2011 May 10 - Headline News

UPDATED 05/10/11 6:57 p.m.

CHICAGO (CBS) - Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel has ordered all department heads to cut management costs by 10 percent, which would necessitate a combination of salary reductions and some job cuts.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports job and/or salary cuts must total 10 percent per department. Non-union middle- to upper-management-level employees would be affected. The cuts could also be achieved by not filling open positions.

“If you are going to make other types of savings and reforms …. I don’t think you can ward off upstairs, the corporate suite,” said Emanuel, who believes there is some fat that can be trimmed among management at all city departments.

Emanuel is looking for what will total a $75 million cut to the city’s budget as he starts his term in office next week.

The pink slips started going out last week at Chicago Public Schools headquarters-on orders from the new administration.

The City Hall cuts are new. A letter went out last Friday to all commissioners, stating: “I am asking all of you to cut your payroll budgets for appointees by 10 percent - no exceptions and no excuses.”

[continued....]
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/05/10/emanuel-plans-75m-budget-cut-for-start-of-term-as-mayor/

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The U.S. Postal Service continues to hemorrhage money, with a loss of $2.2 billion in the most recent quarter.

The national mail service said Tuesday that it expects to have a cash shortfall and reach its statutory borrowing limit by the time its fiscal year ends in September. That means the agency could be forced to default on some of its payments to the federal government.Patrick Donahoe, the Postmaster General, said the service is still seeking changes to federal laws that would allow it to change its business model and potentially save enough money to avoid a default.

"The Postal Service may return to financial stability only through significant changes to the laws that limit flexibility and impose undue financial burdens," Donahoe said in a statement.

At issue is a 2006 law requiring the service to pay between $5.4 and $5.8 billion into its prepaid retiree health benefits each year. In addition, the agency is seeking Congressional approval to eliminate Saturday mail service.

The postal service has estimated that moving to five day service could save $3.1 billion. But the Postal Regulatory Commission, which oversees the agency, issued an advisory in March that put the savings at a much more modest $1.7 billion.

While the Postal Service is not strictly a government agency, it is not exactly a private business either.

[continued....]
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/10/news/companies/usps_earnings/?section=money_latest

President Obama’s aides have quietly turned the key in the engine of the massive campaign-in-waiting that’s been operating under the name Organizing for America for the past two years, and will begin his reelection with the sort of online and field organizations most presidential campaigns would be glad to have 16 months from now.

The leadership of the field organization - with hundreds of employees, tens of thousands of volunteers and massive online assets (primarily, a giant email list) - is shifting from the Democratic National Committee to the new campaign in Chicago. And in mass emails and in a quiet series of one-on-one meetings with volunteer leaders, the group is resetting its relationship with its supporters.

And while many Democrats have complained that Organizing for America’s vaunted abilities began to sputter once Obama became president, people watching the organization closely say it has succeeded in what may have been its central mission all along: building an unparalleled reelection organization while staying under the political world’s radar.

“Nothing like this has ever happened this early or this big,” said Natalie Foster, a former DNC new media director.

Obama’s reelection campaign may lack the novelty, and the purity, of his first campaign. Aides hope, though, that any enthusiasm gap - which they believe will close as the race begins to take shape - will be made up for by the sheer scale and capacity of the newly re-tuned organization.

Obama’s campaign will “give a little on the enthusiasm, but they gain a lot on the fact that they’re starting with this huge set of resources they didn’t have in 2008 ,” said a Democrat closely watching the ramp-up.
That Organizing for America remains very much a political powerhouse to be feared may come as a surprise to some who have bought into the popular narrative that group has floundered since the 2008 campaign. And early in Obama’s presidency, OFA did suffer from being wildly over-hyped: it was to be a juggernaut that would transform legislative politics, sending members of Congress of both parties running headlong in fear.

The group, to the dismay of some of Obama’s key supporters, never attempted to bring the “movement” feel of the campaign to a truly independent new organization. Its website remained BarackObama.com, and - after an early foray drew complaints from Capitol Hill - it shied away from doing anything that could get the president in trouble with his less trail-blazing allies in Congress.

But despite the fact that OFA did not live up to admittedly unrealistic expectations, it did play a role in keeping Democrats on board during the protracted health care fight, mobilizing on a large scale despite a sour national mood and skepticism of the bill, even among Democrats. The group’s 2008 breakthrough had been linking the online organization with offline action, and the organization’s leaders last month detailed some of their results in a Huffington Post article, writing that in August of 2009, more than 34,000 OFA members attended 410 town hall events to back the bill, and that 65,000 supporters paid in-person visits to members of Congress.

Now Organizing for America begins where many presidential campaigns would be glad to finish. Leading Democrats say the group has more than 400 staffers around the country - many with two or more years of experience in the organization - thousands of local volunteer leaders, a list of a million people willing to volunteer, and an email list insiders say has grown since the campaign ended, and stands at more than 10 million names. (An Obama campaign spokeswoman, Katie Hogan, said the campaign will not be giving out the exact numbers of staffers, though they become public in occasional filings.)

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53941.html#ixzz1M1mqetkt

Now TheWonWTF will be able to override all cellphone transmissions in case of an emergency and text us with 'important' messages. The comments below the story are pretty funny............

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/05/09/20...

This DAY in HISTORY:

May 10, 1869:
Transcontinental railroad completed

On this day in 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the West would surely lose some of its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized East.

Since at least 1832, both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until 1853, though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad. The actual building of the railroad would have to wait even longer, as North-South tensions prevented Congress from reaching an agreement on where the line would begin.

One year into the Civil War, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act (1862), guaranteeing public land grants and loans to the two railroads it chose to build the transcontinental line, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. With these in hand, the railroads began work in 1866 from Omaha and Sacramento, forging a northern route across the country. In their eagerness for land, the two lines built right past each other, and the final meeting place had to be renegotiated.

Harsh winters, staggering summer heat, Indian raids and the lawless, rough-and-tumble conditions of newly settled western towns made conditions for the Union Pacific laborers--mainly Civil War veterans of Irish descent--miserable. The overwhelmingly immigrant Chinese work force of the Central Pacific also had its fair share of problems, including brutal 12-hour work days laying tracks over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On more than one occasion, whole crews would be lost to avalanches, or mishaps with explosives would leave several dead.

For all the adversity they suffered, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific workers were able to finish the railroad--laying nearly 2,000 miles of track--by 1869, ahead of schedule and under budget. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days. Their work had an immediate impact: The years following the construction of the railway were years of rapid growth and expansion for the United States, due in large part to the speed and ease of travel that the railroad provided.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/transcontinental-railroad-completed