Upua assembly 4feb2009 :: 1:55:32 to 1:56:58
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1:55:31 to 2:03:00( Edit History Discussion )
Title: Michael Pipe

Michael Pipe's confirmation as Deputy Commissioner for Election Publicity in the 2009 UPUA elections.

1:55:32 to 1:56:58( Edit History Discussion )

Valarie Russell: Moving on to Deputy Commissioner for Election Publicity, Mr. Micheal Pipe.

Michael Pipe: Thanks very much.  Not many of you probably have seen my face, so I do plan on using the majority of my five minutes to tell you a little bit about who I am.  My name is Micheal Pipe and I'm a political science major.  I first came to Penn State in the fall of 2004 and barely survived East Halls.  My first foray into student government came during sophomore year.  I served as an executive vice president for South Halls Residence Association—our meetings were sparsely attended, and that inhibited us from getting anything concrete done.  I think that student government, largely, is the last thing on students' minds.  My junior year was spent largely out of Innovation Park, working on my political talk show called "Present Tense."  I asked many of my guests who came on the show and involved on the show who were involved in government, "how do we counter-act the apathy on campus?"

No answer seemed to satisfy me—this lead me to write, direct, and produce a mockumentary about the state of affairs of UPUA.  (Some of the stars are in the room right now, actually.)  My goal is to give students a different look at student government in a creative way.  I enlisted the help of six actors who made up different parts of the campaign team.  The final product, however, was not consumed en masse by the campus, but we had a good time doing it.

1:56:58 to 1:58:12( Edit History Discussion )

Michael Pipe: After my junior year, I made the decision to drive out to Las Vegas, Nevada, to intern for a relatively unknown politician with a funny name.  After my summer internship ended I was offered a job by the campaign and jumped at the opportunity.  I spent a total of fifteen months working on the best–organized presidential campaign in American history.  I worked in eight different states for the campaign and organized alongside hundreds of fellow staffers and volunteers.  For three weeks in March 2008 I actually had the privilege of working here on-campus for the campaign.  The amazing students I've worked alongside of, and faculty, we registered thousands of new voters, and I'm positive that every one of you was asked "are you registered to vote?"  (I'm pretty sure, we try to do our best.)  I heard that many of the people that we brought into the process say that they felt empowered and in-turn what they did was they used their skills about what they learned about organizing to empower other students and other State College residents.  Some of them even took the opportunity to take off from fall 2008, the semester, to work on various campaigns.  As for me, I actually ended up working in the state up north, Michigan, for the general election.  On that bright night in November millions of peoples' dreams did come true.

More and more people on "relatively modest salaries" are being dragged into becoming higher-rate taxpayers, Budget analysis suggests.

The number of higher rate taxpayers, who pay a chunk of their income at the 40% tax level, could rise from 3.7m last year to 5m by 2014.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) made the prediction after studying changes to tax levels in the Budget.

However, lower-income families will benefit from the changes.

In the Budget, the government also decided to end age-related tax allowances for pensioners.

The IFS said that move will cause pensioners to lose 0.25% of their income in 2014.

'Millionaires pay less'

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls criticised the changes to pension allowances.

"The fact is the normal increase in the state pension just keeps up with inflation, but cuts to personal allowances in the Budget will mean 4.4 million pensioners are worse off in real terms," he said.

"It's now even clearer that this was a Budget that asked millions to pay more so millionaires could pay less."

But Chancellor George Osborne told the BBC that no pensioner would be worse off in cash terms, including the "largest increase in the state pension" next month.

"The net changes made by this government, including introducing this triple lock, mean that pensioners are better off."

The tax-free chunk of income, known as the personal allowance, is rising for the under-65s to �9,205 in April 2013.

The IFS said this would cost the Treasury an estimated �3.5bn, and would mean 675,000 fewer people would pay income tax.

From 6 April, people earning taxable incomes of up to �34,370 will pay 20% in tax and people earning between �34,371 and �150,000 are taxed at 40%.

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