Politics
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PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS A PLAN TO OUT-EDUCATE THE WORLD
MITT ROMNEY WOULD MAKE DEEP CUTS TO EDUCATION AND LEAVE STUDENTS BEHIND
President Obama wants the United States to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. Through student loan reform, tax credits, and spurring states to strengthen K-12 programs, the President is taking us forward. Mitt Romney would cut investments in education to pay for more tax cuts for the wealthy.
Obama: Set a goal to cut tuition growth in half over the next decade with a plan to double campus based student aid and incentives for schools that are successful at keeping tuition growth down
Romney: As governor, Romney made deep cuts to higher education – by the end of his term, college costs had skyrocketed, with fees at state colleges and universities increasing 63%
Obama: Launched Race to the Top, spurring 46 states to raise their standards for college and career readiness, and has a plan to recruit 100,000 science and math teachers over the next decade.
Romney: Would abandon the bipartisan national commitment to turn around failing schools and believes that class size is “not relevant” to student learning
Obama:
Watch online: Tuesday, September 25, 2012; 12:00pm -1:30pm
With less than two months to go until the presidential election of 2012, the contours of the campaign thus far have been remarkably similar to the ones outlined in our paper from the fall of 2011, “The Path to 270.” The study argues that the election would boil down to the relative balance between two fundamental forces nationally and across the most important battleground states: demographic change—favoring President Barack Obama and the Democrats—and the lingering impact of an economy not yet fully recovered from the depths of the Great Recession—favoring the Republican candidate (now former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney) and his party.
With the campaign debate heating up and increasingly cast in ideological terms, it is time to revisit the basic questions posed by the original report: Will the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women, and secular voters that pushed President Barack Obama to victory in 2008 be sufficient and mobilized enough to ensure his reelection in 2012? Or will the Republican Party and its nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, capitalize on a struggling economy and greater mobilization from a conservative base that holds the president in deep disdain?
RSVP or watch this event live online: http://www.americanprogress.org/events/2012/09/17/38203/the-path-to-270-revisited-the-role-of-demographics-economics-and-ideology-in-the-2012-election/?evlc=rsvp
People surround themselves with people who earn similar incomes, and it is now fueling a rise in residential segregation. One recent study suggests the income gap might be greater today than even during colonial times – even when you account for slavery.
Residential segregation also makes it easier when it comes to gerrymandering, or redrawing district boundaries. Taylor says that increasingly the people who draw those lines do so in order to create “safe” districts, whether for Republicans or Democrats. (NPR News, 9/22/12)
Republicans Recoil At Romney
The controversy surrounding Mitt Romney’s inflammatory attack on nearly half of Americans at closed-door fundraiser with millionaire donors shows no signs of abating. In fact, it only appears to be growing. Even Romney’s own running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), criticized Romney during a television appearance last night.
The controversy made the front pages of at least 41 swing state newspapers this morning. Editorial boards across the country, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Mercury News, Nashua Telegraph, Concord Monitor, Charlotte Observer, Raleigh News & Observer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Toledo Blade, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Denver Post, Boulder Daily Camera, Kansas City Star, Seattle Times, Roanoke Times, Philadelphia Daily News, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Richmond Times-Dispatch all condemned Romney in today’s paper.
And now — and even worse for Romney, his fellow Republicans are distancing themselves from him and even, in some cases, outright attacking Romney for his comments. Check out the growing list of prominent Republicans who want nothing to do with Romney’s derisive, sneering attack on nearly half of the American people.
Tampa speaks up
August 29, 2012
Congressman Paul Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president and champion of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of middle class and seniors, will address the Republican National Convention. But before he goes on, a few regular folks—college students and retirees, veterans, and Medicare recipients—stopped by to make their voices heard about what matters to the middle class.
For many Floridians, health care is a top priority, and the people we met today are concerned about what the extreme Romney-Ryan budget would mean for themselves and their families. Carole, who shared her story during this morning’s press conference, says her husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer five years ago—and there is no way they’d be able to pay his medical bills without Medicare.
“Medicare paid for his excellent surgeons and the excellent treatment. It paid for chemotherapy, which is very, very expensive. We’re middle class. Up until then we had a charmed life, but it hits you. It hits all of a sudden.”
The fact that Mitt Romney and Ryan want to end Medicare as we know it and replace it with a voucher system prompted Carole to get up in front of a room of journalists and cameras and share her story—even though she says she’d never dreamed she’d do such a thing. There’s just too much at risk to keep quiet. Carole explains, “I would say our medical bills are over a million dollars. Medicare paid for this. We have a small supplement, but it’s dependent on Medicare. We have private homeowners’ insurance that we can’t afford anymore. If there’s a voucher program for health care, I’m skeptical about turning over medical insurance to a private company.”
Veterans are also worried about what a Romney-Ryan ticket means for their health. Annie, a Tampa senior who stood up at today’s press conference, says her husband is a veteran who suffers from PTSD. She’s worried that if the Republicans get elected, his medical benefits will get cut—or that the VA will be forced to cut back on his doctors and counselors. It’s a concern Elena, a Tampa-area veteran, shares. “The President has always had our back,” Elena says. “If we elect Romney, we’d be turning our backs on veterans when we need them most—when they gave us their all.”
Annie sums up what’s at stake. It’s the reason they all came out today: “I don’t want to go back to those eight years that we had before. I just don’t want to go back. I want to go forward.”
It’s late August. The Republicans are having their national convention. A huge tropical storm is bearing down on the U.S. Gulf Coast. So what’s new? We have had major hurricanes bearing down on the United States during four of the past six Republican conventions: Andrew in 1992, Frances in 2004, Gustav in 2008, and this year, Isaac. This is not a coincidence: Republicans seem determined to underfund, undermanage, and understaff the government agencies that respond to hurricanes, putting lives and property at risk, as well as their political careers.
This gets way more interesting… Red more:http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/open-government/news/2012/08/29/34936/why-do-republicans-have-so-much-trouble-with-hurricanes/
danetteoneal1
Danette O'Neal, PhD 