Tammy Duckworth leaving VA post
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 14th, 2011 4:34 am by HL
Tammy Duckworth leaving VA post
Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran who drew national attention with her 2006 run for Congress, is resigning as an assistant secretary in the Department of Veterans Affairs, administration officials confirmed Monday.
Duckworth plans to return to her home state of Illinois, where political insiders expect her to run again for the House next fall.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said Duckworth “has served the Department of Veterans Affairs with distinction. Her unwavering dedication to veterans and their families has strengthened VA’s ability to perform our mission — providing veterans the health care and benefits they have earned.”
From White House to heartland, a call to give up subsidies
HILL CITY, Kan. — This is what Washington’s new austerity has brought.
A freshman Republican congressman, himself a fifth-generation corn farmer and his family a longtime beneficiary of government agricultural subsidies, drove through the endless fields of far-flung western Kansas to deliver a difficult message.
“Everybody needs to share,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp told a few dozen townspeople sitting patiently on the hard wooden benches of the Graham County Courthouse. “If you’re a farmer like me, you’re going to expect less. Something’s going to go away. The direct payments are going to go away.”
Obama calls for more engineering grads as a way to spur the economy
DURHAM, N.C. — President Obama called for more Americans to become engineers in a speech here Monday, continuing a year-long push to present his vision for the economy as U.S. unemployment remains above nine percent.
“Today, only 14 percent of all undergraduate students enroll in what we call the STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and math,” Obama said at the headquarters of Cree, a Durham-based company that uses LED technology to produce fuel-efficient lighting. “We can do better than that. We must do better than that. If we’re going to make sure the good jobs of tomorrow stay in America, stay here in North Carolina, we need to make sure all our companies have a steady stream of skilled workers to draw from.”
New Hampshire Republican debate: Winners and losers
GOFFSTOWN, N.H — The first major debate of the 2012 Republican presidential race is in the books, a two-hour affair where the seven candidates on stage avoided attacking one another and instead focused their rhetorical firepower on President Obama.
We live-blogged the proceedings but also managed to come up with our initial read-out of the winners and losers from tonight’s proceedings.
Our picks are below. Agree? Disagree? The comments section awaits.
