Obama-Administration

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates Issues Memo to Phase Out Federal Private Prisons, Citing Safety Problems and High Costs

| Importance: 9/10

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates issues a memorandum directing the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to discontinue outsourcing operations to private entities and either decline to renew contracts or substantially reduce their scope as they expire. The memo cites a comprehensive Office of Inspector General …

Sally Yates Department of Justice Bureau of Prisons CoreCivic GEO Group +1 more private-prison prison-reform obama-administration doj prison-industrial-complex
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Obama Announces Limited NSA Reforms While Preserving Core Surveillance Programs

| Importance: 8/10

President Obama delivered a major address at the Department of Justice outlining reforms to NSA surveillance programs in response to Edward Snowden’s revelations, but the proposed changes left core bulk collection authorities largely intact while adding modest procedural safeguards. The speech …

Barack Obama NSA FISA Court Edward Snowden nsa-surveillance obama-administration surveillance-reform bulk-collection privacy-rights
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Obama Signs American Taxpayer Relief Act Making 82% of Bush Tax Cuts Permanent - 'Fiscal Cliff' Deal Locks in $2.8 Trillion in Tax Cuts for Wealthy

| Importance: 9/10

On January 2, 2013, President Barack Obama signed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) into law, resolving the ‘fiscal cliff’ crisis by making permanent 82% of President Bush’s tax cuts—approximately $2.8 trillion of the $3.4 trillion total Bush tax cut package estimated …

Barack Obama Joe Biden Mitch McConnell John Boehner Harry Reid +3 more tax-policy obama-administration fiscal-cliff bipartisan-complicity wealth-transfer +4 more
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BP Agrees to $20 Billion Gulf Coast Claims Fund Amid Deepwater Horizon Fallout

| Importance: 8/10

Under intense pressure from the Obama administration and Congress, BP agreed to establish a $20 billion independent claims fund to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The fund, administered by Kenneth Feinberg, represented an unprecedented corporate commitment to environmental …

BP (British Petroleum) Barack Obama Tony Hayward Kenneth Feinberg Gulf Coast Claims Facility +2 more compensation-fund corporate-accountability environmental-justice bp-deepwater-horizon obama-administration
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Race to the Top Competition Uses Federal Funds to Incentivize Charter Expansion and Teacher Evaluation Reforms

| Importance: 8/10

On July 24, 2009, the Obama administration announced Race to the Top (RttT), a $4.35 billion competitive grant program that would profoundly reshape American education policy by requiring states to adopt charter school expansion, test-based teacher evaluations, and Common Core standards as …

President Barack Obama Secretary of Education Arne Duncan Bill Gates Gates Foundation Democrats for Education Reform +1 more education charter-schools teacher-evaluation obama-administration neoliberal-reform +1 more
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