[Riot]

Originally Posted by Cannon Shell

The inference that there is some measuring stick that "first years" are ranked by is even stupider than trying to say a country with as many continuing issues as we have just had an all time great year.

I didn't say this country had an all-time great year, genius. Neither has anybody else.

Here ya go: certainly you are free to point out why all the below are bad things for the US:

When we Americans elect a president, we’re doing much more than putting someone in the White House to steer the country through a maze of high-profile issues like health care, climate change and the economy.

For instance, President Obama’s first year in office seemed to be consumed only by health care and unemployment. Yet hundreds of other issues were addressed, most of them flying beneath the radar but making significant changes that will affect millions of Americans for years to come.

That’s why I take issue with those who insist they vote only “for the man” during a presidential election and not for the party, as if that’s some kind of virtue. It’s the overall party philosophy that guides an administration and shapes the policies that it puts in place. When we elect a president, we’re making decisions on who serves on the Supreme Court, who presides over the national parks and what environmental policies will be enforced, to name just a few.

With thanks to West Coast writer Dan Benbow, let’s take a look at some of the changes that Obama’s administration has made during his first year in office.

In his first month, the president signed equal-pay-for-equal-work legislation to counteract a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that placed severe restrictions on a woman taking legal action over unequal treatment. A couple of weeks later, he signed into law a bill extending health coverage to 4 million uninsured children that the previous administration and Congress had blocked.

The president ordered his new attorney general to take action against people who avoid income taxes by laundering their money in foreign countries. At the same time, he proposed that the government quit the practice of having banks make student loans and then having the U.S. guarantee their repayment. Rather, Obama declared, the government should eliminate the middle man and loan the money itself.

He reversed the Bush administration’s restrictions on the use of stem cells for medical research, clearing the way for federal help for experiments being conducted in places like the University of Wisconsin. He reversed the Bush administration’s crackdown on medical use of marijuana even in states that had legalized the sales. He ordered the Food and Drug Administration to ease access to the “morning after” pill.

Obama began overturning the Bush administration’s “midnight” rules that OK’d mountain mining operations and dumping waste into streams. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the Bush rule that limits the role of science in Endangered Species Act decisions was being rescinded and he placed a million acres of public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon off limits to uranium claims and exploration.

Obama made more aid available to the still-Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and ordered the antitrust division of the Justice Department to scrutinize monopolies in agriculture that may be harming family farm businesses. He unshackled AIDS programs from restrictions that prevented their use for family planning.

The president urged Congress to pass new restrictions on onerous bank overdraft fees and pushed the passage of a credit card consumer act to counter high fees and interest rates. He ordered the Pentagon to allow photographs of soldiers’ coffins returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and he opened the White House visitors’ log to public scrutiny.

All that plus dealing with an obstinate Congress on health care legislation, a massive federal stimulus program to help get the economy moving again, money for the first time ever to build high-speed passenger rail, fostering a new international climate of cooperation, progress with Russia on a new nuclear arms treaty and much more.

Yes, there have been many disappointments during Obama’s first year, but the accomplishments are more than meet the eye.

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of the Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com