Listen to Maureen Dowd

Dear Friends,

President Obama should take the advice of Maureen Dowd in her recent op-ed column in The New York Times entitled "A Modest Proposal" (here).  You should read the whole column but here is the proposal:

He gives a passionate address to the nation, channeling 2004 Obama, and asks, as the son of a foreigner who came to America to go to school, how our mosaic of immigrants soured into such a cruel place toward displaced children.
He defies the Republicans and shoots the moon on an executive order, giving backdoor amnesty to millions of undocumented Hispanic immigrants as well as all those suffering kids on the border who are afraid to live in their own violent countries.

How proud I would be of President Obama!!!

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

EQ 14: Executive Orders = Action

Dear Friends,

I was reminded this morning by my wife that President Obama is doing a good job enacting policy through Executive Orders.  While Executive Orders are by their nature limited in the scope of what they can accomplish, they do provide a way to get somethings done when a President is faced with an opposition party that is against anything that he proposes.  Since the Republicans have made it clear that they will oppose anything that President Obama is for (think Obamacare and Cap and Trade both originally Republican ideas), President Obama has been forced to use Executive Orders to get things done.  Today he announced one directing federal agencies to find ways to expand flexible work place policies to be more family friendly.  Previously, he has used Executive Orders to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.  He has made it easier to have the states provide information about mental illness to the federal gun background check system.  He has increased the minimum wage for federal contractors.  He has addressed climate change, most recently with coal fired power plant emissions.  The list goes on and you can see it here.

Each of these orders is just a small step.  It would be far better to have Congress act much more broadly in these areas, but that is not going to happen so we should encourage President Obama to continue to use Executive Orders whenever he can.  We should particularly encourage him to stop deporting people who may be here illegally but who do not pose any safety threat to our communities and if people are being deported to do so in a much more humanitarian way.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal