Ron Barber for AZ Congress

http://ronbarberforcongress.com
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6/03/12 07:28 PM ET By Josh Lederman – TheHill

Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) will campaign in Arizona with Democrat Ron Barber, the former aide who is running to replace her.

Giffords will appear with Barber at a get-out-the-vote rally and concert at a historic theater in Tucson, Ariz. on Saturday – three days before the special election to replace Giffords.

“She knows that Ron is the only person running who will fight for Southern Arizona,” read an invitation to Barber’s supporters from Jennifer Cox, Barber’s campaign manager. “So, Gabby is coming to town to help get out the vote for Ron.”

Giffords has made few public appearances since narrowly surviving an assassination attempt at a campaign event in her district in January 2011. Giffords personally asked Barber to run to replace her, and has endorsed his campaign, but has not appeared on the trail until now.

Barber, who served as Giffords’s district director, was shot twice in the January 2011 shooting spree that killed six, critically injured Giffords and led to her resignation from the House one year later.

Giffords’s favorite band, the Tucson-based group Calexico, will play at the concert. The band played frequently at Giffords’s own campaign events and her husband, Mark Kelly, selected one of the band’s songs as the wake-up call for the crew of the Discovery shuttle mission he commanded in 2008, NPR reported.

For more: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/230617-former-rep-giffords-to-campaign-with-democrat-running-to-replace-her

$15K + Cambridge/Menlo Park + Awesome Mentors + No Strings Attached

Summer@HIGHLAND is a 5-year old entrepreneurship program designed to provide student entrepreneurs and university-affiliated startups with the environment and resources for taking their initiative/company to the next level. The program is “founder friendly”: Highland receives no equity stake in exchange for a team’s participation, and teams are under no obligation to Highland after the summer. Our only priority is helping entrepreneurs and their teams significantly advance their startup over the summer.

For the entire article: http://www.s.co/event/summerhighland-15k-cambridgemenlo-park-awesome-mentors-no-strings-attached

6/2/12 By JIM ABRAMS | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A program that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of farmers whether or not they plant a crop may disappear with hardly a protest from farm groups and the politicians who look out for their interests.

The Senate is expected to begin debate this week on a five-year farm and food aid bill that would save $9.3 billion by ending direct payments to farmers and replacing them with subsidized insurance programs for when the weather turns bad or prices go south.

The details are still to be worked out. But there’s rare agreement that fixed annual subsidies of $5 billion a year for farmers are no longer feasible in this age of tight budgets and when farmers in general are enjoying record prosperity.

About 80 percent of the bill’s half-trillion-dollar cost over the next five years represents nutrition programs, primarily food stamps now going to some 46 million people. About $100 billion would be devoted to crop subsidies and other farm programs.

The Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee last month approved a bill that would save $23 billion over the next decade by ending direct payments and consolidating other programs. The bill would strengthen the subsidized crop insurance program and create a program to compensate farmers for smaller, or “shallow,” revenue losses, based on a five-year average, for acres actually planted.

Getting a bill to the president’s desk will be a challenge. Most of the bill’s spending is on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, at an annual cost now of about $75 billion. The Republican-led House is looking for greater cuts to this program than the Democratic Senate will accept.

The House also is more sympathetic to Southern rice and peanut farmers who say that shallow loss program hurts them. They want to keep some form of target price subsidy.

The current farm bill expires at the end of September.

But the Senate bill, and presumably the yet-to-be-written House counterpart, “makes clear that the era of direct payments is over,” said Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, who heads the Senate committee. She said the Senate bill “represents the most significant reform in American agriculture policy in decades.”

For more: http://news.yahoo.com/farm-bill-end-direct-payments-farmers-113631289–finance.html

MAY 14, 2012 obamafoodorama.blogspot

On the heels of George Clooney’s megamillions fundraising dinner for President Obama, Campaign officials have newly announced another big-ticket culinary soiree. Former President Bill Clinton will join President Obama at a “Gala Dinner” at The Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York on Monday, June 4th. Grammy Award-winning rock legend Jon Bon Jovi will give a special concert. Tickets are $35,800 for silk-pocketed donors wanting the full experience of facetime and a photo op with 44 & 42. The race is on to make the 6:00 PM Park Avenue event a sell out, just like Clooney’s affair, which raised close to $15 million.

I suggest ordering your ticket soon since this event will probably sell out quickly,” co-host Jon Cooper wrote in an email sent this weekend with the invitation. President of New York’s Spectronics Corporation and Co-Chair, Tri-State Region, of the Obama Victory Trustees, Cooper hailed the event as “what is sure to be a very memorable evening!”

Obama for America already announced two other fundraising events for the two Presidents on the same day; one is at the New Amsterdam Theater on West 42nd Street. Dubbed ‘Barack on Broadway,’ it officially kicks off at 7:00 PM. The third will be at hedge-fund manager Mark Lasry’s home, with tickets at $40,000 each. Clinton’s first Obama fundraiser was a dinner and reception on April 29th at the Virginia home of former Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe.

For more: http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/2012/05/president-obama-and-bill-clinton-to.html

Cypress Bay High School 2012 Commencement

Vice President Biden delivers the commencement address at Cypress Bay High School in Weston, FL
Cypress Bay High School Graduation 2012

Date: Monday, June 4, 2012 4 P.M. EDT

Location:
Marlins Baseball Park
Miami, Florida 33125

5/8/12 By Elizabeth Hartfield | ABC OTUS News

Milwaukee Mayor;Tom Barrett won the Democratic primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. This means Barrett will go head-to-head with embattled Republican Gov. in the rare recall election on June 5.

Barrett, who also ran against Walker in 2010, was expected to win his party’s nomination- polls had showed him with a large lead over former Dane county executive Kathleen Falk, who was viewed as his biggest competitor and had been endorsed by many of the labor organizations in the state. With 33 percent of precincts reporting, Barrett led Falk 54.7 percent to 37 percent.

Enthusiasm has run high in Wisconsin ahead of the recall election. Walker, Barrett and Falk each reported raising large sums of money- though at slightly under $1 million each, Falk and Barrett have been far outpaced by Walker, who has raised $13 million between mid-January, when the recall was officially announced, and mid-April.

The Government Accountability Board- which oversees elections in Wisconsin- predicted turnout for the primary would be between 30 and 35 percent of the voting age population, notably higher than the 25 percent that turned out for the presidential primary April 3.

A Marquette Law School poll released at the beginning of May showed Barrett and Walker in a statistical dead heat.

If Walker loses the election, he will be the third governor in U.S. history to be recalled from office. He is the first governor in Wisconsin’s history to face a recall election, which was initiated after the governor moved to curtail the rights of some unionized state workers.

Uploaded by wisdems09 on Jan 20, 2012

More than one million Wisconsinites are standing united against Scott Walker’s attacks on working, middle-class families.

3/30/12 By Brendan O’Brien | Reuters

MILWAUKEE (Reuters) – Wisconsin’s controversial Republican Governor Scott Walker will face a recall election on June 5 over a new law he championed that strips public sector unions of most power, becoming the first U.S. governor to face a no-confidence vote in nearly a decade.
The five-member Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, which manages elections, voted unanimously on Friday to formally certify more than 900,000 signatures calling for Walker’s ouster, setting in motion the recall election.

Democrats and labor unions, outraged by the law they see as an attack on the rights of workers and their unions, gathered nearly double the number of signatures needed to force a recall vote.
A Democratic primary will be held on May 8 to choose Walker’s opponent in the recall vote. The Democrat who could face Walker is Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in a rematch of the 2010 election narrowly won by Walker, although Barrett has not yet formally entered the race.

For the entire article: http://news.yahoo.com/wisconsin-governor-walker-face-recall-vote-june-5-152557966.html

2012 Recall Initiatives
The Government Accountability Board has now ordered recall elections for Governor, Lieutenant Governor and four members of the State Senate, based on the six recall petitions filed on January 17, 2012 against those officeholder.

Recall elections were ordered for May 8, 2012. If necessary, that election will become a primary, with the final recall election held June 5, 2012.

Source: http://gab.wi.gov/elections-voting/recall