National Press Club

Financial watchdog Better Markets Inc. announced the release of a report Sept. 12 at the National Press Club that estimated the cost of the 2008-2009 financial crisis to be over $12.8 trillion.

“It is remarkable…that no one has looked at the damage caused comprehensively'' until now, Better Markets Chief Executive Officer Dennis Kelleher told reporters at the Newsmaker event.

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President Obama is poised to ensure in a second term that people with disabilities have an even better and more secure future, Jonathan Young, chairman of the National Council on Disability Policy, said at a September 11 National Press Club Newsmaker.

"I am here today because the voice and vote of people with disabilities matter in this election," Young said. "It is time for the disability community to flex its muscles and be the difference-maker it can be."

Young spoke as a representative of Obama. The Romney campaign declined to send a representative to speak on the subject.

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Forty-eight hours before the Washington Redskins' season kickoff in New Orleans on Sunday, general manager Bruce Allen declined to predict how many games the team would win this year at a National Press Club luncheon Sept. 7.

But he was quick to promise that Redskin fans will be captivated by the team’s heralded new quarterback, Robert Griffin III.

“This is a quarterback you’re gonna love,” Allen said, extolling the team’s No. 1 draft pick from Baylor University who last fall won the Heisman Trophy as the nation’s outstanding collegiate player.

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If Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is elected, it would spell disaster for Planned Parenthood, actress-activist Kathleen Turner told a predominantly female National Press Club luncheon audience Sept. 6.

Turner, the still-sultry and throaty-voiced star of stage and screen and an impassioned advocate for women’s reproductive rights, took time from her current show at a local theater to articulate her election-year concerns about conservative and far-right politicians seeking to overturn and cut back hard-won choice rights.

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Decades after losing a civil war with China, Taiwan continues to suffer cultural isolation and is deprived of its right to participate in normal world affairs, Republic of China Minister of Culture Lung Yingtai told reporters at a National Press Club Newsmaker on Aug. 29.

The island nation of 23 million people, under martial law until 1987, remains in the political shadow of mainland China. Its people feel they are treated as second-class citizens, according to Lung.

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Afghanistan's armed forces are improving their capability as the U.S. military withdraws from the country, Marine Corps Commandant James F. Amos told a National Press Club luncheon audience on Aug. 28.

On a recent tour of Helmand Province, Amos said he saw progress and developments that "turn more favorable and turn more favorable," Amos said.

He acknowledged that there have been assaults on U.S. troops by Afghan soldiers and Taliban attacks on civilians. But, in general, security is improving.

Afghan forces are are "very capable on the ground in Helmand Province," he said.

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A five-member panel of educational experts concluded at an Aug. 23 Newsmaker that the nation has failed to achieve racially integrated schools.

Housing patterns are a major reason, said Alex Medler, vice president for policy and advocacy of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. "Housing is one of the most segregated things in America. Choice of schools comes by where you live."

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Sister Mary Hughes, past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), told a club luncheon audience August 16 that she felt “humiliated” when a Vatican representative told her in April that the Vatican was appointing three U.S. bishops to oversee the LCWR, revise its statutes and review its programs.

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission staffs the nation's 300 ports with just 550 people, Commission Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum said Thursday at a Newsmaker event.

“We’re working to find the proper balance between the flow of commerce and detaining dangerous consumer products," she said.

During 2011, CPSC’s Office of Import Surveillance found more than 1,100 violations of safety standards and halted the entry of 4.5 million unsafe products into the United States, many of which were designed for children, she said.

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Improvements to safety and oil production in the Gulf of Mexico remain a mixed picture two years after the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill, panelists said at a Newsmaker event Friday on the future of energy activity in the Gulf.

Drilling in the Gulf contributes 28% of annual U.S.fossil fuel production, making it a critical part of the nation's energy infrastructure.

The U.S. energy industry still needs to balance safety and oil production, said Jennifer Dlouhy, Washington correspondent for the Houston Chronicle.

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