February 14, 2021

When I got my second Covid vaccine. They told me to keep my card.

It might come in handy if I needed to travel. Do you think the vaccination works in place of a negative test since vaccinated individuals can still carry the virus but be asymptomatic?

December 7, 2011

Remarks by the President on the Economy in Osawatomie, Kansas - 12/6/11

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
December 06, 2011
Remarks by the President on the Economy in Osawatomie, Kansas

Osawatomie High School
Osawatomie, Kansas

12:59 P.M. CST

Excerpt (I'm sorry no HTML):

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/06/remarks-president-economy-osawatomie-kansas

Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year. I’m not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I’m saying people who make a million dollars every single year. For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent.

Now, this kind of inequality -- a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity, of strong consumers all across the country. That’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. (Applause.) It leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them, that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.

But there’s an even more fundamental issue at stake. This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people -- we tell our kids -- that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do. That’s why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores.

And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class -- 33 percent.

It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It is wrong. (Applause.) It flies in the face of everything that we stand for. (Applause.)

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/06/remarks-president-economy-osawatomie-kansas

February 14, 2021

it can get contentious but were all here for the same basic reason.

December 7, 2011

'Obamacare' to the rescue

A woman who felt President Obama had let the middle class down has changed her mind.

By Spike Dolomite Ward
A woman who felt President Obama had let the middle class down has changed her mind.

December 6, 2011

I want to apologize to President Obama. But first, some background.

I found out three weeks ago I have cancer. I'm 49 years old, have been married for almost 20 years and have two kids. My husband has his own small computer business, and I run a small nonprofit in the San Fernando Valley. I am also an artist. Money is tight, and we don't spend it frivolously. We're just ordinary, middle-class people, making an honest living, raising great kids and participating in our community, the kids' schools and church.

We're good people, and we work hard. But we haven't been able to afford health insurance for more than two years. And now I have third-stage breast cancer and am facing months of expensive treatment.

To understand how such a thing could happen to a family like ours, I need to take you back nine years to when my husband got laid off from the entertainment company where he'd worked for 10 years. Until then, we had been insured through his work, with a first-rate plan. After he got laid off, we got to keep that health insurance for 18 months through COBRA, by paying $1,300 a month, which was a huge burden on an unemployed father and his family.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ward-in-praise-of-obamacare-20111206,0,6794828.story

December 6, 2011

1,000 Posts to Applaud Howard Dean

How is it that our leaders have forgotten and abandoned our communities and repudiated our idealism and our principles?

When confronted with the President's ideologues, too many Americans have stopped participating, stopped voting, stopped believing that they can change America.

And we in politics have not given people a reason to vote or a reason to participate. We have slavishly spewed sound bites, copying each other while saying little. We raise millions of dollars and each year make lofty promises, while every year the struggle of ordinary Americans increases and fewer Americans vote. And our politicians, many of them good people, have been paralyzed by their fear of losing office. This leadership has developed a vocabulary which has become meaningless to the American people....

...Martin Luther King, Jr. said that, "Our lives begin to end on the day we become silent about the things that matter."

The history of our nation is clear: At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nationhood has always come from the bottom up, from our people.

http://www.crocuta.net/Dean/Transcript_of_Deans_Candidacy_Announcement_June23_2003.htm

Please feel free to post your appreciation for the great work Dr. Dean, your Howard stories, your favorite Howard quotes or moments, yourfavorite Howard pictures, and anything else you feel the need to add. As Howard said in his formal announcement, "change comes from the people."

When we did this in 2007 we got to 149 replies with about 25 different posters: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3054937 - We can make this the most discussed and most recommend thread of all DU3! C'mon Dean People, Post Away!

December 6, 2011

FYI: If you want it to look more like Old DU...

Go to My Account on the top right of your browser
Switch: Preferred format for regular web browsers from Standard to Classic

And presto, it looks way more like Old Du but still with all the bells and whistles.

I was leaning towards thumbs down because looking at replies to posts just kind of stream down the page was annoying, but now I'm happy.

Good work Skinner, Elad and EarlG!

February 14, 2021

Poor, poor Florida.

Add in DeSantis and you have the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.