The President lays out his vision for innovation, growth, and quality jobs from Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. September 21, 2009.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you! Hello, Hudson Valley! (Applause.) Thank you very much. Everybody, please have a seat. Thank you. Thank you very much. What a wonderful reception. It is great to be here. Thanks for whoever organized the weather. (Laughter.)
I want to, first of all, say thank you to Jill Biden, who has been a teacher for almost three decades and shes spent most of that time in community colleges. She understands, as all of you do, the power of these institutions to prepare students for 21st century jobs, and to prepare America for a 21st century global economy. And thats whats happening right here at Hudson Valley Community College. So give yourselves a big round of applause. (Applause.)
We’ve got some special guests here that I want to acknowledge, in addition to Jill. First of all, a wonderful man, the governor of the great state of New York — David Paterson is in the house. (Applause.) Your shy and retiring Attorney General — Andrew Cuomo is in the house. (Applause.) Andrew is doing great work enforcing the laws that need to be enforced.
I want to thank the Comptroller — Thomas DiNapoli is in the house. (Applause.) Speaker Sheldon Silver is in the house. (Applause.) The Democratic Conference Leader, State Senator John Sampson. (Applause.) Albany Mayor Gerald Jennings. (Applause.) We’ve got three outstanding members of Congress who are just doing great work every single day — Maurice Hinchey, Paul Tonko, Scott Murphy — please give them a big round of applause. (Applause.)
The President of Hudson Valley Community College, Andrew Matonak, is in the house. (Applause.) Did I pronounce that right, Andrew? And Joe Sarubbi, Executive Director of TEC-SMART, who did a — gave me a wonderful tour — (applause.)
Now, you may ask, why are we here at Hudson Valley? We’re here because this is a place where anyone with the …
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Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2008 State of the City economic development webisode.
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President Obama outlines new steps to better prepare Americas children for college and the workplace at a meeting with the National Governors Association . The President is calling for a redesigned Elementary and Secondary Education Act that includes a comprehensive, new vision to help states successfully transition to and implement college- and career-ready standards by improving teacher preparation and development, upgrading classroom instruction, and supporting high-quality assessments.
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Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, CIO Vivek Kundra, Diana Farrell of the National Economic Council, and Tom Kalil of OSTP take your questions about innovation in the Fiscal Year 2011 budget. February 3, 2010.
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Vice President Biden and President Obama speak to the U.S. Conference of Mayors about sustaining economic growth and creating new jobs in communities large and small. January 21, 2010.
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Some good sources of information from some really smart people.
Books
Meltdown (Woods Jr.) – http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879
The Mystery of Banking (Rothbard) – http://mises.org/Books/mysteryofbanking.pdf
The Case Against the Fed (Rothbard) – http://mises.org/books/fed.pdf
A History of Money & Banking in the United States (Rothbard) – http://mises.org/books/historyofmoney.pdf
The New Empire of Debt (Bonner) – http://www.amazon.com/New-Empire-Debt-Financial-Bubble/dp/0470483261
Videos
Peter Schiff Was Right (Schiff) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw
Schiff/Epstein debate (Austrian vs Keynesian) – http://www.youtube.com/user/schiffreport?blend=3&ob=4#p/c/3FBA79932EC17518/28/zM23TZxzOw8
Why College is so Expensive (Schiff) – http://www.youtube.com/user/schiffreport?blend=3&ob=4#p/c/3FBA79932EC17518/16/DteBlI2eihA
Crash Course Chapter 16 – Fuzzy Numbers (Martenson) – http://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisMartensondotcom#p/u/27/zPkTItOXuN0
Crash Course Chapter 3 – Exponential Growth (Martenson) – http://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisMartensondotcom#p/u/37/EXd66gP53fk
Understanding the Exponential Function (Part 1 of 
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
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Dr. Robert D. Atkinson, President of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, and Dr. Jonathan Liebenau, Reader in Technology Management at the London School of Economics, assess the employment impact in the United Kingdom of investments in three ICT infrastructures: broadband networks, intelligent transportation systems, and the smart power grid. Dr. Atkinson and Dr. Liebenau find that these investments (1) contribute to significant immediate direct and indirect job growth in the UK economy; (2) create a network effect throughout the economy that creates additional jobs; and (3) provide a foundation for longer term benefits, including government cost savings, economy-wide productivity, and improved quality of life for all.
A copy of the report is available online at http://www.itif.org/files/digitalrecovery.pdf
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New California Dream: “Follow It”
Genre: Travel/Creative Vision
Royalty-free Music/Shockwave Sound: “Crystal Garden”
Website for Contest: http://www.newcaliforniadream.org/
ABOUT NEW CALIFORNIA DREAM Entry:
I speak of future dreams while driving across America with all its problems (from NYC to LA ((Malibu Canyon Road)), Summer 2007).
For more information, please visit the New California Dream official website: http://www.newcaliforniadream.org
The organization identifies the six critical issues (sustainable communities, health care, education, civic participation, economy, and revenue streams) noted as the “Six Pillars”: The blueprint for organizing and implementing CHANGE … making the California Dream a reality for everyone.
Thanks for viewing and commenting.
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In which a man with an exceptionally creepy mustache explains why both tax cuts and government spending may or may not stimulate the economy, depending on who the tax cuts go to and what the government spends money on.
Note: This video is part of a series which debunks myths pertinent to laissez-faire capitalism. Many points not addressed in this video can be found at the above link.
Myth: Tax cuts stimulate the economy; government spending does the opposite.
Overall, the evidence is not consistent with the belief that the level of taxes or government spending has a large effect on economic growth. There is no clear link between periods of low taxes and high growth. The strongest period of growth in U.S. history was the 1960s—when the top marginal rate was 70 percent or higher. More recently, economic growth in the 1990s was quite strong, despite the 1993 increase of the top marginal tax rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. In addition, after-tax income gains have been significantly larger among the top five percent of tax filers—the only group affected by the increase in marginal tax rates in the 1990s—than among the rest of the population. More detailed economic research also finds no evidence that countries with lower tax rates or higher levels of government spending experience stronger economic growth.[Source]
Neither government spending nor tax cuts necessarily stimulate the economy. Indeed, some kinds of government spending—such as that which essentially distributes money to powerful corporations—almost certainly will not help create an economic boost. This is the kind of spending that occurs when corporate power, acting through government, is inadequately checked. Any reasonable person would have a problem with this; it certainly qualifies as waste, and libertarians and progressives should be working together against it. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that government spending on other kinds of things (to name just a few examples, mass transit and freight rail, “smart” electrical grid transmission systems, and wind and solar power) can and does stimulate the economy:
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and now-CBO director Peter Orszag wrote in late 2001, Basic economic analysis indicates that increased government expenditures can indeed be stimulative, and, in fact, are often more effective as stimulus measures than tax cuts. Similarly, two senior Federal Reserve economists found in 2002 that increases in government spending tend to have a greater stimulative effect than tax cuts that have the same cost, because more of the increase in government spending will translate quickly into an increase in total spending in the economy, while a substantial part of a tax cut will generally be saved.[Source]
This only stands to reason. Individual spending on productive ends stimulates the economy, and there is nothing magical about the process of individual spending on productive ends that makes it fundamentally different from government spending on productive ends. Further, when it comes to whether tax cuts to the rich or to the poor are more likely to improve economic prospects in general, the answer is pretty obvious. If spending stimulates the economy and wealthy people are more likely to save and invest their money than poorer people, tax cuts to poorer people will clearly be of greater advantage to the economy than those to wealthier people.
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http://Beingism.org
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Green City Journal hosted a forum on November 8th, for the closing night of Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association’s (PIFVA) expo “Politics As Usual?”, which highlighted political documentaries made by local filmmakers. Here’s an excerpt from the discussion that followed the screenings where panelists discuss what they expect in the first 100 days of an Obama presidency. Participants include Jerry Silberman, from PASNAP and local sustainability movements, David Sternberg, Chairperson for Philly for Change, Jethro Heiko, Director for Organizing Iraq Veterans Against the War and co-founder of Casino-Free Philadelphia, Rob Stuart, filmmaker and founder of Evolve Strategies and Evolve Foundation, Gail Lloyd, editor of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan and group moderator Caryn Hunt of www.GreenCityJournal.com. Video shot by Debbie Rudman.
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