Do you have an election in your community this week? If you do, go out and VOTE and take a friend with you.
Folks, there are elections all across the country on Tuesday, November 3 and THEY MATTER.
We’ll see important elections for Governor in New Jersey and Virginia and important Mayoral elections in Atlanta, Houston, New York and other cities and we should be focused on them. Plus races for City Council, State Legislature and other positions are also up for grabs. These elections might not receive as much publicity and hype and may not seem to be as ‘sexy’ as the Presidential elections but they are more important in many ways.
These elections will affect our daily lives: The raising of fees, property taxes, making our schools more effective, fighting disparities in our criminal justice system are all determined by the City Council, Commissioner’s Court, Sherriff’s office and by local and state judges yet we ignore these elections. We should gladly spend time in lines to make sure our votes are counted in our local elections.
Even though President Obama is the leader of our country and the leader of the Democratic Party, once he authorizes monies to go to our communities our local elected officials are the ones who decide HOW to spend the monies.
Our President is VERY important but our local elected officials are the people who allocate these funds in a meaningful way or waste it to serve their own personal agendas.
In order for President Obama’s policies to be effective, we need local politicians in office who have a similar vision.
Know which local politician(s) in your community will do the most for you and your family. Share this information with your neighbors and friends and please make sure everyone in your household go out and vote and make sure each person takes a friend with them to the polls.
President Barack Obama used his March 7, 2009 weekly address to detail his plans to fix our ailing economy, noting that reforming healthcare is necessary to ensure our long term fiscal health. While ending this crisis will not be quick or easy, the President’s plans will take the swift, bold, and responsible actions needed for the United States to emerge stronger and more prosperous than before. And that is why reforming healthcare, jumpstarting job creation, restoring lending, relieving responsible homeowners, and making hard choices are all so critically important right now.
Transcript of President Obama’s remarks:
Yesterday, we learned that the economy lost another 651,000 jobs in the month of February, which brings the total number of jobs lost in this recession to 4.4 million. The unemployment rate has now surpassed 8 percent, the highest rate in a quarter century.
These aren’t just statistics, but hardships experienced personally by millions of Americans who no longer know how they’ll pay their bills, or make their mortgage, or raise their families.
From the day I took office, I knew that solving this crisis would not be easy, nor would it happen overnight. And we will continue to face difficult days in the months ahead. But I also believe that we will get through this — that if we act swiftly and boldly and responsibly, the United States of America will emerge stronger and more prosperous than it was before.
That’s why my administration is committed to doing all that’s necessary to address this crisis and lead us to a better day. That’s why we’re moving forward with an economic agenda that will jumpstart job creation, restart lending, relieve responsible homeowners, and address the long-term economic challenges of our time: the cost of health care, our dependence on oil, and the state of our schools.
To prevent foreclosures for as many as 4 million homeowners — and lower interest rates and lift home values for millions more — we are implementing a plan to allow lenders to work with borrowers to refinance or restructure their mortgages. On Wednesday, the Department of Treasury and Housing and Urban Development released the guidelines that lenders will use for lowering mortgage payments. This plan is now at work.
To restore the availability of affordable loans for families and businesses — not just banks — we are taking steps to restart the flow of credit and stabilize the financial markets. On Thursday, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve launched the Consumer and Business Lending Initiative — a plan that will generate up to a trillion dollars of new lending so that families can finance a car or college education — and small businesses can raise the capital that will create jobs.
And we’ve already begun to implement the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — a plan that will save and create over 3.5 million jobs over the next two years — jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges, constructing wind turbines and solar panels, expanding broadband and mass transit. And because of this plan, those who have lost their job in this recession will be able to receive extended unemployment benefits and continued health care coverage, while 95 percent of working Americans will receive a tax break beginning April 1st.
Of course, like every family going through hard times, our country must make tough choices. In order to pay for the things we need — we cannot waste money on the things we don’t.
My administration inherited a $1.3 trillion budget deficit, the largest in history. And we’ve inherited a budgeting process as irresponsible as it is unsustainable. For years, as Wall Street used accounting tricks to conceal costs and avoid responsibility, Washington did, too.
These kinds of irresponsible budgets — and inexcusable practices — are now in the past. For the first time in many years, my administration has produced a budget that represents an honest reckoning of where we are and where we need to go.
It’s also a budget that begins to make the hard choices that we’ve avoided for far too long — a strategy that cuts where we must and invests where we need. That’s why it includes $2 trillion in deficit reduction, while making historic investments in America’s future. That’s why it reduces discretionary spending for non-defense programs as a share of the economy by more than 10 percent over the next decade — to the lowest level since they began keeping these records nearly half a century ago. And that’s why on Wednesday, I signed a presidential memorandum to end unnecessary no-bid contracts and dramatically reform the way contracts are awarded — reforms that will save the American people up to $40 billion each year.
Finally, because we cannot bring our deficit down or grow our economy without tackling the skyrocketing cost of health care, I held a health care summit on Thursday to begin the long-overdue process of reform. Our ideas and opinions about how to achieve this reform will vary, but our goal must be the same: quality, affordable health care for every American that no longer overwhelms the budgets of families, businesses, and our government.
Yes, this is a moment of challenge for our country. But we’ve experienced great trials before. And with every test, each generation has found the capacity to not only endure, but to prosper — to discover great opportunity in the midst of great crisis. That is what we can and must do today. And I am absolutely confident that is what we will do. I’m confident that at this defining moment, we will prove ourselves worthy of the sacrifice of those who came before us, and the promise of those who will come after.
Another great interview! President-elect Obama will be President for all Americans and he will work hard to make the life of ordinary Americans better.Of course that means that the wealthiest among us will do great as well.
It will take some time and effort to fix the economy but President Obama will work hard and diligently for us.
“Where there is unity there is always victory.”Publilius Syrus
The White House Chief of Staff is the highest ranking member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a senior aide to the President.The Chief of Staff is often nicknamed ‘The Second Most Powerful Man in Washington’ because of the influence and access to the President.
“I announce this appointment first because the chief of staff is central to the ability of a President and administration to accomplish an agenda,” President-Elect Obama said in a statement. “And no one I know is better at getting things done than Rahm Emanuel.”
Traditionally the Chief of Staff has been responsible for overseeing the actions of the White House staff, managing the President’s schedule and deciding who is allowed to meet with the President.Because of these duties, the Chief of Staff has at various times been called ‘The Gatekeeper’ and ‘The Co-President’.
Most White House Chiefs of Staff are former politicians and many continue their political careers in other senior roles once they leave the White House.Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff was Dick Cheney.Cheney became US Representative for Wyoming, then Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush and Vice President under George W. Bush.
The roles of the Chief of Staff are both managerial and advisory and can include the following duties depending on President Obama’s vision and style of conducting business:
·Select key White House staff and supervise them
·Structure the White House staff system
·Control the flow of people into the Oval Office
·Manage the flow of information to the POTUS
·Advise the President on issues, politics and policies and management issues
·Protect the interest of the President
·Negotiate with Congress and other members of the Executive Branch and other governmental political groups to implement the President’s agenda
Rahm Israel Emanuel, President-Elect Obama’s choice for Chief of Staff was born in Chicago, Illinois.His first name Rahm means ‘high’ or ‘lofty’ in Hebrew and his last name, Emanuel, means ‘God is with us.’
Rahm’s last name was adopted by his family in 1933 after Rahm’s paternal uncle Emanuel Auerbach was killed in a skirmish with Arabs in Jerusalem.
Rahm’s father, Benjamin Emanuel was born in Jerusalem.He is a pediatrician and former member of the Irgun – a staunchly nationalist Zionist militia active in the British Mandate of Palestine between 1931 and 1948.His mother, the former Martha Smulevitz, worked as an x-ray technician and was the daughter of a local union organizer.She became a civil rights activist and was also the owner of a Chicago- area rock and roll club.
Rahm attended Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School – a Jewish day school.After his family moved to Wilmette he attended public schools: Romona School, Wilmette Junior High School and New Trier West High School.He and his brothers attended summer camp in Israel. During high school while working at an Arby’s Emanuel severely injured his right middle finger.Instead of getting medical treatment he went swimming in Lake Michigan.His finger became severely infected and was partially amputated.
Rahm graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981 and received a Masters in Speech and Communication from Northwestern University in 1985. While an undergraduate he joined the congressional campaign of David Robinson, Chicago.
Emanuel was a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and served in one of Israel’s northern bases.
Amy Rule, Rahm’s wife, is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.Amy converted to Modern Orthodox Judaism shortly before their wedding.They are active members of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel – a Modern Orthodox congregation in Chicago.They have three children: a son Zachariah and daughters Ilana and Leah.
What is the trickle-down economy theory? It’s the set of economic policies based on the concept that you provide economic incentives to the wealthy by cutting their taxes (by letting them keep their money) while at the same time deregulating industry, you’ll let loose a tsunami of economic activities that will enrich even the least advantaged among us.
Wow, this sounds great in theory but as we all know now, it doesn’t work.
Trickle-down is largely a rationale for upward redistribution that’s been kept alive by those who benefit from it by paying less tax. Reagan put this stuff on the map, GW Bush brought it back with a vengeance and McCain intends to take it even further. McCain’s policy calls for an extension of the Bush tax cuts plus he adds pork fat of about $75 billion more in corporate tax cuts on top of that!
In the 1990s when Clinton came into office he would have nothing to do with allowing the rich to pay less taxes; he instead cut taxes on lower-income households and raised taxes on the wealthiest. Obama takes a similar approach.
Because of lowering taxes on the middle-class and raising the taxes on the wealthy in hind sight we see evidence of the strong real growth in median incomes and sharp declines in poverty that occurred during the 1990s compared with the opposite movement in the 2000s with Bush’s policies.
The income for the middle-class grew by 10% or by $5,200 in the 1990s (1989-2000); these same households saw a decrease of $2,000 in 2000s under Bush when he lowered taxes for the wealthy.If Bush had kept Bill Clinton’s policy of lowering the taxes for the middle-class, income would have continued to increase in the 2000s and middle class median income would have gone up $3,600 instead of falling $2,000.
So why do the republicans continue to push tax cuts for the rich?It seems that it is as simple as ‘because they and their friends are rich’ and it benefits them and their friends including heirs and heiresses.That’s straight-talk.
Relations between Russia and the U.S. have become exceptionally tense. Russia has thrown out a challenge to the United States, daring President George W Bush to “choose” between Washington’s relationship with Georgia and its future ties with Moscow.
In what appeared to be calculated defiance of the United States and the European Union, which mediated a ceasefire deal struck less than 24 hours earlier, early Wednesday, Moscow sent its forces to occupy the Georgian town of Gori, just 50 miles from the capital Tbilisi.
President George W Bush said the move had “damaged relations” between America and Russia and demanded that Moscow “keep its word” over the ceasefire.
“To begin to repair the damage to its relations with the United States, Europe and other nations, and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must keep its word and act to end this crisis,” Bush said.
But Russia retorted that America, which has a staunch ally of Tbilisi’s pro-western government, would have “to choose” between building a relationship with Georgia or Russia.
“We understand that this current Georgian leadership is a special project of the United States, but one day the United States will have to choose,” said the Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili earlier Wednesday called for John McCain and other American leaders to do more for Georgia in their response to the conflict in his country.
“Yesterday, I heard Sen. McCain say, ‘We are all Georgians now,’ ”Saakashvili said on CNN’s American Morning. “Well, very nice, you know, very cheering for us to hear that, but OK, it’s time to pass from this – from words to deeds.”
Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and their two beautiful young daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 left Chicago for Hawaii earlier today – the state where Obama grew up and where his grandmother, who helped raise him, still lives. The Obamas will spend a week in a house they rented.
I think this is a great idea – Obama needs some rest.He must be burned-out, physically and emotionally.He needs to regroup and come back strong.
Obama acknowledged some concern about taking time off but said that was offset by the need for some family time and a desire to visit his grandmother, who does not travel.
His campaign in conjunction with his family who lives in Hawaii have organized a welcome rally at a local park as well as a round of interviews. He is also expected to attend a fundraiser next week. Obama’s vacation will include mostly downtime, though. Other than enjoying the beach and watching the Olympics, he will spend some time with his grandmother, who helped raise him in Honolulu in the 1970s.
“I want to make sure that I’m spending time with her and I want to make sure she gets to spend time with her great grandchildren,”he said yesterday.
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