U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood speaks in Pittsburgh, April 23, 2012. (by Photo courtesy Michael Henninger/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Ed. note: This is cross-posted from the Department of Transportation's Fast Lane blog

One year ago, I gathered pipeline operators together and asked each of them to take a serious look at their infrastructure and to identify those sections that need to be repaired or replaced.

I pledged that if operators stepped up and created modernization plans, then DOT would do everything in our power to help cut bureaucratic red tape to put people to work and get shovels in the ground more quickly on these important projects to make America's communities safer.

NiSource, Inc., answered that call in Pittsburgh last Friday, and they are setting an example for the entire industry by investing more than $4 billion dollars in 1,000 miles of modern diameter pipeline. This massive modernization project will take place in Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, and it will promote the safe and reliable delivery of energy resources across the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the U.S.

DOT will hold up our end of bargain as well. We all know how important it is to get these infrastructure projects moving so we can put Americans back on the jobsite and make our neighborhoods safer. That's why President Obama signed an executive order to fast-track crucial infrastructure through review and permitting, and that's exactly what we plan to do in these states.

Ed. Note: This live event has concluded. Watch the on-demand introduction video below and watch all of the panels on the White House's YouTube page.

This morning, President Obama spoke at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate the Holocaust, saying, "We must tell our children. But more than that, we must teach them. Because remembrance without resolve is a hollow gesture. Awareness without action changes nothing. In this sense, "never again" is a challenge to us all -- to pause and to look within." Read the President's full remarks here.

This afternoon, the White House is hosting an event to honor the pledge of "never again" and we are inviting all of you to join in the interactive discussion. Beginning at 1:00 p.m. ET, you can watch the White House event with Administration officials, student leaders and organizations about how communities across America are mobilizing and playing a role in saving lives around the word. 

"Always be humble and don’t let anybody say you don't work hard. Do your best” were the words of wisdom instilled in me by my Haitian-born parents. They’d experienced the dictatorship of Jean Claude Duvalier, yet remained total optimists. 

I thought of them when I arrived at the White House earlier this month. I thought I was just going to attend the signing of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act but in fact, I did more than that. First, I was fortunate enough to attend a roundtable discussion to discuss how the new law will fuel innovation across the country and then we had the privilege of meeting President Obama and joined him on the podium in the Rose Garden to sign the bill into law.  

As I stood up there, I felt honored to part of such a historic occasion. I was thinking of my own startup, my co-founders, our customers, our employees and our investors, and my journey to this moment.

I was born in Nassau, Bahamas, and then five years later, my family moved to New York. Like many immigrants from the Caribbean, we made Brooklyn, NY, our home.

In junior high school, I worked hard doing odd jobs to save money to buy my first computer. I started my first (little) company selling colorful computer disks and typing papers for my high school teachers, who were completing their Masters degrees. While my friends had paper routes, I was already going the techie route. 

After completing undergraduate and graduate programs in computer science at Cornell, I worked at Intel, before helping launch The Theory Center, a leader in component software for enterprise applications. Our founding team was like the United Nations, with representatives from Argentina, China, Haiti, Mexico, and the U.S. We sold the company to BEA systems, for more than $150 million, a life-changing experience. 

After three years spent investing in young companies, I joined with two of my original partners (Joseph Pilkerton and Julian Pelenur) to start FirstBest Systems. We wanted to renew our passion for building innovative companies and we chose insurance because the industry was underserved by technology in so many areas. We spent 18 months talking to real insurance people about their pains and asked them "If you could wave a magic wand and change your work world, what would it look like?" When everyone began saying the same thing, we knew we were on to something. 

Did you know?

To better protect the health of American families and the air they breathe, the Obama Administration has issued landmark clean air standards that will save lives by cleaning up air pollution in communities across the country. 

The Administration has established first-ever national limits for mercury, arsenic, and other toxic air pollution from power plants; put in place a program that will slash smog and soot-forming pollution from power plants that cross state lines and create health problems in downwind areas; and taken common-sense steps to limit mercury and other pollutants for the largest sources of industrial air pollution, including cement plants, industrial boilers, and waste incinerators. 

These clean air standards will provide enormous public health benefits: each year, they will avert tens of thousands of premature deaths, prevent tens of thousands of heart attacks and hospital visits, and alleviate hundreds of thousands of childhood asthma attacks. 

The Administration has also proposed the first national standard for carbon pollution from new power plants under the Clean Air Act, which will ensure that the next generation of power plants employ widely available, American-made technologies to produce electricity more cleanly and efficiently. 

Did you know...

that the United States is comprehensively cataloging greenhouse gas emissions from the largest sources – an important initial step toward measurable and transparent reductions in carbon emissions, which will reduce air pollution and protect the health and welfare of the American people. In January 2012, the Administration launched an online tool that makes comprehensive greenhouse gas emission data publicly available for 29 different industrial categories and other large sources of greenhouse gas pollution.

President Obama has also directed the Federal Government – the largest energy consumer in the U.S. economy – to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from direct sources such as building energy use and fuel consumption by 28 percent by 2020. He also directed Federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from indirect sources, such as those from employee commuting, by 13 percent by 2020. By meeting these goals, Federal agencies can save up to $11 billion dollars in energy costs and eliminate the equivalent of cumulative 235 million barrels of oil over the next decade. In 2011, the Administration released the first-ever comprehensive Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Inventory for the U.S. Government, allowing agencies to leverage data to gauge the effectiveness of their renewable energy investments and their energy and fuel efficiency efforts.

Ed. Note: This was originally published on Healthcare.gov

Robyn Martin is a remarkable woman from Maryland who shared her story of how the Affordable Care Act, the new health care law, is affecting her family’s life. In a discussion with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other women in Maryland, Robyn spoke of her son Jax, who has serious genetic disorders, including a heart defect. After he was born, he immediately was placed in the neonatal intensive care unit (NCIU), where he spent three weeks. Jax has undergone surgery since then. The Affordable Care Act’s prohibition on lifetime dollar limits for coverage is so important to Robyn’s family.

“I don’t know how much all of his health care has cost to this point, but in five months, I know it’s got to be a lot. The first day in the NICU was $150,000,” Robyn says. “If he in five months used up the lifetime limit for him, my family would be in really dire straits.”

In these videotaped remarks, President Obama sends an important and very clear message to the people of Sudan and South Sudan: conflict is not inevitable. The people of Sudan and South Sudan still have a choice, a chance to avoid being dragged back into war. Sudan needs to halt all military actions, including aerial bombardments; give aid workers unfettered access to people in need; and end support for armed groups. Similarly, South Sudan must end its support for armed groups inside Sudan and cease its military actions across the border.  All parties fighting – including in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile States – must recognize that the only way to achieve real and lasting security is to resolve their differences through negotiation. 

President Obama is gravely concerned by the situation in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, especially as the violent clashes continue along the shared border with South Sudan. He continues to urge all sides to exercise maximum restraint and to emphasize the importance of finding peaceful solutions for Sudan and South Sudan. The President is deeply committed to seeing Sudan and South Sudan become two economically prosperous states living side-by-side in peace.

The people of Sudan and South Sudan have endured extraordinary hardship over years of war. But in recent years, against great odds, they have made tremendous progress toward a future of peace. The future of Sudan and South Sudan belongs to them and, as President Obama makes clear in his remarks, those who have the courage to walk the path of peace will have a strong and steady partner in the United States of America. 

In his gloomy Washington Post commentary today on yesterday’s ceremony transferring ownership of the Space Shuttle Discovery from NASA to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Charles Krauthammer urged readers to think of that transfer as the funeral for U.S. leadership in space.  Nothing could be further from the truth. The United States remains far and away the world leader in space technology and exploration. As long as appropriate support continues to be forthcoming from Congress, this will remain the case indefinitely. 

Krauthammer suggests that if China succeeds in putting astronauts on the Moon by 2025, as that country plans, they will have “overtaken” the United States. How absurd! Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon in 1969. How does China managing this feat fifty-six years later, if this happens, amount to “overtaking” us? Obviously, the United States could repeat its lunar feats of the 1960s and 1970s if that were the next most important thing to do in space exploration for the money. But it isn’t! We may well return to the lunar surface again as one of many destinations in the future, but for now, our immediate, more scientifically rewarding goals include sending astronauts to an asteroid in the 2020s, and Mars in the mid-2030s. They bring scientific and technological challenges worthy of a great nation and a true world leader.

Krauthammer doesn’t even mention the International Space Station. The United States led the planning, design, and construction of this $53 billion marvel – an orbiting science and technology-development laboratory that has been continuously manned since 2000. Under the previous administration’s plan, it was underfunded after 2016, implying intent to abandon it long before its scientific and engineering potential had been realized. Under the new bipartisan space-exploration plans worked out between the Obama Administration and the Congress, we will continue to operate the Space Station until at least 2020 and perhaps beyond.

In robotic space exploration, too, nobody else comes close. At this very moment, a stream of data is flowing to us from missions orbiting the Sun, Mercury, the Moon, the asteroid Vesta, Mars, and Saturn. We now have missions on the way to Jupiter, Pluto and Mars. The Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, and Fermi space telescopes continue to make groundbreaking discoveries on an almost daily basis. We’re on track in the construction of the James Webb Space Telescope, the most sophisticated science telescope ever constructed to help us reveal the mysteries of the cosmos in ways never before possible.  Last year, the MESSENGER spacecraft became the first-ever to enter orbit around Mercury. And shortly thereafter, the Ebb and Flow satellites began orbiting and mapping the gravity field of the Moon. 

President Barack Obama signs a proclamation regarding the establishment of the Fort Ord National Monument, in the Oval Office, April 20, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Sonya N. Herbert)

Today President Obama signed a proclamation establishing Fort Ord, a former U.S. Army Post located in the heart of California's Central Coast, as a National Monument. It is one of the largest open spaces in the highly developed Monterey Bay area.

The area was once traversed by Spanish settlers traveling from Mexico to San Francisco, and later became a U.S. Army facility. The rugged terrain was perfect for training exercises, and nearly 1.5 million American soldiers who served between World War I and the early 1990s were introduced to the rigors of military service there.

Today, 10,000 visitors each year explore the area's canyons and grasslands by bike, horse and foot, while scientists flock to the area because of its diverse group of rare and endemic species of plants and animals. In fact, Fort Ord is one of the few remaining places in the world where coastal scrub, live oak woodland and savanna habitats, and vernal pools--shallow, temporary pools of water that teem with insect life--exist in a contiguous, interconnected landscape.

The protection of the Fort Ord area will maintain its historical and cultural significance, attract tourists from near and far, and enhance its unique natural resources, for the enjoyment of all Americans.