US President Barack Obama said on Saturday that until the US becomes a place where anyone who is willing to work hard can earn a way into the middle class “we can’t let up and we can’t rest.”
“We can’t rest until we offer new ladders of opportunity for anyone willing to climb them,” Obama said in a keynote address to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner.
“Over the last 30 years, upward mobility in this country — the idea that if you work hard, you can get ahead — has slipped out of reach for too many Americans. And that’s especially true in communities with large African-American populations,” he said.
Obama hewed to the theme of the dinner, the “Spirit of 1963,” including the civil rights movement and the March on Washington for Jobs and Justice led 50 years ago by Martin Luther King Jr and the advances it brought about for black Americans. Topping the list of achievements is Obama’s election in 2008 as America’s first black president.
Without mentioning his place in history, Obama acknowledged progress made since 1963, but said there was more to be done. He spoke of work needed to reduce a black unemployment rate that is twice that of whites, increase the minimum wage and provide health care and education for all.
Obama also lamented the failure earlier this year to get gun legislation through the Senate and said “that means we’ve got to get back up and go back at it” to work harder than those he said want to make it easier for people to get firearms.
Obama made passing tough gun laws a top priority after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December last year.
However, Congress rejected his proposals to restrict sales of certain types of guns and require greater background checks. Gun-rights groups opposed the measures, saying they would infringe on constitutional rights.
“We fought a good fight earlier this year, but we came up short, and that means we’ve got to get back up and go back at it,” Obama said.
“As long as there are those who fight to make it as easy as possible for dangerous people to get their hands on guns, then we’ve got to work as hard as possible for the sake of our children ... to do more work to make it harder,” he said to applause.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion