Today was a good day

Dear Friends,

I read about two good things that President Obama did today.

First, President Obama is going to require hospitals to permit same-sex couples and other non-married people visitation rights as well as decision making rights.  Here is The Christian Science Monitor article about it and their summary of the action that President Obama took:

The president’s memorandum, released Thursday night, directs the Department of Health and Human Services to draft rules requiring hospitals that accept Medicaid and Medicare funding to “respect the rights of patients to designate visitors” and representatives authorized to take part in medical decisionmaking. The directive’s central focus is same-sex couples, though other categories of people would also be covered, including widows and widowers who choose to designate friends.

The article does a really nice job describing the difficult job that President Obama has in pleasing all of the constituencies that helped to get him elected at a time when the country and the world face so many significant issues.  Here are a few paragraphs of their analysis:

The president's tensions with the gay community are similar to those between him and other constituencies – including blacks, Hispanics, women, and labor – that supported his campaign and expected big things after eight years of the Bush administration. Analysts see two factors at play: one, Obama’s deliberative style, and two, the immense issue agenda he has taken on, a combination of his own goals and inherited problems, including two wars and an economic crisis.
“Look at how he prepared for his decision on Afghanistan; he took months,” says Bruce Buchanan, a presidential scholar at the University of Texas, Austin. “Also, he’s got to be careful over how he times things, and how he portrays them, given the huge [number of] balls that he has in the air at any given time.”
Healthcare reform dominated Obama's first year-plus in office, and he is now tackling financial reform. In addition, if he is seen as putting any of his constituencies ahead of the others, he could alienate important supporters.
Obama seems aware of the juggling act he faces, and of the frustrations it creates. Last June, at an event in the East Room of the White House honoring the gay rights movement, the president acknowledged that “many in this room don’t believe that progress has come fast enough,” drawing parallels with civil rights leaders petitioning for equality a half century ago. But, he added, “I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration."

 The second thing that I read about today that President Obama did that I think is great was to threaten to veto any financial reform bill that does not heavily regulate derivatives.  Here is an Associated Press article on the subject and the critical paragraphs of the story.

President Barack Obama vowed Friday to veto a financial overhaul bill that doesn't regulate the eclectic derivatives market, even as Senate Republicans lined up en masse against it.Legislation pending in Congress would for the first time regulate derivatives, complex financial instruments like the mortgage-backed securities that contributed to a near economic meltdown in 2008 when their value plummeted during the housing crisis.
Obama said he wants derivatives to be strongly regulated, and he added that he's ready to veto any financial reform bill that comes to his desk without it.
But there's some dispute among Democrats about how far such regulation should go.
Further complicating matters Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell obtained signatures from 40 fellow GOP senators voicing opposition to the Senate bill and demanding further negotiations.

President Obama's threatened veto is great for several reasons.  First, derivatives should be heavily regulated.  I have a rather extreme view that things like derivatives that serve no purpose other than to transfer money from one entity to another should be banned, but that will never happen, so heavy regulation is the only viable answer.

Second, by threatening a veto, President Obama is making it clear that he has a backbone and will not buckle under to pressure from Wall Street and their Republican and Democratic lackeys.

Third, I hope that by doing this President Obama is making it clear that he will take this issue to the people and get the debate framed in the correct way.  He needs to be clear that he is regulating Wall Street over the reckless activities that they undertook that lead to this awful recession and that the Republicans are using their just say no techniques to protect Wall Street.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal