Obama

Along the entire two-KM stretch from the eastern part of Tijuana to the wall on the U.S. border, hundreds of people sleep in makeshift tents of cardboard and cloth, tunnel-like holes, and sewage ditches and on the bridges and the sides of the levees. The banks are strewn with trash washed down by the Tijuana River, which stinks from the sewage. This is the “city” of people who have no one. The underside of the border bridges and the banks of the concrete-lined channel are home to hundreds of deported homeless migrants.

As the three-day U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit got underway here Monday, anti-corruption activists urged President Barack Obama to prod a key U.S. agency to issue long-awaited regulations requiring oil, gas, and mining companies to publish all payments they make in countries where they operate.“The companies need to be held accountable, and we would ask President Obama to also support us in this message,” said Ali Idrissa.

The current humanitarian crisis of the explosive number of unaccompanied minors on the U.S. southern border, at last count 52,000, but increasing daily, is no mere accident. Over the past two years the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has tracked the incremental increase of minors attempting to cross the border, over two-thirds from Central American countries and the remaining one-third from Mexico. For example, DHS was aware that more than 25,000 minors arrived unaccompanied at the U.S. border seeking entry in 2013.

Asked if the US will defend the Philippines in case territorial disputes in the South China Sea escalate, Obama said, “Our goal is not to counter China; our goal is not to contain China. Our goal is to make sure that international rules and norms are respected, and that includes in the area of maritime disputes.” He said the US welcomes China’s “peaceful rise” amid its “constructive relationship” and “enormous trade” with the nation.

The number of African Americans who lacked health insurance dropped dramatically in 2014's first quarter compared to 2013's fourth quarter thanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which Republicans threaten to repeal if they win control of both houses of Congress in November's national elections. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index reported on Monday that the uninsured rate for African Americans fell from 20.9 percent in 2013's fourth quarter to 17.6 percent in 2014's first quarter, a drop of 3.3 percentage points.

The populations most vulnerable to those outrages are hardly aware of the Koch brothers. I believe only a minuscule number of Democrats and Independents know of the very real threat to our country’s decency – and our base responsibility to those less advantaged – posed by Sheldon Adelson and Koch brother types out there wielding hundreds of millions of dollars in what I call “The Dark Campaign”.So the intent of the Democratic campaign organizations to shine a light on those threats and that Dark Campaign is commendable.

More than 2.2 million Americans are barely getting by after most of their extended unemployment benefits were abruptly cut over the Christmas break. In fact, Congress and the president skipped town for restful, holiday vacations soon after. Hopes of a post-New Year’s Day resolution were dashed by stalls and foot-dragging in the Senate, which is finally taking a vote this week. But, a nastier, unsympathetic House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is signaling that he’s not interested in bringing it to the floor for a vote. 

Images, and the words that oftentimes accompany them, have a tendency to take on lives of their own.  The mustache sported so famously by Hitler represents many things.  It represents fear, violence, extermination, destruction, hate.  The very fact that someone would use an image as loaded as that of Hitler to make a statement about an economic policy is irresponsible.  That being said, the policies born from economic theories have had huge impacts on the lives of millions upon millions of people.