Meet Emmett Till

Reblogged from Life Full Circle Radio:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wRfe75UdFA&feature=player_embedded

Deshaun Davis Films is currently in production on 55 Till Now. Jonah Lampkin has been chosen to play Emmett Till. Meet him...in character here.

Add your thoughts here... (optional)

20 Percent of Chickens From Supermarkets Carry Salmonella

One in five chickens sold in supermarkets carries the bug behind most cases of food poisoning. An investigation found that campylobacter and listeria have both been found in was what considered fresh chicken in major grocery retailers.

Campylobacter — a bacterium blamed for more than 370,000 food poisoning cases a year — can be killed by cooking chicken properly and disinfecting contaminated areas.
Consumer watchdog Which? tested 192 samples of whole chickens and chicken portions — standard, free range and organic from Aldi, Asda, The Co-operative, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose in March.

It found bacterial contamination in samples from each retailer.

Which? stressed the study was a ‘snapshot’ as it tested each retailer on two days in different locations and so could not definitively conclude that chicken from one was better than that from another.

But the results are an improvement on 2009, when the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in the UK found 65 percent of fresh chickens it tested were contaminated with campylobacter at the point of sale.

Which? repeated advice not to wash raw chicken as it could splash the bacteria on to the sink, worktops or nearby dishes, increasing the risk of cross-contamination.

Which? executive director Richard Lloyd said: ‘While the situation is improving, it is still unacceptable that one in five chickens we tested was found to be contaminated with campylobacter.

Read Entire Article HERE

Miami-Dade Fire Captain On Zimmerman Charges

Source: Joy-Ann Reid / theGrio

The Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue Department is investigating a Facebook post by one of its captains that seems to blame the shooting death of Trayvon Martin on the “shi*tbag parents” of “our urban youth,” and the “ghetto hoodie look” of young black men like Martin.

The entry was posted on the personal Facebook page of Miami-Dade fire captain Brian Beckmann. The Facebook page bears the same profile picture as the entry, which appears to have been deleted, but which was captured in a screengrab sent to theGrio.

The page’s profile entry lists Metro-Dade Firefighters Local 1403.

The entry appears to have been created on Wednesday, the night State Attorney Angela Corey announced she would file second degree murder charges against George Zimmerman over Martin’s shooting death.

To read this article in its entirety visit theGrio.

via Miami-Dade Fire Captain On Zimmerman Charges: Blame The Parents Of ‘Our Urban Youth’ | Roland Martin Reports.

Amazing 2pac Hologram Live At Coachella

The Black Urban Times: Tupac Hologram Live At Coachella (Full Performance).

Mass media Programming and Mind Control

“When u control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. He will find his ‘proper place’ & will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will protest until one is made for his use. His education demands it” ~ Dr. Carter G. Woodson

Video: Controlled: Deep Video Explaining How Society Is Being Programmed Like Robots, Not Human Beings!.

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/e/16711680/wshh6U922Y90606Q83Sq

Related Article:

http://unitedblackamerica.com/science-mass-mind-control/

Benefits of Meditation

(NaturalNews) Many think of meditation as a silly New Age practice or “too hippie” for their taste. Some others think it is against their religion.

In the 1970s, Swami Muktananda arrived in Santa Monica, California from India to kick off his “meditation revolution” in the USA. A young reporter asked if her rabbi would allow meditation. Muktananda responded with this question, “Does your rabbi allow you to sleep?”

Meditation is not sleep. But it is very personally subjective and doesn’t conflict with any religious dogma or belief system. It requires daily practice for optimum benefits. It’s considered better to meditate for short periods daily than long periods occasionally.

Meditation requires you sit comfortably in a restful space, close your eyes, and allow mind chatter to settle on its own without forceful intervention. It also includes focusing on your breathing while calmly witnessing your thoughts and mental imagery without attachment or aversion.

Remain relaxed, aware, and alert. Start with short sessions daily and increase durations as you get more out of your practice. Eventually you’ll come to enjoy the tranquility and clarity of a quiet mind. This takes steady, patient practice.

Recently, medical researchers have been exploring the physiological and psychological benefits of daily meditation.

Research on meditation proves health benefits

(1) Heart health: Meditation leads to calmness and better stress management. One report from England claims it cuts heart disease in half. The study was done on people with a history of heart health problems. Another study in Southern California had similar conclusions.

(2) Blood Pressure: Blood pressure is lowered naturally by practicing meditation daily. This has been measured and recorded.

(3) Stress reduction and improved energy levels: General health, immunity, and energy levels are boosted by meditation in that it reduces sympathetic nervous system activity, resulting in reduced stress hormones released. Chronic fatigue or adrenal fatigue and a compromised immune system are the direct results of too many unnecessary adrenaline and cortisol secretions.

(4) Increased intelligence: A University of California, Los Angeles study showed MRI evidence of increased gyrification (brain matter folding) in the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain associated with overall cognitive intelligence.

(5) Self awareness and reflection: Similar studies in Massachusetts and Germany showed brain matter changes corresponded with feelings of improved self esteem and peacefulness within eight weeks of daily meditation.

A meditation opinion

Now medical science assures us it’s a good idea to meditate for practical health reasons. Consider how this benefits us as our food and water is being poisoned, beneficial foods and supplements are being banned, and toxic pharmaceuticals are shoved our way.

Let’s add the worsening economic and financial situations inflicted upon us by elite financial manipulators. All this awareness is conducive to stress unless one is oblivious. Even those who are oblivious have other daily functions that are stressful to them.

We simply live in stressful times. But with meditation, we all have an equal opportunity of release that helps us maintain good health despite all this.

Escaping into delusional fantasy is avoided. This release doesn’t require expensive vacationing, drug and alcohol use, or binge eating. Lots of TV makes you duller and more stupid. Lots of meditation makes you smarter and more able cope in this mad world through tolerance (http://www.naturalnews.com/035478_freedom_tyranny_philosophy.html).

All these benefits haven’t delved into the increased spiritual awareness that eventually leads to absorption into inner realms of existence and eventually even total spiritual salvation. Meditation masters consider this the ultimate goal of daily meditation.

Starting meditation with only your health in mind will get you going on that journey too. Guess that makes reason number six.

More Info:

http://unitedblackamerica.com/intro-meditation-consciousculturefriday/

http://www.tm.org/health-benefits-stress

http://www.naturalnews.com/032897_meditation_heart_attacks.html

http://www.theepochtimes.com

http://www.theepochtimes.com

When “stand your ground” fails

When “stand your ground” fails – Crime – Salon.com.

Trayvon Martin’s tragic murder has brought much-needed scrutiny to “Stand Your Ground” laws. If you read or hear about a local “Stand Your Ground” case that isn’t getting much national press, blog about it on Open Salon.

As the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the failure of authorities to arrest his killer, George Zimmerman, continues to grab headlines, many conservatives and gun rights advocates insist that race has nothing to do with it. Some have also rallied to the defense of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the self-defense legislation under which Zimmerman was able to avoid arrest. Yet not all stand your ground claims are so successful. Not too far from Sanford, Fla., a black man named John McNeil is serving a life sentence for shooting Brian Epp, a white man who trespassed and attacked him at his home in Georgia, another stand your ground state.

It all began in early 2005, when McNeil and his wife, Anita, hired Brian Epp’s construction company to build a new house in Cobb County, Ga. The McNeils testified that Epp was difficult to work with, which led to heated confrontations. They eventually decided to close on the house early to rid their lives of Epp, whom they found increasingly threatening. At the closing, both parties agreed that Epp would have 10 days to complete the work, after which he would stay away from the property, but he failed to keep up his end of the bargain.

On Dec. 6, 2005, John McNeil’s 15-year-old son, La’Ron, notified his dad over the phone that a man he didn’t recognize was lurking in the backyard. When La’Ron told the man to leave, an argument broke out. McNeil was still on the phone and immediately recognized Epp’s voice. According to La’Ron’s testimony, Epp pointed a folding utility knife at La’Ron’s face and said, “[w]hy don’t you make me leave?” at which point McNeil told his son to go inside and wait while he called 911 and headed home.

According to McNeil’s testimony, when he pulled up to his house, Epp was next door grabbing something from his truck and stuffing it in his pocket. McNeil quickly grabbed his gun from the glove compartment in plain view of Epp who was coming at him “fast.” McNeil jumped out of the car and fired a warning shot at the ground insisting that Epp back off. Instead of retreating, Epp charged at McNeil while reaching for his pocket, so McNeil fired again, this time fatally striking Epp in the head. (Epp was found to have a folding knife in his pocket, although it was shut.)

The McNeils weren’t the only ones who felt threatened by Epp. David Samson and Libby Jones, a white couple who hired Epp to build their home in 2004, testified that they carried a gun as a “precaution” around Epp because of his threatening behavior. According to Jones, Epp nearly hit her when she expressed dissatisfaction with his work at a weekly meeting. The couple even had a lawyer write a letter warning Epp to stay away from their property. Samson testified that after they fired him, Epp would park his car across the street and watch their house, saying “it got to the point where my wife and I were in total fear of this man.”

After a neighbor across the street who witnessed the encounter corroborated McNeil’s account, police determined that it was a case of self-defense and did not charge him in the death. Nevertheless, almost a year later Cobb County District Attorney Patrick Head decided to prosecute McNeil for murder. In 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

McNeil’s attorney Mark Yurachek told Salon that “DAs throughout the country enjoy that kind of flexibility of deciding who to prosecute, but it’s curious that he took a year to do it.” While he said there’s no way to know what swayed the DA to prosecute, Yurachek revealed that letters, which he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, were written to the DA’s office demanding that McNeil be charged. “They were mostly emails from people cajoling prosecutors to investigate,” says Yurachek. “One was from Epp’s widow. Others were written anonymously.”

In 2008, McNeil appealed his case to the Georgia Supreme Court with all but one of the seven justices upholding his conviction. The sole dissent came from Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears who argued, “the State failed to disprove John McNeil’s claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.” She went on to write:

Even viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence was overwhelming in showing that a reasonable person in McNeil’s shoes would have believed that he was subject to an imminent physical attack by an aggressor possessing a knife and that it was necessary to use deadly force to protect himself from serious bodily injury or a forcible felony. Under the facts of this case, it would be unreasonable to require McNeil to wait until Epp succeeded in attacking him, thereby potentially disarming him, getting control of the gun, or stabbing him before he could legally employ deadly force to defend himself.  This is not what Georgia law requires.

As a leading gun rights state, Georgia has both a stand your ground law that permits citizens to use deadly force “only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury,” as well as a Castle Doctrine law, which justifies the use of deadly force in defense of one’s home.

Thus far, gun rights advocates such as the NRA and former Cobb County congressional Rep. Newt Gingrich have been silent on McNeil’s conviction, though it’s unclear whether they are aware of the case. The NRA did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Still, Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP State Conference, argues, “The NRA would be screaming about the injustice of his conviction if John had been white and shot a black assailant that came at him on his property armed with a knife.” (McNeil grew up in North Carolina, where the local NAACP chapter, led by Barber, was the first to pick up on his case in Georgia.)

Barber was clear that the NAACP remains firmly against stand your ground laws because “they give cover to those who may engage in racial profiling and racialized violence,” adding that “There is a history and legacy of discriminatory application of the law” that continues to this day. “African-Americans are caught in curious position. On one hand, we fight against stand your ground laws, but once the laws are on the books they aren’t applied to us.”

Civil rights activist Markel Hutchins agrees and has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s stand your ground law because the law is not applied equally to African-Americans. He accuses the courts of accepting “the race of a victim as evidence to establish the reasonableness of an individual’s fear in cases of justifiable homicide.”

Meanwhile, Barber argues that McNeil’s treatment stands in stark contrast to that of George Zimmerman, who has been afforded the benefit of the doubt despite his victim being unarmed. “America’s always had a difficult issue dealing with race, so rather than face it when it’s exposed, the tendency by some is to try and dismiss it. But the reality is you do not see this kind of miscarriage of justice when it comes to whites.” He adds,  “John’s whole life has been taken away from him. His wife is very ill with cancer and she has lost a husband, his sons have lost a father and society has lost a man that was contributing to his community.”

50 Accomplishment of President Obama

1. Passed Health Care Reform: After five presidents over a century failed to create universal health insurance, signed the Affordable Care Act (2010). It will cover 32 million uninsured Americans beginning in 2014 and mandates a suite of experimental measures to cut health care cost growth, the number one cause of America’s long-term fiscal problems.

2. Passed the Stimulus: Signed $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 to spur economic growth amid greatest recession since the Great Depression. Weeks after stimulus went into effect, unemployment claims began to subside. Twelve months later, the private sector began producing more jobs than it was losing, and it has continued to do so for twenty-three straight months, creating a total of nearly 3.7 million new private-sector jobs.

3. Passed Wall Street Reform: Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010) to re-regulate the financial sector after its practices caused the Great Recession. The new law tightens capital requirements on large banks and other financial institutions, requires derivatives to be sold on clearinghouses and exchanges, mandates that large banks provide “living wills” to avoid chaotic bankruptcies, limits their ability to trade with customers’ money for their own profit, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (now headed by Richard Cordray) to crack down on abusive lending products and companies.

4. Ended the War in Iraq: Ordered all U.S. military forces out of the country. Last troops left on December 18, 2011.

5. Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan: From a peak of 101,000 troops in June 2011, U.S. forces are now down to 91,000, with 23,000 slated to leave by the end of summer 2012. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the combat mission there will be over by next year.

6. Eliminated Osama bin laden: In 2011, ordered special forces raid of secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the terrorist leader was killed and a trove of al-Qaeda documents was discovered.

7. Turned Around U.S. Auto Industry: In 2009, injected $62 billion in federal money (on top of $13.4 billion in loans from the Bush administration) into ailing GM and Chrysler in return for equity stakes and agreements for massive restructuring. Since bottoming out in 2009, the auto industry has added more than 100,000 jobs. In 2011, the Big Three automakers all gained market share for the first time in two decades. The government expects to lose $16 billion of its investment, less if the price of the GM stock it still owns increases.

8. Recapitalized Banks: In the midst of financial crisis, approved controversial Treasury Department plan to lure private capital into the country’s largest banks via “stress tests” of their balance sheets and a public-private fund to buy their “toxic” assets. Got banks back on their feet at essentially zero cost to the government.

9. Repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: Ended 1990s-era restriction and formalized new policy allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military for the first time.

10. Toppled Moammar Gaddafi: In March 2011, joined a coalition of European and Arab governments in military action, including air power and naval blockade, against Gaddafi regime to defend Libyan civilians and support rebel troops. Gaddafi’s forty-two-year rule ended when the dictator was overthrown and killed by rebels on October 20, 2011. No American lives were lost.

11. Told Mubarak to Go: On February 1, 2011, publicly called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to accept reform or step down, thus weakening the dictator’s position and putting America on the right side of the Arab Spring. Mubarak ended thirty-year rule when overthrown on February 11.

12. Reversed Bush Torture Policies: Two days after taking office, nullified Bush-era rulings that had allowed detainees in U.S. custody to undergo certain “enhanced” interrogation techniques considered inhumane under the Geneva Conventions. Also released the secret Bush legal rulings supporting the use of these techniques.

13. Improved America’s Image Abroad: With new policies, diplomacy, and rhetoric, reversed a sharp decline in world opinion toward the U.S. (and the corresponding loss of “soft power”) during the Bush years. From 2008 to 2011, favorable opinion toward the United States rose in ten of fifteen countries surveyed by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, with an average increase of 26 percent.

14. Kicked Banks Out of Federal Student Loan Program, Expanded Pell Grant Spending: As part of the 2010 health care reform bill, signed measure ending the wasteful decades-old practice of subsidizing banks to provide college loans. Starting July 2010 all students began getting their federal student loans directly from the federal government. Treasury will save $67 billion over ten years, $36 billion of which will go to expanding Pell Grants to lower-income students.

15. Created Race to the Top: With funds from stimulus, started $4.35 billion program of competitive grants to encourage and reward states for education reform.
16. Boosted Fuel Efficiency Standards: Released new fuel efficiency standards in 2011 that will nearly double the fuel economy for cars and trucks by 2025.

17. Coordinated International Response to Financial Crisis: To keep world economy out of recession in 2009 and 2010, helped secure from G-20 nations more than $500 billion for the IMF to provide lines of credit and other support to emerging market countries, which kept them liquid and avoided crises with their currencies.

18. Passed Mini Stimuli: To help families hurt by the recession and spur the economy as stimulus spending declined, signed series of measures (July 22, 2010; December 17, 2010; December 23, 2011) to extend unemployment insurance and cut payroll taxes.

19. Began Asia “Pivot”: In 2011, reoriented American military and diplomatic priorities and focus from the Middle East and Europe to the Asian-Pacific region. Executed multipronged strategy of positively engaging China while reasserting U.S. leadership in the region by increasing American military presence and crafting new commercial, diplomatic, and military alliances with neighboring countries made uncomfortable by recent Chinese behavior.

20. Increased Support for Veterans: With so many soldiers coming home from Iraq and Iran with serious physical and mental health problems, yet facing long waits for services, increased 2010 Department of Veterans Affairs budget by 16 percent and 2011 budget by 10 percent. Also signed new GI bill offering $78 billion in tuition assistance over a decade, and provided multiple tax credits to encourage businesses to hire veterans.

21. Tightened Sanctions on Iran: In effort to deter Iran’s nuclear program, signed Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (2010) to punish firms and individuals who aid Iran’s petroleum sector. In late 2011 and early 2012, coordinated with other major Western powers to impose sanctions aimed at Iran’s banks and with Japan, South Korea, and China to shift their oil purchases away from Iran.

22. Created Conditions to Begin Closing Dirtiest Power Plants: New EPA restrictions on mercury and toxic pollution, issued in December 2011, likely to lead to the closing of between sixty-eight and 231 of the nation’s oldest and dirtiest coal-fired power plants. Estimated cost to utilities: at least $11 billion by 2016. Estimated health benefits: $59 billion to $140 billion. Will also significantly reduce carbon emissions and, with other regulations, comprises what’s been called Obama’s “stealth climate policy.”

23. Passed Credit Card Reforms: Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act (2009), which prohibits credit card companies from raising rates without advance notification, mandates a grace period on interest rate increases, and strictly limits overdraft and other fees.

24. Eliminated Catch-22 in Pay Equality Laws: Signed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, giving women who are paid less than men for the same work the right to sue their employers after they find out about the discrimination, even if that discrimination happened years ago. Under previous law, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the statute of limitations on such suits ran out 180 days after the alleged discrimination occurred, even if the victims never knew about it.

25. Protected Two Liberal Seats on the U.S. Supreme Court: Nominated and obtained confirmation for Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman to serve, in 2009; and Elena Kagan, the fourth woman to serve, in 2010. They replaced David Souter and John Paul Stevens, respectively.

26. Improved Food Safety System: In 2011, signed FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which boosts the Food and Drug Administration’s budget by $1.4 billion and expands its regulatory responsibilities to include increasing number of food inspections, issuing direct food recalls, and reviewing the current food safety practices of countries importing products into America.

27. Achieved New START Treaty: Signed with Russia (2010) and won ratification in Congress (2011) of treaty that limits each country to 1,550 strategic warheads (down from 2,200) and 700 launchers (down from more than 1,400), and reestablished and strengthened a monitoring and transparency program that had lapsed in 2009, through which each country can monitor the other.

28. Expanded National Service: Signed Serve America Act in 2009, which authorized a tripling of the size of AmeriCorps. Program grew 13 percent to 85,000 members across the country by 2012, when new House GOP majority refused to appropriate more funds for further expansion.

29. Expanded Wilderness and Watershed Protection: Signed Omnibus Public Lands Management Act (2009), which designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, created thousands of miles of recreational and historic trails, and protected more than 1,000 miles of rivers.

30. Gave the FDA Power to Regulate Tobacco: Signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (2009). Nine years in the making and long resisted by the tobacco industry, the law mandates that tobacco manufacturers disclose all ingredients, obtain FDA approval for new tobacco products, and expand the size and prominence of cigarette warning labels, and bans the sale of misleadingly labeled “light” cigarette brands and tobacco sponsorship of entertainment events.

31. Pushed Federal Agencies to Be Green Leaders: Issued executive order in 2009 requiring all federal agencies to make plans to soften their environmental impacts by 2020. Goals include 30 percent reduction in fleet gasoline use, 26 percent boost in water efficiency, and sustainability requirements for 95 percent of all federal contracts. Because federal government is the country’s single biggest purchaser of goods and services, likely to have ripple effects throughout the economy for years to come.

32. Passed Fair Sentencing Act: Signed 2010 legislation that reduces sentencing disparity between crack versus powder cocaine possessionfrom100 to1 to 18 to1.
33. Trimmed and Reoriented Missile Defense: Cut the Reagan-era “Star Wars”
missile defense budget, saving $1.4 billion in 2010, and canceled plans to station antiballistic missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of sea-based defense plan focused on Iran and North Korea.

34. Began Post-Post-9/11 Military Builddown: After winning agreement from congressional Republicans and Democrats in summer 2011 budget deal to reduce projected defense spending by $450 billion, proposed new DoD budget this year with cuts of that size and a new national defense strategy that would shrink ground forces from 570,000 to 490,000 over the next ten years while increasing programs in intelligence gathering and cyberwarfare.

35. Let Space Shuttle Die and Killed Planned Moon Mission: Allowed the expensive ($1 billion per launch), badly designed, dangerous shuttle program to make its final launch on July 8, 2011. Cut off funding for even more bloated and problem-plagued Bush-era Constellation program to build moon base in favor of support for private-sector low-earth orbit ventures, research on new rocket technologies for long-distance manned flight missions, and unmanned space exploration, including the largest interplanetary rover ever launched, which will investigate Mars’s potential to support life.

36. Invested Heavily in Renewable Technology: As part of the 2009 stimulus, invested $90 billion, more than any previous administration, in research on smart grids, energy efficiency, electric cars, renewable electricity generation, cleaner coal, and biofuels.

37. Crafting Next-Generation School Tests: Devoted $330 million in stimulus money to pay two consortia of states and universities to create competing versions of new K-12 student performance tests based on latest psychometric research. New tests could transform the learning environment in vast majority of public school classrooms beginning in 2014.

38. Cracked Down on Bad For-Profit Colleges: In effort to fight predatory practices of some for-profit colleges, Department of Education issued “gainful employment” regulations in 2011 cutting off commercially focused schools from federal student aid funding if more than 35 percent of former students aren’t paying off their loans and/or if the average former student spends more than 12 percent of his or her total earnings servicing student loans.

39. Improved School Nutrition: In coordination with Michelle Obama, signed Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010 mandating $4.5 billion spending boost and higher nutritional and health standards for school lunches. New rules based on the law, released in January, double the amount of fruits and vegetables and require only whole grains in food served to students.

40. Expanded Hate Crimes Protections: Signed Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009), which expands existing hate crime protections to include crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender, or disability, in addition to race, color, religion, or national origin.

41. Avoided Scandal: As of November 2011, served longer than any president in decades without a scandal, as measured by the appearance of the word “scandal” (or lack thereof) on the front page of the Washington Post.

42. Brokered Agreement for Speedy Compensation to Victims of Gulf Oil Spill: Though lacking statutory power to compel British Petroleum to act, used moral authority of his office to convince oil company to agree in 2010 to a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; $6.5 billion already paid out without lawsuits. By comparison, it took nearly two decades for plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez Alaska oil spill case to receive $1.3 billion.

43. Created Recovery.gov: Web site run by independent board of inspectors general looking for fraud and abuse in stimulus spending, provides public with detailed information on every contract funded by $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Thanks partly to this transparency, board has uncovered very little fraud, and Web site has become national model: “The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory,” reports Governing magazine.

44. Pushed Broadband Coverage: Proposed and obtained in 2011 Federal Communications Commission approval for a shift of $8 billion in subsidies away from landlines and toward broadband Internet for lower-income rural families.

45. Expanded Health Coverage for Children: Signed 2009 Children’s Health Insurance Authorization Act, which allows the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to cover health care for 4 million more children, paid for by a tax increase on tobacco products.

46. Recognized the Dangers of Carbon Dioxide: In 2009, EPA declared carbon dioxide a pollutant, allowing the agency to regulate its production.

47. Expanded Stem Cell Research: In 2009, eliminated the Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, which shows promise in treating spinal injuries, among many other areas.

48. Provided Payment to Wronged Minority Farmers: In 2009, signed Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion in funding for a legal settlement with black and Native American farmers who the government cheated out of loans and natural resource royalties in years past.

49. Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Helped South Sudan Declare Independence: Appointed two envoys to Sudan and personally attended a special UN meeting on the area. Through U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, helped negotiate a peaceful split in 2011.

50. Killed the F-22: In 2009, ended further purchases of Lockheed Martin single-seat, twin-engine, fighter aircraft, which cost $358 million apiece. Though the military had 187 built, the plane has never flown a single combat mission. Eliminating it saved $4 billion.

Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu collaborated on this article. Glastris is the editor in chief of the Washington Monthly. Cooper and Hu are interns at the magazine.

© 2012 Washington Monthly All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/154840/

Cntrovrc creates cash…

Related articles

• 50 Accomplishment of President Obama (cntrovrc.wordpress.com)
• March 2012: Obama’s 50 Great Accomplishments (Updated this month) (newomenforchange.org)
• March 2012: Obama’s 50 Great Accomplishments (Updated this month) (kaystreet.wordpress.com)

Chicago Teen Murdered Over A Pair Of Sneakers

Video: Chicago Teen Murdered Over A Pair Of Sneakers! Refused To Give Them Up.

Another senseless killing…

http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/e/16711680/wshhn8Ng0mH8PXWeL0Kq

10 Facts on the Relationships Between Racism and Patriotism

Reblogged from The Activists:

1)      A study in the American Bible Belt, found that 82% of the people mix up the definitions of patriotism and racism.

2)      92% of people who claim to be ‘very patriotic’ exhibit very blatant racist tendencies.

3)      Men who label themselves ‘very patriotic’ are 63% more likely to make racial assaults on other people.

4)      According to the BBC, militaries throughout the world make use of both racism and patriotism to get soldiers worked up.

Read more… 112 more words