Tracking Obama’s promises
I don’t believe that in the US we can simply trust our politicians and elected officials to do what is right. We must verify. And this site will be useful.
PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.
To date:
The links in the table are live at the site. For example, clicking “Stalled” takes you to “No. 505: Create a New American Jobs Tax Credit for companies that add jobs” with more information on why it’s stalled.
A tad biased, perhaps?
Man hasn’t been inaugurated yet.
Turn this same scrutiny on GWB and see what oozes out.
EP
18 January 2009 at 5:11 pm
I’m not sure where you see bias. Tracking performance against promises seems to be a smart thing to do. GWB was a total failure, but what does that have to do with this? And, whether inaugurated or not, Obama is already taking actions and setting priorities. Personally, I think the tracking is a great idea.
LeisureGuy
18 January 2009 at 9:37 pm
Okay, I agree with what you say. Guess I’ve just gotten cynical in the last few years.
EP
19 January 2009 at 9:03 am
I understand—especially when the tracking site is located in Florida. OTOH, the St. Petersburg Times has done some excellent work. My hope is that this site gets so popular that newspapers in every state start the same thing for their governor, US Senators and Representatives, and selected state legislators.
In California, for example, we replaced Gov. Gray Davis because he came up with a $38 billion shortfall. We got Arnold Schwarzenegger instead, who put into place new policies (for example, cutting back the auto registration fee). Result: we now have a $40 billion shortfall, but if Gray Davis policies had been left in place, the shortfall would have been “only” $8 billion.
LeisureGuy
19 January 2009 at 9:32 am