U.S. Navy playing Politics with a Carrier?

The Navy announced its final decision Wednesday to move a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to Mayport Naval Base in Florida, but the political battle over where to station the carrier may be far from over.

The ship would be the first nuclear-powered carrier based at Mayport, which was home to conventionally powered carriers from 1952 until the retirement of the USS John F. Kennedy in 2007. Since the retirement of the Kennedy, all East Coast carriers have been stationed at Virginia's Norfolk Naval Base.

In a statement, Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Bill Nelson, D-Fla., stressed the importance of the Navy spreading out its Atlantic-based carrier fleet.

"Keeping all the carriers in just one port is too great a risk," he said.

Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., said the Florida delegation's next step is to secure funding in the fiscal 2010 budget to upgrade Mayport to accommodate the carrier.

"National security demands we move this project forward," Martinez added.

Virginia lawmakers could stand in the way of the Navy's decision. Each carrier brings about 3,000 military jobs to a base -- making it a strong economic engine to an area.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., an Armed Services Committee member and former Navy secretary, said after the announcement that he wants a "fully-justified cost/benefit analysis" and other information before Congress considers providing the funding to implement the decision.

"I intend to bring full scrutiny to this decision in the coming months as it makes its way through the appropriate congressional process," Webb said. "I have yet to receive a proper, intelligence-based assessment from the Navy on this matter, despite the fact that as late as Jan. 12, the chief of naval operations confirmed that he could not identify a threat-based requirement for this proposal."

The Navy announced its preference to move a nuclear-powered carrier to Florida in November, prompting Virginia lawmakers and Gov. Tim Kaine to urge that a decision be postponed until after President-elect Obama's inauguration.

Now that the Navy has made its decision, Obama and his national security team will be under considerable pressure by lawmakers from both states -- each of which were important to his election -- to respond to their competing concerns. Kaine, whom the president-elect tapped last week to lead the Democratic National Committee, is likely to continue to press the issue.

Webb penned a 24-page paper this month opposing efforts to move a carrier to Mayport, arguing that it would cost as much as $1 billion at a time when the Navy has more pressing fiscal priorities.

"If I were serving as secretary of the Navy today, I would be very worried about where I would be finding $4.6 billion to pay for unfunded requirements in the Navy's existing budget," Webb said Wednesday.

"I would also be worried about where I would be finding the billions of dollars needed to fund procurement for the Navy's lamentably mismanaged aircraft programs, and the billions that the Navy would need to grow its fleet by more than 25 ships, to its announced goal of 313 combatants," he said.

Webb added that he would "not be proposing an additional $1 billion on top of these shortfalls for a nonessential, redundant facility in Mayport."

Obama Predicts a Florida Victory tonight - WTF !!!!

Obama Predicts a Florida Victory

By JOHN HARWOOD

In the realm of athletics, President-elect Barack Obama has become most closely identified with basketball. But he plainly loves sports of all kinds — and follows the action closely.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Obama predicted that Florida would defeat Oklahoma in tonight’s BCS championship game, especially if its speedy running back Percy Harvin is healthy. But he reiterated his support for a college football playoff system and noted that other schools beyond Florida and Oklahoma can lay claim to being number one no matter who wins tonight.

“I think Utah has a pretty good claim. They’re undefeated,” he said. “I think USC, which had a great Rose Bowl, beat Penn State pretty badly. They’ve got a pretty good claim to being number one. Florida and Oklahoma, I think, both have a claim. Texas, at this point, has got to feel like, ‘Well, we did OK, too.’ I think–I think a football playoff system makes sense. I’ve spoken about this quite a bit, and I think if you look at knowledgeable sports fans, they agree with me.”

Mr. Obama said he’d have his hands full attempting to rescue the American economy. But he has gotten in a little practice in bowling lately on the Nintendo Wii his daughters received for Christmas. Mr. Obama, who famously struggled in bowling during last year’s Democratic primaries, said he performs better in the video game.

Could This Week Decide the Election?

Could This Week Decide the Election?

By Shane D'Aprile

Tuesday marks the start of early voting in Ohio-the state that held the key to the presidential election four years ago. In a place where voting issues have become the norm, some estimates have early voters comprising more than 35 percent of Ohio's total electorate this year. If so, it would be more than enough to swing the state to Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain.

"Truth is, it's a bit of a work in progress here," says Democrat and longtime Ohio political consultant Jerry Austin. This is the first presidential election for which the state will allow early voting, and Austin says there's just not enough history to provide candidates and campaigns with much of a game plan.

"The biggest thing it forces you to do," says Austin, "is to allocate a lot of resources now, as opposed to leaving it all for the last three weeks of the race."

Across the country the frequency of early voting has increased dramatically over the past three election cycles as more states have moved toward no-excuse absentee voting. That means that tens of thousands of voters no longer need a legitimate reason to cast an absentee ballot.

One wrinkle to the early voting process in Ohio this year is a rule that will allow new voters to register and actually cast an early vote on the same day. Early voting in Ohio is set to begin Tuesday, but the state's registration deadline isn't until Oct. 6. During that six-day period, Ohio's Democratic secretary of state has ruled that residents can register and immediately cast a vote. It has resulted in a lawsuit from the state GOP, which says the rule raises the specter of fraud.

Ohio's state Supreme Court is expected to rule on whether the early voting process can move forward as planned sometime Monday.

The Obama campaign, meanwhile, is preparing to take advantage of the 6-day window with younger voters, particularly those on college campuses. The primary focus is Ohio State University, which has more than 50,000 students. The campaign is also concentrating on urban areas and other parts of the state where the likelihood of securing early votes for Obama is high.

Rock the Vote has plans for an Ohio bus tour to raise awareness of the early voting window that runs mostly through the state's urban areas and major college towns.

"The fact that [Ohio] has this golden window is something [Democrats] are seeing as a great opportunity to encourage folks to get out and vote early," says Christine Pelosi, a Democratic organizer. "The other benefit is that if you can get your supporters out now, before the final blitz of negativity, you can counter some of the voter suppression that comes in the form of negative campaigning during the last few weeks."

From a grassroots perspective, one of the keys to early voting is voter education. Pelosi says the greatest early voting hurdle tends to be unawareness of the rules. That's particularly the case in a state like Ohio, where the 6-day window breeds uncertainty.

"It's confusing," she says. "It made my eyes pop and I do this for a living. So, I can imagine the reaction of the average voter."

The McCain campaign, too, is rounding up early voters in Ohio, and says it's not ceding the playing field to Obama. The McCain-Palin ticket will be in Columbus, Ohio for a Monday morning rally.

Republican Phillip Stutts says that while on paper the Obama campaign has the organizing advantage, the McCain campaign boasts an Ohio grassroots staff that has worked together for more than one election cycle, and has executed early voting plans in the form of absentee balloting in previous years.

Of course, Ohio is far from the only key state where early voting will exert a major impact on the final vote. Early voting estimates are just as high in states like Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and Florida, where between 30 and 40 percent of the total electorate is expected to cast early or mail-in votes.

In 2004, says Stutts, the early voting focus in the Bush campaign was on reliable voters. Stutts was the national director of the Bush campaign's highly successful 72-hour plan.

"We had an early vote strategy for every state in 2004, because you had to deal with different rules and regulations in just about every state," he says. "We tried to turn out our reliable voters early, which allowed us to spend the last week or so getting the less reliable voters out."

As for exactly who votes early, it's hard to identify any real pattern, says John Fortier of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. Based on past statistics, early voting doesn't appear to advantage one party over another, but Fortier says research does show that early voters are more partisan than the rest of the electorate.

In the end, says Stutts, early voting likely means that the next two weeks are just as important as Election Day for the GOTV operations of both campaigns.

"You could have a third of the entire electorate that has already voted by Election Day," he says. "So the best early vote strategy could really decide this entire election."

sdaprile@politicsmagazine.com

(Florida) Local Latin American advocacy group supports driver licences for illegals

Local Latin American advocacy groupsupports driver licences
for illegals
By ELYSA BATISTA

A local Latin American advocacy group supports a resolution that would allow illegal immigrants to get driver licenses.

The League of United Latin American Citizens’ Civil Right Council 7115 supported the resolution, passed by its state chapter in Miami last week, during a press conference Thursday at the Golden Gate Community Center.

Council President Victor Valdes presented the resolution, aimed at providing driver licenses to undocumented immigrants with no criminal record.

On one side, there is the humanitarian issue that affects the unlicensed immigrants, Valdes said.

“But I realized that there would be racist people out there that would say, ‘Well, we don’t care,’” he said.

Instead the group opted to approach it from the safety perspective, Valdes said.

“If there are 1 million undocumented drivers in Florida, while we (licensed drivers) are on the road, the chances for an accident, regardless of who is at fault, is greater,” he said.

If undocumented drivers have licenses and insurance, the state’s drivers would be safer, Valdes said.

The way things are right now, who would pay if he were in an accident with an unlicensed or uninsured undocumented immigrant, Valdes said.

“It’s the governor’s moral obligation to guarantee Florida’s drivers that the streets are safe for us to drive on,” said Valdes.

Local government officials had a different take on the issue.

Commissioner Fred Coyle said he thought giving driver licenses to illegal immigrants would be a violation of law and that he would strongly oppose such legislation.

“They shouldn’t be driving and they shouldn’t be here,” Coyle said. “A driver’s license gives people a lot of access to things, including an airplane.”

It’s a chance that government should not take, Coyle said.

“We simply can’t tolerate that. If they are undocumented, we simply don’t know who they are, and we shouldn’t be giving them documentation,” Coyle said, adding that such legislation did not make sense. “If they think that it’s going to solve a problem, it won’t be solved by giving the official documentation.”

The Collier County Sheriff’s Office agreed.

“We don’t support changing the law,” said Collier County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Karie Partington. “Giving illegal aliens driver’s licenses would be a violation of state law and the upcoming federal REAL ID act.”

The REAL ID Act of 2005 was passed by Congress to make it more difficult to fraudulently acquire a driver license or ID card, as part of the effort to fight terrorism and reduce fraud.

The act establishes minimum standards for state-issued driver licenses and personal identification cards which include information and security features that must be incorporated into each card; proof of identity and U.S. citizenship or legal status of an applicant; verification of the source documents provided by an applicant; and security standards for the offices that issue the licenses and identification cards.

REAL ID compliant driver licenses and ID cards allow people to board a federally-regulated airplane, access a federal facility or a nuclear power plant.

“It’s a matter of domestic security, because driver’s licenses are such key pieces of documentation,” said Partington.

Valdes said he knows that there are people clamoring for the government to immediately deport all undocumented immigrants as a way to stop them from driving, but that won’t happen overnight.

“(The government) can’t guarantee that they’re going to be able to kick out, within the next 15 to 30 days, the more than 1 million undocumented immigrants in Florida,” said Valdes. “You have to at least give them a license, or else you are putting regular drivers in peril, because these people will still be on the road.”

The resolution, which was unanimously approved by the Florida League of United Latin American Citizens Assembly last week in Miami, is similar to one adopted by New Mexico in 2003 and revamped in 2007.

According to New Mexico documents, residents within that state — with or without a Social Security number— are required to present two forms of identification to obtain a driver license. A person without a Social Security card can present either a tax identification number, a Matricula Consular provided by the Mexican Consulate in Albuquerque after February 2005 or a valid foreign passport to obtain a driver license.

Since 2003, New Mexico has issued 50,562 driver licenses to foreign nationals or those without a legal presence. Out of the 50,562, a total 10,790 issued since Oct. 1.

“We think this law change, has benefited New Mexico,” said Ken Ortiz, the Director of the Motor Vehicle Division for the state of New Mexico.

Ortiz said, that by being able to issue illegal immigrants a driver license, the law has helped accomplish two of the state’s main goals.

“We can test them and make sure that they are safe drivers,” Ortiz said. We know who they are, we know where they live. We feel that it brings them out of the shadows.”

He added that with a valid license, a foreign national would be less likely to leave the scene of an accident, and more likely to report a crime.

Once in the system, the state can keep track of traffic citations and monitor vehicle insurance, which is also a positive, Ortiz said.

“I think it’s an overall benefit for the state,” he said.

New Mexico is one of seven states in the U.S. that do not require drivers to prove legal status to obtain a license.

The next step is for Florida’s delegation to take the resolution to LULAC’s national convention on July 12, said Valdes.

Soon after that, he said, Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Legislature can expect to receive the proposal.