“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care,” the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

Isn’t this the reason for health reform in the first place? Someone who lacks medical insurance because they lack a job is being judged on their level of productivity in society. Sarah Palin is not sophisticated enough to understand that, making her the perfect mouthpiece for the GOP; ignorant and pretty.

more commentary
• on LiberalValues
• at The Democratic Daily

Ahmadinejad said that the nuclear issue would not be on the table, because the Iranian uranium enrichment program is not for military use. Over 98% of American nuclear waste is generated from industrial use.

“So Mr Obama’s hopes for a new and constructive dialogue with Iran on the nuclear issue look as far away as ever, says the BBC’s Jon Leyne in Tehran,” according to a BBC article.

This is actually a strong move on the part of the President, as it would prevent President Obama from repeating the mistakes of the past. As we learned when former President George W. Bush created false “weapons of mass destruction,” this is an important distinction: if the nuclear program is peaceful, then it is not cause for war.

According to international law, it is illegal to start a war unless another country has attacked first.
By standing firm on this issue, President Ahmadinejad could set a positive precedent in global governance for states to respect laws preventing illegal wars, and important step for world peace.

In line with this, “Mr Ahmadinejad did confirm that he would be presenting to the powers negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme a package of proposals on managing global issues.They are likely to include proposals for global nuclear disarmament,” the same article said.

Likewise appealing to this law is the other issue which has taken precedent the U.S.-Iranian dialogues: the funding of Hamas. The Obama administration has said that by donating money to Hamas, Iran funding a terrorist organization. This is up for debate, as Hamas is the only government the Palestinians are allowed by the Israelis, whose aggressive actions this January against the people of the Gaza Strip ghettos verged on genocide.

Palestine’s lack of statehood has been a human rights problem for the disenfranchised nation, as they are not represented, and President Ahmadinejad has undertaken their cause very seriously. If Ahmadinejad lets this issue define his debate with President Obama, he could put an end to the the talks before they begin, likewise jeopardizing his ability to work with the United States to positively affect their position.

Palestinian statehood is a “legitimate right,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today to the UAE state news agency WAM, while emphasizing its importance to Middle Eastern security.

They say the first 100 days of a president’s administration are the most telling. President Obama has achieved more in his first 100 days in office than most parties have in decades. Hear his analysis, broadcasted live on hulu.

While all eyes were on Obama to announce a winning strategy against pirates off the coast of Somalia this week, I had complete faith in his team to choose the right tactic. After all, with such a diligent team they couldn’t miss historic naval strategy of Pompey the Great against pirates: cut off their land ports.

Somalia has no government. Despite international outcry against entering a sovereign state, the fact remains that Somalia doesn’t have one, or that’s all they have; no matter how the denizens of this anarchist country may feel about this state of affairs, (“The ruined men of all nations,” in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, “a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.”) its lucky for us.

Similar Historic Battles

Caesar vs. the Cilician Pirates

When pirates captured and hatched a plan to ransom a young Caesar back to Rome for 20 gold talons, he laughed at them for not knowing who he was, and said, “I’m worth fifty, at least.”

After he’d been ransomed back, he rallied a fleet and went back and destroyed the pirates to a man, crucifying the lot of them.

While he was in captivity in the pirate camp, the other pirates said that, although a prisoner, he acted like he owned the place, joining in all their pirate games

Caesar vs. the Gauls

In another example of this ploy by land, in his Gallic Wars Caesar was already familiar with a tactic wherein he would double his troops back to the next town that the Gauls received grain from and then seized it, ensuring that the Gauls went without supplies in their own land.

Pompey vs. the Pirates

• Pompey vs. the Pirates The above quote from a famous classicist is from this link, an article by another famous classicist. The article is about how a September 11 like event, wherein consuls were kidnapped by pirates in Rome itself, so after brushing himself off from Cilicia, Pompey hatched a plan emptying the treasury for a campaign it only took him three  months to complete.
• Pompey vs. Ancient Piracy from militaryhistoryonline.com,
• Piracy in the Greco-Roman World –shows that even after Pompey used the hype to make himself “Great,”  “pirate” remained a buzzword in the senate, and indeed, this issue has created a lot of buzz in the news. The pirates were further important because they threatened the sanctions of Pax Romana; likewise, modern pirates threaten the United Nations, which has banned piracy. Moreover, they have adopted a very modern strategy , which is to use this as an excuse to restore order and a republic to Somalia, which is for anarchists as Dubai is to libertarians: a living example of the failure of their theories.

The public has made their opinion and their voice very clear to us that they were not comfortable with the MTA’s transparency, nor are they comfortable with how they have basically spent their tax dollars that they’ve given to the MTA. Also, we are looking for oversight for the Controller. of the STate of New York so that he has the ability to do a further investigation into the way that the MTA is dealing with their resources. Also…we will come up with a capital plan, and in that capital plan, Long Island and upstate bridges and tolls, bridges and roads [sic] will be part of that plan. And finally, and this one is where we have to do more work on our part, but we do know the stimulus package has money for shovel ready projects, some of which the MTA may be willing to put forward, but we do know that the shovel-ready projects have additional implementation for members of our congress in addition to the public.

-Malcom A. Smith, New York State Senate Democratic Majority Leader in video the video Senate Majority Leader announces plan to addresses MTA operating budget shortfall, prevents dramatic fare increases and service reductions, available on his site.

With all this information, maybe you’ll actually be informed enough to be brave enough to make a comment on one of their pages Great!

Let me know if you’ve found any more that I’ve missed (there are a lot of ways the government has provided for communication and transparency) and what you think of the MTA’s move for new media transparency.

"I couldn’t be more optimistic about the time to start a company and the place to start a company, meaning now and here," Bloomberg said. He was himself an entrepreneur many years ago.

Here, in our view, are the ones that matter:

1. Create Incubators for Start-up Businesses 
   New York City is partnering with academic institutions, property management companies and commercial landlords to establish high-quality, ready-to-use office space that comes with basic business services and administrative support.
2. Establish New York City Angel Fund
   The City will invest $3 million to create several funds totaling between $9 million and $10 million to make angel investments of $20,000 to $250,000 to New York City-based start-up companies. By the end of February, NYCEDC will release a Request for Proposals from private fund managers to operate the fund. It is expected that this fund will provide early-stage financing to 250 New York-based start-up companies over the next 8 years and will increase by 25 percent the angel funds now-available to New York-based companies.
3. Open "VC Connect" Online Information Portal and Provide VC Support Services 
   Establishing a central information clearing house and support network for entrepreneurs and startup companies and publicizing the activity already occurring in New York requires a website that will include a calendar of seminars and networking events, real estate information, a discussion forum and other resources to help entrepreneurs. NYCEDC will release a Request for Proposals from website developers in the coming weeks, and the website will launch in Summer 2009.
   The City is also working to expand existing events in high demand in the startup community, such as seminars on writing business plans and pitching investors and networking events. For example, this summer at Columbia University NYCEDC will host a seminar on how to participate in the Federal Government’s SBIR program a program to help small businesses access Federal Research support.
4. Begin the FastTrac Program to Help New Yorkers Start Entrepreneurial Businesses
   The program will offer two courses: FastTrac NewVenture, a six-session classroom-based "crash course" beginning March 23 that is designed to help entrepreneurs determine the viability of their business concepts and develop start-up strategies for their businesses; and FastTrac GrowthVenture, an eight-session classroom training beginning in mid-April that will teach existing 1-year-or-older businesses how to review and reshape their business models in order to meet the current economic challenges.
5. Start JumpStart NYC to Help New Yorkers Join Entrepreneurial Businesses 
   This program will offer an entrepreneurial training "boot camp," after which participants will be offered a 10-week unpaid internship with a start up company with the potential of converting to full-time employment at the end of the internship.

Read the Mayor’s full press release here.

• Startup Wisdom in 13 Points
  Paul Graham’s words for startup companies.
• The Anatomy of A Good Space
  Speaking at events; making presentations well.
• 50 E-Commerce Website Designs, part 1
  Well-designed internet retail sites, big and small.
• 25+ E-Commerce Website Designs, part 2
  More well-designed internet retail sites.

In a promising step for a newborn simulacrum, Obama has released a video showing that he will open up the federal process to the people. As Cicero says, any with a voice to express themselves can be part of the government. Likewise, Obama’s plan plans to allow citizens to offer policy advise and comment on legislation before it is passed.

He also wants universal broadband – groundbreaking because its equating the internet with the forum. This is apt in a pivotal time in the evolution of consciousness having progressed from an agrarian state into the global informational age (see Ken Wilbur’s Integral Theory of Consciousness). It’s also a better direction to go in that its dissolution in world war.

Obama is also making a move for transparency, making all public data available, government grants, earmarks, funds and lobbying information available, meaning that citizens willl also have the information requisite to make even judge on these issues.

This allows a person to set for the policy on an issue,

(e.g. “Platonic, classical and current international policy forbids war under these circumstances,”

or

Cicero might agree that doing drugs is a victimless crime and a personal choice, and thus outside of the public sphere, and we would hope that federal jurisdiction would be respected here…”)

which can then be backed up with concrete fact:

“According to these public figures, money from the war on drugs has gone to prop up a system of oil refineries in Colombia, and this is the type of unsustainable energy we’re trying to get off of, according to Obama’s Blueprint for Change, and also this is a crass, corruption, a squirrling away of public funds, exactly the kind of leveraging of the republic to turn it into just gold that we don’t want.”

The implacations of this transparency in the fight against corruption is just mind boggling. Here’s to a new kind of citizen journalism.