Posts Tagged ‘progress
22
Feb
17
Keep Up The Good Fight
The 4th Circuit has reaffirmed that assault weapons are not protected by the 2nd Amendment.
slate.com/blogs/the_slat…
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Tim 🇺🇸 Dickinson (@7im) February 21, 2017For those who still dont understand ACA (or know they now have no benefit caps) read this piece on what that means. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
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Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) February 22, 2017****
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A Judge Has Blocked Texas From Cutting Planned Parenthood Funding
buzzfeed.com/claudiakoerner… https://t.co/0cNeid21Dr
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BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 22, 2017Federal judge Sparks is ... not impressed with TX's rationale for trying to kick Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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Brian M. Rosenthal (@brianmrosenthal) February 21, 2017****
Angry constituents confront Chuck Grassley in Iowa: “If it wasn’t for Obamacare, we wouldn’t be able to afford insu… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 21, 2017****
Everyone holding up their CO driver's license to prove that it's all Coloradans wanting to talk with… twitter.com/i/web/status/8…
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(@IndivisibleNOCO) February 22, 2017Activists hang ‘Refugees Welcome’ banner on Statue of Liberty nyp.st/2m9X6cn https://t.co/RJrlbGTzt9
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McSpocky™ 👽 (@mcspocky) February 21, 2017
08
Nov
16
Progress You Can Believe In
Under @POTUS, 15.5 million new private-sector jobs have been created over the past 80 months. This is progress:… twitter.com/i/web/status/7…
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The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 07, 2016
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Juliet Eilperin: Obama Has Vastly Changed The Face Of The Federal Bureaucracy
Friday afternoon announcements in Washington are usually aimed at attracting as little attention as possible, but last Friday was different. President Obama’s decision to nominate Eric Fanning — an openly gay man — to head a branch of the military which only four years ago did not allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, was both historic and attention-grabbing. And it underscored an often-overlooked feature of the Obama presidency: Obama has presided over the most demographically diverse administration in history, according to a new analysis of his top appointments. The majority of top policy appointments within the executive branch are held by women and minorities for the first time in history. The shifts are significant enough, experts say, that they may have forever transformed the face of government. The Obama White House, by contrast, has established specific programs to boost diversity among appointees.
For the 1st time ever the majority of top exec branch posts aren't held by white men. Here's how @POTUS @vj44 did it wapo.st/1KsI5Xk
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Juliet Eilperin (@eilperin) September 21, 2015The Presidential Personnel Office targets historically black colleges and universities, as well as minority-serving institutions, as part of a new campus recruitment program. It has a liaison to identify candidates by working with leaders from underrepresented groups, including those who are LGBT or have disabilities. The impact of Obama’s diversity efforts could reverberate for decades in people such as Michael Blake, a son of Jamaican immigrants who was homeless as a child but worked on Obama’s two presidential campaigns and in the White House as associate director of public engagement. Last year, Blake won election to the New York State Assembly, with the help of a lot of other Obama alumni, including Marlon Marshall, who is now Hillary Rodham Clinton’s director of state campaigns and political engagement. Blake’s campaign slogan was about his transformation: “No House to the White House.” Obama, Blake said, has helped create a new network of people of color now climbing the ranks of government. “He did that,” Blake said. “He grew that.”
More here
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President Obama admin: 53.5% women and minorities
W: 25.6%
Bill Clinton: 37.5%
washingtonpost.com/politics/obama… http://t.co/dkoA5knQj3
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meta (@metaquest) September 21, 2015Where did @POTUS actually deliver on change? For the 1st time ever white men are a minority of top exec branch posts wapo.st/1KsI5Xk
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Ed O'Keefe (@edatpost) September 21, 2015
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Keith Boykin: Why Obama May Be The Best President Since WWII
I woke up this morning to a disturbingly silly headline. President Obama is the worst president since World War II, according to a plurality of voters in a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. When you look beneath the numbers, it’s not what it looks like. Only about 33 percent of those polled called Obama the worst president, but that number roughly mirrors the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans, a group which has tried to sabotage, block, sue and impeach the president in recent years. So for the moment, forget what the polls say. The facts tell the real story of the Obama presidency, and the facts are damn good, especially compared to his predecessor. Under President Obama, the unemployment rate has fallen from 10 percent in 2009 to 6.3 percent today. Under George W. Bush, on the other hand, the unemployment rate rose from 4.2 percent to 7.8 percent. Under President Obama, the U.S. economy is gaining 200,000 jobs a month.
Compared to U.S. Presidents from Truman to Bush, Obama stacks up well. bet.com/news/politics/… http://t.co/9P6AAECpVh
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Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 02, 2014When Bush left office, however, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month. Under President Obama, at least 24 million people have gotten health insurance. The rate of uninsured has declined from 18 percent to 13.4 percent and the rate for Blacks has dropped dramatically from 20.9 percent to 14.7 percent. And despite all the exaggerated GOP claims that Obamacare would be a “job killer,” we’ve actually added more than 9 million new private sector jobs since the president signed the law. Under President Obama, businesses are also booming again. In the first few weeks of his presidency, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was sitting at 6547. Today it’s close to 17,000, a 10,000 point increase in five years!
And corporate profits hit an all-time record high just last year. President Obama ended the war in Iraq, drew down troops in Afghanistan, captured Osama Bin Laden, averted a second depression, helped to rescue the financial sector, stabilized home prices and saved more than a million jobs in the auto industry. At the same time, he enacted the most sweeping health care reform legislation in 50 years, something Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton couldn’t do, and which Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes never wanted to do. as a student of history, as an unapologetic liberal, as an African-American, as a gay man, as a supporter of equal rights for women and as someone who knows what it’s like to lose a job and live without health insurance, I’d say President Obama has done more good for this country than any president before him.
More here
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White House: A Historic Day For Our Judiciary
This morning, the Senate confirmed three federal judges. On the one hand, they are not unique; like all of the President’s judges and judicial nominees, they have the necessary intellect, experience, integrity, and temperament. But they are special in that each of them is a trailblazer on their courts:
Judge Darrin Gayles, confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, is the first openly gay African American man to be confirmed as a lifetime-appointed federal judge in our nation’s history.
Judge Salvador Mendoza, confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, is the first Hispanic judge to serve on his court.
Staci Yandle, confirmed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, is the first African American to serve on her court and the first openly gay lifetime-appointed federal judge in Illinois.
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President Obama has now appointed more female judges and more Hispanic judges than any other President: wh.gov/lHujw
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Shin Inouye (@Inouye44) June 17, 2014Today’s confirmations also set historic milestones: For the first time in history, the Senate has confirmed two openly gay judges on the same day. President Obama has now appointed more female judges than any other President, breaking the record previously set by President Clinton. President Obama also has now appointed more Hispanic judges than any other President, breaking the record previously held by President George W. Bush. As we’ve said before, these “firsts” — and these milestones — are important, not because these judges will consider cases differently, but because a judiciary that better resembles our nation instills even greater confidence in our justice system, and because these judges will serve as role models for generations of lawyers to come. Congratulations to our newest federal judges, who we are confident will serve with honor, distinction, and fidelity to the rule of law.
03
Dec
13
Have we gotten any better?
Channing Kennedy unearthed a little tidbit from 1982, in which President Ronald Reagan’s spokesperson Larry Speakes is asked about the disease which had been recently declared an epidemic by the CDC: AIDS. Amid much laughter from Mr. Speakes and the White House Press Corps, all parties participate in a callous back and forth on what the Reagan Administration’s position was on the new disease.
One part of the dialogue stuck out to me:
Q: Does the President, does anybody in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any—
Q: Nobody knows?
MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.
Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping—
MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he’s had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.
“There has been no personal experience here.”
No one in the White House, or among the White House Press Corps, knew anyone who was afflicted with AIDS. It hadn’t touched them. And the concerns of a despised minority reaping what they had sown were not their concerns.
The Obama Diary 
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