. . . plus c'est la meme chose.
1989.
2009.
Glenn Beck Meet & Greet Breakfast
and Radio Show Ticket Package
Breakfast and Meet & Greet at 7AM
Radio Show at 9AM
Ticket Price:
$500.00
Package Includes:
* Breakfast at the General Denver Hotel
* Meet & Greet with Glenn Beck
* Photo with Glenn Beck
* Premium Ticket to the live Radio Show Broadcast at the Murphy Theatre
All Ages
Reserved Seating
Glenn Beck Live Radio Show Broadcast
Doors: 8:00AM
Radio Show: 9:00AM (Must be seated by 8:45AM sharp)
Ticket Price:
$125.00
All Ages
Reserved Seating
This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.IT'S A reasonable suggestion. I'd call it "taking the high road," only radically so.
To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.
If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.
We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party. The president has almost no credibility left with Republicans and little with independents.
If the president adopts our suggestion, both sides will be forced to compromise. The alternative, we fear, will put the nation at greater risk. While we believe that Obama can be reelected, to do so he will have to embark on a scorched-earth campaign of the type that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election, which divided Americans in ways that still plague us.WOW. Just wow.
Obama owes his election in large measure to the fact that he rejected this approach during his historic campaign. Indeed, we were among those millions of Democrats, Republicans and independents who were genuinely moved by his rhetoric and purpose. Now, the only way he can make real progress is to return to those values and to say that for the good of the country, he will not be a candidate in 2012.
Should the president do that, he - and the country - would face virtually no bad outcomes. The worst-case scenario for Obama? In January 2013, he walks away from the White House having been transformative in two ways: as the first black president, yes, but also as a man who governed in a manner unmatched by any modern leader. He will have reconciled the nation, continued the economic recovery, gained a measure of control over the fiscal problems that threaten our future, and forged critical solutions to our international challenges. He will, at last, be the figure globally he has sought to be, and will almost certainly leave a better regarded president than he is today. History will look upon him kindly - and so will the public.
It's clear that the Great Recession battered those on the bottom most heavily, adding 6 million people to the ranks of the officially poor, defined as just $22,000 in annual income for a family of four. Forty-four million Americans -- one in seven citizens -- are now living below the poverty line, more than at any time since the Census Bureau began tracking poverty 51 years ago. Shamefully, that figure includes one in five children, more than one in four African Americans or Latinos, and over 51 percent of female-headed families with children under 6.
These numbers are bad enough. But dig deeper -- as Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman has been doing for nearly 50 years in his battle against poverty -- and the story told by these figures is even more staggering.
Edelman points out that 19 million people are now living in "extreme poverty," which is under 50 percent of the poverty line, or $11,000 for a family of four. "That means over 43 percent of the poor are extremely poor," said Edelman, who served as an aide to Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.) and in the Clinton administration before resigning in protest over welfare reform that shredded the safety net. "That's over 6 percent of the population, and that figure has just been climbing up and up."
(snip)
Beyond what Congress can do immediately, it's clear that America needs a broader movement to create a more just and higher-wage economy. Edelman and other advocates say that we will need to push to make it easier for people to join labor unions through an Employee Free Choice Act or at least reduce legal barriers to organizing. The minimum wage should also be indexed to half the average wage.
"But you're still going to have a gap," said Edelman. "And you essentially have to invent some new idea of a wage supplement that starts from the premise that the so-called good jobs went away a long time ago and we've become a nation of low-wage work."
That's why 100 million people are struggling to make ends meet on less than $44,000 per year.
This devastating economic reality has the potential to create new political alliances -- and shape a 21st-century anti-poverty movement. Such a movement is urgently needed because the voices of the poor, of workers and of those struggling to get by are barely heard in the halls of power these days. Anti-poverty groups and advocates with ideas for a more equitable economy are often marginalized within even Democratic Party policy circles that seem hard-wired to reject them.
We know what needs to be done to reduce poverty. The question is who will fight that fight? And who will listen?
Donald’s life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.WATCH. Now.
COMMON KNOWLEDGE is, Tiger Nation is going to go apes*** if Les comes away with a loss against North Carolina in Hotlanta on Saturday night.Now one script tells us, three years after winning a national championship, after going 8-5 and 9-4, Miles needs a 9-3 regular-season record to maintain employment at LSU.
An 8-4 regular season, says one script, and the Tiger Athletic Foundation is prepared to come up with the money necessary to buy out the head coach.
Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.AND THE CURE for this is supposed to be less regulation? Less government? Fewer taxes on the wealthy? Removing the last of society's unraveling safety nets?
Families have survived the ups and downs of economic booms and busts for a long time, but the fall-behind during the busts has gotten worse while the surge-ahead during the booms has stalled out. In the boom of the 1960s, for example, median family income jumped by 33% (adjusted for inflation). But the boom of the 2000s resulted in an almost-imperceptible 1.6% increase for the typical family. While Wall Street executives and others who owned lots of stock celebrated how good the recovery was for them, middle class families were left empty-handed.
The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.
But core expenses kept going up. By the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much (adjusted for inflation) on mortgages than they did a generation ago -- for a house that was, on average, only ten percent bigger and 25 years older. They also had to pay twice as much to hang on to their health insurance.
To cope, millions of families put a second parent into the workforce. But higher housing and medical costs combined with new expenses for child care, the costs of a second car to get to work and higher taxes combined to squeeze families even harder. Even with two incomes, they tightened their belts. Families today spend less than they did a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases -- but it hasn't been enough to save them. Today's families have spent all their income, have spent all their savings, and have gone into debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems, and just to stay afloat a little while longer.
Through it all, families never asked for a handout from anyone, especially Washington. They were left to go on their own, working harder, squeezing nickels, and taking care of themselves. But their economic boats have been taking on water for years, and now the crisis has swamped millions of middle class families.
The contrast with the big banks could not be sharper. While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts.
"The difference is -- when you look at middle-class families -- if you needed 12 years back in 1970? The taxpayer paid for it. You got it all for free. All you had to do was show up . . . live there and show up.WITH THE ADVENT of what is an almost-mandatory two years of preschool for toddlers, Warren noted that -- in little more than a generation -- we've gone from a shot at a middle-class life requiring 12 years of free education to requiring 18 years of schooling, one-third of which parents are on the hook for.
By the year 2000, if you need a college diploma, you pay for it yourself.
Sure Berkeley and other state-supported schools? I guess that means you guys aren't paying any tuition? [Laughter]
Room, board, books, right? It's not very much -- I guess you borrowed maybe a dollar or two in order to do this?
But notice what that means. It means the launch -- what parents have to do to get that next generation into the middle class -- has shifted from being something that everybody pays for to something that only the families with children are paying for.
As the U.S. economy endures high unemployment and a jittery stock market, President Barack Obama has preached sacrifice and fiscal discipline. But the pictures coming out of a sun-splashed Spanish resort may be sending a different message.AT LEAST in Vegas, there's the slimmest of chances you might hit it big, though. When you're dealing with Washington, politics and the public's bankroll, not so much.
First lady Michelle Obama is in the midst of a five-day trip to a luxury resort along with a handful of friends, her younger daughter, aides and Secret Service. Her office said the Obamas would pay for personal expenses, but would not reveal the taxpayer cost for the government employees.
Elected officials -- Democrats and Republicans -- were reluctant to weigh in, not wanting to appear critical of the President's wife. But the trip provided fodder for television news shows, talk-show hosts and bloggers. Critics portrayed the foreign getaway as tone-deaf to the deep economic anxiety back home. Every first family takes vacations: the criticism aimed at Mrs Obama is that she chose to visit a foreign country rather than remain in the US and support its fragile economy.
Just last month, Mrs Obama flew to the Florida panhandle, a tourist draw hit hard by the oil spill crisis, and delivered the message that for parents "looking for things to do with their kids this summer … this is a wonderful place to visit."
The opulence of the European trip also has drawn scrutiny. Mr Obama has urged frugality in lean economic times. He once cautioned that families saving money for college shouldn't "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas."
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
The UC Board of Regents approved a two-phase increase that will boost the average undergraduate fee $2,500 by next fall. That would bring the average annual cost to about $10,300 — a threefold increase in a decade.STOCK UP on the Prozac, kid. The suck has only just begun.
After a series of deep cuts in state aid, and with state government facing a nearly $21 billion budget gap over the next year and a half, regents said there was no option to higher fees.
Outside the meeting hall, hundreds of demonstrators chanted, beat drums and hoisted signs opposing the fee increase while UC campus police in face shields and California Highway Patrol officers with beanbag-shooting guns stood watch.
One person was arrested. She was cited for obstructing an officer and released, said Hampton.
There were 14 arrests on Wednesday.
Other protesters on Thursday took over an ethnic studies classroom building at the other end of campus, chaining the doors shut and forcing cancellation of classes. However, they were peaceful and were allowed to remain, Hampton said.
Many students from other campuses flocked to UCLA to join the protests, staying overnight in a campus tent city.
Laura Zavala, 20, a third-year UCLA student, said she may have to get a second job to afford the increase.
“My family can’t support me. I have to pay myself,” she said. “It’s not fair to students, when they are already pinched.”
Ayanna Moody, a second-year prelaw student, said she might have to return to community college next year.
“I worked so hard to be at one of the most prestigious universities. To have to go back, it’s very depressing,” she said.
Mayor Jim Suttle was skeptical today about whether the Omaha City Council's budget plan is based on realistic numbers.
“It was very chaotic yesterday,” Suttle said in an interview with The World-Herald. “We have to now see how it all adds up.”
After nearly nine hours of debate and maneuvering, a divided council Tuesday approved a 2010 budget that includes Suttle's property tax hike to pay city debt but makes more than $10 million in changes, including a 2½-day voluntary employee furlough and a new satellite TV fee.
The approved budget now goes to Suttle for review and any possible vetoes.
Suttle said he will study the council's changes and is willing to work with council members. But he said he's concerned that some of their ideas won't bring in as much money as they hope.
If revenue sources fall short next year, he said, the city could end up having to repeat this year's round of cuts to swimming pools, libraries and other services.
“I don't want to repeat this summer, next summer,” Suttle said. “I'm really guarded about that.”
Some council members also were dissatisfied with the budget, but for different reasons.
The budget was approved on a 4-2 vote after a debate that stretched until nearly 11 p.m. Council members Pete Festersen and Jean Stothert voted against it because it contains a tax increase to pay debt on projects such as the Qwest Center Omaha.
That tax increase would cost the owner of a $100,000 house an extra $24 a year.
An $11 million shortfall in the budget was addressed with the help of a new, $50 inspection fee for satellite TV dishes and the voluntary furlough plan for all city employees. Both were proposed by Councilman Chris Jerram.
(snip)
Initially, the budget did not pass. Councilman Franklin Thompson voted with Festersen and Stothert to reject it, citing the tax increase.
Thompson later switched to become the deciding vote in passing the measure.
“I do believe the council has been cornered, but I believe this council has done everything it can to do the right thing,” Thompson said. “My constituents are going to be disappointed in me.”
YOU GOT that right, Franklin. I'm your constituent, and I'm disappointed that Ben Gray was the only grown-up on the city council. I'm disappointed Gray was the only council member to realize the city had already cut into the bone . . . and that it was time to tell taxpayers to bear their share of the burden of self-governance.
And now the council has passed a sham of a budget, one that kicks the fiscal can down the road for a date with another crisis in a few months.
Voluntary furloughs? Lord God, what kind of insanity is that?
Most of the council declared they couldn't expect property owners to pay enough more in taxes -- about $52 extra a year when all is said and done -- to cover the city's budget shortfall and debt-service obligations, yet they expect city employees to voluntarily forfeit 2 1/2 days' pay?
That's not just your average, everyday insanity, that's some heavy-duty, patently unjust insanity.
TO MAKE THIS short and not-so-sweet, the council-passed Omaha city budget is the biggest fiction you're likely to see until the next Glenn Beck Show. And the council members to blame for it have proven themselves unworthy of their office.
Every year the city council holds budget meetings where department heads present financial needs and answer questions. This year Sass was the only director asked to defend the existence of her department. Councilman Chuck Sigerson said the Internet and devices such as Amazon’s Kindle might eliminate the need for libraries.
“Sure we can all download books on a Kindle, but who’s going to buy the Kindle for us?” Sass said. “There’s an assumption people can afford these devices and then there’s the thing that chills me to the bone … when the book 1984 disappeared from the Kindle. Talk about the ultimate irony.”
Sass said libraries are changing with the times, beyond e-books and DVDs to involve more people in more ways. For instance OPL now offers etiquette classes, baby classes and parenting classes.
“Information isn’t just something you find in a book; information is about satisfying a need, whether it’s curiosity, educational or informational,” she said.
[Mayor Jim] Suttle said today that he would support Gray's proposal if the rest of the council gets behind it.I DON'T KNOW what more to say about a guy who would run for mayor of a large city, presumably because he wanted to make the hard decisions . . . but only if the city council makes them for him.
Mayor Jim Suttle said Friday that Omaha faces an additional $7 million gap in its general fund budget this year. The new problems raise the total 2009 unresolved shortfall to $12 million.YIKES! One way or another, this is going to hurt.
The shortfall has grown mainly because of weak interest earnings, higher-than-expected health care payments for retirees and lower tax collections on gas and water usage, officials said.
“These latest numbers reinforce the depth of the financial crisis and point out the urgency in obtaining wage freezes from the city unions for both 2009 and 2010,” Suttle said.
Omaha has been struggling with its budget because of the weak economy, with revenues falling short of projections. Both Suttle and former Mayor Mike Fahey have scrambled to balance this year's budget, and Suttle also has proposed tax hikes and budget cuts for 2010.
So far this year, Omaha officials have cut $9 million from the budget passed last summer. Until now, they thought the goal was $14 million in cuts. Suttle had hoped to close the $5 million gap by negotiating wage freezes equaling that amount with city employee unions.
Now, even if the unions agree to those concessions, the city still faces a massive hole in its current budget.
“Ouch,” said City Council President Garry Gernandt. “It's the type of news we don't want to hear, now or ever.”
Suttle and his new finance director, Pam Spaccarotella, did not outline what additional cuts they will propose. Suttle pointed out that his proposed 2 percent entertainment tax, if implemented, would take effect Oct. 1 of this year. While the tax is mainly aimed at solving next year's budget problems, Suttle said it also would generate $2 million this year that could be applied to the current shortfall.
Councilman Chuck Sigerson was not swayed by that argument. He remains skeptical of the entertainment tax and said the latest numbers don't change his mind.
“I think we need to be very, very careful before we leap into an entertainment tax,” he said. “We need to let cooler heads prevail. I just won't be railroaded into doing it, just because of the latest emergency.”
Sigerson also said he hoped that the city would gain extra revenue later in the year. For example, he said, the federal “cash for clunkers” program is enticing more people to buy cars, which would boost sales tax revenue for the city.
Gernandt doubted whether the city would be able to start collecting the new entertainment tax by Oct. 1, even if the council did approve it. He said there would be many logistical challenges in implementing the tax.
But Gernandt also said he couldn't immediately say where the city might make enough cuts to balance the budget.
Spaccarotella said the latest projections for the shortfall are based on actual spending for the first half of the year. Earlier estimates were calculated from spending and revenues during the first three months.
UNITY head Martha Kegel explained that the homeless people they met were placed on a waiting list and given priority according to how likely they were to die without housing. Quite a few already had died waiting for housing, she said.WELL, one policy answer might have been for local activist groups to not to jump on board the Sharon Jasper Express, which went full-steam for the right to live not in decent housing, but instead in a hellhole named Desire . . . or St. Bernard . . . or Lafitte. That is, before it jumped the tracks.
"Is there a quick way to house people so that they're not dying on a list?" Farha asked. "What is the policy answer to address the immediate need?"
Mickey Palmer, who traveled the world for 20 years as a merchant seaman shipping out of the Port of New Orleans, welcomed international visitors on Monday morning to his home, an abandoned building scattered with Katrina-era debris.TO THE EXTENT the average citizen can look at this and spout platitudes about free markets, bootstraps and "U.N. socialists out to get the United States," God will -- and should -- damn America. That human beings live like this in the richest country on earth -- live much as the biblical Lazarus did right under the nose of the rich man, begging for crumbs off a table of plenty -- should be as much a scandal to us as it was to Jesus Christ two millennia ago.
As a cool wind blew through a large open window, Palmer, 57, puffed on a cigarette and tried to stay positive.
"This is a good place to squat, as we call it, " he told international housing expert Leilani Farha, who led a small entourage to New Orleans this week to interview people who have lost affordable housing and others who may lose their homes.
Farha, who leads a low-income-housing advocacy group in Ontario, Canada, is part of an advisory group that reports to UN-HABITAT, the United Nations agency charged with monitoring poverty and housing. The group spent Monday morning with outreach workers from UNITY of Greater New Orleans who tromp through blighted buildings searching for disabled people who need help. The group will publish a report online after their visit.
Representatives of the United Nations have shown special interest in New Orleans since Katrina, with some U.N. officials using the storm as an opportunity to critique the U.S. government's policies toward poor and minority groups.
The group's forays haven't been without controversy. Last year, two U.N. specialists attracted international attention when they said the federal government's response violated an international treaty on racism. But the authors of the resolution also acknowledged they hadn't visited New Orleans since the storm.
On Monday, UNITY officials told the latest U.N. visitors that they believe 6,000 squatters may live in the city's more than 65,000 abandoned structures.
(snip)
In a nearby decrepit house, two other homeless women cited similar medical woes. Peaches Jackson, 42, suffers seizures because she lost 20 percent of her brain in an accident 10 years ago, she said. Charlene Stewart, 35, is scheduled for abdominal surgery next week for a bacterial infection.
Bailey walked back to the room she sleeps in. She keeps the window there closed at night or else mosquitoes devour her, she said. When it rains, the roof leaks generously onto the rotting floorboards.
She didn't always live like this, she said quietly, talking about her work in the service industry and the low rent she'd paid nearly all her adult life.
19IN THE WORST economic times since the Great Depression, there has been much talk about "stimulus packages."
"There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day.
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And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,
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who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.
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When the poor man died, he was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried,
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and from the netherworld, where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.
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And he cried out, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames.'
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Abraham replied, 'My child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.
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Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.'
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He said, 'Then I beg you, father, send him to my father's house,
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for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.'
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But Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.'
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He said, 'Oh no, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
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Then Abraham said, 'If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.'"