He put industry people in charge of the bail out to fix a problem the financial industry created. That was my main gripe with it to begin with. As to what the "best" we could have achieved is, it's business as usual in America again as far as corporations are concerned. I don't call that a resounding success, unless success for you was the status quo.
Success was avoiding a full blown depression.
You can argue that the banking collapse should have been used as an excuse to destroy the banking system and create a new socialist order, and I had friends online and IRL who genuinely thought we were heading into a revolutionary phase (but then some of them thought that about the London riots...). But from the point of view of the man trying to keep people alive, in their houses and out of bankruptcy, further disruption was something to be avoided.
The actual banking reform bills that were fought for alongside the bailout are robust and they needed to come from industry faces to have any sort of chance of getting through. Their enforcement has been largely blocked by congressional forces outside Obama's control. He has used the workarounds available to him but there are drastic limits to his powers in financial areas.
From a US citizen's point of view, it sucks. I don't see why you're defending it or his decision to back it 100%.
ACTA doesn't change US laws. It's an international treaty designed broadly to bring international IP laws in line with US laws so that patents and other IP can be enforced overseas more easily. (Certain) Industry interests are massively advantaged and the average citizen isn't going to see any change.
As a British/EU citizen, it's a horrible treaty and I don't think any other government should ever have signed it and that's a voting point with me. As a US citizen I oppose it on principle, out of solidarity with other nations. If I were in the US government, charged with acting in the provincial interests of those I represent? Hard call. It's broadly good for the US overall and unless the forces on the other side started coming up with serious policy proposals for reform there isn't really another path open. IP law is a total mess with gross inconsistencies and holes. You either come up with reforms or patches, and no serious government level reform has ever gotten off the ground.
For the record, I think there needs to be serious and fundamental copyright reform on the international level soon. ACTA was the opposite of the way to go about things. But none of that is on Obama as far as I'm concerned.
I have read about it. The president has basically ceded that Guantanamo will never close, and the detainees there will likely be detained for the rest of their natural lives at that facility. As long as that facility still stands, it can be used as a place for rendition and extra-judicial prison sentences...the exact reasons he said he wanted to close it.
Erm, he is still fighting hard to get the place closed. I can't imagine any steps he could have taken that he hasn't. Arguably he has overreached executive authority in a few cases (although I don't believe he has).
When Obama came into office he ordered a review of all prisoners. They found that many of them had few records attached to their cases. Combine the lack of information with the legal minefield of the circumstances the prisoners were captured and held and you have a near impossible ball to untangle. The eventual review found that 48 of the prisoners held could not be prosecuted but also could not be released for security reasons. The rest were cleared for release or trial. Getting those prisoners released, however, means securing extradition for people whose legal status is entirely up in the air, and where their release to other nations may be harmful either to that nation, the individual or others. Every single prisoner's case is complex, long winded and involves fighting congressional blocks as well as vested interests within the US government that are fighting to cover their own backs.
Short of accidentally blowing the whole place up I doubt there was any way to detangle the ball in the time he has had. I'm not even sure if it's possible in the next four. In any case, it's certainly impossible now for any further prisoners to be taken there and GTMO itself was never used for rendition.
It only took Congress to add the language explicitly stating what the act did or did not do. As it was originally conceived, it was so ambiguous it HAD to be clarified. That's not the behavior I expect of democratic presidents. And his whole "I agree not to make use of these provisions during my presidency" was a PR stunt, said in full light of the fact that the act will exist beyond his presidency. Again, this is not what I expect of a liberal democrat.
Yeah, that was a PR stunt because those provisions were not there in the first place. He was speaking to public fears through a signing statement, not actually ignoring any provisions contained within the law. Well, he did do that, but only with the provisions supposed to make GTMO prisoners impossible to transfer off of the island.
And to be clear, the US government has claimed the right to detail without trial US citizens on US soil since 2002 and
José Padilla. The authorisation (supposedly) comes from the AUMF. The thing is, they would have to be incredibly careful. Absolutely nothing in any US law, not the NDAA or AUMF, remove habeas rights from US citizens, in any circumstances. Even GTMO prisoners have habeas rights. That means they can only detain someone for as long as it takes their case to get in front of the Supreme Court and their interpretation of the law to be dismissed. In Padilla's case they rapidly transferred him out of detention before this point was reached.
And yes, all of this is utter bullshit. It's also a legal quagmire that has had no real oversight from congress before the NDAA (and even then absolutely none within it; no version of the law I saw substantially changed detention law beyond the GTMO provisions). Obama has not actually done much in this area either way, backing off some of the arguments used in the Bush era. Getting attention focused on things by congress would really help things move in this area, which is why I hoped the NDAA would lead to a substantial review and writing (not rewriting, just writing) of US detention law and policy. No luck yet, but here's hoping.
I don't know, maybe I'm too focused on process these days but I'm getting more and more frustrated with people reacting to bills that basically restate the status quo as the end of the world, or when they blame Obama for things that he actually made better or didn't have control over. I'm starting to find it hard to understand this general perception of him as a traitor and crook when the actions trotted out to prove this are so often someone else's or the actual best path possible for the situation. And then the complete ignoring of the points I'd actually love to see him taken to task for...
But then I'm also of the view that any ethical man who spent a year as president would probably be due some jail time at the end of it.
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Topic: American Election Megathread - It's Over (Read 769146 times)