Newt Gingrich: an ethical vacuum - Oliver Twist Returns

Newt Gingrich defends his child education plan for poor children. Newt Gingrich stated he felt poor children grew up to be unemployed because they had no role models. Newt said the kids grew up in poverty because their parents had no jobs and the kids never learned what it was to go to work everyday. Newt said the poor kids needed to learn a work ethic and what it meant to go to work everyday. With this goal in mind, Newt Gingrich proposed that poor kids be put to work cleaning the floors and cleaning the bathrooms at schools...oh yeah, and painting the building.. HUH!!!!!
When the news media asked Newt if he was serious, Newt said he was. He said people are poor because they don't work, so the kids never see people going to work everyday and, hence, do not have a work ethic.
Newt is far out f touch with poor America? Poor is defined as people whose incomes fall below the US poverty level. There are many people who are employed, yet are poor. These are the working poor. They are only able to get hired to lower paying jobs. So, they go to work regularly, but barely make enough to pay their bills. For various reasons, they are stuck in poor neighborhoods. Often these people are younger adults, especially those with kids, and older adults who are disabled, ill or aged out of the job marketplace.
Children in the US are protected from hazardous material exposure which includes feces, and chemicals. Kids are also allotted shortened work days, so they can experience childhood. As an American citizen, I have some of my earned money taken every year by the government to get kids into schools daily and teach them about life and work. If the schools are not working, tear them down and send the kids elsewhere.
There are people who are poor financially, but are not poor in social conditions. So, many poor children grow up in great families and have the benefit of a healthy supportive environment. Newt did not grow up in poverty, but he was sodomized by a pedophile teacher as a youth, who he later married and with whom he fathered two children. Most would say Newt led a life of poverty in that he lived in a pedophile-based relationship for about 25 years and never learned regular American ethics, morals and mores.

Republicans Pass a Jobs Bill

Republicans said they wanted to pass H.R. 1904 because it was a jobs bill for Arizona. The Republicans stated the bill would create 500 jobs and up to 3,000 jobs later. The crux of the bill is that Arizona sells some federal  Indian land in exchange for a larger plot of non-federal land. The rights to the sold Indian land would go to two foreign countries, Britain and Australia and they would get the rights to the largest amount of copper known in the northern hemisphere. The issues about where the copper will be processed and whether the US had workers for this mine were poorly addressed. The large foreign mine operations will be digging over 7,000 feet below the surface. There was no mention as to how far down they could go (I assume to the center of the earth) and there was also no mention as to how far they could tunnel.
As a jobs bill, this seems pretty poor for the US, since I doubt we have 3,000 copper miners to fill these jobs. I assume foreign workers will come and get the jobs created. In addition, these foreign countries have the technology to use robots and exclude workers. There were no provisions in the bill that humans had to be employed. There was also no mention in the bill that the US got any of the copper profits over the many years to come. The Republicans did state the US has no facilities to process the copper, so all of the processing jobs will be abroad.
Oh, and the Indians who live on the land will not be consulted until after Congress gave the OK to go ahead with the project.
If we imagine that all was well with this bill and 3,000 jobs would be created, the jobs would not appear for years. we need jobs now. In one to three years, we should be in a recovery and all of this loss of our precious mineral resource will be too late to fit the alleged plan.
The Republican bill passed and now sits in the Senate.
Clearly, this was a payola scam on the American people.

President Obama to speak to black congressional caucus

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CNN's Athena Jones

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The economic slowdown has hit the black community particularly hard, pushing the unemployment rate among blacks up to 16.7% in August, nearly double the national average. The problem is the Congressional Black Caucus' chief concern and one many members have pushed the White House to do a better job of addressing.

As President Barack Obama prepares to speak at Saturday night's 2011 Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner, he is likely to tout some of the proposals in the American Jobs Act he introduced this month. Several are aimed at tackling the problem of long-term unemployment, steps that could provide much-needed aid to the community where the jobless rate is highest.

One CBC member who has been especially critical of the president in recent months is Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat who represents California's 35th congressional district. At a CBC jobs tour town hall in Detroit in August, she said black unemployment was "unconscionable," the strategy to fix it was unclear and that the caucus was "getting tired" of waiting for one.

Earlier this month, she questioned the president's decision to focus on the Midwest during a three-day jobs bus tour in August, saying the 3 million population of Iowa, an electorally important state that is also mostly white, is roughly equal to the number of African Americans who are out of work and suggesting that the population of that key state seemed more important to the administration than the black community.

"Are the unemployed in the African-American community, including almost 45% of its youth, as important as the people of Iowa?" she asked in the statement she released ahead of the president's speech before a joint session of Congress in which he announced his jobs plan.

The White House is well aware of this criticism from some in the black community and has made a point of trying to address it.

"The president shares the frustration of African Americans and all Americans about the pace of the economy," said Kevin Lewis, the White House director of African-American media. "Though the president is committed to improving the economy for all Americans, he'll note in tonight's speech that the American Jobs Act includes targetd initiatives and programs that protect, support and provide economic stability for the most vulnerable Americans.  He'll continue to urge Americans to urge Congress to act in a bipartisan fashion and pass the bill."

The president has proposed a $4,000 tax credit to employers for hiring long-term unemployed workers and higher credits to companies that hire veterans who have been unemployed for at least six months. He also wants to see unemployment insurance extended to prevent 5 million Americans from losing their benefits and stronger programs to help the long-term unemployed through counseling and job training.

A number of CBC members - including Missouri Democrat and CBC Chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver and Democratic representatives like John Lewis of Georgia and Frederica Wilson of Florida - released statements of support for the American Jobs Act after the president's speech, as did other black leaders like Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter.

Waters also praised the plan in television interviews after the speech, though she said she and other CBC members wished the plan was "even bigger" and that she hoped the kind of help proposed would get to the people who need it most.

More than anything, CBC members want to see the president fight hard for the jobs plan and not give in to any demands to weaken it. Members' staffers have spoken of concerns that the White House did not negotiate from a position of strength with past bills, such as the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory overhaul or the health care overhaul, and say they hope the president has learned a lesson from those experiences.

While some African-American critics of the president have argued he has not done enough to listen to the concerns of the black community, his recent schedule shows he has spent time meeting with black journalists and with the leaders of organizations that serve the community like the NAACP's Ben Jealous, the National Urban League's Marc Morial and the Rev. Al Sharpton from the National Action Network.

At a panel this month with black media group Interactive One, one of the president's top advisers, Valerie Jarrett, called the unemployment rate in the black community "unacceptably high" and said the president understood that "inaction is not an option." In remarks to the panel, the president said 20 million African-American workers would benefit from the jobs bill proposal to cut the payroll tax in half, a measure he said would save the average family $1,500 a year.

"It helps out-of-work Americans, including the 1.4 (million) African-American folks and their families who are out of work by extending unemployment benefits to help support them and their families while they're looking for work," the president said. "And it also reforms the training programs that are available so that they can build real skills and connect to jobs. And that will particularly help the long-term unemployed."

The president also taped an interview with BET Networks, set to air Monday, in which he is expected to specifically address the "increase of unemployment among African-Americans since taking office, the current economic crisis, the political landscape around the 2012 presidential election" among other issues, according to the network.