CREDO Mobile – previously known as Working Assets – has counted the votes and announced its 2009 grantees.

USAction came in third place overall, just ahead of Amnesty International and behind Doctors Without Borders and Planned Parenthood.

CREDO Mobile is a progressive phone company that, long before “corporate social responsibility” became a buzzphrase, developed an innovative long distance service where 1 percent of customers’ charges goes to progressive nonprofits customers vote on.

This year, USAction is to receive $85,916 thanks to CREDO Mobile and its friendly, progressive customers! By comparison, our 2006 donation from CREDO was $43,791.

View the full list of great causes CREDO Mobile is funding.

The time for quality affordable health care for all can’t wait and President Obama mentioned this in his address to Congress and the nation last night, Feb. 24, 2009. [emphasis added]:

…the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough.

So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.

The question now… how will we get there?  $59 billion of the stimulus is slated for health care.

image source: www.recovery.gov

We’ll be working with the Health Care for America Now campaign to see that this money is spent the right way.

An overwhelming 92% of viewers responded positively to Obama’s address to Congress last night. Sixty-eight percent of speech-watchers questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey said they had a very positive reaction, with 24 percent indicating that they had a somewhat positive response and 8 percent saying they had a negative reaction.

On the flip side, Republican attempts to remain relevant - by mindless carping against a near flawless performance - was almost universally panned in the media, even by their own Fox News.

Think Progress gives a roundup of coverage here.

Today USAction and its online project, TrueMajority.org embraced Rep. Barney Frank’s call for significant cuts to obsolete weapons systems.

Government programs must be scrutinized in terms of their sensibility. High-ranking retired military and Dept. of Defense officials say $60 billion can be trimmed from the Pentagon budget without putting our safety at risk.

Meanwhile, in a case of “military procurement ‘gone amok’“, reports surfaced today that Billions of dollars have been spent to develop a new (and unnecessary) helicopter fleet for the President.  This program, started by the Bush administration, is now expected to cost $11.2 billion — almost  twice the original estimate.

We are encouraged to know that Sen. McCain is supporting the review of this spending and it will potentially be stopped by the Obama administration.

Originally posted on February 23rd, 2009 by Jason Rosenbaum on the Health Care for America Now Blog.  USAction is a Steering Committee Member of Health Care for America Now.

The White House is lashing out at a CNBC reporter who attacked on President Barack Obama’s anti-foreclosure plan. In a subtly blistering press confere,ce Robert Gibbs, white house press secretary, encouraged Rick Santelli to actually ‘READ’ and talk to people ’smarter than himself’ before making blanket policy statements.

More here at the link: WH lashes out at CNBC’s Santelli

At a February 17, 2009 press conference at the Chicago Federation of Labor, USAction President William McNary, along with Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL) and SEIU Illinois President Tom Balanoff, spoke up & out for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Progress Illinois writes:

Later in the day, around 3,000 riled up rank-and-file members filled the Plumbers Hall to hear from national leaders such as Change to Win’s Anna Burger and ALF-CIO President John Sweeney, as well as an array of Illinois labor leaders and elected officials. McNary had this to say to the enthusiastic crowd: “We didn’t start this fight. We didn’t ask for this fight. But if it’s a fight they want, it’s a fight they’ll get. Knuckle up.”

See footage of the press conference here:

Then sign the petition in support of EFCA.

The Federal Reserve is expecting the unemployment rate to climb to 8.5 or 8.8 percent this year with up to 750,000 job losses in February alone.  We are currently at 7.6% unemployment, well above the “natural” rate.  The Fed has a track record of being too optimistic, so we’ll likely see even more people lose their jobs.

Some people are already “too discouraged to even look for work.” These folks, who aren’t registered as actively looking for a job, are not even counted in the unemployment rate.  We can’t afford to be too discouraged, this is the time to be aggressive.  

The Bush Administration just finished with “a net job loss of 0.10%,” the worst presidential record since Herbert Hoover.  Please keep in touch with us and help reverse this trend.

How high do you think the rate is going?  Some say over 10%, the depression era saw rates over 25%. 

President Obama signed the ‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’ into law early yesterday afternoon and Pennsylvania leaders came together to celebrate.

“Passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a major victory for the American people who are seeking relief from the worst economic crisis in a generation,” said David Bielski, of AFSCME.

On Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2009, Erie County Executive Mark DiVecchio, Erie Mayor Joe Sinnott and AFSCME labor leaders gathered to celebrate the signing into law of President Barack Obama’s ‘American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” — a historic and politically transformational achievement. 

Passage of the Obama jobs plan will create 143,000 jobs for Pennsylvania and jump start the economy in the near and long term by making investments in education, transportation, health care and renewable sources of energy in addition to providing tax relief to 95 percent of Americans. 

Passage of the Obama plan by wide margins in the House and Senate also represented a repudiation of the failed trickle down economic policies of the past eight years which created the current economic crisis inherited by President Obama and the Congress.

Excerpted from Penn Action, a USAction affiliate.

The media’s coverage of the economic recovery package was nothing short of abysmal. Not only were Republican talking points and outrageous claims by conservative media repeated as fact, but the debate on the Sunday shows and cable news was virtually devoid of policy.