After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
Sign up for email alerts, from breaking news to weekly commentary:
Find more content in these topics: Money
Visit Hightower's General Store, to buy high-power Hightower books and other goodies like that.
Home | Contact | RSS | Privacy policy | Copyright Public Intelligence, Inc., all rights reserved 2003-2007
W.'s budget in under 100 words
George W.'s latest budget adds up to this: It gives away more than half-a-trillion dollars to the military, billions in special tax giveaways to his wealthy supporters, and a multi-billion annual prescription-drug boondoggle for Big Pharma (aka the drug companies).
It takes away from school dropout prevention, work-training grants, nurse training, rural firefighters, medical research for veterans, lead poisoning prevention in children, prison rape prevention, modernizing air-traffic controller systems, EPA's clean water fund, modernizing the IRS to pursue corporate tax cheats, small business micro-loans, the Children's Health Insurance Program, state and local law enforcement assistance, college tuition grants and after-school care for children.