Ramanisblog

Tag: United States Congress

  • Highlights of Obma’s State of The Union Address 2012.Text.

    High Lights of The State of The Union Address by President Obama in 2012.

    Official photographic portrait of US President...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Text.

    ”

    Let’s never forget:  Millions of Americans who work hard and play by the rules every day deserve a Government and a financial system that do the same.  It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom:  No bailouts, no handouts, and no copouts.  An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody. …

    I will not back down from making sure an oil company can contain the kind of oil spill we saw in the Gulf two years ago.  I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury pollution, or making sure that our food is safe and our water is clean.  I will not go back to the days when health insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny you coverage, or charge women differently from men.

    And I will not go back to the days when Wall Street was allowed to play by its own set of rules.  The new rules we passed restore what should be any financial system’s core purpose:  Getting funding to entrepreneurs with the best ideas, and getting loans to responsible families who want to buy a home, start a business, or send a kid to college.

    So if you’re a big bank or financial institution, you are no longer allowed to make risky bets with your customers’ deposits.  You’re required to write out a “living will” that details exactly how you’ll pay the bills if you fail – because the rest of us aren’t bailing you out ever again.  And if you’re a mortgage lender or a payday lender or a credit card company, the days of signing people up for products they can’t afford with confusing forms and deceptive practices are over.  Today, American consumers finally have a watchdog in Richard Cordray with one job: To look out for them. …

    And tonight, I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans.

    A return to the American values of fair play and shared responsibility will help us protect our people and our economy.  But it should also guide us as we look to pay down our debt and invest in our future.
    Right now, we’re poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.  Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households.  Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. …

    Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans?  Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else – like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans?  Because if we’re serious about paying down our debt, we can’t do both.

    But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.  Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule:  If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.  And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right:  Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires.  In fact, if you’re earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn’t get special tax subsidies or deductions.  On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up.  You’re the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages.  You’re the ones who need relief.

    Now, you can call this class warfare all you want.  But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes?  Most Americans would call that common sense.

    We don’t begrudge financial success in this country.  We admire it.  When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich.  It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet.  That’s not right.  Americans know it’s not right.  They know that this generation’s success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country’s future, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility.  That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit.  That’s an America built to last.

    Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics.  So together, let’s take some steps to fix that.  Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow.  Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.  Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa – an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.

    www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-25/president-barack-obama-s-state-of-the-union-address-full-text.html.

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  • End America’s two-party system?

    True that the bickering over the current Financial imbroglio has left a bad taste and makes one disillusioned with Democracy in general and the two-party system in particular.
    The problem encountered is inherent in Democracy where majority rule is important.
    Again the value system of each individual is different while looking at problems.
    Hence this controversy.
    The alternate suggested will breed only anarchy at a later date.
    However the emergence of third/fourth parties will be a certainty.
    This is being witnessed in India where innumerable parties on the national level and at the State level have made governing an impossible task.
    The the US you have people fighting for what they believe to be in the interest of the country.
    In India it is personal aggrandizement that is ruining the country.
    Multiparty system is good but people who run the parties
    matter.
    All said done two-party system is the best bet until we frame a an alternate system to Democracy.

    Confidence in the U.S. Congress is at a historic low, more than half of Americans think that the Republican and Democratic parties are doing such a bad job that a third party is needed, and the word “dysfunction” has been common currency in the drawn-out debate over the national debt.

    Does this mean the bells are tolling for the Republican-Democratic duopoly which has dominated American political life for more than 150 years?

    The answer is yes for a budding political force that aims to get the millions of voters who are disaffected by the present system to bypass the traditional selection of presidential candidates through primary elections.

    Instead, the new organization, Americans Elect, says it wants voters “to decide the issues that matter, find candidates to match your views and nominate the President and Vice President directly.”

    It’s a novel and extremely ambitious idea, backed by a 50-strong board of advisors that includes business executives, seasoned political operatives and senior former government officials, including ex-FBI director William Webster and former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills. Also on the board: Doug Schoen, a pollster who worked for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

    The chairman of the group is Peter Ackerman, who heads the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and made a fortune in the 1980s working for Drexel Burnham Lambert, the junk-bond dealers. His son Elliot is chief operations officer. Both are confident that the Internet and social media are the right tools to change the way the system functions.

    http://blogs.reuters.com/bernddebusmann/2011/08/05/time-to-end-americas-two-party-system/#comment-1686

  • Karunanidhi and Bigamy law.

    Karunanidhi has been getting away with this far too long.

    Way back ,in reply to Opposition leader Karuthiruman  of Congress in Tamil Nadu  Assembly .on being queried about a woman having delivered a child in Chennai and who the father was,Karunanidhi said’ the mother of the child is Rajathi’

    And he has been/is being  praised for this repartee!

    He calls wedded wife Dayalu as ‘Manaivi'(wife) and  Kanimozhi‘s mother Rajathi as ‘Thunavi-meaning companion).

    He might be the only politician who openly struts between both homes in an official car daily to office.

    And this man talks of Kannagi ,Chastity and Tamil Culture.

    What an ass Law can be, when some one declares the information officially!.

    NEW DELHI: The assets declared by M Karunanidhiof his two wives on Thursday while filing his nomination for the election has exposed the widespread impunity for bigamy even after it has been outlawed 55 years ago for all Indians except Muslims.

    Though the second marriage during the lifetime of the first spouse is illegal, many men get away with bigamy because of a loophole in the criminal law. Despite the liability of imprisonment up to seven years, bigamy is not a cognizable offence for which the police can register an FIR, either on their own or on receiving information from others. A violator of Section 494 IPC can be prosecuted only on a complaint filed by the first wife before a court.

    In August 2009, the Law Commission of India, headed then by Justice A R Lakshmanan, recommended that this loophole be plugged by making bigamy a cognizable offence.

    In any case, whether the first wife exercises the option of initiating criminal proceedings or not, the second wife has no legal status even if her marriage had taken place with the consent of the first wife.

    Under the Hindu code, only the first wife is a legal heir of the husband while the second wife is not entitled to any share in the ancestral estate and, if the husband has died without leaving a will, even in his self-acquired property. Once the second marriage is declared null and void, the wife concerned cannot even claim maintenance as a matter of right.

    It is therefore ironic that, despite all such legal disabilities, Karunanidhi’s second wife, Rajathi Ammal, with movable assets of Rs 20.83 crores, is actually shown to be wealthier than his first wife, Dayalu Ammal, whose movable assets are apparently worth Rs 15.34 crores.

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/assembly-elections-2011/tamil-nadu/Why-bigamy-law-wont-put-Karunanidhi-in-spot/articleshow/7783936.cms

  • NPR executive Resigns. Journalists Apolitical?No.

    Journalists are human beings.

    It is like burying one’s head in the sand assuming that Journalists are apolitical.

    Every individual has his opinions:one can not be expected not to express his views.

    If,by expressing in Public,Public opinion is molded, even then it can not be called as a sin.

    Let the Majority (?!) decide.

    However the expressions used are in bad taste.

    ( I think most people agree to the fact that all politicians  are not only ‘anti intellectual’ but buffoons and Criminals as well,at least as far as India concerned;that Jews control US is a fact)

    It is also a Myth that Media is neutral.

    With reference to whom?

    We might say ,by being hated by all the parties, Media can be said to be Neutral.

    Is this a sound argument?

    Fact is media is as Neutral as its proprietors are.

    On the other point that public Funds for media in the form of subsidy is that it leads to arm twisting by Governments at critical times.

    Look at new York Times; they wih-held information on Raymond Davis at the pleasure of the White House.

    Inject more funds from Government to media, the result is Goebbels in full force.

    Private sector in Media is also not above board.

    Look at media influencing Government right from Cabinet posts in India.

    ( please read my stories under Media/corruption ).

    With all these warts Democracy is still  the best available system for governance right now.

    NPR lost its chief executive Wednesday, a day after the news organization was embarrassed by a secretly recorded video that caught one of its top managers calling Republicans “anti-intellectual” and tea party members “racists.”

    Vivian Schiller, NPR’s top officer, was forced out of her job after two years, just as a Republican-held Congress has accelerated the debate on cutting funds for public broadcasting.

    Schiller officially resigned, but there was little doubt she was ousted under pressure from NPR’s board and officials from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that acts as Congress’s liaison in distributing about $430 million a year to public radio and television stations.

    Schiller announced she is leaving only about 24 hours after a video surfaced on the Internet with comments by NPR’s top fundraiser, Ron Schiller (no relation to Vivian Schiller), made during a luncheon meeting with two men who posed as wealthy donors from a Muslim charity. During the meeting, which was recorded by James O’Keefe, a well-known conservative provocateur, Schiller disparaged Republicans as “anti-intellectual” and tea party members as racists and xenophobes. He also suggested that Jews control the nation’s newspapers and that NPR would be better off without its federal subsidy.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030905763.html

  • Burkha Dutt ,Radia and Barkha’s Reply,Audio.

     

    In her reply Burkha Dutt nowhere denies her part.

    She is angry as to why others have not been exposed!

    Barkha Dutt:

    • Barkha–18-188819-0-10-20090522-094851 
    • Barkha–33-188819-0-21-20090522-095845 
    • Barkha Dutt-02-188819-0-01-20090522-104733 
    • Barkha–11-188819-0-07-20090522-153129 
    • Barkha–09-188819-0-04-20090522-180916 
    • Barkha-14-188819-0-08-20090522-192357 

    To download the file, right click on: Barkha–18-188819-0-10-20090522-094851.mp3 and choose Save

    http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268327

     

    Barkha Dutt: Hi Niira

    Niira Radia:  Hi, did I wake you up?

    Barkha Dutt: No, no, no. I’ve been up, yaa, most of the night. The stalemate continues, yaa.

    Niira Radia:  Yeah. Listen, the thing is that they need to talk to him directly. That is what the problem is.

    Barkha Dutt: Apparently now, the message from the other side is, that why did he go? Why did Baalu [T.R. Baalu, former DMK minister] go public? They claim that at this point will they had offered him this formula and this guys said, “no”. This guys never told them they were going to withdraw support. Not withdraw support. But outside support. Apparently, PM was really pissed off ‘ cause they had went public.

    Niira Radia:  But that’s Baalu’s doing, naa… he was not instructed by Karunanidhi to do that.

    Barkha Dutt: Oh, he wasn’t?

    Niira Radia:  This is not. He was told to come away and tell Congress that.

    Barkha Dutt: And he went public

    Niira Radia:  Well, the media… media, the media was standing outside.

    Barkha Dutt: Oh God. So now what? What should I tell them? Tell me what should I tell them?

    Niira Radia:  I’ll tell you what it is—the problem and I have had a long chat with both his wife and with the daughter, right?

    Barkha Dutt: Haan, haan.

    Niira Radia:  The problem is if the Congress has a problem with Baalu, if they have no problem with anyone. They need and go talk to Karunanidhi. They have very good relationship with Karunanidhi directly.

    Barkha Dutt: Correct, haan.

    Niira Radia:  Because you see, in front of Baalu, in front of Maran, they can’t talk.

    Barkha Dutt: Yeah

    Niira Radia:  So they have to tell him directly, there [are] enough Congress leaders in Tamil Nadu. They need to go in and tell him exactly—the biggest problem is that the following of Azhagiri is saying that you cannot give Maran a cabinet post and keep Azhagiri in the MoS state.

    Barkha Dutt: That’s right. But will Karuna drop Baalu?

    Niira Radia:  He… look, if you tell him that Baalu is the only problem. I would imagine, he will drop him.

    Barkha Dutt: But you see the problem right now is also over the choice of portfolios, naa…

    Niira Radia:  No. They’ve not said anything. The portfolios have not even got discussed.

    Barkha Dutt: Congress claims, for whatever it’s worth, that the DMK wanted surface transport, power, IT, telecom, railways and health.

    Niira Radia:  Wo tho pehle se list gaya tha

    Barkha Dutt: Haa, abhi Congress has offered IT, telecom, chemical, fertilizer and labour

    Niira Radia:  Yes

    Barkha Dutt: So this is where it’ll stand off. Will DMK accept all (or both)?

    Niira Radia:  Maybe no, because they have to drop Maran if you want them to be accept… Maran is wishing coal and mine.

    Barkha Dutt: Who’s wishing?

    Niira Radia:  Now Maran is saying, you give me coal and more mine. If he.. my honest advice to… is that you need to tell them… tell him directly that we are happy because Kani (M.K.Kanimozhi, Karundanidhi’s daughter) got no issue about being even as independent but Azhagiri is now telling her that you cannot take an independent charge if Maran remains cabinet minister. And congress is sending messages through media and through various sources saying that… Maran is going around telling everyone that he is the only acceptable person.

    Barkha Dutt: Ya, ya, ya. That I know.

    Niira Radia:  But that’s not correct na?

    Barkha Dutt: No, I know and we’ve (NDTV) have taken that off… We’ve have taken that off.

    Niira Radia:  But also… Congress needs to tell Karunanidhi that we have not said anything about Maran

    Barkha Dutt: OK. let me talk to them again

    Niira Radia:  Yeah? The choice of candidate we will leave to you. We have some reservation about Baalu. And let them tell the reservation. And we have not said anything about Maran. We are not asking…

    Burkha Dutt’s Reply:

    Society, the monthly lifestyle magazine of the Magna group owned by Nari Hira, has a cover story on Vir Sanghvi andBarkha Dutt in its January 2011 issue.

    For the first time, the two journalists most affected by theNiira Radia tapes, appear on the same platform.

    In her one-page interview, Dutt states:

    “I can’t comment on why the leakage has been so selective. But clearly, the conversations have been cherry picked and, in the interests of transparency, I think all 5,000-plus conversations should now be made public.”

    “My viewers don’t need to be disheartened. The way the story has been presented is so caricatured and distorted that it is made to look in a certain way. I am still the same journalist that I always was. I strongly object to the way these stories have been written.”

    http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/vir-sanghvi-barkha-dutt-we-were-targete

    http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?268327

    Burkhs Dutt’s Reply.


    As a journalist, whose work has been consistently hard-hitting and scathingly critical of the ongoing 2G scam and the former Telecom Minister, I am astonished, angered and hurt to see the baseless allegations against me in sections of the media this week.

    While there is no doubt that journalists must be held to the same exacting standards of accountability that we seek from others, the allegations in this instance, as they relate to me, are entirely slanderous and not backed by a shred of evidence. The edited conversations between PR Representative Nira Radia and me have been headlined to suggest that I misused my role as a journalist to “lobby” for A. Raja, a man I have never met.

    While this is completely untrue, I can understand the anger and anguish that such a misrepresentation can create, among viewers who rely on me to report honestly and impartially. And I would like to address some of the questions raised by these edited transcripts.

    The tapes seem to add up to hundreds of hours of conversations between Nira Radia and people from different backgrounds, including scores of well-known journalists and editors from all the major media organisations (TV and Print) in India. Despite this, much of the commentary has been strangely selective in its focus. And quite often, vindictively personal. Consider, for example, that online it is being dubbed “BarkhaGate.”

    I cannot speak on behalf of any other journalist on the tapes. Framed in the backdrop of a larger media debate, every journalist’s conversation on these tapes must, of course, be evaluated on its own merit. So, speaking only for myself, the insinuation made by the magazines are preposterous.

    By definition, the insinuation of “lobbying” implies either a quid-pro-quo of some kind or a compromise in how I have reported the story. As anyone who has watched my coverage of the ongoing 2G scam over the past year would know – to suggest either is entirely absurd. (ATTACHED BELOW ARE LINKS TO SEVERAL SHOWS HOSTED BY ME ON THE 2G SCAM OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS). In several different statements, I have already challenged two newsmagazines who first carried the allegations to establish any proof of a quid-pro quo or a bias in reportage. I know that neither charge stands the test of any scrutiny.

    For those perplexed by the ongoing debate, it could be useful to understand the context in which these conversations took place. The few, short conversations took place in the backdrop of cabinet formation in 2009, when the DMK had stormed out of the UPA coalition over portfolio allocation.

    In this instance, Nira Radia, was clearly plugged into the inner workings of the DMK, a fact we only discovered when she rang up to tell me that the news flashes running on different news channels were incorrect; the stalemate between the DMK and the Congress had not yet been resolved. She corroborated her claim by saying she was in direct contact with the DMK chief and was in fact with his daughter, Kanimozhi. We talked about news developments within the DMK and the Congress and nothing I said was different from what I was reporting on TV minute-by-minute.

    Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/page/?type=barkha-statement&cp