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A top General Motors executive said Thursday that automakers were “deserving” of as much as $50 billion in government-backed loans so that they can build more fuel-efficient cars.
Cash hungry GM may go to Congress for some extra needed cash to move towards a possible acquisition of Chrysler LLC. According to a person familiar with the financial side of the deal, said that GM is looking to go as the government to help it purchase Chrysler although he is not sure if the General had approached the government as of yet.
"We appreciate Senator McCain's effort to stir up the Republican base by attacking a community organization working to increase public participation in our democratic process. However, these attacks reflect an increasingly panicked candidate."
In Chicago, ACORN fought to get certified teachers in every classroom. In order to curb youth related crime, our members organized an anti-violence rally in which more than 100 members participated. As a result, city officials awarded $12 million to ACORN to put toward new after-school and weekend programs.
ACORN has facilitated statewide education reform in Illinois, working with a coalition of community organizations, to create the Grow Your Own Teacher program. The program recruits teacher candidates from among paraprofessionals and active parents in hard-to-staff schools, and involves 587 teacher candidates, more than 50 percent of whom are African American and 25 percent Latino.GYOTACORN has been approved for a third year of funding by the state legislature at $3 million.
Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon has established a housing fund with an initial deposit of $2 million to which additional monies will be generated through bonds and resource campaigns.
In Delaware, ACORN pushed off-shore wind farm Blue Water to agree to set the price of wind power, distributed through Delmarva Power, at an affordable rate of $6.76-$8.92 for 25 years. ACORN has been concerned that expensive wind power could add $11.71-$55 per month to energy bills.
No other organization has fought harder to increase access to credit for low-income and minority families than ACORN, but predatory lending is threatening to reverse the progress we have made. Beginning in the 1980s, ACORN fought against redlining and discrimination and for greater community investment. ACORN Housing was founded to provide free education and counseling to help low-income people become homeowners.
Power generation, construction, coal and aluminum are the biggest losers after a day of votes by the European Parliament's environment committee yesterday. The winners on "Super Tuesday", as it was dubbed, will be investors in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and Russia.
The committee was staking out a position on the next phase of the EU's carbon emissions trading scheme, which began in 2003. ETS involves sucking some €30bn out of industry by mandating that manufacturing and power generators must bid for permits. Most permits are now free, but the committee voted to force power plants into full auctioning from 2013. The goal is to enforce full auctioning across all parts of the economy (or what's left of it) by 2020. The committee's votes inform the EU's negotiating position in global climate negotiations.
So much for energy independence since Poland generates most of its power from home-mined coal, but will be dependent on Russian gas in the next decade.
"Europe will export jobs and import energy-intensive products, with no environmental gain," said Patrick de Schrynmakers, secretary general of the European Aluminium Association (EAA). The EU will be able to fine member states which fail to meet their national targets, at the rate of €100 for every extra tonne of CO2 emitted.
Funeral Industry Prepares for Potential Historic Windfall: Death of the Baby Boomers. Experts say the mortality rate is the greatest single predictor of the industry's business, estimated at about $11 billion annually at funeral homes alone. So bottom lines are likely to bulge.
"It sounds kind of morbid, but they are looking at boom times," said Tara Olson, the owner of AllPoints Research, a marketing research firm that has worked with funeral homes to develop business plans. "They're just sort of waiting for the baby boomers to start dying off."
For now, funeral directors milled the floors of the convention center here, in a surreal world where people in Snow White and Tinkerbell costumes hand out flyers for a funeral webcasting company and a marching band performs near a display of tiny caskets for children.
Chocolates come in the shape of coffins, boxer shorts have jokes about cremation, and giveaway calendars devote months to products such as JaundiBalm ("Toughest against jaundice!")
Excitement builds.
Some convention-goers tested out a device used to lift corpses by being lowered into a coffin, then back unto a table. "Best thing ever invented," one exclaimed.
Freedom from Want
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.” Article 22 guarantees the right to social security. Article 23 affirms the right to work, as well as to “equal pay for equal work” and “just and favourable remuneration.
Sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Stephen Bradberry
Living Wage Advocate and Director of New Orleans ACORN — United States
Stephen Bradberry is the head organizer of Louisiana ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN has been active in communities of color for more than 30 years. Bradberry has served in low and moderate-income neighborhoods in Louisiana for more than a decade. His chapter of the national community group, ACORN, has more than 10,000 member families and works specifically in the area of Living Wages, Environmental Justice and Voting rights.
At ACORN, Bradberry has worked extensively on issues of environmental and financial justice. He directs a staff of community organizers who go door to door throughout the state of Louisiana to mobilize residents to work for social change. Under his direction, the organization ran an 18 month campaign to turn the City of New Orleans planning process 180 degrees from turning the lower ninth ward into wetlands to being a pilot neighborhood for the rebuilding process.
Labor Rights Activist for Farmers — Mexico
By educating and organizing fellow migrant farmworkers, Lucas Benitez helped secure the first wage increase for tomato pickers in 20 years, exposed and stopped two slavery rings, and launched a Labor Action Rights program that collected nearly $100,000 in back wages. He organized a successful boycott of the fast-food chain Taco Bell, called off in 2005 when the company agreed to address the wages and working conditions of farmworkers in the Florida tomato industry.
"Human rights are universal, and if we as farmworkers are to one day indeed enjoy equal rights, the same rights all other workers in this country are guaranteed, this agreement must only be a beginning," Benitez said when announcing the end of the boycott. "To make those rights truly universal, other leaders of the fast-food industry and the supermarket industry must join us on this path toward social responsibility."
A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws.
"Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
"The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said.
Johnson, who works at a cellphone kiosk in downtown Cleveland, said he was a sitting duck for the signature hunters, but was always happy to help them out in exchange for a smoke or a little scratch. He'd collected 10 to 20 cigarettes and anywhere from $10 to $15, he said.
Nineteen-year-old Joaquin Rico and his 24-year-old alleged accomplice, Joseph R Espinoza, both turned themselves in.
Police in Arvada say the men stole cash and cigarettes from a shop in May.
The two were unarmed but reportedly hit a shop assistant and injured her.
One man wore a green thong and the other wore blue. The garments barely covered the men's features, leaving most of their faces exposed.