On Barack Obama’s campaign website he posted the following promise:
Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days
On January 20th Obama’s White House site posted the following:
Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.
And how did that work out?
On Thursday, Obama appeared to break that promise with the first piece of legislation he signed into law. Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, designed to make it easier for women to sue employers that pay them less than their male counterparts. The text of the legislation was apparently posted about the same time that Obama signed it. A White House spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment specifically on the Lilly Ledbetter legislation, but she said there have been some technical and other issues preventing White House staff from getting content up on the Web site as fast as they’d like.
Transparency indeed.
See author page
You are right, Curt. It was a violation of a pledge, which is not the way to start things off. On the other hand, it is a very good law, which is obvious from a review of the details of the Ledbetter case.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Here is how the Obama administration is approaching transparency on the newly renovated whitehouse.gov website.
Turns out that what they say is not necessarily what they do.
Hope. Change. Lies.
Did you happen by chance read other parts lised on the dot gov website?
Like this
The Problem
Lobbyists Write National Policies: For example, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force of oil and gas lobbyists met secretly to develop national energy policy
–yikkes
if a man and a woman are performing the same job and doing the smae quality of work their pay should be the same. that said, there are times when someone has more experience or does the job better, even if it is the same position. we have a stylist is our salon who has been doing hair for over 30 years, you would assume that she knows what she is doing, not. we have a newer girl, who does a far better job, is booked more and has a better attitude. the one with 30 some odd years makes a higher commision percentage and has far more “redos”. that is unfair in my mind. the younger,newer one should be making more money. i feel pay should be on merit, not years there, not asskissing, but merit. i think this law was written for good intentions, but missed the mark. women can’t do the same jobs in construction as men can, they are not as strong. but they are usually better able to get into the tight spaces due to smaller stature, go figure. good idea, gone about poorly in my opinion. and obama is a liar, woo hoo.
I may be a little naive, but it seems to me that someone’s salary should be a matter of negotiation between the employer and employee, regardless of the sex of the employer/employee. If someone is unhappy with their level of compensation, re-negotiate or quit. It seems to me an employer would have an obligation to pay an employee the absolute minimum that it will take to keep the employee satisfied. Any more would be a disservice to the company
This will be the first of many broken promises.
Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for him…
On the other hand, it is a very good law, which is obvious from a review of the details of the Ledbetter case.
I am not sure why you would think that the law is good.
The new law essentially break all legal precedance in saying that the actionable offense is ongoing, rather when the offense occurs.
Furthermore, …”First, Ledbetter waited more than five years after learning that she was paid substantially less than most male co-workers to file her Title VII claim for back pay, compensatory, and punitive damages. Second, by that time a key supervisor — whom she belatedly accused of holding down her pay raises after she rejected his sexual advances — had died. Third, Ledbetter chose not to pursue a claim under the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which has a much longer time limit (three years) than Title VII but does not (yet) provide for big-bucks damage awards.
Fourth, her years of poor performance evaluations, plus repeated layoffs that affected her eligibility for raises, convinced a federal magistrate judge (although not the jury) that her relatively low pay did not prove sex discrimination. Maybe Ledbetter was a victim of discrimination, as the jury found. Maybe not. The evidence is too stale to allow for a confident conclusion — which is one reason the justices ruled against her.”
Source: http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/openingargument.php
Its a bad law based upon misrepresentation of facts.
Hmmm, have those promises been scrubbed from the sites yet?
And yet another broken promise from the Obamessiah:
Obama’s DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers
as reported by Fred Garner in the April 21, 2009 addition to the CounterPunch.org website. The full article can be read here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/gardner04212009.html
This may not be a big deal to most people; most people don’t have a legitimate use for medical marijuana. I can assure you, from my personal experience of the past 16 years of chronic, debilitating pain, it would be a big deal for you if you had to experience the dizzying downward spiral known in the US as pain treatment. Because a meddlesome group of “holiier than thou” politicians have decided that marijuana use of any kind is simply “wrong”, and despite testimony of numerous medical professionals showing that marijuana is the safest way to deal with intense chronic pain (and its related health issues) that affects hunreds of thousands of American citizens, I am not able to use relatively safe medical marijuana. Instead, over these past 16 years I have seen more than 50 doctors and have tried more than 60 medications and both surgical and non-surgical therapies, most of which have had no effect, and many of which have made my pain worse and have contributed to deteriorating health.
I didn’t vote for Obama, but for those who did vote for him in part because he promised not to prosecute providers of medical marijuana, I hope you see why so many of us did not believe in the rhetoric of “Hope and Change.” Keep this in mind the next presidential election cycle!
Jeff V
Spam filter ate my homework (my post)!!!
@ruaqtpi2:
I’m so sorry to hear about your health problems Jeff, it’s remarkable that you are able to give us such interesting input all the while suffering pain, thank you, you are quite a trooper.
Recently my son-in-laws aunt came up from Arkansas to stay with his parents, she was dying of cancer. The rural area she lived in did not have decent medical facilities to help her so they brought her up here and she was in and out of one of the Chicago hospitals, can’t remember which one.
Her medication was making her extremely ill, she couldn’t eat or sleep and my son-in-law found someone to buy marijuana from, it helped her, she was able to keep her food down and she would sleep for hours. She went fast, but I can’t help but think that it provided some comfort in her last days. But, what would happen if my son-in-law would have been caught getting it for her? My daughter is a nurse at Saint Alexius in Hoffman Estates, would have raised some eyebrows for her too.