Courtesy of Newsmax.com
WASHINGTON � The Obama White House left open the possibility Sunday that the president would break a campaign promise and raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000 to support his health care overhaul agenda.
White House adviser David Axelrod said the administration wouldn't rule out taxing some employees' benefits to fund a health care agenda that has yet to take final form. The move would be a compromise with fellow Democrats, who are pushing the proposal as a way to pay for the massive undertaking without ballooning the federal deficit.
"There are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going," Axelrod said. "We've gotten a long way down the road and we want to finish that journey."
But if President Barack Obama compromises on that point, it would reverse a campaign tax promise.
"I pledge that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase," Obama told a crowd in Dover, N.H., last year. "Not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of tax."
At the time, his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was proposing a tax on health benefits similar to the plan Obama is now considering. Just a year ago, Obama spent millions on campaign commercials attacking the idea.
One ad accused McCain of favoring "taxing health benefits for the first time ever ... taxing health care instead of fixing it. We can't afford John McCain."
A second Obama ad called McCain's approach "the largest middle-class tax increase in history." Driving the point home, it contended the "McCain tax could cost your family thousands. Can you afford it?"
Under the current proposals, a tax on health benefits would affect only those with pricey health plans. The idea would be to tax as income the portion of health benefits worth more than a specified limit. Officials are considering several options, including one that would set the limit at $17,240 for family coverage and $6,800 for individuals.
Plans worth more than that would be taxed; those worth less would see no increase.
Obama has faced similar criticism before. When he increased taxes on tobacco to pay for a children's health bill, his critics said he was raising taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year.
Obama left open the possibility of a tax during interviews last week, insisting he wasn't taking any option off the table despite his personal opposition. But two of his high-profile advisers budget chief Peter Orszag and economic adviser Jason Furman both have indicated they support some taxes on health benefits to pay for the overhaul.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said that Obama should step in an oppose the tax if he's truly against it. Otherwise, he faces a loss to his own Democratic Party and his own campaign credibility.
"I think it's going to take presidential leadership to get people of his party to see that we shouldn't be subsidizing high-end health insurance policies that drive up inflation in health insurance," said Grassley, the top Republican on the powerful finance committee.
Grassley and, to be sure, other Republicans remember Obama's scathing criticism of their GOP presidential nominee.
"Since the president denigrated John McCain's effort to move in this direction during the campaign, it's going to take, in order to win over Republicans, presidential leadership in that direction," Grassley said.
To help sell his plan, Obama scheduled a town hall-style meeting this week in Annandale, Va., a Washington suburb. He plans to take questions Wednesday from the audience and from online sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
Axelrod insisted that the White House has made progress on a health care plan and is working with Congress. Even so, the emerging legislation is hardly the bipartisan collaboration Obama's top advisers had sought.
"One of the problems we've had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other," Axelrod said. "And you don't get anything done. That's not the way the president approaches us."
Axelrod appeared on ABC's "This Week" and NBC's "Meet the Press." Grassley appeared on "This Week."
Sphere: Related Content
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Pray for Monica Conyers
"If you're not praying for me, you're just adding to the problem," said Monica Conyers, wife of Congressman John Conyers who was implicated in a bribery investigation last week.
I hope every Christian takes the time to pray for Ms. Conyers that she sees the light of Christ's truth. She opened the door and now we are obligated to walk through it and ask for God's guidance. Sphere: Related Content
I hope every Christian takes the time to pray for Ms. Conyers that she sees the light of Christ's truth. She opened the door and now we are obligated to walk through it and ask for God's guidance. Sphere: Related Content
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Obama Is My Shepard
THE FIRST BOOK OF DEMOCRAT
PSALM 2008-2012
OBAMA IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT.
PSALM 2008-2012
OBAMA IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT.
HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL FACTORIES.
HE RESTORETH MY FAITH IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
HE GUIDETH ME IN THE PATH OF UNEMPLOYMENT.
YEA, THOUGH I WALK THRU THE VALLEY OF THE BREAD LINE, I SHALL NOT GO HUNGRY.
OBAMA HAS ANOINTED MY INCOME WITH TAXES.
MY EXPENSES RUNNETH OVER MY INCOME.
SURELY, POVERTY AND HARD LIVING WILL FOLLOW ME ALL THE DAYS OF HIS TERM.
FROM HENCE FORTH, WE WILL LIVE ALL THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES IN A RENTED HOME WITH AN OVERSEAS LANDLORD.
BUT I AM GLAD I AM AN AMERICAN, I AM GLAD THAT I AM FREE.
BUT I WISH I WAS A DOG AND OBAMA WAS A TREE.
Today's Quote: "Too many Americans grew tired of being thought to be dumb by the rest of the world, so they went to the polls and removed all doubt."
Sphere: Related Content
Friday, June 5, 2009
Soros: European socialism needed
From an article on George Soros at www.discoverthenetworks.org You can read the full article here.
In a November 2008 interview with Spiegel, Soros made some comments that accurately outlined precisely the course that President Obama's administration would eventually pursue in 2009:
"I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets -- because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost would be in the 300 to 600 billion dollar range [in addition to the $700 billion bailout which the government already had given to the financial industry]…. I think this is a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The U.S. needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. I would use the revenues from these auctions to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the current stagnation."
The interviewer then said: "Your proposal would be dismissed on Wall Street as 'big government.' Republicans might call it European-style 'socialism.'"
Soros replied:
"That is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful -- but also very harmful to our society…. I think it is better to have a government that wants to provide good government than a government that doesn't believe in government…. At times of recession, running a budget deficit is highly desirable. Once the economy begins to recover, you have to balance the budget. In 2010, the Bush tax cuts will expire and we should not extend them. But we will also need additional revenues."
Soros and his foundations have had a hand in funding such noteworthy leftist organizations as the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy; the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the National Organization for Women; Feminist Majority; the American Civil Liberties Union; People for the American Way; Alliance for Justice; NARAL Pro-Choice America; America Coming Together; the Center for American Progress; Campaign for America's Future; Amnesty International; the Sentencing Project; the Center for Community Change; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Human Rights Watch; the Prison Moratorium Project; the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; the National Lawyers Guild; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Coalition for an International Criminal Court; The American Prospect; MoveOn.org; Planned Parenthood; the Nation Institute; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the National Security Archive Fund; the Pacifica Foundation; Physicians for Human Rights; the Proteus Fund; the Public Citizen Foundation; the Urban Institute; the American Friends Service Committee; Catholics for a Free Choice; Human Rights First; the Independent Media Institute; MADRE; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Immigration Law Center; the National Immigration Forum; the National Council of La Raza; the American Immigration Law Foundation; the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee; and the Peace and Security Funders Group.
Apart from the more than $5 billion that Soros' foundation network has donated to leftist groups like those listed above, Soros personally has made campaign contributions to such notable political candidates as Charles Rangel, Al Franken, Tom Udall, Joe Sestak, and Sherrod Brown. Sphere: Related Content
In a November 2008 interview with Spiegel, Soros made some comments that accurately outlined precisely the course that President Obama's administration would eventually pursue in 2009:
"I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets -- because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost would be in the 300 to 600 billion dollar range [in addition to the $700 billion bailout which the government already had given to the financial industry]…. I think this is a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The U.S. needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. I would use the revenues from these auctions to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy. That would be yet another federal program that could help us to overcome the current stagnation."
The interviewer then said: "Your proposal would be dismissed on Wall Street as 'big government.' Republicans might call it European-style 'socialism.'"
Soros replied:
"That is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful -- but also very harmful to our society…. I think it is better to have a government that wants to provide good government than a government that doesn't believe in government…. At times of recession, running a budget deficit is highly desirable. Once the economy begins to recover, you have to balance the budget. In 2010, the Bush tax cuts will expire and we should not extend them. But we will also need additional revenues."
Soros and his foundations have had a hand in funding such noteworthy leftist organizations as the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy; the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the National Organization for Women; Feminist Majority; the American Civil Liberties Union; People for the American Way; Alliance for Justice; NARAL Pro-Choice America; America Coming Together; the Center for American Progress; Campaign for America's Future; Amnesty International; the Sentencing Project; the Center for Community Change; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense and Educational Fund; Human Rights Watch; the Prison Moratorium Project; the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement; the National Lawyers Guild; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the Coalition for an International Criminal Court; The American Prospect; MoveOn.org; Planned Parenthood; the Nation Institute; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Ms. Foundation for Women; the National Security Archive Fund; the Pacifica Foundation; Physicians for Human Rights; the Proteus Fund; the Public Citizen Foundation; the Urban Institute; the American Friends Service Committee; Catholics for a Free Choice; Human Rights First; the Independent Media Institute; MADRE; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the National Immigration Law Center; the National Immigration Forum; the National Council of La Raza; the American Immigration Law Foundation; the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee; and the Peace and Security Funders Group.
Apart from the more than $5 billion that Soros' foundation network has donated to leftist groups like those listed above, Soros personally has made campaign contributions to such notable political candidates as Charles Rangel, Al Franken, Tom Udall, Joe Sestak, and Sherrod Brown. Sphere: Related Content
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Obama's Gramps: Gazing skyward on D-Day in England
By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Surely, Stanley Dunham was gazing skyward 65 years ago, on D-Day. Dunham, the man whom Barack Obama would one day call Gramps, was a 26-year-old supply sergeant stationed near the English Channel with the U.S. Army Air Forces when the invasion of Normandy at last began.
Six weeks later, he crossed the Channel, too, and followed the Allied front across France. A year later, he was on track to fight in Japan when the atom bomb sent him home instead.
Dunham, who died 17 years ago, was the Kansas-born grandfather with the outsized personality who helped to fill the hole in the future president's life created by the absence of Obama's Kenyan father. Sgt. Dunham's war years have been something of a mystery, the details of dates and places lost with the passage of time. The units that he served in were unknown even to the White House.
But a life-size portrait emerges from interviews and records unearthed by The Associated Press. On D-Day, documents place him at Stoney Cross, England, in the 1830th Ordnance Supply and Maintenance Co., Aviation.
"This was the day we had all been waiting for," Dunham's commanding officer wrote the night of June 6 from their base near the English Channel. "Planes by the hundreds took off and landed at our field from dusk until dawn."
His company supported the 9th Air Force as it prepared for the assault on Normandy and took part in the drive that carried the Allies across France. Dunham and the men of the 1830th came across six weeks after the initial Normandy invasion and followed the front through France, servicing airfields known by numbers — A-2, A-44, A-71, and more — in places such as Brucheville, Cricqueville, St.-Jean-de-Daye, Peray, Clastres, Juvincourt and Saint-Dizier.
On this coming Saturday, the 65th anniversary of D-Day, Obama will visit the gravesites and beaches of Normandy, and look out across the channel that his grandfather crossed from a staging area at Southampton, England.
"I knew him when he was older," Obama said of his grandfather in 2007. "But I think about him now and then as he enlisted — a man of 23, fresh-faced with a wise-guy grin."
To the 75 men of Dunham's company, he was a good guy to have around.
For one thing, he taught the men how to use their new gas masks.
He also came up with a radio, games and books for a day room that Dunham's commanding officer described as "a swell place to spend an evening."
And when the 1830th had a party in the gym three days after D-Day, they had Dunham to thank for it.
On May 31, 1944, payday, Dunham had taken up a collection of 35 British pounds — about $150 in today's dollars — to finance the event. He lined up a convoy of girls from Southampton who, the men hoped, would be "simply smashing," as his commanding officer, Frederick Maloof, wrote in his diary.
"The party was a huge success, except that the beer ran out about 10:30 p.m.," 1st Lt. Maloof later reported. "All agreed that the orchestra was good. A few of the die-hards were still crooning over the empty beer barrels at an early morning hour."
For all the good times, the strains of war were ever present for Dunham and his fellow soldiers.
On the evening after D-Day, Dunham's unit dug 27 foxholes.
"This was done in case of a retaliation by the Germans," Maloof wrote.
On June 11, the first hospital ships returned from France, bringing tales of the "hardships encountered on invasion day."
That same day, Maloof wrote that "our mail has not been reaching home, and the wives and sweethearts are beginning to wonder if we have gone across the channel on the first wave."
The wives included Madelyn Dunham, back home in Wichita, Kan., with Stanley Ann, a toddler who would grow up to be Obama's mother.
Madelyn, the beloved grandmother known as "Toot" who helped raise the future president, did her part for the war effort, working the night shift as a supervisor on the B-29 bomber assembly line at the Boeing plant.
Her brother is part of the war story, too. Charles Payne, Obama's great-uncle, in 1945 helped liberate a sub-camp of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, which Obama will visit this Friday.
Stanley Dunham's older brother Ralph, another great-uncle to Obama, also is a branch in the wartime family tree.
Ralph was called up after Stanley enlisted. He landed at Normandy's Omaha Easy Red beach on D-Day plus four, then worked his way through France, Italy and Germany as an assignment and personnel officer.
In the months before the invasion, the brothers met up twice in England while on leave. Once, they came across each other by happenstance in London, where Ralph was staying at the Russell Hotel.
"I walked down the steps and there was my brother sitting on a settee," 92-year-old Ralph Dunham said in interview with the AP.
It turned out that Stanley's hotel had run out of rations and he was sent to the Russell in search of food. The two Kansas boys — each 6-foot-2, by Ralph's recollection — spent the rest of their leave together, touring the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and other sites with a helpful taxi driver. At night, they sampled the London theater offerings. Ralph remembers they saw "Hamlet."
The brothers had a double portrait snapped to send home — after Stanley borrowed a jacket from a fellow member of the 9th Air Force so they'd both be in uniform. The February 1944 portrait is one that Ralph still treasures.
Late in July, six weeks after D-Day, Stanley Dunham's unit crossed the English Channel and landed at Omaha Beach.
"After looking over the Atlantic wall, with its pill boxes, we all agreed it was a miracle that the Allies were able to land," Maloof wrote.
In his autobiography, Obama reports that during the war his grandfather was "sloshing around in the mud of France, part of Patton's Army."
That's right, at least for a few months.
In February 1945, at Saint-Dizier, Dunham's unit was assigned to Patton's 3rd Army, and Dunham remained in that company until early April. Prior to February, Dunham's unit had supported 1st Army operations.
Obama sketches Dunham as a man with a wild streak early on who settled down to sell furniture and life insurance.
By the time he joined the Army, he already had lived large.
He'd been thrown out of his high school in El Dorado, Kan., for punching the principal in the nose. For three years he'd lived off odd jobs, "hopping rail cars to Chicago, then California, then back again, dabbling in moonshine, cards and women," Obama wrote in his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father."
Dunham had also fallen in love with a woman from the other side of the tracks — the good side — and married her. He eloped with Madelyn Payne just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, and he was quick to enlist after the Japanese attack.
"He was really gung-ho," remembers Ralph. "He didn't have to go because he was married. He could have held off."
He was inducted at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Jan. 15, 1942.
That November, while Dunham still was stationed stateside, he got leave to come home to Kansas when his daughter, Stanley Ann, was born at Fort Leavenworth.
Her unusual name, Obama wrote, was "one of Gramps' less judicious ideas — he had wanted a son." The family called her Stannie. Later, she would be known as Ann.
In December 1942, weeks-old Stanley Ann makes her appearance as a dependent on Dunham's pay records. (He's earning $22 a month, with $6.70 deducted for life insurance.)
Dunham spent the first year and a half of his war service stateside, part of it in the 1802nd Ordnance Medium Maintenance Company, Aviation, at Baer Field in Indiana, now Fort Wayne International Airport. He transferred to the 1830th in March 1943, and the unit shipped out to England on the HMS Mauretania that October.
"All officers and enlisted men alike tumbled out of bunks and hammocks to get the last view of the good old U.S.A. as it disappeared beyond the horizon," Maloof wrote.
The rhythms of life for Dunham and the men of the 1830th emerge in the weekly unit histories recorded by Maloof. Men transfer in and out. There is field training. There is a lecture on mines and booby-traps, another on "sex morality." Typhus shots are administered. The company drills on the use of the carbine. The men take a 3-mile hike and bivouacked overnight. Time and again, they move on from one airfield to the next, supporting the front lines.
A number of men go AWOL. Others are charged with drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Dunham's name turns up with surprising frequency, but his conduct generates nothing but praise.
"Sgt. Dunham has been doing a good job as Special Service noncom," Maloof takes time to report in September 1944.
At Clastres in France, stoves are issued to each tent "as the weather at this base has been very cold." French classes are offered. At Juvincourt, it is worthy of note when a small shower is installed, heated by a boiler found in the ruins of an old building. "It is the best bathing facilities we have had since coming to France," the unit history states.
In October 1944, as the front presses forward, the men attend a compulsory lecture in the 367th Fighter Group area on "What to Expect When Stationed in Germany."
It turns out Dunham could have skipped that one. On April 7, 1945, one week before the 1830th moves on to Germany and three weeks before Hitler commits suicide, Dunham is transferred "to the infantry," the unit history shows. Further digging reveals he was assigned to the 12th Reinforcement Depot, based in Tidworth, England, where replacements were being trained for depleted combat units.
The war was winding down in Europe by then, with air superiority achieved and the Luftwaffe not a major threat. Ralph Dunham says his brother was sent back to the states to prepare for possible transfer to Japan in the infantry. Were it not for V-J Day in August 1945, "he would've been fighting in Japan," says Ralph.
Stanley Dunham's military personnel file was destroyed, along with millions of others, in a 1973 fire at the Military Personnel Records center in St. Louis.
The AP pieced together Dunham's war years from other records at the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and the St. Louis center, and with help from historian David Spires at the University of Colorado. The richest details, however, come from Ralph Dunham and the private papers of Maloof, who died in 2005. Maloof's granddaughter, Tamara Maloof Ryman in Houston, searched through page after page to pry out details about Dunham for the AP.
Four months after he transferred out of the 1830th, Stanley Dunham was discharged from the Army on Aug. 30, 1945, at Fort Leavenworth.
Obama tells the rest of the story in his autobiography.
"Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family headed to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI Bill," Obama wrote. "But the classroom couldn't contain his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the family moved again, first back to Kansas, then through a series of small Texas towns, then finally to Seattle, where they stayed long enough for my mother to finish high school."
Wanderlust sent the family on to Hawaii, where Dunham and his wife would be central figures in the life of their grandson after Obama's father left the family. Madelyn died last year at age 86, two days before Obama was elected president.
Stanley, who called his grandson "Bar," died in 1992 at age 73. His ashes are inurned at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, commonly known as Punchbowl.
"It was a small ceremony with a few of his bridge and golf partners in attendance, a three-gun salute, and a bugle playing taps," Obama wrote.
That ceremony was 17 years ago.
But Ralph Dunham is reminded of his brother every time Obama's face appears on TV or in the paper.
"You know," Ralph says, "he looks exactly like Stanley. He looks exactly like my brother, only he's dark."
___
Associated Press writer Betsy Taylor in St. Louis and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report. Sphere: Related Content
WASHINGTON – Surely, Stanley Dunham was gazing skyward 65 years ago, on D-Day. Dunham, the man whom Barack Obama would one day call Gramps, was a 26-year-old supply sergeant stationed near the English Channel with the U.S. Army Air Forces when the invasion of Normandy at last began.
Six weeks later, he crossed the Channel, too, and followed the Allied front across France. A year later, he was on track to fight in Japan when the atom bomb sent him home instead.
Dunham, who died 17 years ago, was the Kansas-born grandfather with the outsized personality who helped to fill the hole in the future president's life created by the absence of Obama's Kenyan father. Sgt. Dunham's war years have been something of a mystery, the details of dates and places lost with the passage of time. The units that he served in were unknown even to the White House.
But a life-size portrait emerges from interviews and records unearthed by The Associated Press. On D-Day, documents place him at Stoney Cross, England, in the 1830th Ordnance Supply and Maintenance Co., Aviation.
"This was the day we had all been waiting for," Dunham's commanding officer wrote the night of June 6 from their base near the English Channel. "Planes by the hundreds took off and landed at our field from dusk until dawn."
His company supported the 9th Air Force as it prepared for the assault on Normandy and took part in the drive that carried the Allies across France. Dunham and the men of the 1830th came across six weeks after the initial Normandy invasion and followed the front through France, servicing airfields known by numbers — A-2, A-44, A-71, and more — in places such as Brucheville, Cricqueville, St.-Jean-de-Daye, Peray, Clastres, Juvincourt and Saint-Dizier.
On this coming Saturday, the 65th anniversary of D-Day, Obama will visit the gravesites and beaches of Normandy, and look out across the channel that his grandfather crossed from a staging area at Southampton, England.
"I knew him when he was older," Obama said of his grandfather in 2007. "But I think about him now and then as he enlisted — a man of 23, fresh-faced with a wise-guy grin."
To the 75 men of Dunham's company, he was a good guy to have around.
For one thing, he taught the men how to use their new gas masks.
He also came up with a radio, games and books for a day room that Dunham's commanding officer described as "a swell place to spend an evening."
And when the 1830th had a party in the gym three days after D-Day, they had Dunham to thank for it.
On May 31, 1944, payday, Dunham had taken up a collection of 35 British pounds — about $150 in today's dollars — to finance the event. He lined up a convoy of girls from Southampton who, the men hoped, would be "simply smashing," as his commanding officer, Frederick Maloof, wrote in his diary.
"The party was a huge success, except that the beer ran out about 10:30 p.m.," 1st Lt. Maloof later reported. "All agreed that the orchestra was good. A few of the die-hards were still crooning over the empty beer barrels at an early morning hour."
For all the good times, the strains of war were ever present for Dunham and his fellow soldiers.
On the evening after D-Day, Dunham's unit dug 27 foxholes.
"This was done in case of a retaliation by the Germans," Maloof wrote.
On June 11, the first hospital ships returned from France, bringing tales of the "hardships encountered on invasion day."
That same day, Maloof wrote that "our mail has not been reaching home, and the wives and sweethearts are beginning to wonder if we have gone across the channel on the first wave."
The wives included Madelyn Dunham, back home in Wichita, Kan., with Stanley Ann, a toddler who would grow up to be Obama's mother.
Madelyn, the beloved grandmother known as "Toot" who helped raise the future president, did her part for the war effort, working the night shift as a supervisor on the B-29 bomber assembly line at the Boeing plant.
Her brother is part of the war story, too. Charles Payne, Obama's great-uncle, in 1945 helped liberate a sub-camp of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, which Obama will visit this Friday.
Stanley Dunham's older brother Ralph, another great-uncle to Obama, also is a branch in the wartime family tree.
Ralph was called up after Stanley enlisted. He landed at Normandy's Omaha Easy Red beach on D-Day plus four, then worked his way through France, Italy and Germany as an assignment and personnel officer.
In the months before the invasion, the brothers met up twice in England while on leave. Once, they came across each other by happenstance in London, where Ralph was staying at the Russell Hotel.
"I walked down the steps and there was my brother sitting on a settee," 92-year-old Ralph Dunham said in interview with the AP.
It turned out that Stanley's hotel had run out of rations and he was sent to the Russell in search of food. The two Kansas boys — each 6-foot-2, by Ralph's recollection — spent the rest of their leave together, touring the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace and other sites with a helpful taxi driver. At night, they sampled the London theater offerings. Ralph remembers they saw "Hamlet."
The brothers had a double portrait snapped to send home — after Stanley borrowed a jacket from a fellow member of the 9th Air Force so they'd both be in uniform. The February 1944 portrait is one that Ralph still treasures.
Late in July, six weeks after D-Day, Stanley Dunham's unit crossed the English Channel and landed at Omaha Beach.
"After looking over the Atlantic wall, with its pill boxes, we all agreed it was a miracle that the Allies were able to land," Maloof wrote.
In his autobiography, Obama reports that during the war his grandfather was "sloshing around in the mud of France, part of Patton's Army."
That's right, at least for a few months.
In February 1945, at Saint-Dizier, Dunham's unit was assigned to Patton's 3rd Army, and Dunham remained in that company until early April. Prior to February, Dunham's unit had supported 1st Army operations.
Obama sketches Dunham as a man with a wild streak early on who settled down to sell furniture and life insurance.
By the time he joined the Army, he already had lived large.
He'd been thrown out of his high school in El Dorado, Kan., for punching the principal in the nose. For three years he'd lived off odd jobs, "hopping rail cars to Chicago, then California, then back again, dabbling in moonshine, cards and women," Obama wrote in his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father."
Dunham had also fallen in love with a woman from the other side of the tracks — the good side — and married her. He eloped with Madelyn Payne just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7, 1941, and he was quick to enlist after the Japanese attack.
"He was really gung-ho," remembers Ralph. "He didn't have to go because he was married. He could have held off."
He was inducted at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Jan. 15, 1942.
That November, while Dunham still was stationed stateside, he got leave to come home to Kansas when his daughter, Stanley Ann, was born at Fort Leavenworth.
Her unusual name, Obama wrote, was "one of Gramps' less judicious ideas — he had wanted a son." The family called her Stannie. Later, she would be known as Ann.
In December 1942, weeks-old Stanley Ann makes her appearance as a dependent on Dunham's pay records. (He's earning $22 a month, with $6.70 deducted for life insurance.)
Dunham spent the first year and a half of his war service stateside, part of it in the 1802nd Ordnance Medium Maintenance Company, Aviation, at Baer Field in Indiana, now Fort Wayne International Airport. He transferred to the 1830th in March 1943, and the unit shipped out to England on the HMS Mauretania that October.
"All officers and enlisted men alike tumbled out of bunks and hammocks to get the last view of the good old U.S.A. as it disappeared beyond the horizon," Maloof wrote.
The rhythms of life for Dunham and the men of the 1830th emerge in the weekly unit histories recorded by Maloof. Men transfer in and out. There is field training. There is a lecture on mines and booby-traps, another on "sex morality." Typhus shots are administered. The company drills on the use of the carbine. The men take a 3-mile hike and bivouacked overnight. Time and again, they move on from one airfield to the next, supporting the front lines.
A number of men go AWOL. Others are charged with drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Dunham's name turns up with surprising frequency, but his conduct generates nothing but praise.
"Sgt. Dunham has been doing a good job as Special Service noncom," Maloof takes time to report in September 1944.
At Clastres in France, stoves are issued to each tent "as the weather at this base has been very cold." French classes are offered. At Juvincourt, it is worthy of note when a small shower is installed, heated by a boiler found in the ruins of an old building. "It is the best bathing facilities we have had since coming to France," the unit history states.
In October 1944, as the front presses forward, the men attend a compulsory lecture in the 367th Fighter Group area on "What to Expect When Stationed in Germany."
It turns out Dunham could have skipped that one. On April 7, 1945, one week before the 1830th moves on to Germany and three weeks before Hitler commits suicide, Dunham is transferred "to the infantry," the unit history shows. Further digging reveals he was assigned to the 12th Reinforcement Depot, based in Tidworth, England, where replacements were being trained for depleted combat units.
The war was winding down in Europe by then, with air superiority achieved and the Luftwaffe not a major threat. Ralph Dunham says his brother was sent back to the states to prepare for possible transfer to Japan in the infantry. Were it not for V-J Day in August 1945, "he would've been fighting in Japan," says Ralph.
Stanley Dunham's military personnel file was destroyed, along with millions of others, in a 1973 fire at the Military Personnel Records center in St. Louis.
The AP pieced together Dunham's war years from other records at the Air Force Historical Research Agency at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama and the St. Louis center, and with help from historian David Spires at the University of Colorado. The richest details, however, come from Ralph Dunham and the private papers of Maloof, who died in 2005. Maloof's granddaughter, Tamara Maloof Ryman in Houston, searched through page after page to pry out details about Dunham for the AP.
Four months after he transferred out of the 1830th, Stanley Dunham was discharged from the Army on Aug. 30, 1945, at Fort Leavenworth.
Obama tells the rest of the story in his autobiography.
"Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family headed to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI Bill," Obama wrote. "But the classroom couldn't contain his ambitions, his restlessness, and so the family moved again, first back to Kansas, then through a series of small Texas towns, then finally to Seattle, where they stayed long enough for my mother to finish high school."
Wanderlust sent the family on to Hawaii, where Dunham and his wife would be central figures in the life of their grandson after Obama's father left the family. Madelyn died last year at age 86, two days before Obama was elected president.
Stanley, who called his grandson "Bar," died in 1992 at age 73. His ashes are inurned at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, commonly known as Punchbowl.
"It was a small ceremony with a few of his bridge and golf partners in attendance, a three-gun salute, and a bugle playing taps," Obama wrote.
That ceremony was 17 years ago.
But Ralph Dunham is reminded of his brother every time Obama's face appears on TV or in the paper.
"You know," Ralph says, "he looks exactly like Stanley. He looks exactly like my brother, only he's dark."
___
Associated Press writer Betsy Taylor in St. Louis and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report. Sphere: Related Content
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Rasmussen: Only 68% Of American Oppose National Sales Tax
From Rasmussen Reports
To raise additional money for the government, just 18% of Americans nationwide favor a national sales tax. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 68% oppose such a tax.
There is more support for the concept if sales tax revenue is used to provide health insurance for all Americans. In that scenario, 40% favor a national sales tax and 49% are opposed.
Democrats strongly support a national sales tax to provide universal health insurance coverage. Republicans are opposed by a three-to-one margin, and those not affiliated with either major party are opposed two-to-one.
A plurality of Americans would support a national sales tax if it meant getting rid of the federal income tax: 43% favor that trade-off, but 38% are opposed. Pluralities of Republicans and unaffiliateds like the idea, while a plurality of Democrats are against it.
Forty-eight percent (48%) say a national sales tax is fairer than an income tax while 26% hold the opposite view. The sales tax is viewed as fairer by 52% of Republicans, 44% of Democrats and 49% of unaffiliateds.
According to recent news reports, some in Washington say adoption of a national sales tax on all goods and services would lead to a reduction in income tax rates. However, Americans are skeptical that the nation’s politicians would actually go through with such a trade-off.
Only 20% of Americans think it’s even somewhat likely that the government would actually cut income tax rates once the national sales tax was approved. Just eight percent (8%) say it’s Very Likely income tax rates would come down.
A Washington Post article this week said a national sales tax ranging from 10% to 25% is being discussed. In the Rasmussen Reports survey, no specific levels of taxation were mentioned. However, since the tax rate would be much higher than existing state sales taxes, it is likely that support for a national sales tax would decline as specific numbers became known.
An earlier survey found that 34% were generally willing to pay higher taxes to provide health insurance for all. But there was strong opposition to taxing health insurance benefits provided by companies. Fifty percent (50%) are willing to tax alcohol products to generate revenue for health care, but there is little support for a “sin-tax” on non-diet sodas.
Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters prefer a government that offers fewer services and has lower taxes. Seventy-seven percent (77%) say the bigger problem in the United States is the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending rather than Americans' unwillingness to pay higher taxes. Sphere: Related Content
To raise additional money for the government, just 18% of Americans nationwide favor a national sales tax. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 68% oppose such a tax.
There is more support for the concept if sales tax revenue is used to provide health insurance for all Americans. In that scenario, 40% favor a national sales tax and 49% are opposed.
Democrats strongly support a national sales tax to provide universal health insurance coverage. Republicans are opposed by a three-to-one margin, and those not affiliated with either major party are opposed two-to-one.
A plurality of Americans would support a national sales tax if it meant getting rid of the federal income tax: 43% favor that trade-off, but 38% are opposed. Pluralities of Republicans and unaffiliateds like the idea, while a plurality of Democrats are against it.
Forty-eight percent (48%) say a national sales tax is fairer than an income tax while 26% hold the opposite view. The sales tax is viewed as fairer by 52% of Republicans, 44% of Democrats and 49% of unaffiliateds.
According to recent news reports, some in Washington say adoption of a national sales tax on all goods and services would lead to a reduction in income tax rates. However, Americans are skeptical that the nation’s politicians would actually go through with such a trade-off.
Only 20% of Americans think it’s even somewhat likely that the government would actually cut income tax rates once the national sales tax was approved. Just eight percent (8%) say it’s Very Likely income tax rates would come down.
A Washington Post article this week said a national sales tax ranging from 10% to 25% is being discussed. In the Rasmussen Reports survey, no specific levels of taxation were mentioned. However, since the tax rate would be much higher than existing state sales taxes, it is likely that support for a national sales tax would decline as specific numbers became known.
An earlier survey found that 34% were generally willing to pay higher taxes to provide health insurance for all. But there was strong opposition to taxing health insurance benefits provided by companies. Fifty percent (50%) are willing to tax alcohol products to generate revenue for health care, but there is little support for a “sin-tax” on non-diet sodas.
Sixty-four percent (64%) of voters prefer a government that offers fewer services and has lower taxes. Seventy-seven percent (77%) say the bigger problem in the United States is the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending rather than Americans' unwillingness to pay higher taxes. Sphere: Related Content
Friday, May 29, 2009
Big Donors & Bundlers Among Obama's Picks
Courtesy of www.opensecrets.org
Published by Michael Beckel on May 28, 2009
U.S. presidents have long rewarded big campaign donors, fundraisers and other loyalists with ambassadorships, and Democratic President Barack Obama seems to be no exception. Yesterday, he officially announced his intent to nominate a dozen individuals to ambassadorships around the globe. That list included a handful of career Foreign Service officers, but it also included several big contributors and bundlers, who, along with their spouses, have given nearly $1 million almost exclusively to Democrats since the 1990 election cycle. These donations include $34,600 to Obama himself, on top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars they steered toward Obama's presidential campaign and inauguration committees as bundlers.
Some of the individuals nominated for ambassadorships have not contributed any money to federal candidates, parties or committees, but most have, including one who reportedly holds the nickname of "Vacuum Cleaner" for his ability to suck up checks for Democrats. The nominated individuals--including Obama's choice to be the ambassador to Ireland, which he announced on St. Patrick's Day--and their spouses, have contributed at least $968,900 since 1989. Of this sum, 89 percent has gone to Democrats. (Download a list of the political contributions the nominees have given by cycle, as well as the candidates that have received money from them here: Ambassador_Data.xls. Note that there are two tabs.)
Here's the money-in-politics breakdown for Obama's recent ambassador picks:
Louis B. Susman: This lawyer and investment banker has reportedly earned the nicknames the "vacuum cleaner" and "big bundler" for his prowess as a bundler of campaign cash. He bundled at least $100,000 for Obama's presidential campaign and at least $300,000 for his inauguration, according to Public Citizen. This includes $50,000 from his personal funds. Further, he and his wife have contributed at least $581,400 to federal candidates, committees and parties, with 99 percent of that sum going to Democrats, including at least $12,800 to Obama. He has been nominated to be the ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Daniel M. Rooney: Owner and chairman of the Pittsburgh Steeler's football team, he and his wife have contributed at least $152,400 to federal candidates, committees and parties since the 1990 election cycle, including $500 to Obama. Ninety percent of their funds have gone to Democrats. Rooney also endorsed Obama in the run-up to Pennsylvania's heated presidential primary in April of 2008. He is a co-founder of the Ireland-related fundraising organization, The Ireland Funds, as well, and he has been nominated to be the ambassador to Ireland.
Charles H. Rivkin: The head of the entertainment company W!LDBRAIN, he served as a delegate to the Democratic National Committee in support of Obama last summer. Moreover, he sent at least half-a-million towards Obama's campaign committee as a bundler and another $300,000 toward his inaugural committee. Since the 1994 election cycle, he has personally contributed more than $97,500 to Democrats, including $6,600 to Obama, and now he has been nominated to be the ambassador to France.
John V. Roos: This lawyer has bundled at least $500,000 to Obama's presidential campaign. He and his wife have also contributed at least $77,500 to Democrats since the 1992 election cycle, including $6,900 to Obama. Roos is the CEO of the technology-oriented law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and has been nominated to be ambassador to Japan.
Laurie S. Fulton: The long-time lawyer who also served on the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace from 2004 to 2008 bundled at least $100,000 for Obama's presidential campaign. Moreover, she has personally contributed at least $48,900 to Democrats since the 1992 election cycle, including $4,850 to Obama. She has been nominated to be the ambassador to Denmark.
Vilma S. Martinez: The former head of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a litigator with Munger, Tolles & Olson, she has contributed more than $9,800 to Democratic candidates and groups since 1989, including at least $1,900 to Obama. She has been nominated to be ambassador to Argentina.
Miguel H. Díaz: A professor of theology at St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, Diaz contributed $1,000 to Obama's campaign last fall, his only federal political contribution to meet disclosure requirements since 1989. He also served as a Catholic adviser to Obama's presidential campaign. He has been nominated to be the ambassador to the Vatican.
Michael A. Battle, Sr.: The president of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Ga., Battle has no known history of giving federal campaign cash. He has also been an administrator at several higher education institutions, including Chicago State University, Virginia State University and Hampton University, and he has been nominated to be the U.S. representative to the African Union, which has the rank of ambassador.
Robert S. Connan: Working for the U.S. Commercial Service within the Department of Commerce since 1980, Connan has not made any contributions exceeding $200 to federal candidates, committees or parties. His most recent position has been with the European Union, and he has been nominated to be the ambassador to Iceland.
Patricia A. Butenis: A career officer with the U.S. Foreign Service, which she joined in 1980, Butenis has served most recently in the U.S. embassy in Iraq. She has been nominated to be the ambassador to both Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Butenis has not given contributions greater than $200 since 1989.
Christopher William Dell: A career officer with the U.S. Foreign Service, which he joined in 1983, he served most recently in the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. He has been nominated to be the ambassador to Kosovo, and he does not have any known federal campaign contributions.
Thomas A. Shannon: A career member of the U.S. Foreign Service, which he joined in 1984, he is the current Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Ambassador. He has not given any federal campaign contributions greater than $200, and he has been nominated to be the ambassador to Brazil.
Timothy J. Roemer: The former six-term Democratic congressman from Indiana was a member of the 9/11 Commission and provided Obama with a hearty endorsement during the contentious primary race with Hillary Clinton. He currently heads the Center for National Policy, a DC-based public policy organization, and has been nominated to be the ambassador to India. He has not made any personal campaign contributions to federal candidates, but he does appear in our Revolving Door database.
Since John F. Kennedy was president in the 1960s, about one-third of American ambassadors have been political appointees, according to the American Academy of Diplomacy. The academy is among the groups that think the public would be served if that number was lowered, and have urged Obama to cut that number to about ten percent. "Too often ambassadorships have served as political rewards for unqualified candidates," they wrote in a letter to Obama last year.
Time will tell if the Obama administration has any plans to buck this tradition and reduce the number of non-career appointees. And even as Obama rewards some big donors with ambassadorships, he has also pledged to grow the number of Foreign Service officers. The budget plan he submitted to Congress earlier this year would increase by 25 percent the total number of Foreign Service officers by 2013 and double the number of staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development by 2012.CRP Researchers Doug Weber and Carolyn Sharpe contributed to this report. Sphere: Related Content
Published by Michael Beckel on May 28, 2009
U.S. presidents have long rewarded big campaign donors, fundraisers and other loyalists with ambassadorships, and Democratic President Barack Obama seems to be no exception. Yesterday, he officially announced his intent to nominate a dozen individuals to ambassadorships around the globe. That list included a handful of career Foreign Service officers, but it also included several big contributors and bundlers, who, along with their spouses, have given nearly $1 million almost exclusively to Democrats since the 1990 election cycle. These donations include $34,600 to Obama himself, on top of the hundreds of thousands of dollars they steered toward Obama's presidential campaign and inauguration committees as bundlers.
Some of the individuals nominated for ambassadorships have not contributed any money to federal candidates, parties or committees, but most have, including one who reportedly holds the nickname of "Vacuum Cleaner" for his ability to suck up checks for Democrats. The nominated individuals--including Obama's choice to be the ambassador to Ireland, which he announced on St. Patrick's Day--and their spouses, have contributed at least $968,900 since 1989. Of this sum, 89 percent has gone to Democrats. (Download a list of the political contributions the nominees have given by cycle, as well as the candidates that have received money from them here: Ambassador_Data.xls. Note that there are two tabs.)
Here's the money-in-politics breakdown for Obama's recent ambassador picks:
Louis B. Susman: This lawyer and investment banker has reportedly earned the nicknames the "vacuum cleaner" and "big bundler" for his prowess as a bundler of campaign cash. He bundled at least $100,000 for Obama's presidential campaign and at least $300,000 for his inauguration, according to Public Citizen. This includes $50,000 from his personal funds. Further, he and his wife have contributed at least $581,400 to federal candidates, committees and parties, with 99 percent of that sum going to Democrats, including at least $12,800 to Obama. He has been nominated to be the ambassador to the United Kingdom.
Daniel M. Rooney: Owner and chairman of the Pittsburgh Steeler's football team, he and his wife have contributed at least $152,400 to federal candidates, committees and parties since the 1990 election cycle, including $500 to Obama. Ninety percent of their funds have gone to Democrats. Rooney also endorsed Obama in the run-up to Pennsylvania's heated presidential primary in April of 2008. He is a co-founder of the Ireland-related fundraising organization, The Ireland Funds, as well, and he has been nominated to be the ambassador to Ireland.
Charles H. Rivkin: The head of the entertainment company W!LDBRAIN, he served as a delegate to the Democratic National Committee in support of Obama last summer. Moreover, he sent at least half-a-million towards Obama's campaign committee as a bundler and another $300,000 toward his inaugural committee. Since the 1994 election cycle, he has personally contributed more than $97,500 to Democrats, including $6,600 to Obama, and now he has been nominated to be the ambassador to France.
John V. Roos: This lawyer has bundled at least $500,000 to Obama's presidential campaign. He and his wife have also contributed at least $77,500 to Democrats since the 1992 election cycle, including $6,900 to Obama. Roos is the CEO of the technology-oriented law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and has been nominated to be ambassador to Japan.
Laurie S. Fulton: The long-time lawyer who also served on the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace from 2004 to 2008 bundled at least $100,000 for Obama's presidential campaign. Moreover, she has personally contributed at least $48,900 to Democrats since the 1992 election cycle, including $4,850 to Obama. She has been nominated to be the ambassador to Denmark.
Vilma S. Martinez: The former head of the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and a litigator with Munger, Tolles & Olson, she has contributed more than $9,800 to Democratic candidates and groups since 1989, including at least $1,900 to Obama. She has been nominated to be ambassador to Argentina.
Miguel H. Díaz: A professor of theology at St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, Diaz contributed $1,000 to Obama's campaign last fall, his only federal political contribution to meet disclosure requirements since 1989. He also served as a Catholic adviser to Obama's presidential campaign. He has been nominated to be the ambassador to the Vatican.
Michael A. Battle, Sr.: The president of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Ga., Battle has no known history of giving federal campaign cash. He has also been an administrator at several higher education institutions, including Chicago State University, Virginia State University and Hampton University, and he has been nominated to be the U.S. representative to the African Union, which has the rank of ambassador.
Robert S. Connan: Working for the U.S. Commercial Service within the Department of Commerce since 1980, Connan has not made any contributions exceeding $200 to federal candidates, committees or parties. His most recent position has been with the European Union, and he has been nominated to be the ambassador to Iceland.
Patricia A. Butenis: A career officer with the U.S. Foreign Service, which she joined in 1980, Butenis has served most recently in the U.S. embassy in Iraq. She has been nominated to be the ambassador to both Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Butenis has not given contributions greater than $200 since 1989.
Christopher William Dell: A career officer with the U.S. Foreign Service, which he joined in 1983, he served most recently in the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan. He has been nominated to be the ambassador to Kosovo, and he does not have any known federal campaign contributions.
Thomas A. Shannon: A career member of the U.S. Foreign Service, which he joined in 1984, he is the current Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Ambassador. He has not given any federal campaign contributions greater than $200, and he has been nominated to be the ambassador to Brazil.
Timothy J. Roemer: The former six-term Democratic congressman from Indiana was a member of the 9/11 Commission and provided Obama with a hearty endorsement during the contentious primary race with Hillary Clinton. He currently heads the Center for National Policy, a DC-based public policy organization, and has been nominated to be the ambassador to India. He has not made any personal campaign contributions to federal candidates, but he does appear in our Revolving Door database.
Since John F. Kennedy was president in the 1960s, about one-third of American ambassadors have been political appointees, according to the American Academy of Diplomacy. The academy is among the groups that think the public would be served if that number was lowered, and have urged Obama to cut that number to about ten percent. "Too often ambassadorships have served as political rewards for unqualified candidates," they wrote in a letter to Obama last year.
Time will tell if the Obama administration has any plans to buck this tradition and reduce the number of non-career appointees. And even as Obama rewards some big donors with ambassadorships, he has also pledged to grow the number of Foreign Service officers. The budget plan he submitted to Congress earlier this year would increase by 25 percent the total number of Foreign Service officers by 2013 and double the number of staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development by 2012.CRP Researchers Doug Weber and Carolyn Sharpe contributed to this report. Sphere: Related Content
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