An excessively wealthy Kisumu based medical doctor who had declared his intention of vying for the elective position n of County governor in the region has hastily beat the retreat after allegedly being prevailed upon by the ODM leadership in unclear circumstances.
Dr Hezron Makobewa o is the director of the Kisumu based OGRA FOUNDATION AN Ngo which is heavily funded by the UK sources with the support of the British government, however declined to name the emissaries who conveyed the message to him, but multiple source have hinted that the message came from two influential Luo MPs mandarins of the ODM believes to be close to the party leadership.
Dr Makobewa had launched his elaborate campaign strategy and established a secretariat to oversee and spearhead his campaign activities, which he is reported to have quickly dissolved and abandoned.
The medic who was recently appointed by the Heritage and Cultural Minster William Ole Ntimama to head the Council of NGOs hails from Kano Kowuor Kamaaga in what used to be the North East Kano location, which is located between Ahero-Miwani and Masogo within the Kisumu County. He is know to be a astute businessman who runs a chains of medium sizes, but ultra modern hotels facilities in the lakeside City of Kisumu.
Prior to the 2007 general elections an excessively wealthy unnamed and popular Nairobi based business magnate, from Mbita constituency in Suba region of the larger Southern Nyanza was prevailed upon not to contest the Mbita parliamentary seat in a similar fashion.
Multiple sources had revealed that the businessman who is also still working in the public service was posed to inflicting heavy defeat to the Immigration and Registration of Persons Minister Gerald Otieno Kajwang’ the incumbent Mbita MP. The populist and youthful business tycoon reluctantly withdrew his candidature to the chagrins of the electorate and pulled out of politics altogether saying he would concentrate in his civil service job and to improve his chains of businesses spanning from Nairobi to Luo-Nyanza.
Dr Makobewa could not be reached for his immediate comment about the rumor which hit Kisumu city lie tsunami, provoking wholesale condemnation by the electorate in general and his people of the populous Kano clan in particular.
Political pundits and observers alike were quick in terming the ODM action undemocratic and dictatorial which must not be allowed to go on as it is likely to poison the electorate in other electoral areas in the region.
The ODM’s alleged action in preventing the medics fro contesting the election for the Kisumu County governor, which is his constitutional and birthrights is an amounting to a mockery of the essence an tenets of democratic principles.
‘The party must embrace democracy ad stop the bad habit of imposing unpopular candidates on the electorate in Luo-Nyanza and elsewhere countrywide,” said a party operative in Kisumu who requested for his identity to remain anonymous for fear of possible reprisal.
The recently flawed Ndhiwa preliminary nomination of the party candidate I the by-election, which s scheduled for September 17,2012 has exposed a lot of weaknesses in ODM electoral system.
The nomination to fill the vacant Ndhiwa parliamentary seat followed the death of the former are MP Joshua Orwa Ojode in an aircraft accident left close to 60,00 voters disfranchised as they were unable to cast their votes or due to poor logistics and unavailability of election materials to the polling stations and non-arrival of election officials who included clerks and the returning officers in time. This dismal performance by the ODM board of election only facilitated d 7,800 hundred voters in a populous and votes rich Ndhiwa constituency with record registration of close to 85,000 voters.
Whoever won the primary nomination in Ndhiwa does not enjoy the confidence of the majority of the voters who were denied their democratic right of choosing a candidate of their own choice
The Obama track records are in public domain and it is clear that President Obama has succeeded on many fronts in performance and leadership and has performed much better than those before him. His successes are worth celebrating. They are long and compelling……..follow this trend in your search to know the truth and avoid being filled with LIES. Thus: See what President Obama did in:
1) defeating Bin Laden
2) getting out of Iraq
3) Putting America on top as a Super-Power
4) helping to oust Qaddafi
5) restoring our reputation internationally
6) resetting our international priorities to better coincide with our long term interests
(the “pivot” to a focus on Asia and China)
7) producing meaningful healthcare reform to all
8) producing significant financial services reforms accessible to all
9) lifting the downward spiral in the economy and laying foundations Way-forward for recovery etc.,
Top on the agenda is President Obama’s leadership success in international economic policy which must be appreciated, and it all goes along way with Foreign Policy that must be acceptable and are favorable. You cannot succeed in home politics and make a success story in the lead of being a super power with a failed foreign policy and be successful. Both must provide a balance and this is what President Obama has done. You cannot claim to be successful in business commerce (Free Trading enterprising) without cooperating with the International Governments or without laying down constitutional democratic plan how to deliberate and provide a balance for Global environmental security, managing terrorism, securing safe and secure livelihood and survival. This is what President Obama did and why he engaged provision for a healthy Nation where he first provide Welfare Reform for good and affordable healthcare, he engaged a diverse shared ideas for employment and job opportunities and creation through financial support and training extension for job creation and placements. This program fell under the Stimulus Recovery Act where The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, abbreviated ARRA (Pub.L. 111-5) and commonly referred to as the Stimulus or The Recovery Act, is an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009 and signed into law on February 17, 2009, by President Barack Obama. President Obama Administration therefore monitors, balances and oversee the collection of Revenues from business in fees or levy etc., and from government contracts with government trading bills, loans and bonds employment and business trading expansion under a reliable fair Partnership is set in a balanced shared sacrifice. In essence these are basic requirements needed from a Responsible leadership to steer a successful Government operation in prioritizing service deliver to Public Mandate & needs. President Obama energized and boosted the Educational agenda for success in boosting student loans and encouraging science and Technology motivating girls to engage in science subjects and Technology.
Quote:
“To respond to the late-2000s recession, the primary objective for ARRA was to save and create jobs almost immediately. Secondary objectives were to provide temporary relief programs for those most impacted by the recession and invest in infrastructure, education, health, and ‘green’ energy. The approximate cost of the economic stimulus package was estimated to be $787 billion at the time of passage, later revised to $831 billion between 2009 and 2019.[1] The Act included direct spending in infrastructure, education, health, and energy, federal tax incentives, and expansion of unemployment benefits and other social welfare provisions. The Act also included many items not directly related to economic recovery such as long-term spending projects (e.g., a study of the effectiveness of medical treatments) and other items specifically included by Congress (e.g., a limitation on executive compensation in federally aided banks added by Senator Dodd and Rep. Frank).”
A few years ago, president Obama made a bold move for the U.S. to double it’s exports over the next five years, with growth averaging over 16 percent a year and since then, progress is being made. The U.S. Export-Import Bank has broken all records in terms of financing of U.S. exports. Three trade deals got through a divided Congress-against substantial opposition from within the president’s own party. The TPP process is moving forward. Trading laws are being enforced more aggressively. U.S. pressure on China regarding its currency and trading policies for fair shared mutual consideration for common good of all is beginning to have an effect both locally and abroad. U.S. is becoming actively involved globally. In European and the G8, debt discussions has been forceful moved and played in a meaningful way negotiating against EU headwinds and the EuroZone Economic crisis. The U.S. has actively begun a program to attract foreign Partnership investment in the U.S., a long-overlooked area of great importance in the Global Emerging Markets. Exports are contributing heavily to recent growth. The president’s Export Initiative is making impact beyond contrasts from Republican obstruction hurdles or those who held diverse reasons against President Obama’s hope mission agenda for CHANGE.
President Obama’s policy with regard to resetting defense priorities is equally bearing fruits. The Panetta plan for cutting spending was unveiled and is a good plan. More importantly, the rewards are now seen in the context of the current political environment. Imagine, making tough choices is what a successful leader must do. It can be seen that, in the process of the President running for re-election, he is willing to make argument over a controversial case for substantial defense spending cuts ($450 billion over a decade) even though he knows it will bring him an onslaught of criticism and constant attacks from his opponents on defense. It is because he understands what is best for the Nation and its people. There is nothing soft about being willing to take such heat in order to do what is right for the country. As the president notes, even with these cuts we will still be spending vastly more than every major military power in the world combined.
It is through the GOVERNMENT that made President Obama success story become real. It is therefore true that the Government CREATS JOBS…….If not, with all the riches of big money in their successful businesses why are they scrumbling to own and control the Government????????
But when people suggest that the president has failed, is weak or not a leader; they are wrong. They are opportunists who have no facts and cannot prove their case. President Obama is the most truthful and a fair leader ever seen in the whole world. Those his critics are out of touch and base their lofty cases on pure lies with no basis….……..President Obama mean well, is passionate and cares for America and the American people without discrimination.
In comparison, Mitt Romney of the Republican nominee is a flip flopper, cannot be trusted because of questionable loose-end tax report he has refused to release; leaving people to wonder what he could be hiding from his tax release. Mitt Romney has not been able to give specifics of his Blue Print Plan how he wish to move America forward with stipulated Foreign Policy. Mitt Romney has frequently dodged journalists questions and people are wondering what he is afraid of and why he is not clear and open.
We thought Chris Christie was going to lay down clear sale of Mitt Romney on the stage, it was obvious the continued Republican platform did not present ideas of “Shared Sacrifice” and “truth”, the driving key themes Christie’s speech was to present on the future WAYFORWARD of America. Even Ann Romney’s speech did not appeal to present expectation on what Mitt Romney was going to do if he become the next President. There were no laid down vision of specifics on how they intend to do the economic Development and growth; they did not say how they spent the Stimulus Fund packages to get their constituents out of the short recess.
Within four (4) years, President Obama has accomplished a lot; fixing and stabilizing the economic crisis. He made good ties with the International Governments to secure lasting and sustainable Partnership relations. Education and affordable Healthcare is beginning to impact many lives. Giving out stimulus packages helped the country to float instead of sinking during the recession. Killing Osama Bin Laden has made the world more safer from terrorists. President Obama has put the country on the path to recovery from economic collapse from where he took leadership. The list is endless.
The few rich Republicans don’t want to face reality, they are dodging all these because, the truth is; they just want to hijack and claim that the laid down Stimulus package and the Recovery Plan Act success story of President Obama was their vision; so they will say it was not President Obama but THEM who made it………
The best thing to do for America, the people of America and the world is that Romney and team should realize that they cannot do a better job than that of President Obama. But because of President Obama’s good work and commitment to America and without jelousy, they should join to support President Obama for the re-election. The best they should do is to join President Obama for the second term and prepare to take over after President Obama’s second term is over.
For what they plan to do is to bulldoze and take leadership in a crafty crooked way using LIES and because of the power of money from the rich supporters they have e.g. like what they are doing in spoiling for racial overtone votes. They continue to magnify their lies. This is why their lie will never stop. People must be watchful that everything said has silver lining of much bigger lies to drive their message home. Even under the Isack storm, their lie linger on as big as the size of the elephant’s head and people must begin to worry that voter discrepancy is therefore looming big………
Yes, we must stand for the TRUTH and demand for facts in “Truth Checker” people……..It is the only way America will stay and remain the most powerful nation in the world……!!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
– – – – – – – – – – –
Mitt Romney’s BIG LIES on Medicare and Welfare Reform
Published on Aug 23, 2012 by politicalarticles
No description available.
Mitt Romney at Risk of Being Dropped From Washington State Ballot
Published on Aug 23, 2012 by politicalarticles
No description available.
Lying To Seniors: Republicans Try New Twist on Old Medicare LIE
Published on Aug 23, 2012 by politicalarticles
No description available.
Hypocrite Ryan Overlooks Own $20Mil Stimulus Request While Opposing Stimulus (1/2)
Published on Aug 22, 2012 by politicalarticles
The Only ‘Big Idea’ Coming Out of the Romney-Ryan Campaign Is the BIG LIE: http://www.politicalarticles.net/blog/2012/08/22/the-only-big-idea-coming-out…
Be mindful of Paul Ryan, this guy is cunning and? opportunist and loves showmanship with very self-serving views. Politicians like this sort is problem in all over the world. In fact most of the politicians are like this. Another one to watch out Eric Canter another hypocrite smooth self serving politician.
kamhasan2011 6 days ago
Ryan is not just a hypocrite, he’s a bold-faced? liar.
photodube 1 week ago
Hypocrite Ryan Overlooks Own $20Mil Stimulus Request While Opposing Stimulus (2/2)
Published on Aug 22, 2012 by politicalarticles
The Only ‘Big Idea’ Coming Out of the Romney-Ryan Campaign Is the BIG LIE: http://www.politicalarticles.net/blog/2012/08/22/the-only-big-idea-coming-out…
Do You Really Know Hypocrite Paul Ryan? (2/3)
Published on Aug 22, 2012 by politicalarticles
The Only ‘Big Idea’ Coming Out of the Romney-Ryan Campaign Is the BIG LIE: http://www.politicalarticles.net/blog/2012/08/22/the-only-big-idea-coming-out…
Chris Hayes, Is Paul Ryan a hypocrite Part 1
Published on Aug 19, 2012 by Dave Tice
No description available.
Chris Hayes, Is Paul Ryan a hypocrite Part 2
Published on Aug 19, 2012 by Dave Tice
No description available.
Mitt Romney’s Big LIES About Chamber of Commerce & Health Care (1/2)
Published on Jul 2, 2012 by politicalarticles
Healthcare Terrorism: Defeated, Desperate & Despicable Republicans Hang on To Dear ‘TAX’: http://www.politicalarticles.net/blog/2012/07/02/healthcare-terrorism-defeate…
Mitt Romney’s Big LIES About Chamber of Commerce & Health Care (2/2)
MITT ROMNEY IS A LIER AND A CHEAT! OBAMA? 2012!
starkebedrock301 1 month ago
2012 Election RIGGED – This is going Viral
Uploaded by Freedom3777 on Feb 18, 2012
Evidence/Proof – 2012 Election Rigged Vote Fraud. Primary/Caucus/Maine. Doug Wead, Ben Swann, Reality Check, Rachel Maddow, Judge Napolitano.
http://america-hijacked.com/
Who owns the 12 Central Banks?:
Mitt Romney: I dont know what the Constitution says! Ask Ron Paul
Uploaded by djgabrielpresents on Jan 8, 2012
New Hampshire GOP primary debate (Transcript)
ROMNEY: George, this is an unusual topic that you’re raising. States have a right to ban contraception? I can’t imagine a state banning contraception. I can’t imagine the circumstances where a state would want to do so, and if I were a governor of a state or…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, the Supreme Court has ruled —
(CROSSTALK)
ROMNEY: … or a — or a legislature of a state — I would totally and completely oppose any effort to ban contraception. So you’re asking — given the fact that there’s no state that wants to do so, and I don’t know of any candidate that wants to do so, you’re asking could it constitutionally be done? We can ask our constitutionalist here.
(LAUGHTER)
Ron Paul vs. Mitt Romney – How the Hell is Romney Winning?
Published on Mar 4, 2012 by pmpowell001
Compilation of Ron Paul and Mitt Romney highlights and possible voter fraud.
***same video with music toned way down posted in my videos by request***
Romney fielding questions about Bain
Published on Jul 16, 2012 by PresidentObama3
Romney fielding questions about Bain
How Romney Keeps Lying Through His Big White Teeth
Posted: 08/28/2012 7:50 pm
“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” says Neil Newhouse, a Romney pollster.
A half dozen fact-checking organizations and websites have refuted Romney’s claims that Obama removed the work requirement from the welfare law and will cut Medicare benefits by $216 billion.
Last Sunday’s New York Times even reported on its front page that Romney has been “falsely charging” President Obama with removing the work requirement. Those are strong words from the venerable Times. Yet Romney is still making the false charge. Ads containing it continue to be aired.
Presumably the Romney campaign continues its false claims because they’re effective. But this raises a more basic question: How can they remain effective when they’ve been so overwhelmingly discredited by the media?
The answer is the Republican Party has developed three means of bypassing the mainstream media and its fact-checkers.
The first is by repeating big lies so often in TV spots — financed by a mountain of campaign money — that the public can no longer recall (if it ever knew) that the mainstream media and its fact-checkers have found them to be lies.
The second is by discrediting the mainstream media — asserting it’s run by “liberal elites” that can’t be trusted to tell the truth. “I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans,” Newt Gingrich charged at a Republican debate last January, in what’s become a standard GOP attack line.
The third is by using its own misinformation outlets — led by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his yell-radio imitators, book publisher Regnery, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, along with a right-wing blogosphere — to spread the lies, or at least spread doubt about what’s true.
Together, these three mechanisms are creating a parallel Republican universe of Orwellian dimension — where anything can be asserted, where pollsters and political advisers are free to create whatever concoction of lies will help elect their candidate, and where “fact-checkers” are as irrelevant and intrusive as is the truth.
Democracy cannot thrive in such a place. To the contrary, history teaches that this is where demagogues take root.
The Romney campaign has decided it won’t be dictated by fact-checkers. But a society without trusted arbiters of what is true and what is false is vulnerable to every lie imaginable.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.” His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
David Letterman presents ‘Ann and Mitt Romney Lies’
By David Ferguson
Tuesday, August 28, 2012 8:48 EDT
Topics: david letterman ? mitt romney ? The lovely Ann Romney
Monday night on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” host David Letterman premiered a new segment called “Ann and Mitt Romney Lies.”
“Ann,” he said, “The lovely Ann Romney, married to, uh…MITCH Romney.”
Letterman then rolled a clip of a Fox News interview with presumptive Republican nominee Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) and his wife Ann in which the couple talk about how much they love going to the grocery store and doing their own chores, and that Mitt even likes to iron his own shirts — that he bought at Costco. After each assertion of their alleged humble, ‘just folks’-iness, the word “LIE” flashed across the screen, accompanied by a game show buzzer.
It is worth noting that adherents of the Mormon faith highly value the work ethic as a tenet of godly living. While we appreciate the joke, it could be said that Letterman is misapprehending a part of the Romneys’ belief system.
From the website of the Church of Latter Day Saints: “Mormons believe in work and in teaching our children to work. A child who learns to work will have a better chance of success in the future, independence, a responsible nature, self-reliance, confidence, and a greater appreciation for the blessings we have and how much it takes to supply needs and wants.”
Watch the clip, embedded via Mediaite, below:
Does having an African American President really make a difference? And if so, what is the difference?
President Obama is one of the most important African American successful role models in history.
The President made history again by being nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize after only 10 months in office.
Of course, for African American people, this success has particular significance.
What can African American people learn from his success?
President Obama Breaks Ground for New Black History Museum
A new national museum telling the history of black life, art, and culture will soon begin taking shape as the 19th museum in the Smithsonian Institution to explore stories that have sometimes been left out on the National Mall.
President Barack Obama and former first lady Laura Bush celebrated the start of construction for the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Brian Keane
President, SmartPower
GET UPDATES FROM Brian Keane
Obama’s Solar Story Shows Success, Not Failure
Posted: 01/19/12 05:05 PM ET
As the election season shifts into high gear, we’re bracing ourselves for more stories about Solyndra and other so-called “scandals” of the Obama administration.
But let’s not kid ourselves — Solyndra is a sideshow to the real, incredibly exciting story of solar power over the course of this administration.
Here’s the real news: The price of solar decreased by 50 percent during 2011! 50 percent! That’s a game-changing number that has resulted in a jump in installations throughout the U.S. and Europe, according to a recent Bloomberg report. Indeed, here in the U.S., new spending on solar energy jumped more than 30 percent to $55.9 billion in 2011, surpassing the 1 percent gain in China to $47.4 billion.
These are astounding numbers and show real movement and vindication for President Obama’s solar policies. Bring costs down — and people will buy it.
But much like the struggling economy, while the numbers may reflect an encouraging trend, our work is far from done. Now, with solar making economic sense, we need more than ever to get out into the communities and convey the real value of solar power to the American consumer. Sure, it’s good for the environment — but that’s only one of its many values to the American consumer. Solar also happens to be affordable, reliable, good for our national security, and good as a hedge against rising energy costs over time. Plus, it adds value to your home. And on top of that, like your third computer — the iPod — it’s a cool gadget.
This type of excitement about solar is obvious in my organization’s Arizona Solar Challenge campaign. In 2011, we hosted more than 100 community solar events that reached more than 11,000 potential customers — and ultimately saw over 4,000 residential installations of solar. The City of Yuma alone doubled in just one year the amount of solar power installed over the previous seven years!
Now, we’re bringing this solar challenge to New England, giving the original colonies a chance to match what Arizona’s Tea Partiers are already doing. Proving, as an aside, that this isn’t a Red State versus Blue State issue. Solar simply makes sense — good economic sense.
Reading the papers and the blogs, one would think the only movement in solar power was Solyndra’s movement to bankruptcy. But these community solar campaigns are working — and that’s telling evidence that the death of clean energy has been greatly exaggerated.
Let’s be honest: Solar prices were largely responsible for Solyndra’s bankruptcy. That’s an economy reality that even Mitt Romney can and should be touting. Consolidation in the marketplace was a good thing while he was at Bain. So too in the solar industry. It’s getting stronger, less expensive — and cooler to have.
The solar success story is a huge one for this administration. And it’s time to tell the story truthfully.
Brian Keane is the President of SmartPower, a non-profit marketing organization funded by private foundations to help build the clean energy marketplace by helping the American public become smarter about their energy use.
Green jobs success eludes President Obama
Obama pledged in 2008 to create 5 million green collar workers within a decade. | AP Photo Close
By DARREN SAMUELSOHN | 6/12/11 11:09 PM EDT
President Barack Obama heads to an energy plant in North Carolina on Monday to talk once again about the job-creating power of a green economy.
The catch? Nearly three years into Obama’s presidency, the White House can’t point to much solid evidence that significant numbers of Americans are scoring the green jobs the president has been touting.
. . .
The New New Deal
President Obama’s stimulus has been an astonishing, and unrecognized, success, argues Michael Grunwald.
By David Plotz|Posted Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012, at 4:30 AM ET
Michael Grunwald, a Time magazine correspondent, this week publishes The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era, a gripping account of President Obama’s stimulus bill. Grunwald writes that the stimulus has transformed America—and American politics—in ways that we have failed to recognize. I interviewed him by email about the book.
Slate: What possessed you to write this book?
Grunwald: I fled Washington for the public policy paradise of South Beach while writing my last book, about the Everglades and Florida, so in 2010 I was only vaguely aware of the Beltway consensus that President Obama’s stimulus was an $800 billion joke. But because I write a lot about the environment, I was very aware that the stimulus included about $90 billion for clean energy, which was astonishing, because the feds were only spending a few billion dollars a year before. The stimulus was pouring unprecedented funding into wind, solar, and other renewables; energy efficiency in every form; advanced biofuels; electric vehicles; a smarter grid; cleaner coal; and factories to make all that green stuff in the U.S.
It was clearly a huge deal. And it got me curious about what else was in the stimulus. I remember doing some dogged investigative reporting—OK, a Google search—and learning that the stimulus also launched Race to the Top, which was a real a-ha moment. I knew Race to the Top was a huge deal in the education reform world, but I had no idea it was a stimulus program. It quickly became obvious that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the formal name of the stimulus) was also a huge deal for health care, transportation, scientific research, and the safety net as well as the flailing economy. It was about Reinvestment as well as Recovery, and it was hidden in plain view.
So I decided to do a piece for Time about this untold story. But my editors thought I was nuts. The stimulus was old news. Unemployment was 9 percent; what else was there to say? I actually flew up to New York to make my case. I told my bosses I felt like a reporter in 1938, trying to convince them to do a story on this initiative called “The New Deal.” They looked at me like I was that blogger in The Newsroom pitching his story on Bigfoot. To their credit, though, they eventually let me write an article about how the stimulus was changing America, which led to the book.
In what ways has the stimulus been like and unlike Roosevelt’s New Deal?
The stimulus isn’t the New Deal. But they were both massive exercises in government activism in response to epic economic collapses. And they were both about change. The stimulus was the purest distillation of what Obama meant by “Change we can believe in.” And it’s the essence of Obama-ism—not only the policies, which came straight from his campaign agenda, but his approach to getting them into law, which was more pragmatic and political and messy than his hopey-changey rhetoric had led people to believe. So there was plenty of New, and plenty of Deal.
The Obama team thought a lot about the New Deal while they were putting the stimulus together, but times have changed since the New Deal. The Hoover Dam put 5,000 Americans to work with shovels. A comparable project today would only require a few hundred workers with heavy equipment. Christy Romer, the Depression scholar who led Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, kept reminding colleagues that the Roosevelt administration hired 4 million Americans in the winter of 1934. At one point she started calling Cabinet departments to see how many employees they could hire with unlimited funds: They’d say oh, a lot, maybe 20,000! So the stimulus didn’t create giant new alphabet agencies like the WPA or CCC. It only created one new agency, a tiny incubator for cutting-edge energy research called ARPA-E.
People forget that the CCC herded unemployed urban youths into militarized rural work camps—often known as “concentration camps,” before that phrase became uncool—for less than a dollar a day. That kind of thing wouldn’t fly today. The New Deal basically created Big Government, but it’s still here. There was no need to re-create Big Government, and no political desire to expand Big Government.
So the stimulus didn’t establish new entitlements like Social Security or deposit insurance, or new federal responsibilities like securities regulation or labor relations, or new workfare programs for the creative class like the Federal Art Project, Federal Music Project, or Federal Writers Project. The New Deal was a barrage of contradictory initiatives enacted and adjusted over several years. The stimulus was one piece of legislation cobbled together and squeezed through Congress during Obama’s first month in office. The New Deal was a journey, an era, an aura. The Recovery Act was just a bill on Capitol Hill.
But it was a really big bill, 50 percent bigger than the entire New Deal in constant dollars. It included some New Deal-ish programs, like a $7 billion initiative to bring broadband to underserved areas, a modern version of FDR’s rural electrification. It included another $7 billion in incentives for states to modernize and expand the New Deal-era unemployment insurance system, which was created for a workforce of male breadwinners. Its aid to victims of the Great Recession lifted at least 7 million people out of poverty and made 32 million poor people less poor. It built power lines and sewage plants and fire stations, just like the New Deal. It refurbished a lot of New Deal parks and train stations and libraries. And Republicans have trashed the stimulus as a radical exercise in socialism, just as some Republicans—but not all Republicans—trashed the New Deal.
The most significant difference is that the New Deal was wildly popular, while the stimulus has been a political bust. There are many reasons for this, but the most important is that FDR launched the New Deal after the U.S. had suffered through more than two years of depression under Hoover, while Obama launched the stimulus when the economy was nowhere near rock bottom. Everyone knew about the financial earthquake, but the economic tsunami hadn’t yet hit the shore.
The New Deal produced tangible, monumental physical achievements—dams, trails, works of art, buildings. The stimulus produced none of that. There were no new bridges—instead they repaved old ones. Why? Why didn’t the Obama administration look for physical structures to build and celebrate?
I wouldn’t say “none of that.” The stimulus is producing the world’s largest wind farm, a half dozen of the world’s largest solar arrays, and America’s first refineries for advanced biofuels. It’s creating a battery-manufacturing industry for electric vehicles almost entirely from scratch. It financed net-zero border stations and visitors centers, an eco-friendly new Coast Guard headquarters, a one-of-a-kind “advanced synchrotron light source.” It jump-started three long-awaited mega-projects in Manhattan alone—the Moynihan Station, the Second Avenue Subway, and the Long Island Railroad connection to the East Side—and it would have jump-started that multibillion-dollar rail tunnel to New Jersey as well if Governor Chris Christie hadn’t killed the project.
It didn’t build new dams, because we don’t need new dams, but it did finance the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history to restore salmon flows on the Elwha River. It even distributed $50 million to artists.
But I take your point. Most of the money in the stimulus went to unsexy stuff designed to prevent a depression and ease the pain of the recession: aid to help states avoid drastic cuts in public services and public employees; unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other assistance for victims of the downturn; and tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers. And the money that did flow into public works went more toward fixing stuff that needed fixing—aging pipes, dilapidated train stations, my beloved Everglades—than building new stuff. In its first year, the stimulus financed 22,000 miles of road improvements, and only 230 miles of new roads. There were good reasons for that. Repairs tend to be more shovel-ready than new projects, so they pump money into the economy faster. They also pass the do-no-harm test. (New sprawl roads make all kind of problems worse.) And they are fiscally responsible. Repairing roads reduces maintenance backlogs and future deficits; building roads add to maintenance backlogs and f
uture deficits.
Obama and his team did try to push a few big physical legacy projects. During his transition, he called for a massive nationwide effort to rebuild and retrofit public schools. But Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine hated it, and Obama needed her vote to get the stimulus through the Senate, so it got deleted. Obama also wanted to build a smart grid, with digital meters for all Americans (the smart part) and a new national network of high-voltage wires (the grid part). His aides explained that couldn’t happen quickly and didn’t even make sense as a federal project. Instead, the stimulus included about $11 billion of seed money for the smart grid, which has launched a new era for the utility sector but hasn’t really penetrated the national psyche. Finally, the White House slipped $8 billion into the stimulus for high-speed rail, the largest new transportation initiative since the interstates. But Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, killed a bullet train from Tampa to Orlando that was supposed to be the showcase project, and the only other bullet train, connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles in less than three hours, is still decades away from completion. The shovel-readier projects—like improvements that will slice an hour off the Amtrak train from Chicago to St. Louis—won’t produce the oohs and aahs of bullet trains. They’re really higher-speed rail—worthy, but not iconic.
Your subtitle is: “The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era.” Why hidden? What are the great hidden accomplishments?
There are two reasons this story has been hidden, one understandable, one less so. First, the stimulus was supposed to create jobs at a time when jobs were vanishing at a terrifying rate. Nonpartisan economists agree that it helped stop the free fall; job losses peaked the month before it passed, and the economy dramatically improved once it kicked into gear. But even after the dramatic improvements, the unemployment rate was still sky-high and rising; an economy can do a lot better than losing 800,000 jobs a month without doing well. Ultimately, the stimulus was a 2.5 million-job solution to an 8 million-job problem.
And the Obama transition team put out a tragically dumb forecast suggesting it would keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent. In fairness, the situation was deteriorating far faster than people realized; the government had announced a growth rate of -4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, which is hideous, but that was later revised to -9 percent, which is way beyond hideous. Unemployment actually topped 8 percent the month the stimulus passed, which obviously wasn’t the fault of the stimulus. Recoveries after financial cataclysms are always ugly. But when you spend $800 billion on an economic recovery package, and the recovery stinks, people don’t tend to look past that.
That said, the national media should have tried to look past that, but it didn’t, because the national media sucks at covering public policy. The stimulus included $27 billion to computerize our pen-and-paper health care system, which should reduce redundant tests, dangerous drug interactions, and fatalities caused by doctors with chicken-scratch handwriting. It doubled our renewable power generation; it increased solar installations over 600 percent; it essentially launched our transition to a low-carbon economy. It provided a new model for government spending—with unprecedented transparency, unprecedented scrutiny, and unprecedented competition for the cash. Experts predicted that as much as 5 percent of it would be lost to fraud, but so far, investigators have documented less than $10 million in losses, about 0.001 percent. Despite all the controversy over the lack of shovel-ready projects, the Obama administration has met every spending deadline, and it’s kept costs so far under budget that it’s been able to finance over 3,000 additional projects with the savings. But the media coverage of the stimulus was almost exclusively gotcha stuff, usually without a real gotcha. And when the media did notice long-term investments in the stimulus, like Race to the Top or clean-energy research, it rarely mentioned the stimulus connection.
Except, of course, when it was noticing Solyndra. After a year of screaming headlines about crony capitalism and shady deals, even Republican investigators have admitted there’s no evidence of any political interference or other wrongdoing. A slew of independent reviews—including one led by John McCain’s finance chairman—have concluded that the clean-energy loan program is working well. Everyone knew that some of its loans would go bad. But the Solyndra scandal—which isn’t even a scandal—is probably the best-known product of the stimulus.
The complaint from the left about the stimulus has long been: It was too small. According to your reporting, that’s an unrealistic claim. Why?
Well, it was too small. More aid to states would have prevented more layoffs of public employees. More infrastructure projects would have put more unemployed laborers to work. More tax cuts would have put more money into the hands of consumers. What my reporting shows is that the disillusionment addicts of the left are wrong to blame President Obama for the size of the stimulus.
People forget that after Lehman Bros. collapsed in September 2008, Democrats couldn’t even get 60 votes in the Senate for a $50 billion stimulus; in fact, two Democrats voted against it. The $800 billion stimulus was over four times larger than Obama’s campaign proposal in October 2008. It was over twice as large as the package that 387 liberal economists urged Congress to pass in late November. It’s only in retrospect that $800 billion seems wimpy. And Obama couldn’t have gotten a dime more through the Senate. The three moderate Republicans who voted yes—Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter—all insisted they wouldn’t support anything over $800 billion. So did at least a half-dozen centrist Democrats, like Mark Begich of Alaska, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota wanted a bigger stimulus, but he was in the room during the negotiations, and he told me: There was absolutely no way to make that happen.
Some progressives admit that Obama couldn’t have gotten more stimulus during his first month in office but complain that he never pushed for more stimulus after the Recovery Act passed. That’s just wrong. He never stopped pushing behind the scenes and ended up getting another $700 billion worth in 2009 and 2010, even though Republicans were trying to obstruct him at every turn. They were even marching in lockstep against unemployment benefits and small-business tax cuts that they had always supported in the past. So Obama did well to get what he got.
This is an adulatory story about the Obama administration, depicting a subtle, engaged, brilliant president working for the long-term good of the nation, surrounded by brilliant, self-sacrificing scientists and thinkers who are looking for sweeping change, and opposed by venal, selfish, viciously partisan Republicans willing to sacrifice the health of the nation for political gain. That’s a portrait that will surely delight Democrats and irritate Republicans. Why should the average reader trust it? Why shouldn’t they see this as partisan hackwork in the service of the Obama re-election campaign?
Wow! Maybe you’re so accustomed to reading breathless tell-alls about the fumbling, bumbling hacks in the White House—by right-wingers, left-wingers, and even Obama supporters who basically approve of his agenda but want to show how independent and tough-minded they are—that my story sounds adulatory. The guy doesn’t walk on water. I write about his missteps and miscalculations as well as his achievements, and I reveal a lot of internal dissension on his team.
That said, I realize The New New Deal tells a story that, for the most part, Obama lovers are going to like and Obama haters on the left and the right are going to hate. I’d say that readers shouldn’t see this as partisan hackwork because I’m not a partisan hack. I’ve been a reporter for 20 years, and my reporting is accurate. In case people are curious, I’m a registered independent, socially liberal, otherwise pretty unpredictable. I voted for Obama in 2008, but I voted for Charlie Crist for governor over a generic Democrat in 2006, back when he was a rising Republican star. I do tend to be a contrarian. I think I was the first non-oil-stooge to write that the BP spill was not that awful an ecological disaster. But I was just following my reporting; I know a lot of scientists in Louisiana, and I got to see a lot of persuasive data. I feel the same way about the stimulus; the data tell a very different story than the prevailing narrative.
I don’t think my book portrays the Republicans as “vicious,” but I do show—thanks to a lot of in-depth interviews with GOP sources—how they plotted to obstruct Obama before he even took office. I show how the stimulus was chock full of stuff they claimed to support until Jan. 20, 2009—not just things like health IT and the smart grid and energy efficiency and scientific research, but the very idea of Keynesian stimulus. Every presidential candidate in 2008 proposed a stimulus package, and Mitt Romney’s was the largest. So I do spend a fair amount of time chronicling Republican stimulus hypocrisies. (Readers might enjoy the backstory of Sen. Judd Gregg’s short-lived nomination to be Obama’s commerce secretary.) In general, I’d have to say my reporting backs up the Norm Ornstein-Thomas Mann thesis that the Republicans have gone off the policy deep end—denying global warming, denying Keynesian economics (except when it comes to business tax cuts and defense spending!), trashing Obama’s government takeover of health care and also his Medicare cuts, drumming stimulus supporters like Crist and Specter out of the party. Then again, one Republican who comes off pretty well is Mark Sanford, a rare voice of honest small-government conservatism in the party. (He also says some pretty surprising things about his trip down the Appalachian Trail.)
I think there ought to be a great debate about the stimulus and its interventions in various sectors of the economy. But we haven’t had that debate. We’ve debated a bizarro-world stimulus that does not exist. And I think that’s true about Obama, too. I don’t think he comes across as “brilliant.” I think he comes across as a pragmatic left-of-center technocrat who wasn’t interested in pursuing lost causes, but basically tried to do what he said he would do during the campaign. He wasn’t a policy entrepreneur with new policy ideas, but he did his best to get 60 votes for old policy ideas that made sense, and then pushed his administration to put them into action as cleanly and competently as possible. And I did a lot of reporting in the bowels of the bureaucracy and around the country to show how change has been playing out.
I tried to tell the story as fairly and honestly as I could. But I didn’t try to be balanced for the sake of balance. When politicians were full of shit, I tried to point that out.
Can you explain why so many local Republican officials and organizations traditionally aligned with the GOP (like the Chamber of Commerce) supported the stimulus, while the national party was united against it?
The top priority for many local Republican politicians and Republican-leaning business organizations was avoiding a depression. They saw that the Obama stimulus wasn’t radical leftism; it was textbook countercyclical stimulus. Republicans had called for $300 billion worth of tax cuts, and that’s exactly what it had. Republican governors like Crist, Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Jodi Rell of Connecticut, Jim Douglas of Vermont, and Jon Hunstman of Utah understood that its aid to states—over $160 billion worth—would prevent massive cutbacks of public services and massive layoffs of public employees. As the lobbyist for the Chamber of Commerce told me: When you sit where I sit, you don’t want to see an epic collapse of aggregate demand. Depressions are bad for business. I also tell a fun story of a Democratic aide screaming and cursing at some business lobbyists, warning that they’d get nothing from the Democratic Congress if they couldn’t support an economic recovery bill during an economic emergency.
But the top priority for Washington Republicans was denying Obama bipartisan victories, so that they could come back from political oblivion. There’s a lot of fun fly-on-the-wall stuff in the book about meetings where Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and other GOP leaders made this case—and on-the-record quotes from former GOP congressmen like Mike Castle, George Voinovich, and Specter complaining about it. McConnell often reminded his caucus about the 1984 election. Everyone remembers it as the 49-state Reagan landslide, Morning in America; people forget that only one Republican challenger ousted a Democratic incumbent that year. (It was McConnell, so he remembers.) His point was that there was nothing to be gained by going along with Obama. If the recovery plan worked and the economy boomed, Republicans would get re-elected even if they had voted against Obama. But if the economy was still struggling in 2010, Republicans could make a comeback if they stuck together.
Did the Republican opposition ruin Keynesian stimulus for the indefinite future?
I doubt it. The opposition is mostly opportunistic. One of the Republican alternatives to the stimulus in the House was a $715 billion plan that included far more highway construction than Obama’s. Almost the entire GOP conference supported it. And Republicans still defend business tax cuts and defense spending in Keynesian terms, even though they’re generally mediocre as Keynesian stimulus. I suspect that if Mitt Romney wins the election, the Republican opposition to fiscal stimulus will vanish, along with their rhetorical commitment to reining in budget deficits.
Why was the GOP’s message of opposition so much more effective than the administration’s message of spending? Was Obama’s failure fundamentally a communications failure, as Ed Rendell told you?
I don’t claim to be an expert in political strategy and messaging. I tried to tell the story and let readers decide for themselves where the politics went wrong. But I’ll make a few observations. First, the Obama team’s Recovery Act message was highly nuanced. It was short-term jobs along with long-term investments. It was tax cuts along with spending. It was the biggest domestic spending bill in history, but it was also just a first step toward normalcy. The economy needed fiscal stimulus in the short term but fiscal responsibility in the long term.
The Republican message was much simpler: No.
Republicans were also maniacally disciplined about repeating that message. During the stimulus debate, Democrats used most of their airtime quibbling with Obama’s specifics, which helped confirm the GOP message that the stimulus was a porky big-government mess. And once it passed, Obama and the Democrats moved on to other business, like health care, financial reform, and so on. The Republicans never moved on. Their message—big spending, big government, big mess—never changed.
There’s a lot of reporting about messaging in this book. It was a topic of hot debate inside the White House, on the Hill, and everywhere else. But I will say that I think people tend to overstate its importance. I’m not sure what kind of message would have worked when unemployment was hovering around double digits. I tell a story about how Obama set up White House interviews with all the major anchors to sell the stimulus—a chance to tell his story to the American people through Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper!—but all the questions were about Tom Daschle withdrawing his Cabinet nomination that morning because of unpaid taxes. I suppose you could make the case that was a turning point, but I really don’t think so. And I’m skeptical of Rendell’s idea that the Democratic Party’s Great Communicator suddenly became a lousy communicator once he took office. I think Obama and his team made more than their share of communications mistakes—I especially think he should have focused his message more on long-term transformation than short-term economic revival, and some of his aides agree with me—but I don’t see how better communications would have changed the story of 2010.
When will Americans be able to look out and recognize measurable, wonderful gains from the stimulus?
Well, we’re already able. For example, 95 percent of us received Making Work Pay tax cuts of up to $800 a year for a family. But they were dribbled out through reduced withholding, because behavioral economics suggests that we’re less likely to spend money when it arrives in a big chunk, so fewer than 10 percent of us noticed them. The backstory of that decision will make Obama supporters cringe.
Similarly, anyone who received expanded unemployment benefits or food stamps or Cobra subsidies or Pell Grants in 2009 or 2010 benefited from the stimulus. The stimulus saved more than 300,000 education jobs, and preserved over $100 billion worth of health services for the poor. We’re already using more clean energy and less energy overall because of the stimulus; the electric vehicle industry is here because of the stimulus; the domestically manufactured content of U.S. wind turbines has increased from 20 percent to 60 percent because of the stimulus. There are over 100,000 stimulus projects that have upgraded our parks, subways, hospitals, food pantries, and so forth. On our last vacation my family visited Ketchikan, Alaska, where the stimulus upgraded the nature center. It was a very nice nature center.
Also: The stimulus helped prevent a depression, and as Romer says in the book, depressions really, really suck. They create horrible human suffering, and horrible deficits, too. The economy is quite lousy, but it really could’ve been a lot lousier.
The stimulus will produce more good stuff in the future. By 2015, almost all of us will have an electronic medical record because of the stimulus. The stimulus is also pouring $1 billion into desperately needed “comparative effectiveness research” that will help doctors and patients learn what kind of treatments actually work. There’s billions more for data-driven education reforms—Investments in Innovation and School Improvement Grants as well as Race to the Top—that will seek to scale up promising approaches in public schools. And the most exciting changes will transform the way we generate and consume energy. For example, a company called Envia Systems that got a grant from ARPA-E—a modern version of the Manhattan Project—has already developed the world’s most powerful lithium-ion battery, which could slice $5,000 off the price of the next Chevy Volt.
Will Americans associate any of this change with the 2009 stimulus? I doubt it. Maybe they will if my book becomes a runaway best-seller.
Would President Romney roll back these programs or A) is it too late and the money is spent? or B) would he actually support them as president because they are fundamentally valuable programs?
During the 2010 campaign, Republicans vowed to cancel all unspent stimulus funds if they took back Congress. They took back the House, but they didn’t take back one dime of stimulus money. Romney also says he’ll cancel unspent stimulus funds, but there aren’t many left to cancel—at this point, mostly health IT, high-speed rail, and some clean-energy dollars—and I’d bet they’ll all eventually get spent.
That said, Romney and the Republicans can make sure that much of the stimulus legacy ends with the stimulus. Romney wants to shut down the tax credit for wind power, which could virtually shut down the industry. High-speed rail could die on the vine. Romney has said nice things about ARPA-E—even though it “picks winners and losers”—and as governor he supported health IT and other stimulus-friendly policies, so maybe he’d keep them as president. I wouldn’t bet on that, though.
There’s a reason most of Romney’s ads feature the stimulus (a caricature of the stimulus, but still). He’s running against the idea that government can produce positive change, and the stimulus was the ultimate test of that idea. Maybe he’ll change his mind if he wins—he’s obviously changed his mind before—but presidents tend to try to keep their campaign promises. Obama certainly did.
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 4:44 PM, Jagem K’Onyiego wrote:
Ladies and Men(s)
These Mombasa demonstrations needs to be looked at deeply, for the people to understand what is going on. Now let us pause, think a little and ask this simple questions. Who stands to benefit in these chaos? And who stands to loose in these Chaos? To get the answer we need to know certain facts. These facts will have to be put into consideration for us to arrive at the answer to those two questions.
These are the facts:
1. Who controls security, I mean who are the people who sit in the Nations security Panel?
2. Who is the head of NSIS?
3. Who is the head of Police?
4. Who was the judge who found it fit to un-proscribe MRC. Was he setting some of their members on a certain course?
5. Is it possible that NSIS did not have any intelligence about this killing. If so what is the need for that Department when they can not b proactive, considering the fact that there has been a lot of upheaval at the Coast. And if they had intelligence, what did they do to prevent the assassin reaching Rogo? Intelligence at this point in tie required Rogo to be monitor but protected in order to prevent such reactions from emotional bone headed followers.
6. ODM Leader has been at the coast enjoining with Muslims to celebrate Idd. I understand that the wife comes from an Islam adherent Family. This makes the premier understand Islam well. Despite that some people have tried to put a wedge between the PM and Muslims in general. Some are famously found here in the forum. What, therefore, is the motive of those trying to drive a wedge between the PM and the Muslims? Could this be tied to 2013 elections? This may be so bcause the PM seems to be seriously gaining ground with voters from these areas. Is it a disruption process to de-fragment, the voting block. If this is true, then, who stands to gain from it?
In 1997 elections a few politicians were paid by Baba na mama Party to cause mayhem by declaring that some Jaluos were not welcome at the coast. End result. many of Luos who were settles in the areas of Kisauni, Kongowea, Bamburi, Mtopanga, Kiembeni, Mlaleo, and many other areas of North Coast were targeted and subsequently dislocated from places they had lived in since the early 60s. Karisa Maitha, God twist his soul in eternal Hell (GTSEH), was responsible for killing the Luos and displacing them in the North Coast area.
On the South Coast, we had another lunatic called Omar Masumbuko. This area too, Luos were targeted, where their houses were burned down. The survivors ended up being butchered at the order of Omar. Fortunately some of his group members disobeyed his orders, and instead chose to put identifiable marks on the Victims. They punched holes on the ear lobes of Victims using Paper punch. Reason; to identify them in future elections.
At the end of this senseless massacre and displacement which spread from Likoni, Mtongwe, Shikaadabu Ukunda, Waa, Shimba Hills, to Lunga Lunga, the locals economy was completely destroyed. Tourism stopped, and the income which they got from rented houses by Luos, also disappeared. They discovered in shock that they were duped to bring poverty on themselves.
Today as I write, I believe that the same style that was used in 1997, is being used again to destabilize the Coastal people. ROGO was killed for the purpose of heightening tension, where the impatient locals are going to be duped into Violence. They will burn business properties and subsequently start intimidating the “Wabare” people. In the end, the loser will be the Coastal person. Raiya wa Mombasa na Pwani kwa jumla ndoo watakao umia. Jee, is it possible that NSIS do not have this information?? I doubt it!!! You can therefore put two and two together and get seven the way the street people has got it, and are using seven to demonste.
President Obama’s years of public service are based around his unwavering belief in the ability to unite people around politics of purpose. To save America from Economic collapse he provided the Stimulus Package and formulated American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. With these programs put in place, all leaders from Congress and Senate (including Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan who later admitted) were offered the opportunity and took funds and agreed to utilize the Stimulus package responsibly to create job opportunities in their regional’s.
President Obama expects elected leaders to be truthful, responsible, answerable, transparent and be accountable to the people who vote them to public office by telling the truth how they used the stimulus packages and if it did not work well for them, they should instead give report why it did not instead of covering the Truth with smokes-screen and just flip flopping……
President Obama knows that in his leadership, he aided Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan with other Congressmen and Senate with stimulus packages to help their people in creating jobs; and it is true they did not create their wealth alone, they were aided through without Government facilities, resources, bonds, etc., to make it possible for them to do what they had to do which they must explain to the people why; if they did not create job opportunities as was demanded in the stimulus package for The Recovery Act.
President Obama was able to steady the economy to where it is now. President Obama made strides to cut taxes for working families, and expanded health care for children and their parents. As a United States Senator, he reached across the aisle to pass groundbreaking lobbying reform, lock up the world’s most dangerous weapons, and brought to surface transparency in the government by putting federal spending online.
President Obama cannot do it alone and this is why he wants voters to elect bi-partisan people in the Congress who will engage effectively in both the Congress and at the Senate to make things work in a bi-partisan instead of those who are bent to fight the Government for self greed of the 1% Special Interest of the Rich.
The war is centrally between the Rich against the middle-class and the poor. The Rich want a Government that works and deliver for the 1% rich and should be closed to the rest 99% of the people……What will become of the 99% if the government is shut-down from serving the middle-class and the poor….??? People, the Government should work for all people the rich and the poor without discrimination but based on regulatory trading policies in order to balance. ……… Facts are all in the open ……..check attachments…..
It is the Truth that shall set us all free united at peace with each other…….
Cheers Everybody…….!!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
Check it out!!!
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The ED Show – Romney helps the rich get richer
Published on Jul 11, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
July 11, 2012
The Nation magazine revealed that Romney’s biggest campaign donors love offshore tax havens and examined the banking habits of the top 11 donors. The Nation also revealed Romney wants to cut their taxes, and his own, by at least 10%. Ed Schultz talks to “The Nation’s” George Zornick about Romney’s donors and why they’re all investing in the Romney campaign.
Guess who has to pick up the slack to cover for their tax deficit – the low income and middleclass.
Its like these rich mofos can? reap all the benefits of a rigged society yet provide nothing to support it…I guess thats a good thing in the end as it most likely will all come falling down.
syntaxed2 1 month ago
The ED Show – Romney: Don’t need more firemen, policemen, teachers
Published on Jun 8, 2012
June 8, 2012
Republicans hammered President Obama over his remarks that the private sector is “doing fine.” But Mitt Romney actually revealed the honest truth about the Republican prescription for the jobs market. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich joins Michael Eric Dyson to dig into Romney’s comments.
The current Republicans in congress are the most annoying and useless people you could ever elect. They have no ideas except tax cuts for the rich, cutting spending during a recovery on programs that benefit those hit hardest by the recession, and subsidizing and privatizing the government so that big corporations can make profit off of services the government use to? provide.
Show it Mike! You know it’s right to tell the truth and make the fair contrast!! If the house can’t pass another couple trillion $ TAX-CUT for the RICH, they ain’t doin anything FOR THE REST of the country. Causing thousands of Americans to continue to be? laid off adding more millions to the already outrageous number out of work. SO LAME! Mitt and the rest of those hate-filled Repulicans have their heads stuck in the freakin sand, they are smothered in their own ignorance. Lift up and BREATHE!
Mamalita7 1 month ago
Romney and his CROOKED BAIN DEALINGS REVEALED Keith Olbermann
Published on Aug 6, 2012 by LedaOhio21
Google the video title for more info.. My ScrewTube accounts are nuked so fast I am tired of writing all the details out.. Do some leg work.. Search for more info yourself.. It is out there!
Romney Dogged by Questions on Bain & Tax Returns as Obama Deems Him “Outsourcer-in-Chief”
Published on Jul 18, 2012 by democracynow
DemocracyNow.org – Records revealed last week show Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney remained at the helm of the private equity firm Bain Capital three years longer than he had previously disclosed. Romney maintained he left Bain in 1999 to run the Winter Olympics in Utah. But the Boston Globe reported last week that Romney retained control of Bain and earned a salary through 2002. The three-year period in question saw Bain shuttering a number of U.S. companies, leading to layoffs and the outsourcing of American jobs. We’re joined by Chris Rowland, Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe.
To watch the complete weekday independent news hour, read the transcript, download the podcast, search our vast archive, or to find more information about Democracy Now! and Amy Goodman, visit http://www.democracynow.org/
Outsourcer-in-thief! I want someone in office who has had the life long passion to help the American people as a servant, not someone who cost the economy millions of dollars and jobs and has enough money to run for office for 12yrs because of it. I don’t even care if he helped other businesses to succeed. ? Just the fact that he could outsource jobs for profit instead of making them stronger within the country convinces me that he is in it to win it for himself and not for the American people.
TheLeperChef1 4 weeks ago
1099: Mitt Romney’s Troubling Tax Talk Continues Despite Barrage of Insults at Obama
Caught on Tape Again: Mitt Romney’s Heartless Positions Revealed in Open Mic Show Off To Fat Cats
Published on Apr 17, 2012 by politicalarticles
No description available.
I am voting for Obama because I don’t want the republicans to have a three judge advantage on the supreme court. They brought us citizens united with a one judge advantage can you? imagine how badly they will screw us with three?
Smartassawhip 4 months ago in playlist Favorite videos
Stericycle: mitt romney Profits Off Aborted Fetus Disposal – July 2012
Published on Jul 16, 2012 by mccainisthroughX
Unelectable buffoon, republican religious Kook, anti-American outsourcer and US tax-evader mitt romney’s newest problems include his investment in Stericycle, a disposal company that handles disposing of aborted fetuses and afterbirth. Once again, flip-flopping moron and religious Kook romney is on both sides of an issue, and there’s more to come, since romney’s investments are now being investigated more closely.
That’s right. mitt is a liar and hypocrite of unseen proportions. mitt, like most religious Kooks, is unable to tell the truth, a religious trait that was created through an unwillingness to live inside of? reality, and a need to be self-righteous, as Terrorists are. The religious are taught, by idiots, liars and the mentally ill, to ignore reality and pretend they know everything, even when they know nothing at all. mitt is a joke, and President Barack Obama will be Our President for 4 more.
mccainisthroughXin reply to maha77(Show the comment) 2 weeks ago
Of course they’re hypocrites! Do you really think the GOP wants to overturn Roe? This has been the greatest political windfall for them since the Civil War. Thanks to this issue, they have a solid voting block that is all fired up over “baby killing”! What better? emotional issue to keep your base united and looking the other way while you rape the US middle class? I am sure a few of them are sincere but, as a party the GOP LOVES abortion!
pdoylemiin reply to mccainisthroughX(Show the comment) 1 week ago
Bill Maher Slams Mitt Romney Hard, Compares Him to Rappers (Real Time New Rules 1-20-12)
Video shows just how un-sure ‘Mitt Romney’ is about almost everything in the world, See for yourself.
Vote 4 Ron Paul – http://www.ronpaul2012.com/
The ED Show – Romney camp struggles to explain later Bain years
Published on Jul 16, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
July 16, 2012
The Romney Campaign cannot get away from questions about the candidate’s time at Bain Capital or his unreleased tax returns. Ed Schultz talks with MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe and former Newt Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler about the latest mess for Mitt Romney.
Paul Ryan’s Secret Shame Revealed: Political FUBAR
Published on Aug 14, 2012 by britethorn
Paul Ryan’s secret shame is wide out in the open. Mitt Romney has revealed it and its only a matter of time before the GOP voters find themselves faced with having to support a person who is against everything the modern Republican Party has rejected!
http://www.britethorn.com
http://www.facebook.com/BritethornMedia
Crying,
I just don’t know. I mean, I just don’t know the Republican Party anymore. Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan because he’s the intellectual leader of the GOP? And if that isn’t Political FUBAR, I don’t know what is.
Am I the only one in the world who seems to have caught what the mainstream media and the big time political pundits seems to have missed about Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick? That he’s smart? That Paul Ryan actually reads every page of the Congressional Budget, understands it, and enjoys it? That he’s a policy wonk? That Mitt Romney has called him the intellectual leader of the Republican Party?
And when is the last time you heard anyone refer to anyone on a Republican Presidential ticket as an intellectual? I mean, George W Bush was able to convince people that he was a cowboy despite the fact that he doesn’t ride and owns a ranch without any horses –but he could have sold whiskey to Mormons before he got anyone to swallow the notion that he was smart. And Sarah Palin, smart? Dan Quayle smart? I mean, sure, Dick Cheney is probably an intellectual, but my guess is that the last guy who tried calling him one was the hunting biddy who’s face he tried to shoot off.
No, Republicans have spent the better part of the last thirty years denigrating, shaming and ridiculing anyone who dared to present themselves to the public as an intellectual, which is one big reason why I think Mitt Romney’s made a huge error in picking Paul Ryan as his running mate. Although, by comparison Ryan does make Romney look pretty stupid which could wind up making him a lot more popular with Republican Voters.
Not George W Bush popular, because, and idiot like that only comes along once in a lifetime — twice, if you count Sarah Palin.
Maybe that’s why Romney picked him, hoping to bring some brains to what has been a pretty brainless campaign so far. Unfortunately, Romney’s campaign has seemed to RELY on the? fact that Republicans don’t think. I can’t explain most of the things he’s done and said so far otherwise. Now they are being asked to applaud an “intellectual.” Honestly, I don’t see how this can fail to get hairy.
Of course, in the meantime, Biden is making plenty of dumb gaffes today too, so…
MartianStories 1 week ago
Mitt Romney Leaves Dog on Roof of Car
Uploaded by bluestatewins on Jan 13, 2012
http://www.bluestatewins.com Mitt Romney Leaves Dog on Roof of Car
Romney: Corporations Are People, My Friend.
Uploaded by tpmtv on Aug 11, 2011
more at c-span.org
Does this means that Romney chops up people and sells their dressed up remains at a profit?
Because that’s? what he’s been doing with corporations.
psychocrysis2 3 months ago 14
The impending general elections and the forthcoming ICC trials at the Hague are two sets of weighty subjects which are likely to produce dreadful and professional liars in the same way and manner similar to those five witnessed decades ago during the trial of the famous Kapenguria Six in 1953.
Many not worthy mentioned and hire witnesses have emerged in recent months, some of them suspected to have been bribed to falsely manufacture late and afterthought testimonies incriminating the Prime Minister Raila Odiga with the 2007/2008 post election violence.
There is a lot of similarity to the current on-going well orchestrated anti multiple accusation and allegations, by anti-Raila elements within our nation’s political class, which are aimed at denying “Agwambo” birth and constitutional rights and entitlement Raila’s to succeed President Kibaki upon his retirement.
For those of us who have been here for longer than seven decades Raila’s opponents in their desperate effort to pin him down appeared have erroneously deployed the same crude tactics similar in fashion, style and manner in then scale the colonial authorities in Kenya had hired witnesses who testified in the Kapenguria Trial of the six linking our founding President the late Jomo Kenyatta with criminal offences of organizing and managing the Mau Mau rebellion
The perpetrators and manufacturers of these falsehoods knew it pretty well that what they had told the trial colonial judge at Kapenguria were false and pack of lies, but for their lust for money, they shamelessly testified and gave false testimonies purely for economic gains.
No wonder five years later in 1959, the late Rawson Mbogua Macharia, the key witness for the crown came forward to swear an affidavit disowning and repudiating his testimonies at the famous Kapenguria Six trial.
The garland Kenyan nationalists whose lives were at stake at Kapenguria were headed by Jomo Kenyatta, Paul Joseph Ngei, Bildad Kaggia, Rachard Achieng’ Oneko, Kungu Karumba, Fred Kubai.
Some of us who have been following Kenyatta’s personal history and lifestyle from the year 1948 can honestly testify that Kenyatta had nothing to do with the Mau Mau rebellion nor was he aware f its existence. Men like Fred Kubai, Bildad Kaggi,Dedan Mugo knew something, though not directly involved but not Kenyatta. In fact at one time the former President joined hands with African Christian Bishop in the Mt. Kenyatta region and strongly condemned and denounced Mau Mau activities and its oathings a few weeks before his arrest and detention on the night of October 20,1952. This particular date is so significant because it coincided with the declaration of the state of emergency by the then governor Evelyn Baring.
Macharia eventually paid so dearly for his crime when he was goaled into jail for 18 months after being found guilty on a charge of perjury. Fortunately or unfortunately when Kenyatta was released after completing hi seven year jaile5ece with yard labor and years of eng placed in restriction camps in various remote places in Northern Kenya, the founding President came face to face with Rawson Mbogua Macharia who became his immediate neighbor at Gatundu rural home, though the two remained as no good friends for the rest of their life time, though Kenyatta in his fatherly heart had preached and taught us to embrace he spirit of forgiveness, but not to forget, Macharia remained in political limbo and lived as pauper and led a squalid life next to the home of an excessively wealthy family of Jomo Kenyatta.
The story of Maharia is still very fresh in the minds of level minded Kenyans and should serve as a deterrent to those hell-bent on making false and concocted testimonies against other fellow Kenyans. To desist from engaging on such not so honorable and respectable exercises which are tan amounting to betrayal doing so .The ma end up paying the prices for their heinous actions the same way the Biblical Judas of Iscariots and Rawson Macharia of Kenya.
I am writing this comment because I was recently taken back when I read stories in the newspaper column that some not very upright Kenyans who were desperately looking for the way how they could take what they called fresh evidence to the Hague in Netherlands that could link the Prime Minister with criminal offences committed by other people who incited other Kenyans to slaughter and butcher one another in the aftermath of the post-election violence.
Of course, these are the modern day Macharias. Such people must be told that they should tread carefully even if the have been paid handsomely to save the neck of their kin and kins facing ICC trials on a fee.
It is also imperative to remind the anti-Raila that ”Agwambo” has two prominent distinguished constituencies in this country. The Raila Odinga constituency are the people. His overzealous and near fanatic supporter would always vote for him no matter how one succeeded in mad slinging him.
The second constituency comprises those who hate Raila Odinga. No matter how good he has performed and carried out his Prime Minister’s office work. No matter how hard “Agwambo” work in a concerted effort to delivery the goods to the electorate and even in solving the problems of individual families in dire need of assistance.
Many greenhorns and political novices appeared to have turned Raila Odinga their punching bags, but this is to the chagrins of the silent millions of Kenyans who valued the work being done by the Prime Minister and have held him in the highest esteem against his fellow competitors and presidential aspirants.
Raila Odinga is not a corrupt leader as he is being portrayed to be by his detractors and hired political mercenaries acting at the behest of his cowardice rivals who appeared to be suffering from crisis of confidence after failing to articulate their individuals’ policies and those of their makeshift political parties and amorphous G7-tribal alliance.
I am glad that after failing to convince the Kenyan voters of by providing them with agendas of what they intended to do for Kenyans if they are vote in resorting to singing some old lyrics o the late 1950s by the late John Mwale and Isaya Mwinamo Both talented guitarists/musicians were from Tiriki in Vihiga dstrict Western Province, some of the songs which obviously are close to hurling insults to “Agwambo” and clearly amounted to the hate speeches, which are prohibited by the law of the land, and only time will as to who has the interest of Kenyan people at heart.
The presidential race is still widely open, and only require those panicking about”Agwambo soaring popularity need only to change tacts and resort to issues oriented campaign in place of hurling abuses.
Kenyans are very much aware that every tricks in the books were being placed on ‘Agwambo path and route to State House . It is no longer the game of foolhardy and Kenyans areno mnore simple spectators, but would soon ensure that every presidential aspirant who sowed the seed of discord can only harvest what he had sown when the game come to a finale halt.
A senior national official of the United Republican Party [URP} is recuperating in an Eldoret medical Hospital after he was reportedly attacked and stabbed by unknown assailants in Kisumu City.
George Ayugi who is an Assistant National Organizing Secretary of the URP who is also commonly known to is peers as “Mbuta”, according to the report lost right eye sight and several teeth in the brutal attack which is aid to have occurred last Saturday.
He was at first admitted to the Aga Khan hospital in Kisumu before being transferred to Moi Teaching and Pre-referal Hospital in Eldoret town.
Ayugi is a close political associate of the Eldoret North MP William Samoei Ruto. He has been an instrumental tool on which the latter had used and succeeded I making major inroad into Kisumu and are which is perceived to be the stronghold of the ODM.
Ayugi was among the plane load of passengers who travelled to the Hague during the first hearing of the ICC cases against four top Kenyan politicians who are facing serious criminal charges of violation of human rights, before the ICC which are related to the 2007 post election violence in Kenya. He and a few other activists were arrested by Norwegian police when they made a frantic attempt to address pubic rally outside the ICC Court at the Hague.
The six top Kenyan leaders were former Head of Public Service Ambassador Francis Muathaura, Industrialization Minster Henry Kosgei Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Muigai Kenyata, William Ruto and former Comissioner of Police Major Hussein Ali. The charges against Hussein Ali and Kosgey have since been withdrawn as the two were cleared as having committed no offence during pre-cameral trial leaving ony four who included the radio journalist Joshua Sang.
Ayugi closeness to Ruto is believed to have started while the latter was serving in the coalition government as the Minister for Agriculture. He is a member of the Sugar Arbitration Tribunal, a parastatal body which fall under the docket of the Agricultural Ministry and his appointment is believed to have been influenced by the then Agricultural Minister William Ruto.
See my latest blog post. Feel free to comment there.
—
Caring citizens communicating American values are the solution to expanding liberty and justice for all,
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Empathy Surplus Project – 2012 Theme: Occupy Compassion
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Sign the Charter for Compassion
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Romney, Ryan and the Devil’s Budget: Will America Keep Its Soul?
by George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith, first published at Huffington Post, 08/22/2012
America was born with a great soul, a moral view of Democracy in which citizens care about their fellow citizens and join together to take responsibility not just for themselves but for each other, for America as a union, a joint enterprise. The government’s job was to carry out that moral vision and to do so it created what we call The Public, the provision of basic protection and empowerment for all.
From the beginning of America, the Public provided roads and bridges, public schools, hospitals, a national bank, a patent office, police, a justice system, public buildings and records, and more. Since then the Public has expanded as public needs have expanded — sewers, clean water, public transportation, public health and disease control, scientific research, the internet, GPS, an energy grid, parks, and much, much more. See rest of article;
From: Lenore Palladino, MoveOn.org Political Action
Dear MoveOn member,
Representative Todd Akin’s comment about “legitimate rape” was no gaffe. It was a glimpse into the GOP War on Women.
Republicans are just days away from ratifying a personhood amendment as part of their party platform, which would ban all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest.1
32,000 rape survivors get pregnant in America each year.2 And the Republican party would ban abortions for all of these women.
Today’s New York Times editorial is challenging Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to amend this “extremist,” “mean-spirited and intolerant platform.”3
MoveOn members need to join that call with hundreds of thousands of voices, because even if Romney and Ryan won’t listen, America is listening. Representative Todd Akin’s comments were a wake-up call about Republican views on women.
This shameful moment is our best opportunity to draw attention to the dangerous woman-hating agenda of the Republican Party and expose it to American voters.
But the GOP Convention is next week, and we want to confront Ryan and Romney with a massive petition at an event TOMORROW for the media to see, so we need to act urgently. Can you sign today and ask everyone you know to sign, too?
Romney and Ryan: “Remove the abortion ban for rape survivors from the Republican Party platform.”
Republicans, including Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, are trying to run away from the terrible comments of their Senate candidate, Rep. Todd Akin, about “legitimate rape.” But they can’t.
Here’s a brief history of Romney and Ryan’s own words and deeds on this issue:
Ryan and Akin were the original co-sponsors of a bill that would limit the definition of rape to “forcible rape” (Akin’s idea of “legitimate rape”).4
Ryan co-sponsored a personhood bill with Akin, which would outlaw some forms of birth control and all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest.5
Mitt Romney told Mike Huckabee that he would have “absolutely” supported a constitutional amendment establishing the definition of life at conception.6
Of course, now that the media is paying attention to their extreme views, the Romney-Ryan campaign stated that they would not prohibit abortion in cases of rape.7 But talk is cheap.
If Romney and Ryan want to prove that they don’t stand with Akin on abortion bans for rape survivors, they need to get it out of the party platform. And our job is to make sure the country is watching what they do.
Sign today—Romney and Ryan: “Remove the abortion ban for rape survivors from the Republican Party platform.”
Thanks for all you do,
–Lenore, Elena, Amy, Marika, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “GOP party platform sticks with anti-abortion stance, does not address rape exception,” The Washington Post, August 21, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=279220&id=49506-21095459-G2v5OJx&t=6
2. “Injury Center: Violence Prevention,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=279195&id=49506-21095459-G2v5OJx&t=7
3. “What the G.O.P. Platform Represents,” The New York Times, August 21, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=279242&id=49506-21095459-G2v5OJx&t=8
4. “How Todd Akin and Paul Ryan Partnered to Redefine Rape,” Think Progress, August 19, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=279196&id=49506-21095459-G2v5OJx&t=9
5. “Paul Ryan Sponsored Fetal Personhood Bill, Opposes Family Planning Funds,” Huffington Post, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278852&id=49506-21095459-G2v5OJx&t=10
6. “Romney: I Would ‘Absolutely’ Support State Constitutional Amendment to Define Life As Beginning At Conception,” Think Progress, October 3, 2011
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=279210&id=49506-21095459-G2v5OJx&t=11
7. “Romney Statement on Abortion Contradicts Ryan’s Earlier Stance,” The New York Times, August 20, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=279214&id=49506-21095459-G2v5OJx&t=12
The weekend endorsement for the Health Services Minister Prof Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o to vie for the Kisumu County senate seat has been received wit mixed reaction by the electorate in the region.
Observers and political pundits were quick in pointing out that Prof. Nyong’’s quest for the senate seat would be a daunted if not an uphill task, while others have described the move as political suicide.
Nyong’o is the current MP or Kisumu Rural, a rural constituency, which has since been disbanded by the IEBC, which has realigned and splinted into three, namely Seme, Kisumu town West and Kisumu Central.
The Minister has represented Kisumu Rural eve since 1992 first multi-party elections on a Ford Kenya ticket, but was rested by the voters in 1997 and was only re-elected back to parliament on an n LDP ticket in 2002 after a five years in political limbo only after reportedly being reconciled with Raila Odinga.
Nyong’o is facing Equally powerful, influential, resourceful Nairobi base businessmen in the name of En Maxwell Otieno Odongo of Otieno Odongo and Partners Engineering Company and a Nairobi base architect Ocholla Ogoda the former poplar Gor Mahia Football Club chairman.
Local pundits say his chances of clinching the Kisumu County Senate seat are very remote if not a pipe dream.
Information reaching us says Prof Nyong’o has never been a highly performer MP at the local political derby. His detractors are accusing of being a very mean and extremely thrift person tot worth to be a politician.
His lackluster and dismal performance at the constituency level has contributed a great deal to his poor performance resulting in bad blood between him and his constituents.
At the national political area, the Professor has been the principal spokesman of the ODM o mater related to the party policy and ideological guidance. He had always had the sole of the most formidable defender on the part leader Raila Odinga. Perhaps this is what has prompted the Minister to shift his political base from his Seme Rural constituency to Kisumu County an area with the largest cosmopolitan voters in the hope that Raila Odinga will come to his aid and bail him out of shameful d Senate.
The MPs move in backing and endorsing Nyong’o or the Kisumu County Senate seat, however, is faulted by many people who described it as an attempt impose leadership on the voters. Some o the MPs who came to Kisumu to drum up the support for Nyong’o, however, are themselves facing lean time in their respective constituencies, and quite a few of them will be kicked out. So they would only cause Pro Nyong’o more trouble.
One of Prof Nyong’o’s most credible opponents is Eng. Maxell Otieno Odongo, who hails from the populous Kano sub-clan, which is well spread I the three administrative districts of Nyando, Muhoroni and part of Kisumu is arguably posing a real threat to Nyong’o’s ambition. It is said that if the clans arithmetic could work in Odongo’s favor then Prof Nyong’o is going to nowhere.
The other aspirant, Ochola Ogoda hails from another populous clan of Nyakach. He has settled in Muhoron Settement scheme where the presence of people whose original home is from Nakch is formidable. Ogoda, would therefore claim most of the voter fro Nyakach district, while Nyong;o whose relations with the electorate in hi s home turf of Seme s aid not to be all that much cordial could face uncertain political future if cannot re-brand himself.
Otieno Odongo is a flamboyant industrialists-cum-business tycoon who had employed so many people in his own establishment, which span from large scale sugar cane farming, tourist hotels, engineering firm with an international outlet, milling and also involve in the rice milling business in Ahero and elsewhere.
Immediately after the launching of Prof.Nyong’o Senate campaign, the dreadful rumor went around that the six ODM who attended the ceremony had agreed on an MOU called to mount a joint campaign aimed at scuttling Engineer Odogo’s campaign or the Senate seat Stop Otieno Odongo [SOO} campaign to scuttle Eng. Odongo elaborate campaign. The Engineer had launched his own campaign at the same venue two weeks ago, which attracted thousands of people from all the seven constituencies that form the Kiumu County.
The constituencies are Nakach, Muhoroni, Nyando, Kisumu Town East, Kisumu Central, Kisumu Tow West and the newly created Seme constituency.
Commonly known to his peers as “The Aga Khan” as the result of his generosity towards the down trodden poor people.Eng Oteno Odongo one of the wealthiest Luos is said to be very generous and had helped in paying school fees for hundreds of students from the poor families acquire education, ad is known for making hefty donate towards the local community projects.
They still ask, who is this Barack Obama whom after close to 4 years, they still don’t know and dont want to understand……….They looked at him and saw that he does not look like them and from the word go, they refused to welcome him; they rejected him. It is not because he did something bad, it is because they have not accepted him like one of them.
He came with an electrifying impact of peace and unity that no one could have resisted even if they wanted to. He energized the ground like never seen before. He found the world was lost in a frenzy of confusion and were thirsty for direction. Both the rich and the poor found themselves in deep trouble of economic instability they wanted to repair and fix, but did not know how to do it. He came with a promise of Hope to give life a new meaning on the wayforward; to be relieved from getting stuck in the mud and find meaning for life, the purpose for God’s creation; but they will not give him a chance to do what he came for. He found everyone had lost hope and were living in despair in hopeless situation. Both rich and poor are caved in the same pit of confusion not knowing how to get out of the quagmire. They instead formed a wall of rejection to oppose all good plan he put forward in a bi-partisan fashion.
They did not know the answer was in the missing link of the Builder’s cornerstone of Zion. The house of humanity with nature preservation is not complete without the Builder’s cornerstone that balances and carries the weight to make the house firm and strong that cannot be shaken by any diverse storm.
President Obama carrying with him the hope of the missing link of the builder’s cornerstone needed to complete the work. What he was asking and pleading for is cooperation from the other-side of the Special Interest who are afraid of shift in their confort zone; so in fairness, a bi-partisan collaboration can be found in Congress and in Senate able to make work easy and operational in Washington instead of staging blockages against facilitating public mandate in service delivery.
President Obama is a success story. His ways has been tested, he struggled and delivered in the midst of storm and so he can be trusted. We therefore trust that he is able to deliver with little or no obstruction, he needs cooperation so things can be done. The fact remain that, they rejected him from the word go, because he does not look like them. But this behavior must change. They are not rating him in value to what he is capable of doing, but they feel that he should not because of racial biasness and hate.
The missing link, which is in the blood of the black society, cannot be wiped-out, forgotten or be ignored in the wayforward at Global Progressive Agenda for shared mutual cooperation in the Emerging Markets. It cannot be said that black has nothing to offer in the progressive development agenda. The slaughter of the black and the blood of the black have reached heaven high and must come to a stop in the newness of life. It is the missing link that must be accepted with honor and dignity as valuable treasure to fix the problem in the missing link in the Builder’s cornerstone. We are at a point of Referendum before choices that will be made by voters…….the point is at a crossroad where voters will choose between
In reference, the Biblical builder’s cornerstone (Kidi Mar Jo Gedo) of the Zion is a symbol of unity that unites the two intersecting walls of the house. Symbolically, President Obama is that rock for Peace and our unity of common purpose can be found in fair share Partnership prospects of Liberation, and it depends in the Structural Plan in the missing link he holds as symbol for Unity in the newness of life. This missing link bonds humankind together and make us whole at peace with each other under the commandment of love as we all endeavor in struggle, in competition and challenges to make the best of lifestyle we all choose to engage. Without a cornerstone, the house is unlikely to withstand the storm and test of time in the Global Economic instabilities.
A second chance means electing bi-partisan people who are able to engage in a cooperative manner to join with President Obama in moving the country forward; those who truely are focused and are willing to play fair game to the benefit of all and are not selfish but in solidarity are able to move America on top of the world.
The kind of leaders who strives to fight the Govenment and struggles to reduce government ability to facilitate, control and balance public and business activities but instead, prefers to offer Special Interest freedom over the Government, need to check their facts. They are the cause of Global Economic collapse which has failed and cannot be relied on. Their business idiologies have caused enormous human pain and sufferings including those of environmental disastors.
Like the builder’s cornerstone in Zion; President Obama is the present tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; those who trust and believe in peace and unity, will not be disappointed or dismayed. He is a good man and is likeable. He should be given a second chance to complete his term with honor and we all shall not live to regret.
Peace be with us all as we tred……..
Cheers everybody……!!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
– – – – – – – – – – –
President Obama: “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Back Now.”
Published on Aug 18, 2012 by BarackObamadotcom
Help build this campaign: http://OFA.BO/nHAK2p
Four years ago as I had the privilege to travel all across this country and meet Americans from all walks of life.
I decided nobody else should have to endure the heartbreak of a broken health care system. No one in the wealthiest nation on earth should go broke because they get sick.
Nobody should have to tell their daughters or sons the decisions they can and cannot make for themselves are constrained because of some politicians in Washington.
And thanks to you we’ve made a difference in people’s lives. Thanks to you there are folks that I meet today who have gotten care and their cancer’s been caught. And they’ve got treatment. And they are living full lives and it happened because of you.
We’ve come too far to turn back now. We’ve got too much work to do to implement health care. We’ve got too much work to do to create good jobs.
We’ve got too many teachers that we’ve got to hire. We’ve got too many schools that we’ve got to rebuild. We’ve got too many students who still need affordable higher education.
There’s more homegrown energy to generate. There more troops that we’ve got to bring home.
There more doors of opportunity we’ve got to open to anybody who is willing to work hard and walk through those doors.
We’ve got to keep building an economy where no matter what you look like or where you come from, you can make it here if you try.
And you can leave something behind for the next generation, that’s what at stake right now Colorado. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.
That’s why I’m asking for your vote. I still believe in you. And if you still believe in me, and if you’re willing to stand with me, and knock on some doors with me, and make some phone calls with me, and talk to your neighbor and friends about what’s at stake—we will win this election. We will finish what we started.
And we’ll remind the world why America is the greatest nation on earth.
God bless you and God bless the United States of America.
Obama! U the? bomb
heatedchaos007 5 hours ago
Nice?
lsandqvist 5 hours ago
I think this is a good reason why Obama should win. Even if he fails miserably, I can say he tried to do good. More than I can say for most republicans? with bad intentions and their successes only hurt America more.
MultiBlasian 5 hours ago
This made me cry. If Obama doesn’t win i am leaving America!?
crystalmua 5 hours ago
Tht was beautiful?
MsLatingirl143 5 hours ago
Best.? President. Ever.
peteagassi 6 hours ago
THIS IS? WHY I’M VOTING OBAMA!
peteagassi 6 hours ago
Just remember no matter how great our? president is he can’t do it alone. This should be obvious to everyone who has a pulse. President Barack Obama needs a Congress and Senate that are equally great. So on election day lets remember to vote for our progressive leaders that will help this country become great once again. GO AMERICA!
grand1976 6 hours ago
President Obama Urges Congress to Pass American Jobs Act
Uploaded by whitehouse on Sep 14, 2011
President Obama travelled to North Carolina State University where he delivered remarks on the American Jobs Act, emphasizing the need for Congress to pass it now and put more people back to work and more money in the pockets of working Americans, while not adding a dime to the deficit. September 14, 2011.
Reid: Next Steps Towards Deficit-Reduction, Job-Creation
Uploaded by SenateDemocrats on Aug 1, 2011
Senator Harry Reid, speaking to reporters on Monday afternoon, says that once a compromise plan to reduce the deficit becomes law, Congress will focus on getting Americans back to work.
Obama Urges Congress to Help Put Teachers Back to Work
By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – Sat, Aug 18, 2012
With students heading back to school, President Obama is accusing Republicans of wanting to cut education funding to give tax breaks to the wealthy, saying their economic plan “undercuts our future.”
“This year, several thousand fewer educators will be going back to school,” the president says in his weekly address. More than 300,000 local education jobs have been lost since the end of the recession, according to a new White House report on the impact of teacher layoffs.
Obama says cuts in education “force kids into crowded classrooms, cancel programs for preschoolers and kindergarteners, and shorten the school week and the school year.”
Even in tough fiscal times, Obama says states should make education a priority, but adds, “Congress should be willing to help out – because this affects all of us.”
“That’s why part of the jobs bill that I sent to Congress last September included support for states to prevent further layoffs and to rehire teachers who’d lost their jobs. But here we are – a year later with tens of thousands more educators laid off – and Congress still hasn’t done anything about it,” he says.
The president says the Republicans’ economic plan would “make the situation even worse.”
“It would actually cut funding for education – which means fewer kids in Head Start, fewer teachers in our classrooms, and fewer college students with access to financial aid – all to pay for a massive new tax cut for millionaires and billionaires,” he says. “That’s backwards. That’s wrong. That plan doesn’t invest in our future; it undercuts our future.”
Obama touts the steps he has taken to boost the nation’s education system, including instituting the Race to the Top competitive grant program, giving states flexibility on No Child Left Behind requirements, and reforming the student loan program.
Obama Says George Clooney Friendship Born in Sudan, Not Hollywood
By Matthew Larotonda | ABC News Blogs – 4 hrs ago
President Obama’s reelection campaign has benefited immensely from the backing of much of Hollywood’s elite, but few share a closer relationship with him than George Clooney. In an interview to be aired Monday, the president contends those ties were born out of shared policy vision before assuming the Oval Office.
“The truth is we got to know each other because of a substantive issue,” the president says. “He is a terrific advocate on behalf of the people of Darfur, and to the people of Sudan who’ve been brutalized for a long time.”
Speaking with CBS’ ” Entertainment Tonight,” Obama recounted laboring with Clooney on the troubled region when he was a senator.
“That was an issue that I was working together on a bipartisan basis, and George, who had traveled there, done documentaries there, and was very well-informed, came to testify in Congress,” he said. “And so we got to know each other, and he is a good man, and a good friend.”
Clooney has become a permanent fixture of humanitarian movements regarding Sudan, which the United Nations estimates still houses nearly 2.5 million displaced individuals after years of strife. In March Clooney was arrested outside Washington’s Sudanese embassy in protest of the ongoing turmoil.
Despite the close relationship, Obama says in the actor and film producer is acutely aware of the image problems involved with getting too close to the White House.
“He’s very protective about not bothering me. And he’s also sensitive to the fact that if he’s around a lot, then somehow it’ll be tagged as ‘Obama hanging out with Hollywood stars,’ and that’s not who he is,” he said.
Regardless, Clooney has contributed significantly to Obama’s reelection campaign, most recently attending a star-studded fundraiser at his home in March that drew in $15 million.
Obama’s “ET” interview comes as he faces mounting criticism for a string of recent softball interviews with entertainment media and local television outlets outside the Washington press. On “Fox News Sunday” this morning, Obama campaign man and former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended the interviews.
“The notion that this president is somehow not doing interviews is ridiculous. Not long ago, we were answering questions and charges that somehow Obama was over-exposed,” he said.
Republicans have attempted to pin the campaign on this point, with Mitt Romney taking the unusual step of making himself available to the press twice recently. However, Romney himself sat down with People Magazine last week, joined by running mate Paul Ryan and their families.
Mine “bloodbath” shocks post-apartheid S.Africa
By Jon Herskovitz | Reuters – 1 hr 54 mins ago
MARIKANA, South Africa (Reuters) – The police killing of 34 striking platinum miners in the bloodiest security operation since the end of white rule cut to the quick of South Africa’s psyche on Friday, with searching questions asked of its post-apartheid soul.
Newspaper headlines screamed “Bloodbath”, “Killing Field” and “Mine Slaughter”, with graphic photographs of heavily armed white and black police officers walking casually past the bloodied corpses of black men lying crumpled in the dust.
The images, along with Reuters TV footage of officers opening up with automatic weapons on a small group of men in blankets and t-shirts at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum plant, rekindled uncomfortable memories of South Africa’s racist past.
Police chief Riah Phiyega confirmed 34 dead and 78 injured in Thursday’s shootings after officers moved against 3,000 striking drill operators armed with machetes and sticks at the mine, 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.
A sombre-looking President Jacob Zuma, who cut short a trip to Mozambique for a regional summit because of the violence, travelled to Marikana and announced he had ordered an official inquiry into what he called the “shocking” events.
“This is unacceptable in our country which is a country where everyone feels comfortable, a country with a democracy that everyone envies,” he said in a statement read at a news conference. He did not take questions.
Phiyega, a former banking executive appointed to lead the police force only in June, said officers acted in self-defence against charging, armed assailants at Marikana.
“The police members had to employ force to protect themselves,” she said, noting that two policemen had been hacked to death by a mob at the mine on Tuesday.
However, the South African Institute of Race Relations likened the incident to the 1960 Sharpeville township massacre near Johannesburg, when apartheid police opened fire on a crowd of black protesters, killing more than 50.
“Obviously the issues that have led to this are not the same as the past, but the response and the outcome is very similar,” research manager Lucy Holborn told Reuters.
In a front-page editorial, the Sowetan newspaper questioned what had changed since 1994, when Nelson Mandela overturned three centuries of white domination to become South Africa’s first black president.
“It has happened in this country before where the apartheid regime treated black people like objects,” the paper, named after South Africa’s biggest black township, said. “It is continuing in a different guise now.”
Zuma, who faces an internal leadership election in his ruling African National Congress (ANC) in December, called on South Africa to mourn together. “It is a moment to start healing and rebuilding,” he said at Marikana.
“We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence,” an earlier statement from him said.
Despite promises of a better life for all South Africa’s 50 million people, the ANC has struggled to provide basic services to millions in poor black townships.
Efforts to redress the economic inequalities of apartheid have had mixed results, and the mining sector comes in for particular criticism from radical ANC factions as a bastion of “white monopoly capital”.
In Washington, the White House said it was saddened by the loss of life. “We encourage all parties to work together to resolve the situation peacefully,” spokesman Josh Earnest said.
POLICE PRESENCE
Hundreds of police patrolled the dusty plains around the Marikana mine, which was forced to shut down this week because of a rumbling union turf war that has hit the platinum sector this year.
Crime scene investigators combed the site of the shooting, which was cordoned off with yellow tape, collecting spent cartridges and the slain miners’ bloodstained traditional weapons – machetes and spears.
Six firearms were recovered, including a service revolver from one of the police officers killed earlier in the week.
Before Thursday, 10 people had died in nearly a week of conflict between rival unions at what is Lonmin’s flagship plant. The London-headquartered company has been forced to shut down all its South African platinum operations, which account for 12 percent of global output.
South Africa is home to 80 percent of the world’s known reserves of platinum, a precious metal used in vehicle catalytic converters. Rising power and labour costs and a steep decline this year in the price have left many mines struggling to stay afloat.
Although the striking Marikana miners were demanding huge pay hikes, the roots of the trouble lie in a challenge by the newer Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) to the 25-year dominance of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), a close ANC ally.
“There is clearly an element in this that a key supporter of the ANC – the NUM – has come under threat from these protesting workers,” said Nic Borain, an independent political analyst.
Pre-crackdown footage of dancing miners waving machetes and licking the blades of home-made spears raised questions about the habitual use of violence in industrial action 18 years after the end of apartheid.
“This culture of violence and protest, it must somehow be changed,” said John Robbie, a prominent Johannesburg radio host. “You can’t act like a Zulu impi in an industrial dispute in this day and age,” he said, using the Zulu word for armed units.
World platinum prices spiked nearly 3 percent on Thursday as the full extent of the violence became clear, and rose again on Friday to a five-week high above $1,450 an ounce.
Lonmin shares in London and Johannesburg fell more than 5 percent to four-year lows at Friday’s market open, although later trimmed their losses. Overall, they have shed nearly 15 percent since the violence began a week ago.
Nomination losers at the just concluded, but reportedly flawed ODM preliminaries in the Ndhiwa by-election have been urged to join hands with other party leaders in the region I supporting the winner Augustino Neto Oyugi win the seat back and strengthen its parliamentary strength.
They must remain steadfastly in ODM and remained patriotic and totally committed to the party ideals
The disillusioned nomination losers are reported to have ganged up after meeting in Nairobi and vowed to put their weight behind the candidate of other party instead of supporting and campaigning for the ODM torch bearer.
Making what he termed as passionate appeal to the close t 21 nomination losers to change their hearts and abandon their planned rebellion against the party, a Homa-Bay County prominent politician Hilary Ochieng’ Alila told the nomination losers to be patient ,saying the patience pays. This is because the general election is around the corner and if even if they had lost I the nomination, they should remain loyal and supportive to the party nominee to win.
They will be able to stand contest and win the election during he forthcoming general elections. The elections will come with unlimited opportunities for those who are ambitious to win the elective positions both at the national, senate and in the regional governance in accordance to the unlimited opportunities offered under the new constitutional dispensation.
Alila said for the ODM members to extend their support to candidate of a rival political party in the by-election campaign would be tantamount to a betrayal and open rebellion, which could earn those involve the cancellation of their party membership and eventual expulsion from the party,
Alila a Nairobi based businessman who is currently campaigning for the Homa-Bay County Senate seat said for the ODM members and supporter to propel the party leader Raila Amolo Odinga to realize his presidential ambition, the party must remain united and all should work as a team.
Alila is challenging the Immigration and Registration of Persons Minister Gerald Otieno Kajwang’, the current Mbita MP who has shifted his political camp from Mbita to Homa-Bay town and is now contesting the County Senate seat.
It has since emerged that during the just ended Ndhiwa by-election nomination ODM preliminaries, Kajwang, who is also the ODM County branch in Homa-Bay and his rival Alila had thrown their weights o two different aspirants.
Kajwang’, it is being alleged to have thrown his weight behind the former Ndhiwa MP Tom Okello Obondo a perennial Ndhiwa parliamentary election loser ever since 1994. Obondo performed poorly in the nomination, while Hilary Ocheng Alila another contender for the County Senate seat supported Augustino Neto Oyugi who eventually won the party in a hotly contested and controversial by-election nomination. He outcome of the Ndhiwa preliminary nomination is therefore only pointing fingers at the direction the Homa-Bay County politics will follow come March, 4 2013.
The populist and youthful Alila whose candidature for the County Senate seat against Minister Otieno Kajwang’ is being commonly being referred to by the locals like the biblical battle between the little David and the giant Goliath is said to have gathered and mobilized a formidable campaign team in all the eight parliamentary constituencies that forms Homa-Bay County, stretching from Kabondo-Kasipul, Kasipul, Karachuonyo,Rangwe, Homa-Bay Town, Ndhiwa, Gwassi and Mbita.
However, the political intrigues recently witnessed in the last week’s Ndhiwa nomination indicating that the Minister is under heavy pressure of losing the Senate battle and in a great panicking.
Another important key ODM Homa-Bay County branch was the branch treasurer, Mrs Monica Amolo, who is also the self-proclaimed ODM coordinator in Nyanza and a perennial election loser in Ndhiwa. She had lost the bid to become the Ndhiwa MP against the late Joshua Orwa Ojode in 2002 and 2007 each tie claiming that she had been rigged t and her votes stolen, and even atone time moved to the High Court against the late Ojode and the disbanded Elect0ral Commission of Kenya under Kivuitu though she had garnered only 12,000 votes against Ojode’s 48,000.The case was throw out against her with cost.in 2007
Reports emerging from Homa-Bay ay Alila is currently on the lead in the two constituencies in Suba districts of Gwassi and Mbita, Ndhiwa,Rangwe, Kabondo-Kasipul and Kasipul while Otieno Kajwang has fragmented and scattered support among his uncles in Karachuonyo where his mother hails from
Pundits, however, maintains that it is too early to make an accurate assessment.
So they say in legal terms that justice delayed is justice denied. This I may add by coining another word that “the voting delayed is a denial of democratic rights of the electorate.”
The last Sunday ODM preliminary nomination in the just concluded, but much flawed Ndhiwa by-election was a total sham, and a big shame to the party that has always been boasting of championing the essence of he democratic principles in this country.
Thousands of the constituents who turned out in their big numbers to vote for a candidate of their choice were badly let down by poor management of the by-election, poor logistics and the disappearance of election material, non-arrival of ballot papers at the poling stations, which are scattered all over the expansive rural constituency.
It is even shameful to say that the distance between Ndhiwa Town and Ratang’a, which is the late Joshua Orwa Ojode’s rural home is hardly seven kilometers apart. The two centers are linked by the Rodi-Sori road which is beautifully tarmac ked and could take hardly ten minutes drive. The election materials and ballot papers from Ndhjiwa Town arrived at Ratang’a at about 4.15 p.m long after the would be voters had dispersed and went home after waiting for the election materials from as early a 7.a.m. What a mess?
Owing to the logistics problems experienced all over Ndhiwa only 7,278 voters managed to cast their votes in a constituency which boasts close to 80,000 registered voters. The voters had turned out o enthusiastically read to exercise their democratic rights in voting in their new MP.
They sang and danced at the various polling station, but in some places waited for the whole day without the election officials on sight. This later was to become the source of fist fights and mayhem that were witnessed at the various stations. The voters had become impotent and suspicious that their preferable candidates were about to be rigged out of the race after waiting for the whole day without seeing the election materials.
It was a total flop, and its time the ODM electoral board headed by Eng.Philip Okoth Okundi and its entire directors were shown the exit door by the party headquarters at the Orange House in Nairobi.
Alternatively, political parties which cannot organize and manage their own preliminaries be compelled to seek assistance and help from the IEBC.
The story has been the same ever since 2007showing clear proof that the ODM is incapable of of organizing an efficient and peaceful preliminaries on its own in the by-elections that have come and gone. This is perhaps the reason why the party which is led by he Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga has lost in nearly all the by-elections it had participated ever since 2007 starting with the one which was held in Ainamoi in Kericho district following the death of the former MP for the area the late David Too who was shot and killed by a policeman in Eldoret .
In all the previous by-elections held countrywide in the recent past the ODM had lost due to its haphazardly and inefficiently managed by-election which have ended with numerous complaints by participants of highly rigged by-elections. Ndhiwa should serve as the shining example. There was no logistic problem in the area. All the access and feeder roads are passable and in good condition wit one major highway traversing the entire constituency from Rodi-Kopany in the neighboring Rangwe constituency in Homa-Bay district winding up at Sori in Karungu Bay in Nyatike constituency.
The election s official were nowhere raising temperature of the voters who set upon those few officials who showed up late, but half-heartedly with kicks and other crude weapons almost marred the exercise following the outbreak of sporadic of fist fighting everywhere The ODM is to be blamed.
The worse part of the exercise is the unconfirmed claims and allegation to the effect that Agustino Neto Oyugi, the youthful politician who emerged the winner of the much flawed nomination has been working as the campaign manager of Eng Phillip Okundi, the chairman of the ODM election board who is also currently campaigning for the coveted position Homa-Bay County governor.
The 12 hours delay in announcing the outcome of the preliminary nomination exercise where Neto was reported to have garnered 4,278 votes, while the 21 other aspirants received a combined figures of 3,000 votes has escalated the suspicious that the winner might have been rigged in by a plan hatched by the board chairman. There was no indication as to who was number two, number three and so forth.
Taking into account the allegation that the winner is closely connected to Okundi, there is all the significant aspect of conspiracy to deprive the Ndhiwa electorate of their constitutional rights of picking up a popular Mp of their own choice. And justice can only be seen as being done, if the could issue an orders for the repeat of Ndhiwa by-election. Such irregularities like those witnessed in Ndhiwa last Sunday could hurt the ODM successes in the impending general election schedule for Mach 3, 2013 and even impact negatively on Raila Odinga’s presidential bid.
Ndhiwa by-election preliminary nomination is a clear mockery of the tenets of democracy and must be declared null and void in the interest of democracy
Other aspirants had their names missing from the ballot papers in as many as in twenty polling stations. What a mess. One Jeremiah Owiti who is known to his peers as “Jero” had his name missing from ballot papers in nearly every polling station.
In all fairness, the ODM headquarters must order for the repeat of the Ndhiwa preliminary nomination exercise
Paul Ryan is bad for America. He’s anti-choice, and would give big tax cuts for millionaires, while raising taxes on the middle-class. He’s a Tea Party favorite who takes donations from the billionaire Koch brothers, and he introduced one of harshest and most inhumane budgets in recent history. His ideological hero for many years called selfishness a virtue and charity an abomination.
But most people don’t know just how bad Paul Ryan is. So we made this list of 10 things to know about Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential pick, Paul Ryan.
. . .
The future of America is on the line—from a woman’s right to choose to our economy.
10 Things to know about Paul Ryan
1. His economic plan would cost America 1 million jobs in the first year. Ryan’s proposed budget would cripple the economy. He’d slash spending deeply, which would not only slow job growth, but shock the economy and cost 1 million of us our jobs in 2013 alone and kill more than 4 million jobs by the end of 2014.1
2. He’d kill Medicare. He’d replace Medicare with vouchers for retirees to purchase insurance, eliminating the guarantee of health care for seniors and putting them at the mercy of the private insurance industry. That could amount to a cost increase of more than $5,900 by 2050, leaving many seniors broke or without the health care they need. He’d also raise the age of eligibility to 67.2
3. He’d pickpocket the middle class to line the pockets of the rich. His tax plan is Robin Hood in reverse. He wants to cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over the next decade, but only for corporations and the rich, like giving families earning more than $1 million a year a $300,000 tax cut. And to pay for them, he’d raise taxes on middle- and lower-income households and butcher social service programs that help middle- and working-class Americans.3
4. He’s an anti-choice extremist. Ryan co-sponsored an extremist anti-choice bill, nicknamed the ‘Let Women Die Act,’ that would have allowed hospitals to deny women emergency abortion care even if their lives were at risk. And he co-sponsored another bill that would criminalize some forms of birth control, all abortions, and in vitro fertilization.4
5. He’d dismantle Social Security. Ironically, Ryan used the Social Security Survivors benefit to help pay for college, but he wants to take that possibility away from future generations. He agrees with Rick Perry’s view that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” and he supported George W. Bush’s disastrous proposal to privatize Social Security.5
6. He’d eliminate Pell grants for more than 1 million low-income students. His budget plan cuts the Pell Grant program by $200 billion, which could mean a loss of educational funding for 1 million low-income students.6
7. He’d give $40 billion in subsidies to Big Oil. His budget includes oil tax breaks worth $40 billion, while cutting “billions of dollars from investments to develop alternative fuels and clean energy technologies that would serve as substitutes for oil.”7
8. He’s another Koch-head politician. Not surprisingly, the billionaire oil-baron Koch brothers are some of Ryan’s biggest political contributors. And their company, Koch industries, is Ryan’s biggest energy-related donor. The company’s PAC and affiliated individuals have given him $65,500 in donations.8
9. He opposes gay rights. Ryan has an abysmal voting record on gay rights. He’s voted to ban adoption by gay couples, against same-sex marriage, and against repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He also voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law in 2009.9
10. He thinks an “I got mine, who cares if you’re okay” philosophy is admirable. For many years, Paul Ryan devoted himself to Ayn Rand’s philosophy of selfishness as a virtue. It has shaped his entire ethic about whom he serves in public office. He even went as far as making his interns read her work.10
If there was ever any doubt that Mitt Romney’s got a disastrous plan for America—he made himself 100% clear when he picked right-wing extremist Paul Ryan as his running mate. Paul Ryan is bad for America, but we can’t beat him if Americans don’t know everything he stands for. Share this list with all your.
Thanks for all you do.
–Justin, Carrie, Steven, Stephen, and the rest of the team
Sources:
1. “Ryan’s Budget, Robin Hood in reverse,” Economic Policy Institute
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278939&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=4
2. “12 Things You Should Know About Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan,” Think Progress, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278662&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=5
3.”Ryan Budget Would Raise Some Taxes; Guess Who Gets Hit?,” Off the Charts, April 12, 2012 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278692&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=6
“Middle class could face higher taxes under Republican plan, analysis finds,” The Washington Post, June 19, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278693&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=7
4. “Statement on Mitt Romney’s Selection of Rep. Paul Ryan for His Vice-Presidential Running Mate,” NARAL, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278694&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=8
“Paul Ryan’s Extreme Abortion Views,” The Daily Beast, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278695&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=10
“Paul Ryan Sponsored Fetal Personhood Bill, Opposes Family Planning Funds,” Huffington Post, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278852&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=12
5. “12 Things You Should Know About Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan,” Think Progress, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278662&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=13
“Ayn Rand would have HATED Paul Ryan,” Daily Kos, August 12, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278853&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=14
6. “Pell Grants For Poor Students Lose $170 Billion In Ryan Budget,” Huffington Post, March 27, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278696&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=15
7. “Ryan Budget Pads Big Oil’s Pockets with Senseless Subsidies,” Center for American Progress, March 20, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278697&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=16
8. “Koch brothers have Paul Ryan’s back,” Politico, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278940&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=17
9. “Paul Ryan as VP Matches Mitt Romney on Homophobia,” The Advocate, August 11, 2012
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278698&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=18
10.”Paul Ryan And Ayn Rand”, The New Republic, December 28, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=278699&id=48818-21095459-eD0V2Nx&t=19
BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
10 Things The Romney Campaign Doesn’t Want You To Know About Paul Ryan
Posted on August 13, 2012 by Marika
Most people don’t know just how bad Romney’s VP choice is. So we made this list of 10 things to know about Paul Ryan. Read it, then share it with everyone. The future of America is on the line—from a woman’s right to choose to our economy.
When President Obama ran for Presidency on Faith and Hope, he was sincere to voters. It was evident that he had great passion to put America on the path of reform and success, and he set forth to do just that. During his three years rule, he delivered most of his campaign promises with a lot of strain and difficulties from opposing GOP Republicans. This is because most of the Republicans developed hate and became lukewarm with President Obama’s leadership and declared that Obama will be a one-time-President. To achieve this, most GOP House representatives led by Speaker majority Mr. John Boehner were set to make life difficult for President Obama from day one. At some time, they ganged up to have a Government shut-down, so President Obama would give up and surrender. On many other occasions, they made it difficult and obstructed signing of Bills including job bills. Partisan politics is often an obstruction to good governance. This is the game some Republican played on President Obama to block him from continuing with the second term. President Obama instead played bi-partisan roll and many GOP took it for being a loner, which is not the case.
To whom much is given, much is expected emphasizes the commitment President Obama endeavored to deliver mandated public services irrespective of forces that worked against his efforts. Public expectation and anxiety was real and it is true that, a lot was expected of President Obama as the country was in serious economic instability when he took over. To do this, President Obama did not rest; he vigorously led, invited public opinion engagement and embarked on immediate programs to cushion the economy through Stimulus packages, creation of jobs with other incentives to the business community to steady the economy from collapse while on the other hand, he made some adjustment to curb and level the economy. The Parable is true to President Obama’s faithfulness and wise stewardship. In his passionate commitment, he inspired many people globally and became a role model influencing younger generation all over the world.
Job Specification of a President is to govern through leadership in a bi-partisan manner, and must be able to facilitate Public Mandate through a functioning system of Government Machinery in an effective and efficient way. The President must have exemplary skills to provide a conducive environment for Unity of Purpose for shared interest to thrive and manage a balanced process where commerce, governing and social welfare needs and interest harmonizes each other smoothly, easily and comfortably.
Republican Congress majority under Speaker John Boehner did not pass the job-plan, they blocked and obstructed it from being signed. If President Obama was incapable, it would have been impossible to steady the economy, manage a balance in both Governance and offer insight for favorable economics of commerce to boost job creation. He understands his role with its high expectations and that is why he was able to create thousands of job opportunities. Through Government public contracts and programs like education and infrastructure etc., businesses got Government contracts that helped business growth and expansion. This statement was also taken out of context by GOP Republicans claiming that Government does not create jobs.
President Obama is a good manager in both internal and external affairs. In Foreign matters, President Obama is able to keep friends of America at peace with each other. The methods and tactics involved in managing a Government require sound mastery of natural Political science that shares and builds unity of purpose. It cannot border on repressive of public interest and it succeeds.
The new government leadership of President Obama rejected politics of the former regime of the Republicans, which was the reason for Economic Collapse. The economy is slowly picking up in the right direction, and at a pace where President Obama has no control but the assurance is there. Three years is too early to gain full recovery from serious economic collapse. It will require voters to vote bi-partisan, responsible and committed Congress Representatives to move the country forward instead of being stuck in the mud. Intrigue maneuvering to disqualify President Obama as a bad leader, is being made in bad taste and is selfish because they see President Obama in racial biasness and not on merit.
President Obama must stand tall and just let people know the truth. He must take stock of the good services he has done and how he intends to move FORWARD with increase of job opportunities to improve the economy further in his second term. He must state to do list he wishes to engage to level economic balance for businesses and through job creation and expansion of the same. How Foreign policy is crucial and Public need to know the benefit of keep good allies in Foreign Policy and why America must remain the most powerful in Global region of the world…….With this, Africa cannot be left behind, as Africa’s successful democracy is the backbone and strength of America’s economic stability. Therefore, no one can engage better with Africa to make it a successful story at this initial stage better than President Obama. Africans are tired to be treated as animals for slaughter houses for the unscrupulous corrupt International Corporate Special Business Interest. Without corrupt Corporate Special Interests, Asianic/China scramble to African is pushing Africa to a worse case-scenario. Africans too want to do away with corruption and poverty so to be treated with love and care. Equally, African want to be recognized and be part of Global economic progressive development agenda, valued in shared common interest…….and this will be the beginning of realizing sustainable Unity, Peace and Love all over the world.
Cheers everybody……!!!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
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Rachel Maddow – HARRY REID SMASH!
Published on Aug 7, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
Aug 6, 2012
Rachel Maddow reviews the recent series of vitriolic outbursts by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, including his tenacious pounding on the issue of Mitt Romney hiding his tax returns from American voters.
The ED Show – Romney tax plan skewered by independent study
Published on Aug 1, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
Aug 1, 2012
Mitt Romney’s tax plan is skewered by an independent study done by the Tax Policy Center. President Obama is all over it, and the Romney camp is complaining even though they’ve cited the same think tank before. Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum join Michael Eric Dyson to discuss Romney’s tax plan and how it affects the middle class.
The Last Word – Obama attacks Romney tax increases
Published on Aug 2, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
Aug 1, 2012
New polling shows Obama turned a state previously considered a toss-up into a safe Obama win. The president also attacks Romney’s tax cut for only the wealthy. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell discusses the 2012 headlines with MSNBC’s Howard Fineman and Reuters tax expert David Cay Johnston.
Rachel Maddow – Romney on taxes: ‘You’re going to have to take my word for it’
Published on Aug 2, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
Aug 1, 2012
Rachel Maddow talks about Mitt Romney’s vague responses when asked about his taxes throughout the years and questions how much of his current proposed tax plan would only help himself. James Roosevelt, Jr., the top lawyer for the Massachusetts Democratic Party when tax returns were a problem for Romney while running for governor, joins the discussion to explain how Romney tried to “retroactively rewrite history” about his tax returns ten years ago.
The Last Word – Mitt Romney’s ‘tough road trip’
Published on Aug 1, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
July 31, 2012
Mitt Romney returns from what the conservative Washington Times deems a “tough road trip” after his aide tells the press to “kiss his a**.” MSNBC’s Joy Reid and Ari Melber join MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to assess the Romney trip and his lie about his Palestinian remarks.
Rachel Maddow – House GOP continue fight against health care for women
Published on Aug 1, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
July 31, 2012
Rachel Maddow talks with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., about the Republicans’ attempts to yet again block women from accessing expanded reproductive health care.
The Last Word – Rewriting GOP’s idea of elitism
Published on Aug 1, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
July 31, 2012
One FOX News conservative is taking shots at Mitt Romney over his expensive Olympic horse. But one thing he thinks is still more elitist? John Kerry windsurfing. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell explains the folly in that logic in the latest Rewrite.
The ED Show – Republican compares access to health care to 9/11
Published on Aug 1, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
Aug 1, 2012
Roughly 47 million women gain greater access to preventive health care under the Affordable Health Care. One Congressman says that’s akin to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The Grio.com’s Joy Reid and Republican strategist Susan del Percio join Michael Eric Dyson to discuss the GOP reaction to the new health care provisions.
Rachel Maddow Destroys Rush Limbaugh’s Batman Conspiracy Theory 7/18/2012
Published on Jul 19, 2012 by globalissues andnews
Rachel Maddow, on The Rachel Maddow Show, shows the absolute absurdity with Rush Limbaugh’s most recent conspiracy theory which involves the third, and final, Batman movie. Limbaugh (more than) hints that there is a connection between Bain Capital and the nemesis of the Batman movie, Bane.
The Koch Brothers Get Exposed in Madison, WI
Published on May 10, 2012 by bravenewfoundation
“Koch Brothers Exposed” director Robert Greenwald and campaign director Jesse Lava speak to WORT-FM in Madison, WI to discuss the vast reach of the Koch brothers influence and how voters can get involved. Get your DVD today at kochbrothersexposed.com!
Koch Brothers Exposed: the Film
Published on Mar 19, 2012 by bravenewfoundation
This hard-hitting investigation of the 1% at its very worst is the latest from acclaimed director Robert Greenwald. Charles and David Koch are using their billions to put a stranglehold on American democracy. What are we going to do about it?
KOCH BROTHERS EXPOSED BY RACHEL MADDOW
Uploaded by LIBERALTSUNAMI on Jun 4, 2011
THIS GANG OF TERRORIST CHRISTIANS MUST BE DESTROYED
Rachel Maddow Explores Right Wing Lying Echo Chamber
Uploaded by ewillies on Nov 4, 2010
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Keith Olbermann Destroys Rush Limbaugh’s NBC Interview 10/13/09
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Keith Olbermann Destroys Rush Limbaugh’s NBC Interview 10/13/09, October 13, 2009.
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Bane: Hate-Talker Rush Limbaugh Exposes Hollywood Time-Machine Conspiracy
Robert Greenwald on MSNBC’s The Ed Show: The Koch/Walker Connection
Published on May 3, 2012 by bravenewfoundation
Robert Greenwald discusses the Koch brothers close connection to WI Gov. Scott Walker, R, with MSNBC host Ed Schultz.
Income Inequality: Prof. Michael Eric Dyson Explains Why Romney & Gingrich are ‘Out of Touch’
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The ED Show – Harry Reid is the GOP’s Public Enemy #1
Published on Aug 6, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
Aug 6, 2012
Republicans are calling Senator Harry Reid a liar, but the Majority Leader won’t back off his claims that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years. Rep. John Garamendi and Tom Perriello of the Center for American Progress join Ed Schultz to weigh in on the latest beltway battle.
The ED Show – Romney camp struggles to explain later Bain years
Published on Jul 16, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
July 16, 2012
The Romney Campaign cannot get away from questions about the candidate’s time at Bain Capital or his unreleased tax returns. Ed Schultz talks with MSNBC’s Richard Wolffe and former Newt Gingrich spokesman Rick Tyler about the latest mess for Mitt Romney.
The ED Show – Romney misquotes foreign minister, bashes American economy
Published on Jul 23, 2012 by Licentiathe8th
July 23, 2012
itt Romney claims the world sees America “in decline,” but he needs to check his source. Romney repeatedly misquoted Australia’s Foreign Minister, who had to release a statement to set the record straight. President Obama delivered a powerful defense of America to the National Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nevada today
MSNBC – The Ed Show – The Details Of The Drastic Budget Cuts 4-12-2011
Uploaded by whywasilaidoff on Apr 13, 2011
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), talks about the new details of the spending cuts the House will vote on Wednesday.
MSNBC – The Ed Show – How Corporations Are Avoiding Taxes 3-30-2011
Uploaded by whywasilaidoff on Mar 30, 2011
Politicians are turning a blind eye to corporations who aren’t and don’t want to pay taxes. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, asks the questions that nobody else will.
MSNBC – The Ed Show – The Government Is Heading For A Shutdown 3-30-2011
Uploaded by whywasilaidoff on Mar 30, 2011
Chris Hayes Washington Editor of The Nation Talks about who’s to blame if we’re faced with a government shutdown and what happens if the GOP caves to the Tea Party’s budget demands.
Reports Leo Odera Omolo In Awendo Town, Migori County.
TWO men who are believed to be the most trusted confidants and close political associates of the Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga appeared to have taken an early led in the battle for the two prime positions in the Migori County governance thereby sending the other aspirants eyeing the same positions into great panicking.
The two are Prof. Edward Oyugi Akong’o who appeared to have already emerged as the leading contender for the lucrative position of the Migori County governor.
The other Raila’s political associate of long standing is the former Mathare MP Gilbert Ochieng’ Mbeo who is contesting the covenant position of Migori Senate seat.
Before winning the Mathare parliamentary seat during the 1992 first multiparty elections, Ochieng’Mbeo was among the so-called Young Turks who joined hands with the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga the doyen of the opposition in Kenya and fought gallantly for the introduction of the multiparty system of politics in Kenya as opposed to hitherto most dreaded one party monolithic system.
Prof Akong’o Oyugi who hails from Suna Migori was detained along side with the late George Moseti Anyona the former Kitutu Masaba MP and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Raila Odinga and others after a long period of torture at the now infamous and defunct Nyayo Torture Chambers under the hawk eye of the then dreaded Special Branch security intelligence under the retired President Daniel Arap Moi and he lost his teaching job at the University of Nairobi upon his release from detention camp, forcing him to fled the country in search of green pasture in Europe as he could longer be employed by any public University in Kenya.
The crime committed by the trio was alleged attempt to launch an opposition party in Kenya during the clamor for the multi-party political system which was sweeping the country lie Tsunami at the time.
In the 1992 first election held under the multiparty system, Ochieng’ Mbeo comfortably won the Mathare parliamentary seat of a Ford Kenya ticket. He was later nominated by the LDP then led by Raila Odinga to represent Kenya in the East African Legislative Assembly in Arusha where he was returned twice before serving in the ODM electoral system for a couple of years.
Armed with an American degree Ohieng’ Mbeo is considered the most experienced and suitable person to represent Migori County in the Senate due to his vast experience and wealth of experience in parliamentary system.
Mbeo is to square it with the one time two times MP for the old larger Homa-Bay constituency Phares Oluoch Kanindo, a man who is well known for party hoping or party hoper who contested the Rongo parliamentary seat on PNU ticket in 2007 and who is considered by the electorate as a spent force and politically non-entity.
He had twice served as the chairman of the board of the directors for the Awendo-based SonySugar Company which he left in huff after failing to turn the government-owned sugar mill around into a vibrant profit-making outfit.
After sitting in the August House for close to ten year Kanindo is on record for not having made his maiden speech s or asking questions. The majority of the electorate in Migori say his time is up and as such he should vacate the political field for more the youthful and properly educated lots.
Kanindo of late has been making the round while appearing in almost every funeral gathering making sugar-coated speeches in Dho-Luo vernacular dialect for which he is so fluent in, but which the locals consider as ‘big joke” and ineffective and stale as for as modern politics in Kenya f today are concerned.
Ochieng’Mbeo is therefore stand a better chance of clinching Migori Senate seat in the absent of any other credible challenger. The ODM party loyalty will also count a great deal This is because the ODM will not take the risk of issue anyone whose loyalty and total commitment to the party presidential victory with a ticket to contest any elective position on its behalf. He paty’s vetting and screening would be the toughest this time around.
The Migori County in a complex that the region is shared by two ethnic tribal group,namely the luos the majority and the Kurias who are the minority. However, the Kuria and Luos have worked together from the time immemorial since 1962 when the former South Nyanza district was split into two one for theKiii and the Southern Nyanza fr the Luos. The Luos went home Bayalog with their neighbors the Kuriapeople.
The two communities have lived and worked together harmoniously. During the formation of the larger County Council of the greater Southern Nyanza, the late Mzee Paul Mboya Akoko became the first County Clerk. Mboya was a Luo from Karachuonyo while his deputy was Chacha Marama from Kuria and when Mboya finally bowed out ad retired Chacha Marama took over the County Clerk position and served for long time. The two communities plans to share the County positions of the County governance in equal terms and in a democratic manner.
In the case of governor Prof Akong’o Oyugi who is serving as political adviser to the Prime minster on matters of politics is expected to battle it with several other aspirants who have already declared their interest in the seat.
They included the KSB zonal director for Sonysugar zone Zacharia Okoth Obado from North Kanyamkago, in Uriri district,Ezra Odondi Odhiambo from Central Sakwa in Awendo district, Mark Nyamita also from Uriri distrct, Christopher Rusanat.
However, Prof Oyugi appeared to be more popular than the rest of the aspirants an acceptable by the electorate to the entire region.
Migori Cunt has eight parliamentary constituencies, namely Kuia East, Kuria Wes, Migor East,Migori West, Nyatike, Uriri,Awendo and Rongo..
DEGGARS seemed to have already been drawn up for the election battle in the race for Homa-Bay County Senate seat.
The contest for this important County governance seat appeared to be heading for a two men horse race between the Immigration and Registration of Persons Minister Gerald Otieno Kajwang’ and the populist Nairobi based youthful and populist businessman Hilary Ochieng’ Alila..
A number of the would be aspirants for the same seat appeared to have backed out of the race, leaving the field open for the two Kajwang’ and Alila to battle out.
Kajwang’ is the outgoing Mbita MP and a seasoned politician who has represented the Mbita people for the past three consecutive terms ever since 1997. The Minister, however, is leaving the Sua region without the blessing and confident of the voters in the region following his recent patch up with the Suba community over the change of the name o two parliamentary constituencies, namely Gwassi and Mbita, which had been changed by the IEBC to Suba South and Suba North.
The hurdles facing Kajwang’ is his reported concerted effort to rubbish the existence of the Suba community, failure to recognize the existence community and failure to come into terms with political realities that the existence the Suba community is not negotiable and a reality.
The Minister who is known to be one of Raila Odinga’s confidants, and infamous or his Bado Kuna Mapambano lyrics political song, is being accused for having made no significant contributions in terms of development of Mbit constituency and Likened by the constituents like “someone who is flying out of political realities in the region” and seeking a soft landing spot in the Homa-Bay Senate seat.
Kjawang’ had previously underrated his worthy challenger Hilary Hilary Alila and apparently concentrated his energies fighting the late Joshua Orwa Ojode, the former Ndhiwa MP who before he met his sudden and accidental death on June 10, 2012 in a helicopter crash had indicated that he too would contest the same Homa-Bay
This paved the way for a tactful and mobilizer per excellence Hilary Alila who is a very resourceful young politician to concentrate in building his power bases in all the eight parliamentary constituencies stretching from Kabondo-Kasipul, Kasipul, Karachuonyo, Rangwe, Homa-Bay Town, Ndhiwa, Gwassi and Mbita.
Meanwhile report reaching this writer from Ndhiwa constituency says the constituents there have faulted Tom Otieno Alila the elder brother of Hilary Alila who made the announcement at the weekend that he too would be contesting the impending Ndhiwa by-election .
The rumor making he round in Ndhiwa Town and it environs, is that Tom Alila’s candidature is a deploy tactics of Minister Otieno Kajwang’ which are meant and aimed at weakening the most effective campaign being mounted by the latter’s younger brother Hilary Alila against him in the race for Homa-Bay County where the two are battling it out for the County Senate seat.
Ndhiwa electorate wants Tom Alila to withdraw his candidature in the Ndhiwa by-election to allow Hilary Alila to put p a strong challenge against Kajwang’ in the battle for Senate seat. “Moreover Tom Alila is not an ODM member and as such his chance of clinching Ndhiwa seat are too remote”, they said, adding unless he is being used as spoiler he should pull out immediately. His younger brother has invested a lot in the Senate campaign.
In the same context, Ndhiwa constituents also wants Sam Ojode to pull out of the by-election race so that Orwa Ojode’s widow Mary Ojode could carry out the family flag and recapture the vacant seat. to continue implementing the soicio-economic projects were initiated by her late husband ,but left unfinished.
Both Sam Ojode and Tom Alila were not available for their immediate comments on the latest development. Phone call placed to their mobile phone numbers went unanswered.
Sad but true. We are not learning from our mistakes.
– – – – – – – – – – –
House Democrats Accept GOP Frame On Taxes
The Democratic Campaign Committee sent me a message this afternoon entitled DISASTER. The message: “Did you see Al Gore’s message? We only have a few hours left before tonight’s midnight FEC deadline…”
Groan. Once again, the Democratic Party trashes its credibility by treating liberal activists like nothing more than a crowd of marks, just waiting to be conned. There is no midnight FEC deadline. People will be just as able to donate to the Democrats on August 1st as they are today on July 31st. The DCCC’s message is using a cheap trick, well known to hucksters selling gizmos on New Jersey boardwalks: Create a false sense of urgency with a limited time offer, and suckers will start shelling out their money before their rational minds can catch on to the gimmick.
. . .
[cartoon image;] “If I could just talk llike an elephant, maybe they wouild let me join the circus”, said the donkey.
PARTY hoppers, political-turn-coats and those known as common political gamblers this time round will not be welcome by the Orange Democratic Movement {ODM} to take part and contest the election in Ndhiwa constituency during the impending by-election.
ODM leaders in Ndhiwa and in the larger Homa-Bay County have resolved that that those aspirants who have been identified as party hoppers will not be welcome to contest the election in Ndhiwa by-election.
The Independent Electoral and Boundary Commission {IEBC} has called for the by election to be held on September 13.
The by-election is for the vacant Ndhiwa parliamentary seat. The seat fell vacant following the accidental death of the former MP for the area he late Joshua Orwa Ojode who perished in an helicopter crush at the Ngong Forest near Nairobi on June 10, 2012.
Ojode who was an Assistant minister for Internal Security lost his life together with his boss, the former Security Minister Prof.George Saitoti and their two police security bodyguard and two pilots.
However, there has been unusual influx in the number of the potential aspirants rearing to go for the seat. Some of them could be arguably classified as green-horns, while there are quite a number of experienced politicians who have contested the elections in the area before.
ODM party leaders and members in Ndhiwa are, however, seemed to be much concerned with the about three potential aspirants, who had stood and contested for the party’s tickets in the same constituency during the general elections of 2007.
The three have been identified as Mrs Monica Amolo, Augustine Neto Oyugi and the one time MP forNdhiwa Tom Okello Obondo.
The three were beaten hands down by the late Joshua Orwa Ojode and after loosing in the preliminaries jumped onto the bandwagon of Charity Ngilu led Narc Kenya and were eventually bundled to humiliating defeat by Orwa Ojode during the election proper.
There were also other candidates who lost to Ojode during the preliminaries, but they stuck to ODM and never ditched the party and had stayed on and contributed immensely towards the late Ojode’s victory.
One of the aspirants Monica Amolo cause uproar when she claimed that she had been rigged out of her victory and went as far as petitioning the court against Ojode’s landslide victory, and yet she pulled only 12,000 compared to the winner Ojodes 48,000. She had also lost the election
Tom Obondo who had represented the area for only one and half year in between 1992 and 1994 1992 on a Ford-Kenya ticket, and immediately had crossed the floor of the August House and went back to KANU for some reasons best known to himself. This is what is paved the way for Joshua Orwa Ojode’s easy victory on LDP ticket during the by-election of 1994.
Obondo has since became one of the notorious party hoppers in the region crossing back and fro to KANU an even joined Nicholas Biwott’s Vision Party of Kenya. At one time Obondo had teamed up with Biwott in a vain effort to wrestle KANU from its then national chairman Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, but the effort flopped but the latter triumphantly retained his sit.
The here have since trooped back to the ODM, and readily announced heir intention to take part in the impending Ndhiwa by-election. Now the party leaders in the region have set tough conditions for in any elective positions on the party’s tickets in future.
On of the leading contenders in the Ndhiwa by-election Ted Odero, made bluntly clear that here is room for political prostitution in Ndhiwa. “Gamblers who simply call the press and made some announcement about their intention of contesting the election in the by-election for the simple purpose of attracting handouts from partly and politicians are not welcome in Ndhiwa, “Said Odero.
Another prominent politician in Ndhiwa Jeremiah OwIti has called the ODM head office to ensure that there were strictest rules in place that are governing the readmission of those who had left the party and joined other parties.
They must bet thoroughly screened and vetted before they are welcome back,” said Jeremiah Owiti another aspirant the impending Ndhiwa by-election.
Meanwhile reports reaching us from Ndhiwa say that the widow of the late former Assistant Minister Internal Security the Joshua Orwa Ojode, Mrs Mary Ojode is also contemplating the idea of herself plunging into the race in the by-election.
A multiple sources have report that May Ojode has already hit the ground despite not having unanimous blessing from her late husband’s Kwabwayi clan home. She is reported to have made an extensive campaign tour of various trading center and marketplaces like Aora-Chuodho, Ratang’a and Wachara where he met with her supporters.
Mrs Ojode, however, could not be reached for the verifications of these conflicting reports. Her mobile phone rang, but there has been no answer.
Other unconfirmed reports says that Mrs Ojode would later this week visit the Orange House, the administrative headquarters of the OD in a tough lady who can fight for the set even against her men competitors on her own and even win.
The Eldoret North MP William Ruto is reported to have made an inroad into rank and file of the ODM Women Orange Democrat organization’s national office and may be now operating deeply behind his arch-political rival Raila Odinga’s rear-guards.
News about Ruto’s breakthrough Raila Odinga behind the line came following he recent fiasco during the ODM Women Democrats elections of the organization’s national office bearers.
The election meeting was held on July 17 at the Boma of Kenya. Raila and his wife Ida Odinga are reported to have attended the meeting briefly.
Apparently unaware of what had transpired due to intensive behind the scene maneuverings the previous evening when most delegates from up-country converged in Nairobi.
Prior to their trip to Nairobi, delegates from within the Kisumu County had held a meeting in Kisumu City and agreed on the line up. The delegates were supposed to have traveled together and had resolved to give their baking and support to only the women who are loyal to the Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Strange thing, however, happened. Upon reaching Nairobi, the Kisumu delegates lost contact with their colleagues, who had travelled much earlier and had already been booed into a posh hotel by a woman who is suspected to have been acting at the behest of William Ruto and other anti-Raila forces.
It was at this time hen Kisumu delegates came to realize the intrigues surrounding heir much highlighted meeting. The chairman of the Kisumu Women Orange Democrat organization, Mrs Rosa Buyu was nowhere to be seen. The phone lines were all switched off. Communication between her and Kisumu delegates were severed.
On arrival In Nairobi, However the Kisumu County delegates were shocked to find there was another line up of proposals involving Assistant Housing Minister Bishop Margaret Wanjiru. Two ODM nominated MPs Rachel Shebesh and Millie Odhiambo had their own line up, which was immediately allegedly joined by Buyu who for some unknown reasons had abandoned the Kisumu delegation and even disowned Mrs Nancy Matara who had been tipped earlier by the Kisumu delegates to contest the position of the national organizing secretary. She was abandoned.
The young woman, however, stuck to the Ida Odinga’s line up and squeezed a slim victory to become he Deputy National Organizing Secretary, despite having been abandoned and disowned by her own delegates
Her branch secretary Mrs Grace Akumu lost contact, and the situation was only saved following he intervention of Mr Ida Odinga, her sister –in-law Ruth Adhiambo Odinga and Grace Akumu who quickly worked out for a alternative new-lineup that show Mrs Elizabeth Syeng’o from Kitui North victory over Mrs Farida Ahmed from the coast.
There were 20 slots and countrywide and Kisumu County ODM Orange Democrats got one position to the chagrins of the ODM Women parliamentary caucus.
What has emerged since is that there infighting between Mrs Ida Odinga and the ODM women parliamentary caucus. After the parliamentary caucus had lost their line-up, one of the Rachel Shebesh confronted the ODM election board chairman with unsubstantiated accusation that the elections had been rigged, though it was conducted transparently according to the made which had been agreed upon by the delegate themselves.
From all the intrigues, pundits were quick into pointing out that some members of the party’ women parliamentary caucus are covertly fighting Raila, though some of them are the same members of the much touted ODM Reloaded team. He group had a hidden agenda to scuttle the ODM Women Democrats national office elections. The ODM Youth Orange Democrats had their election the previous day at the same venue, which went on smoothly.
Last weekend the Kisumu County branch ODM Women Orange Democrats had called a meeting at the party offices along the Kisumu-Kakamega Highway, The purpose of the meeting was nowhere. She did not show up nor did she send in an apology.
The women who attended the meeting appeared to have been brain-washed while they were in Nairobi where other reports says plenty of money had changed hands. What followed the weekend meeting in Kisumu was full of the acrimonies, followed by accusation and counter accusations.
All clearly pointing to the direction of unconfirmed rumor making the round that some members of the ODM parliamentary caucus were not happy with the active role being played by Mrs Ida Odinga in mounting the most aggressive the campaign for her husband to realize his presidential ambition
Unconfirmed report says the money which almost scuttled the organization meeting at the Bomas of Kenya came from either a source connected to Wiliam Ruto or senior, but un-named, members of the G7.
The same money has sine derailed the unity of the Kisumu County Women Orange Democrats.
The time is ripe for Kenyan politicians who are nursing presidential ambition to cast their political nets widely open while shopping around for suitable running mates to consider the possibility of including the COTU {K} Secretary-General in their teams.
Atwoli has the largest constituency in the labor movement; therefore his inclusion into the presidential race team as the running-mate could have a far-reaching and fruitful result to any party or presidential hopeful who chooses him as a running-mate.
Historically it should be remembered that the labor movement in Kenya had played a pivotal role in the struggle for independence and went as far as helping the Kenyan African National Union{KANU} into a sweeping victory in 1963 general elections that ushered in the political independence.
It could be remembered that its inception at the Kirigiti stadium in Kiambu town in June 1960, KANU immediately identified itself with the Kenyan workers. It was gradually built on the strength of the labor movement.
At the birth of KANU, the late Tom Mboya had won its coveted top office of the Secretary-General of newly established first black African colony-wide mass political movement ever since the colonial authorities banned the Kenya African Union [KAU} under the Sate of Emergency declared by the colonial governor in Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring on October 20,1952.
The formation of KANU an that of its rival Kenya African Democratic Union {KADU} came as a hard bargain during the first round able constitutional conference in Kenya which was held a he famous Lancaster House in London between February and March 1960.
It happened that Mboya who had trounced Arthur Aggrey Ochwada with only one single vote for the position f the Secretary-General was at the time the most influential General Secretary of the defunct Kenya Federation of Labor {KFL}, which was the hen the umbrella of the labor movement I Kenya.
All the unions affiliated to KFL joined the fray. All the general secretaries of the unions affiliated to KFL mobilized the workers who in turn joined KANU en mass. Prior to the birth of KANU, the KFL had become the most effective voice of he workers in Kenya and also that of the African population frequently issuing statements on behalf of African population and is aspiration as well as the demand for political independence and the end of both the state of emergency and racial discrimination on jobs.
In its early existence as a mass political movement in Kenya , KANU survived mostly on resources and manpower provided by the KFL, which later propelled I-it into power in 1963.
It was also joined by splinters of African political parties which were given very limited chances to operate within the district level. This was so in the absence of any mass and colony-wide African political parties. Ii fact it as through the KFL unfaltering support that KANU successfully managed to over its rivals like the pro-white settlers KADU and other a the tie of the 1963 general election, which ushered in political independence.
And even today the labor movement could [provide the competing parties with a swing votes. This is the main reason why I have the opinion that any presidential aspirant whose party can settle on Atwoli as its running-mate could harvest maximum votes within the industries and from the plantation workers.
The outspoken unionist has built a large following not only among the workers, but the Kenya public at large. He is a robust- man who always prefer taking the bull by its horn and a fearless speaker when it come to the question of defending he Kenyan workers.
Atwoli always peaks his minds irrespective of how other takes hi views. He has built a strong constituency beyond parochial lines, tribal ethnic boundaries; therefore he could be an asset to the party that picks him up as a running mate to its presidential aspirant. Such a party would definitely harvest maximum votes from the workers and other Kenyans who have come to trust Atwoli as an untainted leader.
History is so kind and it tells us that the later Dr Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana won and be Secretary general of the Trade Union Congress o Ghana {TUC}, while in Kenya the late Jomo Kenyatta’s accession to power was made possible owing to the organizational skills and mobilization ability of the politically genius Tom Mboya. It was Mboya’s dynamism and used his political magnanimity and skills in propelling KANU into victory n 1963.
Atwoli apart from c being the boss of COTU {K} is also the Secretary-general of the membership –rich Union of the Kenya Plantation and Agricultural Workers. Also in his armpit is the Kenya Union of Sugar Plantation Workers.
Atwoli is known as a man who strongly abhorred the politics of sycophancy and as such would make a wonderful vice president of the Republic of Kenya. Ever since stepping into the helm of workers leadership, Atwoli has put the Kenyan workers into the world map. He is sitting o several key and important world-wide workers boards, important workers boards in the African continent.
