Climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet — and scientists are literally crying in despair. The biggest climate summit of the decade is just four months away. If we can pack the streets at the largest climate march in history we can get our leaders to agree to end fossil fuels for good — join now!
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“Who’s your billionaire?” Now more than ever, any serious presidential candidate needs to have an answer for this question. Over the weekend, we found out who the answer for Senator Marco Rubio is: Norman Braman, a billionaire auto dealer from Miami.
Braman isn’t just supporting Rubio’s White House bid to the expected tune of $10 million; he has been a key figure in Rubio’s professional and personal life for many years. Here is the New York Times report:
As Mr. Rubio has ascended in the ranks of Republican politics, Mr. Braman has emerged as a remarkable and unique patron. He has bankrolled Mr. Rubio’s campaigns. He has financed Mr. Rubio’s legislative agenda. And, at the same time, he has subsidized Mr. Rubio’s personal finances, as the rising politician and his wife grappled with heavy debt and big swings in their income.
To state the obvious: The increasing influence of big money in politics from donors like Norman Braman, the Koch Brothers, and others, drowns out the voices of everyday Americans in the political process. There are a number of ways to combat this threat to democracy; one big target for reformers is to overturn the judicial decisions like Citizens United that have opened the floodgates to unlimited spending on elections. That is a critical fight.
Here is another important way to make it easier for all citizens to have their voices heard: make voting more accessible. One of the most progressive methods for doing that is called Automatic Voter Registration (AVR), a system by which states would integrate information from existing government databases — such as departments of motor vehicles, the Postal Service, revenue agencies, and others — to compile and update the voting rolls with information that they already collect. Oregon just became the first state in the country to implement this type of system, and it expects to add 300,000 people to voter rolls as a result.
Now, a new report from the Center for Popular Democracy outlines some of the transformative impacts AVR would have across the country. If Automatic Voter Registration were adopted in all states, it would potentially result in 55 million new voters added to the rolls.
AVR would result in the registration of currently underrepresented communities as well, including approximately:
While most voting rights news focuses on the concerted efforts by conservatives to suppress the vote, especially among disadvantaged communities, automatic voter registration is gaining momentum. California, which just advanced its own AVR bill late last month, could be the next state to take this important step.
BOTTOM LINE: With our campaign finance laws continuing to loosen, millionaires and billionaires will only increase the amount of influence they exert in our political process. But there are important steps being taken to counter them: policies like automatic voter registration would register millions of voters, raise voter turnout, and make our democracy healthier and more representative of its citizens.
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To be sure the numbers have shot upward
This is what a successful Presidency looks like:
| President Obama Took Office (January 2009) |
Today | |
| 7,949 | The Dow Jones Index | 17,573 |
| 7.8% | Unemployment | 5.8% |
| -5.4% | GDP Growth | 3.5% |
| 9.8% | Deficit GDP % | 2.8% |
| 37.7 | Consumer Confidence | 94.5 |
In 6 years under President Barack Obama, we’ve made incredible progress as a country.
Often in the face of incredible obstruction, the President has continued to fight for us and lead us forward.
Will you add your name now and say that you’re still standing with President Obama in his final two years in office?
Sign your name to say you’re standing with President Obama:
http:// action.dccc.org/i-stand-with-obama
When Laura Palmaro was 10 years old, she woke one morning to find that the central vision in her left eye had all but disappeared. She was not ill and had no genetic issues—it was completely out of the blue. When she was 14, the same rare condition struck her right eye, and she began her freshman year of high school legally blind. Suddenly she was forced to depend on other people to read everything aloud, from school assignments to menus. The toughest part, according to Laura, was losing her sense of independence—and not knowing when or how she would get it back.
Laura has since adopted technological solutions to her vision challenges, using a combination of screen-readers and magnification software to read, work and more. Now a program manager at Google, she is following her passion, helping Chrome and Chrome OS teams make their products more accessible. “Technology has truly transformed my life,” she says. “Assistive technology can tear down boundaries, and empower people to find their independence and fulfill their dreams.”
We agree with Laura about the power of technology to change lives. And in order to support more people like her—people who see obstacles as opportunities—we’re launching the Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities. We’re putting $20 million in Google.org grants behind nonprofits using emerging technologies to increase independence for people living with disabilities, and today we’re issuing an open call to identify new areas of opportunity at g.co/ImpactChallengeDisability.
We’re kicking things off with support for two remarkable organizations. Each of these organizations is using technology to dramatically reduce the cost of and access to prosthetic limbs and auditory therapy, respectively—which could be transformative for hundreds of millions of people.
The Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities will seek out nonprofits and help them find new solutions to some serious “what ifs” for the disabled community. We will choose the best of these ideas and help them to scale by investing in their vision, by rallying our people and by mobilizing our resources in support of their missions.
But of course, we realize there’s always room to improve our products as well. We have a team committed to monitoring the accessibility of Google tools; and we provide engineering teams with training to incorporate accessibility principles into products and services. That doesn’t just mean improving existing Google tools, it means developing new ones as well. For example, Liftware is a stabilizing utensil designed to help people with hand tremors eat more easily, and self-driving cars could one day transform mobility for everyone.
Historically, people living with disabilities have relied on technologies that were often bulky, expensive, and limited to assisting with one or two specific tasks. But that’s beginning to change. Thanks to groups like Enable and World Wide Hearing, and with tools like Liftware, we’re starting to see the potential for technologies that can profoundly and affordably impact millions. But we’ll all get there sooner if we make it a team effort—which is why we’re launching Google Impact Challenge: Disabilities today. Together, we can create a better world, faster.
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director, Google.org
just another rant …
Outsourcing, you know; when the company’s bottom line is to get products made in large quantities but on the cheap? Therefore, they send thousands of jobs overseas where cost per employee is so low you cannot refuse in spite of the millions of unemployedAmericans.
I have to say when there is a choice between getting cheap material, retaliating against President Obama, cheap labour or that word so many folks on TV involved in the market say “uncertainty”. We all have to compare and contrast what they want opposed to participating in helping America be number one again and the handwriting is clear … Profit before People and Country is the choice of those sitting on the sidelines of “uncertainty” have decided to take.
Unless you are living under a rock, you know or have heard that big Corporations are still sitting on trillions of dollars hate regulation, the rules, fair trade now seem to be fighting the government and the need to help their fellow Americans. The various companies who feel they have no choice as the “uncertainty” of it puts them at risk are leaving Americans jobless. Yes, they have every right to do so but in a time when your fellow American is jobless, your country is still in a recession what could be better for all parts of our financial system to come together and agree to fix the various strands causing our economy to deteriorate instead of participating in retaliation. It’s my contention that those sitting on all that money might be waiting for the 2012 elections and contrary to what Harold Ford suggested – soften regulations and stop criticizing , we have to make sure that the new regulations stay in place otherwise we will always have the uncertainty of systematic financial collapse. It is time for Wall Street, banksters and big Corporations to take part in the healing of America and stop playing the waiting game because given our choices Americans with any common sense will not dare vote for anyone else but Barak Obama in 2012.
In May of 2009 there was a rumor that GM was planning to outsource more American jobs to Russia instead of being a part of our financial solution by providing Americans with jobs, Bill Gates has outsourced to other companies as well as other well-known celebrities and who have started companies overseas in order to get materials on the cheap. Fortunately, President Obama did not allow GM and most of the auto industry to collapse though many politicians even Detroit politicians and current candidates for President felt they should meet their makers and go into bankruptcy which makes you wonder how American is that and what does that tell about their Presidential attributes. I could not vote for a person who would turn their back on a company so apart of what being an American is all about and in the end President Obama saved over millions jobs. While Teapublicans and some conservadems in Congress filibuster common sense efforts to get America back on track, meaning JOBs bills that will help everyone not just adding government jobs or an infrastructure Bank is something that will be available for the Private Sector and Public Service. This is good for everyone but Teapublicans on both the State and Federal level have one thing on their agenda and that is pulling down our beloved America to the edge of disaster in order to take down President Obama … ask yourself how American is that? Teapublicans seem to be out of touch and clearly have a narrow view of how they would govern. Teapublicans are clearly unqualified to govern and if you need evidence do some research on how well Speaker Boehner, Cantor McConnell are really doing and it ain’t for We the People.
Outrage cannot begin to describe how this should make Americans feel and is this what Americans have to look forward to from other so-called American companies more Wall Street and Bank retaliation disguised as an “uncertainty” in tax laws and other policies that will limit their ability to “beat” the system.(my take). We all know these companies were bailed out by Americans who then turned on us by deciding to sit on or use the money to go on trips, hold seminars and give huge bonus’ to their employees without real merit involved. We all know that the money we Americans gave the Banks should have been reinvested in America by providing small or huge business loans. So, what happened and what is wrong with playing by the rules, regulations, policies that are transparent, provide full disclosure, and might deter folks from betting against Americans to get theirs. If you listen to the rumors, Eric Cantor seems to feel betting against fellow Americans might be lucrative and unfortunately, this seems atypical of the Teapublican Party.
The practice of sitting on money, in our case trillions of dollars or offshoring jobs is unacceptable and if outsourcing continues unemployment will remain a problem.
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