Posts Tagged Washington DC
Free Wood Post – After Oil Is Discovered Under Sesame Street, Mitt Romney Calls For As Much Funding As Needed
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Free Wood Post, Humor/Parody on October 4, 2012
After Oil Is Discovered Under Sesame Street, Mitt Romney Calls For As Much Funding As Needed
October 3, 2012
By Sarah Wood
In a startling discovery, in the midst of cleaning out his trash can Oscar the Grouch dug a little too deep and to his delight became covered in crude oil. “It just started spewing up everywhere. I was covered in the stuff… filthy, it was awesome. I didn’t want to tell anyone, but I figured I should let someone know what I found. I found a passerby who told me it was oil, and I thought, golly this could save Sesame Street.”
Later in the day Oscar told Big Bird who quickly phoned Washington DC letting them know of the natural petroleum reserve discovered beneath 123 Sesame Street. President Obama wants to make sure the dignity and quality of life on the famous street is preserved and protected, while Republicans couldn’t phone their oil buddies fast enough to get first dibs.
When news of the oil discovery reached Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney he stated, “well that’s just fantastic. We should get in there right away. This is American oil and there’s nothing better than that. We should call in the big dogs, those best in the business to drill, and help them get that oil out of the ground for American consumption.” When asked if he was in favor of the government subsidizing the oil project he said, “Of course! There’s no time to lose. We need to get what we can get when we can get it.” When asked if this could be considered picking winners and losers he said, “there are no winners and losers with oil, only winners. Sesame Street may have saved the day.” When approached with his comments about shutting Sesame Street down to save pennies within the national budget Romney replied, “that was then, this is now. We need to pump as much money as needed into Sesame Street to benefit the nation as a whole. Domestic oil is what we need, and domestic oil is what they have.”
Options are still being weighed within the oil industry, the federal government, and the local government surrounding Sesame Street. As soon as a decision is made, Free Wood Post will be first on the scene to give you details of the deal as they are laid out.
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Congress Raises Livestock Minimum Wage To $6.50 Per Hour | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Humor/Parody, The Onion on July 4, 2012
Congress Raises Livestock Minimum Wage To $6.50 Per Hour
WASHINGTON—In response to mounting pressures from domesticated farm animals, Congress voted Monday to raise the minimum wage for livestock to $6.50 an hour. “A lot of these animals are on their hooves all day pulling 10-hour shifts down at the slaughterhouse,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who co-sponsored the first livestock minimum-wage increase since 1993. “This bill ensures sheep, goats, chickens, and cows a fair wage, and will allow them to continue putting corn and oats in the trough. The costs of barns, pens, and pastureland have increased—why shouldn’t their paychecks?” President Obama said he would sign the bill even though it did not include the tougher regulations he had pushed for to discourage gender-based discrimination in the farmyard.
Congress Raises Livestock Minimum Wage To $6.50 Per Hour | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source.
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D.C. mayor visiting China to tap investors – The Washington Post
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Banking, China, Economy, Foreign Affairs on June 23, 2012
D.C. mayor visiting China to tap investors
Ricky Carioti/WASHINGTON POST - In recent months, D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray and administration officials have had several meetings about possibly funding a streetcar system.
By ,
In his first overseas trip as mayor, Gray (D) is looking to build on what he sees as China’s growing interest in the nation’s capital, as that country’s wealthy investors look to park large amounts of money in U.S. real estate.
Gray, who will be accompanied by some of the District’s biggest names in construction, is counting on Chinese investment to accelerate the redevelopment of the Southwest Waterfront, McMillan Reservoir, the former Walter Reed Hospital campus, the O Street Market and the grounds of St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast Washington.
The trip, which includes the opening of the city’s first permanent overseas office, comes as Gray is in talks with Chinese financiers about funding the city’s planned $1.5 billion streetcar network.
“It’s where it’s happening,” Gray said of China. “What China has done internally for itself is pretty phenomenal. . . . And we are a tremendously low-risk investment.”
Gray’s trip comes at a delicate time for the District government, after Kwame R. Brown’s resignation as D.C. Council chairman and in the midst of a continuing federal investigation into the mayor’s 2010 campaign. In recent days, there has been speculation that Gray also could be forced to leave office early because of the federal probe.
But in an interview with The Washington Post on Friday, Gray said there is “no truth” to rumors that he might resign this summer.
“No truth to that, unless something’s going on in my head that I don’t know about,” Gray said. “I came to do certain things, and I am focused on those things.”
The District continues to add an estimated 1,000 residents per month and attract new investment, despite the controversy and scandal in the John A. Wilson Building. But shovel-ready residential and retail projects outstrip available domestic funding, causing developers and D.C. officials to look overseas for an infusion of cash and credit.
Last year, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar invested more than $700 million to break ground on City Center DC, a downtown neighborhood being created on the site of the former D.C. Convention Center.
On Thursday, Gray toured the project with Qatari officials, including Ambassador Mohamed Bin Abdulla Al-Rumaihi. Gray said Qatari officials also expressed interest in financing a hotel on the site.
Gray said the District’s success in securing a cash deal for the City Center project has helped focus efforts to attract more investment from China, which is experiencing a boom in personal wealth.
“When Qatar decided to invest in City Center, that was really a wake-up call, not just to the District but to large-scale development teams looking to expand their scope in looking for equity,” said Jose Sousa, a spokesman for the deputy mayor for planning and economic development.
Administration officials note that China, unlike Qatar, does not have a state sovereign wealth fund. Instead, the District will try to persuade Chinese banks and individuals to invest more cash in the city.
Officials expect to announce next week that several Chinese entrepreneurs will be investing as much as $40 million in the second phase of the O Street Market, a 1 million-square-foot mixed-use retail and residential project in Shaw. In exchange, the 80 investors will receive EB-5 visas to move to the United States, officials said. Gray said he hopes to persuade more foreign business executives to take advantage of the federal immigration program by investing in the District.
“Worldwide, Washington, D.C., is seen as one of the premier investment locations,” said Richard Lake, a delegation member and president of Roadside Development, which is overseeing the O Street project. “A lot of money is in flight away from risk and looking for safe harbor, and Washington is pretty stable.”
But Gray’s planned meeting with officials from the Export-Import Bank of China could one day prove to have the most far-reaching consequences for the District.
In recent months, Gray and administration officials have had several meetings with officials from the bank in the District about possibly funding the streetcar system.
Gray said that the talks are preliminary but that he senses that the bank might be interested in funding all or part of the project in exchange for collecting ridership profits. Without foreign investment, Gray said, it would take two decades for the District to complete the project, because the city is nearing its debt cap.
“There are a lot of details that would have to be worked out,” Gray said. “But there is certainly interest in the streetcar system.”
When asked about a potential for congressional or public backlash about so much Chinese investment in the District, Gray said, “They are already heavily invested in America.”
“They are not heavily invested in the District of Columbia,” he said. “We are expanding our own horizons here and maybe moving some projects along more quickly.”
D.C. mayor visiting China to tap investors – The Washington Post.
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Free Wood Post – House Calls for Additional Troops to Fight War on Women
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Free Wood Post, Humor/Parody on June 22, 2012
House Calls for Additional Troops to Fight War on Women
June 21, 2012
This week the House approved a measure to allocate additional troops to fight the war on women.
The troops are expected to be deployed in areas of particular volatility within the borders of the United States, particularly those states that are currently in the process of passing legislation restricting abortion, which has reportedly sparked anger among female citizens.
Incensed by relentless budget cutbacks being made to Planned Parenthood across the country, women have also been holding vigorous demonstrations in city centers in recent weeks. Lawmakers hope that the increased military presence will help male citizens to feel safe and in rightfully in control again.
Troops will also be sent to Washington DC, where they are expected to quash rebellion in the ranks of female representatives, some of whom have become, in the words of Senator John Kyl of Arizona, “mighty uppity, in recent months.” Kyl noted that many female legislators appear to be under the impression that their representation in Congress was equal to that of men.
“They really need to get the message that this is not the case,” he told reporters. “I’m just saying, there’s a reason they get paid less. That’s not an accident.”
Republican Speaker John Boehner noted that while he strongly supported the authorization to add additional troops, he felt the legislation did not go far enough.
“This surge was long overdue,” he said during a press conference early this week. “But we are concerned that many women won’t take the hint just from an increased presence of aggressive armed forces. They need to understand definitively that this sort of insurrection is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”
Boehner added that if this current period of female unrest continues, “swift and decisive action,” would be taken by the United States government. The speaker refused to comment when asked for details, although he did confirm, when pressed, that “every option is on the table.”
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Has the Media Given Up on Occupy Coverage? | Double Dip Politics
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Editorial, Employment, Finance, Opinion, Social, Society on December 14, 2011
BY ANNABEL LEE
Quick, think of the last few times you’ve seen or heard about the Occupy Movements on national television. What did you come up with? Chances are, it was either the police raiding an encampment or a protestor being injured in some way by police clearing the encampments or crowds. It seems that the novelty of the movement has worn off, and the media has grown tired of reporting on a boring story. Some of the recent stories that have come out of the Occupy camps:
· Protestors in Seattle, including an 84-year-old woman, are pepper sprayed by police – 16 Nov
· Protestors at UC Davis pepper sprayed despite sitting quietly on the ground - 22 Nov
· Occupy Wall Street kicked from their gathering place and their library was taken – 15 Nov
Those are some of the most recent, national stories coming from the Occupy Movement. For the most part, it appears to be an afterthought. Yes, there are some local stations and papers that are reporting on the movement as it continues to move and take shape. Yes, there are many blogs and websites tracking the events. This is about the national media.
In Baltimore, there is Occupy Baltimore. Hardly anything has been heard from them, even on the local news. In Washington DC, the news rarely talks about Occupy DC unless there’s a death or crime committed and reported that can be sensationalized. We barely hear anything from the other movements across the nation on our local news.
Granted, in California, the Sacramento Bee and SF Gate have both been providing coverage to the movement. The national media seems to be ignoring the story unless there is something to sensationalize.
The most recent story nationally covered? The Washington Post released a story online this morning looking at Occupy movements and how they missed their window. Thanks to the narrative of the Republican candidates, the majority of Americans think that big government is the problem, not big business. This has increased since the start of the Occupy movements. You can read the story HERE.
Other stories that have trickled through talk about the cold weather reducing the number of protestors in areas. Occupy Oakland was believed to have shrunk in size since the raids. The fewer numbers protesting the ports in the Bay Area showed people losing interest.
Meanwhile, these stories are just what big business, Republicans and the Tea Party want to hear. They want to hear that the media doesn’t care about the Occupy protestors. They want the movement to disappear, to let them have their stage back. They’ve learned a lesson from these events on how to sway the public. Perhaps the furor that had been released by the Occupy movement will influence politicians, but it’s highly unlikely. Money talks in politics. The Tea Party has it. Big Business has it. Occupy doesn’t have anywhere near the amount that these other groups do.
Yes, Occupy has brought some major problems to light. They have shined a light on all the games, the tricks, the facts. They forced the media to change their reporting for a few months. Sadly, it looks like the leash has been pulled on the reporters, that the big business print and broadcast media companies said no more. Unless it will sell a paper or get viewers to watch for ad revenue, there’s no point, in their eyes.
This isn’t to say that the movement has lost steam. This is not about the movement losing relevance or credibility. The movement isn’t dead. The message won’t go away. Even if it appears that the media’s interest has. The media reports what they’re told by their superiors, many of which are the same people being railed against by the Occupy Movements.
Even after the media dries up, even after people move from the streets to the internet, the movement will continue and grow. The message is true, the facts are supporting the protestors. Even if you won’t hear that on the national media stations.
Has the Media Given Up on Occupy Coverage? | Double Dip Politics.
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The #Occupy Movement Needs To Converge On Washington With Specific Grievances – National Political Buzz | Examiner.com
Posted by Michael B. Calyn in Open Rant Forum, Opinion, Social, Society, Wall Street on October 31, 2011
Glenn Osrin
October 30, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street movement has accomplished a great deal in just over two months. It has given voice to the simmering undercurrent of down-trodden disgust felt by Americans of every flavor, age, religion and social status. No longer are the 99%er’s sitting on their hands in bars and coffee shops and unemployment lines reading about our economic problems, they are protesting in ever larger numbers, trying to do something about the gaping hole in the side of Titanic America’s spirit.
Indeed, what began as a small protest in Zuccati Park in New York’s financial district has spread like a wildfire accelerated by steroidal Red Bull.
It’s given us call outs, shout outs, General Assemblies, communal living, pitched tents and curious celebrities and onlookers; and, it’s given the world the arrests by the New York Police on the Brooklyn Bridge, the infamous tear gas attack on four penned in women in downtown New York, and now even a critical injury to Iraq War Veteran Scott Olsen courtesy of the Oakland Police.
Yet what remains sorely lacking in this burgeoning movement is a cohesive message; the absence of which seems driven largely by the Occupy philosophy that the movement is of the People and should not be co-opted by formal leadership or political parties.
More troubling still is that as the numbers of protests grow in cities and towns all across the U.S. and the world, they exist in a specific municipality or geographic region where the media may or may not cover their story; or, the reasons for protest differ markedly.
Thus, the message doesn’t necessarily get to the right people, and the Occupy discontent continues to morph from anger at Wall Street to joblessness to political corruption to no jobs for college graduates, ad nauseum.
With winter fast approaching, the Occupy collective brain-trust needs to do two key things before the worst of Mother Nature buries them in snow and freezing temperatures and surely thins their ranks.
First, a core leadership needs to emerge that can serve as the locus of control or brain trust of the movement, capable of harnessing the individual efforts of all of the groups and compelling them all to converge on the Mall in Washington, D.C. to make their points over 500,000 people strong.
Perhaps even take things a step further and coordinate a National Strike, using the power of social networking like Twitter and Facebook the way the Egyptian people did to mushroom their protests in Tahrir Square.
Second, Occupy could take protests from big-city sit-ins to right outside the front doors of Congressional leadership in Washington, D.C. where they can’t be ignored or avoided by the elected officials not showing up for work or ducking into underground garages or back entrances.
If history has proven anything, it’s that the protests that ended the Viet Nam War or the marches that won civil rights would have accomplished less over a long period of time had they remained splintered in individual fiefdoms of disconnection. One need simply imagine the majesty, spectacle, and power of half a million or more Occupiers showing up together from around the nation in Washington, D.C., digging in and not leaving until politicians on both sides acknowledge they exist and take up their cause.
That said, Occupy needs to accept that while the overall gist of the movement is that 1% of the people and corporations in this country hold all the cards financially and hold the rest of the 99%er’s hostage, each protest in every locale may have different specific goals and needs within that framework.
For example, Wisconsin may be all about protesting the GOP assault on unions while Florida might be all about protesting immigration reform. Cleveland may want first-responders to be Priority One while Des Moines may demand a consortium of ethanol producers subsidize affordable energy initiatives in industries other than corn.
Even the Tea Party, for all their ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ bravado found a way to bring all the individual branches of the party together in a loosely defined amalgamation of purpose: specifically, their core value agendas hew not so coincidentally to the GOP side of the slate and by doing so the movement uses the party and the party uses the movement to mutual gain.
No one is saying that Occupy has to sell their souls to politicians on either side. The fact of the matter is, while the movement has majority support of most Americans, support from major labor unions, the eyes of the media and the full attention of the American people, Occupy needs to rise to the challenge of the moment and pull it all together as one, fighting for the common purpose of us all.
It’s time for the movement to take it up a notch and mature from scintillating television and rapid fire social networking updates to a sustained and clear roadmap for change that everyone can believe and participate in.
Without that, Occupy runs a very real risk of losing momentum and being marginalized by bad weather and the splintered framework of directionless demands.
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- The Occupy movement and the wisdom of non-violence (dailykos.com)
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- Why the Occupy Movement Will Succeed…..By Jake Olzen, From Nation of Change (truthnreality.wordpress.com)
- What Would Jesus Occupy? (the1955hudson.com)
- Would Jesus Occupy Wall Street? (dangerousminds.net)
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