12) Renewable Energy Slighted in Obama Second Term - During his three years in office, President Obama has devoted more resources to fossil fuels than he has to renewable energy. He has opened up the Western states for much more production of coal and he has expanded the number of offshore oil drilling leases. Meanwhile, while he has inveighed against the tax breaks for fossil fuel industries, no action has been taken to reduce or eliminate any of the breaks.
President Obama did provide $80 billion for renewable energy in his initial stimulus spending plan. The electric-car industry received $5 billion of funding but much of it has not produced positive results. For instance, in August 2009, Obama announced $2.4 billion in more than 40 grants to car industry firms, much of it going to battery manufacturers. Several of these manufacturers have floundered or failed, laying off large numbers of workers. The Energy Department said in February 2010 that a goal was one million EVs by 2015. Actual sales now stand at 16,800, or about 2/10ths of one percent of 2011 domestic car sales.
13) Pluses and Minuses on the Environment - President Obama has had a mixed record on environmental policy. His greatest achievement was to get an agreement to require passenger cars and light trucks to achieve 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Probably his next most important achievement was to set a national standard for mercury, a toxic metal. The EPA has also reduced allowable downwind pollution for manufacturing and power plants.
Easily the two most controversial environmental decisions made by Obama were to block tougher standards on smog creation and to delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until 2013. Even though the EPA's independent scientific panel was unanimous in supporting the tougher standards on smog, Obama rejected them due to the higher costs they would impose on the industries primarily responsible for the smog.
The EPA's record on mountaintop removal mining has been uneven, as it has denied some permits for such mining and approved others. The Obama administration has not moved to ban such environmentally destructive mining.
14) The Wrong Track on Education - President Obama has proposed some useful changes in No Child Left Behind, by giving the states more control and removing the focus on failure as a predominant outcome; however, he has continued to support high stakes testing, with its attendant narrowing of the educational horizon for students.
Obama is also a strong proponent of charter schools, even though the evidence continues to accumulate that they don't perform any better, in general, than traditional public schools; they are more segregated than traditional public schools; and are more prone to fraud and corruption than are traditional public schools. Only about five percent of charter schools employ unionized teachers -- a dagger aimed at his own party by Obama, because unionized teachers are among the most faithful constituencies of the Democratic Party.
As a general proposition, students from states with highly unionized teaching corps perform better on standardized tests than do students learning in right-to-work states. Students in industrialized nations with a heavily unionized teaching force also test better than do students form right-to-work states.
One of President Obama's main educational projects is the Race to the Top. In order to qualify, any cap on charter schools must be removed and teacher evaluations must be closely tied to student performances on tests. Most public schools do not participate in Race to the Top.
15) Near Status Quo in War on Drugs - President Obama has largely embraced the War on Drugs, increasingly seen as a colossal failure. Despite the expenditure of billions of U.S. dollars in Columbia, that nation remains a violent land for union leaders and other activists. Drug-related violence has actually increased in Mexico during the Obama years and the "Fast and Furious" program to trace U.S.-supplied firearms to Mexican drug cartels has been a major fiasco.
The Obama White House has stepped up raids of medical marijuana dispensaries and users in those states that have liberalized their marijuana laws. These raids and prosecutions have created a terrible quandary for those following their state law, only to be hit with a federal prosecution.
The first drug czar appointed by President Obama spoke of the need to emphasize treatment over law enforcement; however, that called-for policy change has been mostly rhetorical in nature.
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