http://www.mikepanetta.com Wed, 27 Jan 2010 02:25:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en DC Vote has been making an aggressive push to get President Obama to address the lack of representation in Congress for the District of Columbia during his State of the Union address. They recently dropped off 41,000 petitions to be delivered to the White House at a Capitol Hill post ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2010/01/dc-voting-rights-and-the-state-of-the-union/ Last month I wrote about grant money being made available by the DC government for organizations working in support of DC voting rights and/or statehood. More details were recently released by the Office of Partnerships and Grants Services on how to go about applying for some of this money. ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2010/01/funds-available-to-promote-dc-statehood-and-voting-rights/ This is an exciting time for DC Statehood, and I know I speak for many when I say how pleased I am to see all the renewed efforts and energy surrounding the goal of making the District of Columbia the 51st state. If there ever was a time to move forward ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2010/01/district-of-columbia-statehood-efforts-in-2010/ The Statehood Stakeholder Committee has now has several subcommittees to manage the planning and implementation of several activities in furtherance of our push for full democracy and statehood. I'll be very active in this process (of course) and I encourage others to get involved as well. There is a lot ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2010/01/dc-statehood-stakeholders-meeting-january-19/ Order by midnight, December 17th for standard shipping delivery by the 24th! I have three questions for you: 1) Are you still looking for the perfect holiday gift? 2) Do you like snarky T-shirts? 3) Do you want to support the DC Statehood Fund? If the the answer was "yes" to any of the above, ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2009/12/dc-statehood-fund-holiday-gifts/ UPDATE: According to the Office of the Secretary, the details of the grant are not ready for release. Stay tuned for a future update regarding the procedure and timing. In the meantime, get your thinking caps on... The following grant notice was distributed last week at the Statehood Stakeholders meeting.  I ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2009/12/competitive-grants-dc-statehood-voting-rights/ As I wrote yesterday, DC is finally free to implement laws and spend money on programs related to abortion, medical marijuana, and needle-exchange programs as Congress had stripped away the anti-democratic riders that usurped these aspects of home rule. Here's a great statement from Delegate Norton on what the lifting ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2009/12/more-on-lifting-dc-riders/ Good news from the Capitol, the District's annual appropriation bill has cleared the conference committee with many of the egregious riders being stripped off. The District's long-standing prohibitions on spending city funds on medical marijuana, needle-exchange programs and abortion will finally be lifted. Directly from the Senate Appropriation Committee's web ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2009/12/district-appropriation-bill-clears-conference-committee/ Yesterday at Kramer Middle School in Anacostia the One Economy Corporation, Cricket Wireless, Google and Qualcomm announced their collaboration to provide 1,000 D.C.-area low-income families free wireless broadband for two years. One Economy will be working with area community organizations to identify the families to receive the broadband cards. Over ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2009/12/google-and-other-companies-to-give-dc%e2%80%99s-low-income-families-free-wireless-broadband/ I'm a little late in writing about this, but I wanted to make sure I got it into my blog "for the record". As you may recall, last week I wrote about a hearing that was taking place on Capitol Hill about the the issue of Congressional oversight "in  all cases ... http://www.mikepanetta.com/2009/11/trouble-for-colonialist-at-the-capitol/