Category: Gov’t & Trade

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Obama’s Positive Accomplishments

I’m an openly enthusiastic fan of Obama. If you’re one of those people thinking that our president doesn’t deserve admiration, maybe an item from the list below will change your opinion. And if you’re a fellow Obama fan, enjoy the read! (I’ll be updating this list)

A Columbia University historian says this about the 111th Congress: “This is probably the most productive session of Congress since at least the ‘60s,” said Alan Brinkley, a historian at New York’s Columbia University. “It’s all the more impressive given how polarized the Congress has been.” “See for yourself, what is only a partial list of nearly 400 pieces of legislation that became law out of the 111th Congress” FB Page: “Things Obama has done…” Major Accomplishments of Barack Obama (a @StCyrlyMe2 find.) I love this format: the list is broken up into categories and every one can be expanded to give you a brief synopsis of the type of change Obama made happen. Click on the link (or several links) supplied for each entry to see the official public information page or news article where verification of the change can be viewed. What a fabulous way of presenting this information!

Obamaachievements.org read more

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Christie Claims Budget Cuts Backpedalling As Increases

Republicans are masters of brainwashing.

Christie’s claiming $850 in “new aid” to schools but the reality is that the $850 million allocated includes $820 million Christie’s first budget draft took away from New Jersey schools. This is how Christie math works:

Christie ignored a state Supreme Court ruling from last May calling for $500 million more for the state’s neediest school districts. After restoring $820 million of funds he himself cut in his original budget proposal, Christie’s present budget added only $30 million of school aid: he must still add $470 million to comply with Supreme Court ruling. read more

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Christie Declares War On the Poor

I can’t really add anything to this succinctly phrased statement by William Colon. He lays out for easy review, the drastic funding cuts Christie has enacted, which strike blow after blow to the most vulnerable of our state.

(Read article in Spanish)

Christie’s War On The Poor

Written by William Colon, executive director of the Latino Institute, Inc. and a contributing writer for the Hall Institute of Public Policy.

“We had a ‘war on poverty’ once, and we lost it, and since poverty is still here, let’s eliminate the poor amongst us.” read more

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Businesses Now Immigration Police?

In today’s column, Miguel Perez criticizes the Supreme Court for blurring the lines between federal and local government with its recent ruling to uphold the Legal Arizona Workers Act. Perez says, “Mind you, this is not the most infamous Arizona law — the one that would institutionalize racial profiling against all immigrants by allowing police to question anyone’s immigration status. This one empowers local authorities to shut down any business that knowingly hires an undocumented immigrant.” read more

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FCC forms net-neutrality committee

by Sara Jerome / 04/27/11 03:01 PM ET

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published a note in the Federal Register last week announcing that it plans to form a net-neutrality committee.

The “Open Internet Advisory Committee” is charged with tracking the effects of the net-neutrality rules, passed in December, and with providing recommendations to the agency as it enforces the rules.

The committee will reportedly include phone and cable companies, consumer groups, engineering experts, investors, Internet companies and device manufacturers. read more

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Must I sign my doctor’s HIPAA policy receipt form?

My son and I share a doctor who recently declined to treat my son, and said she would need to bill me directly for past services, because we each refused to sign the form acknowledging her office’s HIPAA policy. Doc said that by not signing the acknowledgement form Jorge Ivan and I made it impossible for her office to bill our insurance provider. I said, “I’ve been told that you need to ask for my signature on this form, but that I am not obliged to sign it.” Eventually, Doc and I agreed that I would do some research to prove my case, and if I couldn’t prove it – and still refused to sign the form – that I would agree to pay for her services directly. read more

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Overcoming the Bush legacy: a people bled, betrayed and frightened

The Power of Propaganda

Just before election day I understood what they had meant to accomplish when, only one month after Obama’s inauguration, Republicans began reciting the litany I would hear many times over the next 20 months, “Just look at the mess Obama’s gotten us into.”

I was so astonished the first time I heard a friend say this, I was literally struck dumb. After a moment, I recovered the power of speech enough to ask, “How can you say that, Barry? Obama hasn’t been in office long enough to know his way around his desktop yet, let alone take any action which could affect the country in any radical sense. What we’re dealing with is directly due to the policies Bush enacted over eight years of bleeding the country dry.” read more

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NJ’s pension debacle: time to rethink pensions?

A recent article gives a view of some of the steps which have caused a public employees pension fund debacle in New Jersey. This very informative, well researched report, is written by a police officer. It seems to be lacking only one piece of essential information: were pension funds actually looted by New Jersey governors, or were employee pay-ins simply not matched, at the 8.5% rate stipulated by law when the funds were created? No matter the answer, it’s apparent that there are serious problems with the pension fund’s management. read more

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EPA needs to monitor pesticides better

Apparently, the US has been asleep at the helm for years when we should have been much more closely monitoring the alarming and increasing use of herbicides and pesticides in our crops, fields and yards. Atrazine, a chemical widely banned across Europe since 2004, is finally coming under the scrutiny of our own government, and it’s about time.

The Huffington Post tell us,

Atrazine is one of the most widely used herbicides in the U.S. An estimated 76 million pounds of the chemical are sprayed on corn and other fields in the U.S. each year, sometimes ending up in rivers, streams, and drinking water supplies. It has been the focus of intense scientific debate over its potential to cause cancer, birth defects, and hormonal and reproductive problems. As the Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported in a series of articles last fall, the EPA failed to warn the public that the weed-killer had been found at levels above federal safety limits in drinking water in at least four states. Some water utilities are suing Syngenta to have it pay their costs of filtering the chemical. read more

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Environmental vigilance pays – money

In the race to compete in a global economic recovery, the U.S. may have a secret weapon against rivals like China and even economies closer to ours, such as Canada. China may be graduating more engineers and scientists; Canada may have a better health care system; but the U.S. has an unlikely secret weapon that has put American companies and workers in a position to race ahead of the pack for years to come — the Environmental Protection Agency.

While some in Congress, and any number of business leaders, have moaned about environmental regulations, especially the EPA’s nascent efforts to curb carbon emissions, the truth is that thoughtful protection of the environment saves money and lives, which makes America more competitive. By sharp contrast, the Washington D.C. based International Fund for China’s Environment estimates that China must spend at least 2 percent of its GDP annually — over $100 billion — to clean up decades of pollution which now threaten food production, public health, and worker productivity. Without this investment, China will lose far more. read more

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Iceland poised to provide true freedom to journalists

Edited to add: Julian Assange, one of the engineers of Iceland’s new freedom of speech protection laws, was arrested for rape today but released after police decided the report against him lacked merit.

After Iceland’s near-economic collapse laid bare deep-seated corruption, the country aims to become a safe haven for journalists and whistleblowers from around the globe by creating the world’s most far-reaching freedom of information legislation.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and parliamentary representative Birgitta Jonsdottir are helping to create, “the world’s most far-reaching freedom of information legislation,” in Iceland. Reformers estimate it will take 1 1/2 years to change 13 laws to make it possible for Iceland to offer the most extreme level journalists have anywhere in the globe, plus similar protection for whistleblowers who report on abuse by governments and major corporations and afterwards may become targets for persecution, harassment, slander and even assassination. read more

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Immediate benefits of health care reform

So many people are asking what the benefits are of recent health care reforms, and there’s a lot of frustration because so much help is needed right now, but the changes aren’t all that exciting – for this year. I share feelings many have that urgent help is needed NOW but it helps to remember that every journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, and the current changes add up to way more than that. Along with the health care changes, the final bills provided changes to aid for college students too. Let’s take a look at some of the health care changes that do kick in this year: read more

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Family sues school for spying on student

In a tale that mirrors the crushing privacy violations and vitriolic penal environment of Delores Umbridge in Harry Potter’s world, high school administrators in the Lower Merion School District of Pennsylvania used school issued computers, and software supposedly installed to protect students, to invade the privacy of the students homes and family lives.

Installed webcams were activated to spy on students and their families. This blew up in their face when a school administrator disciplined one student for “engaging in improper behavior in his home,” (that’s the language used in the family’s lawsuit) – and had the audacity to back her claim up by showing the photograph the webcam took of the Robbins boy as evidence. read more

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Microsoft v. Brazilian official – for moving to drop Windows

People ask me why I won’t let my kids buy an XBox. I explain our family policy: “Our family doesn’t support Microsoft. In any way.” Many hearing this think my view is seriously radical (not to mentioned extremely flawed). After all, XBox graphics are great and the games are cheap. “But, buying a kids’ gaming system? That’s not supporting a company!”

“To you it isn’t, which is completely fine. But to me, it is,” I reply. “Microsoft manufactures XBox, so my boys can’t have one.” read more

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Internet “Driver’s Licenses” – a very, very bad idea

An ‘incredibly dangerous concept’

In several articles written in his typically clear style, internet user advocate Lauren Weinstein explains why he opposes the idea of ‘Internet Driver’s Licenses’, which he refers to as an, “incredibly dangerous concept. . . . I’m disappointed, though not terribly surprised,” Lauren comments, “especially in light of Microsoft’s explicit continuing support of Chinese censorship against human rights — to hear a top Microsoft executive pushing a concept that is basic to making the Internet Police State a reality.” He frames his opposition in an earlier article(January 2010). read more