There are four days until the Inauguration, and the country is alight with excitement, not just about the arrival of Barack Obama in the White House but also for the beginning of a new era of civic engagement.
We’ve tapped into this energy with our
Ideas for Change in America, and today we held a press event at the National Press Club in Washington DC to announce the winners of the competition. The 10 winning ideas reflect the diverse interests of the millions of people calling for change across the country, and include ideas for securing universal heath care, LGBT rights, and sustainable green energy. All winning ideas can be viewed at
www.change.org/ideas.
The winning ideas were accepted on behalf of the Presidential Transition Team by Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media and the person who oversees our second-favorite website, Change.gov. Macon then addressed the attendees of the event, which included nonprofit leaders and grassroots activists, and spoke about the importance the administration will place on citizen-driven efforts like Ideas for Change.
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Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- President-elect
Barack Obama is likely to back a bank-rescue effort that combines fresh capital injections with steps to deal with toxic assets clogging lenders’ balance sheets, according to people familiar with the matter.
Obama’s economic team will use another portion of the $350 billion remaining from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. It may also assist cash-strapped cities and states that are having trouble selling bonds, the people said.
This week’s sell-off in financial stocks and the continuing decline of the U.S. economy put pressure on Treasury Secretary- designate
Timothy Geithner and Obama’s economics chief
Lawrence Summers to unveil a comprehensive program. Without a radical new effort, soaring credit losses could prolong and deepen a
recession that is now more than a year old.
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New York (CNN) -- Saying that moving quickly is imperative, President-elect Barack Obama on Saturday offered an outline of his economic recovery plan to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011, saying American workers will rebuild the nation's roads and bridges, modernize its schools and create more sources of alternative energy.
"These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis," Obama said in the weekly Democratic address, posted on his Web site. "These are the long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long."
Details of the plan are still being worked out by his economic team, Obama said, but he hopes to sign the two-year, nationwide plan shortly after taking office January 20.
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Confused with all of the information flying around these days about the elections and the economy? The following is a great article that we found over at
Good.
We’ve got a presidential election coming up and we’re in the throes of an economic meltdown. The media isn’t providing much understanding. The debates don’t help all that much either. So here are three sites that do a great job of consolidating clear, useful information.
Untwisting the Campaigns’ Claims: Most of the claims we’ve heard in the debates so far have been misleading. The candidates are expert at twisting facts and spinning. But we’ve been really impressed with
CNN’s well edited Fact Check column.
Keeping Up with the Polls: To get all the day’s polls, incorporated into one simple, yet comprehensive electoral map, check
electoral-vote.com. The campaigns themselves use it to stay informed.
Making Sense of the Money Meltdown: It is remarkable how little understanding one comes away with listening to the 24-hour saturation coverage of the credit crisis/mortgage meltdown/bailout-rescue plan given the saturation coverage in the media.
The Money Meltdown consolidates and organizes the best information so you’re not just swimming in terrifying gibberish and superficialities.
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