Kevin Kennedy, Head of the Great Lakes Integrated Operational Team and MONUC (United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo) Director of Public Information, met with UN officials today on an urgent appeal to help the thousands of internally displaced persons throughout the country due to intense fighting and looting.
Mr. Kennedy referred to the Security Council statement made yesterday condemning the attacks and calling for an immediate ceasefire to protect civilians and to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers.
Heavy cross border fire between armed factions was reported last night on the Rwandan/DRC border.
These recent incidents have slowed humanitarian aid throughout the country. Kennedy reported that the city of Goma is relatively calm today but overnight widespread looting and little access to the internally displaced has left many looking to neighboring Uganda for security. Many are staying with host families and churches as most refugees are displaced over large areas.
UNHCR reported thousands of civilians fleeing the country and is now distributing food aid and other essentials to the many families left behind.
Kennedy called for further international community assistance to help provide much needed essentials on the ground. He inferred that MONUC has limited ability to cover the entire city of Goma, much less the entire country.  The mission is making urgent efforts to prevent the advance of rebel forces and to restart the political process to rebuild confidence and build a template for cooperation between government troops and rebel groups on the Rwandan border. Over 4,000 child soldiers are now believed to be recruiting to fight with rebel troops.

The Advancement Project held a media briefing today concerning voting issues and victories around the country. Communications Director Sabrina E. Williams explained the need to remove obstacles for voters prior to election day because America has “over 13,000 separate systems and rules” based on states and counties that can confuse and distract voters. Judith A. Browne-Dianis is the Co-Director of the Advancement Project and stated that she was concerned about the “unprepared infrastructure” of the polling places because of the expected historical rates of turnout. She outlined the negative consequences of provisional ballots that are almost always not counted anyway, as well as the matching bills that show eligible voters as only those people whose registration form addresses match those of the Department of Motor Vehicles. In states like Michigan, foreclosure lists have become an issue where voters are being told that they are ineligible to vote because their house is in foreclosure. According to Browne-Dianis, in Virginia, Governor Tim Kaine has not requested help from the Department of Justice and the polling places and poll workers are not prepared for election day. In some polling places there are over 350 voters per machine, which will mean longer lines and that voters are more likely to leave without voting. Kaine has expressed that long lines should be expected, but the Advancement Project and its allies have asked for paper ballots and an extension of voting hours. The Republican National Committee has publicly stated that they oppose both of these measures.
Edward A. Hailes, Jr. is a senior attorney for the Advancement Project. He highlighted some of the victories in the past week for voters around the country. In Colorado, for example, thousands of registration forms were deemed incomplete because of an unchecked box. As election officials realized just how many voters were being unlisted, they realized it was because the applicants needed to give their social security number and check a box, but most people were just giving the number. Election officials have since sent letters to over 1,400 people telling them that they are still eligible to vote. Poll worker training was also examined by the Advancement Project and was found lacking. Instead, the Advancement Project has made “cheat sheets of information” that will be necessary for specific issues that may occur on election day.
Elizabeth Westfall is also a senior attorney for the Advancement Project and she discussed the legal battles that have been happening in battleground states like Ohio and Florida. The Secretary of State of Florida, specifically, has decided to enforce the “No Match Law” that requires accurate matches of address from the DMV and voter registration forms. This leaves more than 12,000 eligible voters without the ability to vote. However, since this law was passed, election officials in over five counties has “parted ways from the Secretary of State” and are allowing these disenfranchised voters to vote. Westfall called this an “encouraging step in the right direction.”

“We want a level playing field with a fair conversation,” said Burns Strider concerning the recent organization of the Democrats as a party that will be able to use their faith and religion like the Republicans have over the past twenty years. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Religion and Ethics Newsweekly held a discussion about the role of religion in the 2008 election season and how it has differed from previous elections. Strider, a member of the panel, was the Director of Faith Outreach for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and has watched the Republicans lose their former comfortableness in speaking about their faith publicly. Now the Democrats have organized positions such as his, to help religion become a more talked about and present topic on the minds of candidates.
Julian Zelizer, another member of the panel, is a professor of history and public affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. Zelizer said that the “crisis of the Bush presidency has been equivalent to a crisis for religious groups.” He also compared the current shift of political strength from conservatives to liberals to Reagan’s usurpation of the religious discussion, only in reverse. Both men believed that the evangelical base is a cultural one and has thus been divided by this election. Also, unlike the usual dependence of values voters to support the conservative vote, the economy has taken center-stage as the issue at hand, and many people, conservatives and liberals, are voting Democratic.
Despite the ease that the Democrats have found, particularly Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama, when speaking about their faith, many evangelical Christians are still voting for Sen. McCain because issues like abortion and same-sex marriage are considered deal breakers.

The governors of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Utah today announced their commitment to a modification of the United States public education system. The education reform framework is called “Tough Choices or Tough Times”(TCTT), which is “the most dramatic overhaul of education in at least 100 years.” The reform is also supported by the National Education Association, the largest teacher’s union in the nation with more than 3.2 million members.
The reform incorporates many features of the world’s most successful education systems. Massachusetts Secretary of Education, Paul Reville, said the reform will “transform our education system to make it truly competitive with the best education systems in the world.” Former U.S. Labor Secretary, Senator William Brock (R-Tenn.), said “forty years ago, the United States had the best educated workforce in the world. Now we are number ten and falling.” Brock said that currently, 70 percent of our 8th graders are not proficient in reading or math, and most will never catch up. He also said that the United States ranks 21st in high school graduates among the 30 industrialized nations, and approximately 1 million American students drop out of high school every year.
Mark Tucker, President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, outlined the issues the reform will address: revamping the high school-college transition; ending high school for most students after the tenth grade, when they would take rigorous state board exams (set to what they should be able to do to succeed in state, community, and technical colleges). Additional reforms would be: after passing the exams, enabling students to go directly to those state, community colleges and technical schools as freshmen; reallocating close to 13% of the funds now being spent on elementary and secondary education towards higher productivity uses; recruiting teachers from the top third of college graduates by paying them professional salaries and letting them run the schools; supplying “Pre-K” for all; and redesigning how schools are funded and managed.
The main differences between TCTT framework and the No Child Left Behind Act is the “Tough Choices or Tough Times agenda is to get 95% of American students ready for college without remediation by the time they leave high school,” as the TCTT report says. Lyonel B. Tracy, Commissioner of Education in New Hampshire, said the No Child Left behind act sets minimum standards, while the TCTT “follows the child through the next round.”

Mark Tucker, President of the National Center on Education and the Economy, outlines the issues in education “Tough Choices or Tough Times” will address.

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In the wake of highest GDP contraction in seven years, several economic experts offered their take on the recent crisis and weighed in on the costs and benefits of a fiscal stimulus package during a Joint Economic Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
“This is likely to be the most severe recession the United States has experienced in a number of decades,” said Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
“This is going to be much longer, more severe, more protracted than the average U.S. recession.”
Roubini recommended an aggressive fiscal stimulus package priced anywhere between $300 billion and $400 billion, and warned that it should be passed soon.
“We cannot wait until the next congress in February because three months from now, the collapse of spending, consumption, and investments is going to be so sharp that the economic contractions could become even more severe.”
Roubini said that the next package should focus on direct government spending for goods and services since the private sector has decreased its overall consumption.
Richard Vedder, Professor of Economics at Ohio University and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said he was “dubious” of a fiscal stimulus package. Vedder said that fiscal stimulus does little to aid the economy, and pointed out the last stimulus package was followed by a decrease in GDP and a rise in unemployment rates. However, if fiscal stimulus is unavoidable, Vedder stated that it should take a different form. “If you’re going to have a stimulus package, certainly a tax cut is preferable to a spending increase…a tax cut would have some more positive long run incentive effects.”
When asked if the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or the bailout bill, was a good idea, Roubini answered it was the right step as long as it was used to inject banks with public capitol. This was a notion agreed upon by Simon Johnson, Ronald Kurtz Professor
of Entrepreneurship at MIT.
“The original design of TARP to buy distressed assets was a bad idea and remains a bad idea. Using those funds to recapitalize the bank system and the insurance industry, and other financial institutions that may need recapitalization as we head into serious recession is a very good, if not essential idea,” said Johnson.
Vedder said that he reluctantly supported the original proposal, but was neutral regarding the revisions.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, recommended an aggressive fiscal stimulus package priced anywhere between $300 billion and $400 billion, and warned that it should be passed soon (0:29).

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Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, says that the current recession may last for up to two years, and will be more severe than the average recession without a fiscal stimulus package (0:34).

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For weeks, the administration has been lowering expectations about the economy, saying the third quarter report on gross domestic product would be rough.
It was. It fell 0.3% between July and September, the weakest figure in seven years. And the White House outlook? Things are probably going to get worse.
“There’s no question the economy has weakened significantly,” admitted Eddie Lazear, chairman of the president’s council of economic advisors. “We’ve got a few tough months ahead of us,”
Lazear said parts of the U.S. are undoubtedly in a recession, but declined to say if the entire country is. By definition, a recession occurs when the economy shrinks for two quarters in a row.
But Lazear said the administration’s recent actions, notably the massive $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP will help move the economy in the right direction.
Dividends
Meantime, White House press secretary Dana Perino was subjected to a barrage of questions about why banks dipping into the TARP trough for much needed capital continue to pay dividends to shareholders.
“You know, some people think only rich people get dividends. That’s not true, she said.” Perino pointed out that “mutual funds, schoolteachers” and others get dividends through investments they hold.
Where’s Bush?
The silence is thunderous. President Bush is, perhaps not by choice, staying off the campaign trail and keeping quiet about the race to succeed him – a race now down to its final hundred hours. He’ll spend the weekend at Camp David with the First Lady, but will return to the White House to watch returns on election night.
When will the president hold a news conference to comment on the election?
“I don’t know,” says Perino. “You’ll probably hear from me first though, on Tuesday night.”
The President did find a receptive audience today, though, attending graduation at the FBI academy, then visiting Marine Squadron One – home of Marine One, the presidential helicopter.
Mrs. Bush, for her part, visited New Orleans today, her 20th visit to the Gulf region since Hurricane Katrina. She visited an elementary school and announced a grant to help rebuild school libraries in the region. Perino said it would probably be Mrs. Bush’s final visit to the region as first lady.

The Washington Bureau will cover a Joint Economic Committee hearing on “Faltering Economic Growth and the Need for Economic Stimulus” and a news conference to announce and discuss the details about the first group of states to join implementation of the “Tough Choices or Tough Times” initiative. The Bureau will also cover a discussion on “God and Country: A New Role for Faith in Presidential Politics?” at the National Press Club.
In the afternoon, the Washington Bureau will cover a news conference on “Barriers to the Ballot Box: What Can Voters Expect on November 4?” at the National Press Club and a forum on “Back to Enron: Were the Wrong Lessons Learned for Corporate Governance and Energy Policy?” at the Cato Institute.