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President Museveni of Uganda, with Lidet Tilahun, Matt Keller and Molly Mark

Yesterday, the East African Community signed a memorandum of understanding with One Laptop per Child in a ceremony in Kampala, Uganda.

Speaking at the ceremony to announce the partnership, Amb. Juma Mwapachu, Secretary General of the East Africa Community, said, “If you want to build a knowledge economy, you must have a computer literate population, starting from primary, secondary school children and all the way to university….This is a very ambitious project for which we will have to partner with various people and institutions to mobilise and find the resources required to meet our objectives by 2015.”

According to the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the EAC and OLPC in Kampala, Uganda, the two organisations agreed to work together to leverage the advantages of the laptops in transforming primary school education and to promote strategies for better access to laptops and connectivity– especially for the region’s underprivileged children.

Pictured are President Museveni of Uganda (right), Lidet Tilahun and Matt Keller of One Laptop Per Child (center), and Molly Mark of Cassidy & Associates (left). President Museveni has agreed to deploy 10,000 OLPC laptops in Uganda.

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a nonprofit organization created by Nicholas Negroponte and partners from the MIT Media Lab (USA) to design, manufacture and distribute laptop computers that are inexpensive enough to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education.

Note: OLPC is a pro-bono client of Cassidy & Associates.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Colin Peterson  has held and scheduled a number of oversight field hearings across the country to advance consideration of the reauthorization of the Farm Bill which expires in 2012.  The first of many hearings was held in Washington, D.C. on April 21^st where the Committee heard from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Chairman Peterson said:

 “This hearing is the first step in the process of writing the next Farm Bill. A bill this large and that covers so many important issues takes a lot of time and effort to get it right, and I am committed to a process that is open, transparent, and bipartisan. I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and from all regions of the country to be sure that we put together a bill that supports the food, fiber, conservation, energy and rural development needs of this country.” 

These hearings field hearings will help the Committee prioritize the continued need for important farm programs that have helped to support rural America and provide our country with an abundant, safe and affordable food supply.

Cassidy CEO Marty Russo just posted his thoughts on the DISCLOSE Act to National Journal as a regular contributor to its Under the Influence expert blog.

The Partnership for Philanthropic Planning sent a letter to the ranking members of the Finance and Ways and Means Committees today urging them to move forward with reconciliation on the Tax Extenders Act of 2009.  

The Partnership for Philanthropic Planning is concerned with the extension of the Individual Retirement Account Charitable Rollover provision, saying a failure to extend could cause many major universities and hospitals to lose charitable donations.  In her letter Tanya Howe Johnson, president of Partnership for Philanthropic Planning, asked lawmakers to bear in mind, “the many charities that rely on IRA rollovers from generous Americans. Prompt action by Congress on the IRA Charitable Rollover would help charities raise the money they so desperately need in this tough economic climate.” However, the bill contains a host of other extensions that may complicate passage.

According to OpenCongress:

This bill would extend the filing deadline for existing tiers of unemployment benefits until Dec. 31, 2010. COBRA health care subsidies for the unemployed would also be extended. Other provisions in the bill include an extension of the current rate of Medicare payments to doctors and dozens of targeted tax cuts. The total cost of the bill is estimated at $140 billion, with $80 billion of that being for the extended unemployment benefits. None of the cost is offset with new revenues.

With a crowded legislative calendar and fierce fiscal rhetoric set against the backdrop of economic uncertainty and high unemployment it will be interesting to see what happens with this bill.

IRS officials indicated that a study regarding: Reporting of Unrelated Business Income Tax, Endowments, and Executive Compensation Affecting the Tax-exempt Status of Institutions of Higher Learning will be issued soon. These comments were made during an annual Georgetown Law conference on Representing & Managing Tax-Exempt Organizations.

For more check out the Non profit law prof blog.

I read an interesting article posted in Knowledge@Wharton on Health Care Reform.

“America’s health care reform may be out of the emergency room, but its prognosis remains sketchy. Passage of the historic 2,400-page legislation that President Barack Obama signed into law on March 23 by no means ended the health care debate, say Wharton experts: It just splintered one massive question mark into a lot of new big ones.”

I know from my eighteen years in Congress that whenever major reform legislation is enacted, implementation will always be a difficult task. In my view, every piece of legislation is a living document which is subject to change and improvement as circumstances change in society. That is one of the advantages of our political system.

This is certainly true with the recent healthcare reform law.  The Congress has done the best they can given the circumstances that the country is facing now.  They had to produce legislation that could garner a majority vote in both houses.  It might not be the best possible result, but at least we have begun to address the health care crisis in our country.

Using a football analogy – you can’t score a touchdown every time you start with the ball on your own five yard line.  It’s better to take steps to move the ball down the field toward your ultimate goal. That is what Congress did with health care reform. The big question is how do we keep the ball moving forward. 

For reform to be truly beneficial, we must address the many details of implementation.  Much of this work will move to the executive branch agencies although you can be sure Congress will keep a close eye on the progress.  How do we ensure we are actually containing costs and reducing the deficit? How do we keep access open? How will the health insurance exchanges operate in an efficient and effective manner?  How do employers answer questions from their employees asking when they can put an adult child back on the group plan?

There is a lot of negative talk right now about deficiencies in the bill and even campaign rhetoric that the bill should be repealed.  My view is that advancing health care solutions and addressing the deficit is too important to our country to give up and go back to the five yard line.  Let’s give health care reform legislation the opportunity to work.  If it doesn’t work or if there are specific areas that need to be redesigned, then Congress should step up to make the necessary adjustments.

In response to health advocacy efforts and recent health studies, the FDA has begun to focus attention on the amount of salt consumed by Americans, specifically the amount of sodium in processed foods.

Currently, the food industry is not obligated to regulate the amount of sodium in products as sodium is generally recognized as safe by the FDA. However, according to the Washington Post, “In recent months, Conagra, Pepsico, Kraft Foods, General Mills, Sara Lee and others have announced that they would reduce sodium in many of their products.” Experts at the Department of Agriculture, the FDA and the Center for Science in the Public Interest say this may not be enough when it comes to reducing the number of Americans suffering from heart disease and hypertension as a result of high sodium intake.

The Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, will be releasing a report on Wednesday focusing on strategies to reduce salt intake across the board. Likely, this report written by leading health authorities will be used as a guide not only in the debate on sodium and standards to be set by FDA, but will also be used by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee which will be writing the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans  due to be launched next year.

The GAO report previously highlighted on this blog shows that the government is taking a hard look at tax exemptions in the Internal Revenue Code.

According to BNA News (subscription req’d) Diana Aviv of the Independent Sector said, “There is a significant challenge in setting the parameters for potential tax reform relative to treating some causes more favorably than others, and particularly that is seen by the public at large, who don’t necessarily trust that their elected officials would come up with the right formula to decide what constitutes that kind of favorable treatment.” Furthermore as one Finance Committee staff member pointed out the for-profit/charity divide has become blurred making legislative remedies all the more complicated. As the government addresses tax reform this issue will certainly come up.

Are all charities created equal, or are some more equal than others?  How will those decisions be made? Who will get to keep their tax exempt status?

After months of uncertainty as to the direction Congress and the Administration are going to take on energy, the next few weeks should bring some clarity, even though an energy bill on the President’s desk is still many rancorous months away. The long-awaited Kerry-Graham-Lieberman draft of a climate bill is slated to be released on April 26^th, and President Obama is weighing in: “Obama Wants Senate to Tackle Climate Bill After Wall St. Reforms”, by Darren Samuelsohn, The New York Times):

“This is one of these foundational priorities from my perspective that has to be done soon,” Obama said of the climate bill Friday during a White House meeting of outside experts helping the administration on economic recovery plans.

Obama predicted several weeks of Senate debate on the financial reform package, with lawmakers working behind the scenes on a climate bill that must get support from industry if it has any chance of passing.”

Perhaps the most significant recent indication that the President is engaging with this issue at a high level was a meeting between Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, and the leaders of some of the major environmental and climate advocacy groups, during which it seems he shared an Administration commitment to fight for a bill in the next few months. One might guess, however, that that message is tied to some uncomfortable concessions for that community.

Senator Kerry, one of the main players on the Congressional climate stage, today (“John Kerry sees an energy ‘moment’”, by Jeanne Cummings, Politico) gave a number of clues to what may be in the “tri-partisan” package, including: a price on carbon emissions, but not via the cap-and-trade mechanism in the House-passed bill; consumer protection payments to alleviate energy cost-based financial hardship; and, significant assistance for industries such as coal, which will help supporters frame this effort as a job creator.

As I see it, the key to successfully moving a climate bill will be the number of Senators who show signs of embracing the efforts put forth by Senators Kerry, Graham and Lieberman. That alone will be the signal to the Majority Leader for whether this bill has “any legs” in the Senate.

That being said, mere passage of a bill in the Senate does not a law make. “KGL”, as it is now being called, is vastly different to the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill. Reconciling those differences would be difficult under the best of circumstances; and, the clock continues to tick, with barely 70 legislative days left in the 111^th Congress. Stay tuned …

Politico reported this morning that Spanish language network Telemundo has announced it will launch its own Sunday morning talk show à la NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Fox’s “Fox News Sunday” and others.   From the piece:

Telemundo has announced the debut of “Enfoque” (”Focus”), which airs Sundays at 11:30 a.m.

The show will likely share an audience with Univision’s “Al Punto” with Jorge Ramos, which began airing last year.  As we all know, the immigration debate is gearing up, and the Spanish-speaking electorate continues to grow exponentially in size. While it’s still rare these days to see Hispanic elected officials guesting on the regular Sunday morning shows, I have a feeling this is about to change…