I admit I did not listen to the entire State of the Union and did not take the time to read it. I did hear some clips and all I can say is that if it is not total BS then at least it is total spin. My response to a couple points:
Going into this I do acknowledge that Obama is up against impossible odds. Last year he asked congress to do 41 things he thought would be good for the country and they did TWO of them! Bills that would pass with bipartisan support in the House, don't even get brought to a vote because they are things that the Democrats want more than the Republicans (like an end to the shut down or immigration reform). That being said, Obama, in my opinion, is still full of $#!^ on a few topics.
He pushed his Pacific Rim 'free' trade agreement with the argument that it will help create jobs. Even he knows, or knew, that is not the case. In 2008 he correctly blamed rising income inequality and a downward push of wages on free trade agreements like NAFTA. This free trade agreement would likely drive wages lower but it will also soften labor and environmental laws - making it more difficult, for instance, for the State of California, to pass strict regulations of natural gas fracking.
Good for him for talking about poverty, few presidents do. Income inequality is one of the biggest problems this country faces and again, good on him for talking about this issue. And I guess baby steps are better than nothing, but it is difficult to imagine he is being genuine when he says he is raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour because 'no one who works for our government should live in poverty'. I am sorry, but $10.10 is still a poverty wage. If the minimum wage kept pace with the cost of living it would be over $20 an hour. Especially when you consider how government programs are structured. By getting a raise, many people will be worse off because of the all or nothing way our government assistance programs like food stamps, housing assistance, health care assistance, etc are determined. People who make slightly more (even a few dollars more) than the cut-off for these programs often lose all their assistance at once - food, housing, health care, etc. Our safety net really needs to be calculated on a sliding scale. I even experienced this this year, as the cost for insuring my own two kids went over night from $50 a month to $500 a month! This kind of system can't help to encourage conversations like "I can't afford to work more" or "maybe I should ask that I don't get a raise, because I would be better off." And of course, these kind of conversations are not good for the State of our Union!
Obama's 'all of the above' energy plan would be fine if he believed Climate Change is not a problem. But Obama said "Climate Change is real" and he talked about how we need to be able to look our grand kids in the eye and tell them we did everything we could to prevent climate change. That is total BS. Sure, Obama is taking some good baby steps, but he is not doing everything he can, nor is he telling us what that really would mean. Our domestic oil production is at an all time high, he is on the verge of giving the green light to Keystone XL pipeline which will enable the production of the dirtiest form of oil on the planet, and his savior - natural gas - is being extracted at a terrible cost to human lives, local economies, and the environment.
The argument that the tar sands will be mined regardless of what we do is a terrible one. When I tell my students that they should make smart choices about what they buy, they often say "well it is in the store already, so if we don't buy it, someone else will." They quickly see the lack of logic in that argument. The store only replaces things at the speed they fly off the shelf. I heard a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute today say that the tar sands oil is going to come out of the ground, like it or not. Scientists have warned that if we burn all that tar sand oil it will be 'game over' for the climate. Are you doing all you can do Obama? If he stood up solidly against the Keystone XL pipeline, regardless of the political blow back, he would have a little more credibility with his grand kids.
The US has reduced its carbon emissions due to an increase in the use of Natural Gas for producing electricity. NG has way less carbon than coal and less also than oil. That is all good, but the method of mining it, called fracking, is TERRIBLE. Obama said he wants to cut red tape so more natural gas can be extracted. Well go to this link and check out this report: Shalefield Stories. It has dozens of first hand accounts of people who have been poisoned, farms destroyed, lives ruined, cancers, etc due to fracking where they live. This is not the direction we need to be leading the world, Mr. President.
I certainly don't blame Obama for all his shortcomings, he is no doubt at the wheel of a ship with a lot of momentum and his copilots have tied his hands behind his back. But at this point his actions speak louder than his words and his actions contradict his words a few too many times.
My republican friends try to say "I told you so" when they hear me critical of Obama. While I am disappointed in him on MANY fronts (drones, his crack down on whistle blowers, etc) I did not expect him to be my perfect candidate (He is no Bernie Sanders) and I still contend that a conservative Democrat is better than a Republican. For my values, it is sad but true.
Going into this I do acknowledge that Obama is up against impossible odds. Last year he asked congress to do 41 things he thought would be good for the country and they did TWO of them! Bills that would pass with bipartisan support in the House, don't even get brought to a vote because they are things that the Democrats want more than the Republicans (like an end to the shut down or immigration reform). That being said, Obama, in my opinion, is still full of $#!^ on a few topics.
He pushed his Pacific Rim 'free' trade agreement with the argument that it will help create jobs. Even he knows, or knew, that is not the case. In 2008 he correctly blamed rising income inequality and a downward push of wages on free trade agreements like NAFTA. This free trade agreement would likely drive wages lower but it will also soften labor and environmental laws - making it more difficult, for instance, for the State of California, to pass strict regulations of natural gas fracking.
Good for him for talking about poverty, few presidents do. Income inequality is one of the biggest problems this country faces and again, good on him for talking about this issue. And I guess baby steps are better than nothing, but it is difficult to imagine he is being genuine when he says he is raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $10.10 an hour because 'no one who works for our government should live in poverty'. I am sorry, but $10.10 is still a poverty wage. If the minimum wage kept pace with the cost of living it would be over $20 an hour. Especially when you consider how government programs are structured. By getting a raise, many people will be worse off because of the all or nothing way our government assistance programs like food stamps, housing assistance, health care assistance, etc are determined. People who make slightly more (even a few dollars more) than the cut-off for these programs often lose all their assistance at once - food, housing, health care, etc. Our safety net really needs to be calculated on a sliding scale. I even experienced this this year, as the cost for insuring my own two kids went over night from $50 a month to $500 a month! This kind of system can't help to encourage conversations like "I can't afford to work more" or "maybe I should ask that I don't get a raise, because I would be better off." And of course, these kind of conversations are not good for the State of our Union!
Obama's 'all of the above' energy plan would be fine if he believed Climate Change is not a problem. But Obama said "Climate Change is real" and he talked about how we need to be able to look our grand kids in the eye and tell them we did everything we could to prevent climate change. That is total BS. Sure, Obama is taking some good baby steps, but he is not doing everything he can, nor is he telling us what that really would mean. Our domestic oil production is at an all time high, he is on the verge of giving the green light to Keystone XL pipeline which will enable the production of the dirtiest form of oil on the planet, and his savior - natural gas - is being extracted at a terrible cost to human lives, local economies, and the environment.
The argument that the tar sands will be mined regardless of what we do is a terrible one. When I tell my students that they should make smart choices about what they buy, they often say "well it is in the store already, so if we don't buy it, someone else will." They quickly see the lack of logic in that argument. The store only replaces things at the speed they fly off the shelf. I heard a spokesperson for the American Petroleum Institute today say that the tar sands oil is going to come out of the ground, like it or not. Scientists have warned that if we burn all that tar sand oil it will be 'game over' for the climate. Are you doing all you can do Obama? If he stood up solidly against the Keystone XL pipeline, regardless of the political blow back, he would have a little more credibility with his grand kids.
The US has reduced its carbon emissions due to an increase in the use of Natural Gas for producing electricity. NG has way less carbon than coal and less also than oil. That is all good, but the method of mining it, called fracking, is TERRIBLE. Obama said he wants to cut red tape so more natural gas can be extracted. Well go to this link and check out this report: Shalefield Stories. It has dozens of first hand accounts of people who have been poisoned, farms destroyed, lives ruined, cancers, etc due to fracking where they live. This is not the direction we need to be leading the world, Mr. President.
I certainly don't blame Obama for all his shortcomings, he is no doubt at the wheel of a ship with a lot of momentum and his copilots have tied his hands behind his back. But at this point his actions speak louder than his words and his actions contradict his words a few too many times.
My republican friends try to say "I told you so" when they hear me critical of Obama. While I am disappointed in him on MANY fronts (drones, his crack down on whistle blowers, etc) I did not expect him to be my perfect candidate (He is no Bernie Sanders) and I still contend that a conservative Democrat is better than a Republican. For my values, it is sad but true.
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