HAPPY ONE-MONTH ANNIVERSARY!

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President Barack Obama had Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in the Oval Office today, seated to the left, and Vice President Joe Biden as well. They were all wearing suit coats, and Obama was talking football. (AP photo by Charles Dharapak)




Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is greeted by an unidentified U.S. official upon her arrival at a military airport in Seongnam, near Seoul, February 19, 2009. (Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters)




President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper walk down on the way to a news conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, February 19, 2009. (Chris Wattie/Reuters)


http://www.alternet.org/story/127848/5_great_progressive_moves_by_obama_that_you_might_have_missed

5 Great Progressive Moves by Obama That You Might Have Missed

Here are five significant under-the-radar things to be grateful for in the post-Bush era.

It's been a full month since the inauguration of Barack Obama. With debates raging over the financial system and the larger economic crisis, Obama has quietly succeeded in pushing through some great progressive initiatives and picked an encouraging candidate for his drug czar.

Here are five significant under-the-radar things to be grateful for in the post-Bush era:

$10 Billion for High-Speed Rail

If one day in the next decade you find yourself rolling silently through the cornfields of Wisconsin at over 200 mph, on your way from Chicago to Minneapolis, you might spare a thought for Rahm Emanuel, who last week at the president's behest,instructed Democrats to insert $9.3 billion into the stimulus bill for the long-delayed development of high-speed rail in America.

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Commission to Review Faith-Based Initiatives

It was a small change, but on Feb. 5, Obama signed an executive order renaming the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives entity created by President Bush. The new title of the organization is Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, with much bigger changes in store. Along with widening the scope of groups receiving funds, the White House has said it will not direct federal dollars to groups that proselytize or advocate for so-called reparative or conversion therapy for homosexuals.

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A Reform-Minded Drug Czar

During the transition, progressives and drug-policy reform advocates were jolted by rumors that conservative Minnesota Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad was Obama's choice to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy. But in fact, Obama's recently announced choice for "drug czar," Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, is a relief and an opportunity. True, he's a cop, not a public-health advocate as many reform advocates would have liked, but he's a relatively enlightened cop. (Even if the NAACP did once call for his resignation after his handling of an abuse case.) Kerlikowske comes from a city that has been a pioneer on policies such as needle-exchange programs, lowering marijuana as a law-enforcement priority and innovating overdose-prevention strategies.

A confidante of Attorney General Eric Holder, Kerlikowske has received strong local endorsements and praise for his tolerance of local medical marijuana laws, despite their being at variance with federal law. "Oh God bless us," a medical-marijuana patient told the Seattle Times upon hearing of Kerlikowske's nomination. "What a blessing -- the karma gods are smiling on the whole country, man."

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Swift Action on Arms Control

By all accounts, Obama appears serious about meeting his campaign pledge to drastically reduce the world's largest nuclear stockpiles and initiate a new era of arms control.

Earlier this month, it came out that even before he was sworn in, Obama had sent Henry Kissinger to Moscow to explore a grand bargain that would slash Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals to 1,000 each. The administration has signaled that it intends to reduce spending on missile defense, reconsider missile defense in Europe and deny funding for the development of new nuclear weapons. For the first time in eight years, committed nonproliferation experts are being slotted in senior positions at the State Department and other agencies.

"(Obama) came into office with the most comprehensive, integrated, detailed nuclear policy of any candidate ever to assume the presidency," Joseph Cirincione, of the Ploughshares Fund, said last week at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "I have a great deal of optimism for our chances to fundamentally change U.S. nuclear policy (and) make the world a safer and better place."

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