Everyone Living in Colorado: Read This (Very Important/Politics)

• Iraq
  
  1. Troops home in 16 months, no permanent bases unless a terrorist group sets up house in Iraq. Then he will house a small strike force.
     
  2. Use political means to pressure Iraq into forming a stable government, and to form stronger alliances with the surrounding nations.
     
  3. Humanitarian relief for the local victims of the war.
  
  
• Social Security
  
  1. Strengthen Social Security as it exists today.
     
  2. Eliminate the income tax for seniors making under $50,000.
     
  3. Reform bankruptcy laws so that companies declaring bankruptcy are not let off the hook for employee pensions.
     
  4. Require full disclosure of any company's pension fund investments.
     
  5. All employers must offer a pension plan.
     
  6. Expand tax incentives for retirement funds.
     
  7. Go after age discrimination in workplaces.
  
  
• Healthcare
  Obama will make available a new national health plan to all Americans, including the self-employed and small businesses, to buy affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to members of Congress. The Obama plan will have the following features:
  
  1. Guaranteed eligibility. No American will be turned away from any insurance plan because of illness or pre-existing conditions.
     
  2. Comprehensive benefits. The benefit package will be similar to that offered through Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the plan members of Congress have. The plan will cover all essential medical services, including preventive, maternity and mental health care.
     
  3. Affordable premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
     
  4. Subsidies. Individuals and families who do not qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP but still need financial assistance will receive an income-related federal subsidy to buy into the new public plan or purchase a private health care plan.
     
  5. Simplified paperwork and reined in health costs.
     
  6. Easy enrollment. The new public plan will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage.
     
  7. Portability and choice. Participants in the new public plan and the National Health Insurance Exchange (see below) will be able to move from job to job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.
     
  8. Quality and efficiency. Participating insurance companies in the new public program will be required to report data to ensure that standards for quality, health information technology and administration are being met.
  
  A National Health Insurance Exchange would be created in his first term in office
  
  1. Would create a series of rules and standards which an HMO would have to abide by or suffer fines
     
  2. These rules and standards include issuing every applicant a policy, charge fair and stable premiums no matter your state of health, and creating a transparency into the differences between insurer's plans by making every company's plan - including cost - available to the public
     
  3. Would create a competing government-run national plan as a competitor to the already existing private companies to help bring costs down
     
  4. Should an employer not offer a proper healthcare plan through a private company, a percentage of their payroll would have to be put towards this national plan (small employers below a certain threshold of earnings would be exempt from this).
  
  
  This is a very very detailed part of his platform, so read further here.
  
  
• Government Transparency and Ethics Reform.
  
  1. Centralized ethics and lobbying information via an internet database of lobbying reports, ethics records and campaign finance filings.
     
  2. The creation of an independent watchdog to oversee the investigation of congressional ethics violations.
     
  3. Creation of a database disclosing how much federal contractors spent on lobbying, which contracts they received and how successful they were in implementing them.
     
  4. End no bid contracts on all projects over $25,000.
     
  5. Expose earmarks to scrutiny by having all earmarks attributed to the legislator who requested them and requiring written justification before they can be passed.
     
  6. Make White House business transparent by disclosing all communications on regulatory issues between White House officials and those outside of government, and by having executive branch negotiations broadcast online.
     
  7. Hold 21st century fireside chats by requiring all Cabinet officials to conduct national online meetings and answer questions from the public.
  
  
  Obama's work in transparency (along with Senator Coburn from across the aisle) already includes USASpending.gov, a searchable database of government spending made available to all citizens. He was also instrumental in passing the most sweeping ethics reform bill since Watergate.
  
  
• Education
  
  1. Expand early childhood education
     
  2. Emphasize math and science
     
  3. Recruit new teachers
     
  4. Create the American Opportunity Tax Credit: this universal and fully refundable credit will ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans
  
  
• Technology
  
  1. Protect Net Neutrality
     
  2. Strengthen and expand our communications infrastructure
  
  
• Immigration
  
  1. Secure the borders
     
  2. Improve the immigration system to reduce the number of illegal immigrants
     
  3. Allow illegal immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and move to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens
  
  
• Economy
  
  1. Provide a tax cut for working families and sunset the Bush tax cuts for the rich
     
  2. Amend NAFTA
     
  3. Protect the right to unionize
     
  4. Invest in manufacturing
     
  5. Ensure accountability in subprime mortgage industry and end predatory loan practices
     
  6. Reform bankruptcy laws
  
  
• Short-Term Economic Stimulus
  In the short term, Barack Obama's recently-released economic stimulus plan would enact these measures from his overall economic plan:
  
  1. Half the $500 tax credit listed at the top would be implemented immediately for both working Americans and seniors, with the other $250 coming if a three-month decline continues following the first half's implementation
     
  2. Establish a $10 billion fund to avoid home foreclosure, allowing families facing said foreclosure to remortgage their homes or sell them, keeping property values from declining
     
  3. Provide a $10 billion relief "safety net" for states and local governments hit hardest by the housing crisis to keep services like education, and health and infrastructure running
     
  4. In addition to these stimuli taken from his administrative economic policy, Obama also says that there should be a temporary extension and expansion of unemployment insurance for those who have exhausted their current eligibility to offset the older Americans who are having trouble re-entering the job market, thus allowing consumer spending to remain at an acceptable level, as well as extending unemployment insurance eligibility to more workers - including part-time and non-traditional workers currently left out of the program.
  
  
• Women's Rights
  
  1. Senator Obama is dedicated to preserving a woman’s right to choose and has received a rating of 100% from Planned Parenthood
  
  

bump. sorry about the formatting, there were spaces in between those words before i sent it i swear.

and here's that image because it doesn't look like it's showing up

obamas pastor follows black liberation theology. obama has attended that church for 17 years. i dont think he would have done that if he disagreed with black liberation theology. makes perfect sense to me. my pastor is presbyterian, that makes me presbyterian. i dont understand the palin/jews thing tho. could you elaborate?