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Randy
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October 12, 2012
The WARN Act (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) protects workers, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide notification 60 calendar days in advance of plant closings and mass layoffs. ( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) Other (leave your comments below) Take the poll here. Find out the results of last week’s instapoll here.
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Randy
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October 04, 2012
This week, one Border Patrol agent was wounded and another was killed in Arizona near the Mexico border. According to news reports, the agents had been responding to a tripped ground sensor in a drug trafficking corridor. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer criticized “the federal failure and political stalemate that has left our border unsecured and our Border Patrol in harm’s way.”
In June, President Obama announced that his administration would grant temporary amnesty from deportation to young people brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents, if they met certain criteria. To qualify for the program, illegal immigrants must be under 31 years old and have come to the U.S. before they were 16. Applicants are required to show that they have lived here continuously since June 15, 2007, and be currently in school or have earned a high school diploma, or have been honorably discharged from the military. Additionally, they must pass a background check to show they do not have any significant criminal record or pose a threat to national security. Additionally, in July, it was announced that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection is closing 9 border patrol stations in California, Montana, Idaho and Texas. The stations were reportedly closed in order to reassign agents to higher-priority areas closer to the border. Opponents of these decisions have criticized the administration for thwarting Congress’ constitutional authority to enact laws regarding immigration, including whether taxpayers would be responsible for covering the cost of the deferred deportation program, how the Department of Homeland Security will prevent fraud and abuse in the process of verifying applications, and how officials would be able to continue border security and enforce federal immigration laws. Question of the week: Which immigration reform proposals do you support? (Multi-Answer) ( ) Stricter enforcement of existing laws combating illegal immigration ( ) Enhanced border security ( ) Focusing more resources on border states ( ) Allowing states to enact immigration laws ( ) Making it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain citizenship ( ) Enhanced focus on deportation of illegal immigrants ( ) Granting amnesty to the children of illegal immigrants ( ) Ending birthright citizenship amnesty ( ) Eliminating the per-country caps on employment-based green cards ( ) Requiring all U.S. employers to use E-Verify ( ) Providing green cards for foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). ( ) Decreasing the immigration application backlog ( ) Easing the adoption process for foreign children adopted by U.S. citizens ( ) Other (share your thoughts below) Take the poll here. Find out the results of last week’s instapoll here.
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Randy
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September 27, 2012
The good news or the bad news?
The bad news first: The College Board, which administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), announced this week that only 43% of those in the class of 2012 graduates finished high school prepared for a college curriculum. (The College Board measured college readiness by meeting a SAT benchmark score of 1550.) The average SAT reading (verbal) scores have decreased significantly over the last forty years. Nationally, 44% of high-school freshmen go on to attend college and 21% earn a bachelor's degree in six years, the College Board reported. Fortunately, there is also good news: Virginia’s 2012 college-bound high school seniors graduating from public schools outperformed the national averages by 17 points. The College Board’s report also indicated that 40 percent of test-takers in Virginia were minorities. State rankings will be updated early next year but Virginia ranked third in the nation in achievement on Advanced Placement examinations. Congressman Forbes believes that responsibility for student achievement is best handled by the states and individual school districts, in order to enhance local flexibility, protect taxpayers’ investments in education, and strengthen state and local autonomy. Read more about his work on education here. Question of the week: Which of the following solutions do you support to improve our elementary and secondary educational system? (Multi-Answer) ( ) Decreased reliance on standardized testing ( ) Increased use of standardized testing ( ) Additional waivers from the requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind) ( ) Modification to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to remove penalties for not meeting yearly standards of learning ( ) General reduction of the federal government’s role in elementary and secondary education ( ) Increased teacher pay in general ( ) Merit-based teacher pay ( ) Teacher Union Reform ( ) Increased funding for schools ( ) Increased funding for charter schools ( ) Increased school choice options ( ) Other (Please share your comments and ideas below.) Take the poll here. Find out the results of last week’s instapoll here.
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Randy
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September 20, 2012
Tragically, on September 11th in Benghazi, Libya, the United States Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were murdered. This was the first U.S. Ambassador who had been murdered since 1979. ( ) Tether foreign aid to pro-democracy, religious freedoms and human rights benchmarks ( ) Reduce or eliminate foreign aid ( ) Sever diplomatic ties and/or remove embassy staffs ( ) Bolster embassy security with elite Marine units ( ) Continue engagement with these foreign governments to combat terrorism and promote democracy. Take the poll here.
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Randy
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September 07, 2012
This week, our nation’s public debt topped $16 trillion, an increase of over $5 trillion, since January 20, 2009. To put that in perspective, the debt is equal to $50,955 for each person and $134,946 for every household in the United States. The debt is now greater than the current Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $15.094 trillion, a measure of all that is produced in the economy.
Question of the week: Which measures do you support to reduce the national debt? (multi-answer) ( ) Decreasing the size of the Federal Government by ending duplicative and wasteful programs ( ) Rolling back burdensome and costly regulations ( ) Reducing spending in annual appropriations bills ( ) Holding Members of Congress accountable by tying their salaries to the growth in spending ( ) Allowing current tax cuts to expire to increase revenue ( ) Ending bailouts and stimulus spending ( ) Reforming the tax code to remove loopholes and inappropriate tax shelters ( ) Other (leave your comments below).Take the poll here. Find out the results of last week’s instapoll here.
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Randy Forbes
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August 31, 2012
Mr. Armstrong, it was July 20, 1969. I was a 17-year-old driving past the golden corn fields that lined Mount Pleasant Road in the quiet rural community of Chesapeake, Virginia. You were commanding Apollo 11.
I remember the rich, smoky voice of the announcer coming through the speakers, the rush of frigid air blasting out of the vents of my father’s Ford on that hot, heavy Sunday afternoon. With only minutes of fuel remaining, you were piloting a tiny fleck of a spaceship nearly a quarter of a million miles away. Humanity drew in its breath to listen as you took the controls to manually redirect the craft on course to collide with bulky craters jutting out of the charcoal landscape. My heart hammered in my chest. My mind raced. Around the world, a half a billion hearts pumped with me. You were unflappably calm. Precise. You held the anticipation of all of humanity in that moment. “Houston, Tranquility Base here,” you radioed. “The Eagle has landed.” “Roger, Tranquility,” mission control replied. “We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again.” It was a day I will carry with me forever. You were a main character in a national narrative of hope – hope based not in words but in deeds, hope measured by not by soundbites but by skill. You lived at a time when the word ‘communism’ wasn’t a theory but a threat - ripe and fresh and mingling in the minds of morning commuters and Sunday shoppers. And when you walked on the surface of moon that day, the world felt the power of your nation’s pride -- pride that would ripple far beyond the decisive victory of a decade long Soviet-American space race. Mr. Armstrong, you were the first to do what man had never done. And, it was nothing short of astonishing, marvelous, and ecstatic. When my grandchildren Hannah and Sawyer sit at my feet, I’ll tell them of you. Not only the man that walked on the moon, but also the man you were when you walked the earth. Quiet. Private. Reserved. I’ll tell them that you were a hero once for your bravery, but twice for your humility. You were never at ease with your own fame, never celebrated your celebrity, never cashed in on book deals or speaking tours, never commercialized what could have been so successfully mass-produced on cheap t-shirts and gift-shop memorabilia. You reached into an unfathomable black abyss, not for the glory, or the fame, or the conquest, or the riches, but because it was your job and because your country asked. Perhaps it was reward enough to behold the artistry of the rich glaring blue of our planet captured against the lifeless gray landscape of the moon’s celestial body. Perhaps it was reward enough to place your nation’s stars and stripes in a soil never before touched by man. I’ll never know. But I doubt it. I’d like to think you never claimed your worldly fame because you knew what a precious treasure you held. You knew it was a priceless gem – best left pure and undefiled. Best not to twitter, and tweak, and airbrush that which on its own is so magnificent, so genuine. America’s coming generation knows of the day you walked on the moon only in grainy flickering video, in static-filled radio transmissions, and in sepia-tinted textbook photos, but even to them your legacy is vivid. Decades later you remain an antidote for a weary nation, jostled and numb by an onslaught of mediocrity and dizzy from a national lens out-of-focus. You, Mr. Armstrong, are like wind in our faces. Your name will forever invoke a cool breeze of anticipation and expectancy. You awaken in us that freshness of vision that we remember of our younger selves- in the words of Lewis Carroll - the "child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.” When you descended the ladder of Apollo 11 you left not just a permanent impression of your boot in the sandy soil of a celestial body orbiting 240,000 miles from Earth, you left a permanent impression on the hearts of our nation that there is not anything that America cannot do, there is not any challenge we cannot overcome. From that 17-year-old boy, who still stares into the night's sky, beholds our limitless possibilities, and ponders the destinations that this great nation will set foot upon, thank you, Mr. Armstrong, thank you.
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August 30, 2012
Medicare was established in 1965 as a federal insurance program to provide access to health care for Americans, age 65 and older, and was later expanded to cover disabled individuals under the age of 65. In 2011, Medicare covered nearly 50 million Americans.
According to an annual report published by the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, Medicare’s hospital insurance (HI) trust fund, which covers Part A benefits such as inpatient hospital services and home health care, will be depleted by 2024. Additionally, the report estimates that Medicare spending will grow from $549.1 billion in 2011 to $1 trillion in 2021. There is bi-partisan consensus that Medicare is on an unsustainable course and reform is needed, but significant debate remains about which proposals should be implemented. Question of the week: Which proposals aimed at strengthening Medicare do you support? (multi-answer) ( ) No changes - continue providing health insurance the way Medicare does now ( ) Allow seniors to choose a plan, including the traditional plan, in which the government gives older Americans money to buy health insurance. In this system, private insurers would compete for seniors’ business on price and services. ( ) Regulate Medicare costs by an Independent Payment Advisory Board, responsible for controlling program costs whenever Medicare is projected to exceed preset budgets. ( ) Raise the eligibility age of Medicare from 65 to 67 ( ) Increase beneficiary costs from 25 to 35% ( ) Gradually limit benefits for high-income enrollees ( ) Other (share your thoughts on my blog here.) Take the poll here. Find out the results of last week’s instapoll here.
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Randy
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August 17, 2012
Reuters reported this week that the White House was considering releasing oil from the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve if gasoline prices do not fall after September 3rd. in order to provide some relief at the gas pump just two months before the November 6th election.
Oil prices have risen sharply in recent weeks, rising 30 cents to $3.71 per gallon, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the Department of Energy’s emergency fuel storage of oil, along the U.S. Gulf coast, with a capacity of 727 million barrels of oil. According to Bloomberg Business Week, the reserve “currently has 696 million barrels of crude, the equivalent of 80 days worth of oil imports.” The Department of Energy (DOE) states on its website, “The Strategic Petroleum Reserve exists, first and foremost, as an emergency response tool the President can use should the United States be confronted with an economically-threatening disruption in oil supplies.” According to the DOE, a Presidentially-directed release has occurred three times under these conditions. First, in 1991, at the beginning of Operation Desert Storm, the United States joined its allies in assuring the adequacy of global oil supplies when war broke out in the Persian Gulf. The second was in September 2005 after Hurricane Katrina devastated the oil production, distribution, and refining industries in the Gulf regions of Louisiana and Mississippi. The third was announced on June 23, 2011 for 30 million barrels of petroleum to be released to offset the disruption in global oil supplies caused by unrest in Libya and other countries. A 2011 Congressional Research Service report noted that while the reserve has traditionally been tied to a shortage of oil supplies, “price was deliberately kept out of the president’s . . . drawdown authority because of concerns about what price level would trigger a drawdown, and that any hint of a price threshold could influence private sector and industry inventory practices.” Question of the week: Do you support tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to attempt to temporarily alleviate gas prices at the pump? ( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) Other (share your thoughts on my blog here). Take the poll here. Find out the results of last week's instapoll here.
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August 09, 2012
While the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 163,000 new jobs were created during the month of July, the actual amount of Americans working dropped by 195,000. The unemployment rate continued to rise, reaching 8.3%, marking 42nd consecutive months with an unemployment rate of at least 8%.
At the end of this year, Bush tax cuts are set to expire and automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion in federal spending known as sequestration will take place. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that the upcoming combination of spending cuts and the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts on January 1st is creating a $7 trillion “fiscal cliff.” Question of the week: What aspects of the “fiscal cliff” most concern you? (Multi-Answer) · Automatic spending cuts to defense budget of $55 billion in 2013
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Randy
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August 03, 2012
This week, the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, and the presumptive Republican nominee for President, Mitt Romney visited Israel. These visits fall on the heels of visits in the last three weeks by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon, and John Brennan, the counterterrorism chief.
As allies, American and Israeli leaders have expressed grave concerns about nuclear developments in Iran as diplomacy and sanctions have failed to deter the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. Iran continues to assert that its nuclear development program is meant to produce civilian energy, not weapons, and is therefore not in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This week, Congressman Forbes co-sponsored H.R. 1905, the Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Human Rights Act of 2012, which Congress passed. This legislation strengthens U.S. sanctions against Iran, for the purpose of forcing the Islamic Republic of Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. To read more about Secretary Panetta’s visit to Israel this week, click here. Question Of The Week: With Iranian nuclear programs posing serious threats to the security of both Israel and the United States, what courses of action do you support in preventing Iranian efforts to develop nuclear capabilities? (Multi-Answer) 1) Strengthened economic and trade sanctions 2) U.S. and Israeli joint military strikes 3) Israeli military strikes only 4) I do no support preemptive military action. 5) Other (leave your response below) Take the poll here. |
SEARCH BLOGRECENT POSTS10/12/2012 - Question of the Week: Do you support the administration using taxpayer dollars to re-imburse legal fees to defense companies for failure to comply with the WARN Act?10/04/2012 - Question of the week: Which immigration reform proposals do you support? 09/27/2012 - Question of the week: Which of the following solutions do you support to improve our elementary and secondary educational system? 09/20/2012 - Question of the week: In the wake of recent violence, unrest and protests directed against the United States, what should be the foreign policy response from the United States to countries like Egypt or Libya? 09/07/2012 - Question of the week: Which measures do you support to reduce the national debt? 08/31/2012 - Thank you, Mr. Armstrong ARCHIVESBy YearBy Issue
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