Senate Democrats Fight For Veterans' Employment

Senate Democrats Wednesday championed a bill to put veterans back to work, as the veteran unemployment rate reached 12.1 percent in October.

“These men and women, who have served our country, literally put their lives on the line, endured many, many long periods of separation from their families in order to protect our country - but the problem right now is that these veterans have a higher unemployment rate than our civilian population,” Kagan said.

Because North Carolina has the third largest military footprint in the country, this is an especially pressing issue for Kagan’s constituents.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) echoed Kagan’s sentiments and touted veterans skills and qualification that could benefit employers.

“These are individuals that possess enormous capability - great skills, the ability to complete very difficult assignments under the most excruciating pressure,” Casey said during a conference call with reporters. “Also that they have a discipline and a work ethic and a focus that you can rarely find in a broad cross-section of workers.”

Over the next two days, the Senate will look at the component of President Obama’s “American Jobs Act” aimed at spurring veterans’ employment growth.

Such a bill will provide a tax credit of up to $5,600 for hiring veterans and up to $9,600 for hiring wounded warriors. The bill will also implement a transition assistance program that will facilitate workshops for veterans meant to emphasize their skills that can be taken into civilian life.

Attached to this bill is another bill that Kagan is supportive of that will repeal the requirement that federal, state and local governments withhold three percent of federal contracts to ensure no outstanding tax links will be associated with that contract.

“If you withhold three percent out of a small business contract with the federal government, that will definitely have a significant impact on the cash flow to the small businesses,” Kagan explained.

While Veteran’s Day is only two days away, Kagan expressed hope that this bill will be passed by a bipartisan vote in time for the holiday.

“As we pause to honor our veterans and reflect on their sacrifices - we will do that on Friday- but getting them back to work truly needs to be a priority 365 days a year,” Kagan concluded. “There isn’t one veteran who should be standing in an unemployment line and I am going to fight for their jobs and their families just like they fought fought for our family and our freedom.”

Unemployment high in March, Officials say

By Michael Ruhl, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

A day after President Barack Obama's budget was passed by a Congress boiling with partisanship, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing unemployment at its highest since 1983. There are now 13.2 million Americans out of work.

The pouring rain in Washington mirrored the sobered mood in the room, as the Joint Economic Committee heard the testimony of Keith Hall, the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

March was one of the worst Months on record for unemployment, and when asked outright, Hall told the committee that there were no "bright spots" in the report.

National unemployment climbed to 8.5 percent in March, rising from the level of 8.1 percent in February and 7.6 percent in January.

Hall said that two-thirds of the job loss has happened in the past 5 months. Every state is in recession for the first time in 30 years, according to Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).

Official unemployment numbers do not encompass underemployed Americans or those who have officially left the workforce. It is reported that 16 percent of the country is out of work or underemployed. One in four of those unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, and of those, half have been looking for work for over a year, Hall said.

Maloney highlighted that last month, 8,000 jobs were lost in the news publishing industry. Those losses total 70,000 job cuts since Dec. 2007, Hall said, adding that most job losses have been see in the manufacturing, construction, and temporary services industries. The only area to see any growth in March was the Healthcare industry, Hall said.

Ranking Committee member Senator Sam Brownback (R-KA) noted that the impact of the ongoing recession was not severe for almost a year after it began in December 2007. Brownback attributed recent dramatic jumps in job losses over the past five months to the lockup in the credit markets and the government bailouts that followed.

The Federal Reserve believes that unemployment will peak at 8.8 percent this year, but Ranking House Committee Member Kevin Brady (R-TX) said that the unemployment rate is already higher than what the administration anticipated for 2009. Brady said that the Obama Administration's "optimistic assumptions" would not get the country out of its current mess.

President Obama’s Economic Stimulus package was passed by Congress earlier this year, and saw an unprecedented amount of money placed into public works meant to put people back to work. Obama has pledged the legislation will save or create three to four million jobs over the next two years.

Read the report here: Bureau of Labor Statistics Report

Obama's new strategy will leave Iraq to be responsible

by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service

By August 31, 2010 the U.S. combat mission in Iraq will end.

Today at a Press Conference held at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, President Obama addressed his new strategy to end the war in Iraq.

President Obama said that his new strategy would end the war by working on transitioning Iraqis to full responsibility. “To achieve that goal, we will work to promote an Iraqi government that is just, representative, and accountable, and that provides neither support nor safe-haven to terrorists...America’s men and women in uniform, so many of you, fought block by block, province by province, year after year, to give the Iraqis this chance to choose a better future. Now, we must ask the Iraqi people to seize it.”

The first part of Obama’s strategy is to responsibly remove our combat brigades from Iraq. “As we carry out this drawdown, my highest priority will be the safety and security of our troops and civilians in Iraq.” Obama said that once the U.S. has removed combat brigades the next mission is to change from combat to supporting the Iraqi government and its security forces. “As I have long said, we will retain a transitional force to carry out three distinct functions: training, equipping, and advising Iraqi security forces as they remain non sectarian; conducting targeted counter-terrorism missions; and protecting our ongoing civilian and military efforts within Iraq.”

The second part of the strategy is to sustain diplomacy between U.S. and Iraq but Obama stated that since Iraq is a sovereign country, America cannot, and should not, take their place. “Diplomacy and assistance is also required to help the millions of displaced Iraqis. These men, women and children are a living consequence of this war and a challenge to stability in the region, and they must become a part of Iraq’s reconciliation and recovery.”

The third part of the strategy would be to help establish productive and normalized relationships with the Middle East region. “Going forward, the United States will pursue principled and sustained engagement with all of the nations in the region, and that will include Iran and Syria.”

Obama also spoke about working on the United States’ relationship with Iraq as well. “Our nations have known difficult times together. But ours is a bond forged by shared bloodshed, and countless friendships among our people. We Americans have offered our most precious resource, our young men and women, to work with you to rebuild what was destroyed by despotism...The United States pursues no claim on your territory or your resources...Going forward we can build a lasting relationship founded upon mutual interests and mutual respect as Iraq takes its rightful place in the community of nations.”

Obama went on to honor U.S. soldiers for their sacrifice and talked about implementing a 21st century GI Bill, and identifying and treating wounds of the war like post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury that many soldiers endure after. “Your sacrifice should challenge all of us, every single American, to ask what we can do to be better citizens.”

With change comes reaction: Immigrants in the US

by Christina Lovato, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service


Because there is an increasing number of immigrants moving into U.S.
suburban neighborhoods there comes change. At a discussion on
“Immigration, Politics and Local Responses” immigration experts shared
their research from all around the United States on how local
residents reacted to the growing rate of immigrants moving into their
neighborhoods.

Angeles Ortega-Moore, the Chief Executive Officer of the Latin
American Coalition (LAC), said that at first LAC was a cultural
organization for Latinos in North Carolina but as the immigrant
population grew they had to change their programming. “No longer we
were doing Pasofino and horse shows and things like that. We started
to do English as a second language, how do we help people applying for
their driving licenses...We became really fully a social service
organization.” she said.

Audrey Singer, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy
Program shared her research on immigration in Prince William County,
Virginia, and said that changes in the suburban neighborhoods got
residents frustrated and in March 2007 some of them started a “Help
save Manassas” group, whose stated goal was, “To reduce the number of
illegal aliens living in our community.” That led to two resolutions
that directed police to ascertain a person’s legal status only when
they had probable cause to believe the person was illegally present
and to restrict unauthorized immigrants from receiving business
licenses and participating in eight social service programs. From her
research, Singer recommended that leaders be more organized when
creating new policies. “Facts are important for policy making...and
officials should communicate policy changes clearly. Many of the
residents were confused by the new policies...and many in the
immigrant community were fearful about how the new policies would
affect them.”

Obama-Biden campaign leads with early voters

The Obama-Biden campaign today announced a very confident and committed position in the presidential election. With several million volunteers around the country. the Obama-Biden campaign manager, David Plouffe, said “we like what we’re seeing in all the states with the early vote.”

Today the campaign released two 30 second TV ads in Arizona, North Dakota and Georgia. Plouffe said that even though the McCain-Palin campaign has criticized the Obama-Biden campaign about heavy advertising, “the McCain spending levels this week have been quite high. In the Tampa market, they’re spending over 5,000 points of television, which may be the most amount of television ever bought in a political race.”

Through advertising, voter contact, and resources, Plouffe said he feels the Obama-Biden campaign is doing everything they need to do in the swing-states. Plouffe also said the campaign is organizing polling information at popular locations that youths hang out at in the swing states.

Plouffe said that in the tossup state of Nevada, 43% of democrats voting early are new or sporadic. In North Carolina, 19% of democrats voting early never voted in an election before. In Florida, 1/4 of sporadic voting democrats have voted early. Plouffe said the campaign is putting special focus on voters who recently committed to Obama, because they’re known as “sticky” and still vulnerable to vote for McCain. Even though the campaign feels confident in their state of the race, Plouffe said this does not take away from “the fierce urgency of trying to win Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Florida, and Ohio.”