Archive for January 2013
By Zachary A. Goldfarb and William Branigin (The Washington Post)
LAS VEGAS — Declaring that America’s immigration system is broken, President Obama on Tuesday called for a process to allow millions of illegal immigrants in the country to apply for citizenship, and he warned that he would send his own bill to Congress if lawmakers deadlock on a new Senate proposal.
In his first trip outside Washington since beginning his second term, Obama added to momentum on Capitol Hill in favor of an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, setting forth the principles for a top second-term priority — and perhaps the one most likely to be accomplished.
“We need Congress to act on a comprehensive approach that finally deals with the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are in this country right now,” Obama said.
“Now’s the time,” he said repeatedly.
At a public high school in a state with a population that is 27 percent Hispanic, Obama outlined the steps illegal immigrants could take to apply for citizenship. They would register, submit biometric data, pass background checks and pay fees before gaining a provisional legal status. After gaining a “provisional legacy status” and learning English, the immigrants would wait in line for existing immigration backlogs to clear before applying for permanent residency and citizenship.
“There will be no uncertainty about their ability to become U.S. citizens if they meet these eligibility criteria,” according to a White House briefing document.
“We have to bring this shadow economy into the light so that everybody is accountable,” Obama said in his speech. He said he hopes that proposal “provides some key markers to members of Congress as they craft a bill.”
While welcoming a newly announced Senate plan, Obama ventured beyond it in several respects. He said a framework for comprehensive immigration reform that was announced by a bipartisan group of senators Monday is “very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years.”
But he warned that if lawmakers are unable to agree on legislation, “I will send up a bill based on my proposals and insist that they vote on it right away.”
According to the proposal Obama made Tuesday, released to reporters under embargo, children brought to the United States illegally would be eligible for an expedited process if they go to college or serve in the military for at least two years.
Obama is kicking off a public effort to revise immigration laws after an unsuccessful effort in his first term — something he said he regards as his biggest regret — and after President George W. Bush tried unsuccessfully to overhaul immigration policy in his second term.
This year, Republicans seem more open than in the past to rewriting the nation’s immigration laws, with rising stars such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) pushing to move ahead and demographic changes in the country weighing heavily on the GOP’s political fortunes.
Obama’s principles largely mirror the work that a bipartisan Senate group seeking to overhaul immigration laws released Monday.
“The good news is that — for the first time in many years — Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together,” Obama said. “Members of both parties, in both chambers, are actively working on a solution.”
He said the Senate group’s proposal is “very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years. At this moment, it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon. And that’s very encouraging.”
But the two approaches differ, with the president proposing an unconditional pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The Senate plan links such a process to additional steps to enforce border security.
In his proposal Tuesday, Obama made clear that he was not planning to loosen border security and enforcement, but he also noted that the administration has made substantial progress on this front already. Looking forward, the administration said it would seek to phase in electronic employment verification programs at companies.
But it was the proposal for easing immigration restrictions that were sure to garner the most attention. The proposal seeks to expedite applications from immigrants who are family members of existing residents or citizens.
For the first time, it would allow citizens and permanent residents to seek a visa for a same-sex partner.
To help recruit science and engineering professionals to stay in the country, Obama’s proposal would offer green cards to people who have received master’s degrees or doctorates from American universities in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics and have also obtained employment in the United States.
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Joseph Stiglitz attacks US ‘inequality'(from BBC America).
The richest 1% of Americans now hold 25% of the country’s wealth and more needs to be done to boost equality, Nobel Prize winning US economist Joseph Stiglitz has said.
Mr Stiglitz, speaking in Davos, said this was a result of the top 1% seeing their wealth double since 1980.
By contrast, he said that the median income level in the US had not changed since the early 1990s.
But Mr Stiglitz had praise for Brazil and the Scandinavian countries.
Speaking to the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Stiglitz called for more work to boost the educational opportunities of the “bottom 50%” of Americans, higher minimum wages, and more collective bargaining in the workplace.
“America likes to think of itself as a land of equality and opportunity, the so-called American dream is very deep to our sense of identity,” he said.
“The stats show otherwise, the US has one of the worst opportunity rates of any of the advanced economies. A child’s life chances are more dependent on the income of his or her parents than most other industrial economies.”
Mr Stiglitz contrasted the situation in the US in the past 30 years with that from the Second World War to 1980, when he said the US economy enjoyed “rapid growth in which we all grew together”.
Looking outside the US, Mr Stiglitz praised Brazil, where he said a major bipartisan effort over the past 20 years had markedly improved equality in the country.
Meanwhile, he said that the Scandinavian countries were leading the way with the highest levels of equality.
We applaud President Obama and his team for the appointment of Ms. Mary Jo White to head the SEC yesterday, this is a major step in the right direction for any of you that know of Ms. White’s record and her experience as a US prosecuting attorney against Wall Street’s corrupt traders and their corrupt procedures as we agree greed is not good for us as a Nation in the long run. We have during the campaign last year called on the President and his team time and time again to send a clear signal to Wall Street that the old ways and the old days of doing corrupt and greedy business are over, this is a small step in the right direction but an important one. Now we continue to call on the President and his team to focus on Civil Rights (which were more or less put on the back burner for the last four years) in his second term and undo the dark days of Bush/Cheney’s administration and their disregard for the US Constitution and give back to the citizens of the US the rights bestowed upon them by our Founding Fathers and continue to implement new laws that will give freedom, justice and equality to all and not just the lucky few.
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All we can say is well explained Madam President (in 2016).
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The Happy First Couple – January 21st, 2013.
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“It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.” – President Obama January 21st, 2013.
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We did it Amazing Democrats! Thank you all for your Amazing participation which without this weekend wouldn’t be so special for us all. Let us not forget the dream and let us keep our promises to the American people for the next four years and not let them down.
God Bless The President and the Vice-President and God Bless America.
“It shows you what one voice can do. That one voice can change a room. And if a voice can change a room, it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it can change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world”. – President Obama (Manassas, Prince William County, Virginia, November 3, 2008, 10:30pm – Night Before the Election).
It is your day this Monday Mr. President. May you and the First Family have a great day. From the whole team for the Amazing Mission-Castro-Noe-Bernal Heights districts of San Francisco for Organizing for Action (formerly Organizing for America).
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The Amazing Democrats for the Mission-Castro-Noe-Bernal Heights districts for Organizing for Action (formerly Organizing for America) San Francisco gave a hot meal to homeless people on the streets.Meet Kat and his sign said he was hungry, so off we went to food store, paid $5.99 for a hot meal of rice, beef and vegetables and gave it to Kat. His story is that he was at college fulltime but suffered depression and he had to drop out and since has become hooked on a serious hard drug which he is now addicted to. He had not taken any drugs today and was very hungry and seemed very articulate. He is aware of his problem and with his doctor he is trying to get into a rehabilitation program at San Francisco’s General Hospital. He is lucky that has Healthy San Francisco, however he loses his temporary accommodation in five days’ time and has no funds to find another place. He has contacted the agencies in San Francisco and they have put him on a waiting list. He would like to get help from his doctor to deal with his depression and go back to college. He wants to be a paramedic.This is just one of the many stories we hear daily and as part of the week that is in it we met with Supervisor Scott Weiner yesterday at City Hall. We support Supervisor Weiner many great efforts and we know one day he will run successful for Mayor of San Francisco. He listened with great care and made some honest observations of this serious urgent issue in San Francisco. We as Democrats must look to ourselves and our party and remember the work of FDR for the homeless and less well off. President Obama has started with small steps and the Affordable Care Act will go a long way to help the homeless in 2014 but we must do a lot more to at least slow down the cancer of homelessness in our major US cities. A percentage of these homeless people are veterans who have fought for our country and now we need to repay them and look out for their welfare until they get back on their feet again.
In some parts of one of our districts in the Mission it is a mess and not only needs urgent Police action to clean up the selling of illegal serious drugs, false IDs and even illegal weapons but for the City’s agencies to respond to the urgent needs of this community living on the streets of the Mission and on Market Street, which at night looks look a war torn street at night with all the homeless. As a former cycling tour guide there wasn’t one tour that didn’t start off with the tourists inquiring why San Francisco has so many homeless people. To say it is because they get great social benefits is the reason, is a cop out. On Tuesday go to the agencies and services and try and get help yourself and email us to tell us how successful you were and what in fact you actually got. Homelessness in America is a hidden cancer eating away at one of the wealthiest Nations in the World. If you complain about the homeless getting free services than open your eyes and see the twenty billion dollars a year for the next ten years we have to pay to Iraq for invading that country based on a lie that they had weapons of mass destruction (which no one ever found). Just think what the city of San Francisco could do with twenty billion dollars a year for its homeless? It’s time for us Democrats to return to the philosophy of President Roosevelt and forget about raising millions upon millions of dollars for campaign finance to win elections and take care of our homeless, it is not a sign of weakness to do so but a sign of strength. We are the Amazing Democrats and we can do it. God Bless America.
Disclaimer: Kat’s story is his words and no facts from his story have been confirmed.
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Today on the National Day of Service (Saturday January 19th, 2013) we the Amazing Democrats for the Mission-Castro-Noe-Bernal Heights districts in San Francisco for Organizing for Action (formerly Organizing for America) would like to thank the owner and his wife of the Church Street Café, 260 Church Street, San Francisco, CA 94114 who every week for seven months during the Presidential campaign allowed us to use an amazing space there for Phone Banking for no charge whatsoever and they and their staff were so kind and patient with us. We are so proud of our work there as we grew to field 1,200 calls in an hour and forty-five minutes each week and became one of the top calling teams for the President’s re-election campaign. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
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By Zachary A. Goldfarb and William Branigin (The Washington Post)
The Amazing Democrats 