Black History

~~ the Senate ~~ CONGRESS ~~ the House


capitolphonelines

Senate stands in adjournment until 10:00am on Tuesday, September 10, 2013.

  Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will be in morning business until 11:00am with the time equally divided and controlled between the two Leaders or their designees with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

At 11:00am, the Senate will resume the motion to proceed to Legislative Calendar #166, S.J.Res.21, to authorize the limited and specified use of the United States Armed Forces against Syria.  The time until 12:00pm will be equally divided Senators will be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

The Senate will recess from 12:00pm until 2:15pm to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

After the Senate convened today, Senator Reid renewed the motion to proceed to S.J.Res.21, to authorize limited use of the Armed Forces against Syria.

 There was a previous order that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S.1392, the Energy Efficiency bill sponsored by Senators Shaheen and Portman, at 11am today. By consent, the order was modified that the motion to proceed be agreed to at a time to be determined by the Majority Leader with the concurrence of the Republican Leader.

Under the previous order, the Senate will be in a period of morning business until 11:00am, with the time equally divided between the two Leaders or their designees.

The Senate will continue to debate the motion to proceed to the Syria resolution today. The Senate will recess from 12:00 noon until 2:15pm to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.

By unanimous consent the Senate confirmed Executive Calendar #191, the nomination of Georgia, Marilyn A. Brown, to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority for a term expiring May 18, 2017 (Reappointment).

 The Senate is now debating the motion to proceed to S.J.Res.21, Syria, with the time until 12:00 noon equally divided between the two Leaders or their designees.

WRAP UP

No ROLL CALL VOTES

LEGISLATIVE ITEMS

Adopted S.Res.221, designating the week of October 7 through October 13, 2013, as “Naturopathic Medicine Week” to recognize the value of naturopathic medicine in providing safe, effective, and affordable health care.

Discharged the Finance committee from further consideration of S.1427, the Family Farmer Bankruptcy Clarification Act, and referred it to the Judiciary committee.

EXECUTIVE ITEMS

Confirmed Executive Calendar #191, Marilyn A. Brown – to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority for a term expiring May 18, 2017.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Last Floor Action: 9/10
2:25:48 P.M. – The Speaker announced that
the House do now recess. The next meeting is subject to the call of the Chair.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

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Digging into our Roots!


NMAAHC -- National Museum of African American History and Culture
africa diaspora title bannerFINAL-01.jpg
Searching for Your Roots
This event is full. However, please join us via webcast at nmaahc.si.edu/Events/SearchingforYourRoots.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. Photo by Jeffrey Dunn
Thursday, September 12, 2013 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM
We share a basic drive to discover our own personal stories that explain who we are — and where we come from. In the 2012 PBS series, Finding Your Roots, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explored “the DNA of American culture.” Gates enlisted his own corps of discovery — leading genealogists, geneticists, and ancestry genetic testing companies — to uncover the ancestry of celebrities in each episode. This very team has been busy tracing the genetic histories of tonight’s guests, the Smithsonian’s own Lonnie Bunch, director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and Washington Week’s Gwen Ifill. Gates will reveal their ancestral backgrounds, discovered through historical records and genomic data, live on stage. Ifill and Bunch will explore the results and comment on what they’ve learned.
Lonnie Bunch Lonnie Bunch
9-Genome-Gwen-Ifill.jpg Gwen Ifill
After the ancestral reveal, the program continues with a discussion on the promise and limitations of genomic research and ancestral inference genetic testing. Panelists include:
Aravinda Chakravarti, professor, McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University;
Charmaine Royal, faculty, Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, and associate research professor, Department of African and African American Studies, Duke University;
Joanna Mountain, senior director of research, 23andMe.
The panel moderator is Vence Bonham, associate investigator, National Human Genome Research Institute. A question-and-answer session with the audience follows.
Gates is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University, and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research.
For more information, email NMAAHCPROGRAMS@si.edu.
 
Presented in partnership with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of Natural History, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.
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No Kid Hungry campaign


SHARE OUR STRENGTH - NO KID HUNGRY - Watch now: a special message from Jeff Bridges

I want to be the first to welcome you to Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign! Our children are our future and taking care of them is the most important thing you and I can do. By asking your state governor to support summer meals programs on Care2, you’ve joined thousands of fellow Americans who are making our nation’s kids a priority — and connecting them with the healthy meals they need to grow, thrive and be happy.
As the national spokesperson for the No Kid Hungry campaign, you’ll be hearing from me throughout the year and also from my friend Billy Shore, founder of Share Our Strength.

All the best,
signature
Jeff Bridges
National Spokesperson, No Kid Hungry

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Whites Only?


By 

The GOP’s Demographic Doom

Some in the Republican Party continue to argue that the party can make up for its abysmal standing with minority voters by becoming more conservative in order to attract and turn out more white voters.

CAP Senior Fellow Ruy Teixeira lays out fresh evidence why this whites-only strategy is destined to fail:

5. White voters are increasingly likely to be single and secular. The idea that the GOP can get higher and higher levels of support from white voters presupposes that the white population is likely to get ever-more conservative and therefore inclined to vote Republican. But what if the reverse is true? Two factors that could make the white population more liberal are family and religion. Thirty five percent of white voters in 2012 were unmarried, compared to 30 percent in 1984. Unmarried whites are far more likely to vote Democratic than married ones.

And in just a five year span from 2007 to 2012, the percentage of whites who are religiously unaffiliated rose from 15 to 20 percent. According to Brownstein, Democrats have averaged a 32 point advantage with white secular voters since 2000.

4. A smaller and smaller proportion of white voters are working class. Working class or non-college educated voters are among the most conservative white voters, regularly giving Republicans a 12-14 point larger margin than they receive among white college graduates. But white working class voters are declining precipitously as a share of voters (down from 54 to 36 percent between 1988 and 2012) while white college graduates are increasing their share (from 31 to 36 percent over the same time period). That means that the white working class is also declining as a share of white voters. Back in 1988, 64 percent of white voters were white working class; by 2012, that figure had dropped to just half of white voters. This trend is likely to continue for many years making the white vote a harder not easier target for GOP appeals.

3. The rise of the Millennial generation. The Millennial generation, as has been widely documented, is the most liberal generation in the electorate by a considerable margin. This is also true of white Millennials—they are considerably more progressive than their older counterparts.  In the last two elections, the Republic margin among white Millennials has averaged 20 points below that among white voters as a whole.  And Millennials are becoming a larger and larger proportion of the white electorate with every passing year. By the time the 2020 election is held, they’ll make up about two out of every five (37 percent) of all white voters.

2. White Republicans are too concentrated in the most conservative areas of the country. Even assuming Republicans can get past the factors above and continue inflating the national support among whites, that will not necessarily yield success against Democrats’ domination of the electoral college. As Brownstein points out, “Romney’s national margins among the various groups of white voters are inflated by Obama’s utter collapse in the country’s most conservative regions, particularly the South.” This chart makes his point plainly — Obama did much better among white voters in competitive states than in the South or Appalachia:

whites by state1. Every year, the pool of white voters shrinks. The most important reason why the GOP’s desperate quest to squeeze ever more voters out of the white population is doomed to fail is that every year there are fewer of them. How Republicans can look at charts like this one:

minority-growth

Or this one:

pop-projections-by-race

and still place their faith in a white people forever strategy is beyond me. But they do.

Republicans seem to think they will soon be matching the Gipper’s 64 percent share of the white vote in his 1984 re-election victory and then some. But, as Karl Rove (!) put it, “it’s unreasonable to expect Republicans to routinely pull numbers that last occurred in a 49-state sweep.” Unreasonable the white voters strategy may be, but since when has that stopped the contemporary Republican party from believing something?

BOTTOM LINE: Instead of demanding more damaging austerity and pursuing an endless series of unpopular attacks on Obamacare, Republicans should attempt to broaden their appeal by pursuing policies like immigration reform with a pathway to earned citizenship.

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Fed up with Cargill, taking our demands to its customers


Rainforest Action Network

It has begun!

I’m here in Minnesota today to kick off The Power Is In Your Palm Tour, a traveling roadshow that will visit a dozen of the Snack Food 20—companies using conflict palm oil in their popular snack food products—at their US headquarters. I’ll be working with the dedicated activists on the Palm Oil Action Team to deliver our demands to each of these companies: Take conflict palm oil tied to rainforest destruction, orangutan extinction, and human rights violations out of your snack foods!

Fittingly, we started the tour at the world headquarters of Cargill, the #1 importer of conflict palm oil into the US. We just hand-delivered over 100,000 petitions calling on Cargill to commit to transparency and safeguards that will eliminate the conflict palm oil that is driving orangutans to the brink of extinction from its global supply chain.

Cargill petition delivery

After years of making similar demands, though, we’re tired of waiting. Cargill has had its chance to do the right thing. After today, we’re taking our demands directly to Cargill’s customers—many of whom are amongst the Snack Food 20.
The Power Is In Your Palm Tour will travel across the US to deliver the message far and wide that you and me can change how these companies do business. When we take action, the Snack Food 20 will have to remove conflict palm oil from their products. And to do that, the Snack Food 20 will have to tell Cargill that it’s time to remove conflict palm oil from its supply chain.
Here’s how you can help:
1. Sign up for the Palm Oil Action Team—you’ll get all the latest calls to action and will make a huge contribution to The Power Is In Your Palm Tour. Together, we’ll pressure the Snack Food 20 to change their ways.
2. Chip in $5 to keep the tour rolling! We can’t do any of this without your support. Just $5 will go a long way.
It’s so important that you get involved now because we have truly reached The Last Stand of the Orangutan. Best estimates place the population of orangutans in the wilds of Sumatra and Borneo at just 60,600. We really have no time to waste in convincing the Snack Food 20 and Cargill to make sure the products they sell aren’t destroying precious habitat for these great red apes.
Thanks for all you do! And stay tuned, because the next event of The Power Is In Your Palm Tour is going down this Thursday, and we’ll finally be naming the Snack Food 20 and publicly calling on them to clean up their act. You’ll have a big role to play in making that call as loud and clear as possible!

For the great red ape,
Jess Serrante             National Agribusiness Organizer             Twitter: @Jess_Serrante

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