American and Canadian Social Values in the Age of Obama and Harper
Noted Canadian pollster and author Michael Adams will discuss his recent public opinion research tracking the evolution of Canadian and American social value...
By: WoodrowWilsonCenter
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American and Canadian Social Values in the Age of Obama and Harper - Video
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President Barack Obama's new promise to seek ways to ease his administration's rate of deportations aims to mollify angry immigrant advocates but carries risks for a White House that has insisted it has little recourse.
In asking Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to review enforcement practices, Obama could undo already fragile congressional efforts to overhaul immigration laws. And he still could fall short of satisfying the demands of pro-immigrant groups that have been increasing pressure on him to dramatically reverse the administration's record of deportations.
The White House announced Thursday that Obama had directed Johnson, who was sworn in three months ago, to see how the department "can conduct enforcement more humanely within the confines of the law." Then the president summoned 17 labor and immigration leaders to the White House Friday afternoon for what some participants described as a spirited discussion of his deportations policies and the strategy for enacting a comprehensive congressional overhaul of immigration laws.
"The president displayed a great deal of sympathy for the families affected by the deportation machinery," Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, said after the nearly two-hour session. "There was less agreement on when and what should be done about it by the president."
Participants emerged from the meeting unified in their call for House Republicans to act on immigration legislation. Privately, some said Obama voiced frustration during the meeting with the criticism some of them have directed at him, including calling him "deporter in chief."
Republican House Speaker John Boehner's office pointedly warned that fixes to the immigration system should be carried out by Congress, not by the president on his own. The Democratic-controlled Senate last year passed a comprehensive bill that would enhance border security and provide a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million immigrants who entered the country illegally or overstayed their visas. But the Republican-held House has delayed action and favors a more piecemeal approach.
"There's no doubt we have an immigration system that is failing families and our economy, but until it is reformed through the democratic process, the president is obligated to enforce the laws we have," Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck said Friday. "Failing to do so would damage perhaps beyond repair our ability to build the trust necessary to enact real immigration reform."
But immigrant advocates insisted Obama needs to act promptly and broadly to reduce deportations, which have reached nearly 2 million during his presidency.
The White House has pointed to the high level of deportations as evidence that Obama is paying heed to border security, a Republican priority.
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President Barack Obama's appearance on the "Between Two Ferns" satirical online talk show this week has reached 15 million views almost at Justin Bieber levels.
The website Funny or Die said Friday that Obama's interview with Zach Galifianakis, posted Tuesday, will likely beat Bieber's record of 17.8 million views for the show. The pop singer's appearance was posted in September.
The president's appearance to persuade young people to sign up for health insurance is a key moment for the Internet, much like Franklin Roosevelt's fireside chats were for radio and the Kennedy-Nixon debate for television, said Dick Glover, CEO of the comic website started by Will Ferrell.
"It truly validates that it is an incredibly valuable medium for the president," he said.
For his part, Obama told Ryan Seacrest in an interview that he figured he'd reached his target audience when his daughter Malia was excited that he'd done the interview when he told her at the dinner table. She's seen most of the "Between Two Ferns" posts, he said.
Galifianakis' act is to ask his guest hostile or inappropriate questions. But Obama said he seemed nervous at the White House taping.
"He was looking around at all the Secret Service guys with guns and thinking, 'I wonder what happens if I cross the line?'" the president said.
Obama will have a way to go to beat Funny or Die's record of 81 million views for a video posted in 2007, showing Ferrell being harassed by a pint-sized "landlord."
Now that Galifianakis has interviewed Obama, who's next on the "Between Two Ferns" wish list?
"(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is certainly up there," Glover said.
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President Barack Obama's move to make more workers eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay is being hailed by Democrats who see it as a potent midterm election issue and condemned by Republicans and business leaders as presidential overreach. Supporters say it will help the still fragile economy, critics say it will damage it further.
It is likely to affect millions of American workers.
"From my perspective, they have to be pulling numbers out of the air right now," said Washington labor lawyer Tammy McCutchen, referring to the conflicting claims by partisans that it would either help or hurt the economy. "We don't even know what the policy is going to be."
She's closer to the process than most. As administrator of the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division during the George W. Bush administration, McCutchen oversaw the last rewrite of the program in 2004.
Currently, salaried workers making more than $455 a week, or $23,660 a year, aren't eligible for time-and-a-half overtime if some of their work is considered supervisory, even though many spend most of their day doing manual, clerical or technical work with few management duties.
Obama signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday directing the Labor Department to devise new overtime rules "to ensure that workers are paid fairly for a hard day's work." He's tossing out most of the rules McCutchen wrote in the process.
"Well, it's going to be bad for business," she said in an interview. "It's going to be good for my bottom line. Lawyers all over the country are going to be making a lot of money."
She called the rules "my babies. I spent two years of my life working on them. It's personal for me. It's going to be very sad to see them taking out a lot of the stuff I put in," she said.
But she also warned that the Obama administration should expect a rocky road ahead in implementing whatever new policy emerges just as the Bush administration faced last time around.
Those close to the process suggest it will take 12 months to 18 months for the agency to complete its new assignment.
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President Obama has no business experience.
For most people, that might incline one to modesty. Not this president. To the contrary, he believes he knows how an auto company should be run, what policies health-insurance companies should offer, the wages, say, a part-time worker in a family restaurant should receive and what banks should pay in bonuses.
Now the president has found a new area in which to intervene. Yesterday he directed his Labor Department to make millions of salaried managers eligible for overtime pay. Under existing rules, employers must pay overtime to salaried workers earning less than $455 a week. Though Obama didnt set a new figure, most expect it to be more than double that amount.
The rhetoric out of Washington will have you believe this is justice for all those evil corporations making record profits while stiffing employees. That may make for a good election-year sound bite. But its surely not the tonic for a nation where a record number of Americans have given up on the job market altogether.
Like so many of Obamas recent actions, this one will not be done through legislation. Instead, it will be engineered simply by changing the regulations. Its the same logic behind the boost in the minimum wage. Washington decrees and people get richer.
That, at least, is the theory. The reality is that when government makes people more expensive to employ, sooner or later it will mean fewer people are hired or employed.
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