Subset (2)

default · 750k rows

Split (2)

train · 600k rows

news_text stringlengths 0 312k	title stringlengths 0 11.1k	hyperpartisan bool 2 classes	url stringlengths 20 344	published_at stringlengths 0 10	bias class label 5 classes	text stringlengths 19 312k	uid int64 0 600k
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>MONTOYA: Faces aggravated battery charges</p> <p>Note: An earlier version of this story, based on information in a criminal summons, said incorrectly that Montoya was arrested on Feb. 9.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Montoya's attorney Antonio Maestas said his client met with police after the dispute but was not arrested. She received the criminal summons on Feb. 12 and was ordered to appear in Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court on Feb. 26.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>Sandoval County Treasurer Laura Montoya is facing aggravated battery charges arising from a spat with an ex-boyfriend over phone photos, police say.</p> <p>During a dispute on Feb. 9, Montoya allegedly punched and bit her ex-boyfriend, Abdul Kebe, according to a criminal summons issued by Metropolitan Court in Bernalillo County.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The court issued the summons at the request of an Albuquerque police officer, who responded to a call from Kebe.</p> <p>Montoya has pleaded not guilty to the charge.</p> <p>"Ms. Montoya acted in self-defense. She has been falsely accused and looks forward to her day in court. She will continue, as always, to serve her community," her attorney Antonio Maestas said in a statement.</p> <p>According to the summons, Montoya asked Kebe to delete pictures of her from his phone and when he refused, she seized the phone and refused to give it back.</p> <p>It said Montoya pushed Kebe away as he tried to get the phone from her. She tried to leave the house and bit Kebe's arm below the elbow as he reached for the phone.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>As he tried again to stop Montoya from leaving, she punched him with a closed fist on the side of his face, the summons said. Montoya then left the house with Kebe's phone, leaving her own phone behind.</p> <p>Kebe called police, who met with Montoya at another location. The summons said Kebe had a bite mark with teeth impressions on one arm, and a field investigator was called to photograph the injuries.</p> <p>Montoya, a Democrat, was elected as county treasurer in 2012 in her first run for elected office.</p> <p>Sandoval County spokesman Sidney Hill said elected officials are not subject to county personnel policy. "They answer strictly to the voters," Hill said.</p> <p /> <p />	Updated: Sandoval treasurer facing battery charges	false	https://abqjournal.com/367441/sandoval-treasurer-facing-battery-charges.html		2least	Updated: Sandoval treasurer facing battery charges <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>MONTOYA: Faces aggravated battery charges</p> <p>Note: An earlier version of this story, based on information in a criminal summons, said incorrectly that Montoya was arrested on Feb. 9.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Montoya's attorney Antonio Maestas said his client met with police after the dispute but was not arrested. She received the criminal summons on Feb. 12 and was ordered to appear in Bernalillo County Metropolitan Court on Feb. 26.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>Sandoval County Treasurer Laura Montoya is facing aggravated battery charges arising from a spat with an ex-boyfriend over phone photos, police say.</p> <p>During a dispute on Feb. 9, Montoya allegedly punched and bit her ex-boyfriend, Abdul Kebe, according to a criminal summons issued by Metropolitan Court in Bernalillo County.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The court issued the summons at the request of an Albuquerque police officer, who responded to a call from Kebe.</p> <p>Montoya has pleaded not guilty to the charge.</p> <p>"Ms. Montoya acted in self-defense. She has been falsely accused and looks forward to her day in court. She will continue, as always, to serve her community," her attorney Antonio Maestas said in a statement.</p> <p>According to the summons, Montoya asked Kebe to delete pictures of her from his phone and when he refused, she seized the phone and refused to give it back.</p> <p>It said Montoya pushed Kebe away as he tried to get the phone from her. She tried to leave the house and bit Kebe's arm below the elbow as he reached for the phone.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>As he tried again to stop Montoya from leaving, she punched him with a closed fist on the side of his face, the summons said. Montoya then left the house with Kebe's phone, leaving her own phone behind.</p> <p>Kebe called police, who met with Montoya at another location. The summons said Kebe had a bite mark with teeth impressions on one arm, and a field investigator was called to photograph the injuries.</p> <p>Montoya, a Democrat, was elected as county treasurer in 2012 in her first run for elected office.</p> <p>Sandoval County spokesman Sidney Hill said elected officials are not subject to county personnel policy. "They answer strictly to the voters," Hill said.</p> <p /> <p />	4,300
<p>Students may not like them, but strict junk food laws in schools appear to help curb childhood obesity, a new study shows.</p> <p>The study, published Monday in the <a href="http://www.jpeds.com/" type="external">journal Pediatrics</a>, found a strong association between children's weight and tough state laws curbing the sales of snacks and sugary drinks, known as competitive food, outside school breakfast and lunch,&#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/health/research/study-links-healthy-weight-in-children-with-tough-snack-and-sugary-drinks-laws.html" type="external">The New York Times reported</a>.</p> <p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/120812/can-stress-and-depression-shrink-your-brain" type="external">Can stress and depression shrink your brain?</a></p> <p>Children in the study gained less weight in the fifth through eighth grades if they lived in states with strong "competitive food laws."</p> <p>Also, children who were overweight or obese in fifth grade were more likely to be at a healthier weight in eighth grade if they lived in states with the strongest such laws, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-08-13/schools-junk-food-laws/57029492/1?csp=34news" type="external">according to The Associated Press</a>.</p> <p>The results weren't huge and the study wasn't conclusive, but it raised optimism among public health experts and obesity researchers about the promise of laws that curb junk food in schools.</p> <p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/120811/daily-aspirin-can-decrease-cancer-risk-says-new-study" type="external">Daily aspirin can decrease cancer risk, says a new study</a></p> <p>"We have found that kids eat less junk food when there is less junk food in schools," Dr. Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/08/13/junk-food-laws-in-schools-may-mean-healthier-kids-study" type="external">told US News &amp; World Report</a>. "This is the first big national study that looked at the laws."</p> <p>Child obesity has tripled over the past three decades, according to the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/" type="external">US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>.</p> <p>In 2008, 20 percent of children aged 6 to 11 were considered obese.</p>	Junk food laws may curb childhood obesity, study says	false	https://pri.org/stories/2012-08-13/junk-food-laws-may-curb-childhood-obesity-study-says	2012-08-13	3left-center	Junk food laws may curb childhood obesity, study says <p>Students may not like them, but strict junk food laws in schools appear to help curb childhood obesity, a new study shows.</p> <p>The study, published Monday in the <a href="http://www.jpeds.com/" type="external">journal Pediatrics</a>, found a strong association between children's weight and tough state laws curbing the sales of snacks and sugary drinks, known as competitive food, outside school breakfast and lunch,&#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/health/research/study-links-healthy-weight-in-children-with-tough-snack-and-sugary-drinks-laws.html" type="external">The New York Times reported</a>.</p> <p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/120812/can-stress-and-depression-shrink-your-brain" type="external">Can stress and depression shrink your brain?</a></p> <p>Children in the study gained less weight in the fifth through eighth grades if they lived in states with strong "competitive food laws."</p> <p>Also, children who were overweight or obese in fifth grade were more likely to be at a healthier weight in eighth grade if they lived in states with the strongest such laws, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-08-13/schools-junk-food-laws/57029492/1?csp=34news" type="external">according to The Associated Press</a>.</p> <p>The results weren't huge and the study wasn't conclusive, but it raised optimism among public health experts and obesity researchers about the promise of laws that curb junk food in schools.</p> <p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/120811/daily-aspirin-can-decrease-cancer-risk-says-new-study" type="external">Daily aspirin can decrease cancer risk, says a new study</a></p> <p>"We have found that kids eat less junk food when there is less junk food in schools," Dr. Marlene Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/08/13/junk-food-laws-in-schools-may-mean-healthier-kids-study" type="external">told US News &amp; World Report</a>. "This is the first big national study that looked at the laws."</p> <p>Child obesity has tripled over the past three decades, according to the <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/" type="external">US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>.</p> <p>In 2008, 20 percent of children aged 6 to 11 were considered obese.</p>	4,301
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>But that doesn’t mean the controversial case is over. The Taos district can challenge the appeals court’s proposal and also says he can still pursue the case regardless.</p> <p>The proposed order by the appeals court says the district attorney’s office should not have excused a member of the grand jury and chosen a replacement during Farrell’s indictment process. A district court judge – not the district attorney – must oversee that process, the appeals court found.</p> <p>But “the prosecution remains free to institute new criminal proceedings,” the Aug. 21 appeals court notice states.</p> <p>A State Police video of the November car stop of Farrell, 39, went viral after it showed Farrell and one of her five children struggling with an officer; an officer breaking out a van window with his baton as children inside screamed; and Farrll taking off from police twice her mini-van , the second time as an officer fires toward the van. That officer was subsequently fired. Farrell has pleaded not guilty to fleeing an officer, child abuse and other charges.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Taos District Attorney Donald Gallegos said Monday afternoon that he had not reviewed the appeals court action. “It’s not a finality,” he said. “I’m not overly concerned.” He called the situation “just a procedural stumbling block.” Gallegos said he could either go back to the grand jury or take the case back directly to court for a preliminary hearing that would determine if there’s probable cause for charges against Farrell.</p> <p>A final order by the court will come down later this week, said defense attorney Alan Maestas. The replacement of the juror by the district attorney’s office was “improper grand jury procedure,” said Maestas.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p>	Appeals court finds against prosecution in ‘van mom’ case	false	https://abqjournal.com/451966/new-court-decision-in-taos-van-mom-case.html	2014-08-25	2least	Appeals court finds against prosecution in ‘van mom’ case <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>But that doesn’t mean the controversial case is over. The Taos district can challenge the appeals court’s proposal and also says he can still pursue the case regardless.</p> <p>The proposed order by the appeals court says the district attorney’s office should not have excused a member of the grand jury and chosen a replacement during Farrell’s indictment process. A district court judge – not the district attorney – must oversee that process, the appeals court found.</p> <p>But “the prosecution remains free to institute new criminal proceedings,” the Aug. 21 appeals court notice states.</p> <p>A State Police video of the November car stop of Farrell, 39, went viral after it showed Farrell and one of her five children struggling with an officer; an officer breaking out a van window with his baton as children inside screamed; and Farrll taking off from police twice her mini-van , the second time as an officer fires toward the van. That officer was subsequently fired. Farrell has pleaded not guilty to fleeing an officer, child abuse and other charges.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Taos District Attorney Donald Gallegos said Monday afternoon that he had not reviewed the appeals court action. “It’s not a finality,” he said. “I’m not overly concerned.” He called the situation “just a procedural stumbling block.” Gallegos said he could either go back to the grand jury or take the case back directly to court for a preliminary hearing that would determine if there’s probable cause for charges against Farrell.</p> <p>A final order by the court will come down later this week, said defense attorney Alan Maestas. The replacement of the juror by the district attorney’s office was “improper grand jury procedure,” said Maestas.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p>	4,302
<p>Madison Gesiotto, former beauty queen and current Ohio State University law student and contributor for the Washington Times, was threatened after writing a pro-life column highlighting the primary killer in black American: abortion. As <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7051" type="external">Campus Reform</a> reports, she was immediately met with threats and backlash which were largely ignored by administration; she did, however, receive a strong critique and lecture on how “offensive” her column was from those school officials.</p> <p>Gesiotto’s column, which was published on October 23, made the argument that “ <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/23/madison-gesiotto-number-one-killer-black-americans/" type="external">abortion destroys more black lives annually than heart disease, cancer, homicide, and motor vehicle accidents combined</a>.” Her argument was supported by extensive data from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as other sources. But some students apparently felt that her column was “offensive” and infringed upon their safe space. Gesiotto was threatened “anonymously” by someone she later discovered was a white female student.</p> <p>“The government cannot take action against you for your offensive and racist article. But your colleagues can,” read the threat left via Facebook message.</p> <p>The law student quickly reported the threat to officials, fully expecting that they would investigate the situation and ensure her safety. She was incorrect. Not only was the woman who threatened Gesiotto let off the hook, but Gesiotto was treated to an “hour-long harangue from three administrators who were evidently more interested in critiquing her op-ed than in ensuring her safety.”</p> <p>“They took issue with the piece as a whole, one Dean claiming that it looks like a direct attack on Black Lives Matter, which was not referenced or referred to at all in the column,” she told Campus Reform. “They clearly seemed more concerned about the school's relationship with the Black Lives Matters lobbying group than my personal safety or respecting the constitutional freedom lawyers are sworn to uphold.</p> <p>“They kept saying that it was flawed writing that would offend many and was nowhere near a well-developed legal piece,” she added, noting that one Dean became especially fixated with the last line of her column—in which she opines that “America needs to wake up and recognize that abortion is taking the lives of way too many black Americans and more must be done to avoid high rates of abortion within America’s minority populations”—stressing his belief that the sentence is flawed because it can be interpreted in a variety of ways.</p> <p>Gesiotto claimed that she was contacted by school administration the following day and was “assured” that the Black Law Students Association didn’t mean any harm. But the threat came from a white female and not the BLSA, as Gesiotto had reported.</p> <p>Dean Alan Michaels told the Washington Times that the school “takes all threats against its student very seriously.” He also touted the “inclusive” environment, the school's appreciation of “a wide range of viewpoints” and the “culture of respectful dialogue” the school attempts to foster.</p> <p>The Ohio Right to Life group has come to the defense of Gesiotto, requesting a meeting with OSU officials to discuss the issue.</p> <p>“Any threats made to students should be taken seriously, not callously tossed aside. In an age when academia boasts 'inclusion' and 'diversity,' the school's admonishment of Madison's beliefs rather than of those who seek to exclude her is hypocritical and perilous to the practice of First Amendment rights on campus,” said the president of the Ohio Right to Life, Mike Gonidakis.</p> <p>“Regardless of what a student believes, a taxpayer-funded institution like Ohio State must prioritize her right to express herself,” added Gonidakis. “These recent events should concern every parent and every OSU student who wants an education that fosters diversity in belief.”</p>	‘Tolerant’ Campus Shows Zero Tolerance For Former Beauty Queen’s Pro-life Views	true	https://dailywire.com/news/1597/tolerant-campus-shows-zero-tolerance-former-beauty-amanda-prestigiacomo	2015-12-04	0right	‘Tolerant’ Campus Shows Zero Tolerance For Former Beauty Queen’s Pro-life Views <p>Madison Gesiotto, former beauty queen and current Ohio State University law student and contributor for the Washington Times, was threatened after writing a pro-life column highlighting the primary killer in black American: abortion. As <a href="http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7051" type="external">Campus Reform</a> reports, she was immediately met with threats and backlash which were largely ignored by administration; she did, however, receive a strong critique and lecture on how “offensive” her column was from those school officials.</p> <p>Gesiotto’s column, which was published on October 23, made the argument that “ <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/23/madison-gesiotto-number-one-killer-black-americans/" type="external">abortion destroys more black lives annually than heart disease, cancer, homicide, and motor vehicle accidents combined</a>.” Her argument was supported by extensive data from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as other sources. But some students apparently felt that her column was “offensive” and infringed upon their safe space. Gesiotto was threatened “anonymously” by someone she later discovered was a white female student.</p> <p>“The government cannot take action against you for your offensive and racist article. But your colleagues can,” read the threat left via Facebook message.</p> <p>The law student quickly reported the threat to officials, fully expecting that they would investigate the situation and ensure her safety. She was incorrect. Not only was the woman who threatened Gesiotto let off the hook, but Gesiotto was treated to an “hour-long harangue from three administrators who were evidently more interested in critiquing her op-ed than in ensuring her safety.”</p> <p>“They took issue with the piece as a whole, one Dean claiming that it looks like a direct attack on Black Lives Matter, which was not referenced or referred to at all in the column,” she told Campus Reform. “They clearly seemed more concerned about the school's relationship with the Black Lives Matters lobbying group than my personal safety or respecting the constitutional freedom lawyers are sworn to uphold.</p> <p>“They kept saying that it was flawed writing that would offend many and was nowhere near a well-developed legal piece,” she added, noting that one Dean became especially fixated with the last line of her column—in which she opines that “America needs to wake up and recognize that abortion is taking the lives of way too many black Americans and more must be done to avoid high rates of abortion within America’s minority populations”—stressing his belief that the sentence is flawed because it can be interpreted in a variety of ways.</p> <p>Gesiotto claimed that she was contacted by school administration the following day and was “assured” that the Black Law Students Association didn’t mean any harm. But the threat came from a white female and not the BLSA, as Gesiotto had reported.</p> <p>Dean Alan Michaels told the Washington Times that the school “takes all threats against its student very seriously.” He also touted the “inclusive” environment, the school's appreciation of “a wide range of viewpoints” and the “culture of respectful dialogue” the school attempts to foster.</p> <p>The Ohio Right to Life group has come to the defense of Gesiotto, requesting a meeting with OSU officials to discuss the issue.</p> <p>“Any threats made to students should be taken seriously, not callously tossed aside. In an age when academia boasts 'inclusion' and 'diversity,' the school's admonishment of Madison's beliefs rather than of those who seek to exclude her is hypocritical and perilous to the practice of First Amendment rights on campus,” said the president of the Ohio Right to Life, Mike Gonidakis.</p> <p>“Regardless of what a student believes, a taxpayer-funded institution like Ohio State must prioritize her right to express herself,” added Gonidakis. “These recent events should concern every parent and every OSU student who wants an education that fosters diversity in belief.”</p>	4,303
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Martinez: Says his truck rolled, but all passengers werebelted in</p> <p>SANTA FE, N.M. — The driver of a pickup hit by a wrong-way driver suspected of being drunk on Interstate 25 in Santa Fe on Wednesday night knows he and his two friends are lucky to be alive.</p> <p>“With the reaction time I had, I was able to maneuver the truck a few feet out of the way and if I hadn’t been able to do that it would have been a head-on,” said Leslie “Les” Martinez of Pecos.</p> <p>Martinez was initially identified by law enforcement as a woman but he doesn’t mind the mistake – he is just glad to be talking and walking.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Asked by a reporter on Friday how he was doing, he responded, “Beat up, beat up and hurting. All I can do is thank God we survived.”</p> <p>He and his co-workers from his Custom Coachworks body shop were on their way home from Albuquerque where they were getting some car parts when a wrong-way car driven southbound by Joe Salazar of Santa Fe crashed into their 2011 Ford pickup on I-25 near St. Francis Drive, destroying both vehicles, police said.</p> <p>Martinez said his truck actually went airborne after the collision and landed on its side and rolled three times. But all three people in the truck were wearing seat belts and the truck’s air bags deployed, helping save the occupants.</p> <p>The wreck occurred shortly before 8 p.m. Police found an empty vodka bottle amid the wreckage of Salazar’s Dodge Stratus.</p> <p>Salazar, 52, is still hospitalized from his injuries and, when released, he will be charged with aggravated DWI, reckless driving and having an open container inside the car, said police spokeswoman Celina Westervelt.</p> <p>It’s expected that Salazar will be hospitalized from his injuries for another week, she said.</p> <p>Martinez was nursing strains and cuts when he described the crash in a telephone interview on Friday. His co-workers, Dominic Garcia, 39, of Rowe and Dino Martinez, 32 of Pecos, no relation to Leslie, are also recovering at home.</p> <p>The three were initially hospitalized in Santa Fe. Garcia has a concussion and two broken ribs, and Martinez was knocked unconscious in the crash, said Leslie Martinez.</p> <p>Les Martinez of Pecos narrowly avoided a direct head-on collision between his truck and this Dodge Stratus traveling the wrong way on Interstate 25 in Santa Fe on Wednesday night. Martinez and his two passengers were hurt in the wreck, but have been released from the hospital. The wrong-way driver faces charges including DWI. (Courtesy Santa Fe Police)</p> <p>“He (Salazar) had to be doing 75 (mph) plus; it was instantaneous and in no more than a fraction of second he was on top of us,” said Martinez. “My cruise control was set at 75 and he was flying. It was like an explosion. I didn’t even get a chance to put my foot on the brake.”</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>It all started as a pleasant drive home with friends but that changed in seconds.</p> <p>“I was in the passing lane,” related Martinez. “My helpers and I were just kind of talking and laughing, and listening to the radio. There was another car in the passing lane (ahead of him) also and they swerved suddenly into the slow lane and I thought ‘what’s this guy doing?'”</p> <p>But then “in a fraction of a second there were headlights, I swerved my vehicle to the right and at that same instant he hit us … with the driver’s side of his door into the driver’s side of my truck,” he said.</p> <p>“We flew over the car (Salazar’s Stratus). We were literally airborne after the accident, We landed on the driver’s side and it immediately went into a roll and landed (again) on the driver’s side first. I guess we rolled three times. Once we landed, the air bags deployed all over the place and parts were flying all over the place,” he said.</p> <p>“Fortunately we were all belted in and the passenger in the rear, Dino Martinez, he was knocked unconscious. That was it – we landed on all fours.”</p> <p>Salazar: Faces DWI, reckless driving charges</p> <p>‘An explosion’</p> <p>Martinez said of the crash, “It destroyed everything, it felt like an explosion … every police officer who was there was amazed we walked out, the truck looks like a bulldozer ran over it.”</p> <p>Martinez’s sister-in-law, Brenda Ortiz, of Rio Rancho, contacted KOB-TV in Albuquerque to say she had set up a fund for the men to help defray their medical costs and perhaps get a new truck. KOB shared the fund details with the Journal.</p> <p>The public can contribute at any Wells Fargo branch, said a bank representative, to the Brenda Ortiz account.</p> <p>“I’m self-employed,” said Martinez. “I am not working and if I am not working there’s no income.” That goes for his two injured employees.</p> <p>The Stratus that Salazar is accused of driving was sold in September in Albuquerque, the former owner said on Friday. The prior owner said he forgot to remove the license plate from the car and that Salazar had promised to return it but never did. Salazar paid $1,200 cash for the Dodge and was extremely excited with the purchase, the former owner said.</p> <p /> <p />	Driver: I-25 crash like ‘an explosion’	false	https://abqjournal.com/324589/driver-i25-crash-like-an-explosion.html		2least	Driver: I-25 crash like ‘an explosion’ <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Martinez: Says his truck rolled, but all passengers werebelted in</p> <p>SANTA FE, N.M. — The driver of a pickup hit by a wrong-way driver suspected of being drunk on Interstate 25 in Santa Fe on Wednesday night knows he and his two friends are lucky to be alive.</p> <p>“With the reaction time I had, I was able to maneuver the truck a few feet out of the way and if I hadn’t been able to do that it would have been a head-on,” said Leslie “Les” Martinez of Pecos.</p> <p>Martinez was initially identified by law enforcement as a woman but he doesn’t mind the mistake – he is just glad to be talking and walking.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Asked by a reporter on Friday how he was doing, he responded, “Beat up, beat up and hurting. All I can do is thank God we survived.”</p> <p>He and his co-workers from his Custom Coachworks body shop were on their way home from Albuquerque where they were getting some car parts when a wrong-way car driven southbound by Joe Salazar of Santa Fe crashed into their 2011 Ford pickup on I-25 near St. Francis Drive, destroying both vehicles, police said.</p> <p>Martinez said his truck actually went airborne after the collision and landed on its side and rolled three times. But all three people in the truck were wearing seat belts and the truck’s air bags deployed, helping save the occupants.</p> <p>The wreck occurred shortly before 8 p.m. Police found an empty vodka bottle amid the wreckage of Salazar’s Dodge Stratus.</p> <p>Salazar, 52, is still hospitalized from his injuries and, when released, he will be charged with aggravated DWI, reckless driving and having an open container inside the car, said police spokeswoman Celina Westervelt.</p> <p>It’s expected that Salazar will be hospitalized from his injuries for another week, she said.</p> <p>Martinez was nursing strains and cuts when he described the crash in a telephone interview on Friday. His co-workers, Dominic Garcia, 39, of Rowe and Dino Martinez, 32 of Pecos, no relation to Leslie, are also recovering at home.</p> <p>The three were initially hospitalized in Santa Fe. Garcia has a concussion and two broken ribs, and Martinez was knocked unconscious in the crash, said Leslie Martinez.</p> <p>Les Martinez of Pecos narrowly avoided a direct head-on collision between his truck and this Dodge Stratus traveling the wrong way on Interstate 25 in Santa Fe on Wednesday night. Martinez and his two passengers were hurt in the wreck, but have been released from the hospital. The wrong-way driver faces charges including DWI. (Courtesy Santa Fe Police)</p> <p>“He (Salazar) had to be doing 75 (mph) plus; it was instantaneous and in no more than a fraction of second he was on top of us,” said Martinez. “My cruise control was set at 75 and he was flying. It was like an explosion. I didn’t even get a chance to put my foot on the brake.”</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>It all started as a pleasant drive home with friends but that changed in seconds.</p> <p>“I was in the passing lane,” related Martinez. “My helpers and I were just kind of talking and laughing, and listening to the radio. There was another car in the passing lane (ahead of him) also and they swerved suddenly into the slow lane and I thought ‘what’s this guy doing?'”</p> <p>But then “in a fraction of a second there were headlights, I swerved my vehicle to the right and at that same instant he hit us … with the driver’s side of his door into the driver’s side of my truck,” he said.</p> <p>“We flew over the car (Salazar’s Stratus). We were literally airborne after the accident, We landed on the driver’s side and it immediately went into a roll and landed (again) on the driver’s side first. I guess we rolled three times. Once we landed, the air bags deployed all over the place and parts were flying all over the place,” he said.</p> <p>“Fortunately we were all belted in and the passenger in the rear, Dino Martinez, he was knocked unconscious. That was it – we landed on all fours.”</p> <p>Salazar: Faces DWI, reckless driving charges</p> <p>‘An explosion’</p> <p>Martinez said of the crash, “It destroyed everything, it felt like an explosion … every police officer who was there was amazed we walked out, the truck looks like a bulldozer ran over it.”</p> <p>Martinez’s sister-in-law, Brenda Ortiz, of Rio Rancho, contacted KOB-TV in Albuquerque to say she had set up a fund for the men to help defray their medical costs and perhaps get a new truck. KOB shared the fund details with the Journal.</p> <p>The public can contribute at any Wells Fargo branch, said a bank representative, to the Brenda Ortiz account.</p> <p>“I’m self-employed,” said Martinez. “I am not working and if I am not working there’s no income.” That goes for his two injured employees.</p> <p>The Stratus that Salazar is accused of driving was sold in September in Albuquerque, the former owner said on Friday. The prior owner said he forgot to remove the license plate from the car and that Salazar had promised to return it but never did. Salazar paid $1,200 cash for the Dodge and was extremely excited with the purchase, the former owner said.</p> <p /> <p />	4,304
<p>Let it never be said that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895260905/amazon0156-20/" type="external">I can’t say anything nice</a> about Jimmy Carter. &#160;It’s very nice that he’s an ex-president, for example. &#160;(Though the attack submarine is a little much.) &#160;I look forward to being able to say the same thing about Obama some day. &#160;But lo and behold, it turns out that Jimmy Carter didn’t just de-regulate airlines and trucking: he also de-regulated beer. &#160;I believe it was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beer" type="external">the fiasco of Billy Beer</a> that made him do it–another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.</p> <p>In any case, Power Line’s video division decided to revisit this classic story with our first ever original “mockumentary.” &#160;It’s about 10 minutes long, features the expert testimony of the great beer writer Martin Morse Wooster, and has a lot of painful memories for people old enough to recall the 1970s first hand.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>P.S. &#160;Power Line reader with initials “FM” will want to watch all the way through the outtakes at the very end for a special shout out.</p>	Did Jimmy Carter Really Save Beer? Power Line Reports	true	http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/did-jimmy-carter-really-save-beer-power-line-reports.php	2013-07-24	0right	Did Jimmy Carter Really Save Beer? Power Line Reports <p>Let it never be said that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895260905/amazon0156-20/" type="external">I can’t say anything nice</a> about Jimmy Carter. &#160;It’s very nice that he’s an ex-president, for example. &#160;(Though the attack submarine is a little much.) &#160;I look forward to being able to say the same thing about Obama some day. &#160;But lo and behold, it turns out that Jimmy Carter didn’t just de-regulate airlines and trucking: he also de-regulated beer. &#160;I believe it was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Beer" type="external">the fiasco of Billy Beer</a> that made him do it–another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.</p> <p>In any case, Power Line’s video division decided to revisit this classic story with our first ever original “mockumentary.” &#160;It’s about 10 minutes long, features the expert testimony of the great beer writer Martin Morse Wooster, and has a lot of painful memories for people old enough to recall the 1970s first hand.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>P.S. &#160;Power Line reader with initials “FM” will want to watch all the way through the outtakes at the very end for a special shout out.</p>	4,305
<p>Donald Trump’s widely discredited claim that Muslims in New Jersey were seen on TV cheering the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and Ben Carson’s initial support of Trump’s remarks — has resulted in even more false claims, as both candidates try to explain their statements:</p> <p>It was in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/donald-trump-syrian-muslims-surveillance.html" type="external">Nov. 21 speech</a> in Alabama that Trump first made his claim about Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.</p> <p>Trump, the <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html" type="external">leading Republican</a> presidential candidate, told his audience: “Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. So something’s going on. We’ve got to find out what it is.”</p> <p>A day later, on ABC’s “ <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-donald-trump-ben-carson/story?id=35336008" type="external">This Week</a>,” Trump insisted: “It did happen. I saw it. It was on television. I saw it. There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down.”</p> <p>There is no evidence, as others have pointed out, that thousands of people in New Jersey cheered the attacks on 9/11. <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/22/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-thousands-new-jersey-ch/" type="external">PolitiFact</a> and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/" type="external">Washington Post</a> gave Trump’s claim their worst ratings.</p> <p>The fact is that New Jersey and New York news organizations tried to track down rumors and unverified reports of celebrations in New Jersey cities and turned up little or nothing.</p> <p>The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper, <a href="http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/from_the_archives_muslims_and_arabs_fear_violent_b.html" type="external">wrote on Sept. 13, 2001</a>, about “persistent rumors — repeated all day on talk radio and on the Internet” — that Muslims were celebrating in the streets of Paterson, New Jersey. That story did not contain any mention of Jersey City nor did it provide any evidence that the rumors in Paterson were true.</p> <p>The New York Daily News dispatched a reporter to Paterson shortly after the attacks to investigate the same rumors and came up empty. In a Sept. 14, 2001, story, the Daily News quoted an unidentified police officer saying there were no public celebrations in Paterson. “I patrol these streets every day and I haven’t seen one person with a smile on their face at the mention of this tragedy,” the officer told the Daily News. “The people here are suffering and mourning like everyone else.”</p> <p>On Sept. 18, 2001, the Associated Press wrote that federal investigators had returned to Jersey City — specifically to the neighborhood that had been “home to a mosque where blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman preached before he was convicted of plotting the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and other New York City landmarks.” But there was no mention of any 9/11 celebrations in Jersey City. Instead, the paper wrote of “Arab-Americans [who] decried the terrorist attacks, and told of harassment they had suffered in the past week.”</p> <p>The Star-Ledger revisited the rumors again in a <a href="http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/from_the_archives_paterson_muslims_struggle_to_ove.html" type="external">Sept. 23, 2001, story</a> about the rise of bias incidents against Muslims and Arabs. John Farmer Jr., who was the state’s attorney general at the time, told the Star-Ledger that reports of rooftop celebrations in Paterson were an “insidious rumor” that was helping to fuel the rise in bias incidents. The Star-Ledger said of the rumor of celebrations: “[I]n the end it was nothing more than a rapid-fire urban myth.”</p> <p>That story did say, however, that the paper interviewed two people who said they knew of one incident in Paterson regarding “a small handful of teenagers who shouted ‘revenge’ the night of the bombing.” There was no mention of Jersey City.</p> <p>Update, Nov. 25: Farmer told the New York Times in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/nyregion/a-definitive-debunking-of-donald-trumps-9-11-claims.html?ref=politics&amp;_r=0" type="external">story published Nov. 25</a>&#160;that the New Jersey State Police received reports on the day of the attacks that “Muslims were dancing on the rooftops and in the streets of Jersey City and Paterson.” Those reports were investigated and found to be false, Farmer said. “We followed up on that report instantly because of its implications,” Farmer told the Times. “The word came back quickly from Jersey City, later from Paterson. False report. Never happened.”</p> <p>On Nov. 23, two days after he first made his 9/11 remarks, Trump claimed to have evidence that supported him. He tweeted out a link to a&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/09/18/northern-new-jersey-draws-probers-eyes/40f82ea4-e015-4d6e-a87e-93aa433fafdc/?postshare=7281448290025183&amp;tid=ss_fb" type="external">Sept. 18, 2001,&#160;Washington Post story</a> and demanded an apology.</p> <p /> <p>The Post story said that Jersey City police detained “a number of people” who were “allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding a tailgate-style party” in Jersey City. That allegation was unattributed and unverified. Even if it did happen, and there is no evidence of it, the celebrating was not on TV and did not involve “thousands and thousands of people.”</p> <p>The Washington Post Fact Checker talked to both reporters on the Post story cited by Trump, and neither could recall if the allegations about the tailgate-style celebration were verified. “I specifically visited the Jersey City building and neighborhood where the celebrations were purported to have happened,” said Fredrick Kunkle, one of the Post reporters on that story. “But I could never verify that report.”</p> <p>What’s clear to us — and should be to Trump — is that there were no widespread televised celebrations in New Jersey on 9/11.&#160;In fact,&#160;what Trump described would have been big news, and the reporters at the Daily News, Star-Ledger and elsewhere who tried and failed to track down rumors of 9/11 celebrations could have just turned on the TV to get their story.</p> <p>In an <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/23/carson-backs-up-trumps-controversial-claim-us-muslims-cheered-on-911.print.html" type="external">interview on Nov. 23</a>, Carson <a href="http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ben-carson-joins-donald-trump-in-claiming-us-muslims-cheered-9-11-1246806" type="external">told reporters in Nevada</a>&#160;that&#160;he had seen “newsreels” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the attacks.</p> <p>“Well, you know, there are going to be people who respond inappropriately to virtually everything. I think that was an inappropriate response. I don’t know if on the basis of that you can say all Muslims are bad people. I really think that would be a stretch,” Carson said.</p> <p>The next day, he denied that he was talking about New Jersey and <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-muslims-911-216175" type="external">blamed the media</a> for a “misunderstanding.”</p> <p>“I thought we were just talking about the fact that Muslims were inappropriately celebrating,” he said. “I didn’t know that they had an agenda behind the question.”</p> <p>We don’t know what Carson was thinking about when he was answering the questions, but the exchange between two reporters and Carson could not have been more clear. In fact, he was asked to verify that the video he saw was of Muslims in New Jersey, and he answered, “yes.”</p> <p>Here is the relevant portion of the <a href="https://amp.twimg.com/v/388a0057-5c7b-4da9-9b56-665c5053aa63" type="external">exchange</a>:</p> <p>Reporter 1, Nov. 23: Dr. Carson, were American Muslims in New Jersey cheering on 9/11 when the towers fell — did you hear about that or see that?</p> <p>Carson: Yes.</p> <p>Reporter 1: Yes. Can you expand on that?</p> <p>Carson: Well, you know, there are going to be people who respond inappropriately to virtually everything. I think that was an inappropriate response. I don’t know if on the basis of that you can say all Muslims are bad people. I really think that would be a stretch.</p> <p>Reporter 1: But did you see that happening though on 9/11?</p> <p>Carson: I saw the film of it, yes.</p> <p>Reporter 2: In New Jersey?</p> <p>Carson: Yes.</p> <p>Unlike Trump, Carson at least now acknowledges that it’s not true that thousands of Muslims were captured on TV celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11. But in doing so he rewrites the record.</p>	Trump, Carson on 9/11 ‘Celebrations’	false	https://factcheck.org/2015/11/trump-carson-on-911-celebrations/	2015-11-24	2least	Trump, Carson on 9/11 ‘Celebrations’ <p>Donald Trump’s widely discredited claim that Muslims in New Jersey were seen on TV cheering the 9/11 terrorist attacks — and Ben Carson’s initial support of Trump’s remarks — has resulted in even more false claims, as both candidates try to explain their statements:</p> <p>It was in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/donald-trump-syrian-muslims-surveillance.html" type="external">Nov. 21 speech</a> in Alabama that Trump first made his claim about Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.</p> <p>Trump, the <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html" type="external">leading Republican</a> presidential candidate, told his audience: “Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. So something’s going on. We’ve got to find out what it is.”</p> <p>A day later, on ABC’s “ <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-donald-trump-ben-carson/story?id=35336008" type="external">This Week</a>,” Trump insisted: “It did happen. I saw it. It was on television. I saw it. There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down.”</p> <p>There is no evidence, as others have pointed out, that thousands of people in New Jersey cheered the attacks on 9/11. <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/22/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-thousands-new-jersey-ch/" type="external">PolitiFact</a> and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/" type="external">Washington Post</a> gave Trump’s claim their worst ratings.</p> <p>The fact is that New Jersey and New York news organizations tried to track down rumors and unverified reports of celebrations in New Jersey cities and turned up little or nothing.</p> <p>The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper, <a href="http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/from_the_archives_muslims_and_arabs_fear_violent_b.html" type="external">wrote on Sept. 13, 2001</a>, about “persistent rumors — repeated all day on talk radio and on the Internet” — that Muslims were celebrating in the streets of Paterson, New Jersey. That story did not contain any mention of Jersey City nor did it provide any evidence that the rumors in Paterson were true.</p> <p>The New York Daily News dispatched a reporter to Paterson shortly after the attacks to investigate the same rumors and came up empty. In a Sept. 14, 2001, story, the Daily News quoted an unidentified police officer saying there were no public celebrations in Paterson. “I patrol these streets every day and I haven’t seen one person with a smile on their face at the mention of this tragedy,” the officer told the Daily News. “The people here are suffering and mourning like everyone else.”</p> <p>On Sept. 18, 2001, the Associated Press wrote that federal investigators had returned to Jersey City — specifically to the neighborhood that had been “home to a mosque where blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman preached before he was convicted of plotting the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and other New York City landmarks.” But there was no mention of any 9/11 celebrations in Jersey City. Instead, the paper wrote of “Arab-Americans [who] decried the terrorist attacks, and told of harassment they had suffered in the past week.”</p> <p>The Star-Ledger revisited the rumors again in a <a href="http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2015/11/from_the_archives_paterson_muslims_struggle_to_ove.html" type="external">Sept. 23, 2001, story</a> about the rise of bias incidents against Muslims and Arabs. John Farmer Jr., who was the state’s attorney general at the time, told the Star-Ledger that reports of rooftop celebrations in Paterson were an “insidious rumor” that was helping to fuel the rise in bias incidents. The Star-Ledger said of the rumor of celebrations: “[I]n the end it was nothing more than a rapid-fire urban myth.”</p> <p>That story did say, however, that the paper interviewed two people who said they knew of one incident in Paterson regarding “a small handful of teenagers who shouted ‘revenge’ the night of the bombing.” There was no mention of Jersey City.</p> <p>Update, Nov. 25: Farmer told the New York Times in a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/nyregion/a-definitive-debunking-of-donald-trumps-9-11-claims.html?ref=politics&amp;_r=0" type="external">story published Nov. 25</a>&#160;that the New Jersey State Police received reports on the day of the attacks that “Muslims were dancing on the rooftops and in the streets of Jersey City and Paterson.” Those reports were investigated and found to be false, Farmer said. “We followed up on that report instantly because of its implications,” Farmer told the Times. “The word came back quickly from Jersey City, later from Paterson. False report. Never happened.”</p> <p>On Nov. 23, two days after he first made his 9/11 remarks, Trump claimed to have evidence that supported him. He tweeted out a link to a&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/09/18/northern-new-jersey-draws-probers-eyes/40f82ea4-e015-4d6e-a87e-93aa433fafdc/?postshare=7281448290025183&amp;tid=ss_fb" type="external">Sept. 18, 2001,&#160;Washington Post story</a> and demanded an apology.</p> <p /> <p>The Post story said that Jersey City police detained “a number of people” who were “allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding a tailgate-style party” in Jersey City. That allegation was unattributed and unverified. Even if it did happen, and there is no evidence of it, the celebrating was not on TV and did not involve “thousands and thousands of people.”</p> <p>The Washington Post Fact Checker talked to both reporters on the Post story cited by Trump, and neither could recall if the allegations about the tailgate-style celebration were verified. “I specifically visited the Jersey City building and neighborhood where the celebrations were purported to have happened,” said Fredrick Kunkle, one of the Post reporters on that story. “But I could never verify that report.”</p> <p>What’s clear to us — and should be to Trump — is that there were no widespread televised celebrations in New Jersey on 9/11.&#160;In fact,&#160;what Trump described would have been big news, and the reporters at the Daily News, Star-Ledger and elsewhere who tried and failed to track down rumors of 9/11 celebrations could have just turned on the TV to get their story.</p> <p>In an <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/11/23/carson-backs-up-trumps-controversial-claim-us-muslims-cheered-on-911.print.html" type="external">interview on Nov. 23</a>, Carson <a href="http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/ben-carson-joins-donald-trump-in-claiming-us-muslims-cheered-9-11-1246806" type="external">told reporters in Nevada</a>&#160;that&#160;he had seen “newsreels” of Muslims in New Jersey cheering the attacks.</p> <p>“Well, you know, there are going to be people who respond inappropriately to virtually everything. I think that was an inappropriate response. I don’t know if on the basis of that you can say all Muslims are bad people. I really think that would be a stretch,” Carson said.</p> <p>The next day, he denied that he was talking about New Jersey and <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-muslims-911-216175" type="external">blamed the media</a> for a “misunderstanding.”</p> <p>“I thought we were just talking about the fact that Muslims were inappropriately celebrating,” he said. “I didn’t know that they had an agenda behind the question.”</p> <p>We don’t know what Carson was thinking about when he was answering the questions, but the exchange between two reporters and Carson could not have been more clear. In fact, he was asked to verify that the video he saw was of Muslims in New Jersey, and he answered, “yes.”</p> <p>Here is the relevant portion of the <a href="https://amp.twimg.com/v/388a0057-5c7b-4da9-9b56-665c5053aa63" type="external">exchange</a>:</p> <p>Reporter 1, Nov. 23: Dr. Carson, were American Muslims in New Jersey cheering on 9/11 when the towers fell — did you hear about that or see that?</p> <p>Carson: Yes.</p> <p>Reporter 1: Yes. Can you expand on that?</p> <p>Carson: Well, you know, there are going to be people who respond inappropriately to virtually everything. I think that was an inappropriate response. I don’t know if on the basis of that you can say all Muslims are bad people. I really think that would be a stretch.</p> <p>Reporter 1: But did you see that happening though on 9/11?</p> <p>Carson: I saw the film of it, yes.</p> <p>Reporter 2: In New Jersey?</p> <p>Carson: Yes.</p> <p>Unlike Trump, Carson at least now acknowledges that it’s not true that thousands of Muslims were captured on TV celebrating in New Jersey on 9/11. But in doing so he rewrites the record.</p>	4,306
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>After meetings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other leaders, Pence told reporters that President Donald Trump was confident that economic and diplomatic pressure has a chance of compelling North Korea to cooperate.</p> <p>“It is our belief by bringing together the family of nations with diplomatic and economic pressure we have a chance of achieving a freeze on the Korean Peninsula,” Pence said.</p> <p>“We will not rest and will not relent until we obtain the objective of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” he said.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The Trump administration has signaled a more forceful U.S. stance toward North Korea’s recent missile tests and threats, including a warning from Trump that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has “gotta behave.”</p> <p>So Pence struck a stern tone after arriving at a U.S. naval base from South Korea.</p> <p>“We appreciate the challenging times in which the people of Japan live with increasing provocations from across the Sea of Japan,” he said. “We are with you 100 percent.”</p> <p>On Monday, Pence traveled to the tense Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea, where he warned North Korea’s leaders that after years of testing the U.S. and South Korea with its nuclear ambitions, “the era of strategic patience is over.”</p> <p>A senior North Korean official then accused the United States of bringing the countries to the brink of thermonuclear war.</p> <p>Pence, on a 10-day Asia trip that will also take him to Indonesia and Australia, said Trump hopes China will use its leverage to get its longtime ally North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program and ballistic missiles.</p> <p>In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a fresh appeal for calm.</p> <p>Wang told reporters that although U.S. officials have made clear that a military strike remains a possibility, he believes that Washington would still prefer to de-escalate tensions through multi-sided talks.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Abe said Japan likewise hopes for peaceful dialogue with Pyongyang, “but at the same time, dialogue for the sake of dialogue is valueless.” Pressure on North Korea is crucial, the prime minister said.</p> <p>After meeting with Abe, Pence held talks with Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso on a new U.S.-Japan “economic dialogue” to be led by the two.</p> <p>The new forum for trade talks was launched by Trump and Abe during the Japanese leader’s visit to the U.S. in February. In part, it is meant to take the place of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the regional trade pact that Trump withdrew from shortly after taking office.</p> <p>Pence and Aso said they believed the dialogue could yield opportunities to create new jobs on both sides and to fortify the economic aspects of the alliance.</p> <p>“We would like to seek the best shape and forum for our bilateral relationship,” Pence said. “The TPP is a thing of the past for the United States of America.”</p> <p>He said Trump is certain that negotiating trade deals with individual countries was the best way to ensure they yield “win-win” situations for both sides.</p> <p>The talks Tuesday did not delve into sector-by-sector issues such as auto exports. With no U.S. trade representative yet in office and other key positions still unfilled, such nitty-gritty discussions will have to come later.</p> <p>The loss of U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a blow to Japan following strenuous negotiations, especially over opening its long-protected farm sector to more imports, especially of dairy and meat products.</p> <p>For now, both sides seem eager to downplay potential for conflict, with Aso repeatedly saying that trade friction has been vanquished in a “new era of cooperation.”</p> <p>As Indiana governor, Pence saw firsthand the impact of Japanese automakers Toyota, Honda and Subaru, whose factories employ thousands of people in his home state.</p> <p>U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who met with Japan’s trade minister, Hiroshige Seko, earlier Tuesday, said he hopes to soon begin talks on a free trade agreement with Japan.</p>	Pence: US won’t rest until N. Korea gives up nuclear weapons	false	https://abqjournal.com/989382/pence-us-wont-rest-until-n-korea-gives-up-nuclear-weapons.html	2017-04-18	2least	Pence: US won’t rest until N. Korea gives up nuclear weapons <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>After meetings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and other leaders, Pence told reporters that President Donald Trump was confident that economic and diplomatic pressure has a chance of compelling North Korea to cooperate.</p> <p>“It is our belief by bringing together the family of nations with diplomatic and economic pressure we have a chance of achieving a freeze on the Korean Peninsula,” Pence said.</p> <p>“We will not rest and will not relent until we obtain the objective of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula,” he said.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The Trump administration has signaled a more forceful U.S. stance toward North Korea’s recent missile tests and threats, including a warning from Trump that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has “gotta behave.”</p> <p>So Pence struck a stern tone after arriving at a U.S. naval base from South Korea.</p> <p>“We appreciate the challenging times in which the people of Japan live with increasing provocations from across the Sea of Japan,” he said. “We are with you 100 percent.”</p> <p>On Monday, Pence traveled to the tense Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea, where he warned North Korea’s leaders that after years of testing the U.S. and South Korea with its nuclear ambitions, “the era of strategic patience is over.”</p> <p>A senior North Korean official then accused the United States of bringing the countries to the brink of thermonuclear war.</p> <p>Pence, on a 10-day Asia trip that will also take him to Indonesia and Australia, said Trump hopes China will use its leverage to get its longtime ally North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program and ballistic missiles.</p> <p>In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi made a fresh appeal for calm.</p> <p>Wang told reporters that although U.S. officials have made clear that a military strike remains a possibility, he believes that Washington would still prefer to de-escalate tensions through multi-sided talks.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Abe said Japan likewise hopes for peaceful dialogue with Pyongyang, “but at the same time, dialogue for the sake of dialogue is valueless.” Pressure on North Korea is crucial, the prime minister said.</p> <p>After meeting with Abe, Pence held talks with Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso on a new U.S.-Japan “economic dialogue” to be led by the two.</p> <p>The new forum for trade talks was launched by Trump and Abe during the Japanese leader’s visit to the U.S. in February. In part, it is meant to take the place of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the regional trade pact that Trump withdrew from shortly after taking office.</p> <p>Pence and Aso said they believed the dialogue could yield opportunities to create new jobs on both sides and to fortify the economic aspects of the alliance.</p> <p>“We would like to seek the best shape and forum for our bilateral relationship,” Pence said. “The TPP is a thing of the past for the United States of America.”</p> <p>He said Trump is certain that negotiating trade deals with individual countries was the best way to ensure they yield “win-win” situations for both sides.</p> <p>The talks Tuesday did not delve into sector-by-sector issues such as auto exports. With no U.S. trade representative yet in office and other key positions still unfilled, such nitty-gritty discussions will have to come later.</p> <p>The loss of U.S. participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership was a blow to Japan following strenuous negotiations, especially over opening its long-protected farm sector to more imports, especially of dairy and meat products.</p> <p>For now, both sides seem eager to downplay potential for conflict, with Aso repeatedly saying that trade friction has been vanquished in a “new era of cooperation.”</p> <p>As Indiana governor, Pence saw firsthand the impact of Japanese automakers Toyota, Honda and Subaru, whose factories employ thousands of people in his home state.</p> <p>U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who met with Japan’s trade minister, Hiroshige Seko, earlier Tuesday, said he hopes to soon begin talks on a free trade agreement with Japan.</p>	4,307
<p>An estimated 143 million consumers, that’s almost half of the U.S. population may have had their personal information stolen due to a data breach at Equifax, one of nation’s major consumer credit monitoring agencies . Here’s what you need to know</p> <p>Equifax struggled over the weekend with its response to its massive data breach as consumers continued to criticize the credit-reporting company's efforts and cited ongoing problems with a website set up to help them.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Regulators, meanwhile, are urging consumers to freeze their credit reports, a move some lenders fear could ding credit growth even as the finance industry struggles with the question of how to contain the potential for widespread fraud that could affect millions of Americans.</p> <p>Despite&#160;Equifax's statement Friday evening that it had cleaned up many of the problems on its website, consumers said they were still receiving erroneous and confusing responses. Some said they made up fake last names and social security numbers and received responses from the site that suggest it didn't recognize they were fictitious identities.</p> <p>The issues add to consumer ire over the data breach, which has exposed vital personal identification data -- including social security numbers, names, addresses and dates of birth -- of potentially as many as 143 million Americans. The hack is second in size to only one that was disclosed by Yahoo last year but potentially the most dangerous to date given the vital gatekeeper role firms such as&#160;Equifax&#160;play in terms of consumer credit and people's personal information.</p> <p>Kris Rockwell of Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday morning said she went to&#160;Equifax's website and entered random letters from the alphabet in the name field and all zeros in the social security number field. The response was that she "probably ha[d] been hacked," she said in an email. "Are they kidding us?"</p> <p>Some consumers trying to visit the site also received a warning message that "attackers might be trying to steal [their] information from the website." That raised further concerns for already jittery consumers.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>An&#160;Equifax&#160;spokesman said that the data file "likely contains a very limited number of names and numbers that do not connect to real people. But to reiterate, the key point is that every person potentially impacted is in the file."</p> <p>Some consumers will be receiving letters in the mail from&#160;Equifax&#160;informing them that they have likely been impacted by the breach.</p> <p>Meanwhile, authorities were urging consumers to do more than sign up for the free credit-monitoring service now being offered by&#160;Equifax. The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent an email to state residents Saturday telling them to consider placing a freeze on their credit reports. The email said it would make it harder for someone to open a new account in their name. It added that tax identity fraud was a possible result of the&#160;Equifax&#160;hack since social security numbers were compromised. Similarly, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's office issued a release on Friday recommending, among other things, that consumers contact each of the main credit-reporting firms to freeze their credit reports.</p> <p>Equifax's offer of the free one-year credit monitoring service includes freezing people's credit reports at their firm but not elsewhere. Consumers would have to contact other firms on their own.</p> <p>Credit freezes prevent lenders from being able to get copies of prospective customer's credit reports. That prevents swindlers from opening credit cards or other loans but also places that same limit on the legitimate customers unless they undo the freeze, says credit specialist John Ulzheimer.</p> <p>For lenders, though, the prospect of millions of Americans freezing their credit raises the possibility of a crimp in lending. That could dent profits at some firms and, if the issue became widespread enough, could hamper economic growth.</p> <p>At the same time, lenders have to deal with the data breach and the possibility it raises of widespread fraud. Banks and other lenders stand to incur losses on fraudulent loans and credit cards opened in consumers names with data pilfered from&#160;Equifax.</p> <p>"There will be some impact on lending over time, but the more immediate challenge facing financial institutions is authentication," meaning making sure that the people who apply for loans and those using existing accounts are who they say they are, said a credit card executive at a large bank.</p> <p>Credit specialists are stumped as to how the cleanup process will work here. In most cases, credit-reporting firms aren't in a position to validate whether a loan application is legitimate. That is the responsibility of the lender receiving the application, who relies on the files at credit-reporting companies to help determine whether the loan applicant is creditworthy.</p> <p>Major lenders typically add information to credit reports when consumers apply for credit and if they receive loans. When fraudulent activity has been added to those reports, consumers as well as lenders need to get involved to inform the credit-reporting companies that the accounts are fraudulent.</p> <p>Banks for decades have relied on credit-reporting firms as a key source of verifying consumers' identities to issue credit to them. While&#160;Equifax&#160;has said that the consumer credit reports weren't involved in the breach, the pieces of information that were stolen are enough in many cases for swindlers to open accounts in other people's names.</p> <p>In some cases, if swindlers open up payday loans or loans from other nonmainstream lenders, those won't end up on the credit reports with the big three credit bureaus. That could make it more difficult to spot future fraud by effectively creating a shadow type of loan that consumers would be unaware of, even if they check their credit reports. In many cases consumers would only find out when lenders or collection firms contacted them.</p> <p>Write to AnnaMaria Andriotis at [email protected]</p>	Equifax complaints keep growing	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/11/equifax-complaints-keep-growing.html	2017-09-11	0right	Equifax complaints keep growing <p>An estimated 143 million consumers, that’s almost half of the U.S. population may have had their personal information stolen due to a data breach at Equifax, one of nation’s major consumer credit monitoring agencies . Here’s what you need to know</p> <p>Equifax struggled over the weekend with its response to its massive data breach as consumers continued to criticize the credit-reporting company's efforts and cited ongoing problems with a website set up to help them.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Regulators, meanwhile, are urging consumers to freeze their credit reports, a move some lenders fear could ding credit growth even as the finance industry struggles with the question of how to contain the potential for widespread fraud that could affect millions of Americans.</p> <p>Despite&#160;Equifax's statement Friday evening that it had cleaned up many of the problems on its website, consumers said they were still receiving erroneous and confusing responses. Some said they made up fake last names and social security numbers and received responses from the site that suggest it didn't recognize they were fictitious identities.</p> <p>The issues add to consumer ire over the data breach, which has exposed vital personal identification data -- including social security numbers, names, addresses and dates of birth -- of potentially as many as 143 million Americans. The hack is second in size to only one that was disclosed by Yahoo last year but potentially the most dangerous to date given the vital gatekeeper role firms such as&#160;Equifax&#160;play in terms of consumer credit and people's personal information.</p> <p>Kris Rockwell of Atlanta, Georgia on Sunday morning said she went to&#160;Equifax's website and entered random letters from the alphabet in the name field and all zeros in the social security number field. The response was that she "probably ha[d] been hacked," she said in an email. "Are they kidding us?"</p> <p>Some consumers trying to visit the site also received a warning message that "attackers might be trying to steal [their] information from the website." That raised further concerns for already jittery consumers.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>An&#160;Equifax&#160;spokesman said that the data file "likely contains a very limited number of names and numbers that do not connect to real people. But to reiterate, the key point is that every person potentially impacted is in the file."</p> <p>Some consumers will be receiving letters in the mail from&#160;Equifax&#160;informing them that they have likely been impacted by the breach.</p> <p>Meanwhile, authorities were urging consumers to do more than sign up for the free credit-monitoring service now being offered by&#160;Equifax. The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman sent an email to state residents Saturday telling them to consider placing a freeze on their credit reports. The email said it would make it harder for someone to open a new account in their name. It added that tax identity fraud was a possible result of the&#160;Equifax&#160;hack since social security numbers were compromised. Similarly, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine's office issued a release on Friday recommending, among other things, that consumers contact each of the main credit-reporting firms to freeze their credit reports.</p> <p>Equifax's offer of the free one-year credit monitoring service includes freezing people's credit reports at their firm but not elsewhere. Consumers would have to contact other firms on their own.</p> <p>Credit freezes prevent lenders from being able to get copies of prospective customer's credit reports. That prevents swindlers from opening credit cards or other loans but also places that same limit on the legitimate customers unless they undo the freeze, says credit specialist John Ulzheimer.</p> <p>For lenders, though, the prospect of millions of Americans freezing their credit raises the possibility of a crimp in lending. That could dent profits at some firms and, if the issue became widespread enough, could hamper economic growth.</p> <p>At the same time, lenders have to deal with the data breach and the possibility it raises of widespread fraud. Banks and other lenders stand to incur losses on fraudulent loans and credit cards opened in consumers names with data pilfered from&#160;Equifax.</p> <p>"There will be some impact on lending over time, but the more immediate challenge facing financial institutions is authentication," meaning making sure that the people who apply for loans and those using existing accounts are who they say they are, said a credit card executive at a large bank.</p> <p>Credit specialists are stumped as to how the cleanup process will work here. In most cases, credit-reporting firms aren't in a position to validate whether a loan application is legitimate. That is the responsibility of the lender receiving the application, who relies on the files at credit-reporting companies to help determine whether the loan applicant is creditworthy.</p> <p>Major lenders typically add information to credit reports when consumers apply for credit and if they receive loans. When fraudulent activity has been added to those reports, consumers as well as lenders need to get involved to inform the credit-reporting companies that the accounts are fraudulent.</p> <p>Banks for decades have relied on credit-reporting firms as a key source of verifying consumers' identities to issue credit to them. While&#160;Equifax&#160;has said that the consumer credit reports weren't involved in the breach, the pieces of information that were stolen are enough in many cases for swindlers to open accounts in other people's names.</p> <p>In some cases, if swindlers open up payday loans or loans from other nonmainstream lenders, those won't end up on the credit reports with the big three credit bureaus. That could make it more difficult to spot future fraud by effectively creating a shadow type of loan that consumers would be unaware of, even if they check their credit reports. In many cases consumers would only find out when lenders or collection firms contacted them.</p> <p>Write to AnnaMaria Andriotis at [email protected]</p>	4,308
<p>This is the eighth of a nine-part series on empowering a faith community to impact the world. Already theology, hospitality, evangelism, missions, ethics, Bible, and spirituality have been explored. These articles can be found at the <a href="" type="internal">Perspectives tab</a> at Baptist New Global.</p> <p>Broad swaths of Baptists look to Bill Leonard for church history. Bill always invites us into an integration of church past and present toward the church we all hope for. He accomplishes this as a serious scholar and with zeal and humor that invite all learners into the value of church history.</p> <p /> <p>Perhaps he has taught in your church as he has in mine. Generating an interest in church history in the local church for a holistic approach to theological education is not easy.</p> <p>Thomas Groome in his epic book, Educating for Life, writes this:</p> <p>Better by far that educators and their curricula honor people’s “whole time” — past, present, and future — as a unity. If teachers and parents maintain a more integrated sense of time, they will also teach its legacy — tradition — in ways that enrich the present rather than determine it and that encourage agency rather than fatalism toward the future.</p> <p>Karen Tye, reflecting on Groome’s work in her book, Basics of Christian Education, writes that education in the church “attends to (1) the activity of God in our present, (2) the story of the Christian faith community and (3) the vision of God’s kingdom.”</p> <p>At this writing I have just returned from the 2015 Parliament of the World Religions in Salt Lake City. This gathering garnered respect and relationship among the people of many religions. Workshops enabled the various stories to be told — where the religion came from and where it is headed. Tradition, reason, experience, and stories abounded. The plenary sessions each night modeled the union of purpose that was taking place concerning the plight of the world and our place in addressing that plight.</p> <p>The Alliance of Baptists recently commissioned Andrew Gardner to write the Alliance history. The staff and board of directors believe that remembering the past promotes the future and this became the initiative behind the soon-to-be published book, Reimagining Zion.</p> <p>Church history is critical to faith formation. Every church must find ways to include this branch of learning for a holistic approach to its future.</p>	Church history: Toward the future	false	https://baptistnews.com/article/church-history-toward-the-future/		3left-center	Church history: Toward the future <p>This is the eighth of a nine-part series on empowering a faith community to impact the world. Already theology, hospitality, evangelism, missions, ethics, Bible, and spirituality have been explored. These articles can be found at the <a href="" type="internal">Perspectives tab</a> at Baptist New Global.</p> <p>Broad swaths of Baptists look to Bill Leonard for church history. Bill always invites us into an integration of church past and present toward the church we all hope for. He accomplishes this as a serious scholar and with zeal and humor that invite all learners into the value of church history.</p> <p /> <p>Perhaps he has taught in your church as he has in mine. Generating an interest in church history in the local church for a holistic approach to theological education is not easy.</p> <p>Thomas Groome in his epic book, Educating for Life, writes this:</p> <p>Better by far that educators and their curricula honor people’s “whole time” — past, present, and future — as a unity. If teachers and parents maintain a more integrated sense of time, they will also teach its legacy — tradition — in ways that enrich the present rather than determine it and that encourage agency rather than fatalism toward the future.</p> <p>Karen Tye, reflecting on Groome’s work in her book, Basics of Christian Education, writes that education in the church “attends to (1) the activity of God in our present, (2) the story of the Christian faith community and (3) the vision of God’s kingdom.”</p> <p>At this writing I have just returned from the 2015 Parliament of the World Religions in Salt Lake City. This gathering garnered respect and relationship among the people of many religions. Workshops enabled the various stories to be told — where the religion came from and where it is headed. Tradition, reason, experience, and stories abounded. The plenary sessions each night modeled the union of purpose that was taking place concerning the plight of the world and our place in addressing that plight.</p> <p>The Alliance of Baptists recently commissioned Andrew Gardner to write the Alliance history. The staff and board of directors believe that remembering the past promotes the future and this became the initiative behind the soon-to-be published book, Reimagining Zion.</p> <p>Church history is critical to faith formation. Every church must find ways to include this branch of learning for a holistic approach to its future.</p>	4,309
<p>By Bob Allen</p> <p>Baptist-owned Hobby Lobby faces fines up to $1.3 million a day for refusing to obey a law that takes effect Jan. 1 requiring employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptives, including methods the business owners believe induce abortion.</p> <p>The Oklahoma City-based retailer lost a legal battle Dec. 20 when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HL10CD.pdf" type="external">overruled</a> its objections that portions of the Affordable Care Act – also known as Obamacare – violate the religious freedom of employers opposed to “abortion-inducing contraceptive drugs and devices.”</p> <p>Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/27/us-usa-healthcare-hobbylobby-idUSBRE8BQ00A20121227" type="external">refused</a> to block enforcement of the coverage mandate, saying that if they fail to win their case in lower courts, then the Greens can petition to high court to hear it.</p> <p>Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Hobby Lobby in the case, <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/statement-regarding-sotomayor-opinion/" type="external">said</a> his clients will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees, but, “To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.”</p> <p>Founded in 1970 by David Green, a member of <a href="http://www.councilroad.org/" type="external">Council Road Baptist Church</a> in Bethany, Okla., Hobby Lobby now has <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/stores/store_locations_search.cfm" type="external">525 stores</a> across the nation. In addition to its arts-and-crafts business, the firm also runs <a href="http://www.mardel.com/about/" type="external">Mardel</a>, a Christian bookstore chain with 35 stores located in the central region of the United States.</p> <p>Rick Thompson, pastor of the <a href="http://sbc.net/churchsearch/church.asp?ID=3175%2D73008" type="external">4,800-member</a> Council Road Baptist Church, said in a <a href="http://roadwetravel.blogspot.com/2012/12/hobby-lobby-and-america-we-are-becoming.html" type="external">blog</a> Dec. 29 that what the government is doing to the Green family is “disgusting, frustrating and egregious.”</p> <p>“Hobby Lobby is not some impersonal corporate conglomerate,” Thompson said. “It is a family owned business. And as a good friend and pastor to many in this family, I know them up close and personal. These are not corporate tycoons. These are not people who fly corporate jets and flaunt their wealth. They are by all appearances an average American family with traditional American values. They are about the least materialistic family you would ever meet. They give most of their money away, pay their taxes, love their family, serve their church. They are patriotic, humble and outstanding role models and servants to their community. They quietly support a multitude of charitable causes around the world.”</p> <p>Courts have ruled that as a secular corporation Hobby Lobby is not entitled to free exercise of religion protection under the First Amendment. Thompson said that means the government “doesn’t care about your sense of religious freedom if you happen to be a successful business owner.”</p> <p>Green said in an earlier statement: “Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families. We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”</p> <p>The Hobby Lobby website says, “The foundation of our business has been, and will continue to be strong values, and honoring the Lord in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.” Hobby Lobby stories are <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/our_company.cfm" type="external">closed</a> on Sunday and give a 10 percent <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/considerations.cfm" type="external">discount</a> to churches, schools and national charitable organizations that use an organizational check or credit card.</p> <p>In addition, Hobby Lobby “partners with organizations working to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to all the world,” the website continues. Ministry <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/ministry.cfm" type="external">partners</a> include <a href="http://www.wycliffe.org/" type="external">Wycliffe Bible Translators</a> and <a href="http://www.oru.edu/" type="external">Oral Roberts University</a>.</p> <p>The Hobby Lobby case is one of 42 lawsuits <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/hhsinformationcentral/" type="external">filed</a> by more than 110 plaintiffs challenging the contraception mandate. Some, like complaints <a href="culture/politics/item/7875-texas-baptists-schools-challenge-obamacare" type="external">filed</a> by Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College, East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University, contend that religious organizations like schools and hospitals that hire people outside the faith and serve a larger constituency than just church members should be entitled to the same conscience clause that exempts houses of worship from providing coverage that runs contrary to their faith.</p>	Hobby Lobby braces for fines	false	https://baptistnews.com/article/hobby-lobby-braces-for-fines-2/		3left-center	Hobby Lobby braces for fines <p>By Bob Allen</p> <p>Baptist-owned Hobby Lobby faces fines up to $1.3 million a day for refusing to obey a law that takes effect Jan. 1 requiring employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptives, including methods the business owners believe induce abortion.</p> <p>The Oklahoma City-based retailer lost a legal battle Dec. 20 when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/HL10CD.pdf" type="external">overruled</a> its objections that portions of the Affordable Care Act – also known as Obamacare – violate the religious freedom of employers opposed to “abortion-inducing contraceptive drugs and devices.”</p> <p>Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/27/us-usa-healthcare-hobbylobby-idUSBRE8BQ00A20121227" type="external">refused</a> to block enforcement of the coverage mandate, saying that if they fail to win their case in lower courts, then the Greens can petition to high court to hear it.</p> <p>Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents Hobby Lobby in the case, <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/statement-regarding-sotomayor-opinion/" type="external">said</a> his clients will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees, but, “To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.”</p> <p>Founded in 1970 by David Green, a member of <a href="http://www.councilroad.org/" type="external">Council Road Baptist Church</a> in Bethany, Okla., Hobby Lobby now has <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/stores/store_locations_search.cfm" type="external">525 stores</a> across the nation. In addition to its arts-and-crafts business, the firm also runs <a href="http://www.mardel.com/about/" type="external">Mardel</a>, a Christian bookstore chain with 35 stores located in the central region of the United States.</p> <p>Rick Thompson, pastor of the <a href="http://sbc.net/churchsearch/church.asp?ID=3175%2D73008" type="external">4,800-member</a> Council Road Baptist Church, said in a <a href="http://roadwetravel.blogspot.com/2012/12/hobby-lobby-and-america-we-are-becoming.html" type="external">blog</a> Dec. 29 that what the government is doing to the Green family is “disgusting, frustrating and egregious.”</p> <p>“Hobby Lobby is not some impersonal corporate conglomerate,” Thompson said. “It is a family owned business. And as a good friend and pastor to many in this family, I know them up close and personal. These are not corporate tycoons. These are not people who fly corporate jets and flaunt their wealth. They are by all appearances an average American family with traditional American values. They are about the least materialistic family you would ever meet. They give most of their money away, pay their taxes, love their family, serve their church. They are patriotic, humble and outstanding role models and servants to their community. They quietly support a multitude of charitable causes around the world.”</p> <p>Courts have ruled that as a secular corporation Hobby Lobby is not entitled to free exercise of religion protection under the First Amendment. Thompson said that means the government “doesn’t care about your sense of religious freedom if you happen to be a successful business owner.”</p> <p>Green said in an earlier statement: “Our family is now being forced to choose between following the laws of the land that we love or maintaining the religious beliefs that have made our business successful and supported our family and thousands of our employees and their families. We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”</p> <p>The Hobby Lobby website says, “The foundation of our business has been, and will continue to be strong values, and honoring the Lord in a manner consistent with Biblical principles.” Hobby Lobby stories are <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/our_company.cfm" type="external">closed</a> on Sunday and give a 10 percent <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/considerations.cfm" type="external">discount</a> to churches, schools and national charitable organizations that use an organizational check or credit card.</p> <p>In addition, Hobby Lobby “partners with organizations working to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to all the world,” the website continues. Ministry <a href="http://www.hobbylobby.com/our_company/ministry.cfm" type="external">partners</a> include <a href="http://www.wycliffe.org/" type="external">Wycliffe Bible Translators</a> and <a href="http://www.oru.edu/" type="external">Oral Roberts University</a>.</p> <p>The Hobby Lobby case is one of 42 lawsuits <a href="http://www.becketfund.org/hhsinformationcentral/" type="external">filed</a> by more than 110 plaintiffs challenging the contraception mandate. Some, like complaints <a href="culture/politics/item/7875-texas-baptists-schools-challenge-obamacare" type="external">filed</a> by Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College, East Texas Baptist University and Houston Baptist University, contend that religious organizations like schools and hospitals that hire people outside the faith and serve a larger constituency than just church members should be entitled to the same conscience clause that exempts houses of worship from providing coverage that runs contrary to their faith.</p>	4,310
<p>Many small businesses across the nation are launching green initiatives and saving … money.</p> <p>Enesta Jones of the EPA said one way small businesses can translate saving energy directly to the bottom line is by eliminating inefficiencies. Through use of EPA-recommended practices and innovative building efficiencies, U.S. companies are saving nearly $900,000 per year on energy bills while working to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>The EPA’s ENERGY STAR program named one such company, Elephants Delicatessen, as a recipient of its 2009 Small Business Award for sustainable, energy-saving practices. The growing Portland, Ore. deli chain uses recyclable, biodegradable contents, timed lighting, Energy-Star-qualified kitchen appliances, industrial vans, biodiesel fuels and operates on 100% wind power.</p> <p>“It all started back in the 80s with a concerned effort to do recycling and sort all of our items,” said CEO Anne Weaver.</p> <p>Weaver said the company’s energy-cost savings helped cushion the business during the recession. And, she said, it wasn’t difficult to start up the saving of energy and cash.</p> <p>“What we did was start a ‘Green Team’ and got a couple people on board building from small successes,” Weaver said. “Start with little things and have fun with it. Try to add new things that are painless, because they will have big impacts down the road.”</p> <p>Victor Seydin, owner of Lake City Cleaners in Chicago, is another business owner who says he is making green from being green.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>“The dry cleaning machine that I have is … exceptionally unique,” Seydin said. “The technology has just come out ... We were the very first dry cleaners in the country to receive [the green machine].” The company also introduced an environmentally-friendly alternative to the single-use garment bag.</p> <p>The dry cleaner uses its own brand name for its eco-friendly efforts called Monarch Care. And this, Seydin said, has created a strong environmentally-conscious client base, adding to the businesses profits.</p> <p>“We have right now quite a few customers that will not change to any other dry cleaning machine,” Seydin said. “They admit this machine is incredible and green. People are willing to pay maybe 5% more to preserve the environment. It is astonishing how people care about protecting the environment.”</p> <p>Small businesses can get free advice and help on moving toward greener (in more ways than one) business practices from the EPA and other eco-friendly organizations. Energy Star is a joint program of the EPA and the U.S. <a href="" type="internal">Department of Energy</a>.</p>	How to Turn ‘Planet-Saving’ Into Cash	true	http://foxbusiness.com/features/2009/10/16/turn-planet-saving-cash.html	2016-03-23	0right	How to Turn ‘Planet-Saving’ Into Cash <p>Many small businesses across the nation are launching green initiatives and saving … money.</p> <p>Enesta Jones of the EPA said one way small businesses can translate saving energy directly to the bottom line is by eliminating inefficiencies. Through use of EPA-recommended practices and innovative building efficiencies, U.S. companies are saving nearly $900,000 per year on energy bills while working to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>The EPA’s ENERGY STAR program named one such company, Elephants Delicatessen, as a recipient of its 2009 Small Business Award for sustainable, energy-saving practices. The growing Portland, Ore. deli chain uses recyclable, biodegradable contents, timed lighting, Energy-Star-qualified kitchen appliances, industrial vans, biodiesel fuels and operates on 100% wind power.</p> <p>“It all started back in the 80s with a concerned effort to do recycling and sort all of our items,” said CEO Anne Weaver.</p> <p>Weaver said the company’s energy-cost savings helped cushion the business during the recession. And, she said, it wasn’t difficult to start up the saving of energy and cash.</p> <p>“What we did was start a ‘Green Team’ and got a couple people on board building from small successes,” Weaver said. “Start with little things and have fun with it. Try to add new things that are painless, because they will have big impacts down the road.”</p> <p>Victor Seydin, owner of Lake City Cleaners in Chicago, is another business owner who says he is making green from being green.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>“The dry cleaning machine that I have is … exceptionally unique,” Seydin said. “The technology has just come out ... We were the very first dry cleaners in the country to receive [the green machine].” The company also introduced an environmentally-friendly alternative to the single-use garment bag.</p> <p>The dry cleaner uses its own brand name for its eco-friendly efforts called Monarch Care. And this, Seydin said, has created a strong environmentally-conscious client base, adding to the businesses profits.</p> <p>“We have right now quite a few customers that will not change to any other dry cleaning machine,” Seydin said. “They admit this machine is incredible and green. People are willing to pay maybe 5% more to preserve the environment. It is astonishing how people care about protecting the environment.”</p> <p>Small businesses can get free advice and help on moving toward greener (in more ways than one) business practices from the EPA and other eco-friendly organizations. Energy Star is a joint program of the EPA and the U.S. <a href="" type="internal">Department of Energy</a>.</p>	4,311
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Stella Padilla</p> <p>Retired Old Town resident Stella Padilla has suffered a major setback in her quest to get her name on Albuquerque’s mayoral ballot, but she’s vowing to fight on.</p> <p>State District Judge Nancy Franchini has granted the city’s motion to dismiss Padilla’s lawsuit, which alleged that City Clerk Natalie Howard and her staff had wrongfully thrown out legitimate voter signatures on Padilla’s nominating petition.</p> <p>“It breaks my heart, Ms. Padilla. I would like to rule in your favor, but I can’t,” Franchini said during a hearing Friday.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Franchini’s decision wasn’t based on the substance of Padilla’s claim – that the City Clerk’s Office had erroneously thrown out legitimate signatures – but rather on the technical aspects of how the case was filed.</p> <p>Assistant City Attorney Nick Bullock argued that Padilla lacked standing to file the lawsuit in the first place because under the Municipal Code, only voters whose signatures were thrown out could petition the court to reinstate the signatures. He told the court that Padilla erred by filing the case under the Declaratory Judgment Act.</p> <p>Franchini agreed with his argument.</p> <p>“This is an election, not a selection, which is what they’re trying to do,” Padilla told the Journal after the hearing. “This is not over yet by a long shot.”</p> <p>A. Blair Dunn, Padilla’s attorney, said he would ask the state Supreme Court for an immediate review of the ruling.</p> <p>Padilla was one of 16 candidates who filed to run for mayor. To qualify to get their names on the ballot, candidates were required to submit signatures from 3,000 registered city voters by April 28.</p> <p>According to the City Clerk’s Office, nine candidates met that requirement. Padilla, however, was 171 valid signatures short of qualifying for the ballot, according to the city clerk’s website.</p> <p>Licensed private investigator Carlos Villanueva submitted an affidavit to the court in support of Padilla’s claim that the City Clerk’s Office had wrongfully thrown out legitimate signatures on her nominating petition.</p> <p>In that sworn statement, Villanueva says that Padilla’s team was able to validate more than 180 signatures that were thrown out by the City Clerk’s Office, which would give Padilla more than the required number to qualify as a mayoral candidate.</p> <p>Bullock, in a written statement, said Howard and her office just followed the law.</p> <p>“The city clerk works hard to ensure that the state and local election rules are not only followed but applied equally to all candidates,” he said. “Beginning in February, the City Clerk’s Office communicated with various campaigns about the status of their petitions and provided explanations for why some signatures could not be validated given the requirements of New Mexico’s election code. This fair, impartial and methodical work of the City Clerk’s Office ensures the integrity of the election process.”</p> <p /> <p />	Judge dismisses mayoral candidate’s suit	false	https://abqjournal.com/1029832/judge-tosses-mayoral-hopefuls-case.html	2017-07-07	2least	Judge dismisses mayoral candidate’s suit <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Stella Padilla</p> <p>Retired Old Town resident Stella Padilla has suffered a major setback in her quest to get her name on Albuquerque’s mayoral ballot, but she’s vowing to fight on.</p> <p>State District Judge Nancy Franchini has granted the city’s motion to dismiss Padilla’s lawsuit, which alleged that City Clerk Natalie Howard and her staff had wrongfully thrown out legitimate voter signatures on Padilla’s nominating petition.</p> <p>“It breaks my heart, Ms. Padilla. I would like to rule in your favor, but I can’t,” Franchini said during a hearing Friday.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Franchini’s decision wasn’t based on the substance of Padilla’s claim – that the City Clerk’s Office had erroneously thrown out legitimate signatures – but rather on the technical aspects of how the case was filed.</p> <p>Assistant City Attorney Nick Bullock argued that Padilla lacked standing to file the lawsuit in the first place because under the Municipal Code, only voters whose signatures were thrown out could petition the court to reinstate the signatures. He told the court that Padilla erred by filing the case under the Declaratory Judgment Act.</p> <p>Franchini agreed with his argument.</p> <p>“This is an election, not a selection, which is what they’re trying to do,” Padilla told the Journal after the hearing. “This is not over yet by a long shot.”</p> <p>A. Blair Dunn, Padilla’s attorney, said he would ask the state Supreme Court for an immediate review of the ruling.</p> <p>Padilla was one of 16 candidates who filed to run for mayor. To qualify to get their names on the ballot, candidates were required to submit signatures from 3,000 registered city voters by April 28.</p> <p>According to the City Clerk’s Office, nine candidates met that requirement. Padilla, however, was 171 valid signatures short of qualifying for the ballot, according to the city clerk’s website.</p> <p>Licensed private investigator Carlos Villanueva submitted an affidavit to the court in support of Padilla’s claim that the City Clerk’s Office had wrongfully thrown out legitimate signatures on her nominating petition.</p> <p>In that sworn statement, Villanueva says that Padilla’s team was able to validate more than 180 signatures that were thrown out by the City Clerk’s Office, which would give Padilla more than the required number to qualify as a mayoral candidate.</p> <p>Bullock, in a written statement, said Howard and her office just followed the law.</p> <p>“The city clerk works hard to ensure that the state and local election rules are not only followed but applied equally to all candidates,” he said. “Beginning in February, the City Clerk’s Office communicated with various campaigns about the status of their petitions and provided explanations for why some signatures could not be validated given the requirements of New Mexico’s election code. This fair, impartial and methodical work of the City Clerk’s Office ensures the integrity of the election process.”</p> <p /> <p />	4,312
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.</p> <p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Pete Domenici would like to be seen as someone who is hopeful about New Mexico and the nation.</p> <p>That said, he’s worried. He’s worried about the lack of economic progress in the state and the challenges facing the nation – from the corrosive partisanship in Washington to North Korea to civil unrest sparked by people and groups protesting President Trump.</p> <p>“How much can this democracy take?” he asked rhetorically during an interview in his Downtown office in Albuquerque.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Domenici, who with his wife, Nancy, moved back to Albuquerque from Washington, D.C., earlier this year and has begun working as a consultant, brings a unique perspective. A one-time Albuquerque city commissioner, Domenici went on to represent New Mexico for 36 years in the U.S. Senate, where he became one of the most influential political figures in the United States before deciding in 2007 not to seek re-election. He completed his sixth term in January 2009.</p> <p>A Republican, he was known for working across the aisle and was particularly influential on budget matters, mental health and energy policy. Some of his signature accomplishments came about by working with Democrats, including Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Sen. Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts.</p> <p>Domenici and Democrat Leon Panetta negotiated one of the country’s last balanced budgets, and he played a major role in working to get tons of weapons-grade plutonium out of the Soviet Union after its collapse.</p> <p>“That material ended up in American nuclear power plants,” he said. “It was a good deal for America and for the world.”</p> <p>Domenici, who decided not to seek re-election after the diagnosis of a degenerative brain disease – a diagnosis that was reconsidered later – spent the past seven years working with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He said it was a position he took after insisting the center also bring on Democrat Alice Rivlin, budget director for President Bill Clinton, to work with him on budget matters.</p> <p>Domenici says he enjoyed the work, but at age 84 he’s glad to be home with family, and in a state where he believes he can still make a difference.</p> <p>To that end, he has embarked on a consulting venture under the name of “Domenici Insights,” with space on the 10th floor at his son’s law office overlooking Downtown.</p> <p>Domenici is quick to tick off a list of challenges facing the state and the need to address them. At the same time, he is upfront about his own battles with health issues, including a neurological condition that causes extreme pain in his hand.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>His mobility is limited, and he tires easily.</p> <p>But he is up to speed on topics ranging from Syria to the “nuclear option” used by Senate Republicans to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and he homes in on New Mexico’s bleak economic picture.</p> <p>Former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico at the U.S. Capitol in October 1993. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p> <p>He says he wants to use his background, political skills and connections to help New Mexico out of its economic funk.</p> <p>New Mexico has the highest unemployment rate in the nation and is facing a budget crisis due in large part to low oil and natural gas prices. The state’s governor and lawmakers remain far apart on how to fund next year’s budget and cannot even agree on whether the state has enough money to pay its bills through the end of this fiscal year.</p> <p>As has been the case throughout his career, Domenici has strong opinions he doesn’t hesitate to express.</p> <p>“You’ve got to start by saying children in New Mexico can’t be left out,” he says. “We need better job training. I see no real effort to put groups together – money and strength – so you have a chance at attracting what President Trump describes as a new cycle of growth.”</p> <p>U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., in silhouette at left at the U.S. Capitol in 1993. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p> <p>Domenici’s résumé would seem to put him firmly in the camp of establishment Republicans who were less than thrilled by Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination and then the presidency. But he believes Trump’s economic agenda will mean jobs and renewed economic vitality in America.</p> <p>The question, he says, is how do we position ourselves to share in that?</p> <p>“If they can succeed in Ohio. … We’re sitting here and don’t seem to have a stick in the game and don’t seem to worry about it. But I do worry.”</p> <p>“Our situation is difficult and hard on our people,” he says. “We need a game changer to get a share of this growth.”</p> <p>Former Sen. Pete Domenici says it’s important for New Mexico to capitalize on its strengths and the technology from the labs, pointing to fracking as an example of game-changing technology developed in part at Sandia National Laboratories. (Source: Sandia National Laboratories)</p> <p>For Domenici, that’s about government and the private sector working to boost entrepreneurship for those families “that invest their life savings to start a business.”</p> <p>It’s about capitalizing on New Mexico’s strengths and the technology from the labs, which he proudly supported, and he often points out Sandia National Laboratories’ role in developing fracking technology as an example of game-changing technology from the labs.</p> <p>There are still plenty of influential people who listen when Domenici talks. He retains the ability to attract major players around the country to his annual Domenici Institute at New Mexico State University.</p> <p>Democratic Party strategist James Carville, former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, also a Democrat, and Panetta, who headed both the CIA and Department of Defense under Democratic presidents, are examples.</p> <p>He is passionate about wanting to make a positive impact on a state with so many dismal statistics and says we have bounced back from setbacks in the past. But he acknowledges the difficult path ahead.</p> <p>He isn’t sure how much his health will allow him to do, or how his efforts here will be received.</p> <p>“You’ve got to let it fall where it falls,” he says.</p> <p>But where New Mexico is concerned, he says he’s watched from the sidelines for too long.</p> <p>“When you’re dealt apples, you’ve got to use the apples. When you aren’t dealt anything, you’ve got to go looking.”</p> <p>Face to Face is a feature by senior editor Kent Walz, who periodically sits down for a chat with a newsmaker. You can contact Walz at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p> <p /> <p />	Face to face with Pete Domenici: Moving off the sidelines	false	https://abqjournal.com/994844/face-to-face-with-pete-domenici-moving-off-the-sidelines.html		2least	Face to face with Pete Domenici: Moving off the sidelines <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Former New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.</p> <p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Pete Domenici would like to be seen as someone who is hopeful about New Mexico and the nation.</p> <p>That said, he’s worried. He’s worried about the lack of economic progress in the state and the challenges facing the nation – from the corrosive partisanship in Washington to North Korea to civil unrest sparked by people and groups protesting President Trump.</p> <p>“How much can this democracy take?” he asked rhetorically during an interview in his Downtown office in Albuquerque.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Domenici, who with his wife, Nancy, moved back to Albuquerque from Washington, D.C., earlier this year and has begun working as a consultant, brings a unique perspective. A one-time Albuquerque city commissioner, Domenici went on to represent New Mexico for 36 years in the U.S. Senate, where he became one of the most influential political figures in the United States before deciding in 2007 not to seek re-election. He completed his sixth term in January 2009.</p> <p>A Republican, he was known for working across the aisle and was particularly influential on budget matters, mental health and energy policy. Some of his signature accomplishments came about by working with Democrats, including Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and Sen. Teddy Kennedy of Massachusetts.</p> <p>Domenici and Democrat Leon Panetta negotiated one of the country’s last balanced budgets, and he played a major role in working to get tons of weapons-grade plutonium out of the Soviet Union after its collapse.</p> <p>“That material ended up in American nuclear power plants,” he said. “It was a good deal for America and for the world.”</p> <p>Domenici, who decided not to seek re-election after the diagnosis of a degenerative brain disease – a diagnosis that was reconsidered later – spent the past seven years working with the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington. He said it was a position he took after insisting the center also bring on Democrat Alice Rivlin, budget director for President Bill Clinton, to work with him on budget matters.</p> <p>Domenici says he enjoyed the work, but at age 84 he’s glad to be home with family, and in a state where he believes he can still make a difference.</p> <p>To that end, he has embarked on a consulting venture under the name of “Domenici Insights,” with space on the 10th floor at his son’s law office overlooking Downtown.</p> <p>Domenici is quick to tick off a list of challenges facing the state and the need to address them. At the same time, he is upfront about his own battles with health issues, including a neurological condition that causes extreme pain in his hand.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>His mobility is limited, and he tires easily.</p> <p>But he is up to speed on topics ranging from Syria to the “nuclear option” used by Senate Republicans to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and he homes in on New Mexico’s bleak economic picture.</p> <p>Former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico at the U.S. Capitol in October 1993. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p> <p>He says he wants to use his background, political skills and connections to help New Mexico out of its economic funk.</p> <p>New Mexico has the highest unemployment rate in the nation and is facing a budget crisis due in large part to low oil and natural gas prices. The state’s governor and lawmakers remain far apart on how to fund next year’s budget and cannot even agree on whether the state has enough money to pay its bills through the end of this fiscal year.</p> <p>As has been the case throughout his career, Domenici has strong opinions he doesn’t hesitate to express.</p> <p>“You’ve got to start by saying children in New Mexico can’t be left out,” he says. “We need better job training. I see no real effort to put groups together – money and strength – so you have a chance at attracting what President Trump describes as a new cycle of growth.”</p> <p>U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., in silhouette at left at the U.S. Capitol in 1993. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p> <p>Domenici’s résumé would seem to put him firmly in the camp of establishment Republicans who were less than thrilled by Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican nomination and then the presidency. But he believes Trump’s economic agenda will mean jobs and renewed economic vitality in America.</p> <p>The question, he says, is how do we position ourselves to share in that?</p> <p>“If they can succeed in Ohio. … We’re sitting here and don’t seem to have a stick in the game and don’t seem to worry about it. But I do worry.”</p> <p>“Our situation is difficult and hard on our people,” he says. “We need a game changer to get a share of this growth.”</p> <p>Former Sen. Pete Domenici says it’s important for New Mexico to capitalize on its strengths and the technology from the labs, pointing to fracking as an example of game-changing technology developed in part at Sandia National Laboratories. (Source: Sandia National Laboratories)</p> <p>For Domenici, that’s about government and the private sector working to boost entrepreneurship for those families “that invest their life savings to start a business.”</p> <p>It’s about capitalizing on New Mexico’s strengths and the technology from the labs, which he proudly supported, and he often points out Sandia National Laboratories’ role in developing fracking technology as an example of game-changing technology from the labs.</p> <p>There are still plenty of influential people who listen when Domenici talks. He retains the ability to attract major players around the country to his annual Domenici Institute at New Mexico State University.</p> <p>Democratic Party strategist James Carville, former North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, also a Democrat, and Panetta, who headed both the CIA and Department of Defense under Democratic presidents, are examples.</p> <p>He is passionate about wanting to make a positive impact on a state with so many dismal statistics and says we have bounced back from setbacks in the past. But he acknowledges the difficult path ahead.</p> <p>He isn’t sure how much his health will allow him to do, or how his efforts here will be received.</p> <p>“You’ve got to let it fall where it falls,” he says.</p> <p>But where New Mexico is concerned, he says he’s watched from the sidelines for too long.</p> <p>“When you’re dealt apples, you’ve got to use the apples. When you aren’t dealt anything, you’ve got to go looking.”</p> <p>Face to Face is a feature by senior editor Kent Walz, who periodically sits down for a chat with a newsmaker. You can contact Walz at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p> <p /> <p />	4,313
<p /> <p><a href="" type="internal">paintings</a>&#160;\|&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Shutterstock.com</a></p> <p>&#160;</p> <p /> <p>In a month where the Orlando massacre has highlighted the deadly consequences of <a href="" type="internal">hate</a>, conservative Australian politicians are trying amidst the late stages of a generally unremarkable election campaign to play both sides of the fence over the issue of same-sex marriage. Being one of the few areas where the ruling (and desperately misnamed) Liberal-National Party coalition can try to temper its conspicuously illiberal and reactionary image with something approximating principled values without offending their primary constituents in the banking and mining industries, the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has offered to open the issue to a national plebiscite —&#160;in essence, a national vote over the issue.</p> <p>Advocates for marriage equality in Australia <a href="" type="internal">oppose</a> a national plebiscite on a number of grounds, not least of which being that the Australian High Court has already ruled that the definition of marriage in the Constitution already includes same-sex marriages, and that since this is the case, parliament already has the power to legislate marriage equality should it so desire — and, which, given the injustice of discrimination in general, might be considered desirable, and an opportunity for leaders to lead rather than pander to the prejudices of the majority. Not only then is a plebiscite unnecessary, nether is it subject to the same regulations as a referendum on Constitutional questions and is open to manipulation, and the result is not binding on Parliament anyway. Their unwillingness to legislate with the legal mandate they already have does not inspire confidence that they will do so with one from a plebiscite.</p> <p>In the Lionel Murphy memorial lecture at the Australian National University in late June, the senior Labor frontbencher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/penny-wong" type="external">Penny Wong</a> elaborated on these concerns, arguing that heterosexual politicians don’t understand why those supposedly benefitting most from a plebiscite on same-sex marriage opposite it because they have no concept of the treatment metered out to LGBTI Australians at the hands of local bigots. ‘I know that a plebiscite designed to deny me and many other Australians a marriage certificate will instead license hate speech to those who need little encouragement,’ she said. ‘Mr Turnbull, and many commentators on this subject, don’t understand that for gay and lesbian Australians hate speech is not abstract.’ Insofar as that was the case, Wong described the non-binding plebiscite as ‘just the latest in a series of obstacles erected by opponents of marriage equality,’ affirming the description of it offered by Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten as ‘a taxpayer-funded platform for homophobia.’</p> <p>As if to demonstrate the soundness of such criticisms, the federal treasurer, Scott Morrison, responded to Wong’s speech by declaring, ‘People of very strong religious views, they have also been subject to quite dreadful hate speech and bigotry as well. It is not confined to one side of this debate.’ Claiming that as a white, propertied conservative male, he had suffered from the same sorts of discrimination as LGBTI people, Morrison claimed to ‘understand the concern Penny is raising, I know it from personal experience, having been exposed to that sort of hatred and bigotry for the views I’ve taken, from others who have a different view to me’ —&#160;though neglecting to elaborate exactly on what basis he was able to experience discrimination on the basis of his views. ‘I have an electorate where I cannot represent the view of every person on this issue,’ Morrison added, appearing to demonstrate the motivations of the conservative party backing a plebiscite. ‘People know my view on this in my electorate, and it tends to be, it would seem, the majority view in my electorate.’ It is, no doubt, the majority viewpoint amongst conservatives.</p> <p>Some indication of what these kinds of views are come to us courtesy of South Australian senator Cori Bernadi, who continues to insist on the threat posed by halal certification despite a Senate inquiry instigated at his behest at the cost of millions of dollars to the Australian taxpayer finding <a href="" type="internal">no substance</a> to those claims. In the same vein, Bernadi has taken the opportunity to dredge up the <a href="" type="internal">claim</a> that marriage equality is the thin end of the wedge of animal bestiality, something to which he obviously gives a great deal of thought. They are further significantly demonstrated in an <a href="" type="internal">Election Guide</a> from the Australian Christian Lobby, one which encourages readers to ‘Discover the truth about Labor’s rainbow policy positions,’ and demonstrating its patent terror of apparent competition by inviting them to ‘turn to page 5 to read about the ALP’s plans to give the gay lobby privileged status in government decision-making.’ Upon turning to page 5, one finds that ‘The Australian Labor Party’s 2015 National Conference made headlines over the party’s decision to force all of its MPs to support same-sex marriage from 2019.’ Worse, ‘a series of little-known amendments to the party’s national platform went unreported by the mainstream media,’ meaning that, ‘Sadly Labor’s capitulation to radical rainbow ideology is complete.’ This heinous capitulation to privileged interests, the graphic informs us, includes an ‘ALP Forced Vote for same-sex marriage,’ ‘Taxpayer funded sex-change operations.’ ‘Continues to support the so-called “Safe Schools” programme that teaches children that gender is fluid,’ ‘Anti-discrimination law review,’ ‘Government funded rainbow cop to enforce rainbow ideology from pre-school to board room,’ and reprinting documents ‘with new prefixes to remove or change gender markers or increase “identification options,”’ described as ‘make public toilets unsafe for women and girls?’</p> <p>It appears from such comments that, for all allusions to things like ‘capitulation to radical rainbow ideology’ and ‘rainbow cop to enforce rainbow ideology from pre-school to board room,’ the ACL is preoccupied with a speck in someone else’s eye while carrying a log in their own. If its election guide is anything to go by, it is the conservatives who are capitulating to far-right Pentecostal theocratic ideology premised on the one hand on oppressive gender norms whose primary function is to provide a basis for the imposition of gender-based hierarchies, and on the other on a deterministic cosmological outlook that interprets ideas in terms of ideas that serve the privileged interests the ACL represents, and what was described in earlier periods of history as ‘evildoing.’ It is this agenda that also sees a threat in the ‘ <a href="http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org.au/what-we-do" type="external">Safe Schools</a>’ campaign, which ‘offers a suite of free resources and support to equip school staff with knowledge, skills and practical ideas to create safer and more inclusive school environments for same sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, staff and families.’</p> <p>Due to its binary and generally authoritarian outlook, which makes it incapable of distinguishing between having its views doubted or contradicted and being attacked or otherwise deprived of its rights, the ACL sees in initiatives to prevent bullying a ‘dangerous queer gender ideology that teaches students and school teachers that you should not to refer to “boys and girls”, while also promoting a view that gender is fluid.’ At no point does the patently homophobic ACL mentality attempt to engage with arguments on this count, a fact that would appear to corroborate the employment of the ‘with us or against us’ fallacy indicative of the failure to distinguish being criticized and being attacked as a tactic admission that it has run out of ideas and is simply unwilling to admit that it is in the wrong. Reaching at this point for ammunition against the object of its fear and loathing, the ACL describes the programme as directing students ‘to websites that give directions on how girls can bind their chests (a potentially lethal exercise) and how boys can tuck their genitals’ —&#160;typical activities for transgender teenagers one would imagine, though the suggestion that chest binding is as completely unsupported as any of the other claims the ACL makes, and is generally asinine.</p> <p>Reflecting again the dangerous Pentecostal ideology that teaches students who don’t fit into traditional gender categories that they should hate themselves, as it performs the role of religious cop to enforce binary gender categories from pre-school until the suicide or mass shooting, the ACL complains that ‘Despite a review, followed by a response from the Education Minister, the program still contains material that teaches that gender is a construct.’ Given the homophobic hate speech of the ACL and their willingness to target anti-bullying campaigns in the name of beliefs it decides prior to making any effort to provide supporting arguments or proof are so legitimate that to doubt them is to give aid to the enemies of justice, their claims to being victimized can hardly be taken as anything other than playing the victim —&#160;a classic form of moral disengagement, along with the victim blaming they so enthusiastically embrace.</p> <p>The parallels to claims from Scott Morrison to having been victimized as a result of being contradicted by people who happen not to appreciate the abovementioned types of views are impossible to miss. Indeed, it is not one bit surprising to discover that Morrison, who by his own admission is a representative of the kinds of ‘very strong religious views’ contained in this guide, is himself the same kind of Pentecostal Christian as the Australian Christian Lobby. While Morrison regards the characteristically binary and hateful attitudes expressed in the ACL Election Guide as the majority viewpoint, as if the basis of the truth of an idea was the number of people who believed it, according to the <a href="" type="internal">Australian Bureau of Statistics</a>, Pentecostal Christianity can claim a full <a href="" type="internal">1.1.%</a> of the total population. Given this fact it is ironic in the extreme that the ACL or anyone else accuse their critics or detractors of having capitulated to extremist ideology, much less to say of being extremist ideologues looking to enforce ideological orthodoxies from birth.</p> <p>It is a truism of life that we tend to project our unconscious shame onto those who tend to remind us of it, a fact that tends to give rise to the inevitable conclusion that those who express the greatest hate about things like homosexuality are usually also those who have the least understanding of their own sexual identity or capacity to fulfill either their own needs or anyone else’s. It is because the ACL and Morrison know full well what they are up do in this respect that gives rise to the subjective moral imperatives to willfully conflate being doubted or contradicted with being attacked or deprived of their rights, to victim blame and to play the victim whenever anyone tries to hold them accountable for the consequences of their actions. As the heinous hate crime carried out by Omar Mateen in Orlando has highlighted, the destructive potential of homophobia and of those with the capacity to influence the attitudes of many others, such as the Australian treasurer, is impossible to miss — for most. Some, such as Family First Senator Peter Madden, have been able to <a href="" type="internal">reconnect</a> with moral values with the aid of Twitter. Others, such as incumbent Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, remain committed, in this case accusing Bill Shorten on FM radio in the Northern Territory in mid-June of ‘running a scare campaign about a plebiscite on gay marriage.’ The Prime Minister had, on the other hand, nothing to say about running a scare campaign about ‘radical rainbow ideology.’</p> <p>Perhaps with good reason, on the grounds of anyone finding rainbows threatening to the sanctity of their worldview, way of life or life being patently unfit to govern — much less to say operate machinery, perhaps, or take a bath unassisted for fear of drowning.</p>	Homophobia and the Conservative Victim Complex	true	https://counterpunch.org/2016/06/24/homophobia-and-the-conservative-victim-complex/	2016-06-24	4left	Homophobia and the Conservative Victim Complex <p /> <p><a href="" type="internal">paintings</a>&#160;\|&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Shutterstock.com</a></p> <p>&#160;</p> <p /> <p>In a month where the Orlando massacre has highlighted the deadly consequences of <a href="" type="internal">hate</a>, conservative Australian politicians are trying amidst the late stages of a generally unremarkable election campaign to play both sides of the fence over the issue of same-sex marriage. Being one of the few areas where the ruling (and desperately misnamed) Liberal-National Party coalition can try to temper its conspicuously illiberal and reactionary image with something approximating principled values without offending their primary constituents in the banking and mining industries, the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull has offered to open the issue to a national plebiscite —&#160;in essence, a national vote over the issue.</p> <p>Advocates for marriage equality in Australia <a href="" type="internal">oppose</a> a national plebiscite on a number of grounds, not least of which being that the Australian High Court has already ruled that the definition of marriage in the Constitution already includes same-sex marriages, and that since this is the case, parliament already has the power to legislate marriage equality should it so desire — and, which, given the injustice of discrimination in general, might be considered desirable, and an opportunity for leaders to lead rather than pander to the prejudices of the majority. Not only then is a plebiscite unnecessary, nether is it subject to the same regulations as a referendum on Constitutional questions and is open to manipulation, and the result is not binding on Parliament anyway. Their unwillingness to legislate with the legal mandate they already have does not inspire confidence that they will do so with one from a plebiscite.</p> <p>In the Lionel Murphy memorial lecture at the Australian National University in late June, the senior Labor frontbencher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/penny-wong" type="external">Penny Wong</a> elaborated on these concerns, arguing that heterosexual politicians don’t understand why those supposedly benefitting most from a plebiscite on same-sex marriage opposite it because they have no concept of the treatment metered out to LGBTI Australians at the hands of local bigots. ‘I know that a plebiscite designed to deny me and many other Australians a marriage certificate will instead license hate speech to those who need little encouragement,’ she said. ‘Mr Turnbull, and many commentators on this subject, don’t understand that for gay and lesbian Australians hate speech is not abstract.’ Insofar as that was the case, Wong described the non-binding plebiscite as ‘just the latest in a series of obstacles erected by opponents of marriage equality,’ affirming the description of it offered by Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten as ‘a taxpayer-funded platform for homophobia.’</p> <p>As if to demonstrate the soundness of such criticisms, the federal treasurer, Scott Morrison, responded to Wong’s speech by declaring, ‘People of very strong religious views, they have also been subject to quite dreadful hate speech and bigotry as well. It is not confined to one side of this debate.’ Claiming that as a white, propertied conservative male, he had suffered from the same sorts of discrimination as LGBTI people, Morrison claimed to ‘understand the concern Penny is raising, I know it from personal experience, having been exposed to that sort of hatred and bigotry for the views I’ve taken, from others who have a different view to me’ —&#160;though neglecting to elaborate exactly on what basis he was able to experience discrimination on the basis of his views. ‘I have an electorate where I cannot represent the view of every person on this issue,’ Morrison added, appearing to demonstrate the motivations of the conservative party backing a plebiscite. ‘People know my view on this in my electorate, and it tends to be, it would seem, the majority view in my electorate.’ It is, no doubt, the majority viewpoint amongst conservatives.</p> <p>Some indication of what these kinds of views are come to us courtesy of South Australian senator Cori Bernadi, who continues to insist on the threat posed by halal certification despite a Senate inquiry instigated at his behest at the cost of millions of dollars to the Australian taxpayer finding <a href="" type="internal">no substance</a> to those claims. In the same vein, Bernadi has taken the opportunity to dredge up the <a href="" type="internal">claim</a> that marriage equality is the thin end of the wedge of animal bestiality, something to which he obviously gives a great deal of thought. They are further significantly demonstrated in an <a href="" type="internal">Election Guide</a> from the Australian Christian Lobby, one which encourages readers to ‘Discover the truth about Labor’s rainbow policy positions,’ and demonstrating its patent terror of apparent competition by inviting them to ‘turn to page 5 to read about the ALP’s plans to give the gay lobby privileged status in government decision-making.’ Upon turning to page 5, one finds that ‘The Australian Labor Party’s 2015 National Conference made headlines over the party’s decision to force all of its MPs to support same-sex marriage from 2019.’ Worse, ‘a series of little-known amendments to the party’s national platform went unreported by the mainstream media,’ meaning that, ‘Sadly Labor’s capitulation to radical rainbow ideology is complete.’ This heinous capitulation to privileged interests, the graphic informs us, includes an ‘ALP Forced Vote for same-sex marriage,’ ‘Taxpayer funded sex-change operations.’ ‘Continues to support the so-called “Safe Schools” programme that teaches children that gender is fluid,’ ‘Anti-discrimination law review,’ ‘Government funded rainbow cop to enforce rainbow ideology from pre-school to board room,’ and reprinting documents ‘with new prefixes to remove or change gender markers or increase “identification options,”’ described as ‘make public toilets unsafe for women and girls?’</p> <p>It appears from such comments that, for all allusions to things like ‘capitulation to radical rainbow ideology’ and ‘rainbow cop to enforce rainbow ideology from pre-school to board room,’ the ACL is preoccupied with a speck in someone else’s eye while carrying a log in their own. If its election guide is anything to go by, it is the conservatives who are capitulating to far-right Pentecostal theocratic ideology premised on the one hand on oppressive gender norms whose primary function is to provide a basis for the imposition of gender-based hierarchies, and on the other on a deterministic cosmological outlook that interprets ideas in terms of ideas that serve the privileged interests the ACL represents, and what was described in earlier periods of history as ‘evildoing.’ It is this agenda that also sees a threat in the ‘ <a href="http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org.au/what-we-do" type="external">Safe Schools</a>’ campaign, which ‘offers a suite of free resources and support to equip school staff with knowledge, skills and practical ideas to create safer and more inclusive school environments for same sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, staff and families.’</p> <p>Due to its binary and generally authoritarian outlook, which makes it incapable of distinguishing between having its views doubted or contradicted and being attacked or otherwise deprived of its rights, the ACL sees in initiatives to prevent bullying a ‘dangerous queer gender ideology that teaches students and school teachers that you should not to refer to “boys and girls”, while also promoting a view that gender is fluid.’ At no point does the patently homophobic ACL mentality attempt to engage with arguments on this count, a fact that would appear to corroborate the employment of the ‘with us or against us’ fallacy indicative of the failure to distinguish being criticized and being attacked as a tactic admission that it has run out of ideas and is simply unwilling to admit that it is in the wrong. Reaching at this point for ammunition against the object of its fear and loathing, the ACL describes the programme as directing students ‘to websites that give directions on how girls can bind their chests (a potentially lethal exercise) and how boys can tuck their genitals’ —&#160;typical activities for transgender teenagers one would imagine, though the suggestion that chest binding is as completely unsupported as any of the other claims the ACL makes, and is generally asinine.</p> <p>Reflecting again the dangerous Pentecostal ideology that teaches students who don’t fit into traditional gender categories that they should hate themselves, as it performs the role of religious cop to enforce binary gender categories from pre-school until the suicide or mass shooting, the ACL complains that ‘Despite a review, followed by a response from the Education Minister, the program still contains material that teaches that gender is a construct.’ Given the homophobic hate speech of the ACL and their willingness to target anti-bullying campaigns in the name of beliefs it decides prior to making any effort to provide supporting arguments or proof are so legitimate that to doubt them is to give aid to the enemies of justice, their claims to being victimized can hardly be taken as anything other than playing the victim —&#160;a classic form of moral disengagement, along with the victim blaming they so enthusiastically embrace.</p> <p>The parallels to claims from Scott Morrison to having been victimized as a result of being contradicted by people who happen not to appreciate the abovementioned types of views are impossible to miss. Indeed, it is not one bit surprising to discover that Morrison, who by his own admission is a representative of the kinds of ‘very strong religious views’ contained in this guide, is himself the same kind of Pentecostal Christian as the Australian Christian Lobby. While Morrison regards the characteristically binary and hateful attitudes expressed in the ACL Election Guide as the majority viewpoint, as if the basis of the truth of an idea was the number of people who believed it, according to the <a href="" type="internal">Australian Bureau of Statistics</a>, Pentecostal Christianity can claim a full <a href="" type="internal">1.1.%</a> of the total population. Given this fact it is ironic in the extreme that the ACL or anyone else accuse their critics or detractors of having capitulated to extremist ideology, much less to say of being extremist ideologues looking to enforce ideological orthodoxies from birth.</p> <p>It is a truism of life that we tend to project our unconscious shame onto those who tend to remind us of it, a fact that tends to give rise to the inevitable conclusion that those who express the greatest hate about things like homosexuality are usually also those who have the least understanding of their own sexual identity or capacity to fulfill either their own needs or anyone else’s. It is because the ACL and Morrison know full well what they are up do in this respect that gives rise to the subjective moral imperatives to willfully conflate being doubted or contradicted with being attacked or deprived of their rights, to victim blame and to play the victim whenever anyone tries to hold them accountable for the consequences of their actions. As the heinous hate crime carried out by Omar Mateen in Orlando has highlighted, the destructive potential of homophobia and of those with the capacity to influence the attitudes of many others, such as the Australian treasurer, is impossible to miss — for most. Some, such as Family First Senator Peter Madden, have been able to <a href="" type="internal">reconnect</a> with moral values with the aid of Twitter. Others, such as incumbent Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, remain committed, in this case accusing Bill Shorten on FM radio in the Northern Territory in mid-June of ‘running a scare campaign about a plebiscite on gay marriage.’ The Prime Minister had, on the other hand, nothing to say about running a scare campaign about ‘radical rainbow ideology.’</p> <p>Perhaps with good reason, on the grounds of anyone finding rainbows threatening to the sanctity of their worldview, way of life or life being patently unfit to govern — much less to say operate machinery, perhaps, or take a bath unassisted for fear of drowning.</p>	4,314
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>file image</p> <p>KEENESBURG, Colo. — A wild animal sanctuary in Colorado agreed to take 30 lions from two countries that banned circus animals after an international rescue group persuaded Peruvian and Colombian officials to intervene.</p> <p>Wild Animal Sanctuary founder Pat Craig said his refuge northeast of Denver will take 21 lions from Peru and nine from Colombia.</p> <p>In 2011, Peru banned the use of wild animals in circuses following a campaign by Animal Defenders International. In 2013, the Colombian Congress banned the use of wild animals in traveling circuses and local animal shows because of complaints of brutal treatment.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The international organization has said animals are suffering so people can be entertained.</p> <p>An airlift of the lions headed to Colorado is scheduled for the first week in April.</p> <p>Craig said the lions will most likely be in bad shape. Most are expected to need dental work and medical care. In a lion rescue in 2011 from Bolivia, many animals had never touched grass before and stumbled around because they did not have motor skills.</p> <p>Animal Defenders International asked the Wild Animal Sanctuary to take the animals after the sanctuary successfully relocated 25 lions from Bolivia, the Greeley Tribune reported ( <a href="http://tinyurl.com/lx8lnrz" type="external">http://tinyurl.com/lx8lnrz</a> ).</p> <p>The sanctuary is a popular tourist destination, with a walkway for tourists that is nearly a mile long and gives visitors a chance to see more than 350 lions, tigers, bears, wolves and other large carnivores roaming freely in natural habitats.</p> <p>Craig opened the sanctuary and wrote letters to zoos seeking surplus animals.</p> <p>“I got over 300 response letters in the first month,” Craig said.</p> <p>About 80 percent of that list was carnivores. He didn’t intend to focus on one kind of animal over another, but carnivores had the biggest need, Craig said.</p> <p>“These are the ones nobody takes,” Craig said. “They’re expensive to feed and hard to take care of.”</p> <p>——</p> <p>Information from: The Tribune of Greeley, Co, <a href="http://greeleytribune.com" type="external">http://greeleytribune.com</a></p>	Colorado sanctuary agrees to take more lions	false	https://abqjournal.com/556162/colorado-sanctuary-agrees-to-take-more-lions.html		2least	Colorado sanctuary agrees to take more lions <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>file image</p> <p>KEENESBURG, Colo. — A wild animal sanctuary in Colorado agreed to take 30 lions from two countries that banned circus animals after an international rescue group persuaded Peruvian and Colombian officials to intervene.</p> <p>Wild Animal Sanctuary founder Pat Craig said his refuge northeast of Denver will take 21 lions from Peru and nine from Colombia.</p> <p>In 2011, Peru banned the use of wild animals in circuses following a campaign by Animal Defenders International. In 2013, the Colombian Congress banned the use of wild animals in traveling circuses and local animal shows because of complaints of brutal treatment.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The international organization has said animals are suffering so people can be entertained.</p> <p>An airlift of the lions headed to Colorado is scheduled for the first week in April.</p> <p>Craig said the lions will most likely be in bad shape. Most are expected to need dental work and medical care. In a lion rescue in 2011 from Bolivia, many animals had never touched grass before and stumbled around because they did not have motor skills.</p> <p>Animal Defenders International asked the Wild Animal Sanctuary to take the animals after the sanctuary successfully relocated 25 lions from Bolivia, the Greeley Tribune reported ( <a href="http://tinyurl.com/lx8lnrz" type="external">http://tinyurl.com/lx8lnrz</a> ).</p> <p>The sanctuary is a popular tourist destination, with a walkway for tourists that is nearly a mile long and gives visitors a chance to see more than 350 lions, tigers, bears, wolves and other large carnivores roaming freely in natural habitats.</p> <p>Craig opened the sanctuary and wrote letters to zoos seeking surplus animals.</p> <p>“I got over 300 response letters in the first month,” Craig said.</p> <p>About 80 percent of that list was carnivores. He didn’t intend to focus on one kind of animal over another, but carnivores had the biggest need, Craig said.</p> <p>“These are the ones nobody takes,” Craig said. “They’re expensive to feed and hard to take care of.”</p> <p>——</p> <p>Information from: The Tribune of Greeley, Co, <a href="http://greeleytribune.com" type="external">http://greeleytribune.com</a></p>	4,315
<p /> <p>They’re red from all the chafing! In the latest installment of Irony and Hypocrisy Weekly, a study has shown that traditionally conservative states consume the most online pornography. Okay, the <a href="http://people.hbs.edu/bedelman/papers/redlightstates.pdf" type="external">study</a> (pdf link) was actually in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and it looked at zip codes of credit cards used for “online adult entertainment” between 2006 and 2008. Researchers found that Utah led the way in sexy interweb fun times, with 5.47 subscribers per 1000 broadband users, followed by Alaska and Mississippi. Out of the top ten porn-using states, only Hawaii and Florida voted for Obama in the 2008 elections, and I think Hawaii is excused because they’re so far away from, you know, actual sex with people they don’t live next door to. Of course, one could also ascribe the higher online porn usage rates in red states to the simple fact that these states have often made in-person porn buying more difficult, but I prefer to think of it as another example of Larry Craig Syndrome: those who doeth protest too much are at home having a wanketh.</p> <p>Researchers also found “marginally” higher porn subscription rates in the 27 states that had (at that time) passed anti-gay marriage laws, and in states where surveys show conservative positions on sexuality and gender roles. But in a boon to church-goers, there was also a slight dip in porn subscriptions on Sunday, although the oh-so-cynical researchers noted that this meant only that these people “shift their consumption of adult entertainment to other days of the week.” Note to self: promote online porn company more aggressively on Saturdays and Mondays.</p> <p />	Red States Love Porn	true	https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/red-states-love-porn/	2009-03-02	4left	Red States Love Porn <p /> <p>They’re red from all the chafing! In the latest installment of Irony and Hypocrisy Weekly, a study has shown that traditionally conservative states consume the most online pornography. Okay, the <a href="http://people.hbs.edu/bedelman/papers/redlightstates.pdf" type="external">study</a> (pdf link) was actually in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and it looked at zip codes of credit cards used for “online adult entertainment” between 2006 and 2008. Researchers found that Utah led the way in sexy interweb fun times, with 5.47 subscribers per 1000 broadband users, followed by Alaska and Mississippi. Out of the top ten porn-using states, only Hawaii and Florida voted for Obama in the 2008 elections, and I think Hawaii is excused because they’re so far away from, you know, actual sex with people they don’t live next door to. Of course, one could also ascribe the higher online porn usage rates in red states to the simple fact that these states have often made in-person porn buying more difficult, but I prefer to think of it as another example of Larry Craig Syndrome: those who doeth protest too much are at home having a wanketh.</p> <p>Researchers also found “marginally” higher porn subscription rates in the 27 states that had (at that time) passed anti-gay marriage laws, and in states where surveys show conservative positions on sexuality and gender roles. But in a boon to church-goers, there was also a slight dip in porn subscriptions on Sunday, although the oh-so-cynical researchers noted that this meant only that these people “shift their consumption of adult entertainment to other days of the week.” Note to self: promote online porn company more aggressively on Saturdays and Mondays.</p> <p />	4,316
<p>One evening in March 1983, after giving her three-year-old daughter a birthday party, a New Bedford, Massachusetts woman left her two children with their father and walked to a neighborhood bar to buy cigarettes. According to her story, she bought the cigarettes, had a drink, and was chatting with another woman, when a group of men threw her on a pool table&#160;and collaborated in raping her. Others in the bar observed what happened, and allegedly encouraged the rapists in their sexual assault. Apparently no one interfered or called the police.</p> <p />	The New Bedford Rape Trial	true	https://dissentmagazine.org/article/the-new-bedford-rape-trial	2018-10-06	4left	The New Bedford Rape Trial <p>One evening in March 1983, after giving her three-year-old daughter a birthday party, a New Bedford, Massachusetts woman left her two children with their father and walked to a neighborhood bar to buy cigarettes. According to her story, she bought the cigarettes, had a drink, and was chatting with another woman, when a group of men threw her on a pool table&#160;and collaborated in raping her. Others in the bar observed what happened, and allegedly encouraged the rapists in their sexual assault. Apparently no one interfered or called the police.</p> <p />	4,317
<p>During the first Democratic presidential primary debate, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton went back and forth about who loved Denmark the most. Turns out Sanders is a slightly bigger fan, but both have praised Scandinavia and its Democratic socialist governments as models for the United States to emulate. So what's the reality of the left's Danish utopia? Well, it's a country with low corporate tax rates, but an insanely high taxes on the middle class. Oh yeah, and it's swinging right and anti-migrant faster than you can say "rein in the excesses of capitalism."</p> <p>When CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Sanders how a self-described socialist could actually win the general election, Sanders turned to his <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/what-can-we-learn-from-de_b_3339736.html" type="external">go-to</a> anti-capitalist talking points.</p> <p>"When you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States," claimed Sanders. "You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we’re not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have — we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth.Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people."</p> <p>"We are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America, and it is our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism."</p> <p>Hillary Clinton</p> <p>Seeing an opportunity to score some easy patriotic points, Clinton responded, "We are not Denmark," but then underscored her "love" for socialist countries, saying that what she wanted to do was to curb America's "excesses."</p> <p>"We are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America, and it is our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism,” said the Democratic frontrunner.</p> <p>But the reality of Denmark doesn't quite measure up to the left's soaring praise for the country. First, the middle-class-punishing tax rates: Denmark regularly has one of the highest top personal income tax rates in the world, currently <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-their-government-spending" type="external">around 60%</a>, and income tax accounts for over 25% of its GDP (as compared to 15% in the U.S.). But that 60% rate is not just for the greedy one-percenters; that's a rate that applies to everyone who makes around $60,000:</p> <p>Scandinavian income taxes raise a lot of revenue because they are actually rather flat. In other words, they tax most people at these high rates, not just high-income taxpayers. The top marginal tax rate of 60 percent in Denmark applies to all income over 1.2 times the average income in Denmark. From the American perspective, this means that all income over $60,000 (1.2 times the average income of about $50,000 in the United States) would be taxed at 60 percent.</p> <p>Then there's Denmark's value-added tax, which is a whopping 25% (as compared to America's average of 7% sales tax) and makes up about 10% of its GDP.</p> <p>Even Sanders admits that the crippling rates make it "difficult to become very rich in Denmark," but <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/what-can-we-learn-from-de_b_3339736.html" type="external">maintains</a> that it's all worth it because "no one is allowed to be poor."</p> <p>In corporate tax rates, Denmark is more "generous" than the U.S., though the total percentage contribution to the government's income is about the same (around 3%). While the U.S. crushes corporations with a 39.1% rate, Denmark’s only levies 24.5%.</p> <p>But what should be most sobering to American progressives is the current political climate in Denmark, which is moving right and responding aggressively to the Middle Eastern migrant crisis in a way that undermines their "generous compassion" narrative.</p> <p>The most recent election saw a major victory by a <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/why-even-scandinavia-moving-right" type="external">center-right coalition</a>, as th right-wing, strongly anti-immigration Danish People’s Party has surged ahead, becoming the <a href="http://qz.com/523559/hillary-and-bernie-spar-who-loves-denmark-more/" type="external">second-biggest party</a> in the country. The results: the government is doing everything it can to dissuade "refugees" from trying to enter the country, including <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5fe8095c-1ffb-11e5-aa5a-398b2169cf79.html#axzz3oZHGydfL" type="external">slashing benefits by half</a>.</p>	Sanders and Hillary Love Denmark. Here's How Denmark Actually Works.	true	https://dailywire.com/news/413/sanders-and-hillary-love-denmark-heres-how-denmark-james-barrett	2015-10-14	0right	Sanders and Hillary Love Denmark. Here's How Denmark Actually Works. <p>During the first Democratic presidential primary debate, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton went back and forth about who loved Denmark the most. Turns out Sanders is a slightly bigger fan, but both have praised Scandinavia and its Democratic socialist governments as models for the United States to emulate. So what's the reality of the left's Danish utopia? Well, it's a country with low corporate tax rates, but an insanely high taxes on the middle class. Oh yeah, and it's swinging right and anti-migrant faster than you can say "rein in the excesses of capitalism."</p> <p>When CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Sanders how a self-described socialist could actually win the general election, Sanders turned to his <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/what-can-we-learn-from-de_b_3339736.html" type="external">go-to</a> anti-capitalist talking points.</p> <p>"When you look around the world, you see every other major country providing health care to all people as a right, except the United States," claimed Sanders. "You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we’re not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have — we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth.Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people."</p> <p>"We are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America, and it is our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism."</p> <p>Hillary Clinton</p> <p>Seeing an opportunity to score some easy patriotic points, Clinton responded, "We are not Denmark," but then underscored her "love" for socialist countries, saying that what she wanted to do was to curb America's "excesses."</p> <p>"We are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America, and it is our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism,” said the Democratic frontrunner.</p> <p>But the reality of Denmark doesn't quite measure up to the left's soaring praise for the country. First, the middle-class-punishing tax rates: Denmark regularly has one of the highest top personal income tax rates in the world, currently <a href="http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-scandinavian-countries-pay-their-government-spending" type="external">around 60%</a>, and income tax accounts for over 25% of its GDP (as compared to 15% in the U.S.). But that 60% rate is not just for the greedy one-percenters; that's a rate that applies to everyone who makes around $60,000:</p> <p>Scandinavian income taxes raise a lot of revenue because they are actually rather flat. In other words, they tax most people at these high rates, not just high-income taxpayers. The top marginal tax rate of 60 percent in Denmark applies to all income over 1.2 times the average income in Denmark. From the American perspective, this means that all income over $60,000 (1.2 times the average income of about $50,000 in the United States) would be taxed at 60 percent.</p> <p>Then there's Denmark's value-added tax, which is a whopping 25% (as compared to America's average of 7% sales tax) and makes up about 10% of its GDP.</p> <p>Even Sanders admits that the crippling rates make it "difficult to become very rich in Denmark," but <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/what-can-we-learn-from-de_b_3339736.html" type="external">maintains</a> that it's all worth it because "no one is allowed to be poor."</p> <p>In corporate tax rates, Denmark is more "generous" than the U.S., though the total percentage contribution to the government's income is about the same (around 3%). While the U.S. crushes corporations with a 39.1% rate, Denmark’s only levies 24.5%.</p> <p>But what should be most sobering to American progressives is the current political climate in Denmark, which is moving right and responding aggressively to the Middle Eastern migrant crisis in a way that undermines their "generous compassion" narrative.</p> <p>The most recent election saw a major victory by a <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/why-even-scandinavia-moving-right" type="external">center-right coalition</a>, as th right-wing, strongly anti-immigration Danish People’s Party has surged ahead, becoming the <a href="http://qz.com/523559/hillary-and-bernie-spar-who-loves-denmark-more/" type="external">second-biggest party</a> in the country. The results: the government is doing everything it can to dissuade "refugees" from trying to enter the country, including <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5fe8095c-1ffb-11e5-aa5a-398b2169cf79.html#axzz3oZHGydfL" type="external">slashing benefits by half</a>.</p>	4,318
<p>US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that sanctuary cities must cooperate with federal immigration enforcement or face the wrath of cuts in federal grants. The new policy outlines requirements cities need to follow to receive funding.</p> <p>On Tuesday afternoon, Sessions released a <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/889962217982103554" type="external">statement</a> threatening to cut lucrative funding related to the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants for so-called sanctuary cities, where local and state law enforcement are not bound to federal requests on immigration enforcement. Many cities rely on federal funding for law enforcement in their communities.</p> <p>Read more</p> <p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/397514-trump-sessions-mccabe-row/" type="external" /></p> <p>The requirements set forth by Sessions state that the sanctuary cities need to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers access to their jails and can’t stop their local police from providing ICE the immigration status of the people they arrest. Moreover, the cities must give ICE a 48-hour notice before releasing people from custody who get arrested, if ICE has a detainer on them.</p> <p>“So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes,” Sessions said in the statement.</p> <p>“This is what the American people should be able to expect from their cities and states, and these long overdue requirements will help us take down MS-13 and other violent transnational gangs, and make our country safer,” the top US law enforcement official added.</p> <p>Federal funding will not be revoked for any cities that have already received it, or cities that are in the process of getting the money this year. The new rules will go into effect next year, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/its-official-attorney-general-jeff-sessions-takes-on-sanctuary-cities" type="external">according</a> to the Daily Beast.</p> <p>President Donald Trump has spoken in the past about targeting sanctuary cities, but immigrant rights activists disagree with him and argue that when law enforcement is blocked from communication with ICE, immigrants have less fear about telling law enforcement about crimes.</p> <p>For many cities, losing the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant will be a big deal and fighting back may not be an option. In March, Austin, which does not fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, said that they may have to start complying because they rely on the grant funding, the Daily Beast reported.</p> <p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/397435-trump-angry-hillary-crimes/" type="external">READ MORE: Trump blasts AG over ‘Clinton collusion with Ukraine’, says acting FBI director got ‘$700k from H’</a></p> <p>Cecelia Friedman Levin, senior policy counsel for the immigration justice group Asista, believes undocumented immigrants may think twice about calling law enforcement in the current political climate.</p> <p>“Abusers commonly threaten victims that reaching out for help will result in their removal or separation from their children,” she said, the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/23/undocumented-immigrants-wary-report-crimes-deportation" type="external">reported</a>.</p> <p>“Before the executive orders on immigration,” she added, “the advice advocates would commonly give is that the police are here to help, that there are policies in place that protect all victims. But now, depending on the jurisdiction, those advocates may pause before giving that same advice, especially if they’re seeing increased immigration raids in their communities and given the wide breadth of enforcement priorities laid out by the administration.”</p> <p>The announcement from the US attorney general comes on the heels of Trump’s negative comments about Sessions. Trump <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wont-say-if-he-will-fire-attorney-general-sessions-1501010025" type="external">told</a> the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday afternoon that he was “very disappointed” in Sessions.</p> <p>[embedded content]</p>	Attorney General Sessions threatens sanctuary cities with federal grant cuts	false	https://newsline.com/attorney-general-sessions-threatens-sanctuary-cities-with-federal-grant-cuts/	2017-07-26	1right-center	Attorney General Sessions threatens sanctuary cities with federal grant cuts <p>US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced that sanctuary cities must cooperate with federal immigration enforcement or face the wrath of cuts in federal grants. The new policy outlines requirements cities need to follow to receive funding.</p> <p>On Tuesday afternoon, Sessions released a <a href="https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/889962217982103554" type="external">statement</a> threatening to cut lucrative funding related to the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants for so-called sanctuary cities, where local and state law enforcement are not bound to federal requests on immigration enforcement. Many cities rely on federal funding for law enforcement in their communities.</p> <p>Read more</p> <p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/397514-trump-sessions-mccabe-row/" type="external" /></p> <p>The requirements set forth by Sessions state that the sanctuary cities need to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers access to their jails and can’t stop their local police from providing ICE the immigration status of the people they arrest. Moreover, the cities must give ICE a 48-hour notice before releasing people from custody who get arrested, if ICE has a detainer on them.</p> <p>“So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes,” Sessions said in the statement.</p> <p>“This is what the American people should be able to expect from their cities and states, and these long overdue requirements will help us take down MS-13 and other violent transnational gangs, and make our country safer,” the top US law enforcement official added.</p> <p>Federal funding will not be revoked for any cities that have already received it, or cities that are in the process of getting the money this year. The new rules will go into effect next year, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/its-official-attorney-general-jeff-sessions-takes-on-sanctuary-cities" type="external">according</a> to the Daily Beast.</p> <p>President Donald Trump has spoken in the past about targeting sanctuary cities, but immigrant rights activists disagree with him and argue that when law enforcement is blocked from communication with ICE, immigrants have less fear about telling law enforcement about crimes.</p> <p>For many cities, losing the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant will be a big deal and fighting back may not be an option. In March, Austin, which does not fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, said that they may have to start complying because they rely on the grant funding, the Daily Beast reported.</p> <p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/397435-trump-angry-hillary-crimes/" type="external">READ MORE: Trump blasts AG over ‘Clinton collusion with Ukraine’, says acting FBI director got ‘$700k from H’</a></p> <p>Cecelia Friedman Levin, senior policy counsel for the immigration justice group Asista, believes undocumented immigrants may think twice about calling law enforcement in the current political climate.</p> <p>“Abusers commonly threaten victims that reaching out for help will result in their removal or separation from their children,” she said, the Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/23/undocumented-immigrants-wary-report-crimes-deportation" type="external">reported</a>.</p> <p>“Before the executive orders on immigration,” she added, “the advice advocates would commonly give is that the police are here to help, that there are policies in place that protect all victims. But now, depending on the jurisdiction, those advocates may pause before giving that same advice, especially if they’re seeing increased immigration raids in their communities and given the wide breadth of enforcement priorities laid out by the administration.”</p> <p>The announcement from the US attorney general comes on the heels of Trump’s negative comments about Sessions. Trump <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-wont-say-if-he-will-fire-attorney-general-sessions-1501010025" type="external">told</a> the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday afternoon that he was “very disappointed” in Sessions.</p> <p>[embedded content]</p>	4,319
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>DENVER (AP) — A Colorado man who pleaded guilty Friday to killing his estranged wife more than two decades ago recently led authorities to her body, which was buried under the grave of a World War II veteran.</p> <p>John Sandoval, 52, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1995 death of Kristina Tournai-Sandoval.</p> <p>As part of a plea deal, he told investigators March 22 the remains were buried at a Greeley cemetery.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Sandoval found an open gravesite early in the morning on Oct. 20, 1995, that was scheduled for a burial that afternoon. Prosecutors say he dug about 2 feet (0.61 meters) below the grave and buried Tournai-Sandoval's body, which was wrapped in several layers of industrial-grade plastic.</p> <p>Cemetery workers then unknowingly buried the veteran over her remains.</p> <p>That day, detectives found a wet and muddy shovel in Sandoval's car and muddy clothes inside his home. After he was arrested, investigators noticed scratch marks on his face, neck and chest.</p> <p>Charges were not filed at the time because authorities could not find the body, any witnesses or a crime scene.</p> <p>“For 7,826 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes, the location of Tina's remains has been a mystery,” Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said in a news release Friday. “Over the course of the last week, we have finally been able to give her family what they so desperately wanted.”</p> <p>Sandoval was convicted in 2010 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. But an appeals court overturned his conviction last year, ruling a judge wrongfully allowed evidence that Sandoval stalked other women, as well as expert testimony correlating stalkers with murderers.</p> <p>Prosecutors had been preparing for a new trial when Sandoval acknowledged knowing the location of his wife's body.</p> <p>Court records show Sandoval had met with his wife to settle a debt before finalizing their divorce. Before the meeting, she warned family members that if anything happened to her, her husband was responsible. She also arranged to talk with her sister by phone after the meeting.</p> <p><a href="#fb0bc8c7-8402-47af-a8e1-c08024e96765" type="external">© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</a> Learn more about our <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/privacy" type="external">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/terms" type="external">Terms of Use</a>.</p>	Colorado woman's remains found under grave of WWII veteran	false	https://abqjournal.com/980349/colorado-womans-remains-found-under-grave-of-wwii-veteran.html	2017-03-31	2least	Colorado woman's remains found under grave of WWII veteran <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>DENVER (AP) — A Colorado man who pleaded guilty Friday to killing his estranged wife more than two decades ago recently led authorities to her body, which was buried under the grave of a World War II veteran.</p> <p>John Sandoval, 52, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 1995 death of Kristina Tournai-Sandoval.</p> <p>As part of a plea deal, he told investigators March 22 the remains were buried at a Greeley cemetery.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Sandoval found an open gravesite early in the morning on Oct. 20, 1995, that was scheduled for a burial that afternoon. Prosecutors say he dug about 2 feet (0.61 meters) below the grave and buried Tournai-Sandoval's body, which was wrapped in several layers of industrial-grade plastic.</p> <p>Cemetery workers then unknowingly buried the veteran over her remains.</p> <p>That day, detectives found a wet and muddy shovel in Sandoval's car and muddy clothes inside his home. After he was arrested, investigators noticed scratch marks on his face, neck and chest.</p> <p>Charges were not filed at the time because authorities could not find the body, any witnesses or a crime scene.</p> <p>“For 7,826 days, 3 hours and 22 minutes, the location of Tina's remains has been a mystery,” Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said in a news release Friday. “Over the course of the last week, we have finally been able to give her family what they so desperately wanted.”</p> <p>Sandoval was convicted in 2010 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. But an appeals court overturned his conviction last year, ruling a judge wrongfully allowed evidence that Sandoval stalked other women, as well as expert testimony correlating stalkers with murderers.</p> <p>Prosecutors had been preparing for a new trial when Sandoval acknowledged knowing the location of his wife's body.</p> <p>Court records show Sandoval had met with his wife to settle a debt before finalizing their divorce. Before the meeting, she warned family members that if anything happened to her, her husband was responsible. She also arranged to talk with her sister by phone after the meeting.</p> <p><a href="#fb0bc8c7-8402-47af-a8e1-c08024e96765" type="external">© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</a> Learn more about our <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/privacy" type="external">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/terms" type="external">Terms of Use</a>.</p>	4,320
<p>An Australian man has been jailed for six months for posting nude pictures of his former lover on Facebook.</p> <p>It is the first social networking-related conviction in Australian history and one of just a handful in the world, <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/exlover-punished-for-facebook-revenge-20120421-1xdpy.html" type="external">according to the Fairfax media</a>.</p> <p>Court documents revealed Ravshan ''Ronnie'' Usmanov, 20, of Sydney, posted six nude photos of his ex-girlfriend on Facebook shortly after they broke up. The photos showed his ex-girlfriend "nude in certain positions and clearly showing her breasts and genitalia."</p> <p>Usmanov, a credit controller for a shipping company,&#160;reportedly told police:</p> <p>"I put the photos up because she hurt me and it was the only thing [I had] to hurt her."</p> <p><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/exlover-punished-for-facebook-revenge-20120421-1xdpy.html" type="external">The Sydney Morning Herald reported</a> that Usmanov emailed his girlfriend after he posted the photos to Facebook, saying: "Some of your photos are now on Facebook." The woman, who was not identified, pleaded with Usmanov to take down the photos. When he refused, she called the police.</p> <p>Deputy-Chief Magistrate, Jane Mottley, said: "New-age technology through Facebook gives instant access to the world. Facebook as a social networking site has limited boundaries. Incalculable damage can be done to a person's reputation by the irresponsible posting of information through that medium. With its popularity and potential for real harm, there is a genuine need to ensure the use of this medium to commit offenses of this type is deterred.?</p> <p>In 2010, <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4341191/Naked-photo-sends-jilted-lover-to-jail" type="external">the&#160;Dominion Post reported</a>on New Zealand man Joshua Simon Ashby, 20,&#160;who was sentenced to four months in jail for posting a naked photo of his ex-girlfriend on Facebook.&#160;</p> <p>His act was described as one of "irresponsible drunken rage" by presiding judge, who also said: "Technology can't be used in this way. You would do incalculable damage to someone's reputation."</p> <p>Usmanov's ex-girlfriend, who&#160;Fairfax chose not to identify, had ended their relationship and moved out of their shared home less than three months before he posted the photos.</p> <p>Fairfax cited Australian privacy experts as saying&#160;the case has exposed the ''tip of the iceberg'' of online offenses that were rarely punished.</p> <p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/facebook-removal-breastfeeding-photos-angers-aussie-mums" type="external">More from GlobalPost: Facebook removal of breastfeeding images angers Aussie mums</a></p> <p>David Vaile, executive director of the cyberspace law and policy center at the University of New South Wales, said online harassment was not taken as seriously as physical offenses.</p> <p>''There are very few convictions under harassment and indecent publication, he told Fairfax. "It's not treated as the same way as, say, breaking into a bank website. There is more police support for criminal damage. In this case, he didn't slash her tires in an act of revenge. He slashed her reputation.''</p> <p>The legality or otherwise of posting nude photos of others without their permission in the US is unclear, though a Google search reveals several web forums devoted to the topic, <a href="http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/986877" type="external">including this one</a>.</p> <p>In sentencing Usmanov, Mottley reportedly&#160;said: "New-age technology through Facebook gives instant access to the world. Facebook as a social networking site has limited boundaries. Incalculable damage can be done to a person's reputation by the irresponsible posting of information through that medium. With its popularity and potential for real harm, there is a genuine need to ensure the use of this medium to commit offenses of this type is deterred.</p> <p>''The harm to the victim is not difficult to contemplate: embarrassment, humiliation and anxiety at not only the viewing of the images by persons who are known to her but also the prospect of viewing by those who are not. It can only be a matter for speculation as to who else may have seen the images, and whether those images have been stored in such a manner which, at a time the complainant least expects, they will again be available for viewing, circulation or distribution.''</p> <p>Usmanov's lawyer, Maggie Sten, had argued his was not a ''serious offense,'' to which Mottley fired back: ''What could be more serious than publishing nude photographs of a woman on the internet, what could be more serious?''</p> <p>She added: ''It's one thing to publish an article in print form with limited circulation. That may affect the objective seriousness of the offense but once it goes on the worldwide web via Facebook it effectively means it's open to anyone who has some link in any way, however remotely.''</p> <p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/turkey/120411/meet-the-people-behind-turkeys-economic-miracle" type="external">Meet the people behind Turkey's 'miracle'</a></p>	Australia man sentenced to jail for posting nude photos of ex-lover on Facebook	false	https://pri.org/stories/2012-04-21/australia-man-sentenced-jail-posting-nude-photos-ex-lover-facebook	2012-04-21	3left-center	Australia man sentenced to jail for posting nude photos of ex-lover on Facebook <p>An Australian man has been jailed for six months for posting nude pictures of his former lover on Facebook.</p> <p>It is the first social networking-related conviction in Australian history and one of just a handful in the world, <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/exlover-punished-for-facebook-revenge-20120421-1xdpy.html" type="external">according to the Fairfax media</a>.</p> <p>Court documents revealed Ravshan ''Ronnie'' Usmanov, 20, of Sydney, posted six nude photos of his ex-girlfriend on Facebook shortly after they broke up. The photos showed his ex-girlfriend "nude in certain positions and clearly showing her breasts and genitalia."</p> <p>Usmanov, a credit controller for a shipping company,&#160;reportedly told police:</p> <p>"I put the photos up because she hurt me and it was the only thing [I had] to hurt her."</p> <p><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/exlover-punished-for-facebook-revenge-20120421-1xdpy.html" type="external">The Sydney Morning Herald reported</a> that Usmanov emailed his girlfriend after he posted the photos to Facebook, saying: "Some of your photos are now on Facebook." The woman, who was not identified, pleaded with Usmanov to take down the photos. When he refused, she called the police.</p> <p>Deputy-Chief Magistrate, Jane Mottley, said: "New-age technology through Facebook gives instant access to the world. Facebook as a social networking site has limited boundaries. Incalculable damage can be done to a person's reputation by the irresponsible posting of information through that medium. With its popularity and potential for real harm, there is a genuine need to ensure the use of this medium to commit offenses of this type is deterred.?</p> <p>In 2010, <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4341191/Naked-photo-sends-jilted-lover-to-jail" type="external">the&#160;Dominion Post reported</a>on New Zealand man Joshua Simon Ashby, 20,&#160;who was sentenced to four months in jail for posting a naked photo of his ex-girlfriend on Facebook.&#160;</p> <p>His act was described as one of "irresponsible drunken rage" by presiding judge, who also said: "Technology can't be used in this way. You would do incalculable damage to someone's reputation."</p> <p>Usmanov's ex-girlfriend, who&#160;Fairfax chose not to identify, had ended their relationship and moved out of their shared home less than three months before he posted the photos.</p> <p>Fairfax cited Australian privacy experts as saying&#160;the case has exposed the ''tip of the iceberg'' of online offenses that were rarely punished.</p> <p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/facebook-removal-breastfeeding-photos-angers-aussie-mums" type="external">More from GlobalPost: Facebook removal of breastfeeding images angers Aussie mums</a></p> <p>David Vaile, executive director of the cyberspace law and policy center at the University of New South Wales, said online harassment was not taken as seriously as physical offenses.</p> <p>''There are very few convictions under harassment and indecent publication, he told Fairfax. "It's not treated as the same way as, say, breaking into a bank website. There is more police support for criminal damage. In this case, he didn't slash her tires in an act of revenge. He slashed her reputation.''</p> <p>The legality or otherwise of posting nude photos of others without their permission in the US is unclear, though a Google search reveals several web forums devoted to the topic, <a href="http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/986877" type="external">including this one</a>.</p> <p>In sentencing Usmanov, Mottley reportedly&#160;said: "New-age technology through Facebook gives instant access to the world. Facebook as a social networking site has limited boundaries. Incalculable damage can be done to a person's reputation by the irresponsible posting of information through that medium. With its popularity and potential for real harm, there is a genuine need to ensure the use of this medium to commit offenses of this type is deterred.</p> <p>''The harm to the victim is not difficult to contemplate: embarrassment, humiliation and anxiety at not only the viewing of the images by persons who are known to her but also the prospect of viewing by those who are not. It can only be a matter for speculation as to who else may have seen the images, and whether those images have been stored in such a manner which, at a time the complainant least expects, they will again be available for viewing, circulation or distribution.''</p> <p>Usmanov's lawyer, Maggie Sten, had argued his was not a ''serious offense,'' to which Mottley fired back: ''What could be more serious than publishing nude photographs of a woman on the internet, what could be more serious?''</p> <p>She added: ''It's one thing to publish an article in print form with limited circulation. That may affect the objective seriousness of the offense but once it goes on the worldwide web via Facebook it effectively means it's open to anyone who has some link in any way, however remotely.''</p> <p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/turkey/120411/meet-the-people-behind-turkeys-economic-miracle" type="external">Meet the people behind Turkey's 'miracle'</a></p>	4,321
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>Col. Eric Froehlich, former 377th Air Base Wing commander, and his wife, Stephanie, were recently awarded the Air Force 2017 Gen. and Mrs. Jerome O’Malley Award.</p> <p>The O’Malley Award is given to the wing commander and spouse whose contributions to the nation, Air Force and local community best exemplify the highest ideals and positive leadership of a military couple serving in a key Air Force position.</p> <p>“We have a lot of great commanders in the Air Force, and to win this award is monumental,” said Gen. Robin Rand, Air Force Global Strike Command commander.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In a recent briefing to Team Kirtland, Maj. Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, 20th Air Force commander, congratulated the Froehlichs and praised their accomplishment. “They are the No. 1 wing commander-and-wife team in the Air Force.”</p> <p>The couple served as role models for not only the 377th Air Base Wing, but also for employees and family members of more than 100 mission partners on the installation, while presenting a united Air Force message to local civic and congressional leaders.</p> <p>The commander envisioned the base’s 75th anniversary celebration, directing multiple base and community events, including a major 1940s-themed banquet. He also led Kirtland’s first air show in five years and re-energized the Honorary Commanders Program, which inducted 54 community leaders, the most ever.</p> <p>Together, the Froehlichs started a multitude of new programs, including a Kirtland speaker series that brought in high-profile guests, such as former Vietnam prisoner of war Col. Lee Ellis, University of New Mexico head football coach Bob Davie and former Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker.</p> <p>They started 15 heritage cultural events that celebrated diversity and fortified respect. Through multiple visits and conversations, they strengthened pueblo relations and signed an agreement between the Air Force and Native American leaders in New Mexico, improving communications over mutual concerns.</p> <p>Froehlich thanked Team Kirtland members for their hard work and said receiving the award would not have been possible without them.</p> <p>“This is not just our award. This is a team award and it’s special to be able to share it with you,” he said. “Together we’ve forged amazing partnerships, not just within our base community but also between our civic, congressional and pueblo leaders. We have worked hard to build relationships of trust among those we’ve sworn to defend.”</p> <p>Jerome O’Malley and his wife, Diane, died in April 1985 in an airplane crash. Their children established the award.</p> <p>The Froehlichs have left Kirtland to serve at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., where Col. Froehlich will be the vice commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center.</p> <p />	Former KAFB commander, wife honored	false	https://abqjournal.com/1026423/former-kafb-commander-wife-honored.html		2least	Former KAFB commander, wife honored <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>Col. Eric Froehlich, former 377th Air Base Wing commander, and his wife, Stephanie, were recently awarded the Air Force 2017 Gen. and Mrs. Jerome O’Malley Award.</p> <p>The O’Malley Award is given to the wing commander and spouse whose contributions to the nation, Air Force and local community best exemplify the highest ideals and positive leadership of a military couple serving in a key Air Force position.</p> <p>“We have a lot of great commanders in the Air Force, and to win this award is monumental,” said Gen. Robin Rand, Air Force Global Strike Command commander.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In a recent briefing to Team Kirtland, Maj. Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, 20th Air Force commander, congratulated the Froehlichs and praised their accomplishment. “They are the No. 1 wing commander-and-wife team in the Air Force.”</p> <p>The couple served as role models for not only the 377th Air Base Wing, but also for employees and family members of more than 100 mission partners on the installation, while presenting a united Air Force message to local civic and congressional leaders.</p> <p>The commander envisioned the base’s 75th anniversary celebration, directing multiple base and community events, including a major 1940s-themed banquet. He also led Kirtland’s first air show in five years and re-energized the Honorary Commanders Program, which inducted 54 community leaders, the most ever.</p> <p>Together, the Froehlichs started a multitude of new programs, including a Kirtland speaker series that brought in high-profile guests, such as former Vietnam prisoner of war Col. Lee Ellis, University of New Mexico head football coach Bob Davie and former Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker.</p> <p>They started 15 heritage cultural events that celebrated diversity and fortified respect. Through multiple visits and conversations, they strengthened pueblo relations and signed an agreement between the Air Force and Native American leaders in New Mexico, improving communications over mutual concerns.</p> <p>Froehlich thanked Team Kirtland members for their hard work and said receiving the award would not have been possible without them.</p> <p>“This is not just our award. This is a team award and it’s special to be able to share it with you,” he said. “Together we’ve forged amazing partnerships, not just within our base community but also between our civic, congressional and pueblo leaders. We have worked hard to build relationships of trust among those we’ve sworn to defend.”</p> <p>Jerome O’Malley and his wife, Diane, died in April 1985 in an airplane crash. Their children established the award.</p> <p>The Froehlichs have left Kirtland to serve at Tinker Air Force Base, Okla., where Col. Froehlich will be the vice commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center.</p> <p />	4,322
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p> <p>Republicans from Newt Gingrich to Paul Ryan claim to be followers of the President Ronald Reagan. They are pressuring President Obama to make concessions on Social Security. Yet as Reagan states in the video below and as most who are interested in understanding the program know, Social Security has nothing to do with the budget deficit.</p> <p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/EgbertoWilliescom/181893712536" type="external">LIKE My Facebook Page</a></p> <p />	Ronald Reagan: "Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit." Obama must not cave!	true	http://egbertowillies.com/2012/12/21/ronald-reagan-social-security-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-deficit/	2012-12-21	4left	Ronald Reagan: "Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit." Obama must not cave! <p><a href="" type="internal" /></p> <p>Republicans from Newt Gingrich to Paul Ryan claim to be followers of the President Ronald Reagan. They are pressuring President Obama to make concessions on Social Security. Yet as Reagan states in the video below and as most who are interested in understanding the program know, Social Security has nothing to do with the budget deficit.</p> <p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/EgbertoWilliescom/181893712536" type="external">LIKE My Facebook Page</a></p> <p />	4,323
<p>New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.Pat Vasquez-Cunningham/Albuquerque Journal/ZUMAPRESS.com</p> <p /> <p>A <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155872-ag-motion-to-unseal-saenz-v-barela-complaint.html" type="external">recently</a> unsealed <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html" type="external">whistleblower lawsuit</a> filed in New Mexico state court makes a series of explosive allegations against appointees of rising GOP star <a href="" type="internal">Gov. Susana Martinez</a>, accusing high-ranking officials in her administration of public corruption, mismanagement, and intimidation. It claims that officials at the state’s economic development agency engaged in extramarital affairs that could expose the state to sexual harassment charges and that officials tried to silence employees who reported contracting violations and other wrongdoing.</p> <p>The 22-page complaint— <a href="https://caselookup.nmcourts.gov/caselookup/app?component=cnLink&amp;page=SearchResults&amp;service=direct&amp;session=T&amp;sp=SD-101-CV-201400359" type="external">filed</a> February 10 on behalf of two former state employees—claims that a company co-founded by Martinez appointee <a href="http://www.gonm.biz/About_NMEDD.aspx" type="external">Jon Barela</a>, secretary of the <a href="http://www.gonm.biz" type="external">New Mexico Economic Development Department</a>, secretly benefited from a state tax credit program. The complaint also alleges that aides to Martinez <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p9/a156580" type="external">instructed</a> a state employee to use his personal email for sensitive government work to avoid being subject to public records requests; that Barela and his deputy, Barbara Brazil, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p10/a156581" type="external">ignored</a> waste and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p11/a156582" type="external">mismanagement</a> at the state’s <a href="http://spaceportamerica.com" type="external">Spaceport</a> project in southern New Mexico; and that Brazil <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p12/a156794" type="external">ran</a> several Dairy Queen franchises she had an interest&#160;in “while simultaneously being paid by the State of New Mexico.”</p> <p>The&#160;whistleblowers are <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kurt-saenz/31/ab2/917" type="external">Kurt Saenz</a>, the former chief financial officer at the New Mexico Economic Development Department, and <a href="http://brenteastwood.com/about_us.php" type="external">Brent Eastwood</a>, a former Army infantry officer and RAND Corporation analyst who ran the department’s international trade and business advocacy divisions. Both men are Republicans and were appointed by Martinez. Eastwood’s wife, Melanie Sanchez-Eastwood, worked as a scheduler on Martinez’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. A source familiar with the case says the FBI has interviewed Saenz and Eastwood about their allegations. Eastwood also anonymously <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p6/a2" type="external">reported</a> his allegations to the state attorney general and the state auditor. (Saenz and Eastwood declined to comment for this story.)</p> <p>In <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155083-defendants-answer-to-saenz-and-eastwood-complaint.html" type="external">a response filed on March 14</a>, an attorney for Barela, Brazil, and the Economic Development Department denied all the allegations contained in the whistleblower suit. Barela, Brazil, and spokespeople for Martinez&#160;and the Economic Development Department did not respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>The lawsuit comes at an inopportune time for Martinez. For months, she and Barela have mounted a public campaign to encourage Tesla, the electric car company, to select New Mexico as the site for <a href="http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Teslas-5B-Giga-Battery-Factory-and-Deep-Politics-in-AZ-TX-NV-and-NM" type="external">a new $5 billion car-battery factory</a>. Tesla’s “gigafactory” would be the largest lithium-ion battery plant in the world, covering 10 million square feet and employing as many as 6,500 people.</p> <p>In February, Tesla <a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/367480/news/will-law-affect-new-mexicos-chances-for-tesla-factory.html" type="external">selected</a> New Mexico as one of four finalists for the factory. Throughout this courtship, Barela has been front and center touting the benefits of doing business in New Mexico. While campaigning for governor in 2010, Martinez pledged to bring jobs to New Mexico by rooting out the kind of corruption in state government that the whistleblower suit alleges. “We must get rid of [corruption] completely,” she said then.</p> <p>“Requested By The Governor”</p> <p>Kurt Saenz <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p1/a156584" type="external">was hired</a> in April 2011 as the Economic Development Department’s CFO and the director of its administrative services division. It wasn’t long, he asserts, before he spotted trouble.</p> <p>That summer, his suit alleges, Saenz <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p7/a156585" type="external">discovered</a> the department was paying a web developer more than $30,000 to build its new website without a contract—a violation of state procurement code. The company, <a href="http://rtsolutions.com" type="external">Real Time Solutions</a>, employed a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/julie-rogers/13/55/aa5" type="external">web architect</a> who was the wife of an Albuquerque lawyer and former Republican National Committeeman, Pat Rogers. Rogers <a href="http://patrogerslaw.com/About.aspx" type="external">has worked</a> for Martinez’s gubernatorial campaign and is close to her administration. When Saenz alerted Barela to the contracting problem, Barela, the complaint says, dismissed Saenz’s concerns. Hiring Real Time Solutions, Barela told Saenz, was “requested by the governor,” <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p8/a156587" type="external">according</a> to the complaint.</p> <p>The complaint states that Barela&#160;and Brazil, his deputy, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p9/a156588" type="external">pressured</a> Saenz to keep quiet about possible contracting irregularities, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p7/a156585" type="external">telling</a> him not to use the words “procurement code violation” around his colleagues or in emails and ordering him never to discuss the workings of the department with other state agencies. The complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p7/a156585" type="external">accuses</a> Brazil of “engaging in a cover-up” and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p13/a156589" type="external">trying</a> to “silence Saenz regarding the procurement code violations and his whistleblowing.”</p> <p>Eastwood, the other whistleblower, makes similar charges. According to the complaint, two aides to Martinez—spokesman Scott Darnell and deputy chief of staff Ryan&#160;Cangiolosi— <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p13/a156589" type="external">instructed Eastwood</a> to use his personal email to discuss “sensitive information” in order to circumvent the state’s public records law. (Cangiolosi&#160;and a Martinez spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.)</p> <p>The Martinez administration has previously been criticized for doing state business using personal email accounts. In response to a public records request, the Santa Fe Reporter <a href="http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-7156-the-year-in-closed-government.html" type="external">obtained</a> hundreds of emails showing government staff communicating with lobbyists, donors, and other members of the public about state business using Yahoo and Gmail accounts—not their official state email accounts. In June 2012, Martinez <a href="http://roundhouseroundup.blogspot.com/2012/06/governor-tells-state-employees-to-use.html" type="external">instructed</a> state employees not to use private email for state business.</p> <p>The complaint also accuses <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p13/a156589" type="external">Barela</a> and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p14/a156591" type="external">Wade Jackson</a>, the department’s general counsel and human resources director, of each engaging in extramarital affairs with subordinates in the department. Saenz <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p15/a156592" type="external">says</a> he told Barela that these affairs could expose the department to potential sexual harassment lawsuits. (Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.)</p> <p>The “Slush Fund” and Tax Credits on the Sly</p> <p>In March 2012, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p4/a156593" type="external">according to the lawsuit</a>, Saenz and a colleague at the Economic Development Department gave Eastwood an internal spreadsheet containing details about the department’s <a href="http://www.gonm.biz/tax_incentives.aspx" type="external">Angel Investment Tax Credit</a>, which rewarded investors in New Mexico tech and research companies with tax breaks. Eastwood, the complaint notes, reviewed the spreadsheet and one name popped out: Cerelink, a local high-tech company that specialized in cloud computing. Barela was its co-founder and a <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2010/12/barela-picked-to-be-economic-development-secretary/" type="external">part owner</a> when he was tapped in December 2010 to head the Economic Development Department. Saenz and his EDD colleague could find no mention of Cerelink in the department’s records, creating the appearance that the firm’s investors has received off-the-books tax breaks.</p> <p>Eastwood did some digging. According to the complaint, he found that in 2011 Barela <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p5/a156594" type="external">sought investments</a> to boost Cerelink, which was struggling to stay afloat. So, the lawsuit claims, Barela dangled the state’s angel investment credit in front of prospective investors to entice them into financing Cerelink. The complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p5/a156594" type="external">claims</a> that four people who eventually invested in Cerelink received $34,000 in tax credits; several of those investors, the complaint says, were donors to Barela’s failed 2010 congressional campaign. (The investors’&#160;names are not listed in the suit.)</p> <p>Around the time Eastwood says he discovered the Cerelink tax credits, Barela and Brazil, he <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156596" type="external">alleges</a>, gave him an unusual assignment: Drive south to Chihuahua, Mexico, and solicit money from businesses to pay for efforts to market the economic benefits of the border region. The suit says that Barela and Brazil called this a “ <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156596" type="external">slush fund.”</a> Eastwood notes that he <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156596" type="external">told</a> the pair he thought such a fund was illegal and feared being kidnapped or killed by Mexican drug cartels operating on the border.</p> <p>The lawsuit contains other allegations of mismanagement and dysfunction. Eastwood claims to have <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p10/a156782" type="external">witnessed</a> Brazil “working three (3) Dairy Queen franchises which she had a personal interest in while simultaneously being paid by the State of New Mexico.”&#160;Barela&#160;and Brazil also <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p12/a156794" type="external">allegedly moved</a> the Economic Development Department’s Albuquerque office to a location next to one of Brazil’s Dairy Queens&#160;“in order for Brazil to be able to work at the business while being paid by the State of New Mexico.”&#160;Eastwood also&#160; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">alleges</a>&#160;costly overruns and&#160; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">mismanagement</a> at the Spaceport, the state-funded launch site used by <a href="http://www.virgingalactic.com" type="external">Virgin Galactic</a>, the commercial space travel company.</p> <p>Eastwood, according to the lawsuit, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155084-defendants-request-for-jury-trial-in-saenz.html" type="external">told</a> his bosses in December 2011 that he planned to blow the whistle, and&#160;Saenz and Eastwood&#160;claim their whistleblowing led to their eventual dismissal. On April 11, 2012, the complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">says</a>, Barela confronted Eastwood in Eastwood’s office, pointing a finger at him and saying, “Come and get me.” Then, the lawsuit alleges, Barela grabbed an American flag and slammed it onto Eastwood’s desk in what the complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155581-defendants-answer-to-danni-sutana-complaint.html" type="external">calls</a> “an attempt to bait Eastwood into a physical confrontation.”</p> <p>Barela fired Eastwood that day, and state troopers were called to oversee his departure. Saenz was fired the following August.</p> <p>Since their firings, Saenz and Eastwood’s complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">states</a>, “each had their characters and professional reputations defamed, each was ‘black-listed’ and/or refused employment for positions within the state of New Mexico and outside governmental agencies that they were fully qualified to perform.” The defendants in the case have <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155084-defendants-request-for-jury-trial-in-saenz.html" type="external">requested</a> a jury trial.</p> <p>READ THE COMPLAINT:</p> <p />	Whistleblower Suit Alleges Corruption, Cronyism, and Affairs in Gov. Susana Martinez’s Administration	true	https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/05/susana-martinez-new-mexico-whistleblower-suit-jon-barela/	2014-05-08	4left	Whistleblower Suit Alleges Corruption, Cronyism, and Affairs in Gov. Susana Martinez’s Administration <p>New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.Pat Vasquez-Cunningham/Albuquerque Journal/ZUMAPRESS.com</p> <p /> <p>A <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155872-ag-motion-to-unseal-saenz-v-barela-complaint.html" type="external">recently</a> unsealed <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html" type="external">whistleblower lawsuit</a> filed in New Mexico state court makes a series of explosive allegations against appointees of rising GOP star <a href="" type="internal">Gov. Susana Martinez</a>, accusing high-ranking officials in her administration of public corruption, mismanagement, and intimidation. It claims that officials at the state’s economic development agency engaged in extramarital affairs that could expose the state to sexual harassment charges and that officials tried to silence employees who reported contracting violations and other wrongdoing.</p> <p>The 22-page complaint— <a href="https://caselookup.nmcourts.gov/caselookup/app?component=cnLink&amp;page=SearchResults&amp;service=direct&amp;session=T&amp;sp=SD-101-CV-201400359" type="external">filed</a> February 10 on behalf of two former state employees—claims that a company co-founded by Martinez appointee <a href="http://www.gonm.biz/About_NMEDD.aspx" type="external">Jon Barela</a>, secretary of the <a href="http://www.gonm.biz" type="external">New Mexico Economic Development Department</a>, secretly benefited from a state tax credit program. The complaint also alleges that aides to Martinez <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p9/a156580" type="external">instructed</a> a state employee to use his personal email for sensitive government work to avoid being subject to public records requests; that Barela and his deputy, Barbara Brazil, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p10/a156581" type="external">ignored</a> waste and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p11/a156582" type="external">mismanagement</a> at the state’s <a href="http://spaceportamerica.com" type="external">Spaceport</a> project in southern New Mexico; and that Brazil <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p12/a156794" type="external">ran</a> several Dairy Queen franchises she had an interest&#160;in “while simultaneously being paid by the State of New Mexico.”</p> <p>The&#160;whistleblowers are <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kurt-saenz/31/ab2/917" type="external">Kurt Saenz</a>, the former chief financial officer at the New Mexico Economic Development Department, and <a href="http://brenteastwood.com/about_us.php" type="external">Brent Eastwood</a>, a former Army infantry officer and RAND Corporation analyst who ran the department’s international trade and business advocacy divisions. Both men are Republicans and were appointed by Martinez. Eastwood’s wife, Melanie Sanchez-Eastwood, worked as a scheduler on Martinez’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign. A source familiar with the case says the FBI has interviewed Saenz and Eastwood about their allegations. Eastwood also anonymously <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p6/a2" type="external">reported</a> his allegations to the state attorney general and the state auditor. (Saenz and Eastwood declined to comment for this story.)</p> <p>In <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155083-defendants-answer-to-saenz-and-eastwood-complaint.html" type="external">a response filed on March 14</a>, an attorney for Barela, Brazil, and the Economic Development Department denied all the allegations contained in the whistleblower suit. Barela, Brazil, and spokespeople for Martinez&#160;and the Economic Development Department did not respond to requests for comment.</p> <p>The lawsuit comes at an inopportune time for Martinez. For months, she and Barela have mounted a public campaign to encourage Tesla, the electric car company, to select New Mexico as the site for <a href="http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Teslas-5B-Giga-Battery-Factory-and-Deep-Politics-in-AZ-TX-NV-and-NM" type="external">a new $5 billion car-battery factory</a>. Tesla’s “gigafactory” would be the largest lithium-ion battery plant in the world, covering 10 million square feet and employing as many as 6,500 people.</p> <p>In February, Tesla <a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/367480/news/will-law-affect-new-mexicos-chances-for-tesla-factory.html" type="external">selected</a> New Mexico as one of four finalists for the factory. Throughout this courtship, Barela has been front and center touting the benefits of doing business in New Mexico. While campaigning for governor in 2010, Martinez pledged to bring jobs to New Mexico by rooting out the kind of corruption in state government that the whistleblower suit alleges. “We must get rid of [corruption] completely,” she said then.</p> <p>“Requested By The Governor”</p> <p>Kurt Saenz <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p1/a156584" type="external">was hired</a> in April 2011 as the Economic Development Department’s CFO and the director of its administrative services division. It wasn’t long, he asserts, before he spotted trouble.</p> <p>That summer, his suit alleges, Saenz <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p7/a156585" type="external">discovered</a> the department was paying a web developer more than $30,000 to build its new website without a contract—a violation of state procurement code. The company, <a href="http://rtsolutions.com" type="external">Real Time Solutions</a>, employed a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/julie-rogers/13/55/aa5" type="external">web architect</a> who was the wife of an Albuquerque lawyer and former Republican National Committeeman, Pat Rogers. Rogers <a href="http://patrogerslaw.com/About.aspx" type="external">has worked</a> for Martinez’s gubernatorial campaign and is close to her administration. When Saenz alerted Barela to the contracting problem, Barela, the complaint says, dismissed Saenz’s concerns. Hiring Real Time Solutions, Barela told Saenz, was “requested by the governor,” <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p8/a156587" type="external">according</a> to the complaint.</p> <p>The complaint states that Barela&#160;and Brazil, his deputy, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p9/a156588" type="external">pressured</a> Saenz to keep quiet about possible contracting irregularities, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p7/a156585" type="external">telling</a> him not to use the words “procurement code violation” around his colleagues or in emails and ordering him never to discuss the workings of the department with other state agencies. The complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p7/a156585" type="external">accuses</a> Brazil of “engaging in a cover-up” and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p13/a156589" type="external">trying</a> to “silence Saenz regarding the procurement code violations and his whistleblowing.”</p> <p>Eastwood, the other whistleblower, makes similar charges. According to the complaint, two aides to Martinez—spokesman Scott Darnell and deputy chief of staff Ryan&#160;Cangiolosi— <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p13/a156589" type="external">instructed Eastwood</a> to use his personal email to discuss “sensitive information” in order to circumvent the state’s public records law. (Cangiolosi&#160;and a Martinez spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.)</p> <p>The Martinez administration has previously been criticized for doing state business using personal email accounts. In response to a public records request, the Santa Fe Reporter <a href="http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-7156-the-year-in-closed-government.html" type="external">obtained</a> hundreds of emails showing government staff communicating with lobbyists, donors, and other members of the public about state business using Yahoo and Gmail accounts—not their official state email accounts. In June 2012, Martinez <a href="http://roundhouseroundup.blogspot.com/2012/06/governor-tells-state-employees-to-use.html" type="external">instructed</a> state employees not to use private email for state business.</p> <p>The complaint also accuses <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p13/a156589" type="external">Barela</a> and <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p14/a156591" type="external">Wade Jackson</a>, the department’s general counsel and human resources director, of each engaging in extramarital affairs with subordinates in the department. Saenz <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p15/a156592" type="external">says</a> he told Barela that these affairs could expose the department to potential sexual harassment lawsuits. (Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.)</p> <p>The “Slush Fund” and Tax Credits on the Sly</p> <p>In March 2012, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p4/a156593" type="external">according to the lawsuit</a>, Saenz and a colleague at the Economic Development Department gave Eastwood an internal spreadsheet containing details about the department’s <a href="http://www.gonm.biz/tax_incentives.aspx" type="external">Angel Investment Tax Credit</a>, which rewarded investors in New Mexico tech and research companies with tax breaks. Eastwood, the complaint notes, reviewed the spreadsheet and one name popped out: Cerelink, a local high-tech company that specialized in cloud computing. Barela was its co-founder and a <a href="http://www.nmpolitics.net/index/2010/12/barela-picked-to-be-economic-development-secretary/" type="external">part owner</a> when he was tapped in December 2010 to head the Economic Development Department. Saenz and his EDD colleague could find no mention of Cerelink in the department’s records, creating the appearance that the firm’s investors has received off-the-books tax breaks.</p> <p>Eastwood did some digging. According to the complaint, he found that in 2011 Barela <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p5/a156594" type="external">sought investments</a> to boost Cerelink, which was struggling to stay afloat. So, the lawsuit claims, Barela dangled the state’s angel investment credit in front of prospective investors to entice them into financing Cerelink. The complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p5/a156594" type="external">claims</a> that four people who eventually invested in Cerelink received $34,000 in tax credits; several of those investors, the complaint says, were donors to Barela’s failed 2010 congressional campaign. (The investors’&#160;names are not listed in the suit.)</p> <p>Around the time Eastwood says he discovered the Cerelink tax credits, Barela and Brazil, he <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156596" type="external">alleges</a>, gave him an unusual assignment: Drive south to Chihuahua, Mexico, and solicit money from businesses to pay for efforts to market the economic benefits of the border region. The suit says that Barela and Brazil called this a “ <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156596" type="external">slush fund.”</a> Eastwood notes that he <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156596" type="external">told</a> the pair he thought such a fund was illegal and feared being kidnapped or killed by Mexican drug cartels operating on the border.</p> <p>The lawsuit contains other allegations of mismanagement and dysfunction. Eastwood claims to have <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p10/a156782" type="external">witnessed</a> Brazil “working three (3) Dairy Queen franchises which she had a personal interest in while simultaneously being paid by the State of New Mexico.”&#160;Barela&#160;and Brazil also <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p12/a156794" type="external">allegedly moved</a> the Economic Development Department’s Albuquerque office to a location next to one of Brazil’s Dairy Queens&#160;“in order for Brazil to be able to work at the business while being paid by the State of New Mexico.”&#160;Eastwood also&#160; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">alleges</a>&#160;costly overruns and&#160; <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">mismanagement</a> at the Spaceport, the state-funded launch site used by <a href="http://www.virgingalactic.com" type="external">Virgin Galactic</a>, the commercial space travel company.</p> <p>Eastwood, according to the lawsuit, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155084-defendants-request-for-jury-trial-in-saenz.html" type="external">told</a> his bosses in December 2011 that he planned to blow the whistle, and&#160;Saenz and Eastwood&#160;claim their whistleblowing led to their eventual dismissal. On April 11, 2012, the complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">says</a>, Barela confronted Eastwood in Eastwood’s office, pointing a finger at him and saying, “Come and get me.” Then, the lawsuit alleges, Barela grabbed an American flag and slammed it onto Eastwood’s desk in what the complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155581-defendants-answer-to-danni-sutana-complaint.html" type="external">calls</a> “an attempt to bait Eastwood into a physical confrontation.”</p> <p>Barela fired Eastwood that day, and state troopers were called to oversee his departure. Saenz was fired the following August.</p> <p>Since their firings, Saenz and Eastwood’s complaint <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155079-kurt-saenz-and-brent-eastwood-v-new-mexico.html#document/p17/a156597" type="external">states</a>, “each had their characters and professional reputations defamed, each was ‘black-listed’ and/or refused employment for positions within the state of New Mexico and outside governmental agencies that they were fully qualified to perform.” The defendants in the case have <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1155084-defendants-request-for-jury-trial-in-saenz.html" type="external">requested</a> a jury trial.</p> <p>READ THE COMPLAINT:</p> <p />	4,324
<p>Mark with Houston at Houston's high school graduation in 2009Courtesy of the family</p> <p>For more on this story, read Mac McClelland’s new chapter at the&#160; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/magazine/when-not-guilty-is-a-life-sentence.html?_r=0" type="external">New York Times Magazine.</a>&#160;It was also featured on the New York Times’ podcast, The Daily, which you can listen to below.</p> <p>THE THING THAT STRUCK ME when I first met my cousin Houston was his size. He wasn’t much taller than me, if at all, and was slight of frame. On the other side of the visitors’ glass, he looked surprisingly small, young for his 22 years. The much more remarkable thing about him turned out to be his vocabulary, vast and lovely, lyrical almost—until it came to an agitated or distracted halt. In any case, all things considered, he seemed altogether extremely unlike a person who had <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20111123/ARTICLES/111129821" type="external">recently murdered someone</a>.</p> <p /> <p>The symptoms displayed by Houston (in my family, a cousin of any degree is simply “a cousin”; technically, Houston is my third) in the year preceding this swift and horrific tragedy have since been classified as “a classic onset of schizophrenia.” At the time, it was just an alarming mystery. Houston had been attending Santa Rosa Junior College, living with his mom, playing guitar with his dad, when he became withdrawn and depressed. He slept all day; his band had broken up, and suddenly he had no friends. His dad, Mark, who had once struggled with depression and substance abuse but was now a pillar of the recovery community, and his mom, Marilyn, tried to help, took him to a psychiatrist. Houston didn’t have a drinking problem, but he mostly stopped drinking anyway. He didn’t smoke pot anymore, or even cigarettes. His psychiatrist indicated possible schizoaffective disorder in his notes, but put Houston on a changing regimen of antidepressants over the next eight months. It didn’t make any difference. Houston had started stealing his mom’s Adderall. He said it helped him feel better. He got fired from multiple jobs. Marilyn kicked him out, and he moved in with Mark.</p> <p /> <p>“This was not my nephew,” my Aunt Annette, Mark’s sister, says of Houston’s behavior then. “He was always solicitous and loving and talkative with me. Now, he was anxious, quiet, said very strange things. He would say things that seemed not to come from him. I asked him how his therapy was going, and he said, ‘Terrible.'”</p> <p>Toward the end of Houston’s devolution, he started having violent outbursts, breaking furniture; he tossed his mom across a room. Desperate now, Mark and Marilyn called the psychiatrist repeatedly and asked what to do. He told them to call the police.</p> <p>“You can call the police,” the deputy director of <a href="http://www.namisonomacounty.org/" type="external">Sonoma County’s National Alliance on Mental Illness</a> (NAMI), David France, said when I asked him what options are available to a parent whose adult child appears to be having a mental breakdown. “The police can activate resources,” like an emergency psych bed in a regular hospital, or transport and admission to a psychiatric hospital in a county that, unlike Sonoma, has one. But only if the police decide your child is a danger to himself or others can they arrest him with the right to hold him for three days—what in California is called a <a href="http://http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?file=5150-5157&amp;group=05001-06000&amp;section=wic" type="external">5150</a>, after the relevant section of state law. Otherwise you can be turned away for lack of space even if your loved one is willing to be admitted, or be left no good options if they’re not. <a href="" type="internal">Ninety-two percent</a> of the patients in California’s state psych hospitals got there via the criminal-justice system.</p> <p /> <p>But Mark didn’t want to call the police. For one, he didn’t think Houston was dangerous, just upset, despairing. Also, Mark read the news. The Santa Rosa cops had killed two mentally ill men they’d been called to intervene with in the last six years, one case resulting in a federal civil rights suit. This is not a problem unique to Santa Rosa—or to greater Sonoma County, which in 2009 paid a <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090113/NEWS/901130251?p=4&amp;tc=pg&amp;tc=ar" type="external">$1.75 million settlement to</a> the family of a mentally ill 16-year-old whom sheriff’s deputies shot eight times. There’s no comprehensive data yet, but mental illness appears to be a factor in so many arrest-related deaths that the Justice Department has considered adding mental-health status to its national database of such deaths. Just last year, for example, the DOJ found the Portland, Oregon, police department had a “pattern or practice of using excessive force…against people with mental illness,” including <a href="http://www.katu.com/news/local/123477464.html" type="external">eight shootings in 18 months</a> and the <a href="http://www.katu.com/news/local/99517814.html" type="external">beating to death of an unarmed man</a> in 2006.</p> <p>Anyway, Mark didn’t think three days of lockdown in a mental facility would make his son less unstable. He was looking for a meaningful treatment plan, not to rustle Houston through emergency services. “All those kids get shot by the police,” he told Marilyn. “Just let me handle it.”</p> <p>So Mark didn’t call the police, and Houston didn’t get any additional help. Ten days before all the really bad things happened, Annette came out to visit from Ohio. “Honey,” she said to her nephew, “something’s going on with you, babe. Either something’s happened to you, or you’re not sharing something. I’m really, really worried that something’s going on.” She says he turned his head and looked at her eerily and said, “Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.” She says, “It didn’t even sound like him.”</p> <p>He did tell her about it, later. He told her he’d been having delusions, something about telepathic communications and aliens and wireless circuits. Something about his mom and dad—who’d been divorced for a long time—and teenage sister, Savannah, being in an incestuous sex ring. Something about an invisible friend, Devon, and also that he’d been cutting himself to exorcise the evil, and that Mark was poisoning him with lead and was the source of the evil. He did tell Annette, but only after it was too late, after he came home from the gym late one November night in 2011 and stabbed his father 60 times, with four different knives. When Savannah came downstairs and called 911, it appeared he was trying to behead him.</p> <p>“What the FUCK?” my Aunt Annette exclaimed around the one-year anniversary of her brother’s death. “HOUSTON, what the FUCK?” But, she told me, the fact that what Houston did was “so heinous” didn’t mean he wasn’t a victim, too. “There was no facility, no support. There was nowhere to take him; there was nothing to do but call the police.”</p> <p>“There’s been no place to put my anger,” she said about losing Mark. “Because I love this child. I know how sick he is. I was there at his birth.” And then she asked me to do the talking for a while, because she couldn’t talk anymore because she was sobbing.</p> <p /> <p>Psychiatrist <a href="http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/dr-e-fuller-torrey" type="external">E. Fuller Torrey</a> calls a crime like Houston’s “a predictable tragedy.” That’s what he has also called the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073973345594508.html" type="external">Gabrielle Giffords shooting</a>; he says the same thing about the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/310200/virginia-tech-tucson-aurora-and-counting-e-fuller-torrey" type="external">Virginia Tech massacre</a>, the Aurora movie theater shooting, the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324407504578185361458883822.html" type="external">Sandy Hook Elementary shooting</a>, and dozens of other recent homicides, some of them famous mass killings or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/opinion/01torrey.html?_r=2&amp;" type="external">subway platform shovings</a>, but many of them less publicized. Ten percent of US homicides, he estimates based on an analysis of the relevant studies, are committed by the untreated severely mentally ill—like my schizophrenic cousin. And, he says: “I’m thinking that’s a conservative estimate.”</p> <p>Saying that the severely mentally ill are disproportionately responsible for homicides has made Torrey, author of <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780393341379-0" type="external">The Insanity Offense</a> and the forthcoming <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Clinical/?view=usa&amp;ci=9780199988716" type="external">American Psychosis</a>, unpopular in some circles. “[My critics’] argument is you can’t talk about these things because it causes stigma,” he says. In the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, some mental-illness advocates insisted that even if Adam Lanza had Asperger’s or any mental-health issues, it would be totally inappropriate to cite that as a factor in his actions. But other administrators and caretakers think it’s vital to bring up. “We have to think about mental-health care in a public health framework,” says <a href="http://nac.samhsa.gov/naccouncil/bios.aspx" type="external">Dee Roth</a>, who is on the National Advisory Council of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). “Public health measures solved rickets, cholera, people dying when they’re 30.” But when it comes to mental illness, she says, “we’re not treating the sick people.” And while the details of Lanza’s diagnosis or any attempts to treat it remain unconfirmed, what is known, as Torrey pointed out in a piece he <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073973345594508.html" type="external">coauthored in the Wall Street Journal</a>, is that Connecticut is “among the worst states to seek such treatment. It has among the weakest involuntary treatment laws and is one of only six states that doesn’t have a law permitting court-ordered ‘assisted outpatient treatment,'” which, Torrey notes, “has been shown to decrease re-hospitalizations, incarcerations and, most importantly, episodes of violence among severely mentally ill individuals.” Although even Torrey, who founded the <a href="http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/index.php" type="external">Treatment Advocacy Center</a>, an organization that pushes for fewer restrictions on involuntary commitment, admits that such measures would hardly plug all the holes in our mental-health-care system.</p> <p /> <p>Obviously, lots of violence is perpetrated by the “sane.” And most violence committed by the severely mentally ill is committed against themselves. Even in the range of schizophrenia narratives, which commonly include suicide or dying on the street, Houston’s took an extraordinarily unhappy turn. But happy endings are getting harder for even the nonviolent mentally ill to come by. And as states and counties pare back what few mental-health services remain, we’re learning that whether people who need help can get it affects us all.</p> <p /> <p>ON OCTOBER 12, 1773, the first patient was admitted to the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds in Williamsburg, Virginia, the first North American facility of its kind. The governor, an Enlightenment man, had prevailed upon the assembly to create a place where “a poor unhappy set of people who are deprived of their senses and wander about the countryside, terrifying the rest of their fellow creatures” could, with the help of experts, reclaim their “lost reason.” Over the next 100 years, the rest of the country followed suit, taking “lunaticks” out of cages in jail basements after Boston schoolteacher Dorothea Dix happened into one such dungeon in 1841 and launched a fact-finding and activism rampage that led to the establishment of 110 public psych hospitals by 1880.</p> <p>About a hundred years after that, in 1977, my mother—Mark’s second cousin—dragged her 16-year-old baby sister kicking and ranting into Woodruff Psychiatric Hospital in Cleveland.</p> <p>The day my Aunt Terri had a psychotic break, she just appeared in my mother’s backyard. The neighbor who was over babysitting my then-infant older sister didn’t know how long Terri had been out there when she finally noticed her, but she’d been pacing back and forth, long and hard and fast enough to wear a rut into the lawn. Raving in outer-space language. Flailing and swinging wildly.</p> <p>“Do whatever you have to do to get her in the car,” the general practitioner said when my mom phoned him, after the babysitter called her home from work. The doctor had asked my mom to describe the scene. He’d asked my mom if she’d ever seen anyone act like that on any kind of drug. He’d told her to hold on and he’d call her right back after he contacted a special hospital in nearby Cleveland, and now he was telling her she had to get her sister there by any means necessary. So my mom told my Aunt Terri that she would take her to the airport, because the only discernible thing that Terri was babbling about was that Chris Squire, the bass player of Yes, was sending her messages that she needed to meet him in Canada right away.</p> <p>It took five white coats to contain Terri as she tried to scream and fight her way out of the hospital lobby. The admitting doctor didn’t know—no one who saw her in the first months she was in and out of hospitals was able to decide—if Terri, straight-As bright and talented but a party girl, went crazy because she was doing drugs or if she was doing drugs to self-medicate symptoms of oncoming crazy. By the time I’d been born and grown old enough to understand what adults were talking about, it didn’t matter. Aunt Terri was schizophrenic. Period. When I was younger, I was afraid of her. Or on some level, I was afraid of being her, more likely, of not being able to tell the difference between real voices and voices in my head, of being pulled so deep into my imagination that I’d never get out. When I was a teenager, I gave her rides home from family gatherings, but only after hanging back and hoping someone else would offer first.</p> <p>Last year, Aunt Terri died in her yard. My Aunt Paula came to pick her up for the weekly grocery shopping and found her dead in the cold winter grass. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, I tell people when that lands on their face as horror. It was, in fact, pretty much the best-case scenario. She died in her own yard, of her own home, where she lived her own life, young at 52, yeah, but not a terrible age for a body doused in antipsychotics and incessant cigarettes, giving out too early, but from the ever-desired “natural causes.” Yet more and more these days, Aunt Terri’s best-case scenario is an unlikely one. It took a lot of work, on the part of my grandma and Aunt Paula, and 23 years of dedication by a caseworker, work I didn’t even want to do for a 15-minute car ride, work nobody wants to do, work counties and states are increasingly not paying for. &#160;</p> <p>THE HOSPITAL my mother checked Aunt Terri into no longer exists. Neither does the state hospital, CPI—Cleveland Psychiatric Institute—that she was taken to later. Had it not closed a few years after her break, she may have ended up living in it for the rest of her life. But the changes in Terri’s brain coincided with massive changes in mental-health policy.</p> <p>In the 1950s, more than a half million people lived in US mental institutions—1 in 300 Americans. By the late ’70s, only 160,000 did, due to a concerted effort on the part of psychiatrists, philanthropists, and politicians to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill. Today there’s one psychiatric bed per 7,100 Americans. The motives behind this trend were varied, to say the least. Emptying the asylums was going to save money. Who needed asylums anymore, anyway, with all the great antipsychotics now on the market? Deinstitutionalization was going to restore citizens’ rights and protect them from deplorable conditions popularized by movies and memoirs and often all too real. “We were totally creeped out,” my mom remembers of walking into CPI to visit her sister. “It was exactly like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. People just sitting around talking to themselves and staring into space in hospital gowns”—a place where a sane person would go crazy and the crazy were unlikely to be cured. Wouldn’t it be better if the mentally ill were treated at home, given support and therapy and medication via a network of community clinics? Anyone who visited even a “good” mental hospital found that message appealing.</p> <p>My grandparents tried bringing Terri home. They weren’t medical professionals, and for years she was in and out of the hospital as they struggled to get her to take her medication and to take care of her when she wasn’t stable. Once, when doing the dishes with Aunt Paula after dinner, she smashed a frying pan into Paula’s head, causing her to see stars and their brother to tackle Terri to the floor, the single act of aggression anyone ever saw him commit. Several months later, after she started a fight that ended with my grandmother’s arm broken, she was moved to a group home owned by a nonprofessional but sympathetic woman in Madison, Ohio, 20-some miles from my grandparents’ house.</p> <p>The constant presence of other people continued to agitate Terri; within six months she was thrown out. Using Terri’s Social Security income and Section 8 housing assistance, my grandparents got her a duplex in Painesville. She was evicted. She got another apartment, and was evicted again. Two more group homes in Cleveland, evicted. She would go door to door, “bothering” tenants. She would lie on the sidewalk in her bathing suit. And she would always, always, always be blasting music. Another apartment, in Mentor: evicted. With CPI long since closed by now, and hospitalization no longer an option, Terri was running out of places to go.</p> <p>When in 1961 a joint commission of the American Medical and American Psychiatric associations recommended integrating the mentally ill into society, their plan depended on the establishment of local facilities where mentally ill people would receive outpatient care. Congress passed a law providing funding for these “community mental health centers” in 1963, and states, already under pressure from the patients’ rights movement, downsized their mental hospitals faster than anyone had anticipated. Between Vietnam and an economic crisis and lack of political will, though, adequate funding for community services never came through. In 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act, aimed at filling the gap. But a year later Ronald Reagan, already known for eviscerating mental-health services as governor of California, took office and gutted it, then decreased federal mental-health spending 30 percent and shifted the burden to state and local governments. By 1985, the federal government covered just 11 percent of mental-health agency budgets. When the crucial community services that the mentally ill were supposed to receive as the hospitals closed failed to materialize, more and more of them ended up on the streets. By the mid-1980s, pretty much everyone in America agreed that deinstitutionalization was not going well.</p> <p>“Homelessmentallyilldeinstitutionalized was one noun in the media at the time,” says SAMHSA’s Roth, who is the source of the oft-cited data point that a third of America’s homeless people are seriously mentally ill (helping to rebut the misconception then that they all were). In 1984, Dr. John A. Talbott, then president of the American Psychiatric Association, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">apologized</a> for the association’s role in the disaster. “The psychiatrists involved in the policymaking at that time certainly oversold community treatment,” he said, “and our credibility today is probably damaged because of it.”</p> <p /> <p>“Think of it as haircuts,” says Roth, who watched deinstitutionalization unfold in her 37 years as chief of evaluation and research at the Ohio Department of Mental Health. “In the age of the great gothic castle on the hill, mentally ill patients had everything taken care of. Health care, sleeping, eating, etc. When they got out, they were supposed to have everything. They got Medicare and Medicaid, but [policymakers] didn’t think about food. And haircuts. Clothes. How to find a place to live.” How to do laundry; how to grocery shop. How to ensure people who need meds take them. What to do with people who had too many behavioral problems to avoid being evicted six times in a row.</p> <p>Fortunately for my aunt, she lived in a state that, as Roth explains, had some “very dedicated, very dogged” leaders at the Department of Mental Health who were determined to make Ohio a model for post-deinstitutionalization life. By the mid-’90s, my home state “was famous all over the country for all kinds of stuff,” she says. Independent-living initiatives. Supported-employment programs. Supported education. Home-based services for kids. Active and excellent case management.</p> <p>It was an excellent case manager who ultimately helped solve my aunt’s housing crisis. Eleanor Dockry, a tiny woman with chin-length black hair and black-frame glasses, was assigned Terri’s case through Pathways (now called Beacon Health), a nonprofit outpatient service provider supported by the county Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) board—essentially the rump of what was supposed to have been the community-services network envisioned by the reformers of the ’60s—and a slew of other community organizations. Though I met her for the first time just a few months ago, she took care of my aunt for 23 years, a life jacket. Eleanor knew that you could only be evicted from so many places before no landlord in Ohio would rent to you, so she sat my grandparents down. “I think if you could afford to buy something for her, that would be good,” she said. My grandparents pulled the money together for a trailer in a mobile-home community near their house.</p> <p>“I have my own place,” Terri bragged to my mother, beaming, at 36 years old. “Daddy bought it for me.”</p> <p /> <p>Eleanor came by at least once and sometimes twice a week. She took Terri to her favorite restaurant, McDonald’s, or to the park, or to go buy her nieces Christmas presents with money she saved from her Social Security check. (Terri liked to give me bubbles and sidewalk chalk, even when I was in college.) Every three weeks, Eleanor took my aunt to get her antipsychotic haloperidol injections, which Terri stopped refusing after my grandfather convinced her they were necessary for her own and everyone else’s good. Eleanor took her to Neighboring, a local nonprofit, which offered field trips, skill-building lessons about cooking or doing laundry, and support groups about medication side effects, as well as art classes, the results of which were sometimes displayed in the local mall.</p> <p>“She just had a few little problems” with neighbors once she was in her own place, Eleanor says. The rock music, of course. An obsession with hoses that made her turn them on and leave them on, flooding the driveway. “But since they owned it there’s nothing they could do.” She lived on her own for almost two decades. “She did better than you could really expect for someone so mentally ill.”</p> <p>So mentally ill: According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the term “mentally ill” can be applied to a whopping <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ANYDIS_Adult.shtml" type="external">quarter of the US adult population</a> in any given year, because broadly, it includes everything from depression to attention deficit disorder. “Seriously mentally ill,” however, is used to describe severe functional impairments like major depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, which occur in up to 6 percent of the population. Within the severely mentally ill schizophrenic population ( <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml#Schizophrenia" type="external">about 2.4 million Americans</a>), my aunt—who constantly talked to invisible people, and got “pregnant” at 19 with Yes bassist Chris Squire’s baby (“It always came back to Chris Squire,” my mom says), her belly swelling realistically huge with his imaginary baby inside it—classified as low-functioning, making her about as mentally ill as a person can be. Still. With family and a few resources in place, Social Security checks and housing subsidies and a great caseworker, “she was able to manage on her own,” Eleanor says.</p> <p>At Aunt Terri’s funeral, my family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the mental-health organizations that made her life possible. We nieces who lived out of town and couldn’t make it were instructed to honor Terri and her love of loud music by throwing ourselves a peace-disturbing one-person dance party at the time of the service, wherever we were. My grandma and Aunt Paula resolved to find a broke veteran (who turned out to be struggling with his own psychological issues) and to give Terri’s trailer to him. My grandmother wanted to help other people needing help since the government had helped Terri. “She was independent until the very end,” she says.</p> <p>“I’m so grateful,” she says, “that we had so much support.”</p> <p>“OHIO ONCE HAD one of the top mental health systems in the country,” lamented the National Alliance on Mental Illness in a <a href="" type="internal">2011 report</a>. “Today, after several years of significant budget cuts, thousands of youth and adults living with serious mental illness are unable to access care in the community and are ending up either on the streets or in far more expensive settings, such as hospitals and jails.”</p> <p>The glory days of Ohio’s mental-health department had already come to an end by the time the budget crises of the late 2000s rolled around. But the recession and the subsequent tea party austerity movement made things even worse. On the list of the 10 states that cut the most from mental-health budgets between 2009 and 2011, Ohio was No. 6. Then Gov. John Kasich’s 2012-13 budget <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/03/schools_local_governments_take.html" type="external">slashed local government funds</a> by a billion dollars and continued a trend of downsizing community mental-health programs. “The most fragile people in our society, we looked out for them,” <a href="http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-33509-kasich-defends-budget-proposal.html" type="external">the governor said</a>. “And if there’s a hole or a mistake, we’ll come back later to figure it out.” (He’s since proposed <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/02/14/mentally-ill-benefit-in-kasich-budget.html" type="external">restoring some services</a>.)</p> <p>“Ohio,” as Roth explains, “is a microcosm of the United States.” Collectively, states have cut <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/state-mental-health-cuts_n_1897769.html" type="external">$4.35 billion in public mental-health spending</a> since 2009.</p> <p>As in the rest of the country, Ohio allocates funds differently to different counties based on formulas and politics. My Aunt Terri was lucky to live in Lake County, Eleanor says. Not that it’s perfect there: All the Neighboring programs Terri once participated in have been eliminated, and the county doesn’t have the budget for enough group homes for its lowest-functioning mentally ill, which, if my family had been unwilling—or unable—to procure Terri her own place, would have been her last option. In this county of 236,000, there are a total of 18 “acute beds” in such facilities, so while Terri waited for someone occupying one of them to die, she’d have been checked into a psych ward at a hospital, and if Lake County didn’t have any psych ward beds open, she’d have been moved to a hospital in Summit County, an hour away, if it had a bed. Eleanor says the need for group homes contributes to homelessness in largely suburban Lake County, where the single operating shelter, 30 percent of whose residents are mentally ill, turns away 800 calls a year. But at least Lake County still had the funds to give Aunt Terri a caseworker.</p> <p>In some other places, Eleanor says, people “just fall through the cracks.” Take next-door Cuyahoga County—home of the Cleveland Indians, and the largest mentally ill population in the state. <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/01/ohio_ignores_cuyahoga_countys.html" type="external">William Denihan</a>, CEO of the ADAMHS board there, explains that Cuyahoga has been the biggest loser, since the Ohio Department of Mental Health cut funding for community services there by 60 percent in 10 years. “The average county in Ohio got $4.20 per person” in state mental-health funding in fiscal 2012, he tells me in his office overlooking Lake Erie. But in Cuyahoga? They got 20 cents per person. Meanwhile, demand for beds in homeless shelters, along with emergency room and jail admissions, is exploding. “The prison population is the largest cost in Ohio,” Denihan shakes his head. “The largest mental-health hospital is our jail system.”</p> <p>This is true across Ohio, where, 25 years into the Reagan-era policy changes but even before the recent austerity cuts, there were enough high-profile cases of mentally ill inmates being beaten, undertreated, killed by guards, or committing suicide to make it the subject of the 2005 Frontline documentary <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/" type="external">The New Asylums</a>. But it is also true across the nation, where the three largest de facto psychiatric facilities are jails. In 2011, the sheriff of Cook County <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&amp;id=8143042" type="external">threatened to sue</a> Illinois for making the jail the largest mental-health provider in the state. “We’re not set up to do that, obviously,” he said. As of 2006, 1.3 million of America’s mentally ill were housed right back where they were in Dorothea Dix’s day: in prisons and jails. Between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill behind bars more than quadrupled; the share of mentally ill people among the incarcerated was five times higher than in the general population. More-recent national prison stats aren’t out yet, but in some county jails, mental-illness rates have increased by nearly 50 percent in the last seven years. It’s not uncommon for individual jails to report that 25 or 30 percent of their inmates are mentally ill, or that their mentally ill population rises year after year.</p> <p /> <p>In Summit County, Ohio, just south of Cuyahoga, the sheriff <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/ohio-jail-to-stop-accepting-violent-mentally-ill-detainees/" type="external">announced last year</a> that he would not “be a dumping ground anymore for these people,” and shut the jail to admissions of the mentally ill. He was the first sheriff in the country to do such a thing—somewhat ironic given that the county is exceptionally proactive in keeping the mentally ill out of jails. To make up for the lack of state funds, Summit County passed a dedicated mental-health levy on local property taxes in 2007. It is also one of five training sites in the nation for mental-health courts, which get offenders into treatment rather than locking them away.</p> <p>“No one ends up in jail rotting,” Summit ADAMHS chief clinical officer Doug Smith promises me, dismissing the very notion of that happening here with a shake of his head. “We don’t have those problems here, like they have in California.”</p> <p>Ah, California. No. 1 in the amount of mental-health funding cut from 2009 to 2011, No. 7 in cuts as a percentage. Home to one of the largest jail/psych facilities in the nation, the LA County Jail. Where visitors can’t believe how many bat-shit-crazy homeless we’ve got. Where deinstitutionalization was pioneered under Gov. Ronald Reagan with the 1967 <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=wic&amp;group=04001-05000&amp;file=5000-5120" type="external">Lanterman-Petris-Short Act</a>, which made it vastly more difficult to commit people, and where the rate of mentally ill in the criminal-justice system doubled just one year after it took effect. Where, often, the severely mentally ill live in jail for three to six months because they’re waiting for a bed to open up in a psychiatric facility. California: where, says Torrey, the psychiatrist who warns about “predictable” violence like my cousin’s, “they led the way in [deinstitutionalization], and they’ve led the way downhill. They’re certainly leading the way in consequences.”</p> <p>THE TENDERLOIN, a neighborhood on the western edge of San Francisco’s downtown, has never been quite as infamous as New York City’s skid row once was, but it is no less deserving of its own depressing show tune. Emerging from the Civic Center subway station—with a guy stalking behind you barking, “Bitch. Bitch. Bitch”—you can generate a tour of movie-drama levels of abandoned humanity by simply doing a 360-degree spin. See a guy in a camo jacket selling four boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, cursing at unsellable mac and cheese. A guy rubbing his hands and smelling them, rubbing his hands, smelling them. A guy with a skateboard and chatty invisible friend to his lower right; another guy earnestly preparing a crack pipe; a filth-covered gal sitting and staring intently at nowhere; a lady with one shoe, no bra, a high ponytail, and a confused face, weeping and glancing around, lost in the broad light of day.</p> <p>“This is not a ghetto,” says Cindy Gyori, executive director of <a href="http://www.hydestreetcs.org/" type="external">Hyde Street Community Services</a>, one of the city’s underfunded community mental-health centers. “Nobody is born here. They’re looking for the end of the rainbow,” and they end up here because San Francisco has “a reputation for being open.” Of the 1,000 individuals the clinic sees per year, 44 percent walk in the door homeless. Fifty percent admit to substance abuse. From wherever they came, “they bring their problems with them.”</p> <p>Gyori, a petite white-haired lady with an exuberance you wouldn’t expect to last 20 minutes, much less 40 years, in this neighborhood—its 35 square blocks host 6,000 homeless people and 72 crimes on any given day—joined the civil and patients’ rights movement that had helped a cost-cutting Gov. Reagan pass Lanterman-Petris-Short. As a social worker, she experienced deinstitutionalization shake out; she’s had to call the police, invoking LPS’s Section 5150, on “lots of people” who “didn’t know how to take care of themselves” and were a threat to their own or others’ safety. But she still disagrees with those who think it should be easier to get people committed, medicated, or treated against their will. Whether they’re in their “right mind” or not, she says, mentally ill people should be able to do whatever they choose until they’re a danger—just like non-mentally-ill people. That violence has often already occurred by the time someone gets 5150’d is, Gyori says, a necessary “complication of our rights in America.”</p> <p /> <p>What of the studies that show that involuntary-treatment laws decrease rates of violence and hospitalization and incarceration among severely mentally ill patients? Such laws are “stupid,” Gyori says. If your concern is public safety and crime prevention, she adds, “it’s the funding that matters.” Funding for school screening programs that could catch signs of severe mental illness. Funding for early treatment to keep the moderately mentally ill from becoming a lot sicker, and funding for rehab programs for those who didn’t get treatment and started self-medicating. Funding for intensive case management, subsidized housing for people who are functionally disabled. All things that combat the isolation and desperation and hopelessness that can help cause and exacerbate mental illness—schizophrenia included. The majority of Gyori’s clients are suffering afflictions like PTSD, anxiety, depression, and the associated addiction issues. That is: With treatment, they’re theoretically capable of recovery and (nonsubsidized) functioning. But Gyori’s staff is short, underpaid. New clients can’t be seen for initial risk assessment for a month. The city’s public-housing shortage is so severe that it closed the list to new applicants. “This society is set up to create Tenderloins,” she says.</p> <p>“We’re dealing with the most stigmatized and misunderstood population. You can scream outside my window,” she says, turning her face in the direction of the guy screaming outside her window—something about “dinner”—”and I’m not gonna make assumptions that it’s your fault. As long as a person is disabled, and income is limited, you have to help them. Destigmatization is a big part of it.”</p> <p>Sure. When I leave the clinic, it is admittedly difficult not to judge the strung-out-looking fellow lunging through the crosswalk hollering a song about monkeys, the refrain of which is a monkey call, or the parties responsible for the two piles of human shit I sidestep in as many blocks. Though an estimated <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/01/19/1-in-5-americans-suffer-from-mental-illness/" type="external">1 in 5 families</a> contains someone with a mental illness, even families of the mentally ill aren’t always sympathetic. “We have families who aren’t willing to work with us or do anything,” says my Aunt Terri’s caseworker, Eleanor. “Your family was so willing; everybody was there to do whatever.” But she’s certainly not talking about my great-grandmother, who pronounced Terri lazy, and not even so much my grandfather, who thought his daughter was a spoiled brat who just wanted attention. And she wasn’t talking about me, whose total uselessness in Terri’s transportation and other needs earned me the resentment of at least one cousin.</p> <p>Sonoma County NAMI’s David France told me about classes his organization holds for families to combat this lack of compassion. I saw a similar school talk in Ohio once as a teenager. I remember the heavyset woman well, her matching blouse and pant of some artificial peach fabric. I don’t remember whether her illness was depression or bipolar or what, but I do remember that she told us her method of self-harm was to pull out all of her eyelashes because it was a self-harm no one noticed. She told us, with the inevitably pleading look of a person who knows they’re telling you something important but also knows you can’t possibly understand, that suicide was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. That no matter how sick you are, there’s room for improving and becoming a functioning member of society, like her.</p> <p>I remember finding her totally weak and disgusting.</p> <p>“People with mental illness are not valued in this society,” says Roth. Not valued members of the family Christmas party. Not valued recipients of dwindling state budget dollars. “It’s not a place where people want to give money. We’re in a country right now that is so mean-spirited, people really aren’t in any mood to spend any money on anybody.”</p> <p>But as Randall Hagar, director of government relations for the <a href="http://www.calpsych.org/" type="external">California Psychiatric Association</a>, points out, the country will pay for it one way or another. “Taxpayers pay for nuisance issues related to the homeless,” he says, especially since the total elimination of California’s $55 million mentally ill homeless outreach program, which deployed teams to help with everything from housing crises to paperwork. Since the defunding of the state’s mentally ill offender crime reduction program, which delivered services like training, counseling, and outpatient assistance to discharged transgressors, the incidence of violence has increased among that population, says Hagar. In Virginia between 2010 and 2011, mental-health treatment facilities <a href="" type="internal">turned away 200 people</a> determined to be dangerous because there were no available beds. In Arizona, a Phoenix hospital saw a <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/09/21/20110921mental-health-cuts-toll-debated.html?nclick_check=1" type="external">40 percent jump</a> in psychiatric emergency room episodes after the abolition of mental-health services to 12,000 non-Medicaid-eligible mentally ill. The moral issues of not taking care of society’s sick and vulnerable aside, Hagar says, our post-deinstitutionalization transinstitutionalization is not cheap: “Two to three thousand dollars in treatment saves $50,000 in jail.”</p> <p /> <p>In the Tenderloin—as in Santa Rosa, as in Cleveland and Phoenix and Lynchburg—”do we have the resources to adequately treat them? No,” Gyori says. Neither for those who seek it, nor for those who “don’t want your help but go bonkers in the street and have to be locked away.” Whatever differences they have over the patients’ rights debate, Torrey and Gyori agree on one thing. “Sometimes,” Gyori says, “people need to go to the hospital. The problem is, now you don’t have acute beds. So people are let go too soon, and it’s not as easy to get in.”</p> <p>“The system now is, they don’t wanna see people,” Torrey complains. “None of us are suggesting that we need to go back to 1930, when I as a psychiatrist could say, ‘I don’t like the sound of your voice, so I’m going to keep you in my facility that I also happen to own for three weeks.’ You have to have a system of checks and balances.”</p> <p>But the pendulum has swung far past patients’ rights and well into the territory of wild neglect. The dismantling of the mental-health system has left those willing to undergo treatment with no options, and rendered the laws to protect against dangerous scenarios ineffective. “Danger to self or others is defined too limitedly,” Torrey says. In the eight states where that’s the only triggering mechanism for treatment, “you either have to be trying to kill your psychiatrist or trying to kill yourself in front of your psychiatrist.” Some states have less-strict provisions, but even there, no open beds plus the expense of keeping someone in the beds equals admission standards that are too high and discharge standards that are too low.</p> <p>Regardless of what you think about commitment rules, the bottom line is you have to have facilities. If there had been a facility—not “a psych ward in a general hospital which is set up to see people with eating disorders and depression,” Torrey says, but a clinic staffed with the appropriate kinds of professionals and with an open bed and antipsychotics that have proven to be extremely effective if properly administered—if my Uncle Mark could have taken Houston someplace like that—maybe crimes like Houston’s could be not just predictable, but preventable.</p> <p>“Hospitals are motivated to get people out as quickly as possible,” says Robin Lipetzky, who deals with the fallout as chief public defender of Contra Costa County, just across San Francisco Bay. “We ignore the mentally ill until they commit a crime that ends them up in prison. Over and over again we see these situations where parents of these folks who commit these offenses—if they don’t kill their parents, which is what often happens—say they’ve been trying and trying to get treatment for these kids and it’s just not available. And it’s usually young adults. There’s not enough out there in terms of resources for families. The people making the budgets don’t look at it as an integrated whole. It’s unfortunate that that calculation isn’t done at the same time.” Although, she concedes, not all the pieces of calculating the cost of “treatment of the mentally ill up front” would be that easy to do. “How do you put the price,” she asks, “on people losing their lives when people have a psychotic break?” &#160;</p> <p>“SOCIETY SHOULD BE more helpful and there should be more services, obviously,” says Lieutenant Corrado Ghioldi of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. But in the meantime, “we had to evolve, grow, and specialize to be able to take care of these people.” The Sonoma County jail, just a few miles away from the spas and rolling, vineyard-lined hills that make the region world famous, is an expensive-looking salmon-colored facility hidden from the street by manicured trees. (“Is this the new Nordstrom?” people drove up to ask when it was first built.) Ghioldi has spent a career trying to better serve his jail’s mentally ill population, which has increased 3,650 percent since 1992, and which now includes Houston. “We’re slowly turning into a big mental-health facility. I never could have imagined this 20 years ago,” he says. And then, more to himself, with something approaching awe, “What’s it gonna be in 10 years?”</p> <p>The jail has animal-assisted therapy now. An independent-living course. Their “Prevention, Art &amp; Anger Management, Thinking Cognitively, Health Issues, Stress Reduction (PATHS)” program <a href="http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/COMIO/2011_Awards.html" type="external">won an award</a> in 2011 from the Council on Mentally Ill Offenders. An unusually dedicated corrections deputy who’s even joined the local NAMI board, Ghioldi convinces the deans of nearby universities to come teach recidivism-reducing classes by offering to go give university students presentations in exchange. “We wouldn’t survive without volunteers because we don’t have the money to run all these classes,” he says.</p> <p>Houston, who had already been incarcerated for 430 days the first time I visited him back in January, costing the county $49,811 in jail expenditures alone, won’t go to any of the classes. He gets medication, but no therapy. After I identified myself as a cousin who knew Annette and we settled into our visiting-booth chairs, he explained, without complaining, that he wasn’t exactly thriving here. He talked about his illness a little, how he’d had “some episodes” that had landed him in the most acute cells of the most serious of the jail’s three mental wards, “the dungeon,” which includes rooms with padded walls and no socializing and barricadable windows and sometimes sick people yelling and screaming on all sides. “You would have a nervous breakdown,” he told me, “just standing in there for 10 minutes.”</p> <p>It was quiet as a library when I later visited the unit and interviewed some of the deputies, whom Ghioldi handpicks and specially trains to work in the psych units, 35 mental-health officers in all. Though they were decidedly not doing what they signed up for at the police academy, each spoke sensitively and passionately about their wards and asserted, to a man, that working with this population was the most rewarding career on the force. Meanwhile, the faces and naked chests of crazy inmates appeared through the long vertical windows of the reinforced metal cell doors.</p> <p>During the 45 minutes that I got Houston out of his cell, mostly what he wanted to talk about was books. Superfriendly but often avoiding my eyes and pulling his jaw down, he was ceaselessly ticky and fidgety, common side effects of the antipsychotics he’s on. He told me he was reading Bertrand Russell—Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits—and when I said I couldn’t really hang in that philosophy discussion, he switched to poetry. When I chastised him for reading hardly any books by women, he smiled, looking embarrassed, and promised to read whatever I sent. He wanted to know what my college thesis was, and asked me a lot of questions about it.</p> <p>We did not talk about Uncle Mark, or the 500 people who went to his memorial thanks in part to the 35 years he’d spent mentoring in AA. We didn’t talk about how Houston had so gruesomely killed him, or, as unspeakable as that was, that sometimes unchecked illness can lead to far worse, given access to guns plus delusions about a movie theater or a temple or an elementary school. We did talk about the possibilities for Houston’s own life. After more than a year of evaluations, in which several psychiatrists declared Houston schizophrenic, it still wasn’t clear if the DA’s office would pursue a murder trial or if Houston might be sent to the psych hospital in Napa for treatment and possibly eventual release.</p> <p>“I might get into politics,” he said when I asked him what he’d do if he ever did get out. “Like work in an organization, not just standing around getting signatures.” Or “help people in my situation.” Someday, he said, he’d really like to travel. He asked me a lot of questions about what it’s like to travel, eyes big behind his glasses; he said he also liked the idea of teaching abroad, like another cousin in Abu Dhabi, where the prince shuts down the highway to show off his fantastic cars.</p> <p>It’s different, obviously, because no matter what happens to Houston, and on top of whatever else he has to overcome, he’ll always have done what he did. But I told him about Aunt Terri anyway. How she’d prevailed after she stayed on her meds and got a good caseworker and a place of her own, even though she was much lower-functioning and less lucid than he is. How it seemed that she’d found joy in her interests—music, smoking, collecting cat figurines. And in family. When she was cleaning out the trailer, Paula found Terri’s diary, and in addition to brief, sweet poems, it was full of updates about our lives. On one page, under the heading MY CHILDREN, appeared many names. Some were of babies who did not exist. Some were my cousins’. One was my own.</p> <p>I told Houston about as many happy endings as I could think of. I told him about the therapeutic community I’d seen in Ohio that was way more effective than institutionalization, though not covered by Medicaid, a working farm with Belgian horses and beautiful Belted Galloway cows and programs to help residents better integrate into society. When he looked impressed, I didn’t tell him they don’t accept people who’ve committed violent crimes.</p> <p>“I told Houston once that my hope for him is that he can deal emotionally with what he’s done,” killing his dad, his biggest fan, his best supporter, says Fred Von Renner, a family friend who visits the jail every week. “Houston has told me he hopes he never goes to that place again, where he hears voices that say his parents are against him,” where he’s overcome by darkness. “I told him I hope he can go to Napa, get out, get the right level of medication, get a life, a family. ‘That’s the hope I hold for you,’ I told him.”</p> <p /> <p>“With Houston,” my grandmother, on the other hand, admits, “I’m on the fence. You can’t proclaim him well because you can’t guarantee that this man will go out in the world and take his medication. If he takes it, fine. He’ll do fine. But if he’s noncompliant? Can a person like this be trusted? That would be my fear.”</p> <p>The last time I saw Houston was in a courtroom at the end of February. It was yet another hearing, to set his trial date, now slated for April 5. He didn’t look at me, or at anybody, not even his mother, Marilyn, as she stood in the audience, yelling, “He’s gonna die if he stays here more. He’s gonna commit suicide.” He kept his tortured-looking face pointed at his twitching thumbs, probably wondering, amid his delusions—despite the antipsychotics, he still sees people hiding in the corners in the dark, still suspects people of being conniving extraterrestrials or robots—if, when the trial moves forward, his NGI plea—not guilty by reason of insanity—will be accepted by a jury. Whether he will go to prison, or—after likely waiting another six months in jail for a bed to open—instead be sent to Napa for treatment and stay there for years, or forever, occupying one more precious bed that won’t be available to one more guy having trouble until it’s too late.</p> <p>“I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen this kind of situation leading up to somebody killing somebody,” says Lipetzky, the Contra Costa County public defender. “I have two NGI clients right now who tried to kill their parents,” Eleanor says. “One of them even had ’em tied up and everything” when the parents were able to talk their child out of it. If we don’t talk about the whole, true picture of untreated mental illness, Torrey says, so that we can treat it, the far-from-standard but still very real possibilities for violence from a judgment- and impulse-impaired brain, “the stigma’s going to go on forever because of the high-profile homicides that cause the stigma.”</p> <p>“Once Houston is finally hospitalized and treated,” my Aunt Annette says, “maybe Mark will finally be able to truly rest.” And if that doesn’t happen, at least—at the very least—”his story can go to a greater cause. I want people to know about this,” she says, with a sharp, gasping cry. That’s why she’s telling me, and I am telling you: “If this story can serve a purpose, I feel like Mark will not have died in vain.”</p>	Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.	true	https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/mental-health-crisis-mac-mcclelland-cousin-murder/	2018-05-01	4left	Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin. <p>Mark with Houston at Houston's high school graduation in 2009Courtesy of the family</p> <p>For more on this story, read Mac McClelland’s new chapter at the&#160; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/magazine/when-not-guilty-is-a-life-sentence.html?_r=0" type="external">New York Times Magazine.</a>&#160;It was also featured on the New York Times’ podcast, The Daily, which you can listen to below.</p> <p>THE THING THAT STRUCK ME when I first met my cousin Houston was his size. He wasn’t much taller than me, if at all, and was slight of frame. On the other side of the visitors’ glass, he looked surprisingly small, young for his 22 years. The much more remarkable thing about him turned out to be his vocabulary, vast and lovely, lyrical almost—until it came to an agitated or distracted halt. In any case, all things considered, he seemed altogether extremely unlike a person who had <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20111123/ARTICLES/111129821" type="external">recently murdered someone</a>.</p> <p /> <p>The symptoms displayed by Houston (in my family, a cousin of any degree is simply “a cousin”; technically, Houston is my third) in the year preceding this swift and horrific tragedy have since been classified as “a classic onset of schizophrenia.” At the time, it was just an alarming mystery. Houston had been attending Santa Rosa Junior College, living with his mom, playing guitar with his dad, when he became withdrawn and depressed. He slept all day; his band had broken up, and suddenly he had no friends. His dad, Mark, who had once struggled with depression and substance abuse but was now a pillar of the recovery community, and his mom, Marilyn, tried to help, took him to a psychiatrist. Houston didn’t have a drinking problem, but he mostly stopped drinking anyway. He didn’t smoke pot anymore, or even cigarettes. His psychiatrist indicated possible schizoaffective disorder in his notes, but put Houston on a changing regimen of antidepressants over the next eight months. It didn’t make any difference. Houston had started stealing his mom’s Adderall. He said it helped him feel better. He got fired from multiple jobs. Marilyn kicked him out, and he moved in with Mark.</p> <p /> <p>“This was not my nephew,” my Aunt Annette, Mark’s sister, says of Houston’s behavior then. “He was always solicitous and loving and talkative with me. Now, he was anxious, quiet, said very strange things. He would say things that seemed not to come from him. I asked him how his therapy was going, and he said, ‘Terrible.'”</p> <p>Toward the end of Houston’s devolution, he started having violent outbursts, breaking furniture; he tossed his mom across a room. Desperate now, Mark and Marilyn called the psychiatrist repeatedly and asked what to do. He told them to call the police.</p> <p>“You can call the police,” the deputy director of <a href="http://www.namisonomacounty.org/" type="external">Sonoma County’s National Alliance on Mental Illness</a> (NAMI), David France, said when I asked him what options are available to a parent whose adult child appears to be having a mental breakdown. “The police can activate resources,” like an emergency psych bed in a regular hospital, or transport and admission to a psychiatric hospital in a county that, unlike Sonoma, has one. But only if the police decide your child is a danger to himself or others can they arrest him with the right to hold him for three days—what in California is called a <a href="http://http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?file=5150-5157&amp;group=05001-06000&amp;section=wic" type="external">5150</a>, after the relevant section of state law. Otherwise you can be turned away for lack of space even if your loved one is willing to be admitted, or be left no good options if they’re not. <a href="" type="internal">Ninety-two percent</a> of the patients in California’s state psych hospitals got there via the criminal-justice system.</p> <p /> <p>But Mark didn’t want to call the police. For one, he didn’t think Houston was dangerous, just upset, despairing. Also, Mark read the news. The Santa Rosa cops had killed two mentally ill men they’d been called to intervene with in the last six years, one case resulting in a federal civil rights suit. This is not a problem unique to Santa Rosa—or to greater Sonoma County, which in 2009 paid a <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090113/NEWS/901130251?p=4&amp;tc=pg&amp;tc=ar" type="external">$1.75 million settlement to</a> the family of a mentally ill 16-year-old whom sheriff’s deputies shot eight times. There’s no comprehensive data yet, but mental illness appears to be a factor in so many arrest-related deaths that the Justice Department has considered adding mental-health status to its national database of such deaths. Just last year, for example, the DOJ found the Portland, Oregon, police department had a “pattern or practice of using excessive force…against people with mental illness,” including <a href="http://www.katu.com/news/local/123477464.html" type="external">eight shootings in 18 months</a> and the <a href="http://www.katu.com/news/local/99517814.html" type="external">beating to death of an unarmed man</a> in 2006.</p> <p>Anyway, Mark didn’t think three days of lockdown in a mental facility would make his son less unstable. He was looking for a meaningful treatment plan, not to rustle Houston through emergency services. “All those kids get shot by the police,” he told Marilyn. “Just let me handle it.”</p> <p>So Mark didn’t call the police, and Houston didn’t get any additional help. Ten days before all the really bad things happened, Annette came out to visit from Ohio. “Honey,” she said to her nephew, “something’s going on with you, babe. Either something’s happened to you, or you’re not sharing something. I’m really, really worried that something’s going on.” She says he turned his head and looked at her eerily and said, “Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.” She says, “It didn’t even sound like him.”</p> <p>He did tell her about it, later. He told her he’d been having delusions, something about telepathic communications and aliens and wireless circuits. Something about his mom and dad—who’d been divorced for a long time—and teenage sister, Savannah, being in an incestuous sex ring. Something about an invisible friend, Devon, and also that he’d been cutting himself to exorcise the evil, and that Mark was poisoning him with lead and was the source of the evil. He did tell Annette, but only after it was too late, after he came home from the gym late one November night in 2011 and stabbed his father 60 times, with four different knives. When Savannah came downstairs and called 911, it appeared he was trying to behead him.</p> <p>“What the FUCK?” my Aunt Annette exclaimed around the one-year anniversary of her brother’s death. “HOUSTON, what the FUCK?” But, she told me, the fact that what Houston did was “so heinous” didn’t mean he wasn’t a victim, too. “There was no facility, no support. There was nowhere to take him; there was nothing to do but call the police.”</p> <p>“There’s been no place to put my anger,” she said about losing Mark. “Because I love this child. I know how sick he is. I was there at his birth.” And then she asked me to do the talking for a while, because she couldn’t talk anymore because she was sobbing.</p> <p /> <p>Psychiatrist <a href="http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/about-us/dr-e-fuller-torrey" type="external">E. Fuller Torrey</a> calls a crime like Houston’s “a predictable tragedy.” That’s what he has also called the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073973345594508.html" type="external">Gabrielle Giffords shooting</a>; he says the same thing about the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/310200/virginia-tech-tucson-aurora-and-counting-e-fuller-torrey" type="external">Virginia Tech massacre</a>, the Aurora movie theater shooting, the <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324407504578185361458883822.html" type="external">Sandy Hook Elementary shooting</a>, and dozens of other recent homicides, some of them famous mass killings or <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/opinion/01torrey.html?_r=2&amp;" type="external">subway platform shovings</a>, but many of them less publicized. Ten percent of US homicides, he estimates based on an analysis of the relevant studies, are committed by the untreated severely mentally ill—like my schizophrenic cousin. And, he says: “I’m thinking that’s a conservative estimate.”</p> <p>Saying that the severely mentally ill are disproportionately responsible for homicides has made Torrey, author of <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780393341379-0" type="external">The Insanity Offense</a> and the forthcoming <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Clinical/?view=usa&amp;ci=9780199988716" type="external">American Psychosis</a>, unpopular in some circles. “[My critics’] argument is you can’t talk about these things because it causes stigma,” he says. In the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, some mental-illness advocates insisted that even if Adam Lanza had Asperger’s or any mental-health issues, it would be totally inappropriate to cite that as a factor in his actions. But other administrators and caretakers think it’s vital to bring up. “We have to think about mental-health care in a public health framework,” says <a href="http://nac.samhsa.gov/naccouncil/bios.aspx" type="external">Dee Roth</a>, who is on the National Advisory Council of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). “Public health measures solved rickets, cholera, people dying when they’re 30.” But when it comes to mental illness, she says, “we’re not treating the sick people.” And while the details of Lanza’s diagnosis or any attempts to treat it remain unconfirmed, what is known, as Torrey pointed out in a piece he <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073973345594508.html" type="external">coauthored in the Wall Street Journal</a>, is that Connecticut is “among the worst states to seek such treatment. It has among the weakest involuntary treatment laws and is one of only six states that doesn’t have a law permitting court-ordered ‘assisted outpatient treatment,'” which, Torrey notes, “has been shown to decrease re-hospitalizations, incarcerations and, most importantly, episodes of violence among severely mentally ill individuals.” Although even Torrey, who founded the <a href="http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/index.php" type="external">Treatment Advocacy Center</a>, an organization that pushes for fewer restrictions on involuntary commitment, admits that such measures would hardly plug all the holes in our mental-health-care system.</p> <p /> <p>Obviously, lots of violence is perpetrated by the “sane.” And most violence committed by the severely mentally ill is committed against themselves. Even in the range of schizophrenia narratives, which commonly include suicide or dying on the street, Houston’s took an extraordinarily unhappy turn. But happy endings are getting harder for even the nonviolent mentally ill to come by. And as states and counties pare back what few mental-health services remain, we’re learning that whether people who need help can get it affects us all.</p> <p /> <p>ON OCTOBER 12, 1773, the first patient was admitted to the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds in Williamsburg, Virginia, the first North American facility of its kind. The governor, an Enlightenment man, had prevailed upon the assembly to create a place where “a poor unhappy set of people who are deprived of their senses and wander about the countryside, terrifying the rest of their fellow creatures” could, with the help of experts, reclaim their “lost reason.” Over the next 100 years, the rest of the country followed suit, taking “lunaticks” out of cages in jail basements after Boston schoolteacher Dorothea Dix happened into one such dungeon in 1841 and launched a fact-finding and activism rampage that led to the establishment of 110 public psych hospitals by 1880.</p> <p>About a hundred years after that, in 1977, my mother—Mark’s second cousin—dragged her 16-year-old baby sister kicking and ranting into Woodruff Psychiatric Hospital in Cleveland.</p> <p>The day my Aunt Terri had a psychotic break, she just appeared in my mother’s backyard. The neighbor who was over babysitting my then-infant older sister didn’t know how long Terri had been out there when she finally noticed her, but she’d been pacing back and forth, long and hard and fast enough to wear a rut into the lawn. Raving in outer-space language. Flailing and swinging wildly.</p> <p>“Do whatever you have to do to get her in the car,” the general practitioner said when my mom phoned him, after the babysitter called her home from work. The doctor had asked my mom to describe the scene. He’d asked my mom if she’d ever seen anyone act like that on any kind of drug. He’d told her to hold on and he’d call her right back after he contacted a special hospital in nearby Cleveland, and now he was telling her she had to get her sister there by any means necessary. So my mom told my Aunt Terri that she would take her to the airport, because the only discernible thing that Terri was babbling about was that Chris Squire, the bass player of Yes, was sending her messages that she needed to meet him in Canada right away.</p> <p>It took five white coats to contain Terri as she tried to scream and fight her way out of the hospital lobby. The admitting doctor didn’t know—no one who saw her in the first months she was in and out of hospitals was able to decide—if Terri, straight-As bright and talented but a party girl, went crazy because she was doing drugs or if she was doing drugs to self-medicate symptoms of oncoming crazy. By the time I’d been born and grown old enough to understand what adults were talking about, it didn’t matter. Aunt Terri was schizophrenic. Period. When I was younger, I was afraid of her. Or on some level, I was afraid of being her, more likely, of not being able to tell the difference between real voices and voices in my head, of being pulled so deep into my imagination that I’d never get out. When I was a teenager, I gave her rides home from family gatherings, but only after hanging back and hoping someone else would offer first.</p> <p>Last year, Aunt Terri died in her yard. My Aunt Paula came to pick her up for the weekly grocery shopping and found her dead in the cold winter grass. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, I tell people when that lands on their face as horror. It was, in fact, pretty much the best-case scenario. She died in her own yard, of her own home, where she lived her own life, young at 52, yeah, but not a terrible age for a body doused in antipsychotics and incessant cigarettes, giving out too early, but from the ever-desired “natural causes.” Yet more and more these days, Aunt Terri’s best-case scenario is an unlikely one. It took a lot of work, on the part of my grandma and Aunt Paula, and 23 years of dedication by a caseworker, work I didn’t even want to do for a 15-minute car ride, work nobody wants to do, work counties and states are increasingly not paying for. &#160;</p> <p>THE HOSPITAL my mother checked Aunt Terri into no longer exists. Neither does the state hospital, CPI—Cleveland Psychiatric Institute—that she was taken to later. Had it not closed a few years after her break, she may have ended up living in it for the rest of her life. But the changes in Terri’s brain coincided with massive changes in mental-health policy.</p> <p>In the 1950s, more than a half million people lived in US mental institutions—1 in 300 Americans. By the late ’70s, only 160,000 did, due to a concerted effort on the part of psychiatrists, philanthropists, and politicians to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill. Today there’s one psychiatric bed per 7,100 Americans. The motives behind this trend were varied, to say the least. Emptying the asylums was going to save money. Who needed asylums anymore, anyway, with all the great antipsychotics now on the market? Deinstitutionalization was going to restore citizens’ rights and protect them from deplorable conditions popularized by movies and memoirs and often all too real. “We were totally creeped out,” my mom remembers of walking into CPI to visit her sister. “It was exactly like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. People just sitting around talking to themselves and staring into space in hospital gowns”—a place where a sane person would go crazy and the crazy were unlikely to be cured. Wouldn’t it be better if the mentally ill were treated at home, given support and therapy and medication via a network of community clinics? Anyone who visited even a “good” mental hospital found that message appealing.</p> <p>My grandparents tried bringing Terri home. They weren’t medical professionals, and for years she was in and out of the hospital as they struggled to get her to take her medication and to take care of her when she wasn’t stable. Once, when doing the dishes with Aunt Paula after dinner, she smashed a frying pan into Paula’s head, causing her to see stars and their brother to tackle Terri to the floor, the single act of aggression anyone ever saw him commit. Several months later, after she started a fight that ended with my grandmother’s arm broken, she was moved to a group home owned by a nonprofessional but sympathetic woman in Madison, Ohio, 20-some miles from my grandparents’ house.</p> <p>The constant presence of other people continued to agitate Terri; within six months she was thrown out. Using Terri’s Social Security income and Section 8 housing assistance, my grandparents got her a duplex in Painesville. She was evicted. She got another apartment, and was evicted again. Two more group homes in Cleveland, evicted. She would go door to door, “bothering” tenants. She would lie on the sidewalk in her bathing suit. And she would always, always, always be blasting music. Another apartment, in Mentor: evicted. With CPI long since closed by now, and hospitalization no longer an option, Terri was running out of places to go.</p> <p>When in 1961 a joint commission of the American Medical and American Psychiatric associations recommended integrating the mentally ill into society, their plan depended on the establishment of local facilities where mentally ill people would receive outpatient care. Congress passed a law providing funding for these “community mental health centers” in 1963, and states, already under pressure from the patients’ rights movement, downsized their mental hospitals faster than anyone had anticipated. Between Vietnam and an economic crisis and lack of political will, though, adequate funding for community services never came through. In 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act, aimed at filling the gap. But a year later Ronald Reagan, already known for eviscerating mental-health services as governor of California, took office and gutted it, then decreased federal mental-health spending 30 percent and shifted the burden to state and local governments. By 1985, the federal government covered just 11 percent of mental-health agency budgets. When the crucial community services that the mentally ill were supposed to receive as the hospitals closed failed to materialize, more and more of them ended up on the streets. By the mid-1980s, pretty much everyone in America agreed that deinstitutionalization was not going well.</p> <p>“Homelessmentallyilldeinstitutionalized was one noun in the media at the time,” says SAMHSA’s Roth, who is the source of the oft-cited data point that a third of America’s homeless people are seriously mentally ill (helping to rebut the misconception then that they all were). In 1984, Dr. John A. Talbott, then president of the American Psychiatric Association, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html?pagewanted=all" type="external">apologized</a> for the association’s role in the disaster. “The psychiatrists involved in the policymaking at that time certainly oversold community treatment,” he said, “and our credibility today is probably damaged because of it.”</p> <p /> <p>“Think of it as haircuts,” says Roth, who watched deinstitutionalization unfold in her 37 years as chief of evaluation and research at the Ohio Department of Mental Health. “In the age of the great gothic castle on the hill, mentally ill patients had everything taken care of. Health care, sleeping, eating, etc. When they got out, they were supposed to have everything. They got Medicare and Medicaid, but [policymakers] didn’t think about food. And haircuts. Clothes. How to find a place to live.” How to do laundry; how to grocery shop. How to ensure people who need meds take them. What to do with people who had too many behavioral problems to avoid being evicted six times in a row.</p> <p>Fortunately for my aunt, she lived in a state that, as Roth explains, had some “very dedicated, very dogged” leaders at the Department of Mental Health who were determined to make Ohio a model for post-deinstitutionalization life. By the mid-’90s, my home state “was famous all over the country for all kinds of stuff,” she says. Independent-living initiatives. Supported-employment programs. Supported education. Home-based services for kids. Active and excellent case management.</p> <p>It was an excellent case manager who ultimately helped solve my aunt’s housing crisis. Eleanor Dockry, a tiny woman with chin-length black hair and black-frame glasses, was assigned Terri’s case through Pathways (now called Beacon Health), a nonprofit outpatient service provider supported by the county Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Services (ADAMHS) board—essentially the rump of what was supposed to have been the community-services network envisioned by the reformers of the ’60s—and a slew of other community organizations. Though I met her for the first time just a few months ago, she took care of my aunt for 23 years, a life jacket. Eleanor knew that you could only be evicted from so many places before no landlord in Ohio would rent to you, so she sat my grandparents down. “I think if you could afford to buy something for her, that would be good,” she said. My grandparents pulled the money together for a trailer in a mobile-home community near their house.</p> <p>“I have my own place,” Terri bragged to my mother, beaming, at 36 years old. “Daddy bought it for me.”</p> <p /> <p>Eleanor came by at least once and sometimes twice a week. She took Terri to her favorite restaurant, McDonald’s, or to the park, or to go buy her nieces Christmas presents with money she saved from her Social Security check. (Terri liked to give me bubbles and sidewalk chalk, even when I was in college.) Every three weeks, Eleanor took my aunt to get her antipsychotic haloperidol injections, which Terri stopped refusing after my grandfather convinced her they were necessary for her own and everyone else’s good. Eleanor took her to Neighboring, a local nonprofit, which offered field trips, skill-building lessons about cooking or doing laundry, and support groups about medication side effects, as well as art classes, the results of which were sometimes displayed in the local mall.</p> <p>“She just had a few little problems” with neighbors once she was in her own place, Eleanor says. The rock music, of course. An obsession with hoses that made her turn them on and leave them on, flooding the driveway. “But since they owned it there’s nothing they could do.” She lived on her own for almost two decades. “She did better than you could really expect for someone so mentally ill.”</p> <p>So mentally ill: According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the term “mentally ill” can be applied to a whopping <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ANYDIS_Adult.shtml" type="external">quarter of the US adult population</a> in any given year, because broadly, it includes everything from depression to attention deficit disorder. “Seriously mentally ill,” however, is used to describe severe functional impairments like major depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, which occur in up to 6 percent of the population. Within the severely mentally ill schizophrenic population ( <a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml#Schizophrenia" type="external">about 2.4 million Americans</a>), my aunt—who constantly talked to invisible people, and got “pregnant” at 19 with Yes bassist Chris Squire’s baby (“It always came back to Chris Squire,” my mom says), her belly swelling realistically huge with his imaginary baby inside it—classified as low-functioning, making her about as mentally ill as a person can be. Still. With family and a few resources in place, Social Security checks and housing subsidies and a great caseworker, “she was able to manage on her own,” Eleanor says.</p> <p>At Aunt Terri’s funeral, my family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the mental-health organizations that made her life possible. We nieces who lived out of town and couldn’t make it were instructed to honor Terri and her love of loud music by throwing ourselves a peace-disturbing one-person dance party at the time of the service, wherever we were. My grandma and Aunt Paula resolved to find a broke veteran (who turned out to be struggling with his own psychological issues) and to give Terri’s trailer to him. My grandmother wanted to help other people needing help since the government had helped Terri. “She was independent until the very end,” she says.</p> <p>“I’m so grateful,” she says, “that we had so much support.”</p> <p>“OHIO ONCE HAD one of the top mental health systems in the country,” lamented the National Alliance on Mental Illness in a <a href="" type="internal">2011 report</a>. “Today, after several years of significant budget cuts, thousands of youth and adults living with serious mental illness are unable to access care in the community and are ending up either on the streets or in far more expensive settings, such as hospitals and jails.”</p> <p>The glory days of Ohio’s mental-health department had already come to an end by the time the budget crises of the late 2000s rolled around. But the recession and the subsequent tea party austerity movement made things even worse. On the list of the 10 states that cut the most from mental-health budgets between 2009 and 2011, Ohio was No. 6. Then Gov. John Kasich’s 2012-13 budget <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/03/schools_local_governments_take.html" type="external">slashed local government funds</a> by a billion dollars and continued a trend of downsizing community mental-health programs. “The most fragile people in our society, we looked out for them,” <a href="http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-33509-kasich-defends-budget-proposal.html" type="external">the governor said</a>. “And if there’s a hole or a mistake, we’ll come back later to figure it out.” (He’s since proposed <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/02/14/mentally-ill-benefit-in-kasich-budget.html" type="external">restoring some services</a>.)</p> <p>“Ohio,” as Roth explains, “is a microcosm of the United States.” Collectively, states have cut <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/state-mental-health-cuts_n_1897769.html" type="external">$4.35 billion in public mental-health spending</a> since 2009.</p> <p>As in the rest of the country, Ohio allocates funds differently to different counties based on formulas and politics. My Aunt Terri was lucky to live in Lake County, Eleanor says. Not that it’s perfect there: All the Neighboring programs Terri once participated in have been eliminated, and the county doesn’t have the budget for enough group homes for its lowest-functioning mentally ill, which, if my family had been unwilling—or unable—to procure Terri her own place, would have been her last option. In this county of 236,000, there are a total of 18 “acute beds” in such facilities, so while Terri waited for someone occupying one of them to die, she’d have been checked into a psych ward at a hospital, and if Lake County didn’t have any psych ward beds open, she’d have been moved to a hospital in Summit County, an hour away, if it had a bed. Eleanor says the need for group homes contributes to homelessness in largely suburban Lake County, where the single operating shelter, 30 percent of whose residents are mentally ill, turns away 800 calls a year. But at least Lake County still had the funds to give Aunt Terri a caseworker.</p> <p>In some other places, Eleanor says, people “just fall through the cracks.” Take next-door Cuyahoga County—home of the Cleveland Indians, and the largest mentally ill population in the state. <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/01/ohio_ignores_cuyahoga_countys.html" type="external">William Denihan</a>, CEO of the ADAMHS board there, explains that Cuyahoga has been the biggest loser, since the Ohio Department of Mental Health cut funding for community services there by 60 percent in 10 years. “The average county in Ohio got $4.20 per person” in state mental-health funding in fiscal 2012, he tells me in his office overlooking Lake Erie. But in Cuyahoga? They got 20 cents per person. Meanwhile, demand for beds in homeless shelters, along with emergency room and jail admissions, is exploding. “The prison population is the largest cost in Ohio,” Denihan shakes his head. “The largest mental-health hospital is our jail system.”</p> <p>This is true across Ohio, where, 25 years into the Reagan-era policy changes but even before the recent austerity cuts, there were enough high-profile cases of mentally ill inmates being beaten, undertreated, killed by guards, or committing suicide to make it the subject of the 2005 Frontline documentary <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/" type="external">The New Asylums</a>. But it is also true across the nation, where the three largest de facto psychiatric facilities are jails. In 2011, the sheriff of Cook County <a href="http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&amp;id=8143042" type="external">threatened to sue</a> Illinois for making the jail the largest mental-health provider in the state. “We’re not set up to do that, obviously,” he said. As of 2006, 1.3 million of America’s mentally ill were housed right back where they were in Dorothea Dix’s day: in prisons and jails. Between 1998 and 2006, the number of mentally ill behind bars more than quadrupled; the share of mentally ill people among the incarcerated was five times higher than in the general population. More-recent national prison stats aren’t out yet, but in some county jails, mental-illness rates have increased by nearly 50 percent in the last seven years. It’s not uncommon for individual jails to report that 25 or 30 percent of their inmates are mentally ill, or that their mentally ill population rises year after year.</p> <p /> <p>In Summit County, Ohio, just south of Cuyahoga, the sheriff <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/social-issues/ohio-jail-to-stop-accepting-violent-mentally-ill-detainees/" type="external">announced last year</a> that he would not “be a dumping ground anymore for these people,” and shut the jail to admissions of the mentally ill. He was the first sheriff in the country to do such a thing—somewhat ironic given that the county is exceptionally proactive in keeping the mentally ill out of jails. To make up for the lack of state funds, Summit County passed a dedicated mental-health levy on local property taxes in 2007. It is also one of five training sites in the nation for mental-health courts, which get offenders into treatment rather than locking them away.</p> <p>“No one ends up in jail rotting,” Summit ADAMHS chief clinical officer Doug Smith promises me, dismissing the very notion of that happening here with a shake of his head. “We don’t have those problems here, like they have in California.”</p> <p>Ah, California. No. 1 in the amount of mental-health funding cut from 2009 to 2011, No. 7 in cuts as a percentage. Home to one of the largest jail/psych facilities in the nation, the LA County Jail. Where visitors can’t believe how many bat-shit-crazy homeless we’ve got. Where deinstitutionalization was pioneered under Gov. Ronald Reagan with the 1967 <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=wic&amp;group=04001-05000&amp;file=5000-5120" type="external">Lanterman-Petris-Short Act</a>, which made it vastly more difficult to commit people, and where the rate of mentally ill in the criminal-justice system doubled just one year after it took effect. Where, often, the severely mentally ill live in jail for three to six months because they’re waiting for a bed to open up in a psychiatric facility. California: where, says Torrey, the psychiatrist who warns about “predictable” violence like my cousin’s, “they led the way in [deinstitutionalization], and they’ve led the way downhill. They’re certainly leading the way in consequences.”</p> <p>THE TENDERLOIN, a neighborhood on the western edge of San Francisco’s downtown, has never been quite as infamous as New York City’s skid row once was, but it is no less deserving of its own depressing show tune. Emerging from the Civic Center subway station—with a guy stalking behind you barking, “Bitch. Bitch. Bitch”—you can generate a tour of movie-drama levels of abandoned humanity by simply doing a 360-degree spin. See a guy in a camo jacket selling four boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, cursing at unsellable mac and cheese. A guy rubbing his hands and smelling them, rubbing his hands, smelling them. A guy with a skateboard and chatty invisible friend to his lower right; another guy earnestly preparing a crack pipe; a filth-covered gal sitting and staring intently at nowhere; a lady with one shoe, no bra, a high ponytail, and a confused face, weeping and glancing around, lost in the broad light of day.</p> <p>“This is not a ghetto,” says Cindy Gyori, executive director of <a href="http://www.hydestreetcs.org/" type="external">Hyde Street Community Services</a>, one of the city’s underfunded community mental-health centers. “Nobody is born here. They’re looking for the end of the rainbow,” and they end up here because San Francisco has “a reputation for being open.” Of the 1,000 individuals the clinic sees per year, 44 percent walk in the door homeless. Fifty percent admit to substance abuse. From wherever they came, “they bring their problems with them.”</p> <p>Gyori, a petite white-haired lady with an exuberance you wouldn’t expect to last 20 minutes, much less 40 years, in this neighborhood—its 35 square blocks host 6,000 homeless people and 72 crimes on any given day—joined the civil and patients’ rights movement that had helped a cost-cutting Gov. Reagan pass Lanterman-Petris-Short. As a social worker, she experienced deinstitutionalization shake out; she’s had to call the police, invoking LPS’s Section 5150, on “lots of people” who “didn’t know how to take care of themselves” and were a threat to their own or others’ safety. But she still disagrees with those who think it should be easier to get people committed, medicated, or treated against their will. Whether they’re in their “right mind” or not, she says, mentally ill people should be able to do whatever they choose until they’re a danger—just like non-mentally-ill people. That violence has often already occurred by the time someone gets 5150’d is, Gyori says, a necessary “complication of our rights in America.”</p> <p /> <p>What of the studies that show that involuntary-treatment laws decrease rates of violence and hospitalization and incarceration among severely mentally ill patients? Such laws are “stupid,” Gyori says. If your concern is public safety and crime prevention, she adds, “it’s the funding that matters.” Funding for school screening programs that could catch signs of severe mental illness. Funding for early treatment to keep the moderately mentally ill from becoming a lot sicker, and funding for rehab programs for those who didn’t get treatment and started self-medicating. Funding for intensive case management, subsidized housing for people who are functionally disabled. All things that combat the isolation and desperation and hopelessness that can help cause and exacerbate mental illness—schizophrenia included. The majority of Gyori’s clients are suffering afflictions like PTSD, anxiety, depression, and the associated addiction issues. That is: With treatment, they’re theoretically capable of recovery and (nonsubsidized) functioning. But Gyori’s staff is short, underpaid. New clients can’t be seen for initial risk assessment for a month. The city’s public-housing shortage is so severe that it closed the list to new applicants. “This society is set up to create Tenderloins,” she says.</p> <p>“We’re dealing with the most stigmatized and misunderstood population. You can scream outside my window,” she says, turning her face in the direction of the guy screaming outside her window—something about “dinner”—”and I’m not gonna make assumptions that it’s your fault. As long as a person is disabled, and income is limited, you have to help them. Destigmatization is a big part of it.”</p> <p>Sure. When I leave the clinic, it is admittedly difficult not to judge the strung-out-looking fellow lunging through the crosswalk hollering a song about monkeys, the refrain of which is a monkey call, or the parties responsible for the two piles of human shit I sidestep in as many blocks. Though an estimated <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/01/19/1-in-5-americans-suffer-from-mental-illness/" type="external">1 in 5 families</a> contains someone with a mental illness, even families of the mentally ill aren’t always sympathetic. “We have families who aren’t willing to work with us or do anything,” says my Aunt Terri’s caseworker, Eleanor. “Your family was so willing; everybody was there to do whatever.” But she’s certainly not talking about my great-grandmother, who pronounced Terri lazy, and not even so much my grandfather, who thought his daughter was a spoiled brat who just wanted attention. And she wasn’t talking about me, whose total uselessness in Terri’s transportation and other needs earned me the resentment of at least one cousin.</p> <p>Sonoma County NAMI’s David France told me about classes his organization holds for families to combat this lack of compassion. I saw a similar school talk in Ohio once as a teenager. I remember the heavyset woman well, her matching blouse and pant of some artificial peach fabric. I don’t remember whether her illness was depression or bipolar or what, but I do remember that she told us her method of self-harm was to pull out all of her eyelashes because it was a self-harm no one noticed. She told us, with the inevitably pleading look of a person who knows they’re telling you something important but also knows you can’t possibly understand, that suicide was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. That no matter how sick you are, there’s room for improving and becoming a functioning member of society, like her.</p> <p>I remember finding her totally weak and disgusting.</p> <p>“People with mental illness are not valued in this society,” says Roth. Not valued members of the family Christmas party. Not valued recipients of dwindling state budget dollars. “It’s not a place where people want to give money. We’re in a country right now that is so mean-spirited, people really aren’t in any mood to spend any money on anybody.”</p> <p>But as Randall Hagar, director of government relations for the <a href="http://www.calpsych.org/" type="external">California Psychiatric Association</a>, points out, the country will pay for it one way or another. “Taxpayers pay for nuisance issues related to the homeless,” he says, especially since the total elimination of California’s $55 million mentally ill homeless outreach program, which deployed teams to help with everything from housing crises to paperwork. Since the defunding of the state’s mentally ill offender crime reduction program, which delivered services like training, counseling, and outpatient assistance to discharged transgressors, the incidence of violence has increased among that population, says Hagar. In Virginia between 2010 and 2011, mental-health treatment facilities <a href="" type="internal">turned away 200 people</a> determined to be dangerous because there were no available beds. In Arizona, a Phoenix hospital saw a <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/09/21/20110921mental-health-cuts-toll-debated.html?nclick_check=1" type="external">40 percent jump</a> in psychiatric emergency room episodes after the abolition of mental-health services to 12,000 non-Medicaid-eligible mentally ill. The moral issues of not taking care of society’s sick and vulnerable aside, Hagar says, our post-deinstitutionalization transinstitutionalization is not cheap: “Two to three thousand dollars in treatment saves $50,000 in jail.”</p> <p /> <p>In the Tenderloin—as in Santa Rosa, as in Cleveland and Phoenix and Lynchburg—”do we have the resources to adequately treat them? No,” Gyori says. Neither for those who seek it, nor for those who “don’t want your help but go bonkers in the street and have to be locked away.” Whatever differences they have over the patients’ rights debate, Torrey and Gyori agree on one thing. “Sometimes,” Gyori says, “people need to go to the hospital. The problem is, now you don’t have acute beds. So people are let go too soon, and it’s not as easy to get in.”</p> <p>“The system now is, they don’t wanna see people,” Torrey complains. “None of us are suggesting that we need to go back to 1930, when I as a psychiatrist could say, ‘I don’t like the sound of your voice, so I’m going to keep you in my facility that I also happen to own for three weeks.’ You have to have a system of checks and balances.”</p> <p>But the pendulum has swung far past patients’ rights and well into the territory of wild neglect. The dismantling of the mental-health system has left those willing to undergo treatment with no options, and rendered the laws to protect against dangerous scenarios ineffective. “Danger to self or others is defined too limitedly,” Torrey says. In the eight states where that’s the only triggering mechanism for treatment, “you either have to be trying to kill your psychiatrist or trying to kill yourself in front of your psychiatrist.” Some states have less-strict provisions, but even there, no open beds plus the expense of keeping someone in the beds equals admission standards that are too high and discharge standards that are too low.</p> <p>Regardless of what you think about commitment rules, the bottom line is you have to have facilities. If there had been a facility—not “a psych ward in a general hospital which is set up to see people with eating disorders and depression,” Torrey says, but a clinic staffed with the appropriate kinds of professionals and with an open bed and antipsychotics that have proven to be extremely effective if properly administered—if my Uncle Mark could have taken Houston someplace like that—maybe crimes like Houston’s could be not just predictable, but preventable.</p> <p>“Hospitals are motivated to get people out as quickly as possible,” says Robin Lipetzky, who deals with the fallout as chief public defender of Contra Costa County, just across San Francisco Bay. “We ignore the mentally ill until they commit a crime that ends them up in prison. Over and over again we see these situations where parents of these folks who commit these offenses—if they don’t kill their parents, which is what often happens—say they’ve been trying and trying to get treatment for these kids and it’s just not available. And it’s usually young adults. There’s not enough out there in terms of resources for families. The people making the budgets don’t look at it as an integrated whole. It’s unfortunate that that calculation isn’t done at the same time.” Although, she concedes, not all the pieces of calculating the cost of “treatment of the mentally ill up front” would be that easy to do. “How do you put the price,” she asks, “on people losing their lives when people have a psychotic break?” &#160;</p> <p>“SOCIETY SHOULD BE more helpful and there should be more services, obviously,” says Lieutenant Corrado Ghioldi of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. But in the meantime, “we had to evolve, grow, and specialize to be able to take care of these people.” The Sonoma County jail, just a few miles away from the spas and rolling, vineyard-lined hills that make the region world famous, is an expensive-looking salmon-colored facility hidden from the street by manicured trees. (“Is this the new Nordstrom?” people drove up to ask when it was first built.) Ghioldi has spent a career trying to better serve his jail’s mentally ill population, which has increased 3,650 percent since 1992, and which now includes Houston. “We’re slowly turning into a big mental-health facility. I never could have imagined this 20 years ago,” he says. And then, more to himself, with something approaching awe, “What’s it gonna be in 10 years?”</p> <p>The jail has animal-assisted therapy now. An independent-living course. Their “Prevention, Art &amp; Anger Management, Thinking Cognitively, Health Issues, Stress Reduction (PATHS)” program <a href="http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/COMIO/2011_Awards.html" type="external">won an award</a> in 2011 from the Council on Mentally Ill Offenders. An unusually dedicated corrections deputy who’s even joined the local NAMI board, Ghioldi convinces the deans of nearby universities to come teach recidivism-reducing classes by offering to go give university students presentations in exchange. “We wouldn’t survive without volunteers because we don’t have the money to run all these classes,” he says.</p> <p>Houston, who had already been incarcerated for 430 days the first time I visited him back in January, costing the county $49,811 in jail expenditures alone, won’t go to any of the classes. He gets medication, but no therapy. After I identified myself as a cousin who knew Annette and we settled into our visiting-booth chairs, he explained, without complaining, that he wasn’t exactly thriving here. He talked about his illness a little, how he’d had “some episodes” that had landed him in the most acute cells of the most serious of the jail’s three mental wards, “the dungeon,” which includes rooms with padded walls and no socializing and barricadable windows and sometimes sick people yelling and screaming on all sides. “You would have a nervous breakdown,” he told me, “just standing in there for 10 minutes.”</p> <p>It was quiet as a library when I later visited the unit and interviewed some of the deputies, whom Ghioldi handpicks and specially trains to work in the psych units, 35 mental-health officers in all. Though they were decidedly not doing what they signed up for at the police academy, each spoke sensitively and passionately about their wards and asserted, to a man, that working with this population was the most rewarding career on the force. Meanwhile, the faces and naked chests of crazy inmates appeared through the long vertical windows of the reinforced metal cell doors.</p> <p>During the 45 minutes that I got Houston out of his cell, mostly what he wanted to talk about was books. Superfriendly but often avoiding my eyes and pulling his jaw down, he was ceaselessly ticky and fidgety, common side effects of the antipsychotics he’s on. He told me he was reading Bertrand Russell—Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits—and when I said I couldn’t really hang in that philosophy discussion, he switched to poetry. When I chastised him for reading hardly any books by women, he smiled, looking embarrassed, and promised to read whatever I sent. He wanted to know what my college thesis was, and asked me a lot of questions about it.</p> <p>We did not talk about Uncle Mark, or the 500 people who went to his memorial thanks in part to the 35 years he’d spent mentoring in AA. We didn’t talk about how Houston had so gruesomely killed him, or, as unspeakable as that was, that sometimes unchecked illness can lead to far worse, given access to guns plus delusions about a movie theater or a temple or an elementary school. We did talk about the possibilities for Houston’s own life. After more than a year of evaluations, in which several psychiatrists declared Houston schizophrenic, it still wasn’t clear if the DA’s office would pursue a murder trial or if Houston might be sent to the psych hospital in Napa for treatment and possibly eventual release.</p> <p>“I might get into politics,” he said when I asked him what he’d do if he ever did get out. “Like work in an organization, not just standing around getting signatures.” Or “help people in my situation.” Someday, he said, he’d really like to travel. He asked me a lot of questions about what it’s like to travel, eyes big behind his glasses; he said he also liked the idea of teaching abroad, like another cousin in Abu Dhabi, where the prince shuts down the highway to show off his fantastic cars.</p> <p>It’s different, obviously, because no matter what happens to Houston, and on top of whatever else he has to overcome, he’ll always have done what he did. But I told him about Aunt Terri anyway. How she’d prevailed after she stayed on her meds and got a good caseworker and a place of her own, even though she was much lower-functioning and less lucid than he is. How it seemed that she’d found joy in her interests—music, smoking, collecting cat figurines. And in family. When she was cleaning out the trailer, Paula found Terri’s diary, and in addition to brief, sweet poems, it was full of updates about our lives. On one page, under the heading MY CHILDREN, appeared many names. Some were of babies who did not exist. Some were my cousins’. One was my own.</p> <p>I told Houston about as many happy endings as I could think of. I told him about the therapeutic community I’d seen in Ohio that was way more effective than institutionalization, though not covered by Medicaid, a working farm with Belgian horses and beautiful Belted Galloway cows and programs to help residents better integrate into society. When he looked impressed, I didn’t tell him they don’t accept people who’ve committed violent crimes.</p> <p>“I told Houston once that my hope for him is that he can deal emotionally with what he’s done,” killing his dad, his biggest fan, his best supporter, says Fred Von Renner, a family friend who visits the jail every week. “Houston has told me he hopes he never goes to that place again, where he hears voices that say his parents are against him,” where he’s overcome by darkness. “I told him I hope he can go to Napa, get out, get the right level of medication, get a life, a family. ‘That’s the hope I hold for you,’ I told him.”</p> <p /> <p>“With Houston,” my grandmother, on the other hand, admits, “I’m on the fence. You can’t proclaim him well because you can’t guarantee that this man will go out in the world and take his medication. If he takes it, fine. He’ll do fine. But if he’s noncompliant? Can a person like this be trusted? That would be my fear.”</p> <p>The last time I saw Houston was in a courtroom at the end of February. It was yet another hearing, to set his trial date, now slated for April 5. He didn’t look at me, or at anybody, not even his mother, Marilyn, as she stood in the audience, yelling, “He’s gonna die if he stays here more. He’s gonna commit suicide.” He kept his tortured-looking face pointed at his twitching thumbs, probably wondering, amid his delusions—despite the antipsychotics, he still sees people hiding in the corners in the dark, still suspects people of being conniving extraterrestrials or robots—if, when the trial moves forward, his NGI plea—not guilty by reason of insanity—will be accepted by a jury. Whether he will go to prison, or—after likely waiting another six months in jail for a bed to open—instead be sent to Napa for treatment and stay there for years, or forever, occupying one more precious bed that won’t be available to one more guy having trouble until it’s too late.</p> <p>“I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve seen this kind of situation leading up to somebody killing somebody,” says Lipetzky, the Contra Costa County public defender. “I have two NGI clients right now who tried to kill their parents,” Eleanor says. “One of them even had ’em tied up and everything” when the parents were able to talk their child out of it. If we don’t talk about the whole, true picture of untreated mental illness, Torrey says, so that we can treat it, the far-from-standard but still very real possibilities for violence from a judgment- and impulse-impaired brain, “the stigma’s going to go on forever because of the high-profile homicides that cause the stigma.”</p> <p>“Once Houston is finally hospitalized and treated,” my Aunt Annette says, “maybe Mark will finally be able to truly rest.” And if that doesn’t happen, at least—at the very least—”his story can go to a greater cause. I want people to know about this,” she says, with a sharp, gasping cry. That’s why she’s telling me, and I am telling you: “If this story can serve a purpose, I feel like Mark will not have died in vain.”</p>	4,325
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Cash 5" game were:</p> <p>03-14-29-35-39</p> <p>(three, fourteen, twenty-nine, thirty-five, thirty-nine)</p> <p>Estimated jackpot: $187,500</p> <p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Cash 5" game were:</p> <p>03-14-29-35-39</p> <p>(three, fourteen, twenty-nine, thirty-five, thirty-nine)</p> <p>Estimated jackpot: $187,500</p>	Winning numbers drawn in 'Cash 5' game	false	https://apnews.com/amp/ea1fcb60627d4d7c9e0403cf8e54bbc6	2018-01-12	2least	Winning numbers drawn in 'Cash 5' game <p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Cash 5" game were:</p> <p>03-14-29-35-39</p> <p>(three, fourteen, twenty-nine, thirty-five, thirty-nine)</p> <p>Estimated jackpot: $187,500</p> <p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) _ The winning numbers in Thursday evening's drawing of the Indiana Lottery's "Cash 5" game were:</p> <p>03-14-29-35-39</p> <p>(three, fourteen, twenty-nine, thirty-five, thirty-nine)</p> <p>Estimated jackpot: $187,500</p>	4,326
<p /> <p>I punched in my pin number and pressed “account balance.” In the seconds it took for the machine to spit out the receipt, my stomach churned with anxiety.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>I was a junior in college, presenting a paper at a conference in Utah. A huge accomplishment, but I wasn’t proud. I was 1,000 miles from home, and I had only $10 in my checking account.</p> <p>How was I supposed to eat?</p> <p>Moments before I found the ATM, I had called my parents for money, something I rarely did. My dad had just lost his job. My sister had called me the week before to tell me that the RV my parents loved had been repossessed, and creditors were calling. Still, they sent the money.</p> <p>My parents taught me many good lessons–the value of education, the love of books and the trick to folding sheets with fitted corners. But when it came to money, my parents’ lessons were lacking, and I’m still trying to unlearn bad habits that have led to over-spending and under-budgeting.</p> <p>And now, it’s not just about me. I have a young daughter, and I want her to grow up with power over her finances, and not the other way around. As my husband and I begin to plan her financial education, we are focusing on four key areas that are my greatest financial weaknesses.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>I hope that they will be her strengths.</p> <p>Bad Habit #1: Using Your Money While You Have It</p> <p>Both my parents grew up with a poverty mentality that perpetuated a feast-or-famine attitude toward spending. When your paycheck comes, you spend. When the end of the month comes, you starve. When I married and saw my husband set aside money every month for things like furniture, appliances, auto repairs and even smaller things like haircuts, I was floored. Now, I try to live from the axiom that money stays around as long as you save it.</p> <p>How we teach it: To teach my daughter to be wise with her finances, we’ve started a savings account for her, and as she grows we’ll give her a specific amount that she’ll be allowed to spend each month within it. We’ve set aside a section of our budget called “Ellis” (our daughter’s name) and as soon as she starts asking for clothes and candy, we will give her a checking account and help her learn to use it. By the time she’s nine, we plan to put her in charge of her own budget. If I buy her shoes or clothes, she’ll have to pay me back.</p> <p>Bad Habit #2: Believing That No Credit Is Good Credit</p> <p>My parents have had problems with credit cards, and raised us to believe that all debt was bad. Consequently, when I went to rent an apartment after college, my name couldn’t be on the lease because I had no credit history. Debt is bad when you let it accumulate, but using a credit card and paying off the balance every month is a smart way to built good credit, so when it comes time to rent or own, you won’t be at the mercy of your roommates.</p> <p>How we teach it: My husband’s parents helped him sign up for a credit card at a young age, which he used to purchase things he needed and paid off every month. We plan to sit down with our daughter each month and show her what purchases we’ve made on our cards, and how we pay them off every month. Our goal is to help her learn how to wisely handle credit, so she won’t misuse it later in life.</p> <p>Bad Habit #3:&#160; Hiding Your Flaws</p> <p>In college, I lived in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Because my parents’ finances were insecure, I never knew if the money would be there to pay for the next semester. I worked hard to bridge the financial gaps, taking a second job when I could. Finally, my junior year, I walked into the financial aid office and asked for help. The counselors were kind and non-judgmental. I’d been warned by my parents not to discuss finances with the school (or anyone), but talking about it was the best thing I could have done. I learned about additional loans I could take out, and was recommended for a summer job on campus, which helped me take charge of my school payments.</p> <p>How we teach it: I now love hearing how people save money, as well as their investment strategies and tips and tricks for saving. Talking about money doesn’t have to be shameful. In fact, it’s often very helpful. Hiding your problems doesn’t make them go away. I never want my daughter to think she has to hide her flaws, whether a bad credit score or something else. Honesty is best taught through example: I plan on discussing money openly with our daughter, and including her in our budget decisions.</p> <p>Bad Habit #4: Buying Now, Paying Later</p> <p>Right after I graduated college, I wanted to buy a car. My husband (then my fiancé) told me to wait. “Don’t go into debt for a depreciating asset,” he said. “We can make this work.” And we did. We were a one-car family for two years as we saved for a car. To this day, when it comes to furniture and appliances and vacations, we set aside a little every month, so that when it comes time for a big purchase, we’re prepared.</p> <p>How we teach it: My husband learned this lesson as a child: “If you don’t have money, you don’t get it.” Meaning, you don’t buy that thing you really want just because you want it. By putting our daughter in charge of her finances early on, we hope to instill this virtue in her by letting her see firsthand the true value of money. Outside of gifts, necessities and the occasional treat (we’re suckers), if our daughter doesn’t have the money to buy something she wants, then she simply won’t be able to get it.</p> <p>Unlearning the bad money lessons my parents taught me hasn’t been easy—I have to constantly rethink purchases and financial decisions, but the good news is, watching my husband, seeing us budget and hearing our plan for their granddaughter has inspired my parents to start saving more and spending less, too.</p>	The Bad Money Lessons My Parents Taught Me	true	http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/05/15/bad-money-lessons-my-parents-taught-me.html	2017-02-08	0right	The Bad Money Lessons My Parents Taught Me <p /> <p>I punched in my pin number and pressed “account balance.” In the seconds it took for the machine to spit out the receipt, my stomach churned with anxiety.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>I was a junior in college, presenting a paper at a conference in Utah. A huge accomplishment, but I wasn’t proud. I was 1,000 miles from home, and I had only $10 in my checking account.</p> <p>How was I supposed to eat?</p> <p>Moments before I found the ATM, I had called my parents for money, something I rarely did. My dad had just lost his job. My sister had called me the week before to tell me that the RV my parents loved had been repossessed, and creditors were calling. Still, they sent the money.</p> <p>My parents taught me many good lessons–the value of education, the love of books and the trick to folding sheets with fitted corners. But when it came to money, my parents’ lessons were lacking, and I’m still trying to unlearn bad habits that have led to over-spending and under-budgeting.</p> <p>And now, it’s not just about me. I have a young daughter, and I want her to grow up with power over her finances, and not the other way around. As my husband and I begin to plan her financial education, we are focusing on four key areas that are my greatest financial weaknesses.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>I hope that they will be her strengths.</p> <p>Bad Habit #1: Using Your Money While You Have It</p> <p>Both my parents grew up with a poverty mentality that perpetuated a feast-or-famine attitude toward spending. When your paycheck comes, you spend. When the end of the month comes, you starve. When I married and saw my husband set aside money every month for things like furniture, appliances, auto repairs and even smaller things like haircuts, I was floored. Now, I try to live from the axiom that money stays around as long as you save it.</p> <p>How we teach it: To teach my daughter to be wise with her finances, we’ve started a savings account for her, and as she grows we’ll give her a specific amount that she’ll be allowed to spend each month within it. We’ve set aside a section of our budget called “Ellis” (our daughter’s name) and as soon as she starts asking for clothes and candy, we will give her a checking account and help her learn to use it. By the time she’s nine, we plan to put her in charge of her own budget. If I buy her shoes or clothes, she’ll have to pay me back.</p> <p>Bad Habit #2: Believing That No Credit Is Good Credit</p> <p>My parents have had problems with credit cards, and raised us to believe that all debt was bad. Consequently, when I went to rent an apartment after college, my name couldn’t be on the lease because I had no credit history. Debt is bad when you let it accumulate, but using a credit card and paying off the balance every month is a smart way to built good credit, so when it comes time to rent or own, you won’t be at the mercy of your roommates.</p> <p>How we teach it: My husband’s parents helped him sign up for a credit card at a young age, which he used to purchase things he needed and paid off every month. We plan to sit down with our daughter each month and show her what purchases we’ve made on our cards, and how we pay them off every month. Our goal is to help her learn how to wisely handle credit, so she won’t misuse it later in life.</p> <p>Bad Habit #3:&#160; Hiding Your Flaws</p> <p>In college, I lived in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Because my parents’ finances were insecure, I never knew if the money would be there to pay for the next semester. I worked hard to bridge the financial gaps, taking a second job when I could. Finally, my junior year, I walked into the financial aid office and asked for help. The counselors were kind and non-judgmental. I’d been warned by my parents not to discuss finances with the school (or anyone), but talking about it was the best thing I could have done. I learned about additional loans I could take out, and was recommended for a summer job on campus, which helped me take charge of my school payments.</p> <p>How we teach it: I now love hearing how people save money, as well as their investment strategies and tips and tricks for saving. Talking about money doesn’t have to be shameful. In fact, it’s often very helpful. Hiding your problems doesn’t make them go away. I never want my daughter to think she has to hide her flaws, whether a bad credit score or something else. Honesty is best taught through example: I plan on discussing money openly with our daughter, and including her in our budget decisions.</p> <p>Bad Habit #4: Buying Now, Paying Later</p> <p>Right after I graduated college, I wanted to buy a car. My husband (then my fiancé) told me to wait. “Don’t go into debt for a depreciating asset,” he said. “We can make this work.” And we did. We were a one-car family for two years as we saved for a car. To this day, when it comes to furniture and appliances and vacations, we set aside a little every month, so that when it comes time for a big purchase, we’re prepared.</p> <p>How we teach it: My husband learned this lesson as a child: “If you don’t have money, you don’t get it.” Meaning, you don’t buy that thing you really want just because you want it. By putting our daughter in charge of her finances early on, we hope to instill this virtue in her by letting her see firsthand the true value of money. Outside of gifts, necessities and the occasional treat (we’re suckers), if our daughter doesn’t have the money to buy something she wants, then she simply won’t be able to get it.</p> <p>Unlearning the bad money lessons my parents taught me hasn’t been easy—I have to constantly rethink purchases and financial decisions, but the good news is, watching my husband, seeing us budget and hearing our plan for their granddaughter has inspired my parents to start saving more and spending less, too.</p>	4,327
<p /> <p>Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX)reported mixed quarterly results after Monday's market close. We already <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/17/netflix-inc-breaks-100-million-global-subscribers.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">broke down the pertinent numbers Opens a New Window.</a>, so now let's take a look at the challenges that await the leading premium streaming platform.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Netflix stock was hitting new highs just ahead of the report.Let's look at some of the things that have to go right in the current quarter for Netflix to keep pushing to new highs.</p> <p>Image source: Netflix.</p> <p>1. Netflix can't miss its subscriber targets again</p> <p>There were some rumblings about Netflix <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2017/04/03/will-it-be-dangerous-to-own-netflix-stock-on-april.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">falling short of its subscriber forecast Opens a New Window.</a>, and those worrywarts got it right for a change. Netflix was targeting 5.2 million in net streaming subcriber additions during the first three months of the year, 1.5 million domestic and 3.7 million international. It fell slightly short on both fronts with 1.42 million stateside net additions and 3.53 million more users overseas.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Netflix has rarely missed its membership forecasts. The last time it happened was during the second quarter of last year, and the stock got creamed. Netflix recovered nicely, with back-to-back blowout quarters of surpassing its subscriber targets by at least a million. It's going to have to do so again.</p> <p>2. House of Cards needs to be a hit</p> <p>Earnings clocked in better than expected, partly because the fifth season of House of Cards moving from the first quarter to the second had a positive effect on boosting operating margin this time around. Obviously, that tailwind will become a headwind for the current quarter, so Netflix better hope that its most iconic show draws a crowd. Falling short on the bottom line and in terms of subscriber count doomed Netflix during the second quarter of last year.</p> <p>3. Sandler needs to keep working</p> <p>Netflix had some kind words to say about its Adam Sandler movies. It chose to recently double Sandler's four-movie deal, and the third installment -- Sandy Wexler -- debuted over the weekend. Netflix made it clear why it bet big on an actor whose last few films have been critical duds. Members have spent more than 500 million hours streaming the first two entries. All three movies have fared poorly with critics, but the 33% Rotten Tomatoes score for Sandy Wexler is actually well ahead of the first two entirely. It needs to keep subscribers close.</p> <p>4. Movies in general need to matter</p> <p>Netflix praised its Sandler deal, but it was humble enough to call out the mistake it made with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, a big-budget sequel that failed to resonate with audiences. Movies cost a lot, and Netflix will have to make sure it has a higher hit rate on its pricier flicks.</p> <p>5. Say "100 million" sooner rather than later</p> <p>Netflix's goal of 99 million subscribers by the end of March failed to materialize, much less the nice round milestone of 100 million. It's surprising that Netflix didn't announce that it had already crossed that mark until you realize that the second quarter has historically been its worst period for acquiring subs. It's forecasting 3.2 million net additions during the quarter, and it was 1.25 million subs away from 100 million by the end of March. Netflix's subscriber tally should cross into nine figures by early May, and you can be sure that bears will let the market know if it's mid-May and Netflix hasn't issued a press release.</p> <p>6 through 10. The streaming TV competition is intensifying</p> <p>Sling, Playstation Vue, DirecTV Now, YouTube TV and Hulu's upcoming service were five platforms singled out by Netflix on Monday, and therefore the next five reasons to worry. These internet-tethered services are replacing more expensive cable and satellite television packages. The optimist will argue that consumers trading down to $30 to $50 monthly plans leaves more money for Netflix, but the pessimist will counter that as customers begin to binge on those platforms, Netflix won't be as relevant. Netflix is still growing in this climate, but it needs to keep things that way.</p> <p>11. DVDs can't drag down performance</p> <p>Netflix now has fewer than 4 million DVD-based subscribers, something that hasn't happened since the third quarter of 2005. This remains a profitable business, but it's also a scalable one where it needs big numbers to make that platform viable. DVD members and DVD contribution profit has fallen by 17% and 16%, respectively, over the past year.</p> <p>12. Members can't thumb their noses at thumbs</p> <p>Netflix recently switched away from its five-star ratings grid, simplifying the process to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote. This may make it easier for customers to decide, but switching to a two-point system instead of a five-star range may take some getting used to.</p> <p>13. Marketing will need to pay off</p> <p>There's a lot of money being spent on content, but let's talk about marketing where Netflix is committed to spending $1 billion to promote its service this year. Netflix is turning toprogrammatic advertising, a new yet promising niche where the ad buys are automated to maximize their effective reach. With nearly 99 million members worldwide, Netflix can afford to spend some serious money on getting the word out about its new content and evolving platform. We'll see how it plays out.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than Netflix</p> <p>When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=7cb2eca1-bd1a-4c91-b7d4-487ee7db13d4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Netflix wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=7cb2eca1-bd1a-4c91-b7d4-487ee7db13d4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Netflix. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	13 Reasons Why Netflix Will Have to Bounce Back in 2Q	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/18/13-reasons-why-netflix-will-have-to-bounce-back-in-q2.html	2017-04-18	0right	13 Reasons Why Netflix Will Have to Bounce Back in 2Q <p /> <p>Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX)reported mixed quarterly results after Monday's market close. We already <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/17/netflix-inc-breaks-100-million-global-subscribers.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">broke down the pertinent numbers Opens a New Window.</a>, so now let's take a look at the challenges that await the leading premium streaming platform.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Netflix stock was hitting new highs just ahead of the report.Let's look at some of the things that have to go right in the current quarter for Netflix to keep pushing to new highs.</p> <p>Image source: Netflix.</p> <p>1. Netflix can't miss its subscriber targets again</p> <p>There were some rumblings about Netflix <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2017/04/03/will-it-be-dangerous-to-own-netflix-stock-on-april.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">falling short of its subscriber forecast Opens a New Window.</a>, and those worrywarts got it right for a change. Netflix was targeting 5.2 million in net streaming subcriber additions during the first three months of the year, 1.5 million domestic and 3.7 million international. It fell slightly short on both fronts with 1.42 million stateside net additions and 3.53 million more users overseas.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Netflix has rarely missed its membership forecasts. The last time it happened was during the second quarter of last year, and the stock got creamed. Netflix recovered nicely, with back-to-back blowout quarters of surpassing its subscriber targets by at least a million. It's going to have to do so again.</p> <p>2. House of Cards needs to be a hit</p> <p>Earnings clocked in better than expected, partly because the fifth season of House of Cards moving from the first quarter to the second had a positive effect on boosting operating margin this time around. Obviously, that tailwind will become a headwind for the current quarter, so Netflix better hope that its most iconic show draws a crowd. Falling short on the bottom line and in terms of subscriber count doomed Netflix during the second quarter of last year.</p> <p>3. Sandler needs to keep working</p> <p>Netflix had some kind words to say about its Adam Sandler movies. It chose to recently double Sandler's four-movie deal, and the third installment -- Sandy Wexler -- debuted over the weekend. Netflix made it clear why it bet big on an actor whose last few films have been critical duds. Members have spent more than 500 million hours streaming the first two entries. All three movies have fared poorly with critics, but the 33% Rotten Tomatoes score for Sandy Wexler is actually well ahead of the first two entirely. It needs to keep subscribers close.</p> <p>4. Movies in general need to matter</p> <p>Netflix praised its Sandler deal, but it was humble enough to call out the mistake it made with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny, a big-budget sequel that failed to resonate with audiences. Movies cost a lot, and Netflix will have to make sure it has a higher hit rate on its pricier flicks.</p> <p>5. Say "100 million" sooner rather than later</p> <p>Netflix's goal of 99 million subscribers by the end of March failed to materialize, much less the nice round milestone of 100 million. It's surprising that Netflix didn't announce that it had already crossed that mark until you realize that the second quarter has historically been its worst period for acquiring subs. It's forecasting 3.2 million net additions during the quarter, and it was 1.25 million subs away from 100 million by the end of March. Netflix's subscriber tally should cross into nine figures by early May, and you can be sure that bears will let the market know if it's mid-May and Netflix hasn't issued a press release.</p> <p>6 through 10. The streaming TV competition is intensifying</p> <p>Sling, Playstation Vue, DirecTV Now, YouTube TV and Hulu's upcoming service were five platforms singled out by Netflix on Monday, and therefore the next five reasons to worry. These internet-tethered services are replacing more expensive cable and satellite television packages. The optimist will argue that consumers trading down to $30 to $50 monthly plans leaves more money for Netflix, but the pessimist will counter that as customers begin to binge on those platforms, Netflix won't be as relevant. Netflix is still growing in this climate, but it needs to keep things that way.</p> <p>11. DVDs can't drag down performance</p> <p>Netflix now has fewer than 4 million DVD-based subscribers, something that hasn't happened since the third quarter of 2005. This remains a profitable business, but it's also a scalable one where it needs big numbers to make that platform viable. DVD members and DVD contribution profit has fallen by 17% and 16%, respectively, over the past year.</p> <p>12. Members can't thumb their noses at thumbs</p> <p>Netflix recently switched away from its five-star ratings grid, simplifying the process to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down vote. This may make it easier for customers to decide, but switching to a two-point system instead of a five-star range may take some getting used to.</p> <p>13. Marketing will need to pay off</p> <p>There's a lot of money being spent on content, but let's talk about marketing where Netflix is committed to spending $1 billion to promote its service this year. Netflix is turning toprogrammatic advertising, a new yet promising niche where the ad buys are automated to maximize their effective reach. With nearly 99 million members worldwide, Netflix can afford to spend some serious money on getting the word out about its new content and evolving platform. We'll see how it plays out.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than Netflix</p> <p>When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=7cb2eca1-bd1a-4c91-b7d4-487ee7db13d4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Netflix wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=7cb2eca1-bd1a-4c91-b7d4-487ee7db13d4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBreakerRick/info.aspx" type="external">Rick Munarriz Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Netflix. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	4,328
<p>Every four years, the Democratic National Convention attracts the most patriotic Americans in the country. Marxists. Anarchists. Feminists. Black Supremacists. Islamists. All lovely folks. This year, the DNC playground didn’t disappoint. Pro-Palestinian activists were out in force, displaying their Israel-hatred in an open forum and cheering alongside supposed liberals.</p> <p>Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/215544" type="external">reports</a>:</p> <p>Activists identifying themselves on twitter as being “Progressive for Palestine" raised a Palestinian flag in the middle of the convention floor, making it clearly visible to the overhead cameras, and held up signs reading: "I support Palestinian human rights."</p> <p>We at the FLA delegation just raised Flag of Palestine at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DNCinPHL?src=hash" type="external">#DNCinPHL</a> during platform vote <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ProgressiveforPalestine?src=hash" type="external">#ProgressiveforPalestine</a> <a href="https://t.co/g64VLfUxHe" type="external">pic.twitter.com/g64VLfUxHe</a></p> <p>Expect scenes like this to become the norm at Democratic Party functions. Welcome to the new extremist donkey party championed by cult-leader non-Democratic, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.</p> <p>Sanders has pushed the party to the Left, particularly on wedge issues, like Israel-Palestine. The Democratic-Socialist used the last morsel of leverage he had left to force his adopted-party to adopt a staunchly anti-Israel platform. Under the banner of “progressivism,” Sanders’ appointments for the Democratic platform drafting committee, including vehement anti-Israel crusaders like James Zogby and and Cornel West, attempted to force the party to adopt the term “occupation” in reference to Israeli policy in Palestinian-populated areas. The move would have been unprecedented. Never before has a major American political partner even considered explicitly marginalizing its main ally in the Middle East with such egregious provocation.</p> <p>Ultimately, the more-moderate Hillary Clinton-wing of the party won out, refusing to incorporate the Sanders-camp Israel-demonizing language into the Democratic platform. But still the damage was done. In fact, the party allowed major concessions to its Israel policy, making this year’s platform the most anti-Israel platform in Democratic Party history.</p> <p>"The new language breaks with the party's practice of framing its aim of establishing a Palestinian state solely in terms of Israel's interests," <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/24/politics/hillary-clinton-israel-dnc-platform/" type="external">stated</a> J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami. "By including parallel acknowledgment of Israeli and Palestinian rights, the party underscores its belief that the only viable resolution to the conflict -- a two-state solution -- requires recognizing the fates of the two peoples are intertwined.”</p> <p>"We at the FLA delegation just raised Flag of Palestine at #DNCinPHL during platform vote."</p> <p>Ahmed Bedier</p> <p>If J Street is praising the platform then those who love Israel should be worried. The group has been at the forefront of anti-Israel advocacy in Congress, making a name for itself as the Left’s most effective Palestinian-friendly lobbying group.</p> <p>As Sanders' young supporters like to point out, this is only the beginning. Democrats are only going to become more openly hostile to Israel as they work to galvanize the expanding far-Left base.</p>	DNC Attendee Waves Palestinian Flag On Convention Floor. Crowd Cheers. Welcome To The Scary, New Openly Anti-Israel Democratic Party.	true	https://dailywire.com/news/7823/dnc-attendee-waves-palestinian-flag-convention-michael-qazvini	2016-07-26	0right	DNC Attendee Waves Palestinian Flag On Convention Floor. Crowd Cheers. Welcome To The Scary, New Openly Anti-Israel Democratic Party. <p>Every four years, the Democratic National Convention attracts the most patriotic Americans in the country. Marxists. Anarchists. Feminists. Black Supremacists. Islamists. All lovely folks. This year, the DNC playground didn’t disappoint. Pro-Palestinian activists were out in force, displaying their Israel-hatred in an open forum and cheering alongside supposed liberals.</p> <p>Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/215544" type="external">reports</a>:</p> <p>Activists identifying themselves on twitter as being “Progressive for Palestine" raised a Palestinian flag in the middle of the convention floor, making it clearly visible to the overhead cameras, and held up signs reading: "I support Palestinian human rights."</p> <p>We at the FLA delegation just raised Flag of Palestine at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DNCinPHL?src=hash" type="external">#DNCinPHL</a> during platform vote <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ProgressiveforPalestine?src=hash" type="external">#ProgressiveforPalestine</a> <a href="https://t.co/g64VLfUxHe" type="external">pic.twitter.com/g64VLfUxHe</a></p> <p>Expect scenes like this to become the norm at Democratic Party functions. Welcome to the new extremist donkey party championed by cult-leader non-Democratic, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.</p> <p>Sanders has pushed the party to the Left, particularly on wedge issues, like Israel-Palestine. The Democratic-Socialist used the last morsel of leverage he had left to force his adopted-party to adopt a staunchly anti-Israel platform. Under the banner of “progressivism,” Sanders’ appointments for the Democratic platform drafting committee, including vehement anti-Israel crusaders like James Zogby and and Cornel West, attempted to force the party to adopt the term “occupation” in reference to Israeli policy in Palestinian-populated areas. The move would have been unprecedented. Never before has a major American political partner even considered explicitly marginalizing its main ally in the Middle East with such egregious provocation.</p> <p>Ultimately, the more-moderate Hillary Clinton-wing of the party won out, refusing to incorporate the Sanders-camp Israel-demonizing language into the Democratic platform. But still the damage was done. In fact, the party allowed major concessions to its Israel policy, making this year’s platform the most anti-Israel platform in Democratic Party history.</p> <p>"The new language breaks with the party's practice of framing its aim of establishing a Palestinian state solely in terms of Israel's interests," <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/24/politics/hillary-clinton-israel-dnc-platform/" type="external">stated</a> J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami. "By including parallel acknowledgment of Israeli and Palestinian rights, the party underscores its belief that the only viable resolution to the conflict -- a two-state solution -- requires recognizing the fates of the two peoples are intertwined.”</p> <p>"We at the FLA delegation just raised Flag of Palestine at #DNCinPHL during platform vote."</p> <p>Ahmed Bedier</p> <p>If J Street is praising the platform then those who love Israel should be worried. The group has been at the forefront of anti-Israel advocacy in Congress, making a name for itself as the Left’s most effective Palestinian-friendly lobbying group.</p> <p>As Sanders' young supporters like to point out, this is only the beginning. Democrats are only going to become more openly hostile to Israel as they work to galvanize the expanding far-Left base.</p>	4,329
<p>PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — Two cowboys are being credited with coming to the rescue of a deer stuck in an Arizona canal.</p> <p>The state Game and Fish Department received several calls Thursday reporting a deer was trapped in a canal near Lake Pleasant, northwest of Phoenix.</p> <p>The animal apparently slipped into the cold water and couldn’t scale the canal’s steep, concrete walls to get out.</p> <p>Game and Fish officer Reuben Gonzales says two cowboys with lassos happened by and stopped at the scene to help.</p> <p>Video the agency posted on YouTube shows one man standing on a bridge above the canal and dropping a lasso around the deer’s antlers as it swims below.</p> <p>Gonzales says Game and Fish officers then carried the stressed, shivering animal out of the water and loaded it into a truck. They then took it to Lake Pleasant Regional Park and released it.</p> <p>The deer regained its composure after about 20 minutes and ran off.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Online: <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external" /> <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external">http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN</a></p> <p>PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — Two cowboys are being credited with coming to the rescue of a deer stuck in an Arizona canal.</p> <p>The state Game and Fish Department received several calls Thursday reporting a deer was trapped in a canal near Lake Pleasant, northwest of Phoenix.</p> <p>The animal apparently slipped into the cold water and couldn’t scale the canal’s steep, concrete walls to get out.</p> <p>Game and Fish officer Reuben Gonzales says two cowboys with lassos happened by and stopped at the scene to help.</p> <p>Video the agency posted on YouTube shows one man standing on a bridge above the canal and dropping a lasso around the deer’s antlers as it swims below.</p> <p>Gonzales says Game and Fish officers then carried the stressed, shivering animal out of the water and loaded it into a truck. They then took it to Lake Pleasant Regional Park and released it.</p> <p>The deer regained its composure after about 20 minutes and ran off.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Online: <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external" /> <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external">http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN</a></p>	Cowboys ride to the rescue of deer trapped in Arizona canal	false	https://apnews.com/f84fdc615f174fa1aafd6ae6ce1cb774	2015-12-18	2least	Cowboys ride to the rescue of deer trapped in Arizona canal <p>PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — Two cowboys are being credited with coming to the rescue of a deer stuck in an Arizona canal.</p> <p>The state Game and Fish Department received several calls Thursday reporting a deer was trapped in a canal near Lake Pleasant, northwest of Phoenix.</p> <p>The animal apparently slipped into the cold water and couldn’t scale the canal’s steep, concrete walls to get out.</p> <p>Game and Fish officer Reuben Gonzales says two cowboys with lassos happened by and stopped at the scene to help.</p> <p>Video the agency posted on YouTube shows one man standing on a bridge above the canal and dropping a lasso around the deer’s antlers as it swims below.</p> <p>Gonzales says Game and Fish officers then carried the stressed, shivering animal out of the water and loaded it into a truck. They then took it to Lake Pleasant Regional Park and released it.</p> <p>The deer regained its composure after about 20 minutes and ran off.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Online: <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external" /> <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external">http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN</a></p> <p>PEORIA, Ariz. (AP) — Two cowboys are being credited with coming to the rescue of a deer stuck in an Arizona canal.</p> <p>The state Game and Fish Department received several calls Thursday reporting a deer was trapped in a canal near Lake Pleasant, northwest of Phoenix.</p> <p>The animal apparently slipped into the cold water and couldn’t scale the canal’s steep, concrete walls to get out.</p> <p>Game and Fish officer Reuben Gonzales says two cowboys with lassos happened by and stopped at the scene to help.</p> <p>Video the agency posted on YouTube shows one man standing on a bridge above the canal and dropping a lasso around the deer’s antlers as it swims below.</p> <p>Gonzales says Game and Fish officers then carried the stressed, shivering animal out of the water and loaded it into a truck. They then took it to Lake Pleasant Regional Park and released it.</p> <p>The deer regained its composure after about 20 minutes and ran off.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Online: <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external" /> <a href="http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN" type="external">http://bit.ly/1NXKOgN</a></p>	4,330
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>The trial of a 10-year-old boy accused of killing his father has been postponed as lawyers await the fate of a 911 recording now in the hands of a New Mexico appeals court.</p> <p>In a decision issued Friday, Judge George Eichwald agreed to allow the issue of the recording’s use to go to an appeals court after a motion from the boy’s attorney, William Cooley. That court could decide not to hear the appeal, but the move delays the trial that was scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection in a Valencia County courtroom. The 911 recording contains the voice of the boy asking for a doctor as his dad was dying.</p> <p>“I am so happy by this decision,” said Cooley, who is seeking to have the 911 recordings banned from the case. “I don’t think the tape should be allowed because a 10-year-old’s statements aren’t allowed under the children’s code.”</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Prosecutors said the boy, Benjamin Hilburn, put a gun to the head of 42-year-old Byron Hilburn and killed him at their Belen home in 2009. The boy, now 14 and living in Oklahoma, faces a first-degree murder charge.</p> <p>Cooley said the father, who kept loaded guns in the house, was abusive to the boy and two other siblings.</p> <p>If found guilty, the boy will be in state custody until he is 21 and must take part in a plan for rehabilitation.</p> <p>Experts say the boy is just one of a handful of very young children in the nation’s history to face first-degree murder.</p> <p>On Thursday, Cooley filed a motion in an attempt to prevent photographs of the dead father from being shown to jurors. Cooley said lawyers don’t know who took the photos and didn’t know the images existed until recently.</p> <p>Lemuel L. Martinez, 13th Judicial District attorney, has declined to discuss details of the case, but he has defended the decision to pursue the first-degree murder charge. “We are going to court because we believe we have enough evidence to meet the burden of proof,” he said.</p> <p>Cooley said the boy’s defense team plans to call more than three dozen witnesses to testify on the boy’s behalf about the abuse he faced and the failure by the state to intervene. He also said he’ll be able to show that the boy did not fully grasp his actions that day and was exposed to constant violence.</p> <p /> <p />	Boy’s trial in dad’s death postponed	false	https://abqjournal.com/252441/boys-trial-in-dads-death-postponed.html	2013-08-24	2least	Boy’s trial in dad’s death postponed <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>The trial of a 10-year-old boy accused of killing his father has been postponed as lawyers await the fate of a 911 recording now in the hands of a New Mexico appeals court.</p> <p>In a decision issued Friday, Judge George Eichwald agreed to allow the issue of the recording’s use to go to an appeals court after a motion from the boy’s attorney, William Cooley. That court could decide not to hear the appeal, but the move delays the trial that was scheduled to begin Monday with jury selection in a Valencia County courtroom. The 911 recording contains the voice of the boy asking for a doctor as his dad was dying.</p> <p>“I am so happy by this decision,” said Cooley, who is seeking to have the 911 recordings banned from the case. “I don’t think the tape should be allowed because a 10-year-old’s statements aren’t allowed under the children’s code.”</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Prosecutors said the boy, Benjamin Hilburn, put a gun to the head of 42-year-old Byron Hilburn and killed him at their Belen home in 2009. The boy, now 14 and living in Oklahoma, faces a first-degree murder charge.</p> <p>Cooley said the father, who kept loaded guns in the house, was abusive to the boy and two other siblings.</p> <p>If found guilty, the boy will be in state custody until he is 21 and must take part in a plan for rehabilitation.</p> <p>Experts say the boy is just one of a handful of very young children in the nation’s history to face first-degree murder.</p> <p>On Thursday, Cooley filed a motion in an attempt to prevent photographs of the dead father from being shown to jurors. Cooley said lawyers don’t know who took the photos and didn’t know the images existed until recently.</p> <p>Lemuel L. Martinez, 13th Judicial District attorney, has declined to discuss details of the case, but he has defended the decision to pursue the first-degree murder charge. “We are going to court because we believe we have enough evidence to meet the burden of proof,” he said.</p> <p>Cooley said the boy’s defense team plans to call more than three dozen witnesses to testify on the boy’s behalf about the abuse he faced and the failure by the state to intervene. He also said he’ll be able to show that the boy did not fully grasp his actions that day and was exposed to constant violence.</p> <p /> <p />	4,331
<p /> <p>More workers than ever are finding a little something special in their paychecks this year.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Sign-on, spot and retention bonus programs are at an all-time high, according to a new study from WorldatWork, a nonprofit human resources association for professionals and organizations. All three types of bonuses are significantly more common in 2014 compared to 2010, with referral bonuses also on the rise.</p> <p>Specifically, 74 percent of businesses are awarding signing bonuses this year, up from 54 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, the number of spot-bonus programs, informal recognition that is delivered in cash, spontaneously or "on the spot," have increased by 17 percentage points in the last four years. Additionally, 51 percent of organizations are paying out retention bonuses, up from 25 percent, while referral bonus programs have seen a 3 percentage-point increase.</p> <p>"The uptick in sign-on and retention bonus programs may indicate that the war for key talent could be heating up as the economy improves, leading to an increased focus on attracting and retaining employees," Rose Stanley, WorldatWork's total rewards practice leader, said in a statement. "In addition, with continually small incremental increases in merit budgets, spot bonuses may be a means to recognize talent for special excellence during the year."</p> <p>Overall, organizations have offered an average of three bonus programs this year, up from just two in 2010.</p> <p>While referral bonuses are still very important, it appears businesses are focusing their strategies on attraction, retention and recognition through spot bonuses, Stanley said.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>"Employers are using the sign-on and retention bonuses to attract and retain the talent that they need," she said. "They are targeting spot bonuses as an additional means to recognize employees that are excelling when other forms of cash compensation have been restricted."</p> <p>Results showed that spot bonuses are most commonly given for special recognition, going above and beyond, and completing projects. Nearly all of the organizations surveyed said that employees below upper management are eligible for spot bonuses.</p> <p>The study was based on surveys of 811 WorldatWork members, most of whom work at the managerial level or higher in the headquarters of a large North American company.</p> <p>Originally published on <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5134-cool-job-benefits.html" type="external">Business News Daily. Opens a New Window.</a></p>	Bonus! The Perk Employers Are Coming to Rely On	true	http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/06/24/bonus-perk-employers-are-coming-to-rely-on.html	2016-04-07	0right	Bonus! The Perk Employers Are Coming to Rely On <p /> <p>More workers than ever are finding a little something special in their paychecks this year.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Sign-on, spot and retention bonus programs are at an all-time high, according to a new study from WorldatWork, a nonprofit human resources association for professionals and organizations. All three types of bonuses are significantly more common in 2014 compared to 2010, with referral bonuses also on the rise.</p> <p>Specifically, 74 percent of businesses are awarding signing bonuses this year, up from 54 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, the number of spot-bonus programs, informal recognition that is delivered in cash, spontaneously or "on the spot," have increased by 17 percentage points in the last four years. Additionally, 51 percent of organizations are paying out retention bonuses, up from 25 percent, while referral bonus programs have seen a 3 percentage-point increase.</p> <p>"The uptick in sign-on and retention bonus programs may indicate that the war for key talent could be heating up as the economy improves, leading to an increased focus on attracting and retaining employees," Rose Stanley, WorldatWork's total rewards practice leader, said in a statement. "In addition, with continually small incremental increases in merit budgets, spot bonuses may be a means to recognize talent for special excellence during the year."</p> <p>Overall, organizations have offered an average of three bonus programs this year, up from just two in 2010.</p> <p>While referral bonuses are still very important, it appears businesses are focusing their strategies on attraction, retention and recognition through spot bonuses, Stanley said.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>"Employers are using the sign-on and retention bonuses to attract and retain the talent that they need," she said. "They are targeting spot bonuses as an additional means to recognize employees that are excelling when other forms of cash compensation have been restricted."</p> <p>Results showed that spot bonuses are most commonly given for special recognition, going above and beyond, and completing projects. Nearly all of the organizations surveyed said that employees below upper management are eligible for spot bonuses.</p> <p>The study was based on surveys of 811 WorldatWork members, most of whom work at the managerial level or higher in the headquarters of a large North American company.</p> <p>Originally published on <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5134-cool-job-benefits.html" type="external">Business News Daily. Opens a New Window.</a></p>	4,332
<p>Republicans are still working their way through the five stages of having a black president: denial (birthers), anger (town halls), bargaining (debt ceiling), depression (John Boehner’s tears) and, finally, racially charged jokes, like those told at the Republican Leadership Conference.</p> <p>In the video below, Obama impersonator Reggie Brown jokes before guffawing GOPers about the president’s race. Eventually, he gets yanked off stage, but only after focusing on some Republican targets, including Michele Bachmann. The RLC released a statement saying Brown got the hook for his insensitive jokes, but the comedian <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/0620/Obama-impersonator-gets-hook-at-GOP-meeting.-Why-was-he-hired" type="external">thinks he was</a> over time and “the material was starting to get to a point to where maybe they started to feel uncomfortable with where it was going,” as in “going” after Republicans.</p> <p>You be the judge. — PZS</p> <p /> <p />	What Would a Republican Conference Be Without Racial Controversy?	true	https://truthdig.com/articles/what-would-a-republican-conference-be-without-racial-controversy/	2011-06-21	4left	What Would a Republican Conference Be Without Racial Controversy? <p>Republicans are still working their way through the five stages of having a black president: denial (birthers), anger (town halls), bargaining (debt ceiling), depression (John Boehner’s tears) and, finally, racially charged jokes, like those told at the Republican Leadership Conference.</p> <p>In the video below, Obama impersonator Reggie Brown jokes before guffawing GOPers about the president’s race. Eventually, he gets yanked off stage, but only after focusing on some Republican targets, including Michele Bachmann. The RLC released a statement saying Brown got the hook for his insensitive jokes, but the comedian <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2011/0620/Obama-impersonator-gets-hook-at-GOP-meeting.-Why-was-he-hired" type="external">thinks he was</a> over time and “the material was starting to get to a point to where maybe they started to feel uncomfortable with where it was going,” as in “going” after Republicans.</p> <p>You be the judge. — PZS</p> <p /> <p />	4,333
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Mikhail, the grandson of plane crash victim Nina Lushchenko, sits at her grave during her funeral at a cemetery in the village of Sitnya in Russia on Thursday. Russia's Airbus 321-200 broke up over the Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 31. (The Associated Press)</p> <p>CAIRO - International passengers departing Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh continued to line up for flights on Sunday, as the first of three teams of Russian inspectors was dispatched to the country to examine airport security following the Oct. 31 airline disaster.</p> <p>The Russian flight's crash in the Sinai Peninsula that killed all 224 people onboard continues to generate fallout, after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for its downing and U.S. and British officials say intelligence shows it was likely brought down by a bomb on board.</p> <p>Britain and several airlines have stopped normally scheduled flights to the resort, while Russia has suspended all flights to Egypt because of security concerns.</p> <p>U.S. lawmakers weighed in on the issue Sunday. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that if it's confirmed the plane was brought down by an Islamic State bomb, then "ISIS has now fully eclipsed al-Qaida as the gravest terrorist threat in the world."</p> <p>British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond told the BBC on Sunday that if the bomb is confirmed, it will require a potential rethinking of airport security in all areas where the extremist group is active.</p> <p>Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich did not give details on what specific security issues the inspections teams would be examining. Dvorkovich said that 11,000 Russians were flown home from Egypt on Saturday and an even larger number were expected to leave Sunday, according to Russian news agencies.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In Russia, more than a thousand mourners packed into the landmark St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg for a memorial service for the victims. Attendees lit candles and stood in silence as the cathedral bells rang 224 times to remember each victim.</p> <p>"We came to the service today with all our family to support the people in our common grief," said Galina Stepanova, 58.</p> <p>Stepanova said she believed the plane was downed by a bomb but said that Russia should continue its airstrike campaign against the Islamic State group and other insurgents in Syria.</p> <p /> <p />	Many wait to leave Egypt; inspectors on way	false	https://abqjournal.com/672730/many-wait-to-leave-egypt-inspectors-on-way.html		2least	Many wait to leave Egypt; inspectors on way <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>Mikhail, the grandson of plane crash victim Nina Lushchenko, sits at her grave during her funeral at a cemetery in the village of Sitnya in Russia on Thursday. Russia's Airbus 321-200 broke up over the Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 31. (The Associated Press)</p> <p>CAIRO - International passengers departing Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh continued to line up for flights on Sunday, as the first of three teams of Russian inspectors was dispatched to the country to examine airport security following the Oct. 31 airline disaster.</p> <p>The Russian flight's crash in the Sinai Peninsula that killed all 224 people onboard continues to generate fallout, after the Islamic State claimed responsibility for its downing and U.S. and British officials say intelligence shows it was likely brought down by a bomb on board.</p> <p>Britain and several airlines have stopped normally scheduled flights to the resort, while Russia has suspended all flights to Egypt because of security concerns.</p> <p>U.S. lawmakers weighed in on the issue Sunday. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that if it's confirmed the plane was brought down by an Islamic State bomb, then "ISIS has now fully eclipsed al-Qaida as the gravest terrorist threat in the world."</p> <p>British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond told the BBC on Sunday that if the bomb is confirmed, it will require a potential rethinking of airport security in all areas where the extremist group is active.</p> <p>Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich did not give details on what specific security issues the inspections teams would be examining. Dvorkovich said that 11,000 Russians were flown home from Egypt on Saturday and an even larger number were expected to leave Sunday, according to Russian news agencies.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In Russia, more than a thousand mourners packed into the landmark St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg for a memorial service for the victims. Attendees lit candles and stood in silence as the cathedral bells rang 224 times to remember each victim.</p> <p>"We came to the service today with all our family to support the people in our common grief," said Galina Stepanova, 58.</p> <p>Stepanova said she believed the plane was downed by a bomb but said that Russia should continue its airstrike campaign against the Islamic State group and other insurgents in Syria.</p> <p /> <p />	4,334
<p>This piece is part of a symposium appearing in a special issue of National Review. <a href="" type="internal">Click here to read EPPC Senior&#160;Fellow Mona Charen’s contribution to the symposium</a>.</p> <p>Donald Trump is no conservative. That’s not a crime, it’s just a reason to vote against him. Many fine people are not conservatives. But the reason Trump’s candidacy should worry the Right runs much deeper than that: He poses a direct challenge to conservatism, because he embodies the empty promise of managerial leadership outside of politics.</p> <p>Trump’s diagnoses of our key problems — first and foremost, that America’s elites are weak and unwilling to put the interests of Americans first — have gained him a hearing from many on the right. But when he gestures toward prescriptions, Trump reveals that even his diagnoses are not as sound as they might seem.</p> <p>Conservatives incline to take the weakness of our elite institutions as an argument for recovering constitutional principles — and so for limiting the power of those institutions, reversing their centralization of authority, and recovering a vision of American life in which the chief purpose of the federal government is protective and not managerial.</p> <p>Trump, on the contrary, offers himself as the alternative to our weak and foolish leaders, the guarantee of American superiority, and the cure for all that ails our society; and when pressed about how he will succeed in these ways, his answer pretty much amounts to: “great management.”</p> <p>The appeal of Trump’s diagnoses should be instructive to conservatives. But the shallow narcissism of his prescriptions is a warning. American conservatism is an inherently skeptical political outlook. It assumes that no one can be fully trusted with public power and that self-government in a free society demands that we reject the siren song of politics-as-management.</p> <p>A shortage of such skepticism is how we ended up with the problems Trump so bluntly laments. Repeating that mistake is no way to solve these problems. To address them, we need to begin by rejecting what Trump stands for, as much as what he stands against.</p> <p>—&#160;Yuval Levin, a contributing editor of National Review, is the editor of National Affairs.</p>	Conservatives against Trump: Yuval Levin on Trump’s “Shallow Narcissism”	false	https://eppc.org/publications/conservatives-against-trump-yuval-levin-on-trumps-shallow-narcissism/		1right-center	Conservatives against Trump: Yuval Levin on Trump’s “Shallow Narcissism” <p>This piece is part of a symposium appearing in a special issue of National Review. <a href="" type="internal">Click here to read EPPC Senior&#160;Fellow Mona Charen’s contribution to the symposium</a>.</p> <p>Donald Trump is no conservative. That’s not a crime, it’s just a reason to vote against him. Many fine people are not conservatives. But the reason Trump’s candidacy should worry the Right runs much deeper than that: He poses a direct challenge to conservatism, because he embodies the empty promise of managerial leadership outside of politics.</p> <p>Trump’s diagnoses of our key problems — first and foremost, that America’s elites are weak and unwilling to put the interests of Americans first — have gained him a hearing from many on the right. But when he gestures toward prescriptions, Trump reveals that even his diagnoses are not as sound as they might seem.</p> <p>Conservatives incline to take the weakness of our elite institutions as an argument for recovering constitutional principles — and so for limiting the power of those institutions, reversing their centralization of authority, and recovering a vision of American life in which the chief purpose of the federal government is protective and not managerial.</p> <p>Trump, on the contrary, offers himself as the alternative to our weak and foolish leaders, the guarantee of American superiority, and the cure for all that ails our society; and when pressed about how he will succeed in these ways, his answer pretty much amounts to: “great management.”</p> <p>The appeal of Trump’s diagnoses should be instructive to conservatives. But the shallow narcissism of his prescriptions is a warning. American conservatism is an inherently skeptical political outlook. It assumes that no one can be fully trusted with public power and that self-government in a free society demands that we reject the siren song of politics-as-management.</p> <p>A shortage of such skepticism is how we ended up with the problems Trump so bluntly laments. Repeating that mistake is no way to solve these problems. To address them, we need to begin by rejecting what Trump stands for, as much as what he stands against.</p> <p>—&#160;Yuval Levin, a contributing editor of National Review, is the editor of National Affairs.</p>	4,335
<p>A post-debate poll shows real estate mogul Donald Trump holding onto his massive lead, with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) tied for second place.</p> <p>Here are the results from the leftist <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/02/trump-clinton-still-have-big-sc-leads.html." type="external">Public Policy Polling survey:</a></p> <p>PPP has come under severe criticism for its methods; as Nate Cohn <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/114769/ppp-methodology-results-arent-defense" type="external">wrote</a> in 2013, "Everything about PPP’s polling screams 'unrepresentative sample.'” The same year, Nate Silver <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nate-silver-calls-out-ppp-for-liberal-bias-on-gun-control-poll/article/2535603" type="external">slammed</a>PPP for refusing to publish a poll showing defeat for pro-gun control lawmakers facing recall in Colorado. Silver tweeted, "VERY bad and unscientific practice for @ppppolls to suppress a polling result they didn't believe/didn't like."</p> <p>PPP's write-up of their survey remarks on how "consistent" Trump's support is among every demographic:</p> <p>Most surprising of all is that Trump leads among those who have a favorable view of former President George W. Bush at 26 percent, followed by Cruz at 22 percent and Rubio at 20 percent. It seems as if Trump channeling Code Pink and Michael Moore at Saturday's debate has not harmed him so far.</p> <p>If the race in South Carolina were to be between only Trump, Rubio and Cruz, the results would be 40 percent, 28 percent and 22 percent, respectively. In head-to-head matchups, Trump holds a slim lead over Rubio 46 percent to 45 percent, while he leads Cruz by a margin of 48 percent to 38 percent.</p> <p>Predictably, since PPP leans so heavily toward the left, Cruz has the worst favorability ratings of any Republican candidate in the poll, as 42 percent have a favorable view of him while 48 percent don't. The candidate with the best favorables in the state is Carson, as 68 percent view him positively, followed by Rubio at 58 percent.</p> <p>Despite Trump's massive lead, PPP describes the race as "fluid," since 29 percent voters say that their minds could change between now and election day. The polling the rest of the week will reveal a better indication as to just how fluid the race in South Carolina really is. As Breitbart's Mike Flynn <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/15/trump-enters-home-stretch-with-big-south-carolina-lead/" type="external">writes,</a> "The best way to evaluate this PPP poll is as one data point. Over the next two days there will be many more public polls released. The key is to identify trends."</p>	Surprise: Leftist Poll Trashes Cruz, Finds Trump Still Up Big In South Carolina	true	https://dailywire.com/news/3413/polls-trump-still-big-south-carolina-aaron-bandler	2016-02-16	0right	Surprise: Leftist Poll Trashes Cruz, Finds Trump Still Up Big In South Carolina <p>A post-debate poll shows real estate mogul Donald Trump holding onto his massive lead, with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) tied for second place.</p> <p>Here are the results from the leftist <a href="http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/02/trump-clinton-still-have-big-sc-leads.html." type="external">Public Policy Polling survey:</a></p> <p>PPP has come under severe criticism for its methods; as Nate Cohn <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/114769/ppp-methodology-results-arent-defense" type="external">wrote</a> in 2013, "Everything about PPP’s polling screams 'unrepresentative sample.'” The same year, Nate Silver <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nate-silver-calls-out-ppp-for-liberal-bias-on-gun-control-poll/article/2535603" type="external">slammed</a>PPP for refusing to publish a poll showing defeat for pro-gun control lawmakers facing recall in Colorado. Silver tweeted, "VERY bad and unscientific practice for @ppppolls to suppress a polling result they didn't believe/didn't like."</p> <p>PPP's write-up of their survey remarks on how "consistent" Trump's support is among every demographic:</p> <p>Most surprising of all is that Trump leads among those who have a favorable view of former President George W. Bush at 26 percent, followed by Cruz at 22 percent and Rubio at 20 percent. It seems as if Trump channeling Code Pink and Michael Moore at Saturday's debate has not harmed him so far.</p> <p>If the race in South Carolina were to be between only Trump, Rubio and Cruz, the results would be 40 percent, 28 percent and 22 percent, respectively. In head-to-head matchups, Trump holds a slim lead over Rubio 46 percent to 45 percent, while he leads Cruz by a margin of 48 percent to 38 percent.</p> <p>Predictably, since PPP leans so heavily toward the left, Cruz has the worst favorability ratings of any Republican candidate in the poll, as 42 percent have a favorable view of him while 48 percent don't. The candidate with the best favorables in the state is Carson, as 68 percent view him positively, followed by Rubio at 58 percent.</p> <p>Despite Trump's massive lead, PPP describes the race as "fluid," since 29 percent voters say that their minds could change between now and election day. The polling the rest of the week will reveal a better indication as to just how fluid the race in South Carolina really is. As Breitbart's Mike Flynn <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/15/trump-enters-home-stretch-with-big-south-carolina-lead/" type="external">writes,</a> "The best way to evaluate this PPP poll is as one data point. Over the next two days there will be many more public polls released. The key is to identify trends."</p>	4,336
<p>After the fourth election loss in row since President Trump took office, a growing pack of Democrats in the House want to get rid of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who they think is holding the party down.</p> <p>"We can't keep losing races and keep the same leadership in place. You have a baseball team that keeps losing year after year. At some point, the coach has got to go, right?" Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) told the Associated Press.</p> <p>The group of angry Democrats met quietly last week after the party went 0-4 in special House elections, talking about options for replacing Pelosi. But that's about all they've got: Talk. "Right now, what I'm pushing for is a conversation within the caucus," Rice said.</p> <p>For her part, Pelosi says she isn't going anywhere. "My decision about how long I stay is not up to them."</p> <p>But this is how these things always start in Washington. Pelosi, at 77, clearly knows her days are numbered. And party leaders are desperately searching for a new message — few want it to be "old, white people." Sen. Bernie Sanders, 75, is still one of the party's leaders (and he's not even a Democrats!), as is Hillary Clinton, 69. There is a move on to inject some young voices into the party and begin to groom a new crop of leaders.</p> <p>What's more, Pelosi is still a driving force for the Republican Party. In the most recent special election in Georgia last Tuesday, Republican Karen Handel put out a slew of ads featuring Pelosi, not her opponent, Jon Ossoff. She made the case that if the Democrat won in the 6th District of Georgia, Pelosi would really be running the show. Handel won handily.</p> <p>Rice said it's a tried and true strategy with Pelosi at the helm. "The Republican playbook has been very successful. It's not fair. It's not accurate in its attacks on our leader, but it's effective. They keep winning and we keep losing," she said.</p> <p>Pelosi didn't like all the talk last week about her demise, taunting Rice by saying, "when it comes to personal ambition and having fun on TV, have your fun. I love the arena. I thrive on competition."</p> <p>And Republicans hope she stays right there. Trump stripped it all down in a tweet.</p> <p>The GOP plans to run directly at Pelosi in 2018, The Hill reports, tying House candidates to the Democratic leader.</p> <p>The GOP made clobbering the California Democrat a central piece of their messaging in Georgia’s recent special election, hammering her almost as much as Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff. With Republican Karen Handel emerging victorious on Tuesday, Republicans are making clear that they’ll stick with this strategy in the 2018 midterms.</p> <p>“Nancy Pelosi will be front and center in the millions of dollars we’re going to spend over the next two years across the country,” said Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) executive director Corry Bliss, whose group spent almost $7 million in the Georgia election cycle. ...</p> <p>Said Bliss: “This midterm is going to be a referendum on Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco liberal values. That’s what the elections are going to be about. ... We saw a little glimpse of that on Tuesday.”</p>	Knives Out For Nancy: Can Loopy Pelosi Survive?	true	https://dailywire.com/news/17928/knives-out-nancy-can-loopy-pelosi-survive-joseph-curl	2017-06-26	0right	Knives Out For Nancy: Can Loopy Pelosi Survive? <p>After the fourth election loss in row since President Trump took office, a growing pack of Democrats in the House want to get rid of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who they think is holding the party down.</p> <p>"We can't keep losing races and keep the same leadership in place. You have a baseball team that keeps losing year after year. At some point, the coach has got to go, right?" Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-NY) told the Associated Press.</p> <p>The group of angry Democrats met quietly last week after the party went 0-4 in special House elections, talking about options for replacing Pelosi. But that's about all they've got: Talk. "Right now, what I'm pushing for is a conversation within the caucus," Rice said.</p> <p>For her part, Pelosi says she isn't going anywhere. "My decision about how long I stay is not up to them."</p> <p>But this is how these things always start in Washington. Pelosi, at 77, clearly knows her days are numbered. And party leaders are desperately searching for a new message — few want it to be "old, white people." Sen. Bernie Sanders, 75, is still one of the party's leaders (and he's not even a Democrats!), as is Hillary Clinton, 69. There is a move on to inject some young voices into the party and begin to groom a new crop of leaders.</p> <p>What's more, Pelosi is still a driving force for the Republican Party. In the most recent special election in Georgia last Tuesday, Republican Karen Handel put out a slew of ads featuring Pelosi, not her opponent, Jon Ossoff. She made the case that if the Democrat won in the 6th District of Georgia, Pelosi would really be running the show. Handel won handily.</p> <p>Rice said it's a tried and true strategy with Pelosi at the helm. "The Republican playbook has been very successful. It's not fair. It's not accurate in its attacks on our leader, but it's effective. They keep winning and we keep losing," she said.</p> <p>Pelosi didn't like all the talk last week about her demise, taunting Rice by saying, "when it comes to personal ambition and having fun on TV, have your fun. I love the arena. I thrive on competition."</p> <p>And Republicans hope she stays right there. Trump stripped it all down in a tweet.</p> <p>The GOP plans to run directly at Pelosi in 2018, The Hill reports, tying House candidates to the Democratic leader.</p> <p>The GOP made clobbering the California Democrat a central piece of their messaging in Georgia’s recent special election, hammering her almost as much as Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff. With Republican Karen Handel emerging victorious on Tuesday, Republicans are making clear that they’ll stick with this strategy in the 2018 midterms.</p> <p>“Nancy Pelosi will be front and center in the millions of dollars we’re going to spend over the next two years across the country,” said Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) executive director Corry Bliss, whose group spent almost $7 million in the Georgia election cycle. ...</p> <p>Said Bliss: “This midterm is going to be a referendum on Nancy Pelosi and her San Francisco liberal values. That’s what the elections are going to be about. ... We saw a little glimpse of that on Tuesday.”</p>	4,337
<p /> <p>Sen. Mitch McConnell’s first response to Mother Jones‘ report on a <a href="" type="internal">closed-door campaign meeting</a> about prospective challenger Ashley Judd: <a href="" type="internal">Call the FBI</a>. His second response: Ask for money.</p> <p>On Tuesday morning, McConnell’s campaign twitter account blasted out a link to a new splash page (“ <a href="http://teammitch.com/wiretap/?src=twitter" type="external">teammitch.com/wiretap</a>“) asking supporters to “stand with Senator McConnell” by signing up for his mailing list—and donating to his campaign. The campaign specifically charges the “liberal media,” which in this case is apparently Mother Jones, with “illegal and underhanded tactics”:</p> <p>As we explained <a href="" type="internal">in the piece</a>, Mother Jones was provided a copy of the tape. It was not involved in making the tape.</p> <p>McConnell’s move isn’t unusual for a campaign dealing with a news story like this—which may have some benefits for a politician who has worked hard to ingratiate himself with the state’s conservative activists. What better way for McConnell to show his mettle than by coming under attack from the left?</p> <p />	McConnell Asks FBI to Investigate Secret Tape—Then Fundraises Off It	true	https://motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/mitch-mcconnells-campaign-fundraises-secret-audio-tape/	2013-04-09	4left	McConnell Asks FBI to Investigate Secret Tape—Then Fundraises Off It <p /> <p>Sen. Mitch McConnell’s first response to Mother Jones‘ report on a <a href="" type="internal">closed-door campaign meeting</a> about prospective challenger Ashley Judd: <a href="" type="internal">Call the FBI</a>. His second response: Ask for money.</p> <p>On Tuesday morning, McConnell’s campaign twitter account blasted out a link to a new splash page (“ <a href="http://teammitch.com/wiretap/?src=twitter" type="external">teammitch.com/wiretap</a>“) asking supporters to “stand with Senator McConnell” by signing up for his mailing list—and donating to his campaign. The campaign specifically charges the “liberal media,” which in this case is apparently Mother Jones, with “illegal and underhanded tactics”:</p> <p>As we explained <a href="" type="internal">in the piece</a>, Mother Jones was provided a copy of the tape. It was not involved in making the tape.</p> <p>McConnell’s move isn’t unusual for a campaign dealing with a news story like this—which may have some benefits for a politician who has worked hard to ingratiate himself with the state’s conservative activists. What better way for McConnell to show his mettle than by coming under attack from the left?</p> <p />	4,338
<p>The mayor of Philly is going to “crack down” on unregistered, uninsured drivers.</p> <p>This campaign, as usual, is packaged as if it’s about “cutting costs” and “safety”. It’s about neither. If one can or cannot afford to patronize private, for-profit insurers, these compulsory insurance laws offer many grounds to call for rejecting the system. This is privatization, at its worst, of a public interest area, that creates endless nightmares, dangers and costs for the people while illegitimately benefiting one private industry…big insurance. It’s no small concern to also consider that the idea of a business-linked government compelling a large segment of the public to hand over profits to a business is a very ominous precedent that ought not be tolerated. It’s not that big a step, now that the public has been conned into accepting it, to the idea of compulsory private health insurance, for all. This isn’t fantasy-land. Sen. Bill Bradley actually promoted just such a policy before the last national elections.</p> <p>Here’s a collection of problem areas with the Philadelphia car insurance situation.</p> <p>* Unless City Council did a sneak law change somewhere along the line, it is the CITY which is the scofflaw by tolerating the use of the Parking Authority for non-parking-related matters…such as this registration/ insurance thing. The Authority’s tow trucks and lots will be used for impoundments. The Authority’s establishing ordinance doesn’t just ignore this to let officials fill in the blanks as they please…the ordinance specifically FORBIDS use of the Authority for things not directly related to parking and the free flow of traffic etc. The Parking Authority’s establishing ordinance does not authorize it to be a Revenue Enhancement operation either…but that’s another topic.</p> <p>* The real and virtual lies used to sell this vicious campaign indicate that it is invalid and that officials know this, but do it anyway. Lie Number One has been somewhat addressed in a March 2 Inquirer article…the parts about how “rates will come down” etc. Often officials sound like they’re advertising Snake Oil by saying things like “we HOPE that rates MAY come down” etc., but notice…there is NEVER any guarantee demanded from the insurers. Who’s in charge anyway? Also, Philly’s invaluable CEPA…Consumer Education and Protection Assn., confirms that nowhere in the country has it been found that rates came down no matter HOW much compliance increased. Insurers can always find an excuse to maintain or raise rates, and officials let them. Lie Number Two, often heard, is that it’s about “SAFETY”. This is patently preposterous. A piece of paper in the glove compartment does nothing to increase safety. The absurd cost of this insurance means that low income people will keep older and less-safe cars on the road and will avoid getting new tires and brakes etc., AND…if one had to pay for their OWN repairs and doctor bills (if not covered elsewhere), one would tend to drive more safely. So…this insurance thing COULD be actually LESS safe.</p> <p>* Viciousness abounds. It’s a big part of the War on The Poor. What’s the average income level of those 400,000 uninsured drivers? As Welfare Cuts kick in for real, along comes the City, not to HELP…but to impound what may be a vehicle that’s necessary for jobs. As public transit rates go up and as routes and schedules are cut, along comes the City to make it even MORE impossible for many to go to school or work or to medical care or relatives or shopping or the works.</p> <p>* It is not hyperbole to note that this program reeks of classic, dictionary-definition and even Mussolini-definition fascism. It is the merger of private business and Public Governing, as the POLICE are used as tools to compel drivers to purchase a PRIVATE commercial service… and, of course, to contribute profits to one of the wealthiest corporate entities in the land, AND to fork over investment money for the insurers to increase holdings in god-knows-what all industries…like cigarette manufacturing, weapons, cigarette ingredients, pesticides, nuke plants, prison industries and the works. Though one may say the insurers can do what they want with their money…it’s not funny that drivers do not have this luxury. This isn’t a Free Market…it’s a compulsory market.</p> <p>* Some say…well, no one’s forcing you to drive and…it’s a “privilege”, not a right. Swell. The same people who created the driving necessity and who did all possible to make public transit as expensive and limited as possible now say drivers have to purchase private insurance.</p> <p>* Radio news about this said that the program would not be about racial profiling. That’s nice. Imagine them saying otherwise. The racism is, conveniently, Built-In…since most of the worst poverty in the city is in the African American and Latina/o communities…for all the well-known historical and current reasons. These are people who are not asked to pay a PERCENT of their income or car value to insurance (as would be the case if the program was Tax Based); they are asked to pay the SAME as, or MORE (!!!) than, the richest drivers in Chestnut Hill! Annual insurance may cost a day’s wages (or interest earnings) or LESS for one person, but may be two month’s income or more for another. Money to come out of kid’s mouths, medical care, clothes budgets and all the rest.</p> <p>If the impoundment program, instead of forcing great compliance, simply makes it impossible for low income minorities to drive, we have taken a step towards increased ghettoization. Absolutely despicable.</p> <p>* Insurance would be easily affordable for almost EVERYONE if it was tax based…on blue book car value, tax on gas at the pump (to also get input from out-of-staters who DO no less contribute to accidents) and from some part of registration fee. Other countries manage such plans quite well. If the gov’t believes it is a Public Interest thing to do, IT must provide the system. Whatever happened to complaints about “unfunded mandates”?…or is that only when the mandate is on a business?</p> <p>* This vicious system is yet another example (like drug laws, most famously) of The Law causing more crime and danger than would exist otherwise. It’s the LAW that caused 400,000 cars (they say), in just One City, to be unregistered and uninsured…and ALSO UN-INSPECTED! That’s SAFETY inspections remember. So…whereas we could have had ALL of those cars safety inspected via a public system, now we got 400,000 actually or potentially UNSAFE cars running around in Philadelphia alone. State-wide figures must be breathtaking. The LAW created a public endangerment of vast scale.</p> <p>* And…it has proven exceedingly difficult to get official rules or statements about the safety of impounded cars and contents. Do, or will, cops do an inventory of contents at time of impoundment to make sure things don’t get stolen? Will cops do check of car condition (like they do at some car rentals) so that City will be liable for damages later? Or is it “tough cookies”…the apparent Motto of The City? If car is destroyed…where do all the fluids go? There’s battery acid, steering fluid, oil, gasoline, anti-freeze and who-knows-what a car may be carrying besides. How much just drains into the ground and then water table? I’ve seen one impoundment lot. It was a toxic swamp.</p> <p>* INJUSTICE. Impoundment of car is a huge penalty for a violation that harms no one and, unless car is a danger, threatens no one. This may mean loss of one’s job or dropping out of school. It may impact entire families, innocents, in every way imaginable.</p> <p>* Arbitrariness and cruelty will reign, unavoidably. Cops will pick and choose, guaranteed, who they will leave out on highways during what weather conditions or times of day…and who they will not. What ARE the guidelines re/ elderly or handicapped or children passengers, or pets? Will they be stuck on the roadside in strange neighborhoods in the rain at night? Will the cops take drivers and passengers to the police stations? Will cops wait til people are picked up by friends or a cab?…IF they have friends or money for a cab. (Can this all be done in the 15 minutes per stop that the mayor mentions?) Will people be able to remove their work equipment from vehicles? Some cops WILL be maybe less zealous and cruel to those who have those FOP stickers or U.S. flags waving…or to folks who are the right racial type, etc. They might just let them go altogether or not run a check in the first place. Others… a different story.</p> <p>* What is the expected effect as over 400,000 people (add the affected family members) come to fear, hate and avoid police? And…with such a Draconian penalty awaiting someone, what’s the incentive for a driver to stop at even a minor accident? Add that to the huge economic and immobilization incentive to hit-and-run, with the dangers to ALL that represents.</p> <p>* I fully believe that this program is NOT about safety or cutting costs for drivers…but is about REVENUE enchantment for the City…to fill the void left by corporate interests which do not pay anything NEAR their fair share of taxes…or which even GET public money for their various business pursuits. Also, of course, it’s about officials doing favors for campaign contributors, to increase their own economic holdings or those of their immediate family, AND to increase future job prospects.</p> <p>Clearly the people (hundreds of THOUSANDS!) ARE scoffing at a law that deserves the greatest scoffing for a host of reasons, as noted above. Officials who enact such stuff are scoffing at the very idea of justice, democracy and humanitarianism…not to mention free-market business principles. If the Parking Authority ordinance has not been changed, officials may themselves be scofflaws here, as so many are in the Billboard situation.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p>	Michael Moore and Me	true	https://counterpunch.org/2002/03/07/michael-moore-and-me-2/	2002-03-07	4left	Michael Moore and Me <p>The mayor of Philly is going to “crack down” on unregistered, uninsured drivers.</p> <p>This campaign, as usual, is packaged as if it’s about “cutting costs” and “safety”. It’s about neither. If one can or cannot afford to patronize private, for-profit insurers, these compulsory insurance laws offer many grounds to call for rejecting the system. This is privatization, at its worst, of a public interest area, that creates endless nightmares, dangers and costs for the people while illegitimately benefiting one private industry…big insurance. It’s no small concern to also consider that the idea of a business-linked government compelling a large segment of the public to hand over profits to a business is a very ominous precedent that ought not be tolerated. It’s not that big a step, now that the public has been conned into accepting it, to the idea of compulsory private health insurance, for all. This isn’t fantasy-land. Sen. Bill Bradley actually promoted just such a policy before the last national elections.</p> <p>Here’s a collection of problem areas with the Philadelphia car insurance situation.</p> <p>* Unless City Council did a sneak law change somewhere along the line, it is the CITY which is the scofflaw by tolerating the use of the Parking Authority for non-parking-related matters…such as this registration/ insurance thing. The Authority’s tow trucks and lots will be used for impoundments. The Authority’s establishing ordinance doesn’t just ignore this to let officials fill in the blanks as they please…the ordinance specifically FORBIDS use of the Authority for things not directly related to parking and the free flow of traffic etc. The Parking Authority’s establishing ordinance does not authorize it to be a Revenue Enhancement operation either…but that’s another topic.</p> <p>* The real and virtual lies used to sell this vicious campaign indicate that it is invalid and that officials know this, but do it anyway. Lie Number One has been somewhat addressed in a March 2 Inquirer article…the parts about how “rates will come down” etc. Often officials sound like they’re advertising Snake Oil by saying things like “we HOPE that rates MAY come down” etc., but notice…there is NEVER any guarantee demanded from the insurers. Who’s in charge anyway? Also, Philly’s invaluable CEPA…Consumer Education and Protection Assn., confirms that nowhere in the country has it been found that rates came down no matter HOW much compliance increased. Insurers can always find an excuse to maintain or raise rates, and officials let them. Lie Number Two, often heard, is that it’s about “SAFETY”. This is patently preposterous. A piece of paper in the glove compartment does nothing to increase safety. The absurd cost of this insurance means that low income people will keep older and less-safe cars on the road and will avoid getting new tires and brakes etc., AND…if one had to pay for their OWN repairs and doctor bills (if not covered elsewhere), one would tend to drive more safely. So…this insurance thing COULD be actually LESS safe.</p> <p>* Viciousness abounds. It’s a big part of the War on The Poor. What’s the average income level of those 400,000 uninsured drivers? As Welfare Cuts kick in for real, along comes the City, not to HELP…but to impound what may be a vehicle that’s necessary for jobs. As public transit rates go up and as routes and schedules are cut, along comes the City to make it even MORE impossible for many to go to school or work or to medical care or relatives or shopping or the works.</p> <p>* It is not hyperbole to note that this program reeks of classic, dictionary-definition and even Mussolini-definition fascism. It is the merger of private business and Public Governing, as the POLICE are used as tools to compel drivers to purchase a PRIVATE commercial service… and, of course, to contribute profits to one of the wealthiest corporate entities in the land, AND to fork over investment money for the insurers to increase holdings in god-knows-what all industries…like cigarette manufacturing, weapons, cigarette ingredients, pesticides, nuke plants, prison industries and the works. Though one may say the insurers can do what they want with their money…it’s not funny that drivers do not have this luxury. This isn’t a Free Market…it’s a compulsory market.</p> <p>* Some say…well, no one’s forcing you to drive and…it’s a “privilege”, not a right. Swell. The same people who created the driving necessity and who did all possible to make public transit as expensive and limited as possible now say drivers have to purchase private insurance.</p> <p>* Radio news about this said that the program would not be about racial profiling. That’s nice. Imagine them saying otherwise. The racism is, conveniently, Built-In…since most of the worst poverty in the city is in the African American and Latina/o communities…for all the well-known historical and current reasons. These are people who are not asked to pay a PERCENT of their income or car value to insurance (as would be the case if the program was Tax Based); they are asked to pay the SAME as, or MORE (!!!) than, the richest drivers in Chestnut Hill! Annual insurance may cost a day’s wages (or interest earnings) or LESS for one person, but may be two month’s income or more for another. Money to come out of kid’s mouths, medical care, clothes budgets and all the rest.</p> <p>If the impoundment program, instead of forcing great compliance, simply makes it impossible for low income minorities to drive, we have taken a step towards increased ghettoization. Absolutely despicable.</p> <p>* Insurance would be easily affordable for almost EVERYONE if it was tax based…on blue book car value, tax on gas at the pump (to also get input from out-of-staters who DO no less contribute to accidents) and from some part of registration fee. Other countries manage such plans quite well. If the gov’t believes it is a Public Interest thing to do, IT must provide the system. Whatever happened to complaints about “unfunded mandates”?…or is that only when the mandate is on a business?</p> <p>* This vicious system is yet another example (like drug laws, most famously) of The Law causing more crime and danger than would exist otherwise. It’s the LAW that caused 400,000 cars (they say), in just One City, to be unregistered and uninsured…and ALSO UN-INSPECTED! That’s SAFETY inspections remember. So…whereas we could have had ALL of those cars safety inspected via a public system, now we got 400,000 actually or potentially UNSAFE cars running around in Philadelphia alone. State-wide figures must be breathtaking. The LAW created a public endangerment of vast scale.</p> <p>* And…it has proven exceedingly difficult to get official rules or statements about the safety of impounded cars and contents. Do, or will, cops do an inventory of contents at time of impoundment to make sure things don’t get stolen? Will cops do check of car condition (like they do at some car rentals) so that City will be liable for damages later? Or is it “tough cookies”…the apparent Motto of The City? If car is destroyed…where do all the fluids go? There’s battery acid, steering fluid, oil, gasoline, anti-freeze and who-knows-what a car may be carrying besides. How much just drains into the ground and then water table? I’ve seen one impoundment lot. It was a toxic swamp.</p> <p>* INJUSTICE. Impoundment of car is a huge penalty for a violation that harms no one and, unless car is a danger, threatens no one. This may mean loss of one’s job or dropping out of school. It may impact entire families, innocents, in every way imaginable.</p> <p>* Arbitrariness and cruelty will reign, unavoidably. Cops will pick and choose, guaranteed, who they will leave out on highways during what weather conditions or times of day…and who they will not. What ARE the guidelines re/ elderly or handicapped or children passengers, or pets? Will they be stuck on the roadside in strange neighborhoods in the rain at night? Will the cops take drivers and passengers to the police stations? Will cops wait til people are picked up by friends or a cab?…IF they have friends or money for a cab. (Can this all be done in the 15 minutes per stop that the mayor mentions?) Will people be able to remove their work equipment from vehicles? Some cops WILL be maybe less zealous and cruel to those who have those FOP stickers or U.S. flags waving…or to folks who are the right racial type, etc. They might just let them go altogether or not run a check in the first place. Others… a different story.</p> <p>* What is the expected effect as over 400,000 people (add the affected family members) come to fear, hate and avoid police? And…with such a Draconian penalty awaiting someone, what’s the incentive for a driver to stop at even a minor accident? Add that to the huge economic and immobilization incentive to hit-and-run, with the dangers to ALL that represents.</p> <p>* I fully believe that this program is NOT about safety or cutting costs for drivers…but is about REVENUE enchantment for the City…to fill the void left by corporate interests which do not pay anything NEAR their fair share of taxes…or which even GET public money for their various business pursuits. Also, of course, it’s about officials doing favors for campaign contributors, to increase their own economic holdings or those of their immediate family, AND to increase future job prospects.</p> <p>Clearly the people (hundreds of THOUSANDS!) ARE scoffing at a law that deserves the greatest scoffing for a host of reasons, as noted above. Officials who enact such stuff are scoffing at the very idea of justice, democracy and humanitarianism…not to mention free-market business principles. If the Parking Authority ordinance has not been changed, officials may themselves be scofflaws here, as so many are in the Billboard situation.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p>	4,339
<p>The&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/17/freedom-industries-executives-indicted_n_6341600.html" type="external">Dec. 16 indictment of Freedom Industries</a>&#160;in West Virginia is the latest example of why in-depth, honest journalism that holds power accountable is so critical to a democratic society.</p> <p>In January 2014, Freedom Industries spilled chemicals into the Elk River,&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/12/west-virginia-chemical-spill-water_n_4585018.html" type="external">tainting drinking water for 300,000 people</a>&#160;in the most populous area of West Virginia. By February, most of the national media had moved on to other stories,&#160; <a href="http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/236019/while-national-media-focuses-on-bridgegate-w-va-reporters-stay-on-water-story/" type="external">like Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal</a>.</p> <p>However, a few bold news organizations chose to dig a little deeper into the companies behind the spill, spend time with people in affected communities, rake through the muck and stick with the story. Occupy.com was one of those organizations, sending me to West Virginia to write a&#160; <a href="http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/236019/while-national-media-focuses-on-bridgegate-w-va-reporters-stay-on-water-story/" type="external">two-piece series</a>&#160;on the spill&#160; <a href="" type="internal">and its aftermath</a>. Eleven months after the spill, Freedom Industries president Gary Southern and several other executives at the company were&#160; <a href="http://media.wvgazette.com/static/coal%20tattoo/Freedom%20Indictment.pdf" type="external">finally indicted</a>&#160;for violating environmental laws and committing multiple acts of fraud. There would have been no pressure to seek justice were it not for the relentless reporting of dedicated journalists in the weeks and months following the spill.</p> <p>On Jan. 9, 10,000 gallons of the chemical MCHM, a coal-cleaning agent, along with the chemical PPH&#160; <a href="http://rt.com/usa/west-virginia-chemical-cancer-373/" type="external">and even formaldehyde, which causes cancer</a>, spilled into the Elk River. By Jan. 15, West Virginia American Water had declared the water safe to drink and bathe in (though&#160; <a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/01/fallout-continues-west-virginia-chemical-spill/" type="external">pregnant women were told</a>&#160;to not drink the water). However, when I visited Charleston that week, residents attending a community forum told me they were sticking solely to drinking bottled water and bathing by heating bottled water – filling a plastic bag with a valve and hanging it from their shower spigot. Nobody there trusted the governor or the water officials who said MCHM levels were low enough to be negligible, especially since water from the faucet still had the signature licorice-like smell of MCHM.</p> <p>National reporters made sure to get images of people lining up for water and capture the bewildered expressions of Gary Southern at a press conference&#160; <a href="http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2014/01/13/this-press-conference-is-over-or-maybe-it-isnt/" type="external">when he tried to duck out early</a>. When the water bans were lifted, the West Virginia water crisis ceased to be breaking news, and the national media was content to let America forget about the story. This made the remaining journalists' jobs that much harder, especially considering that these muckrakers were going up against the coal industry, their bought politicians, and an audience that was wholly on coal's side.</p> <p>Honest Journalism Meets the Corporate State and a Skeptic Public</p> <p>One week after the spill occurred, residents of Van, West Virginia, a small town of roughly 200 people an hour’s drive from Charleston, had their water ban lifted and residents were instructed to flush their hot and cold water systems for 15 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively. On Jan. 16,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">I knocked on the door of Van resident Richard Bishop</a>, who was in the middle of feeding his many cats while his water was running in the kitchen. (When one of them climbed on my lap during our interview, Bishop reached over and tossed the cat to the other side of the couch, yelling “git!”)</p> <p>Like a lot of other West Virginians, Bishop came from a family of coal industry workers and had worked in industry-related jobs for most of his professional life. Even though coal chemicals caused the most recent water crisis, and even though Bishop told me about a similar spill that tainted Van’s drinking water&#160; <a href="http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/BREAKING-NEWS-ALERT-Incident-Turns-River-White-in-Boone-County-222519061.html?device=phone" type="external">just four months prior</a>, he didn’t fault the coal industry for the nearly-constant toxic state of his water. Rather, Bishop blamed the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations on the coal industry, saying that requiring coal to be cleaned with MCHM would have inevitably led to an MCHM spill in water supplies sooner or later.</p> <p>Bishop’s skepticism about the effectiveness of federal regulation of the coal industry is an endemic feature of West Virginia’s pro-coal culture, which made the West Virginia media’s consistent coverage of the spill and its aftermath that much more remarkable. West Virginia’s political establishment is largely funded by the coal industry and coddles the coal industry as a result, making accountability for environmental disasters a pipe dream. West Virginia’s politicians regularly drum up animosity against the federal government’s regulatory agencies in stump speeches every campaign season – for example, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin&#160; <a href="http://www.wv.gov/news/Pages/GovEarlRayTomblinAnnouncesRallyForCoal.aspx" type="external">announced a “Rally for Coal”</a>&#160;in response to new EPA regulations on mountaintop removal mining.</p> <p>Because coal mining is such a staple of West Virginia’s culture, any candidate for public office who endorses environmentalist policies will be unable to raise enough money or support to be effective. Because an anti-environmental platform is a prerequisite to win office, coal-related spills and other disasters are often overlooked by government officials who want to be re-elected. Thus, criminal prosecution for polluters becomes an impossibility without independent voices shedding light on new developments. This is why quality investigative journalism was especially needed in West Virginia after the Elk River spill.</p> <p>Investigative Journalists Create a Case for the Feds</p> <p>After the national media left West Virginia, one of the local outlets that looked deeper into Freedom Industries was the Charleston Gazette. Ken Ward, Jr. reported that Freedom knew in October 2013,&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201402100021" type="external">three months before the spill occurred</a>, that the storage tanks which contained the MCHM, as well as the facility’s drainage system, didn’t meet industry or federal standards. Kate White, also of the Charleston Gazette, wrote in-depth reports on Freedom Industries’&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401170030" type="external">chapter 11 bankruptcy</a>, which allowed them to dodge almost two dozen lawsuits from 20 different creditors.</p> <p>White also broke the story of Freedom owner J. Clifford Forrest forming apparent shell corporations eight days after the spill – strategically set up so that Freedom could&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401210034" type="external">effectively lend money to itself through separate legal entities</a>. And the Gazette’s David Gutman reported on Freedom’s long history of criminal activity, as its founder, Carl Kennedy,&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401120056?page=1" type="external">was convicted of tax evasion and willful failure to pay $1 million in employee tax withholdings</a>.</p> <p>In the&#160; <a href="http://media.wvgazette.com/static/coal%20tattoo/Freedom%20Indictment.pdf" type="external">37-page federal grand jury indictment</a>&#160;handed down to Freedom executives Dennis Farrell, William Tis, Charles Herzing and Gary Southern on Dec. 16, many of the issues that committed journalists unearthed in the weeks and months following the spill are listed in the charges. In the charges relating to violating the Clean Water Act, the indictment cites examples of neglecting to maintain the MCHM storage tanks and drainage infrastructure at federal and industry standards. While Farrell, Tis, and Herzing each face three years for their role in the spill, Gary Southern could face 68 years in jail if convicted of all of his charges. In addition to environmental charges, Southern was also charged with bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud and lying under oath in relation to Freedom’s sudden bankruptcy.</p> <p>The moral of the story? In today’s corrupt and vapid media world, there are still plenty of journalists who won't stop short of digging deep on the corporations behind the degradation of public resources, and providing answers that lead to real justice. This is how proper journalism works.</p> <p />	How Real Journalism Brought Real Justice to West Virginia	true	http://occupy.com/article/how-real-journalism-brought-real-justice-west-virginia		4left	How Real Journalism Brought Real Justice to West Virginia <p>The&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/17/freedom-industries-executives-indicted_n_6341600.html" type="external">Dec. 16 indictment of Freedom Industries</a>&#160;in West Virginia is the latest example of why in-depth, honest journalism that holds power accountable is so critical to a democratic society.</p> <p>In January 2014, Freedom Industries spilled chemicals into the Elk River,&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/12/west-virginia-chemical-spill-water_n_4585018.html" type="external">tainting drinking water for 300,000 people</a>&#160;in the most populous area of West Virginia. By February, most of the national media had moved on to other stories,&#160; <a href="http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/236019/while-national-media-focuses-on-bridgegate-w-va-reporters-stay-on-water-story/" type="external">like Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal</a>.</p> <p>However, a few bold news organizations chose to dig a little deeper into the companies behind the spill, spend time with people in affected communities, rake through the muck and stick with the story. Occupy.com was one of those organizations, sending me to West Virginia to write a&#160; <a href="http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/236019/while-national-media-focuses-on-bridgegate-w-va-reporters-stay-on-water-story/" type="external">two-piece series</a>&#160;on the spill&#160; <a href="" type="internal">and its aftermath</a>. Eleven months after the spill, Freedom Industries president Gary Southern and several other executives at the company were&#160; <a href="http://media.wvgazette.com/static/coal%20tattoo/Freedom%20Indictment.pdf" type="external">finally indicted</a>&#160;for violating environmental laws and committing multiple acts of fraud. There would have been no pressure to seek justice were it not for the relentless reporting of dedicated journalists in the weeks and months following the spill.</p> <p>On Jan. 9, 10,000 gallons of the chemical MCHM, a coal-cleaning agent, along with the chemical PPH&#160; <a href="http://rt.com/usa/west-virginia-chemical-cancer-373/" type="external">and even formaldehyde, which causes cancer</a>, spilled into the Elk River. By Jan. 15, West Virginia American Water had declared the water safe to drink and bathe in (though&#160; <a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/01/fallout-continues-west-virginia-chemical-spill/" type="external">pregnant women were told</a>&#160;to not drink the water). However, when I visited Charleston that week, residents attending a community forum told me they were sticking solely to drinking bottled water and bathing by heating bottled water – filling a plastic bag with a valve and hanging it from their shower spigot. Nobody there trusted the governor or the water officials who said MCHM levels were low enough to be negligible, especially since water from the faucet still had the signature licorice-like smell of MCHM.</p> <p>National reporters made sure to get images of people lining up for water and capture the bewildered expressions of Gary Southern at a press conference&#160; <a href="http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2014/01/13/this-press-conference-is-over-or-maybe-it-isnt/" type="external">when he tried to duck out early</a>. When the water bans were lifted, the West Virginia water crisis ceased to be breaking news, and the national media was content to let America forget about the story. This made the remaining journalists' jobs that much harder, especially considering that these muckrakers were going up against the coal industry, their bought politicians, and an audience that was wholly on coal's side.</p> <p>Honest Journalism Meets the Corporate State and a Skeptic Public</p> <p>One week after the spill occurred, residents of Van, West Virginia, a small town of roughly 200 people an hour’s drive from Charleston, had their water ban lifted and residents were instructed to flush their hot and cold water systems for 15 minutes and 5 minutes, respectively. On Jan. 16,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">I knocked on the door of Van resident Richard Bishop</a>, who was in the middle of feeding his many cats while his water was running in the kitchen. (When one of them climbed on my lap during our interview, Bishop reached over and tossed the cat to the other side of the couch, yelling “git!”)</p> <p>Like a lot of other West Virginians, Bishop came from a family of coal industry workers and had worked in industry-related jobs for most of his professional life. Even though coal chemicals caused the most recent water crisis, and even though Bishop told me about a similar spill that tainted Van’s drinking water&#160; <a href="http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/BREAKING-NEWS-ALERT-Incident-Turns-River-White-in-Boone-County-222519061.html?device=phone" type="external">just four months prior</a>, he didn’t fault the coal industry for the nearly-constant toxic state of his water. Rather, Bishop blamed the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations on the coal industry, saying that requiring coal to be cleaned with MCHM would have inevitably led to an MCHM spill in water supplies sooner or later.</p> <p>Bishop’s skepticism about the effectiveness of federal regulation of the coal industry is an endemic feature of West Virginia’s pro-coal culture, which made the West Virginia media’s consistent coverage of the spill and its aftermath that much more remarkable. West Virginia’s political establishment is largely funded by the coal industry and coddles the coal industry as a result, making accountability for environmental disasters a pipe dream. West Virginia’s politicians regularly drum up animosity against the federal government’s regulatory agencies in stump speeches every campaign season – for example, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin&#160; <a href="http://www.wv.gov/news/Pages/GovEarlRayTomblinAnnouncesRallyForCoal.aspx" type="external">announced a “Rally for Coal”</a>&#160;in response to new EPA regulations on mountaintop removal mining.</p> <p>Because coal mining is such a staple of West Virginia’s culture, any candidate for public office who endorses environmentalist policies will be unable to raise enough money or support to be effective. Because an anti-environmental platform is a prerequisite to win office, coal-related spills and other disasters are often overlooked by government officials who want to be re-elected. Thus, criminal prosecution for polluters becomes an impossibility without independent voices shedding light on new developments. This is why quality investigative journalism was especially needed in West Virginia after the Elk River spill.</p> <p>Investigative Journalists Create a Case for the Feds</p> <p>After the national media left West Virginia, one of the local outlets that looked deeper into Freedom Industries was the Charleston Gazette. Ken Ward, Jr. reported that Freedom knew in October 2013,&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201402100021" type="external">three months before the spill occurred</a>, that the storage tanks which contained the MCHM, as well as the facility’s drainage system, didn’t meet industry or federal standards. Kate White, also of the Charleston Gazette, wrote in-depth reports on Freedom Industries’&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401170030" type="external">chapter 11 bankruptcy</a>, which allowed them to dodge almost two dozen lawsuits from 20 different creditors.</p> <p>White also broke the story of Freedom owner J. Clifford Forrest forming apparent shell corporations eight days after the spill – strategically set up so that Freedom could&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401210034" type="external">effectively lend money to itself through separate legal entities</a>. And the Gazette’s David Gutman reported on Freedom’s long history of criminal activity, as its founder, Carl Kennedy,&#160; <a href="http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201401120056?page=1" type="external">was convicted of tax evasion and willful failure to pay $1 million in employee tax withholdings</a>.</p> <p>In the&#160; <a href="http://media.wvgazette.com/static/coal%20tattoo/Freedom%20Indictment.pdf" type="external">37-page federal grand jury indictment</a>&#160;handed down to Freedom executives Dennis Farrell, William Tis, Charles Herzing and Gary Southern on Dec. 16, many of the issues that committed journalists unearthed in the weeks and months following the spill are listed in the charges. In the charges relating to violating the Clean Water Act, the indictment cites examples of neglecting to maintain the MCHM storage tanks and drainage infrastructure at federal and industry standards. While Farrell, Tis, and Herzing each face three years for their role in the spill, Gary Southern could face 68 years in jail if convicted of all of his charges. In addition to environmental charges, Southern was also charged with bankruptcy fraud, wire fraud and lying under oath in relation to Freedom’s sudden bankruptcy.</p> <p>The moral of the story? In today’s corrupt and vapid media world, there are still plenty of journalists who won't stop short of digging deep on the corporations behind the degradation of public resources, and providing answers that lead to real justice. This is how proper journalism works.</p> <p />	4,340
<p /> <p>Altria Group (NYSE: MO) has produced extremely strong performance for shareholders lately, posting average annual returns of more than 23% over the past five years. The company behind the world-renowned Marlboro brand has investors excited about its future, and signs of growth in its core cigarette business as well as in smaller businesses like smokeless tobacco and wine have inspired a record-setting run for the stock. Yet investors need to take one indication of Altria's attractiveness as an investment with a grain of salt, because it reflects a temporary situation that will go away over the next year. If you don't plan for that inevitable event, then you could find yourself unpleasantly surprised.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Recently, Altria has come up on many value investing screens as being a great buy at current prices. In particular, those who track price-to-earnings ratios have seen Altria appear quite frequently on their radar, and that's not terribly surprising in light of the fact that the tobacco giant's stock currently sports a trailing earnings multiple of less than 10.</p> <p>Long-time investors in Altria are used to seeing relatively low valuations for the cigarette stock. The threat of litigation and other large liability events has loomed over Altria for years, and investors routinely forced Altria to suffer a significant discount to the market's earnings multiple in order to account for that increased risk.</p> <p>Image source: Altria.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Yet today's low earnings multiples for Altria stem not from investor concern but rather from a one-time boost in the company's bottom line. Out of the $21.85 billion in pre-tax profit that Altria posted during 2016, nearly two-thirds -- $13.9 billion -- came from gains related to the combination of beer giants SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD).</p> <p>The nature of the SABMiller deal dictated Altria's tax exposure to the sale of its 27% stake in the company. Upon completion of the transaction, Altria received about 185 million restricted shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev stock, along with $4.8 billion in pre-tax cash as the cash component of the merger agreement. In addition, Altria had opened a derivative position in order to hedge currency risk from the deal, and that produced roughly $500 million in additional cash.</p> <p>Most of the gain stemmed from the difference between the share price of Anheuser-Busch InBev on the day the transaction was completed and the book value at which Altria had carried its position in SABMiller. In addition, some further gain resulted from divestitures that Anheuser-Busch InBev did following the deal closing. As Altria noted, most of the gain from the merger was eligible for tax deferral treatment under U.S. corporate tax law, but to the extent that the tobacco giant received cash in exchange for a portion of its stake in SABMiller, it had to pay taxes on gains.</p> <p>Once that one-time gain falls off the company's 12-month trailing earnings, Altria investors will see the stock's P/E ratio climb considerably. Already, investors are predicting that on a forward-looking basis, Altria's earnings multiple is likely to double to 20 by the end of 2017. That's above the market average even in an environment in which many see the overall market as being overvalued, and it reflects the desirability of Altria's consistent flows of dividend income and defensive characteristics.</p> <p>Altria's new position in Anheuser-Busch InBev will provide an additional growth component to the company's core tobacco business, and investors are right to be excited about the opportunities that Altria's partnership with the beer behemoth will bring to its financial statements in the future. Nevertheless, Altria investors can't afford to think that they're getting a huge bargain for their shares based on current trailing earnings. Those who make that mistake will get a rude awakening when the effects of the SABMiller deal fade into the past later this year.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than Altria GroupWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=dfd1e464-662e-4beb-ae2a-e7e4c7e6c20f&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Altria Group wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=dfd1e464-662e-4beb-ae2a-e7e4c7e6c20f&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Anheuser-Busch InBev NV. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	The Biggest Danger for Altria Group Investors Right Now	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/07/biggest-danger-for-altria-group-investors-right-now.html	2017-04-07	0right	The Biggest Danger for Altria Group Investors Right Now <p /> <p>Altria Group (NYSE: MO) has produced extremely strong performance for shareholders lately, posting average annual returns of more than 23% over the past five years. The company behind the world-renowned Marlboro brand has investors excited about its future, and signs of growth in its core cigarette business as well as in smaller businesses like smokeless tobacco and wine have inspired a record-setting run for the stock. Yet investors need to take one indication of Altria's attractiveness as an investment with a grain of salt, because it reflects a temporary situation that will go away over the next year. If you don't plan for that inevitable event, then you could find yourself unpleasantly surprised.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Recently, Altria has come up on many value investing screens as being a great buy at current prices. In particular, those who track price-to-earnings ratios have seen Altria appear quite frequently on their radar, and that's not terribly surprising in light of the fact that the tobacco giant's stock currently sports a trailing earnings multiple of less than 10.</p> <p>Long-time investors in Altria are used to seeing relatively low valuations for the cigarette stock. The threat of litigation and other large liability events has loomed over Altria for years, and investors routinely forced Altria to suffer a significant discount to the market's earnings multiple in order to account for that increased risk.</p> <p>Image source: Altria.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Yet today's low earnings multiples for Altria stem not from investor concern but rather from a one-time boost in the company's bottom line. Out of the $21.85 billion in pre-tax profit that Altria posted during 2016, nearly two-thirds -- $13.9 billion -- came from gains related to the combination of beer giants SABMiller and Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD).</p> <p>The nature of the SABMiller deal dictated Altria's tax exposure to the sale of its 27% stake in the company. Upon completion of the transaction, Altria received about 185 million restricted shares of Anheuser-Busch InBev stock, along with $4.8 billion in pre-tax cash as the cash component of the merger agreement. In addition, Altria had opened a derivative position in order to hedge currency risk from the deal, and that produced roughly $500 million in additional cash.</p> <p>Most of the gain stemmed from the difference between the share price of Anheuser-Busch InBev on the day the transaction was completed and the book value at which Altria had carried its position in SABMiller. In addition, some further gain resulted from divestitures that Anheuser-Busch InBev did following the deal closing. As Altria noted, most of the gain from the merger was eligible for tax deferral treatment under U.S. corporate tax law, but to the extent that the tobacco giant received cash in exchange for a portion of its stake in SABMiller, it had to pay taxes on gains.</p> <p>Once that one-time gain falls off the company's 12-month trailing earnings, Altria investors will see the stock's P/E ratio climb considerably. Already, investors are predicting that on a forward-looking basis, Altria's earnings multiple is likely to double to 20 by the end of 2017. That's above the market average even in an environment in which many see the overall market as being overvalued, and it reflects the desirability of Altria's consistent flows of dividend income and defensive characteristics.</p> <p>Altria's new position in Anheuser-Busch InBev will provide an additional growth component to the company's core tobacco business, and investors are right to be excited about the opportunities that Altria's partnership with the beer behemoth will bring to its financial statements in the future. Nevertheless, Altria investors can't afford to think that they're getting a huge bargain for their shares based on current trailing earnings. Those who make that mistake will get a rude awakening when the effects of the SABMiller deal fade into the past later this year.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than Altria GroupWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=dfd1e464-662e-4beb-ae2a-e7e4c7e6c20f&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Altria Group wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=dfd1e464-662e-4beb-ae2a-e7e4c7e6c20f&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Anheuser-Busch InBev NV. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	4,341
<p /> <p>Image Source: Getty Images.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Risk is one of those words that get thrown around a lot in the world of investing, but so few investors sit down and try to understand what the most important risks are for them. As a long-term investor, chances are volatility isn't as important a risk factor for you. One risk that should be high on your list is inflation. After all, if your investment can't beat the slow creep of inflation, then it's losing you money.</p> <p>So we asked three of our contributors to highlight one stock they think is a relatively safe bet for beating inflation over the long haul. Here's what they had to say.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Matt DiLallo Opens a New Window.</a>: The easy way to beat inflation is to invest in assets that already have built-in inflation escalators. Few are better at doing that than Brookfield Asset Management . The company's focus is on owning real assets such as real estate, infrastructure, and power-generation stations, whose value tends to rise with inflation. Further, the bulk of the cash flow generated by these assets is secured by contracts that often contain inflation escalators.</p> <p>For example,70% of the earningsof Brookfield Asset Management's infrastructure arm, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners , are set to capture inflationary increases due to regulated mandates and long-term contracts. The company's renewable power arm, Brookfield Renewable Partners , has similar inflation protection because 90% of its revenue has inflation-linked escalation contract clauses. Even the company's real estate subsidiary, Brookfield Property Partners , captures inflationary increases via escalating rents and rising property values.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Not only does Brookfield Asset Management have inflation covered, but it is poised to beat it comfortably. The company's revenue has several additional escalators, including those linked to GDP growth, occupancy increases, and redevelopment gains. Further, the company has a diverse set of organic growth projects across its portfolio as well as a history of accretive mergers and acquisitions to drive incremental earnings growth. Needless to say, Brookfield Asset Management is well positioned to outpace inflation in the years to come.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a>:The best way to beat inflation is to find a stock that has the pricing power to pass on any cost increases to its consumers. Athletic shoe and apparel giant Nike has the clout within the industry to do exactly that, and it is already able to sell its products at a huge premium to their cost. Over the past year, Nike has brought in $32.4 billion in revenue, but it spent only $17.4 billion on the cost of goods sold, which includes the materials and labor necessary to manufacture its apparel and shoe products. Nike's 46% gross margin is a primary contributor to its financial success, and it demonstrates the extent to which its brand loyalty overcomes the upward march of inflation over time.</p> <p>Moreover, Nike's brand strength continues to solidify worldwide. In late June, Nike reported record annual sales of $32.4 billion, which grew 6% from the previous year's revenue. Earnings per share grew at an even faster 17% pace, even though higher overhead expenses and strong currency headwinds kept the company's bottom line from climbing even faster. As it keeps following its business model of latching onto superstar athletes and getting key endorsements for its products, Nike is staying ahead of its smaller competitors and demonstrating its ability to overcome inflation and become even more profitable over time.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFDirtyBird/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Tyler Crowe Opens a New Window.</a>: I'm in the same boat as Matt in this case. If losing to inflation is a major concern, then why not invest in a business that gets to constantly up its prices because of inflation? A large portion of Magellan Midstream Partners' refined-petroleum product pipeline network serves places that are considered to have a lack of competition by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. So, much like a regulated utility, the fees it charges are regulated and revised annually. Much of that fee change has to do with generating a fixed return on investment, and the number is always adjusted for inflation.</p> <p>This kind of fee structure has been quite valuable for Magellan as it has provided it with very consistent streams of growing profits over the years. Those profits have been returned to shareholders in the form of a distribution that has grown at a 13% rate annually. That sort of distribution growth is well above anything inflation can throw at you, and it has generated very strong total returns over the past decade.</p> <p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/MMP/ebitda_ttm" type="external">MMP EBITDA (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> <p>Magellan's management has been keen to grow its business while keeping a much more conservative balance sheet than many of its pipeline and master limited partnership peers. If it continues to do so, its stock should more than likely be able to continue to outpace inflation for its investors.</p> <p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/02/want-to-beat-inflation-then-youll-love-these-3-sto.aspx" type="external">Want to Beat Inflation? Then You'll Love These 3 Stocks Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Matt DiLallo</a> owns shares of Brookfield Asset Management, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, and Brookfield Property Partners. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFDirtyBird/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Tyler Crowe</a> owns shares of Brookfield Asset Management and Magellan Midstream Partners. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nike. The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and Magellan Midstream Partners. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> <p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	Want to Beat Inflation? Then You'll Love These 3 Stocks	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/07/02/want-to-beat-inflation-then-youll-love-these-3-stocks.html	2016-07-02	0right	Want to Beat Inflation? Then You'll Love These 3 Stocks <p /> <p>Image Source: Getty Images.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Risk is one of those words that get thrown around a lot in the world of investing, but so few investors sit down and try to understand what the most important risks are for them. As a long-term investor, chances are volatility isn't as important a risk factor for you. One risk that should be high on your list is inflation. After all, if your investment can't beat the slow creep of inflation, then it's losing you money.</p> <p>So we asked three of our contributors to highlight one stock they think is a relatively safe bet for beating inflation over the long haul. Here's what they had to say.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Matt DiLallo Opens a New Window.</a>: The easy way to beat inflation is to invest in assets that already have built-in inflation escalators. Few are better at doing that than Brookfield Asset Management . The company's focus is on owning real assets such as real estate, infrastructure, and power-generation stations, whose value tends to rise with inflation. Further, the bulk of the cash flow generated by these assets is secured by contracts that often contain inflation escalators.</p> <p>For example,70% of the earningsof Brookfield Asset Management's infrastructure arm, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners , are set to capture inflationary increases due to regulated mandates and long-term contracts. The company's renewable power arm, Brookfield Renewable Partners , has similar inflation protection because 90% of its revenue has inflation-linked escalation contract clauses. Even the company's real estate subsidiary, Brookfield Property Partners , captures inflationary increases via escalating rents and rising property values.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Not only does Brookfield Asset Management have inflation covered, but it is poised to beat it comfortably. The company's revenue has several additional escalators, including those linked to GDP growth, occupancy increases, and redevelopment gains. Further, the company has a diverse set of organic growth projects across its portfolio as well as a history of accretive mergers and acquisitions to drive incremental earnings growth. Needless to say, Brookfield Asset Management is well positioned to outpace inflation in the years to come.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a>:The best way to beat inflation is to find a stock that has the pricing power to pass on any cost increases to its consumers. Athletic shoe and apparel giant Nike has the clout within the industry to do exactly that, and it is already able to sell its products at a huge premium to their cost. Over the past year, Nike has brought in $32.4 billion in revenue, but it spent only $17.4 billion on the cost of goods sold, which includes the materials and labor necessary to manufacture its apparel and shoe products. Nike's 46% gross margin is a primary contributor to its financial success, and it demonstrates the extent to which its brand loyalty overcomes the upward march of inflation over time.</p> <p>Moreover, Nike's brand strength continues to solidify worldwide. In late June, Nike reported record annual sales of $32.4 billion, which grew 6% from the previous year's revenue. Earnings per share grew at an even faster 17% pace, even though higher overhead expenses and strong currency headwinds kept the company's bottom line from climbing even faster. As it keeps following its business model of latching onto superstar athletes and getting key endorsements for its products, Nike is staying ahead of its smaller competitors and demonstrating its ability to overcome inflation and become even more profitable over time.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFDirtyBird/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Tyler Crowe Opens a New Window.</a>: I'm in the same boat as Matt in this case. If losing to inflation is a major concern, then why not invest in a business that gets to constantly up its prices because of inflation? A large portion of Magellan Midstream Partners' refined-petroleum product pipeline network serves places that are considered to have a lack of competition by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. So, much like a regulated utility, the fees it charges are regulated and revised annually. Much of that fee change has to do with generating a fixed return on investment, and the number is always adjusted for inflation.</p> <p>This kind of fee structure has been quite valuable for Magellan as it has provided it with very consistent streams of growing profits over the years. Those profits have been returned to shareholders in the form of a distribution that has grown at a 13% rate annually. That sort of distribution growth is well above anything inflation can throw at you, and it has generated very strong total returns over the past decade.</p> <p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/MMP/ebitda_ttm" type="external">MMP EBITDA (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> <p>Magellan's management has been keen to grow its business while keeping a much more conservative balance sheet than many of its pipeline and master limited partnership peers. If it continues to do so, its stock should more than likely be able to continue to outpace inflation for its investors.</p> <p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/02/want-to-beat-inflation-then-youll-love-these-3-sto.aspx" type="external">Want to Beat Inflation? Then You'll Love These 3 Stocks Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFmd19/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Matt DiLallo</a> owns shares of Brookfield Asset Management, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, and Brookfield Property Partners. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFDirtyBird/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Tyler Crowe</a> owns shares of Brookfield Asset Management and Magellan Midstream Partners. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nike. The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Infrastructure Partners and Magellan Midstream Partners. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> <p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	4,342
<p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck has added three assistants and made two promotions in a staff shuffle for his second season.</p> <p>Fleck announced Wednesday he’s hired Clay Patterson in a to-be-determined on-field coaching role and Donald Celiscar and Michael Priefer Jr. as graduate assistants.</p> <p>Patterson was the head coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&amp;M the last two years. Celiscar played for Fleck at Western Michigan. Priefer, who attended Mound Westonka High School in the Twin Cities area and played defensive back at Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is the son of Minnesota Vikings special teams coordinator Mike Priefer.</p> <p>Joe Rossi was also promoted from quality control assistant to defensive line coach, and special teams coordinator Rob Wenger added outside linebackers to his supervision. Bryce Paup moved from defensive line coach to pass rush specialist.</p> <p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck has added three assistants and made two promotions in a staff shuffle for his second season.</p> <p>Fleck announced Wednesday he’s hired Clay Patterson in a to-be-determined on-field coaching role and Donald Celiscar and Michael Priefer Jr. as graduate assistants.</p> <p>Patterson was the head coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&amp;M the last two years. Celiscar played for Fleck at Western Michigan. Priefer, who attended Mound Westonka High School in the Twin Cities area and played defensive back at Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is the son of Minnesota Vikings special teams coordinator Mike Priefer.</p> <p>Joe Rossi was also promoted from quality control assistant to defensive line coach, and special teams coordinator Rob Wenger added outside linebackers to his supervision. Bryce Paup moved from defensive line coach to pass rush specialist.</p>	Fleck makes staff adds, promotions for 2nd year with Gophers	false	https://apnews.com/68dc8758ea574a8d994d69f55ccd1777	2018-01-17	2least	Fleck makes staff adds, promotions for 2nd year with Gophers <p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck has added three assistants and made two promotions in a staff shuffle for his second season.</p> <p>Fleck announced Wednesday he’s hired Clay Patterson in a to-be-determined on-field coaching role and Donald Celiscar and Michael Priefer Jr. as graduate assistants.</p> <p>Patterson was the head coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&amp;M the last two years. Celiscar played for Fleck at Western Michigan. Priefer, who attended Mound Westonka High School in the Twin Cities area and played defensive back at Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is the son of Minnesota Vikings special teams coordinator Mike Priefer.</p> <p>Joe Rossi was also promoted from quality control assistant to defensive line coach, and special teams coordinator Rob Wenger added outside linebackers to his supervision. Bryce Paup moved from defensive line coach to pass rush specialist.</p> <p>MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck has added three assistants and made two promotions in a staff shuffle for his second season.</p> <p>Fleck announced Wednesday he’s hired Clay Patterson in a to-be-determined on-field coaching role and Donald Celiscar and Michael Priefer Jr. as graduate assistants.</p> <p>Patterson was the head coach at Northeastern Oklahoma A&amp;M the last two years. Celiscar played for Fleck at Western Michigan. Priefer, who attended Mound Westonka High School in the Twin Cities area and played defensive back at Wisconsin-Eau Claire, is the son of Minnesota Vikings special teams coordinator Mike Priefer.</p> <p>Joe Rossi was also promoted from quality control assistant to defensive line coach, and special teams coordinator Rob Wenger added outside linebackers to his supervision. Bryce Paup moved from defensive line coach to pass rush specialist.</p>	4,343
<p>Over at&#160; <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2011/08/11/why-minorities-reach-for-bottled-water-over-tap-how-marketers-drive-habit/" type="external">Forbes</a>, Nadia Arumugam writes that bottled water companies have been actively marketing their products to minority groups, with ads targeting black and Latino mothers, and endorsements from celebrities like TLC’s Chilli and Hispanic TV host <a href="http://www.cristinaonline.com/" type="external">Cristina Saralegui</a>.&#160;</p> <p>Below, Chilli talks about making the Dasani ad with her son:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Judging from a new study published <a href="http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/archpediatrics.2011.83v1" type="external">by the American Medical Association</a>, the PR push is working. Researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin found that Latinos and African Americans are more likely to give bottled water to their children and spend up to twice as much of their household income on bottled water as do whites. After surveying some 640 people they found that Latinos and African Americans are more likely to consume bottled water largely because they view tap water as a health risk. From the study:</p> <p>Beliefs about tap water safety and cleanliness, preference for bottled water taste, and perceived bottled water convenience had the strongest association with the use of bottled water. Obtaining information about tap water from environmental organizations was also associated with greater odds of bottled water use.</p> <p>Latinos and African Americans, the survey found, spent up to 12 and 16.7 percent of their household income on bottled water, respectively, while white Americans spent up to 6 percent. The racial/ethnic gap in bottled water consumption could be explained by “actual differences in current tap water quality,” the study notes, and survey responses supported this notion, finding that “prior experience is related to water choices.”</p> <p>America’s water system faces an annual funding shortfall of at least $11 billion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. In their <a href="http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/drinking-water" type="external">2009 Report Card for American Infrastructure</a>, the group gave a disappointing D- for drinking water, arguing that the country’s ability to prevent failure in drinking-water systems and maintain them are inadequate. Disruptions in water delivery services “can hinder disaster response and recover efforts, expose the public to water-borne contaminants, and cause damage to roadways, structures, and other infrastructure, endangering lives and resulting in billions of dollars in losses.”</p> <p>Such weaknesses might be more acute in rural and low-income communities. According to the <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf" type="external">US Census Bureau</a> (PDF), Latino and African Americans together make up almost half of the US population living under the poverty line. The <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/latino/english/latino_en.pdf" type="external">Natural Resources Defense Council reported</a> (PDF) in 2004 that 3 in 5 African and Latino Americans live in communities that are also home to Superfund sites, which are prone to releasing toxins into nearby groundwater supplies. In a March 2011 <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gleick/detail?entry_id=85136" type="external">case study of California’s San Joaquin Valley</a>, the environmental group Pacific Institute warned that nearby communities were probably drinking water contaminated with nitrates above EPA-sanctioned levels and likely coming from agricultural fertilizers. Those most at risk, the report found, were disproportionately low-income households and Spanish-speaking residents.</p> <p>Back in 2007, three scholars from the University of Illinois <a href="http://www.eoearth.org/article/Water_and_poverty_in_the_United_States" type="external">argued in the journal Geoforum</a> that such a disparity is often ignored because people tend to assume that the United States provides universal access to safe drinking water. Not true, they say:</p> <p>Contrary to reports of 100 percent access to safe water and sanitation in international surveys, the United States has a complex landscape of low-income water systems…The vast majority of urban and rural poor in the US do have access to water and sanitation. However, even cursory observation of poor areas in the US indicates residents who lack access to basic indoor water and plumbing. They include some among the urban homeless, migrant workers, residents of colonias along the US-Mexico border, and remote areas of Native American reservations…</p> <p>You can’t blame people for choosing bottled water when the tap water sucks. But unfortunately, bottled water comes with pretty serious environmental consequences. There’s the obvious waste problem, to start. Somewhere around 2.4 million tons of polyethylene terephthalate&#160;plastic (commonly used for bottling drinks) is <a href="http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html" type="external">discarded in the US</a> each year, and up to 41 percent of that comes from water bottles. Nor are bottled water companies the kind you’d want in your neighborhood. <a href="" type="internal">Mother Jones has reported</a> extensively on <a href="" type="internal">Fiji Water’s practices</a> in particular, whether it’s turning its cheek away from the island’s oppression under the military junta, disregarding the local populace’s lack of access to water, or <a href="" type="internal">burning its trash</a> in nearby towns.</p> <p>The underlying and perhaps most sobering threat here is that unsafe tap water, whether perceived or real, could be contributing to the financial burden on low-income communities. And if safe tap water were more widely available, maybe people wouldn’t be so vulnerable to bottled water companies’ marketing ploys, regardless of ethnicity.</p>	Why Bottled Water Companies Target Blacks and Latinos	true	https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/08/bottled-waters-ethnic-gap/	2011-08-15	4left	Why Bottled Water Companies Target Blacks and Latinos <p>Over at&#160; <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2011/08/11/why-minorities-reach-for-bottled-water-over-tap-how-marketers-drive-habit/" type="external">Forbes</a>, Nadia Arumugam writes that bottled water companies have been actively marketing their products to minority groups, with ads targeting black and Latino mothers, and endorsements from celebrities like TLC’s Chilli and Hispanic TV host <a href="http://www.cristinaonline.com/" type="external">Cristina Saralegui</a>.&#160;</p> <p>Below, Chilli talks about making the Dasani ad with her son:</p> <p /> <p /> <p>Judging from a new study published <a href="http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/archpediatrics.2011.83v1" type="external">by the American Medical Association</a>, the PR push is working. Researchers from the Medical College of Wisconsin found that Latinos and African Americans are more likely to give bottled water to their children and spend up to twice as much of their household income on bottled water as do whites. After surveying some 640 people they found that Latinos and African Americans are more likely to consume bottled water largely because they view tap water as a health risk. From the study:</p> <p>Beliefs about tap water safety and cleanliness, preference for bottled water taste, and perceived bottled water convenience had the strongest association with the use of bottled water. Obtaining information about tap water from environmental organizations was also associated with greater odds of bottled water use.</p> <p>Latinos and African Americans, the survey found, spent up to 12 and 16.7 percent of their household income on bottled water, respectively, while white Americans spent up to 6 percent. The racial/ethnic gap in bottled water consumption could be explained by “actual differences in current tap water quality,” the study notes, and survey responses supported this notion, finding that “prior experience is related to water choices.”</p> <p>America’s water system faces an annual funding shortfall of at least $11 billion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. In their <a href="http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/drinking-water" type="external">2009 Report Card for American Infrastructure</a>, the group gave a disappointing D- for drinking water, arguing that the country’s ability to prevent failure in drinking-water systems and maintain them are inadequate. Disruptions in water delivery services “can hinder disaster response and recover efforts, expose the public to water-borne contaminants, and cause damage to roadways, structures, and other infrastructure, endangering lives and resulting in billions of dollars in losses.”</p> <p>Such weaknesses might be more acute in rural and low-income communities. According to the <a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf" type="external">US Census Bureau</a> (PDF), Latino and African Americans together make up almost half of the US population living under the poverty line. The <a href="http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/latino/english/latino_en.pdf" type="external">Natural Resources Defense Council reported</a> (PDF) in 2004 that 3 in 5 African and Latino Americans live in communities that are also home to Superfund sites, which are prone to releasing toxins into nearby groundwater supplies. In a March 2011 <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/gleick/detail?entry_id=85136" type="external">case study of California’s San Joaquin Valley</a>, the environmental group Pacific Institute warned that nearby communities were probably drinking water contaminated with nitrates above EPA-sanctioned levels and likely coming from agricultural fertilizers. Those most at risk, the report found, were disproportionately low-income households and Spanish-speaking residents.</p> <p>Back in 2007, three scholars from the University of Illinois <a href="http://www.eoearth.org/article/Water_and_poverty_in_the_United_States" type="external">argued in the journal Geoforum</a> that such a disparity is often ignored because people tend to assume that the United States provides universal access to safe drinking water. Not true, they say:</p> <p>Contrary to reports of 100 percent access to safe water and sanitation in international surveys, the United States has a complex landscape of low-income water systems…The vast majority of urban and rural poor in the US do have access to water and sanitation. However, even cursory observation of poor areas in the US indicates residents who lack access to basic indoor water and plumbing. They include some among the urban homeless, migrant workers, residents of colonias along the US-Mexico border, and remote areas of Native American reservations…</p> <p>You can’t blame people for choosing bottled water when the tap water sucks. But unfortunately, bottled water comes with pretty serious environmental consequences. There’s the obvious waste problem, to start. Somewhere around 2.4 million tons of polyethylene terephthalate&#160;plastic (commonly used for bottling drinks) is <a href="http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html" type="external">discarded in the US</a> each year, and up to 41 percent of that comes from water bottles. Nor are bottled water companies the kind you’d want in your neighborhood. <a href="" type="internal">Mother Jones has reported</a> extensively on <a href="" type="internal">Fiji Water’s practices</a> in particular, whether it’s turning its cheek away from the island’s oppression under the military junta, disregarding the local populace’s lack of access to water, or <a href="" type="internal">burning its trash</a> in nearby towns.</p> <p>The underlying and perhaps most sobering threat here is that unsafe tap water, whether perceived or real, could be contributing to the financial burden on low-income communities. And if safe tap water were more widely available, maybe people wouldn’t be so vulnerable to bottled water companies’ marketing ploys, regardless of ethnicity.</p>	4,344
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/china/" type="external">China</a>’s ruling Communist Party has finally released a date, if not a full agenda, for its National Congress, the quinquennial event that formally decides who will run the world’s most populous country for the next five years and what direction it will take.</p> <p>The showcase gathering, to kick off Oct. 18, and last up to 10 days, will elect the 25-member inner circle of government, known as the Politburo, and will reshuffle the party’s 400-member Central Committee. Most importantly, the congress is expected to confirm the strength and position of <a href="http://variety.com/t/xi-jinping/" type="external">Xi Jinping</a>, general secretary of the party and China’s president.</p> <p>Xi has already been in the job since the last National Congress five years ago and has worked tirelessly to make himself the most powerful Chinese leader in decades. This year’s congress is expected to give him even more leverage, though exactly how much more and what he will do with it remains to be seen.</p> <p>In the statement announcing the National Congress, released late Thursday, Xi is once again described as a “core” leader – a title bestowed on only two previous presidents. Analysts expect a line of political philosophy to be named after Xi, but that philosophy&#160;is not yet wholly clear. He has launched a huge anti-corruption drive that has toppled military generals, senior party figures, top-ranked civil servants and high-flying businessmen but that has also removed challengers and bolstered his personal position.</p> <p>Observers will be watching for signs, particularly in his choice of appointments, of whether Xi is grooming a successor or whether he plans to lay the groundwork for ditching the rules on retirement age in order to secure a third mandate in 2022.</p> <p>The National Congress’ stated policy objectives are boringly familiar. Its “four comprehensive” goals are to promote “a moderately prosperous society, deepen reform, advance rule of law, and strengthen strict Party governance.” It aims also to “create new prospects for Socialism with Chinese characteristics.”</p> <p>One aspect of Xi’s political credo seems to be the need for a dominant leader who will guide China through tougher times ahead. A slowing economy, international frictions and a technological balancing act may all call for the Xi brand of tough, conservative, focused leadership.</p> <p>Over the past 30 years, China has made astonishing economic progress and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and into a burgeoning, predominantly urban, middle class. One side effect of ballooning disposable income has been a rejuvenated cinema industry. The economy is still expanding at more than 6.5% per year.</p> <p>But Xi is worried by the mountains of debt that have been built by provincial governments and by large corporations. Recently, the Chinese government confirmed that big overseas acquisitions in the entertainment sector are off the table for the time being, as seen in the collapse of such deals as <a href="http://variety.com/t/dalian-wanda/" type="external">Dalian Wanda</a>’s attempted purchase of Dick Clark Productions.</p> <p>Indeed, while Xi&#160;turned up with a huge retinue of Chinese business leaders to proclaim the advantages of international trade at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, he is no economic liberal. &#160;He wants trade on China’s terms. Foreign capital is welcome, but investment is taboo in many sectors – film and TV, for example – and it cannot be allowed to challenge local champions. That puts China in breach of several of its <a href="http://variety.com/t/world-trade-organization/" type="external">World Trade Organization</a> obligations, but the criticisms are regularly shrugged off.</p> <p>In the past year, Xi has put increasing emphasis on central control of the economy, through regular intervention in the stock markets, the maintenance of a closed capital account, and punishment for private companies that are not doing enough of the government’s bidding. (The recent troubles besetting Wanda may offer one of the clearest examples.) In their place, inefficient but obedient state-owned enterprises are being pushed forward, along with the new Silk Road development policy known as the Belt and Road Initiative.</p> <p>Xi’s relationship with technology and the media has sparked concern. While hundreds of millions of Chinese have turned to mobile devices and the Internet for news, entertainment, and commentary, China has updated legislation to extend government control of the domestic online space, part of what Xi described last year as “Internet sovereignty.”&#160;China has toughened rules on foreign content, shut down VPNs, crimped live-streaming activity, and all but outlawed news reporting by non-state organizations.</p> <p>Chinese tech giants <a href="http://variety.com/t/alibaba/" type="external">Alibaba</a>, <a href="http://variety.com/t/tencent/" type="external">Tencent</a> and Baidu, which have recently been pricked by government rebukes and regulatory catch-up, will be watching the National Congress especially carefully. As huge, profitable and innovative, private sector companies, do they still have Xi’s trust? Will they be allowed to become China’s national champions at home and abroad? Or will their competitiveness and aggression be sacrificed for a domestic agenda of control?</p>	China Cues Up National Congress, With President Xi Jinping in the Ascendant	false	https://newsline.com/china-cues-up-national-congress-with-president-xi-jinping-in-the-ascendant/	2017-09-01	1right-center	China Cues Up National Congress, With President Xi Jinping in the Ascendant <p><a href="http://variety.com/t/china/" type="external">China</a>’s ruling Communist Party has finally released a date, if not a full agenda, for its National Congress, the quinquennial event that formally decides who will run the world’s most populous country for the next five years and what direction it will take.</p> <p>The showcase gathering, to kick off Oct. 18, and last up to 10 days, will elect the 25-member inner circle of government, known as the Politburo, and will reshuffle the party’s 400-member Central Committee. Most importantly, the congress is expected to confirm the strength and position of <a href="http://variety.com/t/xi-jinping/" type="external">Xi Jinping</a>, general secretary of the party and China’s president.</p> <p>Xi has already been in the job since the last National Congress five years ago and has worked tirelessly to make himself the most powerful Chinese leader in decades. This year’s congress is expected to give him even more leverage, though exactly how much more and what he will do with it remains to be seen.</p> <p>In the statement announcing the National Congress, released late Thursday, Xi is once again described as a “core” leader – a title bestowed on only two previous presidents. Analysts expect a line of political philosophy to be named after Xi, but that philosophy&#160;is not yet wholly clear. He has launched a huge anti-corruption drive that has toppled military generals, senior party figures, top-ranked civil servants and high-flying businessmen but that has also removed challengers and bolstered his personal position.</p> <p>Observers will be watching for signs, particularly in his choice of appointments, of whether Xi is grooming a successor or whether he plans to lay the groundwork for ditching the rules on retirement age in order to secure a third mandate in 2022.</p> <p>The National Congress’ stated policy objectives are boringly familiar. Its “four comprehensive” goals are to promote “a moderately prosperous society, deepen reform, advance rule of law, and strengthen strict Party governance.” It aims also to “create new prospects for Socialism with Chinese characteristics.”</p> <p>One aspect of Xi’s political credo seems to be the need for a dominant leader who will guide China through tougher times ahead. A slowing economy, international frictions and a technological balancing act may all call for the Xi brand of tough, conservative, focused leadership.</p> <p>Over the past 30 years, China has made astonishing economic progress and lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and into a burgeoning, predominantly urban, middle class. One side effect of ballooning disposable income has been a rejuvenated cinema industry. The economy is still expanding at more than 6.5% per year.</p> <p>But Xi is worried by the mountains of debt that have been built by provincial governments and by large corporations. Recently, the Chinese government confirmed that big overseas acquisitions in the entertainment sector are off the table for the time being, as seen in the collapse of such deals as <a href="http://variety.com/t/dalian-wanda/" type="external">Dalian Wanda</a>’s attempted purchase of Dick Clark Productions.</p> <p>Indeed, while Xi&#160;turned up with a huge retinue of Chinese business leaders to proclaim the advantages of international trade at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, he is no economic liberal. &#160;He wants trade on China’s terms. Foreign capital is welcome, but investment is taboo in many sectors – film and TV, for example – and it cannot be allowed to challenge local champions. That puts China in breach of several of its <a href="http://variety.com/t/world-trade-organization/" type="external">World Trade Organization</a> obligations, but the criticisms are regularly shrugged off.</p> <p>In the past year, Xi has put increasing emphasis on central control of the economy, through regular intervention in the stock markets, the maintenance of a closed capital account, and punishment for private companies that are not doing enough of the government’s bidding. (The recent troubles besetting Wanda may offer one of the clearest examples.) In their place, inefficient but obedient state-owned enterprises are being pushed forward, along with the new Silk Road development policy known as the Belt and Road Initiative.</p> <p>Xi’s relationship with technology and the media has sparked concern. While hundreds of millions of Chinese have turned to mobile devices and the Internet for news, entertainment, and commentary, China has updated legislation to extend government control of the domestic online space, part of what Xi described last year as “Internet sovereignty.”&#160;China has toughened rules on foreign content, shut down VPNs, crimped live-streaming activity, and all but outlawed news reporting by non-state organizations.</p> <p>Chinese tech giants <a href="http://variety.com/t/alibaba/" type="external">Alibaba</a>, <a href="http://variety.com/t/tencent/" type="external">Tencent</a> and Baidu, which have recently been pricked by government rebukes and regulatory catch-up, will be watching the National Congress especially carefully. As huge, profitable and innovative, private sector companies, do they still have Xi’s trust? Will they be allowed to become China’s national champions at home and abroad? Or will their competitiveness and aggression be sacrificed for a domestic agenda of control?</p>	4,345
<p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has ordered state agencies to stop issuing new regulations and review old ones to determine if they’re outmoded or excessive and should be continued, modified or repealed.</p> <p>He called for reviews of current regulations by Nov. 1.</p> <p>Justice wrote that “continuing to reduce the heavy regulatory burden on West Virginians ... will promote citizens’ freedom to lawfully engage in individual, family and business pursuits.”</p> <p>The governor, whose family businesses include coal mines, farms and resorts, switched from Democrat to Republican last year at a rally with President Donald Trump, whose administration has emphasized cutting federal regulations on businesses.</p> <p>Justice’s moratorium on new regulations contains exemptions for complying with federal requirements, reducing the regulatory impact of current rules and “improving the quality of West Virginia’s workforce.”</p> <p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has ordered state agencies to stop issuing new regulations and review old ones to determine if they’re outmoded or excessive and should be continued, modified or repealed.</p> <p>He called for reviews of current regulations by Nov. 1.</p> <p>Justice wrote that “continuing to reduce the heavy regulatory burden on West Virginians ... will promote citizens’ freedom to lawfully engage in individual, family and business pursuits.”</p> <p>The governor, whose family businesses include coal mines, farms and resorts, switched from Democrat to Republican last year at a rally with President Donald Trump, whose administration has emphasized cutting federal regulations on businesses.</p> <p>Justice’s moratorium on new regulations contains exemptions for complying with federal requirements, reducing the regulatory impact of current rules and “improving the quality of West Virginia’s workforce.”</p>	Justice orders halt, review of state regulations	false	https://apnews.com/c60b76136eb243c4bfe8f28c99d8ef17	2018-01-16	2least	Justice orders halt, review of state regulations <p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has ordered state agencies to stop issuing new regulations and review old ones to determine if they’re outmoded or excessive and should be continued, modified or repealed.</p> <p>He called for reviews of current regulations by Nov. 1.</p> <p>Justice wrote that “continuing to reduce the heavy regulatory burden on West Virginians ... will promote citizens’ freedom to lawfully engage in individual, family and business pursuits.”</p> <p>The governor, whose family businesses include coal mines, farms and resorts, switched from Democrat to Republican last year at a rally with President Donald Trump, whose administration has emphasized cutting federal regulations on businesses.</p> <p>Justice’s moratorium on new regulations contains exemptions for complying with federal requirements, reducing the regulatory impact of current rules and “improving the quality of West Virginia’s workforce.”</p> <p>CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has ordered state agencies to stop issuing new regulations and review old ones to determine if they’re outmoded or excessive and should be continued, modified or repealed.</p> <p>He called for reviews of current regulations by Nov. 1.</p> <p>Justice wrote that “continuing to reduce the heavy regulatory burden on West Virginians ... will promote citizens’ freedom to lawfully engage in individual, family and business pursuits.”</p> <p>The governor, whose family businesses include coal mines, farms and resorts, switched from Democrat to Republican last year at a rally with President Donald Trump, whose administration has emphasized cutting federal regulations on businesses.</p> <p>Justice’s moratorium on new regulations contains exemptions for complying with federal requirements, reducing the regulatory impact of current rules and “improving the quality of West Virginia’s workforce.”</p>	4,346
<p>The news emanating from Donald Trump’s Circque Du Collusion continues to break with rapid fire reliability. Much of it this week has been centered on Trump’s “lawyer” Michael Cohen, whose prospects for remaining a free man are getting more remote by the hour.</p> <p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2115596055121845" type="external" /></p> <p>In just the space of a few days Cohen’s home and office were <a href="" type="internal">raided</a> by New York prosecutors, he was forced to reveal that Sean Hannity of Fox News was his “secret” client (which <a href="" type="internal">Hannity denied</a>), and a fellow attorney who is close to Trump told the President that Cohen was likely to flip and testify against him.</p> <p>The latest embarrassing development to emerge is the announcement that Cohen is <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/michael-cohen-drops-lawsuits-against-buzzfeed-and-fusion-gps" type="external">dropping a lawsuit</a> that he filed against BuzzFeed News. The suit was in response to BuzzFeed publishing the infamous “Steele Dossier” that contained allegations of Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia, along with some salacious tales of engaging in “water sports” with Russian prostitutes.</p> <p>Cohen’s objections, however, were the references to his alleged travels to Prague on Trump’s behalf to meet with Russian operatives and hackers. He adamantly denied having ever been to Prague in his life and insisted that he could prove it. He portrayed the dossier as outright lies that he would expose to save his reputation, and that of his primary client, Donald Trump.</p> <p>Well, that’s all over now. Cohen has decided to forego his reputation rescue and let the matter slide. He says that he’s too busy now with other legal entanglements, most notably involving porn star Stormy Daniels. And, of course, his ordeal with the recent raid that is seeking information concerning possible bank and wire fraud. While those are indeed serious concerns, they don’t actually interfere with his proceeding with the BuzzFeed suit if he were really convinced that he would prevail.</p> <p>And therein lies his problem. The likelihood of succeeding against BuzzFeed has decline in recent days. McClatchy News <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> that special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen did, in fact, go to Prague. And Cohen has failed to produce any of his alleged proof that he didn’t. Consequently, proceeding with the lawsuit presents more risks than benefits.</p> <p>Should Cohen persist in this litigation he would be required to sit for a deposition with lawyers from BuzzFeed. They would surely ask him about his travels and the supposed proof that he was never in Prague. His answers would be under oath. What’s more, the discovery process would require him to hand over any and all documents (letters, itineraries, receipts, phone calls, emails, etc.) pertaining to his whereabouts during the time in question.</p> <p>By backing out of this lawsuit that he was so confidant of winning, Cohen is sending the message that he is more worried about coming clean than he had previously let on. He is signaling that the evidence might actually prove that he was in Prague. And the depth of the discovery could even verify who he was meeting with when he was there. In other words, continuing with the suit could wind up getting him in even deeper legal trouble.</p> <p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p> <p>It should also be noted that Cohen’s legal bills are being paid by the Trump campaign. More than $200,000 of Trump’s donor’s money has already been paid to Cohen’s attorneys. However, the Trump campaign cannot bankroll the BuzzFeed litigation. It’s unknown whether that had any impact on the decision to drop the suit. Cohen presumably could pay for his own legal representation. After all, by his account he had the wherewithal to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money out of his own pocket. So it’s more likely that his reluctance to proceed with the suit was due to legal jeopardy than financing. And he still isn’t out of hot water. Stay tuned.</p>	Here’s Why Trump’s ‘Fixer’ Michael Cohen Ran Away From the BuzzFeed/Steele Dossier Lawsuit	true	http://newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p%3D33184		4left	Here’s Why Trump’s ‘Fixer’ Michael Cohen Ran Away From the BuzzFeed/Steele Dossier Lawsuit <p>The news emanating from Donald Trump’s Circque Du Collusion continues to break with rapid fire reliability. Much of it this week has been centered on Trump’s “lawyer” Michael Cohen, whose prospects for remaining a free man are getting more remote by the hour.</p> <p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2115596055121845" type="external" /></p> <p>In just the space of a few days Cohen’s home and office were <a href="" type="internal">raided</a> by New York prosecutors, he was forced to reveal that Sean Hannity of Fox News was his “secret” client (which <a href="" type="internal">Hannity denied</a>), and a fellow attorney who is close to Trump told the President that Cohen was likely to flip and testify against him.</p> <p>The latest embarrassing development to emerge is the announcement that Cohen is <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/michael-cohen-drops-lawsuits-against-buzzfeed-and-fusion-gps" type="external">dropping a lawsuit</a> that he filed against BuzzFeed News. The suit was in response to BuzzFeed publishing the infamous “Steele Dossier” that contained allegations of Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia, along with some salacious tales of engaging in “water sports” with Russian prostitutes.</p> <p>Cohen’s objections, however, were the references to his alleged travels to Prague on Trump’s behalf to meet with Russian operatives and hackers. He adamantly denied having ever been to Prague in his life and insisted that he could prove it. He portrayed the dossier as outright lies that he would expose to save his reputation, and that of his primary client, Donald Trump.</p> <p>Well, that’s all over now. Cohen has decided to forego his reputation rescue and let the matter slide. He says that he’s too busy now with other legal entanglements, most notably involving porn star Stormy Daniels. And, of course, his ordeal with the recent raid that is seeking information concerning possible bank and wire fraud. While those are indeed serious concerns, they don’t actually interfere with his proceeding with the BuzzFeed suit if he were really convinced that he would prevail.</p> <p>And therein lies his problem. The likelihood of succeeding against BuzzFeed has decline in recent days. McClatchy News <a href="" type="internal">reported</a> that special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen did, in fact, go to Prague. And Cohen has failed to produce any of his alleged proof that he didn’t. Consequently, proceeding with the lawsuit presents more risks than benefits.</p> <p>Should Cohen persist in this litigation he would be required to sit for a deposition with lawyers from BuzzFeed. They would surely ask him about his travels and the supposed proof that he was never in Prague. His answers would be under oath. What’s more, the discovery process would require him to hand over any and all documents (letters, itineraries, receipts, phone calls, emails, etc.) pertaining to his whereabouts during the time in question.</p> <p>By backing out of this lawsuit that he was so confidant of winning, Cohen is sending the message that he is more worried about coming clean than he had previously let on. He is signaling that the evidence might actually prove that he was in Prague. And the depth of the discovery could even verify who he was meeting with when he was there. In other words, continuing with the suit could wind up getting him in even deeper legal trouble.</p> <p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p> <p>It should also be noted that Cohen’s legal bills are being paid by the Trump campaign. More than $200,000 of Trump’s donor’s money has already been paid to Cohen’s attorneys. However, the Trump campaign cannot bankroll the BuzzFeed litigation. It’s unknown whether that had any impact on the decision to drop the suit. Cohen presumably could pay for his own legal representation. After all, by his account he had the wherewithal to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money out of his own pocket. So it’s more likely that his reluctance to proceed with the suit was due to legal jeopardy than financing. And he still isn’t out of hot water. Stay tuned.</p>	4,347
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>A: Guests should always keep in mind the effort and timing that go into a successful dinner, and they should honor their host and his or her invitation by being on time. If that’s not possible, latecomers to a small, intimate dinner should always notify the host in advance that they will be late and how late they will be. If they know ahead of time, they should let the host know as soon as they are aware of it. If something detains them that evening, they should call as soon as possible.</p> <p>To help buffer the disruption caused by late arrivals, time your party so that the first 30 minutes are spent on introducing new friends and greeting one another. Serve drinks and light appetizers and use the time to connect with each guest.</p> <p>Waiting half an hour prior to seating everyone for dinner should allow for traffic tie-ups, wardrobe malfunctions and other obstacles that keep guest from arriving on time.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>When the pre-dinner activities start to dwindle and the food is ready to be served, it is fine to start dinner without the tardy guests who have been given ample time to arrive.</p> <p>Seating can be quickly rearranged if you discover the latecomers won’t attend at all, or you may leave it as is so they have places when they do arrive. Just don’t leave any of your guest at the end of the table with too many empty chairs. Change the seating so that all are connected to the group.</p> <p>When latecomers do arrive, graciously accept their apologies and welcome them to the table. Start them with the course the rest of the group is being served, even if it’s dessert.</p> <p>Despite all options available to deal with lateness, the bottom line is, don’t be late.</p> <p>Dear Thelma: Each year our family comes together for the holidays to have an all-day Christmas meal. While I love my family, I do not like several of its members. They are loud, rude and often mean-spirited. Can you give me any advice on getting through what has the potential of being a miserable event?</p> <p>A: If you are the host of this meal, I advise you to talk to these “loud, rude and often mean-spirited” people before the event takes place. If you are not the host, consider encouraging the host to initiate a conversation.</p> <p>Since it is family and the guest list won’t be altered to not include these intrusive people, you should talk about it openly. The host does have the right to say, “I don’t want negative behavior here.”</p> <p>I myself have found the occasion to say, “We’re going to have a happy time. We’re not going to pick on each other. Got it?” They may say, “Then I’m not coming.” And that would be their choice, but the peace of the day would have a better chance at being preserved.</p> <p>To get through the day, consider bringing out games you can play together or even give one as a gift during the party. From old standards like cards and dominos to modern party games, these may help you focus on something other than someone else’s faults.</p> <p>Expecting good behavior and good manners never go out of style.</p> <p>Agree or disagree with Thelma’s advice? Post your comments or ask a question about etiquette at <a href="http://thelmadomenici.com" type="external">thelmadomenici.com</a>. Thelma Domenici is CEO of Thelma Domenici &amp; Associates, offering corporate coaching and contemporary social skills development programs to all ages.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p />	Greet tardy guests with courtesy, dessert	false	https://abqjournal.com/320461/greet-tardy-guests-with-courtesy-dessert.html		2least	Greet tardy guests with courtesy, dessert <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>A: Guests should always keep in mind the effort and timing that go into a successful dinner, and they should honor their host and his or her invitation by being on time. If that’s not possible, latecomers to a small, intimate dinner should always notify the host in advance that they will be late and how late they will be. If they know ahead of time, they should let the host know as soon as they are aware of it. If something detains them that evening, they should call as soon as possible.</p> <p>To help buffer the disruption caused by late arrivals, time your party so that the first 30 minutes are spent on introducing new friends and greeting one another. Serve drinks and light appetizers and use the time to connect with each guest.</p> <p>Waiting half an hour prior to seating everyone for dinner should allow for traffic tie-ups, wardrobe malfunctions and other obstacles that keep guest from arriving on time.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>When the pre-dinner activities start to dwindle and the food is ready to be served, it is fine to start dinner without the tardy guests who have been given ample time to arrive.</p> <p>Seating can be quickly rearranged if you discover the latecomers won’t attend at all, or you may leave it as is so they have places when they do arrive. Just don’t leave any of your guest at the end of the table with too many empty chairs. Change the seating so that all are connected to the group.</p> <p>When latecomers do arrive, graciously accept their apologies and welcome them to the table. Start them with the course the rest of the group is being served, even if it’s dessert.</p> <p>Despite all options available to deal with lateness, the bottom line is, don’t be late.</p> <p>Dear Thelma: Each year our family comes together for the holidays to have an all-day Christmas meal. While I love my family, I do not like several of its members. They are loud, rude and often mean-spirited. Can you give me any advice on getting through what has the potential of being a miserable event?</p> <p>A: If you are the host of this meal, I advise you to talk to these “loud, rude and often mean-spirited” people before the event takes place. If you are not the host, consider encouraging the host to initiate a conversation.</p> <p>Since it is family and the guest list won’t be altered to not include these intrusive people, you should talk about it openly. The host does have the right to say, “I don’t want negative behavior here.”</p> <p>I myself have found the occasion to say, “We’re going to have a happy time. We’re not going to pick on each other. Got it?” They may say, “Then I’m not coming.” And that would be their choice, but the peace of the day would have a better chance at being preserved.</p> <p>To get through the day, consider bringing out games you can play together or even give one as a gift during the party. From old standards like cards and dominos to modern party games, these may help you focus on something other than someone else’s faults.</p> <p>Expecting good behavior and good manners never go out of style.</p> <p>Agree or disagree with Thelma’s advice? Post your comments or ask a question about etiquette at <a href="http://thelmadomenici.com" type="external">thelmadomenici.com</a>. Thelma Domenici is CEO of Thelma Domenici &amp; Associates, offering corporate coaching and contemporary social skills development programs to all ages.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p />	4,348
<p>Music flooded into the streets around Austin's convention center as South by Southwest's music festival kicked off and the interactive portion wrapped up. The head of Google's (X) division talked about testing driverless cars and delivery drones, gender bias in tech was a hot topic and event-goers checked out the latest products and companies on the trade show floor.</p> <p>Here are some highlights as South by Southwest Interactive draws to a close.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>GOOGLE X</p> <p>Some of Google's most secretive projects like Google Glass and driverless cars have come out of its five-year-old (X) division, so attendees flooded in Tuesday to hear Astro Teller, head of the division, talk about how the most ambitious projects require a lot of failure before succeeding. Testing products in the real world is key, he said. The company drives thousands of miles on city streets every day to test how its driverless cars function in every imaginable situation. "Nothing beats going out into the real world and seeing if what a simulator says will work is actually possible," he said.</p> <p>Working on creating unmanned delivery drones, Teller's team came up with a type of vehicle that sits upright and launches vertically, but there were some problems with it (Teller didn't say exactly what). Google co-founder Sergey Brin gave the team five months to be able to make deliveries by drone. They did it successfully in Queensland, Australia, but decided to go in a different direction with the drone project. Still, having the deadline helped the process advance, he said, and predicted there will be news about the drones later this year.</p> <p>Teller also discussed Google's most high-profile failure, Google Glass, the wearable device which Google shuttered in January after it received a tepid response from users. The problem with Glass wasn't the device itself but the way they presented it to the public, he said. "We encouraged too much attention for the program," he said. "We wanted to say to the world this is an early prototype that we think is really exciting. But we also did things that encouraged people to think of this as a finished product."</p> <p>GENDER BIAS IN TECH</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>The lack of gender diversity in tech received a jolt of attention after a talk on Monday between Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson, U.S. Chief Technology Officer (and former Googler) Megan Smith and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The subject of the talk was "How Innovation Happens" but topics ranged from immigration policy, getting top tech talent to work in the government, and connectivity deserts, or areas where it's hard for people to get online. Schmidt talked over Smith several times. During the Q&amp;A conducted via Twitter, a listener pointed out how often Schmidt had interrupted Smith — and the audience applauded.</p> <p>The panel had earlier discussed Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who wrote the first-ever computer algorithm but isn't well known as one of the founders of technology. (Her story is described in Isaacson's book "The Innovators"). Smith said it's crucial to make women aware of women's role in developing technology.</p> <p>"Diversity makes better products," said Smith. "It's debilitating to not know technical women have been part of history from the beginning."</p> <p>TECH IN THE SOUTH</p> <p>The two 24-year old founders of Yik Yak, a messaging app wildly popular with college students, are proud to be based in Atlanta. Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington told an audience on Monday that they have no plans to leave for more well-known tech hubs like Silicon Valley or New York.</p> <p>"We're hometown heroes, we love Atlanta, that's where our families are from," Droll said. There's plenty of tech talent there too, added Buffington. "Not every single engineer comes from California, a lot of them are from the East Coast," Buffington said.</p> <p>Billionaire investor Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, wants to support tech companies in smaller cities too. On Monday Case said he'll lead a bus tour across cities including Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina and Atlanta dubbed "The Rise of the Rest" and hold pitch competitions for tech companies. He plans to invest $500,000 in the winners.</p> <p>WINKLEVOSS TWINS TALK BITCOIN</p> <p>The Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron, are betting the digital currency bitcoin is here to stay. The brothers, known for suing Mark Zuckerberg over the idea for Facebook, on Monday promoted their new company Gemini, which they describe as a stock market for bitcoin. It's not operational yet, but in a panel Monday the twins said the digital currency could even replace gold as a stable currency.</p> <p>"There's a certain inevitability to it, it's like the missing piece of the Internet," Cameron said. Tyler pointed out that bitcoin trading is already happening in China. "America is sitting on the sidelines," he said.</p> <p>TRADE SHOW ANTICS</p> <p>On the exhibition floor, small startups funded by Kickstarter showed off their products alongside bigger companies and organizations like NASA and IBM. At the NASA display, attendees could wear the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift to take a tour of Mars. A small company called Exiii displayed 3D-printed prosthetic limbs. At the booth for GMO Answers, a group funded by companies including Dow Agrosciences and Monsanto to try to improve the public's perception of genetically modified food, they were giving away potato chips made with a high-tech soybean oil called Plenish.</p> <p>Giuseppe Taibi, a consultant from Lexington, Mass., was perusing the trade show floor on Tuesday. He was impressed by Jamit, a device that you insert into a violin to get real-time visual feedback to help improve your playing, since his daughter is learning the violin. And he was happy to talk to the makers of Tableau, a spreadsheet program he uses. "I got to have a Q&amp;A with an expert," he said.</p> <p>He enjoys the energy and networking at South by Southwest. "There are so many great ideas and everyone is in the mood for sharing," he said. "I'm sad to leave to go back to the snow in Boston."</p>	Moonshots at Google and gender bias in tech are top topics as South by Southwest wraps up	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/03/18/moonshots-at-google-and-gender-bias-in-tech-are-top-topics-as-south-by.html	2016-03-06	0right	Moonshots at Google and gender bias in tech are top topics as South by Southwest wraps up <p>Music flooded into the streets around Austin's convention center as South by Southwest's music festival kicked off and the interactive portion wrapped up. The head of Google's (X) division talked about testing driverless cars and delivery drones, gender bias in tech was a hot topic and event-goers checked out the latest products and companies on the trade show floor.</p> <p>Here are some highlights as South by Southwest Interactive draws to a close.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>GOOGLE X</p> <p>Some of Google's most secretive projects like Google Glass and driverless cars have come out of its five-year-old (X) division, so attendees flooded in Tuesday to hear Astro Teller, head of the division, talk about how the most ambitious projects require a lot of failure before succeeding. Testing products in the real world is key, he said. The company drives thousands of miles on city streets every day to test how its driverless cars function in every imaginable situation. "Nothing beats going out into the real world and seeing if what a simulator says will work is actually possible," he said.</p> <p>Working on creating unmanned delivery drones, Teller's team came up with a type of vehicle that sits upright and launches vertically, but there were some problems with it (Teller didn't say exactly what). Google co-founder Sergey Brin gave the team five months to be able to make deliveries by drone. They did it successfully in Queensland, Australia, but decided to go in a different direction with the drone project. Still, having the deadline helped the process advance, he said, and predicted there will be news about the drones later this year.</p> <p>Teller also discussed Google's most high-profile failure, Google Glass, the wearable device which Google shuttered in January after it received a tepid response from users. The problem with Glass wasn't the device itself but the way they presented it to the public, he said. "We encouraged too much attention for the program," he said. "We wanted to say to the world this is an early prototype that we think is really exciting. But we also did things that encouraged people to think of this as a finished product."</p> <p>GENDER BIAS IN TECH</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>The lack of gender diversity in tech received a jolt of attention after a talk on Monday between Aspen Institute CEO Walter Isaacson, U.S. Chief Technology Officer (and former Googler) Megan Smith and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt. The subject of the talk was "How Innovation Happens" but topics ranged from immigration policy, getting top tech talent to work in the government, and connectivity deserts, or areas where it's hard for people to get online. Schmidt talked over Smith several times. During the Q&amp;A conducted via Twitter, a listener pointed out how often Schmidt had interrupted Smith — and the audience applauded.</p> <p>The panel had earlier discussed Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who wrote the first-ever computer algorithm but isn't well known as one of the founders of technology. (Her story is described in Isaacson's book "The Innovators"). Smith said it's crucial to make women aware of women's role in developing technology.</p> <p>"Diversity makes better products," said Smith. "It's debilitating to not know technical women have been part of history from the beginning."</p> <p>TECH IN THE SOUTH</p> <p>The two 24-year old founders of Yik Yak, a messaging app wildly popular with college students, are proud to be based in Atlanta. Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington told an audience on Monday that they have no plans to leave for more well-known tech hubs like Silicon Valley or New York.</p> <p>"We're hometown heroes, we love Atlanta, that's where our families are from," Droll said. There's plenty of tech talent there too, added Buffington. "Not every single engineer comes from California, a lot of them are from the East Coast," Buffington said.</p> <p>Billionaire investor Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, wants to support tech companies in smaller cities too. On Monday Case said he'll lead a bus tour across cities including Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina and Atlanta dubbed "The Rise of the Rest" and hold pitch competitions for tech companies. He plans to invest $500,000 in the winners.</p> <p>WINKLEVOSS TWINS TALK BITCOIN</p> <p>The Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron, are betting the digital currency bitcoin is here to stay. The brothers, known for suing Mark Zuckerberg over the idea for Facebook, on Monday promoted their new company Gemini, which they describe as a stock market for bitcoin. It's not operational yet, but in a panel Monday the twins said the digital currency could even replace gold as a stable currency.</p> <p>"There's a certain inevitability to it, it's like the missing piece of the Internet," Cameron said. Tyler pointed out that bitcoin trading is already happening in China. "America is sitting on the sidelines," he said.</p> <p>TRADE SHOW ANTICS</p> <p>On the exhibition floor, small startups funded by Kickstarter showed off their products alongside bigger companies and organizations like NASA and IBM. At the NASA display, attendees could wear the virtual reality headset Oculus Rift to take a tour of Mars. A small company called Exiii displayed 3D-printed prosthetic limbs. At the booth for GMO Answers, a group funded by companies including Dow Agrosciences and Monsanto to try to improve the public's perception of genetically modified food, they were giving away potato chips made with a high-tech soybean oil called Plenish.</p> <p>Giuseppe Taibi, a consultant from Lexington, Mass., was perusing the trade show floor on Tuesday. He was impressed by Jamit, a device that you insert into a violin to get real-time visual feedback to help improve your playing, since his daughter is learning the violin. And he was happy to talk to the makers of Tableau, a spreadsheet program he uses. "I got to have a Q&amp;A with an expert," he said.</p> <p>He enjoys the energy and networking at South by Southwest. "There are so many great ideas and everyone is in the mood for sharing," he said. "I'm sad to leave to go back to the snow in Boston."</p>	4,349
<p>&gt; <a href="http://www.digmo.com/news/story.php?ID=17337" type="external">Columbia Daily Trib writer may have to testify about interview (CM)</a> &gt; <a href="http://aan.org/gyrobase/Aan/ViewArticle?oid=oid:153793" type="external">Celeste explains why the alt-press "is doing pretty damn good" (AAN)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001613376" type="external">How the process of foreign news gathering works these days (E&amp;P)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/12/when_is_plagari.html" type="external">That's not plagiarism, it's just "inadvertent mingling" (Umansky)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02leak.html?hp&amp;ex=1133586000&amp;en=b1cbca5e0bab0b97&amp;ei=5094&amp;partner=homepage" type="external">Rove changed testimony after Luskin talked to Time's Novak (NYT)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3999" type="external">When should journalists drop their notebooks and help out? (AJR)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-et-williams2dec02,1,7261981.story?coll=la-headlines-technology" type="external">NBC's Williams straddles the worlds of old media and new media (LAT)</a> &gt; <a href="" type="external">Halberstam learned a lot about human nature while in Vietnam (MW)</a></p>	Additional items for December 2, 2005	false	https://poynter.org/news/additional-items-december-2-2005	2005-12-01	2least	Additional items for December 2, 2005 <p>&gt; <a href="http://www.digmo.com/news/story.php?ID=17337" type="external">Columbia Daily Trib writer may have to testify about interview (CM)</a> &gt; <a href="http://aan.org/gyrobase/Aan/ViewArticle?oid=oid:153793" type="external">Celeste explains why the alt-press "is doing pretty damn good" (AAN)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001613376" type="external">How the process of foreign news gathering works these days (E&amp;P)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/12/when_is_plagari.html" type="external">That's not plagiarism, it's just "inadvertent mingling" (Umansky)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/politics/02leak.html?hp&amp;ex=1133586000&amp;en=b1cbca5e0bab0b97&amp;ei=5094&amp;partner=homepage" type="external">Rove changed testimony after Luskin talked to Time's Novak (NYT)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3999" type="external">When should journalists drop their notebooks and help out? (AJR)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-et-williams2dec02,1,7261981.story?coll=la-headlines-technology" type="external">NBC's Williams straddles the worlds of old media and new media (LAT)</a> &gt; <a href="" type="external">Halberstam learned a lot about human nature while in Vietnam (MW)</a></p>	4,350
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>SANTA FE — Gov. Susana Martinez has vetoed a bill that would have given Santa Fe city government’s historic preservation rules jurisdiction over the State Land Office’s plans to develop the site of Garrett’s Desert Inn across the street from the Land Office headquarters downtown.</p> <p>The governor’s veto message for SB 409, sponsored by House Speaker Brian Egolf and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, both Santa Fe Democrats, would have subjected all projects on state or state trust land to historic preservation oversight by local governments, regardless of funding source.</p> <p>“This oversight would undoubtedly delay, postpone, or cancel many projects throughout the state that would better the lives of New Mexicans through safety improvements or economic development,” the veto statement said.</p> <p>Wirth has acknowledged the bill was aimed at the Land Office’s disposition of the Garrett’s Inn property, which the office obtained last year in a land swap with Cochiti Pueblo. “It’s really designed to make sure we don’t end up with a 10-story building across from the State Land Office that doesn’t fit in at all with the community,” Wirth said last month.</p> <p>State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn plans to take formal proposals for the 2.7-acre site on Old Santa Fe Trail, located in the downtown historic district, this summer. Prior court cases suggest state property is outside the city’s land-use jurisdiction.</p> <p>Dunn has said he’ll urge potential developers to work within the historic district’s building restrictions, but that he has a fiduciary responsibility to make decisions based on what’s best for the State Land Trust. The trust managed by the Land Office generates funds for schools, universities and other public entities.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>	Governor vetoes preservation rules targeted at Garrett’s	false	https://abqjournal.com/984705/governor-vetoes-preservation-rules-targeted-at-garretts.html		2least	Governor vetoes preservation rules targeted at Garrett’s <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>SANTA FE — Gov. Susana Martinez has vetoed a bill that would have given Santa Fe city government’s historic preservation rules jurisdiction over the State Land Office’s plans to develop the site of Garrett’s Desert Inn across the street from the Land Office headquarters downtown.</p> <p>The governor’s veto message for SB 409, sponsored by House Speaker Brian Egolf and Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, both Santa Fe Democrats, would have subjected all projects on state or state trust land to historic preservation oversight by local governments, regardless of funding source.</p> <p>“This oversight would undoubtedly delay, postpone, or cancel many projects throughout the state that would better the lives of New Mexicans through safety improvements or economic development,” the veto statement said.</p> <p>Wirth has acknowledged the bill was aimed at the Land Office’s disposition of the Garrett’s Inn property, which the office obtained last year in a land swap with Cochiti Pueblo. “It’s really designed to make sure we don’t end up with a 10-story building across from the State Land Office that doesn’t fit in at all with the community,” Wirth said last month.</p> <p>State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn plans to take formal proposals for the 2.7-acre site on Old Santa Fe Trail, located in the downtown historic district, this summer. Prior court cases suggest state property is outside the city’s land-use jurisdiction.</p> <p>Dunn has said he’ll urge potential developers to work within the historic district’s building restrictions, but that he has a fiduciary responsibility to make decisions based on what’s best for the State Land Trust. The trust managed by the Land Office generates funds for schools, universities and other public entities.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>	4,351
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>Presbyterian Healthcare Services President and CEO Jim Hinton said hospitals in other parts of the country are consolidating or closing but Rust Medical Center is responding to growth in the surrounding community. He said Presbyterian was able to accelerate plans to expand the hospital thanks to strong local support.</p> <p>Hinton and hospital Administrator Jeff McBee gave a presentation to local officials at the hospital, outlining the scope of the expansion.</p> <p>It includes a new, six-story patient tower that will house 48 hospital beds, a cancer center, four operating rooms and a rehabilitation gym. The expansion will bring 100 more professional jobs to Rio Rancho, on top of Rust’s existing workforce of 670. There will be 50 to 100 workers involved during construction.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p>Groundwork has already started on the site on the west side of the hospital, near the intersection of Unser and Black Arroyo. McBee said they have an aggressive schedule, with projected opening in November 2015.</p> <p>“We want the beds available before the busy winter season,” McBee said in an interview before the presentation.</p> <p>Rust currently has 92 patient beds, including an 11-bed neonatal intensive-care unit.</p> <p>Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull, who also spoke, called the expansion project “an exciting stimulus to the local economy.” He mentioned the numerous businesses that have opened along nearby Unser Boulevard in recent years.</p> <p>Sandoval County voters in 2008 approved a property-tax increase to bring in funds to support Rust Medical Center and the UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center, also in Rio Rancho. Rust Medical Center opened in October 2011 with 68 beds. In 2012, city councilors approved a moratorium that cut the fees the city charges developers for infrastructure.</p> <p>30,665</p> <p>1,228</p> <p />	RR, Sandoval get a sneak peek at Rust expansion	false	https://abqjournal.com/416216/rr-sandoval-get-a-sneak-peek-at-rust-expansion.html		2least	RR, Sandoval get a sneak peek at Rust expansion <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>Presbyterian Healthcare Services President and CEO Jim Hinton said hospitals in other parts of the country are consolidating or closing but Rust Medical Center is responding to growth in the surrounding community. He said Presbyterian was able to accelerate plans to expand the hospital thanks to strong local support.</p> <p>Hinton and hospital Administrator Jeff McBee gave a presentation to local officials at the hospital, outlining the scope of the expansion.</p> <p>It includes a new, six-story patient tower that will house 48 hospital beds, a cancer center, four operating rooms and a rehabilitation gym. The expansion will bring 100 more professional jobs to Rio Rancho, on top of Rust’s existing workforce of 670. There will be 50 to 100 workers involved during construction.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p>Groundwork has already started on the site on the west side of the hospital, near the intersection of Unser and Black Arroyo. McBee said they have an aggressive schedule, with projected opening in November 2015.</p> <p>“We want the beds available before the busy winter season,” McBee said in an interview before the presentation.</p> <p>Rust currently has 92 patient beds, including an 11-bed neonatal intensive-care unit.</p> <p>Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull, who also spoke, called the expansion project “an exciting stimulus to the local economy.” He mentioned the numerous businesses that have opened along nearby Unser Boulevard in recent years.</p> <p>Sandoval County voters in 2008 approved a property-tax increase to bring in funds to support Rust Medical Center and the UNM Sandoval Regional Medical Center, also in Rio Rancho. Rust Medical Center opened in October 2011 with 68 beds. In 2012, city councilors approved a moratorium that cut the fees the city charges developers for infrastructure.</p> <p>30,665</p> <p>1,228</p> <p />	4,352
<p>On Monday, after Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald decided to liken the dismal wait times for veterans to the wait times at Disneyland, Disney <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/disney-responds-to-va-secretary-we-take-wait-times-very-seriously/" type="external">fired back</a>.</p> <p>McDonald <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/va-secretary-disney-doesnt-measure-wait-times-so-why-should-va/article/2592021" type="external">said</a> during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters, "When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what's important? What's important is, what's your satisfaction with the experience? And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure."</p> <p>A Disney Theme Parks spokesperson <a href="http://injo.com/2016/05/612245-disney-fires-back-after-va-secretary-compares-wait-lines-for-veterans-to-theme-park-rides/" type="external">blasted</a>:</p> <p>We take wait times very seriously. We continually push the boundaries to give our guests the best experience possible. A large team of highly trained industrial engineers are tasked with improving our guest’s experiences, from transportation, to guest flow, to ride comfort and certainly wait times.</p> <p>One of the things we take great pride in is if you have a wait time at our parks, your wait is enjoyable. We call this the Disney Difference. We recently remodeled the Dumbo ride, doubling its size and adding a Big Top area for families waiting for the ride. This area is a huge, interactive, air conditioned area for children to play in and where adults can relax with a buzzer they receive that notifies them when their spot is ready on the ride.</p> <p>Disney has posted a <a href="https://wdpromedia.disney.go.com/media/wdpro-assets/dlr/help/guest-services/guests-with-disabilities/dlr-disability-access-service_2014-12-09.pdf" type="external">guide</a> on the internet for customers with disabilities who have difficulty standing in wait lines. The guide, speaking of the company’s Disability Access Service, reads in part:</p> <p>DAS is intended for Guests whose disability prevents them from waiting in a conventional queue environment. This service allows Guests to schedule a return time that is comparable to the current queue wait for the given attraction. Once a return time is issued, Guests are free to enjoy other theme park offerings such as meeting a Character, grabbing a bite to eat, enjoying entertainment or even visiting another attraction until their listed return time. Return times are valid until redeemed prior to park closing.</p> <p>Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also targeted McDonald, tweeting:</p> <p>This is not make-believe, Mr. Secretary. Veterans have died waiting in those lines. <a href="https://t.co/OxfT3AYzTi" type="external">https://t.co/OxfT3AYzTi</a></p>	VA Secretary Compares Wait Times To Disneyland. Disneyland Lashes Back.	true	https://dailywire.com/news/6010/va-secretary-compares-wait-times-disneyland-hank-berrien	2016-05-24	0right	VA Secretary Compares Wait Times To Disneyland. Disneyland Lashes Back. <p>On Monday, after Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald decided to liken the dismal wait times for veterans to the wait times at Disneyland, Disney <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/disney-responds-to-va-secretary-we-take-wait-times-very-seriously/" type="external">fired back</a>.</p> <p>McDonald <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/va-secretary-disney-doesnt-measure-wait-times-so-why-should-va/article/2592021" type="external">said</a> during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters, "When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what's important? What's important is, what's your satisfaction with the experience? And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure."</p> <p>A Disney Theme Parks spokesperson <a href="http://injo.com/2016/05/612245-disney-fires-back-after-va-secretary-compares-wait-lines-for-veterans-to-theme-park-rides/" type="external">blasted</a>:</p> <p>We take wait times very seriously. We continually push the boundaries to give our guests the best experience possible. A large team of highly trained industrial engineers are tasked with improving our guest’s experiences, from transportation, to guest flow, to ride comfort and certainly wait times.</p> <p>One of the things we take great pride in is if you have a wait time at our parks, your wait is enjoyable. We call this the Disney Difference. We recently remodeled the Dumbo ride, doubling its size and adding a Big Top area for families waiting for the ride. This area is a huge, interactive, air conditioned area for children to play in and where adults can relax with a buzzer they receive that notifies them when their spot is ready on the ride.</p> <p>Disney has posted a <a href="https://wdpromedia.disney.go.com/media/wdpro-assets/dlr/help/guest-services/guests-with-disabilities/dlr-disability-access-service_2014-12-09.pdf" type="external">guide</a> on the internet for customers with disabilities who have difficulty standing in wait lines. The guide, speaking of the company’s Disability Access Service, reads in part:</p> <p>DAS is intended for Guests whose disability prevents them from waiting in a conventional queue environment. This service allows Guests to schedule a return time that is comparable to the current queue wait for the given attraction. Once a return time is issued, Guests are free to enjoy other theme park offerings such as meeting a Character, grabbing a bite to eat, enjoying entertainment or even visiting another attraction until their listed return time. Return times are valid until redeemed prior to park closing.</p> <p>Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also targeted McDonald, tweeting:</p> <p>This is not make-believe, Mr. Secretary. Veterans have died waiting in those lines. <a href="https://t.co/OxfT3AYzTi" type="external">https://t.co/OxfT3AYzTi</a></p>	4,353
<p>The world lost a visionary activist this week, with the death of Chokwe Lumumba, the newly elected mayor of Jackson, Miss. Lumumba died unexpectedly at the age of 66 of an apparent heart attack. Last June, he won the mayoral race in this capital of Mississippi, a city steeped in the history of racism and violence. He was a champion of human rights, a pioneering radical attorney, a proud Black Nationalist and a dedicated public servant. While his friends, family and allies mourn his death, there is much in his life to celebrate.</p> <p>First, take a step back, and look at the history of Jackson, Miss. As my “Democracy Now!” news hour co-host, Juan Gonzalez, pointed out when we interviewed Lumumba the day after he was elected, Jackson was “a center of racism and racial oppression over centuries. The city was named after Andrew Jackson by the white settlers when Jackson, in 1820, was able, as Indian commissioner, to pressure the Choctaw Indians to give up 13 million acres of land … in the Treaty of Doak’s Stand. That’s why the white settlers named the city after Jackson, because of his success at ethnic cleansing.” Jackson, Miss., where the NAACP’s first field secretary for Mississippi, Medgar Evers, was assassinated on the evening of June 12, 1963. This city is just 80 miles from Philadelphia, Miss., where Freedom Summer activists Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were murdered, and 95 miles from Money, Miss., where 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 1955, for allegedly “wolf-whistling” at a white woman. Jackson, Miss., is the political, economic and historic center of so much violence and racial hatred, which is why Lumumba’s victory in the mayoral race held such import.</p> <p>Lumumba told me last June, “I attribute the victory that we had this last week to the people, the people of Jackson, who were more than ready to have leadership that was forward-looking and ready to raise Jackson to a different level of development, ready to embrace the ideas that all government should do the most to protect the human rights of the people.” He was dedicated to human rights, and was embarking on a progressive agenda for the city. His slogan read “One City, One Aim, One Destiny.”</p> <p>Lumumba was born Edwin Finley Taliaferro, in Detroit. His parents involved him with civil-rights organizing at an early age. Lumumba’s explanation to the Jackson Free Press on how he changed his name is worth repeating. He said: “I picked the name Chokwe because in my African history class I learned that the Chokwe tribe, which is a tribe that still exists, was one of the last tribes to resist the slave trade successfully in northeast Angola. The name literally means ‘hunter.’ The second name, Lumumba, was the name of a great African leader who began to lead Africa to decolonize, to independence. He was from the Congo. Lumumba means ‘gifted.’ So literally, it means ‘gifted hunter.'”</p> <p /> <p>He became a lawyer, and represented people like the activist Assata Shakur and the rap artist Tupac Shakur. He successfully appealed to the governor the life sentences of two sisters, Gladys and Jamie Scott, imprisoned for the robbery of 11 dollars. They were released after serving 16 years in prison. In 2009, he ran for and won a seat on the Jackson City Council. Four years later, he became mayor, with an ambitious agenda and strong public support. Just this past month, on Jan. 14, the voters of Jackson approved an increase in the local sales tax of 1 percent. Along with increases in the water and sewer rates, Lumumba was going to raise $700 million to improve the city’s infrastructure, and leverage that for more funding through bonds. He told me: “We are a population here now in the need of a lot of development. Development is one of the tracks or one of the roads to human rights and to the recognition of human rights, especially our economic human rights.”</p> <p>Lumumba’s sudden death has left his broad community reeling. A close ally of Lumumba’s, Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, told me, “We look forward to continuing his vision for the city of Jackson.” The new, publicly approved sales tax goes into effect March 1. On the first weekend in May, a conference that Lumumba helped organize, Jackson Rising, will take place, promoting economic alternatives like cooperative business ownership. The inspired vision of Chokwe Lumumba continues.</p> <p>Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.</p> <p>Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.</p> <p>© 2014 Amy Goodman</p> <p>Distributed by King Features Syndicate</p>	Mayor Chokwe Lumumba: A Life of Struggle, a Legacy of Progress	true	https://truthdig.com/articles/mayor-chokwe-lumumba-a-life-of-struggle-a-legacy-of-progress/	2014-02-27	4left	Mayor Chokwe Lumumba: A Life of Struggle, a Legacy of Progress <p>The world lost a visionary activist this week, with the death of Chokwe Lumumba, the newly elected mayor of Jackson, Miss. Lumumba died unexpectedly at the age of 66 of an apparent heart attack. Last June, he won the mayoral race in this capital of Mississippi, a city steeped in the history of racism and violence. He was a champion of human rights, a pioneering radical attorney, a proud Black Nationalist and a dedicated public servant. While his friends, family and allies mourn his death, there is much in his life to celebrate.</p> <p>First, take a step back, and look at the history of Jackson, Miss. As my “Democracy Now!” news hour co-host, Juan Gonzalez, pointed out when we interviewed Lumumba the day after he was elected, Jackson was “a center of racism and racial oppression over centuries. The city was named after Andrew Jackson by the white settlers when Jackson, in 1820, was able, as Indian commissioner, to pressure the Choctaw Indians to give up 13 million acres of land … in the Treaty of Doak’s Stand. That’s why the white settlers named the city after Jackson, because of his success at ethnic cleansing.” Jackson, Miss., where the NAACP’s first field secretary for Mississippi, Medgar Evers, was assassinated on the evening of June 12, 1963. This city is just 80 miles from Philadelphia, Miss., where Freedom Summer activists Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner were murdered, and 95 miles from Money, Miss., where 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured and murdered in 1955, for allegedly “wolf-whistling” at a white woman. Jackson, Miss., is the political, economic and historic center of so much violence and racial hatred, which is why Lumumba’s victory in the mayoral race held such import.</p> <p>Lumumba told me last June, “I attribute the victory that we had this last week to the people, the people of Jackson, who were more than ready to have leadership that was forward-looking and ready to raise Jackson to a different level of development, ready to embrace the ideas that all government should do the most to protect the human rights of the people.” He was dedicated to human rights, and was embarking on a progressive agenda for the city. His slogan read “One City, One Aim, One Destiny.”</p> <p>Lumumba was born Edwin Finley Taliaferro, in Detroit. His parents involved him with civil-rights organizing at an early age. Lumumba’s explanation to the Jackson Free Press on how he changed his name is worth repeating. He said: “I picked the name Chokwe because in my African history class I learned that the Chokwe tribe, which is a tribe that still exists, was one of the last tribes to resist the slave trade successfully in northeast Angola. The name literally means ‘hunter.’ The second name, Lumumba, was the name of a great African leader who began to lead Africa to decolonize, to independence. He was from the Congo. Lumumba means ‘gifted.’ So literally, it means ‘gifted hunter.'”</p> <p /> <p>He became a lawyer, and represented people like the activist Assata Shakur and the rap artist Tupac Shakur. He successfully appealed to the governor the life sentences of two sisters, Gladys and Jamie Scott, imprisoned for the robbery of 11 dollars. They were released after serving 16 years in prison. In 2009, he ran for and won a seat on the Jackson City Council. Four years later, he became mayor, with an ambitious agenda and strong public support. Just this past month, on Jan. 14, the voters of Jackson approved an increase in the local sales tax of 1 percent. Along with increases in the water and sewer rates, Lumumba was going to raise $700 million to improve the city’s infrastructure, and leverage that for more funding through bonds. He told me: “We are a population here now in the need of a lot of development. Development is one of the tracks or one of the roads to human rights and to the recognition of human rights, especially our economic human rights.”</p> <p>Lumumba’s sudden death has left his broad community reeling. A close ally of Lumumba’s, Bill Chandler, executive director of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, told me, “We look forward to continuing his vision for the city of Jackson.” The new, publicly approved sales tax goes into effect March 1. On the first weekend in May, a conference that Lumumba helped organize, Jackson Rising, will take place, promoting economic alternatives like cooperative business ownership. The inspired vision of Chokwe Lumumba continues.</p> <p>Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.</p> <p>Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,200 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “The Silenced Majority,” a New York Times best-seller.</p> <p>© 2014 Amy Goodman</p> <p>Distributed by King Features Syndicate</p>	4,354
<p>Cirrus Logic (NASDAQ: CRUS) shares have dropped more than 10% since its Aug. 2 <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/03/cirrus-logics-profit-surges-but-outlook-calls-for.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">first-quarter report Opens a New Window.</a> despite the company topping Wall Street estimates. The audio-chip specialist's reliance on Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) for the majority of its revenue turned out to be a double-edged sword.</p> <p>Apple clocked better-than-expected&#160; <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/02/finally-apple-incs-growth-isnt-just-about-iphone.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">iPhone sales Opens a New Window.</a> in the latest quarter, which rubbed off positively on Cirrus' top line, as it gets around&#160;76% of its revenue from its largest customer, which is presumed to be Apple. But at the same time, the uncertain production ramp-up schedule of the next-generation iPhones crushed Cirrus' hopes of issuing a sunny guidance.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Not surprisingly, Cirrus shares dropped almost 7% in post-earnings action. The stock has lost roughly 20% since since hitting a 52-week high in early June, as rumors of a delay&#160;in iPhone production have taken their toll. But does this drop in Cirrus' stock price make it a buy, or should investors brace for more downside?</p> <p>Cirrus Logic forecasts&#160;revenue between $390 million and $430 million for the fiscal second quarter. The company's revenue will drop 4% year over year at the midpoint of that guidance range, which isn't usually expected from a major Apple supplier going into the third quarter of a calendar year, when the iPhone production ramp usually begins.</p> <p>By comparison, Cirrus' September-ended quarter revenue in 2016 shot up an impressive 40% year over year as Apple decided to increase the production&#160;numbers of the 7-series iPhones. The situation is different this time, as Cupertino has reportedly been forced to <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/17/report-apple-inc-oled-iphone-production-delayed.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">delay production Opens a New Window.</a> of next-gen iPhones by around two months thanks to supply chain issues.</p> <p>But investors shouldn't press the panic button yet, because Cirrus management believes things could come out better than expected.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>In a letter&#160;to shareholders issued by Cirrus management, the company said:</p> <p>The last line indicates that Cirrus is having difficulty gauging its guidance for the second and third quarters of the fiscal year thanks to Apple-related uncertainty. But the company has laid out the possibility of its second-quarter revenue turning out to be better than the guidance based on the timing of the orders.</p> <p>Additionally, investors should consider that Apple's latest revenue guidance turned out to be better than Wall Street expectations. The company forecasts&#160;revenue between $49 billion and $52 billion for the quarter that ends at the end of September, ahead (at the top) of the analyst estimate that calls for a top line of $49.2 billion. Good iPhone news for Apple would be good news for Cirrus.</p> <p>Cirrus Logic looks like a value play after the recent correction in its stock price. The stock currently trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio&#160;of just 15, which is cheap given its projected annual earnings growth&#160;of over 23% for the next five years. In fact, the chipmaker's current P/E multiple is lower&#160;than its 13-year median of 18.4.</p> <p>Finally, investors shouldn't forget that Cirrus has been <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/08/2-new-technologies-that-could-power-cirrus-logic-h.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">trying to diversify Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;by focusing on emerging technologies so that it isn't so reliant on Apple and the iPhone.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than Cirrus LogicWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0c8a2f04-8615-4581-9cd8-459c4cd4c5ef&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Cirrus Logic wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0c8a2f04-8615-4581-9cd8-459c4cd4c5ef&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of August 1, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TechJunk13/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Harsh Chauhan Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Cirrus Logic. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	Why Cirrus Logic Could Bounce Back	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/15/why-cirrus-logic-could-bounce-back.html	2017-08-15	0right	Why Cirrus Logic Could Bounce Back <p>Cirrus Logic (NASDAQ: CRUS) shares have dropped more than 10% since its Aug. 2 <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/03/cirrus-logics-profit-surges-but-outlook-calls-for.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">first-quarter report Opens a New Window.</a> despite the company topping Wall Street estimates. The audio-chip specialist's reliance on Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) for the majority of its revenue turned out to be a double-edged sword.</p> <p>Apple clocked better-than-expected&#160; <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/02/finally-apple-incs-growth-isnt-just-about-iphone.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">iPhone sales Opens a New Window.</a> in the latest quarter, which rubbed off positively on Cirrus' top line, as it gets around&#160;76% of its revenue from its largest customer, which is presumed to be Apple. But at the same time, the uncertain production ramp-up schedule of the next-generation iPhones crushed Cirrus' hopes of issuing a sunny guidance.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Not surprisingly, Cirrus shares dropped almost 7% in post-earnings action. The stock has lost roughly 20% since since hitting a 52-week high in early June, as rumors of a delay&#160;in iPhone production have taken their toll. But does this drop in Cirrus' stock price make it a buy, or should investors brace for more downside?</p> <p>Cirrus Logic forecasts&#160;revenue between $390 million and $430 million for the fiscal second quarter. The company's revenue will drop 4% year over year at the midpoint of that guidance range, which isn't usually expected from a major Apple supplier going into the third quarter of a calendar year, when the iPhone production ramp usually begins.</p> <p>By comparison, Cirrus' September-ended quarter revenue in 2016 shot up an impressive 40% year over year as Apple decided to increase the production&#160;numbers of the 7-series iPhones. The situation is different this time, as Cupertino has reportedly been forced to <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/17/report-apple-inc-oled-iphone-production-delayed.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">delay production Opens a New Window.</a> of next-gen iPhones by around two months thanks to supply chain issues.</p> <p>But investors shouldn't press the panic button yet, because Cirrus management believes things could come out better than expected.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>In a letter&#160;to shareholders issued by Cirrus management, the company said:</p> <p>The last line indicates that Cirrus is having difficulty gauging its guidance for the second and third quarters of the fiscal year thanks to Apple-related uncertainty. But the company has laid out the possibility of its second-quarter revenue turning out to be better than the guidance based on the timing of the orders.</p> <p>Additionally, investors should consider that Apple's latest revenue guidance turned out to be better than Wall Street expectations. The company forecasts&#160;revenue between $49 billion and $52 billion for the quarter that ends at the end of September, ahead (at the top) of the analyst estimate that calls for a top line of $49.2 billion. Good iPhone news for Apple would be good news for Cirrus.</p> <p>Cirrus Logic looks like a value play after the recent correction in its stock price. The stock currently trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio&#160;of just 15, which is cheap given its projected annual earnings growth&#160;of over 23% for the next five years. In fact, the chipmaker's current P/E multiple is lower&#160;than its 13-year median of 18.4.</p> <p>Finally, investors shouldn't forget that Cirrus has been <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/08/2-new-technologies-that-could-power-cirrus-logic-h.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">trying to diversify Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;by focusing on emerging technologies so that it isn't so reliant on Apple and the iPhone.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than Cirrus LogicWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0c8a2f04-8615-4581-9cd8-459c4cd4c5ef&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Cirrus Logic wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=0c8a2f04-8615-4581-9cd8-459c4cd4c5ef&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of August 1, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TechJunk13/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Harsh Chauhan Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Cirrus Logic. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=e13f32de-78c6-11e7-a9c8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	4,355
<p>Republican Representative Joe Barton believes that the solution to America’s gun problem is more guns. In fact, <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/353928-gop-rep-on-gun-control-more-people-being-armed-worked-in-the-old-west" type="external">Barton told Vox during a recent interview</a> that if more people had guns, people would be too afraid to use them just like in the “old west.” Not only is Barton’s characterization of the Old West completely wrong, but statistics prove that more guns equals more death. Ring of Fire’s <a href="https://twitter.com/farronbalanced?lang=en" type="external">Farron Cousins</a> explains.</p> <p /> <p>Transcript:</p> <p>US Representative Joe Barton, a Republican from the state of Texas, has figured out how to solve the gun problem here in the United States of people just being gunned down by madmen all over the country. According to Barton, the way we stop this is that we arm everybody. If everybody has a gun, everybody’s going to be too scared to use their gun because if they use it, then they’re going to get shot. That is Barton’s reasoning here.</p> <p>In fact, he said, “If you want an example of how this works, go look at the Old West.” Joe Barton, Republican representative from the state of Texas wants to take this country back to the days of the Old West because according to him, because everyone was carrying a gun, there was never any gun violence. This is actually a sentiment that’s been shared by people like Rick Santorum in the past. They always say, “Well, if everybody had a gun, then nobody’s going to use a gun because you’re going to get shot.”</p> <p>Well, that doesn’t stop somebody from actually killing, it just means that they have to think twice because they’ll be killed too. As we saw, especially with this Las Vegas shooter, he had every intention of dying, so I don’t think people shooting back at him was going to do any good. Not to mention the fact, what’s going to happen when you have 500 or more people in a crowd shooting up at a blank hotel window where you’ve got hundreds of windows, innocent people going about their lives in those hotel rooms? Suddenly, they’ve got a barrage of gunfire coming at them.</p> <p>Now, Barton is not a stranger to saying stupid things. As some people may recall, after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Barton was the Republican who actually came out and apologized to BP for the oil spill, and how mean his fellow representatives were being to the oil company that destroyed an entire ecosystem. Yeah, Barton’s said his fair share of stupid stuff along the way.</p> <p>Let’s go back to his Old West mentality. Do you know what they had in the Old West? Or actually I should say, do you know what they didn’t have in the Old West? Automatic or even semiautomatic weapons. They had six shooter revolvers, things that weren’t quite accurate more than 30, 40 feet away. Really, you think that using that as an analogy is pertinent to this particular situation?</p> <p>Let’s go ahead and dispel this entire myth that everybody in the Old West was carrying guns. According to reports, they weren’t. In fact, the Old West had stricter gun laws in place than we have in this country today. You were not allowed to openly carry a weapon. You were not allowed to bring your guns into establishments. They had very strict gun laws and very low gun crime.</p> <p>The fact of the matter is, talking points like those used by Barton and Santorum in the past, and many other Republicans both in the past and in the present, more guns don’t work. How do we know this? Well, for starters, the United States owns roughly half of the world’s guns. United states civilians own almost half of the world’s guns, and we have the highest rate of mass shootings out of any industrialized country in the world. We also have the most lax gun laws. More guns do not equal less crime. They are not a deterrent. More guns equals more death, and that is the only equation that is held up and supported by the facts.</p>	Republican Lawmaker Says Prevent Atrocities By Arming Everyone Like “Old West”	true	https://trofire.com/2017/10/05/republican-lawmaker-says-prevent-atrocities-arming-everyone-like-old-west/	2017-10-05	4left	Republican Lawmaker Says Prevent Atrocities By Arming Everyone Like “Old West” <p>Republican Representative Joe Barton believes that the solution to America’s gun problem is more guns. In fact, <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/353928-gop-rep-on-gun-control-more-people-being-armed-worked-in-the-old-west" type="external">Barton told Vox during a recent interview</a> that if more people had guns, people would be too afraid to use them just like in the “old west.” Not only is Barton’s characterization of the Old West completely wrong, but statistics prove that more guns equals more death. Ring of Fire’s <a href="https://twitter.com/farronbalanced?lang=en" type="external">Farron Cousins</a> explains.</p> <p /> <p>Transcript:</p> <p>US Representative Joe Barton, a Republican from the state of Texas, has figured out how to solve the gun problem here in the United States of people just being gunned down by madmen all over the country. According to Barton, the way we stop this is that we arm everybody. If everybody has a gun, everybody’s going to be too scared to use their gun because if they use it, then they’re going to get shot. That is Barton’s reasoning here.</p> <p>In fact, he said, “If you want an example of how this works, go look at the Old West.” Joe Barton, Republican representative from the state of Texas wants to take this country back to the days of the Old West because according to him, because everyone was carrying a gun, there was never any gun violence. This is actually a sentiment that’s been shared by people like Rick Santorum in the past. They always say, “Well, if everybody had a gun, then nobody’s going to use a gun because you’re going to get shot.”</p> <p>Well, that doesn’t stop somebody from actually killing, it just means that they have to think twice because they’ll be killed too. As we saw, especially with this Las Vegas shooter, he had every intention of dying, so I don’t think people shooting back at him was going to do any good. Not to mention the fact, what’s going to happen when you have 500 or more people in a crowd shooting up at a blank hotel window where you’ve got hundreds of windows, innocent people going about their lives in those hotel rooms? Suddenly, they’ve got a barrage of gunfire coming at them.</p> <p>Now, Barton is not a stranger to saying stupid things. As some people may recall, after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Barton was the Republican who actually came out and apologized to BP for the oil spill, and how mean his fellow representatives were being to the oil company that destroyed an entire ecosystem. Yeah, Barton’s said his fair share of stupid stuff along the way.</p> <p>Let’s go back to his Old West mentality. Do you know what they had in the Old West? Or actually I should say, do you know what they didn’t have in the Old West? Automatic or even semiautomatic weapons. They had six shooter revolvers, things that weren’t quite accurate more than 30, 40 feet away. Really, you think that using that as an analogy is pertinent to this particular situation?</p> <p>Let’s go ahead and dispel this entire myth that everybody in the Old West was carrying guns. According to reports, they weren’t. In fact, the Old West had stricter gun laws in place than we have in this country today. You were not allowed to openly carry a weapon. You were not allowed to bring your guns into establishments. They had very strict gun laws and very low gun crime.</p> <p>The fact of the matter is, talking points like those used by Barton and Santorum in the past, and many other Republicans both in the past and in the present, more guns don’t work. How do we know this? Well, for starters, the United States owns roughly half of the world’s guns. United states civilians own almost half of the world’s guns, and we have the highest rate of mass shootings out of any industrialized country in the world. We also have the most lax gun laws. More guns do not equal less crime. They are not a deterrent. More guns equals more death, and that is the only equation that is held up and supported by the facts.</p>	4,356
<p /> <p>Oct 25 (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co reported a 38 percent jump in quarterly profit, helped by cost-cutting and higher demand for Sprite and tea and coffee in North America, its biggest market.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Net income attributable to the company's shareholders rose to $1.45 billion, or 33 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 29, from $1.05 billion, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier.</p> <p>Revenue fell 14.6 percent to $9.08 billion as it refranchised some bottling operations.</p> <p>(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)</p>	Coca-Cola's quarterly profit jumps 38%	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/25/coca-colas-quarterly-profit-jumps-38.html	2017-10-25	0right	Coca-Cola's quarterly profit jumps 38% <p /> <p>Oct 25 (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co reported a 38 percent jump in quarterly profit, helped by cost-cutting and higher demand for Sprite and tea and coffee in North America, its biggest market.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Net income attributable to the company's shareholders rose to $1.45 billion, or 33 cents per share, in the third quarter ended Sept. 29, from $1.05 billion, or 24 cents per share, a year earlier.</p> <p>Revenue fell 14.6 percent to $9.08 billion as it refranchised some bottling operations.</p> <p>(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)</p>	4,357
<p /> <p>The Blessed Hope "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Tts&amp;c=2" type="external">Titus 2:13-15</a></p> <p>The Tri-fold power of having the Blessed Hope within us</p> <p>Titus chapter 2 is an amazing chapter because it tells us that the pretribulation rapture of the church is our 'blessed hope', in which we are to do the following while we wait on His return:</p> <p>So you see that the Blessed Hope is a means by which God uses it to prepare us and purify us as we wait. It is not simply a "get out of jail free card", it is a refining tool of the Lord to make us ready on a daily basis. After all, death is a reality for over 250,000 people a day every day around the world, with lots of them being bible believing Christians.</p> <p /> <p>Don't you think that to be "ready at any moment" is a pretty good idea? Having the blessed hope in our lives pushes us towards readiness, and way from stagnation and slothfullness in our spiritual walk with the Lord Jesus.</p> <p>Salvation is by grace through faith plus nothing strengthens the Blessed Hope</p> <p>As bible believeing Christians in the age of Grace, we live in a period of time that people of no other dispensation were afforded. Salvation by grace through faith is a gift that we in this life will never understand the full measure of. We read about this in the second chapter of the book of Ephesians:</p> <p>"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)</p> <p>And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in [his] kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.</p> <p>For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?t=KJV&amp;x=0&amp;y=0&amp;b=Eph&amp;c=2&amp;v=1" type="external">Ephesians 2: 4-10</a></p> <p>We who are saved did nothing to save ourselves, and we do nothing to keep ourselves saved. It is all of the Lord Jesus, this is His great gift to us. We can't fall out, be pulled out, be pushed out, or be talked out of the eternal life He gives us at the moment we recieve this free gift. We can't even jump out! Paul addresses this in the eighth chapter of the book of Romans:</p> <p>"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?t=KJV&amp;x=0&amp;y=0&amp;b=Rom&amp;c=8&amp;v=1" type="external">Romans 8:38,39</a></p> <p>God knows that we are redeemed sinners who still have to live everyday in unredeemed bodies of flesh. He knows that we will still commit sin. So He gives us verses like Romans 8 to assure us and comfort us that we can never be separated from His love no matter where we wander. The Prodigal Son, while he lost his inheritance (a picture of loss of <a href="../doctrine/faith-works-and-the-judgment-seat-of-christ.htm" type="external">rewards at the Judgment Seat</a>), he never lost his sonship with the Father.</p> <p>Of course, it is God's desire to see us not become like the Prodigal, and to strive to live our lives as He would have us to live them.</p> <p>Beloved, the bible teaches us that Jesus will 'never leave us or forsake us' after we have been saved. That's a promise you can hang your eternal destiny on. His return for His church to take us our before the Tribulation is also another precious promise you may trust with all your heart.</p> <p>He said He would come get us...and He will. Be ye always ready....this is our BLESSED HOPE.</p> <p /> <p>"WATCH" By Warren M. Smith.</p> <p>Oh, the glory fast approaching, of Ascension's happy morn,� When the watchful servants quickly to His bosom shall be borne; When the dear ones left behind us, shall for us oft seek in vain,� But our spirits shall have risen to the Lamb for sinners slain. Caught up in the air to meet Him, oh! the heights and depths of joy, Lengths and breadths of love surpassing, purest bliss wi ' thout alloy;� Now we see with darkened vision, then we'll see Him face to face,� And we will, through countless ages, sing the glories of His grace. Two shall at a mill be grinding, one be taken, one be left,� Two shall in a bed be sleeping, one of these shall be bereft;� Oh, what wonder and amazement, shall the ones on earth, possess,� They shall pass through tribulation, pain, and sorrow and distress. We shall live with Him forever, in the sunshine of His love,� We shall meet to part, no never, with th' angelic host above;� There we'll hear our Father's welcome, as He calls us, one by one, Saying to each one in person, "Faithful servant, 'tis well done." Let us, then, our lamps keep burning, and our wedding garments on,� Ready to go forth to meet Him, when we hear Him say, "I come;� There will be no time to slumber, lest He come whil'st we're asleep And the door be shut between us; let us then our vigil keep.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p /> The Blessed Hope the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ The Tri-fold power of having the Blessed Hope within us Looking for Jesus: Denying ungodliness: Speak, exhort and rebuke: Click here	Titus 2:13 And The Blessed Hope	true	http://nowtheendbegins.com/pages/rapture/the-blessed-hope.htm		0right	Titus 2:13 And The Blessed Hope <p /> <p>The Blessed Hope "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Tts&amp;c=2" type="external">Titus 2:13-15</a></p> <p>The Tri-fold power of having the Blessed Hope within us</p> <p>Titus chapter 2 is an amazing chapter because it tells us that the pretribulation rapture of the church is our 'blessed hope', in which we are to do the following while we wait on His return:</p> <p>So you see that the Blessed Hope is a means by which God uses it to prepare us and purify us as we wait. It is not simply a "get out of jail free card", it is a refining tool of the Lord to make us ready on a daily basis. After all, death is a reality for over 250,000 people a day every day around the world, with lots of them being bible believing Christians.</p> <p /> <p>Don't you think that to be "ready at any moment" is a pretty good idea? Having the blessed hope in our lives pushes us towards readiness, and way from stagnation and slothfullness in our spiritual walk with the Lord Jesus.</p> <p>Salvation is by grace through faith plus nothing strengthens the Blessed Hope</p> <p>As bible believeing Christians in the age of Grace, we live in a period of time that people of no other dispensation were afforded. Salvation by grace through faith is a gift that we in this life will never understand the full measure of. We read about this in the second chapter of the book of Ephesians:</p> <p>"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)</p> <p>And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in [his] kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.</p> <p>For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?t=KJV&amp;x=0&amp;y=0&amp;b=Eph&amp;c=2&amp;v=1" type="external">Ephesians 2: 4-10</a></p> <p>We who are saved did nothing to save ourselves, and we do nothing to keep ourselves saved. It is all of the Lord Jesus, this is His great gift to us. We can't fall out, be pulled out, be pushed out, or be talked out of the eternal life He gives us at the moment we recieve this free gift. We can't even jump out! Paul addresses this in the eighth chapter of the book of Romans:</p> <p>"For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?t=KJV&amp;x=0&amp;y=0&amp;b=Rom&amp;c=8&amp;v=1" type="external">Romans 8:38,39</a></p> <p>God knows that we are redeemed sinners who still have to live everyday in unredeemed bodies of flesh. He knows that we will still commit sin. So He gives us verses like Romans 8 to assure us and comfort us that we can never be separated from His love no matter where we wander. The Prodigal Son, while he lost his inheritance (a picture of loss of <a href="../doctrine/faith-works-and-the-judgment-seat-of-christ.htm" type="external">rewards at the Judgment Seat</a>), he never lost his sonship with the Father.</p> <p>Of course, it is God's desire to see us not become like the Prodigal, and to strive to live our lives as He would have us to live them.</p> <p>Beloved, the bible teaches us that Jesus will 'never leave us or forsake us' after we have been saved. That's a promise you can hang your eternal destiny on. His return for His church to take us our before the Tribulation is also another precious promise you may trust with all your heart.</p> <p>He said He would come get us...and He will. Be ye always ready....this is our BLESSED HOPE.</p> <p /> <p>"WATCH" By Warren M. Smith.</p> <p>Oh, the glory fast approaching, of Ascension's happy morn,� When the watchful servants quickly to His bosom shall be borne; When the dear ones left behind us, shall for us oft seek in vain,� But our spirits shall have risen to the Lamb for sinners slain. Caught up in the air to meet Him, oh! the heights and depths of joy, Lengths and breadths of love surpassing, purest bliss wi ' thout alloy;� Now we see with darkened vision, then we'll see Him face to face,� And we will, through countless ages, sing the glories of His grace. Two shall at a mill be grinding, one be taken, one be left,� Two shall in a bed be sleeping, one of these shall be bereft;� Oh, what wonder and amazement, shall the ones on earth, possess,� They shall pass through tribulation, pain, and sorrow and distress. We shall live with Him forever, in the sunshine of His love,� We shall meet to part, no never, with th' angelic host above;� There we'll hear our Father's welcome, as He calls us, one by one, Saying to each one in person, "Faithful servant, 'tis well done." Let us, then, our lamps keep burning, and our wedding garments on,� Ready to go forth to meet Him, when we hear Him say, "I come;� There will be no time to slumber, lest He come whil'st we're asleep And the door be shut between us; let us then our vigil keep.</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p>&#160;</p> <p /> The Blessed Hope the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ The Tri-fold power of having the Blessed Hope within us Looking for Jesus: Denying ungodliness: Speak, exhort and rebuke: Click here	4,358
<p>Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:</p> <p>1. <a href="" type="internal">TRUMP READY TO PLAY SALESMAN</a></p> <p>In his debut at the annual economic summit in Davos, the U.S. president will argue that his “America First” agenda can go hand-in-hand with global cooperation.</p> <p>2. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT TRUMP’S ‘LOOKING FORWARD’ TO</a></p> <p>Answering questions under oath in the special counsel’s probe of Russian election interference and the president’s possible obstruction in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.</p> <p>3. <a href="" type="internal">IVANKA TRUMP’S BRAND SCRUTINIZED IN CHINA</a></p> <p>When China Labor Watch confronted the now presidential adviser with charges of labor abuses at its Chinese suppliers, her company refused to engage, an AP investigation finds.</p> <p>4. <a href="" type="internal">‘POSSIBLY THE MOST PROLIFIC SERIAL CHILD SEX ABUSER IN HISTORY’</a></p> <p>That’s what a prosecutor called the once-renowned gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who was sentenced to decades in prison for molesting some of the sport’s top athletes.</p> <p>5. <a href="" type="internal">HOW EGYPTIAN BUSINESSMEN ARE AIDING EL-SISSI</a></p> <p>Loyalists of Egypt’s president are handing out cash and food to poor voters as they try to gather tens of thousands of signatures to support his bid for re-election in March.</p> <p>6. <a href="" type="internal">CENTRISTS DREAMING BIG FOR MIDTERMS</a></p> <p>Washington’s partisan brinksmanship is fueling new efforts to reduce the two parties’ influence on U.S. politics and launch the campaigns of independents around the country.</p> <p>7. <a href="" type="internal">UNITED NATIONS ISSUES DIRE WARNING FOR ROHINGYA</a></p> <p>Attacks on the minority Muslim group appear to be continuing in Myanmar and it is not yet safe for the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in Bangladesh to begin returning home.</p> <p>8. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT COULD DERAIL STOCK MARKET’S RISE</a></p> <p>The duration of the bull market, inflation, central bank policy, unrealistic expectations, a trade war and a real war are potential threats.</p> <p>9. <a href="" type="internal">‘FAREWELL YELLOW BRICK ROAD’</a></p> <p>Elton John is retiring from the road after his upcoming three-year global tour, capping nearly 50 years on stages around the world.</p> <p>10. <a href="" type="internal">WHO WAS ELECTED TO COOPERSTOWN</a></p> <p>Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman are easily elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.</p> <p>Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:</p> <p>1. <a href="" type="internal">TRUMP READY TO PLAY SALESMAN</a></p> <p>In his debut at the annual economic summit in Davos, the U.S. president will argue that his “America First” agenda can go hand-in-hand with global cooperation.</p> <p>2. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT TRUMP’S ‘LOOKING FORWARD’ TO</a></p> <p>Answering questions under oath in the special counsel’s probe of Russian election interference and the president’s possible obstruction in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.</p> <p>3. <a href="" type="internal">IVANKA TRUMP’S BRAND SCRUTINIZED IN CHINA</a></p> <p>When China Labor Watch confronted the now presidential adviser with charges of labor abuses at its Chinese suppliers, her company refused to engage, an AP investigation finds.</p> <p>4. <a href="" type="internal">‘POSSIBLY THE MOST PROLIFIC SERIAL CHILD SEX ABUSER IN HISTORY’</a></p> <p>That’s what a prosecutor called the once-renowned gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who was sentenced to decades in prison for molesting some of the sport’s top athletes.</p> <p>5. <a href="" type="internal">HOW EGYPTIAN BUSINESSMEN ARE AIDING EL-SISSI</a></p> <p>Loyalists of Egypt’s president are handing out cash and food to poor voters as they try to gather tens of thousands of signatures to support his bid for re-election in March.</p> <p>6. <a href="" type="internal">CENTRISTS DREAMING BIG FOR MIDTERMS</a></p> <p>Washington’s partisan brinksmanship is fueling new efforts to reduce the two parties’ influence on U.S. politics and launch the campaigns of independents around the country.</p> <p>7. <a href="" type="internal">UNITED NATIONS ISSUES DIRE WARNING FOR ROHINGYA</a></p> <p>Attacks on the minority Muslim group appear to be continuing in Myanmar and it is not yet safe for the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in Bangladesh to begin returning home.</p> <p>8. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT COULD DERAIL STOCK MARKET’S RISE</a></p> <p>The duration of the bull market, inflation, central bank policy, unrealistic expectations, a trade war and a real war are potential threats.</p> <p>9. <a href="" type="internal">‘FAREWELL YELLOW BRICK ROAD’</a></p> <p>Elton John is retiring from the road after his upcoming three-year global tour, capping nearly 50 years on stages around the world.</p> <p>10. <a href="" type="internal">WHO WAS ELECTED TO COOPERSTOWN</a></p> <p>Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman are easily elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.</p>	10 Things to Know for Today	false	https://apnews.com/0915835efb014731a527613c1e32e05e	2018-01-25	2least	10 Things to Know for Today <p>Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:</p> <p>1. <a href="" type="internal">TRUMP READY TO PLAY SALESMAN</a></p> <p>In his debut at the annual economic summit in Davos, the U.S. president will argue that his “America First” agenda can go hand-in-hand with global cooperation.</p> <p>2. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT TRUMP’S ‘LOOKING FORWARD’ TO</a></p> <p>Answering questions under oath in the special counsel’s probe of Russian election interference and the president’s possible obstruction in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.</p> <p>3. <a href="" type="internal">IVANKA TRUMP’S BRAND SCRUTINIZED IN CHINA</a></p> <p>When China Labor Watch confronted the now presidential adviser with charges of labor abuses at its Chinese suppliers, her company refused to engage, an AP investigation finds.</p> <p>4. <a href="" type="internal">‘POSSIBLY THE MOST PROLIFIC SERIAL CHILD SEX ABUSER IN HISTORY’</a></p> <p>That’s what a prosecutor called the once-renowned gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who was sentenced to decades in prison for molesting some of the sport’s top athletes.</p> <p>5. <a href="" type="internal">HOW EGYPTIAN BUSINESSMEN ARE AIDING EL-SISSI</a></p> <p>Loyalists of Egypt’s president are handing out cash and food to poor voters as they try to gather tens of thousands of signatures to support his bid for re-election in March.</p> <p>6. <a href="" type="internal">CENTRISTS DREAMING BIG FOR MIDTERMS</a></p> <p>Washington’s partisan brinksmanship is fueling new efforts to reduce the two parties’ influence on U.S. politics and launch the campaigns of independents around the country.</p> <p>7. <a href="" type="internal">UNITED NATIONS ISSUES DIRE WARNING FOR ROHINGYA</a></p> <p>Attacks on the minority Muslim group appear to be continuing in Myanmar and it is not yet safe for the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in Bangladesh to begin returning home.</p> <p>8. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT COULD DERAIL STOCK MARKET’S RISE</a></p> <p>The duration of the bull market, inflation, central bank policy, unrealistic expectations, a trade war and a real war are potential threats.</p> <p>9. <a href="" type="internal">‘FAREWELL YELLOW BRICK ROAD’</a></p> <p>Elton John is retiring from the road after his upcoming three-year global tour, capping nearly 50 years on stages around the world.</p> <p>10. <a href="" type="internal">WHO WAS ELECTED TO COOPERSTOWN</a></p> <p>Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman are easily elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.</p> <p>Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:</p> <p>1. <a href="" type="internal">TRUMP READY TO PLAY SALESMAN</a></p> <p>In his debut at the annual economic summit in Davos, the U.S. president will argue that his “America First” agenda can go hand-in-hand with global cooperation.</p> <p>2. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT TRUMP’S ‘LOOKING FORWARD’ TO</a></p> <p>Answering questions under oath in the special counsel’s probe of Russian election interference and the president’s possible obstruction in the firing of FBI Director James Comey.</p> <p>3. <a href="" type="internal">IVANKA TRUMP’S BRAND SCRUTINIZED IN CHINA</a></p> <p>When China Labor Watch confronted the now presidential adviser with charges of labor abuses at its Chinese suppliers, her company refused to engage, an AP investigation finds.</p> <p>4. <a href="" type="internal">‘POSSIBLY THE MOST PROLIFIC SERIAL CHILD SEX ABUSER IN HISTORY’</a></p> <p>That’s what a prosecutor called the once-renowned gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, who was sentenced to decades in prison for molesting some of the sport’s top athletes.</p> <p>5. <a href="" type="internal">HOW EGYPTIAN BUSINESSMEN ARE AIDING EL-SISSI</a></p> <p>Loyalists of Egypt’s president are handing out cash and food to poor voters as they try to gather tens of thousands of signatures to support his bid for re-election in March.</p> <p>6. <a href="" type="internal">CENTRISTS DREAMING BIG FOR MIDTERMS</a></p> <p>Washington’s partisan brinksmanship is fueling new efforts to reduce the two parties’ influence on U.S. politics and launch the campaigns of independents around the country.</p> <p>7. <a href="" type="internal">UNITED NATIONS ISSUES DIRE WARNING FOR ROHINGYA</a></p> <p>Attacks on the minority Muslim group appear to be continuing in Myanmar and it is not yet safe for the hundreds of thousands of refugees living in Bangladesh to begin returning home.</p> <p>8. <a href="" type="internal">WHAT COULD DERAIL STOCK MARKET’S RISE</a></p> <p>The duration of the bull market, inflation, central bank policy, unrealistic expectations, a trade war and a real war are potential threats.</p> <p>9. <a href="" type="internal">‘FAREWELL YELLOW BRICK ROAD’</a></p> <p>Elton John is retiring from the road after his upcoming three-year global tour, capping nearly 50 years on stages around the world.</p> <p>10. <a href="" type="internal">WHO WAS ELECTED TO COOPERSTOWN</a></p> <p>Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Vladimir Guerrero and Trevor Hoffman are easily elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.</p>	4,359
<p /> <p>I don’t know about you, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans. The feckless GOP is now signaling they are possibly willing to ban bump stocks. They know damn well that is a slippery slope and the left is salivating over it. These are the same weak, corrupt politicians who caved on Obamacare. New details on the gun legislation put forth by commie Diane Feinstein are surfacing and they are not pretty. Worse yet, it appears the NRA may dance with this. Never let an emergency go to waste, especially if a lot of dead Americans are involved.</p> <p>Feinstein is the one who admitted in the 1990s that she wanted American gun owners to “turn them all in.” She’s now written a bill that would in effect turn millions of Americans into felons overnight. It’s called the Automatic Gun Fire Prevention Act. It bans any accessory that could possibly be construed to help someone fire an AR-15 quickly. Uh no… that won’t fly. “It shall be unlawful for any person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a trigger crank, a bump-fire device, or any part, combination of parts, component, device, attachment, or accessory that is designed or functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle but not convert the semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun.”</p> <p><a href="" type="internal" /></p> <p>The fact that the NRA and Republicans are even willing to discuss this is extremely worrying. Millions of Americans are now fearing for their gun rights under a Republican President. We would never have dreamed that possible. Feinstein is not going after things that modify a gun’s rate of fire and she admits that. Her bill bans anything that helps a rifle fire quickly. That would indicate and cover every single accessory on the market. Replacing a spring or lightening a trigger for competition would be instantaneous felonies, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. There are even now experts who worry that because a magazine size determines how quickly a gun can fire, this could also be constured to ban ‘high capacity magazines’.</p> <p>John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.</p> <p>This my friends, is a very thinly disguised Assault Weapons Ban. The Republicans need to shoot this down and fast (no pun intended). It just signed on its 33rd co-sponsor and I’m even hearing some Republicans come out in support of it. This is not what we elected Republicans to do. If they vote this way, they are betraying the American people and the Constitution. If this bill goes through with Republican support, the American people will turn on ALL of the Republicans and the feces will hit the fan. They might want to consider that before they crawl into bed with gun-banning communists.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>The legislation would give the ATF the authority to ban any type of accessory they want, as long as they can argue that it contributes to helping a shooter fire quickly. And if those accessories just happen to be on every rifle, such as a pistol grip or a handguard, then we are all screwed. This is an absolute assault on the Second Amendment and our rights. We don’t know why the Vegas shooter shot and killed 58 people, but we do know the wolves of the left were just waiting for an event like this. This bill goes after every single AR-15 and rifle owner in the entire country.</p> <p>It’s not just the “RINOs” either. Florida Senator Marco Rubio said this week he would “always be open” to passing gun control. Rep. Mark Meadows – the conservative head of the Freedom Caucus – told reporters he would be “open to considering a bill.” If a gun ban reaches the floor, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson admitted on camera that he “would vote for it.” Texas Senator John Cornyn said that holding a hearing on banning AR-15 accessories would definitely be “worthwhile.” And when asked whether he would let such a bill come to the floor, Paul Ryan said that this is “clearly” something Congress should look into. These are Republicans for God’s sake who are eager to sell our rights out from underneath us. All in all we have counted at least three dozen Republicans who would entertain jumping on board with Feinstein’s gun ban and those are just the ones who admitted they’re open to it.</p> <p>We cannot allow this to happen. If the Second Amendment falls, the rest will quickly follow suit. We will either stand as a Republic or fall and all of it hinges right now on this gun ban. There is no coming back from this if it passes. There is no do-over here. Will you stand and fight for your right to be armed? I know I will.</p> <p>Terresa Monroe-Hamilton is an editor and writer for Right Wing News. She owns and blogs at <a href="http://www.noisyroom.net/blog/" type="external">NoisyRoom.net</a>. She is a Constitutional Conservative and NoisyRoom focuses on political and national issues of interest to the American public. Terresa is the editor at Trevor Loudon's site, New Zeal - <a href="http://www.trevorloudon.com/" type="external">trevorloudon.com</a>. She also does research at <a href="http://www.keywiki.org" type="external">KeyWiki.org</a>. You can <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">email Terresa here</a>. NoisyRoom can be found on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/noisyroom.net" type="external">Facebook</a> and on <a href="https://twitter.com/terresamonroe" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>	‘Republican’ Congress Who Will Pass New Gun Laws But NOT Repeal Obamacare – Are They Republican At All? [VIDEO]	true	http://rightwingnews.com/republicans/republican-congress-who-will-pass-new-gun-laws-but-not-repeal-obamacare-are-they-republican-at-all-video/	2018-10-20	0right	‘Republican’ Congress Who Will Pass New Gun Laws But NOT Repeal Obamacare – Are They Republican At All? [VIDEO] <p /> <p>I don’t know about you, but it’s getting harder and harder for me to tell the difference between Democrats and Republicans. The feckless GOP is now signaling they are possibly willing to ban bump stocks. They know damn well that is a slippery slope and the left is salivating over it. These are the same weak, corrupt politicians who caved on Obamacare. New details on the gun legislation put forth by commie Diane Feinstein are surfacing and they are not pretty. Worse yet, it appears the NRA may dance with this. Never let an emergency go to waste, especially if a lot of dead Americans are involved.</p> <p>Feinstein is the one who admitted in the 1990s that she wanted American gun owners to “turn them all in.” She’s now written a bill that would in effect turn millions of Americans into felons overnight. It’s called the Automatic Gun Fire Prevention Act. It bans any accessory that could possibly be construed to help someone fire an AR-15 quickly. Uh no… that won’t fly. “It shall be unlawful for any person to import, sell, manufacture, transfer, or possess, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, a trigger crank, a bump-fire device, or any part, combination of parts, component, device, attachment, or accessory that is designed or functions to accelerate the rate of fire of a semi-automatic rifle but not convert the semi-automatic rifle into a machine gun.”</p> <p><a href="" type="internal" /></p> <p>The fact that the NRA and Republicans are even willing to discuss this is extremely worrying. Millions of Americans are now fearing for their gun rights under a Republican President. We would never have dreamed that possible. Feinstein is not going after things that modify a gun’s rate of fire and she admits that. Her bill bans anything that helps a rifle fire quickly. That would indicate and cover every single accessory on the market. Replacing a spring or lightening a trigger for competition would be instantaneous felonies, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. There are even now experts who worry that because a magazine size determines how quickly a gun can fire, this could also be constured to ban ‘high capacity magazines’.</p> <p>John Hawkins's book 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know is filled with lessons that newly minted adults need in order to get the most out of life. Gleaned from a lifetime of trial, error, and writing it down, Hawkins provides advice everyone can benefit from in short, digestible chapters.</p> <p>This my friends, is a very thinly disguised Assault Weapons Ban. The Republicans need to shoot this down and fast (no pun intended). It just signed on its 33rd co-sponsor and I’m even hearing some Republicans come out in support of it. This is not what we elected Republicans to do. If they vote this way, they are betraying the American people and the Constitution. If this bill goes through with Republican support, the American people will turn on ALL of the Republicans and the feces will hit the fan. They might want to consider that before they crawl into bed with gun-banning communists.</p> <p /> <p /> <p>The legislation would give the ATF the authority to ban any type of accessory they want, as long as they can argue that it contributes to helping a shooter fire quickly. And if those accessories just happen to be on every rifle, such as a pistol grip or a handguard, then we are all screwed. This is an absolute assault on the Second Amendment and our rights. We don’t know why the Vegas shooter shot and killed 58 people, but we do know the wolves of the left were just waiting for an event like this. This bill goes after every single AR-15 and rifle owner in the entire country.</p> <p>It’s not just the “RINOs” either. Florida Senator Marco Rubio said this week he would “always be open” to passing gun control. Rep. Mark Meadows – the conservative head of the Freedom Caucus – told reporters he would be “open to considering a bill.” If a gun ban reaches the floor, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson admitted on camera that he “would vote for it.” Texas Senator John Cornyn said that holding a hearing on banning AR-15 accessories would definitely be “worthwhile.” And when asked whether he would let such a bill come to the floor, Paul Ryan said that this is “clearly” something Congress should look into. These are Republicans for God’s sake who are eager to sell our rights out from underneath us. All in all we have counted at least three dozen Republicans who would entertain jumping on board with Feinstein’s gun ban and those are just the ones who admitted they’re open to it.</p> <p>We cannot allow this to happen. If the Second Amendment falls, the rest will quickly follow suit. We will either stand as a Republic or fall and all of it hinges right now on this gun ban. There is no coming back from this if it passes. There is no do-over here. Will you stand and fight for your right to be armed? I know I will.</p> <p>Terresa Monroe-Hamilton is an editor and writer for Right Wing News. She owns and blogs at <a href="http://www.noisyroom.net/blog/" type="external">NoisyRoom.net</a>. She is a Constitutional Conservative and NoisyRoom focuses on political and national issues of interest to the American public. Terresa is the editor at Trevor Loudon's site, New Zeal - <a href="http://www.trevorloudon.com/" type="external">trevorloudon.com</a>. She also does research at <a href="http://www.keywiki.org" type="external">KeyWiki.org</a>. You can <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">email Terresa here</a>. NoisyRoom can be found on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/noisyroom.net" type="external">Facebook</a> and on <a href="https://twitter.com/terresamonroe" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>	4,360
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>On Saturday, close to 70 volunteers pitched in to distribute donated turkeys and all the trimmings for Thanksgiving dinner to 409 families during the annual St. Vincent de Paul food distribution at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church. Another 230-plus turkeys that were left at the end of the day were sent to St. Felix Pantry.</p> <p>On Sunday, members of the Armaduras Motorcycle Club, a group of current and former police officers and military personnel, abandoned their Yule logs and braved the cold weather, put on their vests and flew their colors — which include a handgun and a sword — to collect and deliver complete Thanksgiving dinners to three deserving and needy families.</p> <p>The events added proof you can find big-hearted Rio Ranchoans from all walks of life.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In his recent column in the Observer, “Care to Share,” St. Felix Panty president and CEO Jack Bunting invited all residents to make a difference by exploring ways to “address the needs of the hurting, hungry and hopeless people who live within our local community and state.</p> <p>“It requires a willful choice to live our lives with the intention to simply reach out to help our fellow man,” he wrote.</p> <p>In the Rio Rancho area, there are many opportunities to reach out by volunteering or supporting nonprofit outlets, including St. Felix (stfelixpantry.org). Here are a few others:</p> <p>• Paws and Stripes provides service dogs for wounded U.S. military veterans with post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. The dogs come only from shelters, and highly trained service dog trainers work with the veteran/dog teams. The dogs and the training are provided to the veteran free of charge. Visit pawsandstripes.org to see what volunteer opportunities are available.</p> <p>• ReadWest, which believes that the ability to read and write is essential to economic self-sufficiency and personal well-being, has been working to increase literacy skills for adults for more than two decades. For more information, go to readwest.com.</p> <p>• Storehouse West, incorporated in 1992, assists low-income families, senior citizens and others in Sandoval County with a week’s supply of food and other assistance. Go to storehousewestnm.org for more information.</p> <p>• St. Vincent de Paul Society offers a variety of services to people in need. To contact the office in Bernalillo, call 867-1786.</p> <p>A word of caution for those who just want to write a check as a way to help: It’s important to do a little homework.</p> <p>A good option for donating is the United Way of Central New Mexico, which has a complex system of ranking and awarding money.</p> <p>There are also plenty of websites, like charitynavigator.org, that help you take a peek behind the curtain of your favorite charity and see just how much of your hard-earned money is going to the cause you’re supporting, and how much is going to the organization’s CEO.</p> <p>When you and your families sit down to pray, eat, talk and appreciate your bountiful blessings this holiday season, remember to give what you can to those who are in need.</p> <p>&#160;</p>	Our view: Thanksgiving: A time to count our blessings and share what we can	false	https://abqjournal.com/310117/thanksgiving-a-time-to-count-our-blessings-and-share-what-we-can.html		2least	Our view: Thanksgiving: A time to count our blessings and share what we can <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>On Saturday, close to 70 volunteers pitched in to distribute donated turkeys and all the trimmings for Thanksgiving dinner to 409 families during the annual St. Vincent de Paul food distribution at St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church. Another 230-plus turkeys that were left at the end of the day were sent to St. Felix Pantry.</p> <p>On Sunday, members of the Armaduras Motorcycle Club, a group of current and former police officers and military personnel, abandoned their Yule logs and braved the cold weather, put on their vests and flew their colors — which include a handgun and a sword — to collect and deliver complete Thanksgiving dinners to three deserving and needy families.</p> <p>The events added proof you can find big-hearted Rio Ranchoans from all walks of life.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>In his recent column in the Observer, “Care to Share,” St. Felix Panty president and CEO Jack Bunting invited all residents to make a difference by exploring ways to “address the needs of the hurting, hungry and hopeless people who live within our local community and state.</p> <p>“It requires a willful choice to live our lives with the intention to simply reach out to help our fellow man,” he wrote.</p> <p>In the Rio Rancho area, there are many opportunities to reach out by volunteering or supporting nonprofit outlets, including St. Felix (stfelixpantry.org). Here are a few others:</p> <p>• Paws and Stripes provides service dogs for wounded U.S. military veterans with post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. The dogs come only from shelters, and highly trained service dog trainers work with the veteran/dog teams. The dogs and the training are provided to the veteran free of charge. Visit pawsandstripes.org to see what volunteer opportunities are available.</p> <p>• ReadWest, which believes that the ability to read and write is essential to economic self-sufficiency and personal well-being, has been working to increase literacy skills for adults for more than two decades. For more information, go to readwest.com.</p> <p>• Storehouse West, incorporated in 1992, assists low-income families, senior citizens and others in Sandoval County with a week’s supply of food and other assistance. Go to storehousewestnm.org for more information.</p> <p>• St. Vincent de Paul Society offers a variety of services to people in need. To contact the office in Bernalillo, call 867-1786.</p> <p>A word of caution for those who just want to write a check as a way to help: It’s important to do a little homework.</p> <p>A good option for donating is the United Way of Central New Mexico, which has a complex system of ranking and awarding money.</p> <p>There are also plenty of websites, like charitynavigator.org, that help you take a peek behind the curtain of your favorite charity and see just how much of your hard-earned money is going to the cause you’re supporting, and how much is going to the organization’s CEO.</p> <p>When you and your families sit down to pray, eat, talk and appreciate your bountiful blessings this holiday season, remember to give what you can to those who are in need.</p> <p>&#160;</p>	4,361
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>President Barack Obama speaks at the White House on Saturday after airstrikes by U.S. fighter jets and a drone killed several small groups of Islamic State extremists in Iraq. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)</p> <p>KHAZER CAMP, Iraq – President Barack Obama justified the U.S. military’s return to fighting in Iraq Saturday by saying America must act now to prevent genocide, protect its diplomats and provide humanitarian aid to refugees trapped by Islamic State militants on a mountain ridge near the Syrian border.</p> <p>“This is going to be a long-term project” that won’t end and can’t succeed unless Iraqis form an inclusive government in Baghdad capable of keeping the country from breaking apart, Obama said at the White House.</p> <p>U.S. planes and drones launched four airstrikes on Islamic State forces Saturday as they fired indiscriminately on Yazidi civilians taking shelter in the Sinjar mountains, U.S. Central Command said.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The strikes, which were spread out during the day, destroyed armored carriers and a truck, according to the Central Command statement. It was the third round of airstrikes against Islamic State forces by the U.S. military since they were authorized by Obama on Thursday.</p> <p>The military support also has been helping clear the way for aid flights to drop food and water to thousands of starving refugees in the Sinjar area.</p> <p>But the help comes too late for many of the religious minorities targeted for elimination by the Islamic State group, which swept past U.S.-trained and equipped Iraqi government forces in recent weeks and now controls much of Iraq.</p> <p>A delayed response by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad left Kurdish forces struggling to contain the Sunni extremists’ advances. With nowhere to go but uphill, Kurdish-speaking Yazidi refugees sought shelter in the mile-high Sinjar mountains, where their ancient religion holds that Noah’s ark came to rest.</p> <p>U.S., Iraqi and British cargo planes dropped tons of food, water, tents and other equipment to the refugees Friday and Saturday. Iraq’s defense ministry released a video showing people in the Sinjar mountains rushing to collect food and water as the Iraqi government’s fleet of C130 cargo planes dropped 20 tons of aid at a time.</p> <p>But at least 56 children have died of dehydration in the mountains, UNICEF’s spokesman in Iraq, Karim Elkorany, said on Saturday.</p> <p>British officials estimated Saturday between 50,000 and 150,000 people could be trapped on the mountain.</p> <p>And Juan Mohammed, a local government spokesman in the Syrian city of Qamishli, said that more than 20,000 starving Yazidis are fleeing across the border, braving gunfire through a tenuous “safe passage” that Kurdish peshmerga forces are trying to protect.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>With shocked, sunburnt faces, men, women and children in dirt-caked clothes limped to a camp for displaced Iraqis on Saturday, finding safety after harsh days of hiding on a blazing mountaintop, fleeing the Islamic State extremists.</p> <p>Children who died of thirst were left behind; some exhausted mothers abandoned living babies, as thousands of Yazidis trekked across a rocky mountain chain in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, crossing into neighboring Syria, and then looping back into Iraq to reach safety at the Bajid Kandala camp.</p> <p>Other Yazidis have settled in refugee camps in Syria: so awful is their situation, they have sought safety in a country aflame in a civil war.</p> <p>The U.S. military officially withdrew its combat forces in late 2011 after more than eight years of war. It returned to battle Friday when two F/A-18 jets dropped 500-pound bombs on Islamic State fighters advancing on the Kurdish capital of Irbil.</p> <p>A peshmerga spokesman at the Khazer checkpoint on the frontline outside Irbil said it was a “good hit,” but the impact wasn’t yet clear. The Kurdish general spoke on condition his last name not be used.</p> <p>Obama was adamant Saturday that U.S. troops can’t bring peace to Iraq.</p> <p>“We can conduct airstrikes, but ultimately there’s not going to be an American military solution to this problem. There’s going to have to be an Iraqi solution that America and other countries and allies support,” he said.</p> <p /> <p />	Obama says Iraq is going to be a ‘long-term project’	false	https://abqjournal.com/443652/obama-says-iraq-is-going-to-be-a-longterm-project.html		2least	Obama says Iraq is going to be a ‘long-term project’ <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>President Barack Obama speaks at the White House on Saturday after airstrikes by U.S. fighter jets and a drone killed several small groups of Islamic State extremists in Iraq. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/The Associated Press)</p> <p>KHAZER CAMP, Iraq – President Barack Obama justified the U.S. military’s return to fighting in Iraq Saturday by saying America must act now to prevent genocide, protect its diplomats and provide humanitarian aid to refugees trapped by Islamic State militants on a mountain ridge near the Syrian border.</p> <p>“This is going to be a long-term project” that won’t end and can’t succeed unless Iraqis form an inclusive government in Baghdad capable of keeping the country from breaking apart, Obama said at the White House.</p> <p>U.S. planes and drones launched four airstrikes on Islamic State forces Saturday as they fired indiscriminately on Yazidi civilians taking shelter in the Sinjar mountains, U.S. Central Command said.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The strikes, which were spread out during the day, destroyed armored carriers and a truck, according to the Central Command statement. It was the third round of airstrikes against Islamic State forces by the U.S. military since they were authorized by Obama on Thursday.</p> <p>The military support also has been helping clear the way for aid flights to drop food and water to thousands of starving refugees in the Sinjar area.</p> <p>But the help comes too late for many of the religious minorities targeted for elimination by the Islamic State group, which swept past U.S.-trained and equipped Iraqi government forces in recent weeks and now controls much of Iraq.</p> <p>A delayed response by the Shiite-led government in Baghdad left Kurdish forces struggling to contain the Sunni extremists’ advances. With nowhere to go but uphill, Kurdish-speaking Yazidi refugees sought shelter in the mile-high Sinjar mountains, where their ancient religion holds that Noah’s ark came to rest.</p> <p>U.S., Iraqi and British cargo planes dropped tons of food, water, tents and other equipment to the refugees Friday and Saturday. Iraq’s defense ministry released a video showing people in the Sinjar mountains rushing to collect food and water as the Iraqi government’s fleet of C130 cargo planes dropped 20 tons of aid at a time.</p> <p>But at least 56 children have died of dehydration in the mountains, UNICEF’s spokesman in Iraq, Karim Elkorany, said on Saturday.</p> <p>British officials estimated Saturday between 50,000 and 150,000 people could be trapped on the mountain.</p> <p>And Juan Mohammed, a local government spokesman in the Syrian city of Qamishli, said that more than 20,000 starving Yazidis are fleeing across the border, braving gunfire through a tenuous “safe passage” that Kurdish peshmerga forces are trying to protect.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>With shocked, sunburnt faces, men, women and children in dirt-caked clothes limped to a camp for displaced Iraqis on Saturday, finding safety after harsh days of hiding on a blazing mountaintop, fleeing the Islamic State extremists.</p> <p>Children who died of thirst were left behind; some exhausted mothers abandoned living babies, as thousands of Yazidis trekked across a rocky mountain chain in temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, crossing into neighboring Syria, and then looping back into Iraq to reach safety at the Bajid Kandala camp.</p> <p>Other Yazidis have settled in refugee camps in Syria: so awful is their situation, they have sought safety in a country aflame in a civil war.</p> <p>The U.S. military officially withdrew its combat forces in late 2011 after more than eight years of war. It returned to battle Friday when two F/A-18 jets dropped 500-pound bombs on Islamic State fighters advancing on the Kurdish capital of Irbil.</p> <p>A peshmerga spokesman at the Khazer checkpoint on the frontline outside Irbil said it was a “good hit,” but the impact wasn’t yet clear. The Kurdish general spoke on condition his last name not be used.</p> <p>Obama was adamant Saturday that U.S. troops can’t bring peace to Iraq.</p> <p>“We can conduct airstrikes, but ultimately there’s not going to be an American military solution to this problem. There’s going to have to be an Iraqi solution that America and other countries and allies support,” he said.</p> <p /> <p />	4,362
<p>The main sign for the District Wharf. (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)</p> <p>The Wharf ( <a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=690+Water+St.,+S.W.&amp;entry=gmail&amp;source=g" type="external">690 Water St., S.W.</a>) celebrates its grand opening with a long weekend of events&#160;Oct. 12-15.</p> <p>On&#160;Thursday, Oct. 12&#160;there will be live music and entertainment on five stages from&#160;noon-9 p.m.&#160;The Bacon Brothers perform a happy hour concert at&#160;5 p.m.&#160;There will be daytime fireworks at&#160;noon&#160;and sunset fireworks at&#160;6:30 p.m.</p> <p>Friday, Oct. 13&#160;there will be live music from&#160;10 a.m.-10 p.m.&#160;Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, Will Gravatt Band, Tom Lagana and more will perform. Headliner Go Go Gadget performs from&#160;6-7:30 p.m.&#160;There will also be s’mores at the Wharf fire pit and a silent disco.</p> <p>Saturday, Oct. 14&#160;will feature entertainment from&#160;10 a.m.- 9 p.m.&#160;‘90s cover band White Ford Bronco performs from&#160;6-7:30 p.m.&#160;Other actives include Yoga on the Pier, Art Wheels and more.</p> <p>On&#160;Sunday, Oct. 15&#160;activities run from&#160;9 a.m.-6:30 p.m.&#160;At&#160;10 a.m.&#160;there will be morning activities with Rocknoceros Kids’ Band. The U.S. Army Band Downrange performs at&#160;noon. At&#160;4 p.m.&#160;there will be a blessing of the wharf followed by a performance Howard Gospel Choir of Howard University. The weekend closes out with sunset fireworks at&#160;6:30 p.m.</p> <p>For a complete list of events, visit&#160; <a href="http://wharfdc.com/" type="external">wharfdc.com</a>.</p> <p>Apartments at the District Wharf. (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Art Wheels</a> <a href="" type="internal">District Wharf</a> <a href="" type="internal">Gay Men's Chorus of Washington</a> <a href="" type="internal">Go Go Gadget</a> <a href="" type="internal">grand opening</a> <a href="" type="internal">Howard Gospel Choir</a> <a href="" type="internal">Howard University</a> <a href="" type="internal">Rocknoceros Kids' Band</a> <a href="" type="internal">The Bacon Brothers</a> <a href="" type="internal">The Wharf</a> <a href="" type="internal">Tom Lagana</a> <a href="" type="internal">U.S. Army Band Downrange</a> <a href="" type="internal">White Ford Bronco</a> <a href="" type="internal">Will Gravatt Band</a> <a href="" type="internal">Yoga on the Pier</a></p>	Show time for the Wharf	false	http://washingtonblade.com/2017/10/05/show-time-wharf/		3left-center	Show time for the Wharf <p>The main sign for the District Wharf. (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)</p> <p>The Wharf ( <a href="https://maps.google.com/?q=690+Water+St.,+S.W.&amp;entry=gmail&amp;source=g" type="external">690 Water St., S.W.</a>) celebrates its grand opening with a long weekend of events&#160;Oct. 12-15.</p> <p>On&#160;Thursday, Oct. 12&#160;there will be live music and entertainment on five stages from&#160;noon-9 p.m.&#160;The Bacon Brothers perform a happy hour concert at&#160;5 p.m.&#160;There will be daytime fireworks at&#160;noon&#160;and sunset fireworks at&#160;6:30 p.m.</p> <p>Friday, Oct. 13&#160;there will be live music from&#160;10 a.m.-10 p.m.&#160;Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, Will Gravatt Band, Tom Lagana and more will perform. Headliner Go Go Gadget performs from&#160;6-7:30 p.m.&#160;There will also be s’mores at the Wharf fire pit and a silent disco.</p> <p>Saturday, Oct. 14&#160;will feature entertainment from&#160;10 a.m.- 9 p.m.&#160;‘90s cover band White Ford Bronco performs from&#160;6-7:30 p.m.&#160;Other actives include Yoga on the Pier, Art Wheels and more.</p> <p>On&#160;Sunday, Oct. 15&#160;activities run from&#160;9 a.m.-6:30 p.m.&#160;At&#160;10 a.m.&#160;there will be morning activities with Rocknoceros Kids’ Band. The U.S. Army Band Downrange performs at&#160;noon. At&#160;4 p.m.&#160;there will be a blessing of the wharf followed by a performance Howard Gospel Choir of Howard University. The weekend closes out with sunset fireworks at&#160;6:30 p.m.</p> <p>For a complete list of events, visit&#160; <a href="http://wharfdc.com/" type="external">wharfdc.com</a>.</p> <p>Apartments at the District Wharf. (Washington Blade photo by Tom Hausman)</p> <p><a href="" type="internal">Art Wheels</a> <a href="" type="internal">District Wharf</a> <a href="" type="internal">Gay Men's Chorus of Washington</a> <a href="" type="internal">Go Go Gadget</a> <a href="" type="internal">grand opening</a> <a href="" type="internal">Howard Gospel Choir</a> <a href="" type="internal">Howard University</a> <a href="" type="internal">Rocknoceros Kids' Band</a> <a href="" type="internal">The Bacon Brothers</a> <a href="" type="internal">The Wharf</a> <a href="" type="internal">Tom Lagana</a> <a href="" type="internal">U.S. Army Band Downrange</a> <a href="" type="internal">White Ford Bronco</a> <a href="" type="internal">Will Gravatt Band</a> <a href="" type="internal">Yoga on the Pier</a></p>	4,363
<p>During the closing statement, the defendant is expected to repent or express regret for her deeds, or to enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as in the case of my colleagues in the group, this is completely unnecessary. Instead, I want to express my views about the causes of what has happened with us.</p> <p>The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].</p> <p>Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.</p> <p>How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.</p> <p>It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media. Moreover, it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance.</p> <p>Implementing this thoroughly interesting political project has required considerable quantities of professional lighting and video equipment, air time on national TV channels for hours-long live broadcasts, and numerous background shoots for morally and ethically edifying news stories, where in fact the Patriarch’s well-constructed speeches would be pronounced, helping the faithful make the right political choice during the election campaign, a difficult time for Putin. Moreover, all shooting has to take place continuously; the necessary images must sink into the memory and be constantly updated, to create the impression of something natural, constant and compulsory.</p> <p>Our sudden musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song “Mother of God, Drive Putin Out” violated the integrity of this media image, generated and maintained by the authorities for so long, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to combine the visual image of Orthodox culture and protest culture, suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it might also take the side of civic rebellion and protest in Russia.</p> <p>Perhaps such an unpleasant large-scale effect from our media intrusion into the cathedral was a surprise to the authorities themselves. First they tried to present our performance as the prank of heartless militant atheists. But they made a huge blunder, since by this time we were already known as an anti-Putin feminist punk band that carried out their media raids on the country’s major political symbols.</p> <p>In the end, considering all the irreversible political and symbolic losses caused by our innocent creativity, the authorities decided to protect the public from us and our nonconformist thinking. Thus ended our complicated punk adventure in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.</p> <p>I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we now expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. Now the whole world sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, Russia looks different in the eyes of the world from the way Putin tries to present it at daily international meetings. All the steps toward a state governed by the rule of law that he promised have obviously not been made. And his statement that the court in our case will be objective and make a fair decision is another deception of the entire country and the international community.</p> <p>That is all. Thank you.</p>	Closing Statement in Pussy Riot Trial	true	https://counterpunch.org/2012/08/13/closing-statement-in-pussy-riot-trial/	2012-08-13	4left	Closing Statement in Pussy Riot Trial <p>During the closing statement, the defendant is expected to repent or express regret for her deeds, or to enumerate attenuating circumstances. In my case, as in the case of my colleagues in the group, this is completely unnecessary. Instead, I want to express my views about the causes of what has happened with us.</p> <p>The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].</p> <p>Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.</p> <p>How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.</p> <p>It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media. Moreover, it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance.</p> <p>Implementing this thoroughly interesting political project has required considerable quantities of professional lighting and video equipment, air time on national TV channels for hours-long live broadcasts, and numerous background shoots for morally and ethically edifying news stories, where in fact the Patriarch’s well-constructed speeches would be pronounced, helping the faithful make the right political choice during the election campaign, a difficult time for Putin. Moreover, all shooting has to take place continuously; the necessary images must sink into the memory and be constantly updated, to create the impression of something natural, constant and compulsory.</p> <p>Our sudden musical appearance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with the song “Mother of God, Drive Putin Out” violated the integrity of this media image, generated and maintained by the authorities for so long, and revealed its falsity. In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to combine the visual image of Orthodox culture and protest culture, suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it might also take the side of civic rebellion and protest in Russia.</p> <p>Perhaps such an unpleasant large-scale effect from our media intrusion into the cathedral was a surprise to the authorities themselves. First they tried to present our performance as the prank of heartless militant atheists. But they made a huge blunder, since by this time we were already known as an anti-Putin feminist punk band that carried out their media raids on the country’s major political symbols.</p> <p>In the end, considering all the irreversible political and symbolic losses caused by our innocent creativity, the authorities decided to protect the public from us and our nonconformist thinking. Thus ended our complicated punk adventure in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.</p> <p>I now have mixed feelings about this trial. On the one hand, we now expect a guilty verdict. Compared to the judicial machine, we are nobodies, and we have lost. On the other hand, we have won. Now the whole world sees that the criminal case against us has been fabricated. The system cannot conceal the repressive nature of this trial. Once again, Russia looks different in the eyes of the world from the way Putin tries to present it at daily international meetings. All the steps toward a state governed by the rule of law that he promised have obviously not been made. And his statement that the court in our case will be objective and make a fair decision is another deception of the entire country and the international community.</p> <p>That is all. Thank you.</p>	4,364
<p>BOURNEMOUTH, England (AP) — With star forward Alexis Sanchez left at home, Arsenal squandered a lead by conceding two goals in five minutes to lose 2-1 at Bournemouth in the Premier League on Sunday.</p> <p>Callum Wilson equalized in the 70th minute for Bournemouth before setting up Jordon Ibe for the winner in the 74th minute, intensifying Arsenal’s problems in what could be developing into another crisis under Arsene Wenger.</p> <p>Hector Bellerin opened the scoring in the 52nd for Arsenal, which is in sixth place and has dropped eight points off the Champions League qualification positions as a result of Liverpool’s win over Manchester City later Sunday.</p> <p>Wenger said Sanchez was omitted because the Chile international was “being vague” while City and Manchester United fight for his services. It seems inevitable that Sanchez will depart this month, leaving the team without its game-changer and top scorer from last season.</p> <p>“Half in, half out,” Wenger said of Sanchez’s current position at Arsenal. “You never know this kind of situation during the transfer period.”</p> <p>Mesut Ozil was also missing because of injury and Arsenal’s lineup looked a shadow of the past teams under Wenger.</p> <p>“We were 1-0 up and suddenly we lost two goals and we don’t know where they came from,” Wenger said. “It is very frustrating. Overall we have to look at it in a very objective and harsh way — we made mistakes we should not have made.</p> <p>“The team that fights against relegation will fight and you cannot afford any concentration mistake.”</p> <p>It was a first Premier League win over Arsenal for Bournemouth, and a first victory against a top-six side this season that lifts Eddie Howe’s team into 13th place.</p> <p>“In this division, if you can get two or three wins your whole outlook can change,” Howe said. “Then if you get two or three defeats it all changes. We have just tried to be very stable.</p> <p>“That was a famous win for the club.”</p> <p>BOURNEMOUTH, England (AP) — With star forward Alexis Sanchez left at home, Arsenal squandered a lead by conceding two goals in five minutes to lose 2-1 at Bournemouth in the Premier League on Sunday.</p> <p>Callum Wilson equalized in the 70th minute for Bournemouth before setting up Jordon Ibe for the winner in the 74th minute, intensifying Arsenal’s problems in what could be developing into another crisis under Arsene Wenger.</p> <p>Hector Bellerin opened the scoring in the 52nd for Arsenal, which is in sixth place and has dropped eight points off the Champions League qualification positions as a result of Liverpool’s win over Manchester City later Sunday.</p> <p>Wenger said Sanchez was omitted because the Chile international was “being vague” while City and Manchester United fight for his services. It seems inevitable that Sanchez will depart this month, leaving the team without its game-changer and top scorer from last season.</p> <p>“Half in, half out,” Wenger said of Sanchez’s current position at Arsenal. “You never know this kind of situation during the transfer period.”</p> <p>Mesut Ozil was also missing because of injury and Arsenal’s lineup looked a shadow of the past teams under Wenger.</p> <p>“We were 1-0 up and suddenly we lost two goals and we don’t know where they came from,” Wenger said. “It is very frustrating. Overall we have to look at it in a very objective and harsh way — we made mistakes we should not have made.</p> <p>“The team that fights against relegation will fight and you cannot afford any concentration mistake.”</p> <p>It was a first Premier League win over Arsenal for Bournemouth, and a first victory against a top-six side this season that lifts Eddie Howe’s team into 13th place.</p> <p>“In this division, if you can get two or three wins your whole outlook can change,” Howe said. “Then if you get two or three defeats it all changes. We have just tried to be very stable.</p> <p>“That was a famous win for the club.”</p>	Without Sanchez, Arsenal loses 2-1 to Bournemouth in EPL	false	https://apnews.com/4365a0baf75944b2a8a3450fef16e3c5	2018-01-14	2least	Without Sanchez, Arsenal loses 2-1 to Bournemouth in EPL <p>BOURNEMOUTH, England (AP) — With star forward Alexis Sanchez left at home, Arsenal squandered a lead by conceding two goals in five minutes to lose 2-1 at Bournemouth in the Premier League on Sunday.</p> <p>Callum Wilson equalized in the 70th minute for Bournemouth before setting up Jordon Ibe for the winner in the 74th minute, intensifying Arsenal’s problems in what could be developing into another crisis under Arsene Wenger.</p> <p>Hector Bellerin opened the scoring in the 52nd for Arsenal, which is in sixth place and has dropped eight points off the Champions League qualification positions as a result of Liverpool’s win over Manchester City later Sunday.</p> <p>Wenger said Sanchez was omitted because the Chile international was “being vague” while City and Manchester United fight for his services. It seems inevitable that Sanchez will depart this month, leaving the team without its game-changer and top scorer from last season.</p> <p>“Half in, half out,” Wenger said of Sanchez’s current position at Arsenal. “You never know this kind of situation during the transfer period.”</p> <p>Mesut Ozil was also missing because of injury and Arsenal’s lineup looked a shadow of the past teams under Wenger.</p> <p>“We were 1-0 up and suddenly we lost two goals and we don’t know where they came from,” Wenger said. “It is very frustrating. Overall we have to look at it in a very objective and harsh way — we made mistakes we should not have made.</p> <p>“The team that fights against relegation will fight and you cannot afford any concentration mistake.”</p> <p>It was a first Premier League win over Arsenal for Bournemouth, and a first victory against a top-six side this season that lifts Eddie Howe’s team into 13th place.</p> <p>“In this division, if you can get two or three wins your whole outlook can change,” Howe said. “Then if you get two or three defeats it all changes. We have just tried to be very stable.</p> <p>“That was a famous win for the club.”</p> <p>BOURNEMOUTH, England (AP) — With star forward Alexis Sanchez left at home, Arsenal squandered a lead by conceding two goals in five minutes to lose 2-1 at Bournemouth in the Premier League on Sunday.</p> <p>Callum Wilson equalized in the 70th minute for Bournemouth before setting up Jordon Ibe for the winner in the 74th minute, intensifying Arsenal’s problems in what could be developing into another crisis under Arsene Wenger.</p> <p>Hector Bellerin opened the scoring in the 52nd for Arsenal, which is in sixth place and has dropped eight points off the Champions League qualification positions as a result of Liverpool’s win over Manchester City later Sunday.</p> <p>Wenger said Sanchez was omitted because the Chile international was “being vague” while City and Manchester United fight for his services. It seems inevitable that Sanchez will depart this month, leaving the team without its game-changer and top scorer from last season.</p> <p>“Half in, half out,” Wenger said of Sanchez’s current position at Arsenal. “You never know this kind of situation during the transfer period.”</p> <p>Mesut Ozil was also missing because of injury and Arsenal’s lineup looked a shadow of the past teams under Wenger.</p> <p>“We were 1-0 up and suddenly we lost two goals and we don’t know where they came from,” Wenger said. “It is very frustrating. Overall we have to look at it in a very objective and harsh way — we made mistakes we should not have made.</p> <p>“The team that fights against relegation will fight and you cannot afford any concentration mistake.”</p> <p>It was a first Premier League win over Arsenal for Bournemouth, and a first victory against a top-six side this season that lifts Eddie Howe’s team into 13th place.</p> <p>“In this division, if you can get two or three wins your whole outlook can change,” Howe said. “Then if you get two or three defeats it all changes. We have just tried to be very stable.</p> <p>“That was a famous win for the club.”</p>	4,365
<p /> <p>A federal judge has heard testimony in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's request to temporarily block the construction of a four-state oil pipeline near their reservation, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Some things to know about the pipeline and the tribe's ongoing protest:</p> <p>___</p> <p>WHAT IS THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE?</p> <p>Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project that would carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers can access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>WHAT IS THE LAWSUIT TARGETING?</p> <p>The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued federal regulators for approving the oil pipeline, challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings and arguing that the pipeline would be placed less than a mile upstream of the reservation, potentially impacting drinking water for more than 8,000 tribal members and millions of people who rely on it further downstream.</p> <p>The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the tribe by environmental group Earthjustice, said the project violates several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act. The tribe also worries the project will disturb ancient sacred sites outside of the 2.3-million acre reservation.</p> <p>___</p> <p>IS THE PIPELINE SAFE?</p> <p>The company said the pipeline would include safeguards such as leak detection equipment, and workers monitoring the pipeline remotely in Texas could close block valves on it within three minutes if a breach is detected.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WHO ARE THE PROTESTERS?</p> <p>Mostly members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, but they've been joined by other American Indians and non-Native Americans from across the country. "Divergent" actress Shailene Woodley was part of the protests last week, and actress Susan Sarandon was at Wednesday's federal hearing.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HOW MANY ARRESTS HAVE THERE BEEN?</p> <p>For months, there has been a nonviolent tribal protest at a "spirit camp" at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers in the path of the pipeline. More than a dozen young people from the reservation also ran to Washington to deliver 140,000 petition signatures to the Corps to protest the pipeline.</p> <p>But the protest recently became heated, and more than two dozen have been arrested and charged with interfering with the pipeline construction, including Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman David Archambault II.</p> <p>Gov. Jack Dalrymple declared an emergency last week to make more state resources available to manage public safety risks from the protest. He said that the state is committed to protecting lawful assembly rights, but says unlawful acts have led to "serious public safety concerns."</p> <p>___</p> <p>ARE THERE PROTESTS IN OTHER STATES?</p> <p>Yes, but nothing like in North Dakota. Construction equipment at several sites in Iowa was set on fire earlier in August, causing more than $1 million in damage. And Iowa landowners who are upset over the state utilities board allowance of eminent domain have sued and are waiting for that challenge to be heard.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WHY IS IT BEING BUILT?</p> <p>Energy Transfer Partners announced the Dakota Access pipeline in 2014, a few days after Dalrymple urged industry and government officials to build more pipelines to keep pace with the state's oil production, which is second only to Texas'.</p> <p>Supporters said the pipeline would create more markets and reduce truck and oil train traffic — the latter of which has been a growing concern after a spate of fiery derailments of trains carrying North Dakota crude, including one near Dalrymple's hometown of Casselton in 2013, and an explosion in Quebec that same year that killed 47 people.</p>	Oil pipeline: The legal challenges and protests	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/24/oil-pipeline-legal-challenges-and-protests.html	2016-08-24	0right	Oil pipeline: The legal challenges and protests <p /> <p>A federal judge has heard testimony in the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's request to temporarily block the construction of a four-state oil pipeline near their reservation, which straddles the North Dakota-South Dakota border.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Some things to know about the pipeline and the tribe's ongoing protest:</p> <p>___</p> <p>WHAT IS THE DAKOTA ACCESS PIPELINE?</p> <p>Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners' Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile project that would carry nearly a half-million barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota's oil fields through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Illinois, where shippers can access Midwest and Gulf Coast markets.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>WHAT IS THE LAWSUIT TARGETING?</p> <p>The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued federal regulators for approving the oil pipeline, challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to grant permits at more than 200 water crossings and arguing that the pipeline would be placed less than a mile upstream of the reservation, potentially impacting drinking water for more than 8,000 tribal members and millions of people who rely on it further downstream.</p> <p>The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the tribe by environmental group Earthjustice, said the project violates several federal laws, including the National Historic Preservation Act. The tribe also worries the project will disturb ancient sacred sites outside of the 2.3-million acre reservation.</p> <p>___</p> <p>IS THE PIPELINE SAFE?</p> <p>The company said the pipeline would include safeguards such as leak detection equipment, and workers monitoring the pipeline remotely in Texas could close block valves on it within three minutes if a breach is detected.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WHO ARE THE PROTESTERS?</p> <p>Mostly members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, but they've been joined by other American Indians and non-Native Americans from across the country. "Divergent" actress Shailene Woodley was part of the protests last week, and actress Susan Sarandon was at Wednesday's federal hearing.</p> <p>___</p> <p>HOW MANY ARRESTS HAVE THERE BEEN?</p> <p>For months, there has been a nonviolent tribal protest at a "spirit camp" at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers in the path of the pipeline. More than a dozen young people from the reservation also ran to Washington to deliver 140,000 petition signatures to the Corps to protest the pipeline.</p> <p>But the protest recently became heated, and more than two dozen have been arrested and charged with interfering with the pipeline construction, including Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Chairman David Archambault II.</p> <p>Gov. Jack Dalrymple declared an emergency last week to make more state resources available to manage public safety risks from the protest. He said that the state is committed to protecting lawful assembly rights, but says unlawful acts have led to "serious public safety concerns."</p> <p>___</p> <p>ARE THERE PROTESTS IN OTHER STATES?</p> <p>Yes, but nothing like in North Dakota. Construction equipment at several sites in Iowa was set on fire earlier in August, causing more than $1 million in damage. And Iowa landowners who are upset over the state utilities board allowance of eminent domain have sued and are waiting for that challenge to be heard.</p> <p>___</p> <p>WHY IS IT BEING BUILT?</p> <p>Energy Transfer Partners announced the Dakota Access pipeline in 2014, a few days after Dalrymple urged industry and government officials to build more pipelines to keep pace with the state's oil production, which is second only to Texas'.</p> <p>Supporters said the pipeline would create more markets and reduce truck and oil train traffic — the latter of which has been a growing concern after a spate of fiery derailments of trains carrying North Dakota crude, including one near Dalrymple's hometown of Casselton in 2013, and an explosion in Quebec that same year that killed 47 people.</p>	4,366
<p>BALTIMORE (MD)Baltimore SunThe Associated PressOriginally published May 8, 2003, 1:49 PM EDT</p> <p /> <p>Blackwell suffers from multiple medical conditions, including diabetes, kidney damage and -- as a result of the shooting -- nerve damage, Dr. Daniel Howard said in a statement."I recommend that alternatives to incarceration be explored," Howard wrote.Blackwell had been expected to turn himself in to be booked on the charges today. Blackwell's attorney, Kenneth Ravenell, asked the court to cancel the arrest warrant for the priest and instead issue a summons to appear at an arraignment. A 2 p.m. hearing on the request was scheduled.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p />	Priest said to be too ill for incarceration	false	https://poynter.org/news/priest-said-be-too-ill-incarceration	2003-05-08	2least	Priest said to be too ill for incarceration <p>BALTIMORE (MD)Baltimore SunThe Associated PressOriginally published May 8, 2003, 1:49 PM EDT</p> <p /> <p>Blackwell suffers from multiple medical conditions, including diabetes, kidney damage and -- as a result of the shooting -- nerve damage, Dr. Daniel Howard said in a statement."I recommend that alternatives to incarceration be explored," Howard wrote.Blackwell had been expected to turn himself in to be booked on the charges today. Blackwell's attorney, Kenneth Ravenell, asked the court to cancel the arrest warrant for the priest and instead issue a summons to appear at an arraignment. A 2 p.m. hearing on the request was scheduled.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p />	4,367
<p>The freight transport and warehousing sector defied the national downturn in hiring last month, adding 12,400 jobs as warehouse operators and package-delivery companies boosted payrolls at a rapid pace.</p> <p>The gains extended strong growth in sectors tied to e-commerce, as companies get workers and goods in place for another expected surge in online holiday sales.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Warehousing and storage companies, a group that includes the burgeoning business of managing distribution centers filled with online retail inventory, added 4,800 jobs from August to September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, pushing total employment in the sector to a new high of 961,000.</p> <p>Courier and messenger firms, including the parcel carriers that deliver online orders, added 3,600 jobs last month, giving the sector 32,000 more jobs than the same month last year.</p> <p>This holiday season Deloitte expects online sales to rise 18% to 21% compared with 2016, and the National Retail Federation forecasts that nonstore sales will rise 11% to 15%. Both figures are far stronger than the single-digit gains forecast for overall retail sales.</p> <p>Low unemployment and a tight labor market have accelerated seasonal recruitment efforts, with some logistics companies and staffing firms posting job ads as early as July. Average pay for entry-level warehouse workers is expected to hit $13.68 an hour during this holiday season, up 10% compared with nonpeak wages and a nearly 5% increase from 2016, according to logistics staffing firm ProLogistix.</p> <p>This year United Parcel Service Inc. plans to add 95,000 seasonal workers, from package handlers and delivery helpers to drivers who run big-rigs loaded with packages from one facility to another, while FedEx Corp. expects to hire more than 50,000 for the peak.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>The expansion came as the BLS reported that the U.S. overall shed 33,000 jobs last month. Two major hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland in September, slashing employment in the restaurant industry and ending the longest string of job growth on record. Including transit and ground passenger business, the transport and warehousing sector added 21,800 jobs last month, the strongest gain among the sectors that BLS tracks.</p> <p>Trucking employment, meanwhile, slipped by 100 jobs as carriers riding a resurgent freight market reported trouble recruiting drivers.</p> <p>The hurricanes could compound recruitment pressure on trucking companies if drivers leave for construction jobs spawned by rebuilding efforts, Stephens analysts wrote in a research note last week. "We believe carriers will start to announce new rounds of driver pay increases in the near-term and believe any discussions around driver wage increases will be an important topic on earnings conference calls," the analysts wrote.</p> <p>Shipping prices for trucks soared in September as hurricane relief efforts in Texas and Florida diverted trucking capacity from other regions.</p> <p>DAT Solutions LLC, an independent marketplace matching freight loads and trucks, said demand for a variety of trucking services jumped in September while capacity pulled back, sending prices on the spot market soaring. Average rates for truck vans, the most common truck transport, jumped 11% from August to September and were up 22% from a year ago.</p> <p>"There's just not enough trucks to move all the freight that needs to get moved," said Mark Montague, a senior industry analyst with DAT.</p> <p>Write to Jennifer Smith at [email protected]</p> <p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p> <p>October 06, 2017 15:16 ET (19:16 GMT)</p>	Freight and Warehousing Firms Add Jobs in September, Bucking Downturn	true	http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/06/freight-and-warehousing-firms-add-jobs-in-september-bucking-downturn.html	2017-10-06	0right	Freight and Warehousing Firms Add Jobs in September, Bucking Downturn <p>The freight transport and warehousing sector defied the national downturn in hiring last month, adding 12,400 jobs as warehouse operators and package-delivery companies boosted payrolls at a rapid pace.</p> <p>The gains extended strong growth in sectors tied to e-commerce, as companies get workers and goods in place for another expected surge in online holiday sales.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Warehousing and storage companies, a group that includes the burgeoning business of managing distribution centers filled with online retail inventory, added 4,800 jobs from August to September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday, pushing total employment in the sector to a new high of 961,000.</p> <p>Courier and messenger firms, including the parcel carriers that deliver online orders, added 3,600 jobs last month, giving the sector 32,000 more jobs than the same month last year.</p> <p>This holiday season Deloitte expects online sales to rise 18% to 21% compared with 2016, and the National Retail Federation forecasts that nonstore sales will rise 11% to 15%. Both figures are far stronger than the single-digit gains forecast for overall retail sales.</p> <p>Low unemployment and a tight labor market have accelerated seasonal recruitment efforts, with some logistics companies and staffing firms posting job ads as early as July. Average pay for entry-level warehouse workers is expected to hit $13.68 an hour during this holiday season, up 10% compared with nonpeak wages and a nearly 5% increase from 2016, according to logistics staffing firm ProLogistix.</p> <p>This year United Parcel Service Inc. plans to add 95,000 seasonal workers, from package handlers and delivery helpers to drivers who run big-rigs loaded with packages from one facility to another, while FedEx Corp. expects to hire more than 50,000 for the peak.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>The expansion came as the BLS reported that the U.S. overall shed 33,000 jobs last month. Two major hurricanes hit the U.S. mainland in September, slashing employment in the restaurant industry and ending the longest string of job growth on record. Including transit and ground passenger business, the transport and warehousing sector added 21,800 jobs last month, the strongest gain among the sectors that BLS tracks.</p> <p>Trucking employment, meanwhile, slipped by 100 jobs as carriers riding a resurgent freight market reported trouble recruiting drivers.</p> <p>The hurricanes could compound recruitment pressure on trucking companies if drivers leave for construction jobs spawned by rebuilding efforts, Stephens analysts wrote in a research note last week. "We believe carriers will start to announce new rounds of driver pay increases in the near-term and believe any discussions around driver wage increases will be an important topic on earnings conference calls," the analysts wrote.</p> <p>Shipping prices for trucks soared in September as hurricane relief efforts in Texas and Florida diverted trucking capacity from other regions.</p> <p>DAT Solutions LLC, an independent marketplace matching freight loads and trucks, said demand for a variety of trucking services jumped in September while capacity pulled back, sending prices on the spot market soaring. Average rates for truck vans, the most common truck transport, jumped 11% from August to September and were up 22% from a year ago.</p> <p>"There's just not enough trucks to move all the freight that needs to get moved," said Mark Montague, a senior industry analyst with DAT.</p> <p>Write to Jennifer Smith at [email protected]</p> <p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p> <p>October 06, 2017 15:16 ET (19:16 GMT)</p>	4,368
<p>Israeli Independence Day 2008, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the rise of the Jewish State, should be cause for sober reflection and reevaluation as well as celebration. Indeed, we Israeli Jews have much to celebrate. But something, it appears, is amiss. Israel’s 60 Year gala appeared exaggerated, the joy expressed through the blaring loudspeakers somewhat artificial and forced. The celebrations were certainly more militaristic and triumphalist than usual. Neither the Palestinians nor the Occupation were allowed to penetrate the close narrative encasing Independence Day, of course, but military themes and displays, plus&#160; the presence of thousands of soldiers and police in every public place, conveyed an underlying disquiet. Something else was present, an unsettling but unspoken element. I call it the Palestinian poltergeist.</p> <p>Perhaps our loud triumphalism had to do less with celebration than with the disturbing realization that the two-state solution, which even Olmert claims is Israel‘s only hope of remaining a Jewish state, is disappearing before our eyes. Anyone familiar with Israel’s massive settlements blocs, its fragmentation of the Palestinian territories and their irreversible incorporation into Israel proper through a maze of Israeli-only highways and other “facts on the ground,” anyone who has spent an hour in the West Bank, can plainly see that this is the case. The expansion of Israel’s Matrix of Control throughout the Occupied Territories, coupled with American protection from any international pressures for meaningfully withdrawal, have rendered a viable Palestinian state, and thus a genuine two-state solution, unattainable.</p> <p>The transformation of the Occupation into a permanent political fact now shifts the question of co-existence, peace and reconciliation from the West Bank and Gaza to the entire country, to an indivisible Israel/Palestine. This is the true significance of the 60 Years. For if a viable Palestinian state cannot be detached from Israel, then the conflict becomes one which encompasses the entire country from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. The focus on 1948 raises issues we’d rather leave untouched, events and policies we have suppressed these past six decades.</p> <p>Did the Palestinians really flee or did we Israeli Jews drive them out? If almost half the inhabitants of that part of Palestine apportioned by the UN to the Jews in 1947 were Arabs, how could we have turned even that small bit of land into a “Jewish state”? Is Zionism, then, truly free of war crimes or did we in fact conduct a deliberate and cruel campaign of ethnic cleansing that went far beyond the borders of partition? In that context, was the occupation of the entire land of Palestine the result of Jordanian miscalculation or, from a perspective of forty years later, was in actually an inevitable “completion” of 1948, as Rabin and many others have said? How can we reconcile our professed desire for peace with a steady annexation of the Occupied Territories, including almost 250 settlements? Can we really expect to “win,” to frustrate Palestinian aspirations for freedom in their homeland forever, and if we do, what kind of society will we have, what will our children inherit? Indeed, while we presume to speak in the name of world Jewry, can we expect our Diaspora – fundamentally liberal and not tribal as is Judaism in Israel – to support war crimes that only undermine the moral basis of their community, convictions and faith?</p> <p>And then comes the hardest question of all: If it was we who eliminated a viable two-state solution – the creation of a truncated Palestinian prison-state on 15% of historic Palestine a la South Africa’s Bantustans will not solve the conflict – then how will we end our century-old conflict? How will we deal with the bi-national entity that is Israel/Palestine, largely our own creation?</p> <p>In order to avoid these questions, we have developed a number of mechanisms, delaying forever a political solution being only one of them. It is enough for us to merely assert our support for a two-state solution in order that we be considered peace-minded and reasonable. Two-state supporters require only the notion of a Palestinian state, a never-ending process towards it, to escape confronting the reality we created. As long as a Palestinian state can be held out as a possibility, the pressure’s off. Thus many Israelis, Diaspora Jews and others – including such searching and otherwise radical figures as Noam Chomsky and Uri Avnery, together with the Peace Now, Brit Tzedek, Rabbis Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow and members of Rabbis for Human Rights – cling tenaciously to the two-state solution, all refusing to admit it is no longer viable.</p> <p>The 40th anniversary of 1967 had to do with occupation. Had we dealt with that issue wisely and justly, Israel today could have been a Jewish state living at peace with its neighbors on 78% of the Land of Israel, a true cause for celebration. This year’s focus on 60 Years, on 1948, is a different matter entirely. If we want to salvage a national Jewish presence in Palestine/Israel, nothing remains but to courageously confront what we did in 1948 and the bi-national reality we have fostered since 1967. &#160;No longer can we blame the Palestinians for our dilemmas; they accepted the two-state solution way back in 1988. No, it is us, the triumphant, those who believed (and still believe) that military power combined with Jewish victimhood can defeat a people’s will to freedom, who carry the burden of responsibility for this most anti-Zionist, yet wholly predicable, situation.</p> <p>Only a reconciling of our celebration with Palestinian loss will we finally begin to deal with the presence “in our country” of another people with equal claims and rights, paving the way to a just peace, reconciliation and the securing of a Jewish national presence in the Land of Israel – whatever political form that might take. Difficult as it may be, such a reassessment may in fact allow us to achieve Zionism’s original and ultimate aspiration: a genuine homecoming of the Jewish nation to the hearth of its civilization. Our dybbuks and the Palestinian poltergeist will be finally put to rest. Now that will be cause for genuine, unfettered celebration.</p> <p>JEFF HALPER is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>	Rethinking Israel After 60 Years	true	https://counterpunch.org/2008/05/15/rethinking-israel-after-60-years/	2008-05-15	4left	Rethinking Israel After 60 Years <p>Israeli Independence Day 2008, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the rise of the Jewish State, should be cause for sober reflection and reevaluation as well as celebration. Indeed, we Israeli Jews have much to celebrate. But something, it appears, is amiss. Israel’s 60 Year gala appeared exaggerated, the joy expressed through the blaring loudspeakers somewhat artificial and forced. The celebrations were certainly more militaristic and triumphalist than usual. Neither the Palestinians nor the Occupation were allowed to penetrate the close narrative encasing Independence Day, of course, but military themes and displays, plus&#160; the presence of thousands of soldiers and police in every public place, conveyed an underlying disquiet. Something else was present, an unsettling but unspoken element. I call it the Palestinian poltergeist.</p> <p>Perhaps our loud triumphalism had to do less with celebration than with the disturbing realization that the two-state solution, which even Olmert claims is Israel‘s only hope of remaining a Jewish state, is disappearing before our eyes. Anyone familiar with Israel’s massive settlements blocs, its fragmentation of the Palestinian territories and their irreversible incorporation into Israel proper through a maze of Israeli-only highways and other “facts on the ground,” anyone who has spent an hour in the West Bank, can plainly see that this is the case. The expansion of Israel’s Matrix of Control throughout the Occupied Territories, coupled with American protection from any international pressures for meaningfully withdrawal, have rendered a viable Palestinian state, and thus a genuine two-state solution, unattainable.</p> <p>The transformation of the Occupation into a permanent political fact now shifts the question of co-existence, peace and reconciliation from the West Bank and Gaza to the entire country, to an indivisible Israel/Palestine. This is the true significance of the 60 Years. For if a viable Palestinian state cannot be detached from Israel, then the conflict becomes one which encompasses the entire country from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. The focus on 1948 raises issues we’d rather leave untouched, events and policies we have suppressed these past six decades.</p> <p>Did the Palestinians really flee or did we Israeli Jews drive them out? If almost half the inhabitants of that part of Palestine apportioned by the UN to the Jews in 1947 were Arabs, how could we have turned even that small bit of land into a “Jewish state”? Is Zionism, then, truly free of war crimes or did we in fact conduct a deliberate and cruel campaign of ethnic cleansing that went far beyond the borders of partition? In that context, was the occupation of the entire land of Palestine the result of Jordanian miscalculation or, from a perspective of forty years later, was in actually an inevitable “completion” of 1948, as Rabin and many others have said? How can we reconcile our professed desire for peace with a steady annexation of the Occupied Territories, including almost 250 settlements? Can we really expect to “win,” to frustrate Palestinian aspirations for freedom in their homeland forever, and if we do, what kind of society will we have, what will our children inherit? Indeed, while we presume to speak in the name of world Jewry, can we expect our Diaspora – fundamentally liberal and not tribal as is Judaism in Israel – to support war crimes that only undermine the moral basis of their community, convictions and faith?</p> <p>And then comes the hardest question of all: If it was we who eliminated a viable two-state solution – the creation of a truncated Palestinian prison-state on 15% of historic Palestine a la South Africa’s Bantustans will not solve the conflict – then how will we end our century-old conflict? How will we deal with the bi-national entity that is Israel/Palestine, largely our own creation?</p> <p>In order to avoid these questions, we have developed a number of mechanisms, delaying forever a political solution being only one of them. It is enough for us to merely assert our support for a two-state solution in order that we be considered peace-minded and reasonable. Two-state supporters require only the notion of a Palestinian state, a never-ending process towards it, to escape confronting the reality we created. As long as a Palestinian state can be held out as a possibility, the pressure’s off. Thus many Israelis, Diaspora Jews and others – including such searching and otherwise radical figures as Noam Chomsky and Uri Avnery, together with the Peace Now, Brit Tzedek, Rabbis Michael Lerner and Arthur Waskow and members of Rabbis for Human Rights – cling tenaciously to the two-state solution, all refusing to admit it is no longer viable.</p> <p>The 40th anniversary of 1967 had to do with occupation. Had we dealt with that issue wisely and justly, Israel today could have been a Jewish state living at peace with its neighbors on 78% of the Land of Israel, a true cause for celebration. This year’s focus on 60 Years, on 1948, is a different matter entirely. If we want to salvage a national Jewish presence in Palestine/Israel, nothing remains but to courageously confront what we did in 1948 and the bi-national reality we have fostered since 1967. &#160;No longer can we blame the Palestinians for our dilemmas; they accepted the two-state solution way back in 1988. No, it is us, the triumphant, those who believed (and still believe) that military power combined with Jewish victimhood can defeat a people’s will to freedom, who carry the burden of responsibility for this most anti-Zionist, yet wholly predicable, situation.</p> <p>Only a reconciling of our celebration with Palestinian loss will we finally begin to deal with the presence “in our country” of another people with equal claims and rights, paving the way to a just peace, reconciliation and the securing of a Jewish national presence in the Land of Israel – whatever political form that might take. Difficult as it may be, such a reassessment may in fact allow us to achieve Zionism’s original and ultimate aspiration: a genuine homecoming of the Jewish nation to the hearth of its civilization. Our dybbuks and the Palestinian poltergeist will be finally put to rest. Now that will be cause for genuine, unfettered celebration.</p> <p>JEFF HALPER is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>	4,369
<p>BOSTON — So we gather once more to pay homage to our foremothers by celebrating Aug. 26, the anniversary of the passage of suffrage. What a year it’s been since we last met. We’ve seen the first woman speaker of the House, the first woman president of Harvard University, and who can forget Bill Clinton, striving to become the first First Laddie?</p> <p>Nevertheless, we continue our time-honored tradition, celebrating this day by announcing the cherished Equal Rites Awards to those who have labored over the last 12 months to set back the cause of women. As always, our one-woman committee worked hard to sift through all the candidates. Thus, without further ado, the envelopes please:</p> <p>We begin by looking to Japan where the Abe government wins the Knights in (Tarnished) Armor Prize. There, the prime minister refused to apologize for the Japanese army’s use of “comfort women” as sexual slaves in World War II. That was after his health minister called women “baby-making machines.” And finally, the bodyguard for his gender equality minister was arrested for molesting a college student on a train. We send the Land of the Rising Sun a sunset clause.</p> <p>What can we give the winner of this year’s International Ayatollah Award? Our man is Ezzat Attiya, the creative Egyptian cleric who issued a fatwa saying that there was one way around the religious taboo against unmarried men and women working together. Women can breast-feed their male co-workers and legally become family. We would offer Attiya a special breast pump to accompany his fatwa, but we don’t want him to milk the idea.</p> <p /> <p>Ah, but in some pockets of the Middle East, there is progress toward gender equality. Take Iran, winner of our Dubious Equality Award. Why, just last month a man was stoned to death for adultery. We send the judges there an engraved citation for equal brutality.</p> <p>Unfortunately, we must return home for the Patriarch of the Year Prize. It goes with disappointment to Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose opinion restricting abortions rested on the retro notion that women needed to be protected from “regret,” “grief” and “sorrow,” even if it meant protecting them from their rights. We send the paternalistic justice a hook to bring him back to the 21st century.</p> <p>So many judges, so few blindfolds. The Blind Justice Award is winging its way to Carson City (Nev.) District Judge Bill Maddox. While sentencing a man on kiddie porn charges, he opined: “It’s my understanding that most men are sexually attracted to young women. … I mean women from the time they’re 1 all the way up until they’re 100.” That blindfold should be placed carefully over his mouth.</p> <p>Do you miss Tammy Wynette? Well, the Stand By Your Man Prize goes (temporarily) to Wendy Vitter, wife of family values’ Sen. David Vitter, who admitted to a “very serious sin in my past” after his name was found in the D.C. Madam’s black book. In a 2000 interview, Ms. Vitter said, “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary (Clinton). If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.” Stay tuned.</p> <p>Sex, crime and politics? Our Fashion Victim-izer Award goes to The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan for looking deeply into Hillary Clinton’s V-neck shirt and finding cleavage — EEEK! — which she labeled a “teasing display” and a “provocation.” For fashionbabbling without a license, we send her a chic uniform: Paris Hilton’s orange jail jumpsuit.</p> <p>The true fashion statement of the year may be astronaut Lisa Nowak’s diapers. Nowak wins the Backwards Trailblazer Prize for that cross-country drive in pursuit of her rival. Will Nowak go down in history as astronaut or love slave? That Depends.</p> <p>Now for the Desperate (to Get) Housewives Prize. This goes to the British researchers who report that housework reduces the risk of breast cancer. For urging women to scrub their way to better health, we offer them the dustbin of history.</p> <p>Doctors, doctors, everywhere. Our Male-Practice Award goes to the former surgeon general, Richard Carmona, who belatedly confessed to toeing the White House line on abstinence-only education while knowing it was bunk. We give him a Post-it for his new life: Just Say No.</p> <p>Let us not forget the Media Ms.-Adventure Prize. Fox television wins for “Anchorwoman,” the reality show featuring a bikini model and former WWE star reporting on a Texas TV station. Remember when Dan Rather said CBS was “tarting” up the news? We send the folks at Fox a nice, homemade tart.</p> <p>More media? Our Post-Feminist Prize goes to Money magazine for its financial advice on how to close the pay gap: Marry rich. Money offered an investment manual on how to be the wife — first, second or trophy — of a gazillionaire. They say “wear small diamond earrings.” We say watch out for the pre-nup.</p> <p>If you cannot marry money, send it up in smoke? The Marketing Ms.-Adventures goes to the ever-deserving R.J. Reynolds. This time, it is selling Camel No. 9, a cigarette with the aura of Chanel in a black package trimmed in fuchsia or teal. Our prize is an elegant coffin nail, colored pink.</p> <p>Finally, we rest our hopes in the next generation. Sort of. The Our Bodies / Our Daughters Award goes to Mattel. The folks who brought you Barbie are collaborating on a new line of makeup: for 6- to 9-year-olds. For this we award them and all their ilk a special cosmetic for the next year: egg on their face.</p> <p>Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman(at)globe.com.</p> <p>© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group</p>	The Year for Women	true	https://truthdig.com/articles/the-year-for-women/	2007-08-23	4left	The Year for Women <p>BOSTON — So we gather once more to pay homage to our foremothers by celebrating Aug. 26, the anniversary of the passage of suffrage. What a year it’s been since we last met. We’ve seen the first woman speaker of the House, the first woman president of Harvard University, and who can forget Bill Clinton, striving to become the first First Laddie?</p> <p>Nevertheless, we continue our time-honored tradition, celebrating this day by announcing the cherished Equal Rites Awards to those who have labored over the last 12 months to set back the cause of women. As always, our one-woman committee worked hard to sift through all the candidates. Thus, without further ado, the envelopes please:</p> <p>We begin by looking to Japan where the Abe government wins the Knights in (Tarnished) Armor Prize. There, the prime minister refused to apologize for the Japanese army’s use of “comfort women” as sexual slaves in World War II. That was after his health minister called women “baby-making machines.” And finally, the bodyguard for his gender equality minister was arrested for molesting a college student on a train. We send the Land of the Rising Sun a sunset clause.</p> <p>What can we give the winner of this year’s International Ayatollah Award? Our man is Ezzat Attiya, the creative Egyptian cleric who issued a fatwa saying that there was one way around the religious taboo against unmarried men and women working together. Women can breast-feed their male co-workers and legally become family. We would offer Attiya a special breast pump to accompany his fatwa, but we don’t want him to milk the idea.</p> <p /> <p>Ah, but in some pockets of the Middle East, there is progress toward gender equality. Take Iran, winner of our Dubious Equality Award. Why, just last month a man was stoned to death for adultery. We send the judges there an engraved citation for equal brutality.</p> <p>Unfortunately, we must return home for the Patriarch of the Year Prize. It goes with disappointment to Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose opinion restricting abortions rested on the retro notion that women needed to be protected from “regret,” “grief” and “sorrow,” even if it meant protecting them from their rights. We send the paternalistic justice a hook to bring him back to the 21st century.</p> <p>So many judges, so few blindfolds. The Blind Justice Award is winging its way to Carson City (Nev.) District Judge Bill Maddox. While sentencing a man on kiddie porn charges, he opined: “It’s my understanding that most men are sexually attracted to young women. … I mean women from the time they’re 1 all the way up until they’re 100.” That blindfold should be placed carefully over his mouth.</p> <p>Do you miss Tammy Wynette? Well, the Stand By Your Man Prize goes (temporarily) to Wendy Vitter, wife of family values’ Sen. David Vitter, who admitted to a “very serious sin in my past” after his name was found in the D.C. Madam’s black book. In a 2000 interview, Ms. Vitter said, “I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary (Clinton). If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.” Stay tuned.</p> <p>Sex, crime and politics? Our Fashion Victim-izer Award goes to The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan for looking deeply into Hillary Clinton’s V-neck shirt and finding cleavage — EEEK! — which she labeled a “teasing display” and a “provocation.” For fashionbabbling without a license, we send her a chic uniform: Paris Hilton’s orange jail jumpsuit.</p> <p>The true fashion statement of the year may be astronaut Lisa Nowak’s diapers. Nowak wins the Backwards Trailblazer Prize for that cross-country drive in pursuit of her rival. Will Nowak go down in history as astronaut or love slave? That Depends.</p> <p>Now for the Desperate (to Get) Housewives Prize. This goes to the British researchers who report that housework reduces the risk of breast cancer. For urging women to scrub their way to better health, we offer them the dustbin of history.</p> <p>Doctors, doctors, everywhere. Our Male-Practice Award goes to the former surgeon general, Richard Carmona, who belatedly confessed to toeing the White House line on abstinence-only education while knowing it was bunk. We give him a Post-it for his new life: Just Say No.</p> <p>Let us not forget the Media Ms.-Adventure Prize. Fox television wins for “Anchorwoman,” the reality show featuring a bikini model and former WWE star reporting on a Texas TV station. Remember when Dan Rather said CBS was “tarting” up the news? We send the folks at Fox a nice, homemade tart.</p> <p>More media? Our Post-Feminist Prize goes to Money magazine for its financial advice on how to close the pay gap: Marry rich. Money offered an investment manual on how to be the wife — first, second or trophy — of a gazillionaire. They say “wear small diamond earrings.” We say watch out for the pre-nup.</p> <p>If you cannot marry money, send it up in smoke? The Marketing Ms.-Adventures goes to the ever-deserving R.J. Reynolds. This time, it is selling Camel No. 9, a cigarette with the aura of Chanel in a black package trimmed in fuchsia or teal. Our prize is an elegant coffin nail, colored pink.</p> <p>Finally, we rest our hopes in the next generation. Sort of. The Our Bodies / Our Daughters Award goes to Mattel. The folks who brought you Barbie are collaborating on a new line of makeup: for 6- to 9-year-olds. For this we award them and all their ilk a special cosmetic for the next year: egg on their face.</p> <p>Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman(at)globe.com.</p> <p>© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group</p>	4,370
<p /> <p>A 57-year-old North Carolina man, Robert Lewis Dear, is the suspected gunman in a shooting at a Planned Parenthood health clinic in Colorado Springs in which three people died and nine were injured.</p> <p>The Guardian reports:</p> <p>After he was named, Barack Obama said on Saturday the US had “to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them”. […]</p> <p /> <p>Early reports portrayed Dear as a loner who lived in a rural cabin and did not noticeably discuss issues such as religion or abortion. Motive therefore remained unclear in the attack, which police said on Friday was carried out with a “long gun” – usually a reference to a rifle or shotgun. […]</p> <p>Planned Parenthood has […] been at the centre of a fierce political storm – as fierce as that over the gun control measures for which Obama continues to call – over videos released by an anti-abortion group which purport to show officials discussing the sale of foetal tissue. Calls to defund the organisation have proliferated among Republicans in Congress and on the 2016 presidential campaign trail.</p> <p>Read more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/gunman-named-colorado-springs-planned-parenthood-attack" type="external">here</a>.</p> <p /> <p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>	VIDEO: Three Dead, Man in Custody After Shooting at Colorado Planned Parenthood Clinic	true	https://truthdig.com/articles/video-three-dead-man-in-custody-after-shooting-at-colorado-planned-parenthood-clinic/	2015-11-29	4left	VIDEO: Three Dead, Man in Custody After Shooting at Colorado Planned Parenthood Clinic <p /> <p>A 57-year-old North Carolina man, Robert Lewis Dear, is the suspected gunman in a shooting at a Planned Parenthood health clinic in Colorado Springs in which three people died and nine were injured.</p> <p>The Guardian reports:</p> <p>After he was named, Barack Obama said on Saturday the US had “to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them”. […]</p> <p /> <p>Early reports portrayed Dear as a loner who lived in a rural cabin and did not noticeably discuss issues such as religion or abortion. Motive therefore remained unclear in the attack, which police said on Friday was carried out with a “long gun” – usually a reference to a rifle or shotgun. […]</p> <p>Planned Parenthood has […] been at the centre of a fierce political storm – as fierce as that over the gun control measures for which Obama continues to call – over videos released by an anti-abortion group which purport to show officials discussing the sale of foetal tissue. Calls to defund the organisation have proliferated among Republicans in Congress and on the 2016 presidential campaign trail.</p> <p>Read more <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/28/gunman-named-colorado-springs-planned-parenthood-attack" type="external">here</a>.</p> <p /> <p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>	4,371
<p>Peter Lynch once said retail investors should "invest in what you know," and it's likely that a lot of readers will have shopped at either&#160;Kroger (NYSE: KR)&#160;or&#160;Costco (NASDAQ: COST)&#160;recently. Kroger is the largest pure-play supermarket in the country, operating under brand names Kroger, Ralphs, King Soopers, and others. Meanwhile, Costco is the largest discount wholesale membership club, with 90.3 million members as of its most recent quarter.</p> <p>Similarly to Lynch, Warren Buffett once quipped, "Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down." Given the steep price declines in both Kroger and Costco this year, which is the better buy?</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>As you can see, both companies were mid-single-digit growers until recently, when Costco took off, growing a whopping 15.7% in the most recent quarter.</p> <p>Of course, Costco's big increase is mainly due to its June price hikes on membership fees, which make up 65% of company profits.&#160;It should also be noted that Costco's quarterly results include an extra week compared with last year, so the true growth number was probably closer to 14.8%. Still, that is significantly higher than Kroger. In addition, Costco outperformed in the all-important same-store sales figure (excluding fuel), posting 5.7% growth versus Kroger's 0.7%.</p> <p>Clearly, Costco's membership model (which allows for periodic price hikes) seems to give it a better growth profile. Since Costco sells goods near breakeven anyway, it's also more immune to the price wars currently seen at grocery stores. It's the clear winner here.</p> <p>Winner: Costco</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>When we turn to valuation, however, we get a different story. The lower numbers from Kroger have caused it to trade at only half the valuation of Costco on a price-to-earnings basis.</p> <p>Of course, Kroger also has more debt than Costco, as it has largely grown via acquisition. A good way to factor debt into a company's valuation is to look at the <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-enterprise-value-and-why-is-it-important.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">enterprise value Opens a New Window.</a>-to- <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-the-ebit-eps-approach-to-capital-structure.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">EBIT Opens a New Window.</a> ratio, which normalizes for a company's debt profile. On this basis, Costco is not quite as overvalued but is still about 50% more expensive than Kroger.</p> <p>Winner: Kroger</p> <p>Investors in Kroger or Costco may also be concerned with dividends, and Kroger and Costco don't disappoint in that area. Both companies pay a regular dividend, and each company raised its payout this year. Kroger's current dividend yield is almost double that of Costco's, which is probably a function of Kroger's lower valuation.</p> <p>Of course, this regular dividend only tells part of the story. Costco also occasionally pays a special dividend, as <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/09/costcos-special-cash-dividend-what-investors-need.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">it did back in May Opens a New Window.</a>, as well as in 2015 and 2012.</p> <p>Factoring in Costco's special dividends over a multiyear period, long-term Costco shareholders might receive a similar dividend yield to Kroger should the trend continue.</p> <p>However, there's another way to return cash to shareholders besides dividends, and that is through <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-a-share-repurchase.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">share repurchases Opens a New Window.</a>. Here, the scales tip back in favor of Kroger, which has paid out almost five times as much in the way of share repurchases as Costco did over the last 12 months.</p> <p>Winner: Kroger</p> <p>Of course, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is Amazon, which caused both stocks to drop after it bought Whole Foods Market earlier this summer. Everything I've just said up until now may be irrelevant if Amazon is successful in luring away either company's core customers in large numbers.</p> <p>To me, while Costco has a better business model than Kroger, but it's also more vulnerable to Amazon due to Amazon's Prime service, which is a membership subscription not dissimilar to Costco's. Moreover, Costco estimates its average customer is 52 years old, which means Amazon has an opportunity to compete for millennials' loyalty.</p> <p>In addition, a recent piece by <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/10/these-are-the-stores-losing-traffic-to-whole-foods.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Thasos Research Opens a New Window.</a> showed Costco lost slightly more customers (on a percentage basis) to Whole Foods than Kroger did after Amazon slashed prices at Whole Foods on Aug. 28. The effect was small for both companies but is still something to keep an eye on.</p> <p>Winner: Kroger</p> <p>Costco arguably has a better model and is growing faster than Kroger, but investors will have to pay up for the stock, and it seems more vulnerable to Amazon than Kroger is. Therefore, I'm going with the bigger bargain in Kroger.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than KrogerWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=213c6ad4-638c-4e8e-b44b-3c4edbdfaebb&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Kroger wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=213c6ad4-638c-4e8e-b44b-3c4edbdfaebb&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of October 9, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Dubs82/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Billy Duberstein Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Amazon and Kroger. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool recommends Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	Better Buy: Kroger vs. Costco	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/22/better-buy-kroger-vs-costco.html	2017-10-22	0right	Better Buy: Kroger vs. Costco <p>Peter Lynch once said retail investors should "invest in what you know," and it's likely that a lot of readers will have shopped at either&#160;Kroger (NYSE: KR)&#160;or&#160;Costco (NASDAQ: COST)&#160;recently. Kroger is the largest pure-play supermarket in the country, operating under brand names Kroger, Ralphs, King Soopers, and others. Meanwhile, Costco is the largest discount wholesale membership club, with 90.3 million members as of its most recent quarter.</p> <p>Similarly to Lynch, Warren Buffett once quipped, "Whether we're talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down." Given the steep price declines in both Kroger and Costco this year, which is the better buy?</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>As you can see, both companies were mid-single-digit growers until recently, when Costco took off, growing a whopping 15.7% in the most recent quarter.</p> <p>Of course, Costco's big increase is mainly due to its June price hikes on membership fees, which make up 65% of company profits.&#160;It should also be noted that Costco's quarterly results include an extra week compared with last year, so the true growth number was probably closer to 14.8%. Still, that is significantly higher than Kroger. In addition, Costco outperformed in the all-important same-store sales figure (excluding fuel), posting 5.7% growth versus Kroger's 0.7%.</p> <p>Clearly, Costco's membership model (which allows for periodic price hikes) seems to give it a better growth profile. Since Costco sells goods near breakeven anyway, it's also more immune to the price wars currently seen at grocery stores. It's the clear winner here.</p> <p>Winner: Costco</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>When we turn to valuation, however, we get a different story. The lower numbers from Kroger have caused it to trade at only half the valuation of Costco on a price-to-earnings basis.</p> <p>Of course, Kroger also has more debt than Costco, as it has largely grown via acquisition. A good way to factor debt into a company's valuation is to look at the <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-enterprise-value-and-why-is-it-important.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">enterprise value Opens a New Window.</a>-to- <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-the-ebit-eps-approach-to-capital-structure.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">EBIT Opens a New Window.</a> ratio, which normalizes for a company's debt profile. On this basis, Costco is not quite as overvalued but is still about 50% more expensive than Kroger.</p> <p>Winner: Kroger</p> <p>Investors in Kroger or Costco may also be concerned with dividends, and Kroger and Costco don't disappoint in that area. Both companies pay a regular dividend, and each company raised its payout this year. Kroger's current dividend yield is almost double that of Costco's, which is probably a function of Kroger's lower valuation.</p> <p>Of course, this regular dividend only tells part of the story. Costco also occasionally pays a special dividend, as <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/09/costcos-special-cash-dividend-what-investors-need.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">it did back in May Opens a New Window.</a>, as well as in 2015 and 2012.</p> <p>Factoring in Costco's special dividends over a multiyear period, long-term Costco shareholders might receive a similar dividend yield to Kroger should the trend continue.</p> <p>However, there's another way to return cash to shareholders besides dividends, and that is through <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/what-is-a-share-repurchase.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">share repurchases Opens a New Window.</a>. Here, the scales tip back in favor of Kroger, which has paid out almost five times as much in the way of share repurchases as Costco did over the last 12 months.</p> <p>Winner: Kroger</p> <p>Of course, the 800-pound gorilla in the room is Amazon, which caused both stocks to drop after it bought Whole Foods Market earlier this summer. Everything I've just said up until now may be irrelevant if Amazon is successful in luring away either company's core customers in large numbers.</p> <p>To me, while Costco has a better business model than Kroger, but it's also more vulnerable to Amazon due to Amazon's Prime service, which is a membership subscription not dissimilar to Costco's. Moreover, Costco estimates its average customer is 52 years old, which means Amazon has an opportunity to compete for millennials' loyalty.</p> <p>In addition, a recent piece by <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/10/10/these-are-the-stores-losing-traffic-to-whole-foods.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Thasos Research Opens a New Window.</a> showed Costco lost slightly more customers (on a percentage basis) to Whole Foods than Kroger did after Amazon slashed prices at Whole Foods on Aug. 28. The effect was small for both companies but is still something to keep an eye on.</p> <p>Winner: Kroger</p> <p>Costco arguably has a better model and is growing faster than Kroger, but investors will have to pay up for the stock, and it seems more vulnerable to Amazon than Kroger is. Therefore, I'm going with the bigger bargain in Kroger.</p> <p>10 stocks we like better than KrogerWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.</p> <p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=213c6ad4-638c-4e8e-b44b-3c4edbdfaebb&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Kroger wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p> <p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-static%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=213c6ad4-638c-4e8e-b44b-3c4edbdfaebb&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p> <p>Stock Advisor returns as of October 9, 2017</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Dubs82/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Billy Duberstein Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Amazon and Kroger. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool recommends Costco Wholesale. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=4f4e427e-ad4c-11e7-82b8-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	4,372
<p>Jan. 17 (UPI) — Apple on Wednesday announced a five-year plan to add $350 billion in support of the U.S. economy.</p> <p>As part of the plan, Apple will spend $30 billion over the next five years to <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/01/apple-accelerates-us-investment-and-job-creation/" type="external">create 20,000</a> jobs by hiring at existing Apple campuses as well as opening a new one at a location to be announced later this year.</p> <p>“Apple is a success story that could only have happened in America, and we are proud to build on our long history of support for the U.S. economy,” said Apple CEO <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tim_Cook/" type="external">Tim Cook</a>. “We believe deeply in the power of American ingenuity, and we are focusing our investments in areas where we can have a direct impact on job creation and job preparedness. We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country and the people who help make our success possible.”</p> <p>The company said it will make about $38 billion in one-time tax payments on its overseas funds.</p> <p>Apple also promised to expand initiatives geared toward teaching its Swift coding language, noting there are more than 500,000 unfilled programming-related positions across the country.</p> <p>Apple said the new investments, combined withits current pace of spending with domestic suppliers and manufacturers, estimated to be $55 billion in 2018, will result in a direct contribution of $350 billion to the U.S. economy in the next five years.</p> <p>The company also announced Wednesday it will make <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/apple-awarding-2500-rsus-report.html" type="external">$2,500 in restricted stock units</a> available to some employees.</p> <p>“To show our support for our team and our confidence in Apple’s future, we’ll be issuing a grant of $2,500 in restricted stock units to all individual contributors and management up to and including senior managers worldwide,” Cook said. “Both full-time and part-time employees across all aspects of Apple’s business are eligible. “</p>	Apple plans to open new U.S. campus, add 20,000 jobs	false	https://newsline.com/apple-plans-to-open-new-u-s-campus-add-20000-jobs/	2018-01-18	1right-center	Apple plans to open new U.S. campus, add 20,000 jobs <p>Jan. 17 (UPI) — Apple on Wednesday announced a five-year plan to add $350 billion in support of the U.S. economy.</p> <p>As part of the plan, Apple will spend $30 billion over the next five years to <a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/01/apple-accelerates-us-investment-and-job-creation/" type="external">create 20,000</a> jobs by hiring at existing Apple campuses as well as opening a new one at a location to be announced later this year.</p> <p>“Apple is a success story that could only have happened in America, and we are proud to build on our long history of support for the U.S. economy,” said Apple CEO <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tim_Cook/" type="external">Tim Cook</a>. “We believe deeply in the power of American ingenuity, and we are focusing our investments in areas where we can have a direct impact on job creation and job preparedness. We have a deep sense of responsibility to give back to our country and the people who help make our success possible.”</p> <p>The company said it will make about $38 billion in one-time tax payments on its overseas funds.</p> <p>Apple also promised to expand initiatives geared toward teaching its Swift coding language, noting there are more than 500,000 unfilled programming-related positions across the country.</p> <p>Apple said the new investments, combined withits current pace of spending with domestic suppliers and manufacturers, estimated to be $55 billion in 2018, will result in a direct contribution of $350 billion to the U.S. economy in the next five years.</p> <p>The company also announced Wednesday it will make <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/apple-awarding-2500-rsus-report.html" type="external">$2,500 in restricted stock units</a> available to some employees.</p> <p>“To show our support for our team and our confidence in Apple’s future, we’ll be issuing a grant of $2,500 in restricted stock units to all individual contributors and management up to and including senior managers worldwide,” Cook said. “Both full-time and part-time employees across all aspects of Apple’s business are eligible. “</p>	4,373
<p>Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security</p> <p /> <p>The issue closes with an exchange between Michael Desch of the University of Kentucky and several critics of his article "Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters," published in the fall 2002 issue of IS. In the first of three responses, Ajin Choi of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, presents evidence to counter Desch's claim that democratic allies are no more likely than nondemocratic allies to be victorious in wartime. Choi attributes the greater effectiveness of alliances comprised of democracies to two factors: the role of veto players and the transparency of democracies' political institutions. David Lake of the University of California, San Diego, contends that Desch's research design does not provide a fair test of the relationship between democracy and success in war. Dan Reiter of Emory University and Allan Stam of Dartmouth College argue that Desch's decision to slash the number of cases under examination skews his results. Desch replies to their critiques.</p> <p />	Understanding Victory: Why Political Institutions Matter	false	http://belfercenter.org/publication/understanding-victory-why-political-institutions-matter	2018-10-03	2least	Understanding Victory: Why Political Institutions Matter <p>Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security</p> <p /> <p>The issue closes with an exchange between Michael Desch of the University of Kentucky and several critics of his article "Democracy and Victory: Why Regime Type Hardly Matters," published in the fall 2002 issue of IS. In the first of three responses, Ajin Choi of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, presents evidence to counter Desch's claim that democratic allies are no more likely than nondemocratic allies to be victorious in wartime. Choi attributes the greater effectiveness of alliances comprised of democracies to two factors: the role of veto players and the transparency of democracies' political institutions. David Lake of the University of California, San Diego, contends that Desch's research design does not provide a fair test of the relationship between democracy and success in war. Dan Reiter of Emory University and Allan Stam of Dartmouth College argue that Desch's decision to slash the number of cases under examination skews his results. Desch replies to their critiques.</p> <p />	4,374
<p>CHICAGO — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Nelson_Cruz/" type="external">Nelson Cruz</a> belted a two-run homer in the sixth inning to put Seattle ahead, slumping Kyle Seager hit a solo shot in the second and the Mariners held on to beat the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chicago-White-Sox/" type="external">Chicago White Sox</a> 4-3 on Saturday night for their third straight win.</p> <p>Cruz greeted Anthony Swarzak (4-3), Chicago’s second reliever, with his 18th homer on a deep drive to center. Seager’s homer was his 11th, but his first — and only his fourth hit — in his last 10 games.</p> <p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Melky_Cabrera/" type="external">Melky Cabrera</a> belted his 11th homer and had two RBIs as he moved up to Chicago’s leadoff spot for the eighth time this season and went 4-for-5.</p> <p>Seattle starter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Felix_Hernandez/" type="external">Felix Hernandez</a> (5-3) scuffled, but got the win in his fifth start since turning to the rotation after missing 54 games with right shoulder inflammation. The 2010 AL <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cy_Young/" type="external">Cy Young</a> winner lasted just five innings, giving up six hits and three runs, but only one was earned due to three Mariners’ errors.</p> <p>Hernandez hit Chicago slugger <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jose-Abreu/" type="external">Jose Abreu</a> twice with pitches to create bases-loaded, no-out jams in the third and fifth innings. But the six-time All-Star right-hander allowed only one run in those situations — on <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Todd-Frazier/" type="external">Todd Frazier</a>‘s double-play grounder in the fifth that put Chicago ahead 3-2.</p> <p>Four Seattle relievers followed with four scoreless innings. Edwin Diaz pitched the ninth, allowing a single to Cabrera and walking Avisail Garcia with two outs, but got his 15th save in 18 chances when he fanned Abreu to end the game.</p> <p>Chicago starter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Pelfrey/" type="external">Mike Pelfrey</a> pitched 4 2/3 innings, allowing four hits and two runs — one earned — in a no-decision.</p> <p>White Sox manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rick-Renteria/" type="external">Rick Renteria</a> was ejected for the sixth time this season after arguing with second-base umpire <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom_Hallion/" type="external">Tom Hallion</a> in the bottom of the sixth.</p> <p>Cabrera opened the bottom of the first inning by drilling a solo shot to right.</p> <p>Seager lofted Pelfrey’s inside 2-2 offering down the right field line and deep into the seats in the second inning to tie it at 1.</p> <p>Cabrera’s sharp single drove in Adam Engel in the third to put Chicago back ahead 2-1 with an unearned run. Engel reached on shortstop <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jean-Segura/" type="external">Jean Segura</a>‘s error, stole second and advanced to third on a wild pitch.</p> <p>The White Sox went on to load the bases with none out, but Hernandez escaped the jam with no additional runs scoring. Todd Frazier’s weak grounder to third forced out Cabrera at home, then Tyler Saladino popped out and Matt Davidson flied out to center.</p> <p>Seattle tied it at 2 with an unearned run in the fifth. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Carlos_Ruiz/" type="external">Carlos Ruiz</a> singled in <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Danny_Valencia/" type="external">Danny Valencia</a> from third with two outs. Valencia had reached when White Sox shortstop <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tim_Anderson/" type="external">Tim Anderson</a> failed to pick up the Mariners first baseman’s routine ground ball for his MLB-worst 20th error.</p> <p>The White Sox loaded the bases again with none out in the bottom of the inning. Frazier grounded Hernandez’s 0-2 pitch into a 6-4-3 double play to plate one run, but Saladino struck out and Chicago settled for a 3-2 lead.</p> <p>Dan Jennings walked <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Robinson_Cano/" type="external">Robinson Cano</a> to lead off the sixth, then Swarzak entered and gave up with Cruz’s homer to center.</p> <p>NOTES: Melky Cabrera’s leadoff homer has the fourth of his career. … Seattle’s Jean Segura went 2-for-4 and has 21 hits in his last 44 at-bats. … Chicago INF/OF Leury Garcia, out since June 15 with sprained finger on his left hand, is making progress at the team’s Arizona training complex and should be ready for a rehab assignment “in the next day or two,” according to manager Rick Renteria. … Chicago RHP Dylan Covey has resumed throwing from a pitching mound after going on the DL in late May with a left oblique strain. … The White Sox acquired 20-year-old minor league INF Yeyson Yrizarri from Texas for international signing bonus pool money.</p>	Seattle Mariners defeat Chicago White Sox for third straight win	false	https://newsline.com/seattle-mariners-defeat-chicago-white-sox-for-third-straight-win/	2017-07-16	1right-center	Seattle Mariners defeat Chicago White Sox for third straight win <p>CHICAGO — <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Nelson_Cruz/" type="external">Nelson Cruz</a> belted a two-run homer in the sixth inning to put Seattle ahead, slumping Kyle Seager hit a solo shot in the second and the Mariners held on to beat the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Chicago-White-Sox/" type="external">Chicago White Sox</a> 4-3 on Saturday night for their third straight win.</p> <p>Cruz greeted Anthony Swarzak (4-3), Chicago’s second reliever, with his 18th homer on a deep drive to center. Seager’s homer was his 11th, but his first — and only his fourth hit — in his last 10 games.</p> <p><a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Melky_Cabrera/" type="external">Melky Cabrera</a> belted his 11th homer and had two RBIs as he moved up to Chicago’s leadoff spot for the eighth time this season and went 4-for-5.</p> <p>Seattle starter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Felix_Hernandez/" type="external">Felix Hernandez</a> (5-3) scuffled, but got the win in his fifth start since turning to the rotation after missing 54 games with right shoulder inflammation. The 2010 AL <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Cy_Young/" type="external">Cy Young</a> winner lasted just five innings, giving up six hits and three runs, but only one was earned due to three Mariners’ errors.</p> <p>Hernandez hit Chicago slugger <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jose-Abreu/" type="external">Jose Abreu</a> twice with pitches to create bases-loaded, no-out jams in the third and fifth innings. But the six-time All-Star right-hander allowed only one run in those situations — on <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Todd-Frazier/" type="external">Todd Frazier</a>‘s double-play grounder in the fifth that put Chicago ahead 3-2.</p> <p>Four Seattle relievers followed with four scoreless innings. Edwin Diaz pitched the ninth, allowing a single to Cabrera and walking Avisail Garcia with two outs, but got his 15th save in 18 chances when he fanned Abreu to end the game.</p> <p>Chicago starter <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mike_Pelfrey/" type="external">Mike Pelfrey</a> pitched 4 2/3 innings, allowing four hits and two runs — one earned — in a no-decision.</p> <p>White Sox manager <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Rick-Renteria/" type="external">Rick Renteria</a> was ejected for the sixth time this season after arguing with second-base umpire <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tom_Hallion/" type="external">Tom Hallion</a> in the bottom of the sixth.</p> <p>Cabrera opened the bottom of the first inning by drilling a solo shot to right.</p> <p>Seager lofted Pelfrey’s inside 2-2 offering down the right field line and deep into the seats in the second inning to tie it at 1.</p> <p>Cabrera’s sharp single drove in Adam Engel in the third to put Chicago back ahead 2-1 with an unearned run. Engel reached on shortstop <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jean-Segura/" type="external">Jean Segura</a>‘s error, stole second and advanced to third on a wild pitch.</p> <p>The White Sox went on to load the bases with none out, but Hernandez escaped the jam with no additional runs scoring. Todd Frazier’s weak grounder to third forced out Cabrera at home, then Tyler Saladino popped out and Matt Davidson flied out to center.</p> <p>Seattle tied it at 2 with an unearned run in the fifth. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Carlos_Ruiz/" type="external">Carlos Ruiz</a> singled in <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Danny_Valencia/" type="external">Danny Valencia</a> from third with two outs. Valencia had reached when White Sox shortstop <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tim_Anderson/" type="external">Tim Anderson</a> failed to pick up the Mariners first baseman’s routine ground ball for his MLB-worst 20th error.</p> <p>The White Sox loaded the bases again with none out in the bottom of the inning. Frazier grounded Hernandez’s 0-2 pitch into a 6-4-3 double play to plate one run, but Saladino struck out and Chicago settled for a 3-2 lead.</p> <p>Dan Jennings walked <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Robinson_Cano/" type="external">Robinson Cano</a> to lead off the sixth, then Swarzak entered and gave up with Cruz’s homer to center.</p> <p>NOTES: Melky Cabrera’s leadoff homer has the fourth of his career. … Seattle’s Jean Segura went 2-for-4 and has 21 hits in his last 44 at-bats. … Chicago INF/OF Leury Garcia, out since June 15 with sprained finger on his left hand, is making progress at the team’s Arizona training complex and should be ready for a rehab assignment “in the next day or two,” according to manager Rick Renteria. … Chicago RHP Dylan Covey has resumed throwing from a pitching mound after going on the DL in late May with a left oblique strain. … The White Sox acquired 20-year-old minor league INF Yeyson Yrizarri from Texas for international signing bonus pool money.</p>	4,375
<p>ROCKPORT, Texas (AP) — Some Texas coastal towns where Hurricane Harvey made landfall are working to restore tourism and other economic attractions nearly five months after the storm.</p> <p>Hundreds of businesses in Rockport and Fulton are now open amid recovery efforts assisted by Aransas County and other government officials, the <a href="http://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2018/01/11/rockport-fulton-moving-forward-new-economic-development-plans/1024879001/" type="external">Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports</a> . Experts estimate the immediate impact of Harvey added up to $134 million in business losses in the county.</p> <p>Harvey made landfall Aug. 25, leaving behind destroyed homes, businesses and infrastructure in Rockport, with about 10,000 residents. Nearby Fulton, a town of nearly 1,600, also took a heavy hit.</p> <p>Officials with the <a href="http://www.rockport-fulton.org/Hurricane_Harvey_Recovery__Relief" type="external">Rockport-Fulton Chamber of Commerce</a> said about 460 businesses of 1,300 are now operating.</p> <p>Allison Larsen, a volunteer with International Economic Development Corp., was part of a recent recovery meeting. The area’s charm — with special events, hospitality and homegrown businesses — is intact, according to Larsen.</p> <p>“There’s no doubt you have natural assets,” she said in a presentation Thursday in Rockport. “Harvey didn’t take that away from you.”</p> <p>The gathering was the culmination of a series of workshops examining how best to provide economic stability after disaster.</p> <p>Immediate plans include investing in Rockport and Fulton’s downtowns, supporting small businesses and embracing voluntourism — a kind of tourism growing in popularity where visitors seek to combine vacations with volunteering for a cause, the newspaper reported.</p> <p>“Our goal is really to attract volunteers that will spend money in our community and help with recovery,” said Luis Puron, executive director of Rockport Center for the Arts.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external">http://www.caller.com</a></p> <p>ROCKPORT, Texas (AP) — Some Texas coastal towns where Hurricane Harvey made landfall are working to restore tourism and other economic attractions nearly five months after the storm.</p> <p>Hundreds of businesses in Rockport and Fulton are now open amid recovery efforts assisted by Aransas County and other government officials, the <a href="http://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2018/01/11/rockport-fulton-moving-forward-new-economic-development-plans/1024879001/" type="external">Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports</a> . Experts estimate the immediate impact of Harvey added up to $134 million in business losses in the county.</p> <p>Harvey made landfall Aug. 25, leaving behind destroyed homes, businesses and infrastructure in Rockport, with about 10,000 residents. Nearby Fulton, a town of nearly 1,600, also took a heavy hit.</p> <p>Officials with the <a href="http://www.rockport-fulton.org/Hurricane_Harvey_Recovery__Relief" type="external">Rockport-Fulton Chamber of Commerce</a> said about 460 businesses of 1,300 are now operating.</p> <p>Allison Larsen, a volunteer with International Economic Development Corp., was part of a recent recovery meeting. The area’s charm — with special events, hospitality and homegrown businesses — is intact, according to Larsen.</p> <p>“There’s no doubt you have natural assets,” she said in a presentation Thursday in Rockport. “Harvey didn’t take that away from you.”</p> <p>The gathering was the culmination of a series of workshops examining how best to provide economic stability after disaster.</p> <p>Immediate plans include investing in Rockport and Fulton’s downtowns, supporting small businesses and embracing voluntourism — a kind of tourism growing in popularity where visitors seek to combine vacations with volunteering for a cause, the newspaper reported.</p> <p>“Our goal is really to attract volunteers that will spend money in our community and help with recovery,” said Luis Puron, executive director of Rockport Center for the Arts.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external">http://www.caller.com</a></p>	Texas towns hit hard by Hurricane Harvey work to recover	false	https://apnews.com/a553a43ed02049a4b25e04419bbd5c36	2018-01-15	2least	Texas towns hit hard by Hurricane Harvey work to recover <p>ROCKPORT, Texas (AP) — Some Texas coastal towns where Hurricane Harvey made landfall are working to restore tourism and other economic attractions nearly five months after the storm.</p> <p>Hundreds of businesses in Rockport and Fulton are now open amid recovery efforts assisted by Aransas County and other government officials, the <a href="http://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2018/01/11/rockport-fulton-moving-forward-new-economic-development-plans/1024879001/" type="external">Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports</a> . Experts estimate the immediate impact of Harvey added up to $134 million in business losses in the county.</p> <p>Harvey made landfall Aug. 25, leaving behind destroyed homes, businesses and infrastructure in Rockport, with about 10,000 residents. Nearby Fulton, a town of nearly 1,600, also took a heavy hit.</p> <p>Officials with the <a href="http://www.rockport-fulton.org/Hurricane_Harvey_Recovery__Relief" type="external">Rockport-Fulton Chamber of Commerce</a> said about 460 businesses of 1,300 are now operating.</p> <p>Allison Larsen, a volunteer with International Economic Development Corp., was part of a recent recovery meeting. The area’s charm — with special events, hospitality and homegrown businesses — is intact, according to Larsen.</p> <p>“There’s no doubt you have natural assets,” she said in a presentation Thursday in Rockport. “Harvey didn’t take that away from you.”</p> <p>The gathering was the culmination of a series of workshops examining how best to provide economic stability after disaster.</p> <p>Immediate plans include investing in Rockport and Fulton’s downtowns, supporting small businesses and embracing voluntourism — a kind of tourism growing in popularity where visitors seek to combine vacations with volunteering for a cause, the newspaper reported.</p> <p>“Our goal is really to attract volunteers that will spend money in our community and help with recovery,” said Luis Puron, executive director of Rockport Center for the Arts.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external">http://www.caller.com</a></p> <p>ROCKPORT, Texas (AP) — Some Texas coastal towns where Hurricane Harvey made landfall are working to restore tourism and other economic attractions nearly five months after the storm.</p> <p>Hundreds of businesses in Rockport and Fulton are now open amid recovery efforts assisted by Aransas County and other government officials, the <a href="http://www.caller.com/story/news/local/2018/01/11/rockport-fulton-moving-forward-new-economic-development-plans/1024879001/" type="external">Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports</a> . Experts estimate the immediate impact of Harvey added up to $134 million in business losses in the county.</p> <p>Harvey made landfall Aug. 25, leaving behind destroyed homes, businesses and infrastructure in Rockport, with about 10,000 residents. Nearby Fulton, a town of nearly 1,600, also took a heavy hit.</p> <p>Officials with the <a href="http://www.rockport-fulton.org/Hurricane_Harvey_Recovery__Relief" type="external">Rockport-Fulton Chamber of Commerce</a> said about 460 businesses of 1,300 are now operating.</p> <p>Allison Larsen, a volunteer with International Economic Development Corp., was part of a recent recovery meeting. The area’s charm — with special events, hospitality and homegrown businesses — is intact, according to Larsen.</p> <p>“There’s no doubt you have natural assets,” she said in a presentation Thursday in Rockport. “Harvey didn’t take that away from you.”</p> <p>The gathering was the culmination of a series of workshops examining how best to provide economic stability after disaster.</p> <p>Immediate plans include investing in Rockport and Fulton’s downtowns, supporting small businesses and embracing voluntourism — a kind of tourism growing in popularity where visitors seek to combine vacations with volunteering for a cause, the newspaper reported.</p> <p>“Our goal is really to attract volunteers that will spend money in our community and help with recovery,” said Luis Puron, executive director of Rockport Center for the Arts.</p> <p>___</p> <p>Information from: Corpus Christi Caller-Times, <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.caller.com" type="external">http://www.caller.com</a></p>	4,376
<p /> <p>Friday wasn't a good day for AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV). The company announced its third-quarter results shortly before the market opened. AbbVie's stock fell over 6% in pre-market trading and didn't do much better the rest of the day. Here's what the company's management said while AbbVie stock was being hammered.(All quotes courtesy of <a href="http://marketintelligence.spglobal.com/" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>.)</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Image source: Getty Images.</p> <p>Nothing is more important to AbbVie than Humira. The autoimmune disease drug generated over 60% of AbbVie's total revenue in the third quarter. A lot of the discussion on the company's earnings call related to Humira and what seems to be slowing momentum.</p> <p>AbbVie CEO Rick Gonzalez said that Humira is "performing exactly where we would have expected it to perform in the international markets" and has had "outstanding growth" in the U.S. Gonzalez said that biosimilars that are now available outside of the U.S. are only having a "very modest impact" on Humira's sales.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>But what about the slowdown in sequential sales growth for the drug? AbbVie CFO Bill Chase said, "It is not unusual in the U.S. or abroad to see a general flattening out over the summer and then an acceleration back in the back half of the year." Chase thinks that is what happened in the third quarter. He added that the company "feels very, very good" about the full-year growth forecast for Humira.</p> <p>There weren't any worries about Imbruvica losing momentum. Sales for the cancer drug soared in the third quarter. AbbVie's message about Imbruvica: Even better things should be ahead.</p> <p>Gonzalez said that Imbruvica's "market share position is steadily increasing" in the front-line chronic lymphocatic leukemia (CLL) indication. He noted that the drug already holds the market-leading position as a second-line treatment for CLL and for relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma and Waldenstroem'smacroglobulinemia.AbbVie awaits regulatory approval for Imbruvica in treatingrelapsed/refractory marginal zone lymphoma and expects to submit for approval for treatingchronic graft-versus-host disease in the first half of 2017.</p> <p>Imbruvica could face competition relatively soon from AstraZeneca's (NYSE: AZN)acalabrutinib. AstraZeneca has stated that it plans to submit its drug for regulatory approval by the end of 2016 but didn't specify for which indication.AbbVie's management was asked twice about the possible threat from AstraZeneca. Mike Severino, AbbVie's chief scientific officer, acknowledged that he was aware thatacalabrutinib could be moving toward approval but focused on the great potential for Imbruva.</p> <p>AbbVie's executives mentioned Viekira all of two times during the company's earnings call. Once was to briefly mention strong international performance from the hepatitis C drug. The second brief statement referenced declining U.S. sales. AbbVie CFO William Chase said that Viekira had "seenmarket share loss and some price erosion due to the entrance of a new competitor in the market."</p> <p>Who was that new competitor? Zepatier. Merck (NYSE: MRK) launched its hep C drug earlier this year. The entrance of Zepatier accounted for some of that market-share loss mentioned by Chase. Merck was squarely behind Viekira's price erosion. The drugmaker priced Zepatier lower than other hep C drugs on the market, forcing AbbVie and Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) to offer discounts on their products.</p> <p>AbbVie undoubtedly knows Viekira's best days are behind it. Sales for the drug plunged nearly 20% in the third quarter compared to the prior-year period. Management talked more about the new hepatitis C combo treatment that it expects to launch next year. This combo will be taken once per day and will treat all genotypes of hep C.</p> <p>However, no one on AbbVie's team discussed the fact that Gilead has already hit the market with its own pan-genotypic once-daily combo. Epclusa was approved by the FDA on June 28 and saw huge sales in just three days at the end of the second quarter.</p> <p>AbbVie's executives did exactly what they're supposed to do: paint as pretty a picture about the company's prospects as they can. What does that picture really look like?</p> <p>Humira should still keep on plugging along, but sooner or later growth won't just slow down. It will evaporate. AbbVie must get success from newer drugs and its pipeline. Imbruvica is a cornerstone for its strategy to build revenue outside of Humira. The company also needs more winners and is likely to get one with Elagolix, which should be submitted for approval in treating endometriosis next year.</p> <p>I think the scenario for AbbVie still looks pretty good over the next two or three years. Beyond that point, the picture of the company's prospects is like a Monet painting: a little fuzzy.</p> <p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2518&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFishBiz/info.aspx" type="external">Keith Speights Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Gilead Sciences. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	3 Things AbbVie's Management Said While Its Stock Got Hammered	true	http://foxbusiness.com/investing/2016/10/29/3-things-abbvie-management-said-while-its-stock-got-hammered.html	2016-10-29	0right	3 Things AbbVie's Management Said While Its Stock Got Hammered <p /> <p>Friday wasn't a good day for AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV). The company announced its third-quarter results shortly before the market opened. AbbVie's stock fell over 6% in pre-market trading and didn't do much better the rest of the day. Here's what the company's management said while AbbVie stock was being hammered.(All quotes courtesy of <a href="http://marketintelligence.spglobal.com/" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>.)</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Image source: Getty Images.</p> <p>Nothing is more important to AbbVie than Humira. The autoimmune disease drug generated over 60% of AbbVie's total revenue in the third quarter. A lot of the discussion on the company's earnings call related to Humira and what seems to be slowing momentum.</p> <p>AbbVie CEO Rick Gonzalez said that Humira is "performing exactly where we would have expected it to perform in the international markets" and has had "outstanding growth" in the U.S. Gonzalez said that biosimilars that are now available outside of the U.S. are only having a "very modest impact" on Humira's sales.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>But what about the slowdown in sequential sales growth for the drug? AbbVie CFO Bill Chase said, "It is not unusual in the U.S. or abroad to see a general flattening out over the summer and then an acceleration back in the back half of the year." Chase thinks that is what happened in the third quarter. He added that the company "feels very, very good" about the full-year growth forecast for Humira.</p> <p>There weren't any worries about Imbruvica losing momentum. Sales for the cancer drug soared in the third quarter. AbbVie's message about Imbruvica: Even better things should be ahead.</p> <p>Gonzalez said that Imbruvica's "market share position is steadily increasing" in the front-line chronic lymphocatic leukemia (CLL) indication. He noted that the drug already holds the market-leading position as a second-line treatment for CLL and for relapsed/refractory mantle cell lymphoma and Waldenstroem'smacroglobulinemia.AbbVie awaits regulatory approval for Imbruvica in treatingrelapsed/refractory marginal zone lymphoma and expects to submit for approval for treatingchronic graft-versus-host disease in the first half of 2017.</p> <p>Imbruvica could face competition relatively soon from AstraZeneca's (NYSE: AZN)acalabrutinib. AstraZeneca has stated that it plans to submit its drug for regulatory approval by the end of 2016 but didn't specify for which indication.AbbVie's management was asked twice about the possible threat from AstraZeneca. Mike Severino, AbbVie's chief scientific officer, acknowledged that he was aware thatacalabrutinib could be moving toward approval but focused on the great potential for Imbruva.</p> <p>AbbVie's executives mentioned Viekira all of two times during the company's earnings call. Once was to briefly mention strong international performance from the hepatitis C drug. The second brief statement referenced declining U.S. sales. AbbVie CFO William Chase said that Viekira had "seenmarket share loss and some price erosion due to the entrance of a new competitor in the market."</p> <p>Who was that new competitor? Zepatier. Merck (NYSE: MRK) launched its hep C drug earlier this year. The entrance of Zepatier accounted for some of that market-share loss mentioned by Chase. Merck was squarely behind Viekira's price erosion. The drugmaker priced Zepatier lower than other hep C drugs on the market, forcing AbbVie and Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ: GILD) to offer discounts on their products.</p> <p>AbbVie undoubtedly knows Viekira's best days are behind it. Sales for the drug plunged nearly 20% in the third quarter compared to the prior-year period. Management talked more about the new hepatitis C combo treatment that it expects to launch next year. This combo will be taken once per day and will treat all genotypes of hep C.</p> <p>However, no one on AbbVie's team discussed the fact that Gilead has already hit the market with its own pan-genotypic once-daily combo. Epclusa was approved by the FDA on June 28 and saw huge sales in just three days at the end of the second quarter.</p> <p>AbbVie's executives did exactly what they're supposed to do: paint as pretty a picture about the company's prospects as they can. What does that picture really look like?</p> <p>Humira should still keep on plugging along, but sooner or later growth won't just slow down. It will evaporate. AbbVie must get success from newer drugs and its pipeline. Imbruvica is a cornerstone for its strategy to build revenue outside of Humira. The company also needs more winners and is likely to get one with Elagolix, which should be submitted for approval in treating endometriosis next year.</p> <p>I think the scenario for AbbVie still looks pretty good over the next two or three years. Beyond that point, the picture of the company's prospects is like a Monet painting: a little fuzzy.</p> <p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2518&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFishBiz/info.aspx" type="external">Keith Speights Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Gilead Sciences. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Gilead Sciences. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	4,377
<p>Aug. 10 (UPI) — The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tokyo_Electric_Power/" type="external">Tokyo Electric Power</a> Company, or TEPCO, on Thursday said a worker found what appears to be an undetonated U.S. bomb from World War II at the decommissioned Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.</p> <p>TEPCO, which is charged with decommissioning efforts, said an excavation worker <a href="https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170810/p2a/00m/0na/008000c" type="external">found the device</a> in the ground at a parking lot undergoing maintenance at about 7:30 a.m.</p> <p>The bomb, located about <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/399159-fukushima-nuclear-bomb-wwii/" type="external">half a mile</a> from the plant’s damaged No. 1 to No. 4 nuclear reactors, has what appears to be a stabilizer tail and a length of about 2.7 feet with a diameter of about half a foot, officials said.</p> <p>The Fukushima Prefectural Police is investigating to confirm if the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40886169" type="external">discovered device</a> is a bomb.</p> <p>While the immediate area surrounding the potential bomb has been sealed, officials said ongoing work to decommission the damaged plant continues.</p> <p>A Japanese military base was located in Fukushima during World War II and the Fukushima Prefectural Archives indicate U.S. forces launched an airstrike near that area during the war.</p> <p>Six years ago, an <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/11/22/Fukushima-nuclear-plant-briefly-shut-down-in-Japanese-earthquake/8911479818040/" type="external">earthquake and subsequent tsunami</a> killed more than 15,000 people and damaged nuclear reactors at the plant. Decommissioning is expected to take decades.</p> <p>The 2011 event at Fukushima is widely regarded as the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 meltdown at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant, in what was then the Soviet Union.</p>	WWII-era bomb found at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant	false	https://newsline.com/wwii-era-bomb-found-at-japans-fukushima-nuclear-plant/	2017-08-10	1right-center	WWII-era bomb found at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant <p>Aug. 10 (UPI) — The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Tokyo_Electric_Power/" type="external">Tokyo Electric Power</a> Company, or TEPCO, on Thursday said a worker found what appears to be an undetonated U.S. bomb from World War II at the decommissioned Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.</p> <p>TEPCO, which is charged with decommissioning efforts, said an excavation worker <a href="https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170810/p2a/00m/0na/008000c" type="external">found the device</a> in the ground at a parking lot undergoing maintenance at about 7:30 a.m.</p> <p>The bomb, located about <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/399159-fukushima-nuclear-bomb-wwii/" type="external">half a mile</a> from the plant’s damaged No. 1 to No. 4 nuclear reactors, has what appears to be a stabilizer tail and a length of about 2.7 feet with a diameter of about half a foot, officials said.</p> <p>The Fukushima Prefectural Police is investigating to confirm if the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40886169" type="external">discovered device</a> is a bomb.</p> <p>While the immediate area surrounding the potential bomb has been sealed, officials said ongoing work to decommission the damaged plant continues.</p> <p>A Japanese military base was located in Fukushima during World War II and the Fukushima Prefectural Archives indicate U.S. forces launched an airstrike near that area during the war.</p> <p>Six years ago, an <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2016/11/22/Fukushima-nuclear-plant-briefly-shut-down-in-Japanese-earthquake/8911479818040/" type="external">earthquake and subsequent tsunami</a> killed more than 15,000 people and damaged nuclear reactors at the plant. Decommissioning is expected to take decades.</p> <p>The 2011 event at Fukushima is widely regarded as the world’s worst nuclear disaster since the 1986 meltdown at Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant, in what was then the Soviet Union.</p>	4,378
<p>Sanley <a href="http://tookie.com/" type="external">Tookie Williams</a>, co-founder of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles over 30 years ago, is facing execution on December 13. Over the past 12 years, Williams has publicly apologized for his past, written a series of award-winning children’s books to keep kids out of gangs, initiated a Peace Protocol that has led to gang truces in cities such as Newark, New Jersey, and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. (For more details see “ <a href="" type="internal">Saving Tookie Williams</a>“.)</p> <p>On November 25, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he will hold a hearing on December 8 to consider clemency for Williams. Earlier that day I spoke to Williams by telephone.</p> <p>SOME PROSECUTORS, police and prison officials have been trying to discredit you by saying that you are still an active gang member. What’s your response?</p> <p>IT’S QUITE a spurious allegation that these people are putting out. The fact of the matter is that I have a report from the San Quentin Institutional Classification Committee from 2004, which quotes a lieutenant saying that he hadn’t observed anything that was gang-related about me for the past 10 years. It also commended me for 10 years of a positive program.</p> <p>So it’s quite contradictory for a San Quentin spokesperson-or anyone else, for that matter-to state that I’m still involved in gang activity, when that same person’s superiors say I’ve been programming positively for over 10 years.</p> <p>SOME OF the same people say that if you were serious about opposing gang violence, you would allow the authorities to “debrief” you on what you know about the Crips. Do you have any inside information that could be used to weaken the Crips or other gangs, and why have you refused to be debriefed?</p> <p>THE FACT of the matter is that “debriefing” is a euphemism for snitching-telling on people. In my redemptive transition, I vowed to myself not to participate in any kind of violence, or anything that would harm other people, and for me to tell on another person is, in my opinion, harming another individual.</p> <p>But first and foremost, I have no information.</p> <p>Secondly, there’s another contradiction with these individuals who continuously promote this claim about me. As it stands, the Departmental Operations Manual clearly states that the only gangs or individuals who will be debriefed are prison gangs. The Crips and the Bloods are not considered prison gangs. Prison gangs are those that were formed and created in the prison.</p> <p>If I were a gang member, and if there was any iota of data that showed this, I would never have left the hole. I was in there in solitary confinement for close to seven years. And if debriefing was necessary-if it was legal for a street gang-then they would have done that to me then.</p> <p>THE MEDIA has made much of the fact that you have never apologized to the murder victims’ families in your case-you’ve said that you would rather die than lie about something you didn’t do. Do you have anything you would like to say to the victims’ families?</p> <p>IF I had the opportunity to talk to talk to any victims’ family members, I would say that I can empathize and I sympathize with their loss of a loved one. I would say the same thing to anyone who has lost a loved one.</p> <p>However, in regards to me apologizing, it would be wrong of me to apologize for something I didn’t do. I didn’t commit those crimes. I’ve been averring my innocence since day one, and it is the truth. So I cannot apologize for something I didn’t do.</p> <p>It would be wrong of me. It would be a coward’s act. I would be craven to proclaim guilt for something I didn’t do. And that’s why I say that I’d rather just go on and die than to lie about something that is so untrue.</p> <p>WHAT MADE you decide to redirect your life and dedicate yourself to helping kids?</p> <p>I’VE LIVED a pathetic life, and I believe it was education that helped me to change. It was through education that I was able to create common sense and use reasoning. And it was through this that I developed a conscience that led to my redemption.</p> <p>This is something I feel I was obligated to do as a man, period-to do something that would help youth out there. I feel obligated to try to convince them that the life that they wanted to live or are thinking about living-the so-called thug life, or the gang life, or the criminal life, or the drug life-will ruin their lives forever. I was motivated to do something in my small way-to make a contribution.</p> <p>SOME PEOPLE out there want to blame you as an individual for pretty much all the gang violence that exists. What do you think are the underlying causes that result in gangs and street crime and violence?</p> <p>FIRST AND foremost, it’s an impossibility to blame one person for the ills of society. That’s just like Black people trying to blame one white person for slavery and what followed. That would be ridiculous.</p> <p>But I believe the center of the problem is self-hate, which is a very destructive mechanism that people pick up, because of the conditions not only of society but the morbid mindset of how they look at things.</p> <p>I believe that this is the motivating factor of gangs. It was to me. That’s why I had no qualms about initiating aggression toward people who looked like me-in other words, toward Black folks. It was a sense of trying to erase or obliterate that which reminded me of myself, in the negative.</p> <p>WHERE DO you think that self-hate comes from?</p> <p>IT COMES from conditioning. And when I say conditioning, we’re talking about conditioning that’s propagated not only on television and on the radio, but through encounters with the police department, with people in economic positions and in almost any institution-the prisons, the juvenile halls, the police stations, the youth authorities, etc.</p> <p>There’s an inveterate form of racialism that exists, and it perpetuates a negative stereotype. These things are out there.</p> <p>As a youngster growing up, I had the unenviable experience of digesting the most negative stereotypes about Black folks being illiterate, being criminals, being violent, being promiscuous, being indolent, etc. When you’re spoon-fed these things on an incessant basis, you eventually morph into those negative stereotypes, unwittingly. That’s what happened to me. I became the stereotypes that I was spoon-fed.</p> <p>As far as amending the problems, I believe that education is the key. I know I consistently talk about this, but I believe it, because it’s what woke me up. It was my form of an awakening-though over a period of time, because I’ve never had an epiphany or anything like that. I had to undergo years of battling my demons.</p> <p>What I did was I picked up parts of the most negative aspects of society, and I built my character, I built my persona. And I became what I built-a monster. That became my identity.</p> <p>WHAT ACHIEVEMENT in your life are you most proud of?</p> <p>MY REDEMPTIVE transition-being able to alter myself from one extreme to the other.</p> <p>If you would have told me 15 years ago that I was going to change my life, that I would write children’s books, that I would be helping thousands upon thousands of children, that I would eventually be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and that they would eventually make a movie about me, I would have looked at you as if you had lost your mind.</p> <p>The reason is because, being a Crip, so-called “cripping” was all that I knew. I felt that would be what I would do for the rest of my life. It was all I knew. I felt that was my reason to exist.</p> <p>So quite naturally, I thought that was how I would die. I would live until a bullet to the back of the brain, or what have you. I never expected to do anything else, because that was my raison d’etre. There was nothing that could penetrate that armor of the gang life at that time.</p> <p>That’s what I thought-until, to my amazement, something did. What happened was that I was slowly but surely becoming human.</p> <p>MANY OF the people who are campaigning around your case are opposed to the death penalty in general and are fighting to end it. I wonder if there’s anything you’d like to say to the anti-death penalty movement in this country?</p> <p>I’M VERY grateful that they exist, for one thing-because as you and I both know, there wasn’t any type of anti-anything for many years.</p> <p>I’m very grateful that there are people out there who possess the goodness to be willing to help save the lives of many of us they don’t even know. They know nothing about our backgrounds, but yet they know that killing is wrong, and that the death penalty isn’t a deterrent, and it’s not solving any problems.</p> <p>Throughout this nation, the death penalty population and the overall population within prisons are getting larger and larger. If there were a deterrent effect, then prisons would be empty. We’re talking about over 600 on death row in California alone. If a person can deduce from this that the death penalty is working, then something is wrong with their reasoning.</p> <p>But the death penalty has become a pawn that politicians use all the time. You have politicians who didn’t used to be supporters of the death penalty, but once they get into the political arena, they alter their position. They become proponents of the death penalty, because that is the zeitgeist of the moment-the politically correct way to be.</p> <p>Some people can do it. I couldn’t do it. What they’re doing is what many people expect me to do in regards to apologizing for crimes I didn’t commit-just to save my life. Of course I want to live, but not by having to lie.</p> <p>A longer version of this interview will appear on <a href="http://socialistworker.org/" type="external">Socialist Worker Online</a>. To support clemency for Stan, visit <a href="http://www.savetookie.org/" type="external">http://www.savetookie.org</a>. Educators can sign the “Educators for Tookie” letter at <a href="http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/EducatorsTookie.html" type="external">http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/EducatorsTookie.html</a>.</p> <p>PHIL GASPER is Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California and a member of the <a href="http://nodeathpenalty.org/" type="external">Campaign to End the Death Penalty</a>. He has nominated Stanley Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize four times. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p> <p>&#160;</p>	An Interview with Stanley Tookie Williams	true	https://counterpunch.org/2005/11/29/an-interview-with-stanley-tookie-williams/	2005-11-29	4left	An Interview with Stanley Tookie Williams <p>Sanley <a href="http://tookie.com/" type="external">Tookie Williams</a>, co-founder of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles over 30 years ago, is facing execution on December 13. Over the past 12 years, Williams has publicly apologized for his past, written a series of award-winning children’s books to keep kids out of gangs, initiated a Peace Protocol that has led to gang truces in cities such as Newark, New Jersey, and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. (For more details see “ <a href="" type="internal">Saving Tookie Williams</a>“.)</p> <p>On November 25, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that he will hold a hearing on December 8 to consider clemency for Williams. Earlier that day I spoke to Williams by telephone.</p> <p>SOME PROSECUTORS, police and prison officials have been trying to discredit you by saying that you are still an active gang member. What’s your response?</p> <p>IT’S QUITE a spurious allegation that these people are putting out. The fact of the matter is that I have a report from the San Quentin Institutional Classification Committee from 2004, which quotes a lieutenant saying that he hadn’t observed anything that was gang-related about me for the past 10 years. It also commended me for 10 years of a positive program.</p> <p>So it’s quite contradictory for a San Quentin spokesperson-or anyone else, for that matter-to state that I’m still involved in gang activity, when that same person’s superiors say I’ve been programming positively for over 10 years.</p> <p>SOME OF the same people say that if you were serious about opposing gang violence, you would allow the authorities to “debrief” you on what you know about the Crips. Do you have any inside information that could be used to weaken the Crips or other gangs, and why have you refused to be debriefed?</p> <p>THE FACT of the matter is that “debriefing” is a euphemism for snitching-telling on people. In my redemptive transition, I vowed to myself not to participate in any kind of violence, or anything that would harm other people, and for me to tell on another person is, in my opinion, harming another individual.</p> <p>But first and foremost, I have no information.</p> <p>Secondly, there’s another contradiction with these individuals who continuously promote this claim about me. As it stands, the Departmental Operations Manual clearly states that the only gangs or individuals who will be debriefed are prison gangs. The Crips and the Bloods are not considered prison gangs. Prison gangs are those that were formed and created in the prison.</p> <p>If I were a gang member, and if there was any iota of data that showed this, I would never have left the hole. I was in there in solitary confinement for close to seven years. And if debriefing was necessary-if it was legal for a street gang-then they would have done that to me then.</p> <p>THE MEDIA has made much of the fact that you have never apologized to the murder victims’ families in your case-you’ve said that you would rather die than lie about something you didn’t do. Do you have anything you would like to say to the victims’ families?</p> <p>IF I had the opportunity to talk to talk to any victims’ family members, I would say that I can empathize and I sympathize with their loss of a loved one. I would say the same thing to anyone who has lost a loved one.</p> <p>However, in regards to me apologizing, it would be wrong of me to apologize for something I didn’t do. I didn’t commit those crimes. I’ve been averring my innocence since day one, and it is the truth. So I cannot apologize for something I didn’t do.</p> <p>It would be wrong of me. It would be a coward’s act. I would be craven to proclaim guilt for something I didn’t do. And that’s why I say that I’d rather just go on and die than to lie about something that is so untrue.</p> <p>WHAT MADE you decide to redirect your life and dedicate yourself to helping kids?</p> <p>I’VE LIVED a pathetic life, and I believe it was education that helped me to change. It was through education that I was able to create common sense and use reasoning. And it was through this that I developed a conscience that led to my redemption.</p> <p>This is something I feel I was obligated to do as a man, period-to do something that would help youth out there. I feel obligated to try to convince them that the life that they wanted to live or are thinking about living-the so-called thug life, or the gang life, or the criminal life, or the drug life-will ruin their lives forever. I was motivated to do something in my small way-to make a contribution.</p> <p>SOME PEOPLE out there want to blame you as an individual for pretty much all the gang violence that exists. What do you think are the underlying causes that result in gangs and street crime and violence?</p> <p>FIRST AND foremost, it’s an impossibility to blame one person for the ills of society. That’s just like Black people trying to blame one white person for slavery and what followed. That would be ridiculous.</p> <p>But I believe the center of the problem is self-hate, which is a very destructive mechanism that people pick up, because of the conditions not only of society but the morbid mindset of how they look at things.</p> <p>I believe that this is the motivating factor of gangs. It was to me. That’s why I had no qualms about initiating aggression toward people who looked like me-in other words, toward Black folks. It was a sense of trying to erase or obliterate that which reminded me of myself, in the negative.</p> <p>WHERE DO you think that self-hate comes from?</p> <p>IT COMES from conditioning. And when I say conditioning, we’re talking about conditioning that’s propagated not only on television and on the radio, but through encounters with the police department, with people in economic positions and in almost any institution-the prisons, the juvenile halls, the police stations, the youth authorities, etc.</p> <p>There’s an inveterate form of racialism that exists, and it perpetuates a negative stereotype. These things are out there.</p> <p>As a youngster growing up, I had the unenviable experience of digesting the most negative stereotypes about Black folks being illiterate, being criminals, being violent, being promiscuous, being indolent, etc. When you’re spoon-fed these things on an incessant basis, you eventually morph into those negative stereotypes, unwittingly. That’s what happened to me. I became the stereotypes that I was spoon-fed.</p> <p>As far as amending the problems, I believe that education is the key. I know I consistently talk about this, but I believe it, because it’s what woke me up. It was my form of an awakening-though over a period of time, because I’ve never had an epiphany or anything like that. I had to undergo years of battling my demons.</p> <p>What I did was I picked up parts of the most negative aspects of society, and I built my character, I built my persona. And I became what I built-a monster. That became my identity.</p> <p>WHAT ACHIEVEMENT in your life are you most proud of?</p> <p>MY REDEMPTIVE transition-being able to alter myself from one extreme to the other.</p> <p>If you would have told me 15 years ago that I was going to change my life, that I would write children’s books, that I would be helping thousands upon thousands of children, that I would eventually be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and that they would eventually make a movie about me, I would have looked at you as if you had lost your mind.</p> <p>The reason is because, being a Crip, so-called “cripping” was all that I knew. I felt that would be what I would do for the rest of my life. It was all I knew. I felt that was my reason to exist.</p> <p>So quite naturally, I thought that was how I would die. I would live until a bullet to the back of the brain, or what have you. I never expected to do anything else, because that was my raison d’etre. There was nothing that could penetrate that armor of the gang life at that time.</p> <p>That’s what I thought-until, to my amazement, something did. What happened was that I was slowly but surely becoming human.</p> <p>MANY OF the people who are campaigning around your case are opposed to the death penalty in general and are fighting to end it. I wonder if there’s anything you’d like to say to the anti-death penalty movement in this country?</p> <p>I’M VERY grateful that they exist, for one thing-because as you and I both know, there wasn’t any type of anti-anything for many years.</p> <p>I’m very grateful that there are people out there who possess the goodness to be willing to help save the lives of many of us they don’t even know. They know nothing about our backgrounds, but yet they know that killing is wrong, and that the death penalty isn’t a deterrent, and it’s not solving any problems.</p> <p>Throughout this nation, the death penalty population and the overall population within prisons are getting larger and larger. If there were a deterrent effect, then prisons would be empty. We’re talking about over 600 on death row in California alone. If a person can deduce from this that the death penalty is working, then something is wrong with their reasoning.</p> <p>But the death penalty has become a pawn that politicians use all the time. You have politicians who didn’t used to be supporters of the death penalty, but once they get into the political arena, they alter their position. They become proponents of the death penalty, because that is the zeitgeist of the moment-the politically correct way to be.</p> <p>Some people can do it. I couldn’t do it. What they’re doing is what many people expect me to do in regards to apologizing for crimes I didn’t commit-just to save my life. Of course I want to live, but not by having to lie.</p> <p>A longer version of this interview will appear on <a href="http://socialistworker.org/" type="external">Socialist Worker Online</a>. To support clemency for Stan, visit <a href="http://www.savetookie.org/" type="external">http://www.savetookie.org</a>. Educators can sign the “Educators for Tookie” letter at <a href="http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/EducatorsTookie.html" type="external">http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/EducatorsTookie.html</a>.</p> <p>PHIL GASPER is Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame de Namur University in California and a member of the <a href="http://nodeathpenalty.org/" type="external">Campaign to End the Death Penalty</a>. He has nominated Stanley Williams for the Nobel Peace Prize four times. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p> <p>&#160;</p>	4,379
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>But the new policy also allows for the firing of warning shots, which most police departments prohibit, and the firing at moving vehicles under certain circumstances.</p> <p>The International Association of Chiefs of Police brought together 10 other national police groups starting last spring to develop a “National Consensus Policy On Use Of Force” after a number of high-profile police-involved shootings, said former IACP President Terry Cunningham, who convened the group before stepping down from the IACP last fall. Also last spring, the IACP and the national Fraternal Order of Police officers’ union joined together in a rare collaboration to push back on a new “30 Guiding Principles” for use of police force issued in early 2016 by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank supported by large city police chiefs which called for police emphasis on the “sanctity of life” for everyone in a critical incident, not just the officers.</p> <p>So the two national groups convened a summit of police organizations, including the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the National Organization of Women Law Enforcement Executives, groups of federal, tactical and investigative officers and other police trade groups. “These are the people who are on the street every day doing the job,” Cunningham said. “You want to have their buy-in.”</p> <p>The IACP already had a “Model Policy” on use of force, and every police department, large or small, has its own policy on when officers should fire their weapons, whether they should fire at or from moving vehicles, whether they should fire warning shots, and when they should use “less-lethal force.” Nearly all of those policies, as well as the new consensus policy, lift wording from the Supreme Court case of Graham v. Connor, which said police shootings should be assessed from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, and whether their actions are “objectively reasonable” in light of the circumstances seen by the officer.</p> <p>But the new policy adds a section on de-escalation, which states that “An officer shall use de-escalation techniques and other alternatives to higher levels of force consistent with his training whenever possible and appropriate before resorting to force and to reduce the need for force.” That means creating space between an officer and a subject, talking and trying to calm a subject, waiting for backups and supervisors to arrive and trying to resolve a situation without gunfire, when the subject does not have a gun.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Those were the concepts proposed by Chuck Wexler, and endorsed by many big city police chiefs, in the Police Executive Research Forum’s 30 Guiding Principles. One deputies association called it “a ridiculous piece of claptrap.” The joint statement from the IACP and FOP said, “We cannot reasonably expect law enforcement officers to walk away from potentially dangerous situations and individuals in the hope that those situations resolve themselves without further harm being done.”</p> <p>But Cunningham said the 11 police groups jointly looked at de-escalation and decided, “This is a necessary part of what we do. It should be in the policy.” He said the labor organizations at the table “talked about the challenges of what officers see on the street. Ultimately, it all came back to, we get it. If we have the opportunity to de-escalate, we should. And they agreed with that.”</p> <p>The IACP’s model policy strictly prohibited the use of warning shots, which can sometimes injure innocent bystanders, and firing from a moving vehicle. The new consensus policy allows for warning shots and firing from a vehicle under certain circumstances. The new policy also allows for shooting at a moving vehicle, but only when a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or others with a weapon or using the vehicle to deliberately hit someone. The PERF principles call for a prohibition on all shooting at cars.</p> <p>Cunningham said recent terrorist attacks with trucks in Nice, France, and Berlin showed that officers may encounter someone using a vehicle as a deadly weapon. He also said if a police department has a policy which flatly prohibits shooting at a vehicle “it can be used against the officer in a criminal or civil trial.”</p> <p>Cunningham said the new consensus policy “isn’t an IACP policy. This is a national consensus policy. We see administrators asking for it, and we se communities asking for it. This way, everybody signed on to it.”</p>	National police groups add ‘de-escalation’ to new model policy on use of force	false	https://abqjournal.com/929284/national-police-groups-add-de-escalation-to-new-model-policy-on-use-of-force.html		2least	National police groups add ‘de-escalation’ to new model policy on use of force <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>But the new policy also allows for the firing of warning shots, which most police departments prohibit, and the firing at moving vehicles under certain circumstances.</p> <p>The International Association of Chiefs of Police brought together 10 other national police groups starting last spring to develop a “National Consensus Policy On Use Of Force” after a number of high-profile police-involved shootings, said former IACP President Terry Cunningham, who convened the group before stepping down from the IACP last fall. Also last spring, the IACP and the national Fraternal Order of Police officers’ union joined together in a rare collaboration to push back on a new “30 Guiding Principles” for use of police force issued in early 2016 by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank supported by large city police chiefs which called for police emphasis on the “sanctity of life” for everyone in a critical incident, not just the officers.</p> <p>So the two national groups convened a summit of police organizations, including the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the National Organization of Women Law Enforcement Executives, groups of federal, tactical and investigative officers and other police trade groups. “These are the people who are on the street every day doing the job,” Cunningham said. “You want to have their buy-in.”</p> <p>The IACP already had a “Model Policy” on use of force, and every police department, large or small, has its own policy on when officers should fire their weapons, whether they should fire at or from moving vehicles, whether they should fire warning shots, and when they should use “less-lethal force.” Nearly all of those policies, as well as the new consensus policy, lift wording from the Supreme Court case of Graham v. Connor, which said police shootings should be assessed from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, and whether their actions are “objectively reasonable” in light of the circumstances seen by the officer.</p> <p>But the new policy adds a section on de-escalation, which states that “An officer shall use de-escalation techniques and other alternatives to higher levels of force consistent with his training whenever possible and appropriate before resorting to force and to reduce the need for force.” That means creating space between an officer and a subject, talking and trying to calm a subject, waiting for backups and supervisors to arrive and trying to resolve a situation without gunfire, when the subject does not have a gun.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Those were the concepts proposed by Chuck Wexler, and endorsed by many big city police chiefs, in the Police Executive Research Forum’s 30 Guiding Principles. One deputies association called it “a ridiculous piece of claptrap.” The joint statement from the IACP and FOP said, “We cannot reasonably expect law enforcement officers to walk away from potentially dangerous situations and individuals in the hope that those situations resolve themselves without further harm being done.”</p> <p>But Cunningham said the 11 police groups jointly looked at de-escalation and decided, “This is a necessary part of what we do. It should be in the policy.” He said the labor organizations at the table “talked about the challenges of what officers see on the street. Ultimately, it all came back to, we get it. If we have the opportunity to de-escalate, we should. And they agreed with that.”</p> <p>The IACP’s model policy strictly prohibited the use of warning shots, which can sometimes injure innocent bystanders, and firing from a moving vehicle. The new consensus policy allows for warning shots and firing from a vehicle under certain circumstances. The new policy also allows for shooting at a moving vehicle, but only when a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or others with a weapon or using the vehicle to deliberately hit someone. The PERF principles call for a prohibition on all shooting at cars.</p> <p>Cunningham said recent terrorist attacks with trucks in Nice, France, and Berlin showed that officers may encounter someone using a vehicle as a deadly weapon. He also said if a police department has a policy which flatly prohibits shooting at a vehicle “it can be used against the officer in a criminal or civil trial.”</p> <p>Cunningham said the new consensus policy “isn’t an IACP policy. This is a national consensus policy. We see administrators asking for it, and we se communities asking for it. This way, everybody signed on to it.”</p>	4,380
<p>Emergency crews on Monday responded to a fire at Trump Tower in New York City, according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/01/08/authorities-responding-to-fire-on-trump-tower-roof/?utm_term=.8dd1ab217eac" type="external">The Washington Post</a>.</p> <p>The Post on Monday reported a New York City Police Department (NYPD) spokesman said a call came in around 7:30 a.m. local time about the blaze.</p> <p>The spokesman said that the one-alarm fire began on the roof of the 68-floor luxury building on 5th Avenue.</p> <p>Trump Tower did not have any evacuations due to the flames, the spokesman added, and the fire is reportedly under control.</p> <p>Authorities on Monday told The Post that the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) was on the scene of the fire.</p> <p>The FDNY around 8:16 a.m. local time on Monday tweeted that the blaze started inside an HVAC system and is now “under control.”</p> <p>“FDNYalerts MAN 7-5 721 5 AVE, MULTIPLE DWELLING (TRUMP TOWER) FIRE IN HVAC, LOCATED ON ROOF, UNDER CONTROL,” the department said.</p> <p>New York City police on Monday said no injuries had been reported, but a WPIX reporter said officials had confirmed that two people had been injured to her the same day.</p> <p>Eric Trump, who is President Trump’s son, on Monday thanked authorities for helping extinguish a “small electrical fire” at the property.</p> <p>“There was a small electrical fire in a cooling tower on the roof of Trump Tower,” he said. “The New York Fire Department was here within minutes and did an incredible job.”</p> <p>“The men and women of the #FDNY are true heroes and deserve our most sincere thanks and praise!” Eric Trump added.</p> <p>President Trump’s public White House schedule on Monday said he was in Washington, D.C. that morning.</p> <p>Trump Tower is a Manhattan high rise that includes a penthouse condominium for President Trump and his family.</p> <p>The building was also the setting of President Trump’s reality television series – NBC’s “The Apprentice” – and the headquarters of his 2016 election campaign.</p>	Emergency crews responded to a rooftop fire at Trump Tower	false	https://circa.com/story/2018/01/08/nation/trump-tower-fire-prompts-emergency-crews-reponse	2018-01-08	1right-center	Emergency crews responded to a rooftop fire at Trump Tower <p>Emergency crews on Monday responded to a fire at Trump Tower in New York City, according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/01/08/authorities-responding-to-fire-on-trump-tower-roof/?utm_term=.8dd1ab217eac" type="external">The Washington Post</a>.</p> <p>The Post on Monday reported a New York City Police Department (NYPD) spokesman said a call came in around 7:30 a.m. local time about the blaze.</p> <p>The spokesman said that the one-alarm fire began on the roof of the 68-floor luxury building on 5th Avenue.</p> <p>Trump Tower did not have any evacuations due to the flames, the spokesman added, and the fire is reportedly under control.</p> <p>Authorities on Monday told The Post that the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) was on the scene of the fire.</p> <p>The FDNY around 8:16 a.m. local time on Monday tweeted that the blaze started inside an HVAC system and is now “under control.”</p> <p>“FDNYalerts MAN 7-5 721 5 AVE, MULTIPLE DWELLING (TRUMP TOWER) FIRE IN HVAC, LOCATED ON ROOF, UNDER CONTROL,” the department said.</p> <p>New York City police on Monday said no injuries had been reported, but a WPIX reporter said officials had confirmed that two people had been injured to her the same day.</p> <p>Eric Trump, who is President Trump’s son, on Monday thanked authorities for helping extinguish a “small electrical fire” at the property.</p> <p>“There was a small electrical fire in a cooling tower on the roof of Trump Tower,” he said. “The New York Fire Department was here within minutes and did an incredible job.”</p> <p>“The men and women of the #FDNY are true heroes and deserve our most sincere thanks and praise!” Eric Trump added.</p> <p>President Trump’s public White House schedule on Monday said he was in Washington, D.C. that morning.</p> <p>Trump Tower is a Manhattan high rise that includes a penthouse condominium for President Trump and his family.</p> <p>The building was also the setting of President Trump’s reality television series – NBC’s “The Apprentice” – and the headquarters of his 2016 election campaign.</p>	4,381
<p>The real Eliot Ness wasn’t nearly as cool as De Palma made him out to be in The Untouchables. But no matter, Neil Barofsky was still pretty chuffed when Treasury officials likened him to the Prohibition agent. Barofsky felt like Ness during his twenty-seven months in the DC swamp, where “bullshit, ego, politics, turf, and credit” ruled the day, and only he and his SIGTARP (Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program) team stood between Wall Street bankers and hundreds of billions of bailout dollars.</p> <p>Last year Barofsky published Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. The book is a memoir of sorts that aims to call attention to the “hijacking of both the bailouts and the government itself by a handful of Wall Street financial institutions and their executives.” Barofsky hopes that the American people will be as pissed off as he was when, as director of SIGTARP, he found out that Washington had been “captured by the banks.” He wants us to wake up and do something to “break our system free from the corrupting grasp of the megabanks.”</p> <p>A noble objective, to be sure.</p> <p>The Office of the SIGTARP is a special agency established by Congress in 2008. SIGTARP’s website posts quarterly reports, offers a hotline to report TARP abuse, boasts about sending bankers to jail, and warns Americans about mortgage-modification scams. SIGTARP was the result of a compromise between the Executive and Congress over the implementation of TARP, a hotly contested piece of legislation originally designed to provide Treasury with a pool of money to buy up toxic assets, alleviate the mortgage crisis, and restart credit flows. Congress didn’t want to write a blank check to the Executive, but got queasy at the prospect of a financial meltdown. SIGTARP is designed to act as a watchdog for American taxpayers, using its law-enforcement capacity to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse linked to the $700&#160;billion bailout program.</p> <p>In Bailout, Barofsky recounts his bafflement at being nominated for the directorship. Surely the fact that he was “a nobody” with an “aversion to bullshit and hypocrisy that occasionally led to an Asperger’s-like bluntness” would make him unsuitable for the adventure. No, no, Barofsky was perfect for the job. His background as a prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, combined with his experience busting mortgage fraud and his stint investigating the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia prepared him to fight the Treasury. Just in case, he brought his lucky dead-FARC-soldier bayonet — a memento from the “esteemed” Colombian National Police — to Washington with him.</p> <p>TARP had already doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks by the time Barofsky and his right-hand man, Kevin Puvalowski, got keys to their office — conveniently located next the Treasury cafeteria and atop a broken sewage pipe. The space, a harbinger of things to come, screamed, “Welcome to Washington, asshole. Fuck you. Really, I mean it. Fuck. You.” Barofsky had to quickly learn the ropes, face a Congressional hearing, find people willing to work for SIGTARP, get garbage cans for the office, and convince Treasury to start enacting fraud regulations before the next bailout installment to the banks went out.</p> <p>Hank Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury under Bush) had just pulled a major bait-and-switch, using the latitude given to Treasury by the TARP bill to create the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) — a straight-up bailout of the banks — instead of using TARP funds to buy up toxic assets, as originally intended. Through the CPP program, Treasury funneled money directly to big banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs by buying up preferred shares of stock. According to Paulson, avoiding the looming problem of bad assets and underwater mortgages was justified because the CPP program would stimulate lending and “get credit flowing.”</p> <p>Looking over the program his first few days in office, Barofsky realized that there was no protection against banks “cooking their books” to make themselves look healthy enough to qualify for TARP funding, and no language forcing banks to actually use the money to get credit flowing again. When Barofsky tried to convince Treasury to introduce oversight mechanisms into the CPP contracts, Treasury was adamantly opposed, arguing that SIGTARP oversight would frighten banks away from participating.</p> <p>The Bush-Obama changeup brought preparation for a new bailout program called TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility). The program was designed to resuscitate the securitization market by lending $200&#160;billion from the New York Federal Reserve to hedge funds, financial institutions, and other big investors to buy new TALF bonds — bonds formed by lumping together student loans, car loans, credit-card debt, and small-business loans. Investors could borrow 95 percent of the money they needed to buy the bonds from the Fed, and if the bonds turned out to be worthless, no problem. The loans were “non-recourse loans,” so the borrower could simply give the bonds back and be off the hook for the money.</p> <p>Aside from providing a taxpayer-funded floor on losses, TALF was ripe for fraud, particularly collusion between bond buyers and sellers. When Barofsky confronted Treasury about the program’s problems, they gave him the brush-off — said he didn’t understand “that the biggest players in these programs — the big banks and investment firms — would never risk their reputations by trying to rip off the government. The reputational damage they’d suffer would be far greater than any potential profit.” Besides, the bonds would be AAA-rated by the credit-rating agencies, so the taxpayer could rest assured that the “loans backing the bonds were properly underwritten.” These, of course, are the same rating agencies that wildly overrated the asset-backed securities that caused the crisis in the first place, but William Dudley (acting President of the New York Fed) was hopeful, saying: “.&#160;.&#160;. we’re confident [the ratings agencies] won’t risk being embarrassed again.”</p> <p>Ever the wordsmith, Barofsky later told Puva-lowski: “These guys haven’t just drank the Wall Street Kool-Aid, they ripped open the packets, added the water, stirred it up, and are now serving it to us on a $700&#160;billion taxpayer-funded service platter.”</p> <p>Amid all this, Treasury still hadn’t done squat about TARP’s mandate to stem foreclosures. Following Tim Geithner’s confirmation and months of criticism from members of Congress, it issued a vague pronouncement about a $50&#160;billion housing program. When Barofsky asked the department for details about the plan, he got the usual run-around, with officials saying no details had been finalized. Yet a week later, President Obama unveiled the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP) at a speech in Arizona. HAMP was designed to modify mortgages for millions of homeowners whose mortgages were underwater. Treasury would contract out the job to mortgage-service providers who would be paid for every mortgage they modified. Unbeknownst to SIGTARP, Treasury had been quietly working on the program for months with BlackRock and the Trust Company of the West Group — two giant investment houses that stood to profit from the program.</p> <p>The program was a disaster. HAMP didn’t provide homeowners with a way to reduce their principal and offered no relief for people who’d lost their jobs. Barofsky begged Treasury to at least make a public-service announcement warning homeowners against mortgage fraudsters pretending to be part of HAMP, but Treasury refused. The program was so disorganized that Treasury changed the mortgage-modification rules nine times in the first year, and the average homeowner applicant had to submit paperwork to their mortgage servicer six times.</p> <p>The program was also rampant with abuse. Many homeowners were told by their mortgage servicer to stop making payments on their mortgages so they could qualify for HAMP and participate in the trial-mortgage modification program. The mortgage servicer would then collect late fees while the owner waited months and months for the trial modification to be finalized. Many homeowners were rejected after months of waiting and slapped with a “deficiency” bill, charging them for the difference between their trial mortgage monthly payments and their original monthly payments, along with a mountain of late fees.</p> <p>Barofsky and Puvalowski were baffled. Why would the Treasury launch such a shoddy, ill-designed, underfunded program? Calls to SIGTARP’s helpline were nonstop, but it seemed like Treasury really didn’t care at all about the suffering of so many borrowers. Instead, the program appeared to be just more gravy for the banks. Barofsky later discovered in a meeting with Geithner that this was precisely the purpose of HAMP. It was designed to “foam the runway,” giving banks relief from the surge of foreclosures by stretching them out over a longer period of time, thus allowing the banks to absorb the losses more slowly while they pulled in bailout money through the other TARP programs. “HAMP was not separate from the bank bailouts; it was an essential part of them.”</p> <p>HAMP and TALF were just two examples of the 24/7 TARP clusterfuck. The SIGTARP team was flummoxed by the behavior of the Treasury in its response to the crisis. Why had it shown such callous disregard for the American taxpayer while pushing truckloads of free money onto the banks with no strings attached? For Barofsky, the answer is simple: “the entire crisis was unleashed by the greed of a small handful of executives who exploited a financial system that guaranteed that no matter what risks they took .&#160;.&#160;. the US taxpayer would cover their losses.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. The US government had been captured by the banks.”</p>	The Schizophrenic State	true	https://jacobinmag.com/2014/01/the-schizophrenic-state/	2018-10-06	4left	The Schizophrenic State <p>The real Eliot Ness wasn’t nearly as cool as De Palma made him out to be in The Untouchables. But no matter, Neil Barofsky was still pretty chuffed when Treasury officials likened him to the Prohibition agent. Barofsky felt like Ness during his twenty-seven months in the DC swamp, where “bullshit, ego, politics, turf, and credit” ruled the day, and only he and his SIGTARP (Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program) team stood between Wall Street bankers and hundreds of billions of bailout dollars.</p> <p>Last year Barofsky published Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street. The book is a memoir of sorts that aims to call attention to the “hijacking of both the bailouts and the government itself by a handful of Wall Street financial institutions and their executives.” Barofsky hopes that the American people will be as pissed off as he was when, as director of SIGTARP, he found out that Washington had been “captured by the banks.” He wants us to wake up and do something to “break our system free from the corrupting grasp of the megabanks.”</p> <p>A noble objective, to be sure.</p> <p>The Office of the SIGTARP is a special agency established by Congress in 2008. SIGTARP’s website posts quarterly reports, offers a hotline to report TARP abuse, boasts about sending bankers to jail, and warns Americans about mortgage-modification scams. SIGTARP was the result of a compromise between the Executive and Congress over the implementation of TARP, a hotly contested piece of legislation originally designed to provide Treasury with a pool of money to buy up toxic assets, alleviate the mortgage crisis, and restart credit flows. Congress didn’t want to write a blank check to the Executive, but got queasy at the prospect of a financial meltdown. SIGTARP is designed to act as a watchdog for American taxpayers, using its law-enforcement capacity to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse linked to the $700&#160;billion bailout program.</p> <p>In Bailout, Barofsky recounts his bafflement at being nominated for the directorship. Surely the fact that he was “a nobody” with an “aversion to bullshit and hypocrisy that occasionally led to an Asperger’s-like bluntness” would make him unsuitable for the adventure. No, no, Barofsky was perfect for the job. His background as a prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, combined with his experience busting mortgage fraud and his stint investigating the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia prepared him to fight the Treasury. Just in case, he brought his lucky dead-FARC-soldier bayonet — a memento from the “esteemed” Colombian National Police — to Washington with him.</p> <p>TARP had already doled out hundreds of billions of dollars to the banks by the time Barofsky and his right-hand man, Kevin Puvalowski, got keys to their office — conveniently located next the Treasury cafeteria and atop a broken sewage pipe. The space, a harbinger of things to come, screamed, “Welcome to Washington, asshole. Fuck you. Really, I mean it. Fuck. You.” Barofsky had to quickly learn the ropes, face a Congressional hearing, find people willing to work for SIGTARP, get garbage cans for the office, and convince Treasury to start enacting fraud regulations before the next bailout installment to the banks went out.</p> <p>Hank Paulson (Secretary of the Treasury under Bush) had just pulled a major bait-and-switch, using the latitude given to Treasury by the TARP bill to create the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) — a straight-up bailout of the banks — instead of using TARP funds to buy up toxic assets, as originally intended. Through the CPP program, Treasury funneled money directly to big banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs by buying up preferred shares of stock. According to Paulson, avoiding the looming problem of bad assets and underwater mortgages was justified because the CPP program would stimulate lending and “get credit flowing.”</p> <p>Looking over the program his first few days in office, Barofsky realized that there was no protection against banks “cooking their books” to make themselves look healthy enough to qualify for TARP funding, and no language forcing banks to actually use the money to get credit flowing again. When Barofsky tried to convince Treasury to introduce oversight mechanisms into the CPP contracts, Treasury was adamantly opposed, arguing that SIGTARP oversight would frighten banks away from participating.</p> <p>The Bush-Obama changeup brought preparation for a new bailout program called TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility). The program was designed to resuscitate the securitization market by lending $200&#160;billion from the New York Federal Reserve to hedge funds, financial institutions, and other big investors to buy new TALF bonds — bonds formed by lumping together student loans, car loans, credit-card debt, and small-business loans. Investors could borrow 95 percent of the money they needed to buy the bonds from the Fed, and if the bonds turned out to be worthless, no problem. The loans were “non-recourse loans,” so the borrower could simply give the bonds back and be off the hook for the money.</p> <p>Aside from providing a taxpayer-funded floor on losses, TALF was ripe for fraud, particularly collusion between bond buyers and sellers. When Barofsky confronted Treasury about the program’s problems, they gave him the brush-off — said he didn’t understand “that the biggest players in these programs — the big banks and investment firms — would never risk their reputations by trying to rip off the government. The reputational damage they’d suffer would be far greater than any potential profit.” Besides, the bonds would be AAA-rated by the credit-rating agencies, so the taxpayer could rest assured that the “loans backing the bonds were properly underwritten.” These, of course, are the same rating agencies that wildly overrated the asset-backed securities that caused the crisis in the first place, but William Dudley (acting President of the New York Fed) was hopeful, saying: “.&#160;.&#160;. we’re confident [the ratings agencies] won’t risk being embarrassed again.”</p> <p>Ever the wordsmith, Barofsky later told Puva-lowski: “These guys haven’t just drank the Wall Street Kool-Aid, they ripped open the packets, added the water, stirred it up, and are now serving it to us on a $700&#160;billion taxpayer-funded service platter.”</p> <p>Amid all this, Treasury still hadn’t done squat about TARP’s mandate to stem foreclosures. Following Tim Geithner’s confirmation and months of criticism from members of Congress, it issued a vague pronouncement about a $50&#160;billion housing program. When Barofsky asked the department for details about the plan, he got the usual run-around, with officials saying no details had been finalized. Yet a week later, President Obama unveiled the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP) at a speech in Arizona. HAMP was designed to modify mortgages for millions of homeowners whose mortgages were underwater. Treasury would contract out the job to mortgage-service providers who would be paid for every mortgage they modified. Unbeknownst to SIGTARP, Treasury had been quietly working on the program for months with BlackRock and the Trust Company of the West Group — two giant investment houses that stood to profit from the program.</p> <p>The program was a disaster. HAMP didn’t provide homeowners with a way to reduce their principal and offered no relief for people who’d lost their jobs. Barofsky begged Treasury to at least make a public-service announcement warning homeowners against mortgage fraudsters pretending to be part of HAMP, but Treasury refused. The program was so disorganized that Treasury changed the mortgage-modification rules nine times in the first year, and the average homeowner applicant had to submit paperwork to their mortgage servicer six times.</p> <p>The program was also rampant with abuse. Many homeowners were told by their mortgage servicer to stop making payments on their mortgages so they could qualify for HAMP and participate in the trial-mortgage modification program. The mortgage servicer would then collect late fees while the owner waited months and months for the trial modification to be finalized. Many homeowners were rejected after months of waiting and slapped with a “deficiency” bill, charging them for the difference between their trial mortgage monthly payments and their original monthly payments, along with a mountain of late fees.</p> <p>Barofsky and Puvalowski were baffled. Why would the Treasury launch such a shoddy, ill-designed, underfunded program? Calls to SIGTARP’s helpline were nonstop, but it seemed like Treasury really didn’t care at all about the suffering of so many borrowers. Instead, the program appeared to be just more gravy for the banks. Barofsky later discovered in a meeting with Geithner that this was precisely the purpose of HAMP. It was designed to “foam the runway,” giving banks relief from the surge of foreclosures by stretching them out over a longer period of time, thus allowing the banks to absorb the losses more slowly while they pulled in bailout money through the other TARP programs. “HAMP was not separate from the bank bailouts; it was an essential part of them.”</p> <p>HAMP and TALF were just two examples of the 24/7 TARP clusterfuck. The SIGTARP team was flummoxed by the behavior of the Treasury in its response to the crisis. Why had it shown such callous disregard for the American taxpayer while pushing truckloads of free money onto the banks with no strings attached? For Barofsky, the answer is simple: “the entire crisis was unleashed by the greed of a small handful of executives who exploited a financial system that guaranteed that no matter what risks they took .&#160;.&#160;. the US taxpayer would cover their losses.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. The US government had been captured by the banks.”</p>	4,382
<p>Cuba has begun recovery efforts after Hurricane Irma struck the country Friday evening.</p> <p>The storm ripped roofs off homes, collapsed buildings and caused floods along hundreds of miles of coast after cutting a trail of destruction across the Caribbean.</p> <p>In Havana, home to some 2 million residents, central neighborhoods along the coast between the Almendares River and Havana harbor suffered the brunt of the flooding, with seawater making its way more than a third of a mile inland.</p> <p>Waves topped 20 feet at the height of the storm and officials are warning that flooding will persist through Monday.</p> <p>Water and wind also damaged the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. The embassy's flag was in tatters fluttering from its staff Sunday.</p> <p>There were no immediate reports of fatalities in Cuba.</p> <p>Authorities ordered more than 1-million people to evacuate and seek safer ground prior to Irma's arrival.</p> <p>The Associated Press contributed to this report</p>	Irma dealt flooding, winds, and torrential rain to Cuba	false	https://circa.com/story/2017/09/10/world/irma-dealt-flooding-winds-and-torrential-rain-to-cuba	2017-09-11	1right-center	Irma dealt flooding, winds, and torrential rain to Cuba <p>Cuba has begun recovery efforts after Hurricane Irma struck the country Friday evening.</p> <p>The storm ripped roofs off homes, collapsed buildings and caused floods along hundreds of miles of coast after cutting a trail of destruction across the Caribbean.</p> <p>In Havana, home to some 2 million residents, central neighborhoods along the coast between the Almendares River and Havana harbor suffered the brunt of the flooding, with seawater making its way more than a third of a mile inland.</p> <p>Waves topped 20 feet at the height of the storm and officials are warning that flooding will persist through Monday.</p> <p>Water and wind also damaged the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. The embassy's flag was in tatters fluttering from its staff Sunday.</p> <p>There were no immediate reports of fatalities in Cuba.</p> <p>Authorities ordered more than 1-million people to evacuate and seek safer ground prior to Irma's arrival.</p> <p>The Associated Press contributed to this report</p>	4,383
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>The leaders’ separate appearances at the United Nations General Assembly came amid heightened speculation about a thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations following the election of Rouhani, a more-moderate sounding cleric. In fact, officials from both countries had quietly negotiated the possibility of a brief meeting between Obama and Rouhani. But U.S. officials said the Iranians told them Tuesday that an encounter would be “too complicated” given uncertainty about how it would be received in Tehran.</p> <p>Instead, Obama and Rouhani traded hopeful-yet-unyielding messages during public addresses hours apart at the annual U.N. meetings.</p> <p>Obama declared that it was worth pursuing diplomacy with Iran even though skepticism persists about Tehran’s willingness to back up its recent overtures with concrete actions to answer strong concerns at the U.N. and in many nations that the Iranians are working to develop a nuclear bomb.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>“The roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested,” Obama said. He added that while he was “encouraged” by Rouhani’s election, the new president’s “conciliatory words will have to be matched by actions that are transparent and verifiable.”</p> <p>Rouhani, making his international debut, said Iran was ready to enter talks “without delay” and insisted his country was not interested in escalating tensions with the United States. He said Iran must retain the right to enrich uranium, but he vigorously denied that his country was seeking to build a nuclear weapon.</p> <p>“Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran’s security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethnical convictions,” Rouhani declared. “Our national interests make it imperative that we remove any and all reasonable concerns about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”</p> <p>He strongly criticized the economic sanctions that have been imposed on Iran as part of the effort to persuade its leaders to open its nuclear programs to international inspection. The sanctions have badly hurt Iran’s economy, and Rouhani called them “violent” in their impact. He also said that U.S. drone strikes that kill civilians in the name of fighting terrorism should be condemned.</p> <p>U.S. officials said they were not surprised to see Rouhani publicly stake out those positions on the international stage. Still, they say they see him as a more moderate leader elected by an Iranian public frustrated by international isolation and the crippling sanctions.</p> <p>However, the Obama administration is unclear whether Rouhani is willing to take the steps the U.S. seeks in order to ease sanctions, including curbing uranium enrichment and closing the underground Fordo nuclear facility.</p> <p>The U.S. and its allies have long suspected that Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon, though Tehran insists its nuclear activities are only for producing energy and research.</p> <p>Even without a meeting between Obama and Rouhani, it was clear that the U.S. and Iran were edging close to direct talks. Obama said he was tasking Secretary of State John Kerry with pursuing the prospect of a nuclear agreement with Iran. Kerry, along with representatives from five other world powers, is to meet Thursday with Iran’s new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.</p> <p>If Kerry and Zarif hold one-on-one talks on the sidelines of that meeting, it would mark the first direct engagement in six years between a U.S. secretary of state and an Iranian foreign minister.</p> <p /> <p />	Obama, Rouhani call for more nuke talks	false	https://abqjournal.com/268624/obama-rouhani-call-for-more-nuke-talks.html	2013-09-25	2least	Obama, Rouhani call for more nuke talks <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>The leaders’ separate appearances at the United Nations General Assembly came amid heightened speculation about a thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations following the election of Rouhani, a more-moderate sounding cleric. In fact, officials from both countries had quietly negotiated the possibility of a brief meeting between Obama and Rouhani. But U.S. officials said the Iranians told them Tuesday that an encounter would be “too complicated” given uncertainty about how it would be received in Tehran.</p> <p>Instead, Obama and Rouhani traded hopeful-yet-unyielding messages during public addresses hours apart at the annual U.N. meetings.</p> <p>Obama declared that it was worth pursuing diplomacy with Iran even though skepticism persists about Tehran’s willingness to back up its recent overtures with concrete actions to answer strong concerns at the U.N. and in many nations that the Iranians are working to develop a nuclear bomb.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>“The roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested,” Obama said. He added that while he was “encouraged” by Rouhani’s election, the new president’s “conciliatory words will have to be matched by actions that are transparent and verifiable.”</p> <p>Rouhani, making his international debut, said Iran was ready to enter talks “without delay” and insisted his country was not interested in escalating tensions with the United States. He said Iran must retain the right to enrich uranium, but he vigorously denied that his country was seeking to build a nuclear weapon.</p> <p>“Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction have no place in Iran’s security and defense doctrine, and contradict our fundamental religious and ethnical convictions,” Rouhani declared. “Our national interests make it imperative that we remove any and all reasonable concerns about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.”</p> <p>He strongly criticized the economic sanctions that have been imposed on Iran as part of the effort to persuade its leaders to open its nuclear programs to international inspection. The sanctions have badly hurt Iran’s economy, and Rouhani called them “violent” in their impact. He also said that U.S. drone strikes that kill civilians in the name of fighting terrorism should be condemned.</p> <p>U.S. officials said they were not surprised to see Rouhani publicly stake out those positions on the international stage. Still, they say they see him as a more moderate leader elected by an Iranian public frustrated by international isolation and the crippling sanctions.</p> <p>However, the Obama administration is unclear whether Rouhani is willing to take the steps the U.S. seeks in order to ease sanctions, including curbing uranium enrichment and closing the underground Fordo nuclear facility.</p> <p>The U.S. and its allies have long suspected that Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon, though Tehran insists its nuclear activities are only for producing energy and research.</p> <p>Even without a meeting between Obama and Rouhani, it was clear that the U.S. and Iran were edging close to direct talks. Obama said he was tasking Secretary of State John Kerry with pursuing the prospect of a nuclear agreement with Iran. Kerry, along with representatives from five other world powers, is to meet Thursday with Iran’s new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.</p> <p>If Kerry and Zarif hold one-on-one talks on the sidelines of that meeting, it would mark the first direct engagement in six years between a U.S. secretary of state and an Iranian foreign minister.</p> <p /> <p />	4,384
<p>Few U.S. small businesses have adopted social media outlets such as <a href="" type="internal">Facebook</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a> for business uses, according to research released Thursday.</p> <p>Three-quarters of small businesses say they have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter and <a href="" type="internal">LinkedIn</a> helpful for generating business leads or expanding business in the past year, according to a survey conducted for <a href="" type="internal">Citibank</a> (C) Small Business of 500 U.S. businesses with fewer than 100 employees.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Also, 86% said they have not used social networking sites for information or business advice. Ten percent said they have sought business advice and information on expert blogs.The low number of small businesses using such sites for business purposes was unexpected, particularly as social media use has grown overall, said Maria Veltre, executive vice president of Citi's Small Business segment. Citibank is part of Citigroup Inc.</p> <p>"We were very surprised we did not see more use of some of the social media outlets, even if just for advice," she said.</p> <p>"What this survey indicates to us is small businesses are very, very focused on running their business and on generating sales and managing their cash flow and doing the things that are really important, especially in these economic times," Veltre said. "I don't think quite yet the social media piece of it has proven to be as significant."</p> <p>The survey found 42% of small businesses have made greater use of their company Web sites to generate business leads and sales.</p> <p>Nineteen percent were doing more advertising to attract new customers in the economic downturn, 38% said they were doing less and 41% were doing the same, it found.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Also, 28% were using more email marketing and 25% using more <a href="" type="internal">online advertising</a> to generate business leads and sales, it found.</p> <p>The telephone poll was conducted for Citibank Small Business by GFK Roper from August 20-27 of a sample of 500 small business executives across the United States. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.</p>	Small Business, Social Media Not Mixing	true	http://foxbusiness.com/features/2009/10/14/small-business-social-media-mixing.html	2016-03-23	0right	Small Business, Social Media Not Mixing <p>Few U.S. small businesses have adopted social media outlets such as <a href="" type="internal">Facebook</a> and <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a> for business uses, according to research released Thursday.</p> <p>Three-quarters of small businesses say they have not found sites such as Facebook, Twitter and <a href="" type="internal">LinkedIn</a> helpful for generating business leads or expanding business in the past year, according to a survey conducted for <a href="" type="internal">Citibank</a> (C) Small Business of 500 U.S. businesses with fewer than 100 employees.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Also, 86% said they have not used social networking sites for information or business advice. Ten percent said they have sought business advice and information on expert blogs.The low number of small businesses using such sites for business purposes was unexpected, particularly as social media use has grown overall, said Maria Veltre, executive vice president of Citi's Small Business segment. Citibank is part of Citigroup Inc.</p> <p>"We were very surprised we did not see more use of some of the social media outlets, even if just for advice," she said.</p> <p>"What this survey indicates to us is small businesses are very, very focused on running their business and on generating sales and managing their cash flow and doing the things that are really important, especially in these economic times," Veltre said. "I don't think quite yet the social media piece of it has proven to be as significant."</p> <p>The survey found 42% of small businesses have made greater use of their company Web sites to generate business leads and sales.</p> <p>Nineteen percent were doing more advertising to attract new customers in the economic downturn, 38% said they were doing less and 41% were doing the same, it found.</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Also, 28% were using more email marketing and 25% using more <a href="" type="internal">online advertising</a> to generate business leads and sales, it found.</p> <p>The telephone poll was conducted for Citibank Small Business by GFK Roper from August 20-27 of a sample of 500 small business executives across the United States. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.</p>	4,385
<p /> <p /> <p>Because when POTUS says something, he really means it.</p> <p>Not.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p>And the Obama Regime spin continues:</p> <p>Via Free Beacon:</p> <p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/kirby-i-dont-know-that-obama-ever-ruled-out-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria/" type="external">Kirby: ‘I Don’t Know’ That Obama Ever Ruled Out Boots on the Ground in Syria</a></p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/nbc-didnt-obama-break-his-promise-on-troops-going-to-syria/" type="external">NBC: Didn’t Obama Break His Promise on Troops Going to Syria?</a></p> <p /> <p /> <p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cnn-hammers-earnest-youre-saying-thats-not-the-case-that-american-troops-will-see-combat-in-iraq-and-syria/" type="external">CNN Hammers Earnest: ‘You’re Saying That’s Not the Case’ That American Troops Will See Combat in Iraq and Syria?</a></p> <p /> <p /> <p>Related:</p> <p>Breitbart: <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/31/fmr-clinton-nsc-staffer-obama-admins-syria-strategy-is-a-failure-by-all-standards-for-last-four-years/" type="external">Fmr Clinton NSC Staffer: Obama Admin’s Syria Strategy Is ‘A Failure’ ‘By All Standards’ For Last Four Years</a></p> <p>AP: <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_SYRIA_CONGRESS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2015-10-30-16-13-46" type="external">Dems Decry Obama Decision to Deploy Special Ops to Syria</a></p> <p>The Hill: <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/258749-kerry-us-troops-will-only-fight-isis" type="external">Kerry: U.S. troops will only fight ISIS</a></p>		true	http://tammybruce.com/2015/11/video-flashback-potus-and-his-minions-vow-no-boots-on-the-ground.html		0right	<p /> <p /> <p>Because when POTUS says something, he really means it.</p> <p>Not.</p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p>And the Obama Regime spin continues:</p> <p>Via Free Beacon:</p> <p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/kirby-i-dont-know-that-obama-ever-ruled-out-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria/" type="external">Kirby: ‘I Don’t Know’ That Obama Ever Ruled Out Boots on the Ground in Syria</a></p> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p /> <p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/nbc-didnt-obama-break-his-promise-on-troops-going-to-syria/" type="external">NBC: Didn’t Obama Break His Promise on Troops Going to Syria?</a></p> <p /> <p /> <p><a href="http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cnn-hammers-earnest-youre-saying-thats-not-the-case-that-american-troops-will-see-combat-in-iraq-and-syria/" type="external">CNN Hammers Earnest: ‘You’re Saying That’s Not the Case’ That American Troops Will See Combat in Iraq and Syria?</a></p> <p /> <p /> <p>Related:</p> <p>Breitbart: <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/31/fmr-clinton-nsc-staffer-obama-admins-syria-strategy-is-a-failure-by-all-standards-for-last-four-years/" type="external">Fmr Clinton NSC Staffer: Obama Admin’s Syria Strategy Is ‘A Failure’ ‘By All Standards’ For Last Four Years</a></p> <p>AP: <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_SYRIA_CONGRESS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2015-10-30-16-13-46" type="external">Dems Decry Obama Decision to Deploy Special Ops to Syria</a></p> <p>The Hill: <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/258749-kerry-us-troops-will-only-fight-isis" type="external">Kerry: U.S. troops will only fight ISIS</a></p>	4,386
<p /> <p>MoJo reader Steve G. exhibited some <a href="" type="internal">smart, fearless activism</a> (read the comment) yesterday when he called the companies that still advertise on Glenn Beck’s show. Three hours later, the consumer services specialist at Eggland’s Best responded with this message: “Pending further review Eggland’s Best has suspended TV advertising on the Glen Beck Show.”</p> <p>Sure enough, Eggland’s Best is absent from <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909170047" type="external">today’s list of Beck holdouts</a>:&#160; <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909170047" type="external" /></p> <p>Lear Capital</p> <p>LifeLock</p> <p>Weekly Standard</p> <p>US Forest Service (smokeybear.com)</p> <p>National Geographic Channel</p> <p>Toyota (Lexus)</p> <p>Rosland Capital</p> <p>Superior Gold Group</p> <p>Roche Diagnostics (Accu-Chek Aviva)</p> <p>FEMA (National Flood Insurance Program)</p> <p>National Review</p> <p>Conservatives for Patients’ Rights</p> <p>Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers</p> <p>Superior Gold Group</p> <p>Loan Modification Help Line 800-917-8549</p> <p>IRS Tax Agreements</p> <p>Carbonite</p> <p>Rosland Capital</p> <p>National Republican Trust PAC</p> <p>News Corp. (The Wall Street Journal)</p> <p>Imperial Structured Settlements</p> <p>Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (The Informant)</p> <p />	Beck Watch: Fearless MoJo Readers	true	https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/09/beck-watch-smart-fearless-mojo-readers/	2009-09-17	4left	Beck Watch: Fearless MoJo Readers <p /> <p>MoJo reader Steve G. exhibited some <a href="" type="internal">smart, fearless activism</a> (read the comment) yesterday when he called the companies that still advertise on Glenn Beck’s show. Three hours later, the consumer services specialist at Eggland’s Best responded with this message: “Pending further review Eggland’s Best has suspended TV advertising on the Glen Beck Show.”</p> <p>Sure enough, Eggland’s Best is absent from <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909170047" type="external">today’s list of Beck holdouts</a>:&#160; <a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/200909170047" type="external" /></p> <p>Lear Capital</p> <p>LifeLock</p> <p>Weekly Standard</p> <p>US Forest Service (smokeybear.com)</p> <p>National Geographic Channel</p> <p>Toyota (Lexus)</p> <p>Rosland Capital</p> <p>Superior Gold Group</p> <p>Roche Diagnostics (Accu-Chek Aviva)</p> <p>FEMA (National Flood Insurance Program)</p> <p>National Review</p> <p>Conservatives for Patients’ Rights</p> <p>Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers</p> <p>Superior Gold Group</p> <p>Loan Modification Help Line 800-917-8549</p> <p>IRS Tax Agreements</p> <p>Carbonite</p> <p>Rosland Capital</p> <p>National Republican Trust PAC</p> <p>News Corp. (The Wall Street Journal)</p> <p>Imperial Structured Settlements</p> <p>Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (The Informant)</p> <p />	4,387
<p>Hillary Clinton appears to have edged out her Republican opponent Donald Trump in the first presidential debate, based on analysts' take on the market reaction.</p> <p>"Early indications suggest Hillary won the debate; at least didn't lose. Futures are higher and the peso is rallying," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank. U.S. stock index futures erased losses to trade positive as the debate kicked off. Futures were near session highs as the debate ended, with Dow futures briefly adding more than 100 points.</p> <p>The U.S. dollar last traded about 1.8 percent weaker against the Mexican peso and was stronger against the yen. The euro-dollar held steady near $1.125.</p> <p>Related: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/27/donald-trumps-path-to-the-presidency-got-a-lot-steeper.html" type="external">'Donald Trump's Path to the Presidency Got a Lot Steeper'</a></p> <p>In the last few days, the Mexican peso has hit all-time lows against the U.S. dollar as Trump appeared to gain momentum in election polls.</p> <p>The Dow Jones industrial average closed more than 150 points lower Monday, weighed by concerns ahead of the evening debate and pressure on the financial sector from a plunge in shares of Deutsche Bank to record lows.</p> <p>"I think Hillary Clinton did pretty well. I think she was better prepared than Trump," said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Baird. "Whether the debate will mean anything (remains) to be seen." Key market issues such as drug pricing and breaking up the banks were not discussed at this debate. But both candidates agreed on the need to strengthen cybersecurity. Clinton focused more on combating terrorism in cyberspace, while Trump said hacking and cyberwarfare was a "huge problem." Paul Christopher, head global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said Clinton's "direct references to supporting Arab allies against ISIS was also a strong statement that reiterated the current administration's approach, although she did not offer much that was new."</p> <p>Related: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/26/trump-brags-about-not-paying-taxes-that-makes-me-smart.html" type="external">Trump Brags About Not Paying Taxes</a></p> <p>"Mr. Trump agreed that we could be better at cybersecurity, but his answers were diffuse and unfocused, and handicapped by his well-known favorable comments about Russian President [Vladimir] Putin," Christopher said. "Mr. Trump could have said more about opening a broader cyber front against ISIS."</p> <p>To be sure, the immediate Monday night market reaction to the debate could reverse, and analysts were quick to point out that there are still two more presidential debates to come ahead of the November election.</p> <p>"If markets think she did well, then the polls need to reflect that. In the financial industry, the (market participants), they can have an assessment she won. That doesn't mean the average voter has the same view," said Andres Jaime, global FX and rates strategist at Barclays.</p> <p>"If a poll in the next few days shows the race is as tight as it (was heading into the debate), then markets will probably sell off," he said. He said clarity on the latest polls should come by the end of the week.</p>	Markets Like Hillary Clinton in First 2016 Debate	false	http://nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/markets-hillary-clinton-first-debate-n655146	2016-09-27	3left-center	Markets Like Hillary Clinton in First 2016 Debate <p>Hillary Clinton appears to have edged out her Republican opponent Donald Trump in the first presidential debate, based on analysts' take on the market reaction.</p> <p>"Early indications suggest Hillary won the debate; at least didn't lose. Futures are higher and the peso is rallying," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank. U.S. stock index futures erased losses to trade positive as the debate kicked off. Futures were near session highs as the debate ended, with Dow futures briefly adding more than 100 points.</p> <p>The U.S. dollar last traded about 1.8 percent weaker against the Mexican peso and was stronger against the yen. The euro-dollar held steady near $1.125.</p> <p>Related: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/27/donald-trumps-path-to-the-presidency-got-a-lot-steeper.html" type="external">'Donald Trump's Path to the Presidency Got a Lot Steeper'</a></p> <p>In the last few days, the Mexican peso has hit all-time lows against the U.S. dollar as Trump appeared to gain momentum in election polls.</p> <p>The Dow Jones industrial average closed more than 150 points lower Monday, weighed by concerns ahead of the evening debate and pressure on the financial sector from a plunge in shares of Deutsche Bank to record lows.</p> <p>"I think Hillary Clinton did pretty well. I think she was better prepared than Trump," said Bruce Bittles, chief investment strategist at Baird. "Whether the debate will mean anything (remains) to be seen." Key market issues such as drug pricing and breaking up the banks were not discussed at this debate. But both candidates agreed on the need to strengthen cybersecurity. Clinton focused more on combating terrorism in cyberspace, while Trump said hacking and cyberwarfare was a "huge problem." Paul Christopher, head global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said Clinton's "direct references to supporting Arab allies against ISIS was also a strong statement that reiterated the current administration's approach, although she did not offer much that was new."</p> <p>Related: <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/26/trump-brags-about-not-paying-taxes-that-makes-me-smart.html" type="external">Trump Brags About Not Paying Taxes</a></p> <p>"Mr. Trump agreed that we could be better at cybersecurity, but his answers were diffuse and unfocused, and handicapped by his well-known favorable comments about Russian President [Vladimir] Putin," Christopher said. "Mr. Trump could have said more about opening a broader cyber front against ISIS."</p> <p>To be sure, the immediate Monday night market reaction to the debate could reverse, and analysts were quick to point out that there are still two more presidential debates to come ahead of the November election.</p> <p>"If markets think she did well, then the polls need to reflect that. In the financial industry, the (market participants), they can have an assessment she won. That doesn't mean the average voter has the same view," said Andres Jaime, global FX and rates strategist at Barclays.</p> <p>"If a poll in the next few days shows the race is as tight as it (was heading into the debate), then markets will probably sell off," he said. He said clarity on the latest polls should come by the end of the week.</p>	4,388
<p>New York Daily News But its "Al Qaeda: Alive and Kicking" cover was a dud in '02, with just 126,000 copies sold (compared to 268,000 for the "Fat" issue). Paul Colford says Newsweek's "The Tough Love of Dr. Phil" cover did well (a 209,000-copy seller), while its "Welcome Back to Silicon Valley" sunk with just 89,800 copies sold. SADLY NOTED: Us Weekly's Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe's cover sold 619,000 newsstand copies.</p>	Time's "What Makes You Fat?" issue was a newsstand hit	false	https://poynter.org/news/times-what-makes-you-fat-issue-was-newsstand-hit	2003-03-14	2least	Time's "What Makes You Fat?" issue was a newsstand hit <p>New York Daily News But its "Al Qaeda: Alive and Kicking" cover was a dud in '02, with just 126,000 copies sold (compared to 268,000 for the "Fat" issue). Paul Colford says Newsweek's "The Tough Love of Dr. Phil" cover did well (a 209,000-copy seller), while its "Welcome Back to Silicon Valley" sunk with just 89,800 copies sold. SADLY NOTED: Us Weekly's Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe's cover sold 619,000 newsstand copies.</p>	4,389
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>“Today I’m pleased to announce the releasing of almost $650,000 to help thousands of people obtain access to transportation services, specifically veterans, to the transportation services they need,” Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff told a group at the New Mexico Veterans’ Memorial.</p> <p>The Federal Transit Administration is the U.S. Department of Transportation agency that provides financial and technical assistance to local public transit systems.</p> <p>“Transportation can sometimes mean whether a veteran can get to the job training they need, the health care they need, the rehabilitation services they need,” Rogoff said. “And these two grants are going to go a long way to making access to those services a great deal easier.”</p> <p>Rogoff said the New Mexico Department of Transportation will receive $364,000 to upgrade a regional call center in the Santa Fe area, and the Mid-Region Council of Governments will receive $282,500 to launch a new website in Albuquerque.</p> <p>Both efforts are designed to provide one-call or one-click access to information that makes it easy for veterans, military families and others to arrange and connect to transportation options throughout the state.</p> <p>Frank Sharpless, transit and rail director for the state Department of Transportation, said afterward that transportation officials have been meeting with veterans organizations to determine the best ways to get that information to the estimated 155,000 veterans living in central and northern New Mexico.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Sharpless said the call center upgrade and new website should be up and running in about a year. He also said traditional advertising will be part of the effort to make veterans aware of the transportation services available to them – whether it’s a ride down the block or halfway across the state.</p> <p>Vietnam veteran George Pérez, who volunteers at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center, said he sees the need every day for reliable transportation for veterans.</p> <p>“I’m looking forward to spending some of that money,” Pérez quipped.</p> <p /> <p />	N.M. vets to get better access to transportation	false	https://abqjournal.com/207788/nm-vets-to-get-better-access-to-transportation.html	2013-06-07	2least	N.M. vets to get better access to transportation <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p /> <p>“Today I’m pleased to announce the releasing of almost $650,000 to help thousands of people obtain access to transportation services, specifically veterans, to the transportation services they need,” Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff told a group at the New Mexico Veterans’ Memorial.</p> <p>The Federal Transit Administration is the U.S. Department of Transportation agency that provides financial and technical assistance to local public transit systems.</p> <p>“Transportation can sometimes mean whether a veteran can get to the job training they need, the health care they need, the rehabilitation services they need,” Rogoff said. “And these two grants are going to go a long way to making access to those services a great deal easier.”</p> <p>Rogoff said the New Mexico Department of Transportation will receive $364,000 to upgrade a regional call center in the Santa Fe area, and the Mid-Region Council of Governments will receive $282,500 to launch a new website in Albuquerque.</p> <p>Both efforts are designed to provide one-call or one-click access to information that makes it easy for veterans, military families and others to arrange and connect to transportation options throughout the state.</p> <p>Frank Sharpless, transit and rail director for the state Department of Transportation, said afterward that transportation officials have been meeting with veterans organizations to determine the best ways to get that information to the estimated 155,000 veterans living in central and northern New Mexico.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>Sharpless said the call center upgrade and new website should be up and running in about a year. He also said traditional advertising will be part of the effort to make veterans aware of the transportation services available to them – whether it’s a ride down the block or halfway across the state.</p> <p>Vietnam veteran George Pérez, who volunteers at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center, said he sees the need every day for reliable transportation for veterans.</p> <p>“I’m looking forward to spending some of that money,” Pérez quipped.</p> <p /> <p />	4,390
<p>It’s now been over a month since 17 teenagers were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, culminating in a march that brought <a href="" type="internal">nearly a million people</a> to the capital. Yet Congress is still dragging its feet on guns.</p> <p>While Republicans and Democrats gridlocked over the best way to prevent shootings, the Oregon state legislature took action to prevent a particularly deadly form of gun violence — and it didn’t involve arming teachers or outlawing AR-15s.</p> <p>Just one day after the devastating Valentine’s Day shooting in Florida, the Oregon House of Representatives <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/oregons-new-gun-law-big-step-single-women-818799" type="external">passed a bill</a> to close what’s called the “boyfriend loophole” in its gun laws. The new law will prevent anyone from buying or owning a firearm who’s been convicted of stalking or domestic violence, as well as people with active protective orders against them.</p> <p>While federal law is already supposed to prevent gun ownership by domestic abusers, the law’s outdated definition left out those who didn’t live with or have children with their victims — hence, the boyfriend loophole.</p> <p>While this news received relatively little coverage, it’s a huge step forward and will unquestionably save lives. Over 1,000 women are murdered each year by current or past husbands or partners — that’s <a href="https://now.org/resource/violence-against-women-in-the-united-states-statistic/#endref2" type="external">three women a day</a>, or one woman dead each time you sit down for a meal.</p> <p>And though the story of the battered wife is not an unfamiliar one, a <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/research/in-philadelphia-intimate-partner-violence-more-likely-in-dating-relationships" type="external">recent study</a> at the University of Pennsylvania found that over 80 percent of intimate partner violence incidents reported in 2013 involved current or past dating partners, while current and past spouses accounted for less than 20 percent of incidents.</p> <p>As Americans continue to get married later and less frequently, the nationwide population of unmarried adults will grow, which is why closing the boyfriend loophole should be a top priority for lawmakers across the country.</p> <p>Oregon’s new law makes it the <a href="" type="internal">24th state</a> to officially close the loophole, but there’s still much work to be done. The federal law prohibiting gun ownership for abusers doesn’t actually outline a mechanism for them to hand over weapons they already own.</p> <p><a href="http://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/who-can-have-a-gun/domestic-violence-firearms/" type="external">Twenty-seven states</a> require convicted abusers and those subject to protective orders to relinquish their firearms, but only half of those specify whom the weapons should be given to. And just four require law enforcement to proactively remove guns from offenders rather than wait for them to be turned in.</p> <p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://lawcenter.giffords.org/scorecard/#domestic-violence" type="external">13 states</a> have no laws at all to prevent domestic abusers from owning or buying new guns. Six of those states are in the top 10 with the highest rates of gun deaths.</p> <p>Representatives Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Dan Donovan (R-NY), along with Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), have introduced <a href="" type="internal">legislation</a> to close the boyfriend loophole on the federal level. But that alone won’t be enough to ensure that abusers don’t have access to deadly firearms.</p> <p>We need thoroughness and uniformity across state lines. We need specific systems to remove weapons from dangerous people, including laws allowing law enforcement to seize weapons found while responding to reports of intimate partner violence.</p> <p>We need legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to report offenders for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).</p> <p>And, of course, we need universal background checks on all gun sales, no matter where they occur.</p> <p>Survivors everywhere deserve support, security, and peace of mind, and it’s long past time our laws reflect that fact.</p> <p>Aniqa Raihan is a writer, activist, and community organizer with a focus on violence against women. She led a movement against campus sexual assault at the George Washington University.</p> <p>Distributed by OtherWords.org.&#160;</p>	One No-Brainer Way to Bring Gun Deaths Down: Close the “Boyfriend Loophole”	true	https://counterpunch.org/2018/03/30/one-no-brainer-way-to-bring-gun-deaths-down-close-the-boyfriend-loophole/	2018-03-30	4left	One No-Brainer Way to Bring Gun Deaths Down: Close the “Boyfriend Loophole” <p>It’s now been over a month since 17 teenagers were gunned down at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, culminating in a march that brought <a href="" type="internal">nearly a million people</a> to the capital. Yet Congress is still dragging its feet on guns.</p> <p>While Republicans and Democrats gridlocked over the best way to prevent shootings, the Oregon state legislature took action to prevent a particularly deadly form of gun violence — and it didn’t involve arming teachers or outlawing AR-15s.</p> <p>Just one day after the devastating Valentine’s Day shooting in Florida, the Oregon House of Representatives <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/oregons-new-gun-law-big-step-single-women-818799" type="external">passed a bill</a> to close what’s called the “boyfriend loophole” in its gun laws. The new law will prevent anyone from buying or owning a firearm who’s been convicted of stalking or domestic violence, as well as people with active protective orders against them.</p> <p>While federal law is already supposed to prevent gun ownership by domestic abusers, the law’s outdated definition left out those who didn’t live with or have children with their victims — hence, the boyfriend loophole.</p> <p>While this news received relatively little coverage, it’s a huge step forward and will unquestionably save lives. Over 1,000 women are murdered each year by current or past husbands or partners — that’s <a href="https://now.org/resource/violence-against-women-in-the-united-states-statistic/#endref2" type="external">three women a day</a>, or one woman dead each time you sit down for a meal.</p> <p>And though the story of the battered wife is not an unfamiliar one, a <a href="https://penntoday.upenn.edu/research/in-philadelphia-intimate-partner-violence-more-likely-in-dating-relationships" type="external">recent study</a> at the University of Pennsylvania found that over 80 percent of intimate partner violence incidents reported in 2013 involved current or past dating partners, while current and past spouses accounted for less than 20 percent of incidents.</p> <p>As Americans continue to get married later and less frequently, the nationwide population of unmarried adults will grow, which is why closing the boyfriend loophole should be a top priority for lawmakers across the country.</p> <p>Oregon’s new law makes it the <a href="" type="internal">24th state</a> to officially close the loophole, but there’s still much work to be done. The federal law prohibiting gun ownership for abusers doesn’t actually outline a mechanism for them to hand over weapons they already own.</p> <p><a href="http://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/who-can-have-a-gun/domestic-violence-firearms/" type="external">Twenty-seven states</a> require convicted abusers and those subject to protective orders to relinquish their firearms, but only half of those specify whom the weapons should be given to. And just four require law enforcement to proactively remove guns from offenders rather than wait for them to be turned in.</p> <p>Meanwhile, <a href="http://lawcenter.giffords.org/scorecard/#domestic-violence" type="external">13 states</a> have no laws at all to prevent domestic abusers from owning or buying new guns. Six of those states are in the top 10 with the highest rates of gun deaths.</p> <p>Representatives Debbie Dingell (D-MI) and Dan Donovan (R-NY), along with Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), have introduced <a href="" type="internal">legislation</a> to close the boyfriend loophole on the federal level. But that alone won’t be enough to ensure that abusers don’t have access to deadly firearms.</p> <p>We need thoroughness and uniformity across state lines. We need specific systems to remove weapons from dangerous people, including laws allowing law enforcement to seize weapons found while responding to reports of intimate partner violence.</p> <p>We need legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to report offenders for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).</p> <p>And, of course, we need universal background checks on all gun sales, no matter where they occur.</p> <p>Survivors everywhere deserve support, security, and peace of mind, and it’s long past time our laws reflect that fact.</p> <p>Aniqa Raihan is a writer, activist, and community organizer with a focus on violence against women. She led a movement against campus sexual assault at the George Washington University.</p> <p>Distributed by OtherWords.org.&#160;</p>	4,391
<p>Benson 61, Madison 57</p> <p>Cascade 92, Yamhill-Carlton 46</p> <p>Central Linn 83, McKenzie 37</p> <p>Crook County 44, Estacada 37</p> <p>Gladstone 46, Corbett 41</p> <p>Grant 98, Franklin 58</p> <p>Lake Oswego 56, Canby 47</p> <p>Milo Adventist 46, Canyonville Christian 43</p> <p>Santiam 78, St. Paul 28</p> <p>Sherwood 64, Newberg 45</p> <p>Tigard 58, Tualatin 38</p> <p>West Linn 80, Lakeridge 53</p> <p>Benson 61, Madison 57</p> <p>Cascade 92, Yamhill-Carlton 46</p> <p>Central Linn 83, McKenzie 37</p> <p>Crook County 44, Estacada 37</p> <p>Gladstone 46, Corbett 41</p> <p>Grant 98, Franklin 58</p> <p>Lake Oswego 56, Canby 47</p> <p>Milo Adventist 46, Canyonville Christian 43</p> <p>Santiam 78, St. Paul 28</p> <p>Sherwood 64, Newberg 45</p> <p>Tigard 58, Tualatin 38</p> <p>West Linn 80, Lakeridge 53</p>	Wednesday's Scores	false	https://apnews.com/amp/0abf988c49e94e32a673fdf057a5f8ae	2018-01-18	2least	Wednesday's Scores <p>Benson 61, Madison 57</p> <p>Cascade 92, Yamhill-Carlton 46</p> <p>Central Linn 83, McKenzie 37</p> <p>Crook County 44, Estacada 37</p> <p>Gladstone 46, Corbett 41</p> <p>Grant 98, Franklin 58</p> <p>Lake Oswego 56, Canby 47</p> <p>Milo Adventist 46, Canyonville Christian 43</p> <p>Santiam 78, St. Paul 28</p> <p>Sherwood 64, Newberg 45</p> <p>Tigard 58, Tualatin 38</p> <p>West Linn 80, Lakeridge 53</p> <p>Benson 61, Madison 57</p> <p>Cascade 92, Yamhill-Carlton 46</p> <p>Central Linn 83, McKenzie 37</p> <p>Crook County 44, Estacada 37</p> <p>Gladstone 46, Corbett 41</p> <p>Grant 98, Franklin 58</p> <p>Lake Oswego 56, Canby 47</p> <p>Milo Adventist 46, Canyonville Christian 43</p> <p>Santiam 78, St. Paul 28</p> <p>Sherwood 64, Newberg 45</p> <p>Tigard 58, Tualatin 38</p> <p>West Linn 80, Lakeridge 53</p>	4,392
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>PHOENIX — The Arizona House is investigating allegations of sexual harassment at the Legislature, including a Scottsdale lawmaker’s assertion that another member of the chamber told her he wanted to have a romantic relationship with her.</p> <p>The investigations announced Wednesday by House Speaker J.D. Mesnard will examine harassment allegations made by Reps. Michelle Ugenti-Rita of Scottsdale and Kelly Townsend of Mesa, said Matthew Specht, a spokesman for the House Republican caucus.</p> <p>“All allegations of sexual harassment will be taken seriously in the House,” Mesnard said in a statement.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The response to sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo social-media movement has spread to statehouses across the country.</p> <p>Nearly three weeks ago, Ugenti-Rita revealed in a social media post that she encountered sexual harassment at the Legislature soon after taking office in early 2011, but didn’t reveal who allegedly harassed her. In an interview aired Tuesday by Azfamily.com (KTVK-TV), Ugenti-Rita said Rep. Don Shooter of Yuma harassed her.</p> <p>The TV station reported that Shooter initially apologized in a statement, saying he “apparently said things that were insensitive and not taken well.” But Shooter later issued another statement to the station saying he withdraws the apology and denies Ugenti-Rita’s allegations.</p> <p>In a written statement Wednesday, Shooter said he asked for a probe into the allegations.</p> <p>“I requested an investigation by the House which is now underway. Therefore I am unable to comment further except to provide my full support and cooperation,” Shooter said.</p> <p>Townsend issued a statement Wednesday saying she been on the “receiving end of both unwanted sexual advances by more than one person as well as intimidating behavior and retaliation by another in a position of power” in the past.</p> <p>Townsend, who didn’t immediately return a call Wednesday afternoon from The AP, didn’t reveal who had allegedly harassed her. Her statement said two House leaders were able to correct the situation.</p> <p>Two weeks after Ugenti-Rita first made the allegations, the Arizona House issued a written harassment policy. Under the new policy, a House member experiencing harassment can report it to the chamber’s attorney or the chiefs of staff from either party.</p> <p>Gov. Doug Ducey issued a statement saying he supported Mesnard’s decision to launch the investigations.</p> <p>“There can be absolutely no tolerance for sexual harassment in the halls of our state Capitol, or any other organization — private or public,” Ducey said.</p>	Arizona House launches sexual harassment investigations	false	https://abqjournal.com/1089813/arizona-house-launches-sexual-harassment-investigations.html	2017-11-08	2least	Arizona House launches sexual harassment investigations <p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p> <p>PHOENIX — The Arizona House is investigating allegations of sexual harassment at the Legislature, including a Scottsdale lawmaker’s assertion that another member of the chamber told her he wanted to have a romantic relationship with her.</p> <p>The investigations announced Wednesday by House Speaker J.D. Mesnard will examine harassment allegations made by Reps. Michelle Ugenti-Rita of Scottsdale and Kelly Townsend of Mesa, said Matthew Specht, a spokesman for the House Republican caucus.</p> <p>“All allegations of sexual harassment will be taken seriously in the House,” Mesnard said in a statement.</p> <p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> <p>The response to sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo social-media movement has spread to statehouses across the country.</p> <p>Nearly three weeks ago, Ugenti-Rita revealed in a social media post that she encountered sexual harassment at the Legislature soon after taking office in early 2011, but didn’t reveal who allegedly harassed her. In an interview aired Tuesday by Azfamily.com (KTVK-TV), Ugenti-Rita said Rep. Don Shooter of Yuma harassed her.</p> <p>The TV station reported that Shooter initially apologized in a statement, saying he “apparently said things that were insensitive and not taken well.” But Shooter later issued another statement to the station saying he withdraws the apology and denies Ugenti-Rita’s allegations.</p> <p>In a written statement Wednesday, Shooter said he asked for a probe into the allegations.</p> <p>“I requested an investigation by the House which is now underway. Therefore I am unable to comment further except to provide my full support and cooperation,” Shooter said.</p> <p>Townsend issued a statement Wednesday saying she been on the “receiving end of both unwanted sexual advances by more than one person as well as intimidating behavior and retaliation by another in a position of power” in the past.</p> <p>Townsend, who didn’t immediately return a call Wednesday afternoon from The AP, didn’t reveal who had allegedly harassed her. Her statement said two House leaders were able to correct the situation.</p> <p>Two weeks after Ugenti-Rita first made the allegations, the Arizona House issued a written harassment policy. Under the new policy, a House member experiencing harassment can report it to the chamber’s attorney or the chiefs of staff from either party.</p> <p>Gov. Doug Ducey issued a statement saying he supported Mesnard’s decision to launch the investigations.</p> <p>“There can be absolutely no tolerance for sexual harassment in the halls of our state Capitol, or any other organization — private or public,” Ducey said.</p>	4,393
<p>Whole Foods Market Inc. said Tuesday that it has partnered with Nielsen Holdings PLC to collect point-of-sale data, consumer insights and industry metrics to map its product categories based on customer preferences. Whole Foods and its suppliers will use the information in its product development efforts and to help stay on top of trends and consumer habits. Whole Foods shares are down 0.3% in Tuesday trading and Nielsen Holdings is up 0.9%. Whole Foods stock is down 22.8% for the past year while the S&amp;P 500 is down 3.9% for the same period.</p> <p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p>	Whole Foods Selects Nielsen To Map Customer Grocery Preferences	true	http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/06/28/whole-foods-selects-nielsen-to-map-customer-grocery-preferences.html	2016-06-28	0right	Whole Foods Selects Nielsen To Map Customer Grocery Preferences <p>Whole Foods Market Inc. said Tuesday that it has partnered with Nielsen Holdings PLC to collect point-of-sale data, consumer insights and industry metrics to map its product categories based on customer preferences. Whole Foods and its suppliers will use the information in its product development efforts and to help stay on top of trends and consumer habits. Whole Foods shares are down 0.3% in Tuesday trading and Nielsen Holdings is up 0.9%. Whole Foods stock is down 22.8% for the past year while the S&amp;P 500 is down 3.9% for the same period.</p> <p>Copyright © 2016 MarketWatch, Inc.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p>	4,394
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160;</p> <p>&#160;&#160;&#160;</p> <p>NEED TO KNOW</p> <p>Shot in broad daylight. It was true of Benazir Bhutto, and now it's true of the lawyer Pakistan hired to prosecute the former prime minister's assassins.&#160;Chaudhry Zulfiqar, the main state prosecutor for Bhutto's 2007 murder, was <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130503/pakistan-prosecutor-bhutto-mumbai-cases-shot-dead" type="external">gunned down in Islamabad</a> today as he made his way to court.</p> <p>No one yet knows why the lawyer was killed. But his work put him at loggerheads with some powerful people: not only former military president Pervez Musharraf, currently under house arrest on charges that he failed to provide Bhutto with adequate security, but the Islamist group&#160;Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for India's 2008 Mumbai attacks. Before his death, Zulfiqar was believed to be close to submitting final evidence against seven of the group's members. What happens in those cases without their chief prosecutor is yet to be seen.</p> <p>Five hundred and one. That's where's <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130503/bangladesh-building-disaster-death-toll-passes-500-1" type="external">the death toll stands in Bangladesh</a>, a week and a half after a multi-story factory building collapsed on the outskirts of Dhaka with thousands of workers inside. The disaster now has the grim title of the world's most deadly structural failure of modern times.</p> <p>Nine people have been arrested, most recently an engineer who swears blind&#160;he warned the building was unsafe. Labor activists say there are many more culprits, not least the Western retailers who bought cheap clothes at what would turn out to be a very high price.</p> <p>WANT TO KNOW</p> <p>The Independence Day bombings that weren't. The bombs that killed three and wounded hundreds at the Boston Marathon were originally intended for another of the city's biggest celebrations, according to police: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/130502/boston-marathon-bomb-attack-was-originally-plann" type="external">the 4th of July</a>.</p> <p>Prosecutors say the two suspected bombers thought an attack on Independence Day would send a stronger message, but eventually brought the plan forward when they completed their home-made explosives sooner than expected. What would make two long-time American residents want to send a message like that? GlobalPost looks to the suspects' birthplace, Russia's North Caucasus region, <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130502/chechnya-dagestan-tamerlan-tsarnaev-fundamental-islam" type="external">in search of the roots of terror</a>.&#160;</p> <p>What's the going rate for a baby? Ask India.&#160;When police in the north Indian state of Punjab announced the arrest of a grandfather for <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/130425/india-man-arrested-after-selling-baby-grandson-on-f" type="external">allegedly selling his infant grandson on Facebook</a>, the news immediately went viral.&#160;But the real story is hidden behind the headline: the buying and selling of children is shockingly commonplace.</p> <p>GlobalPost reports on the fate that the so-called Facebook baby was lucky enough to escape, but which awaits <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/130501/facebook-kidnapping-human-trafficking-missing-children" type="external">tens of thousands of Indian children each year</a>.&#160;</p> <p>STRANGE BUT TRUE</p> <p>North Koreans could do with some sweetness in their lives. In times chock-full of missiles and gulags, how about some real choc? We're talking <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/today-north-korea/gulags-missiles-not-fear-choco-pies-are-here" type="external">Choco Pies</a>, the sugary, marshmallowy, diabetes-y snack beloved of South Koreans – and increasingly, their northern neighbors. So popular are "South Korea's Oreos" across the border that North Korean factory workers used to receive them as bonuses.</p> <p>As edible proof of South Korea's prosperity, some observers even think the treats could help wake North Koreans up to the misinformation their leaders feed them about their rivals. Democracy never tasted so sweet.</p>	Chatter: Bhutto murder prosecutor gunned down	false	https://pri.org/stories/2013-05-03/chatter-bhutto-murder-prosecutor-gunned-down	2013-05-03	3left-center	Chatter: Bhutto murder prosecutor gunned down <p>&#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160;</p> <p>&#160;&#160;&#160;</p> <p>NEED TO KNOW</p> <p>Shot in broad daylight. It was true of Benazir Bhutto, and now it's true of the lawyer Pakistan hired to prosecute the former prime minister's assassins.&#160;Chaudhry Zulfiqar, the main state prosecutor for Bhutto's 2007 murder, was <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130503/pakistan-prosecutor-bhutto-mumbai-cases-shot-dead" type="external">gunned down in Islamabad</a> today as he made his way to court.</p> <p>No one yet knows why the lawyer was killed. But his work put him at loggerheads with some powerful people: not only former military president Pervez Musharraf, currently under house arrest on charges that he failed to provide Bhutto with adequate security, but the Islamist group&#160;Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for India's 2008 Mumbai attacks. Before his death, Zulfiqar was believed to be close to submitting final evidence against seven of the group's members. What happens in those cases without their chief prosecutor is yet to be seen.</p> <p>Five hundred and one. That's where's <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130503/bangladesh-building-disaster-death-toll-passes-500-1" type="external">the death toll stands in Bangladesh</a>, a week and a half after a multi-story factory building collapsed on the outskirts of Dhaka with thousands of workers inside. The disaster now has the grim title of the world's most deadly structural failure of modern times.</p> <p>Nine people have been arrested, most recently an engineer who swears blind&#160;he warned the building was unsafe. Labor activists say there are many more culprits, not least the Western retailers who bought cheap clothes at what would turn out to be a very high price.</p> <p>WANT TO KNOW</p> <p>The Independence Day bombings that weren't. The bombs that killed three and wounded hundreds at the Boston Marathon were originally intended for another of the city's biggest celebrations, according to police: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/130502/boston-marathon-bomb-attack-was-originally-plann" type="external">the 4th of July</a>.</p> <p>Prosecutors say the two suspected bombers thought an attack on Independence Day would send a stronger message, but eventually brought the plan forward when they completed their home-made explosives sooner than expected. What would make two long-time American residents want to send a message like that? GlobalPost looks to the suspects' birthplace, Russia's North Caucasus region, <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/130502/chechnya-dagestan-tamerlan-tsarnaev-fundamental-islam" type="external">in search of the roots of terror</a>.&#160;</p> <p>What's the going rate for a baby? Ask India.&#160;When police in the north Indian state of Punjab announced the arrest of a grandfather for <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/130425/india-man-arrested-after-selling-baby-grandson-on-f" type="external">allegedly selling his infant grandson on Facebook</a>, the news immediately went viral.&#160;But the real story is hidden behind the headline: the buying and selling of children is shockingly commonplace.</p> <p>GlobalPost reports on the fate that the so-called Facebook baby was lucky enough to escape, but which awaits <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/130501/facebook-kidnapping-human-trafficking-missing-children" type="external">tens of thousands of Indian children each year</a>.&#160;</p> <p>STRANGE BUT TRUE</p> <p>North Koreans could do with some sweetness in their lives. In times chock-full of missiles and gulags, how about some real choc? We're talking <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/today-north-korea/gulags-missiles-not-fear-choco-pies-are-here" type="external">Choco Pies</a>, the sugary, marshmallowy, diabetes-y snack beloved of South Koreans – and increasingly, their northern neighbors. So popular are "South Korea's Oreos" across the border that North Korean factory workers used to receive them as bonuses.</p> <p>As edible proof of South Korea's prosperity, some observers even think the treats could help wake North Koreans up to the misinformation their leaders feed them about their rivals. Democracy never tasted so sweet.</p>	4,395
<p /> <p>Wells Fargo &amp; Co saw "relatively stable" trends in branch banking in January, the executive in charge of the unit stated Friday in a company press release.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Branch interactions fell 12 percent from December and four percent from January 2016, but other metrics showed growth versus a year ago.</p> <p>(Reporting by Dan Freed in New York)</p>	Wells Fargo sees 'relatively stable' retail trends in January	true	http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/02/17/wells-fargo-sees-relatively-stable-retail-trends-in-january.html	2017-02-17	0right	Wells Fargo sees 'relatively stable' retail trends in January <p /> <p>Wells Fargo &amp; Co saw "relatively stable" trends in branch banking in January, the executive in charge of the unit stated Friday in a company press release.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Branch interactions fell 12 percent from December and four percent from January 2016, but other metrics showed growth versus a year ago.</p> <p>(Reporting by Dan Freed in New York)</p>	4,396
<p>Guilt by association?</p> <p>The left is nothing if not consistent in its hypocrisy, as MSNBC host Joy Reid eagerly proved on Saturday’s edition of “AM Joy.”</p> <p>Discussing the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, Reid judged Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson guilty of similar behavior for no other reason than being employed at Fox News.</p> <p>“The two biggest hypocrites on this, I have to say, are Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson… They had lots to say about Harvey Weinstein. And you know what? What they said about Harvey Weinstein is true.”</p> <p>Getty / Alo Ceballos</p> <p>The rare acknowledgement of reality from an MSNBC on-air personality is refreshing, but the feel good moment didn’t last because Reid proceeded to compare Hannity and Tucker to Bill O’Reilly, who reached an agreement with Fox News on his departure from the network earlier this year after The New York Times reported on settlements totaling $13 million being reached with five women who complained of inappropriate behavior.</p> <p>O’Reilly has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, insisting the effort “was a political and financial hit job.”</p> <p>“But, I mean, they’re sitting in the seats of Bill O’Reilly, sitting in his chair,” Reid said, as if that had any meaning whatsoever.</p> <p>She then read a tweet from Carlson, which declared: “It is time for justice for Harvey Weinstein. He is a serial predator.”</p> <p>“He’s sitting in Bill O’Reilly’s chair! At&#160;Roger Ailes‘ network!” cried Reid, who played judge, jury and executioner in finding Tucker guilty by association of alleged crimes attributed to the aforementioned men.</p> <p />	Forget Weinstein, MSNBC’s Joy Reid is busy calling out Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson over sex scandal	true	http://bizpacreview.com/2017/10/15/forget-weinstein-msnbcs-joy-reid-busy-calling-sean-hannity-tucker-carlson-sex-scandal-548688	2017-10-15	0right	Forget Weinstein, MSNBC’s Joy Reid is busy calling out Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson over sex scandal <p>Guilt by association?</p> <p>The left is nothing if not consistent in its hypocrisy, as MSNBC host Joy Reid eagerly proved on Saturday’s edition of “AM Joy.”</p> <p>Discussing the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse scandal, Reid judged Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson guilty of similar behavior for no other reason than being employed at Fox News.</p> <p>“The two biggest hypocrites on this, I have to say, are Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson… They had lots to say about Harvey Weinstein. And you know what? What they said about Harvey Weinstein is true.”</p> <p>Getty / Alo Ceballos</p> <p>The rare acknowledgement of reality from an MSNBC on-air personality is refreshing, but the feel good moment didn’t last because Reid proceeded to compare Hannity and Tucker to Bill O’Reilly, who reached an agreement with Fox News on his departure from the network earlier this year after The New York Times reported on settlements totaling $13 million being reached with five women who complained of inappropriate behavior.</p> <p>O’Reilly has steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, insisting the effort “was a political and financial hit job.”</p> <p>“But, I mean, they’re sitting in the seats of Bill O’Reilly, sitting in his chair,” Reid said, as if that had any meaning whatsoever.</p> <p>She then read a tweet from Carlson, which declared: “It is time for justice for Harvey Weinstein. He is a serial predator.”</p> <p>“He’s sitting in Bill O’Reilly’s chair! At&#160;Roger Ailes‘ network!” cried Reid, who played judge, jury and executioner in finding Tucker guilty by association of alleged crimes attributed to the aforementioned men.</p> <p />	4,397
<p /> <p>As I watched a perfectly delightful production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo presented by the Hudson Theatre ensemble in Hoboken, N.J. last weekend, what I think of as my life coach ‘tic’ was set off by a mother-daughter exchange in the play.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Set in Atlanta in 1939, the wistful, dramatic daughter, Lala Levy, is captivated by the fact that Gone with the Wind is premiering in town. The more aflutter she is, the more aggravated it makes her mother, who keeps scoffing at what she perceives as her daughter’s fleeting ambitions to write radio scripts or a novel.</p> <p>Fictional characters or no, it sets off my triggers when people express joy or passion about something, and then someone, anyone, shoots it down. Ugh.</p> <p>Enter <a href="http://www.nj.com/sports/njsports/index.ssf/2011/04/after_20_years_of_regrets_39-y.html" type="external">a story by Jackie Friedman of The Star-Ledger Opens a New Window.</a>that made me smile from ear to ear: “After 20 years of regrets, 39-year-old Dave Zoni is a lacrosse star at Brookdale Community College.” Don’t you love it already?</p> <p>“Now, after nearly 20 years spent swimming in regret over missing out on college lacrosse, the former high school All-American from Garden City, N.Y., has returned to the field,” Friedman writes.</p> <p>The article goes on to explain that Zoni “had attended Farmingdale State College in Long Island right out of high school for several months, starting in the fall of 1990. But when Zoni’s father suddenly died, he left school -- with his eligibility intact -- to take over the family business.”</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Studying early childhood education and planning to continue on to a four-year program, Zoni is, according to Friedman, “the all-time leading scorer for the 10th best junior college team in the country, with 61 goals and 38 assists over the past two seasons.” He is also sporting a 3.04 GPA.</p> <p>While this story appeals to me in part because it taps into my former life as a sports writer who covered the joys and rigors of college athletics, it goes deeper. The fact is, for reasons less dramatic than Zoni’s, I quit college halfway through my sophomore year. Just up and quit, much to the dismay of the journalism professor who I would later call my mentor.</p> <p>That experience gave me the perspective that the people who stick by us, who see our potential, are like angels sent to offset the naysayers and often our own inner critic; it is the latter that sometimes weakens our resolve and causes us to throw in the towel when to outsiders it seems foolish to do so. Sometimes it feels like we just don’t have the strength to go on, regardless of financial or status rewards that may be dangled in front of us.</p> <p>Perhaps that’s why <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-cole_jamarcus_russell_wastes_another_chance_041411" type="external">a recent story about JaMarcus Russell Opens a New Window.</a> tugged at my heart strings a little bit. Jason Cole of <a href="" type="internal">Yahoo</a>! Sports quotes sources saying that this 25-year-old – who was the No. 1 draft pick in the NFL in 2007 – is wasting his golden opportunity because of a lack of desire and work ethic. Russell was being life coached by John Lucas – a former pro basketball player and coach known for his Houston-based Treatment and Recovery Center -- but he has reportedly given up on him.</p> <p>There is so much involved here and I’m not about to pass judgment on coach or client because only they know what transpired between them, but what I do know is that for any number of reasons many people in their late teens and 20s just aren’t ready to rise to the occasion of their gifts or ambitions. It’s so easy to get sidetracked.</p> <p>“Life is a bunch of start-overs,” then-42-year-old Lucas (he’s now 57) said <a href="http://www.nba.com/rockets/news/Lucas_is_teaching_life_and_bas-187584-822.html" type="external">in a piece on NBA.com Opens a New Window.</a> that explains why he’s called a life coach. “I’ve had to take four. I’ve told the kids that life is about moments and you can turn yourself around.”</p> <p>For Russell, the stakes are incredibly high because it’s the NFL. And for some his perceived lack of effort flies in the face of those who work hard and have the desire but don’t get the chance.</p> <p>But me, I sigh.</p> <p>There’s an angel in his corner and it’s not helping. Ask most life coaches and they’ll tell you that it’s the people with regrets from their 20s who often wind up as our clients. I love it because it gives me a chance to help them bring out of the ashes the dreams, the set-asides, the “not practical” passions they wanted to pursue and now can’t let go.</p> <p>This sometimes comes in the form of a drastic life change, but it doesn’t have to. My recent conversation with some friends about what we’d do if we won the lottery got me thinking. I talked about how I’d go earn a master’s in literature, not to use it for career purposes, just to read good writing. Then I realized that if a client told me that same thing, I’d say this – what are you waiting for?</p> <p>Further, if the goal is to read good writing and discuss it with others, why does it have to be in the context of a degree program that will take over my life in a way that isn’t practical right now? So instead I’ve enrolled in a lit class at New York University this summer and I’m really excited about delving into Dante’s Inferno.</p> <p>The other day I met some new people and was talking about how glad I was that I had told a gym buddy about my desire to learn to hit a bag because sometimes I don’t follow through on things. One of the gentleman picked right up on what I said, noting that I was actually a life coach admitting that I don’t always follow through.</p> <p>The cat’s out of the bag. I’m human. And I’ll go out on a limb and say other life coaches fall into the same category. But in many cases that’s what makes us effective. We can relate to the struggles of procrastination and motivation. We listen. The guy at the gym is keeping me accountable, just as I do for my clients.</p> <p>Ideally we follow through the majority of the time, balance our detractors with angels and overcome the hiccups. That’s how it’s done.</p> <p>Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is <a href="http://www.nancola.com" type="external">www.nancola.com Opens a New Window.</a> and you can follow her on <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a> @nancola. Please direct all questions/comments to <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	Follow-Through and Resuscitating Our Dreams	true	http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/04/20/follow-resuscitating-dreams.html	2016-03-04	0right	Follow-Through and Resuscitating Our Dreams <p /> <p>As I watched a perfectly delightful production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo presented by the Hudson Theatre ensemble in Hoboken, N.J. last weekend, what I think of as my life coach ‘tic’ was set off by a mother-daughter exchange in the play.</p> <p>Continue Reading Below</p> <p>Set in Atlanta in 1939, the wistful, dramatic daughter, Lala Levy, is captivated by the fact that Gone with the Wind is premiering in town. The more aflutter she is, the more aggravated it makes her mother, who keeps scoffing at what she perceives as her daughter’s fleeting ambitions to write radio scripts or a novel.</p> <p>Fictional characters or no, it sets off my triggers when people express joy or passion about something, and then someone, anyone, shoots it down. Ugh.</p> <p>Enter <a href="http://www.nj.com/sports/njsports/index.ssf/2011/04/after_20_years_of_regrets_39-y.html" type="external">a story by Jackie Friedman of The Star-Ledger Opens a New Window.</a>that made me smile from ear to ear: “After 20 years of regrets, 39-year-old Dave Zoni is a lacrosse star at Brookdale Community College.” Don’t you love it already?</p> <p>“Now, after nearly 20 years spent swimming in regret over missing out on college lacrosse, the former high school All-American from Garden City, N.Y., has returned to the field,” Friedman writes.</p> <p>The article goes on to explain that Zoni “had attended Farmingdale State College in Long Island right out of high school for several months, starting in the fall of 1990. But when Zoni’s father suddenly died, he left school -- with his eligibility intact -- to take over the family business.”</p> <p>Advertisement</p> <p>Studying early childhood education and planning to continue on to a four-year program, Zoni is, according to Friedman, “the all-time leading scorer for the 10th best junior college team in the country, with 61 goals and 38 assists over the past two seasons.” He is also sporting a 3.04 GPA.</p> <p>While this story appeals to me in part because it taps into my former life as a sports writer who covered the joys and rigors of college athletics, it goes deeper. The fact is, for reasons less dramatic than Zoni’s, I quit college halfway through my sophomore year. Just up and quit, much to the dismay of the journalism professor who I would later call my mentor.</p> <p>That experience gave me the perspective that the people who stick by us, who see our potential, are like angels sent to offset the naysayers and often our own inner critic; it is the latter that sometimes weakens our resolve and causes us to throw in the towel when to outsiders it seems foolish to do so. Sometimes it feels like we just don’t have the strength to go on, regardless of financial or status rewards that may be dangled in front of us.</p> <p>Perhaps that’s why <a href="http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=jc-cole_jamarcus_russell_wastes_another_chance_041411" type="external">a recent story about JaMarcus Russell Opens a New Window.</a> tugged at my heart strings a little bit. Jason Cole of <a href="" type="internal">Yahoo</a>! Sports quotes sources saying that this 25-year-old – who was the No. 1 draft pick in the NFL in 2007 – is wasting his golden opportunity because of a lack of desire and work ethic. Russell was being life coached by John Lucas – a former pro basketball player and coach known for his Houston-based Treatment and Recovery Center -- but he has reportedly given up on him.</p> <p>There is so much involved here and I’m not about to pass judgment on coach or client because only they know what transpired between them, but what I do know is that for any number of reasons many people in their late teens and 20s just aren’t ready to rise to the occasion of their gifts or ambitions. It’s so easy to get sidetracked.</p> <p>“Life is a bunch of start-overs,” then-42-year-old Lucas (he’s now 57) said <a href="http://www.nba.com/rockets/news/Lucas_is_teaching_life_and_bas-187584-822.html" type="external">in a piece on NBA.com Opens a New Window.</a> that explains why he’s called a life coach. “I’ve had to take four. I’ve told the kids that life is about moments and you can turn yourself around.”</p> <p>For Russell, the stakes are incredibly high because it’s the NFL. And for some his perceived lack of effort flies in the face of those who work hard and have the desire but don’t get the chance.</p> <p>But me, I sigh.</p> <p>There’s an angel in his corner and it’s not helping. Ask most life coaches and they’ll tell you that it’s the people with regrets from their 20s who often wind up as our clients. I love it because it gives me a chance to help them bring out of the ashes the dreams, the set-asides, the “not practical” passions they wanted to pursue and now can’t let go.</p> <p>This sometimes comes in the form of a drastic life change, but it doesn’t have to. My recent conversation with some friends about what we’d do if we won the lottery got me thinking. I talked about how I’d go earn a master’s in literature, not to use it for career purposes, just to read good writing. Then I realized that if a client told me that same thing, I’d say this – what are you waiting for?</p> <p>Further, if the goal is to read good writing and discuss it with others, why does it have to be in the context of a degree program that will take over my life in a way that isn’t practical right now? So instead I’ve enrolled in a lit class at New York University this summer and I’m really excited about delving into Dante’s Inferno.</p> <p>The other day I met some new people and was talking about how glad I was that I had told a gym buddy about my desire to learn to hit a bag because sometimes I don’t follow through on things. One of the gentleman picked right up on what I said, noting that I was actually a life coach admitting that I don’t always follow through.</p> <p>The cat’s out of the bag. I’m human. And I’ll go out on a limb and say other life coaches fall into the same category. But in many cases that’s what makes us effective. We can relate to the struggles of procrastination and motivation. We listen. The guy at the gym is keeping me accountable, just as I do for my clients.</p> <p>Ideally we follow through the majority of the time, balance our detractors with angels and overcome the hiccups. That’s how it’s done.</p> <p>Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is <a href="http://www.nancola.com" type="external">www.nancola.com Opens a New Window.</a> and you can follow her on <a href="" type="internal">Twitter</a> @nancola. Please direct all questions/comments to <a href="http://mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected] Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>	4,398
<p>President Obama rolled out a plan on Monday to reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade by combining cuts to benefit rights and war savings with tax increases. He vowed to veto any bill that relies solely on spending reductions to address the deficit.</p> <p>Tax increases for wealthy Americans and corporations make up $1.5 trillion of the package, part of which will come from an expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts. Reductions in health and benefit rights programs amount to $580 billion, with $248 billion coming from Medicare and $72 billion from Medicaid. The Obama administration said the change to Medicare would not result in any increase in the program’s eligibility age.</p> <p>It is virtually impossible to imagine Republicans agreeing to increase taxes on the rich. Anti-tax conservatives are already attacking the plan as socially divisive. The president anticipated as much: “This is not class warfare,” he said. “It’s math.” –ARK</p> <p>The New York Times:</p> <p /> <p>Mr. Obama is seeking $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy and corporations, through a combination of letting Bush-era income tax cuts expire on wealthier taxpayers, limiting the value of deductions taken by high earners and closing corporate loopholes. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. In a briefing previewing the plan, administration officials said on Sunday that the Medicare savings would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.</p> <p>… $800 billion of the $1.5 trillion in tax increases would come from allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire as scheduled for wealthier taxpayers, while extending them for individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/politics/obama-vows-veto-if-deficit-plan-has-no-tax-increases.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all#&amp;wtoeid=growl1_r1_control" type="external">Read more</a></p>	Obama Does the Math on Deficit Reduction	true	https://truthdig.com/articles/obama-does-the-math-on-deficit-reduction/	2011-09-19	4left	Obama Does the Math on Deficit Reduction <p>President Obama rolled out a plan on Monday to reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade by combining cuts to benefit rights and war savings with tax increases. He vowed to veto any bill that relies solely on spending reductions to address the deficit.</p> <p>Tax increases for wealthy Americans and corporations make up $1.5 trillion of the package, part of which will come from an expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts. Reductions in health and benefit rights programs amount to $580 billion, with $248 billion coming from Medicare and $72 billion from Medicaid. The Obama administration said the change to Medicare would not result in any increase in the program’s eligibility age.</p> <p>It is virtually impossible to imagine Republicans agreeing to increase taxes on the rich. Anti-tax conservatives are already attacking the plan as socially divisive. The president anticipated as much: “This is not class warfare,” he said. “It’s math.” –ARK</p> <p>The New York Times:</p> <p /> <p>Mr. Obama is seeking $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy and corporations, through a combination of letting Bush-era income tax cuts expire on wealthier taxpayers, limiting the value of deductions taken by high earners and closing corporate loopholes. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. In a briefing previewing the plan, administration officials said on Sunday that the Medicare savings would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.</p> <p>… $800 billion of the $1.5 trillion in tax increases would come from allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire as scheduled for wealthier taxpayers, while extending them for individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000.</p> <p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/us/politics/obama-vows-veto-if-deficit-plan-has-no-tax-increases.html?_r=1&amp;hp=&amp;pagewanted=all#&amp;wtoeid=growl1_r1_control" type="external">Read more</a></p>	4,399

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.