“In the coming years, jobs requiring at least an associate degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience. We will not fill those jobs — or keep those jobs on our shores — without the training offered by community colleges.”
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Watch Live: The First-Ever White House Tribal Youth Gathering
President Barack Obama greets Vice President Joe Biden in the Oval Office prior to their weekly lunch, July 8, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
See more from our “Photo of the Day” gallery here.
Watch Live: The White House Tribal Youth Gathering
Today, we’re hosting the first-ever White House Tribal Youth Gathering, to provide American Indian and Alaska Native youth from across the country the opportunity to interact directly with senior Administration officials and the White House Council on Native American Affairs.
Six Months of Progress on the Precision Medicine Initiative
Yesterday, the White House honored extraordinary patients, researchers, innovators, and advocates who are making a difference in people’s lives and driving precision medicine forward. The Administration also released a set of draft guiding principles to protect privacy and build public trust as the Precision Medicine Initiative develops.
Video: Judging the 2015 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge
Nearly 1,000 recipes were submitted for the 2015 Healthy Lunchtime Challenge by kid chefs from across the country. A panel of judges tasted the recipes of two finalists from each U.S. state, four territories, and the District of Columbia in order to select this year’s winning recipes. The 55 winners will attend the fourth annual Kids’ “State Dinner” at the White House.
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1846 US takes San Francisco … On this Day
An American naval captain occupies the small settlement of Yerba Buena, a site that will later be renamed San Francisco.
Surprisingly, Europeans did not discover the spectacular San Francisco Bay until 1769, although several explorers had sailed by it in earlier centuries. When Spanish explorers finally found the bay in that year, they immediately recognized its strategic value. In 1776, the Spanish built a military post on the tip of the San Francisco peninsula and founded the mission of San Francisco de Asis (the Spanish name for Saint Francis of Assisi) nearby.
In retrospect, the Mexicans should have sold while they still had the chance. A little more than a decade later, a dispute between the U.S. and Mexico over western Texas led to war. Shortly after the Mexican War began, U.S. Captain John Montgomery sailed his warship into San Francisco Bay, anchoring just off the settlement of Yerba Buena. On this day in 1846, Montgomery led a party of marines and sailors ashore. They met no resistance and claimed the settlement for the United States, raising the American flag in the central plaza.
The following year, the Americans renamed the village San Francisco. When the Mexicans formally ceded California to the United States in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe, San Francisco was still a small town with perhaps 900 occupants. That same year, however, gold was discovered at the nearby Sutter’s Fort. San Francisco became the gateway for a massive gold rush, and by 1852, the town was home to more than 36,000.
History.com
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Matt Bianco – South East Jazz Festival 2013
Liberty And Justice For All?
CAP Action Releases 89-Page Report Analyzing The Health Of State Democracies
Too often, a citizen’s ability to have their voice heard in the democratic process depends on where they live. From access to voting rights, to representation in government, or the outsized influence of money in our political system, our opportunity to interact with and participate in democracy varies widely. There are, however, many factors that make up a healthy democracy that should be evaluated in sum, not in silos, if solutions are going to have an overall effect. A new report and accompanying interactive website from CAP Action identifies 22 factors in three categories—accessibility of the ballot, representation in state government, and influence in the political system—to rank and grade states based on their democratic health. You can explore the different factors and share how your state did by visiting healthofstatedemocracies.org and using the hashtag #HealthyDemocracy.
Overall, the results show there is room for improvement in every state. Along with grades for each factor and overall ranks, the report offers concrete policy solutions states should implement in order to improve its residents’ democratic experience. Here’s a rundown of the report’s other key findings:
- Every state has room for improvement. Maine, the top-ranked state in this report, still scored poorly on factors such as Motor Voter implementation and online voter registration. Alabama, in the bottom slot, performs well in certain aspects, including having a two-year revolving door ban.
- States previously covered by Voting Rights Act preclearance requirements perform poorly in accessibility of the ballot measures. While several of these states may perform well in other categories, each of the nine states previously fully covered by pre-clearance requirements perform poorly in accessibility of the ballot: all nine of these states rank in the bottom half of state scores for this category, with none receiving a grade higher than D+.
- States have a great deal of room to improve to ensure that elected leaders reflect state demographics as a whole. There is no state in which women are over-represented in office, and only two – Vermont and Mississippi – in which people of color are represented in elective offices at or above their share of the population at large.
- The strength of laws related to influence in the political system are a particular weak spot for states. Just one state received an “A-” grade in this category, fewer than any other category. Four states received an “A” or “A-” grade in representation in state government, and five received an “A” or “A-” in accessibility of the ballot.
There are many steps states can take to better the health of their democracies. CAP Action’s report suggests providing online voter registration, creating fair district maps, and strengthening disclosure laws as some of the many steps states can take to improve access to the democratic process.
For a more in-depth look at the report’s policy recommendations, and to explore the interactive maps of state performance for yourself, head over to healthofstatedemocracies.org.
BOTTOM LINE: In America, too many things are determined by zip code. CAP Action’s new report found that there are recurring and sometimes growing issues which plague our democratic system as a whole, including poor representation of communities of color and women, and the influence of money in politics. And any effort to effectively address the health of state democracies must adequately tackle these issues.
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