Obama Failed at Home and Abroad–From the Peace Resource and Alternet Staffs

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Obama has not really done “better” at home or abroad.

 

In military affairs, he has spent trillions of dollars, killing millions and created a military boondoggle which will take half a century to repair. And while our infrastructure declines at home, he has created an additional 150 combat ready bases worldwide to enforce his tyranny.

 

Obama has governed like a right winger at home and abroad. And we are paying the price.

 

Not yet

1. On Healthcare, we are now forced to pay ever-increasing amounts to insurance cartels who leave 31 million Americans without health care. He has been more willing to compromise than make rules.

 

2. On Immigration, he has deported more than two million people, more than any president in history. He has been breaking up families for no apparent reason. “Deportations have become so rampant that 61 percent of immigrant Hispanics said that deportation relief is more important than a pathway to citizenship.”

 

3. The banksters: ” He has not made bringing criminal bankers to justice a priority, and his administration is clearly a revolving door for Wall Street. The biggest and most dangerous banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo—are even bigger than they were before the crisis. Scarcely a week passes without news of some new abuse committed by these institutions. Obama has failed to support obvious measures to rein in Wall Street, such as the financial transaction tax, and Dodd-Frank has been mostly defanged. Banks have enjoyed special treatment and record-breaking profits during Obama’s tenure, while ordinary Americans have struggled.”

 

4. “Obama’s education “reformers” are corporate privatizers. [President Obama and Secretary Duncan] are heading in the wrong direction. On their present course, they will end up demoralizing teachers, closing schools that are struggling to improve, dismantling the teaching profession, destabilizing communities, and harming public education.”

 

5. “Obama has done nothing but ramp up all forms of surveillance, from metadata capture to wiretapping to recording phone log information of American citizens.”  He continues warrentless searches and is still sending Americans abroad for torture, rape and murder.

 

6. Drone warfare: “President Obama has launched more 390 drone strikes—eight times the number George W. Bush oversaw. Obama has escalated the drone war in Pakistan—where the majority of attacks take place—and in Somalia and Yemen. The drone strikes, meant to target Al Qaeda and the Taliban, have killed scores of civilians, disrupted tribal life, brought about huge suffering and trauma and inflamed anger at the U.S. Four Americans have been killed in drone attacks, and the whole program remains shrouded in secrecy.” Each drone kills an average of fifty innocents.

 

7. “The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a super-secret multinational corporate scheme sometimes described as ‘NAFTA on steroids,’ is one of Obama’s worst initiatives.  …The refrain is always the same: profits come first. The necessities of the people and protection of the planet come last.”

 

8. Obama failed to do much about the racist drug war and discriminatory sentencing. “Obama’s Justice Department fought a Court recommendation to release thousands of federal inmates still serving time under the racist crack standards of pre-2010. So the full court overruled its panel, and those thousands continue to rot in jail with a law that in essence, due to its discriminatory effect, was illegal. Obama’s words are empty until he actually takes the actions that are well within his power, to end the corrupt and racist war on drugs, and curb its devastating effects.”

 

9. Energy Policy and the Environment: The Obama administration has embraced hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas, and propped up a dying coal industry that’s killing us along with itself. “Also baffling and unacceptable is Obama’s green-lighting of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.” Instead of moving towards clean and sustainable energy, Obama has embraced the status quo.

 

10. Obama, once seen as the anti-war candidate, has Bush soundly beat in the number of secret wars with unconventional forces spread across the globe. “In the waning days of the Bush presidency, Special Operations forces were reportedly deployed in about 60 countries around the world . . . In 2013, elite U.S. forces were deployed in 134 countries around the globe . . . This 123% increase during the Obama years demonstrates how, in addition to conventional wars and a CIA drone campaign, public diplomacy and extensive electronic spying, the U.S. has engaged in still another significant and growing form of overseas power projection. Conducted largely in the shadows by America’s most elite troops, the vast majority of these missions take place far from prying eyes, media scrutiny, or any type of outside oversight, increasing the chances of unforeseen blowback and catastrophic consequences.”

See this primary resource:
http://www.alternet.org/visions/10-obama-policies-and-failures-make-us-angriest