Yes, I realize that the White House sets policy, but to the extent that our next Secretary of State, John Kerry, can exert his influence to push for forceful action on global warming, that’s a great thing. The bottom line is this: global warming is by FAR the most important issue facing humanity, including the United States, right now. Despite disinformation to the contrary, we’re talking 10 degrees Fahrenheit warming, which would be utterly catastrophic, if we don’t start slashing greenhouse gas emissions ASAP. That’s why it should go without saying that we need people like John Kerry in positions of power to DO something about this dire situation right away. Plus, as an added bonus, Kerry’s strong on pretty much every other issue most of us care about. So, great choice by President Obama, even if took a meandering/winding path to come to fruition.

P.S. Kerry’s also been a big proponent of clean energy, which hopefully means he’ll do what he can to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from being built.

Richmond, VA – Democratic Party of Virginia Chair Charniele Herring released the following statement today responding to increasing rhetoric from Governor Bob McDonnell, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Virginia Republicans suggesting arming Virginia teachers to keep schools safe:

“As we continue to reflect on the tragic shootings in Newtown, Connecticut and mourn the losses of the children and teachers who died in that senseless event, it is critical that we consider whether we are doing enough to keep our schools, students and teachers safe.

“This week Governor Bob McDonnell, Attorney Ken Cuccinelli and several Virginia legislators including Delegate Bob Marshall and Senator Dick Black have suggested training and arming Virginia teachers in response to this latest tragedy. That is the wrong approach.

“The role of Virginia teachers is to teach. The role of keeping our communities, including our schools, safe belongs to dedicated and hard working police officers and public safety officials across the Commonwealth who have been trained to respond to emergency situations.

“It is critical for elected leaders to do everything in our power to keep those we serve safe – that means acting in the best interest of our communities, not out of a particular political agenda. Virginians deserve a measured and mainstream plan to keep schools safe, not a rash response that blindly puts more guns in our schools, especially without working with our public safety professionals to ensure effective programs are implemented and funded.”  

Washington, DC – Congressman Jim Moran, Northern Virginia Democrat, today introduced the “NRA Members’ Gun Safety Act” to strengthen vulnerabilities in our gun safety laws. The bill would implement five commonsense gun safety reforms that polling shows are supported by at least 63 percent of NRA members.

“The NRA as an organization is out of step with its membership on many commonsense gun safety measures. Polling shows nearly two-thirds of NRA members support the five simple ways to improve gun safety included in this bill,” Moran said. “The NRA’s absolutist position on gun issues is an impediment to the safety and security of the public. This legislation is designed to highlight that schism, offering popular proposals even NRA members support to prevent more gun-related tragedies.”  

Research by Republican pollster Frank Luntz shows the five gun safety reforms in this legislation received overwhelming support from both gun owners and NRA members. The provisions, several of which are drawn from gun safety legislation introduced by democratic lawmakers, also enjoy support from gun safety advocates.

Specifically, the popular provisions in the legislation would:

– Require background checks for every gun purchase (74% NRA member support);

– Require background checks on gun shop employees  (79% NRA member support);

– Prohibit individuals on the terrorist watch list from purchasing firearms (71% NRA member support);

– Require gun owners to report to police when their guns are lost or stolen (64% NRA member supports); and

– Establish minimum standards for concealed carry permits (63-75% NRA member support for each standard)

Moran continued: “The NRA has an opportunity to be proactive in the face of the Newtown tragedy, playing a constructive role in protecting the public in ways that do not undermine the 2nd Amendment in the eyes of their own membership.”

Currently, there are between 250 million and 300 million guns estimated to be owned by Americans. Each year, approximately 100,000 people in America are shot with a gun, and over 10,000 are murdered using a firearm. According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in 2008 and 2009, 5,740 children – “one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 55 every week for two years” – were killed by guns.

To read a fact sheet, please visit: http://moran.house.gov/sites/m…

To read Moran’s OpEd in the Huffington Post, please visit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

To read the bill, please visit: http://moran.house.gov/sites/m…

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100 Rally in Richmond to Demand Congressman Cantor Put Middle Class Before Millionaires

Crowd spoke in opposition to so-called “Plan B” proposal before the House for vote today

Richmond – Approximately 100 citizens gathered today in Kanawha Plaza in downtown Richmond to deliver a simple message to Congressman Eric Cantor: a deal that puts the middle class before millionaires is a bad deal for Virginia. As the US House of Representatives prepared to vote on a so-called “Plan B” proposal that would give tax cuts to the wealthy at the expense of working families, Central Virginians spoke out.

Kevin Wilson, a local small business owner, spoke to the crowd about the impact increasing middle class taxes would have on his business. “Right now our economic recovery is tenuous. Raising taxes on middle class families would have a devastating affect on my small business. I think it’s fair to ask the wealthy to pay a little more so we can all grow and prosper together.”

If Congress fails to act by the end of the year, the average middle class family will see their taxes go up by over $2,000. Since the election, conservatives under Eric Cantor’s leadership and repeatedly refused to let the House of Representatives vote on the Middle Class Tax Cut Act, which would extend tax cuts for 98% of Americans and 97% of small business.

More below.

“We have to make a choice about who we are,” said local Richmond-area resident Adria Scharf. “Is our country a land in which prosperity and resources are broadly shared? In which the economy and the tax code benefit working people?  The federal budget is a reflection of our values and our choices, of who we are as a country.

Now the House will vote on a so-called “Plan B” that is a raw deal for working families. The proposal would end unemployment insurance that 2 million Americans use to subsist in between jobs. It would eliminate tax cuts that 25 million Americans need by letting the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the Opportunity Tax Credit all expire. And, it would save millionaires an average of $50,000 in taxes at the expense of important programs.

In the past month, Virginians have held rallies, town hall meetings, and house parties across Virginia in support of a fiscal cliff deal that puts the middle class before millionaires and lets the Bush tax cuts for the top two percent expire. Events have been held in Reston, Herndon, Vienna, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Richmond, Charlottesville, Staunton, Harrisonburg, Danville, and Lynchburg.

The Action is a grassroots movement of over 150 national, state and local organizations calling for the end of the Bush-era tax breaks for the richest 2 percent that have for too long shortchanged critical investments that create and sustain jobs.

With Cory Booker’s announcement that he won’t be challenging New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in 2013, but instead will look at running for U.S. Senate in 2014, any question about whether Virginia’s elections will be THE marquee races in the country next year just evaporated. At this point, we’re pretty much it. Enjoy the spotlight! 🙂

( – promoted by lowkell)

On Tuesday, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said he believes the answer to school violence may be arming teachers and principals. We know that’s the wrong answer.

Senate Democratic Leader Dick Saslaw said it best when he said, “When that does not work what’s next? Arm the students?  If teachers wanted to carry guns in order to do their day jobs, they would have become policemen.”

Giving teachers weapons and turning schools into armed camps is not the solution. Can you sign our petition telling Governor McDonnell that arming school teachers and principals is wrong? More guns in our schools is not the answer.

Sign this petition to get rid of this awful idea once and for all. With your support, we will fight for solutions that actually make a difference, like banning hundred-round magazines and getting the mentally ill the help they need.

We need to look at solutions that actually make a difference, like banning high-capacity magazines and keeping guns away from those who are mentally unstable.

Sign this petition today and tell Bob McDonnell “NO” to arming teachers and turning schools into armed camps.

( – promoted by lowkell)

by Paul Goldman

President Obama and Senator Warner are smart, Harvard lawyers. Thus, their position on a key Social Security is strangely so wrong as to make my head spin.

I don’t get it. Surely, they read the US Bureau of Labor Statistics stuff at the White House and in the Senate Office Building. In recent years, their computers have been humming to develop something called CPI-E, aimed at trying to determine the real level of inflation experienced by Americans 62 and older. This is different than the CPI- Consumer Price Index, used now as the basis for the COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) that annually adjusts social security payments upward to reflect inflation.

The President and the Senator say using the CPI isn’t an accurate measure of inflation. Instead, they want to use “chained CPI,” which is a different CPI measure and comes in somewhat lower on an annual basis due to its methodology in determining the cost of goods and services used by most Americans.

One of the great achievements by Democrats is not merely Social Security, but passing the law that helps adjust the payments for inflation. Many of the people on Social Security are elderly widows living on a very small amount of money a year — far less than members of Congress make every month when you include their benefits and pensions.

The Social Security COLA has been one of the reasons many of the elderly have not become destitute, as was the case when FDR fought to pass it in the 1930’s. Back then, it was estimated that half of the nation’s elderly – if they were lucky to live to 65, which was higher than the average life span – lived in abject poverty. It is almost impossible to overestimate the amazing vision of FDR, a man whose legend is really yet to be appreciated in my view.

 

The term “Social Security” was not Roosevelt’s; he saw the program as a way to insure the elderly had at least a little dignity in their later years. In the beginning, Social Security covered fewer than half of American workers: few women, even fewer minorities. And without the COLA, the program would not have been what it is today, one of the great progressive achievements in modern civilization.

Unfortunately, the politicians in Washington several decades ago decided the way to cover their deficit spending was to appropriate the Social Security surplus – the program had a net revenue flow of payroll taxes over payments to beneficiaries – and leave special U.S. government IOU’s in the so-called “lock box.” The amount of those IOU’s, growing into the hundreds and hundreds of billions, didn’t matter as long as the Social Security program was revenue positive. They were just pieces of paper IOUs gathering dust. But the politicians knew that at some point, the Social Security program would start becoming revenue negative as the money paid out to beneficiaries began exceeding the payroll tax revenue coming in.

In the early 1980’s, then President Ronald Reagan broke his no-tax pledge and agreed to support the largest payroll tax increase in history in order to put the program on a sounder financial footing. Democratic Senator Pat Moynihan helped convince Reagan to, in effect, save Social Security.

But as the years passed, great advances in health care have expanded the average life span further and faster than had been anticipated. Health care costs likewise have grown far faster than the average index in consumer prices (HOLD THIS THOUGHT IN MIND BECAUSE IT WILL KEY SHORTLY IN THE DISCUSSION) due to the unique dynamics of the health care industry.

Meanwhile, as Congresses have created trillion-dollar deficits, there has been a lot of pressure to look wherever possible to reduce the costs of all government programs to make it easier to balance the general fund of the US Government, the pool of money which pays for its operations and capital investments.

HOWEVER – and this is key – Social Security is NOT SUPPORTED BY GENERAL FUND TAXES, but rather has its own dedicated revenue stream, SS taxes.

THIS IS BY FDR’S DESIGN! He intentionally rejected the use of any general fund tax money to support Social Security, opting instead for a payroll tax system to cover the program at 100%. In doing this, he rejected the dominant model at the time, which had been developed by the Germans in the 1880’s. Their model, which used a combination of general fund taxation and special payroll type of taxation, had been a breakthrough achievement against the Social Darwinism of the time.

FDR feared that if Social Security was seen as funded in any way by general taxation – as opposed to 100% contribution by employees (the employer share was seen then and now as really monies that would otherwise have gone to an employee raise) – then future generations of politicians would raid the funds.

FAST FORWARD to the present. As a matter of law and Democratic history, Social Security should NOT BE PART IN ANY WAY of “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Why? Because Social Security de jure doesn’t contribute to the deficit in any way, shape or form.

BUT: Because the government used all those prior surpluses to hide the true size of its operational deficit, it now has to redeem all those IOU’s from this same general fund.

THUS: If they can figure out a seemingly “fair” way to reduce Social Security benefits, this de facto helps Washington avoid the price of its prior recklessness by reducing the amount it has to pay each year to cover its wasting the Social Security surplus. Ergo, the claim that using the “chained consumer price index” is a fairer measure of measuring real inflation, and thus a fairer basis for the Social Security COLA.

Senator Warner has made this part of his “Gang of Eight” talks, and now the President is saying the same thing They claim that the regular CPI used today is not as accurate a measure of real inflation as the chained CPI. This is true, but…

THE PRESIDENT AND THE SENATOR MAKE ONE BIG MISTAKE. If their goal is to have a “fairer” measure of inflation for the elderly, then why aren’t they calling for the use of the CPI-E measure created specifically to measure consumer price inflation related to the lives of the elderly? What could be fairer? Am I to believe I am the only one to actually have read the reports on CPI-E? Hardly.

I put it to the President and the Senator: Any fairer and more accurate measure surely has to be one that measures the real world of the real people at the heart of the debate. The lives of seniors relies far more heavily on goods and services whose prices rise faster than the chained CPI the President and Senator Warner claim is fairer.

Believe me, I get it: The President and the Senator are trying to do the right thing. They have a good track record in my book. They also have to deal with the Speaker and his posse. I feel for them.

BUT: The current Social Security COLA understates, not overstates, the true inflation faced by seniors. This is a proven fact. The question is, can we make fiscally responsible and prudent improvements to Social Security and Medicare? Yes we can, and Americans will support them.

Social Security didn’t cause the “fiscal cliff”: and it should not be used as a piggy bank any longer to cover the reckless spending on too many for too long in Congress.  

Poor widows on Social Security didn’t cause the nation’s fiscal problems. They raised the children, grieved for their sons dying in war, took care of the grandkids when necessary and buried their husbands. They built America. We owe them.

Let me be honest: For the life of me, I can’t understand why Democrats are hell bent to take $50 a year from these people this year, $50 more on top of that next year, until it really adds up a generation from now. How does this make America better? I don’t get it.

The elderly poor getting a Social Security COLA adjustment that the government’s own experts KNOW understates the real level of senior inflation is not the cause of our fiscal problems.

I know it is hard to deal with Mr. Boehner’s posse. I get that. But they lost the election: and that either has consequences, or why not just get rid of the vote and be done with it?