POLITICS
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BBC News – Barack Obama signs landmark US healthcare bill into law
•March 23, 2010 •
Barack Obama signs landmark US healthcare bill into law
Mr Obama now has to sell the reforms to a divided American public
US President Barack Obama has signed his landmark healthcare bill into law in a ceremony at the White House.
The new law will eventually extend health insurance cover to about 32 million Americans who currently do not have any.
Mr Obama said he was signing the bill for people like his mother “who argued with insurance companies even as she battled cancer in her final days”. link
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Analysis: Common ground at health summit stays empty, barren 2/25/10
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The extraordinary televised summit between President Obama and congressional leaders at Blair House Thursday was less conversation than illustration: a stark depiction of a gulf between the Democrats and Republicans on what to do next about health care.
Republicans said Democrats should “scrap this bill … and start over again on a clean sheet of paper,” as House GOP leader John Boehner put it, adopting a “step-by-step” approach that would cost less and prescribe a smaller government role.
Democrats said it was imperative to act, and quickly. Some Americans “don’t have time for us to start over,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said as the session started. “Many of them are at the end of the line.” link
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Supreme Court Rolls Back Campaign Finance Restrictions 1/21/10
By a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court on Thursday rolled back restrictions on corporate spending in federal campaigns. The decision could unleash a torrent of corporate-funded attack ads in upcoming elections.
“Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy — it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people — political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority.
In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of judicial activism and attacked the use of corporate personhood in the case: “The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case.” link
A grudging accord in climate talks -ny times 12/19/09
COPENHAGEN — After two weeks of delays, theatrics and last-minute deal-making, the United Nations climate change talks concluded here early Saturday morning with a grudging agreement by the participants to “take note” of a pact shaped by five major nations. link
Holdout Senator Agrees To Support Health Care Bill 12/19/09
Jubilant Democrats locked in Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson as the 60th and decisive vote for historic health care legislation Saturday, putting President Obama’s signature issue firmly on a path for Christmas Eve passage. link
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Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize 10/09/2009
OSLO — President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in a stunning decision designed to encourage his initiatives to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.
Nobel observers were shocked by the unexpected choice so early in the Obama presidency, which began less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama woke up to the news a little before 6 a.m. EDT. The White House had no immediate comment on the announcement, which took the administration by surprise.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided not to inform Obama before the announcement because it didn’t want to wake him up, committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said.
“Waking up a president in the middle of the night, this isn’t really something you do,” Jagland said.
The Nobel Committee lauded the change in global mood wrought by Obama’s calls for peace and cooperation but recognized initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.
“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” Jagland said.
Obama’s election and foreign policy moves caused a dramatic improvement in the image of the U.S. around the world. A 25-nation poll of 27,000 people released in July by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found double-digit boosts to the percentage of people viewing the U.S. favorably in countries around the world. That indicator had plunged across the world under President George W. Bush.
via Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize.
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In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health 6/20/09
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. link
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Obama health care news conference 7/22/09
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House Passes Historic Climate Change Bill 6/27/09
With Contributing Reporting By Jeff Muskus and Ryan Grim
After a tense debate, in which the margin of success or failure never moved beyond a handful of votes, the House of Representatives passed the most sweeping climate change policy ever considered by Congress early Friday evening.
The outcome had remained up in the air up until the actual vote, with the White House and the president himself engaging in a heavy lobbying campaign aimed at restoring Democratic Party unity that seemed to be fracturing.
Hoping to stem what seemed increasingly like a Democratic victory, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) deployed an infrequently used parliamentary procedure to delay the bill’s consideration – reading before the House a 300-page amendment that had been offered to the 1,200-page bill Friday morning.
After an hour of reading the text derisively, Boehner finally surrendered the floor. A raucous Democratic caucus quickly asked for vote to be taken, after which it was revealed that the White House and Democratic leadership’s efforts had paid off. The House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 by a vote of 219 to 212. Forty-four Democrats voted against the measure and only eight Republicans yes.
The climate change bill would reset drastically the way the U.S. government approaches the issue of regulating pollution. Instituting a cap and trade system, the bill aims to cut America’s production of greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020, and 83 percent by 2050. The legislation also includes provisions to create alternative energy sources and cleaner technologies, as well as more efficient building standards.
In an effort to recruit the support of lawmakers sitting on the fence, its authors, prominent progressive Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and Ed Markey (D-Mass), reduced goals for carbon emission reductions and threw in favors for the coal and agricultural industries.
The latter moves were, in part, responsible for the 11th-hour concerns over the bill’s passage. Progressive lawmakers balked at supporting legislation that they deemed to be watered down or insufficiently effective. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, in particular, proved to be particularly recalcitrant, pledging not to support the bill even if his amendments were accepted.
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Polls Close in Iran’s Presidential Vote
NPR.org, June 12, 2009 · After a day that saw a massive voter turnout, polls have closed across Iran and both leading candidates in the race for president are claiming victory Friday.
Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election Friday, but his main reformist challenger also proclaimed himself the winner at a news conference moments earlier. Neither the report from IRNA nor the competing announcement by former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi gave details as to what the claims were based on.
Turnout was reported to be heavy — perhaps unprecedented — as lines began forming immediately and people waited for hours to cast ballots at some stations. Authorities permitted polls to stay open an additional six hours until midnight 3:30 p.m. EDT. More than 46 million Iranians are eligible to vote.
The stakes are high, with Ahmadinejad facing his stiffest challenge from Mousavi. The two men were in a neck-and-neck battle going into the election.
The Interior Ministry, which oversees voting, said all rallies or political gatherings would be banned until after the announcement of results, expected Saturday.
The race will go to a runoff June 19 if no candidate receives a simple majority of more than 50 percent of the votes cast. Much depends on how many votes are siphoned off by the two other candidates: conservative former Revolutionary Guard commander Mohsen Rezai and moderate former Parliament speaker Mahdi Karroubi.
President Obama said Iran’s “robust debate” leading up to Friday’s presidential elections is evidence that change is possible, and he expressed optimism that U.S. diplomatic efforts could get a boost no matter who wins.
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Health insurance is a moral imperative- Politico 6/11/09
GREEN BAY, Wis. – President Barack Obama Thursday made his strongest pitch yet for sweeping health-care reform by year’s end, drawing on campaign-style tactics and rhetoric and taking sharp aim at critics of his proposed “public option” plan.
During a town hall meeting here at Southwest High School, the president said he believes “strongly” that health care reform should include “a public insurance option.”
“The reason is not because we want a government takeover of health care,” Obama said in his opening remarks. “I’ve already said, if you’ve got a private plan that works for you, that’s great. But we want some competition. If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it’ll keep them honest, and it’ll help keep their prices down.”
Providing Americans with affordable health insurance, the president said, is “an economic imperative, but it’s also a moral imperative.”
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Obama’s speech at Notre Dame
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Obama’s speech in Philadelphia
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