Fact Sheet: States Answer the First Lady’s Call to Put America’s Heroes Back to Work

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For Immediate Release April 17, 2013 Fact Sheet: States Answer the First Lady’s Call to Put America’s Heroes Back to Work

As part of their Joining Forces initiative, on February 25th First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden addressed the National Governor’s Association and issued a call to action – building on President Obama’s June 2012 announcement of the Military Credentialing and Licensing Task Force – that by the end of 2015, all 50 states will have taken legislative or executive action to help our troops get the credentials they need to successfully transition to the civilian labor market. In less than two months 13 states have answered the First Lady’s call and passed legislation that fast-tracks the ability for service members and veterans to earn civilian credentials and licenses, and 8 states have passed legislation that expedites professional licenses or certifications for military spouses when they move to a new state.

Today, the First Lady will join Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley as he signs into law the Veterans Full Employment Act of 2013. This comprehensive bill, developed in consultation with the Department of Defense, includes a number of Best Practices outlined in the Administration’s report: The Fast Track to Civilian Employment: Streamlining Credentialing and Licensing for Service Members, Veterans, and Their Spouses.

 

Maryland: Setting a National Standard for Military Credentialing and Licensing Policy

Maryland’s Veterans Full Employment Act of 2013 sets a national standard for state legislation, streamlining the ability for service members, veterans, and their spouses to obtain over 70 civilian credentials and licenses.

Supporting separating service members and veterans who seek to qualify for occupational licenses and certification based on their military education, training, and experience, including licenses in Emergency Medical Services and Advanced Medical Occupations.

The bill requires state licensing units to accept education, training, or service completed by a military member toward the qualifications to receive a license or certification.

Supporting separating service members and veterans who seek to obtain academic credit for their military education, training, and experience..

The bill requires the state’s public universities to implement policies that award academic credit for military training, coursework, and education, thus reducing the time to degree as well as the cost of earning a degree or certificate.

Supporting separating service members and military spouses who seek to transfer a current license by endorsement or obtain a temporary license when separating in a state other than the state that approved the current license.

The bill requires state licensing units to expedite licensing for military spouses, service members, and recently-discharged veterans.

Translating Military Experience into Civilian Employment

The United States has the most highly trained military in the world, comprised of men and women who have broad skill sets because of their military education and experience.  The members of our Armed Forces and their families make great sacrifices, and when their service is concluded, we owe it to our veterans and their families to help them accomplish a successful transition to the civilian labor market. That is why over the past year and a half, the President has taken significant action to create a “career-ready military” and streamline the transition process.

Too often the talented men and women who have served our country face barriers that make it difficult to find jobs that take advantage of their military skill sets. Many service members and veterans are required to repeat education or training in order to receive industry certifications and state occupational licenses, even though much, and in some cases, all, of their military training and experience overlaps with credential requirements. Additionally, frequent moves, and the resulting need to search for new employment, can be a significant problem for military spouses, especially when getting a job in a new state requires obtaining an occupational license. Leveraging the skills of our military veterans and their families will build a stronger workforce and a more competitive economy.

As of March 2013, roughly 783,000 veterans were unemployed and looking for work, including 207,000 post-9/11 veterans.  As we drawdown from the war in Afghanistan, one million service members are expected to leave the armed forces over the next several years. 

To ensure service members leave the military with the ability to transfer their education and training to the civilian job market, President Obama created the Military Credentialing and Licensing Task Force in June of 2012.

As its initial action, the Task Force forged partnerships with the five largest manufacturing credentialing bodies to provide opportunities for service members to gain industry-recognized, nationally-portable certifications for high-demand manufacturing jobs -- including welding, machining, maintenance, and logistics -- almost all of which have median   hourly wages above the national average. These partnerships are currently being implemented at military bases across the country.

In February, the Administration expanded its efforts to assist states in translating military training and experience into credit towards professional licensure. The objectives of this initiative are to accelerate states’ occupational licensing processes and to streamline approaches for assessing the equivalency of military training and experience for academic credit as well as in specific occupations, including

Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and ParamedicsLicensed Practical Nurses (LPNs)Physician Assistants (PAs)Commercial Driver’s Licenses for Bus and Truck Driver’s License (CDLs)

Making Military Spouses’ Licenses Portable

There are currently more than 860,000 military spouses, about 95 percent of whom are female. Over the past six years, the labor force participation rate for military spouses has been approximately 55 percent, with an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent. Military spouses experience a number of unique employment challenges. According to analysis from the Treasury Department, military spouses are ten times more likely to have moved across state lines in the last year compared to their civilian counterparts: Taking an average for the years 2007 through 2012, 15.4 percent of military spouses moved across state lines each year, compared to just 1.1 percent of civilian spouses.

While many of the common occupations among military spouses are not licensed, some of the most popular professions, including teaching and nursing, do require licensure.  As occupational licenses carry state-specific conditions and processes, many spouses face lengthy re-employment delays when they move between states. Because of the delay, and expense involved in re-licensure, many spouses are unable to work in their chosen profession. This dilemma can affect the financial stability of military families, discourage service members from staying in the military, and reduce hiring potential if spouses must remain out of the workforce because of these delays.

States Step Up to Answer the First Lady’s Call-to-Action

Since the First Lady’s NGA remarks on February 25th, 13 states have stepped-up to answer her call-to-action by passing legislation that streamlines the ability for service members and veterans to obtain civilian certification and licensure.  Eight states have passed legislation that expedites professional licenses or certifications for military spouses when they move to a new state.  These states include:

Arizona: On April 11th, the Governor signed into law a bill that adopts the Military Skills Test Waiver for Commercial Driver’s Licenses and eases the professional licensing requirements military applicants seeking LPN licensure. In her signing letter, the Governor encouraged all state agencies to examine their licensing rules to identify opportunities where service member training can be credited toward existing professional licensure requirements.  The state has already passed spousal licensing legislation. 

Georgia: On April 8th, the Governor signed into law a bill that streamlines the ability for veterans to earn licenses in the construction trades. The state has already signed the Military Skills Test Waiver for the Commercial Driver’s License.  The bill also allows licensing boards to endorse certain military spousal licenses from other states.  Occupations include Electrical Contractor Class I and Journeyman Plumber.

Idaho: On April 1st, the Governor signed into law a bill that expedites licenses for qualified spouses of members of the military.

Indiana: On April 2nd, the Governor signed into law a bill that streamlines the ability for veterans to earn emergency medical services licenses. The state has already signed the Military Skills Test Waiver for the Commercial Driver’s License and passed spousal licensing legislation.  The state has already passed spousal licensing legislation.

Kansas: The state legislature passed a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including licenses for emergency medical services and nursing. The state has already signed the Military Skills Test Waiver for the Commercial Driver’s License and passed spousal licensing legislation.

Kentucky: On March 19th, the Governor signed into law a bill that streamlines the ability for veterans to earn emergency medical services licenses and Commercial Driver’s Licenses.  The state has already passed spousal licensing legislation.

Maryland: Today, the Governor signed into law a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including licenses for emergency medical services and nursing. The bill also enables service members and veterans to translate military training, education, and experience into academic credit. The state has already signed the Military Skills Test Waiver for the Commercial Driver’s License.  For military spouses, the bill also requires licensing units to expedite licensing, including certificates for educators/teachers issued by the Maryland State Department of Education.

Mississippi: On March 18th, the Governor signed into law a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including Commercial Driver’s Licenses and licenses for emergency medical services and nursing.  The bill also streamlines the process for military spouses who seek to transfer their licenses from other states when they move to Mississippi. For military spouses, the bill covers all occupational and educational professions.

Montana: On March 20th, the Governor signed into law a bill that provides members of the Reserve the ability to extend their licensing deadline while serving on active duty.  The state has already passed spousal licensing legislation.

New Mexico: On March 26th, the Governor signed into law a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including licenses for emergency medical services and nursing.  The bill also streamlines the process for military spouses who seek to transfer their licenses from other states when they move to New Mexico. For military spouses, the bill covers all regulated occupations, with the exception of attorneys and teachers.

 North Dakota: The Governor signed into law a bill that grants a teaching license to an applicant who holds a regular teaching license or certification in another state, provided the individual meets certain requirements. 

South Dakota: On March 16th, the Governor signed into law a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including licenses for nursing. The state has already signed the Military Skills Test Waiver for the Commercial Driver’s License.  The bill also streamlines the process for military spouses who seek to transfer their licenses from other states when they move to South Dakota. For military spouses, the bill covers all occupations covered under Title 36, including teachers.

Tennessee: The state legislature passed a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including Commercial Driver’s Licenses and licenses for emergency medical services and nursing.  The state has already passed spousal licensing legislation.

Utah: On March 26th, the Governor signed into law a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including Commercial Driver’s Licenses and licenses for emergency medical services and nursing.  The state has already passed spousal licensing legislation.

Wyoming: On March 13th, the Governor signed into law a bill that broadly streamlines the ability for veterans to earn state licenses, including Commercial Driver’s Licenses and licenses for emergency medical services and nursing. The bill also streamlines the process for military spouses who seek to transfer their licenses from other states when they move to Wyoming.  For military spouses, the bill covers all occupations, except attorneys and professions with prescriptive drug authority.

Blog posts on this issue April 18, 2013 12:29 PM EDTIn the Face of Evil, Boston Has Shown that Americans Will Lift Up What Is Good

President Obama speaks at in interfaith service dedicated to those who were gravely wounded or killed at the Boston Marathon bombing.

April 18, 2013 10:15 AM EDTWatch Live: President Obama Addresses Healing Service in Boston

President Obama will deliver remarks this morning at Healing Our City: An Interfaith Service which is dedicated to those who were gravely wounded or killed in Monday’s bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

April 18, 2013 9:57 AM EDTCourage, Strength, Resilience: Women Fight AIDS

The Kaiser Foundation hosts an event for the launch of EMPOWERED, Alicia Keys' new campaign to help end the HIV/AIDs epidemic.

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Sequestration Is Devastating Schools On America’s Indian Reservations

The automatic budget cuts that went into effect on March 1 are already having a devastating impact on education and health services on American Indian reservations, where poverty and unemployment rates are already sky-high and high drug addiction and school dropout rates make education an even bigger necessity than it is in other parts of the U.S.

The federal government provides roughly 60 percent of the funding for reservation schools, according to the Washington Post, and on reservations like Montana’s Fort Peck that have already faced budget cuts are now cutting Head Start and summer school, saving money by not filling vacant jobs, and cutting health care services, the Post reports:

The superintendent can’t hire a reading teacher in an elementary school where more than half the students do not read or write at grade level. Summer school, which feeds children and offers them an alternative to hanging around the reservation’s trash-strewn yards, may be trimmed or canceled. [...]

The school system — for which federal funding already had been reduced before the sequester — is looking for $1.2 million in additional cuts, partly by not filling jobs that go vacant. The Indian Health Service, the reservation’s main source for health care, will also be cut by 8 percent, and Head Start, which serves 240 toddlers, will be cut by 5 percent, officials said.

“Instead of trying to cut, we should be adding,” said Kent Hoffman, the vice principal at the high school, who is also filling in as athletic director, another job that will not be filled. “To me, this is insane.”

States across America are kicking kids out of preschool programs because of sequestration. Indiana is using a lottery to randomly remove kids from Head Start, Tennessee is ending bus service (which could reduce enrollment), and Washington is ending food programs in an effort to keep from removing kids from the program, though officials say that too is “simply unavoidable.”

But the effects of budget cuts are even bigger for reservations, which do not have private property to tax and thus rely on federal education funds more than typical school districts. So Fort Peck will no longer fund a vocational training program, leaving students on a reservation where the unemployment rate tops 50 percent unable to take advantage of the booming oil and gas industry across the state line in North Dakota. Children won’t get preschool. Teachers will lose jobs. People who need medical assistance won’t get it. All thanks to budget cuts the United States doesn’t need.

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VIEWPOINT: ‘Kindergartners Shouldn’t Be Taught Sex Ed’ — And Other Myths Endangering America’s Youth

“In case you missed it, Chicago public schools are set to begin teaching sex-ed to Kindergartners,” Family Research Council head Tony Perkins tweeted earlier this week. Adding his voice to a growing chorus of right-wing fearmongering, Perkins is referring to the fact that the city’s Department of Education approved a new policy requiring public schools to teach age-appropriate, LGBT-inclusive sexual health instruction at each grade level. The youngest students — the primary subjects of the recent concern trolling — will learn about anatomy, reproduction, healthy relationships, and personal safety.

It comes as no surprise that Perkins and his fellow conservatives, who are still stubbornly clinging to failed abstinence-only education policies, would be up in arms about comprehensive sex ed (especially when it acknowledges the existence of the LGBT community). But the thought of the country’s third largest school district teaching, in the school district’s words, “accurate information…[so students can] make healthy choices” still makes a lot of people outside of Tony Perkins’ circles squeamish. Mainstream media outlets were quick to raise alarm about 5-year-olds learning how to identify their genitalia, with headlines like “Chicago Passes Sex-Ed for Kindergartners,” “Sex Ed For Kindergarten Students,” and “What Age Should Kids Start Learning Sex Ed? In Chicago, It’s Kindergarten.” The popular parenting blog Babble quoted a mother who revealed the panic behind these headlines: she “just doesn’t think it’s appropriate.”

The unfounded fear that young children will somehow become “impure” if they learn about a dirty subject like sex is deeply rooted in American culture. Our society assumes that human sexuality is dark, dangerous, and shameful — something we need to protect teens from, rather than teach them about. Teens consistently learn that it’s not okay to talk about sex because it’s supposed to be totally off-limits to them, constrained to the bounds of a traditional marriage. But this attitude has led to disastrous consequences: damaging women and LGBT Americans’ sense of sexual self-worth, fueling the STD epidemic, and creating a moral environment where rape culture has flourished. Americans desperately need to overhaul our outdated approach to sexuality, replacing our puritanism with an open, honest, nonjudgmental, sex-positive attitude that we work to instill in our kids from a young age.

Today’s fights over what’s “appropriate” to teach our children about sex are largely symptoms of the United States’ long history of sexual conservatism, which can be traced back to our Puritan roots. There have been a few more sexually liberated periods in U.S. history, like the Progressive Era at the turn of the 20th century, but attitudes about sex remained largely conservative until the women’s and gay rights movements turned everything upside down. Those movements coincided in the 1970s to challenge preconceived ideas about heterosexuality and gender roles, working to normalize sex outside of marriage, sex outside of procreation, and homosexuality as equally valid human experiences.

Since then, social norms about sex have been rapidly evolving, but our sexual education hasn’t kept up — thanks in large part to the Religious Right. After the HIV/AIDS epidemic spurred schools to begin teaching information about sexually transmitted infections, religious conservatives spearheaded a hugely successful state-level campaign in the late 1990s to replace those sex ed classes with abstinence-only programs that lack any information about condoms, birth control, healthy sexual relationships, or sexual orientation. Now, the country is a patchwork of varying state-level sex ed policies, and the majority of states don’t hold the information in their public schools’ health classes to any kind of standards for medical accuracy.

Now, some lawmakers are attempting to combat the abstinence education programs that ballooned under former President George W. Bush by putting forth initiatives to expand comprehensive, medically accurate sex ed classes. But even the most well-intentioned sex ed legislation often remains somewhat stuck in our shame-based past. The Responsible Education About Life Act — a sweeping comprehensive sex ed policy that Democrats in both chambers of Congress have repeatedly pushed — still defines adequate sex education as a course that “stresses the value of abstinence.” Across the country, 37 states require that abstinence be taught in sex ed classes, and 26 states require that abstinence must be stressed as the best, safest option.

This backward approach to sexual education means that American sexual attitudes, particularly as they relate to teens, retain our puritanical past’s unhealthy emphasis on abstinence. Teens are divided into two moral camps: the “good” ones who are abstaining from sex, and the “bad” ones who aren’t (and are shamed for it). Feminist author Jessica Valenti, who’s written a book on the topic, calls it our society’s “purity fetish.” Valenti argues that this preoccupation with purity is especially harmful to young girls, who are held to different “virginal” expectations than boys are. “Virginity and chastity are reemerging as a trend in pop culture, in our schools, in the media, and even in legislation. So while young women are subject to overt sexual messages every day, they’re simultaneously being taught — by the people who are supposed to care for their personal and moral development, no less — that their only real worth is their virginity and ability to remain ‘pure,’” she writes.

Tying young girls’ worth to their purity ultimately teaches them, as Valenti explains, that “their ability to be moral actors is absolutely dependent on their sexuality.” Equally problematically, telling teens to “save their virginity for marriage” is a concept that totally fails to acknowledge some important realities of the LGBT community — since many of those individuals have no context for society’s heteronormative concept of “virginity,” and continue to be denied marriage equality in many parts of the country. Four decades ago, gay rights and women’s liberation activists worked to move us beyond these limited approaches to sexuality. Nonetheless, our obsession with abstinence endures.

But whether or not we teach young adults that their worth is dependent on their ability to remain abstinent, they’ve proven that they’re still going to experiment with their sexuality. By their 19th birthday, seven in ten American teens will have had sex — very similar to the rates in Europe. The only difference is that European teenagers have higher rates of contraceptive use, partly because they’ve grown up in a culture that doesn’t have the same qualms about giving young adults the resources they need to have safer sex. Of course, it isn’t hard to see some of the direct consequences of our tendency to simply “look the other way” and pretend teens aren’t sexual beings: compared to the rest of the developed world, the United States has particularly high rates of both unintended teenage pregnancies and STDs.

And that’s not the only potential consequence of our misguided approach to teenage sexuality. As the American Prospect’s E. J Graff points out, purity culture is also rape culture — a societal construction that devalues consensual sex and blames rape victims for the sexual violence perpetrated against them. As Graff puts it, rape culture “lives anywhere that has a ‘traditional’ vision of women’s sexuality. A culture in which women are expected to remain virgins until marriage is a rape culture. In that vision, women’s bodies are for use primarily for procreation or male pleasure. They must be kept pure.”

The moral divide between the “pure” and the “impure,” the same messages we’ve been feeding to young adults in health classes all over the country, pops up again. Purity culture teaches youth that, once young women have defiled themselves by engaging in the depraved act of sex, there’s nothing else they won’t consent to. An “impure” woman is an active participant in whatever assaults may be committed against her; she “asked for it”; she deserves what she got; she drank too much alcohol and wore too short of a skirt; she’s already had sex with so many guys on the football team, how could she object to another one forcing himself on her? When we think of rape, we don’t think of that girl. When an emphasis on purity remains inextricably tied to attitudes about sex, the only violations that count as “real” crimes are the ones committed against sweet, pure, virginal girls.

Just like we haven’t been able to escape purity, we also haven’t escaped rape culture. This is a country where a Fox News commentator received racist rape and death threats after suggesting that our society should play a role in teaching men to not rape, where high school football players can hire a lawyer to argue that an unconscious girl consented to her rape and abuse because she “didn’t affirmatively say no,” where prestigious universities do everything they can to sweep sexual assault under the rug, where a rape survivor might be expelled from college for speaking about her case, where many local law enforcement offices don’t handle sexual assault cases correctly and can even dissuade survivors from reporting crimes, where elected officials have made so many offensive comments about rape that they were required to undergo a PR training on the subject.

Obviously, these deeply-rooted issues don’t come with easy answers. But as our society marches forward, we don’t want to keep leaving our children’s sex education behind. National policies to standardize comprehensive sexual health information across every state — and to prevent school districts from using instruction materials that “stress” harmful messages about abstinence, contain medically inaccurate information, and ignore or stigmatize LGBT experiences — would be a good start. If our children grew up in a world where discussions of sex were honest and open, rather than learning about their sexuality solely within the context of shame, they might come to understand that they are more than their bodies. In grade school, that doesn’t have to be the type of “inappropriate” sex ed that parents are so worried about. It could be as simple as making sure authority figures explain that kids have nothing to be ashamed about, that they should never be scared to ask questions about their bodies because no information is off-limits, and that they — and only they — have the right to decide how they want to be touched.

We need to go back to the beginning and find a way to totally reorient our approach to human sexuality. Ideally, our citizens should grow up learning about healthy relationships, about self-respect and respecting others, about their bodily autonomy and their right to consent, about taking steps to perserve their sexual health — and especially about their value as a human being regardless of their sexuality. We might want to start in kindergarten.

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Keystone: Exporting Canadian Oil Across America’s Backyard

Cross-posted from Huffington Post

Given the relentless “all of the above” energy strategy pursued by the Obama Administration, the release this past Friday of a positive environmental impact report for the proposed Keystone oil pipeline was no big surprise. The U.S. State Department essentially declared that since the extra-dirty tar sands oil designated for the pipeline was going to be shipped and burned one way or another, building the pipeline down from Canada to Gulf coast refineries would not have that much impact on the environment — despite warnings from climate scientists that burning all the tar sands oil would be “game over” in the fight to stop climate change.

This conclusion by the State Department was a laughable bit of self-fulfilling logic. But perhaps the biggest surprise in the report was the tacit admission that the tar sands oil isn’t going to be burned in the U.S. at all. Instead, it is destined for refining and export overseas.

The State Department report details how Gulf Coast oil refineries will use the tar sands crude oil delivered by Keystone to replace supplies from Venezuela and Mexico, refine the crude into high-end products like gasoline, and then export the refined fuel overseas. Meanwhile, as if to add insult to injury, fuel prices paid by U.S. consumers in the Midwest are expected to jump as the pipeline will siphon off crude oil supplies that are currently landlocked in America. The U.S. State Department did not, of course, highlight these findings at the top of its report but instead buried them down in the “market analysis” section, where it left a clear trail of breadcrumbs.

Interestingly, the State Department went way out of its way to argue that the pipeline won’t be used to export unprocessed crude oil. (Though the industry clearly expects otherwise: see here.) Yet at the same time, the State Department admits, using painstakingly disconnected phrasing, that the crude oil delivered by the pipeline will be processed by Gulf coast refineries and then exported, in a shell game whereby export refineries replace declining crude oil supplies from Venezuela and Mexico with Keystone Canadian tar sands oil.

Regarding the pipeline’s impact on the export of refined crude, the State Department report says: “…future refined product export trends are also unlikely to be significantly impacted by the proposed Project.”

And what exactly are those trends? The State Department reports that: “In 2005, exports began increasing… Export volumes have increased to over [3 million barrels of oil per day] in the first half of 2012. This increased volume of refined products is being exported by refiners as they respond to lower domestic gasoline demand and continued higher demand and prices in overseas markets.”

And why use the extra dirty crude oil to be delivered by the Keystone Pipeline? The State Department says: “Gulf Coast refiners’ traditional sources of heavy crudes, particularly Mexico and Venezuela, are declining and are expected to continue to decline. This results in an outlook where the refiners have significant incentive to obtain heavy crude from the oil sands.”

And there you have it, a shell game, with Keystone as the lynchpin for the whole effort. Gas prices go up for Midwesterners, big oil refineries profit from the overseas export of fuel processed from dirty tar sands oil, and the rest of us are that much further in the hole in our fight to stop climate change. The environmental impact statement appears to be a clear signal that the Obama Administration is headed down the road to approval. However, the growing backlash against the pipeline creates a headache for the president who just made a very public commitment to protect the climate. A fight is clearly in the works.

– Hunter Cutting is a consultant and writer.

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Renewing the National Commitment to Putting America’s Heroes Back to Work

The White House

Office of the First Lady

Washington, D.C. – As part of their Joining Forces initiative, First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden addressed the National Governors Association and renewed their call on governors to do their part putting America’s heroes back to work, and to serve our military veterans and spouses as well as they’ve served us.  The First Lady’s remarks are a call to action – building on President Obama’s June 2012 announcement of the Military Credentialing and Licensing Task Force – setting a goal that by the end of 2015, all 50 states will have taken legislative or executive action to help our troops get the credentials they need to successfully transition to the civilian labor market.

The remarks by Mrs. Obama and Dr. Biden coincide with a new report by the Executive Office of the President that details the barriers veterans and their families face as they seek employment, the Administration’s commitment to help them leverage their skills to good, meaningful jobs and the progress that has already been made.

FACT SHEET: The Fast Track to Civilian Employment

The United States has the most highly trained military in the world, sustained by individuals who have skill sets with enormous breadth and depth because of their military education and experience.  The members of our Armed Forces and their families make great sacrifices, and when their service is concluded, we owe it to our veterans and their families to help them accomplish a successful transition to the civilian labor market. That is why over the past year and a half, the President has taken significant action to create a “career-ready military” and streamline the transition process.
Too often the talented men and women who have served our country face barriers that make it difficult to find jobs that capitalize on their skills. Many service members and veterans are required to repeat education or training in order to receive industry certifications and state occupational licenses, even though much, and in some cases, all, of their military training and experience overlaps with credential requirements.
Additionally, frequent moves, and the resulting need to search for new employment, can be a significant problem for military spouses, especially when getting a job in a new state requires obtaining an occupational license. Leveraging the skills of our military veterans and their families will build a stronger workforce and a more competitive economy.
The Fast Track to Civilian Employment
In the coming years, America will see a continued demand for skilled workers in high-growth industries from healthcare and information technology to clean energy and advanced manufacturing.
Studies generally find that both occupational licenses and government certifications are associated with higher wages, with substantial wage premiums—on the order of 15 to 18 percent—for individuals who hold an occupational license.  Those without licenses often have to take jobs in different, lower-paying occupations.
Helping Servicemembers Gain Industry Recognized Licenses and Credentials
Despite having valuable military experience which in many cases is applicable to well-paying civilian jobs, veterans frequently find it difficult to obtain formal private sector recognition of their military experiences and skill sets through civilian certification and licensure.
o As of January 2013, roughly 844,000 veterans were unemployed and looking for work, including 252,000 post-9/11 veterans.  As we drawdown from the war in Afghanistan, one million service members are expected to leave the armed forces over the next several years. 
o To ensure service members leave the military with the ability to transfer their education and training to the civilian job market, President Obama created the Defense Department Military Credentialing and Licensing Task Force in June of 2012.
o As its initial action, the Task Force forged partnerships with the five largest manufacturing credentialing bodies to provide opportunities for service members to gain industry-recognized, nationally-portable certifications for high-demand manufacturing jobs -- including welding, machining, maintenance, and logistics -- almost all of which have median   hourly wages above the national average. These partnerships are currently being implemented at military bases across the country.

o Administration is now expanding its efforts to assist states in translating military training and experience into credit towards professional licensure. The objectives of this initiative  will be to accelerate states’ occupational licensing processes and to streamline approaches for assessing the equivalency of military training and experience in specific occupations, including:
? Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and Paramedics
? Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs)
? Physician Assistants (PAs)
? Commercial Drivers Licenses for Bus and Truck Drivers (CDLs)
Expanding Licensing Portability for Military Spouses
Frequent moves resulting in the need to search for new employment, can inhibit or delay military spouses from continuing employment, especially when getting a job in a new state requires obtaining an occupational license.
o There are currently more than 860,000 military spouses, about 95 percent of whom are female.  Over the past six years, the labor force participation rate for military spouses has been approximately 55 percent, with an unemployment rate of 9.7 percent.

o Military spouses experience a number of unique employment challenges. According to analysis from the Treasury Department, military spouses are ten times more likely to have moved across state lines in the last year compared to their civilian counterparts.
o In February of 2012, only 11 states had legislation in place to assist military spouses seeking licenses or certifications.  One year later, an additional 17 states have passed spousal licensing legislation, bringing the overall total to 28 states with military spouse measures in place.  Another 15 states have introduced spouse licensure bills. 
o Through collaboration with state legislators and regulators, the Department of Defense has worked to develop best practices with regards to military spouse licensure. These include: licensure through endorsement, temporary licensure, and expedited processes for issuing licenses.

President Obama is on hand for the unveiling of the new Rosa Parks statue in the U.S. Capitol

February 27, 2013 12:00 PM EST

To mark African American History Month, as well as the 150th anniversary of the year the Emancipation Proclamation, we talked with White House Curator Bill Allman about a painting called Watch Meeting--Dec. 31st 1862--Waiting for the Hour that hangs near the Oval Office in the West Wing.

President Obama strongly believes we need to replace the arbitrary cuts known as the sequester with balanced deficit reduction, and today he was at a shipyard in Newport News, VA to talk about what failing to do so will mean for middle class families.

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President should embrace North America's energy resources

By Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) - 02/15/13 02:15 PM ET

In his State of the Union address this week, the president focused his speech on the need to spur economic growth and boost America’s middle class. Included in his proposal was the need to make “America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing” and to take “control of our energy future.” While these are worthy goals, the president failed to outline the necessary steps to achieve them. Absent from the president’s speech were two powerful engines of growth – the Keystone XL pipeline and the development of America’s abundant coal reserves. Rather than harness the potential of the America’s rich energy resources, the president sadly continues to block these important opportunities to create jobs and advance our energy security. The administration’s "all-of-the-above but nothing-from-below" energy policy is harming the middle class.

The White House has needlessly delayed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in spite of the project’s promise to bring jobs and affordable energy to America. It has now been over 1,600 days since the Keystone XL pipeline application was filed with the State Department, and the American people are still waiting for the president to approve this landmark jobs and energy project. The Keystone XL pipeline will help create thousands of middle class jobs. Once constructed, the pipeline would bring nearly a million barrels a day of oil to the United States, helping to reduce our dependence on Middle East oil and providing a stable and affordable energy source to American businesses and consumers.
As the president delays approval of Keystone, his administration is also preventing the development of one of America’s most affordable and abundant energy resources. The United States is home to the largest estimated reserves of coal in the world, and coal remains our country’s greatest source of electricity. But the future of this important American resource is in jeopardy as the EPA continues to pursue harsh regulations aimed at shutting down coal plants. This regulatory attack on coal has already contributed to numerous plant and mine closures across the country and the loss of thousands of middle class jobs. EPA’s recently proposed rule regulating emissions for new power plants will effectively ban the construction of any new coal-fired power plants in America, and the administration is now considering additional rules to regulate emissions at existing power plants. These regulatory policies could mean the end of coal-fired generation in America.
The Keystone XL pipeline and our country’s vast coal reserves represent an opportunity to help create jobs, make energy more affordable, and restore a thriving middle class.  We have the potential to become North American energy independent and rebuild America’s economy, but the president must stop ignoring our energy resources and embrace these positive solutions. 

Gingrey, a Republican from Georgia, is ?vice-chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy.

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Senators Introduce Bipartisan Bill To Strengthen America’s Mental Health System

As part of a wide-ranging effort to address gun violence in the wake of December’s mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a bipartisan group of senators has introduced the Excellence In Mental Health Act, legislation that aims to strengthen America’s mental health safety net by providing behavioral health care facilities more access to federal funding and consolidating disparate elements of the U.S. mental health safety net.

When introducing the legislation, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) explained, “[W]e must work together to spend federal dollars more wisely when treating people who are mentally ill. This bill will help address our fragmented mental health system and ensure that more patients have access to the care they need by offering current Community Mental Health Centers a chance to expand their services and obtain the Federally Qualified Community Behavioral Health Center designation.” Such a move would provide qualifying behavioral health centers parity with physical health centers by giving them access to prospective — rather than retrospective — Medicaid reimbursements. Modern Healthcare reports that the legislation would also require the federal health centers to offer more expansive services to mentally ill Americans and their families:

The new criteria established by the bill… would require such things as 24-hour crisis care, the increased integration of mental and substance abuse care with other kinds of medical care, as well as expanded support for families of mental health patients.

Mark Covall, president and CEO of the National Association of Psychiatric Health Systems, said increased standardization and integration are both worthwhile goals (though the association doesn’t take an official stand on the bill). Whether it is adding mental health services to federally qualified health centers or adding medical care to mental health centers, integration is important because that is the direction the industry is moving toward, Covall said.

In its current iteration, the Excellence In Mental Health Act represents a solid step in the right direction when it comes to bridging the illogical gap between the ways that physical and behavioral health issues are treated in America. But while the increased funding provisions are good news, the bill still does not go quite as far as the Wellstone-Domenici Mental Health Parity And Addiction Equity Act, which would require most private insurers to treat mental health coverage the same way they treat any other coverage.

It is also encouraging that the bill includes mental health resources for veterans and substance abusers. Military suicides reached a record high in January, and substance abusers — as a group — are among the most likely to suffer from a co-occurring mental illness. Alongside Sen. Al Franken’s (R-MN) recently-introduced Mental Health In Schools Act — which encourages early intervention and community resources for mentally ill American children — the new legislation suggests that the Senate is serious about plugging the gaping holes in America’s mental health safety net.

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How The GOP Would Make Undocumented Immigrants America’s Next Permanent Underclass

Conservatives in the House of Representatives are rejecting the growing bipartisan consensus for permitting undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship. Instead, one prominent negotiatior, Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-ID), suggested a legal status “compromise” that would keep 11 million immigrants in a probationary grey area for an indefinite period of time, unable to participate in the full rights of citizenship. As the Washington Post warned, this so-called compromise would establish “a permanent underclass of workers.”

Creating a second class of Americans is not only unsustainable, but also damages the so-called American dream of equality and justice for all — a point proven each time the US has used the law to exclude a group in its history.

After the founding of the nation, lawmakers stipulated that citizenship excluded free and enslaved Africans, who comprised roughly 20 percent of the entire American population in 1776. The Supreme Court reaffirmed in the infamous Dred Scott decision that slaves could not claim citizenship, as they were considered property by the law. After the abolition of slavery, the law’s silence left African Americans in a legal limbo that denied them the right to vote and set the foundation for widespread segregation and economic exploitation. Even after the 14th and 15th Amendments nominally granted them full citizenship rights, state laws instituting poll taxes and literacy tests, as well as segregation and anti-miscegenation laws, immobilized African Americans in a second class of citizenship.

The Mexican-American War ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded the land that is now the American Southwest. In return, all Mexicans living on that land were to be granted full US citizenship. However, Congress and the Supreme Court denied American citizenship to Pueblo Indians and black Mexicans, though both groups had previously enjoyed Mexican citizenship. Pueblo Indians’ right to vote was revoked until 1924. Black Mexicans in Texas were given the choice to either stay in Texas and become slaves or be deported back to Mexico, where slavery was outlawed. Meanwhile, the courts chipped away at the property protections entitled to Mexican landowners as US citizens. Many new Mexican Americans lost their family land to white American settlers, throwing them into poverty for generations. Of course, Pueblos and black Mexicans’ property rights were immediately nullified.

After initially encouraging Chinese migrant workers to come to the US and work on the Transcontinental Railroad, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to halt all immigration from China. At that point, large communities of Chinese immigrants, mainly in California, were permanently excluded from US citizenship. The law also threw families in limbo, as Chinese men could neither bring their families to the US nor leave the country, as they would be barred from re-entry to the US. Amendments to the law extended the law blocking entry to all Asians regardless of their country of origin — even those born in the US. American-born Chinese who traveled abroad were blocked from returning to their homes in the US. These restrictions pulled families apart and ensured that Chinese American communities already established would stagnate for four decades.

Japanese Americans were singled out as enemies during World War II and ordered to relocate to internment camps for the duration of the war. Japanese immigrants were already blocked from becoming full citizens, as naturalization laws banned citizenship for non-white people. American citizens of Japanese descent, however, were not spared from the internment camps, where they endured abysmal, overcrowded conditions for 3 years. When they returned, most found their homes looted or sold and their jobs long gone.

If this latest immigration reform does not include a path to citizenship, the shadow economy that exploits the ambiguous legal status of undocumented immigrants today could be cemented for decades to come.

Though the rights and restrictions of a second-class legal status are not yet articulated, Republicans have previously suggested granting permanent residency to undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria. But while permanent residents can apply for full citizenship after 5 years, undocumented immigrants would likely never attain naturalization. They would have limited access to health care, while certain other economic benefits, such as federal student loans, would be closed off entirely. They would also be denied the right to vote.

Without a path to citizenship, undocumented immigrants will officially inherit the mantle of the many Americans who have endured inferior rights based on a narrow idea of who “deserves” to be an American.

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Clinton: America’s Debt Problems ‘Can’t Be Solved’ With Austerity

Former president Bill Clinton urged House Democrats to avoid the push for immediate austerity at a party retreat in Virginia today, pointing to Europe’s failed deficit-cutting experiment that has led to further economic malaise instead of prosperity.

The American economy, bolstered by a major stimulus bill in 2009, has slowly recovered from the Great Recession, but unemployment remains high and growth slower than it should be. The U.S. has already cut more than $2.5 trillion from future deficits, but with the automatic spending cuts brought about by the 2011 debt ceiling deal fast approaching, Clinton pushed Democrats to avoid calls for “conventional austerity measures”:

The debt problem can’t be solved right now by conventional austerity measures, and that’s why Paul Krugman is right when he keeps talking about all these — everybody that’s tried austerity in a time of no growth has wound up cutting revenues even more than they cut spending because you just get into the downward spiral and drag the country back into recession.

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European countries that have attempted to spur growth by rapidly reducing their deficits have failed to accomplish either goal and have instead driven their economies back into recession. The United Kingdom’s deficit has hardly gotten smaller despite its austerity efforts and the country is on the verge of a triple-dip recession. Greece and Spain both have unemployment rates above 25 percent. Even Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is on the brink of another recession. The Eurozone as a whole slipped back into recession in November and its unemployment rate is at record highs.

Still, politicians in the United States have failed to heed Europe’s warnings, pursuing deficit reduction instead of job growth. Republicans blocked the American Jobs Act, which economists estimated would have spurred growth and created more than a million jobs, and have instead pursued damaging budget cuts that would have the opposite effect even amid evidence that the original American push for stimulus worked better than the European approach.

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Reimagining America’s energy policy

By Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) - 02/05/13 05:33 PM ET

America has an opportunity to reimagine how we think about energy. The possibilities of abundance are very different from the trappings of scarcity, and the facts underpinning the nation’s bright energy outlook to 2020 and beyond are still struggling to make themselves known.

We have enough natural gas buried underground in the United States to meet our current levels of consumption for more than 90 years, according to the Energy Information Administration. Our technically recoverable reserves of oil are large enough to offset a century’s worth of imports from OPEC, and exciting frontiers in geothermal energy, oil shale, methane hydrates and other sources are held back only by technology.

Meanwhile, as domestic energy production booms, the American economy is becoming more efficient and less intensive in its use of energy. The Paris-based International Energy Agency recently highlighted the United States for its improvement in this area. We face the real prospect of tapping our enormous energy potential even as we provide better protection for the environment.

Sound policy can help make all this happen. But foolish policy is certain to derail us.

Too often, energy is seen as a necessary evil. While every form of energy has its consequences, affordable and abundant energy is a fundamentally positive force. It’s what makes modern life and our high standard of living possible.

I released a document this week, titled Energy 20/20: A Vision for America’s Energy, to begin a conversation about where energy and natural-resource policies should go over the next few years. It is intended as a blueprint for discussion. The work of renewing these policies requires cooperation between the president and a new Congress. We should strive to do this together, starting today, through discrete bills and targeted oversight.

I believe there’s a consensus that it’s in our national interest to make energy abundant, affordable, clean, diverse and secure. Our challenge is to align federal policy with that consensus. Energy 20/20 includes ideas to do so under seven headings: producing more, consuming less, clean-energy technology, energy delivery infrastructure, effective government, environmental responsibility and “an energy policy that pays for itself.” 

As we rethink our nation’s energy policies, it is important to face questions about the risks of energy and resource development, including questions about climate change. We need to discuss these questions openly and find common ground on prudent steps to take in the face of uncertainty. What is certain is that we can best address environmental challenges if we are prosperous and secure.

Abundant energy is possible, and there are already many signs of it becoming a reality as technological breakthroughs lower the cost of producing previously uneconomic resources. Affordable energy is vital to our economic well-being, and a prudent balancing of energy production with proper standards for environmental regulation is more pressing than ever. Our nation is too often hamstrung by burdensome regulations, delayed permits and overzealous litigation. This can render projects uneconomic by attrition and prevent timely, efficient and urgently needed investments.

Nevertheless, the future is bright. New technologies are making clean energy — those sources with less environmental impact than their most likely alternatives — increasingly competitive and enabling energy efficiency to continue to improve. Throughout the economy, diversification of energy and natural-resource supplies is apparent. As alternative fuels like electricity and natural gas take hold in the transportation sector, we can expect this trend to continue. And the need for more secure supplies is beginning to influence consensus about additional steps needed to renew our energy and natural-resource policies.

Modern federal energy and natural-resource policies will add to these trends, in part by removing roadblocks erected by the outdated approaches they can replace. And we must continue to fund and consider increasing funding for the scientific research critical to continued progress. Only basic and rigorous research will produce the dramatic breakthroughs we need to reach a future in which clean energy and energy independence are more than just slogans. 

If we make the right choices today and accomplish by 2020 the goals I’ve proposed, we can secure a future in which energy and natural resources are affordable and abundant from secure and diverse sources; ensure the air and water are cleaner in our own country and around the world; and enable Americans to enjoy a healthy economy and preserve their ability to live and “to pursue happiness.”

Murkowski is Alaska’s senior senator and the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Senate Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations subcommittee. 

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‘Olympus Has Fallen’ And America’s Enemies

First, a huge thanks to Alan Pyke, Sharmin Kent, and Betsy Phillips for filling in while I was at Sundance, with help from Zack Beauchamp and Travis Waldron. I’m incredibly grateful for their help, and I hear you gave them a great time.

It makes a certain amount of sense to me that, given the vitriol directed at President Obama, that some insecurities about presidential safety would come out in Hollywood products, the first of which, Olympus Has Fallen, has released its initial trailer:

What’s most interesting to me is not so much that the presidency is portrayed as under attack, or the psychological struggles of Gerard Butler (for that, I recommend Ralph Fiennes’ adaptation of Coriolanus, in which Butler is tremendous, as is everyone else), but who’s doing the attacking. Initially, the movie throws out images of mujahideen-like attackers wielding rocket launchers, only to transition to Washington, DC-born actor Rick Yune playing some kind of sinister and powerful if as-yet-nationally-unaffiliated foreigner who hired them. My bet was that he ends up being North Korean or from some other not-particularly-powerful Asian country that Americans don’t actually feel any geopolitical anxiety about, though, as with the North Koreans in Red Dawn, he’ll be standing in for our worries about an emergent China, or something.

I understand why pop culture wants to play with American worries about our place in the world, why a movie would show the consequences of our actions blowing back on us, why Homeland throws out the specter of symbols like Hezbollah and al Qaeda hooking up, despite the geopolitical realities that divide those groups. But it would be nice if we could deal with those anxieties in a way that reflect reality. The White House doesn’t always have to blow up for us to acknowledge that we’re worried about our place in the world.

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How Walgreens Plans To Lower America’s Health Care Costs

ThinkProgress has previously reported that a massive contributor to America’s annual $2.7 trillion health care expenditures is the staggering 50 percent of Americans who simply do not take their prescribed medications properly.

Now, Wonk Blog’s Sarah Kliff is reporting that corporate pharmacy giant Walgreens wants to start bucking that trend by forming “accountable care organizations” (ACOs) in conjunction with local physicians and hospitals. ACOs are coordinated care systems that are paid on the basis of their performance. If an ACO successfully provides Medicare beneficiaries with quality care while keeping costs under a year-to-year target, it is rewarded with higher Medicare reimbursements from the government by netting the savings — but if it goes over the annual target, it has to swallow the losses.

Although most ACO applications so far have been partnerships between more specialized health care providers, more convenient access to local pharmacies might make them effective venues for managing and tracking Americans’ treatments after their hospital visits:

While a pharmacy-run ACO is not the traditional model, [Walgreens' Senior Vice President Jeffrey Kang] argues it actually makes a lot of sense. Pharmacy stores are open every day of the year, making them a more accessible point of contact than most doctor offices. They have begun to handle basic health care, like vaccination and preventive check-ups, right in the store, which could prevent more costly diseases down the line.

Health care research shows that unnecessary hospital readmissions are often caused by a patient not following the prescribed medical regiment after discharge, creating another place where pharmacists could easily intervene. [...]

“The way I like to describe it is as a physician-led plan where we’re an active partner,” Kang says. “They’re the quarterback who creates the treatment plan. We can be care extenders who help implement and execute the plan.”

In order to make that active partnership work, Walgreens is working to become better integrated with its partner health care systems. While both the pharmacies and doctors, for example, already have electronic medical records, they now need to ensure that each system can interface, allowing all health care providers to track a given patients’ care.

Walgreens’ decision to venture into the coordinated care market underscores the broad innovative potential of Obamacare provisions such as ACOs. Centering medical treatment followups in pharmacies could go a long way towards making sure that Americans stay on their treatment regimens, thus reducing sickness, deaths, and costly hospital re-admissions.

However, lawmakers should make sure that pharmacies that provide more extensive services have the proper oversight, so as not to fall into the same pitfalls as laxly regulated compounding pharmacies in the wake of last year’s deadly meningitis outbreak.

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Why Is NBC Sports Sponsoring America’s Largest Gun Show?

Next week, thousands of gun dealers, traders, and enthusiasts will gather in Las Vegas for the annual Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show, which touts itself as the largest trade show of its kind in the world. When it does, NBC Sports will be a lead sponsor.

NBC Sports, which has struggled to make its mark in the world of daily televised sports, showcases hunting, fishing, and outdoor shows on its network throughout the day, so its original interest in a trade show aimed at the people who participate in such sports isn’t shocking. But according to some accounts, the SHOT Show is hardly that sort of show. While it bills itself as a huge gathering of hunting and outdoors enthusiasts, the reality is far different, according to a 2011 report from Media Matters, which sent reporters to that year’s event:

The reality of SHOT was thousands of yards downrange from the image projected by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association that owns SHOT and celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. The NSSF portrays SHOT as representing the business interests of family-friendly, outdoors recreation-focused “shooting sports” like elk hunting and clay target shooting. These sports are represented at SHOT, as they are in the firearms industry as a whole, but they’re vastly overshadowed by handguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, home defense shotguns and the like, along with hollow point bullets, concealed carry holsters, tactical clothing and other “personal protection” accoutrements.

This year’s show has an even deeper meaning to its attendees. In the wake of multiple mass killings, with lawmakers at the federal, state, and local levels pursuing sensible restrictions on guns in an effort to curb gun violence, SHOT’s organizers are pitching the event as a show of “industry unity,” as Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted today:

SHOT Show is billed as the “the largest and most comprehensive trade show for all professionals involved with the shooting sports, hunting and law enforcement industries” and “the world’s premier exposition of combined firearms.” But it is more than just a trade show; according to its organizer, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the trade association for firearms manufacturers and dealers), “Any SHOT attendee will tell you the show is more than about selling and buying; it’s a powerful display of industry unity and its resolve to meet any challenge affecting the right to make, sell and own firearms.”

It’s one thing for NBC Sports to promote the safe and responsible ownership of guns used in the type of outdoor sports it broadcasts. The SHOT Show, though, seems less a place for hunters and outdoorsmen and women than it does a place where attendees can buy, trade, and otherwise gawk at the high-powered, military- and law-enforcement grade weapons and ammunition that, frankly, have no place in a rational society.

There is a marked difference between those types of weapons and the firearms used by hunters and people who shoot for sport. That distinction is often covered up by organizations like the National Rifle Association, which has instead resorted to promoting the paranoid and absurd belief that liberal politicians in Washington are coming after everyone’s guns. Blurring that distinction is profitable for it and possibly even the National Sports Shooting Foundation (which puts on the SHOT Show), the types of groups that often deny the role of guns in mass killings and America’s high rates of gun violence, because the paranoia that results brings larger crowds to gun shows and pads the bottom line.

But that explanation doesn’t work for NBC Sports, which, as a media organization, shouldn’t just want to promote that distinction but has an obligation to. No one is targeting the guns used in hunting and sport-shooting, because we can curb gun violence in this country without attacking the people who are able to safely and responsibly own and operate firearms for sporting purposes. Those guns, and those gun owners, aren’t the root of America’s gun violence problem, and that’s a fact recognized by everyone involved in the debate over how to prevent gun violence in America (yes, even the NRA). By making that distinction clear, NBC Sports could go a long way in making that debate smarter, sharper, and more accurate. It’s a shame it has chosen not to.

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Lindsay Graham: I Will Destroy America’s Solvency Unless The Social Security Retirement Age Is Raised

Although official Washington is currently fixated on the so-called “Fiscal Cliff,” the biggest threat to American prosperity is the debt ceiling, which must be raised in February to prevent economic catastrophe. If Republicans refuse to reach a deal on the so-called cliff, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that they will spark a new recession in 2013. But if Republicans block action on the debt ceiling, they will make that potential recession look quaint. Without raising the debt ceiling, the United States will be forced to embrace austerity so severe it will lead to “a bigger GDP drop than that experienced during the Great Recession of 2008.”

But in an interview on Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to oppose this must-pass bill unless Social Security benefits are taken away from millions of future retirees:

I’m not going to raise the debt ceiling unless we get serious about keeping the country from becoming Greece, saving Social Security and Medicare [sic]. So here’s what i would like: meaningful entitlement reform — not to turn Social Security into private accounts, not to take a voucher approach to Medicare — but, adjust the age for Social Security, CPI changes and means testing and look beyond the ten-year window. I cannot in good conscience raise the debt ceiling without addressing the long term debt problems of this country and I will not.

Watch it:

This is extortion, plain and simple. It is the budgetary equivalent of threatening to break America’s legs unless Congress agrees to break the backs of millions poised on the edge of retirement. Graham’s position is that seniors should have to wait longer for their retirement benefits — even if they work in physically demanding jobs that literally tear the body apart by the time a worker reaches age 65 — and that those benefits should be reduced in the future.

And if Congress won’t agree to this deal, then Graham is prepared to thrust the nation into an economic calamity unheard of since the Great Depression.

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Obama’s NLRB Unleashes Ambush Elections on America’s Job Creators

On Monday, April 30th, Barack Obama’s union-controlled National Labor Relations Board will be imposing its new union election rules, designed to ambush unsuspecting employers. Since unions won over 71% of the 1595 NLRB-conducted elections in 2011, the NLRB’s radical departure from past precedent is neither necessary, nor warranted. Moreover, given unions’ legal ability to deceive workers into unionizing, it is believed the NLRB’s doing union’s bidding will result in smaller companies and their employees falling prey to unionization.

While the NLRB’s purported ‘streamlining’ of its election procedures seems simple, to those who have experienced the tumultuous time when a union has targeted a company, the ability of the union-controlled NLRB to now eviscerate employers’ ability to challenge the validity of a union’s attack through a fair hearing opens the door to a drastic reduction of time an employer has to respond.

The Associated Builders & Contractors, an association of predominantly union-free contractors, sums it up this way:

Under the rule, commonly known as the “ambush” elections rule, the amount of time between when a union files a representation petition and an election takes place is reduced from the current average of around 40 days to as few as 17 to 20 days.

The NLRB achieved this drastic reduction in time primarily by:

combining pre- and post-election appeals;truncating pre- and post-hearing procedures; andlimiting the types of issues an employer can raise at a pre-election hearing. (Determining which employees are considered supervisors, and which employees constitute a potential bargaining “unit” are no longer permitted before the election takes place.)

While many larger employers have the resources to preemptively insulate their organizations from union attack, many smaller employers and their employees have suddenly become hugely vulnerable.

Over the next several weeks, a multi-part series will be posted on LaborUnionReport.com and RedState.com for both employers and employees to learn how to effectively keep unions out of their companies.

For now, however, thanks to Barack Obama’s union-controlled National Labor Relations Board, the misleadingly still waters have suddenly become even more dangerous.

_____________

“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com

Photo credit: Creative Commons

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Restoring America’s Image In The World; The Canadian Edition

Now, in fairness though I’ve got to say that Canada’s interests here are a little bit different. And particularly, I might as well be frank, particularly in light of the…of the interim decision at least on Keystone. …. Our energy [issue] is the necessity of diversifying our energy export markets. We can not be, as a country, in a situation where really our one energy partner could say no to our energy products. …. when it comes to oil in particular, we do face a significant discount on the marketplace because of the fact that we’re a captive supplier. We have made it clear to the people of Canada, one of our national priorities is to make sure that we have the infrastructure and the capacity to export our energy products outside of North America.

– Canadian PM Stephen Harper

One of Barack Obama’s most obnoxious and arrogant campaign promises was his pledge to “restore America’s image throughout the rest of the world.” Well, it appears I’ll have to eat crow on this one. President Barack Obama has totally turned back the clock on how America is viewed abroad. This is particularly true with respect to Mexico and Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper brims with great frustration at how he has been treated by our current US President. It’s almost as if someone has hit a “Reset” Button back to the Jolly Old Days of The Oregon Boundary Dispute.

During the Election of 1844, a Democratic Party Presidential candidate, James Knox Polk, decided he would run as an expansionist candidate. He was locked in a dispute with the British Government over who would control how much of the Oregon Territory. He staked out a position in favor of “Manifest Destiny” and his supporters demanded that US territory include “All Oregon” with the boundary at “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight.” He later only accepted a border at Forty-Nine North because he was too busy fighting with Mexicans over Texas.

Now this probably wasn’t the US image that Barack Obama chose to restore when he made his grandiose and hateful apology for most of America’s history during a 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt. Instead, America with Barack Obama as President is once again an evil, greedy, conniving neighbor that dominates others and connives to work against the interests of anyone unfortunate enough to share the same hemisphere.

A little known fact about NAFTA (never mentioned amongst our mordant fears of Mexican trucks on American highways) involves the fact that US gets a major price break on petroleum products from Canada under the deal. In return for their loyalty and consideration, Barack Obama has gotten on the phones and lobbied Democratic Party Senators to block the Keystone XL Pipeline. Canadian Prime Minister Harper seems prepared to terminate the US “Good Neighbor Discount.”

Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier. The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama’s de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China. Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That’s about to change.

So that $4 gas you were whinnying about, don’t worry. Relax. President Obama may have just totally taken care of that one for us. I can’t wait to log into GasBuddy.com and check out all the hope and change that erupts when Canada starts charging us the same price on crude that we get from The Saudis.

Barack Obama inherited a situation where the world’s 3rd largest petroleum producer was giving the American motorist the home town discount. All we had to do was build them a decent pipeline to Texas in an expeditious manner. Our new image in the eyes of the world is that we couldn’t be trusted to hold up our end on one of the best trade deals we’ve ever been given in our nation’s history. Good God, I hope this error ends in January 2013.

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Restoring America’s Image In The World; The Canadian Edition

Now, in fairness though I’ve got to say that Canada’s interests here are a little bit different. And particularly, I might as well be frank, particularly in light of the…of the interim decision at least on Keystone. …. Our energy [issue] is the necessity of diversifying our energy export markets. We can not be, as a country, in a situation where really our one energy partner could say no to our energy products. …. when it comes to oil in particular, we do face a significant discount on the marketplace because of the fact that we’re a captive supplier. We have made it clear to the people of Canada, one of our national priorities is to make sure that we have the infrastructure and the capacity to export our energy products outside of North America.

– Canadian PM Stephen Harper

One of Barack Obama’s most obnoxious and arrogant campaign promises was his pledge to “restore America’s image throughout the rest of the world.” Well, it appears I’ll have to eat crow on this one. President Barack Obama has totally turned back the clock on how America is viewed abroad. This is particularly true with respect to Mexico and Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper brims with great frustration at how he has been treated by our current US President. It’s almost as if someone has hit a “Reset” Button back to the Jolly Old Days of The Oregon Boundary Dispute.

During the Election of 1844, a Democratic Party Presidential candidate, James Knox Polk, decided he would run as an expansionist candidate. He was locked in a dispute with the British Government over who would control how much of the Oregon Territory. He staked out a position in favor of “Manifest Destiny” and his supporters demanded that US territory include “All Oregon” with the boundary at “Fifty-Four Forty or Fight.” He later only accepted a border at Forty-Nine North because he was too busy fighting with Mexicans over Texas.

Now this probably wasn’t the US image that Barack Obama chose to restore when he made his grandiose and hateful apology for most of America’s history during a 2009 speech in Cairo, Egypt. Instead, America with Barack Obama as President is once again an evil, greedy, conniving neighbor that dominates others and connives to work against the interests of anyone unfortunate enough to share the same hemisphere.

A little known fact about NAFTA (never mentioned amongst our mordant fears of Mexican trucks on American highways) involves the fact that US gets a major price break on petroleum products from Canada under the deal. In return for their loyalty and consideration, Barack Obama has gotten on the phones and lobbied Democratic Party Senators to block the Keystone XL Pipeline. Canadian Prime Minister Harper seems prepared to terminate the US “Good Neighbor Discount.”

Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier. The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama’s de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China. Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That’s about to change.

So that $4 gas you were whinnying about, don’t worry. Relax. President Obama may have just totally taken care of that one for us. I can’t wait to log into GasBuddy.com and check out all the hope and change that erupts when Canada starts charging us the same price on crude that we get from The Saudis.

Barack Obama inherited a situation where the world’s 3rd largest petroleum producer was giving the American motorist the home town discount. All we had to do was build them a decent pipeline to Texas in an expeditious manner. Our new image in the eyes of the world is that we couldn’t be trusted to hold up our end on one of the best trade deals we’ve ever been given in our nation’s history. Good God, I hope this error ends in January 2013.

View the original article here