Kingston says today he's "vehemently" opposed to "The plan offered by Speaker Pelosi", yet he'd like Congress to buy him a C-37 so he can jet around GA-01 in style.
Details here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/7/15219/4797
This happened at Jack Kingston's Health Care Town Hall, Valdosta, GA, 28 Sep 2009: a veteran was booed for saying respect the president. To Kingston's credit, he shushed the crowd.The speaker was George Rhynes, who is one of the organizers of a rally tomorrow, Saturday 17 October 2009, on the Lowndes County courthouse steps, Valdosta, Georgia. Invitations on
On this Labor Day morning I sent this feedback through whitehouse.gov:
I campaigned for you, like many others. We elected you and majorities of Democrats bigger than Newt Gingrich ever saw to get the job done: end the war, close gitmo, end warrantless wiretapping, implement universal health care, and the other things you said you would do.I'm sure it's hard once you get there, but gitmo is still open and there's a lot of talk that you're thinking of abandoning the public option on health care. A public option is already a compromise. The real solution, as you yourself once said, is single-payer. Medicare for everyone!You can't please everyone. You really can't please Republicans in Congress, because they're not bargaining in good faith: their only goal is to defeat you by defeating health care and anything else you propose. Trying to do it in a bipartisan way was laudable. It didn't work. You held out your hand and they bit it. Time to get the job done.FDR didn't pass the New Deal by asking Republicans to approve every detail. He accepted opposition and actively campaigned to defeat it and to defeat those Congress members in the next election. His biographer Jean Edward Smith said recently:“This fixation on securing bipartisan support for healthcare reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.”LBJ didn't pass Medicare by giving away the store to the Republicans. He said what he wanted and he twisted arms until he got it. If your Blue Dogs are standing in your way tell them to get in line if they want your support for their next bill or at the next election.You're losing us, your progressive base. We are the great majority of people in this country who want real health care reform, not some compromise with the profit-gouging insurers. Nobody else should have to die so a CEO can get a bonus.It's time to lead, Mr. President. It's time for you and the Democrats in Congress to do the job you said you would do; the job we elected you to do.
The amount of Waste, Fraud & abuse for the last 8 years has been allowed to run rampart. The taxpayer's Government procurement system has little incentive to correct the ills in the system since the contractors have been successful in pitting DCMA & DCAA, our top watchdogs, at each other than the ills within the contractor's Business Systems. the contractors, like FLOR, KBR, & DYNCORP need only ignore any recommendations to provide accurate, honest, and clear documentation for incurred cost claimed. The results is compound Waste, Fraud & abuse of taxpayer dollars. I know, I worked with DCAA for 22 years to make these type of contractors accountable in the states of Georgia, Florida, North & South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, etc. Tuesday, August 11,2009 Hill hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan begins the real savings of taxpayer's dollars. Read it for yourself from the Chicago Tribute:
Wartime contracting commission takes aim at KBR for resisting oversight, failing to cut costs
WASHINGTON (AP) — An independent panel examining waste and fraud in wartime spending accused contracting giant KBR Inc. on Tuesday of resisting government oversight and failing to cut costs on support work in Iraq.During a hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting, KBR defended its performance, telling the panel the company was under heavy pressure to meet the urgent demands of military commanders.KBR's internal accounting and cost estimating systems have been inadequate since 2005, commissioners said, leading to questionable billings and drawn out arguments with federal auditors over hundreds of millions of dollars in charges.Commissioner Dov Zakheim said KBR's top managers meet regularly with the Defense Contract Audit Agency. Yet the company has been unable to come up with solutions that satisfy the agency. By comparison, other large contractors, such as Dyncorp International, seem to work out their problems quickly, he said."Are you guys stonewalling?" asked Zakheim, a former Pentagon comptroller.William Walter, KBR's senior vice president for government compliance, said the company was incurring expenses for the work it was doing in Iraq at the same time auditors were poring over the company's cost projections, a situation prone to confusion and disagreements."It's a vicious cycle that we were stuck in," Walter said. He described the disagreements over contract charges as "differences of judgments."KBR is the primary support contractor in Iraq, providing troops with essential services, including housing, meals, mail delivery and laundry. The company has been paid more than $32 billion since 2001.But in a prior report, the commission said billions of dollars of that amount ended up wasted due to poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies.Commissioner Charles Tiefer said KBR is keeping more employees in Iraq than it should in order to keep charging the government for work even as U.S. forces are drawing down.In late January, Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, ordered military units to begin cutting U.S. contractors by 5 percent each quarter and to hire Iraqis instead.Tiefer, a professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore Law School, said figures he's compiled show KBR's personnel rates in Iraq are declining more slowly than others."They're slow rolling the drawdown," he said.Walter said much work remains to be done in Iraq even as the U.S. presence is decreasing. That includes shutting down bases and housing units.Commissioners also faulted KBR for building a $30 million dining facility at a U.S. base in Iraq shortly after the company had renovated the base's existing mess hall at a cost of $3.36 million.The panel wanted to know whether KBR tried to tell the military the new facility was unnecessary, especially with American forces scheduled to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.Walter said the renovation work and the new facility were two separate contracts from two different Army agencies, evidence of the need for government to speak with "one voice.""And nobody from KBR went to anybody senior in the Army and said, 'What in God's name are you doing?'" Zakheim said.Walter said KBR does what it is told to do by the customer.Commissioner Linda Gustitus asked Walter whether the company has been criticized by government officials for not proactively seeking cost savings.Walter didn't answer immediately."The answer is yes, by the way," Gustitus said.___On the Net:Commission on Wartime Contracting: http://www.wartimecontracting.gov/
It is up to us to make sure a new process permit the real saving to be implemented. Monitor, report, & share how they are completing this task is our responsibility.
GOP Theme Team Chair Jack Kingston, G-01, held a health care town hall in Valdosta, Georgia, and Democrats came. We were only a small minority of the hundreds present, but we spoke up and got heard in the room and in the local media.
Posted May 11, 2009 by theindustryradar Categories: Business, Human Resources, Leadership Tags: star trek
The new Star trek movie is a spectacular summer fun ride whether you are a “Trekkie”, or like my 9 year old Star Wars crazed son, a newbie to this iconic story and its characters.
I have loved Star Trek since it came out in 1966 when I was 13. Until seeing the new movie I had never really thought how revolutionary it was in 1966 presenting a crew made up of a black woman, an Asian, a Russian, a Scot, a rebellious Iowa farm boy and an alien. 1966…43 years ago..
Today a team this diverse is not that unusual and the movie is also is a great reminder, especially in difficult times like these, what is required for any organization to succeed:
Now your business may not have Klingons or Romulans to fight but your challenges are just as real.
It is challenging times like these that demand some bold thinking and action and true team work if, as Spock would say, you want to “Live, long and prosper”.
So on this Monday morning are you ready to say – “Beam me up Scotty” – I am ready to go?
“Aye Captain!”….Have a good week!!
www.whitehouse.gov
TEMPE, Ariz. — President Obama traveled Wednesday to the university that does not think he has done enough to merit an honorary degree and declared that he agreed.
Mr. Obama delivered his first commencement address as president at Arizona State University, whose decision not to award him a ceremonial diploma touched off a national furor. He used the controversy to make the point that no one should be satisfied with “the outward markers of success,” either as individuals or as a country.
“I come here not to dispute the suggestion that I haven’t achieved enough in my life,” Mr. Obama told tens of thousands of students and relatives packed into Sun Devil Stadium. “First of all, Michelle concurs with that assessment. She has a long list of things I have not yet done waiting for me when I get home.
“But more than that,” he added, “I come to embrace the notion that I haven’t done enough in my life. I heartily concur. I come to confirm that one’s title, even a title like president of the United States, says very little about how well one’s life has been led — and that no matter how much you’ve done, or how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to do, always more to learn, and always more to achieve.”
The decision not to award an honorary degree to Mr. Obama was taken by many as a snub, especially after university officials explained that “his body of work is yet to come.” Embarrassed university officials tried to contain the damage by renaming its most important financial aid program the President Barack Obama Scholars Program, which will benefit 1,600 freshmen this fall.
The university’s president, Michael Crow, heaped praise on Mr. Obama in introducing him on Wednesday night. “You’ve lit a fire under all of us to move America forward,” Mr. Crow said.
Mr. Obama thanked him and called the controversy “much ado about nothing.” But he still aimed a barb at the university’s leadership. “President Crow and the board of regents will soon learn about being audited by the I.R.S.,” he joked.
Mr. Obama’s commencement season schedule this year has generated more attention than most presidents receive. His plan to speak at the graduation at Notre Dame on Sunday has drawn vociferous protests from anti-abortion leaders who consider it inappropriate for him to be invited to speak at the nation’s most prominent Catholic university.
In his speech here to a stadium full of people who waited hours in temperatures hovering around 100 degrees, Mr. Obama said the degree controversy underscored that the nation needs “a fundamental change of perspective and attitude,” one that values substance over appearance, character over celebrity and wise investments over “get rich quick schemes.”
The country, he suggested, has lost its way. “In recent years, in many ways, we’ve become enamored with our own success, lulled into complacency by our own achievements,” he said, citing the economic crisis. “We started taking shortcuts. We started living on credit, instead of building up savings. We saw businesses focus more on rebranding and repackaging than innovating and developing new ideas that improve our lives.”
He cited Americans who ran the Underground Railroad, fought for worker rights, developed new technology and saved people caught in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. “A whole bunch of them didn’t get honorary degrees,” he said in an ad lib not in the released text, “but they changed the course of history and so can you.”
He added: “That’s what building a body of work is all about: it’s about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime, to a lasting legacy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/politics/14obama.html?ref=politics
Obama Family,
I hope all is well with you. I was asked by the producer of the Emmy Award-winning public affairs show, "IN CONTACT" of WPBA TV-30 to participate in an upcoming segment: New Political Power: In the age of Obama. The program airs at 9am on Sunday mornings on Atlanta's own WPBA TV-30. The half-hour program will take a look at the relevance of such iconic civil rights organizations as the NAACP, the National Urban League and Operation Push as they continue to service marginalized communities in what many are now calling a Post-Civil Rights Era and how to engage our young people are in these activities.I will tape the segment on Monday, May 4th 2009 and will let you know when my program will be televised. About IN CONTACT "IN CONTACT," hosted by veteran journalist and Atlanta Association of Black Journalist member Angela Robinson, delivers lively discussions on a variety of topics that connect and impact the African-American community, including the community's triumphs and challenges. By delivering an African-American perspective and encouraging dialog on timely topics, "IN CONTACT" is unique among Atlanta television programming. REACHBy airing on WPBA Channel 30, "IN CONTACT" has the potential to reach over 1.5 million people in 500,000 homes throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area. The show reaches, on average, 5,000 households each Sunday.Thank you for your support, Preston L. Harden,Georgia's 7th CongressionalDistrict Delegate GO OBAMA!!!!! 2008(404) 376-683You're invited to visit and join our movementwww.prestonlharden.com You're invited to join our group Georgia Young Professionals for Change on My.BarackObama.com:http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/YoungProfessionalsforChange
http://www.nateperkins.tv/profile
http://www.choicesvideo.net
http://www.nateperkinslive.com
February 10, 2009 Financial Stability Plan Fact Sheet by Treasury Department & Geithner is below and my comments are below.
What Geithner stated at the G7 world finance meeting on 2/14/09: we outlined a broad framework for financial recovery and stability. This framework is designed to provide greater transparency to the financial system, to bring in new capital, new financing to restart the flow of credit to consumers and businesses, and create a new investment fund to finance and leverage private sector capital to facilitate the clean up of bank balance sheets. In the coming days we will announce a comprehensive plan to address the housing crisis.
As we act together to build a strong foundation for recovery, we need to begin the process of comprehensive reform of our financial system and the international financial system, so the world never again faces a crisis this severe. While this is a responsibility of national governments, our markets are global and therefore national efforts cannot be fully effective without stronger international cooperation to implement higher standards. In this regard, we will continue to support the important work underway in the Financial Stability Forum and the G20. We will work closely with our colleagues in the G7 and the G20 to build consensus on reforms that match the scope of the problems revealed by this crisis.
What he stated to us on February 10, 2009: Restarting our economy and job creation requires both jumpstarting economic demand for goods and services through our American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and simultaneously ensuring through our new Financial Stability Plan that businesses with good ideas have the credit to grow and expand, and working families can get the affordable loans they need to meet their economic needs and power an economic recovery.
To address the financial crisis, the Financial Stability Plan is designed to attack our credit crisis on all fronts with our full arsenal of financial tools and the resources commensurate to the depth of the problem. To be successful, we must address the uncertainty, troubled assets and capital constraints of our financial institutions as well as the frozen secondary markets that have been the source of around half of our lending for everything from small business loans to auto loans.
To protect taxpayers and ensure that every dollar is directed toward lending and economic revitalization, the Financial Stability Plan will institute a new era of accountability, transparency and conditions on the financial institutions receiving funds. To ensure that we are responding to this crisis as one government, Secretary Timothy Geithner -- working in collaboration and joined by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair, Office of Thrift Supervision Director John Reich and Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan – is bringing the full force and full range of financial tools available to cleaning up lingering problems in our banking system, opening up credit and beginning the process of financial recovery.
The plan summary: on the web: http://www.ustreas.gov/news/index2.html
1. a. Increased Transparency and Disclosure: Increased and enforce banking supervisors recognize the need not to adopt an overly conservative posture or take steps that could inappropriately constrain lending.
b. Coordinated, Accurate, and Realistic Assessment: All relevant financial regulators -- the Federal Reserve, FDIC, OCC, and OTS -- will work together in a coordinated way to bring more consistent, realistic and forward looking assessment of exposures on the balance sheet of financial institutions..
c. Forward Looking Assessment – Stress Test: A key component of the Capital Assistance Program is a forward looking comprehensive "stress test" that requires an assessment of whether major financial institutions have the capital necessary to continue lending and to absorb the potential losses that could result from a more severe decline in the economy than projected.
d. Requirement for $100 Billion-Plus Banks: All banking institutions with assets in excess of $100 billion will be required to participate in the coordinated supervisory review process and comprehensive stress test.
3. Capital Assistance Program: While banks will be encouraged to access private markets to raise any additional capital needed to establish this buffer, a financial institution that has undergone a comprehensive "stress test" will have access to a Treasury provided "capital buffer" to help absorb losses and serve as a bridge to receiving increased private capital. a preferred security investment from Treasury in convertible securities that they can convert into common equity
b. This convertible preferred security will carry a dividend to be specified later and a conversion price set at a modest discount from the prevailing level of the institution's stock price as of February 9, 2009.
c. Banking institutions with consolidated assets below $100 billion will also be eligible to obtain capital from the CAP after a supervisory review.
Financial Stability Trust: Any capital investments made by Treasury under the CAP will be placed in a separate entity – the Financial Stability Trust – set up to manage the government's investments in US financial institutions.
Public-Private Investment Fund: One aspect of a full arsenal approach is the need to provide greater means for financial institutions to cleanse their balance sheets of what are often referred to as "legacy" assets. Many proposals designed to achieve this are complicated both by their sole reliance on public purchasing and the difficulties in pricing assets. Working together in partnership with the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department will initiate a Public-Private Investment Fund that takes a new approach.
Public-Private Capital: This new program will be designed with a public-private financing component, which could involve putting public or private capital side-by-side and using public financing to leverage private capital on an initial scale of up to $500 billion, with the potential to expand up to $1 trillion. Private Sector Pricing of Assets: Because the new program is designed to bring private sector equity contributions to make large-scale asset purchases, it not only minimizes public capital and maximizes private capital: it allows private sector buyers to determine the price for current troubled and previously illiquid assets
Consumer & Business Lending Initiative – Up to $1 Trillion: Addressing our credit crisis on all fronts means going beyond simply dealing with banks. Between 2006 and 2008, there was a net $1.2 trillion decline in securitized lending (outside of the GSEs) in these markets. That is why a core component of the Financial Stability Plan is:
A Bold Expansion Up to $1 Trillion: This joint initiative with the Federal Reserve builds off, broadens and expands the resources of the previously announced but not yet implemented Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF). Treasury was to use $20 billion to leverage $200 billion of lending from the Federal Reserve. The Financial Stability Plan will dramatically increase the size by using $100 billion to leverage up to $1 trillion and kick start lending by focusing on new loans.
Protecting Taxpayer Resources by Limiting Purchases to Newly Packaged AAA Loans: Because these are the highest quality portion of any security -- the first ones to be paid -- we will be able to best protect against taxpayer losses and efficiently leverage taxpayer money to support a large flow of credit to these sectors.
Expand Reach – Including Commercial Real Estate: The Consumer & Business Lending Initiative will expand the initial reach of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility to now include commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). In addition, the Treasury will continue to consult with the Federal Reserve regarding possible further expansion of the TALF program to include other asset classes, such as non-Agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and assets collateralized by corporate debt.
2. New Era of Transparency, Accountability, Monitoring and Conditions: A major and legitimate source of public frustration and even anger with the initial deployment of the first $350 billion of EESA funds was a lack of accountability or transparency as to whether assistance was being provided solely for the public interest and a stronger economy, rather than the private gain of shareholders, bondholders or executives. Going forward, the Financial Stability Plan will call for greater transparency, accountability and conditionality with tougher standards for firms receiving exceptional assistance. These will be the new standards going forward and are not retroactive. These stronger monitoring conditions were informed by recommendations made by formal oversight groups – the Congressional Oversight Panel, the Special Inspector General, and the Government Accountability Office -- as well as Congressional committees charged with oversight of the banking system.
Requiring Firms to Show How Assistance from Financial Stability Plan Will Expand Lending: The core of the new monitoring requirement is to require recipients of exceptional assistance or capital buffer assistance to show how every dollar of capital they receive is enabling them to preserve or generate new lending compared to what would have been possible without government capital assistance.
My Notes:
After listening to Mr. Simon Johnson, economist, on Bill Moyers this Sunday I have to admit he had motivated me to read Geithner’s Financial Stability Plan and to find out why the Market took a nose dive after the announcement of the plan. I better understand his point now. The market dominated by men lacks the keep ingredient men thrive on: Competition. The plan is definitely civil…it does not generate …what they call it…HEAT! Like Baseball there is reason the ball is at one baseball for so many minute before it ends up at the other end. {I don’t know what kind of ball player Geithner is but I know How President Obama is and he would get this point.} Men have to know the rules, see how to follow the rules then what the reward/goal for following the rules is. This is simple but true in business, finance, and economics. Note: These rules apply to women who want to participate as well.
Mr. Simon Johnson, economist, finds the plan needs a scaled up version of FDIC that require the bankers wanting and needing Government assistance should bring to the table a group of private investors and those have the most will receive the most. I have to agree with him. This would add some heat to the process something these well dressed captains of business can understand. I must pass this message to Mr. Geithner, the Obama Team, & Treasury for feedback on what they think. [Submitted to Whitehouse.gov on 2/15/2009]
BTW, Those who voted against the stimulus plan and don't like the Financial Stability Plan be aware that U do not have to take any funding from these plans. These groups can demonstrate their objections by leaving the monies in the Treasury for those who appreciate the Government assistance. Personally, I would be very please if they would do just that!
Read it and Act! Contact your representatives & let them know who supports the President.
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=11354
The Policies of the GOP for the last 28 years are tired and failed ideas. We need to move beyond their gamesmanship to Reality.
Your support can create the world that should be and that is our Challenge!
Your Friend from NWGA4Obama’08,
Marie
Not only words this year..........let's move to save the Economy, the Peace and the International Relations.
These are the main facts we should reach, asap.
Fast, please !
Simone
CLICK
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/28356011#28356011
Watch and enjoy!
I saw those tacky loud ghetto burlap bag grandma jello pudding pop designs the "top" designers are trying to stuff her in for the Inaugural Ball and none of them fit the styles I've seen her wear yet.
I've seen her in classic, elegant, sophisticated (unless she's doing J Targete casual) and those designers have got the "slave-motif" going on. They didn't put a lot of thought into what they've seen her wear.
I've observed and when I was a little girl I wanted to BE a fashion designer and interior decorator. Therefore I give my Unsung and Unasked For opinion. NONE of those gowns work.
So, I give you...
Midnight Black and Deep Purple- ankle lengthBlack Silk Chiffon draped in back with light bow accentEngraved Black and purple boa down front of dress from waistline has hand-sewn pearls to match pearl necklace (drop choker)
I call it Understated Drama with PearlsIt has that Roman Goddess "feel" to the bodice.
This gives her what she's done in the past with a slight bend toward the dramatic, It is certainly traditional, but off the beaten-down path for a most special occasion.
"Now more than ever, we must rededicate ourselves to the notion that we share a common destiny as Americans – that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper. Now, we must all do our part to serve one another; to seek new ideas and new innovation; and to start a new chapter for our great country." - President Elect Barack Obama
www.change.gov
www.barackobama.com
A special holiday prayer and greeting...
Give us, O divine creator, the vision which can see Your love in the world in spite of human failure.Give us the faith to trust Your goodness in spite of our ignorance and weakness.Give us the knowledge that we may continue to pray with understanding hearts.And show us what each one of us can do to set forward the coming of the day of universal peace.
Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olamBlessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe
shehecheyanu v'kiyimanu v'higi'anu laz'man hazeh. (Amein)who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season (Amen)
A familiar introduction to an annual Christmas Carol Service contains the words: 'Because this would most rejoice his heart": let us remember, in his name, the poor and the helpless, the cold, the hungry, and the oppressed; the sick and those who mourn, the lonely and the unloved.'
Wherever these words find you, and in whatever circumstances, I want to wish you a blessed Holiday Season with oceans of joy and all good wishes for 2009!
Raphael Holoman-Frankklin
President-Elect Barack Obama Supporter
