Obama to talk economy during visit to Cleveland steel plant

President Barack Obama won re-election in Ohio last year on the winds of the argument that the economy here and elsewhere was improving.

On Thursday, he’ll be back, but Democrats’ message on the economy has changed now that the goal is to defeat Republican Gov. John Kasich next fall.

Obama will visit the ArcelorMittal steel plant in Cleveland to “deliver remarks on the economy and the strength of American manufacturing,” said a White House official. How Obama’s talk will mesh with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald’s views on the economy remains to be seen.

Lakshmi Mittal

Mr. Lakshmi N. Mittal is the President and CEO of Arcelor Mittal. Arcelor Mittal is the combination of the world’s number one and number two steel companies, Arcelor and Mittal Steel. Mr. Mittal founded Mittal Steel Company (formerly the LNM Group) in 1976

Lakshmi Narayan Mittal[1] (or Lakshmi Niwas Mittal) (born June 15, 1950) is a London-based Indian billionaire industrialist, born in Sadulpur village, in the Churu district of Rajasthan, India, and resides in Kensington, London. He is the richest man in Europe and the fourth richest (5th NOW ) person in the world, with a personal fortune of US$45.0 billion according to Forbes magazine.[2][3]

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Since 2005, Mittal has been the richest person residing in the United Kingdom, the richest person in Asia and the 4th richest person on the planet. He is the President of the Board of Directors and CEO of ArcelorMittal; ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest producer of steel, with assets in France, Belgium, Romania,Spain, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina, South Africa, Poland, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Bulgaria, United States, Trinidad,Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. On July 13, 2005 it was announced that he had donated £2 million to the Labour Party, and on January 16, 2007 it was announced that he had donated a further £3 million.[citation needed]

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Party ideology

The party grew out of the trade union movement and socialist political parties of the 19th century seeking workers’ representation, and describes itself as a “democratic socialist party”.[6] However, since the “New Labour” project began, a larger proportion of its support has come from middle-class voters and many perceive this support as key to Labour’s electoral success since 1997.[6]

Historically the party was broadly in favour of socialism, as set out in Clause Four of the original party constitution, and advocated socialist policies such as public ownership of key industries, government intervention in the economy, redistribution of wealth, increased rights for workers, the welfare state, publicly-funded healthcare and education.

Beginning in the late-1980s under the leadership of Neil Kinnock, and subsequently under John Smith and Tony Blair, the party moved away from socialist positions and adopted free market policies, leading many observers to describe the Labour Party as Social Democratic or Third Way, rather than democratic socialist.[7]

Party electoral manifestos have not contained the term socialism since 1992, when the original Clause Four was abolished, although the new version says:

“The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.”

People have been wondering about the significance of the CLoud, too: http://raisethecloud.org/

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According to their website, “Our proposal is as light as air itself — a tribute to a digital age of bits and atoms beyond the antiquity of steel and glass – a structure which reveals the connected networks of a common humanity fuelling the Olympics, their 2012 host city, and the world itself. The Cloud proposes a new form of monument — a new form of collective expression and experience, and an updated symbol of our dawning age.”

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?topic=165145.0;wap2

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