Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (68692)	1/22/2010 9:35:20 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 149317

GOP candidates claiming to be the "new Scott Brown" baltimoresun.com January 22, 2010 - WASHINGTON - Republican candidates for Congress are latching onto Scott Brown's bolt-from-the-blue win this week in the Massachusetts Senate race, with political outsiders and longtime office-holders alike casting themselves in a similar mold—or seeing Brown in their image. Brown was a nearly obscure state senator who shocked the Democratic favorite, Martha Coakley, in the race to replace the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) by employing a tightly-focused, populist, anti-Washington message. His victory energized Republicans nationwide. Brown's unlikely success drew on support from moderates and conservatives, meaning that both camps have found something to emulate in his win. He has become a sensation in a party that has been eager for new stars. "I don't know too many candidates who haven't seized on Scott Brown," said Jennifer Duffy, a political analyst in Washington who watches Senate races. "If I hear one more time that someone is the next Scott Brown, I'm going to lose my mind. These things are not easily replicated." In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist, a moderate running for U.S. Senate, was quick to telephone Brown after his win. Crist's GOP rival, Marco Rubio, a conservative, had asked his supporters to send money to Brown. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is running against a field of challengers to secure the GOP nomination for Senate in his home state, which has voted overwhelming Democratic in recent years. He spoke to Brown on Thursday, when the newest senator visited Washington for the first time. "If it can happen in Massachusetts, it can happen in Illinois," Kirk said in an interview. Kirk said that he and Brown were alike, both social moderates who were fiscally conservative and strong on national security. In California, all three Republicans vying to take on Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer have pointed to Brown's win. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, who entered the race earlier this month, likened himself to Brown in a statement, saying that Campbell "was the only candidate for Senate with a proven record of fighting federal spending." Meanwhile, the campaign of Carly Fiorina, another GOP Senate candidate, said that, like Brown, Fiorina isn't a Washington insider. "Carly is the only political outsider running," said Julie Soderland, a Fiorina spokesperson. "We believe that is the distinguishing factor." The campaign of a third GOP candidate in the California race, Chuck DeVore, said it did the most to support Brown, directing its supporters to make calls for Brown prior to Election Day. In an interview, Devore said that "there is a direct line that can be drawn" between his campaign and Brown. His spokesman, Joshua Trevino, said that Brown "will be for some time the most in-demand Republican on the planet. Every office-seeker from a dog catcher in Ohio to a Senate candidate in California will want him to come out." But he said that DeVore had not asked Brown to come to California in order to boost his campaign, which lags behind both Campbell and Fiorina. In Connecticut, Republican Senate candidates Linda McMahon and Rob Simmons have been comparing themselves to Brown. McMahon says she, like Brown, is an outsider. Simmons says that, like Brown, he is a deficit hawk who is strong on national defense. As one Republican campaign aide said, "Everyone is the new Scott Brown." Even Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, has had Brown tape a message of support. McCain, who has been in the Senate for 30 years, is trying to ward off a primary challenge from the right. Brown's victory convinced Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who heads the GOP Senate election effort, to take another shot at recruiting high-profile Republicans to take on established Democrats. He has approached Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) about challenging Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh. And there is speculation that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate majority leader, could face a new Republican challenger, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, in the wake of Brown's win. Krolicki's entry could worsen Reid's already fading chances for re-election. Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senate Committee, said he expected Brown's win to help the GOP in tight races against Democrats in Colorado, New Hampshire and Ohio. "This has provided a lot of energy for the party," Walsh said. Copyright © 2010, Tribune Interactive

To: RetiredNow who wrote (68692)	1/23/2010 9:01:18 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 149317

Energy and Climate Change: C+ by Daphne Wysham / Published on Saturday, January 23, 2010 by Foreign Policy in Focus When Barack Obama was elected president, many climate activists were thrilled. With the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere reaching dangerous levels, and Democrats controlling the House and Senate, hopes couldn't have been higher among climate campaigners that Obama would act swiftly to make energy and climate change one of his top priorities. In his first few months in office, Obama did in fact take some significant actions. In the stimulus package, according to budget analysts, he provided $32.80 billion in funding for clean energy projects, $26.86 billion in energy efficiency initiatives, and $18.95 billion for green transportation, giving a total of $78.61 billion directly earmarked for green projects. In May, Obama announced tough new vehicle gas-mileage standards. The agreement requires automakers to meet a minimum fuel-efficiency standard of 35.5 miles per gallon, roughly 30 percent greater than today, by model year 2016 — four years earlier than Congress currently requires. However, compared to the Obama plan, California's clean car laws would achieve 41 percent more greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2020. Obama's "cash for clunkers" program was somewhat misguided on several fronts. Instead of encouraging U.S. consumers to buy fuel-efficient U.S. cars, and help out the ailing auto industry in Detroit, it handed a major taxpayer subsidy to mostly foreign auto manufacturers. The program also did not set the fuel efficiency standards for a car trade-in high enough, thereby allowing people to get cash for new cars that were still relatively fuel inefficient. Similarly, the stimulus dollars invested in roads, another subsidy for the more polluting automobile, could have been invested in public transportation. Obama took a hands-off approach with the climate and energy legislation as it moved through the House. Despite his campaign pledge that there would be a 100 percent auction of pollution allowances, he remained silent as the Waxman-Markey bill (officially known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) became weighted down with giveaways to polluters, including a free allocation of over 80 percent of pollution permits. Yet the budget submitted to Congress counts on raising $627 billion through a 100 percent "cap and trade" auction from 2012-19, with 20 percent dedicated to clean energy investments ($15 billion/year) and the rest funding the “Making Work Pay” tax credit for working families. The free giveaway will reduce this revenue stream and adversely affect the intended beneficiaries. An expanding cast of characters has come to recognize climate change as, among other things, a security issue. The last Bush administration budget, however, allocated $88 to its military forces for every $1 spent on climate change. The Obama administration significantly narrowed this gap to a proportion of $9 to $1. But the vast majority of the investment—87 percent--came in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). In the future, these investments will need to be made in the regular budget. Obama’s efforts in Copenhagen did break down one obstacle imposed by the U.S. Senate: In the so-called Copenhagen Accord, major developing countries (China, India, Brazil and South Africa) and the U.S. — representing roughly 50 percent of global emissions — agreed to a target of two degrees Celsius as an upper limit in the rise in global average temperature. However, in reaching this agreement outside the formal UN process, the Copenhagen Accord has given a boost to the Major Economies Forum to the detriment of multilateralism. The challenge now is to make these commitments legally binding, to strengthen them to reach a target of 350 parts per million of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, and to reaffirm and restore a multilateral approach. So, too, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s pledge to help raise $10 billion per year in climate adaptation and mitigation funds by 2012, and $100 billion per year by 2020 (as noted in the Copenhagen Accord), is ambitious but open to criticism. While the United States is at least rhetorically supporting a significant cash infusion to a global climate fund, critical in building trust with developing countries, the U.S. contribution has yet to be put on the table. The challenge remains: to push the Obama administration to support an adequate and unconditional U.S. contribution beyond existing development aid spending, to shift the fund’s sourcing from carbon markets to a financial transaction tax and other mechanisms, and to house the new body in the United Nations and not the World Bank. *Daphne Wysham co-directs the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

To: RetiredNow who wrote (68692)	1/24/2010 1:24:25 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

More (Steve) Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, Jobs ______________________________________________________________ By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Op-Ed Columnist The New York Times January 24, 2010 The most striking feature of Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency was the amazing, young, Internet-enabled, grass-roots movement he mobilized to get elected. The most striking feature of Obama’s presidency a year later is how thoroughly that movement has disappeared. In part, it disappeared because the Obama team let it disappear, as Obama moved to pass what was necessary — the economic stimulus — and what he aspired to — health care — by exclusively playing inside baseball with Congress. The president seems to have thought that his majorities in the Senate and the House were so big that he never really had to mobilize “the people” to drive his agenda. Obama turned all his supporters into spectators of The Harry and Nancy Show. And, at the same time, that grass-roots movement went dormant on its own, apparently thinking that just getting the first African-American elected as president was the moon shot of this generation, and nothing more was necessary. Well, here’s my free advice to Obama, post-Massachusetts. If you think that the right response is to unleash a populist backlash against bankers, you’re wrong. Please, please re-regulate the banks in a smart way. But remember: in the long run, Americans don’t rally to angry politicians. They do not bring out the best in us. We rally to inspirational, hopeful ones. They bring out the best in us. And right now we need to be at our best. Obama should launch his own moon shot. What the country needs most now is not more government stimulus, but more stimulation. We need to get millions of American kids, not just the geniuses, excited about innovation and entrepreneurship again. We need to make 2010 what Obama should have made 2009: the year of innovation, the year of making our pie bigger, the year of “Start-Up America.” Obama should make the centerpiece of his presidency mobilizing a million new start-up companies that won’t just give us temporary highway jobs, but lasting good jobs that keep America on the cutting edge. The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things, is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things. Without inventing more new products and services that make people more productive, healthier or entertained — that we can sell around the world — we’ll never be able to afford the health care our people need, let alone pay off our debts. Obama should bring together the country’s leading innovators and ask them: “What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over” — and make that his No. 1 priority. Inspiring, reviving and empowering Start-up America is his moon shot. And to reignite his youth movement, he should make sure every American kid knows about two programs that he has already endorsed: The first is National Lab Day. Introduced last November by a coalition of educators and science and engineering associations, Lab Day aims to inspire a wave of future innovators, by pairing veteran scientists and engineers with students in grades K-12 to inspire thousands of hands-on science projects around the country. Any teacher in America, explains the entrepreneur Jack Hidary, the chairman of N.L.D., can go to the Web site NationalLabDay.org and enter the science project he or she is interested in teaching, or get an idea for one. N.L.D. will match teachers with volunteer scientists and engineers in their areas for mentoring. “As soon as you have a match, the scientists and the students communicate directly or via Skype and collaborate on a project,” said Hidary. “We have a class in Chicago asking for civil engineers to teach them how to build a bridge. In Idaho, a class is asking for a scientist to help them build a working river delta inside their classroom.” The president should also vow to bring the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, or NFTE, to every low-income neighborhood in America. NFTE works with middle- and high-school teachers to help them teach entrepreneurship. The centerpiece of its program is a national contest for start-ups with 24,000 kids participating. Each student has to invent a product or service, write up a business plan and then do it. NFTE (www.NFTE.com) works only in low-income areas, so many of these new entrepreneurs are minority kids. In November, a documentary movie — “Ten9Eight” — was released that tracked a dozen students all the way through to the finals of the NFTE competition. Obama should arrange for this movie to be shown in every classroom in America. It is the most inspirational, heartwarming film you will ever see. You can obtain details about it at www.ten9eight.com. This year’s three finalists, said Amy Rosen, the chief executive of NFTE, “were an immigrant’s son who took a class from H&R Block and invented a company to do tax returns for high school students, a young woman who taught herself how to sew and designed custom-made dresses, and the winner was an African-American boy who manufactured socially meaningful T-shirts.” You want more good jobs, spawn more Steve Jobs. Obama should have focused on that from Day 1. He must focus on that for Year 2. Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company