Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rang in the new year still saddled with $5.9 million in debts left over from her unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, according to records filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission.
ERE'S a bottom line to keep you up at night: The economy is falling faster than Washington can get moving. President Obama says his stimulus plan will save or create four million jobs in two years. In the last four months of 2008 alone, employment fell by 1.9 million. Do the math.
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The country music legend, 71, is up, around and touring again after a bout with lung cancer.
Back in 1973, the country was in the grip of economic woes. A beleaguered Republican president was overseeing an unpopular war abroad and gradually had lost the support of the American people.
<p>Below are the excerpts of Obama's Alfalfa Club Dinner remarks, as released by the White House. More info about the dinner can be found <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20090131/obama-alfalfa/">here</a>.</p> <blockquote>I am seriously glad to be here tonight at the annual Alfalfa dinner. I know that many you are aware that this dinner began almost one hundred years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E. Lee. If he were here with us tonight, the General would be 202 years old. And very confused. <p>Now, this hasn⿿t been reported yet, but it was actually Rahm⿿s idea to do the swearing-in ceremony again. Of course, for Rahm, every day is a swearing-in ceremony.</p> <p>But don't believe what you read. Rahm Emanuel is a real sweetheart.</p> <p>No, it's true. Every week the guy takes a little time away to give back to the community. Just last week he was at a local school, teaching profanity to poor children.</p> <p>But these are the kind of negotiations you have to deal with as President. In just the first few weeks, I⿿ve had to engage in some of the toughest diplomacy of my life. And that was just to keep my Blackberry. I finally agreed to limit the number of people who could email me. It⿿s a very exclusive list. How exclusive?</p> <p>Everyone look at the person sitting on your left⿦ Now look at the person sitting on your right⿦ None of you have my email address.</blockquote></p>
A White House source says a decision could be made Monday on whether to name the New Hampshire Republican to the Cabinet post.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) is the leading candidate to become President Obama's Commerce secretary, an administration official said Saturday, adding that a decision could come as early as Monday.
The Senate Finance committee will meet Monday to review the tax records of former Sen. Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee for secretary of health and human services who, according to sources, didn't pay taxes on a car and driver he had been loaned.
As President Obama's motorcade rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, federal authorities deployed a closely held law enforcement tool: equipment that can jam cellphones and other wireless devices to foil remote-controlled bombs, sources said.
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<p>Former Bush White House chief of staff Andrew Card complained to right-wing talk-show host Michael Medved that President Obama is insufficiently respectful of the presidency. Apparently, one demonstrates respect for the presidency by their choice of attire:</p>
<p>Which Super Bowl party would you rather go to?</p>
<p>One where President Obama has to dodge out for a live interview with NBC and the bipartisan bean dip might mean you have to engage in Congressional dealmaking?</p>
<p>Or an all-Democratic bowl fest with unabashed Steelers fan Vice President Joe Biden at the Naval Observatory, which hasn't exactly been the hot party spot the last 8 years.</p>
<p>I <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni/2009/Jan/30/white-house-super-bowl-party-guest-list/">blogged last night about the White House Super Bowl party guest list</a>, and the vice president's office just released a list of his guests.</p>
<p><br /> These lawmakers and their families will be guests at the Naval Observatory. All are Democrats:</p>
<blockquote><em>Sen. Max Baucus (MT)<br /> Sen. Tom Carper (DE)<br /> Sen. Kent Conrad (ND)<br /> Sen. John Kerry (MA)<br /> Sen. Bill Nelson (FL)<br /> Sen. Chuck Schumer (NY)<br /> <br /> Rep. Robert Brady (PA)<br /> Rep. Jim Clyburn (SC)<br /> Rep. Steny Hoyer (MD)<br /> Rep. John Larson (CT)</em></blockquote> <p>Staffers for any of these members of Congress are welcome to <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:cbellantoni@washingtontimes.com">send me tips</a> with any juicy bits they hear from either party.</p>
<p><em><em><em>—</em> </em><em><em><a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="mailto:cbellantoni@washingtontimes.com">Christina Bellantoni</a>, <a rel="nofollow" title="The White House">White House</a> correspondent, <br />The Washington Times</em></em></em></p>
<p><em><em><em>Please bookmark my blog at <br /></em><a rel="nofollow" title="Bellantoni on the Democrats" target="_blank" href="http://washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni/"><em><strong>http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni</strong></em></a></em></em></p>
<p><em><em><em>Find my latest stories <a rel="nofollow" title="Christina Bellantoni's stories" target="_blank" href="http://washingtontimes.com/rss/authors/christina-bellantoni/">here</a>, follow me on <a rel="nofollow" title="Bellantoni on Twitter" target="_blank" href="https://twitter.com/cbellantoni">Twitter</a> and visit my <a rel="nofollow" title="Bellantoni Wash Times YouTube page" target="_blank" href="http://youtube.com/bellantoniwashtimes">YouTube page</a></em></em></em></p>
<p>Our government is in the process of releasing the 2nd $350 billion of the $700 billion the Congress approved a couple of months ago to bail out the banks and financial industry. </p> <p>They have asked for this money as they prepare an economic stimulus package of another $850 billion to $1 trillion.</p> <p>Now we know the economic stimulus is critical and necessary. We have to help get it passed. I would not argue against it, but allow me to make a couple of observations about the banks financial bailout.</p> <p>1) De-regulation costs all of us a ton of money when it doesn't work.<br />
2) If it's costing us about a trillion dollars to bail out the free market system, then the free market system is hardly free.<br />
3) Unrelated or unfettered capitalism is always ultimately disastrous.<br />
4) Unmitigated greed destroys.<br />
5) The ideas Newt Ginarich used to brag about and blather about that came out of the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute are costing the rest of us and our kids and grandkids a whole lot of money.<br />
6) Ayn Rand wrote fiction - not policy.</p> <p>Much of this - certainly this economic stimulus and the economic stimulus we all got last spring - is based on the universal acknowledgement that there just isn't enough spending power or buying power throughout our economy to power our economic engine.</p> <p>You see, while our productivity has gone up by 75% in the last 30 years our wages have stagnated, flat lined. And so working families have borrowed to keep up - incurring mortgage debt as we took out second mortgages or lines of credit on our homes, insidious credit card debt, medical debt as more and more of us lost our healthcare and healthy insurance, education debt as higher education became more and more expensive for the kids of working families.</p> <p>We felt their recession and threatened depression long before they did. We felt it in closed factories and the disappearance of 3 million plus middle class, unions manufacturing jobs. We felt it as communities collapsed around those closed plants. Delphi, Paper Mills, auto plants, south Chicago, Gary, Toledo, Buffalo, South Georgia, and Birmingham.</p> <p>We felt their recession as the number of our fellow Americans without healthcare rose to 47 million and the number of us with inadequate or unreliable healthcare rose to another 40 million.</p> <p>We felt their recession as the number of Americans living in poverty increased 20% while George Bush was president.</p> <p>We know something was desperately wrong with free market economics as we produced more and more wealth with every day of our work while our wages flat lined and CEO pay went from 40 times as much as the average worker in 1980 to 400 times as much as the average worker today.</p> <p>How did all this happen?</p> <p>What happened in these last 30 years?</p> <p>Over the last 30 years workers in America have lost the freedom to bargain collectively with the corporations that ran this economy and our jobs. So while CEO's negotiated contracts that paid them $10 million to $400 million a year with $200 million severance packages when they drove a company into the ditch, we lost our freedom to bargain our way into the middle class, to bargain from a decent standards of living, to bargain for our kids and grandkids to have the same kind of opportunity we had.</p> <p>A corrupt corporate culture has done all it could to deny workers the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.</p> <p>- 30,000 workers a year are retaliated against for exercising supposedly protected workers rights. </p> <p>- 1 in 5 union activists in organizing campaigns will be fired.</p> <p>- Almost all employers in the private sector will do anything to stop workers from forming a union. Even when workers do form a union, employers refuse to bargain in good faith.</p> <p>The real, effective, and best economic stimulus is to restore to workers in America the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively. That is the most common sensical and cost effective way to restore balance in our economy. Allow us to bargain collectively and we will bargain for a greater share of the wealth we create. Just as we did between 1935 and 1955 when our great middle class was created by workers bargaining for dignity and fairness.</p> <p>All this is why we have must pass and enact the Employee Free Choice Act.</p> <p>The Employee Free Choice Act will do three things to restore the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively to America's workers.</p> <p>- Impose real penalties on employers who violate the law</p> <p>- Force corporations to negotiate in good faith by allowing workers to seek arbitration</p> <p>- Allow workers to avoid the corporate attack campaigns by forming their union through majority sign up.</p> <p>In the five years since we introduced this legislation we have made incredible progress. In 2007 it passes the House overwhelmingly 241-185. We got a majority vote in the Senate but could not overcome a Republican filibuster and the promise of the promise of George Bush veto.</p> <p>But now things are different.</p> <p>Our new President supports the Employee Free Choice Act as does a strong majority in the House and a majority in the Senate and 73% of the American public.</p> <p>Our job is to create a filibuster - proof majority of support in the Senate and a national groundswell demand for an economy that works for all.</p> <p>The stakes could not be higher:</p> <p>- The economic health of our nation,</p> <p>- The future of our country as a nation of opportunity</p> <p>- The provision of a future full of hope and opportunity for our kids and grandkids</p> <p>To win right now, we must do two things:</p> <p>1) Run the best and biggest possible ground campaign, mobilizing 100's of 1000's of workers to contact their Members of Congress about the immediate urgency of this legislation</p> <p>2) Make sure everyone understands the Employee Free Choice Act is about the economic health of America - not a narrow, institutional issue for our labor movement. We must demonstrate that the Employee Free Choice Act enjoys broad public support.</p> <p>Change must mean real change in people's lives - healthcare, good jobs, fair trade, workers rights</p> <p>Victory is in our reach. Turning around America is up to us. Winning healthcare for all, creating good jobs and fair trade, and restoring the freedom to organize and bargain is just a matter of mobilizing the most effective ground campaign in our history.</p> <p>One and a half million workers have signed the Millions Workers Demand. 10's of 1000's have taken action in the last five years.</p> <p>It is up to us to move 100's of 1000's to turn Around America and restore economic health and balance to middleclass America.</p>
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