Greetings Pita-consumers!

PITAPOLICY Consulting & Blog, as well as its Founder, Mehrunisa Qayyum are proud to endorse President Obama for a variety of political economy reasons.  Also, business leaders have endorsed Obama:  Warren Buffet; James Sinegal, Costco Fndr; Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO; Dave Geffen, Dreamworks.  In addition, three Nobel Prize Laureates of Economics have also endorsed Obama. None have come forth in support of Governor Romney as this point.   These are PITAPOLICY’s reasons:

Economy & Jobs

• Before President Obama took office, the economy was losing 800K jobs a month.  Now we’ve seen 31 consecutive months of job growth and 5.2 million new private sector jobs in the U.S.
• President Obama refused to let the American auto industry die.  more than 1 million jobs were saved, the U.S. auto industry is roaring back, adding jobs and all the government loans were paid back ahead of time.

Taxes

• President Obama has cut taxes for every working American, saving the typical middle-class family $3,600 in taxes over his first term.
• Mitt Romney would ahve to raise taxes on middle-class families in order to pay for tax cuts for millionaires, costing the typical American family with kids $3,000 more each year.

Foreign Policy

• President Obama ended the war in Iraq and brought our troops back home.
• He is drawing down our troops in Afghanistan as we transition security responsibility to the Afghan people, and is on track to responsibility end the war in 2014.
• President Obama made the bold decision to order a raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, eliminating the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks and the only leader al Qaeda had ever known.

After observing the Arab Awakening and their respective revolutions for the last 23 months, we are truly excited to witness the local process of disagreement, dialogue, and elections.

Electoral Process

With respect to disagreement, we see two things: 1)  grass roots movements challenging the status quo and 2) polarized campaigning.  By no means are we elevating the Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring Revolutions’ global impact, but there are similarities–like the growing rates of unemployed youth.  Polarized groups, such as the Tea-Party have also grown in the US in response to discontent and the support of huge financial donations, almost like the Salafist movements in Egypt and Tunisia.

With respect to dialogue, PITAPOLICY Consulting & Blog Founder, Mehrunisa Qayyum, represents a female-minority small business owner who supports President Obama for a second term.  Like in 2008, she has joined the grassroots effort of phonebanking, canvassing, and recruiting volunteers.  Unlike 2008, Qayyum is campaigning in Washington, DC (not in Chicago) and has actively participated via PITAPOLICY’s social media networks.  She has joined the #Muslims4Obama team in DC.  As a result, because of our small business support for Obama, the Obama campaign field office in DC is now following @PITAPOLICY!  If you have an interest in joining in on the social media campaign to re-elect Obama, or would like to follow the election process in the last stretch, click here for the tweets.  We invite you to retweet or comment on virtually!

Voter Disinformation Campaign

With respect to elections, Qayyum has observed how opposition to Obama has assumed a somewhat racist nature fueled by ignorance.  In particular, the constant disparaging remarks that Obama may be a Muslim is disheartening on two fronts.  Colin Powell sums it up best, ” Well the correct answer is he’s not a Muslim. He’s a Christian and he’s always has been a Christian. But the really right answer is: what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some 7 year old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be President?…So what if was.  That is not America.”  Unfortunately, news outlets like Fox, concluded that Obama only received General Colin Powell’s endorsement because they are both African-American.  That’s racist.

Moreover, the negative campaign attacks by the Romney campaign have hampered significant communities abilities to vote in elections.  For example, the grassroots efforts in support of the Romney campaign have spread voter “disinformation”: posting signs in Spanish that say voters need to bring a photo ID, or misinforming the public about extended Early voting schedules due to Hurricane Sandy.  As an American, this is disheartening.  When we advocate for fair elections in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, we assume that the same applies here at home in the US.  Therefore, Qayyum has agreed to join Voter Protect to monitor polls in Virginia, a “swing state” where undecided voters will determine the election results more so than in states like New York or Illinois.  Currently, the swing state of Ohio is struggling with complaints over early voting outcomes as the Democratic party has filed a lawsuit to extend early voting rights due to the confusion of provisional ballots.

Given all this controversy, Qayyum would like to reemphasize why she’s voting for Obama despite the recession–remember, the fiscal crisis is a global phenomena that ignited during the Bush administration in the Spring of 2008.  Obama took office in 2009.    Regarding the Arab Awakening, the Obama Doctrine was ‘Dignity promotion’ rather than democracy promoted, as noted by scholar, Shadi Hamid.  Hamid shared this at Brookings Institute,  “President Obama’s first term will be defined by the Arab Spring and his response to it. His June 4, 2009 , Cairo Address was applauded across the Middle East…”  Qayyum does not feel that Romney holds neither the insight nor foresight to help Americans through its own “Dignity promotion” phase–only the hindsight as we’ve seen in the last debate where Romney resorted to echoing many of Obama’s Foreign Policy and Economy talking points.

If you vote in DC, here is information on poll locations.

If you vote in Virginia, here is information on poll locations.