THANKSGIVING CHALLENGE 2014: GIVING THANKS BY GIVING BACK

THANKSGIVING CHALLENGE 2014:

This year I Challenge All of my Facebook Family, Fellow Bloggers and Target Audience, to either Volunteer for 2 to 4 Hours in a Homeless Shelter or Children’s Group Home on Thanksgiving Eve or Thanksgiving Day.

Or……………

Deliver a Decorated a Thanksgiving Dinner Basket/ Box with all of the Fixings for a full Thanksgiving Dinner to a local Homeless Shelter or Children’s Group Home.

GIVING BACK to others is always the best way to GIVE THANKS for our own individual Blessings!

2012 DNC Convention Changes Venue, Shortens Event Timeframe

This Evening I Attended (Via Invitation) The 2012 DNC Media Reception Party In Charlotte, NC At The NASCAR Hall Of Fame. I Was Blessed To Meet Various Media Professionals From Politico, C-Span, NY Times, Charlotte Observer, etc., I Also Spoke Briefly With Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx. I Encourage Everyone Of You To Attend The 2012 DNC Convention This September If Possible. The Event Will Be Held For 3 Days From September 3rd Through The 7th. To Begin At Time Warner Arena & End At Bank Of America Stadium Where Pres. Obama Will Deliver His Acceptance Speech. Volunteer Opportunities Are Available. Please Visit charlottein2012.com For More Info.





Major changes to length, location of Charlotte DNC

The length of the Democratic National Convention set to take place in Charlotte later this year is being shortened.

Instead of a traditional four-day event, the DNC will be shortened to three days to make room for a day to celebrate the Carolinas, Virginia and the south, the committee announced Tuesday. On September 3, the program will celebrate Labor Day with a DNC kickoff at the Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord.

"Dedicating Monday, September 3rd to families and the community hosting the convention will help show the world what we can do when we out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world and build an economy that creates opportunity for all," said DNC Committee CEO Steve Kerrigan in a statement Tuesday morning.

That Monday event will be free and open to the public and is not an official DNC event. Tuesday and Wednesday's programs will still take place at the Time Warner Cable Arena in uptown Charlotte.

"It's an exciting day for Charlotte and North Carolina. It will be a big moment for this region and community," Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx said during Tuesday morning's press conference.

On Thursday, September 6, President Barack Obama will deliver his acceptance speech at Bank of America Stadium.

Moving his acceptance speech allows the party to open its doors to tens of thousands of people at the 74,000-seat stadium.

"We want this to be the most open and accessible convention ever," Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman-Schultz said.

The DNC Committee hasn't said exactly how ticketing will be offered for the final event at the Bank of America Stadium. The festival-like event at the Charlotte Motor Speedway will be open to the public. It is not an official convention event.


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Sources: 2012 DNC, Charlottein2012, Charmeck.org, McClatchy Newspapers, WCNC, Google Maps, Youtube

Obama's Strategies For 2012 Presidential Win

How Obama Wins In 2012


Despite sagging poll numbers, the president has bottomed out, and Republicans still lack the leaders and the ideas to beat him, argues former Bush strategist Mark McKinnon.



All of my Republican friends are acting as giddy as kids at Christmas. They are delighting in the misfortunes of the Democrats. They believe, accurately, in my opinion, that the health-care bill is political suicide—at least in the short term. So, if the health-care bill passes, Republicans take the House in the fall. And if the health-care bill doesn’t pass, the Democrats look feckless and incapable of getting anything done, and they still lose the House in the fall.

The political environment is as toxic as we’ve ever seen. President Obama entered office during one of the most troubled and challenging times in our history. He got dealt a bad hand, but many argue that he and his party have played a bad hand badly.

But something very interesting and counterintuitive is happening with Obama. The NBC-Wall Street Journal poll published Tuesday has two findings that are at odds with one another. First, only 17 percent of the American public approve of Congress. That’s the lowest sounding ever recorded for Capitol Hill. And it’s hard to imagine just who makes up that 17 percent, beyond friends and family.

Obama’s approval ratings, on the other hand, hover well above his colleagues'—at a healthy 48 percent.

Let’s drill down on that a bit. It’s hard to imagine that things will get any worse for Obama during his presidency. The economy may not be roaring by 2012, but it’s likely to be better. Whatever happens with the health-care bill, assuming it does ultimately pass, it will have had time to take effect and will probably be less onerous than feared. Most soldiers will be out of Iraq and perhaps progress will be apparent in Afghanistan.

No president has been reelected with an approval rating below 47. And, so Obama, at what is probably the lowest point in his presidency, still has a strong enough approval rating to win a second White House term. And that’s before a reelection campaign in which he and his team will probably spend $1 billion.

Let’s also assume for the sake of argument that the Republicans do take the House this fall. If they do, it’s a blessing for Obama—because then there will be shared responsibility and he can blame-shift accountability for all the failures of Congress. He will replay Bill Clinton’s playbook from 1994.

Besides, you have to beat the other team by putting players on the field who have better talent and skills. If the players on the stage are Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner, whose unnatural-looking spray tan and gleaming teeth make him look like the host for The Price Is Right, or Mitch McConnell, who comes across like a funeral director, Obama’s going to look like Babe Ruth. And to win, you have to have better ideas. At this point, with a respectful nod to Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republicans look more like a glue factory than an idea factory.

So to all my Republican friends, I say, don’t start poppin’ the Champagne yet. Obama has taken the worst possible political pounding and he’s still on his feet and looking pretty strong.




The New Idealist Social Network



Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes talks to Dana Goldstein about his new venture for connecting volunteers to non-profits, Jumo, which goes up today, and why Obama’s Organizing for America fell short.


Among Facebook’s tight-knit group of co-founders, Chris Hughes has always been the idealistic one.

When the social networking site first took off in 2004 and his roommates Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz dropped out of Harvard to make a killing, Hughes—a middle class kid from North Carolina—returned to college and graduated, writing a thesis about Algiers. When candidate Barack Obama intrigued Hughes, he shocked Facebook CEO Zuckerberg by quitting the company to work in the unprofitable world of campaign organizing, where Hughes helped to build and run MyBarackObama.com, the candidate’s groundbreaking online organizing tool.

When the presidential race ended and Hughes needed to chart his next move, he tried venture capital, doing a stint as “entrepreneur-in-residence” at General Capital Partners in Cambridge. But he kept asking himself what he could do to contribute to the greater good.

So Hughes traveled to Africa, India, and Latin America. He spoke to development gurus like Jacqueline Novogratz of the non-profit Acumen Fund and Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist famous for his proposals on how to eradicate global poverty by 2025.

“I was constantly thinking, ‘What do I know and how can I use what I know to help these people?’” Hughes said of the social welfare thinkers and activists he met during his travels. “I took some serious time trying to think through that question.”

Where he ended up was Jumo.com—a new networking site to connect non-profits to the public and to one another, which soft launches Thursday morning. By fall, members will be able to use Jumo to learn more about social justice causes, donate money, and find out about opportunities to volunteer time and skills. The name means “together in concert” in Yoruba, a language spoken in Eastern Senegal, which Hughes visited last April and fell in love with.

On Jumo, Hughes says, a college student looking to volunteer during spring break will be able to type in the dates of her vacation, the regions to which she’d like to travel, and see a comprehensive list of volunteer opportunities. A lawyer fluent in Spanish might be able to help Latin American governments rewrite building codes to better protect against earthquake damage.

A Washington, D.C. woman who gives regularly to Planned Parenthood could learn about related, smaller organizations that need support, such as Hughes favorite One by One, which funds the $420 surgery that repairs obstetric fistulas, a preventable condition caused during childbirth that can lead to a lifetime of stigma for affected women, who often leak urine and feces out of their vaginas.

Hughes recently relocated from Brooklyn’s Prospect Heights neighborhood to the Village to be closer to friends, he says, yet—perhaps a sign of his desire for do-gooder, bohemian cred—“I felt sort of bad about leaving Brooklyn.” Jumo, a non-profit, is now his full-time job, and since he decided to move forward with the idea in January, he has been able to raise about $500,000 from individual donors, hire two full-time staffers, and rent office-space in SoHo.

Whether the non-profit sector is ready to embrace a new social networking platform remains to be seen, especially given these organizations’ often-limited staff time and lack of familiarity with cutting edge technology. And there’s competition—Ning, for instance, allows non-profits to build their own branded social networking websites using pre-fabricated tools.

But the most formidable rivals are Hughes’ old friends at Facebook, which already offers the application Causes, on which users can donate money and promote non-profits to friends. Hundreds of thousands of non-profits are members of Causes, and in the application’s first two years, 25 million Facebook users “joined” at least one of the causes. But according to a Washington Post report, the majority of Causes non-profits have never received a single donation through the application.

Hughes says what sets Jumo apart is that there will be fewer distractions—activism is the only reason to be there—and that when there’s a single website people can visit to learn about how to do good, they will start to engage philanthropically more often. “We have a real problem when it comes to giving,” Hughes said. “People tend to give around moments of crisis, at the end of the year, maybe when they see a really dramatic photo or video, the quote-unquote starving child in Africa.

“The old way of doing this would be to put together a consulting firm and go to each non-profit one by one and offer to build a website, Facebook page, and email program for them,” he said. “But the model we’re embracing is where we create a platform.”

Hughes knows from personal experience that not every launch is as successful as Facebook. He worked on the transition team that turned MyBarackObama.com into Organizing for America, now a division of the Democratic National Committee. OFA has been criticized for failing to mobilize its 13 million-person email list in support of health-care reform.

“It didn’t remain an independent organization, which I think it should have,” Hughes said, adding that OFA has been under-staffed. “In the language of the campaign, we saw a movement of people who were hungry for change. They were much less concerned with the Democratic Party.”

For now, Hughes is looking for ways to make change outside of government. He is gay and has criticized gay rights organizations for not being web-savvy. Similarly, he says online tools like Twitter don’t make it easy enough for like-minded people to meet and organize in the real world.

“The basic premise” behind Jumo, Hughes said, “is that people have a genuine desire to be more involved in the world around them. But the Internet and opportunities online haven’t yet caught up with that desire for people to meet and engage.”


Sources: The Daily Beast

Obama Team Recruiting NC Volunteers For Future Elections...Gearing Up For 2012

Obama team training supporters


Dozens of supporters of President Barack Obama will gather in Raleigh and Charlotte Saturday for training in ways to support Obama on issues such as health care and in future elections.

The workshops are designed to train volunteers to lead "Rapid Response Teams" that can activate people to lobby Congress on issues important to the administration, reports Rob Christensen.

The workshops in Raleigh and Charlotte are among 200 being held across the country on Saturday. They are sponsored by Organizing for America, the grassroots arm for the Democratic National Committee.

It includes many people who were involved in Obama's 2008 campaign, and is an indication that the Obama organization plans to make a major effort in North Carolina again in the 2010 and the 2012 elections.

The workshops will train people in grassroots organizing, online social media, data tracking and other tools of the trade. The workshop in Raleigh will be held in the organization's state headquarters on Morgan Street.

The most immediate effect will be the group's lobbying efforts on behalf of the health care overhaul now before the U.S. Senate.





Obama's Machine Sputters in Effort to Push Budget


When his post-campaign organization was unveiled in January, Barack Obama vowed that the 13 million-strong grass-roots network built during his presidential campaign would play a "crucial role" in enacting his agenda from the White House.

"The change we've worked so hard for will not happen unless ordinary Americans get involved, and supporters like you must lead the way," Obama told backers just before his inauguration.

But in its first big test, the group dubbed Organizing for America (OFA) had little obvious impact on the debate over President Obama's budget, which passed Congress on Thursday with no Republican support and a splintering of votes among conservative Democrats. The capstone of the campaign was the delivery of 214,000 signatures to Capitol Hill, which swayed few, if any, members of Congress, according to legislative aides from both parties.

The episode underscores the difficulty that Obama and his supporters face in attempting to transfer the excitement of a historic presidential campaign to the mundane and complex process of pushing legislation through Congress. It also comes as something of a relief to beleaguered Republicans, who cast the relatively humble pledge campaign as a sign of broader disaffection with Obama's economic priorities.

Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, said the petition drive was "a pretty lame start to the effort, and largely inconsequential to the outcome," adding: "The fact is that the sort of hard politics of policymaking are still driven by partisanship, by public opinion polls, by the roles of interest groups and all the other things that have always mattered in Washington."

Natalie Wyeth, a spokeswoman for the OFA project at the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged that the effort was "a work in progress" but said the rapid gathering of tens of thousands of signatures in favor of Obama's budget hints at the group's powerful potential.

"This is just the first step in the process," Wyeth said. "We've been around 60-some-odd days. This is still a very new project, a new effort, and we're learning as we go."

The organization brought Obama's massive campaign e-mail and address list under the umbrella of the DNC, which is run by Obama's handpicked chairman, Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. The president's 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, acts as an outside adviser to the project. The DNC did not make Plouffe available for comment last week.

DNC financial filings give little indication of the contours of OFA, since the project's expenditures are not separated from the committee's overall operations. The effort has had no discernible impact on DNC fundraising: Total receipts were $9.9 million in the first two months of 2009, including about $3 million transferred from the Obama presidential campaign, down from $10.3 million during the same period in 2007, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The grass-roots effort on behalf of Obama's $3.5 trillion budget began in early March and was described by Plouffe as the group's "first major engagement" in the legislative process. OFA organized a door-to-door canvass effort on March 21 that netted about 100,000 pledge signatures; another 114,000 signatures came in through the group's e-mail network, the group said.

OFA trumpeted the effort as resulting in more than 640,000 pledges. But that number comes from triple-counting -- the group made three copies of pledges, one each for the signer's House member and two senators.

"If today is any indication of the support, we're going to be in very, very good shape over the next couple years," OFA director Mitch Stewart declared on Wednesday as the pledges were being distributed.

Republicans scoffed at the effort, arguing that it showed that even most diehard Obama supporters were uncertain about the wisdom of the president's budget plan. Several GOP aides noted that the number of pledges gathered online amounted to fewer than 1 percent of the names on Obama's vaunted e-mail list.

"The phones rang off the hook this week, but the overwhelming majority of calls came from Kentuckians who agreed that this budget spends, taxes and borrows way too much," said John Ashbrook, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Although Obama did not attract any GOP support, he did manage to gain approval for his budget from most of the "Blue Dog Coalition," a group of about 50 conservative and moderate Democrats in the House who have posed a political challenge for the White House.

But Kristen Hawn, a press aide to Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) who acts as a spokeswoman for the Blue Dogs, said the OFA campaign had little impact on lawmakers' decisions on how to vote. Instead, she said, Obama's promise to enact health-care reform on a deficit-neutral basis was the crucial factor in gaining support from 37 members of the fiscally conservative group.

"It was the policy issue, it was that specific commitment, that made a difference," she said, adding: "I'm not sure how many members knew about the petitions."



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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Under The Dome, Washington Post, Organizing For America, DNC, Google Maps

Disney's Giving Away Free Tickets....To "A Day Of Service" Volunteers

(Disney is offering a free day's admission to 1 million guests who complete a day of volunteer work next year.
The "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" program will provide certified volunteers with a one-day ticket to any park at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., or Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., in 2010.)





Disney offers free entry to 1 million volunteers


Disney is offering a free day's admission to 1 million guests who complete a day of volunteer work next year.

The "Give a Day, Get a Disney Day" program will provide certified volunteers with a one-day ticket to any park at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., or Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., in 2010.

Would-be volunteers must register online with Disney and must be residents of the U.S., Canada or Puerto Rico to be eligible for the free admission.

Disney is partnering with HandsOn Network, a clearinghouse for volunteer opportunities, to connect people with projects and to certify that the work was done.

"We are trying to inspire 1 million people to volunteer in their communities and we're inspiring them to do that by giving them a free day at a Disney park," Jay Rasulo, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

Rasulo called the promotion "very timely," citing the increased needs of nonprofits in the weak economy, as well as President Barack Obama's national volunteering initiative.

Duncan Dickson, who teaches theme park management at the University of Central Florida's Rosen School of Hospitality Management in Orlando, said the volunteer initiative is "a smart marketing move."

Dickson said Disney will get good buzz for encouraging volunteerism plus free publicity from the nonprofits that benefit. And even when theme parks let people in for free, they make their money back in other ways, Dickson said.

"You make a lot of money in popcorn and T-shirts and other things," Dickson said.



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Sources: MSNBC, Disney, Youtube, Google Maps

Details of Ted Kennedy's Public Health Care Reform Plan Available....Volunteers Needed To Help Read It

Huffington Post----

Dropping in at 615 pages is the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee's attempt to fix the broken health care system. The HELP Committee is chaired by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). The second-ranking Democrat, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, had a large hand in drafting the bill as well, given Kennedy's absence from the committee while he battles brain cancer.

If you want to help read through the committee's offering, sign up to be part of the research team by e-mailing submissions+healthcare@huffingtonpost.com Or, if you can't wait that long, give it a read now and write me at ryan@huffingtonpost.com.

A HELP Committee aide cautioned that the bill is not in its final form and that part of the reason for filing it is to meet a committee rule that requires a bill to be filed seven days before a vote can be held.

Committee Democrats will be meeting with their Republican counterparts Wednesday and Thursday to hash out the bill's details.

"On the legislation we'll introduce later today, there are some gaps in it and done so intentionally," said Dodd at a press conference earlier Tuesday. "There are no gaps in our determination, in my determination and that of my colleagues to have a public option, to have something done with the pay or play and deal with the follow on biologics. But I left those areas open for discussion, not because they're open for some sort of decision about whether or not we ought to move in that direction. But I want my Republican colleagues to know, I want their ideas, I want to hear what they have to say. This is a bill, it's an opening step."

Kennedy's bill will get its first hearing on Thursday and is scheduled for a committee vote on Tuesday, June 16th.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Tuesday that a committee vote on a health care bill could come as early as the week after next. The battle over the future of health care in America now enters a span of several months as important as any in a generation.

Below is a statement released by Kennedy and further down is the health care bill itself.

For the past year, Chairman Edward M. Kennedy and Democratic Members and staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) have been working to develop legislation that reduces health care costs, allows Americans to keep the coverage they have if they want it, and makes health insurance affordable to those who do not have it today.

Today, while discussions between HELP Committee Democrats and Republicans on key outstanding issues continue, Chairman Kennedy released the landmark "Affordable Health Choices Act." Click here for a copy of the bill, http://help.senate.gov/BAI09A84_xml.pdf.

"Our health care system is a crisis for American families and President Obama and members of Congress of both parties recognize the urgency of the problem. Our goal is to strengthen what works and fix what doesn't. Over the next few days, we will continue working with our Republican colleagues on common sense solutions that reduce skyrocketing health care costs, assure quality care for all and provide affordable health insurance choices. Much work remains, and the coming days and weeks won't be easy. But we have a unique opportunity to give the American people, at long last, the health care they need and deserve," said Senator Kennedy.

Earlier this year, Kennedy and Senator Max Baucus, Chairman of the Finance Committee, which shares jurisdiction of health care reform with HELP, established a joint process that will lead to complementary legislation being marked-up in June and on the Senate floor by July. The HELP Committee is on track to meet that goal. On Wednesday, June 10 and Thursday, June 11, Democrats and Republicans on the Committee will meet to discuss outstanding legislative options such as the public option and employer mandate.

A public hearing is scheduled for Thursday, June 11 at 3 p.m. in Dirksen 430. Mark-up will begin Tuesday, June 16 at 2:30 p.m. in Russell 325.

Last year, Kennedy asked Senator Christopher J. Dodd, vice chair of the HELP Committee, to be his chief deputy on health reform to help lead the overall effort. In addition, Senators Tom Harkin, Barbara A. Mikulski, Jeff Bingaman and Patty Murray have also assumed leadership roles on key aspects of reform within the Committee. Since January, the Committee has held over a dozen public hearings on improving the quality of care, prevention and wellness, and expanding insurance coverage.

"Health care reform cannot and must not wait. Today, we will introduce legislation that will strengthen what works and fix what doesn't. If you like the insurance you have today, you can keep it. If you don't like what you have today, we'll give you better choices, including a public option for health care. This does not symbolize the end of the game or even the end of the first quarter. We still have a lot of work ahead of us and are looking forward to working with our colleagues on a bipartisan basis to resolve the remaining issues and move forward with a mark-up of this legislation next week," Senator Dodd said.

"All stakeholders in the health reform debate agree one of the keys to reining in the rising costs of health care in this country is to reduce chronic disease. Data shows that with an investment of $10 per person per year, community prevention programs could yield net savings of more than $18 billion annually within 10 to 20 years," said Senator Harkin. "This reform provides one of the largest investments in prevention and wellness initiatives, offering choices throughout the health care system. At the federal level, it creates a new inter-agency council to develop a national health strategy and a dedicated funding stream to support these efforts; at the clinical level, it provides coverage of preventive services and the elimination of co-pays and deductibles for these services; and at the grassroots level offers grants for community initiatives. It short, it realigns incentives to make it easier to be healthy and removes the barriers to preventive services like screenings for diabetes, depression, tobacco cessation, and nutrition counseling - to name just a few."

"We can't fix the economy without fixing health care so families can afford it and businesses can afford it. We can't afford not to fix health care," said Senator Mikulski, who was asked by Chairman Kennedy to lead the Senate effort on improving health care quality. "A national health care quality strategy will provide solutions to the biggest problems - medical errors, preventable hospital readmissions and failure to manage chronic disease - that severely impact people, their lives, their checkbooks and national health care costs. Emphasizing quality improves lives, saves lives and helps pay for reform by saving money."

"This bill introduction marks a very important step toward fixing our nation's broken health care system. As we continue developing this measure in the coming days and weeks, our primary goal will be to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable and quality health care," Senator Bingaman said.

"Our health care reform bill is a step toward ensuring all Americans can see a doctor when they need one and that our long term economic strength is not held captive by the skyrocketing cost of care," Senator Murray said. "I applaud my colleagues for the hours of work they have all put in and thank Senators Kennedy and Dodd for their leadership in moving this forward. I am particularly proud that as we work to offer quality, affordable coverage to all Americans that we have included a plan to ensure we have enough health care professionals to provide that care. We still have work to do, but this bill is a good step forward on protecting patient choice, lowering costs and providing coverage for the millions of Americans who currently have none."

A Quick Summary of the Affordable Health Choices Act

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP), today released The Affordable Health Choices Act, legislation that aims to reduce health care costs, protect individuals' choices of doctors, hospitals and insurance plans and guarantee, quality and affordable health care for all Americans.

The Affordable Health Choices Act includes the following five major elements:

CHOICE:

An important foundation of The Affordable Health Choices Act is the following principle: If you like the coverage you have now, you keep it. But if you don't have health insurance or don't like the insurance you have, our bill will give you new, more affordable options.

COST REDUCTION:

The Affordable Health Choices Act will reduce health care costs through stronger prevention, better quality of care and use of information technology. It will also root out fraud and abuse and reduce unnecessary procedures.

PREVENTION:

The best way to treat a disease is to prevent it from ever striking, which is exactly why The Affordable Health Choices Act will give citizens the information they need to take charge of their own health. The bill will make information widely available in medical settings, schools and communities. It will also promote early screening for heart disease, cancer and depression and give citizens more information on healthy nutrition and the dangers of smoking.

HEALTH SYSTEM MODERNIZATION:

The Affordable Health Choices Act will take strong steps to see that America has a 21st-century workforce for a modern and responsive healthcare system. America must make sound investments in training the doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who will serve the needs of patients in the years to come. It will make sure that patients' care is better coordinated so they see the right doctors, nurses and other health practitioners to address their individual health needs.

LONG TERM CARE AND SERVICES:

The Affordable Health Choices Act will also make it possible for the elderly and disabled to live at home and function independently. It will help them afford to put ramps in their homes, pay someone to check in on them regularly, or any of an array of supports that will enable them to stay in their communities instead of in nursing homes.


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Sources: Huffington Post, Flickr, Google Maps