I find it interesting that instead of calling out the GOP presidential field, the president’s campaign has gone after the Koch brothers. Strategically this is kind of intriguing because it really doesn’t give his political opponents like Romney et al., the chance to respond directly.

If they chose to respond to the ad they would in essence be going on the record defending the Koch brothers and not talking about their candidacies.

Political spending: Obama could force disclosure of corporate political spending – latimes.com

Under the proposed order, all companies bidding for federal contracts would be required to disclose money spent on political campaign efforts, including dollars forwarded through associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other private groups.

I really hope that President Obama actually does this. It would be historic and make an enormous impact on politics. I found a really telling quote from the US Chamber of Commerce’s general counsel which says it all.

“The way the order is drafted, it hijacks the very powerful engine of the federal procurement system and it takes it and tries to achieve political and electoral ends,” said Lily Fu Claffee, the chamber’s general counsel, who charged that the measure would “chill the free-speech rights of corporations.”

That in essence is the point! Are corporations people?! Why do they enjoy the rights of free-speech? A person has those rights and a corporation is not a person and should not have the rights a person has period.

Also, corporations are forever trying to force draconian campaign finance laws onto unions.They’ve tried to make it so that members could have a say in whether a union uses their dues to contribute to political campaigns or which political campaigns (I can’t remember exactly which it was). This would weaken the power of unions politically. I mean I’m all for democracy within a union but there are some things that can’t be opened up for a say by everybody otherwise nothing would get done!

You corporatists wanted to play hardball…..

Advertisers Rebuke Obama Administration’s Proposed Rules on Marketing Food to Kids — Commercial Alert

If the Obama administration gets its way, food marketers would only advertise their healthiest products to children, possibly including teenagers who have long-been exempt from such restrictions.

The rules would start in 2016 and only allow foods that contain no trans fat and not more than one gram of saturated fat and 13 grams of added sugar per ‘eating occasion’ to be marketed to children.

Oh yea? Well I rebuke the advertisers who are rebuking the Obama administration’s proposed rules on marketing food to kids! This is the second thing I posted about today that the administration is doing right. The absolute junk aka poision that these marketers push on to children is disgusting. We would also do good to reform the school lunch program. Children are eating hamburgers, pizzas and hot dogs all the time. That is junk food!

Big Business blasts Obama’s plan for federal contractors – Apr. 29, 2011

According to a leaked draft of a presidential executive order, the White House wants would-be contractors to report when they’ve made $5,000 or more in campaign contributions to federal candidates. It also wants companies to reveal money spent — and more often not disclosed — to sway elections. The White House has confirmed the draft as authentic, but a work in progress.

This is good stuff. I mean sure he still consults with that tax dodging GE corporation but this is a welcome executive order. Business always wants to cry about things like this but then they seek to push these type of disclosure measures on to organized labor.

U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers

Despite President Obama’s pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $22 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.

Following their training, the tech workers will be placed with outsourcing vendors in the region that provide offshore IT and business services to American companies looking to take advantage of the Asian subcontinent’s low labor costs…

via Report: Obama Launches New Program to Help Corporations “Take Advantage of Low Labor Costs” Abroad | CommonDreams.org.

How pathetic and sad is this?

I have to agree with David Sirota when he says.

Now look, I’m all for a robust foreign aid budget – we don’t do nearly enough to help the developing world. However, using foreign aid money to specifically help private corporations “take advantage of low labor costs” in the developing world – that’s absolutely grotesque.

I know thousands of people right in the President’s backyard in Southeast DC who could use this training! WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING?!!

– from Daylife.com

Since I’ve been working and living in the DC metro area I’ve noticed scenes like this way too often. I’ve come across beggars in the street and in the corridors of metro stations almost daily. Sometimes I stop to give them some of the change in my pocket. Most of the time I don’t really have any money on me (you know the whole debit card thing). Every morning on my way to work in Dupont Circle I walk past the same homeless person. Every time I see him I’m reminded of the homeless situation occurring in the nation’s capitol. Part of me often wants to ask him “why don’t you take a job”? Any job that would allow you to not have to live and beg on the streets. For that matter why not go to a homeless shelter? Or is the shelter system too full? Do they only allow people to stay there at night? I also remember speaking to a homeless person back in Westchester County, NY who told me that shelters can be unsafe, so maybe that’s it.

Then part of me also realizes that a lot of the time things aren’t that simple. Even those who are working are barely above or are still below the poverty level. While they may have a roof over their head, their living conditions are usually still deplorable and there’s still a lack of access to opportunity for upward mobility. We call them the working poor and actually up until last year, before I moved, my income put me in that classification. The job I have now–which I’m thankful for since I’m doing something I want to do in the advocacy field–actually put me squarely in the middle class for the first time.

Of course homelessness is nothing new to America. After all I’m from New York and this is something I grew up around in the Bronx. Even when I moved to Westchester homelessness wasn’t hard to find in the county. The question that always comes to mind for me is, why does the local government allow homeless people to loiter and sleep on the streets in the first place? If anything this can be seen as a problem akin to public indecency. Regarding the visual component of homelessness; I was once told that there was an effort in NYC to remove the spectacle because people complained, but nothing was done to solve the problem. The homeless weren’t seen anymore but they were still homeless.

When it comes to the homeless in the District of Columbia, I was also told a story that when the Clinton administration was in power there was less visible poverty in DC. If this story is true then that would mean things have reverted back for the worse. This leads me to my question for the new President. My question is: can we do something to get the homeless out of the streets of the nation’s capitol? I realize that the President will be the leader of the entire nation, but his residence will be here in DC. Shouldn’t he have a vested interested in ensuring that the capitol is a shining city on a hill? Of course by asking this to the new president I’m not absolving the local DC government of anything. My question to them is: why is poverty as visible as it is now? What has the city government done and how high is this a priority for them? While there are some innovative initiatives out there like Street Sense, it’s going to take a lot more to solve this problem.

Technorati : dc, mccain, obama, potus

I don’t think Jason Furman deserves to be anywhere near the Obama campaign, but that’s just my opinion.

“It’s surprising because this guy seems to feel that Wal-Mart’s low-wage, low-benefit business model is good for America. That’s just flat-out wrong,” the executive director of Wal-Mart Watch, David Nassar, said. “This guy helped to lend credibility to the Wal-Mart business model. That was disappointing then and it’s disappointing now given this position,” said Mr. Nassar, whose group is backed by a board that includes the president of the Service Employees International Union, Andrew Stern. Mr. Nassar quickly added that he was “not critiquing the Obama campaign.”

It is really baffling to say the least. Wal-Mart is a disgusting plague on the world. It has abused employees and hurt communities. My only guess for the reason a Wal-Mart lackey like Furman would be appointed to be Obama’s policy director is because of his history with the Clinton White House.