Welcome to the White House
|
To go to the web site directly CLICK HERE. |
UWeb Site URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/
Categories: News Information, RSS Feed
Site Posted by Robert K. Foster on Tuesday, January 27, 2009
The White House is the official residence of the President of the United States, recognized worldwide as a symbol of the prestige of the presidency.
The White House is the official residence of the President of the United States, recognized worldwide as a symbol of the prestige of the presidency. Built between 1792 and 1800, the sprawling 132-room mansion has been used as a home by every President since John Adams.
The East Wing of the White House principally serves as offices for the First Lady and her staff. The First Family’s quarters, located on the second and third floor of the historic White House, provide them with privacy and comfort away from the public spotlight. The West Wing is home to the President’s office and those of his top staff.
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC 20500
White House.gov Blog Feed
( This RSS Feed: http://www.whitehouse.gov/feed/blog )
Weekly Address: Education for a More Competitive America & Better Future
Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:00:00 +0000
The President discusses his blueprint for an updated Elementary and Secondary Education Act to overhaul No Child Left Behind, the latest step from his Administration to encourage change and success in America’s schools at the local level.
The Vice President in the Middle East
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:03:39 +0000
Yesterday, Vice President Biden spoke at Tel Aviv University in Israel about the partnership between the United States and Israel:
Israel’s unique relationship with the United States means that you need not bear that heavy burden alone. Our nations’ unbreakable bond borne of common values, interwoven cultures, and mutual interests has spanned the entirety of Israel’s history. And it’s -- it’s impervious to any shifts in either country and either country’s partisan politics. No matter what challenges we face, this bond will endure. As a result, generations of Israelis and Americans and American-Israelis have kept a foot in each country, enriching both our nations and peoples. I met with some of your leading high-tech leaders earlier, prior to coming to the stage. And they have a foot in both countries, many of them.
While these close relationships span the realm of commerce and education, medicine and technology, culture and the arts, at its core is an ironclad commitment to security -- Israel and my own country’s. Every day, Israel faces bravely threats no country should have to endure. No parent should their child to schools equipped with air raid sirens in the year 2010. No government should be expected to turn a blind eye while an enemy calls for its destruction.
I am here to remind you, though I hope you will never forget, that America stands with you shoulder-to-shoulder in facing these threats. President Obama and I represent an unbroken chain of American leaders who have understood this critical, strategic relationship. As the President said recently, “I will never waver from ensuring Israel’s security and helping them secure themselves in what is a very hostile region."
To watch the full speech, click here.
Earlier this week, the Vice President also spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at Ramallah and with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
The National Security Team, at Work Again on Afghanistan and Pakistan
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 21:38:41 +0000
The President met with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan this morning:
President Barack Obama meets with his national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Situation Room of the White House. From left, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew, United States Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and President Obama March 12, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
President Obama at Your Graduation?
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:46:06 +0000
With only three days left until the application deadline for the President’s High School Commencement Challenge, attention on the competition is heating up.
Earlier this week, Domestic Policy Director Melody Barnes was interviewed on BET’s 106 and Park to encourage the nation’s public high school students to tell the President why their school is the best in the country at preparing students for college and career choices.
Help spread the word to students and schools in your community that you think deserve the commencement speaker of a lifetime – and tell them to get their applications in before the deadline on midnight on Monday, March 15th.
Exploring the Link between Rising Health Insurance Premiums and Stagnant Wages
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:17:04 +0000
The rapid growth in health care spending in the U.S. in recent years has placed an increasingly heavy financial burden on individuals and families, with a steadily growing share of workers' total compensation going to health care costs. Because firms choose to compensate their workers with either wages or with benefits such as employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI), increasing health care costs tend to “crowd out” increases in wages. Therefore, recent rapid increases in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have resulted in much lower wage growth for workers.
Recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "Employer Costs for Employee Compensation" (ECEC) survey can shed light on this issue. According to the ECEC data, workers' inflation-adjusted average total compensation per hour increased by 1.3 percent per year from 2000 to 2009 (from $26.23 per hour to $29.39 per hour in 2009 dollars)1 However, the annual growth rate of average wages and salaries during this period was much lower. More specifically, if one subtracts out the employee share of health insurance premiums2, workers' average hourly wage and salary compensation increased by just 0.7 percent per year from 2000 to 2009. As shown in the following figure, the corresponding growth rate in ESI premiums (including both the employer and employee share) was much higher at 5.1 percent per year.
As a result of these very different growth rates, the fraction of workers' total compensation going to employer-sponsored health insurance premiums increased from 7.4 percent in 2000 to 10.3 percent in 2009. If the growth rates in both workers' average total compensation and in employer-sponsored health insurance premiums remain at their recent rates, this share will increase to 15.0 percent by 2019 and will continue to increase thereafter. Thus in the absence of reform that slows the growth rate of costs, a steadily increasing share of workers' total compensation will be eaten up by health insurance premiums.
The increase from 2000 to 2009 in the average share of workers' total compensation going to ESI premiums is even more striking when one considers that a steadily declining share of workers and their dependents are covered by ESI. More specifically, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the share of non-elderly adults and children covered by ESI fell from 68 percent in 2000 to 62 percent by 2008. This decline was to a large extent driven by a decline in the fraction of firms offering ESI to their workers, which fell from 69 percent in 2000 to 60 percent in 2009.3 Thus if one focused only on those firms that offered ESI during this period, the trends outlined above would be even more striking.
These trends, along with recent empirical research4 on this issue, make clear that increasing health care costs are reducing the wage growth of American workers below what it otherwise would be. The President's Proposal for health insurance reform would genuinely slow this growth in costs, allowing workers to enjoy more of the benefits of their productivity increases in the form of higher take-home wages.
Christina Romer is Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers
Mark Duggan is a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers who focuses on Health
41
Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:43:40 +0000
41 -- that’s the number of leading economists -- including three Nobel Prize winners -- who sent a letter to President Obama and Congress yesterday urging the swift passage of comprehensive health insurance reform to curb skyrocketing health care costs. [Source] 41 -- is also the percentage of adults under the age of 65 who accumulated medical debt, had difficulty paying medical bills, or struggled with both during a recent one year period. [Source]
Download: Rectangular (630px by 303px) | Square (389px by 354px)
Laura Klitzka of Wisconsin is no stranger to the burden of crippling health care costs. In September, we had a chance to visit with her at her home in Green Bay. Here’s her story:
With comprehensive health insurance reform, we can finally control rising health care costs and bring relief to Laura and her family and the many other American families struggling to keep up with their bills. According to these leading economists, “the health care reforms passed by the House and Senate – with recent modifications proposed by President Obama – include serious measures that will slow the growth of health care spending.” If reform fails, they add, “the chances of reducing growth of health care spending in the future will be greatly reduced.”
Today’s number, 41, is the latest in ‘Health Reform by the Numbers,’ our online campaign to raise awareness about why the time is now for health insurance reform. You can follow the campaign on Whitehouse.gov and social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.
If you’d like to help spread the word, share this blog post with your family, friends and online networks using the ‘Share/Bookmark’ feature below.
Previous Numbers:
625 8 1125Your Healthy App Ideas
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:03:03 +0000
div.imgleft { padding-bottom: 0px; padding-right: 5px; float: left; }
Yesterday USDA and First Lady Michelle Obama announced the Apps for Healthy Kids competition – part of Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign to raise a healthier generation of kids. The contest challenges developers to create innovative, fun and engaging tools and games that encourage children to make more nutritious food choices and be more physically active.
To get the ball rolling, The White House and GOOD asked “What kind of healthy kid app would you like to see developed?” on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Here are some of our favorite responses:
From our Facebook fans:
John Allan: A pedometer app for the iPhone that yells at you to get off the couch if you don't get enough steps in per day?
Lindsay Hattaway: An app that let's kids track the type of activity they participated in and the time spent on it each day. Make it a race to be on top against other friends who have the app.
Robbin Burnett Webb: An app such as the "video game" where you are able to cook your own food, using your own ingredients. Kids need to learn how to cook with healthy, fresh ingredients. A lot of parents can't teach them how, because they don't know themselves. Get the kids interested in the kitchen! (from good)
From our fellow Twitterers:
ieatreal: GPS kid-mapping of "wild zones" in their "playborhood" @GOOD Q: What Healthy Kid App wld u like developed? cc @WhiteHouse @ChildrenNature
freshnewengland: @whitehouse re: food app - a visual that shows healthy vs. unhealthy portion sizes, links to farms & farmers markets by zipcode; bike maps
And from our LinkedIn group:
Jim Taylor: As a parent of 3 young children, I would love to see an APP that would calculate various nutritional values simply by scanning the bar codes of the product. Smart phones read bar codes, and by attaching the FDA Nutritional information, a family could scan in all the items they consumed in 1 Hour, or 1 Day, or 1 Week. Suggestions could be given to the family for things like alternative or healthier substitutions, how much exercise they need to do to be fit on the registered diet, links to more information relating to the topic, etc. You could also have things like allergies be quickly ascertained.
Learn more about the challenge at HealthyKidApps.com and check out a recent blog post by Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack.
Stay connected to the White House on facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for upcoming questions.
Competing on the Global Playing Field in the 21st Century
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:53:34 +0000
In his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke about doubling America’s exports over the next few years. Today, he discussed the first steps to meet that goal at the Export-Import Bank’s Annual Conference.
While addressing the importance of America being able to compete in the global marketplace, the President explained that every $1 billion increase in exports would support more than 6,000 jobs. To promote American exports, he announced that the administration is launching the National Export Initiative, an effort to utilize the resources of the government in support for businesses that sell goods and services abroad.
The National Export Initiative will increase access to trade financing for businesses that want to export goods while also increasing the amount of trade-financing export-import offers to support small and medium-sized businesses. The President explained that the government hasn’t done enough to promote businesses abroad in the past, and under the National Export Initiative, the U.S. will advocate for American companies around the world.
This is an effort I will personally lead as President. Next week, I’ll take my second trip to the Asia Pacific – a region that will be fundamental to America’s ability to create jobs and to thrive in the 21st century. We can’t be on the sidelines -– we have to lead, and our engagement has to extend to governments and businesses and peoples across the Pacific. So while I’m there, I’ll visit Indonesia and Australia, two vibrant economies and democracies that will be critical partners for the United States. And in both countries, I’ll highlight the role that American businesses play there, and underscore how strong economic partnerships can create jobs on both sides of the Pacific while advancing both regional and global prosperity. Going forward, I will be a strong and steady advocate for our workers and our companies abroad.
The initiative will begin coordinated efforts to promote new markets and opportunities for American exporters, and ensure that the companies have free and fair access to those markets.
The President also announced that the administration is working on a proposal to reform the Export Control System for high-tech industries in order to strengthen national security. The steps to reform the system include creating a more efficient process for companies to get their products to the market, and removing unnecessary obstacles to export to companies with dual-national and third-country-national employees.
He explained that these efforts will help to double exports, open new markets, and level the playing field for American businesses and American workers.
In times like these, questions have always arisen about whether or not America’s best days are behind us. That’s standard fare. It happens every so often. There have always been naysayers and skeptics. There were always those who’ve waxed fatalistic, fearing that we lacked the capacity to adapt, to succeed – at times even to survive – in a changing world.
But what makes America great, what continues to make America the envy of our competitors, what makes this a place where people come not just to invest but to start lives and businesses and families, is something that has been inexorable and enduring, especially in times of great challenge and great change. It’s that spirit of adventurousness and entrepreneurship that has for generations turned wild-eyed tinkerers into world-changing entrepreneurs; that led us westward and skyward; that led to roads and railways cutting through wilderness, and ships and planes and fiber optic lines carrying American goods and services around the world. It’s the spirit that has advanced America’s leadership in the world and held aloft the American Dream for generations.
President Barack Obama addresses the Export-Import Bank’s annual conference at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.,
The Master Recovery Act Transportation Map
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:57:48 +0000
Sometimes it's good to look up close at how a single Recovery Act project is changing a community for the better and putting people to work. Other times it's instructuve to take a few steps back and look at the big picture. As an example of the latter, the web team at the Federal Highway Administration created an online map of the U.S. that shows over 12,000 Recovery Act road projects. Each of the dots represented on the map represents a project. The full, interactive version on the map allows you to click the dots in order to learn more about these projects.
Secretary Ray LaHood’s Blog talks more about the Recovery Act map:
More important than the number of dots is that every dot in every state represents jobs. And whether we're keeping someone from unemployment or hiring someone back, these Recovery Act projects are creating jobs. Tens of thousands of jobs.
Those dots also add up to a lot of safer, smoother miles for you, your loved ones, and the commercial truck drivers who transport the goods we use from place to place.
In October 2009, President Obama spoke about the benefits that the construction industry was seeing as a result of the Recovery Act, including thousands of highway projects which also helped to create private sector jobs.
What makes these kinds of projects so important isn't just that we're creating so many jobs. It's that we're putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done. We're rebuilding our crumbling roads, our bridges, our waterways. We've already approved nearly a thousand transportation projects to upgrade airports, railroads, mass transit systems, and shipyards. We're strengthening our nation's infrastructure in ways that will leave lasting benefits to our communities, making them stronger, making them safer, and making them better places to live.
Visit WhiteHouse.gov/Recovery or Recovery.gov to learn more about the Recovery Act and projects in different states.
Celebrating International Women's Day: From Kabul to Washington, DC
Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:37:38 +0000
In August 2009, I performed at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, DC in celebration of Afghan Independence Day. At that event, I met Mr. Tim Nusraty, an Afghan-American who now works at the National Security Council at the White House. Many months later, Mr. Nusraty recommended me to perform at the White House on March 8, 2010 for International Women’s Day. When I learned that I was selected to perform, it was the second happiest day of my life. The first was the day I met President Barack Obama and his beautiful wife First Lady Michelle Obama. I have to say that meeting the President, the First Lady, and performing at the White House was surreal. I never thought in a million years that this dream would come true.
As an Afghan girl born in Kabul, Afghanistan and raised in Vancouver, Canada, I have made it my duty to fight for women’s rights and to promote education in Afghanistan. I decided that more than anything else, music would be the best way to do this. It was a long-term goal, and it involved a lot of time, dedication, and hard work, not to mention the many obstacles I would have to face to get there. I had never sung professionally in my life, and decided to start from scratch at the BC Conservatory of Music. Today, my lyrics are heard by millions of people throughout Afghanistan and the region.The song that I sang at the White House on March 8th was composed by my father and me to remember the young Afghan girls who were doused with acid in Kandahar City last year for going to school. The lyrics to the song are very powerful. Below is the translation to the lyrics of the Afghan song:
Afghan Girl
I'm a girl, I am an Afghan girl
I'm the daughter of the land of braves
Don't break my wings, let me fly
Don't break my crown, let me think
I want to be as free as a gazelle
I love my homeland just as Malali did
Sing my songs just like a nightingale in the gardens
Express myself the same as Zainab, Nazo, and Mehri in poetry
Don't break my wings, let me fly
Don't break my crown, let me think
I've a smile on my face like a flower
And live in open green fields
My heart is filled with love for my homeland
I'll sing songs and poems for my landWords can’t describe what I felt when I was standing in the East Room performing at the White House. I was so grateful. I now believe that dreams can come true and goals can be reached. My mother was with me during the performance and was more than lucky to sit next to the First Lady. Halfway through my performance I noticed Mrs. Obama holding my mother’s hand and I was so happy I almost forgot my lyrics. The First Lady is such an inspiration to women around the world, and I am thankful we have such an amazing role model.
Later that day after my performance, I was approached by Afghan media, and they all told me in great excitement that I had made history in Afghanistan and that never in the history of Afghanistan had there been a performance at the White House by an Afghan artist. Even the Afghan journalists who interviewed me became very emotional. I didn’t realize the impact my performance at the White House would have on my Afghan people. Recently I was offered to host my own show on 1TV in Kabul, Afghanistan. This show focuses on family matters, women’s issues, and the treatment of children. I jumped at the opportunity and moved back to Kabul. 1TV is the platform for me to spread awareness for the women of Afghanistan.
Thank you President Obama and Madame First Lady for this amazing opportunity. I would also like to thank Afghan Ambassador Jawad, Ms. Columbia Barrosse, and Mr. Nusraty.Mozhdah Jamalzadah is an Afghan singer, entertainer and model from Kabul, Afghanistan
* * *
©2009 Robert K. Foster
Posted on Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 11:59 AM ( Updated Jan 27, 2009 )
Category:
News Information •
RSS Feed •
0 Comments •
Permanent Link To This Entry
