Obama Administration Threatens the Dreams of Low-Income Students in Louisiana

Days after commemorating Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, the Obama Administration filed suit against the Louisiana Scholarship Program, which has providedthousands of low-income children more opportunity to make their dreams reality.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed suit to stop the program, claiming that it impedes upon “the desegregation process.” However, as Heritage explains in this Backgrounder, the DOJ’s attempt to undermine the scholarship program could keep low-income children confined to poor-performing schools. The program was expanded for the 2013–2014 school year to offer 8,000 scholarships to low-income children.

The stories of families of scholarship recipients in Louisiana, published by the Louisiana Federation for Children, show that children flourish with choice:

Via: The Foundry

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[VIDEO] Tavis Smiley to Obama: Take MLK Bust Out of Oval Office

(CNSNews.com) – Radio host Tavis Smiley said President Barack Obama should remove the bust of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which was added to the Oval Office during Obama’s first term, because of the president’s willingness to go to war with Syria.

“Here you have a war president with a peace prize. Once again the parallel between King and Obama just doesn’t measure up. He ought to just take that bust out of the Oval Office if you’re going to dishonor Martin in this way,” West said.

Obama added the bust of MLK to the Oval Office in 2009, replacing the bust of Sir Winston Churchill, marking the first time an image of an African-American was displayed in the president’s work quarters, NBC Washington reported on March 19, 2009.

Via: CNS News

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Dreaming of Equality of Opportunity, Not Outcome

In the United States, dreams have a funny way of becoming reality. That’s what makes the American dream so powerful. It’s renewed, and usually achieved, in each new generation.

It’s been more than 50 years now since Martin Luther King Jr. described his goal of equality of opportunity for all Americans. It was “a dream deeply rooted in the American dream,” he explained, a dream based on “the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

In many ways, the U.S. has achieved that dream and moved on to others. Segregated water fountains and restaurants are a thing of the past, and laws ensure equal treatment in hiring. But in his speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, President Obama warned that things are getting worse. “The twin forces of technology and global competition have subtracted those jobs that once provided a foothold into the middle class, reduced the bargaining power of American workers,” he said.

To be sure, Americans haven’t achieved economic equality. Obama warned, “We’d be told that growing inequality was the price for a growing economy, a measure of the free market—that greed was good and compassion ineffective, and those without jobs or health care had only themselves to blame.”

But opportunity, not outcomes, should be our concern. And, Obama’s straw man aside, the way to raising incomes is so simple it almost goes without saying: Get more people working, and remove barriers to upward mobility.

Via: The Foundry

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MSNBC Personalities React to Obama’s Speech: Where Was the Policy Proposal?

MSNBC host Chris Matthews and Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson were the first to react to President Barack Obama’s address on the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement’s march on Washington D.C. Both thought the speech was good, but lacked a policy proposal to address issues which are important for the African-American community. 

RELATED: Rush Limbaugh: Obama Will ‘Hijack’ MLK Anniversary to Push His Own Agenda

After Obama finished speaking, Touré turned to Chris Matthews for his reaction to the speech. “You have been so great at speaking about race throughout your career,” Touré noted. “I want to hear your thoughts on what’s going on right now.”

“I thought the speech had great values in it,” Matthews said.

He said he would not criticize the speech expect for the fact that it did not contain a policy proposal of any kind to address poverty. “I was waiting for a proposal today, something concrete,” Matthews added.

Robinson largely agreed, saying that Obama was not speaking to Washington D.C. with an agenda but to the nation at large. “Perhaps that’s the State of the Union address or – he has many chances to do that,” Robinson said.

“In many ways, he put the burden, sort of, on us to act and to push progress forward,” Krystal Ballopined.

Watch the clip below via MSNBC:

Via: Mediaite.com

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[VIDEO] MD GOVERNOR: LIVES OF 'PEOPLE OF COLOR' VALUED LESS THAN WHITES

On Wednesday, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat who will likely run for president in 2016, said the lives of "people of color" are valued less than those of whites in America. 

Speaking on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, O'Malley said there is "too much apathy" in America "when the lives of people of color are too often valued less than the lives of white people."

He called for a variety of actions that included "abolishing the death penalty," helping immigrants, and raising the minimum wage. 

Via: Breitbart

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Obama Calls for Economic Equality in America Changed by King

ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING "REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH"

President Obama, speaking from the same Washington stage where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a defining speech of the civil rights movement, said that even as the nation has been transformed, work remains in countering growing economic disparities.

“To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency,” said Obama, appearing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where 50 years ago today King called on Americans to make good on the country’s founding promise of equality for all.

Speaking shortly after bells rang across the U.S. in commemoration of the start of King’s 1963 speech, Obama’s remarks served as the culmination of a week-long remembrance of a peaceful “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” that helped galvanize the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

King, Obama said, had done more than advance the cause of civil rights for black Americans -- he changed America.

“Because they kept marching, America changed,” Obama said of those who marched on Washington 50 years ago. “‘What King was describing was the dream of every American,’’ he said, ‘‘the chance through honest toil to advance one’s station in life.’’

Obama, 52, the nation’s first black president, has worked throughout his campaigns and government service to transcend issues of race. Yet this address centered on a problem still confronting a nation riven with economic disparities.

Via: Newsmax

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