Obama on the Precipice: The Ten Worst Things He Could Do When He Takes Over

By Don Hazen and Jan Frel and Joshua Holland and Liliana Segura and Tara Lohan and Heather Gehlert, AlterNet. Posted January 17, 2009.

These numbers are reflected every day in beach closings and water advisories from sewage overflows, in waterways that don't meet federal safety standards and in municipalities turning to private companies to run their public water systems because they can't keep up with the costs.

Thirty-five years after the passage of the Clean Water Act, our progress is beginning to erode in a big way. Unbelievably, almost half of our waterways in the United States don't meet water-quality standards. 

We have 72,000 miles of pipes in this country, and we need a way to keep them in shape and keep our water drinkable, safe and publicly controlled. And we need a national water management policy to prepare for water scarcity and climate change. These items should be priorities for Obama's allocations on building sustainable infrastructure, creating jobs and protecting the environment. 

Mistake IX: Continue the Bush Administration’s Warped View of How to Approach the Israel-Palestine Conflict 

It would be a stretch to imagine President Obama radically altering U.S. policy toward Israel and the Occupied Territories. It's unlikely that he will ever tout the Palestinians' right to self-defense, call on Israel to recognize their statehood or mention their need for security, as politicians across the spectrum routinely do when discussing Israel. 

But in the most powerful state in the world, a modest change of course can have a dramatic effect. For 30 years, before the Bush administration came to power, the United States was seen as being slanted toward the Israeli position on most issues, but not to a degree where it became impossible for it to play the role of a broker in the peace process. That changed when the Supreme Court elected Bush in 2000. 

For example, until the Bush administration reversed the policy, the United States had long deducted a dollar in aid to Israel for every dollar spent on expanding Israel's illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories. It was a small nod to international law, but the Bush administration's reversal was seen as a significant departure from the approach previous administrations had taken. 

Having the United States be at least a minimally honest broker is vitally important for both sides of the conflict. It's long been the case that public opinion among both Israelis and Palestinians has favored some sort of deal embracing the concept of "land for peace."

There are, tragically, extremist minorities on both sides of the conflict that reject any effort to negotiate a settlement. The United States has put unrelenting pressure on the Palestinians to renounce their rejectionists, but next to none on the Israelis. What's more, by insulating Israel from international condemnation, Washington has essentially given the Israeli majority no incentive whatsoever to rein in its violent fringe. This is a formula for endless conflict, and Obama would be unwise to continue it.

Mistake X: Continue to Detain Nonviolent Immigration Offenders

Regardless of Obama’s views on the larger debate over immigration, Bush’s push to automatically lock up those suspected of immigration offenses while they are waiting for their cases to be heard is one of the most boneheaded policy shifts of the last decade, and it has to be reversed.

It's not just a matter of ethics, separating people who are suspected of having committed a misdemeanor from their families, sometimes leaving children uncared for. According to Detention Watch, the "supervised release" of immigrants while their cases are pending costs as little as $12 dollars per day, and 93 percent of them do show up for their day in court. Each of the tens of thousands of detainees held in ICE's nationwide prison network costs taxpayers $95 per day, or about eight times as much.

With more than 1.5 million people currently in immigration proceedings, a Washington Post analysis found that ICE "holds more detainees a night than Clarion Hotels have guests, operates nearly as many vehicles as Greyhound has buses and flies more people each day than do many small U.S. airlines."

At $95 bucks a day, that's a policy that just doesn't add up.

See more stories tagged with: iraq, immigration, water, obama, health care, afghanistan, civil liberties, war on drugs, stimulus, mistakes

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet. Jan Frel, Senior Managing Editor; Heather Gehlert, Managing Editor; Josh Holland, senior writer; Tara Lohan, Envionment editor and Liliana Segura is Rights and Liberties Editor.

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