PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Wyclef Jean has stepped down as leader of the embattled aid group he founded as he prepares to formally declare his candidacy for the Haitian presidency.

The singer released a statement today that he was resigning the chairmanship of Yele Haiti effective immediately.

Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean, right, speaks with flood victims in Gonaives, Haiti in September, 2008. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, file) 1/1

The Brooklyn, New York-raised entertainer was headed to his native Haiti and was expected to officially file his election papers this afternoon at the provisional electoral council in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.

“I am not stepping down in my commitment to Haiti. On the contrary, regardless of what path I take next, one thing is certain: My focus on helping Haiti turn a new corner will only grow stronger,” Jean said in the statement.

Businessman Derek Q Johnson will take up the helm of the organisation.

Jean helped found Yele Haiti five years ago to raise money and build awareness of the myriad problems in his impoverished homeland. It raised US$9 million in the wake of the January 12 earthquake that killed a government-estimated 300,000 people. Of that, it has spent US$1.5 million on food, water, tents, clothes and other products for quake survivors, Jean spokeswoman Cindy Tanenbaum said.

The organisation — named for one of the former Fugee member’s songs — often worked in partnership with the United Nations and other agencies to implement its programmes, lending its name and Jean’s cache to help raise funds.

But Yele came under criticism when post-quake scrutiny revealed alleged improprieties including that it had paid Jean to perform at fundraising events and bought advertising air time from a television station he co-owns.

Jean tearfully defended the organisation in a news conference weeks after the quake. Yele also hired a new accounting firm after the allegations surfaced.

Jean was en route to Haiti and could not immediately be reached. From aboard a private plane he posted on Twitter: “Taking off on my way to Haiti me and my family About to make the biggest decision of our life (sic).”

Congressman Anthony Weiner of New York took to the House floor to denounce the GOP for using parliamentary tactics to try and prevent a fund for the health of 9/11 responders from being established.

Trying to express that procedure tactics to derail a $7billion measure designed to give aid to first responders – firefighters and similar – on the scene at Ground Zero and who subsequently became ill.

Aside from the show: Mr. Weiners outrage could be justified, here are some facts.

40 percent of the World Trade Center workers being monitored by a Mount Sinai Hospital study lack health insurance. source: Insider: EPA Lied About WTC Air, Scientist Says It Covered Up Truth In Saying Ground Zero Air Was Safe – CBS News.

Apparently, out of at least 100,000 eligible, fewer than 14,000 have registered, as reported by the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health. The final registration deadline for September 11-related workers’ compensation was August 14, 2007. source: 3 Months Remain for 9/11-Related Workers’ Compensation Program | Tortdeform.

On July 12, 2007, Governor Eliot Spitzer extended to August 14, 2008 the filing deadline for worker’s compensation claims, for people who worked or volunteered at Ground Zero. Individuals would register with the State Workers’ Compensation Board. source: Anthony DePalma, “Albany: Extension for 9/11 Compensation”, The New York Times, July 13, 2007.

On June 11, 2007, Mayor Bloomberg appointed Jeffrey Hon as World Trade Center health coordinator. Hon had previously worked as the spokesman for the American Red Cross September 11 Recovery Program. People have offered conflicting statements, however, regarding Hon’s role. In an interview with the New York Daily News Hon said that his role was to correct inconsistencies in city agencies and to handle related pension issues. Yet, Mayor Bloomberg said that Hon’s role would not involve handling pension-related issues. source: Jordan Lite and Michael Saul, Daily News, June 12, 2007, p. 4
and Media-Newswire.com – Press Release Distribution – PR Agency.

Alleged EPA deceptions about Ground Zero air quality

Numerous key differences between the draft versions and final versions of EPA statements were found. Another statement that showed concerns about “sensitive populations” was deleted altogether. Language used to describe excessive amounts of asbestos in the area was altered drastically to minimize the dangers it posed. source: Laurie Garrett (August 23, 2003). “EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution”. Newsday.

On September 13, 2006, Congressmen Jerrold Nadler (NY), Anthony Weiner (NY), Bill Pascrell Jr. (NJ) filed a request with US Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to investigate whether criminal charges may be brought against Whitman for lying about air safety in the Ground Zero area. source: Press Release of Representative Jerrold Nadler.

20 year veteran of the NYPD, Officer Kevin Hawkins, 41, died in May 2007 from kidney cancer, soon after filing for a Ground Zero disability pension. He had worked only two months at the Ground Zero site.

Civil rights attorney Felicia Dunn-Jones, 42, died February 10, 2002, from sarcoidosis. The city’s chief medical examiner belatedly attributed her death to her being engulfed in the dust cloud from the collapse of the Twin Towers, one block from her office

On April 22, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that EPA head Whitman could not be held liable for saying to World Trade Center area residents that the air was safe for breathing after the buildings collapse. The appeals court said that Whitman had based her information on contradictory information and statements from the Bush administration. It lead to Whitmans resignation.

The local EPA office sidelined the regional EPA office. Dr. Cate Jenkins, a whistle-blower EPA scientist, said that on September 12, 2001, a regional EPA office offered to dispatch 30 to 40 electron microscopes to the WTC pit to test bulk dust samples for the presence of asbestos fibers. Instead, the local office chose the less effective polarized light microscopy testing method. Dr. Jenkins alleged that the local office refused, saying, “We don’t want you f—ing cowboys here. The best thing they could do is reassign you to Alaska. source: Michael Mason, “The 9/11 Cover-Up”, Discover Magazine, October, 2007, page. 24

While everyone is enjoying the outburst of Anthony Weiner on the house floor, one can understand the frustration, he has been fighting for the victims of ground zero since 2006. No one understands the level of inconsistencies, cover-ups, malice and scope that has happened to people suffering in silence after that gruesome day, The nightmare for them had just begun.

By SEWELL CHAN

LouimaAbner Louima, who was tortured in a Brooklyn police station in 1997, appearing at a news conference in 2001 after he received $8.7 million in settlements with the city and the police union. (Photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times)

Ten years ago today, a 30-year-old Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima was arrested and sodomized with a broomstick inside a restroom in the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. The case became a national symbol of police brutality and fed perceptions that New York City police officers were harassing or abusing young black men as part a citywide crackdown on crime.

The case also marked the beginning of the unraveling of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s relationship with the black community in New York. That relationship would deteriorate even further, after the police shot two unarmed black men, Amadou Diallo in February 1999 and Patrick Dorismond in 2000.

One officer, Justin A. Volpe, admitted in court in May 1999 that he had rammed a broken broomstick into Mr. Louima’s rectum and then thrust it in his face. He said he had mistakenly believed that Mr. Louima had punched him in the head during a street brawl outside a nightclub in Flatbush, but he acknowledged that he had also intended to humiliate the handcuffed immigrant. He left the force and was later sentenced to 30 years in prison. The commanders of the 70th Precinct were replaced within days of the assault. As the legal case wore on, Charles Schwarz, a former police officer, was sentenced in federal court in 2002 to five years in prison for perjury stemming from the torture case. A jury found that Mr. Schwarz had lied when he testified that he had not taken Mr. Louima to the station house bathroom where the assault took place.

Mr. Louima, who was born in Thomassin, Haiti, in 1966, and immigrated to New York in 1991, suffered a ruptured bladder and colon and spent two months in the hospital. The charges against him were dropped. Mr. Louima’s case animated anxieties about the Giuliani administration. (Mr. Louima at one point claimed that police officers shouted ”It’s Giuliani time!” as they tortured him; he later retracted that account.)

Mr. Louima won $8.7 million in settlements with the city and the police union — the largest police brutality settlement in the city’s history. Afterward, he moved to Florida.

In addition to Mr. Volpe and Mr. Schwarz, two other officers, Thomas Bruder and Thomas Wiese, were implicated in the case. They were convicted of obstruction of justice, but the convictions were overturned in 2002. They were unsuccessful in their attempt to be reinstated in the Police Department.

As this anniversary approached, Mr. Louima, 40, has been back in the news recently, speaking out against police brutality. “I feel we have made some progress in reducing police brutality over the past 10 years, but I also believe there is still a lot to be done,” he wrote in a guest column published in The Daily News on Sunday. “Things may have improved a bit, but not enough. To name just one example, look at Sean Bell, who last year was shot and killed by police while leaving a nightclub in Queens.”

Also on Sunday, The News published a retrospective of the case. In a column today, Errol Louis of The News discusses the legacy of the case. The News has also put together a collection of articles by the columnist Mike McAlary, who wrote extensively about the case in 1997. Mr. McAlary died of colon cancer in 1998.

On July 30, The New York Post published a profile of Mr. Louima, reporting that he lived a comfortable life in Miami Lakes, Fla., with his wife and three children. The family owns several luxury cars. Mr. Louima has established a charity to support causes in Haiti.

Mr. Louima was evidently not happy with the portrayal of his prosperous lifestyle, according to Newsday. A Newsday article published on Sunday focused on Mr. Louima’s activism against police brutality. “Maybe God figured I was the one to make it public,” Mr. Louima told Newsday. “God wanted me to suffer, he had a plan for me.”

The Associated Press published an account of the case today to mark the anniversary. At 7:30 p.m., Mr. Louima is scheduled to join the Rev. Al Sharpton at the National Action Network, Mr. Sharpton’s political organization, at 106 West 145th Street in Harlem, for a discussion of the legacy of the case.

Al Baker contributed reporting.

DEBT PER GDP

1960-2007 average (pre-Obama): 36.2%.

1960-2000 average (pre-Bush): 36.2%

2001-2007 average (Bush, pre-recession): 36.0%

Bush’s average level of debt was a hair below average, at least up until the beginning of this recent recession. At the end of 2007 it stood at 36.8% of GDP, pretty much where it had been for the previous several decades.

If you want to get really picky, Bush inherited a debt of 35.1% of GDP from Bill Clinton in 2000, and left Obama a debt of 40.8% of GDP in 2008 (per the CBO). There you have it — the smoking gun! An extra 5.7% of GDP in federal debt held by the public. But most of that came in 2008, a full year of recession.

In fact, Bush fought two recessions: one started almost the minute he was sworn into office in 2001, and a second started at the end of 2007, one full year after Democrats took over both houses of Congress. So to be a good Keynesian, Bush should have spent like a drunken sailor in at least two of his eight years in office. (Ironically, Bush actually ran a surplus in 2001, the year of the recession he inherited, one of the shortest and shallowest recessions in history. That would make it a Keynesian-defying event, a virtual miracle.)

As it was, the deficit was $459 B in 2008, the largest in history up to that point in nominal dollars.

Now here is where it gets fun: Obama steps in. The very first year under Obama, 2009, the deficit is expected to be about $1.84 trillion.

Here are some fun facts regarding Obama’s budgets from 2009 through 2019.

• Obama’s first-year deficit, the largest in history, is over four times bigger than George Bush’s last deficit, which had been the largest in history up to then.
• Obama’s first-year deficit is more than Bush’s first seven deficits combined.
• The smallest deficit predicted under Obama’s budget from 2009 through 2019 is $658 B, or 43% bigger than Bush’s largest deficit, the largest in history up to then.
• Under Obama’s budget, deficits exceeding one trillion dollars will occur in four years: 2009, 2010, 2018 and 2019.
• The 10-year cumulative deficit (2010-2019) under Obama’s budget will be $9.3 trillion, or an average of almost one trillion per year, more than doubling what it would have been under the laws left by Bush.
• The debt held by the public in 2008, or that left by Bush for Obama, was 40.8% of GDP. In just one year under Obama, after 2009, it will be 56.8%, or the largest since 1955. By 2019 it will be 82.5%, the largest in our history except for the three years of 1945-47, the end of World War II.
• From 2000 to 2008, or the Bush years, the debt held by the public went from 35.1% of GDP to 40.8% — a 5.7% of GDP increase. By 2016, or a similar period under Obama’s budgets, it is expected to reach 77.5% — a 36.7% of GDP increase.
• Under Obama’s budget, the debt held by the public will reach 82.4% of GDP in 2019. That is more than double the average level since 1960 and more than double what Bush left in 2008. (Recall that “since 1960″ includes Nixon, Ford, Reagan and both Bushes.)

Contrast any of these fun facts about Obama to similar facts about Bush. Bush kept debt fairly steady and near the post-1960 average. The debt barely increased at all in his first seven years. Only in his last year, the first year of this recession, did it go up much, and not all that much even then.

“I grew up in a large Irish Catholic family as the youngest of nine children. By their words, their actions, and their love, our parents instilled in all of us the importance of the ties that bind us together – our faith, our family, and our love of this great country.”
Edward M. Kennedy was the third longest-serving member of the United States Senate in American history. Voters of Massachusetts elected him to the Senate nine times—a record matched by only one other Senator.

The scholar Thomas Mann said his time in the Senate was “an amazing and endurable presence. You want to go back to the 19th century to find parallels, but you won’t find parallels.”

President Obama has described his breathtaking span of accomplishment: “For five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health, and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.”

He fought for and won so many great battles—on voting rights, education, immigration reform, the minimum wage, national service, the nation’s first major legislation to combat AIDS, and equality for minorities, women, the disabled and gay Americans.

He called health care “the cause of my life,” and succeeded in bringing quality and affordable health care for countless Americans, including children, seniors and Americans with disabilities. Until the end he was working tirelessly to achieve historic national health reform. He was an opponent of the Vietnam War and an early champion of the war’s refugees. He was a powerful yet lonely voice from the beginning against the invasion of Iraq. He stood for human rights abroad—from Chile to the former Soviet Union – and was a leader in the cause of poverty relief for the poorest nations of Africa and the world. He believed in a strong national defense and he also unceasingly pursued and advanced the work of nuclear arms control.

He was the conscience of his party, and also the Senate’s greatest master of forging compromise with the other party. Known as the “Lion of the Senate,” Senator Kennedy was widely respected on both sides of the aisle for his commitment to progress and his ability to legislate.

Senator Kennedy was Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Previously he was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and served on that committee for many years. He also served on the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Congressional Joint Economic Committee. He was a leader of the Congressional Friends of Ireland and helped lead the way toward peace on that island.

He was a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Virginia Law School. He lived in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, with his wife Vicki. He is survived by her and their five children Kara, Edward Jr., and Patrick Kennedy, and Curran and Caroline Raclin, and his sister Jean Kennedy Smith.

Barak H. Obama

Barack Obama
aka Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
(1961–)

Barack Obama is the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois and the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee.

During their third and final presidential debate, Obama and Republican presidential nominee John McCain clashed sharply over tax policies and some of the heated rhetoric that had been tossed between their campaigns.

McCain accused Obama of waging “class warfare” with his tax plans and said his proposals would harm the economy.”

“Why would you want to increase anybody’s taxes right now?” McCain asked.

Obama countered that he would cut taxes for 95 percent of earners while raising it on the richest Americans, those making more than $250,000 a year.

“When it comes to economic policies, essentially what you’re proposing is four more years of the same thing, and it hasn’t worked,” Obama responded.

The debate was held October 15, 2008, at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, on Long Island, with CBS’ Bob Schieffer moderating.

Obama and McCain also held debates on September 26 in Oxford, Mississippi, and October 7 in Nashville, Tennessee. The vice presidential nominees, Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden, met for their only debate on October 2 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Voters cast their ballots on Election Day, which is November 4.

Barack Hussein Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. Although reared among Muslims, Obama, Sr., became an atheist at some point.

Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he signed up for service in World War II and marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Dunham’s mother went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G. I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved to Hawaii.

Meantime, Barack’s father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya pursue his dreams in Hawaii. At the time of his birth, Obama’s parents were students at the East–West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Obama’s parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama’s father went to Harvard to pursue Ph. D. studies and then returned to Kenya.

His mother married Lolo Soetoro, another East–West Center student from Indonesia. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro–Ng was born. Obama attended schools in Jakarta, where classes were taught in the Indonesian language.

Four years later when Barack (commonly known throughout his early years as “Barry”) was ten, he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and later his mother (who died of ovarian cancer in 1995).

He was enrolled in the fifth grade at the esteemed Punahou Academy, graduating with honors in 1979. He was only one of three black students at the school. This is where Obama first became conscious of racism and what it meant to be an African–American.

In his memoir, Obama described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He saw his biological father (who died in a 1982 car accident) only once (in 1971) after his parents divorced. And he admitted using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years.

After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science.

After working at Business International Corporation (a company that provided international business information to corporate clients) and NYPIRG, Obama moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked as a community organizer with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s South Side.
It was during this time that Obama, who said he “was not raised in a religious household,” joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He also visited relatives in Kenya, which included an emotional visit to the graves of his father and paternal grandfather.

Obama entered Harvard Law School in 1988. In February 1990, he was elected the first African–American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer, joining the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught at the University of Chicago Law School. And he helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Obama published an autobiography in 1995 Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. And he won a Grammy for the audio version of the book.

Obama’s advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat. He was elected in 1996 from the south side neighborhood of Hyde Park.

During these years, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics, expanded health care services and early childhood education programs for the poor. He also created a state earned-income tax credit for the working poor. And after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U. S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Obama was an early opponent of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. Obama was still a state senator when he spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq during a rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002.

“I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars,” he said. “What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”

“He’s a bad guy,” Obama said, referring to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. “The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him. But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.”

“I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences,” Obama continued. “I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”
The war with Iraq began in 2003 and Obama decided to run for the U.S. Senate open seat vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. In the 2004 Democratic primary, he won 52 percent of the vote, defeating multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes.

That summer, he was invited to deliver the keynote speech in support of John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. Obama emphasized the importance of unity, and made veiled jabs at the Bush administration and the diversionary use of wedge issues.

“We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states,” he said. “We coach Little League in the blue states, and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

After the convention, Obama returned to his U.S. Senate bid in Illinois. His opponent in the general election was suppose to be Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, a wealthy former investment banker. However, Ryan withdrew from the race in June 2004, following public disclosure of unsubstantiated sexual allegations by Ryan’s ex wife, actress Jeri Ryan.

In August 2004, diplomat and former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who was also an African American, accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan. In three televised debates, Obama and Keyes expressed opposing views on stem cell research, abortion, gun control, school vouchers and tax cuts.

In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes’s 27%, the largest electoral victory in Illinois history. Obama became only the third African American elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

Sworn into office January 4, 2005, Obama partnered with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe and Russia. Then with Republican Sen. Tom Corburn of Oklahoma, he created a website that tracks all federal spending.

Obama was also the first to raise the threat of avian flu on the Senate floor, spoke out for victims of Hurricane Katrina, pushed for alternative energy development and championed improved veterans´ benefits. He also worked with Democrat Russ Feingold of Wisconsin to eliminate gifts of travel on corporate jets by lobbyists to members of Congress.

His second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, was published in October 2006.

In February 2007, Obama made headlines when he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. He was locked in a tight battle with former first lady and current U.S. Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton until he became the presumptive nominee on June 3, 2008.

Obama met his wife, Michelle, in 1988 when he was a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. They were married in October 1992 and live in Kenwood on Chicago’s South Side with their daughters, Malia (born 1998) and Sasha (born 2001).