President Obama’s White House website is reviving his 2008 campaign slogan, “Yes we can,” by pointing to one of the president’s green energy loan programs as an outgrowth of that campaign mentality.
“In 2008, Presidential candidate Barack Obama declared ‘Yes We Can,'” Emily Niehaus of Community Rebuilds posted, under the headline “Taking Part in a Yes We Can America,” to the White House blog. “I, along with millions of other Americans, was inspired by this approach to politics. I understood this message to be a partnership request.”
Niehaus explains that she founded Community Rebuilds to construct energy-efficient housing for lw-income familes, in keeping with the Yes We Can slogan, but she couldn’t have done it without government subsidies. “The green building industry was suffering from a lack of green builders,” she said. “When I reached out for financing to build these homes, [a Department of Agriculture official] connected me to two programs: the 502 Direct Loan Program, which helps low-income families purchase homes in rural communities, and the Rural Business Enterprise Gran, which is providing my organization supplementary funding for technical assistance and instructor pay to teach this type of alternative construction.”
Niehaus may be doing great work to help people. In the process, though, President Obama’s campaign is getting some good advertising from government resources which — intentionally or not — are reviving a campaign meme for readers who might not feel like the “hope and change” they were promised in 2008 has been delivered.
