Major conservative organizations

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Below is a listing of large conservative organizations:

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Creating Jobs Faster by Cutting Timelines in Half for Major Infrastructure Projects

Creating Jobs Faster by Cutting Timelines in Half for Major Infrastructure Projects | The White House Skip to main content | Skip to footer site map The White House. President Barack Obama Get Email UpdatesContact Us Go to homepage. The White House Blog Photos & Videos Photo Galleries Video Performances Live Streams Podcasts 2012: A Year in Photos

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For Immediate Release May 17, 2013 Creating Jobs Faster by Cutting Timelines in Half for Major Infrastructure Projects As part of the Administration’s effort to make America a magnet for jobs by building a 21st Century infrastructure, President Obama will sign a Presidential Memorandum that will modernize the Federal infrastructure permitting process, cutting timelines in half for major infrastructure projects while creating incentives for better outcomes for communities and the environment.  By cutting red tape and shaving months, and even years, off the time it takes to review and approve major infrastructure projects, we will be able to start construction sooner, create jobs earlier, and fix our Nation’s infrastructure faster.  In March 2012, the President issued an Executive Order launching a government-wide initiative to improve the efficiency of Federal review and permitting of infrastructure projects.  Since then, agencies have expedited the review and permitting of 50 major projects, including bridges, transit projects, railways, waterways, roads, and renewable energy.  In just one example, Federal agencies recently approved the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement project in New York, saving up to three years on the timeline of a multi-billion project that will help put Americans back to work. As a result of the President’s Executive Order, agencies have also identified a set of best practices for efficient review and permitting, which range from expanding information technology (IT) tools to strategies for improving collaboration, such as having multiple agencies review a project at the same time, instead of one after the other.  Today’s Presidential Memorandum institutionalizes these best practices, directing all relevant agencies to put them into effect. Further details on this initiative and the results achieved so far can be found in the Administration’s first annual Report to the President, which was also published today.  And results of specific projects can be tracked on the Administration’s Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard, a new tool that provides an unprecedented level of transparency into the Federal permitting and review process.   This permitting modernization effort represents an important component of the President’s larger effort to grow the economy, accelerate job creation, and improve U.S. competitiveness by building a 21st Century infrastructure.  Notably, the President’s Budget calls for immediately investing $50 billion in our Nation’s transportation infrastructure, with $40 billion devoted to “fix-it-first” projects that target areas in the most urgent need of repair.  The President also proposed a “Rebuild America Partnership,” creating tools to encourage partnerships between the private sector and Federal, State, and local governments to enhance the role of private capital in U.S. infrastructure investment and ensure America has the best transportation, electric, water, and communications networks in the world.

Blog posts on this issue May 17, 2013 6:08 PM EDTWeekly Wrap Up: “What Our Families Deserve”

Here’s a quick glimpse at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov.

May 17, 2013 5:50 PM EDTA Stronger and Sustainable Military for the 21st Century

The President and the Department of Defense are taking unprecedented steps to protect our environment, achieve significant cost savings, and give our military better energy options.

May 17, 2013 5:28 PM EDTComing Together to Stop Slavery

Today at the White House, we convened the 10th annual meeting of the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons.

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If Genetically Engineered Seafood Enters U.S. Market, Major Grocery Stores Say They Won’t Sell It

A group of major grocery retailers — including Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Aldi — have pledged not to sell genetically engineered (GE) seafood if it’s approved in the U.S., Friends of the Earth announced Wednesday. The retailers are among more than 2,000 national and local grocery stores that have signed a pledge as part of the environmental group’s new campaign to push grocery stores to refuse to sell GE seafood.

The announcement comes as the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to approve what would be the first non-plant GE food to enter the U.S. market. AquAdvantage Salmon — which contain a Chinook salmon gene allowing the fish to grow about twice as fast as a wild Atlantic salmon — passed the FDA’s environmental assessment, which was released last year. Along with salmon, the Center for Food Safety reports that there are at least 34 other species of fish undergoing GE development around the world, including tilapia, trout and flounder.

The debate surrounding genetically modified foods, or GMOs, has intensified in recent months. Whole Foods announced earlier this month that it would label all GMO foods sold in Whole Foods stores by 2018, becoming the first national grocery store to set a timeline on GMO labeling. California’s Proposition 37, which would have mandated GMO labeling in the state, was narrowly defeated in November, after food industry giants like Monsanto and Hershey poured $44 million dollars into an anti-Prop 37 campaign. Polling shows that more than 90 percent of consumers support GMO labeling, and a 91 percent of Americans don’t want GE meat and fish in the U.S. marketplace.

The grocery retailers’ pledges are encouraging, but they don’t make up for the FDA’s oversight in labeling GE salmon as environmentally sound. Opponents of GE seafood stress that not enough research has been done on its health effects, and that GE fish could pose an environmental threat if they escape into open waters. With their ability to grow more quickly than other salmon, GE salmon could out-compete wild salmon for food and space, and could potentially mate with wild seafood, weakening the wild species’ gene pool. AquAdvantage’s developer AquaBounty maintains that all of its salmon are grown as sterile females, but during a 2010 FDA hearing, AquaBounty clarified that 95 to 99 percent of its salmon were sterile — which means up to 750,000 of the eggs AquaBounty plans to grow could be fertile. On top of that, even farmed salmon that aren’t genetically modified pose potential health and environmental risks — they typically contain higher concentrations of PCBs, pesticides and other toxins; generate vast amounts of waste, which pollutes the water surrounding their pens and can harbor disease; and emit nearly as much greenhouse gasses as pork. GE farmed salmon will also carry all those risks.

There are still many other grocery retailers in the U.S. that haven’t signed the pledge, which means that if AquAdvantage salmon are approved, they will still find their way into the American market. The FDA hasn’t had much success with encouraging the food industry to self-regulate on its own, so the federal government will need a broader policy to limit Americans’ exposure to GMO foods — by labeling them or, in the case of GE salmon, by keeping them off shelves altogether.

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Major Networks Ignore News of Increased Costs of ObamaCare

For two nights in a row, NBC, ABC, and CBS have ignored a story that would damage the liberal narrative they are helping the White House to push. Two days ago, the Congressional Budget Office reported that it has revised its projections of the cost of ObamaCare’s insurance subsidies. The CBO now estimates that the subsidies, which are to be offered through exchanges beginning in 2014, will cost 29 percent more than the CBO initially projected in 2010. The projected 10-year cost has increased by $233 billion.

In addition, the report estimates that 7 million workers will lose their employer-sponsored health insurance due to ObamaCare, almost twice as many as the CBO previously estimated. Monetary penalties on those who don’t buy insurance are now expected to be $36 billion higher from 2014 to 2019 than was originally thought.

Ominous news, to be sure. But the three major networks could not be bothered to mention it at all on the Tuesday or Wednesday editions of their evening news programs. NBC Nightly News had more important things to discuss, like Chris Christie’s weight, the new Monopoly game piece, and the 2014 Winter Olympics, which are still a year away, but will be telecast on the networks of NBC Universal. Of course, they also found time to talk about the continuing effort to coerce the Boy Scouts into accepting gay members.

ABC World News also covered Chris Christie’s weight, the new Monopoly piece, and the crusade to allow openly-gay Boy Scouts and scout leaders. In addition, they found time for an update on Barbara Walters’ recovery from chicken pox and a story on the youngest female billionaire in the U.S. (she owns In-N-Out Burger).

Why let the image of ObamaCare, hailed in the media as the president’s crowning achievement, be tarnished with critical news about its negative consequences?

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Steroids And Major League Baseball: Is More Testing The Answer?

The Miami New Times published a bombshell investigative piece this morning that tied multiple Major League Baseball players, including New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, to a Miami drug company that was supplying them with anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and other performance enhancing drugs. The story of Biogenesis, the drug firm, and Rodriguez, who admitted to steroid use before, brought back an ugly issue baseball thought it had largely put behind it when it instituted strong drug testing and harsh penalties in 2004.

The response, of course, has been an immediate call for more testing and harsher penalties. But here’s a question few seem to be asking: do drug tests and harsh penalties deter drug use? And if they don’t, how will more drug tests and even harsher penalties do any better?

In baseball, that’s impossible to know definitively, since there are no before-and-after testing numbers. But academic research suggests that random drug testing probably doesn’t prevent drug use. Dr. Linn Goldberg testified during a House Oversight Committee last month that his two-year testing of high school athletes had no deterrent effect. Other academic research has found that “testing alone is not a sufficient deterrent to eliminate drug use among college athletes.” Research into random testing for drugs like marijuana, meanwhile, has found little proof that such testing prevents use.

If Rodriguez, who had already admitted to steroid use once, indeed used performance enhancing drugs again, drug testing and the threat of penalties and public shame obviously failed as a deterrent. Random tests and the threat of rescinded titles, a lifetime ban, and federal punishment didn’t stop Lance Armstrong, and harsh rules and penalties in professional cycling and the Olympics haven’t prevented numerous athletes from using performance enhancers.

It’s easy to suggest that drug testing acts as a deterrent and that more of it would prevent even more use, but it’s hard to find proof of how effective drug tests are at actually preventing use. I’m not sure what the solution to sports’ drug problem is. I’m not even sure there is one, especially if the technology and funding that goes into producing performance enhancing drugs continues to outpace the technology and funding that goes into testing for them. But before we rush to the intuitive “more testing, harsher penalties” solution, shouldn’t we first figure out if the testing that is being conducted now does any good?

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Sorry, New Orleans: The Super Bowl Won’t Bring A Major Boost To Your Economy

New Orleans is gearing up to host Super Bowl XLVII, the National Football League’s annual championship that will pit the Baltimore Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, February 3. The city and its businesses are predicting an economic boom that will result in the ultimate comeback for a city that was decimated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Officials expect 150,000 people to descend on the city for the Super Bowl, and economic impact studies estimate that the game will bring $434 million to the city’s economy. Hosting three mega sporting events — the 2012 NCAA men’s Final Four and this year’s Super Bowl and women’s Final Four — will boost the city’s economy by more than $1 billion, according to an estimate from the International Business Times. And business leaders and lawmakers think the media exposure involved with hosting the big game will push the boom to immeasurable levels.

Those estimates, though, are likely fool’s gold, according to an assortment of academic research into the actual economic impact of Super Bowls and other major sporting events. When professors Victor Matheson and Robert Baade studied the economic impact of Super Bowls from 1973 to 1997, they found that the games boosted city economies by about $30 million, “roughly one-tenth the figures touted by the NFL” and an even smaller fraction of what New Orleans officials predict. A later Baade and Matheson study found that the economic impact of a Super Bowl is “on average one-quarter or less the magnitude of the most recent NFL estimates.”

Similarly, a 1999 paper from professor Philip Porter found that the Super Bowl had virtually no effect on a city’s economy. Research on other events New Orleans has hosted, including the men’s Final Four, is similar. When Baade and Matheson studied Final Fours, they found that the events tend “not to translate into any measurable benefits to the host cities.”

There are multiple reasons the estimates are often overstated. Impact estimates usually take into account how much money will be spent in the city during an event like the Super Bowl without examining how much potential spending will be lost because people don’t visit or leave the city to avoid the crowd — that is, the impact studies account for gross spending, but not net spending. And the estimates rarely include the additional cost of putting on the event, further distorting the disparity between gross and net spending figures.

Another factor is the possibility of leakages, whereby money spent doesn’t remain in the local economy. Much of the spent money will be at hotels, which often raise prices three-fold for events like the Super Bowl. But as Matheson notes in one study, those price increases don’t translate into three-fold increases for hotel employees, so much of the increased spending never makes it back into the local economy. And many Super Bowl services are outsourced to outside contractors, who don’t return all of their earnings back to the local economy either.

But even if the Super Bowl creates activity to match the most generous estimates, that wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal as it seems. Total economic activity for the New Orleans metro area totaled $80.3 billion in 2011, meaning a $434 million boost would amount to about 0.5 percent of the city’s yearly economic activity.

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GOP Senator Says Gun Safety Is Not A Major Issue

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) dismissed President Obama’s push for new gun safety legislation during an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley on Sunday. “That gets beside the major issues that face American families, which are jobs and the economy and the debt and spending,” he said:

CROWLEY: I spoke with [White House adviser] David Plouffe in the segment before this. He said that he is confident there are enough vote he is in the House and there are the requisite 60 votes in the Senate to pass universal background checks for gun owners and limiting the clips, those high-capacity magazine clips that can fire off so many rounds to 10 and under. Do you think that’s so? Do you think Congress would pass a ban on those clips with ten or over and a universal background check. Is that going to happen?

BARRASSO: No, I don’t think it will. Candy, that gets beside the major issues that face American families, which are jobs and the economy and the debt and spending. That’s where people are focused. That’s the big anxiety of this country.

CROWLEY: Sure, I agree with you, but as you know, you deal with a lot of things up there and at the White House. People and their families deal with a loft things. One of the things that’s been out there is gun control of some sort. Something that addresses Newtown, whether its gun control or better access to mental health. You know the president’s going to push that.

BARRASSO: As a doctor, I can tell you the president’s essentially ignored the major issues of mental health and violence in society in the media and video games and he has focused so much on what may be happening at gun shows or on gun shelves and gun stores that I think he is failing to really try to find a solution to the problem of the tragedy of Newtown.

Watch it:

Just yesterday, five people were shot at three different gun shows on so-called “Gun Appreciation Day.”

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Major Flu Outbreak Could Slow US Economy Further

Boston Declares Flu An Emergency A Boeing 787 Dreamliner experienced brake problems today, with CNBC's Larry Kudlow; and Boston's Mayor is declaring this year's flu season and public health emergency, with Alysha Palumbo, NECN.

This particularly devastating flu season started five weeks earlier than usual and caught many people off guard. Flu season usually peaks in late January or early February but by November the flu was already severe and widespread in some parts of the South and Southeast, and now in the Northeast and Midwest.

There have been more than 2,257 hospitalizations associated with the flu, according to the CDC. Some 18 children in the U.S have died from it.

The city of Boston has declared a pubic health emergency as a result of the flu outbreak. Massachusetts said some 18 people have died in the state from flu related illness. South Carolina reports 22 dead so far. Two people died in Sacramento, California. In Minnesota, 900 people were hospitalized because of the flu and four people died.

For the fourth week in a row, the proportion of people seeing health care providers for flu like illness is above the national average and jumped from 2.8 percent to 5.6 percent in that time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last season's proportion peaked at 2.2 percent, the CDC reports.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employee absences are traditionally up during the winter flu season -- some 32 percent higher than the rest of the year. The highest number of absentees was 3.3 million in 2008 -- a severe flu season.

Employees who are sick and go into work aren't really doing their colleagues any favors, said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc, an outplacement firm.

"Sick employees may think they're doing the right thing by going in but the fact is they are only making matters worse by exposing themsevles to others," Challenger said.

"The business culture is changing and I think most firms are more accepting of people calling in sick, especially during the flu season," said Challenger. (Read more: More Than Flu Hitting)

"What a business should be doing is offering flu shots, and giving comp days to workers who are sick and feel like coming in. Coming in sick and doing sub par work won't really help," argued Challenger.

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World Economic Forum: Income Inequality Is A Major Global Risk

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