As the rally (RNC Convention) begins today for the haves to literally squash the have-nots....
The Time is NOW to UNITE....
for the Future of America.
GET FIRED UP !
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Pathetic!
Board of Elections' Doug Priesse:
Ohio Early Voting Process Should
NOT Accomodate Black Voters !
(HuffPo) An Ohio GOP election official who voted against the weekend voting rules that enabled thousands to cast ballots in the 2008 election said Sunday that he did not think that the state's early voting procedures should accommodate African-Americans.
"I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban -- read African-American -- voter-turnout machine," Doug Priesse said in an email to the Columbus Dispatch Sunday. "Let's be fair and reasonable."
Priesse is a member of the board of elections for Franklin County, which includes Columbus, and chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, on Wednesday ordered all 88 counties in Ohio to allow early voting Monday through Friday, until 7 p.m., during the final two weeks before the election. Weekend voting, however, will not be allowed.
Weekend voting helped 93,000 Ohioans cast ballots in the final three days before the 2008 election. Black churches promoted taking "your souls to the polls" events on the Sunday preceding the election, an option that will be unavailable if Husted's ruling stands. (The Obama administration has sued Husted to restore the final three days of early voting.)
Early voters in 2008 in Cuyahoga and Franklin counties were disproportionately African-American. A study by Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates found blacks accounted for 56 percent of all in-person early votes in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, while they accounted for 26 percent of votes overall. In Franklin County, African-Americans cast 31 percent of early votes and 21 percent of votes overall.
UPDATE: Priesse expressed regret for his comments Monday. "My comments in the Sunday, August 19th Columbus Dispatch have been misconstrued, and in some cases misquoted entirely," Priesse told HuffPost in a statement. "However, if my comments, either in their original form, or as repeated in other ways, have caused anyone discomfort, I regret that."
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B4B Note: This simply exemplifies the concerted effort/desire of the GOP to disenfranchise/squash the Minority vote, particularly in key states. It is for this reason that we MUST UNITE...work diligently to Get Out The Vote....and turn out in record numbers come November.
The Time is NOW...
To Unite and FIGHT !
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Monday, August 13, 2012
12 Things You Should Know About Paul Ryan
(From Think Progress)
Mitt Romney has picked as his running mate 42 year-old Republican Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the architect of the GOP budget, which the New York Times has described as “the most extreme budget plan passed by a house of Congress in modern times.” Below are 12 things you should know about Ryan and his policies:
1. Ryan embraces the extreme philosophy of Ayn Rand. Ryan heaped praise on Ayn Rand, a 20th-century libertarian novelist best known for her philosophy that centered on the idea that selfishness is “virtue.” Rand described altruism as “evil,” condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, viewed the feminist movement as “phony,” and called Arabs “almost totally primitive savages. Though he publicly rejected “her philosophy” in 2012, Ryan had professed himself a strong devotee. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” he said at a D.C. gathering honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.” Learn more about Ryan’s muse:
2. Ryan wants to raises taxes on the middle class, cut them for millionaires. Paul Ryan’s infamous budget — which Romney embraced — replaces “the current tax structure with two brackets — 25 percent and 10 percent — and cut the top rate from 35 percent.” Federal tax collections would fall “by about $4.5 trillion over the next decade” as a result and to avoid increasing the national debt, the budget proposes massive cuts in social programs and “special-interest loopholes and tax shelters that litter the code.” But 62 percent of the savings would come from programs that benefit the lower- and middle-classes, who would also experience a tax increase. That’s because while Ryan “would extend the Bush tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year, he would not extend President Obama’s tax cuts for those with the lowest incomes, which will expire at the same time.” Households “earning more than $1 million a year, meanwhile, could see a net tax cut of about $300,000 annually.”
Audiences have booed Ryan for the unfair distribution:
3. Ryan wants to end Medicare, replace it with a voucher system. Ryan’s latest budget transforms the existing version of Medicare, in which government provides seniors with a guaranteed benefit, into a “premium support” system. All future retirees would receive a government contribution to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans or traditional fee-for-service Medicare. But since the premium support voucher does not keep up with increasing health care costs, the Congressional Budget Offices estimates that new beneficiaries could pay up to $1,200 more by 2030 and more than $5,900 more by 2050. A recent study also found that had the plan been implemented in 2009, 24 million beneficiares enrolled in the program would have paid higher premiums to maintain their choice of plan and doctors. Ryan would also raise Medicare’s age of eligibility to 67.
4. Ryan thinks Social Security is a “ponzi scheme.” In September of 2011, Ryan agreed with Rick Perry’s characterization of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme” and since 2005 has advocated for privatizing the retirement benefit and investing it in stocks and bonds. Conservatives claim that this would “outperform the current formula based on wages earned and overall wage appreciation,” but the economic crisis of 2008 should serve as a wake-up call for policymakers who seek to hinge Americans’ retirement on the stock market. In fact, “a person with a private Social Security account similar to what President George W. Bush proposed in 2005″ would have lost much of their retirement savings.
5. Ryan’s budget would result in 4.1 million lost jobs in 2 years. Ryan’s budget calls for massive reductions in government spending. He has proposed cutting discretionary programs by about $120 billion over the next two years and mandatory programs by $284 billion, which, the Economic Policy Institute estimates, would suck demand out of the economy and “reduce employment by 1.3 million jobs in fiscal 2013 and 2.8 million jobs in fiscal 2014, relative to current budget policies.”
6. Ryan wants to eliminate Pell Grants for more more than 1 million students. Ryan’s budget claims both that rising financial aid is driving college tuition costs upward, and that Pell Grants, which help cover tuition costs for low-income Americans, don’t go to the “truly needy.” So he cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could “ultimately knock more than one million students off” the program over the next 10 years.
7. Ryan supports $40 billion in subsides for big oil. In 2011, Ryan joined all House Republicans and 13 Democrats in his vote to keep Big Oil tax loopholes as part of the FY 2011 spending bill. His budget would retain a decade’s worth of oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.” For instance, it “calls for a $3 billion cut in energy programs in FY 2013 alone” and would spend only $150 million over five years — or 20 percent of what was invested in 2012 — on energy programs.
8. Ryan has ownership stakes in companies that benefit from oil subsidies . Ryan “and his wife, Janna, own stakes in four family companies that lease land in Texas and Oklahoma to the very energy companies that benefit from the tax subsidies in Ryan’s budget plan,” the Daily Beast reported in June of 2011. “Ryan’s father-in-law, Daniel Little, who runs the companies, told Newsweek and The Daily Beast that the family companies are currently leasing the land for mining and drilling to energy giants such as Chesapeake Energy, Devon, and XTO Energy, a recently acquired subsidiary of ExxonMobil.”
9. Ryan claimed Romneycare has led to “rationing and benefit cuts.” “I’m not a fan of [Romney's health care reform] system,” Ryan told C-SPAN in 2010. He argued that government is rationing care in the state and claimed that people are “seeing the system bursting by the seams, they’re seeing premium increases, rationing and benefit cuts.” He called the system “a fatal conceit” and “unsustainable.” Watch it:
10. Ryan believes that Romneycare is “not that dissimilar to Obamacare.” Though Romney has gone to great lengths to distinguish his Massachusetts health care law from Obamacare, Ryan doesn’t see the difference. “It’s not that dissimilar to Obamacare, and you probably know I’m not a big fan of Obamacare,” Ryan said at a breakfast meeting sponsored by the American Spectator in March of 2011. “I just don’t think the mandates work … all the regulation they’ve put on it…I think it’s beginning to death spiral. They’re beginning to have to look at rationing decisions.”
11. Ryan accused generals of lying about their support for Obama’s military budget. In March, Ryan couldn’t believe that Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey supports Obama’s Pentagon budget, which incorporates $487 billion in cuts over 10 years. “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice,” Ryan said at a policy summit hosted by the National Journal. “We don’t think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget.” He later apologized for the implication. Watch it:
12. Ryan co-sponsored a “personhood” amendment, an extreme anti-abortion measure. Ryan joined 62 other Republicans in co-sponsoring the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which declares that a fertilized egg “shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood.” This would outlaw abortion, some forms of contraception and invitro fertilization.
Knowledge is Power...
Share Truth !
Saturday, August 4, 2012
Friday, August 3, 2012
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press
Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
August 3,
2012
Statement on the
Employment Situation in
July
WASHINGTON, DC – Alan B. Krueger, Chairman of the
Council of Economic Advisers, issued the following statement today on the
employment situation in July. You can view the statement HERE.
The Employment Situation in
July
Posted by Alan B. Krueger on August 3, 2012 at
9:32AM EDT
While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment
report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover
from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we
continue the policies that build an economy that works for the middle class as
we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that
began in December 2007. To build on the progress of the last few years,
President Obama has proposed an extension of middle class tax cuts that would
prevent the typical middle class family from facing a $2,200 tax increase next
year. In addition, to create more jobs in particularly hard-hit sectors,
President Obama continues to support the elements of the American Jobs Act that
have not yet passed, including further investment in infrastructure to rebuild
our Nation’s ports, roads and highways, and assistance to State and local
governments to prevent layoffs and rehire hundreds of thousands of teachers and
first responders.
Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that
private sector establishments added 172,000 jobs last month, and overall
non-farm payroll employment rose by 163,000. The economy has now added private
sector jobs for 29 straight months, for a total of 4.5 million jobs during that
period.
The household survey showed that the unemployment
rate ticked up to 8.3% in July (or, more precisely, the rate rose from 8.217% in
June to 8.254% in July).
Acting BLS Commissioner John Galvin noted in his statement that the unemployment
rate was “essentially unchanged” from June to July.
The establishment survey indicated that
manufacturing employment continues to expand and manufacturers added 25,000 jobs
in July. After losing millions of manufacturing jobs in the years before and
during the recession, the economy has added 532,000 manufacturing jobs since
January 2010 – the strongest growth for any 30-month period since June 1989.
Within manufacturing,
motor vehicles and parts added 12,800 jobs in July, its strongest monthly growth
since January 2011, partly reflecting fewer seasonal layoffs last month.
To continue the revival
in manufacturing jobs and output, President Obama has proposed tax incentives
for manufacturers, enhanced training for the workforce, and measures to create
manufacturing hubs and discourage sending jobs
overseas.
Other sectors with net job increases included
professional and business
services (+49,000), education and health services (+38,000), leisure and
hospitality (+27,000), and wholesale trade (+9,200). Within leisure and
hospitality, restaurant employment rose by 29,400 jobs. Government lost 9,000 jobs as State government
payrolls fell by 6,000. Local governments shed 7,000 education jobs. Since
February 2010, State and local governments have lost 485,000 jobs.
As the Administration stresses every month, the monthly employment and
unemployment figures can be volatile, and employment estimates can be subject to
substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any
one monthly report and it is informative to consider each report in the context
of other data that are becoming available.
Alan B. Krueger is Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
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