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<p>Asian shares rose Thursday despite fresh data showing economic weakness in China and Japan, as investors pinned their hopes on further stimulus measures. Monetary easing and ample liquidity are drawing foreign investors, boosting markets across the region.</p>
<p>KEEPING SCORE: Japan's Nikkei 225 remained above the 20,000 mark it broached for the first time in 15 years the day before, gaining 0.2 percent to 20,180.74. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 0.5 percent to 28,073.26 and South Korea's Kospi gained 1.4 percent to 2,174.72. Australia's S&amp;P ASX/200 was nearly flat at 5,836.70, and markets in Southeast Asia were mixed.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>CHINA MANUFACTURING: HSBC said Thursday that a preliminary version of its index based on a survey of factory purchasing managers fell to 49.2 in April, its lowest point in a year, from 49.6 in March. Readings below 50 indicate contraction. The fresh sign that growth is faltering in the world's second biggest economy will add to pressure on policymakers in Beijing to act to stave off a sharper slowdown.</p>
<p>JAPAN DATA: A survey in Japan showed a third straight monthly fall in manufacturing, from 50.3 in March to 49.7 in April, suggesting industries are still not in full recovery mode after the recession brought on by a sales tax hike on April 1, 2014.</p>
<p>THE QUOTE: "Japan and China seem to have detached themselves from economic reality and the gains we've been seeing are by no means a reflection of the underlying economies," Stan Shamu, a market strategist at IG, said in a commentary. "However, judging by the momentum we've been seeing, there is a belief equities will keep on rising."</p>
<p>WALL STREET: The S&amp;P 500 rose 10.67 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,107.96 on Wednesday, just 10 points shy of its March 2 record high. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 88.68 points, or 0.5 percent, to 18,038.27. The Nasdaq composite picked up 21.07 points, or 0.4 percent, to 5,035.17.</p>
<p>ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude oil gained 10 cents to $56.26 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell 45 cents to $56.16 a barrel in New York. Brent crude fell 7 cents to $62.66 barrel in London.</p>
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<p>CURRENCIES: The dollar slipped to 119.84 yen from 119.98 yen late Wednesday. The euro also edged lower, to $1.0710 from $1.0725.</p>
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Asian markets mostly higher as investors shrug off weak data, expecting more stimulus
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/04/23/asian-markets-mostly-higher-as-investors-shrug-off-weak-data-expecting-more.html
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2016-03-06
| 0right
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Asian markets mostly higher as investors shrug off weak data, expecting more stimulus
<p>Asian shares rose Thursday despite fresh data showing economic weakness in China and Japan, as investors pinned their hopes on further stimulus measures. Monetary easing and ample liquidity are drawing foreign investors, boosting markets across the region.</p>
<p>KEEPING SCORE: Japan's Nikkei 225 remained above the 20,000 mark it broached for the first time in 15 years the day before, gaining 0.2 percent to 20,180.74. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 0.5 percent to 28,073.26 and South Korea's Kospi gained 1.4 percent to 2,174.72. Australia's S&amp;P ASX/200 was nearly flat at 5,836.70, and markets in Southeast Asia were mixed.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>CHINA MANUFACTURING: HSBC said Thursday that a preliminary version of its index based on a survey of factory purchasing managers fell to 49.2 in April, its lowest point in a year, from 49.6 in March. Readings below 50 indicate contraction. The fresh sign that growth is faltering in the world's second biggest economy will add to pressure on policymakers in Beijing to act to stave off a sharper slowdown.</p>
<p>JAPAN DATA: A survey in Japan showed a third straight monthly fall in manufacturing, from 50.3 in March to 49.7 in April, suggesting industries are still not in full recovery mode after the recession brought on by a sales tax hike on April 1, 2014.</p>
<p>THE QUOTE: "Japan and China seem to have detached themselves from economic reality and the gains we've been seeing are by no means a reflection of the underlying economies," Stan Shamu, a market strategist at IG, said in a commentary. "However, judging by the momentum we've been seeing, there is a belief equities will keep on rising."</p>
<p>WALL STREET: The S&amp;P 500 rose 10.67 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,107.96 on Wednesday, just 10 points shy of its March 2 record high. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 88.68 points, or 0.5 percent, to 18,038.27. The Nasdaq composite picked up 21.07 points, or 0.4 percent, to 5,035.17.</p>
<p>ENERGY: Benchmark U.S. crude oil gained 10 cents to $56.26 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It fell 45 cents to $56.16 a barrel in New York. Brent crude fell 7 cents to $62.66 barrel in London.</p>
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<p>CURRENCIES: The dollar slipped to 119.84 yen from 119.98 yen late Wednesday. The euro also edged lower, to $1.0710 from $1.0725.</p>
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<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) — Chandler Hutchison scored eight of his season-high 32 points in the final three minutes and Zach Haney had his first career double-double to help Boise State beat UNLV 83-74 on Saturday night for its sixth consecutive win.</p>
<p>Hutchinson was 13-of-18 shooting, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range, and Haney finished with 11 points and a career-high 11 rebounds.</p>
<p>There were eight ties and 10 lead changes, and neither team led by more than five points, in the first half before UNLV (11-3, 0-1 Mountain West) took a 37-35 advantage into the break. Shakur Juiston scored six points in a row to give the Runnin’ Rebels a six-point lead early in the second half, but they missed their next 10 field-goal attempts and Boise State (12-2, 2-0) answered with a 23-4 run to take control. Hutchison scored nine points during that span, including a 3-pointer that capped the spurt and made it 60-47 with just more than 11 minutes to go.</p>
<p>Brandon McCoy’s jumper trimmed UNLV’s deficit to 73-67 with three minutes left, but Hutchison alone outscored the Rebels 8-7 from there to seal it.</p>
<p>Juiston finished with 25 points and Jordan Johnson scored 20 for UNLV. McCoy added 16 and 10 rebounds, giving the freshman 10 double-doubles in 14 career games.</p>
<p>Boise State improved to 8-7 all-time, and has won six of its last seven games, against the Rebels.</p>
<p>UNLV came in shooting 52.4 percent from the field, third best in Division I, but shot a season-low 40.3 percent (27 of 67) on Saturday, including 6 of 22 from 3-point range. Juiston and McCoy combined for 17-of-23 shooting while the other UNLV starters were 9-of-37 (24.3 percent).</p>
<p>The Broncos came in averaging 11.3 made 3s per game (No. 9 nationally), but hit a season-low tying five 3-pointers on 13 attempts against UNLV. Boise State, however, shot nearly 51 percent overall and outrebounded the Rebels 48-29. UNLV came in ranked No. 29 nationally in rebound margin (plus-7.9) and No. 4 in total rebounds per game (43.92).</p>
<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) — Chandler Hutchison scored eight of his season-high 32 points in the final three minutes and Zach Haney had his first career double-double to help Boise State beat UNLV 83-74 on Saturday night for its sixth consecutive win.</p>
<p>Hutchinson was 13-of-18 shooting, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range, and Haney finished with 11 points and a career-high 11 rebounds.</p>
<p>There were eight ties and 10 lead changes, and neither team led by more than five points, in the first half before UNLV (11-3, 0-1 Mountain West) took a 37-35 advantage into the break. Shakur Juiston scored six points in a row to give the Runnin’ Rebels a six-point lead early in the second half, but they missed their next 10 field-goal attempts and Boise State (12-2, 2-0) answered with a 23-4 run to take control. Hutchison scored nine points during that span, including a 3-pointer that capped the spurt and made it 60-47 with just more than 11 minutes to go.</p>
<p>Brandon McCoy’s jumper trimmed UNLV’s deficit to 73-67 with three minutes left, but Hutchison alone outscored the Rebels 8-7 from there to seal it.</p>
<p>Juiston finished with 25 points and Jordan Johnson scored 20 for UNLV. McCoy added 16 and 10 rebounds, giving the freshman 10 double-doubles in 14 career games.</p>
<p>Boise State improved to 8-7 all-time, and has won six of its last seven games, against the Rebels.</p>
<p>UNLV came in shooting 52.4 percent from the field, third best in Division I, but shot a season-low 40.3 percent (27 of 67) on Saturday, including 6 of 22 from 3-point range. Juiston and McCoy combined for 17-of-23 shooting while the other UNLV starters were 9-of-37 (24.3 percent).</p>
<p>The Broncos came in averaging 11.3 made 3s per game (No. 9 nationally), but hit a season-low tying five 3-pointers on 13 attempts against UNLV. Boise State, however, shot nearly 51 percent overall and outrebounded the Rebels 48-29. UNLV came in ranked No. 29 nationally in rebound margin (plus-7.9) and No. 4 in total rebounds per game (43.92).</p>
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Hutchison, Haney help Boise State beat UNLV 83-74
| false |
https://apnews.com/70115ce023fb4c7798983d92120e5651
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2017-12-31
| 2least
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Hutchison, Haney help Boise State beat UNLV 83-74
<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) — Chandler Hutchison scored eight of his season-high 32 points in the final three minutes and Zach Haney had his first career double-double to help Boise State beat UNLV 83-74 on Saturday night for its sixth consecutive win.</p>
<p>Hutchinson was 13-of-18 shooting, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range, and Haney finished with 11 points and a career-high 11 rebounds.</p>
<p>There were eight ties and 10 lead changes, and neither team led by more than five points, in the first half before UNLV (11-3, 0-1 Mountain West) took a 37-35 advantage into the break. Shakur Juiston scored six points in a row to give the Runnin’ Rebels a six-point lead early in the second half, but they missed their next 10 field-goal attempts and Boise State (12-2, 2-0) answered with a 23-4 run to take control. Hutchison scored nine points during that span, including a 3-pointer that capped the spurt and made it 60-47 with just more than 11 minutes to go.</p>
<p>Brandon McCoy’s jumper trimmed UNLV’s deficit to 73-67 with three minutes left, but Hutchison alone outscored the Rebels 8-7 from there to seal it.</p>
<p>Juiston finished with 25 points and Jordan Johnson scored 20 for UNLV. McCoy added 16 and 10 rebounds, giving the freshman 10 double-doubles in 14 career games.</p>
<p>Boise State improved to 8-7 all-time, and has won six of its last seven games, against the Rebels.</p>
<p>UNLV came in shooting 52.4 percent from the field, third best in Division I, but shot a season-low 40.3 percent (27 of 67) on Saturday, including 6 of 22 from 3-point range. Juiston and McCoy combined for 17-of-23 shooting while the other UNLV starters were 9-of-37 (24.3 percent).</p>
<p>The Broncos came in averaging 11.3 made 3s per game (No. 9 nationally), but hit a season-low tying five 3-pointers on 13 attempts against UNLV. Boise State, however, shot nearly 51 percent overall and outrebounded the Rebels 48-29. UNLV came in ranked No. 29 nationally in rebound margin (plus-7.9) and No. 4 in total rebounds per game (43.92).</p>
<p>LAS VEGAS (AP) — Chandler Hutchison scored eight of his season-high 32 points in the final three minutes and Zach Haney had his first career double-double to help Boise State beat UNLV 83-74 on Saturday night for its sixth consecutive win.</p>
<p>Hutchinson was 13-of-18 shooting, including 3 of 3 from 3-point range, and Haney finished with 11 points and a career-high 11 rebounds.</p>
<p>There were eight ties and 10 lead changes, and neither team led by more than five points, in the first half before UNLV (11-3, 0-1 Mountain West) took a 37-35 advantage into the break. Shakur Juiston scored six points in a row to give the Runnin’ Rebels a six-point lead early in the second half, but they missed their next 10 field-goal attempts and Boise State (12-2, 2-0) answered with a 23-4 run to take control. Hutchison scored nine points during that span, including a 3-pointer that capped the spurt and made it 60-47 with just more than 11 minutes to go.</p>
<p>Brandon McCoy’s jumper trimmed UNLV’s deficit to 73-67 with three minutes left, but Hutchison alone outscored the Rebels 8-7 from there to seal it.</p>
<p>Juiston finished with 25 points and Jordan Johnson scored 20 for UNLV. McCoy added 16 and 10 rebounds, giving the freshman 10 double-doubles in 14 career games.</p>
<p>Boise State improved to 8-7 all-time, and has won six of its last seven games, against the Rebels.</p>
<p>UNLV came in shooting 52.4 percent from the field, third best in Division I, but shot a season-low 40.3 percent (27 of 67) on Saturday, including 6 of 22 from 3-point range. Juiston and McCoy combined for 17-of-23 shooting while the other UNLV starters were 9-of-37 (24.3 percent).</p>
<p>The Broncos came in averaging 11.3 made 3s per game (No. 9 nationally), but hit a season-low tying five 3-pointers on 13 attempts against UNLV. Boise State, however, shot nearly 51 percent overall and outrebounded the Rebels 48-29. UNLV came in ranked No. 29 nationally in rebound margin (plus-7.9) and No. 4 in total rebounds per game (43.92).</p>
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<p>A group of a few hundred LGBT activists got in on the Donald Trump inaugural week protest action on Wednesday by staging a " <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/231875073926930/permalink/233346287113142/" type="external">Queer Dance Party at Mike Pence's House</a>" to express their displeasure at his belief in traditional marriage and defense of religious freedom.</p>
<p>The activists protested the VP of the most openly pro-gay Republican president ever by throwing a big block party outside Pence's home in Northwest Washington, D.C., where they brandished signs celebrating "Queer Love" and "Trans Power," declaring "Love Trumps Hate," and warning that the Trump administration might go full Nazi, while reporters filmed the demonstration.</p>
<p>In the video below via NBC News, activists hold up a sign begging Pence not to lead the U.S. into anti-LGBT Nazism, or something:</p>
<p>Below is more footage of the event via @freepress's Matt Wood, who hashtagged it "#werkforpeace and #LoveTrumpsHate:</p>
<p>Marching towards toe queer dance party at <a href="https://twitter.com/MikePenceVP" type="external">@</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MikePenceVP" type="external">MikePenceVP</a>'s (temporary) house in Chevy Chase, DC. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/werkforpeace?src=hash" type="external">#werkforpeace</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/werkforpeace" type="external">@werkforpeace</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LoveTrumpsHate?src=hash" type="external">#LoveTrumpsHate</a> <a href="https://t.co/23c2jddZV4" type="external">pic.twitter.com/23c2jddZV4</a></p>
<p>"Backpack journalist" Alejandro Alvarez, who also took some video and photos of the "queer dance party," estimated about 100 people participated (USA Today says it was "at least a couple hundred"). Here's his footage of the activists singing, "We're gay and up we're rising!"</p>
<p>Singing "we're gay and up we're rising" <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeWillDance?src=hash" type="external">#WeWillDance</a> <a href="https://t.co/j9vWjeagE0" type="external">pic.twitter.com/j9vWjeagE0</a></p>
<p>In NW DC - about 100 here for a "queer dance party" and parade to Mike Pence's place. <a href="https://twitter.com/werkforpeace" type="external">@werkforpeace</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeWillDance?src=hash" type="external">#WeWillDance</a> <a href="https://t.co/XE1ZyfaWLc" type="external">pic.twitter.com/XE1ZyfaWLc</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/01/18/queer-dance-party-mike-pence-house-maryland/96744014/" type="external">USA Today</a> reports that the group met around 6 p.m. outside the Friendship Heights Metro Station, before marching/dancing to the neighborhood where Pence and his wife, Karen, are currently living.</p>
<p>One resident told reporters that law enforcement had moved in prior to the demonstration to make sure things remained peaceful and legal.The neighbor noted that Pence's home is usually guarded by a "vehicle checkpoint and a few officers."</p>
<p>Another neighbor who joined the activists told reporters, "We come in all shapes, sizes, colors, beliefs, and we need to respect our diversity. The LGBT community has had a real struggle to be respected and be accepted, and that’s a sad statement on our country and our culture that they’ve had that struggle."</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the revelers/activists, Pence wasn't even home. It turns out that he was out enjoying dinner with his wife and another oft-protested Republican politician, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.</p>
<p>USA Today outlines the grievances of the LGBT activists:</p>
<p>Pence, a former senator and the governor of Indiana, believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.</p>
<p>In 2014, the governor's chief counsel wrote in a letter that Indiana would not recognize several hundred same-sex marriages that took place after a federal judge overturned Indiana's law banning it.</p>
<p>Pence drew ire from the LGBT and business communities in 2015 when he <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/10/06/pence-gay-rights-lgbtq-record-vice-presidential-debate-column/91663680/" type="external">signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act</a>, a law that allowed business owners to refuse certain services that conflicted with their religious beliefs (like, let's say, a Christian baker approached by a same-sex couple looking for a wedding cake).</p>
<p>And, although Pence has never explicitly advocated for gay and lesbian conversion therapy, he said during the 2000 congressional campaign that public dollars should go toward the practice (It appears on his 2000 campaign <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20010519165033fw_/https://cybertext.net/pence/issues.html" type="external">website</a>, where he also stated he would oppose any effort to give same-sex relationships equal legal status as heterosexual marriages.)</p>
<p>​Due to the inauguration and the number of protests being staged – including reports of <a href="" type="internal">illegal protest schemes by far-left activists</a> – some sections of Washington D.C. are on temporary lock down, the city being turned, as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/security-grid-for-inauguration-means-thousands-of-police-street-closures/2017/01/15/a33a444c-d821-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.344c9f6b937d" type="external">Washington Post</a> puts it, into a "virtual fortress of roadblocks, fences and armed police."</p>
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WATCH: Activists Hold 'Queer Dance Party' At Mike Pence's Place
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/12566/watch-activists-hold-queer-dance-party-mike-pences-james-barrett
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2017-01-19
| 0right
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WATCH: Activists Hold 'Queer Dance Party' At Mike Pence's Place
<p>A group of a few hundred LGBT activists got in on the Donald Trump inaugural week protest action on Wednesday by staging a " <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/231875073926930/permalink/233346287113142/" type="external">Queer Dance Party at Mike Pence's House</a>" to express their displeasure at his belief in traditional marriage and defense of religious freedom.</p>
<p>The activists protested the VP of the most openly pro-gay Republican president ever by throwing a big block party outside Pence's home in Northwest Washington, D.C., where they brandished signs celebrating "Queer Love" and "Trans Power," declaring "Love Trumps Hate," and warning that the Trump administration might go full Nazi, while reporters filmed the demonstration.</p>
<p>In the video below via NBC News, activists hold up a sign begging Pence not to lead the U.S. into anti-LGBT Nazism, or something:</p>
<p>Below is more footage of the event via @freepress's Matt Wood, who hashtagged it "#werkforpeace and #LoveTrumpsHate:</p>
<p>Marching towards toe queer dance party at <a href="https://twitter.com/MikePenceVP" type="external">@</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MikePenceVP" type="external">MikePenceVP</a>'s (temporary) house in Chevy Chase, DC. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/werkforpeace?src=hash" type="external">#werkforpeace</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/werkforpeace" type="external">@werkforpeace</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/LoveTrumpsHate?src=hash" type="external">#LoveTrumpsHate</a> <a href="https://t.co/23c2jddZV4" type="external">pic.twitter.com/23c2jddZV4</a></p>
<p>"Backpack journalist" Alejandro Alvarez, who also took some video and photos of the "queer dance party," estimated about 100 people participated (USA Today says it was "at least a couple hundred"). Here's his footage of the activists singing, "We're gay and up we're rising!"</p>
<p>Singing "we're gay and up we're rising" <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeWillDance?src=hash" type="external">#WeWillDance</a> <a href="https://t.co/j9vWjeagE0" type="external">pic.twitter.com/j9vWjeagE0</a></p>
<p>In NW DC - about 100 here for a "queer dance party" and parade to Mike Pence's place. <a href="https://twitter.com/werkforpeace" type="external">@werkforpeace</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WeWillDance?src=hash" type="external">#WeWillDance</a> <a href="https://t.co/XE1ZyfaWLc" type="external">pic.twitter.com/XE1ZyfaWLc</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/01/18/queer-dance-party-mike-pence-house-maryland/96744014/" type="external">USA Today</a> reports that the group met around 6 p.m. outside the Friendship Heights Metro Station, before marching/dancing to the neighborhood where Pence and his wife, Karen, are currently living.</p>
<p>One resident told reporters that law enforcement had moved in prior to the demonstration to make sure things remained peaceful and legal.The neighbor noted that Pence's home is usually guarded by a "vehicle checkpoint and a few officers."</p>
<p>Another neighbor who joined the activists told reporters, "We come in all shapes, sizes, colors, beliefs, and we need to respect our diversity. The LGBT community has had a real struggle to be respected and be accepted, and that’s a sad statement on our country and our culture that they’ve had that struggle."</p>
<p>Unfortunately for the revelers/activists, Pence wasn't even home. It turns out that he was out enjoying dinner with his wife and another oft-protested Republican politician, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.</p>
<p>USA Today outlines the grievances of the LGBT activists:</p>
<p>Pence, a former senator and the governor of Indiana, believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.</p>
<p>In 2014, the governor's chief counsel wrote in a letter that Indiana would not recognize several hundred same-sex marriages that took place after a federal judge overturned Indiana's law banning it.</p>
<p>Pence drew ire from the LGBT and business communities in 2015 when he <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/10/06/pence-gay-rights-lgbtq-record-vice-presidential-debate-column/91663680/" type="external">signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act</a>, a law that allowed business owners to refuse certain services that conflicted with their religious beliefs (like, let's say, a Christian baker approached by a same-sex couple looking for a wedding cake).</p>
<p>And, although Pence has never explicitly advocated for gay and lesbian conversion therapy, he said during the 2000 congressional campaign that public dollars should go toward the practice (It appears on his 2000 campaign <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20010519165033fw_/https://cybertext.net/pence/issues.html" type="external">website</a>, where he also stated he would oppose any effort to give same-sex relationships equal legal status as heterosexual marriages.)</p>
<p>​Due to the inauguration and the number of protests being staged – including reports of <a href="" type="internal">illegal protest schemes by far-left activists</a> – some sections of Washington D.C. are on temporary lock down, the city being turned, as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/security-grid-for-inauguration-means-thousands-of-police-street-closures/2017/01/15/a33a444c-d821-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.344c9f6b937d" type="external">Washington Post</a> puts it, into a "virtual fortress of roadblocks, fences and armed police."</p>
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<p>Was this the plan all along? <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/24/mccain-camp-to-propose-postponing-vp-debate/" type="external">CNN</a> reports that Team McCain wants the first presidential debate to “take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday” if there’s no bailout deal by Friday.</p>
<p>Senate Democrats appear to have <a href="http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/09/24/senate_democrats_strike_deal_on_bailout.html" type="external">made a deal</a> with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and President Bush has invited both of the presidential candidates, along with other lawmakers, to the White House on Thursday to discuss the proposed solution to the financial crisis.</p>
<p>CNN Political Ticker:</p>
<p>McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.</p>
<p />
<p>In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.</p>
<p><a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/24/mccain-camp-to-propose-postponing-vp-debate/" type="external">Read more</a></p>
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Now McCain Wants to Cancel the VP Debate
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/now-mccain-wants-to-cancel-the-vp-debate/
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2008-09-25
| 4left
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Now McCain Wants to Cancel the VP Debate
<p>Was this the plan all along? <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/24/mccain-camp-to-propose-postponing-vp-debate/" type="external">CNN</a> reports that Team McCain wants the first presidential debate to “take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday” if there’s no bailout deal by Friday.</p>
<p>Senate Democrats appear to have <a href="http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/09/24/senate_democrats_strike_deal_on_bailout.html" type="external">made a deal</a> with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and President Bush has invited both of the presidential candidates, along with other lawmakers, to the White House on Thursday to discuss the proposed solution to the financial crisis.</p>
<p>CNN Political Ticker:</p>
<p>McCain supporter Sen. Lindsey Graham tells CNN the McCain campaign is proposing to the Presidential Debate Commission and the Obama camp that if there’s no bailout deal by Friday, the first presidential debate should take the place of the VP debate, currently scheduled for next Thursday, October 2 in St. Louis.</p>
<p />
<p>In this scenario, the vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin would be rescheduled for a date yet to be determined, and take place in Oxford, Mississippi, currently slated to be the site of the first presidential faceoff this Friday.</p>
<p><a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/24/mccain-camp-to-propose-postponing-vp-debate/" type="external">Read more</a></p>
| 5,603 |
<p />
<p>We knew TASER International had been serious about winning the body camera market, but its decision to <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/05/taser-international-goes-all-in-on-body-cameras-in.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">change the company name Opens a New Window.</a> to Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ: AAXN) was meant to underscore that commitment.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>However, by burying its well-known, immediately identifiable brand with something that could mean anything, Axon risks devaluing the extensive goodwill that's been built up over the years, and there's nothing to suggest it will be a successful strategy either.</p>
<p>Image source: Axon Enterprise.</p>
<p>Smith &amp; Wesson also recently changed its corporate name to the bland American Outdoor Brands (NASDAQ: AOBC), though it is keeping its storied firearmsname, much as Axon isn't changing the name of its stun guns. Similarly, a fewyears ago Research in Motion changed its name to BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) to emphasize its focus on its self-named smartphone and operating system.</p>
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<p>Where the onewas really an attempt to <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/20/why-smith-wesson-changed-to-american-outdoor-brand.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">bury its association Opens a New Window.</a>with firearms by identifying with a new, bigger market opportunity, the otherhas done nothing to stop the smartphone company's slide into irrelevance. People have turned off their BlackBerrys en masse as they turned to the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. BlackBerry has even stopped making its own phones, now preferring instead to farm out the responsibility to a third party.</p>
<p>The gunmaker said the Smith &amp; Wesson branddidn't do justice to the full range of products it now offers, but it also doesn't change that firearms still represent 87% of total net sales.Still, by separating itself from the volatility inherent in gun sales by erecting a barrier in the form of an innocuous sounding new corporate identity, it hopes it can smooth out the wild swings of its stock.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>While Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) didn't rebrand the whole company when it renamed its DVD-by-mail rental service to Qwikster, it quickly came to realize what a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/27/netflix-should-kill-dvds.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">dumb move Opens a New Window.</a>that was. Even though the future of the company is in streaming and content creation, it didn't mean it needed to entirely recast its legacy business. Fortunately it hadn't changed the corporate identity so undoing the rebranding scheme was simple enough to allow it to go on as if nothing happened.</p>
<p>Yet that episode also shows a company doesn't need a completely new name even if it is going in a wholly new direction. Netflix could have come up with exciting new branding for itself as it entered streaming and began making cool, engaging shows, but it realized it had a lot invested in the Netflix brand, despite it originally representinga way to rent movies over the internet. Changing the corporate identity would have cost it a lot more than simply ordering new letterhead and business cards.</p>
<p>In that respect Axon can only hope to achieve the success Altria has, perhaps one of the more successful name changes in corporate history. While it doesn't stop anyone from knowing it makes cigarettes -- arguably, it makes you think about it more -- its stock has enjoyed massive gains since it made the switch nearly 15 years ago, particularly if you include the spinoff of Philip Morris International in 2008.</p>
<p>Axon's name change is certainly one that focuses on its new direction, not least because it adopts the name of its body cam business. Yet at first blush it would appear to be a situation similar to Smith &amp; Wesson because TASER stun guns still represent more than 70% of total 2016 revenues. But that's down from 83% the year before and TASER sales rose just 24% compared to the 153% gain in the Axon division.</p>
<p>Image source: Axon Enterprise.</p>
<p>And Axon sales represent the bigger opportunity. According to TASER's own figures, almost 98% of the 18,250 or so police departments in the country have purchased its stun guns, meaning there's limited opportunity for future growth. While body cams have big potential -- it just announced Austin, Texas just became the 37th major city to buy its cameras -- the real future revenue stream will come from Evidence.com, its evidence management system.</p>
<p>Like a razor-and-blades business model, Axon can afford to give away its body cameras as it's offered to in exchange for hooking people into the evidence management system, which will become an extraordinarily sticky service once it is embedded in a department. It won't be easy for a police department to extract itself from Evidence.com because of the time, expense, and pervasiveness of the new system in transferring all that data.</p>
<p>American Outdoor Brands tries to make the same pitch for its new rugged outdoor market opportunity by saying it's a substantially larger market than firearms, but it is also a crowded field it will never dominate compared to the relative handful of major body camera and evidence management companies, which is already one of the leading names in the industry.</p>
<p>Seeing the TASER name taken down off the marquee is tough for those who respect the brand, but despite changing its corporate identity to Axon Enterprises, the new name is infinitely better than Tribune Publishing's decision to change its name totronc, Inc. And whether you still call it TASER or by its new Axon Enterprise name, this is a company that still has the potential to register stunning growth in the future.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than AxonWhen 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=1d0f0429-8b08-439a-a6e6-8d57f81fe7d1&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 Axon 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=1d0f0429-8b08-439a-a6e6-8d57f81fe7d1&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/TMFCop/info.aspx" type="external">Rich Duprey Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Axon and 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>
|
TASER Just Changed Its Name to Axon: Does It Matter?
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/18/taser-just-changed-its-name-to-axon-does-it-matter.html
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2017-04-18
| 0right
|
TASER Just Changed Its Name to Axon: Does It Matter?
<p />
<p>We knew TASER International had been serious about winning the body camera market, but its decision to <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/05/taser-international-goes-all-in-on-body-cameras-in.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">change the company name Opens a New Window.</a> to Axon Enterprise (NASDAQ: AAXN) was meant to underscore that commitment.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>However, by burying its well-known, immediately identifiable brand with something that could mean anything, Axon risks devaluing the extensive goodwill that's been built up over the years, and there's nothing to suggest it will be a successful strategy either.</p>
<p>Image source: Axon Enterprise.</p>
<p>Smith &amp; Wesson also recently changed its corporate name to the bland American Outdoor Brands (NASDAQ: AOBC), though it is keeping its storied firearmsname, much as Axon isn't changing the name of its stun guns. Similarly, a fewyears ago Research in Motion changed its name to BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) to emphasize its focus on its self-named smartphone and operating system.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Where the onewas really an attempt to <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/12/20/why-smith-wesson-changed-to-american-outdoor-brand.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">bury its association Opens a New Window.</a>with firearms by identifying with a new, bigger market opportunity, the otherhas done nothing to stop the smartphone company's slide into irrelevance. People have turned off their BlackBerrys en masse as they turned to the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. BlackBerry has even stopped making its own phones, now preferring instead to farm out the responsibility to a third party.</p>
<p>The gunmaker said the Smith &amp; Wesson branddidn't do justice to the full range of products it now offers, but it also doesn't change that firearms still represent 87% of total net sales.Still, by separating itself from the volatility inherent in gun sales by erecting a barrier in the form of an innocuous sounding new corporate identity, it hopes it can smooth out the wild swings of its stock.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>While Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) didn't rebrand the whole company when it renamed its DVD-by-mail rental service to Qwikster, it quickly came to realize what a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/04/27/netflix-should-kill-dvds.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">dumb move Opens a New Window.</a>that was. Even though the future of the company is in streaming and content creation, it didn't mean it needed to entirely recast its legacy business. Fortunately it hadn't changed the corporate identity so undoing the rebranding scheme was simple enough to allow it to go on as if nothing happened.</p>
<p>Yet that episode also shows a company doesn't need a completely new name even if it is going in a wholly new direction. Netflix could have come up with exciting new branding for itself as it entered streaming and began making cool, engaging shows, but it realized it had a lot invested in the Netflix brand, despite it originally representinga way to rent movies over the internet. Changing the corporate identity would have cost it a lot more than simply ordering new letterhead and business cards.</p>
<p>In that respect Axon can only hope to achieve the success Altria has, perhaps one of the more successful name changes in corporate history. While it doesn't stop anyone from knowing it makes cigarettes -- arguably, it makes you think about it more -- its stock has enjoyed massive gains since it made the switch nearly 15 years ago, particularly if you include the spinoff of Philip Morris International in 2008.</p>
<p>Axon's name change is certainly one that focuses on its new direction, not least because it adopts the name of its body cam business. Yet at first blush it would appear to be a situation similar to Smith &amp; Wesson because TASER stun guns still represent more than 70% of total 2016 revenues. But that's down from 83% the year before and TASER sales rose just 24% compared to the 153% gain in the Axon division.</p>
<p>Image source: Axon Enterprise.</p>
<p>And Axon sales represent the bigger opportunity. According to TASER's own figures, almost 98% of the 18,250 or so police departments in the country have purchased its stun guns, meaning there's limited opportunity for future growth. While body cams have big potential -- it just announced Austin, Texas just became the 37th major city to buy its cameras -- the real future revenue stream will come from Evidence.com, its evidence management system.</p>
<p>Like a razor-and-blades business model, Axon can afford to give away its body cameras as it's offered to in exchange for hooking people into the evidence management system, which will become an extraordinarily sticky service once it is embedded in a department. It won't be easy for a police department to extract itself from Evidence.com because of the time, expense, and pervasiveness of the new system in transferring all that data.</p>
<p>American Outdoor Brands tries to make the same pitch for its new rugged outdoor market opportunity by saying it's a substantially larger market than firearms, but it is also a crowded field it will never dominate compared to the relative handful of major body camera and evidence management companies, which is already one of the leading names in the industry.</p>
<p>Seeing the TASER name taken down off the marquee is tough for those who respect the brand, but despite changing its corporate identity to Axon Enterprises, the new name is infinitely better than Tribune Publishing's decision to change its name totronc, Inc. And whether you still call it TASER or by its new Axon Enterprise name, this is a company that still has the potential to register stunning growth in the future.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than AxonWhen 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=1d0f0429-8b08-439a-a6e6-8d57f81fe7d1&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 Axon 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=1d0f0429-8b08-439a-a6e6-8d57f81fe7d1&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/TMFCop/info.aspx" type="external">Rich Duprey Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Axon and 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>
| 5,604 |
<p>Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski depicted in the Washington Post, which reported that his hiring by CNN “could be very valuable” to the network. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)</p>
<p>Faced with the destruction of journalistic values by the corrupting effects of the profit motive, journalists can either stand up for the principles that brought many of them into the career in the first place—or else identify with the corruption, telling themselves that they’re siding with the smart money even as it destroys the institutions that form the basis for their profession.</p>
<p>Both reactions were on display in the wake of CNN‘s decision to hire recently fired Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The conservative New York Post ( <a href="http://pagesix.com/2016/06/24/cnn-staff-revolts-over-corey-lewandowski-hire/" type="external">6/24/16</a>) quoted an anonymous “TV insider” saying that “CNN is facing a near internal revolt over the Corey hiring,”with another unnamed source saying, “Everyone at CNN — and even people who used to work there — are pissed about Trump’s former campaign manager being hired on salary.”</p>
<p>“Female reporters and producers especially…are organizing and considering publicly demanding” that Lewandowski be dropped, while “Latinos and others in the newsroom…may do a public letter” protesting the hire, sources told the New York Post‘s Emily Smith and Ian Mohr.</p>
<p>Not so fast, said Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi ( <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/cnns-hiring-of-corey-lewandowski-didnt-cause-a-staff-revolt-in-fact-it-was-the-opposite/2016/06/26/61ba30fe-3bcd-11e6-80bc-d06711fd2125_story.html" type="external">6/27/16</a>). “I get the argument that he was a bully,” he says a “prominent staffer” at CNN told him. “But I also get why we hired him. There aren’t many people who know more than him about how [Trump’s] campaign thinks and works. That could be very valuable to us over the next few months.”</p>
<p>(The staffer, “like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to alienate their employer.” The Washington Post‘s Eric Wemple <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/06/27/a-cnn-staff-revolt-over-lewandowski-hiring-ha/" type="external">pointed out</a> the irony of protecting the identity of workers sticking up for company policy: “These sources requested anonymity to make glowing comments about their employer.”)</p>
<p>Farhi also cited CNN‘s in-house media reporter, Brian Stelter, who said on CNN‘s media show Reliable Sources ( <a href="https://youtu.be/j6gTZor0r9k" type="external">6/26/16</a>): “There are some people that are uncomfortable with the hiring, and there might be some awkward moments in the makeup room. But everyone also said they understood the hiring, understood the logic of it.”</p>
<p>Farhi gives an account of “the knocks on Lewandowski,” which makes it clear that the objections go far beyond his being “a bully”:</p>
<p>He enforced Trump’s ever-growing blacklist on media organizations whose coverage has displeased the presumptive Republican nominee ( <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-revokes-post-press-credentials-calling-the-paper-dishonest-and-phony/2016/06/13/f9a61a72-31aa-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html" type="external">including the Washington Post</a>); he confined reporters to a media “pen” during Trump’s campaign events (and once pushed and threatened to blackball a CNN reporter who defied the edict); he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/inside-trumps-inner-circle-his-staffers-are-willing-to-fight-for-him-literally/2016/03/10/4b2b18e8-e660-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html" type="external">physically restrained a reporter</a>, Michelle Fields, who was asking Trump questions after an event in March (he was criminally charged in that incident, although the charges were later dropped); and he reportedly made inappropriate comments to female reporters on the Trump beat.</p>
<p>But Farhi also explained “the logic” of the hiring, spelling out what makes adding Lewandowski to the staff “very valuable”:</p>
<p>Given that the cable networks analyze and discuss the news far more than they actually report it, Lewandowski will be pressed into service over many hours, a senior correspondent said.</p>
<p>The network already has two Trump partisans in its pundit lineup: former Reagan political operative Jeffrey Lord and conservative columnist Kayleigh McEnany. But it needed another to meet the constant demand for Trump surrogates, he added. “There are many baby birds that need feeding”—that is, many programs that want a guest or a panelist to spout Trump’s views, he said.</p>
<p>Note that Trump’s views, which Lewandowski has been hired to spout, include a startling <a href="http://www.diversityinc.com/news/trumps-record-of-hate-to-date/" type="external">range of smears</a> against Muslims, Latinos, African-Americans, women and others. Note, too, that the phrase “spout Trump’s views” is particularly appropriate because, as Farhi points out, CNN is unlikely to get much in the way of actual information about the Trump campaign out of Lewandowski, who</p>
<p>has acknowledged that he signed a non­disclosure agreement with Trump that prevents him from disparaging the candidate or revealing proprietary information about the campaign. That agreement presumably puts some limits on what he might actually reveal to CNN’s viewers about the campaign’s inner workings over the next four months.</p>
<p>But Lewandowski’s value goes beyond having another in-house spouter:</p>
<p>A further potential benefit to having Lewandowski on the payroll may be in improving CNN’s access to Trump, said a CNN reporter. Although Trump hasn’t been shy about doing interviews on CNN—and CNN hasn’t been stingy in covering his rallies and news conferences—having a former Trump lieutenant can’t hurt when it comes to seeking access to the candidate or resolving issues with his campaign, he said.</p>
<p>So hiring someone as a commentator for your news channel who is so opposed to journalism that he’s actually had charges filed against him for assaulting a reporter is a smart move because it will ensure you can continue to give his former boss a platform—a boss whose attitude toward the press can be summed up in his <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/03/10/donald-trump-versus-the-media/81602878/" type="external">remark</a>: “I would never kill them, but I do hate them. And some of them are such lying, disgusting people.”</p>
<p>CNN‘s Jake Tapper interviewing his new colleague, Corey Lewandowski ( <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/06/27/donald-trump-corey-lewandowski-response-political-elites-tapper-intv.cnn" type="external">6/27/16</a>)</p>
<p>The conflicting responses of journalists to the Lewandowski acquisition were on display in one edition of USA Today. On the op-ed page was former NPR ombud Alicia Shepard ( <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/06/27/hiring-lewandowski-smart-move-cnn-column/86407792/" type="external">6/27/16</a>), who praised the hire as “a smart move for CNN, which is, after all, a business dependent on increasing viewership”:</p>
<p>While they might lose some viewers, they may also bring in some who loitered at Fox and now might tune in to CNN just to hear Lewandowski.</p>
<p>This isn’t rocket science. It’s political theater, and you have to have big names to fill the seats.&#160;Lewandowski will do just that.</p>
<p>Dismissing Lewandowski’s record of attacking journalists as “a long history of being controversial,” Shepard scoffs that “he wasn’t hired for his personality.” Asserting that journalists “seem offended at CNN hiring Lewandowski because they don’t like or respect him after working with him or reading about him,” Shepard bizarrely compares him to a hypothetical hire of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, “who also happens to be the wife of disgraced former New York congressman <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/anthony-weiner-scandal/" type="external">Anthony Weiner</a>“—as if not wanting to work with someone who assaults your colleagues is the same thing as having a personal distaste for someone’s spouse.</p>
<p>Shepard also brushes aside the fact that Lewandowski “signed a <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/donald-trump-nda/" type="external">non-disclosure agreement</a> where he’s promised to not disparage the campaign,” equating that to Donna Brazile as a commentator: “She may have no non-disclosure agreement because as a Democratic strategist and an official with the <a href="http://donnabrazile.com/?page_id=2" type="external">Democratic National Committee</a>, she doesn’t need one.” That’s a non sequitur, since the point of bringing up the non-disclosure agreement is that Lewandowski is not only a partisan, but is legally obligated to be an uninformative one.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, on page 2B of the Money section, USA Today media columnist Rem Rieder ( <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2016/06/27/rieder-cnns-horrendous-lewandowski-hire/86427720/" type="external">6/27/16</a>) cites the Lewandowski hire as something that “encapsulates the utter bankruptcy of a practice that is awful but nevertheless has become a widely accepted part of the scene.” While noting that “why CNN thinks it’s a good idea to have such designated defenders, for any candidate of any political stripe, is completely lost on me,” he explains why hiring this particular spinmeister is particularly outrageous:</p>
<p>At least some of the talking heads have deep political resumes and have witnessed many aspects of the&#160;campaign process. But that’s hardly the case with Lewandowski. His background is largely as a Trump guy. And not so much as a strategist — Trump is his own strategist — or deep thinker, but as a right-hand man, a body man and an enforcer. So there is little reason to suspect Lewandowski will add much insight and perspective to the political dialogue.</p>
<p>And Riemer doesn’t think the legal restriction on Lewandowski talking about the one major campaign that he’s been involved with is irrelevant:</p>
<p>Even if Lewandowski wanted to say something critical of his old boss — and there is zero indication he would — he would be legally prohibited from doing so.&#160;So CNN has essentially placed a Trump propaganda minister — at a hefty salary, according to published reports — on its payroll.</p>
<p>Then there’s the matter of Lewandowski’s deep-seated antagonism toward the enterprise of journalism that he’s been hired to be a part of:</p>
<p>He has <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/06/13/trump-washington-post-banned-list/85842316/" type="external">blacklisted</a> news outlets that filed stories the Trump campaign didn’t like, among them Politico,&#160;BuzzFeed and the Washington Post. He <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/04/14/donald-trump-corey-lewandowski-assault-case-florida-michelle-fields/83030324/" type="external">manhandled</a> then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and was criminally charged, although the charges were dropped. He has consigned reporters to a press “pen” during Trump rallies, and dealt vigorously with those who tried, as they should, to roam the premises and interview people — cover news. Last year, Lewandowski had a confrontation with one of his new colleagues, CNN reporter Noah Gray, who was trying to interview a group of protesters. Lewandowski told the journalist, who was simply trying to do his job,&#160;“Inside the pen, or I will pull your credentials,” the Washington Post&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/18/nine-things-that-happened-during-donald-trumps-visit-to-worcester/" type="external">reported</a>.</p>
<p>Media outlets could stand up to the Trump campaign’s attempts to delegitimize and scapegoat journalists. Or they can do the “smart move” of rewarding&#160; people who thus abuse them with a lucrative spotlight. It’s hard to do both.</p>
<p>Jim Naureckas is the editor of <a href="" type="internal">FAIR.org</a>. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/jnaureckas" type="external">@JNaureckas</a>.</p>
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Lewandowski Hire Makes Journalists Choose Between Defending Their Profession and Embracing Its Demise
| true |
http://fair.org/home/lewandowski-hire-makes-journalists-choose-between-defending-their-profession-and-embracing-its-demise/
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2016-06-29
| 4left
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Lewandowski Hire Makes Journalists Choose Between Defending Their Profession and Embracing Its Demise
<p>Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski depicted in the Washington Post, which reported that his hiring by CNN “could be very valuable” to the network. (photo: John Minchillo/AP)</p>
<p>Faced with the destruction of journalistic values by the corrupting effects of the profit motive, journalists can either stand up for the principles that brought many of them into the career in the first place—or else identify with the corruption, telling themselves that they’re siding with the smart money even as it destroys the institutions that form the basis for their profession.</p>
<p>Both reactions were on display in the wake of CNN‘s decision to hire recently fired Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The conservative New York Post ( <a href="http://pagesix.com/2016/06/24/cnn-staff-revolts-over-corey-lewandowski-hire/" type="external">6/24/16</a>) quoted an anonymous “TV insider” saying that “CNN is facing a near internal revolt over the Corey hiring,”with another unnamed source saying, “Everyone at CNN — and even people who used to work there — are pissed about Trump’s former campaign manager being hired on salary.”</p>
<p>“Female reporters and producers especially…are organizing and considering publicly demanding” that Lewandowski be dropped, while “Latinos and others in the newsroom…may do a public letter” protesting the hire, sources told the New York Post‘s Emily Smith and Ian Mohr.</p>
<p>Not so fast, said Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi ( <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/cnns-hiring-of-corey-lewandowski-didnt-cause-a-staff-revolt-in-fact-it-was-the-opposite/2016/06/26/61ba30fe-3bcd-11e6-80bc-d06711fd2125_story.html" type="external">6/27/16</a>). “I get the argument that he was a bully,” he says a “prominent staffer” at CNN told him. “But I also get why we hired him. There aren’t many people who know more than him about how [Trump’s] campaign thinks and works. That could be very valuable to us over the next few months.”</p>
<p>(The staffer, “like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to alienate their employer.” The Washington Post‘s Eric Wemple <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/06/27/a-cnn-staff-revolt-over-lewandowski-hiring-ha/" type="external">pointed out</a> the irony of protecting the identity of workers sticking up for company policy: “These sources requested anonymity to make glowing comments about their employer.”)</p>
<p>Farhi also cited CNN‘s in-house media reporter, Brian Stelter, who said on CNN‘s media show Reliable Sources ( <a href="https://youtu.be/j6gTZor0r9k" type="external">6/26/16</a>): “There are some people that are uncomfortable with the hiring, and there might be some awkward moments in the makeup room. But everyone also said they understood the hiring, understood the logic of it.”</p>
<p>Farhi gives an account of “the knocks on Lewandowski,” which makes it clear that the objections go far beyond his being “a bully”:</p>
<p>He enforced Trump’s ever-growing blacklist on media organizations whose coverage has displeased the presumptive Republican nominee ( <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/trump-revokes-post-press-credentials-calling-the-paper-dishonest-and-phony/2016/06/13/f9a61a72-31aa-11e6-95c0-2a6873031302_story.html" type="external">including the Washington Post</a>); he confined reporters to a media “pen” during Trump’s campaign events (and once pushed and threatened to blackball a CNN reporter who defied the edict); he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/inside-trumps-inner-circle-his-staffers-are-willing-to-fight-for-him-literally/2016/03/10/4b2b18e8-e660-11e5-a6f3-21ccdbc5f74e_story.html" type="external">physically restrained a reporter</a>, Michelle Fields, who was asking Trump questions after an event in March (he was criminally charged in that incident, although the charges were later dropped); and he reportedly made inappropriate comments to female reporters on the Trump beat.</p>
<p>But Farhi also explained “the logic” of the hiring, spelling out what makes adding Lewandowski to the staff “very valuable”:</p>
<p>Given that the cable networks analyze and discuss the news far more than they actually report it, Lewandowski will be pressed into service over many hours, a senior correspondent said.</p>
<p>The network already has two Trump partisans in its pundit lineup: former Reagan political operative Jeffrey Lord and conservative columnist Kayleigh McEnany. But it needed another to meet the constant demand for Trump surrogates, he added. “There are many baby birds that need feeding”—that is, many programs that want a guest or a panelist to spout Trump’s views, he said.</p>
<p>Note that Trump’s views, which Lewandowski has been hired to spout, include a startling <a href="http://www.diversityinc.com/news/trumps-record-of-hate-to-date/" type="external">range of smears</a> against Muslims, Latinos, African-Americans, women and others. Note, too, that the phrase “spout Trump’s views” is particularly appropriate because, as Farhi points out, CNN is unlikely to get much in the way of actual information about the Trump campaign out of Lewandowski, who</p>
<p>has acknowledged that he signed a non­disclosure agreement with Trump that prevents him from disparaging the candidate or revealing proprietary information about the campaign. That agreement presumably puts some limits on what he might actually reveal to CNN’s viewers about the campaign’s inner workings over the next four months.</p>
<p>But Lewandowski’s value goes beyond having another in-house spouter:</p>
<p>A further potential benefit to having Lewandowski on the payroll may be in improving CNN’s access to Trump, said a CNN reporter. Although Trump hasn’t been shy about doing interviews on CNN—and CNN hasn’t been stingy in covering his rallies and news conferences—having a former Trump lieutenant can’t hurt when it comes to seeking access to the candidate or resolving issues with his campaign, he said.</p>
<p>So hiring someone as a commentator for your news channel who is so opposed to journalism that he’s actually had charges filed against him for assaulting a reporter is a smart move because it will ensure you can continue to give his former boss a platform—a boss whose attitude toward the press can be summed up in his <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/03/10/donald-trump-versus-the-media/81602878/" type="external">remark</a>: “I would never kill them, but I do hate them. And some of them are such lying, disgusting people.”</p>
<p>CNN‘s Jake Tapper interviewing his new colleague, Corey Lewandowski ( <a href="http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2016/06/27/donald-trump-corey-lewandowski-response-political-elites-tapper-intv.cnn" type="external">6/27/16</a>)</p>
<p>The conflicting responses of journalists to the Lewandowski acquisition were on display in one edition of USA Today. On the op-ed page was former NPR ombud Alicia Shepard ( <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/06/27/hiring-lewandowski-smart-move-cnn-column/86407792/" type="external">6/27/16</a>), who praised the hire as “a smart move for CNN, which is, after all, a business dependent on increasing viewership”:</p>
<p>While they might lose some viewers, they may also bring in some who loitered at Fox and now might tune in to CNN just to hear Lewandowski.</p>
<p>This isn’t rocket science. It’s political theater, and you have to have big names to fill the seats.&#160;Lewandowski will do just that.</p>
<p>Dismissing Lewandowski’s record of attacking journalists as “a long history of being controversial,” Shepard scoffs that “he wasn’t hired for his personality.” Asserting that journalists “seem offended at CNN hiring Lewandowski because they don’t like or respect him after working with him or reading about him,” Shepard bizarrely compares him to a hypothetical hire of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, “who also happens to be the wife of disgraced former New York congressman <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/anthony-weiner-scandal/" type="external">Anthony Weiner</a>“—as if not wanting to work with someone who assaults your colleagues is the same thing as having a personal distaste for someone’s spouse.</p>
<p>Shepard also brushes aside the fact that Lewandowski “signed a <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/06/21/donald-trump-nda/" type="external">non-disclosure agreement</a> where he’s promised to not disparage the campaign,” equating that to Donna Brazile as a commentator: “She may have no non-disclosure agreement because as a Democratic strategist and an official with the <a href="http://donnabrazile.com/?page_id=2" type="external">Democratic National Committee</a>, she doesn’t need one.” That’s a non sequitur, since the point of bringing up the non-disclosure agreement is that Lewandowski is not only a partisan, but is legally obligated to be an uninformative one.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, on page 2B of the Money section, USA Today media columnist Rem Rieder ( <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2016/06/27/rieder-cnns-horrendous-lewandowski-hire/86427720/" type="external">6/27/16</a>) cites the Lewandowski hire as something that “encapsulates the utter bankruptcy of a practice that is awful but nevertheless has become a widely accepted part of the scene.” While noting that “why CNN thinks it’s a good idea to have such designated defenders, for any candidate of any political stripe, is completely lost on me,” he explains why hiring this particular spinmeister is particularly outrageous:</p>
<p>At least some of the talking heads have deep political resumes and have witnessed many aspects of the&#160;campaign process. But that’s hardly the case with Lewandowski. His background is largely as a Trump guy. And not so much as a strategist — Trump is his own strategist — or deep thinker, but as a right-hand man, a body man and an enforcer. So there is little reason to suspect Lewandowski will add much insight and perspective to the political dialogue.</p>
<p>And Riemer doesn’t think the legal restriction on Lewandowski talking about the one major campaign that he’s been involved with is irrelevant:</p>
<p>Even if Lewandowski wanted to say something critical of his old boss — and there is zero indication he would — he would be legally prohibited from doing so.&#160;So CNN has essentially placed a Trump propaganda minister — at a hefty salary, according to published reports — on its payroll.</p>
<p>Then there’s the matter of Lewandowski’s deep-seated antagonism toward the enterprise of journalism that he’s been hired to be a part of:</p>
<p>He has <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/06/13/trump-washington-post-banned-list/85842316/" type="external">blacklisted</a> news outlets that filed stories the Trump campaign didn’t like, among them Politico,&#160;BuzzFeed and the Washington Post. He <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/04/14/donald-trump-corey-lewandowski-assault-case-florida-michelle-fields/83030324/" type="external">manhandled</a> then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields and was criminally charged, although the charges were dropped. He has consigned reporters to a press “pen” during Trump rallies, and dealt vigorously with those who tried, as they should, to roam the premises and interview people — cover news. Last year, Lewandowski had a confrontation with one of his new colleagues, CNN reporter Noah Gray, who was trying to interview a group of protesters. Lewandowski told the journalist, who was simply trying to do his job,&#160;“Inside the pen, or I will pull your credentials,” the Washington Post&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/11/18/nine-things-that-happened-during-donald-trumps-visit-to-worcester/" type="external">reported</a>.</p>
<p>Media outlets could stand up to the Trump campaign’s attempts to delegitimize and scapegoat journalists. Or they can do the “smart move” of rewarding&#160; people who thus abuse them with a lucrative spotlight. It’s hard to do both.</p>
<p>Jim Naureckas is the editor of <a href="" type="internal">FAIR.org</a>. Follow him on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/jnaureckas" type="external">@JNaureckas</a>.</p>
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<p />
<p>Echalaz will make that debut in the title role of Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Tosca.” It is her signature role, one that she has sung 30 or 40 times in England, Germany and Austria.</p>
<p>And Echalaz has received widespread praise for her interpretation of Tosca. One British reviewer said her Tosca is “thrillingly sung. Echalaz is now set to be the leading Tosca of her generation.” Another reviewer said Echalaz’s Tosca that she sang at the Royal Opera House, “on the very stage (Maria) Callas once trod, was blessed with a temperament and a completeness that was world class.”</p>
<p>Frédéric Chaslin, who is conducting “Tosca” at the SFO, said he is very proud that Echalaz and tenor Andrew Richards, who sings Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi, are singing in Santa Fe before they sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Echalaz will sing “Tosca” at the Met in a future season. Richards makes his Met debut as Don Jose in “Carmen” in 2013.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I like the idea. … We were able to react faster (than the Met),” Chaslin, the SFO’s chief conductor, said with a grin.</p>
<p>He called “Tosca” “a perfect play. There’s not one redundant word. … So every word is sharp like a knife and goes right to the point.”</p>
<p>Chaslin further described it as one of the operas with the most sexual innuendo and Scarpia, who casts a long, dark shadow over the story, is at the center of those innuendos and the treachery.</p>
<p>Scarpia is the villainous chief of police of Rome in 1800 who desperately wants to seduce Tosca. In his nefarious plan he encourages Tosca to believe that Cavaradossi is cheating on her.</p>
<p>Scarpia – the pivot around which the other characters turn – is the very reason why patrons are crazy about the opera, Chaslin said.</p>
<p>He said he has been attracted to each successive “Star Wars” movie because of the villainy – the presence of Darth Vader.</p>
<p>Stephen Barlow, the director of the SFO production, said Scarpia reminds him of the villains in Alfred Hitchcock films.</p>
<p>“He gets you almost on the villain’s side. He’s always very seductive. There’s that kind of quality there is in ‘Tosca,'” he said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The role of Scarpia is being shared by the bass Raymond Aceto and the baritone Thomas Hampson. Aceto sings the first seven performances; Hampson the remaining five.</p>
<p>The arias, Chaslin said, are amazingly short, “but that doesn’t mean they are easy. … There is the famous aria that is four or five minutes long and it’s the orchestra that plays most of it. That’s the reason why it’s so magic. You can’t sing in there and make yourself comfortable.”</p>
<p>In Act II the character of Tosca sings the aria “Visi d’arte.” In it she sings how unfair life has been to her, though she’s devoted herself to love, art and beauty. Another well known aria, “E lucevan le stelle,” which Cavaradossi sings in Act III.</p>
<p>In terms of the staging, Barlow said he wants the SFO production to be faithful to the libretto and the story, “but within that to find moments which were new. … we are still finding lots of fresh and imaginative departures. … So in this staging things happen. People who know the opera will be pleasantly surprised. There are some nice surprises ahead.”</p>
<p>Having said that, Barlow noted, he and his design team are still finding “lots of fresh and imaginative departures” in being true to the libretto.</p>
<p>The production’s scenic and costume designer is Yannis Thavoris and the lighting designer is Duane Schuler.</p>
<p>The Australian-born Barlow directed Echalaz in the 2008 Opera Holland Park production of “Tosca” London that got her raves from critics. Barlow is making his SFO debut with this opera.</p>
<p>” ‘Tosca’ has all the ingredients for a great opera,” Echalaz said. “It makes for a very exciting evening.”</p>
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Soprano to make her U.S. debut
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https://abqjournal.com/114679/soprano-to-make-her-us-debut.html
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2012-06-24
| 2least
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Soprano to make her U.S. debut
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<p />
<p>Echalaz will make that debut in the title role of Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Tosca.” It is her signature role, one that she has sung 30 or 40 times in England, Germany and Austria.</p>
<p>And Echalaz has received widespread praise for her interpretation of Tosca. One British reviewer said her Tosca is “thrillingly sung. Echalaz is now set to be the leading Tosca of her generation.” Another reviewer said Echalaz’s Tosca that she sang at the Royal Opera House, “on the very stage (Maria) Callas once trod, was blessed with a temperament and a completeness that was world class.”</p>
<p>Frédéric Chaslin, who is conducting “Tosca” at the SFO, said he is very proud that Echalaz and tenor Andrew Richards, who sings Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi, are singing in Santa Fe before they sing at the Metropolitan Opera. Echalaz will sing “Tosca” at the Met in a future season. Richards makes his Met debut as Don Jose in “Carmen” in 2013.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I like the idea. … We were able to react faster (than the Met),” Chaslin, the SFO’s chief conductor, said with a grin.</p>
<p>He called “Tosca” “a perfect play. There’s not one redundant word. … So every word is sharp like a knife and goes right to the point.”</p>
<p>Chaslin further described it as one of the operas with the most sexual innuendo and Scarpia, who casts a long, dark shadow over the story, is at the center of those innuendos and the treachery.</p>
<p>Scarpia is the villainous chief of police of Rome in 1800 who desperately wants to seduce Tosca. In his nefarious plan he encourages Tosca to believe that Cavaradossi is cheating on her.</p>
<p>Scarpia – the pivot around which the other characters turn – is the very reason why patrons are crazy about the opera, Chaslin said.</p>
<p>He said he has been attracted to each successive “Star Wars” movie because of the villainy – the presence of Darth Vader.</p>
<p>Stephen Barlow, the director of the SFO production, said Scarpia reminds him of the villains in Alfred Hitchcock films.</p>
<p>“He gets you almost on the villain’s side. He’s always very seductive. There’s that kind of quality there is in ‘Tosca,'” he said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The role of Scarpia is being shared by the bass Raymond Aceto and the baritone Thomas Hampson. Aceto sings the first seven performances; Hampson the remaining five.</p>
<p>The arias, Chaslin said, are amazingly short, “but that doesn’t mean they are easy. … There is the famous aria that is four or five minutes long and it’s the orchestra that plays most of it. That’s the reason why it’s so magic. You can’t sing in there and make yourself comfortable.”</p>
<p>In Act II the character of Tosca sings the aria “Visi d’arte.” In it she sings how unfair life has been to her, though she’s devoted herself to love, art and beauty. Another well known aria, “E lucevan le stelle,” which Cavaradossi sings in Act III.</p>
<p>In terms of the staging, Barlow said he wants the SFO production to be faithful to the libretto and the story, “but within that to find moments which were new. … we are still finding lots of fresh and imaginative departures. … So in this staging things happen. People who know the opera will be pleasantly surprised. There are some nice surprises ahead.”</p>
<p>Having said that, Barlow noted, he and his design team are still finding “lots of fresh and imaginative departures” in being true to the libretto.</p>
<p>The production’s scenic and costume designer is Yannis Thavoris and the lighting designer is Duane Schuler.</p>
<p>The Australian-born Barlow directed Echalaz in the 2008 Opera Holland Park production of “Tosca” London that got her raves from critics. Barlow is making his SFO debut with this opera.</p>
<p>” ‘Tosca’ has all the ingredients for a great opera,” Echalaz said. “It makes for a very exciting evening.”</p>
| 5,606 |
<p>Will Martin, head football coach at Beaumont High School in Beaumont, California, is in hot water after cell phone video surfaced of him punching one of his students in the stomach, allegedly as a form of punishment:</p>
<p>An anonymous parent provided <a href="http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Beaumont-teacher-punches-student-cellphone-video-450841283.html" type="external">NBC4</a>, a Los Angeles NBC affiliate, with the video. The son of the anonymous parent said the behavior seen in the footage is common practice with coach Martin, and that this is far from the only time it has happened.</p>
<p>Jessica Taylor, a football mom quoted by NBC4, doesn’t think it’s a big deal: "If it's so bad, why are the kids laughing? Why are the kids thinking it's funny?" Taylor added that her son claims activity like that is normal.</p>
<p>However, the school district isn’t so nonchalant about the situation. Beaumont Unified School District spokesperson, Francinni Zabata, said in a statement:</p>
<p>On October 3, 2017, the Beaumont Unified School District administration was informed of allegations of misconduct by a Beaumont High School teacher. The teacher was immediately put on administrative leave and the district is conducting a thorough investigation...We want to reassure parents that our No. 1 priority is the safety and well-being of our students, and that the Beaumont Unified School District takes reports of teacher misconduct very seriously.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://footballscoop.com/news/video-hs-coach-punches-player-stomach/" type="external">Football Scoop</a>, the video has been given to police and Martin "could face criminal charges."</p>
|
VIDEO: High School Football Coach Punches Student Athlete In The Stomach
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/22391/video-high-school-football-coach-punches-student-frank-camp
|
2017-10-17
| 0right
|
VIDEO: High School Football Coach Punches Student Athlete In The Stomach
<p>Will Martin, head football coach at Beaumont High School in Beaumont, California, is in hot water after cell phone video surfaced of him punching one of his students in the stomach, allegedly as a form of punishment:</p>
<p>An anonymous parent provided <a href="http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Beaumont-teacher-punches-student-cellphone-video-450841283.html" type="external">NBC4</a>, a Los Angeles NBC affiliate, with the video. The son of the anonymous parent said the behavior seen in the footage is common practice with coach Martin, and that this is far from the only time it has happened.</p>
<p>Jessica Taylor, a football mom quoted by NBC4, doesn’t think it’s a big deal: "If it's so bad, why are the kids laughing? Why are the kids thinking it's funny?" Taylor added that her son claims activity like that is normal.</p>
<p>However, the school district isn’t so nonchalant about the situation. Beaumont Unified School District spokesperson, Francinni Zabata, said in a statement:</p>
<p>On October 3, 2017, the Beaumont Unified School District administration was informed of allegations of misconduct by a Beaumont High School teacher. The teacher was immediately put on administrative leave and the district is conducting a thorough investigation...We want to reassure parents that our No. 1 priority is the safety and well-being of our students, and that the Beaumont Unified School District takes reports of teacher misconduct very seriously.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://footballscoop.com/news/video-hs-coach-punches-player-stomach/" type="external">Football Scoop</a>, the video has been given to police and Martin "could face criminal charges."</p>
| 5,607 |
<p>A <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/248691.pdf" type="external">study</a> released in February 2015 shows that lone wolf attacks have increased dramatically under President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>The study, conducted by researchers Mark Hamm and Ramon Spaaij and released through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, found that there were 98 lone wolf terrorist attacks between 1940 and 2013. Before the 9/11 terror attacks, there were 38 lone wolf attacks, and after the 9/11 attacks there were 45 lone wolf attacks, 60 if FBI sting operations are included.</p>
<p>Before Obama took office, there were 13 lone wolf attacks in the country, excluding one sting operation. Since Obama has taken office, there have been 32 lone wolf attacks, excluding 14 sting operations–meaning they have more than doubled.</p>
<p>The threat of a lone wolf terror attack cannot be overstated. As radio host and constitutional scholar Mark Levin writes in <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/aaronbandler/2015/08/11/plunder-and-deceit-a-millennials-take-on-mark-levins-new-book-n2036858" type="external">Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future</a>, FBI director James Comey told state attorneys general that he was conducting "home-grown violent extremist investigations in every single state." Levin also cites a Pew Research Center poll that says that 13 percent of Muslims in America view violent attacks against civilians as "often or sometimes justified" or "justified in rare circumstances."</p>
<p>"As there are 1.8 million adult American Muslims in the United States, this suggests at least theoretically as many as thirteen thousand support the use of suicide bombs or other forms of terrorism," writes Levin. "The survey also showed that native Muslims–in particular African-American Muslims–are more likely to support the use of violence."</p>
<p>All it took was one ISIS sympathizer to murder nearly 50 people on Sunday and injuring 53 others.</p>
<p>That's why it's troubling that Obama won't acknowledge that the problem is radical Islamic terrorism. As The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro has <a href="" type="internal">written</a>, calling it radical Islamic terrorism accurately identifies that the clear solution is "true reformation" in Islam to help prevent lone wolf terrorists such as Omar Mateen from becoming radicalized.</p>
<p>Otherwise, the increasing number of lone wolf terror attacks will only continue to skyrocket.</p>
|
FLASHBACK: Study Shows 'Lone Wolf' Attacks Multiplied Catastrophically Under Obama
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/6647/flashback-study-shows-lone-wolf-attacks-multiplied-aaron-bandler
|
2016-06-16
| 0right
|
FLASHBACK: Study Shows 'Lone Wolf' Attacks Multiplied Catastrophically Under Obama
<p>A <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/248691.pdf" type="external">study</a> released in February 2015 shows that lone wolf attacks have increased dramatically under President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>The study, conducted by researchers Mark Hamm and Ramon Spaaij and released through the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, found that there were 98 lone wolf terrorist attacks between 1940 and 2013. Before the 9/11 terror attacks, there were 38 lone wolf attacks, and after the 9/11 attacks there were 45 lone wolf attacks, 60 if FBI sting operations are included.</p>
<p>Before Obama took office, there were 13 lone wolf attacks in the country, excluding one sting operation. Since Obama has taken office, there have been 32 lone wolf attacks, excluding 14 sting operations–meaning they have more than doubled.</p>
<p>The threat of a lone wolf terror attack cannot be overstated. As radio host and constitutional scholar Mark Levin writes in <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/aaronbandler/2015/08/11/plunder-and-deceit-a-millennials-take-on-mark-levins-new-book-n2036858" type="external">Plunder and Deceit: Big Government's Exploitation of Young People and the Future</a>, FBI director James Comey told state attorneys general that he was conducting "home-grown violent extremist investigations in every single state." Levin also cites a Pew Research Center poll that says that 13 percent of Muslims in America view violent attacks against civilians as "often or sometimes justified" or "justified in rare circumstances."</p>
<p>"As there are 1.8 million adult American Muslims in the United States, this suggests at least theoretically as many as thirteen thousand support the use of suicide bombs or other forms of terrorism," writes Levin. "The survey also showed that native Muslims–in particular African-American Muslims–are more likely to support the use of violence."</p>
<p>All it took was one ISIS sympathizer to murder nearly 50 people on Sunday and injuring 53 others.</p>
<p>That's why it's troubling that Obama won't acknowledge that the problem is radical Islamic terrorism. As The Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro has <a href="" type="internal">written</a>, calling it radical Islamic terrorism accurately identifies that the clear solution is "true reformation" in Islam to help prevent lone wolf terrorists such as Omar Mateen from becoming radicalized.</p>
<p>Otherwise, the increasing number of lone wolf terror attacks will only continue to skyrocket.</p>
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<p>PASADENA, Calif. — New Mexico State coach Doug Martin knew his team faced long odds against an inspired opponent on a hallowed field. He still emerged from the Aggies’ latest blowout loss with a few reasons to be optimistic. Brett Hundley passed for 280 yards and three touchdowns, and No. 13 UCLA honored late receiver Nick Pasquale throughout its 59-13 victory Saturday night. Jordon James rushed for a career-best 164 yards and two scores as UCLA (3-0) racked up a school-record 692 yards while routing the overmatched Aggies (0-4) in its first home game since Pasquale was hit by a car and killed two weeks ago. New Mexico State has been beaten by a combined 201-62 this season. Martin chose to be encouraged by solid play from two quarterbacks and opportunistic defensive plays to force three UCLA turnovers in the red zone. “Our kids played their hearts out,” Martin said. “We were just a little overmatched, especially up front. But that’s a really good football team we played, and I thought we played as hard as we could.” Freshman King Davis III passed for 48 yards in his first start for New Mexico State, which got $550,000 to visit Pasadena as a 42-point underdog for the schools’ first meeting. Brandon Betancourt rushed for a late touchdown in his first start for the Aggies, who have lost 15 straight games. Andrew McDonald, who lost his starting job to Davis this week, took over in the third quarter after Davis left with a possible concussion. McDonald threw a 33-yard TD pass to Adam Shapiro in the fourth quarter to avoid the shutout. “I thought both (quarterbacks) played really well,” Martin said. “King was under duress tonight, but he moved the offense well. Andrew came in and played well. We’ve just got to get more big plays and get a little more consistent.” Martin said Davis’ health will be evaluated before he picks a starter for next week’s visit from San Diego State. The Aggies started out splendidly on defense. After Steven Manfro returned the opening kickoff to the New Mexico State 16, Davis Cazares recovered James’ fumble at the New Mexico State 5 on the Bruins’ second play. Hundley then threw an interception to Cazares at the Aggies 1 on UCLA’s second drive. “Our defense all year long has been fantastic at (forcing turnovers),” said Martin, whose Aggies already have matched last season’s total of nine takeaways in their first four games. “If they can keep that up, it’s going to give us a chance to win some games.” UCLA settled down after an emotional early tribute to Pasquale, including a 10-man play on the Bruins’ opening snap. The Rose Bowl crowd waved blue towels and wore T-shirts emblazoned with his No. 36. Pasquale’s parents and brother joined coach Jim Mora and athletic director Dan Guerrero for a ceremony after the first quarter on the field near where his name and jersey number was painted on the hallowed turf. “It’s amazing to honor him like that,” said Manfro, who caught a TD pass and rushed for another score. “This game, this whole season is for him.” Devin Fuller and Shaq Evans also caught scoring passes from Hundley for the Bruins, who blew out the Aggies even while committing three turnovers inside the New Mexico State 5. Manfro also rushed for a score as UCLA took a 45-0 lead through three quarters, giving the Bruins 83 consecutive points after scoring the final 38 in last week’s comeback victory at Nebraska. Malcolm Jones rushed for two fourth-quarter touchdowns for UCLA, which has scored 50 points in consecutive home games for the first time since 1973. “Any time you have three turnovers in the red zone and some penalties, you’re not happy about that,” UCLA offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone said. “It was an inconsistent night for us offensively.” With last week’s win at Nebraska and this blowout, the Bruins embraced Mora’s desire for his team to play in a way that would honor Pasquale. The entire UCLA roster arrived at the Rose Bowl wearing the same No. 36 T-shirts that were sold to fans, with all proceeds going to the Nick Pasquale Foundation. The Bruins finally started the rout when James scored from 4 yards out late in the first quarter. Manfro added another score early in the second, turning a short reception into a 20-yard TD with a slick move. Ishmael Adams returned an interception 52 yards to end New Mexico State’s first good drive. Star Bruins linebacker Anthony Barr got credit for his first sack of the season when he simply took the ball out of Davis’ cocked hand late in the second quarter. New Mexico State’s Anthony Edwards was ejected in the third quarter with a targeting penalty for a head hit on Evans. Moments later, Hundley threw his second interception at the goal line. But UCLA kept rolling, with James carrying the ball three times for 55 yards and a touchdown in just 32 seconds late in the third quarter, putting the Bruins ahead 45-0.</p>
<p>New Mexico St.&#160;&#160; &#160;0&#160;&#160; &#160;0&#160;&#160; &#160;0&#160;&#160; &#160;13–13&lt;cTypeface:&gt; UCLA&#160;&#160; &#160;7&#160;&#160; &#160;24&#160;&#160; &#160;14&#160;&#160; &#160;14–59</p>
<p>First Quarter UCLA-James 4 run (Fairbairn kick), 2:34. Second Quarter UCLA-Manfro 20 pass from Hundley (Fairbairn kick), 13:46. UCLA-Manfro 12 run (Fairbairn kick), 9:28. UCLA-FG Fairbairn 38, 2:39. UCLA-Fuller 21 pass from Hundley (Fairbairn kick), :39. Third Quarter UCLA-Evans 7 pass from Hundley (Fairbairn kick), 2:58. UCLA-James 19 run (Fairbairn kick), 1:24. Fourth Quarter NMSU-Shapiro 33 pass from McDonald (M.Johnson kick), 14:24. UCLA-Jones 3 run (Fairbairn kick), 11:31. NMSU-Betancourt 4 run (kick failed), 7:51. UCLA-Jones 3 run (M.Johnson kick), 4:38. A-58,263. ——— NMSU&#160;&#160; &#160;UCLA First downs&#160;&#160; &#160;21&#160;&#160; &#160;39 Rushes-yards&#160;&#160; &#160;41-187&#160;&#160; &#160;45-298 Passing&#160;&#160; &#160;146&#160;&#160; &#160;394 Comp-Att-Int&#160;&#160; &#160;15-26-1&#160;&#160; &#160;35-49-2 Return Yards&#160;&#160; &#160;25&#160;&#160; &#160;107 Punts-Avg.&#160;&#160; &#160;8-34.8&#160;&#160; &#160;0-0.0 Fumbles-Lost&#160;&#160; &#160;3-1&#160;&#160; &#160;2-1 Penalties-Yards&#160;&#160; &#160;3-35&#160;&#160; &#160;15-138 Time of Possession&#160;&#160; &#160;30:13&#160;&#160; &#160;29:47 —— INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS RUSHING–New Mexico St., Betancourt 18-95, Davis III 12-51,&#160; Morrison 9-45, McDonald 2-(minus 4). UCLA, James 19-164, Hundley 6-33,&#160; Ry.Davis 4-31, Jones 6-25, Perkins 5-23, Manfro 2-14, Harris 1-6,&#160; Fuller 1-4, Team 1-(minus 2). PASSING–New Mexico St., McDonald 9-13-0-98, Davis III 6-13-1-48.&#160; UCLA, Hundley 23-35-2-280, Neuheisel 9-11-0-96, Fafaul 3-3-0-18. RECEIVING–New Mexico St., J.Brown 3-31, Shapiro 2-42, Bowen 2-27,&#160; Matthews 2-15, Scoggins 2-14, Bergstrom 2-11, Morrison 1-4,&#160; Betancourt 1-2. UCLA, Fuller 4-48, Perkins 4-36, Evans 4-32,&#160; Manfro 3-53, Payton 2-37, Lucien 2-30, Bell 2-28, Mazzone 2-28,&#160; Jones 2-26, Andrews 2-25, Hernandez 2-15, Duarte 2-11, Ry.Davis 1-9,&#160; Scott 1-8, Harris 1-5, Sweet 1-3.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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Aggies get blown out at UCLA 59-13
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/267369/aggies-get-blown-out-fall-to-ucla-59-13.html
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2013-09-21
| 2least
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Aggies get blown out at UCLA 59-13
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<p>PASADENA, Calif. — New Mexico State coach Doug Martin knew his team faced long odds against an inspired opponent on a hallowed field. He still emerged from the Aggies’ latest blowout loss with a few reasons to be optimistic. Brett Hundley passed for 280 yards and three touchdowns, and No. 13 UCLA honored late receiver Nick Pasquale throughout its 59-13 victory Saturday night. Jordon James rushed for a career-best 164 yards and two scores as UCLA (3-0) racked up a school-record 692 yards while routing the overmatched Aggies (0-4) in its first home game since Pasquale was hit by a car and killed two weeks ago. New Mexico State has been beaten by a combined 201-62 this season. Martin chose to be encouraged by solid play from two quarterbacks and opportunistic defensive plays to force three UCLA turnovers in the red zone. “Our kids played their hearts out,” Martin said. “We were just a little overmatched, especially up front. But that’s a really good football team we played, and I thought we played as hard as we could.” Freshman King Davis III passed for 48 yards in his first start for New Mexico State, which got $550,000 to visit Pasadena as a 42-point underdog for the schools’ first meeting. Brandon Betancourt rushed for a late touchdown in his first start for the Aggies, who have lost 15 straight games. Andrew McDonald, who lost his starting job to Davis this week, took over in the third quarter after Davis left with a possible concussion. McDonald threw a 33-yard TD pass to Adam Shapiro in the fourth quarter to avoid the shutout. “I thought both (quarterbacks) played really well,” Martin said. “King was under duress tonight, but he moved the offense well. Andrew came in and played well. We’ve just got to get more big plays and get a little more consistent.” Martin said Davis’ health will be evaluated before he picks a starter for next week’s visit from San Diego State. The Aggies started out splendidly on defense. After Steven Manfro returned the opening kickoff to the New Mexico State 16, Davis Cazares recovered James’ fumble at the New Mexico State 5 on the Bruins’ second play. Hundley then threw an interception to Cazares at the Aggies 1 on UCLA’s second drive. “Our defense all year long has been fantastic at (forcing turnovers),” said Martin, whose Aggies already have matched last season’s total of nine takeaways in their first four games. “If they can keep that up, it’s going to give us a chance to win some games.” UCLA settled down after an emotional early tribute to Pasquale, including a 10-man play on the Bruins’ opening snap. The Rose Bowl crowd waved blue towels and wore T-shirts emblazoned with his No. 36. Pasquale’s parents and brother joined coach Jim Mora and athletic director Dan Guerrero for a ceremony after the first quarter on the field near where his name and jersey number was painted on the hallowed turf. “It’s amazing to honor him like that,” said Manfro, who caught a TD pass and rushed for another score. “This game, this whole season is for him.” Devin Fuller and Shaq Evans also caught scoring passes from Hundley for the Bruins, who blew out the Aggies even while committing three turnovers inside the New Mexico State 5. Manfro also rushed for a score as UCLA took a 45-0 lead through three quarters, giving the Bruins 83 consecutive points after scoring the final 38 in last week’s comeback victory at Nebraska. Malcolm Jones rushed for two fourth-quarter touchdowns for UCLA, which has scored 50 points in consecutive home games for the first time since 1973. “Any time you have three turnovers in the red zone and some penalties, you’re not happy about that,” UCLA offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone said. “It was an inconsistent night for us offensively.” With last week’s win at Nebraska and this blowout, the Bruins embraced Mora’s desire for his team to play in a way that would honor Pasquale. The entire UCLA roster arrived at the Rose Bowl wearing the same No. 36 T-shirts that were sold to fans, with all proceeds going to the Nick Pasquale Foundation. The Bruins finally started the rout when James scored from 4 yards out late in the first quarter. Manfro added another score early in the second, turning a short reception into a 20-yard TD with a slick move. Ishmael Adams returned an interception 52 yards to end New Mexico State’s first good drive. Star Bruins linebacker Anthony Barr got credit for his first sack of the season when he simply took the ball out of Davis’ cocked hand late in the second quarter. New Mexico State’s Anthony Edwards was ejected in the third quarter with a targeting penalty for a head hit on Evans. Moments later, Hundley threw his second interception at the goal line. But UCLA kept rolling, with James carrying the ball three times for 55 yards and a touchdown in just 32 seconds late in the third quarter, putting the Bruins ahead 45-0.</p>
<p>New Mexico St.&#160;&#160; &#160;0&#160;&#160; &#160;0&#160;&#160; &#160;0&#160;&#160; &#160;13–13&lt;cTypeface:&gt; UCLA&#160;&#160; &#160;7&#160;&#160; &#160;24&#160;&#160; &#160;14&#160;&#160; &#160;14–59</p>
<p>First Quarter UCLA-James 4 run (Fairbairn kick), 2:34. Second Quarter UCLA-Manfro 20 pass from Hundley (Fairbairn kick), 13:46. UCLA-Manfro 12 run (Fairbairn kick), 9:28. UCLA-FG Fairbairn 38, 2:39. UCLA-Fuller 21 pass from Hundley (Fairbairn kick), :39. Third Quarter UCLA-Evans 7 pass from Hundley (Fairbairn kick), 2:58. UCLA-James 19 run (Fairbairn kick), 1:24. Fourth Quarter NMSU-Shapiro 33 pass from McDonald (M.Johnson kick), 14:24. UCLA-Jones 3 run (Fairbairn kick), 11:31. NMSU-Betancourt 4 run (kick failed), 7:51. UCLA-Jones 3 run (M.Johnson kick), 4:38. A-58,263. ——— NMSU&#160;&#160; &#160;UCLA First downs&#160;&#160; &#160;21&#160;&#160; &#160;39 Rushes-yards&#160;&#160; &#160;41-187&#160;&#160; &#160;45-298 Passing&#160;&#160; &#160;146&#160;&#160; &#160;394 Comp-Att-Int&#160;&#160; &#160;15-26-1&#160;&#160; &#160;35-49-2 Return Yards&#160;&#160; &#160;25&#160;&#160; &#160;107 Punts-Avg.&#160;&#160; &#160;8-34.8&#160;&#160; &#160;0-0.0 Fumbles-Lost&#160;&#160; &#160;3-1&#160;&#160; &#160;2-1 Penalties-Yards&#160;&#160; &#160;3-35&#160;&#160; &#160;15-138 Time of Possession&#160;&#160; &#160;30:13&#160;&#160; &#160;29:47 —— INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS RUSHING–New Mexico St., Betancourt 18-95, Davis III 12-51,&#160; Morrison 9-45, McDonald 2-(minus 4). UCLA, James 19-164, Hundley 6-33,&#160; Ry.Davis 4-31, Jones 6-25, Perkins 5-23, Manfro 2-14, Harris 1-6,&#160; Fuller 1-4, Team 1-(minus 2). PASSING–New Mexico St., McDonald 9-13-0-98, Davis III 6-13-1-48.&#160; UCLA, Hundley 23-35-2-280, Neuheisel 9-11-0-96, Fafaul 3-3-0-18. RECEIVING–New Mexico St., J.Brown 3-31, Shapiro 2-42, Bowen 2-27,&#160; Matthews 2-15, Scoggins 2-14, Bergstrom 2-11, Morrison 1-4,&#160; Betancourt 1-2. UCLA, Fuller 4-48, Perkins 4-36, Evans 4-32,&#160; Manfro 3-53, Payton 2-37, Lucien 2-30, Bell 2-28, Mazzone 2-28,&#160; Jones 2-26, Andrews 2-25, Hernandez 2-15, Duarte 2-11, Ry.Davis 1-9,&#160; Scott 1-8, Harris 1-5, Sweet 1-3.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,609 |
<p>A group of Chinese students <a href="http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20110718-289807.html" type="external">creatively torturing a pig</a> has prompted Internet outrage in China and a justification from the abusers.</p>
<p>Sorry, the boys say. It was just a "class experiment."</p>
<p>Photos gone viral in China show the boys strangling, drowning and stringing up multiple pigs from a pole. The students from Nanning city are reportedly studying at a special police prep school, according to the <a href="http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/pig-abuse-gate-chinese-youth-beat-pigs-with-poles-in-nanning.html" type="external">ChinaSmack site, which has translated coverage</a> from the Chinese-language press.</p>
<p>"What's Wrong With Kids These Days?" read the headline of an article in the <a href="http://news.ifeng.com/society/2/detail_2011_07/06/7471948_0.shtml" type="external">Chinese news site ifeng.com</a>. The students, according to ifeng, claim to have conducted a "forensics class experiment undertaken by criminal investigation and special police students."</p>
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Chinese boys claim pig abuse is just "class experiment"
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2011-07-20/chinese-boys-claim-pig-abuse-just-class-experiment
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2011-07-20
| 3left-center
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Chinese boys claim pig abuse is just "class experiment"
<p>A group of Chinese students <a href="http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20110718-289807.html" type="external">creatively torturing a pig</a> has prompted Internet outrage in China and a justification from the abusers.</p>
<p>Sorry, the boys say. It was just a "class experiment."</p>
<p>Photos gone viral in China show the boys strangling, drowning and stringing up multiple pigs from a pole. The students from Nanning city are reportedly studying at a special police prep school, according to the <a href="http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/pictures/pig-abuse-gate-chinese-youth-beat-pigs-with-poles-in-nanning.html" type="external">ChinaSmack site, which has translated coverage</a> from the Chinese-language press.</p>
<p>"What's Wrong With Kids These Days?" read the headline of an article in the <a href="http://news.ifeng.com/society/2/detail_2011_07/06/7471948_0.shtml" type="external">Chinese news site ifeng.com</a>. The students, according to ifeng, claim to have conducted a "forensics class experiment undertaken by criminal investigation and special police students."</p>
<p />
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| 5,610 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.”</p>
<p>— Henry Ford, 1916</p>
<p>On some days, a glance at the leading stories in the Western media strongly suggests that Muslims everywhere, of all stripes, have gone berserk. It appears that Muslims have lost their minds.</p>
<p>In any week, we are confronted with reports of Islamic suicide attacks against Western targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Western countries themselves; terrorists foiled before they could act; terrorist attacks gone awry; terrorists indicted; terrorists convicted; terrorists tortured; terrorist suspects kidnapped by CIA; or warnings of new terrorist attacks against Western targets.</p>
<p>Unprovoked, without cause–we are repeatedly told–Muslims everywhere, even those living in the West, are lashing out against the civilized West. Many in the Western world–especially in the US–are beginning to believe that the entire Islamic world is on the warpath against Civilization itself.</p>
<p>Expert commentators in Western media want us to believe that the Muslims have lost their minds. They tell us that Muslims are inherently, innately, perverse; that never before has violence been used in this way, against innocent civilians. It is always ‘innocent’ civilians.</p>
<p>Other peoples too have endured colonization, slavery, expulsions, extermination at the hands of Western powers: but none have responded with violence on this scale against the West. Certainly not with violence against civilians. Never have Aborigines, Africans, indigenous Americans, Hindus, Jews, or the Chinese targeted civilians. They never attacked Westerners indiscriminately. They never targeted ‘innocent Western civilians.’</p>
<p>Is this ‘insanity’ slowly raising its head across the Islamic world really unique? Is this ‘insanity’ a uniquely Islamic phenomenon? Is this a uniquely contemporary phenomenon? Is this ‘insanity’ unprovoked?</p>
<p>We cannot of course expect any history from the corporate US media on this Islamic ‘insanity.’ In order to take the moral high ground, to claim innocence, the rich and powerful–the oppressor classes–prefer not to talk about history, or invent the history that serves their interest.</p>
<p>What is surprising, however, is that few writers even on the left bring much history to their analysis of unfolding events. Not being a historian–of Islam, China or Britain–I can only thank serendipity for the little bit of history that I will invoke to provide some background to the ‘malaise’ unfolding in the Islamic world. A little history to connect Islam today to China in the middle of the nineteenth century.</p>
<p>Implausibly–perhaps for some–the history I invoke comes from Friedrich Engels–yes, he of the Communist Manifesto, friend of Karl Marx, revolutionary–writing in May 1857 when the British were waging war against China, known to history as the Second Opium War.</p>
<p>More implausibly, this history comes from an article published in a leading US newspaper: The New York Daily Tribune (available in Marx and Engels Internet Archiv). Yes, in some remote past, a leading US newspaper routinely published commentaries by the likes of Marx and Engels. Today, the publishers of NYT, the Washington Post or LA Times would become apoplectic just thinking about it.</p>
<p>During the First Opium War of 1840-42, when the British waged war to defend their ‘right’ to smuggle opium into China–Friedrich Engels writes — “the people were quiet; they left the Emperor’s soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy.” Yes, in those times, even enlightened Westerners spoke habitually of Oriental fatalism, fanaticism, sloth, backwardness, and–not to forget their favorite–despotism.</p>
<p>However, something strange had overtaken the Chinese some fifteen years later. For, during the Second Opium War, writes Friedrich Engels, “the mass of people take an active, nay fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at Hongkong by wholesale, and with the coolest premeditationThey go with hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers and seize the boat. They kill and kidnap every foreigner within their reach.”</p>
<p>Had the Chinese decided to trade one Oriental disease for another: fatalism for fanaticism? Ah, these Orientals! Why can’t they just stick to their fatalism? If only the Orientals could stick to their fatalism, all our conquests would have been such cakewalks!</p>
<p>It was no ordinary fanaticism either. Outside the borders of their country, the Chinese were mounting suicide attacks against Westerners. “The very coolies,” writes Friedrich Engels, “emigrating to foreign countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames. Even out of China, the Chinese colonistsconspire and suddenly rise in nightly insurrection”</p>
<p>Why do the Chinese hate us?</p>
<p>No doubt the Europeans then were asking this question. And, like the democracy-mongers in the United States today, unwilling to examine the root causes, the history of their own atrocities, unwilling to acknowledge how they “throw hot shell on a defenseless city and add rape to murder,” the Europeans then too were outraged. European statesmen and newspapers fulminated endlessly about Chinese barbarity, calling their attacks “cowardly, barbarous, atrocious” The Europeans too called for more wars, endless wars, till China could be subdued, totally.</p>
<p>Friedrich Engels was not deceived by the moralizing of the British press. Yes, the Chinese are still ‘barbarians,’ but the source of this “universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners” was “the piratical policy of the British government.” Piratical policy? No, never! We are on a civilizing mission; la mission civilizatrice Européenne. It was not a message that the West has been ready to heed: then or now.</p>
<p>Why had the Chinese chosen this form of warfare? What had gone wrong? Was this rage born of envy; was it integral to the Chinese ethos; was this rage aimed only at destroying the West? Westerners claim “their kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres” are cowardly; but, Friedrich Engels answers, the “civilization-mongers should not forget that according to their own showing they [the Chinese] could not stand against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare.” In other words, this was asymmetric warfare. If the weaker party in a combat possesses cunning, it will probe and fight the enemy’s weaknesses: not its strengths.</p>
<p>Then as now, this asymmetric warfare caused consternation in the West. How can the Europeans win when the enemy neutralizes the West’s enormous advantage in technology, when the enemy refuses to offer itself as a fixed target, when it deploys merely its human assets, its daring, cunning, its readiness to sacrifice bodies?</p>
<p>“What is an army to do,” asks Engels, “against a people resorting to such means of warfare? Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the enemy’s country, how to maintain itself there?” The West again confronts that question in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The West has ‘penetrated into the enemy’s country,’ but is having considerable trouble maintaining itself there. Increasingly, Western statesmen are asking: Can they maintain this presence without inviting more attacks?</p>
<p>Friedrich Engels asked the British to give up “moralizing on the horrible atrocities of the Chinese.” Instead, he advises them to recognize that “this is a war pro aris et focis [“for altars and hearth”], a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war.” If we can ignore the stench of Western prejudice in this instance, there is a message here that the West might heed. Is it possible that the Muslims too are waging a “popular war,” a war for the dignity, sovereignty of Islamic peoples?</p>
<p>In 1857, the Chinese war against Westerners too was confined to Southern China. However, “it would be a very dangerous war for the English if the fanaticism extends to the people of the interior.” The British might destroy Canton, attack the coastal areas, but could they carry their attacks into the interior? Even if the British threw their entire might into the war, it “would not suffice to conquer and hold the two provinces of Kwangtung and Kwang-si. What, then, can they do further?”</p>
<p>The United States and Israel now hold Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. How strong, how firm is their hold? On the one hand, they appear to be in a much stronger position than the British in China. They have the ‘rulers’–the Mubaraks, Musharrafs and Malikis–in their back pockets. But how long can these ‘rulers’ stand against their people?</p>
<p>What if the insurgency that now appears like a distant cloud on the horizon–no larger than a man’s fist–is really the precursor of a popular war? What if the “extremists,” “militants,” “terrorists,” are the advance guard of a popular war to restore sovereignty to Islamic peoples? Can the US and Israel win this war against close to a quarter of the world’s population? Will this be a war worth fighting: worth winning?</p>
<p>Shouldn’t these great powers heed the words of Friedrich Engels? Shouldn’t they heed history itself. After nearly a century of hard struggle, the Chinese gained their sovereignty in 1948, driving out every imperialist power from its shores? Today, China is the world’s most powerful engine of capitalist development. It threatens no neighbor. Its secret service is not busy destabilizing any country in the world. At least not yet.</p>
<p>Imagine a world today–and over the past sixty years–if the West and Japan had succeeded in fragmenting China, splintering the unity of this great and ancient civilization, and persisted in rubbing China’s face in the dirt? How many millions of troops would the West have to deploy to defends its client states in what is now China–the Chinese equivalents of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq? If Vietnam bled the United States, imagine the consequences of a quagmire in China?</p>
<p>Would the United States prefer this turbulent but splintered China–held down at massive costs in blood and treasure, with bases, client states, wars, and unending terrorist attacks on American interests everywhere in the world–to the China that it has today, united, prosperous, at peace; a competitor but also one of its largest trading partners?</p>
<p>At what cost, and for how long, will the United States, Europe and Israel continue to support the splintering, occupation and exploitation of the Islamic heartland they had imposed during World War I? At what cost–to themselves and the peoples of the Islamic world? There are times when it is smarter to retrench than to hold on to past gains.</p>
<p>That time is now: and that time may be running out.</p>
<p>Another turn of the screw–another attack by the United States or Israel–and this window may close irrevocably. If wars, civil conflicts or revolutions sweep across the Islamic world–unlike the Chinese revolution, most likely this turbulence will not be confined to one segment of Asia. In one way or another, this violence will draw the whole world into its vortex. One cannot even begin to imagine all the ramifications, all the human costs of such a conflagration.</p>
<p>The most vital question before the world today is: Can the United States, Israel or both be prevented from starting this conflagration?</p>
<p>M. SHAHID ALAM is professor of economics at Northeastern University, and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1889999458/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on America’s ‘War Against Islam’</a> (IPI Publications: 2007). He may be reached at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>© M. SHAHID ALAM</p>
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Islam Now, China Then
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2007/07/24/islam-now-china-then/
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2007-07-24
| 4left
|
Islam Now, China Then
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.”</p>
<p>— Henry Ford, 1916</p>
<p>On some days, a glance at the leading stories in the Western media strongly suggests that Muslims everywhere, of all stripes, have gone berserk. It appears that Muslims have lost their minds.</p>
<p>In any week, we are confronted with reports of Islamic suicide attacks against Western targets in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan or Western countries themselves; terrorists foiled before they could act; terrorist attacks gone awry; terrorists indicted; terrorists convicted; terrorists tortured; terrorist suspects kidnapped by CIA; or warnings of new terrorist attacks against Western targets.</p>
<p>Unprovoked, without cause–we are repeatedly told–Muslims everywhere, even those living in the West, are lashing out against the civilized West. Many in the Western world–especially in the US–are beginning to believe that the entire Islamic world is on the warpath against Civilization itself.</p>
<p>Expert commentators in Western media want us to believe that the Muslims have lost their minds. They tell us that Muslims are inherently, innately, perverse; that never before has violence been used in this way, against innocent civilians. It is always ‘innocent’ civilians.</p>
<p>Other peoples too have endured colonization, slavery, expulsions, extermination at the hands of Western powers: but none have responded with violence on this scale against the West. Certainly not with violence against civilians. Never have Aborigines, Africans, indigenous Americans, Hindus, Jews, or the Chinese targeted civilians. They never attacked Westerners indiscriminately. They never targeted ‘innocent Western civilians.’</p>
<p>Is this ‘insanity’ slowly raising its head across the Islamic world really unique? Is this ‘insanity’ a uniquely Islamic phenomenon? Is this a uniquely contemporary phenomenon? Is this ‘insanity’ unprovoked?</p>
<p>We cannot of course expect any history from the corporate US media on this Islamic ‘insanity.’ In order to take the moral high ground, to claim innocence, the rich and powerful–the oppressor classes–prefer not to talk about history, or invent the history that serves their interest.</p>
<p>What is surprising, however, is that few writers even on the left bring much history to their analysis of unfolding events. Not being a historian–of Islam, China or Britain–I can only thank serendipity for the little bit of history that I will invoke to provide some background to the ‘malaise’ unfolding in the Islamic world. A little history to connect Islam today to China in the middle of the nineteenth century.</p>
<p>Implausibly–perhaps for some–the history I invoke comes from Friedrich Engels–yes, he of the Communist Manifesto, friend of Karl Marx, revolutionary–writing in May 1857 when the British were waging war against China, known to history as the Second Opium War.</p>
<p>More implausibly, this history comes from an article published in a leading US newspaper: The New York Daily Tribune (available in Marx and Engels Internet Archiv). Yes, in some remote past, a leading US newspaper routinely published commentaries by the likes of Marx and Engels. Today, the publishers of NYT, the Washington Post or LA Times would become apoplectic just thinking about it.</p>
<p>During the First Opium War of 1840-42, when the British waged war to defend their ‘right’ to smuggle opium into China–Friedrich Engels writes — “the people were quiet; they left the Emperor’s soldiers to fight the invaders, and submitted after defeat with Eastern fatalism to the power of the enemy.” Yes, in those times, even enlightened Westerners spoke habitually of Oriental fatalism, fanaticism, sloth, backwardness, and–not to forget their favorite–despotism.</p>
<p>However, something strange had overtaken the Chinese some fifteen years later. For, during the Second Opium War, writes Friedrich Engels, “the mass of people take an active, nay fanatical part in the struggle against the foreigners. They poison the bread of the European community at Hongkong by wholesale, and with the coolest premeditationThey go with hidden arms on board trading steamers, and, when on the journey, massacre the crew and European passengers and seize the boat. They kill and kidnap every foreigner within their reach.”</p>
<p>Had the Chinese decided to trade one Oriental disease for another: fatalism for fanaticism? Ah, these Orientals! Why can’t they just stick to their fatalism? If only the Orientals could stick to their fatalism, all our conquests would have been such cakewalks!</p>
<p>It was no ordinary fanaticism either. Outside the borders of their country, the Chinese were mounting suicide attacks against Westerners. “The very coolies,” writes Friedrich Engels, “emigrating to foreign countries rise in mutiny, and as if by concert, on board every emigrant ship, and fight for its possession, and, rather than surrender, go down to the bottom with it, or perish in its flames. Even out of China, the Chinese colonistsconspire and suddenly rise in nightly insurrection”</p>
<p>Why do the Chinese hate us?</p>
<p>No doubt the Europeans then were asking this question. And, like the democracy-mongers in the United States today, unwilling to examine the root causes, the history of their own atrocities, unwilling to acknowledge how they “throw hot shell on a defenseless city and add rape to murder,” the Europeans then too were outraged. European statesmen and newspapers fulminated endlessly about Chinese barbarity, calling their attacks “cowardly, barbarous, atrocious” The Europeans too called for more wars, endless wars, till China could be subdued, totally.</p>
<p>Friedrich Engels was not deceived by the moralizing of the British press. Yes, the Chinese are still ‘barbarians,’ but the source of this “universal outbreak of all Chinese against all foreigners” was “the piratical policy of the British government.” Piratical policy? No, never! We are on a civilizing mission; la mission civilizatrice Européenne. It was not a message that the West has been ready to heed: then or now.</p>
<p>Why had the Chinese chosen this form of warfare? What had gone wrong? Was this rage born of envy; was it integral to the Chinese ethos; was this rage aimed only at destroying the West? Westerners claim “their kidnappings, surprises, midnight massacres” are cowardly; but, Friedrich Engels answers, the “civilization-mongers should not forget that according to their own showing they [the Chinese] could not stand against European means of destruction with their ordinary means of warfare.” In other words, this was asymmetric warfare. If the weaker party in a combat possesses cunning, it will probe and fight the enemy’s weaknesses: not its strengths.</p>
<p>Then as now, this asymmetric warfare caused consternation in the West. How can the Europeans win when the enemy neutralizes the West’s enormous advantage in technology, when the enemy refuses to offer itself as a fixed target, when it deploys merely its human assets, its daring, cunning, its readiness to sacrifice bodies?</p>
<p>“What is an army to do,” asks Engels, “against a people resorting to such means of warfare? Where, how far, is it to penetrate into the enemy’s country, how to maintain itself there?” The West again confronts that question in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. The West has ‘penetrated into the enemy’s country,’ but is having considerable trouble maintaining itself there. Increasingly, Western statesmen are asking: Can they maintain this presence without inviting more attacks?</p>
<p>Friedrich Engels asked the British to give up “moralizing on the horrible atrocities of the Chinese.” Instead, he advises them to recognize that “this is a war pro aris et focis [“for altars and hearth”], a popular war for the maintenance of Chinese nationality, with all its overbearing prejudice, stupidity, learned ignorance and pedantic barbarism if you like, but yet a popular war.” If we can ignore the stench of Western prejudice in this instance, there is a message here that the West might heed. Is it possible that the Muslims too are waging a “popular war,” a war for the dignity, sovereignty of Islamic peoples?</p>
<p>In 1857, the Chinese war against Westerners too was confined to Southern China. However, “it would be a very dangerous war for the English if the fanaticism extends to the people of the interior.” The British might destroy Canton, attack the coastal areas, but could they carry their attacks into the interior? Even if the British threw their entire might into the war, it “would not suffice to conquer and hold the two provinces of Kwangtung and Kwang-si. What, then, can they do further?”</p>
<p>The United States and Israel now hold Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. How strong, how firm is their hold? On the one hand, they appear to be in a much stronger position than the British in China. They have the ‘rulers’–the Mubaraks, Musharrafs and Malikis–in their back pockets. But how long can these ‘rulers’ stand against their people?</p>
<p>What if the insurgency that now appears like a distant cloud on the horizon–no larger than a man’s fist–is really the precursor of a popular war? What if the “extremists,” “militants,” “terrorists,” are the advance guard of a popular war to restore sovereignty to Islamic peoples? Can the US and Israel win this war against close to a quarter of the world’s population? Will this be a war worth fighting: worth winning?</p>
<p>Shouldn’t these great powers heed the words of Friedrich Engels? Shouldn’t they heed history itself. After nearly a century of hard struggle, the Chinese gained their sovereignty in 1948, driving out every imperialist power from its shores? Today, China is the world’s most powerful engine of capitalist development. It threatens no neighbor. Its secret service is not busy destabilizing any country in the world. At least not yet.</p>
<p>Imagine a world today–and over the past sixty years–if the West and Japan had succeeded in fragmenting China, splintering the unity of this great and ancient civilization, and persisted in rubbing China’s face in the dirt? How many millions of troops would the West have to deploy to defends its client states in what is now China–the Chinese equivalents of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq? If Vietnam bled the United States, imagine the consequences of a quagmire in China?</p>
<p>Would the United States prefer this turbulent but splintered China–held down at massive costs in blood and treasure, with bases, client states, wars, and unending terrorist attacks on American interests everywhere in the world–to the China that it has today, united, prosperous, at peace; a competitor but also one of its largest trading partners?</p>
<p>At what cost, and for how long, will the United States, Europe and Israel continue to support the splintering, occupation and exploitation of the Islamic heartland they had imposed during World War I? At what cost–to themselves and the peoples of the Islamic world? There are times when it is smarter to retrench than to hold on to past gains.</p>
<p>That time is now: and that time may be running out.</p>
<p>Another turn of the screw–another attack by the United States or Israel–and this window may close irrevocably. If wars, civil conflicts or revolutions sweep across the Islamic world–unlike the Chinese revolution, most likely this turbulence will not be confined to one segment of Asia. In one way or another, this violence will draw the whole world into its vortex. One cannot even begin to imagine all the ramifications, all the human costs of such a conflagration.</p>
<p>The most vital question before the world today is: Can the United States, Israel or both be prevented from starting this conflagration?</p>
<p>M. SHAHID ALAM is professor of economics at Northeastern University, and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1889999458/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Challenging the New Orientalism: Dissenting Essays on America’s ‘War Against Islam’</a> (IPI Publications: 2007). He may be reached at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>© M. SHAHID ALAM</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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<p />
<p>Hosted by Performance Santa Fe, the ensemble was finishing up an American tour with music by Brahms, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, but there was no slack in the quality of performance.</p>
<p>Impeccable intonation, unfailing sense of ensemble and a thorough understanding of each piece which they are able to convey to an audience with clarity and verve characterize this justifiably renowned organization.</p>
<p>The concert began with Brahms? Sextet in G major, Op. 36, a work he wrote, so the story goes, to console himself for the loss of a young woman he loved. There is little drama in the work, perhaps less than in any large-scale entry in the Romantic repertory. It was not until well into the second movement Scherzo (take that designation with a grain of salt) that the group broke forth with forte sonority.</p>
<p>It came more as shock than surprise after the unbroken lyricism of the opening Allegro non troppo. This is a work of particular introspection, the depth of feeling perfectly conveyed by the ensemble almost despite Brahms' insistence on Classical form.</p>
<p>For the second entry the ensemble turned to something that could hardly be more of a contrast - Shostakovich's Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 11 for string octet. The Prelude is an eclectic combination of neo-Romanticism and more abstruse harmony, typical of the composer. Inconsistency of style never marks the highest level of composition, and Shostakovich frequently resorts to it. The Scherzo was a riot of violent playing and strident, unresolved harmonies. Welcome to Freddy Krueger's birthday party!</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The final work turned back to Romanticism in the most famous of all octets, Mendelssohn's in E-flat major. That a 16-year-old should compose such outstanding melodies is not the most remarkable thing about the work. One either has the gift of melody or not. It cannot be learned or even developed to any great degree. But it is the level of technical skill in presenting his wealth of melodic invention, still youthful and full of bravado, which makes the work quite miraculous.</p>
<p>Generally, chamber music is intended for a room and orchestral music for a hall. But Mendelssohn asks the players for "symphonic orchestral style." Indeed that was what was heard from the St. Martin group, especially in the outer movements. The opening Allegro was a symphonic string section full bore. The Scherzo remained light and airy throughout, foreshadowing the composer's Midsummer Night's Dream music.</p>
<p>Finally the Presto gathered steam constantly, finishing with lightning fast opulent sound as vigorous as the young composer could have imagined. Quite simply, as good as it gets.</p>
<p>For an encore the ensemble gave us an intensely chromatic-ridden arrangement of the standard, "Summertime."</p>
<p />
|
London chamber orchestra conveys clarity and verve
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/585995/london-chamber-orchestra-conveys-clarity-and-verve.html
| 2least
|
London chamber orchestra conveys clarity and verve
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Hosted by Performance Santa Fe, the ensemble was finishing up an American tour with music by Brahms, Shostakovich and Mendelssohn, but there was no slack in the quality of performance.</p>
<p>Impeccable intonation, unfailing sense of ensemble and a thorough understanding of each piece which they are able to convey to an audience with clarity and verve characterize this justifiably renowned organization.</p>
<p>The concert began with Brahms? Sextet in G major, Op. 36, a work he wrote, so the story goes, to console himself for the loss of a young woman he loved. There is little drama in the work, perhaps less than in any large-scale entry in the Romantic repertory. It was not until well into the second movement Scherzo (take that designation with a grain of salt) that the group broke forth with forte sonority.</p>
<p>It came more as shock than surprise after the unbroken lyricism of the opening Allegro non troppo. This is a work of particular introspection, the depth of feeling perfectly conveyed by the ensemble almost despite Brahms' insistence on Classical form.</p>
<p>For the second entry the ensemble turned to something that could hardly be more of a contrast - Shostakovich's Prelude and Scherzo, Op. 11 for string octet. The Prelude is an eclectic combination of neo-Romanticism and more abstruse harmony, typical of the composer. Inconsistency of style never marks the highest level of composition, and Shostakovich frequently resorts to it. The Scherzo was a riot of violent playing and strident, unresolved harmonies. Welcome to Freddy Krueger's birthday party!</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The final work turned back to Romanticism in the most famous of all octets, Mendelssohn's in E-flat major. That a 16-year-old should compose such outstanding melodies is not the most remarkable thing about the work. One either has the gift of melody or not. It cannot be learned or even developed to any great degree. But it is the level of technical skill in presenting his wealth of melodic invention, still youthful and full of bravado, which makes the work quite miraculous.</p>
<p>Generally, chamber music is intended for a room and orchestral music for a hall. But Mendelssohn asks the players for "symphonic orchestral style." Indeed that was what was heard from the St. Martin group, especially in the outer movements. The opening Allegro was a symphonic string section full bore. The Scherzo remained light and airy throughout, foreshadowing the composer's Midsummer Night's Dream music.</p>
<p>Finally the Presto gathered steam constantly, finishing with lightning fast opulent sound as vigorous as the young composer could have imagined. Quite simply, as good as it gets.</p>
<p>For an encore the ensemble gave us an intensely chromatic-ridden arrangement of the standard, "Summertime."</p>
<p />
| 5,612 |
|
<p>EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) — The path for Stefon Diggs to last-play touchdown fame and sudden Minnesota savior didn't start with such brilliance.</p>
<p>Diggs has only arrived at this stage of his life and his career, a Vikings standout on the verge of a Super Bowl, with an unrelenting diligence and a dose of humility.</p>
<p>For all the natural talent of a consensus five-star recruit coming out of high school, he's sure had to work hard to get here.</p>
<p>"He's my guy. I love him to death. I appreciate all he does for this team, and I appreciate all he's done for me," fellow wide receiver Adam Thielen said. "He's pushed me harder than anybody has pushed me in my life."</p>
<p>Remember those first three regular-season games in the NFL? Not really. He was a healthy scratch on the sideline.</p>
<p>That's a long way from the <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Minneapolis-Miracle-Keenum-To-Diggs-For-The-Win/899f7d74-51b0-43f8-a5ea-695e884af19d" type="external">61-yard catch-turn-run sequence that Diggs produced as time expired</a> on Sunday that sent the Vikings to the NFC championship game <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/stunner-keenum-diggs-td-sends-vikings-past-saints-29-24" type="external">with a 29-24 victory over New Orleans</a> .</p>
<p>"He continually has gotten better over the past three years," tight end Kyle Rudolph said.</p>
<p>"It's awesome to see guys like that who work so hard have an opportunity in such a big moment and for them to make the most of it."</p>
<p>Treating each practice as if it's a game is a common response from teammates asked about Diggs and his work ethic. Thielen and Diggs are widely considered to be two of the sharpest and savviest route runners in the league.</p>
<p>"He wants to win. Whether he's getting the ball or he's not getting ball, blocking or not, whatever he's doing, he wants to win," Vikings cornerback Mackensie Alexander said, adding: "The thing I love about Diggs is he doesn't let the game be bigger than him. He just kind of goes in the game, and it's just another game. That allows you to play well."</p>
<p>Setbacks became a recurring theme for Diggs, who chose to stay in his home state and play for Maryland so his family could watch him more often despite offers from powerhouse programs such as Auburn, Florida and USC.</p>
<p>With the Terrapins, though, he caught passes from four different quarterbacks over three seasons, with more than one starter used each year.</p>
<p>Injuries each season kept him from playing a full schedule, including a broken leg as a sophomore and a lacerated kidney as a junior.</p>
<p>When he declared for the draft a year early, there were also questions from NFL teams about his attitude and compliance.</p>
<p>After high stepping and somersaulting into the end zone in one game in 2013, <a href="http://www.dbknews.com/archives/article_7160105e-1836-11e3-ae38-0019bb30f31a.html" type="external">coach Randy Edsall pulled him aside</a> for a mild admonishment to remind him about the importance of reputation.</p>
<p>With substandard 6-foot height also a factor, Diggs fell to the fifth round for the Vikings to find one of the true steals of that 2015 draft. He made an immediate impact in his debut at Denver, with six receptions for 87 yards. Four games in, he had 419 yards and two touchdowns.</p>
<p>"When I was going into the combine and stuff like that, I had 100 percent confidence in myself," Diggs said on Wednesday, as the Vikings reconvened for practice in preparation for their game Sunday at Philadelphia.</p>
<p>"I had a lot of support along the way. I had some great coaches and some great teammates that pushed me in the right direction. I'll never take all the credit."</p>
<p>His production waned down the stretch of his rookie season, with quarterback Teddy Bridgewater still developing on the job.</p>
<p>In Sam Bradford's first game for Minnesota in 2016, the lid-lifter at U.S. Bank Stadium against rival Green Bay, Diggs hauled in 13 catches for 182 yards and a score in front of a prime time Sunday night audience.</p>
<p>But a groin injury cost him one game and some momentum. Then he hurt his knee and missed another game.</p>
<p>His first two games at home in 2017 were showstoppers, with two touchdowns apiece, but that groin injury popped up again at Chicago and kept him out for the next two weeks. Thielen, meanwhile, surpassed him as Case Keenum's favorite target.</p>
<p>There was Diggs in the huddle on Sunday, though, with 10 seconds left listening to Keenum tell the receivers he was going to give somebody a shot.</p>
<p>"It meant so much to me to see my quarterback believe in me the last play of the game," said Diggs, who began crying hard enough to cut short and turn away from one of his on-field TV interviews after the winning touchdown.</p>
<p>His younger brother, Trevon Diggs, happened to be <a href="https://twitter.com/TrevonDiggs/status/952718187992252416" type="external">in the stadium that evening</a> for his first live NFL game. He's a cornerback and punt returner for Alabama who just won a national championship. Their father, Aron Diggs, <a href="https://twitter.com/stefondiggs/status/953288254572433412" type="external">died 10 years ago of heart failure</a> .</p>
<p>"He started me in football. He played a huge part in what's going on now. That's the biggest thing. Kind of try and thank him prior to the game, him and God," Diggs said, "and try and keep that thing going."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) — The path for Stefon Diggs to last-play touchdown fame and sudden Minnesota savior didn't start with such brilliance.</p>
<p>Diggs has only arrived at this stage of his life and his career, a Vikings standout on the verge of a Super Bowl, with an unrelenting diligence and a dose of humility.</p>
<p>For all the natural talent of a consensus five-star recruit coming out of high school, he's sure had to work hard to get here.</p>
<p>"He's my guy. I love him to death. I appreciate all he does for this team, and I appreciate all he's done for me," fellow wide receiver Adam Thielen said. "He's pushed me harder than anybody has pushed me in my life."</p>
<p>Remember those first three regular-season games in the NFL? Not really. He was a healthy scratch on the sideline.</p>
<p>That's a long way from the <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Minneapolis-Miracle-Keenum-To-Diggs-For-The-Win/899f7d74-51b0-43f8-a5ea-695e884af19d" type="external">61-yard catch-turn-run sequence that Diggs produced as time expired</a> on Sunday that sent the Vikings to the NFC championship game <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/stunner-keenum-diggs-td-sends-vikings-past-saints-29-24" type="external">with a 29-24 victory over New Orleans</a> .</p>
<p>"He continually has gotten better over the past three years," tight end Kyle Rudolph said.</p>
<p>"It's awesome to see guys like that who work so hard have an opportunity in such a big moment and for them to make the most of it."</p>
<p>Treating each practice as if it's a game is a common response from teammates asked about Diggs and his work ethic. Thielen and Diggs are widely considered to be two of the sharpest and savviest route runners in the league.</p>
<p>"He wants to win. Whether he's getting the ball or he's not getting ball, blocking or not, whatever he's doing, he wants to win," Vikings cornerback Mackensie Alexander said, adding: "The thing I love about Diggs is he doesn't let the game be bigger than him. He just kind of goes in the game, and it's just another game. That allows you to play well."</p>
<p>Setbacks became a recurring theme for Diggs, who chose to stay in his home state and play for Maryland so his family could watch him more often despite offers from powerhouse programs such as Auburn, Florida and USC.</p>
<p>With the Terrapins, though, he caught passes from four different quarterbacks over three seasons, with more than one starter used each year.</p>
<p>Injuries each season kept him from playing a full schedule, including a broken leg as a sophomore and a lacerated kidney as a junior.</p>
<p>When he declared for the draft a year early, there were also questions from NFL teams about his attitude and compliance.</p>
<p>After high stepping and somersaulting into the end zone in one game in 2013, <a href="http://www.dbknews.com/archives/article_7160105e-1836-11e3-ae38-0019bb30f31a.html" type="external">coach Randy Edsall pulled him aside</a> for a mild admonishment to remind him about the importance of reputation.</p>
<p>With substandard 6-foot height also a factor, Diggs fell to the fifth round for the Vikings to find one of the true steals of that 2015 draft. He made an immediate impact in his debut at Denver, with six receptions for 87 yards. Four games in, he had 419 yards and two touchdowns.</p>
<p>"When I was going into the combine and stuff like that, I had 100 percent confidence in myself," Diggs said on Wednesday, as the Vikings reconvened for practice in preparation for their game Sunday at Philadelphia.</p>
<p>"I had a lot of support along the way. I had some great coaches and some great teammates that pushed me in the right direction. I'll never take all the credit."</p>
<p>His production waned down the stretch of his rookie season, with quarterback Teddy Bridgewater still developing on the job.</p>
<p>In Sam Bradford's first game for Minnesota in 2016, the lid-lifter at U.S. Bank Stadium against rival Green Bay, Diggs hauled in 13 catches for 182 yards and a score in front of a prime time Sunday night audience.</p>
<p>But a groin injury cost him one game and some momentum. Then he hurt his knee and missed another game.</p>
<p>His first two games at home in 2017 were showstoppers, with two touchdowns apiece, but that groin injury popped up again at Chicago and kept him out for the next two weeks. Thielen, meanwhile, surpassed him as Case Keenum's favorite target.</p>
<p>There was Diggs in the huddle on Sunday, though, with 10 seconds left listening to Keenum tell the receivers he was going to give somebody a shot.</p>
<p>"It meant so much to me to see my quarterback believe in me the last play of the game," said Diggs, who began crying hard enough to cut short and turn away from one of his on-field TV interviews after the winning touchdown.</p>
<p>His younger brother, Trevon Diggs, happened to be <a href="https://twitter.com/TrevonDiggs/status/952718187992252416" type="external">in the stadium that evening</a> for his first live NFL game. He's a cornerback and punt returner for Alabama who just won a national championship. Their father, Aron Diggs, <a href="https://twitter.com/stefondiggs/status/953288254572433412" type="external">died 10 years ago of heart failure</a> .</p>
<p>"He started me in football. He played a huge part in what's going on now. That's the biggest thing. Kind of try and thank him prior to the game, him and God," Diggs said, "and try and keep that thing going."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
|
Vikings deep in playoffs, thanks in part to diligent Diggs
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/9203162315e945c0a4b8769372b77861
|
2018-01-18
| 2least
|
Vikings deep in playoffs, thanks in part to diligent Diggs
<p>EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) — The path for Stefon Diggs to last-play touchdown fame and sudden Minnesota savior didn't start with such brilliance.</p>
<p>Diggs has only arrived at this stage of his life and his career, a Vikings standout on the verge of a Super Bowl, with an unrelenting diligence and a dose of humility.</p>
<p>For all the natural talent of a consensus five-star recruit coming out of high school, he's sure had to work hard to get here.</p>
<p>"He's my guy. I love him to death. I appreciate all he does for this team, and I appreciate all he's done for me," fellow wide receiver Adam Thielen said. "He's pushed me harder than anybody has pushed me in my life."</p>
<p>Remember those first three regular-season games in the NFL? Not really. He was a healthy scratch on the sideline.</p>
<p>That's a long way from the <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Minneapolis-Miracle-Keenum-To-Diggs-For-The-Win/899f7d74-51b0-43f8-a5ea-695e884af19d" type="external">61-yard catch-turn-run sequence that Diggs produced as time expired</a> on Sunday that sent the Vikings to the NFC championship game <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/stunner-keenum-diggs-td-sends-vikings-past-saints-29-24" type="external">with a 29-24 victory over New Orleans</a> .</p>
<p>"He continually has gotten better over the past three years," tight end Kyle Rudolph said.</p>
<p>"It's awesome to see guys like that who work so hard have an opportunity in such a big moment and for them to make the most of it."</p>
<p>Treating each practice as if it's a game is a common response from teammates asked about Diggs and his work ethic. Thielen and Diggs are widely considered to be two of the sharpest and savviest route runners in the league.</p>
<p>"He wants to win. Whether he's getting the ball or he's not getting ball, blocking or not, whatever he's doing, he wants to win," Vikings cornerback Mackensie Alexander said, adding: "The thing I love about Diggs is he doesn't let the game be bigger than him. He just kind of goes in the game, and it's just another game. That allows you to play well."</p>
<p>Setbacks became a recurring theme for Diggs, who chose to stay in his home state and play for Maryland so his family could watch him more often despite offers from powerhouse programs such as Auburn, Florida and USC.</p>
<p>With the Terrapins, though, he caught passes from four different quarterbacks over three seasons, with more than one starter used each year.</p>
<p>Injuries each season kept him from playing a full schedule, including a broken leg as a sophomore and a lacerated kidney as a junior.</p>
<p>When he declared for the draft a year early, there were also questions from NFL teams about his attitude and compliance.</p>
<p>After high stepping and somersaulting into the end zone in one game in 2013, <a href="http://www.dbknews.com/archives/article_7160105e-1836-11e3-ae38-0019bb30f31a.html" type="external">coach Randy Edsall pulled him aside</a> for a mild admonishment to remind him about the importance of reputation.</p>
<p>With substandard 6-foot height also a factor, Diggs fell to the fifth round for the Vikings to find one of the true steals of that 2015 draft. He made an immediate impact in his debut at Denver, with six receptions for 87 yards. Four games in, he had 419 yards and two touchdowns.</p>
<p>"When I was going into the combine and stuff like that, I had 100 percent confidence in myself," Diggs said on Wednesday, as the Vikings reconvened for practice in preparation for their game Sunday at Philadelphia.</p>
<p>"I had a lot of support along the way. I had some great coaches and some great teammates that pushed me in the right direction. I'll never take all the credit."</p>
<p>His production waned down the stretch of his rookie season, with quarterback Teddy Bridgewater still developing on the job.</p>
<p>In Sam Bradford's first game for Minnesota in 2016, the lid-lifter at U.S. Bank Stadium against rival Green Bay, Diggs hauled in 13 catches for 182 yards and a score in front of a prime time Sunday night audience.</p>
<p>But a groin injury cost him one game and some momentum. Then he hurt his knee and missed another game.</p>
<p>His first two games at home in 2017 were showstoppers, with two touchdowns apiece, but that groin injury popped up again at Chicago and kept him out for the next two weeks. Thielen, meanwhile, surpassed him as Case Keenum's favorite target.</p>
<p>There was Diggs in the huddle on Sunday, though, with 10 seconds left listening to Keenum tell the receivers he was going to give somebody a shot.</p>
<p>"It meant so much to me to see my quarterback believe in me the last play of the game," said Diggs, who began crying hard enough to cut short and turn away from one of his on-field TV interviews after the winning touchdown.</p>
<p>His younger brother, Trevon Diggs, happened to be <a href="https://twitter.com/TrevonDiggs/status/952718187992252416" type="external">in the stadium that evening</a> for his first live NFL game. He's a cornerback and punt returner for Alabama who just won a national championship. Their father, Aron Diggs, <a href="https://twitter.com/stefondiggs/status/953288254572433412" type="external">died 10 years ago of heart failure</a> .</p>
<p>"He started me in football. He played a huge part in what's going on now. That's the biggest thing. Kind of try and thank him prior to the game, him and God," Diggs said, "and try and keep that thing going."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (AP) — The path for Stefon Diggs to last-play touchdown fame and sudden Minnesota savior didn't start with such brilliance.</p>
<p>Diggs has only arrived at this stage of his life and his career, a Vikings standout on the verge of a Super Bowl, with an unrelenting diligence and a dose of humility.</p>
<p>For all the natural talent of a consensus five-star recruit coming out of high school, he's sure had to work hard to get here.</p>
<p>"He's my guy. I love him to death. I appreciate all he does for this team, and I appreciate all he's done for me," fellow wide receiver Adam Thielen said. "He's pushed me harder than anybody has pushed me in my life."</p>
<p>Remember those first three regular-season games in the NFL? Not really. He was a healthy scratch on the sideline.</p>
<p>That's a long way from the <a href="http://www.vikings.com/media-vault/videos/Minneapolis-Miracle-Keenum-To-Diggs-For-The-Win/899f7d74-51b0-43f8-a5ea-695e884af19d" type="external">61-yard catch-turn-run sequence that Diggs produced as time expired</a> on Sunday that sent the Vikings to the NFC championship game <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/stunner-keenum-diggs-td-sends-vikings-past-saints-29-24" type="external">with a 29-24 victory over New Orleans</a> .</p>
<p>"He continually has gotten better over the past three years," tight end Kyle Rudolph said.</p>
<p>"It's awesome to see guys like that who work so hard have an opportunity in such a big moment and for them to make the most of it."</p>
<p>Treating each practice as if it's a game is a common response from teammates asked about Diggs and his work ethic. Thielen and Diggs are widely considered to be two of the sharpest and savviest route runners in the league.</p>
<p>"He wants to win. Whether he's getting the ball or he's not getting ball, blocking or not, whatever he's doing, he wants to win," Vikings cornerback Mackensie Alexander said, adding: "The thing I love about Diggs is he doesn't let the game be bigger than him. He just kind of goes in the game, and it's just another game. That allows you to play well."</p>
<p>Setbacks became a recurring theme for Diggs, who chose to stay in his home state and play for Maryland so his family could watch him more often despite offers from powerhouse programs such as Auburn, Florida and USC.</p>
<p>With the Terrapins, though, he caught passes from four different quarterbacks over three seasons, with more than one starter used each year.</p>
<p>Injuries each season kept him from playing a full schedule, including a broken leg as a sophomore and a lacerated kidney as a junior.</p>
<p>When he declared for the draft a year early, there were also questions from NFL teams about his attitude and compliance.</p>
<p>After high stepping and somersaulting into the end zone in one game in 2013, <a href="http://www.dbknews.com/archives/article_7160105e-1836-11e3-ae38-0019bb30f31a.html" type="external">coach Randy Edsall pulled him aside</a> for a mild admonishment to remind him about the importance of reputation.</p>
<p>With substandard 6-foot height also a factor, Diggs fell to the fifth round for the Vikings to find one of the true steals of that 2015 draft. He made an immediate impact in his debut at Denver, with six receptions for 87 yards. Four games in, he had 419 yards and two touchdowns.</p>
<p>"When I was going into the combine and stuff like that, I had 100 percent confidence in myself," Diggs said on Wednesday, as the Vikings reconvened for practice in preparation for their game Sunday at Philadelphia.</p>
<p>"I had a lot of support along the way. I had some great coaches and some great teammates that pushed me in the right direction. I'll never take all the credit."</p>
<p>His production waned down the stretch of his rookie season, with quarterback Teddy Bridgewater still developing on the job.</p>
<p>In Sam Bradford's first game for Minnesota in 2016, the lid-lifter at U.S. Bank Stadium against rival Green Bay, Diggs hauled in 13 catches for 182 yards and a score in front of a prime time Sunday night audience.</p>
<p>But a groin injury cost him one game and some momentum. Then he hurt his knee and missed another game.</p>
<p>His first two games at home in 2017 were showstoppers, with two touchdowns apiece, but that groin injury popped up again at Chicago and kept him out for the next two weeks. Thielen, meanwhile, surpassed him as Case Keenum's favorite target.</p>
<p>There was Diggs in the huddle on Sunday, though, with 10 seconds left listening to Keenum tell the receivers he was going to give somebody a shot.</p>
<p>"It meant so much to me to see my quarterback believe in me the last play of the game," said Diggs, who began crying hard enough to cut short and turn away from one of his on-field TV interviews after the winning touchdown.</p>
<p>His younger brother, Trevon Diggs, happened to be <a href="https://twitter.com/TrevonDiggs/status/952718187992252416" type="external">in the stadium that evening</a> for his first live NFL game. He's a cornerback and punt returner for Alabama who just won a national championship. Their father, Aron Diggs, <a href="https://twitter.com/stefondiggs/status/953288254572433412" type="external">died 10 years ago of heart failure</a> .</p>
<p>"He started me in football. He played a huge part in what's going on now. That's the biggest thing. Kind of try and thank him prior to the game, him and God," Diggs said, "and try and keep that thing going."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
| 5,613 |
<p>Heads are starting to roll at 125 S Clark St.</p>
<p>Following weeks of speculation, about 550 administrative staff were slated to receive pink slips this week. From what we are hearing now from sources, secretaries and support services personnel, such as professional development staffers, are getting the ax first.</p>
<p>Cuts are also being made in the human resources and information technology departments. Together, these departments currently have more than 440 employees.</p>
<p>Another 450 cuts will be made over the summer—some during the school year itself.</p>
<p />
<p>Heads are starting to roll at 125 S. Clark St.</p>
<p>Following weeks of speculation, about 550 administrative staff were slated to receive pink slips this week. From what we are hearing now from sources, secretaries and support services personnel, such as professional development staffers, are getting the ax first.</p>
<p>Cuts are also being made in the human resources and information technology departments. Together, these departments currently have more than 440 employees.</p>
<p>Another 450 cuts will be made over the summer—some during the school year itself.</p>
<p>Monique Bond, director of communications, reiterated that the layoffs are not touching classrooms. But the district faces a $475 million—and growing—budget deficit, and for the first time, Bonds admitted that it is becoming harder to keep the cuts from affecting education.</p>
<p>“It is a tough and challenging time,” Bond says. “We are trying to close the gap without compromising instruction.”</p>
<p>Bond could not provide a list of layoffs for each department, citing a restructuring now taking place throughout the central office and administrative ranks. “It would not be comparing apples to apples,” she says.</p>
<p>As one might expect, the mood at central office is dreary. One staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity notes that employees are finding cause for celebration when they are invited to a meeting scheduled for next week—a signal that they will keep their jobs for at least that long.</p>
<p>As part of the restructuring, many of the human resources positions that were part of the human resources department will become part of a new “human capital” department. Chief Financial Officer Pedro Martinez says cuts and reorganizing have yet to be finalized.</p>
<p>One major area where reorganization is being mixed with layoffs is the area offices. Existing area instructional officers now must reapply for new, yet similar, positions renamed “chief area officer.” Other staffers in the offices also are in limbo.</p>
<p>Martinez says staffing at the offices will probably fall, from an average of seven to eight workers to perhaps six, including a data analyst and two or three instructional coaches. He also expects most of the area-level “management support directors,” who help schools work out busing schedules and other logistics, to be retained.</p>
<p>But Martinez cautions that the area restructuring is largely based on guesswork, as district leaders hope to empower the new offices to make their own hiring decisions.</p>
<p>Martinez also confirmed that the district is seeking to cut $10 million from its student busing program, perhaps as many as 400 buses out of some 2,000. Chester Tindall, the general manager of the busing department, expects to find more efficient routing to cover the cuts.</p>
|
Layoffs in central office begin today, will reach nearly 1,000 by end of summer
| false |
http://chicagoreporter.com/layoffs-in-central-office-begin-today-will-reach-nearly-1000-end-summer/
|
2009-07-01
| 3left-center
|
Layoffs in central office begin today, will reach nearly 1,000 by end of summer
<p>Heads are starting to roll at 125 S Clark St.</p>
<p>Following weeks of speculation, about 550 administrative staff were slated to receive pink slips this week. From what we are hearing now from sources, secretaries and support services personnel, such as professional development staffers, are getting the ax first.</p>
<p>Cuts are also being made in the human resources and information technology departments. Together, these departments currently have more than 440 employees.</p>
<p>Another 450 cuts will be made over the summer—some during the school year itself.</p>
<p />
<p>Heads are starting to roll at 125 S. Clark St.</p>
<p>Following weeks of speculation, about 550 administrative staff were slated to receive pink slips this week. From what we are hearing now from sources, secretaries and support services personnel, such as professional development staffers, are getting the ax first.</p>
<p>Cuts are also being made in the human resources and information technology departments. Together, these departments currently have more than 440 employees.</p>
<p>Another 450 cuts will be made over the summer—some during the school year itself.</p>
<p>Monique Bond, director of communications, reiterated that the layoffs are not touching classrooms. But the district faces a $475 million—and growing—budget deficit, and for the first time, Bonds admitted that it is becoming harder to keep the cuts from affecting education.</p>
<p>“It is a tough and challenging time,” Bond says. “We are trying to close the gap without compromising instruction.”</p>
<p>Bond could not provide a list of layoffs for each department, citing a restructuring now taking place throughout the central office and administrative ranks. “It would not be comparing apples to apples,” she says.</p>
<p>As one might expect, the mood at central office is dreary. One staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity notes that employees are finding cause for celebration when they are invited to a meeting scheduled for next week—a signal that they will keep their jobs for at least that long.</p>
<p>As part of the restructuring, many of the human resources positions that were part of the human resources department will become part of a new “human capital” department. Chief Financial Officer Pedro Martinez says cuts and reorganizing have yet to be finalized.</p>
<p>One major area where reorganization is being mixed with layoffs is the area offices. Existing area instructional officers now must reapply for new, yet similar, positions renamed “chief area officer.” Other staffers in the offices also are in limbo.</p>
<p>Martinez says staffing at the offices will probably fall, from an average of seven to eight workers to perhaps six, including a data analyst and two or three instructional coaches. He also expects most of the area-level “management support directors,” who help schools work out busing schedules and other logistics, to be retained.</p>
<p>But Martinez cautions that the area restructuring is largely based on guesswork, as district leaders hope to empower the new offices to make their own hiring decisions.</p>
<p>Martinez also confirmed that the district is seeking to cut $10 million from its student busing program, perhaps as many as 400 buses out of some 2,000. Chester Tindall, the general manager of the busing department, expects to find more efficient routing to cover the cuts.</p>
| 5,614 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Such a sale triggers three tax-law rules. First, a seller of a principal residence is allowed to exclude as much as $250,000 of gain ($500,000 if married filing jointly) from the sale of a property that has been owned and used as the seller’s principal residence for two of the five years before sale.</p>
<p>Second, the sale is called an installment sale, and the seller reports gain in proportion to the payments received each year. So if 10 percent of the total payments called for are received in one year, only 10 percent of the total gain is reported in that year.</p>
<p>The seller divides each payment received into a recovery of cost and a taxable portion, so only a portion of any payment received is taxable. For example, if the sales price is $300,000 and the cost $200,000, then only one-third of each payment is taxable. Two-thirds represents a tax-free recovery of cost.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Third, if the seller reacquires the property due to a buyer default on the contract or note, the seller must report gain equal to the excess of all payments received over all gain previously reported. If less than 100 percent of each payment was reported as gain a reacquisition results in some gain being reported.</p>
<p>Let’s first apply these principles to a sale of a nonresidence asset. Say land is sold for $300,000 and the cost of the land is $200,000. We’ll assume the buyer will pay $20,000 per year for 15 years (and also pay interest).</p>
<p>Of each payment received, one-third is taxable and two-thirds is tax-free recovery of cost. Assume that three payments are made, or $60,000 in total. The seller reports $20,000 as taxable gain and $40,000 as a proportionate recovery of cost.</p>
<p>Now assume the buyer defaults and the seller reacquires the land. The tax law says that the seller must report $40,000 as gain in the year of reacquisition. This is the excess of all payments previously received ($60,000) over gain previously reported ($20,000).</p>
<p>This result has a logic to it – the seller now has both his land back and still has $60,000 of cash. His economic position, relative to the pre-sale state, is improved by the $60,000 received. So he has a total of $60,000 of taxable gain.</p>
<p>Now let’s use the same example, but assume the property was the seller’s principal residence. The initial answer changes because the seller is allowed to exclude the $100,000 recognized gain. The way this works in the tax law is the installment contract treats all payments as tax free.</p>
<p>So our seller again receives three payments totaling $60,000, but reports no gain due to the residence sale exclusion. Again he reacquires the property when the buyer defaults on subsequent payments.</p>
<p>This is where the dispute arises. The IRS says the reacquisition rule applies without exception. This means the seller must report $60,000 of gain on reacquisition – the excess of all payments received ($60,000) over the amounts previously reported as gain (zero).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The seller says, “What about my exclusion? If I have a $100,000 exclusion available, then none of the $60,000 should be taxed when I reacquire the former principal residence. I’m still within my allowed exclusion.”</p>
<p>The Tax Court held for the IRS. First, it said, the reacquisition law says nothing about use of the residence sale exclusion to offset the gain on reacquisition. The plain language of the statute favors the IRS view.</p>
<p>Second, just like with the land example from above, the seller ends up with his former residence plus $60,000. Compared to his original economic position he is better off by $60,000. So it’s logical to require him to report $60,000 gain.</p>
<p>This holding may be an unpleasant surprise to many New Mexico residence sellers who financed the buyer’s purchase and end up with their property again.</p>
<p>James R. Hamill is the director of Tax Practice at Reynolds, Hix &amp; Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
|
Seller’s property reacquisition triggers taxes
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/419430/sellers-property-reacquisition-triggers-taxes.html
| 2least
|
Seller’s property reacquisition triggers taxes
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Such a sale triggers three tax-law rules. First, a seller of a principal residence is allowed to exclude as much as $250,000 of gain ($500,000 if married filing jointly) from the sale of a property that has been owned and used as the seller’s principal residence for two of the five years before sale.</p>
<p>Second, the sale is called an installment sale, and the seller reports gain in proportion to the payments received each year. So if 10 percent of the total payments called for are received in one year, only 10 percent of the total gain is reported in that year.</p>
<p>The seller divides each payment received into a recovery of cost and a taxable portion, so only a portion of any payment received is taxable. For example, if the sales price is $300,000 and the cost $200,000, then only one-third of each payment is taxable. Two-thirds represents a tax-free recovery of cost.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Third, if the seller reacquires the property due to a buyer default on the contract or note, the seller must report gain equal to the excess of all payments received over all gain previously reported. If less than 100 percent of each payment was reported as gain a reacquisition results in some gain being reported.</p>
<p>Let’s first apply these principles to a sale of a nonresidence asset. Say land is sold for $300,000 and the cost of the land is $200,000. We’ll assume the buyer will pay $20,000 per year for 15 years (and also pay interest).</p>
<p>Of each payment received, one-third is taxable and two-thirds is tax-free recovery of cost. Assume that three payments are made, or $60,000 in total. The seller reports $20,000 as taxable gain and $40,000 as a proportionate recovery of cost.</p>
<p>Now assume the buyer defaults and the seller reacquires the land. The tax law says that the seller must report $40,000 as gain in the year of reacquisition. This is the excess of all payments previously received ($60,000) over gain previously reported ($20,000).</p>
<p>This result has a logic to it – the seller now has both his land back and still has $60,000 of cash. His economic position, relative to the pre-sale state, is improved by the $60,000 received. So he has a total of $60,000 of taxable gain.</p>
<p>Now let’s use the same example, but assume the property was the seller’s principal residence. The initial answer changes because the seller is allowed to exclude the $100,000 recognized gain. The way this works in the tax law is the installment contract treats all payments as tax free.</p>
<p>So our seller again receives three payments totaling $60,000, but reports no gain due to the residence sale exclusion. Again he reacquires the property when the buyer defaults on subsequent payments.</p>
<p>This is where the dispute arises. The IRS says the reacquisition rule applies without exception. This means the seller must report $60,000 of gain on reacquisition – the excess of all payments received ($60,000) over the amounts previously reported as gain (zero).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The seller says, “What about my exclusion? If I have a $100,000 exclusion available, then none of the $60,000 should be taxed when I reacquire the former principal residence. I’m still within my allowed exclusion.”</p>
<p>The Tax Court held for the IRS. First, it said, the reacquisition law says nothing about use of the residence sale exclusion to offset the gain on reacquisition. The plain language of the statute favors the IRS view.</p>
<p>Second, just like with the land example from above, the seller ends up with his former residence plus $60,000. Compared to his original economic position he is better off by $60,000. So it’s logical to require him to report $60,000 gain.</p>
<p>This holding may be an unpleasant surprise to many New Mexico residence sellers who financed the buyer’s purchase and end up with their property again.</p>
<p>James R. Hamill is the director of Tax Practice at Reynolds, Hix &amp; Co. in Albuquerque. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
| 5,615 |
|
<p>Washington state Governor Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson have promised to resist President Trump’s possible weed crackdown.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/marijuana/washington-state-will-resist-federal-crackdown-on-legal-weed-ag-ferguson-says/?utm_source=The+Seattle+Times&amp;utm_campaign=533fd6d5d8-Alert_Washington_state_will_resist_federal_crackdo&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_5beb38b61e-533fd6d5d8-122609809" type="external">interview</a> with the Seattle Times, Ferguson said he would completely “resist any efforts by the Trump administration to undermine the will of the voters in Washington state.” Last week, both Gov. Inslee and AG Ferguson sent a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3474339-Gov-AG-Ltr-to-Sessions-Re-Marijuana-002.html" type="external">joint letter</a> to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that underscored the arguments in favor of allowing Washington state to keep its recreational marijuana laws, which are bringing in almost $300 million in tax revenue.</p>
<p>“Our state’s efforts to regulate the sale of marijuana are succeeding. A few years ago, the illegal trafficking of marijuana line the pockets of criminals everywhere,” the letter stated. “Now, in our state, illegal trafficking activity is being displaced by a closely regulated marijuana industry that pays hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.”</p>
<p>“This frees up significant law enforcement resources to protect our communities in other, more pressing ways. We urge [the Department of Justice] to continue to allow states the option to pursue these sensible policies,” Inslee and Ferguson wrote.</p>
<p>States with recreational marijuana laws could be under attack by the Department of Justice after Sean Spicer’s comment that those states could see “greater enforcement” of federal marijuana laws, while saying the administration <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/federal-marijuana-enforcement-sean-spicer-235318" type="external">would trust AG Sessions’ judgment</a> on the issue. For his part, Sessions was unclear about his position on fighting state marijuana laws during his confirmation, but has said in the past that “ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/18/trumps-pick-for-attorney-general-good-people-dont-smoke-marijuana/" type="external">good people don’t smoke marijuana</a>.”</p>
<p>In addition to Washington state, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Oregon <a href="http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-marijuana-laws-map-medical-recreational.html" type="external">all have recreational marijuana laws</a> on the books and may join Washington state’s resistance to the crackdown.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Tom Cahill is a writer for the Resistance Report based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at [email protected], or <a href="http://facebook.com/tom.v.cahill" type="external">follow him on Facebook</a>.</p>
|
Washington State Just Responded to Trump’s Suggested Crackdown on Legal Marijuana
| true |
http://resistancereport.com/resistance/trump-crackdown-washington-state/
|
2017-02-23
| 4left
|
Washington State Just Responded to Trump’s Suggested Crackdown on Legal Marijuana
<p>Washington state Governor Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson have promised to resist President Trump’s possible weed crackdown.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/marijuana/washington-state-will-resist-federal-crackdown-on-legal-weed-ag-ferguson-says/?utm_source=The+Seattle+Times&amp;utm_campaign=533fd6d5d8-Alert_Washington_state_will_resist_federal_crackdo&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_5beb38b61e-533fd6d5d8-122609809" type="external">interview</a> with the Seattle Times, Ferguson said he would completely “resist any efforts by the Trump administration to undermine the will of the voters in Washington state.” Last week, both Gov. Inslee and AG Ferguson sent a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3474339-Gov-AG-Ltr-to-Sessions-Re-Marijuana-002.html" type="external">joint letter</a> to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions that underscored the arguments in favor of allowing Washington state to keep its recreational marijuana laws, which are bringing in almost $300 million in tax revenue.</p>
<p>“Our state’s efforts to regulate the sale of marijuana are succeeding. A few years ago, the illegal trafficking of marijuana line the pockets of criminals everywhere,” the letter stated. “Now, in our state, illegal trafficking activity is being displaced by a closely regulated marijuana industry that pays hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.”</p>
<p>“This frees up significant law enforcement resources to protect our communities in other, more pressing ways. We urge [the Department of Justice] to continue to allow states the option to pursue these sensible policies,” Inslee and Ferguson wrote.</p>
<p>States with recreational marijuana laws could be under attack by the Department of Justice after Sean Spicer’s comment that those states could see “greater enforcement” of federal marijuana laws, while saying the administration <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/federal-marijuana-enforcement-sean-spicer-235318" type="external">would trust AG Sessions’ judgment</a> on the issue. For his part, Sessions was unclear about his position on fighting state marijuana laws during his confirmation, but has said in the past that “ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/18/trumps-pick-for-attorney-general-good-people-dont-smoke-marijuana/" type="external">good people don’t smoke marijuana</a>.”</p>
<p>In addition to Washington state, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Oregon <a href="http://www.governing.com/gov-data/state-marijuana-laws-map-medical-recreational.html" type="external">all have recreational marijuana laws</a> on the books and may join Washington state’s resistance to the crackdown.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Tom Cahill is a writer for the Resistance Report based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at [email protected], or <a href="http://facebook.com/tom.v.cahill" type="external">follow him on Facebook</a>.</p>
| 5,616 |
<p />
<p>While Senator Hillary Clinton’s <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/08/9414_hillary_clinton_convention_speech.html" type="external">speech</a> tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Denver struck an energetic, unifying tone, the music used in her tribute video and walk-on offered an interesting counterpoint. The <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/26414383#26414617" type="external">video</a>, narrated by Chelsea and played before her speech, kicked off brightly and energetically, with a couple of rock tracks that were considered edgy when they first came out but have since settled into the classic-rock pantheon. First we heard The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” which is based entirely around rising, pulsing major chords, in the upbeat “Louie Louie” style of the time. Then we segued into Lenny Kravitz’ “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” a track whose funky minor chords in the verses give way to celebratory major chords in the chorus. Next up, Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” whose chorus kicks off with major chords but then steps briefly into melancholy territory, with a few minor chords expressing a certain nostalgia.</p>
<p>Then the music stepped down another notch. Halfway through the video, the images were accompanied by a dramatic orchestral arrangement based almost entirely around minor keys, somewhere between CBS’ “Cold Case” theme and The Killers’ “Somebody Told Me.” It was a surprisingly fierce choice for a moment that could have relied on cheesy balladry.</p>
<p>Finally, Hillary took the stage to a track she used often on the campaign trail (after that whole <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks22jun22,0,5894867.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail" type="external">Celine Dion debacle</a>): Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzBp_Af2sSk" type="external">“Blue Sky.”</a> While its refrain of “we can change the world” couldn’t be more optimistic, the chorus returns again and again to a minor chord that gives the song a tone that touches on regret as much as hope. The song has an odd resemblance to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxYddWeNoP0" type="external">Graham Nash’s “Chicago,”</a> another minor-chord tune which may bring up uneasy reminders of another fractious Democratic convention. Whatever the night’s narrative, Hillary’s musical metanarrative touched only briefly on celebratory chords, veering quickly into nostalgia and even daringly intense fervor before settling on a reflective minor-chord wistfulness. While the speech electrified the crowd, the music seemed to seep into the subconscious and ask, “What if?”</p>
<p />
|
Hillary Clinton’s Music Strikes a Minor Chord
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/08/hillary-clintons-music-strikes-minor-chord/
|
2008-08-27
| 4left
|
Hillary Clinton’s Music Strikes a Minor Chord
<p />
<p>While Senator Hillary Clinton’s <a href="/mojoblog/archives/2008/08/9414_hillary_clinton_convention_speech.html" type="external">speech</a> tonight at the Democratic National Convention in Denver struck an energetic, unifying tone, the music used in her tribute video and walk-on offered an interesting counterpoint. The <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/26414383#26414617" type="external">video</a>, narrated by Chelsea and played before her speech, kicked off brightly and energetically, with a couple of rock tracks that were considered edgy when they first came out but have since settled into the classic-rock pantheon. First we heard The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” which is based entirely around rising, pulsing major chords, in the upbeat “Louie Louie” style of the time. Then we segued into Lenny Kravitz’ “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” a track whose funky minor chords in the verses give way to celebratory major chords in the chorus. Next up, Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” whose chorus kicks off with major chords but then steps briefly into melancholy territory, with a few minor chords expressing a certain nostalgia.</p>
<p>Then the music stepped down another notch. Halfway through the video, the images were accompanied by a dramatic orchestral arrangement based almost entirely around minor keys, somewhere between CBS’ “Cold Case” theme and The Killers’ “Somebody Told Me.” It was a surprisingly fierce choice for a moment that could have relied on cheesy balladry.</p>
<p>Finally, Hillary took the stage to a track she used often on the campaign trail (after that whole <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-brooks22jun22,0,5894867.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail" type="external">Celine Dion debacle</a>): Big Head Todd and the Monsters’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzBp_Af2sSk" type="external">“Blue Sky.”</a> While its refrain of “we can change the world” couldn’t be more optimistic, the chorus returns again and again to a minor chord that gives the song a tone that touches on regret as much as hope. The song has an odd resemblance to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxYddWeNoP0" type="external">Graham Nash’s “Chicago,”</a> another minor-chord tune which may bring up uneasy reminders of another fractious Democratic convention. Whatever the night’s narrative, Hillary’s musical metanarrative touched only briefly on celebratory chords, veering quickly into nostalgia and even daringly intense fervor before settling on a reflective minor-chord wistfulness. While the speech electrified the crowd, the music seemed to seep into the subconscious and ask, “What if?”</p>
<p />
| 5,617 |
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<p />
<p>On Feb. 1, 1963, the New York Review of Books hit the newsstands and quickly sold out its print run of 100,000 copies. The editors were Barbara Epstein and Robert Silvers, who left their jobs at other publications to put out the new journal’s first issue.</p>
<p>“You’ll be back in a month,” Silvers’ boss at Harper’s magazine told him.</p>
<p>Fifty-four years later, Silvers was still editing the New York Review, which he and Epstein built into what Esquire magazine called “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Silvers, whose editorial guidance and carefully penciled suggestions gave shape to thousands of articles – including literature, art and music, science, economics and politics – in what he called “the paper,” died March 20 at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.</p>
<p>His death was confirmed by the Review’s publisher, Rea Hederman, who said the cause was “most likely pneumonia.”</p>
<p>Along with Epstein, Silvers built the New York Review of Books into a sober, rigorous, politically engaged publication that reaches far beyond simple book reviews and far beyond New York. Since Epstein’s death in 2006, Silvers carried on alone as the Review’s chief editor.</p>
<p>Formidably erudite, Silvers reigned over the semiweekly publication from a desk surrounded by teetering piles of books and manuscripts. He was known to change into black tie to attend the opera, then return to his office and work until after midnight.</p>
<p>It took two shifts of assistants, decades younger than Silvers, to keep up with him. He often softened his editorial queries with the suggestion, “Our readers will want to know.”</p>
<p>“There is only one story you need to know about Bob,” contributing writer Timothy Garton Ash told the Guardan in 2004. ” ‘Four o’clock on Christmas Day: the family is gathered around the turkey, and the phone rings. It’s Bob. ‘Tim,’ he says, ‘How are you doing? On column six of the third galley, there’s a dangling modifier.’ “</p>
<p>From the beginning, the publication enlisted renowned writers – W.H. Auden, Gore Vidal and poet Robert Lowell contributed to the debut issue – and gave them the freedom to engage with ideas and social problems as they saw fit.</p>
<p>“I believe in the writer,” Silvers told New York magazine in 2013. “That’s how we started off: admiring the writer.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In the 1960s, Silvers and Epstein sent author Mary McCarthy to Vietnam, where she wrote some of the first critical dispatches about U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. Later, investigative journalist I.F. Stone reported on Watergate for the Review, Joan Didion wrote about the United States in the 1970s and El Salvador in the 1980s, V.S. Naipaul analyzed Republican politics. Other regular contributors included literary heavyweights such as Norman Mailer, Edmund Wilson, Saul Bellow, Stephen Jay Gould, Garry Wills and Susan Sontag.</p>
<p>“American intellectual life – poor, fragmented thing that it is – would be vastly poorer had it not been for the Review and the model that it gives for how to write for a generally educated audience,” Sontag told the New York Times in 1997.</p>
<p>The New York Review also became known for its intellectual feuds carried out week after week in its letters to the editor and for its sometimes laughably highbrow personal ads, once spoofed by Woody Allen in the movie “Annie Hall.”</p>
<p>Often derided as reflexively leftist – journalist Tom Wolfe called the New York Review “the chief theoretical organ of radical chic” – the publication had no defined political point of view. From its first issue, it was critical of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, reflecting Silvers’ longtime support of human rights in the face of oppression.</p>
<p>In 1969, he went to Cuba and met dissident writer Heberto Padilla, “who insisted we could only talk while walking in the park,” Silvers said in 2013. “There he slipped me a sheaf of poems that we published when I got back.”</p>
<p>Through the efforts of Silvers, former Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., writer Bernard Malamud and others, Cuban authorities finally allowed Padilla to leave the country in 1980.</p>
<p>Robert Benjamin Silvers was born Dec. 31, 1929, in Mineola, New York, and grew up on a farm in Huntington, on Long Island. His father was a wealthy businessman and gentleman farmer; his mother was a music critic for the New York Globe.</p>
<p>Silvers entered the University of Chicago at 15 and graduated in 1947, when he was 17. He attended Yale Law School, then worked as press secretary to Connecticut Gov. Chester Bowles, D, and served in the Army with a unit attached to NATO in Paris.</p>
<p>He was an editor of the Paris Review, lived on a yacht on the Seine (with pianist Peter Duchin) and studied at the Sorbonne and the Paris Institute of Political Sciences. He returned to New York in 1958 to work at Harper’s magazine, where he edited an article by writer Elizabeth Hardwick critical of the state of book reviewing at newspapers.</p>
<p>That article helped provide the intellectual foundation of the New York Review of Books. During the newspaper strike of 1962-63, Hardwick, Lowell (her husband at the time) and book editors Jason Epstien and his then-wife, Barbara, came up with the idea. They brought Silvers in as co-editor and co-owner.</p>
<p>“We published nothing that each of us had not read and gone over,” Silvers once said of Barbara Epstein. “We shared every piece, every assignment. We had no division of labor.”</p>
<p>Despite its relatively small circulation, now at 135,000, the Review has been profitable since 1965. Hederman bought the publication in 1984.</p>
<p>“Bob and I were always in complete agreement on the direction of the paper and we’ll do all we can to continue in the same editorial direction,” Hederman said in an email. “There is no successor yet.”</p>
<p>Silvers was never married but was linked to a number of women. His longtime companion, Grace Ward, the Countess of Dudley, died in December 2016.</p>
<p>As the New York Review moved past its 50-year anniversary,. Silvers remained as curious and intellectually engaged as ever.</p>
<p>“I always feel I want to learn from the articles we publish,” he said in 2013. “And I have to assume that there’s an audience that wants to learn in the same way.”</p>
|
Robert Silvers, a founding editor of New York Review of Books, dies at 87
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/973633/robert-silvers-a-founding-editor-of-new-york-review-of-books-dies-at-87.html
| 2least
|
Robert Silvers, a founding editor of New York Review of Books, dies at 87
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>On Feb. 1, 1963, the New York Review of Books hit the newsstands and quickly sold out its print run of 100,000 copies. The editors were Barbara Epstein and Robert Silvers, who left their jobs at other publications to put out the new journal’s first issue.</p>
<p>“You’ll be back in a month,” Silvers’ boss at Harper’s magazine told him.</p>
<p>Fifty-four years later, Silvers was still editing the New York Review, which he and Epstein built into what Esquire magazine called “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Silvers, whose editorial guidance and carefully penciled suggestions gave shape to thousands of articles – including literature, art and music, science, economics and politics – in what he called “the paper,” died March 20 at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.</p>
<p>His death was confirmed by the Review’s publisher, Rea Hederman, who said the cause was “most likely pneumonia.”</p>
<p>Along with Epstein, Silvers built the New York Review of Books into a sober, rigorous, politically engaged publication that reaches far beyond simple book reviews and far beyond New York. Since Epstein’s death in 2006, Silvers carried on alone as the Review’s chief editor.</p>
<p>Formidably erudite, Silvers reigned over the semiweekly publication from a desk surrounded by teetering piles of books and manuscripts. He was known to change into black tie to attend the opera, then return to his office and work until after midnight.</p>
<p>It took two shifts of assistants, decades younger than Silvers, to keep up with him. He often softened his editorial queries with the suggestion, “Our readers will want to know.”</p>
<p>“There is only one story you need to know about Bob,” contributing writer Timothy Garton Ash told the Guardan in 2004. ” ‘Four o’clock on Christmas Day: the family is gathered around the turkey, and the phone rings. It’s Bob. ‘Tim,’ he says, ‘How are you doing? On column six of the third galley, there’s a dangling modifier.’ “</p>
<p>From the beginning, the publication enlisted renowned writers – W.H. Auden, Gore Vidal and poet Robert Lowell contributed to the debut issue – and gave them the freedom to engage with ideas and social problems as they saw fit.</p>
<p>“I believe in the writer,” Silvers told New York magazine in 2013. “That’s how we started off: admiring the writer.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In the 1960s, Silvers and Epstein sent author Mary McCarthy to Vietnam, where she wrote some of the first critical dispatches about U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia. Later, investigative journalist I.F. Stone reported on Watergate for the Review, Joan Didion wrote about the United States in the 1970s and El Salvador in the 1980s, V.S. Naipaul analyzed Republican politics. Other regular contributors included literary heavyweights such as Norman Mailer, Edmund Wilson, Saul Bellow, Stephen Jay Gould, Garry Wills and Susan Sontag.</p>
<p>“American intellectual life – poor, fragmented thing that it is – would be vastly poorer had it not been for the Review and the model that it gives for how to write for a generally educated audience,” Sontag told the New York Times in 1997.</p>
<p>The New York Review also became known for its intellectual feuds carried out week after week in its letters to the editor and for its sometimes laughably highbrow personal ads, once spoofed by Woody Allen in the movie “Annie Hall.”</p>
<p>Often derided as reflexively leftist – journalist Tom Wolfe called the New York Review “the chief theoretical organ of radical chic” – the publication had no defined political point of view. From its first issue, it was critical of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, reflecting Silvers’ longtime support of human rights in the face of oppression.</p>
<p>In 1969, he went to Cuba and met dissident writer Heberto Padilla, “who insisted we could only talk while walking in the park,” Silvers said in 2013. “There he slipped me a sheaf of poems that we published when I got back.”</p>
<p>Through the efforts of Silvers, former Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., writer Bernard Malamud and others, Cuban authorities finally allowed Padilla to leave the country in 1980.</p>
<p>Robert Benjamin Silvers was born Dec. 31, 1929, in Mineola, New York, and grew up on a farm in Huntington, on Long Island. His father was a wealthy businessman and gentleman farmer; his mother was a music critic for the New York Globe.</p>
<p>Silvers entered the University of Chicago at 15 and graduated in 1947, when he was 17. He attended Yale Law School, then worked as press secretary to Connecticut Gov. Chester Bowles, D, and served in the Army with a unit attached to NATO in Paris.</p>
<p>He was an editor of the Paris Review, lived on a yacht on the Seine (with pianist Peter Duchin) and studied at the Sorbonne and the Paris Institute of Political Sciences. He returned to New York in 1958 to work at Harper’s magazine, where he edited an article by writer Elizabeth Hardwick critical of the state of book reviewing at newspapers.</p>
<p>That article helped provide the intellectual foundation of the New York Review of Books. During the newspaper strike of 1962-63, Hardwick, Lowell (her husband at the time) and book editors Jason Epstien and his then-wife, Barbara, came up with the idea. They brought Silvers in as co-editor and co-owner.</p>
<p>“We published nothing that each of us had not read and gone over,” Silvers once said of Barbara Epstein. “We shared every piece, every assignment. We had no division of labor.”</p>
<p>Despite its relatively small circulation, now at 135,000, the Review has been profitable since 1965. Hederman bought the publication in 1984.</p>
<p>“Bob and I were always in complete agreement on the direction of the paper and we’ll do all we can to continue in the same editorial direction,” Hederman said in an email. “There is no successor yet.”</p>
<p>Silvers was never married but was linked to a number of women. His longtime companion, Grace Ward, the Countess of Dudley, died in December 2016.</p>
<p>As the New York Review moved past its 50-year anniversary,. Silvers remained as curious and intellectually engaged as ever.</p>
<p>“I always feel I want to learn from the articles we publish,” he said in 2013. “And I have to assume that there’s an audience that wants to learn in the same way.”</p>
| 5,618 |
|
<p />
<p>Barbie took a stand for LGBT rights in an Instagram post featuring the doll wearing a “Love Wins” shirt.</p>
<p>The post was part of celebrating Los Angeles-based fashion blogger&#160;Aimee Song who just got her own Barbie doll. Song has designed a line of “Love Wins” T-shirts with half of the proceeds benefitting the Trevor Project. The shirts are sold on Song’s <a href="https://www.twosongs.com/products/love-wins-tee?variant=42525493774" type="external">website</a> for $68. Barbie Style, an Instagram that features Barbie and her friends showing off looks, posted Barbie and the doll Song wearing the shirts.</p>
<p>“Proud to wear this “Love Wins” shirt with @songofstyle! Did you know that her exclusive t-shirts benefit different causes and non-profits? Such an inspiring initiative and fabulous few days I have spent with Aimee, she’s a doll! #barbie #barbiestyle,” the photo is captioned.</p>
<p>The internet was thrilled and immediately began welcoming Barbie to the LGBT community. So far, the post has received more than 35,000 likes.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Aimee Song</a> <a href="" type="internal">Barbie</a> <a href="" type="internal">Love Wins</a></p>
|
Barbie stands up for LGBT rights
| false |
http://washingtonblade.com/2017/11/27/barbie-stands-lgbt-rights/
| 3left-center
|
Barbie stands up for LGBT rights
<p />
<p>Barbie took a stand for LGBT rights in an Instagram post featuring the doll wearing a “Love Wins” shirt.</p>
<p>The post was part of celebrating Los Angeles-based fashion blogger&#160;Aimee Song who just got her own Barbie doll. Song has designed a line of “Love Wins” T-shirts with half of the proceeds benefitting the Trevor Project. The shirts are sold on Song’s <a href="https://www.twosongs.com/products/love-wins-tee?variant=42525493774" type="external">website</a> for $68. Barbie Style, an Instagram that features Barbie and her friends showing off looks, posted Barbie and the doll Song wearing the shirts.</p>
<p>“Proud to wear this “Love Wins” shirt with @songofstyle! Did you know that her exclusive t-shirts benefit different causes and non-profits? Such an inspiring initiative and fabulous few days I have spent with Aimee, she’s a doll! #barbie #barbiestyle,” the photo is captioned.</p>
<p>The internet was thrilled and immediately began welcoming Barbie to the LGBT community. So far, the post has received more than 35,000 likes.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Aimee Song</a> <a href="" type="internal">Barbie</a> <a href="" type="internal">Love Wins</a></p>
| 5,619 |
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<p />
<p>Men always side with men, my young letter-writer concluded. But, she also reminded me, life goes on. I was faced with the Senate’s apparent dismissal of my sexual harassment claim, calls for my job by state officials and death and rape threats from strangers. To add to the open opposition, pundits concluded that the hearing was a meaningless flash – predicted that women would fear coming forward with similar complaints after witnessing the Senate’s dismissive treatment of the issue.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the politicians and pundits were wrong; my 12-year-old ally/life coach was correct. Life went on. I survived by speaking out and challenging the Senate’s dangerously irresponsible handling of my testimony, not by retreating. And I kept my job. Thousands of brave women felt compelled to act on their sexual harassment claims after watching the Thomas hearings, setting records for complaints filed with anti-discrimination agencies. And proving that their issues were bigger than that single moment, women campaigned for office and the country elected them in historic numbers.</p>
<p>For me, Nov. 8, 2016, felt like an unwelcome flashback to October 1991 – another sadly missed opportunity to affirm basic notions of decency and equity. Yet, 25 years after that first ordeal, I know that the simmering divides that exploded during this presidential election involve issues more profound than the mere election of a man like Donald Trump, with his record of misogyny and mistreatment. I know that his victory does not represent the final word, or will not if we work to prevent that outcome.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The “highest, hardest glass ceiling” that Hillary Clinton sought to shatter remains intact, but our country must return to addressing the multiple other challenges that women face. Clinton’s experience shows that ceilings that keep us from moving up are not our only limitations. More frequently than bumping up against ceilings, we encounter “walls” of day-to-day inequities that operate just as effectively as impediments to our progress.</p>
<p>Much has changed for women in the past quarter-century, but too much has stayed the same. Yes, some high-profile allegations of sexual harassment receive wide attention. Yet harassment, despite now-standard training to the contrary, is still routine in too many workplaces and exacts a physical, psychological and economic toll.</p>
<p>Pay equity and equality in the workplace remain maddeningly elusive. Today, a superstore cashier still faces obstacles to becoming a manager and being paid the same as male colleagues, whatever her status. Women with MBAs are unfairly evaluated and their odds of becoming the chief executive of a tech company are dismal.</p>
<p>Barriers to gender equality are in play whenever women’s rape kits are shelved or when they encounter processes founded in misogyny and boundless red tape trying to report sexual assaults at police stations or on college campuses.</p>
<p>These problems are often compounded by race, ethnicity, sexual identity, class and religion. Women of color experience all of these limits plus concern for family safety in the face of police wrongdoing. Since November, fears of permanent separation from families plague immigrant women, preventing them from getting a job or an education and in some cases trapping them in their homes. And threats from anti-Muslim bigots or calls for automatic inclusions on government terrorist watch lists present invisible but very real obstacles to the daily movement of women who belong to religious minorities.</p>
<p>In 2016, in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, commentators declared that feminism is over, lost or dead and so is social justice; women should move on. But what I witnessed after the hearing, when thousands of women demanded that our leadership in Washington reflect their experiences, gives me hope. I’m convinced that those who expect women to recede quietly will soon be disappointed.</p>
<p>On Jan. 21, 2017, women from all identities and circumstances will march in Washington and in cities around the globe in numbers too great for Trump to ignore. Yes, women are moving past the election, but not as spectators, as participants in our democracy – as patriots. That is cause for celebration.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Hill is a professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University.</p>
|
Anita Hill: Trump’s election is disappointing for feminism. But it’s not the final word.
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/931573/anita-hill-trumps-election-is-disappointing-for-feminism-but-its-not-the-final-word.html
| 2least
|
Anita Hill: Trump’s election is disappointing for feminism. But it’s not the final word.
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Men always side with men, my young letter-writer concluded. But, she also reminded me, life goes on. I was faced with the Senate’s apparent dismissal of my sexual harassment claim, calls for my job by state officials and death and rape threats from strangers. To add to the open opposition, pundits concluded that the hearing was a meaningless flash – predicted that women would fear coming forward with similar complaints after witnessing the Senate’s dismissive treatment of the issue.</p>
<p>Fortunately, the politicians and pundits were wrong; my 12-year-old ally/life coach was correct. Life went on. I survived by speaking out and challenging the Senate’s dangerously irresponsible handling of my testimony, not by retreating. And I kept my job. Thousands of brave women felt compelled to act on their sexual harassment claims after watching the Thomas hearings, setting records for complaints filed with anti-discrimination agencies. And proving that their issues were bigger than that single moment, women campaigned for office and the country elected them in historic numbers.</p>
<p>For me, Nov. 8, 2016, felt like an unwelcome flashback to October 1991 – another sadly missed opportunity to affirm basic notions of decency and equity. Yet, 25 years after that first ordeal, I know that the simmering divides that exploded during this presidential election involve issues more profound than the mere election of a man like Donald Trump, with his record of misogyny and mistreatment. I know that his victory does not represent the final word, or will not if we work to prevent that outcome.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The “highest, hardest glass ceiling” that Hillary Clinton sought to shatter remains intact, but our country must return to addressing the multiple other challenges that women face. Clinton’s experience shows that ceilings that keep us from moving up are not our only limitations. More frequently than bumping up against ceilings, we encounter “walls” of day-to-day inequities that operate just as effectively as impediments to our progress.</p>
<p>Much has changed for women in the past quarter-century, but too much has stayed the same. Yes, some high-profile allegations of sexual harassment receive wide attention. Yet harassment, despite now-standard training to the contrary, is still routine in too many workplaces and exacts a physical, psychological and economic toll.</p>
<p>Pay equity and equality in the workplace remain maddeningly elusive. Today, a superstore cashier still faces obstacles to becoming a manager and being paid the same as male colleagues, whatever her status. Women with MBAs are unfairly evaluated and their odds of becoming the chief executive of a tech company are dismal.</p>
<p>Barriers to gender equality are in play whenever women’s rape kits are shelved or when they encounter processes founded in misogyny and boundless red tape trying to report sexual assaults at police stations or on college campuses.</p>
<p>These problems are often compounded by race, ethnicity, sexual identity, class and religion. Women of color experience all of these limits plus concern for family safety in the face of police wrongdoing. Since November, fears of permanent separation from families plague immigrant women, preventing them from getting a job or an education and in some cases trapping them in their homes. And threats from anti-Muslim bigots or calls for automatic inclusions on government terrorist watch lists present invisible but very real obstacles to the daily movement of women who belong to religious minorities.</p>
<p>In 2016, in the aftermath of Trump’s victory, commentators declared that feminism is over, lost or dead and so is social justice; women should move on. But what I witnessed after the hearing, when thousands of women demanded that our leadership in Washington reflect their experiences, gives me hope. I’m convinced that those who expect women to recede quietly will soon be disappointed.</p>
<p>On Jan. 21, 2017, women from all identities and circumstances will march in Washington and in cities around the globe in numbers too great for Trump to ignore. Yes, women are moving past the election, but not as spectators, as participants in our democracy – as patriots. That is cause for celebration.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Hill is a professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University.</p>
| 5,620 |
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<p><a href="http://wp.me/p3bwni-5ov" type="external">21st Century Wire</a> says…</p>
<p>Typhoon Haiyan has slammed the Southeast Asia region this week, with the worst hit area being the Philippines, followed by Vietnam and China. Updates from this morning include….</p>
<p>Japan are now sending troops to the Philippines, Reuters reports:</p>
<p>“Japan will send a Self-Defense Forces emergency relief team to the Philippines after a super typhoon killed thousands, the government said on Tuesday. The dispatch of the team comes as Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is pushing to ease limits on the military imposed by its post-war, pacifist constitution… ”</p>
<p>United States have deployed the&#160;USS George Washington. Reuters:</p>
<p>“… expected to arrive in the region within 48-to-72 hours after making the trip from Hong Kong and, with a crew of 5,000 sailors and 80 aircraft, is expected to be crucial to aid efforts. The deck can serve as a staging platform for incoming and outgoing flights and the ship’s distilling plants are capable of producing 1.5 million liters of fresh water each day.”</p>
<p>China catches tail end of Typhoon, causing massive flooding:</p>
<p>“The rains have left one dead and affected nearly 1 million people in Guangxi. Some 25,000 people were displaced and 249 houses collapsed as Haiyan has left six people dead in China.”</p>
<p>. <a href="http://rt.com/news/philippines-state-national-calamity-544/" type="external">RT.com</a></p>
<p>In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, which left thousands dead, many more displaced and survivors battling for survival amid devastation and chaos, the Philippines has declared a state of national calamity to help restore order to the reeling nation.</p>
<p>In a primetime television speech delivered Monday, President Benigno Aquino said: “We declare a state of national calamity to hasten the action of the government to rescue, provide help and rehabilitate the provinces affected by [Haiyan].”</p>
<p>The declaration will also help the government control the prices of staple goods, with many in the country reduced to begging for food and water. Aquino called for patience as the scope of the damage frustrated efforts to coordinate relief operations.</p>
<p>“The extent of the devastation brought us back to a situation where information was passed on from one person to another. There was no television, radio and internet,”&#160;he said.</p>
<p>Noting how the devastation reduced people to word-of-mouth communication, Aquino vowed help would arrive in the coming days.</p>
<p>“My message: Staying calm, prayer, and helping each other are what will lift us from this challenge,”&#160;he said.</p>
<p>This aerial photo shows flattened houses in the city of Tacloban, Leyte province, in the central Philippines on November 11, 2013, only days after Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the town on November 8. (AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe)</p>
<p>Counting the dead, accounting for the missing</p>
<p>Three days after the typhoon made landfall, authorities are struggling to come to grips with the aftermath of one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded.</p>
<p>Forty-one of the country’s 80 provinces were affected, with Secretary to the Cabinet Rene Almendras saying that in the worst affected areas, the destruction had been “total.”</p>
<p>An estimated 10,000 people are believed to have been killed in Tacloban – a city of over 200,000 southeast of the capital, Manila – which bore the brunt of the storm. Flattened by massive waves and battered by winds reaching speeds up to 235 miles an hour, Tacloban remains littered by the dead, some covered with tarps, others left lying out in the open with looks of horror reportedly etched on their faces. The United Nations said officials in Tacloban had seen one mass grave of 300 to 500 bodies, Reuters reported. Relief workers fear that ground water may be contaminated by decaying bodies, and fears are growing of a massive public health crisis.</p>
<p>The city has also been gripped by looting, with authorities dispatching police and military reinforcements to restore order. A Philippine Red Cross truck carrying medical supplies was reportedly attacked while heading to the city. Manila has said it will not hesitate in deploying more police officers if necessary. Locals have already reportedly formed local militias and have promised to shoot looters to protect their property.</p>
<p>So far, Tacloban is relying almost entirely for supplies and evacuation on just three military transport planes flying from nearby Cebu. Aquino said 24,000 family food packs had been distributed in Tacloban on Sunday, while 18.7 billion pesos ($430 million) had been set aside from calamity funds, contingency funds, and savings for places hit by Haiyan. He said 22 foreign countries had provided aid.</p>
<p>Around 2,000 people, meanwhile, remain missing in the seaside town of Basely alone, which is located about 10 kilometers across a bay from Tacloban. Other coastal areas caught on Haiyan’s path are likely to have suffered similar levels of destruction, though efforts to survey the damage or make a full account of the dead have been severely dampened.</p>
<p>The country’s government has so far confirmed 1,744 deaths.</p>
<p>Both the official and unofficial death tolls are likely climb once officials reach more remote areas. Guiuan, a town of 40,000 in eastern Samar province, was largely decimated, although it does not figure into the casualty tabulations.</p>
<p>“The only reason why we have no reports of casualties up to now is that communications systems … are down,”&#160;Colonel John Sanchez posted on the Philippines Armed Forces’ Facebook page, Reuters reported.</p>
<p>Farther west on the on the islands of Cebu and Panay, which also suffered direct hits from the typhoon, authorities have been hampered in their ability to assess the devastation.</p>
<p>Overall, more than 600,000 people were displaced by the storm across the country, with some lacking access to basic amenities such as food, water or medicine, the UN says.</p>
<p><a href="http://rt.com/news/philippines-state-national-calamity-544/" type="external">Continue this story at RT.com</a></p>
<p>READ MORE GEOENGINEERING NEWS AT: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Geoengineering Files</a></p>
|
Haiyan: Up to 10,000 Dead in Philippines – Relief Effort Underway for Entire Region
| true |
http://21stcenturywire.com/2013/11/12/haiyan-up-to-10000-dead-in-philippines-relief-effort-underway-for-entire-region/
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2013-11-12
| 4left
|
Haiyan: Up to 10,000 Dead in Philippines – Relief Effort Underway for Entire Region
<p><a href="http://wp.me/p3bwni-5ov" type="external">21st Century Wire</a> says…</p>
<p>Typhoon Haiyan has slammed the Southeast Asia region this week, with the worst hit area being the Philippines, followed by Vietnam and China. Updates from this morning include….</p>
<p>Japan are now sending troops to the Philippines, Reuters reports:</p>
<p>“Japan will send a Self-Defense Forces emergency relief team to the Philippines after a super typhoon killed thousands, the government said on Tuesday. The dispatch of the team comes as Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is pushing to ease limits on the military imposed by its post-war, pacifist constitution… ”</p>
<p>United States have deployed the&#160;USS George Washington. Reuters:</p>
<p>“… expected to arrive in the region within 48-to-72 hours after making the trip from Hong Kong and, with a crew of 5,000 sailors and 80 aircraft, is expected to be crucial to aid efforts. The deck can serve as a staging platform for incoming and outgoing flights and the ship’s distilling plants are capable of producing 1.5 million liters of fresh water each day.”</p>
<p>China catches tail end of Typhoon, causing massive flooding:</p>
<p>“The rains have left one dead and affected nearly 1 million people in Guangxi. Some 25,000 people were displaced and 249 houses collapsed as Haiyan has left six people dead in China.”</p>
<p>. <a href="http://rt.com/news/philippines-state-national-calamity-544/" type="external">RT.com</a></p>
<p>In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, which left thousands dead, many more displaced and survivors battling for survival amid devastation and chaos, the Philippines has declared a state of national calamity to help restore order to the reeling nation.</p>
<p>In a primetime television speech delivered Monday, President Benigno Aquino said: “We declare a state of national calamity to hasten the action of the government to rescue, provide help and rehabilitate the provinces affected by [Haiyan].”</p>
<p>The declaration will also help the government control the prices of staple goods, with many in the country reduced to begging for food and water. Aquino called for patience as the scope of the damage frustrated efforts to coordinate relief operations.</p>
<p>“The extent of the devastation brought us back to a situation where information was passed on from one person to another. There was no television, radio and internet,”&#160;he said.</p>
<p>Noting how the devastation reduced people to word-of-mouth communication, Aquino vowed help would arrive in the coming days.</p>
<p>“My message: Staying calm, prayer, and helping each other are what will lift us from this challenge,”&#160;he said.</p>
<p>This aerial photo shows flattened houses in the city of Tacloban, Leyte province, in the central Philippines on November 11, 2013, only days after Super Typhoon Haiyan devastated the town on November 8. (AFP Photo/Ted Aljibe)</p>
<p>Counting the dead, accounting for the missing</p>
<p>Three days after the typhoon made landfall, authorities are struggling to come to grips with the aftermath of one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded.</p>
<p>Forty-one of the country’s 80 provinces were affected, with Secretary to the Cabinet Rene Almendras saying that in the worst affected areas, the destruction had been “total.”</p>
<p>An estimated 10,000 people are believed to have been killed in Tacloban – a city of over 200,000 southeast of the capital, Manila – which bore the brunt of the storm. Flattened by massive waves and battered by winds reaching speeds up to 235 miles an hour, Tacloban remains littered by the dead, some covered with tarps, others left lying out in the open with looks of horror reportedly etched on their faces. The United Nations said officials in Tacloban had seen one mass grave of 300 to 500 bodies, Reuters reported. Relief workers fear that ground water may be contaminated by decaying bodies, and fears are growing of a massive public health crisis.</p>
<p>The city has also been gripped by looting, with authorities dispatching police and military reinforcements to restore order. A Philippine Red Cross truck carrying medical supplies was reportedly attacked while heading to the city. Manila has said it will not hesitate in deploying more police officers if necessary. Locals have already reportedly formed local militias and have promised to shoot looters to protect their property.</p>
<p>So far, Tacloban is relying almost entirely for supplies and evacuation on just three military transport planes flying from nearby Cebu. Aquino said 24,000 family food packs had been distributed in Tacloban on Sunday, while 18.7 billion pesos ($430 million) had been set aside from calamity funds, contingency funds, and savings for places hit by Haiyan. He said 22 foreign countries had provided aid.</p>
<p>Around 2,000 people, meanwhile, remain missing in the seaside town of Basely alone, which is located about 10 kilometers across a bay from Tacloban. Other coastal areas caught on Haiyan’s path are likely to have suffered similar levels of destruction, though efforts to survey the damage or make a full account of the dead have been severely dampened.</p>
<p>The country’s government has so far confirmed 1,744 deaths.</p>
<p>Both the official and unofficial death tolls are likely climb once officials reach more remote areas. Guiuan, a town of 40,000 in eastern Samar province, was largely decimated, although it does not figure into the casualty tabulations.</p>
<p>“The only reason why we have no reports of casualties up to now is that communications systems … are down,”&#160;Colonel John Sanchez posted on the Philippines Armed Forces’ Facebook page, Reuters reported.</p>
<p>Farther west on the on the islands of Cebu and Panay, which also suffered direct hits from the typhoon, authorities have been hampered in their ability to assess the devastation.</p>
<p>Overall, more than 600,000 people were displaced by the storm across the country, with some lacking access to basic amenities such as food, water or medicine, the UN says.</p>
<p><a href="http://rt.com/news/philippines-state-national-calamity-544/" type="external">Continue this story at RT.com</a></p>
<p>READ MORE GEOENGINEERING NEWS AT: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Geoengineering Files</a></p>
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<p>A: I understand your point of view, but I think having no manners at all on a night when droves of people are out after dark is a recipe for disaster. While you appreciate a tremor in their voices as they call out “Trick-or-treat” at your creepy door, I’m sure that you don’t want zombies and ghost pirates stomping through your carefully arranged decorations and kicking your pumpkins or others showing up without costumes but holding out pillowcases for you to fill without even a muttered, “Thank you.”</p>
<p>Even on Halloween, respect, courtesy and consideration – the manners we should be using every day – should be apparent.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>If you want to make your house super scary, that’s up to you. I suspect you have a reputation in your neighborhood for putting on a frightful show and the princesses probably know to stay away. Parents should be aware of the situations they are walking their children into. If you have young children or children who are easily scared, assess a house before you approach it. If it looks too frightening, skip it.</p>
<p>The scariest of houses probably won’t have their porch lights on, but their decorations, black lights and dry ice fog signal that they are looking for trick-or-treaters. However, kids and their chaperones should know that if a relatively normal-looking house’s porch light is off, you should not knock or ring the bell. Lights off is a signal that you should move on to the next home. If there are people inside, they may be out of candy or they may not participate in the tradition.</p>
<p>When walking up to a house or leaving it, stay on the sidewalks and out of the landscaping, and don’t disturb the home’s jack-o-lanterns or other decorations. When you do go to a door, knock or ring the bell once and wait patiently for the answer. Give the person at the door a smile – or an acknowledgement in character with your costume – and say your line: “Trick or treat!” Always say thank you for whatever you have been given – even if it’s something you don’t like.</p>
<p>If you are a teenager or an adult and wish to partake in the fun of trick-or-treating, then you must wear a costume. Walking door to door in a hooded sweatshirt with a pillowcase is not acceptable.</p>
<p>I agree that small children should start their outing before dark. Homeowners who plan to participate should be ready for the doorbell to start ringing early in the evening. Answer your door with a smile. Don’t act as if it is an imposition to have them at your door. If it is, turn off your light, but realize that it won’t be a truly quiet evening. If you are looking for a quiet evening, you might consider taking in a movie or an extended trip to the bookstore.</p>
<p>Finally, all revelers should remember, just because you’re dressed as a creep doesn’t mean you actually become one.</p>
<p>Frighteningly 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://www.thelmadomenici.com" type="external">www.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>
|
Halloween is no excuse to lose your manners
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/142006/halloween-is-no-excuse-to-lose-your-manners.html
|
2012-10-28
| 2least
|
Halloween is no excuse to lose your manners
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>A: I understand your point of view, but I think having no manners at all on a night when droves of people are out after dark is a recipe for disaster. While you appreciate a tremor in their voices as they call out “Trick-or-treat” at your creepy door, I’m sure that you don’t want zombies and ghost pirates stomping through your carefully arranged decorations and kicking your pumpkins or others showing up without costumes but holding out pillowcases for you to fill without even a muttered, “Thank you.”</p>
<p>Even on Halloween, respect, courtesy and consideration – the manners we should be using every day – should be apparent.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>If you want to make your house super scary, that’s up to you. I suspect you have a reputation in your neighborhood for putting on a frightful show and the princesses probably know to stay away. Parents should be aware of the situations they are walking their children into. If you have young children or children who are easily scared, assess a house before you approach it. If it looks too frightening, skip it.</p>
<p>The scariest of houses probably won’t have their porch lights on, but their decorations, black lights and dry ice fog signal that they are looking for trick-or-treaters. However, kids and their chaperones should know that if a relatively normal-looking house’s porch light is off, you should not knock or ring the bell. Lights off is a signal that you should move on to the next home. If there are people inside, they may be out of candy or they may not participate in the tradition.</p>
<p>When walking up to a house or leaving it, stay on the sidewalks and out of the landscaping, and don’t disturb the home’s jack-o-lanterns or other decorations. When you do go to a door, knock or ring the bell once and wait patiently for the answer. Give the person at the door a smile – or an acknowledgement in character with your costume – and say your line: “Trick or treat!” Always say thank you for whatever you have been given – even if it’s something you don’t like.</p>
<p>If you are a teenager or an adult and wish to partake in the fun of trick-or-treating, then you must wear a costume. Walking door to door in a hooded sweatshirt with a pillowcase is not acceptable.</p>
<p>I agree that small children should start their outing before dark. Homeowners who plan to participate should be ready for the doorbell to start ringing early in the evening. Answer your door with a smile. Don’t act as if it is an imposition to have them at your door. If it is, turn off your light, but realize that it won’t be a truly quiet evening. If you are looking for a quiet evening, you might consider taking in a movie or an extended trip to the bookstore.</p>
<p>Finally, all revelers should remember, just because you’re dressed as a creep doesn’t mean you actually become one.</p>
<p>Frighteningly 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://www.thelmadomenici.com" type="external">www.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>
| 5,622 |
<p />
<p>Editor’s note: The following is a letter from a concerned reader who prefers to remain anonymous, but raises some interesting questions about the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.</p>
<p>“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!”</p>
<p>— Donald Rumsfeld on not finding WMDs in Iraq</p>
<p />
<p>On the afternoon of July 17, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777-2H6ER plane carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew members, was shot down at 33,000 feet over a rebel-held area in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Those who downed the plane are war criminals and they must be deported to The Hague and tried.</p>
<p>Russia, which signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, must ratify it. Ukraine, which signed on to the treaty only for this year — must sign on for good. And the United States, which left the treaty (along with Sudan and Israel) and since then has opposed it, must sign it. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_parties_to_the_Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court" type="external">All three countries</a> must join the community of nations that believes in the rule of law for all and punishment for breaching it, especially in cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>To solve a crime this horrific, hard data is required. However, thus far, the U.S. and the U.K. have been citing two sources: YouTube and Twitter. Satellite images taken after the crash have reportedly been released, but virtually all media venues have simply republished an image originally posted on Twitter by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/27/satellite-images-us-show-russian-rocket-fire-into-ukraine" type="external">Geoffrey Pyatt</a>, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Those images, as Twitter would allow, are of very low resolution. More importantly, their earliest date is July 21. All publicly released U.S. satellite information thus far has been of several days after the downing of the plane. Let us also pay attention to the author of the Twitter account — Pyatt. And since he entered the fray via social media, let us recall that it was allegedly he who had discussed a political coup with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957%20" type="external">conversation</a> in February entertaining thoughts on how to install American-friendly Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Politically, the beating heart of the Russia-U.S. post-Cold War conflict is that the people on both sides making foreign policy are Cold War “warriors” or their direct heirs. They project old views and habits onto new situations. And we see the preparations: The information wars on both sides stirring up hatred had started long before July 17 of this year.</p>
<p>The tragedy of the downing of MH17 prompted a widespread assumption about what had happened because it occurred in that environment. And hence, before the investigators could fully examine the site of the crash, sanctions against Russia had been announced and passed — sanctions that the United States had been advocating long before the downing of the plane.</p>
<p>Despite making many claims about the cause of the crash, the U.S. has refused to share the hardest evidence of all: the satellite imagery immediately prior, immediately after and, if available, at the moment of the attack and the downing of MH17.</p>
<p>Both Russian and American satellites have been surveilling the area of the fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military as well as the groups referred to by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as “partisans.” With this deadly proxy war between Russia and the United States, it seems only logical that the U.S. intelligence community had its eyes on the area. If not, the CIA should go on record unequivocally stating that it has no satellite information of the area on the day in question.</p>
<p>The case of the MH17 downing resembles another tragic incident, the shooting down of a Korean Air passenger plane west of Sakhalin Island in what was then the Soviet Union on Sept. 1, 1983.</p>
<p>What is known is that the South Korean passenger plane’s pilots — during their stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, from New York to Seoul — typed a slightly erroneous route in to their autopilot, which tragically led them into Soviet airspace. At that time, American reconnaissance planes were routinely “tickling” the Soviet radar by getting very close to the U.S.-Russian border between the Aleutian Islands near Alaska and Sakhalin. There were many incidents of such tickling in the history of the Cold War. They were designed to both test and provoke the Soviet Union in order to assess its capabilities. Russian fighter jets scrambled, mistaking the South Korean airliner for an American surveillance plane and shot it down. All 269 passengers aboard were killed.</p>
<p>There may have been a similar pattern in the downing of MH17 over Ukraine. Apparently, previous passenger flights were closely followed by Ukrainian fighter planes, potentially tickling and enticing a surface to air missile response by badly trained and possibly drunk pro-Russian rebels. However, it must be stressed that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system" type="external">Buk</a> missile systems, fighter jets and other military hardware made in Russia and in Eastern Ukraine are used by pro-Russian rebels and by the Ukrainian military. It is also highly likely that the expensive and sophisticated component that recognizes the type of plane in the air was either stripped off from the Buk missile system (if proven by direct evidence to have been used) and stolen or simply mishandled.</p>
<p>In order to dismiss this potential scenario, America should immediately publish — or publicly deny having — all satellite photos of MH17 in Ukrainian airspace as well as other commercial flights in the preceding days.</p>
<p>The Russian Defense Ministry quickly released what it says are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKCaEmvhr6w" type="external">radar and satellite shots</a> of the day of the attack, showing Ukrainian fighter jets following MH17 over Ukrainian territory.</p>
<p>These were dismissed as propaganda just as quickly, yet nobody claimed that those images were falsified. If they were proven to be fake, one presumes it would have made the papers. The U.S. must present its own satellite data to counter the Russian data, and I hope it takes place in public, on the floor of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. And then let the chips fall where they may. It can happen now, if officials have the data. If they never had such satellite data, they must clearly state that fact as well, and stand by it.</p>
<p>Victims of the MH17 downing deserve evidence from all parties, not propaganda. We need data.</p>
<p>Yet even a superficial survey of the media landscape across American, Ukrainian and Russian outlets makes one thing clear: Everyone is lying. This, in turn, means only one thing: The truth is inconvenient for all parties and does not fit the stories around which the world is realigning today. There are no good guys here, but there is the truth.</p>
<p>Thus, a simple question stands before the world:</p>
<p>Why has the United States not released its satellite images of the time of the MH17 crash and, more importantly, moments prior to it?</p>
<p>Both the dead and the living deserve the truth.</p>
|
Why Isn't the United States Releasing Its July 17 Satellite Images of MH17?
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/why-isnt-the-united-states-releasing-its-july-17-satellite-images-of-mh17/
|
2014-08-06
| 4left
|
Why Isn't the United States Releasing Its July 17 Satellite Images of MH17?
<p />
<p>Editor’s note: The following is a letter from a concerned reader who prefers to remain anonymous, but raises some interesting questions about the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.</p>
<p>“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!”</p>
<p>— Donald Rumsfeld on not finding WMDs in Iraq</p>
<p />
<p>On the afternoon of July 17, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a Boeing 777-2H6ER plane carrying 283 passengers and 15 crew members, was shot down at 33,000 feet over a rebel-held area in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Those who downed the plane are war criminals and they must be deported to The Hague and tried.</p>
<p>Russia, which signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, must ratify it. Ukraine, which signed on to the treaty only for this year — must sign on for good. And the United States, which left the treaty (along with Sudan and Israel) and since then has opposed it, must sign it. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_parties_to_the_Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court" type="external">All three countries</a> must join the community of nations that believes in the rule of law for all and punishment for breaching it, especially in cases of war crimes and crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>To solve a crime this horrific, hard data is required. However, thus far, the U.S. and the U.K. have been citing two sources: YouTube and Twitter. Satellite images taken after the crash have reportedly been released, but virtually all media venues have simply republished an image originally posted on Twitter by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/27/satellite-images-us-show-russian-rocket-fire-into-ukraine" type="external">Geoffrey Pyatt</a>, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Those images, as Twitter would allow, are of very low resolution. More importantly, their earliest date is July 21. All publicly released U.S. satellite information thus far has been of several days after the downing of the plane. Let us also pay attention to the author of the Twitter account — Pyatt. And since he entered the fray via social media, let us recall that it was allegedly he who had discussed a political coup with Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957%20" type="external">conversation</a> in February entertaining thoughts on how to install American-friendly Arseniy Yatsenyuk as prime minister of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Politically, the beating heart of the Russia-U.S. post-Cold War conflict is that the people on both sides making foreign policy are Cold War “warriors” or their direct heirs. They project old views and habits onto new situations. And we see the preparations: The information wars on both sides stirring up hatred had started long before July 17 of this year.</p>
<p>The tragedy of the downing of MH17 prompted a widespread assumption about what had happened because it occurred in that environment. And hence, before the investigators could fully examine the site of the crash, sanctions against Russia had been announced and passed — sanctions that the United States had been advocating long before the downing of the plane.</p>
<p>Despite making many claims about the cause of the crash, the U.S. has refused to share the hardest evidence of all: the satellite imagery immediately prior, immediately after and, if available, at the moment of the attack and the downing of MH17.</p>
<p>Both Russian and American satellites have been surveilling the area of the fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military as well as the groups referred to by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as “partisans.” With this deadly proxy war between Russia and the United States, it seems only logical that the U.S. intelligence community had its eyes on the area. If not, the CIA should go on record unequivocally stating that it has no satellite information of the area on the day in question.</p>
<p>The case of the MH17 downing resembles another tragic incident, the shooting down of a Korean Air passenger plane west of Sakhalin Island in what was then the Soviet Union on Sept. 1, 1983.</p>
<p>What is known is that the South Korean passenger plane’s pilots — during their stopover in Anchorage, Alaska, from New York to Seoul — typed a slightly erroneous route in to their autopilot, which tragically led them into Soviet airspace. At that time, American reconnaissance planes were routinely “tickling” the Soviet radar by getting very close to the U.S.-Russian border between the Aleutian Islands near Alaska and Sakhalin. There were many incidents of such tickling in the history of the Cold War. They were designed to both test and provoke the Soviet Union in order to assess its capabilities. Russian fighter jets scrambled, mistaking the South Korean airliner for an American surveillance plane and shot it down. All 269 passengers aboard were killed.</p>
<p>There may have been a similar pattern in the downing of MH17 over Ukraine. Apparently, previous passenger flights were closely followed by Ukrainian fighter planes, potentially tickling and enticing a surface to air missile response by badly trained and possibly drunk pro-Russian rebels. However, it must be stressed that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system" type="external">Buk</a> missile systems, fighter jets and other military hardware made in Russia and in Eastern Ukraine are used by pro-Russian rebels and by the Ukrainian military. It is also highly likely that the expensive and sophisticated component that recognizes the type of plane in the air was either stripped off from the Buk missile system (if proven by direct evidence to have been used) and stolen or simply mishandled.</p>
<p>In order to dismiss this potential scenario, America should immediately publish — or publicly deny having — all satellite photos of MH17 in Ukrainian airspace as well as other commercial flights in the preceding days.</p>
<p>The Russian Defense Ministry quickly released what it says are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKCaEmvhr6w" type="external">radar and satellite shots</a> of the day of the attack, showing Ukrainian fighter jets following MH17 over Ukrainian territory.</p>
<p>These were dismissed as propaganda just as quickly, yet nobody claimed that those images were falsified. If they were proven to be fake, one presumes it would have made the papers. The U.S. must present its own satellite data to counter the Russian data, and I hope it takes place in public, on the floor of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. And then let the chips fall where they may. It can happen now, if officials have the data. If they never had such satellite data, they must clearly state that fact as well, and stand by it.</p>
<p>Victims of the MH17 downing deserve evidence from all parties, not propaganda. We need data.</p>
<p>Yet even a superficial survey of the media landscape across American, Ukrainian and Russian outlets makes one thing clear: Everyone is lying. This, in turn, means only one thing: The truth is inconvenient for all parties and does not fit the stories around which the world is realigning today. There are no good guys here, but there is the truth.</p>
<p>Thus, a simple question stands before the world:</p>
<p>Why has the United States not released its satellite images of the time of the MH17 crash and, more importantly, moments prior to it?</p>
<p>Both the dead and the living deserve the truth.</p>
| 5,623 |
<p>Most of the rich nations gathering at this year’s UN climate summit have already&#160; <a href="" type="internal">conceded defeat</a>&#160;when it comes to producing any kind of binding treaty to slow greenhouse gas emissions this decade. But that isn’t going to stop poorer, more climate-vulnerable nations from trying.</p>
<p>Costa Rican president José María Figueres is&#160; <a href="" type="internal">calling on these vulnerable countries to “occupy Durban”</a>&#160;— the South African city hosting the summit from its launch yesterday until December 9th.</p>
<p>“We went to Copenhagen [in 2009] with the illusion we could reach an equitable agreement. We went to Cancún [in 2009] where we saw slight but not sufficient progress. Frustration is now deep and building. Now we hear that we will need more conferences. Sometime we have to get serious. We should be going to Durban with the firm conviction that we do not come back until we have made substantial advances.”</p>
<p>While it is not known whether anyone will take up Figueres’s call to action, theGuardian&#160;did speak to one ambassador who said, “In the corridors [here] there is talk of occupying the meeting rooms, but there could be sanctions. So it needs to be big inside in order to have impact and nobody is punished. We are at the beginning.”</p>
<p>The&#160;Guardian&#160;also noted that Seyni Nafo, spokesman for the important 53-country Africa group, is on record as saying, “Action that might make it [climate change] visible must be considered. We are exploring a lot of avenues and options. You have to take that seriously.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, outside the conference space, protestors have formed <a href="http://occupycop17.org/" type="external">Occupy COP17</a>&#160;(as this is the 17th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Climate Change). The General Assembly held its first meeting yesterday against the backdrop of a banner that read “Conference of People.” Before breaking off into groups to discuss ideas for solutions to the climate crisis, former Bolivian Ambassador to the UN Pablo Solon took the people’s mic:</p>
<p>“The only way to bring balance is to have the rights of nature and the rights of human beings. I have been a negotiator for two and a half years. We opposed the Cancun Agreement one year ago. Why? Because it is going to cook the world and it is going to cook Africa.”</p>
<p>This point has been raised by many African environmentalists as well. At a COP17 protest in Johannesburg on Saturday Earthlife Africa program officer <a href="" type="internal">Makoma Lekalakala told the South African Broadcasting Corporation</a>&#160;that she was marching to “make sure that this COP doesn’t become another failure, a failure that would cost the lives of millions of South Africans.”</p>
<p>To further highlight what many Africans may soon face as a result of climate change, civil society groups have set up a&#160; <a href="" type="internal">mock refugee camp</a>&#160;near the convention center, where about 2,000 climate justice activists from around the region will be based during the next two weeks. One of their main goals is to get the youth involved, which is vital since they represent 70 percent of Africa’s population.</p>
<p>There are some, however, who are already involved. About 200 young people traveled from Nairobi for two weeks in a&#160; <a href="http://www.wehavefaithactnow.org/" type="external">caravan of buses</a>&#160;through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa, organizing concerts along the way to draw attention to the impacts of climate change. Now in Durban, they plan to organize more events that will appeal to the African youth.</p>
<p>As pressure mounts both outside and inside a climate conference many people see as one of the last great hopes to avert the worst effects of climate change, it’s worth pointing out, as&#160; <a href="http://occupycop17.org/" type="external">Occupy COP17 does on its website</a>, that Durban is the place where “Nelson Mandela cast his first vote and Gandhi held his first meeting.” In other words, Durban is a symbol of what people power can achieve and these next two weeks are without a doubt the right time for that legacy to grow.</p>
<p>Bryan Ferrell writes for <a href="http://wagingnonviolence.org/" type="external">Waging in Nonviolence</a>.</p>
|
Occupy Durban
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2011/11/29/occupy-durban-2/
|
2011-11-29
| 4left
|
Occupy Durban
<p>Most of the rich nations gathering at this year’s UN climate summit have already&#160; <a href="" type="internal">conceded defeat</a>&#160;when it comes to producing any kind of binding treaty to slow greenhouse gas emissions this decade. But that isn’t going to stop poorer, more climate-vulnerable nations from trying.</p>
<p>Costa Rican president José María Figueres is&#160; <a href="" type="internal">calling on these vulnerable countries to “occupy Durban”</a>&#160;— the South African city hosting the summit from its launch yesterday until December 9th.</p>
<p>“We went to Copenhagen [in 2009] with the illusion we could reach an equitable agreement. We went to Cancún [in 2009] where we saw slight but not sufficient progress. Frustration is now deep and building. Now we hear that we will need more conferences. Sometime we have to get serious. We should be going to Durban with the firm conviction that we do not come back until we have made substantial advances.”</p>
<p>While it is not known whether anyone will take up Figueres’s call to action, theGuardian&#160;did speak to one ambassador who said, “In the corridors [here] there is talk of occupying the meeting rooms, but there could be sanctions. So it needs to be big inside in order to have impact and nobody is punished. We are at the beginning.”</p>
<p>The&#160;Guardian&#160;also noted that Seyni Nafo, spokesman for the important 53-country Africa group, is on record as saying, “Action that might make it [climate change] visible must be considered. We are exploring a lot of avenues and options. You have to take that seriously.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, outside the conference space, protestors have formed <a href="http://occupycop17.org/" type="external">Occupy COP17</a>&#160;(as this is the 17th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Climate Change). The General Assembly held its first meeting yesterday against the backdrop of a banner that read “Conference of People.” Before breaking off into groups to discuss ideas for solutions to the climate crisis, former Bolivian Ambassador to the UN Pablo Solon took the people’s mic:</p>
<p>“The only way to bring balance is to have the rights of nature and the rights of human beings. I have been a negotiator for two and a half years. We opposed the Cancun Agreement one year ago. Why? Because it is going to cook the world and it is going to cook Africa.”</p>
<p>This point has been raised by many African environmentalists as well. At a COP17 protest in Johannesburg on Saturday Earthlife Africa program officer <a href="" type="internal">Makoma Lekalakala told the South African Broadcasting Corporation</a>&#160;that she was marching to “make sure that this COP doesn’t become another failure, a failure that would cost the lives of millions of South Africans.”</p>
<p>To further highlight what many Africans may soon face as a result of climate change, civil society groups have set up a&#160; <a href="" type="internal">mock refugee camp</a>&#160;near the convention center, where about 2,000 climate justice activists from around the region will be based during the next two weeks. One of their main goals is to get the youth involved, which is vital since they represent 70 percent of Africa’s population.</p>
<p>There are some, however, who are already involved. About 200 young people traveled from Nairobi for two weeks in a&#160; <a href="http://www.wehavefaithactnow.org/" type="external">caravan of buses</a>&#160;through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa, organizing concerts along the way to draw attention to the impacts of climate change. Now in Durban, they plan to organize more events that will appeal to the African youth.</p>
<p>As pressure mounts both outside and inside a climate conference many people see as one of the last great hopes to avert the worst effects of climate change, it’s worth pointing out, as&#160; <a href="http://occupycop17.org/" type="external">Occupy COP17 does on its website</a>, that Durban is the place where “Nelson Mandela cast his first vote and Gandhi held his first meeting.” In other words, Durban is a symbol of what people power can achieve and these next two weeks are without a doubt the right time for that legacy to grow.</p>
<p>Bryan Ferrell writes for <a href="http://wagingnonviolence.org/" type="external">Waging in Nonviolence</a>.</p>
| 5,624 |
<p>In BP's most recent annual energy outlook report, company analysts estimated that demand for oil would continue to grow until at least the mid-2040s.</p>
<p>Watch this <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Energy Opens a New Window.</a> video segment to see Motley Fool analysts Sean O'Reilly and Taylor Muckerman explain how that could be -- where the demand is going to come from, and how it could possibly be met. Also, the hosts talk about where U.S. production of oil is expected to go, how BP (NYSE: BP)projects Africa's demand for energy to grow in the next few decades, and more.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than BPWhen 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=http%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=846a7356-52e5-4ddb-9d58-a51479984d5f&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 BP wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of February 6, 2017</p>
<p>This podcast was recorded on Feb. 10, 2017.</p>
<p>Sean O'Reilly:OK, I'm going to spoil the whole oil demand thing -- they think that oil demand is going to continue to grow until the mid-2040s. One, that is extraordinarily surprising to me. Two, you're talking, based upon their charts, well over 100 million barrels per day that the world is going to want by then. I would think we would need Nigeria's oil to get there; that's what I'm saying.</p>
<p>Taylor Muckerman: Well, you see Brazil, the deepwater there is expected to finally come online.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: That's been a story for ...</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, as long as I've been covering energy, Brazil is supposed to be producing deepwater oil.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Somehow they'll lose all of it due to corruption charges.</p>
<p>Muckerman: But in relation to other offshore oil, it's not that expensive. So that could be a point that we turn to. Venezuela relies very heavily on offshore oil production. So it could just be too expensive for them.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: I was really surprised by that. You have the electric-car bulls and all that --</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. Transportation takes a back seat to non-combustible demand sources. Basically, the petrochemical industry is going to take over the mantle of demand from transportation.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: And that, of course, just means that there's going to be 1.5 billion more people, we're going to get slightly richer, and everybody likes plastic stuff.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Not just plastic. Rubber, clothes. People probably don't realize how much oil they're wearing.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Are you wearing oil right now?</p>
<p>Muckerman: I'm sure. I don't know what it is, but the soles of my shoes, probably. You have recyclable materials going into shoes now, but that's a small fraction of global apparel. And home goods and car parts, you name it.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Yeah. I'm looking at their chart, it's Page 88 of the report, 2035, they think about 105 million barrels per day being demanded. What are we at -- 96? So that's not a crazy jump.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, I think I saw somewhere that the U.S. might jump up to about 15 million barrels per day of that, at some point. And then, the tail end of this, looks like our share kind of starts to decline.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: What did you think of that? I've also seen these reports that talk about how everybody's talking about the shale boom in the United States. And I saw that shale production in the U.S. might peak out at about 2020, and I was like, what's going on there?</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. U.S. share in the first half of the outlook grows, but then it gradually declines. But if you look at natural gas from shale in the U.S., that's going to grow by double, probably, that's what they say.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: We have lots of gas.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. And then that feeds into the LNG discussion that we had at the top of the segment. We have the gas to liquefy, to export. Europe just so happens to be a very close trading partner with us, directly across the Atlantic Ocean. So far, the export facilities that we have online or soon to come online are in the Gulf Coast and the Eastern seaboard. So, easy access to Europe.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Good to go. So the other cool thing that I thought was interesting was Africa is going to be half the increase in global population, but 10% of the GDP increase, the effect. And they actually said in their report that if they were to just meet what India has done in the last 10 years in terms of productivity and GDP growth per capita, it could get very interesting in Africa.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. I didn't end up getting to it, but in the 90s, page-wise, they talk about Africa beyond 2035. That's when the demand is really going to start to kick in, they think, for energy in Africa. A lot of people there don't have access to convenient or reliable energy sources yet.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: And I have to assume, given what's going on with solar today ...</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. Small regional solar, utility-size plants, are going up in Africa, more so than in other parts of the world, I think, because you don't have the continentwide distribution networks, so you need these localized power supplies, and solar is able to provide that for a decent part that continent. It's not yet, but the solar availability for Africa is pretty high in comparison to northern Russia or Canada or anything like that.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Right. The sun shines there.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yes, it does.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: I stepped away from this kind of optimistic about the future.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Me, too. Look at dirty fossil fuels being replaced by cleaner fossil fuels or renewables. Look at renewable energy sources supposed to quadruple by 2035. So you're looking at renewables, nuclear, and hydro, 50% of the increase by 2035. As an overall share of energy production, oil and coal decline. Demand rises slightly for both. But renewables and natural gas catch up and take over some of the market share. They're still not going to be the leaders, but natural gas does surpass coal in the last few years of the projection. It's already surpassed coal here in the United States very recently, but globally, it's supposed to surpass coal in terms of energy market share in the latter half, maybe 2025 or 2030.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBuckeye/info.aspx" type="external">Sean O'Reilly Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFrunAMuck/info.aspx" type="external">Taylor Muckerman Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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>
|
Oil Demand To Increase Until 2040?
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/02/oil-demand-to-increase-until-2040.html
|
2017-03-16
| 0right
|
Oil Demand To Increase Until 2040?
<p>In BP's most recent annual energy outlook report, company analysts estimated that demand for oil would continue to grow until at least the mid-2040s.</p>
<p>Watch this <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Energy Opens a New Window.</a> video segment to see Motley Fool analysts Sean O'Reilly and Taylor Muckerman explain how that could be -- where the demand is going to come from, and how it could possibly be met. Also, the hosts talk about where U.S. production of oil is expected to go, how BP (NYSE: BP)projects Africa's demand for energy to grow in the next few decades, and more.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than BPWhen 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=http%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=846a7356-52e5-4ddb-9d58-a51479984d5f&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 BP wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
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<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of February 6, 2017</p>
<p>This podcast was recorded on Feb. 10, 2017.</p>
<p>Sean O'Reilly:OK, I'm going to spoil the whole oil demand thing -- they think that oil demand is going to continue to grow until the mid-2040s. One, that is extraordinarily surprising to me. Two, you're talking, based upon their charts, well over 100 million barrels per day that the world is going to want by then. I would think we would need Nigeria's oil to get there; that's what I'm saying.</p>
<p>Taylor Muckerman: Well, you see Brazil, the deepwater there is expected to finally come online.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: That's been a story for ...</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, as long as I've been covering energy, Brazil is supposed to be producing deepwater oil.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Somehow they'll lose all of it due to corruption charges.</p>
<p>Muckerman: But in relation to other offshore oil, it's not that expensive. So that could be a point that we turn to. Venezuela relies very heavily on offshore oil production. So it could just be too expensive for them.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: I was really surprised by that. You have the electric-car bulls and all that --</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. Transportation takes a back seat to non-combustible demand sources. Basically, the petrochemical industry is going to take over the mantle of demand from transportation.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: And that, of course, just means that there's going to be 1.5 billion more people, we're going to get slightly richer, and everybody likes plastic stuff.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Not just plastic. Rubber, clothes. People probably don't realize how much oil they're wearing.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Are you wearing oil right now?</p>
<p>Muckerman: I'm sure. I don't know what it is, but the soles of my shoes, probably. You have recyclable materials going into shoes now, but that's a small fraction of global apparel. And home goods and car parts, you name it.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Yeah. I'm looking at their chart, it's Page 88 of the report, 2035, they think about 105 million barrels per day being demanded. What are we at -- 96? So that's not a crazy jump.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah, I think I saw somewhere that the U.S. might jump up to about 15 million barrels per day of that, at some point. And then, the tail end of this, looks like our share kind of starts to decline.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: What did you think of that? I've also seen these reports that talk about how everybody's talking about the shale boom in the United States. And I saw that shale production in the U.S. might peak out at about 2020, and I was like, what's going on there?</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. U.S. share in the first half of the outlook grows, but then it gradually declines. But if you look at natural gas from shale in the U.S., that's going to grow by double, probably, that's what they say.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: We have lots of gas.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. And then that feeds into the LNG discussion that we had at the top of the segment. We have the gas to liquefy, to export. Europe just so happens to be a very close trading partner with us, directly across the Atlantic Ocean. So far, the export facilities that we have online or soon to come online are in the Gulf Coast and the Eastern seaboard. So, easy access to Europe.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Good to go. So the other cool thing that I thought was interesting was Africa is going to be half the increase in global population, but 10% of the GDP increase, the effect. And they actually said in their report that if they were to just meet what India has done in the last 10 years in terms of productivity and GDP growth per capita, it could get very interesting in Africa.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. I didn't end up getting to it, but in the 90s, page-wise, they talk about Africa beyond 2035. That's when the demand is really going to start to kick in, they think, for energy in Africa. A lot of people there don't have access to convenient or reliable energy sources yet.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: And I have to assume, given what's going on with solar today ...</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yeah. Small regional solar, utility-size plants, are going up in Africa, more so than in other parts of the world, I think, because you don't have the continentwide distribution networks, so you need these localized power supplies, and solar is able to provide that for a decent part that continent. It's not yet, but the solar availability for Africa is pretty high in comparison to northern Russia or Canada or anything like that.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: Right. The sun shines there.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Yes, it does.</p>
<p>O'Reilly: I stepped away from this kind of optimistic about the future.</p>
<p>Muckerman: Me, too. Look at dirty fossil fuels being replaced by cleaner fossil fuels or renewables. Look at renewable energy sources supposed to quadruple by 2035. So you're looking at renewables, nuclear, and hydro, 50% of the increase by 2035. As an overall share of energy production, oil and coal decline. Demand rises slightly for both. But renewables and natural gas catch up and take over some of the market share. They're still not going to be the leaders, but natural gas does surpass coal in the last few years of the projection. It's already surpassed coal here in the United States very recently, but globally, it's supposed to surpass coal in terms of energy market share in the latter half, maybe 2025 or 2030.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBuckeye/info.aspx" type="external">Sean O'Reilly Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFrunAMuck/info.aspx" type="external">Taylor Muckerman Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 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>
| 5,625 |
<p>At least when Duffy’s Circus left Youghal there’d be piles of dung from the horses and the elephant. The Kerry campaign leaves nothing of fertilizing potential, not a single creative idea, only grim advisories like not running any nominee from the north-east in 2008, and we all know the probable life-span of that particular piece of useful advice.</p>
<p>How quickly the caravan moves on! The Brookings crowd sadly pull their resumes from the fax machines. John Kerry resumes his ghost-like sojourn in the US Senate, where perhaps he might apply himself to improving his attendance record, the worst in the upper chamber. He missed no less than 76 per cent of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s public hearings over the course of his 8-year tenure on that committee. Teresa returns to full-time work at the Heinz Foundation, dispensing money to neoliberal environmental groups, though alas she has had to dispense with the wise counsel of Ken Lay, formerly of Enron, who adorned her board of advisors until last year.</p>
<p>Pockets of Kerrycrats fight on, like Japanese soldiers on atolls in the Pacific. No doubt there are 527s still nourishing themselves on the money of men like Soros. There’s even been some talk about Kerry keeping his hat in the presidential ring, but we shouldn’t take that too seriously. Over the next few months his horse-like visage will fade in the murk of memory, amid kiss-and-tell memoirs about his indecision and arrogance plus the ultra-high maintenance required for his consort.</p>
<p>The political consultants pocket their retainer fees, their 10 or 15 per cent commissions on hundreds of millions worth of campaign ads and march on to the next electoral rendez-vous . Before the election a Washington Post profile of Kerry’s manager, Bob Shrum, disclosed that he stood to make $5 million out of the 2004 presidential campaign, win or lose.</p>
<p>The truly bad news is the 9/11 nuts have relocated to Stolen Election. My inbox is awash with their ravings. People who have spent the last three years sending me screeds establishing to their own satisfaction that George Bush personally ordered the attacks on the towers and that Dick Cheney vectored the planes in are now pummeling me with data on the time people spent on line waiting to vote in Cuyahoga county, Ohio, and how the Diebold machines are all jimmied. As usual, the conspiracy nuts think that plans of inconceivable complexity worked at 100 per cent efficiency, that Murphy’s law was once again in suspense, and that 10,000 co-conspirators are all going to keep their mouths shut.</p>
<p>Do I think the election was stolen? No more than usual. The Democrats are getting worse at it and the Republicans better. Back in 1960 it was the other way round. The best documented stolen election in history is probably the one that put Lyndon Johnson in the US Senate. Next came the one that gave JFK the White House. So, for sure there’s vote suppression in Ohio and Florida. I don’t think it made the crucial difference.</p>
<p>“Stolen election” is one way to divert attention from the fact that the Democrats had a lousy candidate and gave up on most of the country, investing everything in two or three states. Small wonder they lost the popular vote, not to mention other minor details ,like the US senate.</p>
<p>The months will pass and then, most hideous of hideous thoughts, we’ll have to put up with three solid years of talk about Hillary Clinton. Her in the White House, Bill running the UN. There’ll be nowhere left to run.</p>
<p>Those who argued Bush’s reelection would, by and large, do more to sap the American Empire already detect pleasing omens of enhanced discord among the Allies. Out goes the oiler of troubled waters, Colin Powell. In comes fractious Condoleezza. Would you really have preferred Richard Holbrooke, shuttling between Paris, Bonn, and Madrid amid relieved shouts that here after four dark years was a man who respected Euro-feelings?</p>
<p>And talking of the Euro, down down down goes the US dollar against all the major world currencies. Soon we’ll be getting news footage of US tourists pushing airport trolleys piled high with worthless greenbacks along the rue St Honore and into the Ritz to settle their bills before camping out under the bridges. In the last two years the US dollar has declined 52 per cent against the Euro, which many people used to think had about the same substantive brawn as a UN blue helmet.</p>
<p>Here’s a sign of how bad things are. Speaking honestly, can you remember the name of the Treasury Secretary? Aha! And no, it’s not Evans, who’s quitting the Department of Commerce. It’s John Snow. Now, in the old days everyone knew the name of the Treasury Secretary, the guy who protected the money and strutted the ramparts of Fort Knox. Not any more. These days he’s a harrowed mendicant who spends most of his day on the line to Beijing imploring the Chinese not to join up with the Japanese to ditch the dollar as a global unit of account, heeding Jude Wanniski’s thought that they could join up to fix the yuan and yen to gold in an Asian Bretton Woods.</p>
<p>The neocons? They’re are holding on, probably aware that if they quit government they’ll live like hunted things, fleeing lawsuits down the years. They’ll cling on and then hope Bush will pardon them on his way out of Dodge in 2008, same as his dad did Weinberger and his CIA buddies.</p>
<p>Fallujah has now supposedly been “won”. For how long? Sometimes the parallels drawn between Iraq and Vietnam have seemed a bit theatrical. Not any more. No hearts and minds have been won in Fallujah any more than they were won in the Vietnamese countryside around My Lai. The city has been destroyed in order to save it for democracy. The language of the US military commanders, and of the journalists who relay their press releases echoes with eerie and horrible fidelity those press releases from US military hq in Saigon 35 years ago. LBJ handed the quagmire on to Nixon. It’s Bush’s poisoned chalice bestowed by his first to his second term, the cup he’ll be hoisting on Inauguration Day.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The Poisoned Chalice
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2004/11/20/the-poisoned-chalice/
|
2004-11-20
| 4left
|
The Poisoned Chalice
<p>At least when Duffy’s Circus left Youghal there’d be piles of dung from the horses and the elephant. The Kerry campaign leaves nothing of fertilizing potential, not a single creative idea, only grim advisories like not running any nominee from the north-east in 2008, and we all know the probable life-span of that particular piece of useful advice.</p>
<p>How quickly the caravan moves on! The Brookings crowd sadly pull their resumes from the fax machines. John Kerry resumes his ghost-like sojourn in the US Senate, where perhaps he might apply himself to improving his attendance record, the worst in the upper chamber. He missed no less than 76 per cent of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s public hearings over the course of his 8-year tenure on that committee. Teresa returns to full-time work at the Heinz Foundation, dispensing money to neoliberal environmental groups, though alas she has had to dispense with the wise counsel of Ken Lay, formerly of Enron, who adorned her board of advisors until last year.</p>
<p>Pockets of Kerrycrats fight on, like Japanese soldiers on atolls in the Pacific. No doubt there are 527s still nourishing themselves on the money of men like Soros. There’s even been some talk about Kerry keeping his hat in the presidential ring, but we shouldn’t take that too seriously. Over the next few months his horse-like visage will fade in the murk of memory, amid kiss-and-tell memoirs about his indecision and arrogance plus the ultra-high maintenance required for his consort.</p>
<p>The political consultants pocket their retainer fees, their 10 or 15 per cent commissions on hundreds of millions worth of campaign ads and march on to the next electoral rendez-vous . Before the election a Washington Post profile of Kerry’s manager, Bob Shrum, disclosed that he stood to make $5 million out of the 2004 presidential campaign, win or lose.</p>
<p>The truly bad news is the 9/11 nuts have relocated to Stolen Election. My inbox is awash with their ravings. People who have spent the last three years sending me screeds establishing to their own satisfaction that George Bush personally ordered the attacks on the towers and that Dick Cheney vectored the planes in are now pummeling me with data on the time people spent on line waiting to vote in Cuyahoga county, Ohio, and how the Diebold machines are all jimmied. As usual, the conspiracy nuts think that plans of inconceivable complexity worked at 100 per cent efficiency, that Murphy’s law was once again in suspense, and that 10,000 co-conspirators are all going to keep their mouths shut.</p>
<p>Do I think the election was stolen? No more than usual. The Democrats are getting worse at it and the Republicans better. Back in 1960 it was the other way round. The best documented stolen election in history is probably the one that put Lyndon Johnson in the US Senate. Next came the one that gave JFK the White House. So, for sure there’s vote suppression in Ohio and Florida. I don’t think it made the crucial difference.</p>
<p>“Stolen election” is one way to divert attention from the fact that the Democrats had a lousy candidate and gave up on most of the country, investing everything in two or three states. Small wonder they lost the popular vote, not to mention other minor details ,like the US senate.</p>
<p>The months will pass and then, most hideous of hideous thoughts, we’ll have to put up with three solid years of talk about Hillary Clinton. Her in the White House, Bill running the UN. There’ll be nowhere left to run.</p>
<p>Those who argued Bush’s reelection would, by and large, do more to sap the American Empire already detect pleasing omens of enhanced discord among the Allies. Out goes the oiler of troubled waters, Colin Powell. In comes fractious Condoleezza. Would you really have preferred Richard Holbrooke, shuttling between Paris, Bonn, and Madrid amid relieved shouts that here after four dark years was a man who respected Euro-feelings?</p>
<p>And talking of the Euro, down down down goes the US dollar against all the major world currencies. Soon we’ll be getting news footage of US tourists pushing airport trolleys piled high with worthless greenbacks along the rue St Honore and into the Ritz to settle their bills before camping out under the bridges. In the last two years the US dollar has declined 52 per cent against the Euro, which many people used to think had about the same substantive brawn as a UN blue helmet.</p>
<p>Here’s a sign of how bad things are. Speaking honestly, can you remember the name of the Treasury Secretary? Aha! And no, it’s not Evans, who’s quitting the Department of Commerce. It’s John Snow. Now, in the old days everyone knew the name of the Treasury Secretary, the guy who protected the money and strutted the ramparts of Fort Knox. Not any more. These days he’s a harrowed mendicant who spends most of his day on the line to Beijing imploring the Chinese not to join up with the Japanese to ditch the dollar as a global unit of account, heeding Jude Wanniski’s thought that they could join up to fix the yuan and yen to gold in an Asian Bretton Woods.</p>
<p>The neocons? They’re are holding on, probably aware that if they quit government they’ll live like hunted things, fleeing lawsuits down the years. They’ll cling on and then hope Bush will pardon them on his way out of Dodge in 2008, same as his dad did Weinberger and his CIA buddies.</p>
<p>Fallujah has now supposedly been “won”. For how long? Sometimes the parallels drawn between Iraq and Vietnam have seemed a bit theatrical. Not any more. No hearts and minds have been won in Fallujah any more than they were won in the Vietnamese countryside around My Lai. The city has been destroyed in order to save it for democracy. The language of the US military commanders, and of the journalists who relay their press releases echoes with eerie and horrible fidelity those press releases from US military hq in Saigon 35 years ago. LBJ handed the quagmire on to Nixon. It’s Bush’s poisoned chalice bestowed by his first to his second term, the cup he’ll be hoisting on Inauguration Day.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 5,626 |
<p>LONE ROCK, Wis. (AP) — Gary Ilminen’s passion for motorcycles began with a minibike.</p>
<p>It was the late 1960s in Hurley, a northern Wisconsin community on the Michigan border famous for its snowmobiling and skiing cultures, lumber and mining history, countless taverns and streets named after rocks and minerals like taconite, gold, copper, granite and hematite.</p>
<p>But for the teenage Ilminen, the washboard-like dirt roads and forest paths of Iron County were the draw. This is where Ilminen modified the governor of his 1968 HPE 2501 Cat Mini-Bike to push its top speed to 35 mph, about 10 mph faster than the manufacture’s setting.</p>
<p>He had no idea at the time that he’d reach higher speeds, own several motorcycles and develop a craving for salt.</p>
<p>In 2014, Ilminen — a nurse, author and historian — used a 1974 Honda 350 four-cylinder motorcycle — which he purchased in 2010 at an estate auction in Viroqua for $600 — to set a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats of western Utah. Wearing a one-piece protective leather suit he nabbed for $30 at a resale shop in Mazomanie, Ilminen slowly throttled his bike to hit 80.102 mph, a record for a production class motorcycle of its size.</p>
<p>“The salt feels really rough,” Ilminen, 62, told <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/a-salt-flat-dream-becomes-reality-for-lone-rock-motorcyclist/article_665433dc-ab43-58e3-b093-ceb8bb474c94.html" type="external">the Wisconsin State Journal</a> as he stood in his Lone Rock garage that is home to 11 motorcycles. “They caution you ‘don’t accelerate fast, don’t change direction fast and don’t slow down fast. Do everything real gradual.’ That’s why the short course I ran on was 5 miles long.”</p>
<p>Ilminen, a frequent contributing editor to national motorcycle publications, has written a book about his adventure that included three other prior trips to Bonneville. The 88-page book, released in September by TouchPoint Press, recounts his record run, the restoration of his bikes and a bit of history about the Salt Flats and efforts to preserve the landscape there.</p>
<p>The book also sheds light on the motorcycle culture of the Madison area with mentions of Bill Whisenant, owner of Motorcycle Performance, who rebuilds Ducatis he races on the Salt Flats, and Vetesnik Power Sports in Richland Center. There’s also a back-cover blurb from Peter Egan, an Elroy native, Vietnam War veteran and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who has written about cars and motorcycles for Road &amp; Track and Cycle World magazines and lives near Cooksville, just south of Stoughton.</p>
<p>“Like all the best motorcycle books, it makes you want to get out there and try it yourself,” Egan wrote.</p>
<p>But the book is also about not letting age get in the way of achieving a dream. Ilminen’s was formed in 1970 when his brother, Randy, brought home a copy of Cycle magazine that featured stories and photographs from Bonneville. On the cover of the magazine was a rocket-like ship and its driver posing on the barren landscape.</p>
<p>“Don’t abandon dreams just because you get older,” Ilminen said. “I found myself standing on the salt at age 59. There’s a lot of inspiration there.”</p>
<p>Bonneville has been a destination for speed freaks for over 100 years. Many picture rocket sleds can top 1,000 mph. The American Motorcycle Association hosts the AMA Land Speed Grand Championship, also known as the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials, at which Ilminen set his record. According to the AMA website, classes are determined by engine displacement, modification levels and various degrees of streamlining. The event allows hundreds of competitors on bikes ranging from 50cc minibikes to 3,000cc monstrosities a chance to clinch records sanctioned by the AMA and Federation Internationale de Motocylisme.</p>
<p>“Speed racing is one of the few motor sports where you can be a local like me with no budget, no big money and no big sponsors and go out there and have a legitimate shot at a world record or a national record,” Ilminen said. “And I’m living proof.”</p>
<p>Ilminen works out of his house as a clinical quality analyst where he reviews medical records for Optum Services, a Tennessee health care company, and spent six years writing a book on health care best practices that was published in 1999. He also is an associate online editor for Ultimate Motorcycling magazine and has written for other publications about the Black Hawk War and Chief Black Hawk.</p>
<p>Ilminen has a degree in mechanical design and drafting from Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Michigan, and spent 10 years in manufacturing that included stints with Wick Homes in Mazomanie and Cardinal Glass in Spring Green. He changed course, returned to school and in 1987 earned an associate degree in nursing that has led to what is now a more than 30-year career in health care.</p>
<p>That’s how he met his partner of 22 years, Jacci Shauger, a hospice nurse in Baraboo. They share a home together that includes a 24-foot-wide by 36-foot-long garage that now stores two Harley-Davidsons, one Triumph, seven Hondas and one Yamaha amid the snowblower and lawn mower. There’s also a 1979 Sno Runner, a cross between a snowmobile and motorcycle that’s designed for snow. The 25-foot workbench is jammed with tools and parts and much of the garage’s ceiling is covered with flags, signs and posters. One is from the 2005 movie “The World’s Fastest Indian,” the story of Burt Munro, a New Zealand man who spent years rebuilding a 1920 Indian motorcycle and in 1967 set a land-speed world record at Bonneville.</p>
<p>Shauger, who had no idea about Ilminen’s motorcycle obsession when they first met, has been instrumental in helping with the logistics of Ilminen’s four trips to Bonneville and took many of the photos in the book.</p>
<p>“Bonneville isn’t what you think it is. You think it’s just these guys out there for speed,” Shauger said. “There’s just a whole lot of stuff going on. If someone needs a part you hear it on the loudspeaker. It’s just a whole different world and everybody helps everybody.”</p>
<p>Ilminen’s first trip to Bonneville was in October 2009 when he used his restored Honda V30 Magna with a 500cc, liquid-cooled V-4 engine to hit 104.5 mph but was short of the record in its class of 112 mph. In April 2010, Ilminen returned with the Honda 350 and set an initial record of 72.6 mph only to see it eclipsed later in the competition. In 2012, he again used the V30 Magna bike with hopes of topping 113 mph but wind and rain closed the course and prevented Ilminen from competing.</p>
<p>The fourth trip to the Salt Flats was in August 2014 when Ilminen paid $750 to enter a new class, a 350cc Classic Production class. Ilminen’s first run hit 80.2 mph, 6.2 mph faster than his best speed in 2010. On the second run he hit 79.9 mph for a two run average of 80.1, a record that still holds. Shauger also hit it big that day winning $678 on penny slots at the Rainbow Casino in nearby West Wendover, Nevada.</p>
<p>The bike has been retired but Ilminen still takes it out on day trips through the Driftless Area that includes the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway. He’s even added saddle bags.</p>
<p>“At some point the record speed will be broken — records are made to be broken — and the cycle of rewriting history will continue,” Ilminen writes in his book’s epilogue. “That will be a happy day for me and the new record holder; it will mean somebody else’s dream has come true at that place of legend.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p>
<p>LONE ROCK, Wis. (AP) — Gary Ilminen’s passion for motorcycles began with a minibike.</p>
<p>It was the late 1960s in Hurley, a northern Wisconsin community on the Michigan border famous for its snowmobiling and skiing cultures, lumber and mining history, countless taverns and streets named after rocks and minerals like taconite, gold, copper, granite and hematite.</p>
<p>But for the teenage Ilminen, the washboard-like dirt roads and forest paths of Iron County were the draw. This is where Ilminen modified the governor of his 1968 HPE 2501 Cat Mini-Bike to push its top speed to 35 mph, about 10 mph faster than the manufacture’s setting.</p>
<p>He had no idea at the time that he’d reach higher speeds, own several motorcycles and develop a craving for salt.</p>
<p>In 2014, Ilminen — a nurse, author and historian — used a 1974 Honda 350 four-cylinder motorcycle — which he purchased in 2010 at an estate auction in Viroqua for $600 — to set a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats of western Utah. Wearing a one-piece protective leather suit he nabbed for $30 at a resale shop in Mazomanie, Ilminen slowly throttled his bike to hit 80.102 mph, a record for a production class motorcycle of its size.</p>
<p>“The salt feels really rough,” Ilminen, 62, told <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/a-salt-flat-dream-becomes-reality-for-lone-rock-motorcyclist/article_665433dc-ab43-58e3-b093-ceb8bb474c94.html" type="external">the Wisconsin State Journal</a> as he stood in his Lone Rock garage that is home to 11 motorcycles. “They caution you ‘don’t accelerate fast, don’t change direction fast and don’t slow down fast. Do everything real gradual.’ That’s why the short course I ran on was 5 miles long.”</p>
<p>Ilminen, a frequent contributing editor to national motorcycle publications, has written a book about his adventure that included three other prior trips to Bonneville. The 88-page book, released in September by TouchPoint Press, recounts his record run, the restoration of his bikes and a bit of history about the Salt Flats and efforts to preserve the landscape there.</p>
<p>The book also sheds light on the motorcycle culture of the Madison area with mentions of Bill Whisenant, owner of Motorcycle Performance, who rebuilds Ducatis he races on the Salt Flats, and Vetesnik Power Sports in Richland Center. There’s also a back-cover blurb from Peter Egan, an Elroy native, Vietnam War veteran and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who has written about cars and motorcycles for Road &amp; Track and Cycle World magazines and lives near Cooksville, just south of Stoughton.</p>
<p>“Like all the best motorcycle books, it makes you want to get out there and try it yourself,” Egan wrote.</p>
<p>But the book is also about not letting age get in the way of achieving a dream. Ilminen’s was formed in 1970 when his brother, Randy, brought home a copy of Cycle magazine that featured stories and photographs from Bonneville. On the cover of the magazine was a rocket-like ship and its driver posing on the barren landscape.</p>
<p>“Don’t abandon dreams just because you get older,” Ilminen said. “I found myself standing on the salt at age 59. There’s a lot of inspiration there.”</p>
<p>Bonneville has been a destination for speed freaks for over 100 years. Many picture rocket sleds can top 1,000 mph. The American Motorcycle Association hosts the AMA Land Speed Grand Championship, also known as the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials, at which Ilminen set his record. According to the AMA website, classes are determined by engine displacement, modification levels and various degrees of streamlining. The event allows hundreds of competitors on bikes ranging from 50cc minibikes to 3,000cc monstrosities a chance to clinch records sanctioned by the AMA and Federation Internationale de Motocylisme.</p>
<p>“Speed racing is one of the few motor sports where you can be a local like me with no budget, no big money and no big sponsors and go out there and have a legitimate shot at a world record or a national record,” Ilminen said. “And I’m living proof.”</p>
<p>Ilminen works out of his house as a clinical quality analyst where he reviews medical records for Optum Services, a Tennessee health care company, and spent six years writing a book on health care best practices that was published in 1999. He also is an associate online editor for Ultimate Motorcycling magazine and has written for other publications about the Black Hawk War and Chief Black Hawk.</p>
<p>Ilminen has a degree in mechanical design and drafting from Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Michigan, and spent 10 years in manufacturing that included stints with Wick Homes in Mazomanie and Cardinal Glass in Spring Green. He changed course, returned to school and in 1987 earned an associate degree in nursing that has led to what is now a more than 30-year career in health care.</p>
<p>That’s how he met his partner of 22 years, Jacci Shauger, a hospice nurse in Baraboo. They share a home together that includes a 24-foot-wide by 36-foot-long garage that now stores two Harley-Davidsons, one Triumph, seven Hondas and one Yamaha amid the snowblower and lawn mower. There’s also a 1979 Sno Runner, a cross between a snowmobile and motorcycle that’s designed for snow. The 25-foot workbench is jammed with tools and parts and much of the garage’s ceiling is covered with flags, signs and posters. One is from the 2005 movie “The World’s Fastest Indian,” the story of Burt Munro, a New Zealand man who spent years rebuilding a 1920 Indian motorcycle and in 1967 set a land-speed world record at Bonneville.</p>
<p>Shauger, who had no idea about Ilminen’s motorcycle obsession when they first met, has been instrumental in helping with the logistics of Ilminen’s four trips to Bonneville and took many of the photos in the book.</p>
<p>“Bonneville isn’t what you think it is. You think it’s just these guys out there for speed,” Shauger said. “There’s just a whole lot of stuff going on. If someone needs a part you hear it on the loudspeaker. It’s just a whole different world and everybody helps everybody.”</p>
<p>Ilminen’s first trip to Bonneville was in October 2009 when he used his restored Honda V30 Magna with a 500cc, liquid-cooled V-4 engine to hit 104.5 mph but was short of the record in its class of 112 mph. In April 2010, Ilminen returned with the Honda 350 and set an initial record of 72.6 mph only to see it eclipsed later in the competition. In 2012, he again used the V30 Magna bike with hopes of topping 113 mph but wind and rain closed the course and prevented Ilminen from competing.</p>
<p>The fourth trip to the Salt Flats was in August 2014 when Ilminen paid $750 to enter a new class, a 350cc Classic Production class. Ilminen’s first run hit 80.2 mph, 6.2 mph faster than his best speed in 2010. On the second run he hit 79.9 mph for a two run average of 80.1, a record that still holds. Shauger also hit it big that day winning $678 on penny slots at the Rainbow Casino in nearby West Wendover, Nevada.</p>
<p>The bike has been retired but Ilminen still takes it out on day trips through the Driftless Area that includes the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway. He’s even added saddle bags.</p>
<p>“At some point the record speed will be broken — records are made to be broken — and the cycle of rewriting history will continue,” Ilminen writes in his book’s epilogue. “That will be a happy day for me and the new record holder; it will mean somebody else’s dream has come true at that place of legend.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p>
|
Wisconsin man pursues motorcycle dreams
| false |
https://apnews.com/3807fdd39f5341688af7de32b171756b
|
2018-01-22
| 2least
|
Wisconsin man pursues motorcycle dreams
<p>LONE ROCK, Wis. (AP) — Gary Ilminen’s passion for motorcycles began with a minibike.</p>
<p>It was the late 1960s in Hurley, a northern Wisconsin community on the Michigan border famous for its snowmobiling and skiing cultures, lumber and mining history, countless taverns and streets named after rocks and minerals like taconite, gold, copper, granite and hematite.</p>
<p>But for the teenage Ilminen, the washboard-like dirt roads and forest paths of Iron County were the draw. This is where Ilminen modified the governor of his 1968 HPE 2501 Cat Mini-Bike to push its top speed to 35 mph, about 10 mph faster than the manufacture’s setting.</p>
<p>He had no idea at the time that he’d reach higher speeds, own several motorcycles and develop a craving for salt.</p>
<p>In 2014, Ilminen — a nurse, author and historian — used a 1974 Honda 350 four-cylinder motorcycle — which he purchased in 2010 at an estate auction in Viroqua for $600 — to set a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats of western Utah. Wearing a one-piece protective leather suit he nabbed for $30 at a resale shop in Mazomanie, Ilminen slowly throttled his bike to hit 80.102 mph, a record for a production class motorcycle of its size.</p>
<p>“The salt feels really rough,” Ilminen, 62, told <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/a-salt-flat-dream-becomes-reality-for-lone-rock-motorcyclist/article_665433dc-ab43-58e3-b093-ceb8bb474c94.html" type="external">the Wisconsin State Journal</a> as he stood in his Lone Rock garage that is home to 11 motorcycles. “They caution you ‘don’t accelerate fast, don’t change direction fast and don’t slow down fast. Do everything real gradual.’ That’s why the short course I ran on was 5 miles long.”</p>
<p>Ilminen, a frequent contributing editor to national motorcycle publications, has written a book about his adventure that included three other prior trips to Bonneville. The 88-page book, released in September by TouchPoint Press, recounts his record run, the restoration of his bikes and a bit of history about the Salt Flats and efforts to preserve the landscape there.</p>
<p>The book also sheds light on the motorcycle culture of the Madison area with mentions of Bill Whisenant, owner of Motorcycle Performance, who rebuilds Ducatis he races on the Salt Flats, and Vetesnik Power Sports in Richland Center. There’s also a back-cover blurb from Peter Egan, an Elroy native, Vietnam War veteran and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who has written about cars and motorcycles for Road &amp; Track and Cycle World magazines and lives near Cooksville, just south of Stoughton.</p>
<p>“Like all the best motorcycle books, it makes you want to get out there and try it yourself,” Egan wrote.</p>
<p>But the book is also about not letting age get in the way of achieving a dream. Ilminen’s was formed in 1970 when his brother, Randy, brought home a copy of Cycle magazine that featured stories and photographs from Bonneville. On the cover of the magazine was a rocket-like ship and its driver posing on the barren landscape.</p>
<p>“Don’t abandon dreams just because you get older,” Ilminen said. “I found myself standing on the salt at age 59. There’s a lot of inspiration there.”</p>
<p>Bonneville has been a destination for speed freaks for over 100 years. Many picture rocket sleds can top 1,000 mph. The American Motorcycle Association hosts the AMA Land Speed Grand Championship, also known as the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials, at which Ilminen set his record. According to the AMA website, classes are determined by engine displacement, modification levels and various degrees of streamlining. The event allows hundreds of competitors on bikes ranging from 50cc minibikes to 3,000cc monstrosities a chance to clinch records sanctioned by the AMA and Federation Internationale de Motocylisme.</p>
<p>“Speed racing is one of the few motor sports where you can be a local like me with no budget, no big money and no big sponsors and go out there and have a legitimate shot at a world record or a national record,” Ilminen said. “And I’m living proof.”</p>
<p>Ilminen works out of his house as a clinical quality analyst where he reviews medical records for Optum Services, a Tennessee health care company, and spent six years writing a book on health care best practices that was published in 1999. He also is an associate online editor for Ultimate Motorcycling magazine and has written for other publications about the Black Hawk War and Chief Black Hawk.</p>
<p>Ilminen has a degree in mechanical design and drafting from Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Michigan, and spent 10 years in manufacturing that included stints with Wick Homes in Mazomanie and Cardinal Glass in Spring Green. He changed course, returned to school and in 1987 earned an associate degree in nursing that has led to what is now a more than 30-year career in health care.</p>
<p>That’s how he met his partner of 22 years, Jacci Shauger, a hospice nurse in Baraboo. They share a home together that includes a 24-foot-wide by 36-foot-long garage that now stores two Harley-Davidsons, one Triumph, seven Hondas and one Yamaha amid the snowblower and lawn mower. There’s also a 1979 Sno Runner, a cross between a snowmobile and motorcycle that’s designed for snow. The 25-foot workbench is jammed with tools and parts and much of the garage’s ceiling is covered with flags, signs and posters. One is from the 2005 movie “The World’s Fastest Indian,” the story of Burt Munro, a New Zealand man who spent years rebuilding a 1920 Indian motorcycle and in 1967 set a land-speed world record at Bonneville.</p>
<p>Shauger, who had no idea about Ilminen’s motorcycle obsession when they first met, has been instrumental in helping with the logistics of Ilminen’s four trips to Bonneville and took many of the photos in the book.</p>
<p>“Bonneville isn’t what you think it is. You think it’s just these guys out there for speed,” Shauger said. “There’s just a whole lot of stuff going on. If someone needs a part you hear it on the loudspeaker. It’s just a whole different world and everybody helps everybody.”</p>
<p>Ilminen’s first trip to Bonneville was in October 2009 when he used his restored Honda V30 Magna with a 500cc, liquid-cooled V-4 engine to hit 104.5 mph but was short of the record in its class of 112 mph. In April 2010, Ilminen returned with the Honda 350 and set an initial record of 72.6 mph only to see it eclipsed later in the competition. In 2012, he again used the V30 Magna bike with hopes of topping 113 mph but wind and rain closed the course and prevented Ilminen from competing.</p>
<p>The fourth trip to the Salt Flats was in August 2014 when Ilminen paid $750 to enter a new class, a 350cc Classic Production class. Ilminen’s first run hit 80.2 mph, 6.2 mph faster than his best speed in 2010. On the second run he hit 79.9 mph for a two run average of 80.1, a record that still holds. Shauger also hit it big that day winning $678 on penny slots at the Rainbow Casino in nearby West Wendover, Nevada.</p>
<p>The bike has been retired but Ilminen still takes it out on day trips through the Driftless Area that includes the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway. He’s even added saddle bags.</p>
<p>“At some point the record speed will be broken — records are made to be broken — and the cycle of rewriting history will continue,” Ilminen writes in his book’s epilogue. “That will be a happy day for me and the new record holder; it will mean somebody else’s dream has come true at that place of legend.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p>
<p>LONE ROCK, Wis. (AP) — Gary Ilminen’s passion for motorcycles began with a minibike.</p>
<p>It was the late 1960s in Hurley, a northern Wisconsin community on the Michigan border famous for its snowmobiling and skiing cultures, lumber and mining history, countless taverns and streets named after rocks and minerals like taconite, gold, copper, granite and hematite.</p>
<p>But for the teenage Ilminen, the washboard-like dirt roads and forest paths of Iron County were the draw. This is where Ilminen modified the governor of his 1968 HPE 2501 Cat Mini-Bike to push its top speed to 35 mph, about 10 mph faster than the manufacture’s setting.</p>
<p>He had no idea at the time that he’d reach higher speeds, own several motorcycles and develop a craving for salt.</p>
<p>In 2014, Ilminen — a nurse, author and historian — used a 1974 Honda 350 four-cylinder motorcycle — which he purchased in 2010 at an estate auction in Viroqua for $600 — to set a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats of western Utah. Wearing a one-piece protective leather suit he nabbed for $30 at a resale shop in Mazomanie, Ilminen slowly throttled his bike to hit 80.102 mph, a record for a production class motorcycle of its size.</p>
<p>“The salt feels really rough,” Ilminen, 62, told <a href="http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/a-salt-flat-dream-becomes-reality-for-lone-rock-motorcyclist/article_665433dc-ab43-58e3-b093-ceb8bb474c94.html" type="external">the Wisconsin State Journal</a> as he stood in his Lone Rock garage that is home to 11 motorcycles. “They caution you ‘don’t accelerate fast, don’t change direction fast and don’t slow down fast. Do everything real gradual.’ That’s why the short course I ran on was 5 miles long.”</p>
<p>Ilminen, a frequent contributing editor to national motorcycle publications, has written a book about his adventure that included three other prior trips to Bonneville. The 88-page book, released in September by TouchPoint Press, recounts his record run, the restoration of his bikes and a bit of history about the Salt Flats and efforts to preserve the landscape there.</p>
<p>The book also sheds light on the motorcycle culture of the Madison area with mentions of Bill Whisenant, owner of Motorcycle Performance, who rebuilds Ducatis he races on the Salt Flats, and Vetesnik Power Sports in Richland Center. There’s also a back-cover blurb from Peter Egan, an Elroy native, Vietnam War veteran and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate who has written about cars and motorcycles for Road &amp; Track and Cycle World magazines and lives near Cooksville, just south of Stoughton.</p>
<p>“Like all the best motorcycle books, it makes you want to get out there and try it yourself,” Egan wrote.</p>
<p>But the book is also about not letting age get in the way of achieving a dream. Ilminen’s was formed in 1970 when his brother, Randy, brought home a copy of Cycle magazine that featured stories and photographs from Bonneville. On the cover of the magazine was a rocket-like ship and its driver posing on the barren landscape.</p>
<p>“Don’t abandon dreams just because you get older,” Ilminen said. “I found myself standing on the salt at age 59. There’s a lot of inspiration there.”</p>
<p>Bonneville has been a destination for speed freaks for over 100 years. Many picture rocket sleds can top 1,000 mph. The American Motorcycle Association hosts the AMA Land Speed Grand Championship, also known as the Bonneville Motorcycle Speed Trials, at which Ilminen set his record. According to the AMA website, classes are determined by engine displacement, modification levels and various degrees of streamlining. The event allows hundreds of competitors on bikes ranging from 50cc minibikes to 3,000cc monstrosities a chance to clinch records sanctioned by the AMA and Federation Internationale de Motocylisme.</p>
<p>“Speed racing is one of the few motor sports where you can be a local like me with no budget, no big money and no big sponsors and go out there and have a legitimate shot at a world record or a national record,” Ilminen said. “And I’m living proof.”</p>
<p>Ilminen works out of his house as a clinical quality analyst where he reviews medical records for Optum Services, a Tennessee health care company, and spent six years writing a book on health care best practices that was published in 1999. He also is an associate online editor for Ultimate Motorcycling magazine and has written for other publications about the Black Hawk War and Chief Black Hawk.</p>
<p>Ilminen has a degree in mechanical design and drafting from Gogebic Community College in Ironwood, Michigan, and spent 10 years in manufacturing that included stints with Wick Homes in Mazomanie and Cardinal Glass in Spring Green. He changed course, returned to school and in 1987 earned an associate degree in nursing that has led to what is now a more than 30-year career in health care.</p>
<p>That’s how he met his partner of 22 years, Jacci Shauger, a hospice nurse in Baraboo. They share a home together that includes a 24-foot-wide by 36-foot-long garage that now stores two Harley-Davidsons, one Triumph, seven Hondas and one Yamaha amid the snowblower and lawn mower. There’s also a 1979 Sno Runner, a cross between a snowmobile and motorcycle that’s designed for snow. The 25-foot workbench is jammed with tools and parts and much of the garage’s ceiling is covered with flags, signs and posters. One is from the 2005 movie “The World’s Fastest Indian,” the story of Burt Munro, a New Zealand man who spent years rebuilding a 1920 Indian motorcycle and in 1967 set a land-speed world record at Bonneville.</p>
<p>Shauger, who had no idea about Ilminen’s motorcycle obsession when they first met, has been instrumental in helping with the logistics of Ilminen’s four trips to Bonneville and took many of the photos in the book.</p>
<p>“Bonneville isn’t what you think it is. You think it’s just these guys out there for speed,” Shauger said. “There’s just a whole lot of stuff going on. If someone needs a part you hear it on the loudspeaker. It’s just a whole different world and everybody helps everybody.”</p>
<p>Ilminen’s first trip to Bonneville was in October 2009 when he used his restored Honda V30 Magna with a 500cc, liquid-cooled V-4 engine to hit 104.5 mph but was short of the record in its class of 112 mph. In April 2010, Ilminen returned with the Honda 350 and set an initial record of 72.6 mph only to see it eclipsed later in the competition. In 2012, he again used the V30 Magna bike with hopes of topping 113 mph but wind and rain closed the course and prevented Ilminen from competing.</p>
<p>The fourth trip to the Salt Flats was in August 2014 when Ilminen paid $750 to enter a new class, a 350cc Classic Production class. Ilminen’s first run hit 80.2 mph, 6.2 mph faster than his best speed in 2010. On the second run he hit 79.9 mph for a two run average of 80.1, a record that still holds. Shauger also hit it big that day winning $678 on penny slots at the Rainbow Casino in nearby West Wendover, Nevada.</p>
<p>The bike has been retired but Ilminen still takes it out on day trips through the Driftless Area that includes the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway. He’s even added saddle bags.</p>
<p>“At some point the record speed will be broken — records are made to be broken — and the cycle of rewriting history will continue,” Ilminen writes in his book’s epilogue. “That will be a happy day for me and the new record holder; it will mean somebody else’s dream has come true at that place of legend.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.madison.com/wsj" type="external">http://www.madison.com/wsj</a></p>
| 5,627 |
<p>Left-wing PolitiFact’s <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/angie-drobnic-holan/" type="external">editor</a> Angie Drobnic Holan denied her site’s political bias in a Thursday <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?413183-3/washington-journal-angie-drobnic-holan-fact-checking-political-campaigns" type="external">interview</a> with C-SPAN.</p>
<p>“We are a fact-checking news site,” said Holan, echoing her site’s <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/principles-politifact-punditfact-and-truth-o-meter/" type="external">description</a> of its own purpose as “[rating] the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics.”</p>
<p>Holan described PolitiFact as generally committed to an equal volume of fact-checking between Republicans and Democrats. While quantitatively balanced in its fact-checking of both parties, Nolan noted that PolitiFact was not committed to qualitative equality of analytical outcomes between both sides’ claims.</p>
<p>“We try to fact check an equal number of Democrats and Republicans,” said Holan. “We don’t balance the ratings in any way because we think the facts need to speak for themselves. So the ratings are whatever they are.”</p>
<p>Here is a small sampling of PolitiFact’s deceptive work over recent months.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/05/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-says-hillary-clinton-wants-ra/" type="external">Denies</a> that Clinton said she would raise taxes on the middle class - presumably a misstatement - despite <a href="" type="internal">clear video and audio</a> to the contrary.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/aug/05/rudy-giuliani/no-one-writing-iran-check-under-nuclear-deal/" type="external">Denies</a> that the “Iran Deal” will fund more Islamic terrorism via its <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/07/14/iran-deal-what-each-won-and-lost/30062147/" type="external">releasing</a> of $150 billion to Iran, despite acknowledging Iran's Islamist regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/25/donald-trump-jr/donald-trump-jr-says-unemployment-rates-are-manipu/" type="external">Denies</a> that unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are misleading, ignoring the fact that its most cited metric, the <a href="http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab15.htm" type="external">U3</a>, does not include discouraged workers who have stopped seeking employment.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/29/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-us-put-lid-irans-nuclear-prog/" type="external">Accepts</a> the false premise that the “Iran Deal” will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/14/gary-johnson/mexican-immigrants-more-law-abiding/" type="external">Accepts</a> the false premise that Mexican immigrants - both legal and illegal - are more law-abiding than U.S. citizens, despite its own article providing contrary data.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/18/mark-geist/stand-down-story-ignores-critical-facts-about-effo/" type="external">Demeans</a> Mark “Oz” Geist as a liar, a former CIA security contractor who defied a stand-down order from his station chief to defend Americans in peril at the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi during the Islamic terrorist attack on September 11, 2012.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/19/jeff-sessions/senator-jeff-sessions-says-about-350000-people-suc/" type="external">Demeans</a> Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as a liar over his claim that 350,000 people illegally enter the country every year, assuming that the number of apprehensions along America’s borders exceeds the number of successful illegal entries.</p>
<p>During her interview, Holan's fact-checking included contextualization, inferences, and editorializing in ways beneficial to Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump received the opposite treatment.</p>
<p>Like most left-wing media outlets, PolitiFact attempts to bolster its credibility by operating upon false pretenses of objectivity and neutrality.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
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PolitiFact Denies Its Own Left-Wing Bias
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https://dailywire.com/news/8215/politifact-denies-its-own-left-wing-bias-robert-kraychik
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2016-08-09
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PolitiFact Denies Its Own Left-Wing Bias
<p>Left-wing PolitiFact’s <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/staff/angie-drobnic-holan/" type="external">editor</a> Angie Drobnic Holan denied her site’s political bias in a Thursday <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?413183-3/washington-journal-angie-drobnic-holan-fact-checking-political-campaigns" type="external">interview</a> with C-SPAN.</p>
<p>“We are a fact-checking news site,” said Holan, echoing her site’s <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/principles-politifact-punditfact-and-truth-o-meter/" type="external">description</a> of its own purpose as “[rating] the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others who speak up in American politics.”</p>
<p>Holan described PolitiFact as generally committed to an equal volume of fact-checking between Republicans and Democrats. While quantitatively balanced in its fact-checking of both parties, Nolan noted that PolitiFact was not committed to qualitative equality of analytical outcomes between both sides’ claims.</p>
<p>“We try to fact check an equal number of Democrats and Republicans,” said Holan. “We don’t balance the ratings in any way because we think the facts need to speak for themselves. So the ratings are whatever they are.”</p>
<p>Here is a small sampling of PolitiFact’s deceptive work over recent months.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/05/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-says-hillary-clinton-wants-ra/" type="external">Denies</a> that Clinton said she would raise taxes on the middle class - presumably a misstatement - despite <a href="" type="internal">clear video and audio</a> to the contrary.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/aug/05/rudy-giuliani/no-one-writing-iran-check-under-nuclear-deal/" type="external">Denies</a> that the “Iran Deal” will fund more Islamic terrorism via its <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/07/14/iran-deal-what-each-won-and-lost/30062147/" type="external">releasing</a> of $150 billion to Iran, despite acknowledging Iran's Islamist regime is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/25/donald-trump-jr/donald-trump-jr-says-unemployment-rates-are-manipu/" type="external">Denies</a> that unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are misleading, ignoring the fact that its most cited metric, the <a href="http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab15.htm" type="external">U3</a>, does not include discouraged workers who have stopped seeking employment.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/29/hillary-clinton/hillary-clinton-says-us-put-lid-irans-nuclear-prog/" type="external">Accepts</a> the false premise that the “Iran Deal” will prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/14/gary-johnson/mexican-immigrants-more-law-abiding/" type="external">Accepts</a> the false premise that Mexican immigrants - both legal and illegal - are more law-abiding than U.S. citizens, despite its own article providing contrary data.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/18/mark-geist/stand-down-story-ignores-critical-facts-about-effo/" type="external">Demeans</a> Mark “Oz” Geist as a liar, a former CIA security contractor who defied a stand-down order from his station chief to defend Americans in peril at the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi during the Islamic terrorist attack on September 11, 2012.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/19/jeff-sessions/senator-jeff-sessions-says-about-350000-people-suc/" type="external">Demeans</a> Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as a liar over his claim that 350,000 people illegally enter the country every year, assuming that the number of apprehensions along America’s borders exceeds the number of successful illegal entries.</p>
<p>During her interview, Holan's fact-checking included contextualization, inferences, and editorializing in ways beneficial to Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump received the opposite treatment.</p>
<p>Like most left-wing media outlets, PolitiFact attempts to bolster its credibility by operating upon false pretenses of objectivity and neutrality.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
| 5,628 |
<p>Former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter’s participation in a symposium at the University of Tokyo on 6 February presented his first opportunity to publicly address Secretary Colin Powell’s presentation of “evidence” to the UN. Building 900 of the Komaba campus is not a large building but was packed over 500 strong, the walls lined with standing spectators. Although there were not security checks for the audience Ritter’s bodyguard stood off-stage right, and his Japanese counterpart for the politician on the panel opposite. In his welcoming remarks a representative of the sponsoring citizen’s group thanked Ritter for coming at short notice and for flying economy class. During his four days in town he was interviewed on two national evening news shows (on News 23 former inspector Kurada Hideo sat as character witness and offered the highest praise for his integrity), met with members of the Lower House of the National Diet, and held a news conference at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in addition to the symposium.</p>
<p>Ritter’s talk at Tokyo U was straight-forwardly critical of both the Bush administration’s progress towards war and the general US stance towards Iraq since arms inspections began in 1991. The US insistence on “regime-change” had “polluted the integrity” of the UN inspection process as it came to gather intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s security. Upon expulsion Ritter warned both the US government and the UN that although 90 to 95% of Iraq’s weapons and 100% of all munitions factories were destroyed they could be re-built in six months and there was reason for concern.</p>
<p>Four years hence the inspectors have returned and found nothing, a situation that is utterly unacceptable to the US. This is so, Ritter explained, because it would allow Iraq a path to return to the international community and an ending of sanctions with the current “regime” intact. Therefore the tenor of Colin Powell’s evidence was to show inspections useless and the Iraqi military masterful at the art of deception; “Can you imagine trying to find 18 trucks (allegedly mobile chemical factories) in a country the size of Iraq?” he pointed out with some humor. He summed up the “evidence” as “circumstantial with no hard facts”, the intercepted conversation provided without a clear context, and defectors’ testimonies no matter what the circumstances “uniformly unreliable”.</p>
<p>Sitting on the panel Professor Takahashi Kazuo of Japan’s University of the Air seconded Ritter’s viewpoint of the evidence: Could not have the information of the “terrorist training camps” in the North been shared with the UN, he pondered. Furthermore Saddam Hussein’s “evilness” surely extends back to the 1980’s when Rumsfeld had visited him, or was he less so at this point (audience laughter)? Lower House Representative Sutô Nobuhiko of the opposition Minshutô party expressed his consternation that there was no live televised feed broadcast of the UN session on any of the networks (public t.v. NHK drops the ball again). Tokyo U Professor Kang Sang-jung was a sobering presence. As a Japanese born of Korean ancestry he voiced his concern over the current demonization in Japan’s media of North Korea; indeed, he intoned, where is the US going to turn its attention to next upon “completion” of the Iraq campaign? Quoting an article by George Kennan he opined that US foreign policy is stuck in a militaristic “realism” that seeks to repeat the “Japanese success” of primacy given to bombing as a precursor to democracy. What’s to happen if other stronger nations come to view this as viable standard of foreign policy, he asked. Independent journalist Tanaka Sakai ­ the odd man out in his belief the US would not invade — seemed to second this point in his assertion that this realpolitik does not account for the possibilities for indigenous Islamic democratic movement.</p>
<p>Ritter, already successful at communicating his ideas to the audience through his skilled interpreter (I especially appreciated his “provoking a war with Iraq” becoming “pulling-out a military response” in Japanese) at this point came into his rhetorical best: The Neo-cons who have “seized control” of the decision-making hierarchy are drunk with power, and “friends don’t let friends drive drunk”. His appeal for Japan to “take the key” and “raise their flag proudly” went down particularly well with the audience, for Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s exhortation for the same a year ago clearly meant for those in attendance quite a different banner. A good portion of Ritter’s message is in the presentation. It is clear, with short sentences and key words that can appeal to a listener’s sense of fairness–framework, rules, integrity, law. US neo-con policy is bound to harsher descriptors ­ poisonous, affrontive, drunk. The message is simple and Ritter the messenger is able to convey it so appealingly well not only because he believes in it but because he is a concerned insider, the “warrior at heart” ex-Marine who is speaking out in defense of country and international law. “To be critical is to be patriotic, not treasonous”, and “Opposing an illegal war is the most pro-American act.” He is the law-and-order kinda guy who opened his talk with of explanation of the three conditions that must be fulfilled if weapon’s inspection is to be successful: 1) Iraq must give full cooperation, 2) the Security Council must be willing to enforce its resolutions, and 3) Inspectors and the inspection process must operate within the framework of the resolution. His major point was that first two are in place, it is the US that undermines the third, and this unilateralism is not reflective of democracy but imperialism.</p>
<p>I am usually not stirred to pride for my birth country by the words of a Republican, but it happened that night and it gives me pause to consider another aspect of Ritter’s manner: it is political, almost like a stump speech. This is pure conjecture, of course, but it is plausible. <a href="" type="internal">Robert Novak’s sentiments in his 10 February article</a> are shared by many others on the American right and even in the GOP and there may even be tacit approval of Ritter from some within his own party. The party will require a new public face if the Middle East situation spins out of control and there is intra-party strife aimed at removing the current dominating faction, and that would be Ritter’s moment. If that moment comes and he does come to a position of political authority I hope that he lives up to his words spoken on that chilly evening.</p>
<p>Debate Update: Koizumi VS Kan</p>
<p>Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and opposition leader Kan Naoto (Minshutô Democratic Party) went toe-to-toe again yesterday during question time in the National Diet. Although his Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda Yasuo in news conference praised the veracity of Powell’s claims the following exchange (taken from the 13 February Asahi Shinbun) reveals he is still sticking to “wait and see” and like much of the world waiting for the UN report:</p>
<p>Kan: France, Germany, and Russia in a joint statement believe the inspections should be given more time. Are you for or against this?</p>
<p>PM: First Iraq has to comply fully with the UN resolution. I am requesting the US build international support, and while keeping an eye on the situation would like to continue working towards a peaceful resolution.</p>
<p>Kan: Why don’t you come right out and say you are waiting for the US to make their move and then you will follow accordingly?</p>
<p>PM: I am coming out and saying what needs to be said. I am waiting for the UN report on the 14th and then will make our policy clear. This is not evasion.</p>
<p>Kan: What exactly is the Bush administration wanting: The removal of Iraqi WMD’s, or the actual removal of the Saddam Hussein government?</p>
<p>PM: It is not only the White House but the entire international community that demands weapons removal. The onus is on Iraq to show that they have none.</p>
<p>Kan: Don’t you believe that a preemptive attack without another resolution goes against the UN Charter?</p>
<p>PM: I am not saying that the US will attack. There will be consultations in the Security Council. What will happen after that I cannot tell.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Yomiuri Shinbun Japan’s largest daily has been noticeably pro-US in their reporting and yesterday sported a color front-page photo that disturbingly resembled the home page of the Self-Defense Agency: three battle-class frigates escorting and refueling a US battleship in the Indian Ocean. The Asahi Shinbun has gone several miles in the opposite direction and last week ran a black editorial cartoon of a rough and bruised American flag with several of its tiles fallen out.</p>
<p>ADAM LEBOWITZ teaches at Nihon University and has lived in Japan for 12 years. Mr. Ritter’s comments on Hans Blix’s 27 January report are at <a href="" type="internal">http://www.ribbon-project.jp/SR-shiryou/shiryou-02e.htm</a> as part of the Japanese website concerning his visit. Streaming of his interviews on Japanese t.v. are also available through this site. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2003/02/15/scott-ritter-in-tokyo/
|
2003-02-15
| 4left
|
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
<p>Former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter’s participation in a symposium at the University of Tokyo on 6 February presented his first opportunity to publicly address Secretary Colin Powell’s presentation of “evidence” to the UN. Building 900 of the Komaba campus is not a large building but was packed over 500 strong, the walls lined with standing spectators. Although there were not security checks for the audience Ritter’s bodyguard stood off-stage right, and his Japanese counterpart for the politician on the panel opposite. In his welcoming remarks a representative of the sponsoring citizen’s group thanked Ritter for coming at short notice and for flying economy class. During his four days in town he was interviewed on two national evening news shows (on News 23 former inspector Kurada Hideo sat as character witness and offered the highest praise for his integrity), met with members of the Lower House of the National Diet, and held a news conference at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in addition to the symposium.</p>
<p>Ritter’s talk at Tokyo U was straight-forwardly critical of both the Bush administration’s progress towards war and the general US stance towards Iraq since arms inspections began in 1991. The US insistence on “regime-change” had “polluted the integrity” of the UN inspection process as it came to gather intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s security. Upon expulsion Ritter warned both the US government and the UN that although 90 to 95% of Iraq’s weapons and 100% of all munitions factories were destroyed they could be re-built in six months and there was reason for concern.</p>
<p>Four years hence the inspectors have returned and found nothing, a situation that is utterly unacceptable to the US. This is so, Ritter explained, because it would allow Iraq a path to return to the international community and an ending of sanctions with the current “regime” intact. Therefore the tenor of Colin Powell’s evidence was to show inspections useless and the Iraqi military masterful at the art of deception; “Can you imagine trying to find 18 trucks (allegedly mobile chemical factories) in a country the size of Iraq?” he pointed out with some humor. He summed up the “evidence” as “circumstantial with no hard facts”, the intercepted conversation provided without a clear context, and defectors’ testimonies no matter what the circumstances “uniformly unreliable”.</p>
<p>Sitting on the panel Professor Takahashi Kazuo of Japan’s University of the Air seconded Ritter’s viewpoint of the evidence: Could not have the information of the “terrorist training camps” in the North been shared with the UN, he pondered. Furthermore Saddam Hussein’s “evilness” surely extends back to the 1980’s when Rumsfeld had visited him, or was he less so at this point (audience laughter)? Lower House Representative Sutô Nobuhiko of the opposition Minshutô party expressed his consternation that there was no live televised feed broadcast of the UN session on any of the networks (public t.v. NHK drops the ball again). Tokyo U Professor Kang Sang-jung was a sobering presence. As a Japanese born of Korean ancestry he voiced his concern over the current demonization in Japan’s media of North Korea; indeed, he intoned, where is the US going to turn its attention to next upon “completion” of the Iraq campaign? Quoting an article by George Kennan he opined that US foreign policy is stuck in a militaristic “realism” that seeks to repeat the “Japanese success” of primacy given to bombing as a precursor to democracy. What’s to happen if other stronger nations come to view this as viable standard of foreign policy, he asked. Independent journalist Tanaka Sakai ­ the odd man out in his belief the US would not invade — seemed to second this point in his assertion that this realpolitik does not account for the possibilities for indigenous Islamic democratic movement.</p>
<p>Ritter, already successful at communicating his ideas to the audience through his skilled interpreter (I especially appreciated his “provoking a war with Iraq” becoming “pulling-out a military response” in Japanese) at this point came into his rhetorical best: The Neo-cons who have “seized control” of the decision-making hierarchy are drunk with power, and “friends don’t let friends drive drunk”. His appeal for Japan to “take the key” and “raise their flag proudly” went down particularly well with the audience, for Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s exhortation for the same a year ago clearly meant for those in attendance quite a different banner. A good portion of Ritter’s message is in the presentation. It is clear, with short sentences and key words that can appeal to a listener’s sense of fairness–framework, rules, integrity, law. US neo-con policy is bound to harsher descriptors ­ poisonous, affrontive, drunk. The message is simple and Ritter the messenger is able to convey it so appealingly well not only because he believes in it but because he is a concerned insider, the “warrior at heart” ex-Marine who is speaking out in defense of country and international law. “To be critical is to be patriotic, not treasonous”, and “Opposing an illegal war is the most pro-American act.” He is the law-and-order kinda guy who opened his talk with of explanation of the three conditions that must be fulfilled if weapon’s inspection is to be successful: 1) Iraq must give full cooperation, 2) the Security Council must be willing to enforce its resolutions, and 3) Inspectors and the inspection process must operate within the framework of the resolution. His major point was that first two are in place, it is the US that undermines the third, and this unilateralism is not reflective of democracy but imperialism.</p>
<p>I am usually not stirred to pride for my birth country by the words of a Republican, but it happened that night and it gives me pause to consider another aspect of Ritter’s manner: it is political, almost like a stump speech. This is pure conjecture, of course, but it is plausible. <a href="" type="internal">Robert Novak’s sentiments in his 10 February article</a> are shared by many others on the American right and even in the GOP and there may even be tacit approval of Ritter from some within his own party. The party will require a new public face if the Middle East situation spins out of control and there is intra-party strife aimed at removing the current dominating faction, and that would be Ritter’s moment. If that moment comes and he does come to a position of political authority I hope that he lives up to his words spoken on that chilly evening.</p>
<p>Debate Update: Koizumi VS Kan</p>
<p>Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro and opposition leader Kan Naoto (Minshutô Democratic Party) went toe-to-toe again yesterday during question time in the National Diet. Although his Chief Cabinet Secretary Fukuda Yasuo in news conference praised the veracity of Powell’s claims the following exchange (taken from the 13 February Asahi Shinbun) reveals he is still sticking to “wait and see” and like much of the world waiting for the UN report:</p>
<p>Kan: France, Germany, and Russia in a joint statement believe the inspections should be given more time. Are you for or against this?</p>
<p>PM: First Iraq has to comply fully with the UN resolution. I am requesting the US build international support, and while keeping an eye on the situation would like to continue working towards a peaceful resolution.</p>
<p>Kan: Why don’t you come right out and say you are waiting for the US to make their move and then you will follow accordingly?</p>
<p>PM: I am coming out and saying what needs to be said. I am waiting for the UN report on the 14th and then will make our policy clear. This is not evasion.</p>
<p>Kan: What exactly is the Bush administration wanting: The removal of Iraqi WMD’s, or the actual removal of the Saddam Hussein government?</p>
<p>PM: It is not only the White House but the entire international community that demands weapons removal. The onus is on Iraq to show that they have none.</p>
<p>Kan: Don’t you believe that a preemptive attack without another resolution goes against the UN Charter?</p>
<p>PM: I am not saying that the US will attack. There will be consultations in the Security Council. What will happen after that I cannot tell.</p>
<p>Meanwhile Yomiuri Shinbun Japan’s largest daily has been noticeably pro-US in their reporting and yesterday sported a color front-page photo that disturbingly resembled the home page of the Self-Defense Agency: three battle-class frigates escorting and refueling a US battleship in the Indian Ocean. The Asahi Shinbun has gone several miles in the opposite direction and last week ran a black editorial cartoon of a rough and bruised American flag with several of its tiles fallen out.</p>
<p>ADAM LEBOWITZ teaches at Nihon University and has lived in Japan for 12 years. Mr. Ritter’s comments on Hans Blix’s 27 January report are at <a href="" type="internal">http://www.ribbon-project.jp/SR-shiryou/shiryou-02e.htm</a> as part of the Japanese website concerning his visit. Streaming of his interviews on Japanese t.v. are also available through this site. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 5,629 |
<p>HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. (AP) — The Bearcats’ shooting touch was off after a long layoff. The defense was crisp as always, allowing them to have an easy time extending their streak.</p>
<p>Gary Clark had 13 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season, and Jarron Cumberland scored 15 points, leading No. 21 Cincinnati to an 82-48 victory over Memphis on Sunday that prolonged the nation’s longest active home-court winning streak.</p>
<p>Playing their first game in 10 days, the Bearcats (12-2, 1-0 American Athletic) came out rusty but turned up the defense and were in control by halftime.</p>
<p>“We were excited to play basketball, and play it the right way,” said Jacob Evans III, who had 12 points and six assists.</p>
<p>Clark had an alley-oop dunk and a 3-pointer that started a 15-2 run late in the half, pushing Cincinnati’s lead to 20 points. The Tigers shot three air balls during the spurt as the Bearcats’ defense took control. Cumberland hit a jumper and a 3-pointer as the Bearcats padded the lead to 30 points early in the second half.</p>
<p>“We looked rusty on offense early with Gary and Kyle (Washington) missing some shots,” coach Mick Cronin said. “We passed the ball well the entire game. If you continue to pass it well, you’re going to get some open shots.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats were picked to win the AAC — a slight favorite over newcomer Wichita State — and played up to expectations defensively.</p>
<p>Memphis (9-5, 0-1) had its worst showing of the season on offense, finishing with its fewest points and a season-low 32 percent shooting from the field. The Tigers were only 4 of 22 from beyond the arc. Kareem Brewton Jr. led Memphis with 17 points.</p>
<p>“We just weren’t ready,” coach Tubby Smith said. “I thought we came ready, but we were intimidated early on, especially with our turnovers. We played so poorly, shot so poorly, and against a good team like Cincinnati, they will make you look bad and they’ll beat you like this if you have any letdown at all.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats have won 34 straight home games on two courts. They’ve gone 8-0 while playing this season at BB&amp;T Arena at Northern Kentucky University while their on-campus arena is renovated. They went 18-0 at Fifth Third Arena last season.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Memphis: The inexperienced Tigers are still getting accustomed to playing on the road. The conference opener was only their second true road game of the season. They lost at UAB 71-56 on Nov. 20. Memphis has only two returning letter winners, tied for fewest in the country.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: The Bearcats were missing point guard Cane Broome, sidelined by a sprained ankle. Justin Jenifer played 23 minutes and had seven points with four assists. Evans also filled in at point guard when Jenifer was on the bench.</p>
<p>“It’s a position I played in high school,” Evans said. “I’m pretty comfortable there.”</p>
<p>TUBBY’S HOMECOMING</p>
<p>Smith coached his first game in the Bluegrass State since Feb. 28, 2007, when he led Kentucky to an 82-70 win over Georgia. Smith coached the Wildcats from 1997-2007.</p>
<p>OUCH!</p>
<p>Cincinnati’s Keith Williams and Memphis’ David Nickelberry banged heads while going for a loose ball early in the game. Nickelberry went to the locker room for treatment and returned with a bandage over his right eye. He returned and played a total of 14 minutes and missed his only shot.</p>
<p>DOUBLE TROUBLE</p>
<p>Clark has 22 career double-doubles, the most by a Cincinnati player since Yancy Gates had 23 from 2009-12.</p>
<p>PAGING PITINO</p>
<p>Cronin sent Rick Pitino a Bearcats shirt and is trying to get him to attend a practice and address the team when it’s in Florida later this month. Cronin was an assistant to Pitino at Louisville before becoming a head coach.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Memphis: At Central Florida on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: At Temple on Thursday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More college basketball: <a href="http://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">http://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
<p>HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. (AP) — The Bearcats’ shooting touch was off after a long layoff. The defense was crisp as always, allowing them to have an easy time extending their streak.</p>
<p>Gary Clark had 13 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season, and Jarron Cumberland scored 15 points, leading No. 21 Cincinnati to an 82-48 victory over Memphis on Sunday that prolonged the nation’s longest active home-court winning streak.</p>
<p>Playing their first game in 10 days, the Bearcats (12-2, 1-0 American Athletic) came out rusty but turned up the defense and were in control by halftime.</p>
<p>“We were excited to play basketball, and play it the right way,” said Jacob Evans III, who had 12 points and six assists.</p>
<p>Clark had an alley-oop dunk and a 3-pointer that started a 15-2 run late in the half, pushing Cincinnati’s lead to 20 points. The Tigers shot three air balls during the spurt as the Bearcats’ defense took control. Cumberland hit a jumper and a 3-pointer as the Bearcats padded the lead to 30 points early in the second half.</p>
<p>“We looked rusty on offense early with Gary and Kyle (Washington) missing some shots,” coach Mick Cronin said. “We passed the ball well the entire game. If you continue to pass it well, you’re going to get some open shots.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats were picked to win the AAC — a slight favorite over newcomer Wichita State — and played up to expectations defensively.</p>
<p>Memphis (9-5, 0-1) had its worst showing of the season on offense, finishing with its fewest points and a season-low 32 percent shooting from the field. The Tigers were only 4 of 22 from beyond the arc. Kareem Brewton Jr. led Memphis with 17 points.</p>
<p>“We just weren’t ready,” coach Tubby Smith said. “I thought we came ready, but we were intimidated early on, especially with our turnovers. We played so poorly, shot so poorly, and against a good team like Cincinnati, they will make you look bad and they’ll beat you like this if you have any letdown at all.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats have won 34 straight home games on two courts. They’ve gone 8-0 while playing this season at BB&amp;T Arena at Northern Kentucky University while their on-campus arena is renovated. They went 18-0 at Fifth Third Arena last season.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Memphis: The inexperienced Tigers are still getting accustomed to playing on the road. The conference opener was only their second true road game of the season. They lost at UAB 71-56 on Nov. 20. Memphis has only two returning letter winners, tied for fewest in the country.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: The Bearcats were missing point guard Cane Broome, sidelined by a sprained ankle. Justin Jenifer played 23 minutes and had seven points with four assists. Evans also filled in at point guard when Jenifer was on the bench.</p>
<p>“It’s a position I played in high school,” Evans said. “I’m pretty comfortable there.”</p>
<p>TUBBY’S HOMECOMING</p>
<p>Smith coached his first game in the Bluegrass State since Feb. 28, 2007, when he led Kentucky to an 82-70 win over Georgia. Smith coached the Wildcats from 1997-2007.</p>
<p>OUCH!</p>
<p>Cincinnati’s Keith Williams and Memphis’ David Nickelberry banged heads while going for a loose ball early in the game. Nickelberry went to the locker room for treatment and returned with a bandage over his right eye. He returned and played a total of 14 minutes and missed his only shot.</p>
<p>DOUBLE TROUBLE</p>
<p>Clark has 22 career double-doubles, the most by a Cincinnati player since Yancy Gates had 23 from 2009-12.</p>
<p>PAGING PITINO</p>
<p>Cronin sent Rick Pitino a Bearcats shirt and is trying to get him to attend a practice and address the team when it’s in Florida later this month. Cronin was an assistant to Pitino at Louisville before becoming a head coach.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Memphis: At Central Florida on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: At Temple on Thursday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More college basketball: <a href="http://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">http://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
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No. 21 Cincinnati routs Memphis 82-48, extending home streak
| false |
https://apnews.com/b14a05996f3c4d878df9143819435b90
|
2017-12-31
| 2least
|
No. 21 Cincinnati routs Memphis 82-48, extending home streak
<p>HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. (AP) — The Bearcats’ shooting touch was off after a long layoff. The defense was crisp as always, allowing them to have an easy time extending their streak.</p>
<p>Gary Clark had 13 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season, and Jarron Cumberland scored 15 points, leading No. 21 Cincinnati to an 82-48 victory over Memphis on Sunday that prolonged the nation’s longest active home-court winning streak.</p>
<p>Playing their first game in 10 days, the Bearcats (12-2, 1-0 American Athletic) came out rusty but turned up the defense and were in control by halftime.</p>
<p>“We were excited to play basketball, and play it the right way,” said Jacob Evans III, who had 12 points and six assists.</p>
<p>Clark had an alley-oop dunk and a 3-pointer that started a 15-2 run late in the half, pushing Cincinnati’s lead to 20 points. The Tigers shot three air balls during the spurt as the Bearcats’ defense took control. Cumberland hit a jumper and a 3-pointer as the Bearcats padded the lead to 30 points early in the second half.</p>
<p>“We looked rusty on offense early with Gary and Kyle (Washington) missing some shots,” coach Mick Cronin said. “We passed the ball well the entire game. If you continue to pass it well, you’re going to get some open shots.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats were picked to win the AAC — a slight favorite over newcomer Wichita State — and played up to expectations defensively.</p>
<p>Memphis (9-5, 0-1) had its worst showing of the season on offense, finishing with its fewest points and a season-low 32 percent shooting from the field. The Tigers were only 4 of 22 from beyond the arc. Kareem Brewton Jr. led Memphis with 17 points.</p>
<p>“We just weren’t ready,” coach Tubby Smith said. “I thought we came ready, but we were intimidated early on, especially with our turnovers. We played so poorly, shot so poorly, and against a good team like Cincinnati, they will make you look bad and they’ll beat you like this if you have any letdown at all.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats have won 34 straight home games on two courts. They’ve gone 8-0 while playing this season at BB&amp;T Arena at Northern Kentucky University while their on-campus arena is renovated. They went 18-0 at Fifth Third Arena last season.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Memphis: The inexperienced Tigers are still getting accustomed to playing on the road. The conference opener was only their second true road game of the season. They lost at UAB 71-56 on Nov. 20. Memphis has only two returning letter winners, tied for fewest in the country.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: The Bearcats were missing point guard Cane Broome, sidelined by a sprained ankle. Justin Jenifer played 23 minutes and had seven points with four assists. Evans also filled in at point guard when Jenifer was on the bench.</p>
<p>“It’s a position I played in high school,” Evans said. “I’m pretty comfortable there.”</p>
<p>TUBBY’S HOMECOMING</p>
<p>Smith coached his first game in the Bluegrass State since Feb. 28, 2007, when he led Kentucky to an 82-70 win over Georgia. Smith coached the Wildcats from 1997-2007.</p>
<p>OUCH!</p>
<p>Cincinnati’s Keith Williams and Memphis’ David Nickelberry banged heads while going for a loose ball early in the game. Nickelberry went to the locker room for treatment and returned with a bandage over his right eye. He returned and played a total of 14 minutes and missed his only shot.</p>
<p>DOUBLE TROUBLE</p>
<p>Clark has 22 career double-doubles, the most by a Cincinnati player since Yancy Gates had 23 from 2009-12.</p>
<p>PAGING PITINO</p>
<p>Cronin sent Rick Pitino a Bearcats shirt and is trying to get him to attend a practice and address the team when it’s in Florida later this month. Cronin was an assistant to Pitino at Louisville before becoming a head coach.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Memphis: At Central Florida on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: At Temple on Thursday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More college basketball: <a href="http://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">http://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
<p>HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, Ky. (AP) — The Bearcats’ shooting touch was off after a long layoff. The defense was crisp as always, allowing them to have an easy time extending their streak.</p>
<p>Gary Clark had 13 points and 10 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season, and Jarron Cumberland scored 15 points, leading No. 21 Cincinnati to an 82-48 victory over Memphis on Sunday that prolonged the nation’s longest active home-court winning streak.</p>
<p>Playing their first game in 10 days, the Bearcats (12-2, 1-0 American Athletic) came out rusty but turned up the defense and were in control by halftime.</p>
<p>“We were excited to play basketball, and play it the right way,” said Jacob Evans III, who had 12 points and six assists.</p>
<p>Clark had an alley-oop dunk and a 3-pointer that started a 15-2 run late in the half, pushing Cincinnati’s lead to 20 points. The Tigers shot three air balls during the spurt as the Bearcats’ defense took control. Cumberland hit a jumper and a 3-pointer as the Bearcats padded the lead to 30 points early in the second half.</p>
<p>“We looked rusty on offense early with Gary and Kyle (Washington) missing some shots,” coach Mick Cronin said. “We passed the ball well the entire game. If you continue to pass it well, you’re going to get some open shots.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats were picked to win the AAC — a slight favorite over newcomer Wichita State — and played up to expectations defensively.</p>
<p>Memphis (9-5, 0-1) had its worst showing of the season on offense, finishing with its fewest points and a season-low 32 percent shooting from the field. The Tigers were only 4 of 22 from beyond the arc. Kareem Brewton Jr. led Memphis with 17 points.</p>
<p>“We just weren’t ready,” coach Tubby Smith said. “I thought we came ready, but we were intimidated early on, especially with our turnovers. We played so poorly, shot so poorly, and against a good team like Cincinnati, they will make you look bad and they’ll beat you like this if you have any letdown at all.”</p>
<p>The Bearcats have won 34 straight home games on two courts. They’ve gone 8-0 while playing this season at BB&amp;T Arena at Northern Kentucky University while their on-campus arena is renovated. They went 18-0 at Fifth Third Arena last season.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Memphis: The inexperienced Tigers are still getting accustomed to playing on the road. The conference opener was only their second true road game of the season. They lost at UAB 71-56 on Nov. 20. Memphis has only two returning letter winners, tied for fewest in the country.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: The Bearcats were missing point guard Cane Broome, sidelined by a sprained ankle. Justin Jenifer played 23 minutes and had seven points with four assists. Evans also filled in at point guard when Jenifer was on the bench.</p>
<p>“It’s a position I played in high school,” Evans said. “I’m pretty comfortable there.”</p>
<p>TUBBY’S HOMECOMING</p>
<p>Smith coached his first game in the Bluegrass State since Feb. 28, 2007, when he led Kentucky to an 82-70 win over Georgia. Smith coached the Wildcats from 1997-2007.</p>
<p>OUCH!</p>
<p>Cincinnati’s Keith Williams and Memphis’ David Nickelberry banged heads while going for a loose ball early in the game. Nickelberry went to the locker room for treatment and returned with a bandage over his right eye. He returned and played a total of 14 minutes and missed his only shot.</p>
<p>DOUBLE TROUBLE</p>
<p>Clark has 22 career double-doubles, the most by a Cincinnati player since Yancy Gates had 23 from 2009-12.</p>
<p>PAGING PITINO</p>
<p>Cronin sent Rick Pitino a Bearcats shirt and is trying to get him to attend a practice and address the team when it’s in Florida later this month. Cronin was an assistant to Pitino at Louisville before becoming a head coach.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Memphis: At Central Florida on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>Cincinnati: At Temple on Thursday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More college basketball: <a href="http://collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">http://collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">https://twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
| 5,630 |
<p />
<p>The $3 billion health initiative set up by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan has hired one of AstraZeneca's non-executive directors to head up its science drive.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The British drugmaker said on Wednesday that Cornelia Bargmann would step down from its board next month to take up a new role as president of Chan Zuckerberg Science, part of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.</p>
<p>Leif Johansson, AstraZeneca's chairman, said the board was sorry to see her leave but understood Bargmann's decision to focus on the new assignment.</p>
<p>Zuckerberg and Chan unveiled their new initiative last week, with a goal to "cure, prevent or manage all disease within our children's lifetime".</p>
<p>Their plan echoes the big global health ambitions of the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, another philanthropic endeavor funded by tech industry money that has similarly tapped the pharmaceuticals sector in the past for key staff.</p>
<p>On the plus side, AstraZeneca also said it had hired Columbia University genetics expert David Goldstein to the consultative role chief adviser for genomics. Goldstein, who will continue his academic jobs, had previously served as chair of AstraZeneca's genomics advisory panel.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The company unveiled a 10-year plan in April for a massive gene hunt in the biggest bet yet by a drugmaker on the potential of genetic variations to unlock routes to new medicines.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Adrian Croft)</p>
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Zuckerberg initiative poaches AstraZeneca board member
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2016/09/28/zuckerberg-initiative-poaches-astrazeneca-board-member.html
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2016-09-28
| 0right
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Zuckerberg initiative poaches AstraZeneca board member
<p />
<p>The $3 billion health initiative set up by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan has hired one of AstraZeneca's non-executive directors to head up its science drive.</p>
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<p>The British drugmaker said on Wednesday that Cornelia Bargmann would step down from its board next month to take up a new role as president of Chan Zuckerberg Science, part of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.</p>
<p>Leif Johansson, AstraZeneca's chairman, said the board was sorry to see her leave but understood Bargmann's decision to focus on the new assignment.</p>
<p>Zuckerberg and Chan unveiled their new initiative last week, with a goal to "cure, prevent or manage all disease within our children's lifetime".</p>
<p>Their plan echoes the big global health ambitions of the Bill &amp; Melinda Gates Foundation, another philanthropic endeavor funded by tech industry money that has similarly tapped the pharmaceuticals sector in the past for key staff.</p>
<p>On the plus side, AstraZeneca also said it had hired Columbia University genetics expert David Goldstein to the consultative role chief adviser for genomics. Goldstein, who will continue his academic jobs, had previously served as chair of AstraZeneca's genomics advisory panel.</p>
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<p>The company unveiled a 10-year plan in April for a massive gene hunt in the biggest bet yet by a drugmaker on the potential of genetic variations to unlock routes to new medicines.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Adrian Croft)</p>
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<p>Dr. Yuanyuan Zhang of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine demonstrates the process to engineer a vaginal organ in a laboratory in Winston Salem, N.C. (AP Photo/Wake Forest Institute For Regenerative Medicines Photography)</p>
<p>LONDON - Two new studies describe the latest achievements in growing body parts in a lab and transplanting them into people, this time with nostrils and vaginas.</p>
<p>Windpipes, bladders, blood vessels and other structures have previously been created in part from a patient's own cells and then implanted. Eventually, scientists hope to tackle more complicated things like lungs and kidneys with this strategy, which is aimed at avoiding rejection of transplanted organs.</p>
<p>The latest experiments were published online Friday in the journal Lancet.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"They both show that by using fairly simple tissue engineering techniques, you can get real tissue forming where it's supposed to," said Dr. Martin Birchall, of The Ear Institute at University College London, who co-authored an accompanying commentary. He said the simple methods could be useful for making other body parts, including joint cartilage, bowels and the esophagus.</p>
<p>One experiment involved four teenage girls in Mexico who were born without vaginas because of a rare disorder. Currently, surgeons use tissue grafts to create vaginas for such patients, but that method carries a risk of complications.</p>
<p>The experimental results were reported by Dr. Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with researchers there and at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. Atala said the procedure might also prove useful for replacing vaginas removed because of cancer, and repairing or replacing the organ after an injury.</p>
<p>For the experiment, researchers took a tissue sample less than half the size of a postage stamp from the patients' genitals. They multiplied cells from this tissue in the lab, seeded them onto a biodegradable scaffold and molded it into the right size and shape for each patient before implantation.</p>
<p>The first surgery was done in 2005, and the Lancet report provides a follow-up of the patients for an average of nearly seven years. The women report normal levels of sexual functioning, without any long-term complications. It is not known whether the women could get pregnant; only two have wombs, Atala said.</p>
<p>One of the women, in a video provided by the Mexican university, said she felt fortunate "because I have a normal life." The university didn't identify the woman.</p>
<p>In the other experiment, Swiss scientists built new outer nostrils for five patients who had skin cancer on their noses. When surgeons removed the tumor, they also took a tiny bit of nose cartilage. They grew the cells for four weeks in the lab to make a small flap. That was then implanted onto their nose and covered with skin from their foreheads. Normally, cartilage is taken from the patient's ear or ribs to recreate the nostril.</p>
<p>Ivan Martin of University Hospital Basel, the study's senior author, said none of the patients reported any side effects by one year after surgery, and all were satisfied with their new nostrils.</p>
<p>"Now that we have demonstrated this is safe and feasible, we can use (this technique) for more complicated clinical needs," he said, adding that the same approach is being tested in people to supply knee cartilage. He said scientists were slowly gaining more expertise in making body parts, but predicted it could take another couple of decades before the process becomes mainstream.</p>
<p>"It's not a trivial thing to engineer a functional tissue," he said.</p>
<p />
<p />
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Studies: Lab-grown body parts working well
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/382951/studies-labgrown-body-parts-working-well.html
| 2least
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Studies: Lab-grown body parts working well
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Dr. Yuanyuan Zhang of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine demonstrates the process to engineer a vaginal organ in a laboratory in Winston Salem, N.C. (AP Photo/Wake Forest Institute For Regenerative Medicines Photography)</p>
<p>LONDON - Two new studies describe the latest achievements in growing body parts in a lab and transplanting them into people, this time with nostrils and vaginas.</p>
<p>Windpipes, bladders, blood vessels and other structures have previously been created in part from a patient's own cells and then implanted. Eventually, scientists hope to tackle more complicated things like lungs and kidneys with this strategy, which is aimed at avoiding rejection of transplanted organs.</p>
<p>The latest experiments were published online Friday in the journal Lancet.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"They both show that by using fairly simple tissue engineering techniques, you can get real tissue forming where it's supposed to," said Dr. Martin Birchall, of The Ear Institute at University College London, who co-authored an accompanying commentary. He said the simple methods could be useful for making other body parts, including joint cartilage, bowels and the esophagus.</p>
<p>One experiment involved four teenage girls in Mexico who were born without vaginas because of a rare disorder. Currently, surgeons use tissue grafts to create vaginas for such patients, but that method carries a risk of complications.</p>
<p>The experimental results were reported by Dr. Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with researchers there and at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. Atala said the procedure might also prove useful for replacing vaginas removed because of cancer, and repairing or replacing the organ after an injury.</p>
<p>For the experiment, researchers took a tissue sample less than half the size of a postage stamp from the patients' genitals. They multiplied cells from this tissue in the lab, seeded them onto a biodegradable scaffold and molded it into the right size and shape for each patient before implantation.</p>
<p>The first surgery was done in 2005, and the Lancet report provides a follow-up of the patients for an average of nearly seven years. The women report normal levels of sexual functioning, without any long-term complications. It is not known whether the women could get pregnant; only two have wombs, Atala said.</p>
<p>One of the women, in a video provided by the Mexican university, said she felt fortunate "because I have a normal life." The university didn't identify the woman.</p>
<p>In the other experiment, Swiss scientists built new outer nostrils for five patients who had skin cancer on their noses. When surgeons removed the tumor, they also took a tiny bit of nose cartilage. They grew the cells for four weeks in the lab to make a small flap. That was then implanted onto their nose and covered with skin from their foreheads. Normally, cartilage is taken from the patient's ear or ribs to recreate the nostril.</p>
<p>Ivan Martin of University Hospital Basel, the study's senior author, said none of the patients reported any side effects by one year after surgery, and all were satisfied with their new nostrils.</p>
<p>"Now that we have demonstrated this is safe and feasible, we can use (this technique) for more complicated clinical needs," he said, adding that the same approach is being tested in people to supply knee cartilage. He said scientists were slowly gaining more expertise in making body parts, but predicted it could take another couple of decades before the process becomes mainstream.</p>
<p>"It's not a trivial thing to engineer a functional tissue," he said.</p>
<p />
<p />
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<p>On taxes, Mitt Romney is trapped and victimized by Republican party orthodoxy. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/16/full-transcript-of-the-second-presidential-debate/" type="external">Listen to him</a>:</p>
<p>I want middle-income taxpayers to have lower taxes is because middle-income taxpayers have been buried over the past four years. You’ve seen, as middle-income people in this country, incomes go down $4,300 a family, even as gasoline prices have gone up $2,000. Health insurance premiums, up $2,500. Food prices up. Utility prices up.</p>
<p>The middle-income families in America have been crushed over the last four years. So I want to get some relief to middle-income families. That’s part — that’s part one.</p>
<p>Now, how about deductions? ‘Cause I’m going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but I’m going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they’re paying now.</p>
<p>The top 5 percent of taxpayers will continue to pay 60 percent of the income tax the nation collects. So that’ll stay the same.Middle-income people are going to get a tax break.</p>
<p>It is very unlikely to be true that middle-income people will get a tax break in a Romney administration. 80% of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes. The payroll tax holiday is scheduled to expire at the end of this year, adding 2 points of tax to the liabilities of every worker who earns like than $110,000. That's unlikely to be offset by any plausible income tax cut.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, bear in mind that the top 5% of taxpayers <a href="http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html" type="external">starts at</a> about $154,000 adjusted gross income.</p>
<p>People earning that kind of money benefit heavily from deductions. People earning more than $500,000 a year have much more to gain from a tax-rate cut. So the promise to keep the tax load on the top 5% constant points to an outcome that would see the tax burden shift within the top 5% from the richest members of the group to the least rich. I don't think that will actually happen. I think the Romney tax proposals will be substantially revised if he is elected, assuming they even see the light of day at all. But as described, the future holds: for middle-income people, the end of the payroll tax holiday and not much of an income tax cut; for people earning over $500,000, a big tax cut, getting bigger the more you earn; and serious question marks over the obligations of people in the $150,000-$300,000 range.</p>
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Why Can't Romney's Tax Cuts Deliver as Promised?
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/why-cant-romneys-tax-cuts-deliver-as-promised
|
2018-10-06
| 4left
|
Why Can't Romney's Tax Cuts Deliver as Promised?
<p>On taxes, Mitt Romney is trapped and victimized by Republican party orthodoxy. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/16/full-transcript-of-the-second-presidential-debate/" type="external">Listen to him</a>:</p>
<p>I want middle-income taxpayers to have lower taxes is because middle-income taxpayers have been buried over the past four years. You’ve seen, as middle-income people in this country, incomes go down $4,300 a family, even as gasoline prices have gone up $2,000. Health insurance premiums, up $2,500. Food prices up. Utility prices up.</p>
<p>The middle-income families in America have been crushed over the last four years. So I want to get some relief to middle-income families. That’s part — that’s part one.</p>
<p>Now, how about deductions? ‘Cause I’m going to bring rates down across the board for everybody, but I’m going to limit deductions and exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they’re paying now.</p>
<p>The top 5 percent of taxpayers will continue to pay 60 percent of the income tax the nation collects. So that’ll stay the same.Middle-income people are going to get a tax break.</p>
<p>It is very unlikely to be true that middle-income people will get a tax break in a Romney administration. 80% of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes. The payroll tax holiday is scheduled to expire at the end of this year, adding 2 points of tax to the liabilities of every worker who earns like than $110,000. That's unlikely to be offset by any plausible income tax cut.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, bear in mind that the top 5% of taxpayers <a href="http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html" type="external">starts at</a> about $154,000 adjusted gross income.</p>
<p>People earning that kind of money benefit heavily from deductions. People earning more than $500,000 a year have much more to gain from a tax-rate cut. So the promise to keep the tax load on the top 5% constant points to an outcome that would see the tax burden shift within the top 5% from the richest members of the group to the least rich. I don't think that will actually happen. I think the Romney tax proposals will be substantially revised if he is elected, assuming they even see the light of day at all. But as described, the future holds: for middle-income people, the end of the payroll tax holiday and not much of an income tax cut; for people earning over $500,000, a big tax cut, getting bigger the more you earn; and serious question marks over the obligations of people in the $150,000-$300,000 range.</p>
| 5,633 |
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police in Los Angeles have arrested a man they suspect made a hoax emergency call that resulted in a SWAT police officer fatally shooting a man at the door of his own home in Kansas, law enforcement officials said Saturday.</p>
<p>Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston on Friday characterized the hoax call as “swatting” in which a “prankster” called 911 with a fake story about a shooting and kidnapping to draw a SWAT team to the victim’s address. Authorities haven’t released the name of the man who was killed Thursday, but relatives have identified him as 28-year-old Andrew Finch.</p>
<p>Tyler Barriss, 25, is suspected of making that call and was arrested in Los Angeles on Friday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Wichita Police Department in statements emailed early Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Officer Paul Cruz, a spokesman for the Wichita police, said the two city police departments are working with the FBI on the case, but provided no further details including on possible charges or extradition.</p>
<p>In audio of the 911 call played by Wichita police at a news conference on Friday, a man said he shot his father in the head and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint. The caller, speaking with relative calm, also said he poured gasoline inside the home “and I might just set it on fire.”</p>
<p>Officers subsequently surrounded the home at the address the caller provided and prepared for a hostage situation. When Finch went to the door, police told him to put his hands up and move slowly.</p>
<p>But Livingston said the man moved a hand toward his waistband — a common place where guns are concealed. An officer, fearing the man was reaching for a gun, fired a single shot. Finch died a few minutes later at a hospital. Livingston said Finch was unarmed.</p>
<p>The officer, a seven-year veteran of the department, is on paid leave pending the investigation.</p>
<p>Lisa Finch on Friday told reporters “that cop murdered my son over a false report in the first place.”</p>
<p>In addition to the 911 call, police also released a brief video of body camera footage from another officer at the scene. It was difficult to see clearly what happened.</p>
<p>Dexerto, an online news service focused on gaming, reported that the series of events began with an online argument over a $1 or $2 wager in a “Call of Duty” game on UMG Gaming, which operates online tournaments including one involving “Call of Duty.”</p>
<p>Livingston said investigators were tracking online leads, and a law enforcement official who earlier confirmed Barriss’ arrest said the shooting stemmed from a dispute over “Call of Duty.” The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press Saturday on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>The official said Barriss believed a person involved in the dispute lived at the address, but that investigators don’t believe Finch was the intended target. Finch’s mother said her son was not a gamer.</p>
<p>The official said it wasn’t clear if Barriss was involved in the dispute or if he had been recruited to make the false call.</p>
<p>Court records show Barriss was convicted in 2016 on two counts of making a false bomb report to a TV station in Glendale, California, and sent to Los Angeles County jail for two years. Jail records show he was released in January.</p>
<p>The FBI estimates that roughly 400 cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their number. An FBI supervisor in Kansas City, Missouri, which covers all of Kansas, said the agency joined in the investigation at the request of local police.</p>
<p>In other cases of apparent swatting, three families in Florida in January had to evacuate their homes after a detective received an anonymous email claiming bombs had been placed at the address.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Balsamo reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Jim Salter contributed to this report from St. Louis.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Sign up for the AP’s weekly newsletter showcasing our best reporting from the Midwest and Texas: <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external" /> <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external">http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv</a></p>
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police in Los Angeles have arrested a man they suspect made a hoax emergency call that resulted in a SWAT police officer fatally shooting a man at the door of his own home in Kansas, law enforcement officials said Saturday.</p>
<p>Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston on Friday characterized the hoax call as “swatting” in which a “prankster” called 911 with a fake story about a shooting and kidnapping to draw a SWAT team to the victim’s address. Authorities haven’t released the name of the man who was killed Thursday, but relatives have identified him as 28-year-old Andrew Finch.</p>
<p>Tyler Barriss, 25, is suspected of making that call and was arrested in Los Angeles on Friday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Wichita Police Department in statements emailed early Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Officer Paul Cruz, a spokesman for the Wichita police, said the two city police departments are working with the FBI on the case, but provided no further details including on possible charges or extradition.</p>
<p>In audio of the 911 call played by Wichita police at a news conference on Friday, a man said he shot his father in the head and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint. The caller, speaking with relative calm, also said he poured gasoline inside the home “and I might just set it on fire.”</p>
<p>Officers subsequently surrounded the home at the address the caller provided and prepared for a hostage situation. When Finch went to the door, police told him to put his hands up and move slowly.</p>
<p>But Livingston said the man moved a hand toward his waistband — a common place where guns are concealed. An officer, fearing the man was reaching for a gun, fired a single shot. Finch died a few minutes later at a hospital. Livingston said Finch was unarmed.</p>
<p>The officer, a seven-year veteran of the department, is on paid leave pending the investigation.</p>
<p>Lisa Finch on Friday told reporters “that cop murdered my son over a false report in the first place.”</p>
<p>In addition to the 911 call, police also released a brief video of body camera footage from another officer at the scene. It was difficult to see clearly what happened.</p>
<p>Dexerto, an online news service focused on gaming, reported that the series of events began with an online argument over a $1 or $2 wager in a “Call of Duty” game on UMG Gaming, which operates online tournaments including one involving “Call of Duty.”</p>
<p>Livingston said investigators were tracking online leads, and a law enforcement official who earlier confirmed Barriss’ arrest said the shooting stemmed from a dispute over “Call of Duty.” The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press Saturday on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>The official said Barriss believed a person involved in the dispute lived at the address, but that investigators don’t believe Finch was the intended target. Finch’s mother said her son was not a gamer.</p>
<p>The official said it wasn’t clear if Barriss was involved in the dispute or if he had been recruited to make the false call.</p>
<p>Court records show Barriss was convicted in 2016 on two counts of making a false bomb report to a TV station in Glendale, California, and sent to Los Angeles County jail for two years. Jail records show he was released in January.</p>
<p>The FBI estimates that roughly 400 cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their number. An FBI supervisor in Kansas City, Missouri, which covers all of Kansas, said the agency joined in the investigation at the request of local police.</p>
<p>In other cases of apparent swatting, three families in Florida in January had to evacuate their homes after a detective received an anonymous email claiming bombs had been placed at the address.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Balsamo reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Jim Salter contributed to this report from St. Louis.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Sign up for the AP’s weekly newsletter showcasing our best reporting from the Midwest and Texas: <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external" /> <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external">http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv</a></p>
|
California man arrested after fatal Kansas police shooting
| false |
https://apnews.com/e49b190ef60a4c51ab947fea7aba8fa5
|
2017-12-30
| 2least
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California man arrested after fatal Kansas police shooting
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police in Los Angeles have arrested a man they suspect made a hoax emergency call that resulted in a SWAT police officer fatally shooting a man at the door of his own home in Kansas, law enforcement officials said Saturday.</p>
<p>Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston on Friday characterized the hoax call as “swatting” in which a “prankster” called 911 with a fake story about a shooting and kidnapping to draw a SWAT team to the victim’s address. Authorities haven’t released the name of the man who was killed Thursday, but relatives have identified him as 28-year-old Andrew Finch.</p>
<p>Tyler Barriss, 25, is suspected of making that call and was arrested in Los Angeles on Friday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Wichita Police Department in statements emailed early Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Officer Paul Cruz, a spokesman for the Wichita police, said the two city police departments are working with the FBI on the case, but provided no further details including on possible charges or extradition.</p>
<p>In audio of the 911 call played by Wichita police at a news conference on Friday, a man said he shot his father in the head and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint. The caller, speaking with relative calm, also said he poured gasoline inside the home “and I might just set it on fire.”</p>
<p>Officers subsequently surrounded the home at the address the caller provided and prepared for a hostage situation. When Finch went to the door, police told him to put his hands up and move slowly.</p>
<p>But Livingston said the man moved a hand toward his waistband — a common place where guns are concealed. An officer, fearing the man was reaching for a gun, fired a single shot. Finch died a few minutes later at a hospital. Livingston said Finch was unarmed.</p>
<p>The officer, a seven-year veteran of the department, is on paid leave pending the investigation.</p>
<p>Lisa Finch on Friday told reporters “that cop murdered my son over a false report in the first place.”</p>
<p>In addition to the 911 call, police also released a brief video of body camera footage from another officer at the scene. It was difficult to see clearly what happened.</p>
<p>Dexerto, an online news service focused on gaming, reported that the series of events began with an online argument over a $1 or $2 wager in a “Call of Duty” game on UMG Gaming, which operates online tournaments including one involving “Call of Duty.”</p>
<p>Livingston said investigators were tracking online leads, and a law enforcement official who earlier confirmed Barriss’ arrest said the shooting stemmed from a dispute over “Call of Duty.” The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press Saturday on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>The official said Barriss believed a person involved in the dispute lived at the address, but that investigators don’t believe Finch was the intended target. Finch’s mother said her son was not a gamer.</p>
<p>The official said it wasn’t clear if Barriss was involved in the dispute or if he had been recruited to make the false call.</p>
<p>Court records show Barriss was convicted in 2016 on two counts of making a false bomb report to a TV station in Glendale, California, and sent to Los Angeles County jail for two years. Jail records show he was released in January.</p>
<p>The FBI estimates that roughly 400 cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their number. An FBI supervisor in Kansas City, Missouri, which covers all of Kansas, said the agency joined in the investigation at the request of local police.</p>
<p>In other cases of apparent swatting, three families in Florida in January had to evacuate their homes after a detective received an anonymous email claiming bombs had been placed at the address.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Balsamo reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Jim Salter contributed to this report from St. Louis.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Sign up for the AP’s weekly newsletter showcasing our best reporting from the Midwest and Texas: <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external" /> <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external">http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv</a></p>
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police in Los Angeles have arrested a man they suspect made a hoax emergency call that resulted in a SWAT police officer fatally shooting a man at the door of his own home in Kansas, law enforcement officials said Saturday.</p>
<p>Wichita Deputy Police Chief Troy Livingston on Friday characterized the hoax call as “swatting” in which a “prankster” called 911 with a fake story about a shooting and kidnapping to draw a SWAT team to the victim’s address. Authorities haven’t released the name of the man who was killed Thursday, but relatives have identified him as 28-year-old Andrew Finch.</p>
<p>Tyler Barriss, 25, is suspected of making that call and was arrested in Los Angeles on Friday, according to the Los Angeles Police Department and the Wichita Police Department in statements emailed early Saturday afternoon.</p>
<p>Officer Paul Cruz, a spokesman for the Wichita police, said the two city police departments are working with the FBI on the case, but provided no further details including on possible charges or extradition.</p>
<p>In audio of the 911 call played by Wichita police at a news conference on Friday, a man said he shot his father in the head and that he was holding his mother and a sibling at gunpoint. The caller, speaking with relative calm, also said he poured gasoline inside the home “and I might just set it on fire.”</p>
<p>Officers subsequently surrounded the home at the address the caller provided and prepared for a hostage situation. When Finch went to the door, police told him to put his hands up and move slowly.</p>
<p>But Livingston said the man moved a hand toward his waistband — a common place where guns are concealed. An officer, fearing the man was reaching for a gun, fired a single shot. Finch died a few minutes later at a hospital. Livingston said Finch was unarmed.</p>
<p>The officer, a seven-year veteran of the department, is on paid leave pending the investigation.</p>
<p>Lisa Finch on Friday told reporters “that cop murdered my son over a false report in the first place.”</p>
<p>In addition to the 911 call, police also released a brief video of body camera footage from another officer at the scene. It was difficult to see clearly what happened.</p>
<p>Dexerto, an online news service focused on gaming, reported that the series of events began with an online argument over a $1 or $2 wager in a “Call of Duty” game on UMG Gaming, which operates online tournaments including one involving “Call of Duty.”</p>
<p>Livingston said investigators were tracking online leads, and a law enforcement official who earlier confirmed Barriss’ arrest said the shooting stemmed from a dispute over “Call of Duty.” The official wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press Saturday on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>The official said Barriss believed a person involved in the dispute lived at the address, but that investigators don’t believe Finch was the intended target. Finch’s mother said her son was not a gamer.</p>
<p>The official said it wasn’t clear if Barriss was involved in the dispute or if he had been recruited to make the false call.</p>
<p>Court records show Barriss was convicted in 2016 on two counts of making a false bomb report to a TV station in Glendale, California, and sent to Los Angeles County jail for two years. Jail records show he was released in January.</p>
<p>The FBI estimates that roughly 400 cases of swatting occur annually, with some using caller ID spoofing to disguise their number. An FBI supervisor in Kansas City, Missouri, which covers all of Kansas, said the agency joined in the investigation at the request of local police.</p>
<p>In other cases of apparent swatting, three families in Florida in January had to evacuate their homes after a detective received an anonymous email claiming bombs had been placed at the address.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Balsamo reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Jim Salter contributed to this report from St. Louis.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Sign up for the AP’s weekly newsletter showcasing our best reporting from the Midwest and Texas: <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external" /> <a href="http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv" type="external">http://apne.ws/2u1RMfv</a></p>
| 5,634 |
<p>A comet poised to give Mars a close shave later this year is now blasting dust into space from at least two jets on its surface, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal.</p>
<p>The latest Hubble photo of <a href="http://www.space.com/24479-mars-comet-siding-spring-nasa-photo.html" type="external">Comet Siding Spring</a>, captured on March 11, shows what appear to be two jets of dust coming off the icy object's nucleus. The comet is making its way toward the inner solar system for an Oct. 19 rendezvous with Mars, during which it will miss the planet by just 84,000 miles (135,185 kilometers) — about one-third the distance between Earth and the moon.</p>
<p>The new Hubble observations, along with other recent images of Comet Siding Spring taken by the space telescope on Jan. 21 and Oct. 29, are helping scientists learn key details about the comet, such as the axis of rotation of its nucleus and the speed at which Siding Spring is ejecting dust. NASA released the new Hubble comet photos on Thursday.</p>
<p>"This is critical information that we need to determine whether, and to what degree, dust grains in the coma of the comet will impact Mars and spacecraft in the vicinity of <a href="http://www.space.com/15368-mars-myths-misconceptions-quiz.html" type="external">Mars</a>," Jian-Yang Li, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., said in a statement.</p>
<p>Scientists still aren't sure how much of a threat Comet Siding Spring will pose to orbiters such as NASA's <a href="http://www.space.com/13962-photos-nasa-mars-reconnaissance-orbiter.html" type="external">Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter</a> and Mars Odyssey. They should start to get a better idea in April and May, as the comet gets closer to the sun and begins shedding more material.</p>
<p>- Mike Wall, Space.com</p>
<p>This is a condensed version of story that appeared on Space.com Read the entire article <a href="http://www.space.com/25252-mars-comet-sprouts-jets-hubble-photos.html" type="external">here</a>. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/michaeldwall" type="external">@michaeldwall</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/108984047382030613667/posts" type="external">Google+</a>. Follow us <a href="http://twitter.com/spacedotcom" type="external">@Spacedotcom</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/spacecom" type="external">Facebook</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/+SPACEcom/posts" type="external">Google+</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 2014 <a href="http://www.space.com/" type="external">SPACE.com</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</p>
|
Hubble Catches Jets Sprouting From Mars-Bound Comet
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/science/space/hubble-catches-jets-sprouting-mars-bound-comet-n66211
|
2014-03-28
| 3left-center
|
Hubble Catches Jets Sprouting From Mars-Bound Comet
<p>A comet poised to give Mars a close shave later this year is now blasting dust into space from at least two jets on its surface, photos from the Hubble Space Telescope reveal.</p>
<p>The latest Hubble photo of <a href="http://www.space.com/24479-mars-comet-siding-spring-nasa-photo.html" type="external">Comet Siding Spring</a>, captured on March 11, shows what appear to be two jets of dust coming off the icy object's nucleus. The comet is making its way toward the inner solar system for an Oct. 19 rendezvous with Mars, during which it will miss the planet by just 84,000 miles (135,185 kilometers) — about one-third the distance between Earth and the moon.</p>
<p>The new Hubble observations, along with other recent images of Comet Siding Spring taken by the space telescope on Jan. 21 and Oct. 29, are helping scientists learn key details about the comet, such as the axis of rotation of its nucleus and the speed at which Siding Spring is ejecting dust. NASA released the new Hubble comet photos on Thursday.</p>
<p>"This is critical information that we need to determine whether, and to what degree, dust grains in the coma of the comet will impact Mars and spacecraft in the vicinity of <a href="http://www.space.com/15368-mars-myths-misconceptions-quiz.html" type="external">Mars</a>," Jian-Yang Li, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., said in a statement.</p>
<p>Scientists still aren't sure how much of a threat Comet Siding Spring will pose to orbiters such as NASA's <a href="http://www.space.com/13962-photos-nasa-mars-reconnaissance-orbiter.html" type="external">Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter</a> and Mars Odyssey. They should start to get a better idea in April and May, as the comet gets closer to the sun and begins shedding more material.</p>
<p>- Mike Wall, Space.com</p>
<p>This is a condensed version of story that appeared on Space.com Read the entire article <a href="http://www.space.com/25252-mars-comet-sprouts-jets-hubble-photos.html" type="external">here</a>. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/michaeldwall" type="external">@michaeldwall</a> and <a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/108984047382030613667/posts" type="external">Google+</a>. Follow us <a href="http://twitter.com/spacedotcom" type="external">@Spacedotcom</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/spacecom" type="external">Facebook</a> or <a href="https://plus.google.com/+SPACEcom/posts" type="external">Google+</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 2014 <a href="http://www.space.com/" type="external">SPACE.com</a>, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</p>
| 5,635 |
<p>At a warehouse in Rockville, Maryland sits thousands of bikes in all different shapes, sizes and colors. However, they are not for sale.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bikesfortheworld.org/" type="external">Bikes for the World</a> is a nonprofit organization that collects used bicycles in order to fix them up and then ship them to developing countries.</p>
<p>Founded in 2005, "Bikes for the World" has delivered 131,303 bicycles, according to the organization's website.</p>
<p>Today, the nonprofit delivers between 12,000 and 13,000 bikes each year to disenfranchised communities around the world.</p>
<p>Bikes for the World works with local organizers and various programs internationally to distribute the bikes and spare parts to communities in countries across Africa, Asia and South America.</p>
<p>The project also provides specialized training and workshops to teach local residents how to ride and fix the bikes.</p>
<p>They charity is funded through donations, partnerships and the sale of unique bikes unsuitable for rocky terrain.</p>
<p>Faith groups and service projects are often huge sources of bicycles, Executive Director Keith Oberg told the University of Maryland's Capital News Service.</p>
<p />
|
This nonprofit sends thousands of used bikes to developing countries each year
| false |
https://circa.com/story/2018/01/10/world/maryland-nonprofit-restores-bikes-to-deliver-them-overseas
|
2018-01-10
| 1right-center
|
This nonprofit sends thousands of used bikes to developing countries each year
<p>At a warehouse in Rockville, Maryland sits thousands of bikes in all different shapes, sizes and colors. However, they are not for sale.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bikesfortheworld.org/" type="external">Bikes for the World</a> is a nonprofit organization that collects used bicycles in order to fix them up and then ship them to developing countries.</p>
<p>Founded in 2005, "Bikes for the World" has delivered 131,303 bicycles, according to the organization's website.</p>
<p>Today, the nonprofit delivers between 12,000 and 13,000 bikes each year to disenfranchised communities around the world.</p>
<p>Bikes for the World works with local organizers and various programs internationally to distribute the bikes and spare parts to communities in countries across Africa, Asia and South America.</p>
<p>The project also provides specialized training and workshops to teach local residents how to ride and fix the bikes.</p>
<p>They charity is funded through donations, partnerships and the sale of unique bikes unsuitable for rocky terrain.</p>
<p>Faith groups and service projects are often huge sources of bicycles, Executive Director Keith Oberg told the University of Maryland's Capital News Service.</p>
<p />
| 5,636 |
<p>MIAMI (AP) — Two Florida businessmen have been sentenced in a $3.6 billion money-laundering case involving South American gold.</p>
<p>Federal court records show that 40-year-old Samer Barrage was sentenced to six years and eight months Friday, and 36-year-old Juan Granda received six years. They previously admitted importing illegally mined gold from Peru and other South American countries into the United States.</p>
<p>Court documents show the men smuggled tainted gold between January 2013 and March 2017 for NTR Metals in Miami. The company is owned by a Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal. Neither NTR nor Elemetal has been charged in the case.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the two men circumvented Elemetal’s anti-money-laundering compliance program by buying gold from a drug trafficker, bribing Peruvian officials and falsifying paperwork.</p>
<p>A third convicted trader is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Miami Herald, <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external">http://www.herald.com</a></p>
<p>MIAMI (AP) — Two Florida businessmen have been sentenced in a $3.6 billion money-laundering case involving South American gold.</p>
<p>Federal court records show that 40-year-old Samer Barrage was sentenced to six years and eight months Friday, and 36-year-old Juan Granda received six years. They previously admitted importing illegally mined gold from Peru and other South American countries into the United States.</p>
<p>Court documents show the men smuggled tainted gold between January 2013 and March 2017 for NTR Metals in Miami. The company is owned by a Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal. Neither NTR nor Elemetal has been charged in the case.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the two men circumvented Elemetal’s anti-money-laundering compliance program by buying gold from a drug trafficker, bribing Peruvian officials and falsifying paperwork.</p>
<p>A third convicted trader is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Miami Herald, <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external">http://www.herald.com</a></p>
|
2 sentenced for laundering billions in South American gold
| false |
https://apnews.com/e81052ac75884157872f55958b9728a3
|
2018-01-19
| 2least
|
2 sentenced for laundering billions in South American gold
<p>MIAMI (AP) — Two Florida businessmen have been sentenced in a $3.6 billion money-laundering case involving South American gold.</p>
<p>Federal court records show that 40-year-old Samer Barrage was sentenced to six years and eight months Friday, and 36-year-old Juan Granda received six years. They previously admitted importing illegally mined gold from Peru and other South American countries into the United States.</p>
<p>Court documents show the men smuggled tainted gold between January 2013 and March 2017 for NTR Metals in Miami. The company is owned by a Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal. Neither NTR nor Elemetal has been charged in the case.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the two men circumvented Elemetal’s anti-money-laundering compliance program by buying gold from a drug trafficker, bribing Peruvian officials and falsifying paperwork.</p>
<p>A third convicted trader is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Miami Herald, <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external">http://www.herald.com</a></p>
<p>MIAMI (AP) — Two Florida businessmen have been sentenced in a $3.6 billion money-laundering case involving South American gold.</p>
<p>Federal court records show that 40-year-old Samer Barrage was sentenced to six years and eight months Friday, and 36-year-old Juan Granda received six years. They previously admitted importing illegally mined gold from Peru and other South American countries into the United States.</p>
<p>Court documents show the men smuggled tainted gold between January 2013 and March 2017 for NTR Metals in Miami. The company is owned by a Dallas-based parent company, Elemetal. Neither NTR nor Elemetal has been charged in the case.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the two men circumvented Elemetal’s anti-money-laundering compliance program by buying gold from a drug trafficker, bribing Peruvian officials and falsifying paperwork.</p>
<p>A third convicted trader is scheduled to be sentenced later this month.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Miami Herald, <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.herald.com" type="external">http://www.herald.com</a></p>
| 5,637 |
<p>The state government’s practice of letting workers defy official state policy and pile up unused vacation days and cash them in upon retirement has been criticized on and off for years. California government watchdogs and journalists have outlined the budget problems this causes and noted other states have much different approaches. Now the Center for Investigative Reporting has a <a href="https://beta.cironline.org/reports/thousands-of-california-state-workers-are-hoarding-vacation-days/" type="external">new study</a> out that shows how extensive the problem has become — and how one of the worst abusers is a top official at an agency that’s supposed to push financial discretion and integrity:</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of state employees have exceeded the official limit of 80 banked vacation days, leaving the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.</p>
<p>What are the names of the workers at the top of the list?&#160;The State Controller’s Office, which collects the information and generally prides itself on transparency, wouldn’t say.</p>
<p>Rick Chivaro, the controller’s top lawyer, said he considered the information confidential, even though his office routinely discloses salaries of state workers by name.</p>
<p>It turns out that one of the two top vacation troves belongs to Chivaro himself. By June of last year, he had saved up 498 days of vacation, more than six times the limit. If he retired with that much time off, Chivaro could cash out $317,000 ­­– nearly two years of pay.</p>
<p>The Center for Investigative Reporting was able to identify a few of the state’s biggest vacation misers by their pay rates and job titles, information provided by Chivaro in response to a public records request. …</p>
<p>Two and a half years ago, the controller’s office <a href="http://www.sco.ca.gov/files-aud/05_2012ca_lottery_personnel_payroll.pdf" type="external">criticized the California Lottery Commission</a> for failing to enforce the state vacation cap among its employees. Yet the controller’s office employs 48 individuals with at least twice the maximum vacation days, the data shows. Seven of them, including its chief of human resources, had more vacation on the books than anyone at the Lottery Commission.</p>
<p>As Cal Watchdog has pointed out repeatedly, a fundamental problem in trying to rein in the cost of government pensions and perks is that the officials who should be <a href="" type="internal">cracking down</a> on the abuses have a financial incentive to look the other way or to downplay problems. The CIR report touched on this angle:</p>
<p>“Wow. That’s just wrong,” said Joe Nation, professor of the practice of public policy at Stanford University. “Anyone on the inside or the outside (of government) knows that that’s wrong.”</p>
<p>Nation, a former state lawmaker and municipal water board president, said it’s especially inappropriate for senior managers in salaried positions to “be able to take advantage of and abuse rules like this.”</p>
<p>What would a more reasonable policy look like? The CIR offers some larger context, than points to another big state:</p>
<p>Workers across the country make do with a finite amount of vacation. Many companies, and some states, have use-it-or-lose-it policies that keep employees from carrying over endless amounts of vacation.</p>
<p>In New York, for example, state workers <a href="https://www.goer.ny.gov/Labor_Relations/ManagementConfidential/Handbook/atten.cfm#Vacation" type="external">can’t roll over</a> more than 40 days and get paid out for up to 30 days if they quit or retire. At the stingy end of the spectrum, many employers don’t let workers save any unused time off at all, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.</p>
<p>As for unlimited stockpiling of vacation, “I’ve never seen it in the private sector,” said Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits for the Virginia-based organization. “It’s crazy to do that if you don’t expect a big expense.”</p>
|
Top lawyer for controller benefits from much-criticized state perk
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2015/01/14/top-lawyer-for-controllers-office-benefits-from-perk-he-should-fight/
|
2018-01-20
| 3left-center
|
Top lawyer for controller benefits from much-criticized state perk
<p>The state government’s practice of letting workers defy official state policy and pile up unused vacation days and cash them in upon retirement has been criticized on and off for years. California government watchdogs and journalists have outlined the budget problems this causes and noted other states have much different approaches. Now the Center for Investigative Reporting has a <a href="https://beta.cironline.org/reports/thousands-of-california-state-workers-are-hoarding-vacation-days/" type="external">new study</a> out that shows how extensive the problem has become — and how one of the worst abusers is a top official at an agency that’s supposed to push financial discretion and integrity:</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of state employees have exceeded the official limit of 80 banked vacation days, leaving the state on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars.</p>
<p>What are the names of the workers at the top of the list?&#160;The State Controller’s Office, which collects the information and generally prides itself on transparency, wouldn’t say.</p>
<p>Rick Chivaro, the controller’s top lawyer, said he considered the information confidential, even though his office routinely discloses salaries of state workers by name.</p>
<p>It turns out that one of the two top vacation troves belongs to Chivaro himself. By June of last year, he had saved up 498 days of vacation, more than six times the limit. If he retired with that much time off, Chivaro could cash out $317,000 ­­– nearly two years of pay.</p>
<p>The Center for Investigative Reporting was able to identify a few of the state’s biggest vacation misers by their pay rates and job titles, information provided by Chivaro in response to a public records request. …</p>
<p>Two and a half years ago, the controller’s office <a href="http://www.sco.ca.gov/files-aud/05_2012ca_lottery_personnel_payroll.pdf" type="external">criticized the California Lottery Commission</a> for failing to enforce the state vacation cap among its employees. Yet the controller’s office employs 48 individuals with at least twice the maximum vacation days, the data shows. Seven of them, including its chief of human resources, had more vacation on the books than anyone at the Lottery Commission.</p>
<p>As Cal Watchdog has pointed out repeatedly, a fundamental problem in trying to rein in the cost of government pensions and perks is that the officials who should be <a href="" type="internal">cracking down</a> on the abuses have a financial incentive to look the other way or to downplay problems. The CIR report touched on this angle:</p>
<p>“Wow. That’s just wrong,” said Joe Nation, professor of the practice of public policy at Stanford University. “Anyone on the inside or the outside (of government) knows that that’s wrong.”</p>
<p>Nation, a former state lawmaker and municipal water board president, said it’s especially inappropriate for senior managers in salaried positions to “be able to take advantage of and abuse rules like this.”</p>
<p>What would a more reasonable policy look like? The CIR offers some larger context, than points to another big state:</p>
<p>Workers across the country make do with a finite amount of vacation. Many companies, and some states, have use-it-or-lose-it policies that keep employees from carrying over endless amounts of vacation.</p>
<p>In New York, for example, state workers <a href="https://www.goer.ny.gov/Labor_Relations/ManagementConfidential/Handbook/atten.cfm#Vacation" type="external">can’t roll over</a> more than 40 days and get paid out for up to 30 days if they quit or retire. At the stingy end of the spectrum, many employers don’t let workers save any unused time off at all, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.</p>
<p>As for unlimited stockpiling of vacation, “I’ve never seen it in the private sector,” said Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits for the Virginia-based organization. “It’s crazy to do that if you don’t expect a big expense.”</p>
| 5,638 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FORT COLLINS, Colo. - Hazmat crews are working to clean up at least 1,700 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled from a locomotive in Fort Collins.</p>
<p>Patrick Love, a spokesman for Poudre Fire Authority, tells The Coloradoan ( <a href="http://goo.gl/GkEzTE" type="external">http://goo.gl/GkEzTE</a> ) that Tuesday evening's spill came from a 2,200-gallon tank the train was carrying. He says the spill did not endanger nearby residents or affect traffic.</p>
<p>Great Western Railway owns the locomotive and worked with crews on the cleanup. It's unclear how the fuel spilled.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Fort Collins Coloradoan, <a href="http://www.coloradoan.com" type="external">http://www.coloradoan.com</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Locomotive spills 1,700 gallons of diesel in Fort Collins
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/659621/locomotive-spills-1700-gallons-of-diesel-in-fort-collins.html
| 2least
|
Locomotive spills 1,700 gallons of diesel in Fort Collins
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FORT COLLINS, Colo. - Hazmat crews are working to clean up at least 1,700 gallons of diesel fuel that spilled from a locomotive in Fort Collins.</p>
<p>Patrick Love, a spokesman for Poudre Fire Authority, tells The Coloradoan ( <a href="http://goo.gl/GkEzTE" type="external">http://goo.gl/GkEzTE</a> ) that Tuesday evening's spill came from a 2,200-gallon tank the train was carrying. He says the spill did not endanger nearby residents or affect traffic.</p>
<p>Great Western Railway owns the locomotive and worked with crews on the cleanup. It's unclear how the fuel spilled.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Fort Collins Coloradoan, <a href="http://www.coloradoan.com" type="external">http://www.coloradoan.com</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,639 |
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<p>PUEBLO, Colo. — Authorities are investigating the death of a man who had been acting erratically before he was arrested in southern Colorado.</p>
<p>Police say the unidentified man was walking back and forth across Interstate 25 in Pueblo on Sunday afternoon. They say they were eventually able to get him off the highway but then he struggled with police. They say officers used a stun gun on him but he continued to resist.</p>
<p>After they were able to handcuff him, the man was taken to the hospital where he died.</p>
<p>The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Man dies after police use stun gun during arrest in Pueblo
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1105144/man-dies-after-police-use-stun-gun-during-arrest-in-pueblo.html
| 2least
|
Man dies after police use stun gun during arrest in Pueblo
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>PUEBLO, Colo. — Authorities are investigating the death of a man who had been acting erratically before he was arrested in southern Colorado.</p>
<p>Police say the unidentified man was walking back and forth across Interstate 25 in Pueblo on Sunday afternoon. They say they were eventually able to get him off the highway but then he struggled with police. They say officers used a stun gun on him but he continued to resist.</p>
<p>After they were able to handcuff him, the man was taken to the hospital where he died.</p>
<p>The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office is leading the investigation.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,640 |
|
<p>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits the White House.Michael Reynolds/ZUMA</p>
<p />
<p>A version of this <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176169/" type="external">story</a>first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>Much <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/us/politics/trump-invites-rodrigo-duterte-to-the-white-house.html" type="external">outrage</a> has been expressed in recent weeks over President Donald Trump’s White House invitation to Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, whose “war on drugs” has led to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/01/license-kill/philippine-police-killings-dutertes-war-drugs" type="external">thousands</a> of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/09/killing-and-lies-philippine-president-dutertes-war-drugs-exposed" type="external">extrajudicial killings</a>. Criticism of Trump was especially intense given his warm public support for other authoritarian rulers, including Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi (who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-welcomes-egypts-sissi-to-white-house-in-reversal-of-us-policy/2017/04/03/36b5e312-188b-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.9cb2e1fa21c3" type="external">visited</a> the Oval Office amid presidential praise weeks earlier), Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who got a congratulatory <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/18/opinions/trump-congratulates-erdogan-opinion-ben-ghiat/index.html" type="external">phone call</a> from Trump on the recent referendum <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/17/donald-trump-erdogan-turkey-referendum-congratulations" type="external">victory</a> that cemented his powers), and Thailand’s Prayuth Chan-ocha (who also received a White House <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/01/donald-trump-rebuilds-us-relations-with-thailand-and-philippines" type="external">invitation</a>).</p>
<p>But here’s the strange thing: The critics generally ignored the far more substantial and long-standing support US presidents, Democrat and Republican, have offered to dozens of repressive regimes over the decades. These regimes have one striking thing in common: They are all on an autocratic honor role of at least <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627791698/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">45 nations</a> and territories hosting <a href="http://www.basenation.us/maps.html" type="external">scores</a> of US military bases—from tiny outposts to installations the size of a small city. All told, these bases are home to tens of thousands of US troops.</p>
<p>To ensure basing access, American officials regularly collaborate with regimes and militaries that have been implicated in torture, murder, suppression of democratic rights, systematic oppression of women and minorities, and countless other human rights abuses. Never mind Trump. These collaborations have been the status quo for nearly three-quarters of a century. In fact, since World War II, US administrations have often shown a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691134634/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">preference</a> for maintaining bases in undemocratic and/or despotic states—Spain under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, South Korea under Park Chung-hee, Bahrain under King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and Djibouti under four-term President Ismail Omar Guelleh, to name just a few.</p>
<p>Many of our 45 undemocratic base hosts qualify as fully “authoritarian regimes,” according to a democracy index compiled by the <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-20" type="external">Economist</a>. Which means American installations and the troops stationed there are effectively helping block the spread of democracy in countries like Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Niger, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.</p>
<p>This support for dictatorship and repression should trouble any American who believes in the principles of our <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript" type="external">Constitution</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript" type="external">Declaration of Independence</a>. After all, one of the long-articulated justifications for maintaining US military bases abroad has been that our military presence protects and spreads democracy. Far from it, such bases tend to help <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Base-Politics-Democratic-Military-Overseas/dp/0801446058/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415553718&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=alexander+cooley" type="external">legitimize</a> and prop up repressive regimes, while often interfering with genuine efforts toward political and democratic reform. The silencing of the critics of human rights abuses in base nations such as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/bahrain" type="external">Bahrain</a>, which has violently cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators since 2011, has left the United States <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/27/how-obama-caved-on-bahrain-manama-human-rights/" type="external">complicit</a>.</p>
<p>During the Cold War, such bases were often justified as the unfortunate but necessary consequence of confronting the “communist menace.” Yet in the quarter-century since the Cold War ended, <a href="http://www.basenation.us/maps.html" type="external">few</a> of those bases have closed. So today, while White House visits from autocrats generates indignation, the presence of American military installations in the same countries receives little notice. &#160;</p>
<p>The 45 nations and territories with little or no democratic rule represent more than half the roughly <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/lily-pads/story/lily-pads/" type="external">80 countries</a> now hosting US bases—countries that often lack the power to ask their “guests” to leave. They are part of a historically <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1627791698/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">unprecedented global network</a> of military installations the United States has built or occupied since World War II.</p>
<p>While there are no foreign bases in the United States, we have around <a href="http://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/auislandora%3A55685" type="external">800 bases</a> in <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321" type="external">foreign countries</a>—almost certainly a record for any nation or empire in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Basing-1200-2000-Strategy-History-ebook/dp/B001QN8IFO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" type="external">history</a>. More than 70 years after World War II and 64 years after the Korean War, there remain, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjQz-nSkeDTAhVEYyYKHTY3B3wQFggiMAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.acq.osd.mil%2Feie%2FDownloads%2FBSI%2FBase%2520Structure%2520Report%2520FY15.pdf&amp;usg=AFQjCNH5z20sLCiqx" type="external">according to</a> the Pentagon, 181 US “base sites” in Germany, 122 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. Hundreds more <a href="http://empire.is/" type="external">dot the planet</a> from Aruba to Australia, Belgium to Bulgaria, Colombia to Qatar. Hundreds of thousands of troops, civilians, and family members occupy these installations. By my conservative estimate, manning and maintaining these installations costs US taxpayers at least <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Base-Nation-Military-America-American/dp/1627791698" type="external">$150 billion</a> annually—which is more than the budget of any government agency other than the Pentagon.</p>
<p>For decades, our leaders in Washington have insisted these foreign bases spread American values and democracy—and that may have been true to some extent in occupied Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II. But as base expert <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0814752446/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Catherine Lutz</a> suggests, the subsequent historical record shows that “gaining and maintaining access” for our outposts “has often involved close collaboration with despotic governments.”</p>
<p>Consider the Philippines: The United States has maintained military facilities in the archipelago almost continuously since seizing it from Spain in 1898. America only granted the colony independence in 1946, conditioned on the local government’s <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/b-ph-ust000011-0084.pdf" type="external">agreement</a> that the United States would retain access to more than a dozen military installations there.</p>
<p>After independence, a succession of US administrations supported two decades of Ferdinand Marcos’ autocratic rule in the Philippines, ensuring the continued use of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, two of our largest overseas bases. The Filipinos finally ousted Marcos in 1986 and ordered the US military to leave in 1991, but five years later, the Pentagon quietly returned. With the help of a “visiting forces agreement” and a growing stream of military exercises and training programs, it began to set up surreptitious, small-scale bases once more. A desire to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-usa-idUSBREA2D0GE20140314" type="external">solidify</a> this <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-southchinasea-philippines-carter-idUKKCN0XB0T7" type="external">renewed base presence</a>, while also checking Chinese influence in the region, may have driven Trump’s White House invitation to Duterte. It came despite the Filipino president’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36251094" type="external">record</a> of joking about rape, swearing he would be “happy to slaughter” millions of drug addicts just as “Hitler massacred [six] million Jews,” and bragging, “I don’t care about human rights.”</p>
<p>In Turkey, President Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic rule is only the latest episode in a pattern of military coups and undemocratic regimes interrupting periods of democracy in Turkey. Since 1943, however, US bases have been a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1316643506/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">constant presence</a> in the country, where they have repeatedly sparked protest—throughout the 1960s and 1970s, prior to the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and more recently, when US forces began using them to launch attacks in Syria.</p>
<p>Although Egypt has a relatively small US base <a href="http://mfo.org/en/contingents" type="external">presence</a>, its military has enjoyed deep and lucrative Pentagon ties since the signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1979. After a 2013 military coup ousted a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government, the Obama administration waited months to withhold <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/world/middleeast/trump-al-sisi-egypt-military-exercise.html" type="external">some forms</a> of military and economic aid, despite more than 1,300 killings by security forces and the arrest of more than 3,500 members of the Brotherhood. According to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/egypt" type="external">Human Rights Watch</a>, “Little was said about ongoing abuses,” which have continued to this day.</p>
<p>The United States also has maintained deep connections with the Thai military, which has carried out <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/20/thailands-army-says-this-definitely-isnt-a-coup-heres-11-times-it-definitely-was/?utm_term=.f4625e46d847" type="external">12 coups</a> since 1932. Both countries have been able to deny they have a basing relationship of any sort, thanks to a rental agreement between a private contractor and US forces at Thailand’s Utapao Naval Air Base. “Because of [contractor] Delta Golf Global,” writes journalist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hog-Pilots-Blue-Water-Grunts/dp/1400034582" type="external">Robert Kaplan</a>, “the US military was here, but it was not here. After all, the Thais did no business with the US Air Force. They dealt only with a private contractor.”</p>
<p>In monarchical Bahrain, which has had a US military presence since 1949 and now hosts the Navy’s 5th Fleet, the Obama administration offered only the most <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175479/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_did_the_pentagon_help_strangle_the_arab_spring/" type="external">tepid criticism</a> of the Bahraini government despite an ongoing, often violent <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175393/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_obama_and_the_mideast_arms_trade/" type="external">crackdown</a> on pro-democracy protesters. According to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/bahrain" type="external">Human Rights Watch</a> and others (including an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain_Independent_Commission_of_Inquiry" type="external">independent commission of inquiry</a> appointed by the Bahraini king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa), the government has been responsible for widespread abuses, including the arbitrary arrest of protesters, ill treatment during detention, torture-related deaths, and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/12/bahrain-accelerated-repression-jeopardizes-activists" type="external">growing restrictions</a> on freedoms of speech, association, and assembly. The Trump administration has already signaled its desire to protect the military ties of the two countries by approving a sale of F-16 fighters to Bahrain <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-29/top-general-says-human-rights-shouldn-t-hold-up-u-s-arms-sales" type="external">without demanding any improvements</a> in its human rights record.</p>
<p>This is typical of what the late base expert Chalmers Johnson once <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1181/chalmers_johnson_on_garrisoning_the_planet" type="external">called</a> the American “baseworld.” Research by political scientist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691134634/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Kent Calder</a> confirms what’s come to be known as the “dictatorship hypothesis”: that “the United States tends to support dictators in nations where it enjoys basing facilities.” Another large <a href="https://works.bepress.com/michael_aallen/1/" type="external">study</a> concluded that autocratic states have been “consistently attractive” as base sites. “Due to the unpredictability of elections,” it added bluntly, democratic states prove “less attractive in terms [of] sustainability and duration.”</p>
<p>Even within what are technically US borders, democratic rule has regularly proved “less attractive” than preserving colonialism into the 21st century. The presence of scores of bases in Puerto Rico and the Pacific island of Guam has been a major motivation for keeping these and other territories—American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands—in varying degrees of colonial subordination. Conveniently for military leaders, they have neither full independence nor the full democratic rights—voting, representation in Congress—that come with US statehood. Installations in at least five of Europe’s remaining colonies have proved equally attractive, as has the base US troops have forcibly occupied in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since shortly after the Spanish-American War of 1898.</p>
<p>Authoritarian rulers are well aware of the desire of US officials to maintain the status quo when it comes to bases. As a result, they often <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002716632300" type="external">capitalize</a> on a base presence to extract benefits or help ensure their own political survival.</p>
<p>The Philippines’ Marcos, former South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee, and more recently Djibouti’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-djibouti-reach-agreement-to-keep-counterterrorism-base-in-horn-of-africa-nation/2014/05/05/0965412c-d488-11e3-aae8-c2d44bd79778_story.html?utm_term=.942ecd788067" type="external">Ismail Omar Guelleh</a> have been typical in the way they used bases to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801446058/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">extract economic assistance</a> from Washington, which they then lavished on political allies to shore up their power. Other autocrats have relied on US bases to bolster their international prestige and legitimacy, or to justify violence against political opponents.</p>
<p>After the 1980 Kwangju massacre—in which the South Korean government killed hundreds, if not thousands, of pro-democracy demonstrators, strongman General Chun Doo-hwan <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801446058/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">explicitly cited</a> the presence of US bases and troops to suggest that he enjoyed Washington’s support. Whether that was true remains a matter of historical debate. What’s clear, though, is that American leaders have regularly muted their criticism of repressive regimes lest they imperil US basing rights. And the US presence tends to strengthen military, rather than civilian, institutions because of military-to-military ties, arms sales, and training missions that generally accompany the basing agreements.</p>
<p>Opponents of repressive regimes often use the bases to rally nationalist sentiment, anger, and protest against their ruling elites and the United States. In some such cases, fears in Washington that a transition to democracy might lead to base eviction leads to a doubling down on support for the undemocratic ruler. The result can be an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801446058/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">escalating cycle</a> of opposition and US-backed repression. &#160;</p>
<p>While some analysts defend the presence of US bases in undemocratic countries as necessary to deter bad actors and support American interests (primarily corporate ones), backing dictators and autocrats frequently leads to harm—not just for the citizens of the host nations, but for US citizens as well. The <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176090/tomgram%3A_david_vine,_enduring_bases,_enduring_war_in_the_middle_east" type="external">base buildup</a> in the Middle East is the most prominent example. In the wake of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution the same year, the Pentagon has built up <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176090/tomgram%3A_david_vine,_enduring_bases,_enduring_war_in_the_middle_east" type="external">scores of bases</a> across the Middle East at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. These bases and the troops stationed in them have been a “ <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCYQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fcsis.org%2Ffiles%2Fpublication%2Ftwq08springbowman.pdf&amp;ei=_DNdVNuFPLTLsATknYK4Cg&amp;usg=AFQjCNGr1RKhn7_eim2InSMCN76uFqreZA&amp;sig2=OvoQCtsdNUkjXLss-5dpvw&amp;bvm=bv.79189006,d.cWc" type="external">major catalyst</a> for anti-Americanism and radicalization,” according to former West Point professor Bradley Bowman, who cites research noting a <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCYQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fcsis.org%2Ffiles%2Fpublication%2Ftwq08springbowman.pdf&amp;ei=_DNdVNuFPLTLsATknYK4Cg&amp;usg=AFQjCNGr1RKhn7_eim2InSMCN76uFqreZA&amp;sig2=OvoQCtsdNUkjXLss-5dpvw&amp;bvm=bv.79189006,d.cWc" type="external">correlation</a> between the bases and Al Qaeda recruitment.</p>
<p>Outposts in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan have helped generate and fuel the radical militancy that has spread throughout the Greater Middle East and led to terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. The presence of US bases and troops in Muslim holy lands was a major recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, and part of Osama bin Laden’s <a href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/stephen-glain/2011/05/03/what-actually-motivated-osama-bin-laden" type="external">professed motivation</a> for the 9/11 attacks.</p>
<p>With the Trump administration seeking to entrench the renewed base presence in the Philippines, and the president commending Duterte and similarly authoritarian leaders in Bahrain and Egypt, Turkey and Thailand, human rights violations worldwide are likely to escalate, fueling unknown brutality and baseworld <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175578/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson,_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world/" type="external">blowback</a> for years to come.</p>
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Why Would a President Schmooze With Vicious Autocrats and Repressive Monarchs?
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/trump-duterte-erdogan-autocrats-dictators-military-bases/
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2017-05-28
| 4left
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Why Would a President Schmooze With Vicious Autocrats and Repressive Monarchs?
<p>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits the White House.Michael Reynolds/ZUMA</p>
<p />
<p>A version of this <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176169/" type="external">story</a>first appeared on the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" type="external">TomDispatch</a> website.</p>
<p>Much <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/us/politics/trump-invites-rodrigo-duterte-to-the-white-house.html" type="external">outrage</a> has been expressed in recent weeks over President Donald Trump’s White House invitation to Rodrigo Duterte, president of the Philippines, whose “war on drugs” has led to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2017/03/01/license-kill/philippine-police-killings-dutertes-war-drugs" type="external">thousands</a> of <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/09/killing-and-lies-philippine-president-dutertes-war-drugs-exposed" type="external">extrajudicial killings</a>. Criticism of Trump was especially intense given his warm public support for other authoritarian rulers, including Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi (who <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-welcomes-egypts-sissi-to-white-house-in-reversal-of-us-policy/2017/04/03/36b5e312-188b-11e7-bcc2-7d1a0973e7b2_story.html?utm_term=.9cb2e1fa21c3" type="external">visited</a> the Oval Office amid presidential praise weeks earlier), Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan (who got a congratulatory <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/18/opinions/trump-congratulates-erdogan-opinion-ben-ghiat/index.html" type="external">phone call</a> from Trump on the recent referendum <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/17/donald-trump-erdogan-turkey-referendum-congratulations" type="external">victory</a> that cemented his powers), and Thailand’s Prayuth Chan-ocha (who also received a White House <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/01/donald-trump-rebuilds-us-relations-with-thailand-and-philippines" type="external">invitation</a>).</p>
<p>But here’s the strange thing: The critics generally ignored the far more substantial and long-standing support US presidents, Democrat and Republican, have offered to dozens of repressive regimes over the decades. These regimes have one striking thing in common: They are all on an autocratic honor role of at least <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627791698/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">45 nations</a> and territories hosting <a href="http://www.basenation.us/maps.html" type="external">scores</a> of US military bases—from tiny outposts to installations the size of a small city. All told, these bases are home to tens of thousands of US troops.</p>
<p>To ensure basing access, American officials regularly collaborate with regimes and militaries that have been implicated in torture, murder, suppression of democratic rights, systematic oppression of women and minorities, and countless other human rights abuses. Never mind Trump. These collaborations have been the status quo for nearly three-quarters of a century. In fact, since World War II, US administrations have often shown a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691134634/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">preference</a> for maintaining bases in undemocratic and/or despotic states—Spain under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, South Korea under Park Chung-hee, Bahrain under King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, and Djibouti under four-term President Ismail Omar Guelleh, to name just a few.</p>
<p>Many of our 45 undemocratic base hosts qualify as fully “authoritarian regimes,” according to a democracy index compiled by the <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-20" type="external">Economist</a>. Which means American installations and the troops stationed there are effectively helping block the spread of democracy in countries like Cameroon, Chad, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kuwait, Niger, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.</p>
<p>This support for dictatorship and repression should trouble any American who believes in the principles of our <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript" type="external">Constitution</a> and <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript" type="external">Declaration of Independence</a>. After all, one of the long-articulated justifications for maintaining US military bases abroad has been that our military presence protects and spreads democracy. Far from it, such bases tend to help <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Base-Politics-Democratic-Military-Overseas/dp/0801446058/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1415553718&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=alexander+cooley" type="external">legitimize</a> and prop up repressive regimes, while often interfering with genuine efforts toward political and democratic reform. The silencing of the critics of human rights abuses in base nations such as <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/bahrain" type="external">Bahrain</a>, which has violently cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrators since 2011, has left the United States <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/27/how-obama-caved-on-bahrain-manama-human-rights/" type="external">complicit</a>.</p>
<p>During the Cold War, such bases were often justified as the unfortunate but necessary consequence of confronting the “communist menace.” Yet in the quarter-century since the Cold War ended, <a href="http://www.basenation.us/maps.html" type="external">few</a> of those bases have closed. So today, while White House visits from autocrats generates indignation, the presence of American military installations in the same countries receives little notice. &#160;</p>
<p>The 45 nations and territories with little or no democratic rule represent more than half the roughly <a href="http://investigativereportingworkshop.org/investigations/lily-pads/story/lily-pads/" type="external">80 countries</a> now hosting US bases—countries that often lack the power to ask their “guests” to leave. They are part of a historically <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1627791698/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">unprecedented global network</a> of military installations the United States has built or occupied since World War II.</p>
<p>While there are no foreign bases in the United States, we have around <a href="http://dra.american.edu/islandora/object/auislandora%3A55685" type="external">800 bases</a> in <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321" type="external">foreign countries</a>—almost certainly a record for any nation or empire in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Basing-1200-2000-Strategy-History-ebook/dp/B001QN8IFO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" type="external">history</a>. More than 70 years after World War II and 64 years after the Korean War, there remain, <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjQz-nSkeDTAhVEYyYKHTY3B3wQFggiMAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.acq.osd.mil%2Feie%2FDownloads%2FBSI%2FBase%2520Structure%2520Report%2520FY15.pdf&amp;usg=AFQjCNH5z20sLCiqx" type="external">according to</a> the Pentagon, 181 US “base sites” in Germany, 122 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea. Hundreds more <a href="http://empire.is/" type="external">dot the planet</a> from Aruba to Australia, Belgium to Bulgaria, Colombia to Qatar. Hundreds of thousands of troops, civilians, and family members occupy these installations. By my conservative estimate, manning and maintaining these installations costs US taxpayers at least <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Base-Nation-Military-America-American/dp/1627791698" type="external">$150 billion</a> annually—which is more than the budget of any government agency other than the Pentagon.</p>
<p>For decades, our leaders in Washington have insisted these foreign bases spread American values and democracy—and that may have been true to some extent in occupied Germany, Japan, and Italy after World War II. But as base expert <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0814752446/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Catherine Lutz</a> suggests, the subsequent historical record shows that “gaining and maintaining access” for our outposts “has often involved close collaboration with despotic governments.”</p>
<p>Consider the Philippines: The United States has maintained military facilities in the archipelago almost continuously since seizing it from Spain in 1898. America only granted the colony independence in 1946, conditioned on the local government’s <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/b-ph-ust000011-0084.pdf" type="external">agreement</a> that the United States would retain access to more than a dozen military installations there.</p>
<p>After independence, a succession of US administrations supported two decades of Ferdinand Marcos’ autocratic rule in the Philippines, ensuring the continued use of Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, two of our largest overseas bases. The Filipinos finally ousted Marcos in 1986 and ordered the US military to leave in 1991, but five years later, the Pentagon quietly returned. With the help of a “visiting forces agreement” and a growing stream of military exercises and training programs, it began to set up surreptitious, small-scale bases once more. A desire to <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-usa-idUSBREA2D0GE20140314" type="external">solidify</a> this <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-southchinasea-philippines-carter-idUKKCN0XB0T7" type="external">renewed base presence</a>, while also checking Chinese influence in the region, may have driven Trump’s White House invitation to Duterte. It came despite the Filipino president’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36251094" type="external">record</a> of joking about rape, swearing he would be “happy to slaughter” millions of drug addicts just as “Hitler massacred [six] million Jews,” and bragging, “I don’t care about human rights.”</p>
<p>In Turkey, President Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic rule is only the latest episode in a pattern of military coups and undemocratic regimes interrupting periods of democracy in Turkey. Since 1943, however, US bases have been a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1316643506/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">constant presence</a> in the country, where they have repeatedly sparked protest—throughout the 1960s and 1970s, prior to the Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and more recently, when US forces began using them to launch attacks in Syria.</p>
<p>Although Egypt has a relatively small US base <a href="http://mfo.org/en/contingents" type="external">presence</a>, its military has enjoyed deep and lucrative Pentagon ties since the signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1979. After a 2013 military coup ousted a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government, the Obama administration waited months to withhold <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/26/world/middleeast/trump-al-sisi-egypt-military-exercise.html" type="external">some forms</a> of military and economic aid, despite more than 1,300 killings by security forces and the arrest of more than 3,500 members of the Brotherhood. According to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/egypt" type="external">Human Rights Watch</a>, “Little was said about ongoing abuses,” which have continued to this day.</p>
<p>The United States also has maintained deep connections with the Thai military, which has carried out <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/20/thailands-army-says-this-definitely-isnt-a-coup-heres-11-times-it-definitely-was/?utm_term=.f4625e46d847" type="external">12 coups</a> since 1932. Both countries have been able to deny they have a basing relationship of any sort, thanks to a rental agreement between a private contractor and US forces at Thailand’s Utapao Naval Air Base. “Because of [contractor] Delta Golf Global,” writes journalist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hog-Pilots-Blue-Water-Grunts/dp/1400034582" type="external">Robert Kaplan</a>, “the US military was here, but it was not here. After all, the Thais did no business with the US Air Force. They dealt only with a private contractor.”</p>
<p>In monarchical Bahrain, which has had a US military presence since 1949 and now hosts the Navy’s 5th Fleet, the Obama administration offered only the most <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175479/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_did_the_pentagon_help_strangle_the_arab_spring/" type="external">tepid criticism</a> of the Bahraini government despite an ongoing, often violent <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175393/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_obama_and_the_mideast_arms_trade/" type="external">crackdown</a> on pro-democracy protesters. According to <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/bahrain" type="external">Human Rights Watch</a> and others (including an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain_Independent_Commission_of_Inquiry" type="external">independent commission of inquiry</a> appointed by the Bahraini king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa), the government has been responsible for widespread abuses, including the arbitrary arrest of protesters, ill treatment during detention, torture-related deaths, and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/12/bahrain-accelerated-repression-jeopardizes-activists" type="external">growing restrictions</a> on freedoms of speech, association, and assembly. The Trump administration has already signaled its desire to protect the military ties of the two countries by approving a sale of F-16 fighters to Bahrain <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-29/top-general-says-human-rights-shouldn-t-hold-up-u-s-arms-sales" type="external">without demanding any improvements</a> in its human rights record.</p>
<p>This is typical of what the late base expert Chalmers Johnson once <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1181/chalmers_johnson_on_garrisoning_the_planet" type="external">called</a> the American “baseworld.” Research by political scientist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691134634/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">Kent Calder</a> confirms what’s come to be known as the “dictatorship hypothesis”: that “the United States tends to support dictators in nations where it enjoys basing facilities.” Another large <a href="https://works.bepress.com/michael_aallen/1/" type="external">study</a> concluded that autocratic states have been “consistently attractive” as base sites. “Due to the unpredictability of elections,” it added bluntly, democratic states prove “less attractive in terms [of] sustainability and duration.”</p>
<p>Even within what are technically US borders, democratic rule has regularly proved “less attractive” than preserving colonialism into the 21st century. The presence of scores of bases in Puerto Rico and the Pacific island of Guam has been a major motivation for keeping these and other territories—American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands—in varying degrees of colonial subordination. Conveniently for military leaders, they have neither full independence nor the full democratic rights—voting, representation in Congress—that come with US statehood. Installations in at least five of Europe’s remaining colonies have proved equally attractive, as has the base US troops have forcibly occupied in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since shortly after the Spanish-American War of 1898.</p>
<p>Authoritarian rulers are well aware of the desire of US officials to maintain the status quo when it comes to bases. As a result, they often <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022002716632300" type="external">capitalize</a> on a base presence to extract benefits or help ensure their own political survival.</p>
<p>The Philippines’ Marcos, former South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee, and more recently Djibouti’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-djibouti-reach-agreement-to-keep-counterterrorism-base-in-horn-of-africa-nation/2014/05/05/0965412c-d488-11e3-aae8-c2d44bd79778_story.html?utm_term=.942ecd788067" type="external">Ismail Omar Guelleh</a> have been typical in the way they used bases to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801446058/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">extract economic assistance</a> from Washington, which they then lavished on political allies to shore up their power. Other autocrats have relied on US bases to bolster their international prestige and legitimacy, or to justify violence against political opponents.</p>
<p>After the 1980 Kwangju massacre—in which the South Korean government killed hundreds, if not thousands, of pro-democracy demonstrators, strongman General Chun Doo-hwan <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801446058/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">explicitly cited</a> the presence of US bases and troops to suggest that he enjoyed Washington’s support. Whether that was true remains a matter of historical debate. What’s clear, though, is that American leaders have regularly muted their criticism of repressive regimes lest they imperil US basing rights. And the US presence tends to strengthen military, rather than civilian, institutions because of military-to-military ties, arms sales, and training missions that generally accompany the basing agreements.</p>
<p>Opponents of repressive regimes often use the bases to rally nationalist sentiment, anger, and protest against their ruling elites and the United States. In some such cases, fears in Washington that a transition to democracy might lead to base eviction leads to a doubling down on support for the undemocratic ruler. The result can be an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801446058/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" type="external">escalating cycle</a> of opposition and US-backed repression. &#160;</p>
<p>While some analysts defend the presence of US bases in undemocratic countries as necessary to deter bad actors and support American interests (primarily corporate ones), backing dictators and autocrats frequently leads to harm—not just for the citizens of the host nations, but for US citizens as well. The <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176090/tomgram%3A_david_vine,_enduring_bases,_enduring_war_in_the_middle_east" type="external">base buildup</a> in the Middle East is the most prominent example. In the wake of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian Revolution the same year, the Pentagon has built up <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176090/tomgram%3A_david_vine,_enduring_bases,_enduring_war_in_the_middle_east" type="external">scores of bases</a> across the Middle East at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. These bases and the troops stationed in them have been a “ <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCYQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fcsis.org%2Ffiles%2Fpublication%2Ftwq08springbowman.pdf&amp;ei=_DNdVNuFPLTLsATknYK4Cg&amp;usg=AFQjCNGr1RKhn7_eim2InSMCN76uFqreZA&amp;sig2=OvoQCtsdNUkjXLss-5dpvw&amp;bvm=bv.79189006,d.cWc" type="external">major catalyst</a> for anti-Americanism and radicalization,” according to former West Point professor Bradley Bowman, who cites research noting a <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=2&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCYQFjAB&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fcsis.org%2Ffiles%2Fpublication%2Ftwq08springbowman.pdf&amp;ei=_DNdVNuFPLTLsATknYK4Cg&amp;usg=AFQjCNGr1RKhn7_eim2InSMCN76uFqreZA&amp;sig2=OvoQCtsdNUkjXLss-5dpvw&amp;bvm=bv.79189006,d.cWc" type="external">correlation</a> between the bases and Al Qaeda recruitment.</p>
<p>Outposts in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan have helped generate and fuel the radical militancy that has spread throughout the Greater Middle East and led to terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. The presence of US bases and troops in Muslim holy lands was a major recruiting tool for Al Qaeda, and part of Osama bin Laden’s <a href="https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/stephen-glain/2011/05/03/what-actually-motivated-osama-bin-laden" type="external">professed motivation</a> for the 9/11 attacks.</p>
<p>With the Trump administration seeking to entrench the renewed base presence in the Philippines, and the president commending Duterte and similarly authoritarian leaders in Bahrain and Egypt, Turkey and Thailand, human rights violations worldwide are likely to escalate, fueling unknown brutality and baseworld <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175578/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson,_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world/" type="external">blowback</a> for years to come.</p>
<p />
| 5,641 |
<p>BEIJING (AP) — Manufacturing in China grew at a slightly slower pace in December than the previous month, a Chinese government survey showed Sunday, following government controls on bank lending.</p>
<p>The National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country's manufacturing purchasing managers' index fell to 51.6 from 51.8 in November.</p>
<p>The index is based on a 100-point index on which the 50 mark divides expansion from contraction.</p>
<p>The survey found production and new orders were only slightly lower than in November but at 54 and 53.4 showed steady growth.</p>
<p>Zhao Qinghe, a senior statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics, said the data showed a continued improvement in the economic environment at home and abroad.</p>
<p>The PMI is a widely watched indicator of essential parts of China's economy, which expanded at a still-robust 6.8 percent annual pace in the third quarter.</p>
<p>The latest economic growth rate is a tick lower than the 6.9 percent growth in the previous three-month period.</p>
<p>Chinese economic growth has been unexpectedly strong this year, but economists forecast activity will weaken as Beijing tightens up on bank lending to clamp down on rising debt that analyst say is the biggest threat to the country's economic stability.</p>
<p>Since then, regulators have tightened controls over asset management companies and reined in the growth of a micro-lending industry. That triggered a fall in Chinese stocks.</p>
<p>Analysts also expect that manufacturing growth will also be affected in the coming months by restrictions on factory production in some areas and especially in heavy industries to reduce pollution.</p>
<p>BEIJING (AP) — Manufacturing in China grew at a slightly slower pace in December than the previous month, a Chinese government survey showed Sunday, following government controls on bank lending.</p>
<p>The National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country's manufacturing purchasing managers' index fell to 51.6 from 51.8 in November.</p>
<p>The index is based on a 100-point index on which the 50 mark divides expansion from contraction.</p>
<p>The survey found production and new orders were only slightly lower than in November but at 54 and 53.4 showed steady growth.</p>
<p>Zhao Qinghe, a senior statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics, said the data showed a continued improvement in the economic environment at home and abroad.</p>
<p>The PMI is a widely watched indicator of essential parts of China's economy, which expanded at a still-robust 6.8 percent annual pace in the third quarter.</p>
<p>The latest economic growth rate is a tick lower than the 6.9 percent growth in the previous three-month period.</p>
<p>Chinese economic growth has been unexpectedly strong this year, but economists forecast activity will weaken as Beijing tightens up on bank lending to clamp down on rising debt that analyst say is the biggest threat to the country's economic stability.</p>
<p>Since then, regulators have tightened controls over asset management companies and reined in the growth of a micro-lending industry. That triggered a fall in Chinese stocks.</p>
<p>Analysts also expect that manufacturing growth will also be affected in the coming months by restrictions on factory production in some areas and especially in heavy industries to reduce pollution.</p>
|
Chinese manufacturing growth slows slightly in December
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/4934a4c2f609429fb0cc6e9ee200084a
|
2017-12-31
| 2least
|
Chinese manufacturing growth slows slightly in December
<p>BEIJING (AP) — Manufacturing in China grew at a slightly slower pace in December than the previous month, a Chinese government survey showed Sunday, following government controls on bank lending.</p>
<p>The National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country's manufacturing purchasing managers' index fell to 51.6 from 51.8 in November.</p>
<p>The index is based on a 100-point index on which the 50 mark divides expansion from contraction.</p>
<p>The survey found production and new orders were only slightly lower than in November but at 54 and 53.4 showed steady growth.</p>
<p>Zhao Qinghe, a senior statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics, said the data showed a continued improvement in the economic environment at home and abroad.</p>
<p>The PMI is a widely watched indicator of essential parts of China's economy, which expanded at a still-robust 6.8 percent annual pace in the third quarter.</p>
<p>The latest economic growth rate is a tick lower than the 6.9 percent growth in the previous three-month period.</p>
<p>Chinese economic growth has been unexpectedly strong this year, but economists forecast activity will weaken as Beijing tightens up on bank lending to clamp down on rising debt that analyst say is the biggest threat to the country's economic stability.</p>
<p>Since then, regulators have tightened controls over asset management companies and reined in the growth of a micro-lending industry. That triggered a fall in Chinese stocks.</p>
<p>Analysts also expect that manufacturing growth will also be affected in the coming months by restrictions on factory production in some areas and especially in heavy industries to reduce pollution.</p>
<p>BEIJING (AP) — Manufacturing in China grew at a slightly slower pace in December than the previous month, a Chinese government survey showed Sunday, following government controls on bank lending.</p>
<p>The National Bureau of Statistics reported that the country's manufacturing purchasing managers' index fell to 51.6 from 51.8 in November.</p>
<p>The index is based on a 100-point index on which the 50 mark divides expansion from contraction.</p>
<p>The survey found production and new orders were only slightly lower than in November but at 54 and 53.4 showed steady growth.</p>
<p>Zhao Qinghe, a senior statistician with the National Bureau of Statistics, said the data showed a continued improvement in the economic environment at home and abroad.</p>
<p>The PMI is a widely watched indicator of essential parts of China's economy, which expanded at a still-robust 6.8 percent annual pace in the third quarter.</p>
<p>The latest economic growth rate is a tick lower than the 6.9 percent growth in the previous three-month period.</p>
<p>Chinese economic growth has been unexpectedly strong this year, but economists forecast activity will weaken as Beijing tightens up on bank lending to clamp down on rising debt that analyst say is the biggest threat to the country's economic stability.</p>
<p>Since then, regulators have tightened controls over asset management companies and reined in the growth of a micro-lending industry. That triggered a fall in Chinese stocks.</p>
<p>Analysts also expect that manufacturing growth will also be affected in the coming months by restrictions on factory production in some areas and especially in heavy industries to reduce pollution.</p>
| 5,642 |
<p>Charles Barkley, the basketball player, was always unique.</p>
<p>He stood at 6′ 5″ but became one of the all time great rebounders, averaging just fewer than 12 boards a game for his career.</p>
<p>He was mocked as “The Round Mound of Rebound” because he didn’t have a ripple of muscle tone on his 260 pound pear shaped body, but he bent rims with his strength and once even threw the 350 pound Shaquille O’Neal to the floor.</p>
<p>He was “too short, too fat, too slow” for the NBA but is one of two players in NBA history, along with the legendary Wilt Chamberlain, to finish his career with 23,000 points, 12,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists.</p>
<p>He never won a championship but played huge in big games, scoring 44 points and grabbing 24 rebounds in game 7 of the 1993 conference finals against the Seattle Supersonics and averaged 27 points in the NBA finals against Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls.</p>
<p>Yet what set Chuck apart was his larger than life personality. In a league that produces corporate robots droning about ‘playing one game at a time’ Barkley spoke his mind with the same reckless disregard that marked his playing style.</p>
<p>Now, as a TNT studio analyst, he is achieving more fame than ever with his no holds barred approach to commentary.</p>
<p>While he makes us laugh – with classic lines like when he said to hyper religious AC Green, “If god’s so good, how come he didn’t give you a jump shot?” – Barkley speaks to agitate as well as entertain. In the tradition of Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, or Billie Jean King, Barkley uses his athletic prominence to speak about issues like racism and poverty not usually discussed in “mainstream” U.S. political discussion.</p>
<p>Early in his career he raised eyebrows by stating his desire to become the “first Black republican governor of Alabama” after his playing days ended. But to judge him by his words, it is clear that Barkley is not a Republican or Democrat. He is a political being who wants to shock by speaking hard truths that are sharper and more provocative than anything uttered in the Beltway.</p>
<p>As a public service, here is the best of Mista-Chuck.</p>
<p>Here is Charles on the Janet Jackson Super Bowl scandal: “I wish people were more irate with the Bush administration for starting a war for profit than they are with Janet Jackson for showing her breast. But that’s America … we don’t know what’s important and what’s not important. It’s much ado about nothing. It’s not like she’s going to traumatize anyone. Everyone is all offended now and bent out of shape. Give me a break. There are a lot of trashier things on television that what Janet Jackson did.”</p>
<p>On basketball player Rasheed Wallace calling himself ‘exploited’: “If you’re a grunt for CNN, those people are exploited. The guy behind the camera I talk to, he’s exploited. This guy is making $17 million, and he’s exploited? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. ”</p>
<p>On the Enron scandal investigation: “Almost all those politicians took money from Enron, and there they are holding hearings. That’s like O.J. Simpson getting in the Rae Carruth jury pool.”</p>
<p>On racism: “Any time something bad happens to a black person because of racism, I feel it in my soul. I really do. You take the Abner Louima case. That let me know one thing: If some white guys wanted to stick a plunger up a black guy’s butt, and I’m the black guy who happened to be around, I’d have a plunger up my butt.”</p>
<p>On Saddam Hussein: “I think he’s still alive. . . . Look at Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – they used to both work for the United States and now they’re enemies. That’s part of the hypocrisy that goes on here.”</p>
<p>On the flak celebrities get for their anti-war beliefs: “That’s part of the hypocrisy that goes on when you’re in the limelight – if you say something, you’re anti-American or unpatriotic or too liberal. We’re all free to say what we want to, but if you ever forget your place, we’ll put you back in your place.”</p>
<p>On politics: “Politics is too corrupt,” Barkley said. “You know how you can tell politics is corrupt? President Bush is going to raise $250 million for a job that pays $400,000. Now tell me there isn’t something wrong there?”</p>
<p>On his priority in life: “My No. 1 priority is to help poor people. In this country, 90% of the money is controlled by 10% of the people, and that’s not right.”</p>
<p>Agree or disagree, Charles Barkley recalls the words of Malcolm X in describing a young fighter named Cassius Clay: “Do not underestimate the quality of the mind he has in there. Although a clown can never imitate the wise man, the wise man can imitate a clown.”</p>
<p>DAVE ZIRIN can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. His sports writing can be read at <a href="http://www.edgeofsports.com/" type="external">www.edgeofsports.com</a>.</p>
|
The Round Mound of Sound
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2004/06/05/the-round-mound-of-sound/
|
2004-06-05
| 4left
|
The Round Mound of Sound
<p>Charles Barkley, the basketball player, was always unique.</p>
<p>He stood at 6′ 5″ but became one of the all time great rebounders, averaging just fewer than 12 boards a game for his career.</p>
<p>He was mocked as “The Round Mound of Rebound” because he didn’t have a ripple of muscle tone on his 260 pound pear shaped body, but he bent rims with his strength and once even threw the 350 pound Shaquille O’Neal to the floor.</p>
<p>He was “too short, too fat, too slow” for the NBA but is one of two players in NBA history, along with the legendary Wilt Chamberlain, to finish his career with 23,000 points, 12,000 rebounds and 4,000 assists.</p>
<p>He never won a championship but played huge in big games, scoring 44 points and grabbing 24 rebounds in game 7 of the 1993 conference finals against the Seattle Supersonics and averaged 27 points in the NBA finals against Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls.</p>
<p>Yet what set Chuck apart was his larger than life personality. In a league that produces corporate robots droning about ‘playing one game at a time’ Barkley spoke his mind with the same reckless disregard that marked his playing style.</p>
<p>Now, as a TNT studio analyst, he is achieving more fame than ever with his no holds barred approach to commentary.</p>
<p>While he makes us laugh – with classic lines like when he said to hyper religious AC Green, “If god’s so good, how come he didn’t give you a jump shot?” – Barkley speaks to agitate as well as entertain. In the tradition of Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, or Billie Jean King, Barkley uses his athletic prominence to speak about issues like racism and poverty not usually discussed in “mainstream” U.S. political discussion.</p>
<p>Early in his career he raised eyebrows by stating his desire to become the “first Black republican governor of Alabama” after his playing days ended. But to judge him by his words, it is clear that Barkley is not a Republican or Democrat. He is a political being who wants to shock by speaking hard truths that are sharper and more provocative than anything uttered in the Beltway.</p>
<p>As a public service, here is the best of Mista-Chuck.</p>
<p>Here is Charles on the Janet Jackson Super Bowl scandal: “I wish people were more irate with the Bush administration for starting a war for profit than they are with Janet Jackson for showing her breast. But that’s America … we don’t know what’s important and what’s not important. It’s much ado about nothing. It’s not like she’s going to traumatize anyone. Everyone is all offended now and bent out of shape. Give me a break. There are a lot of trashier things on television that what Janet Jackson did.”</p>
<p>On basketball player Rasheed Wallace calling himself ‘exploited’: “If you’re a grunt for CNN, those people are exploited. The guy behind the camera I talk to, he’s exploited. This guy is making $17 million, and he’s exploited? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. ”</p>
<p>On the Enron scandal investigation: “Almost all those politicians took money from Enron, and there they are holding hearings. That’s like O.J. Simpson getting in the Rae Carruth jury pool.”</p>
<p>On racism: “Any time something bad happens to a black person because of racism, I feel it in my soul. I really do. You take the Abner Louima case. That let me know one thing: If some white guys wanted to stick a plunger up a black guy’s butt, and I’m the black guy who happened to be around, I’d have a plunger up my butt.”</p>
<p>On Saddam Hussein: “I think he’s still alive. . . . Look at Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein – they used to both work for the United States and now they’re enemies. That’s part of the hypocrisy that goes on here.”</p>
<p>On the flak celebrities get for their anti-war beliefs: “That’s part of the hypocrisy that goes on when you’re in the limelight – if you say something, you’re anti-American or unpatriotic or too liberal. We’re all free to say what we want to, but if you ever forget your place, we’ll put you back in your place.”</p>
<p>On politics: “Politics is too corrupt,” Barkley said. “You know how you can tell politics is corrupt? President Bush is going to raise $250 million for a job that pays $400,000. Now tell me there isn’t something wrong there?”</p>
<p>On his priority in life: “My No. 1 priority is to help poor people. In this country, 90% of the money is controlled by 10% of the people, and that’s not right.”</p>
<p>Agree or disagree, Charles Barkley recalls the words of Malcolm X in describing a young fighter named Cassius Clay: “Do not underestimate the quality of the mind he has in there. Although a clown can never imitate the wise man, the wise man can imitate a clown.”</p>
<p>DAVE ZIRIN can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. His sports writing can be read at <a href="http://www.edgeofsports.com/" type="external">www.edgeofsports.com</a>.</p>
| 5,643 |
<p>ARIZONAArizona Daily StarBy Stephanie Innes</p>
<p />
<p>ARIZONA DAILY STAR</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>The whereabouts of a priest whom the Catholic Diocese of Tucson has labeled a serial sexual predator is once again unknown.</p>
<p>Monsignor Robert C. Trupia, 54, left a condominium in Ellicott City, Md., immediately after an Arizona Daily Star reporter and photographer tracked him down there on Jan. 28, according to a spokesman for Monsignor Charles G. Fatooh, who owned the condo and employed Trupia after he was suspended from the ministry.</p>
<p>"Monsignor Fatooh has not had contact with him and doesn't know where he is," said Sean Walsh, the Oakland, Calif.-based spokesman for Fatooh, who resigned as vice chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Monterey in California after it was revealed in a Star story that he owned the condominium where Trupia was living.</p>
<p>Trupia was named in six of the 11 lawsuits that the Catholic Diocese of Tucson settled last year with 10 men and their relatives for an undisclosed amount believed to be as high as $16 million. The Tucson Diocese, which has publicly said Trupia is a notorious and serial abuser of children, is trying to permanently remove him from the priesthood through a process called laicization or defrocking.</p>
|
Trupia's location no longer is known
| false |
https://poynter.org/news/trupias-location-no-longer-known
|
2003-03-31
| 2least
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Trupia's location no longer is known
<p>ARIZONAArizona Daily StarBy Stephanie Innes</p>
<p />
<p>ARIZONA DAILY STAR</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>The whereabouts of a priest whom the Catholic Diocese of Tucson has labeled a serial sexual predator is once again unknown.</p>
<p>Monsignor Robert C. Trupia, 54, left a condominium in Ellicott City, Md., immediately after an Arizona Daily Star reporter and photographer tracked him down there on Jan. 28, according to a spokesman for Monsignor Charles G. Fatooh, who owned the condo and employed Trupia after he was suspended from the ministry.</p>
<p>"Monsignor Fatooh has not had contact with him and doesn't know where he is," said Sean Walsh, the Oakland, Calif.-based spokesman for Fatooh, who resigned as vice chancellor of the Catholic Diocese of Monterey in California after it was revealed in a Star story that he owned the condominium where Trupia was living.</p>
<p>Trupia was named in six of the 11 lawsuits that the Catholic Diocese of Tucson settled last year with 10 men and their relatives for an undisclosed amount believed to be as high as $16 million. The Tucson Diocese, which has publicly said Trupia is a notorious and serial abuser of children, is trying to permanently remove him from the priesthood through a process called laicization or defrocking.</p>
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<p>CEO John Lowe says in a statement Tuesday that the product to be destroyed amounts to 15 tractor-trailer loads on more than 300 pallets. It will cost the Columbus, Ohio-based company more than $2.5 million.</p>
<p>The company said last week that it had recalled all its products from retailers and closed ice cream shops in six states over concerns about possible listeria contamination.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lowe says a team is working to eradicate the bacteria detected in the production kitchen.</p>
<p>Also last week, Texas-based Blue Bell Creameries closed facilities in three states for intensive cleaning after listeria was discovered.</p>
|
Jeni's to destroy 265 tons of ice cream after listeria found
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/576394/jenis-to-destroy-265-tons-of-ice-cream-after-listeria-found.html
| 2least
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Jeni's to destroy 265 tons of ice cream after listeria found
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>CEO John Lowe says in a statement Tuesday that the product to be destroyed amounts to 15 tractor-trailer loads on more than 300 pallets. It will cost the Columbus, Ohio-based company more than $2.5 million.</p>
<p>The company said last week that it had recalled all its products from retailers and closed ice cream shops in six states over concerns about possible listeria contamination.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Lowe says a team is working to eradicate the bacteria detected in the production kitchen.</p>
<p>Also last week, Texas-based Blue Bell Creameries closed facilities in three states for intensive cleaning after listeria was discovered.</p>
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<p>There might be no easier position for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to reverse if, as expected, he is confirmed as attorney general. But in Tuesday’s 10-hour grilling, Sessions received two questions about marijuana, in the form of a loping and friendly inquiry about federalism from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.</p>
<p>“For the first time in a very long time, you have seen some attention paid to federalism, but in the limited area associated with marijuana,” Lee said. “In other words, there are federal laws prohibiting the use of marijuana, the sale of marijuana, the production of marijuana that apply regardless of whether a state has independently criminalized that drug, as every state until recently had. Then you had some states coming along and decriminalizing it, sometimes in the medical context, other times in a broader context. The response by the Department of Justice during the Obama administration has been interesting and it’s been different than it has in other areas. They have been slow to recognize, for instance, federalism elsewhere. They chose to recognize it here. My question to you is, did the way they respond to that federalism concern run afoul of separation of powers?”</p>
<p>Sessions asked Lee to clarify. “Are you talking about separation of powers within the federal government, the three branches of federal government?” he asked. “And how does that implicate the marijuana laws?”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Yes,” Lee said. “Are there separation of powers concerns arising out of the Department of Justice’s current approach to state marijuana laws?”</p>
<p>Lee had not asked directly whether Sessions would reverse what the Obama administration did. Instead, he framed the question as one of whether the Sessions DOJ would obey the law and defer to Congress. That approach, followed literally, would put Sessions on the opposite side of the Obama administration and Democrats on a host of issues – from the status of immigrants living in the United States to voting rights.</p>
<p>In his answer, Sessions suggested that Congress, unlikely to move on marijuana policy, would set the standard.</p>
<p>“I think one obvious concern is that the United States Congress has made the possession of marijuana in every state, and distribution of it, an illegal act,” he said. “So, if you need – if that’s something that’s not desired any longer, Congress should pass a law to change the rule. It’s not so much the attorney general’s job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our job and enforce laws effectively as we’re able.”</p>
<p>The other marijuana question came from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who asked how Sessions squared state’s rights with marijuana policy.</p>
<p>“I believe your own state of Alabama permits the use of a derivative of marijuana known as CBD oil, legal in Alabama, illegal under federal law,” said Leahy. “If you are confirmed as the nation’s chief law enforcement official, and you know that we have very, very limited federal resources — in fact, we spend about a third of our budget now just to keep the prisons open because of mandatory minimums and whatnot — would you use our federal resources to investigate and prosecute sick people who are using marijuana in accordance with their state laws, even though it might violate federal law?”</p>
<p>“I won’t commit to never enforcing federal law,” said Sessions. “But, absolutely, it’s a problem of resources for the federal government. The Department of Justice under Lynch and Holder set forth some policies that they thought were appropriate to define what cases should be prosecuted in states that have legalized at least in some fashion some parts of marijuana.”</p>
<p>“Do you agree with those guidelines?” asked Leahy.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I think some of them are truly valuable in evaluating cases,” said Sessions. But, fundamentally, “the criticism I think that was legitimate is that they may not have been followed. Using good judgment about how to handle these cases will be a responsibility of mine. I know it won’t be an easy decision, but I will try to do my duty in a fair and just way.”</p>
<p>“The only reason I mention it,” said Leahy, “[is that] you have some very strong views. You even mandated the death penalty for anyone convicted of a second drug trafficking offense, including marijuana, even though mandatory death penalties are, of course, unconstitutional.</p>
<p>“Well, I’m not sure under what circumstances I said that,” said Sessions. “But I don’t think that sounds like something I would normally say. I will be glad to look at it.”</p>
<p>It was a mixed series of answers, some of it encouraging to defenders of the current policy, some not. In an interview Monday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who supports allowing states to experiment with legalization without federal meddling, said that he had tried to communicate to Sessions that defending states’ rights would allow legalization to continue.</p>
<p>“Many conservatives believe in leaving states to themselves for the most part,” Paul said. “Decisions like legalizing marijuana should be left up to states. I’ve had that discussion with Sessions. I can’t characterize what he said, but I hope he won’t interfere with legalization. He needs to answer that himself.”</p>
<p>Don Murphy, a legislative strategist at the Marijuana Policy Project, said that the Sessions answers were expected.</p>
<p>“What was most telling may be that not only did Sessions not use his opening statement to mention the conflict between state and federal law regarding marijuana but that no member of either party thought it was worthy of a first round question,” he said. “They all know marijuana policy reform is popular with voters across the political spectrum and a line not to be crossed. I’m sure Trump knows it too.”</p>
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Sessions hints at tougher policy toward legalized marijuana
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/925665/sessions-hints-at-tougher-policy-toward-legalized-marijuana.html
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Sessions hints at tougher policy toward legalized marijuana
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>There might be no easier position for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., to reverse if, as expected, he is confirmed as attorney general. But in Tuesday’s 10-hour grilling, Sessions received two questions about marijuana, in the form of a loping and friendly inquiry about federalism from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.</p>
<p>“For the first time in a very long time, you have seen some attention paid to federalism, but in the limited area associated with marijuana,” Lee said. “In other words, there are federal laws prohibiting the use of marijuana, the sale of marijuana, the production of marijuana that apply regardless of whether a state has independently criminalized that drug, as every state until recently had. Then you had some states coming along and decriminalizing it, sometimes in the medical context, other times in a broader context. The response by the Department of Justice during the Obama administration has been interesting and it’s been different than it has in other areas. They have been slow to recognize, for instance, federalism elsewhere. They chose to recognize it here. My question to you is, did the way they respond to that federalism concern run afoul of separation of powers?”</p>
<p>Sessions asked Lee to clarify. “Are you talking about separation of powers within the federal government, the three branches of federal government?” he asked. “And how does that implicate the marijuana laws?”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Yes,” Lee said. “Are there separation of powers concerns arising out of the Department of Justice’s current approach to state marijuana laws?”</p>
<p>Lee had not asked directly whether Sessions would reverse what the Obama administration did. Instead, he framed the question as one of whether the Sessions DOJ would obey the law and defer to Congress. That approach, followed literally, would put Sessions on the opposite side of the Obama administration and Democrats on a host of issues – from the status of immigrants living in the United States to voting rights.</p>
<p>In his answer, Sessions suggested that Congress, unlikely to move on marijuana policy, would set the standard.</p>
<p>“I think one obvious concern is that the United States Congress has made the possession of marijuana in every state, and distribution of it, an illegal act,” he said. “So, if you need – if that’s something that’s not desired any longer, Congress should pass a law to change the rule. It’s not so much the attorney general’s job to decide what laws to enforce. We should do our job and enforce laws effectively as we’re able.”</p>
<p>The other marijuana question came from Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who asked how Sessions squared state’s rights with marijuana policy.</p>
<p>“I believe your own state of Alabama permits the use of a derivative of marijuana known as CBD oil, legal in Alabama, illegal under federal law,” said Leahy. “If you are confirmed as the nation’s chief law enforcement official, and you know that we have very, very limited federal resources — in fact, we spend about a third of our budget now just to keep the prisons open because of mandatory minimums and whatnot — would you use our federal resources to investigate and prosecute sick people who are using marijuana in accordance with their state laws, even though it might violate federal law?”</p>
<p>“I won’t commit to never enforcing federal law,” said Sessions. “But, absolutely, it’s a problem of resources for the federal government. The Department of Justice under Lynch and Holder set forth some policies that they thought were appropriate to define what cases should be prosecuted in states that have legalized at least in some fashion some parts of marijuana.”</p>
<p>“Do you agree with those guidelines?” asked Leahy.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I think some of them are truly valuable in evaluating cases,” said Sessions. But, fundamentally, “the criticism I think that was legitimate is that they may not have been followed. Using good judgment about how to handle these cases will be a responsibility of mine. I know it won’t be an easy decision, but I will try to do my duty in a fair and just way.”</p>
<p>“The only reason I mention it,” said Leahy, “[is that] you have some very strong views. You even mandated the death penalty for anyone convicted of a second drug trafficking offense, including marijuana, even though mandatory death penalties are, of course, unconstitutional.</p>
<p>“Well, I’m not sure under what circumstances I said that,” said Sessions. “But I don’t think that sounds like something I would normally say. I will be glad to look at it.”</p>
<p>It was a mixed series of answers, some of it encouraging to defenders of the current policy, some not. In an interview Monday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who supports allowing states to experiment with legalization without federal meddling, said that he had tried to communicate to Sessions that defending states’ rights would allow legalization to continue.</p>
<p>“Many conservatives believe in leaving states to themselves for the most part,” Paul said. “Decisions like legalizing marijuana should be left up to states. I’ve had that discussion with Sessions. I can’t characterize what he said, but I hope he won’t interfere with legalization. He needs to answer that himself.”</p>
<p>Don Murphy, a legislative strategist at the Marijuana Policy Project, said that the Sessions answers were expected.</p>
<p>“What was most telling may be that not only did Sessions not use his opening statement to mention the conflict between state and federal law regarding marijuana but that no member of either party thought it was worthy of a first round question,” he said. “They all know marijuana policy reform is popular with voters across the political spectrum and a line not to be crossed. I’m sure Trump knows it too.”</p>
| 5,646 |
|
<p>From under what rock did he emerge that made it necessary to drag him kicking and screaming out of two capitalist entities, the US Department of Defense and the World Bank?</p>
<p>Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is no run-of-the-mill political bureaucrat. He’s a neo-con with teeth.</p>
<p>His last rampage of destruction at the World Bank, a supposedly goody-goody organization of banks, dispenses loans to third world countries thereby putting them into debt. This is nothing but an ingenious way of impoverishing them further, an imperialist tactic, making it easier to control their regimes and steal their resources.</p>
<p>The United States contributes most of the funds so they have most of the clout in running the Bank. Making Wolfowitz president of the World Bank Group was an example of that clout.</p>
<p>When he got the job, in 2005, he was criticized for keeping aid from reaching places where it was needed. He promised to fight government corruption, but charges of nepotism hanging over him gave Wolfowitz an aura of hypocrisy, and skepticism about his anti-corruption promises was widespread.</p>
<p>The way he ran the Bank, primarily with the interest of the United States in mind, raised the hackles of some of the other countries that had an interest in how the Bank dispensed its cash. Other capitalist nations wanted their fair share of the pie.</p>
<p>Wolfowitz shot himself in the foot when he promoted his girl friend, an employee at the World Bank, giving her a whopping raise. That must have been the last straw for a majority of participating banks; the wedge used to get him out.</p>
<p>After some pawing of the ground, backing and filling, a compromise was reached. Wolfowitz threw in the towel. Part of the deal, it seems, was that the United States will be able, again, to pick the replacement.</p>
<p>The World Bank, apparently, is the place where discredited US Secretaries of Defense go to die. Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense in the Lyndon Johnson and Nixon Administrations, wound up in that job after the ignominious defeat in Vietnam. Iraq looks like déjà vu all over again.</p>
<p>But Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, under Donald Rumsfeld, isn’t dead yet.</p>
<p>As Neo-con in Chief, he did a yeoman job helping to engineering the Iraq war in 2003. His claim to fame was his ability to make the intelligence fit the policy. Wolfowitz was widely seen as one of the most hawkish of the neo-cons in the Republican Party.</p>
<p>In the fourth year of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is left, with the rest of us, contemplating the catastrophe that he, and the Bush Administration has concocted.</p>
<p>He must have seen the handwriting on the wall and beat a hasty retreat with a little shove from his friends, leaving his neo-conservative colleagues there to pick up the pieces or look for another place to start a war, like Iran, perhaps.</p>
<p>So what will Wolfowitz’s next adventure be? We can only surmise from his past history.</p>
<p>One example of where Wolfowitz was coming from–his appointment as Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia from 1986-89 while General Suharto was its president, a period of turmoil when East Timor was trying to free itself from Indonesian rule.</p>
<p>Joseph Nevins, an assistant professor at Vassar College and author of a book on East Timor, says of Wolfowitz during that period:</p>
<p>“He consistently argued against East Timorese self-determination, a position he maintained through 1999. While he sometimes criticized the Indonesian military’s more high-profile atrocities, his opposition to any talk favoring an Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor–as demanded by the United Nations–lent credibility to Indonesia’s presence in East Timor, facilitating the very atrocities he occasionally decried.”</p>
<p>ABC News reported that “thousands of leftists detained after the 1965 US- backed military coup that brought Suharto to power were still languishing in jail without trial.” ABC News reported further that “tens of thousands of people in East Timor, a country Suharto’s troops occupied in 1975, died during the 1980s in a series of army anti-insurgency offensives.”</p>
<p>“Wolfowitz went to East Timor and saw abuses going on, but kept quiet,” said Binny Buchori of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development.</p>
<p>In 1989, Paul Wolfowitz joined the administration of George Bush, 41, as Under-Secretary for Defense Policy which happened to be under then Secretary of Defense Dick Chaney, who is now Vice President Dick Chaney in the administration of George Bush, 43.</p>
<p>So Paul Dundes Wolfowitz has come full circle.</p>
<p>STEPHEN FLEISCHMAN, television writer-director-producer, spent thirty years in Network News at CBS and ABC, starting in 1953. In 1959, he participated in the formation of the renowned Murrow-Friendly “CBS Reports” series. In 1983, Fleischman won the prestigious Columbia University-DuPont Television Journalism Award. In 2004, he wrote his memoir. See: <a href="http://www.ARedintheHouse.com/" type="external">http://www.ARedintheHouse.com/</a>, E-mail: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Werewolf of Washington
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2007/05/21/werewolf-of-washington/
|
2007-05-21
| 4left
|
Werewolf of Washington
<p>From under what rock did he emerge that made it necessary to drag him kicking and screaming out of two capitalist entities, the US Department of Defense and the World Bank?</p>
<p>Paul Dundes Wolfowitz is no run-of-the-mill political bureaucrat. He’s a neo-con with teeth.</p>
<p>His last rampage of destruction at the World Bank, a supposedly goody-goody organization of banks, dispenses loans to third world countries thereby putting them into debt. This is nothing but an ingenious way of impoverishing them further, an imperialist tactic, making it easier to control their regimes and steal their resources.</p>
<p>The United States contributes most of the funds so they have most of the clout in running the Bank. Making Wolfowitz president of the World Bank Group was an example of that clout.</p>
<p>When he got the job, in 2005, he was criticized for keeping aid from reaching places where it was needed. He promised to fight government corruption, but charges of nepotism hanging over him gave Wolfowitz an aura of hypocrisy, and skepticism about his anti-corruption promises was widespread.</p>
<p>The way he ran the Bank, primarily with the interest of the United States in mind, raised the hackles of some of the other countries that had an interest in how the Bank dispensed its cash. Other capitalist nations wanted their fair share of the pie.</p>
<p>Wolfowitz shot himself in the foot when he promoted his girl friend, an employee at the World Bank, giving her a whopping raise. That must have been the last straw for a majority of participating banks; the wedge used to get him out.</p>
<p>After some pawing of the ground, backing and filling, a compromise was reached. Wolfowitz threw in the towel. Part of the deal, it seems, was that the United States will be able, again, to pick the replacement.</p>
<p>The World Bank, apparently, is the place where discredited US Secretaries of Defense go to die. Robert McNamara, the former Secretary of Defense in the Lyndon Johnson and Nixon Administrations, wound up in that job after the ignominious defeat in Vietnam. Iraq looks like déjà vu all over again.</p>
<p>But Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense, under Donald Rumsfeld, isn’t dead yet.</p>
<p>As Neo-con in Chief, he did a yeoman job helping to engineering the Iraq war in 2003. His claim to fame was his ability to make the intelligence fit the policy. Wolfowitz was widely seen as one of the most hawkish of the neo-cons in the Republican Party.</p>
<p>In the fourth year of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is left, with the rest of us, contemplating the catastrophe that he, and the Bush Administration has concocted.</p>
<p>He must have seen the handwriting on the wall and beat a hasty retreat with a little shove from his friends, leaving his neo-conservative colleagues there to pick up the pieces or look for another place to start a war, like Iran, perhaps.</p>
<p>So what will Wolfowitz’s next adventure be? We can only surmise from his past history.</p>
<p>One example of where Wolfowitz was coming from–his appointment as Ambassador to the Republic of Indonesia from 1986-89 while General Suharto was its president, a period of turmoil when East Timor was trying to free itself from Indonesian rule.</p>
<p>Joseph Nevins, an assistant professor at Vassar College and author of a book on East Timor, says of Wolfowitz during that period:</p>
<p>“He consistently argued against East Timorese self-determination, a position he maintained through 1999. While he sometimes criticized the Indonesian military’s more high-profile atrocities, his opposition to any talk favoring an Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor–as demanded by the United Nations–lent credibility to Indonesia’s presence in East Timor, facilitating the very atrocities he occasionally decried.”</p>
<p>ABC News reported that “thousands of leftists detained after the 1965 US- backed military coup that brought Suharto to power were still languishing in jail without trial.” ABC News reported further that “tens of thousands of people in East Timor, a country Suharto’s troops occupied in 1975, died during the 1980s in a series of army anti-insurgency offensives.”</p>
<p>“Wolfowitz went to East Timor and saw abuses going on, but kept quiet,” said Binny Buchori of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development.</p>
<p>In 1989, Paul Wolfowitz joined the administration of George Bush, 41, as Under-Secretary for Defense Policy which happened to be under then Secretary of Defense Dick Chaney, who is now Vice President Dick Chaney in the administration of George Bush, 43.</p>
<p>So Paul Dundes Wolfowitz has come full circle.</p>
<p>STEPHEN FLEISCHMAN, television writer-director-producer, spent thirty years in Network News at CBS and ABC, starting in 1953. In 1959, he participated in the formation of the renowned Murrow-Friendly “CBS Reports” series. In 1983, Fleischman won the prestigious Columbia University-DuPont Television Journalism Award. In 2004, he wrote his memoir. See: <a href="http://www.ARedintheHouse.com/" type="external">http://www.ARedintheHouse.com/</a>, E-mail: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 5,647 |
<p>After last weekend’s contested referendum was marked by widespread police violence, the standoff between the Spanish and Catalan governments continues.</p>
<p>The stakes were increased when Regional Premier Carles Puigdemont <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-41494090/catalonia-referendum-puigdemont-will-declare-independence-in-matter-of-days" type="external">told the BBC</a> that Catalonia would unilaterally declare independence within “in a matter of days.” This was followed by a judgement from the Constitutional Court in Madrid suspending Monday’s session of the Catalan parliament.</p>
<p>Radical independence party the CUP responded by demanding a session be held in defiance of the ban. However, with major <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/05/catalonia-political-turmoil-prompting-firms-to-consider-relocating-banks-spain-eu-independence" type="external">corporations</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/daada4cc-a9b4-11e7-93c5-648314d2c72c" type="external">banks</a> threatening to move their legal headquarters outside the region, the conservative Puigdemont now seems less certain. Any move towards a declaration would most likely result in Mariano Rajoy’s right-wing government suspending Catalonia’s autonomy.</p>
<p>Amidst an increasingly-polarized climate, international press coverage has tended to overlook the position of En Comú Podem, the political alliance which has won the last two general elections in Catalonia. This grouping comprising Ada Colau’s Catalonia En Comú and Unidos Podemos has tried to carve out a middle road in the current confrontation.</p>
<p>It recognizes last Sunday’s vote as a legitimate political mobilization but doesn’t view it as a valid referendum. It also defends Catalonia’s right to decide but favors a plurinational, federal Spain. In this respect Colau, who is Barcelona’s mayor, voted in solidarity with those facing police repression but left her ballot blank.</p>
<p>Speaking to Jacobin contributor Eoghan Gilmartin, <a href="" type="internal">Podemos</a> MP Txema Guijarro argues that there is now an opportunity for the Spanish left to take the lead by reaching out to Catalan nationalists and offering a route out of the impasse.</p>
|
Podemos’ Alternative for Catalonia
| true |
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/10/podemos-alternative-for-catalonia
|
2018-10-05
| 4left
|
Podemos’ Alternative for Catalonia
<p>After last weekend’s contested referendum was marked by widespread police violence, the standoff between the Spanish and Catalan governments continues.</p>
<p>The stakes were increased when Regional Premier Carles Puigdemont <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-41494090/catalonia-referendum-puigdemont-will-declare-independence-in-matter-of-days" type="external">told the BBC</a> that Catalonia would unilaterally declare independence within “in a matter of days.” This was followed by a judgement from the Constitutional Court in Madrid suspending Monday’s session of the Catalan parliament.</p>
<p>Radical independence party the CUP responded by demanding a session be held in defiance of the ban. However, with major <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/05/catalonia-political-turmoil-prompting-firms-to-consider-relocating-banks-spain-eu-independence" type="external">corporations</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/daada4cc-a9b4-11e7-93c5-648314d2c72c" type="external">banks</a> threatening to move their legal headquarters outside the region, the conservative Puigdemont now seems less certain. Any move towards a declaration would most likely result in Mariano Rajoy’s right-wing government suspending Catalonia’s autonomy.</p>
<p>Amidst an increasingly-polarized climate, international press coverage has tended to overlook the position of En Comú Podem, the political alliance which has won the last two general elections in Catalonia. This grouping comprising Ada Colau’s Catalonia En Comú and Unidos Podemos has tried to carve out a middle road in the current confrontation.</p>
<p>It recognizes last Sunday’s vote as a legitimate political mobilization but doesn’t view it as a valid referendum. It also defends Catalonia’s right to decide but favors a plurinational, federal Spain. In this respect Colau, who is Barcelona’s mayor, voted in solidarity with those facing police repression but left her ballot blank.</p>
<p>Speaking to Jacobin contributor Eoghan Gilmartin, <a href="" type="internal">Podemos</a> MP Txema Guijarro argues that there is now an opportunity for the Spanish left to take the lead by reaching out to Catalan nationalists and offering a route out of the impasse.</p>
| 5,648 |
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The Latest on the winter storm in North Carolina (all times local):</p>
<p>1 p.m.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service is reporting snowfall amounts of more than 6 inches in areas of North Carolina that don't typically get snow.</p>
<p>The weather service reports 6.5 inches of snow in Edenton and Tyner in Chowan County and 6 inches in Windsor in Bertie County. Both counties are located in northeastern North Carolina.</p>
<p>Wind gusts as high as 77 mph were reported early Thursday morning along the Outer Banks. Blizzard and winter storm warnings, along with winter weather statements, were in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>12:05 p.m.</p>
<p>Areas along North Carolina's coast are reporting wind gusts of hurricane strength as part of a winter storm that's moving up the East Coast.</p>
<p>The highest gusts were reported on Hatteras Island along the Outer Banks. Gusts of 77 mph were reported early Thursday at a kiteboarding resort near Rodanthe, while gusts of 76 mph were reported at the Oregon Inlet Coast Guard station.</p>
<p>A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph.</p>
<p>Gusts of 54 mph were reported at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which is the tallest in the nation at 208 feet.</p>
<p>Elsewhere along the coast, gusts of 49 mph were reported in Carteret County and 44 mph in Craven County.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11:40 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities have reported a third death after a man slid off the road in snowy conditions and overturned his vehicle.</p>
<p>State Emergency Management spokesman Keith Acree said that the man died in Beaufort County around 2 a.m. Thursday.</p>
<p>The man's vehicle slid off the road into a ditch and overturned. Acree said the area had a lot of snow, and authorities determined it was a weather-related death.</p>
<p>Acree identified the man as 29-year-old Joshua Wayne Biddle of Washington, North Carolina.</p>
<p>The Highway Patrol had earlier reported that two men died in a weather-related crash in Moore County on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina's governor says the winter weather has caused hundreds of crashes around the state.</p>
<p>Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday morning that the North Carolina Highway Patrol had responded to 700 collisions and 300 other calls for assistance.</p>
<p>The storm has moved out of the central part of the state, but is still lashing coastal counties with snow and high winds early Thursday. Cooper said coastal areas have seen between 5 and 7 inches of snow already.</p>
<p>Cooper said there were about 6,500 power outages reported, down from a peak of 20,000.</p>
<p>He said that frigid temperatures will mean that slick conditions could persist on roads into the weekend. He urged residents not to use the roads unless it was absolutely necessary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:00 a.m.</p>
<p>Crews are working around the state to remove snow that fell across North Carolina.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service said unofficial reports indicated that 6 inches (15 centimeters) have fallen in places such as Pinehurst and the northeastern corner of the state. Fayetteville had 4 inches (10 centimeters). Wake and Durham counties got more than 1 inch (2.5 centimeters).</p>
<p>The North Carolina Department of Transportation said it had more than 650 vehicles out clearing roads Thursday morning. It reported that it had used nearly 200,000 gallons (757,000 liters) of brine and 3,700 tons (3,360 metric tons) of salt in the storm.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities day two people died in the winter storm when their pickup truck overturned into a creek.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the state Highway Patrol says the truck came to rest on its top while submerged in the creek Wednesday night in Moore County.</p>
<p>Sgt. Michael Baker identified those killed as the driver, 57-year-old Michael Alexander Wilson, and a passenger, 73-year-old Jerry David Wilson. Both were from Bear Creek.</p>
<p>Both men died at the scene.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 a.m.</p>
<p>The snowstorm hit parts of North Carolina with an unexpected strength, including Moore County, where residents said they were stuck in their cars for hours in traffic jams.</p>
<p>Drivers told <a href="http://www.wral.com/winter-weather-causes-10-mile-traffic-jam-in-southern-pines-aberdeen/17230893/" type="external">WRAL-TV</a> that cars were stopped or moving slowly Wednesday night on U.S. Highway 1 in Southern Pines and Aberdeen. Kristine Castillo estimated 60 to 70 cars were stopped as she was in her car for hours.</p>
<p>Penny Creed says she went to cars in the "bumper to bumper" traffic giving our scarves, gloves and hot chocolate. She says she also invited some people into her home for cookies and cocoa.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>7:57 a.m.</p>
<p>The snow is moving out of North Carolina but the cold temperatures are staying behind.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service had blizzard, winter storm warnings and winter weather statements in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well. The snow and ice also prompted the closure of many schools in the eastern half of the state.</p>
<p>Up to 6 inches of snow was reported near Fort Bragg.</p>
<p>Duke Energy reported about 2,400 customers still without electricity Thursday morning. Nearly half of those were in Craven County around New Bern.</p>
<p>Wind child values could be as low as -30 degrees (-34 Celsius) at the mountain tops in western North Carolina.</p>
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The Latest on the winter storm in North Carolina (all times local):</p>
<p>1 p.m.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service is reporting snowfall amounts of more than 6 inches in areas of North Carolina that don't typically get snow.</p>
<p>The weather service reports 6.5 inches of snow in Edenton and Tyner in Chowan County and 6 inches in Windsor in Bertie County. Both counties are located in northeastern North Carolina.</p>
<p>Wind gusts as high as 77 mph were reported early Thursday morning along the Outer Banks. Blizzard and winter storm warnings, along with winter weather statements, were in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>12:05 p.m.</p>
<p>Areas along North Carolina's coast are reporting wind gusts of hurricane strength as part of a winter storm that's moving up the East Coast.</p>
<p>The highest gusts were reported on Hatteras Island along the Outer Banks. Gusts of 77 mph were reported early Thursday at a kiteboarding resort near Rodanthe, while gusts of 76 mph were reported at the Oregon Inlet Coast Guard station.</p>
<p>A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph.</p>
<p>Gusts of 54 mph were reported at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which is the tallest in the nation at 208 feet.</p>
<p>Elsewhere along the coast, gusts of 49 mph were reported in Carteret County and 44 mph in Craven County.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11:40 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities have reported a third death after a man slid off the road in snowy conditions and overturned his vehicle.</p>
<p>State Emergency Management spokesman Keith Acree said that the man died in Beaufort County around 2 a.m. Thursday.</p>
<p>The man's vehicle slid off the road into a ditch and overturned. Acree said the area had a lot of snow, and authorities determined it was a weather-related death.</p>
<p>Acree identified the man as 29-year-old Joshua Wayne Biddle of Washington, North Carolina.</p>
<p>The Highway Patrol had earlier reported that two men died in a weather-related crash in Moore County on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina's governor says the winter weather has caused hundreds of crashes around the state.</p>
<p>Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday morning that the North Carolina Highway Patrol had responded to 700 collisions and 300 other calls for assistance.</p>
<p>The storm has moved out of the central part of the state, but is still lashing coastal counties with snow and high winds early Thursday. Cooper said coastal areas have seen between 5 and 7 inches of snow already.</p>
<p>Cooper said there were about 6,500 power outages reported, down from a peak of 20,000.</p>
<p>He said that frigid temperatures will mean that slick conditions could persist on roads into the weekend. He urged residents not to use the roads unless it was absolutely necessary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:00 a.m.</p>
<p>Crews are working around the state to remove snow that fell across North Carolina.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service said unofficial reports indicated that 6 inches (15 centimeters) have fallen in places such as Pinehurst and the northeastern corner of the state. Fayetteville had 4 inches (10 centimeters). Wake and Durham counties got more than 1 inch (2.5 centimeters).</p>
<p>The North Carolina Department of Transportation said it had more than 650 vehicles out clearing roads Thursday morning. It reported that it had used nearly 200,000 gallons (757,000 liters) of brine and 3,700 tons (3,360 metric tons) of salt in the storm.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities day two people died in the winter storm when their pickup truck overturned into a creek.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the state Highway Patrol says the truck came to rest on its top while submerged in the creek Wednesday night in Moore County.</p>
<p>Sgt. Michael Baker identified those killed as the driver, 57-year-old Michael Alexander Wilson, and a passenger, 73-year-old Jerry David Wilson. Both were from Bear Creek.</p>
<p>Both men died at the scene.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 a.m.</p>
<p>The snowstorm hit parts of North Carolina with an unexpected strength, including Moore County, where residents said they were stuck in their cars for hours in traffic jams.</p>
<p>Drivers told <a href="http://www.wral.com/winter-weather-causes-10-mile-traffic-jam-in-southern-pines-aberdeen/17230893/" type="external">WRAL-TV</a> that cars were stopped or moving slowly Wednesday night on U.S. Highway 1 in Southern Pines and Aberdeen. Kristine Castillo estimated 60 to 70 cars were stopped as she was in her car for hours.</p>
<p>Penny Creed says she went to cars in the "bumper to bumper" traffic giving our scarves, gloves and hot chocolate. She says she also invited some people into her home for cookies and cocoa.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>7:57 a.m.</p>
<p>The snow is moving out of North Carolina but the cold temperatures are staying behind.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service had blizzard, winter storm warnings and winter weather statements in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well. The snow and ice also prompted the closure of many schools in the eastern half of the state.</p>
<p>Up to 6 inches of snow was reported near Fort Bragg.</p>
<p>Duke Energy reported about 2,400 customers still without electricity Thursday morning. Nearly half of those were in Craven County around New Bern.</p>
<p>Wind child values could be as low as -30 degrees (-34 Celsius) at the mountain tops in western North Carolina.</p>
|
The Latest: Northeastern NC reports 6-plus inches of snow
| false |
https://apnews.com/636c2caebca343ff832c28aab690526e
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2018-01-04
| 2least
|
The Latest: Northeastern NC reports 6-plus inches of snow
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The Latest on the winter storm in North Carolina (all times local):</p>
<p>1 p.m.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service is reporting snowfall amounts of more than 6 inches in areas of North Carolina that don't typically get snow.</p>
<p>The weather service reports 6.5 inches of snow in Edenton and Tyner in Chowan County and 6 inches in Windsor in Bertie County. Both counties are located in northeastern North Carolina.</p>
<p>Wind gusts as high as 77 mph were reported early Thursday morning along the Outer Banks. Blizzard and winter storm warnings, along with winter weather statements, were in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>12:05 p.m.</p>
<p>Areas along North Carolina's coast are reporting wind gusts of hurricane strength as part of a winter storm that's moving up the East Coast.</p>
<p>The highest gusts were reported on Hatteras Island along the Outer Banks. Gusts of 77 mph were reported early Thursday at a kiteboarding resort near Rodanthe, while gusts of 76 mph were reported at the Oregon Inlet Coast Guard station.</p>
<p>A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph.</p>
<p>Gusts of 54 mph were reported at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which is the tallest in the nation at 208 feet.</p>
<p>Elsewhere along the coast, gusts of 49 mph were reported in Carteret County and 44 mph in Craven County.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11:40 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities have reported a third death after a man slid off the road in snowy conditions and overturned his vehicle.</p>
<p>State Emergency Management spokesman Keith Acree said that the man died in Beaufort County around 2 a.m. Thursday.</p>
<p>The man's vehicle slid off the road into a ditch and overturned. Acree said the area had a lot of snow, and authorities determined it was a weather-related death.</p>
<p>Acree identified the man as 29-year-old Joshua Wayne Biddle of Washington, North Carolina.</p>
<p>The Highway Patrol had earlier reported that two men died in a weather-related crash in Moore County on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina's governor says the winter weather has caused hundreds of crashes around the state.</p>
<p>Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday morning that the North Carolina Highway Patrol had responded to 700 collisions and 300 other calls for assistance.</p>
<p>The storm has moved out of the central part of the state, but is still lashing coastal counties with snow and high winds early Thursday. Cooper said coastal areas have seen between 5 and 7 inches of snow already.</p>
<p>Cooper said there were about 6,500 power outages reported, down from a peak of 20,000.</p>
<p>He said that frigid temperatures will mean that slick conditions could persist on roads into the weekend. He urged residents not to use the roads unless it was absolutely necessary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:00 a.m.</p>
<p>Crews are working around the state to remove snow that fell across North Carolina.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service said unofficial reports indicated that 6 inches (15 centimeters) have fallen in places such as Pinehurst and the northeastern corner of the state. Fayetteville had 4 inches (10 centimeters). Wake and Durham counties got more than 1 inch (2.5 centimeters).</p>
<p>The North Carolina Department of Transportation said it had more than 650 vehicles out clearing roads Thursday morning. It reported that it had used nearly 200,000 gallons (757,000 liters) of brine and 3,700 tons (3,360 metric tons) of salt in the storm.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities day two people died in the winter storm when their pickup truck overturned into a creek.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the state Highway Patrol says the truck came to rest on its top while submerged in the creek Wednesday night in Moore County.</p>
<p>Sgt. Michael Baker identified those killed as the driver, 57-year-old Michael Alexander Wilson, and a passenger, 73-year-old Jerry David Wilson. Both were from Bear Creek.</p>
<p>Both men died at the scene.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 a.m.</p>
<p>The snowstorm hit parts of North Carolina with an unexpected strength, including Moore County, where residents said they were stuck in their cars for hours in traffic jams.</p>
<p>Drivers told <a href="http://www.wral.com/winter-weather-causes-10-mile-traffic-jam-in-southern-pines-aberdeen/17230893/" type="external">WRAL-TV</a> that cars were stopped or moving slowly Wednesday night on U.S. Highway 1 in Southern Pines and Aberdeen. Kristine Castillo estimated 60 to 70 cars were stopped as she was in her car for hours.</p>
<p>Penny Creed says she went to cars in the "bumper to bumper" traffic giving our scarves, gloves and hot chocolate. She says she also invited some people into her home for cookies and cocoa.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>7:57 a.m.</p>
<p>The snow is moving out of North Carolina but the cold temperatures are staying behind.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service had blizzard, winter storm warnings and winter weather statements in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well. The snow and ice also prompted the closure of many schools in the eastern half of the state.</p>
<p>Up to 6 inches of snow was reported near Fort Bragg.</p>
<p>Duke Energy reported about 2,400 customers still without electricity Thursday morning. Nearly half of those were in Craven County around New Bern.</p>
<p>Wind child values could be as low as -30 degrees (-34 Celsius) at the mountain tops in western North Carolina.</p>
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The Latest on the winter storm in North Carolina (all times local):</p>
<p>1 p.m.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service is reporting snowfall amounts of more than 6 inches in areas of North Carolina that don't typically get snow.</p>
<p>The weather service reports 6.5 inches of snow in Edenton and Tyner in Chowan County and 6 inches in Windsor in Bertie County. Both counties are located in northeastern North Carolina.</p>
<p>Wind gusts as high as 77 mph were reported early Thursday morning along the Outer Banks. Blizzard and winter storm warnings, along with winter weather statements, were in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>12:05 p.m.</p>
<p>Areas along North Carolina's coast are reporting wind gusts of hurricane strength as part of a winter storm that's moving up the East Coast.</p>
<p>The highest gusts were reported on Hatteras Island along the Outer Banks. Gusts of 77 mph were reported early Thursday at a kiteboarding resort near Rodanthe, while gusts of 76 mph were reported at the Oregon Inlet Coast Guard station.</p>
<p>A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds of at least 74 mph.</p>
<p>Gusts of 54 mph were reported at the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, which is the tallest in the nation at 208 feet.</p>
<p>Elsewhere along the coast, gusts of 49 mph were reported in Carteret County and 44 mph in Craven County.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11:40 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities have reported a third death after a man slid off the road in snowy conditions and overturned his vehicle.</p>
<p>State Emergency Management spokesman Keith Acree said that the man died in Beaufort County around 2 a.m. Thursday.</p>
<p>The man's vehicle slid off the road into a ditch and overturned. Acree said the area had a lot of snow, and authorities determined it was a weather-related death.</p>
<p>Acree identified the man as 29-year-old Joshua Wayne Biddle of Washington, North Carolina.</p>
<p>The Highway Patrol had earlier reported that two men died in a weather-related crash in Moore County on Wednesday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina's governor says the winter weather has caused hundreds of crashes around the state.</p>
<p>Gov. Roy Cooper said Thursday morning that the North Carolina Highway Patrol had responded to 700 collisions and 300 other calls for assistance.</p>
<p>The storm has moved out of the central part of the state, but is still lashing coastal counties with snow and high winds early Thursday. Cooper said coastal areas have seen between 5 and 7 inches of snow already.</p>
<p>Cooper said there were about 6,500 power outages reported, down from a peak of 20,000.</p>
<p>He said that frigid temperatures will mean that slick conditions could persist on roads into the weekend. He urged residents not to use the roads unless it was absolutely necessary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:00 a.m.</p>
<p>Crews are working around the state to remove snow that fell across North Carolina.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service said unofficial reports indicated that 6 inches (15 centimeters) have fallen in places such as Pinehurst and the northeastern corner of the state. Fayetteville had 4 inches (10 centimeters). Wake and Durham counties got more than 1 inch (2.5 centimeters).</p>
<p>The North Carolina Department of Transportation said it had more than 650 vehicles out clearing roads Thursday morning. It reported that it had used nearly 200,000 gallons (757,000 liters) of brine and 3,700 tons (3,360 metric tons) of salt in the storm.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:45 a.m.</p>
<p>North Carolina authorities day two people died in the winter storm when their pickup truck overturned into a creek.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the state Highway Patrol says the truck came to rest on its top while submerged in the creek Wednesday night in Moore County.</p>
<p>Sgt. Michael Baker identified those killed as the driver, 57-year-old Michael Alexander Wilson, and a passenger, 73-year-old Jerry David Wilson. Both were from Bear Creek.</p>
<p>Both men died at the scene.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8:50 a.m.</p>
<p>The snowstorm hit parts of North Carolina with an unexpected strength, including Moore County, where residents said they were stuck in their cars for hours in traffic jams.</p>
<p>Drivers told <a href="http://www.wral.com/winter-weather-causes-10-mile-traffic-jam-in-southern-pines-aberdeen/17230893/" type="external">WRAL-TV</a> that cars were stopped or moving slowly Wednesday night on U.S. Highway 1 in Southern Pines and Aberdeen. Kristine Castillo estimated 60 to 70 cars were stopped as she was in her car for hours.</p>
<p>Penny Creed says she went to cars in the "bumper to bumper" traffic giving our scarves, gloves and hot chocolate. She says she also invited some people into her home for cookies and cocoa.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>7:57 a.m.</p>
<p>The snow is moving out of North Carolina but the cold temperatures are staying behind.</p>
<p>The National Weather Service had blizzard, winter storm warnings and winter weather statements in effect Thursday in half of North Carolina's 100 counties.</p>
<p>Wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect in 54 counties for Thursday and in some cases, for Friday as well. The snow and ice also prompted the closure of many schools in the eastern half of the state.</p>
<p>Up to 6 inches of snow was reported near Fort Bragg.</p>
<p>Duke Energy reported about 2,400 customers still without electricity Thursday morning. Nearly half of those were in Craven County around New Bern.</p>
<p>Wind child values could be as low as -30 degrees (-34 Celsius) at the mountain tops in western North Carolina.</p>
| 5,649 |
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<p />
<p>The remarks, made in a Twitter posting, referenced Skandera with a “moo, moo-oink, oink.” This resulted in Brooks getting a suspension of three days without pay, a letter of reprimand placed in his personnel file and the yanking of his Twitter account.</p>
<p>BROOKS: Suspended for 3 days without pay</p>
<p>The business leaders’ letter said that they were “very concerned that at a time when our education system needs balanced and collaborative change, the superintendent has not taken a leadership role. Solutions and compromise are impossible to reach when the level of discourse is not civil or professional.”</p>
<p>It was signed by Elizabeth Shipley, chairman of the board of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce; Terri Cole, president and CEO of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce; Don Power, chairman of the board of the Economic Forum; Bob Murphy, president and CEO of the Economic Forum; Steven Becerra, chairman of the board of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce; and Alex Romero, president and CEO of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce.</p>
<p>The letter echoes the sentiments of a bipartisan correspondence sent to Esquivel last week from the New Mexico state legislative leadership.</p>
<p>On Monday, the full Board of Education met in a closed-door executive session with Brooks to conduct his evaluation. “He heard from us, we heard from him and the next step is to vote on his contract extension Thursday morning,” Esquivel said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He declined to indicate which way the board was leaning.</p>
<p>Also on Monday, APS communications executive director Monica Armenta confirmed that the district’s social media expert, Maralyn Beck, had been disciplined with a formal letter of reprimand in connection with the Brooks-Skandera Twitter debacle. Beck joined the exchange by posting emoticons of barnyard animals. Like Brooks, Beck also sent a letter of apology to Skandera.</p>
<p>A relatively new employee, Beck had been on the job about a month when the incident occurred in early November. She is so new, Armenta said, her name does not yet appear on the APS website that lists all APS employees and their yearly salaries – which in Beck’s case is $52,500.</p>
<p />
<p />
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Business leaders support APS action
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https://abqjournal.com/303776/leaders-support-aps-action.html
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2013-11-19
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Business leaders support APS action
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The remarks, made in a Twitter posting, referenced Skandera with a “moo, moo-oink, oink.” This resulted in Brooks getting a suspension of three days without pay, a letter of reprimand placed in his personnel file and the yanking of his Twitter account.</p>
<p>BROOKS: Suspended for 3 days without pay</p>
<p>The business leaders’ letter said that they were “very concerned that at a time when our education system needs balanced and collaborative change, the superintendent has not taken a leadership role. Solutions and compromise are impossible to reach when the level of discourse is not civil or professional.”</p>
<p>It was signed by Elizabeth Shipley, chairman of the board of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce; Terri Cole, president and CEO of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce; Don Power, chairman of the board of the Economic Forum; Bob Murphy, president and CEO of the Economic Forum; Steven Becerra, chairman of the board of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce; and Alex Romero, president and CEO of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce.</p>
<p>The letter echoes the sentiments of a bipartisan correspondence sent to Esquivel last week from the New Mexico state legislative leadership.</p>
<p>On Monday, the full Board of Education met in a closed-door executive session with Brooks to conduct his evaluation. “He heard from us, we heard from him and the next step is to vote on his contract extension Thursday morning,” Esquivel said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>He declined to indicate which way the board was leaning.</p>
<p>Also on Monday, APS communications executive director Monica Armenta confirmed that the district’s social media expert, Maralyn Beck, had been disciplined with a formal letter of reprimand in connection with the Brooks-Skandera Twitter debacle. Beck joined the exchange by posting emoticons of barnyard animals. Like Brooks, Beck also sent a letter of apology to Skandera.</p>
<p>A relatively new employee, Beck had been on the job about a month when the incident occurred in early November. She is so new, Armenta said, her name does not yet appear on the APS website that lists all APS employees and their yearly salaries – which in Beck’s case is $52,500.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 5,650 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>President Obama has been claiming that people can keep their favorite doctors under the Affordable Care Act. But anyone who wants a premier hospital in California better do some homework before signing up.</p>
<p>A survey of the state’s top hospitals has revealed that most contract with only one or two insurance companies under Obamacare, even though the Covered California exchange has 11 companies to choose from. And one hospital, Loma Linda University Medical Center, has refused to participate altogether and has no contracts.</p>
<p>Obamacare is driven by low-cost policies. So the reimbursement rate that hospitals will receive from insurance companies just isn’t worth it to them. The end result is that the blue ribbon hospitals won’t have a large presence on the exchange, CalWatchdog.com has learned.</p>
<p>“The more we are learn about the insurance plans on&#160;Covered California, the more it becomes clear that the big name hospitals are&#160;sitting on the sidelines — some by choice, other by design of the insurers,” said Josh Archambault, senior fellow for the Foundation for Government Accountability and a frequent Obamacare critic. “Consumers get the short end of the stick.”</p>
<p>CalWatchdog.com looked at the top 15 California hospitals listed in <a href="http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/ca" type="external">U.S. News &amp; World Report’s 2013-2014 annual report</a> and contacted each one to determine their Obamacare insurance contracts. The full list is at the bottom of this article. We found that six hospitals only contracted with one company, another six had two companies, one hospital had none, and one hospital accepted all 12 companies at various levels. Stanford Hospital, listed as No. 2 by U.S. News, refused to respond to numerous requests for information.</p>
<p>For anyone keeping their old private insurance policy, most of these hospitals will still take myriad plans.</p>
<p>The bottom line is money. And insurance companies are well aware of the costs of working with top tier hospitals, said Gail Wilensky, a board member of UnitedHealthcare and the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the first Bush administration.</p>
<p>“Many plans … are concerned that they will be dominated by high using populations that have previously been in risk pools and wanted insurance, but couldn’t access it,” she said. “They are pressed to narrow networks to stay within the premiums.”</p>
<p><a href="http://watchdog.org/114137/top-hospitals-opt-out-of-obamacare/" type="external">An investigation I wrote for Watchdog.org</a>(no longer affiliated with CalWatchdog.com)&#160;showed that California’s hospitals were in line with the nation’s top hospitals, which had the same type of scenario. Most of the top 18 national hospitals accepted only one or two carriers.</p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest vote of no confidence came from No. 4-ranked Cleveland Clinic, which takes about 100 insurance plans if you have private insurance, but only Medical Mutual of Ohio under the exchange.</p>
<p>Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which made <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/best-hospitals/articles/2013/07/16/best-hospitals-2013-14-overview-and-honor-roll" type="external">U.S. News &amp; World Report’s national list</a> as well as California’s, took myriad insurance plans before Obamacare, but now in the Covered California exchange lists just Health Net. Shortly after Watchdog.org’s story appeared, radio stations began running frequent ads saying that not all plans were created equal on the exchange.</p>
<p>“Choose your plan carefully. Make sure your plan includes coverage for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,” the ad intoned.</p>
<p>Many hospitals are in a wait-and-see mode, cautiously entering the exchange and then determining later whether more insurance companies will be added.</p>
<p>“It’s too early to tell what we will do in 2014 or years beyond as there has been more turmoil than expected and we are watching the [Obama] administration consistently introduce or change the regulations along the way,” said Chris&#160;Van Gorder, president and CEO of No. 6-rated Scripps La Jolla Hospitals and Clinics. “It’s almost impossible to know what is going to happen or how many patients will subscribe — and, accordingly,&#160;what will happen to insurance premiums purchased on the exchange or&#160;to&#160;the reimbursement to providers.”</p>
<p>And if government funding for indigent patients is reduced, that would create further financial turmoil for hospitals.</p>
<p>“Two of our five&#160;hospital facilities&#160;have&#160;historically received [Medicare] funding to help offset the number of indigent and government patients they care for,” Van Gorder added. “[Medicare] is supposed to be significantly reduced starting this year in exchange for more insured patients.”</p>
<p>So while Covered California is ahead of most states in that it lists the insurance companies on its site, the doctors and hospitals are still lacking. Prospective policy holders can check out our chart or call the medical provider to make sure they are getting what they want.</p>
<p>“Not having well known hospitals in-network on Covered California plans could come back to bite consumers in two ways: first, they cannot access those doctors and second, if they do, they will be stuck with a massively expensive out-of-network charge,” Archambault said.</p>
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Covered California unplugs most top hospitals from patients
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Covered California unplugs most top hospitals from patients
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<p>President Obama has been claiming that people can keep their favorite doctors under the Affordable Care Act. But anyone who wants a premier hospital in California better do some homework before signing up.</p>
<p>A survey of the state’s top hospitals has revealed that most contract with only one or two insurance companies under Obamacare, even though the Covered California exchange has 11 companies to choose from. And one hospital, Loma Linda University Medical Center, has refused to participate altogether and has no contracts.</p>
<p>Obamacare is driven by low-cost policies. So the reimbursement rate that hospitals will receive from insurance companies just isn’t worth it to them. The end result is that the blue ribbon hospitals won’t have a large presence on the exchange, CalWatchdog.com has learned.</p>
<p>“The more we are learn about the insurance plans on&#160;Covered California, the more it becomes clear that the big name hospitals are&#160;sitting on the sidelines — some by choice, other by design of the insurers,” said Josh Archambault, senior fellow for the Foundation for Government Accountability and a frequent Obamacare critic. “Consumers get the short end of the stick.”</p>
<p>CalWatchdog.com looked at the top 15 California hospitals listed in <a href="http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/area/ca" type="external">U.S. News &amp; World Report’s 2013-2014 annual report</a> and contacted each one to determine their Obamacare insurance contracts. The full list is at the bottom of this article. We found that six hospitals only contracted with one company, another six had two companies, one hospital had none, and one hospital accepted all 12 companies at various levels. Stanford Hospital, listed as No. 2 by U.S. News, refused to respond to numerous requests for information.</p>
<p>For anyone keeping their old private insurance policy, most of these hospitals will still take myriad plans.</p>
<p>The bottom line is money. And insurance companies are well aware of the costs of working with top tier hospitals, said Gail Wilensky, a board member of UnitedHealthcare and the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the first Bush administration.</p>
<p>“Many plans … are concerned that they will be dominated by high using populations that have previously been in risk pools and wanted insurance, but couldn’t access it,” she said. “They are pressed to narrow networks to stay within the premiums.”</p>
<p><a href="http://watchdog.org/114137/top-hospitals-opt-out-of-obamacare/" type="external">An investigation I wrote for Watchdog.org</a>(no longer affiliated with CalWatchdog.com)&#160;showed that California’s hospitals were in line with the nation’s top hospitals, which had the same type of scenario. Most of the top 18 national hospitals accepted only one or two carriers.</p>
<p>Perhaps the biggest vote of no confidence came from No. 4-ranked Cleveland Clinic, which takes about 100 insurance plans if you have private insurance, but only Medical Mutual of Ohio under the exchange.</p>
<p>Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which made <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/best-hospitals/articles/2013/07/16/best-hospitals-2013-14-overview-and-honor-roll" type="external">U.S. News &amp; World Report’s national list</a> as well as California’s, took myriad insurance plans before Obamacare, but now in the Covered California exchange lists just Health Net. Shortly after Watchdog.org’s story appeared, radio stations began running frequent ads saying that not all plans were created equal on the exchange.</p>
<p>“Choose your plan carefully. Make sure your plan includes coverage for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,” the ad intoned.</p>
<p>Many hospitals are in a wait-and-see mode, cautiously entering the exchange and then determining later whether more insurance companies will be added.</p>
<p>“It’s too early to tell what we will do in 2014 or years beyond as there has been more turmoil than expected and we are watching the [Obama] administration consistently introduce or change the regulations along the way,” said Chris&#160;Van Gorder, president and CEO of No. 6-rated Scripps La Jolla Hospitals and Clinics. “It’s almost impossible to know what is going to happen or how many patients will subscribe — and, accordingly,&#160;what will happen to insurance premiums purchased on the exchange or&#160;to&#160;the reimbursement to providers.”</p>
<p>And if government funding for indigent patients is reduced, that would create further financial turmoil for hospitals.</p>
<p>“Two of our five&#160;hospital facilities&#160;have&#160;historically received [Medicare] funding to help offset the number of indigent and government patients they care for,” Van Gorder added. “[Medicare] is supposed to be significantly reduced starting this year in exchange for more insured patients.”</p>
<p>So while Covered California is ahead of most states in that it lists the insurance companies on its site, the doctors and hospitals are still lacking. Prospective policy holders can check out our chart or call the medical provider to make sure they are getting what they want.</p>
<p>“Not having well known hospitals in-network on Covered California plans could come back to bite consumers in two ways: first, they cannot access those doctors and second, if they do, they will be stuck with a massively expensive out-of-network charge,” Archambault said.</p>
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<p>By Kathy Kiely / <a href="http://billmoyers.com/story/robert-frank-talks-radical-pragmatism-economy/" type="external">Moyers &amp; Company</a></p>
<p />
<p>&#160; &#160; Economist Robert Frank. (Robert Frank)</p>
<p>Robert H. Frank is one of America’s leading economists. In addition to reams of textbooks, he has written a number of books looking at the impact of the nation’s widening income gap and the habits of the people who inhabit the economic stratosphere. The most recent is <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10663.html" type="external">Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy</a>. Recently, he stopped by the offices of BillMoyers.com for a conversation about the economic challenges facing the nation and the issues that he thinks the next president will have to address. This transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.</p>
<p />
<p>Kathy Kiely: So tell me a little bit about, Robert Frank, your intellectual history. How did you come to be so interested in income inequality?</p>
<p>Robert Frank: I started writing about competition for rank back in the early 1980s, late 1970s. The standard economic models assume that people care only about their absolute levels of consumption — you know, how big is their house, how fast is their car — in absolute terms. But those kinds of evaluations are almost always heavily context-dependent, so if you ask yourself, “Is my house okay?” the answer to that question would depend really on the context that you’re in.</p>
<p>I was a Peace Corps volunteer before I went to graduate school and I lived in a two-room house with no electricity, no plumbing, in rural Nepal. Never once during the two years I lived in that house did it ever occur to me for an instant that the house was unsatisfactory in any way. It was a really quite nice house actually, in the context where I was living then. If I lived in a house like that in Ithaca, or any US city really, my kids would’ve been ashamed for their friends to see where we lived. It would’ve been shameful for me to have people know that we lived in a house like that. It would be a clear signal that I’d failed in some spectacular way to meet even the minimal expectations of society.</p>
<p>And so, you know, is my house okay? The answer is that depends, and it depends on context and the context is very local.</p>
<p>So if context matters, then the standard economic models that assume it doesn’t matter lead you to many wrong conclusions. So I’ve been writing about that now for 35 years. And the entry point for inequality is that, as I say, context is local, but for technological reasons, which I’ve written about elsewhere too, we’ve seen a move to markets that <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/329317/the-winner-take-all-society-by-robert-frank/9780140259957/" type="external">Phil Cook and I call winner take all markets</a>.</p>
<p>These are — I mean, in your industry it’s very prominent. You don’t need the local newspaper columnist or radio reporter. Everything is available on the internet to everyone at any moment, and so whoever is best at the particular task at hand, that person gets the whole market. It’s not quite that exaggerated, but that’s the trend that we’ve been seeing, and with that have come many benefits. It’s better to consume the best than the third best.</p>
<p>&#160; The Winner-Take-All Effect</p>
<p>But at the same time, it’s led to an enormous concentration of economic rewards in the hands of the people who are judged to be best. They’re often best by only a barely perceptible margin. Maybe they’re not even best. Maybe they just got a lucky break and came to people’s attention before the truly best performer did and then the initial success built on itself.</p>
<p>But anyway, the trend has been for income to concentrate at the top of the ladder, and when that happens — you know, people at the top of the ladder are normal. They do what you and I do, what everyone else does when they have more income. They spend it and they build bigger houses, they buy more expensive automobiles, they take more expensive vacations, the diamonds they get for their partners are bigger. All those things are normal, and there’s no indication I’ve ever seen that people in the middle class get angry about that. If anything, they’re interested. They want to see pictures of the mansions and the yachts and read about what the rich people do.</p>
<p>Kiely: Then why are people so angry in this election?</p>
<p>Frank: The translation of what the people at the top do to the people in the middle is indirect. The people in the middle, as I say, don’t seem to care that the people at the top have a lot. You’re right, now there does seem to be some concern that people like Donald Trump, who claims to have billions, also admits to not having paid any federal income tax for a long time. That I think does arouse anger and concern across a pretty broad spectrum of the population. But in terms of the actual things rich people buy, I think most people feel that the people at the top earned their money fair and square—that’s true in some cases, not true in others.</p>
<p>But the people just below the top, they travel in the same social circles as the people at the top. They go to the same weddings, the same parties, the same gatherings, they belong to the same clubs. When they see that the very richest people are now hosting their daughters’ wedding receptions at home rather than in a hotel or country club, they then feel, “We need a ballroom,” so they build a bigger house.</p>
<p>Then there’s a group just below them, maybe it’s the custom now to have dinner parties for 24, not 18: “We need a bigger dining room.” They build bigger, and one step at a time, it cascades all the way down the income ladder. And unless you invoke something like that spending cascade is what I call it, you can’t really make sense of the fact that the family in the middle, the median earner, whose real income is essentially the same as it was four decades ago, why is that family buying a house that’s 50 percent bigger than what the median family bought four decades ago? What’s driving that? It’s not that they have more money. That’s not the reason for it.</p>
<p>Kiely: Is it keeping up with the Joneses on steroids?</p>
<p>Frank: I’ve never liked that term. Somebody who’s trying to — but, yes, in a manner of speaking, it is that. The term to me evokes a deep human frailty. Somebody is trying to appear richer that he is. He’s insecure, he’s trying to mimic a standard that he’s not really entitled to on the merits of his own income.</p>
<p>So, yes, that a pejorative term in my experience of how people use it, and the phenomenon I’m trying to call attention to would exist even if there were none of that. So the median family, it’s gone into debt to buy a house that’s at least 50&#160;or 75 percent more expensive than what the median family was spending in 1970.</p>
<p>&#160; Why Context Matters</p>
<p>The reason it’s done that is much less because they envy the houses of other people like them. It’s because unless you spend as much as other people like you are spending on a house, your kids will go to bad schools. The link between school quality and neighborhood house prices in the school areas is very strong and direct. The better schools are located in the neighborhoods where the houses are more expensive. So if you’re the family in the middle and it’s your aim to have your kids attend a school of just average quality — you know, we would judge harshly a parent who wasn’t at least that ambitious — then what do you have to do? You have to buy a house that’s roughly near the price of what people like you are spending on houses.</p>
<p>When all the families in that middle of the income distribution do that, what do they achieve? Nothing. You know, they just bid up the prices of the houses in the better school districts. Still half of all kids go to bottom-half schools, the exact same as before. But now families are in debt, they’re not able to meet their bills month by month. Many of them file for bankruptcy. It’s just been an enormous squeeze on the people in the middle, and that’s driven by the spending at the top. And the reason we see more of it now is that the spending on the top is so much greater in relation to spending elsewhere in the income distribution.</p>
<p>That’s happened before. You know, when do you read about luxury? You read about it when the people at the top have been pulling away from everyone else. We read about it in the Gilded Age, the great fortunes of the late 19th century. You notice it when there’s that contrast. But it’s still going on under normal circumstances. Right after World War II, incomes were growing at about the same rate for families up and down the income ladder and it was still true that what the family in the middle spent on a house depended on what the people at the top spent, but it wasn’t — there was growth in balance up and down the line, so we didn’t notice that families were getting squeezed relative to last year. Those stories didn’t break through.</p>
<p>Again, it’s context. If you saw a seventh grader in the third grade, everybody would notice and remark on that. If you see a seven-footer at an NBA game, it’s normal.</p>
<p>Kiely: So is the answer to try to escape context or what’s the answer?</p>
<p>Frank: Well you cannot escape context, that’s just the way we’re wired. “Are we almost there yet?” Well, if there’s five miles to go, “Are we almost there yet?” If it’s a 500–mile trip, yes, we’re almost there. If it’s a six-mile trip, we’re not almost there. It’s just inescapably shaped by context.</p>
<p>So if you can’t change the fact that we’re sensitive to context what can you do? Well, the claim is that people at the top are spending their money in ways that don’t do them any good really but at the same time cause problems for others, the people in the middle who are put under pressure by that spending. Why doesn’t it help the people that are rich? Why do they do it if it doesn’t help them? Well, they think they’ll be happier if they buy a bigger house because when I think about my bigger house, I imagine I’ll a relatively big house. But everybody’s buying a bigger house. And when that happens it just raises the bar that defines big. Forty thousand square feet in Dallas isn’t big anymore. So there’s no evidence whatsoever that the people at the top would be happier if they all had 100,000-square-foot mansions than if they all had 50,000-square-foot mansions.</p>
<p>I think if the truth could be known, it would be clear that they’d be less happy. It’s just such a nuisance to manage a property that’s twice as big. Once you get up to a certain size there’s just no gain. But if everybody else has one and you don’t, then people begin to talk, “His business is slipping. Is he not able to compete any longer?” Or you can’t entertain in the style that’s expected of people in that circle. So yes there’s a sense in which people are a prisoner of what others do. If you want to see well and others stand up, you have to stand up, but if everybody stands up, nobody sees any better than before. So there are lots of situations that have that character and this is one of them.</p>
<p>Kiely: Is this a problem that we should be talking about in the presidential campaign?</p>
<p>Frank: In general it’s a problem that we can solve politically. Given that we can solve it and that the gains from solving it would be so enormous, it’s a crime that we’re not talking about it.</p>
<p>Kiely: And how could we solve it?</p>
<p>Frank: Well if the incentive to have a more expensive party is misleadingly large for the individual, and it is, what do parents want? They want the people who attend their daughter’s wedding to go away feeling like they had a good time. If they serve McDonald’s hamburgers, everyone’s going to go away saying, “Oh, didn’t they understand what an important occasion this was?” The cost of admission is to spend roughly what other families like you typically spend on a wedding. In 1980 the average expenditure is the US was about $10,000. Last year it was $31,000.</p>
<p>Nobody thinks the people getting married who are spending $31,000 are happier because of that fact than the people who were getting married at $10,000 in 1980. In fact, there’s some evidence that they’re less happy because the extra debt they take on creates problems for them. And yet the individual incentives are to spend more if others are spending more. So the simplest solution to that is the one we use in other policy domains. If the problem is people put too much CO2 in the air, we have to ask why are they doing it? Because it’s free to do it. It causes harm to others and it’s expensive to filter it out and if it’s free just to dump it and the harm to you of any one person dumping it is negligible, then of course people are going to dump it.</p>
<p>The simple solution, charge them for dumping it. And what we know is that when we have implemented fees for activities that cause harm to others, people clean up their act in short order. It’s a very powerful effect. And so the analogous solution in this case would be to scrap the income tax completely. In its place adopt a much more steeply progressive consumption tax. And what that would mean —</p>
<p>&#160; Don’t tax income; tax consumption</p>
<p>Kiely: So you agree with the flat taxers?</p>
<p>Frank: No.</p>
<p>Kiely: A fair tax, is that what they call it?</p>
<p>Frank: The fair tax is anything but fair. It’s a gratuitously regressive tax. It would be an awful burden for low-income families. It would be a huge windfall for the very rich. No, the tax that would address this expenditure cascades is a steeply progressive consumption tax. And the way it would work — it sounds frighteningly complicated, but the way it would work would actually be simple. You’d report your income to the IRS just like you do now; we should simplify that while we’re at it. In addition, people would report how much they’d increased their stock of savings during the year. People do that now for 401(k) plans and other things. The difference between those two numbers, your income minus your savings, that’s how much you spent during the year.</p>
<p>We don’t have to keep track of receipts for every individual item to figure out how much you spend. Your spending can only go into two buckets, your savings and your consumption. If we know your income and we know your savings, then we can back out what your consumption must have been. So income minus savings, that’s your consumption. Then knock off a big standard deduction, let’s say $30,000 for a family of four. That’s your taxable consumption. Rates start low. People in the bottom half and slightly above would pay no more tax than they do under the current system. Once your consumption goes up beyond a certain point though, the rates begin rising and at really high levels of consumption, the rates can be extremely high.</p>
<p>Kiely: How high? What would the highest level be in your dream tax scheme?</p>
<p>Frank: Let me not frighten you but I’ll say, suppose it were 100 percent for people consuming already $5 million a year or more, what would that mean? We could never have a tax that high at the margin on income. People would say, rationally, “Why should I work to get more income, they’re going to take all of it if I do.”</p>
<p>If you have 100 percent rate on consumption beyond $5 million a year, what does that mean? That means the next thing you were thinking about buying — which, let’s be clear, it was not something urgent; it was something special that you were hoping to get. That thing, instead of costing $1 now costs you $2 — the $1 you pay for the thing and the $1 of extra tax that you’re levied because of that purchase. So by making additional purchases for people at the top of the ladder much more expensive, that would steer money out of those purchases and into savings and investment.</p>
<p>Kiely: So what would you say to somebody who’s the florist who supplies the flowers at the $31,000 wedding or paints the $40,000 mansion? There are those people who would say the excess spending helps fuel the economy. What do you say to those folks? The trickle-down effect.</p>
<p>Frank: The point’s often made that the spending of the rich does help employ people, to which I say, “Especially since we’re in a situation now where we have not fully recovered from the Great Recession, don’t implement this tax now.” Instead, announce that it’s going to be phased in once the labor market becomes tight, which may happen in the next year or two years or three years from now. If we did that we would see an explosion of new spending right away, not one nickel of it at government expense. People would be, “Oh, if we’re going to build that wing on the mansion we better do it now before they come after us with this progressive consumption tax.</p>
<p>That would put more people to work — florists, all of them. Then once the economy’s back at full employment, phase the tax in gradually. What that would do would be to cause a gradual shift away from consumption toward extra savings and investment. Again, the incomes are growing very rapidly at the top of the income ladder. So what we would see would be a less rapid rate of growth of demand for stuff that the high-end people buy and a more rapid rate of growth of demand for everything else. Public goods — we could use some of the tax revenue generated by this tax to fix the potholes in the roads.</p>
<p>Who’s happier — a guy driving a $300,000 Ferrari on roads riddled with foot-deep potholes or somebody driving a $150,000 Porsche 911 Turbo on well-maintained roads? It’s a choice. We could have either one of those. Right now we have the potholes and the more expensive cars. You don’t give up much when you scale back from the Ferrari to the Porsche, that’s still a pretty good car. It’s got all of the design features that really matter.</p>
<p>Kiely: Have you checked this out personally?</p>
<p>Frank: I’m a car buff, yes, I know these things [laughs]. So that’s the response. But there are many ways to generate employment. Florists and gratuitously expensive weddings aren’t inherently a better form of employment that people planting landscaping in public spaces. There are lots of things we could do that would generate employment that I think in general people would value more highly.</p>
<p>Kiely: So have you run the numbers on this? How would the revenue to the government compare to what it is now under the income tax?</p>
<p>Frank: Well, what we know is that even the rich respond to higher prices. There are in New York many billionaires, they could afford to buy the whole building they live in, so why would a progressive consumption tax get them to choose a smaller dwelling to live in? The reason is, what we know from the evidence is that in cities where real estate prices per square foot are very high, even the billionaires live in much smaller spaces than in other cities where real estate prices are lower. So it’s quite common for a billionaire to live in an apartment that’s under 10,000 square feet in New York City.</p>
<p>Kiely: Poor baby.</p>
<p>Frank: It’s so expensive in New York City, everybody lives in more cramped spaces here so 10,000 space in this context feels like a lot of space. In Dallas that same man would be buying a 40,000-square-foot mansion somewhere in the suburbs. So we know the rich would respond. We don’t know exactly how much they would respond. The proposal that makes the most sense, and it’s due to <a href="http://www1.udel.edu/PR/Messenger/99/3/chaplin.html" type="external">Larry Seidman</a> at the University of Delaware, is to start off with a progressive consumption surtax, levy it only on consumption above half a million dollars a year.</p>
<p>&#160; A gradual changeover</p>
<p>See how people respond and then gradually increase the rates on it while you’re reducing the rates on the income tax so that over a period of time the consumption tax would replace the income tax and we could calibrate the rates in accordance with what we saw in the way of revenue coming in, consumption, adaptations to the new prices and so on.</p>
<p>Kiely: So this is a pretty radical shift, right? It sounds like you’re shifting from an economy that is really — in many ways, our economy is consumer-based. We talk about when we try to evaluate how well or how badly we’re doing as a country economically we talk about consumer confidence. Talk a little bit about what the implications would be for us as a society.</p>
<p>Frank: Well, consumption is about two-thirds of all spending. And people worry that a consumption tax would depress the economy because it would depress consumption spending. What matters for output and employment is not consumption spending but total spending. Total spending is the sum of three or four major categories.</p>
<p>The big three in our economy are consumption, the biggest, next comes investment, spending by private firms on capital investments. Government is another big one. So if we shift spending as a proportion of the national income away from consumption and toward investment or public production, a good life can never be had with just private consumption. You need good schools, you need good roads, you need safety features to keep people from harm. And those expenditures contribute to well-being too. The trick is to find a balance and there’s very good reason to believe that we’ve strayed from the best balance in the US economy.</p>
<p>Kiely: Why do you say that? What are some of the reasons to believe that?</p>
<p>Frank: Just the evidence is very clear that when all the mansions double in size the rich don’t get any happier than before. That’s a lot of money being spent to yield zero measurable result. When all the weddings get twice as expensive, nobody gets any happier. So that’s like pouring money down the toilet. It’s not a productive use of resources. We know that research on diseases that cause premature death yields real benefits for people, the fact that if you kid gets a cancer now there’s a good chance that it could be treated and they’ll survive into adulthood. Those things matter.</p>
<p>Kiely: What do you think are the chances of this proposal being seriously considered in a country where after 9/11 our president told us, “Let’s go shopping”?</p>
<p>Frank: You know, this is not a natural way for people to think about things. If you think about how a tax increase would affect you, it’s a completely natural way to think about that is that it’s going to make it more difficult for me to buy what I want. Why is that? Well, if I have a tax increase that means I’ll have less money.</p>
<p>The natural thing to would be to think back to the last time there was a big tax increase and see how it affected you. Well, the problem with that is that there hasn’t been a tax increase that anyone can remember — not one of a significant magnitude. So the next best thing is just to think back to the times when by circumstance you have had less money.</p>
<p>That might be when you got divorced, might be when you lost your job or your business had a bad year or you have a home fire — who knows? All those things are things that caused you to have less money but didn’t affect the money incomes of anyone else around you. So those things, those things that caused you to have less money really did make you less able to buy what you want. If everybody like you had less money, the effect would be completely different.</p>
<p>But I don’t expect people to come upon that realization of their own accord overnight. That’s kind of a subtle one. If somebody naturally thought about that, I would think that was a weird person in a way. What we know though is that progress can still happen over time.</p>
<p>When for the example the economists were first proposing that we ought to have tradable pollution permits as a way to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from the coal plants in the Midwest, the environmental groups were livid, they said, “Oh, the economists are so immoral they’re proposing that we let polluters pollute to their heart’s content just by paying a fee.” What a strange way to conceptualize what firms do. They’re not saying, “Oh, they’re going to let me buy permits now.” Firms don’t want to pollute, they just pollute because it’s cheaper to pollute than not to pollute. If you have to pay to pollute, then you figure out ways to filter the smoke out.</p>
<p>&#160; Don’t tax income; tax consumption</p>
<p>How did that change get adopted? It didn’t get adopted because the public demanded it; it got adopted because freshmen took Economics 101, they learned about the logic of effluent charges from their professors in those courses. Then they went to work on the Hill in Washington, some of them, and they painstakingly educated their congressmen that pollution charges actually makes good sense.</p>
<p>And 25 years after the idea was first proposed, it was adopted as an amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1995. And overnight the pollution targets started getting hit faster than they expected; the cost of hitting them fell precipitously. It was a huge stampede to do it once the idea demonstrated that it made sense. And I think that’s the route along which this will happen if it happens.</p>
<p>Kiely: So do you see any interest in the policymaking community and your proposal?</p>
<p>Frank: Oh absolutely. I mean, the progressive consumption tax has been proposed at various junctures in history. Irving Fisher proposed it in the early 20th century. It was proposed in 1995 in the Senate by Sam Nunn and Pete Domenici — a Democrat and Republican bipartisan bill. It never came up for a vote. People moved on, there were other battles.</p>
<p>But two years ago, two economists at the American Enterprise Institute published a book advocating the progressive consumption tax. It’s a policy that could win support across both sides of the aisle. It has a long history of bipartisan advocacy.</p>
<p>And so when we ever find ourselves in a political climate in which we could ask what’s the right thing to do to make progress, I think that will be one of the first things at the top of the discussion list. We’re not in a climate like that yet but that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t soon find ourselves in one. The same-sex marriage transformation of public opinion caught everybody off guard, but once people start thinking in a different way about a subject and talking with one another, things can flip surprisingly quickly.</p>
<p>Kiely: And how would you assess Hillary Clinton’s economic policies?</p>
<p>Frank: They’re quite pragmatic. I think they come from a deep policy wonk tradition. You know, the recent proposal she made for a refundable tax credit to help alleviate deep poverty is in line with what serious public policy students on both sides of the aisle have been writing for decades. There’s nothing radical in her proposal. It’s a more progressive agenda than we’ve seen from any candidate in the past, but I think it’s not outside the mainstream by any stretch.</p>
<p>Kiely: Does the next president need to get outside the mainstream?</p>
<p>Frank: You know, things happen incrementally until they don’t. I don’t sense that the American public is ripe for revolution. There are other environments where inequality has provoked much more anger and resentment than it seems to have done so far here. But revolutions, when they come, are never widely predicted.</p>
<p>There was the Arab Spring that occurred — nobody was predicting that to happen. The Soviet Union countries all dropped off the Soviet Bloc one after another in the late 1980s; nobody was predicting that except for a handful of people who’d been predicting it every year for 30 years. You know, the dynamics of public opinion are very difficult to forecast.</p>
<p>What you believe depends on what others you talk to believe. That’s true for me, that’s true for everyone. And when one belief changes, that means everybody who talks to that person is exposed to a different belief and if it’s a reasonable new belief, they can change their minds and then they’ll talk to people. So we do see prairie fires.</p>
<p>Kiely: If you were advising the next president of the United States, what would you tell that person to think about? What are the economic issues on the horizon as you see them that we as a country should be talking about and thinking about?</p>
<p>Frank: I think one of our main problems going forward is to redress the long neglected maintenance of our stock of infrastructure. There’s a report card put out by the American Society of Civil Engineers periodically and it gives American infrastructure a D+ rating. And the figure they estimate is $3.6 trillion of overdue maintenance, never mind building a high-speed train.</p>
<p>That’s off the table. Just patching stuff that’s broken, dams that could collapse at any moment, roads that are substandard — this is one of the most desperately needed things to attend to and now’s a good time to do it because interest rates are at historical lows and there are still unemployed people who know how to do the tasks that need to be done.</p>
<p>Then I think longer term there’s concern that the new advances in AI, artificial intelligence, are putting people out of work who never thought they’d be automated out of their jobs.</p>
<p>Kiely: Such as?</p>
<p>Frank: The radiologists, for example, used to sit there in front of their screens and stare intently at the X-rays and try to spot anomalies. Now algorithms can spot anomalies better than they can and one machine that’s got an algorithm like that embedded in it can replace a thousand radiologists.</p>
<p>Those people are educated, they’ll find something useful to do without question, but there are lots of things like that where — you know, we’ve heard predictions that there’d be a shortage of things for people to do for a long time. Historically, that’s not proved accurate. Every time technology has wiped out a certain group of jobs — tollbooth collectors, things like that — other jobs have emerged to take their place. That could still happen, but I think the concern that it won’t happen is greater now.</p>
<p>You know, the labor market has been the primary source of income for people. Going forward we may not be able to rely on that as a primary source of income. It’s not that we’ll be too poor to support people. There’ll be more income as a result of these technologies, but how do we get it into the hands of people? And so we’ve started to hear now even conservatives calling cautiously for a basic income guarantee.</p>
<p>&#160; The case for a basic income</p>
<p>Kiely: Do you think that’s a good idea?</p>
<p>Frank: It’s not going to work in the form that it’s traditionally proposed. There are many ways in which it is a good idea. Milton Friedman proposed it in the form of a negative income tax back in the 1950s. The idea would be everybody gets a payment every year, no matter whether you’re rich or poor, and then other forms of income get taxed, so if you’re Bill Gates, this payment you get gets wiped out by all the tax you paid, but the payment in his scheme would be big enough to lift an urban family from poverty. So today that would be about $25,000 a year.</p>
<p>If you gave people a payment large enough to lift an urban family from poverty, the effect of that would be that a group of, let’s say, 10 families could form, pool their payments — so we’ve got 10 families, $250,000 a year. They would buy some acreage in Oregon, they would start a commune, they would raise chickens and goats, they would grow vegetables. They could practice their guitars in the morning, they could debate politics and the arts in the afternoon and they could go skinny dipping in the pond, all completely at taxpayer expense.</p>
<p>And so if you imagine what would happen in that — and it might not be very many who did that, but some would. Then there would soon be an eager audience for video footage of them on the nightly news. You know, you’re going to work every day, paying taxes, doing a hard job, these people are having fun all day at your expense. That would not be politically sustainable, in my opinion.</p>
<p>What we could do is give a much smaller basic income grant, much too small to form a group that could live wholly at taxpayer expense like that, and then offer to supplement that by extending an opportunity to perform useful tasks in the public realm for a small wage, smaller than the private sector wage, which in combination with the basic income grant, would lift you from poverty.</p>
<p>Kiely: So what kind of tasks do you have in mind?</p>
<p>Frank: Oh, there’s been a lot of research on this. You know, transporting elderly and infirm people around, there’s not nearly enough of that done by the private sector. Planting seedlings on hillsides that are eroding, graffiti removal and staffing daycare centers. There’s all sorts of things that people without a lot of skill could do with proper supervision. You could contract the management of tasks like that out to the private sector if you’re worried about government bureaucracy expanding too much.</p>
<p>There’s sort of an old tradition of public service employment. The WPA projects produced some wonderful additions to the nation’s stock of capital, and I think at a time when there aren’t enough jobs to keep people busy in the private sector, attending to obviously useful tasks in the public sector would be something we would want to do anyway, quite apart from the need to get income into people’s hands.</p>
<p>Kiely: If I had to ask you for a shorthand — maybe a word or a couple of words to describe the type of economic philosophy you’re proposing — what would it be? Have you thought about that?</p>
<p>Frank: I was once thinking to title a book Radical Pragmatism. The publisher didn’t like the title so I didn’t use it, but it always seemed like it was kind of a pair of words that captured the essence of the thinking behind proposals like these. They’re at one level radical. They’re outside the mainstream, certainly. But at another level, they’re deeply pragmatic and they’re rooted in what we know about human psychology and political reality as it exists.</p>
<p>Kiely: Let me just ask you one last question, and that’s about your latest book, which is kind of about the conflation of luck and skill, or the notion that a lucky person is skillful. Why did you write that book and does it fit into what you’ve been talking about, and how?</p>
<p>Frank: Yeah, I think the tendency — what we know from the social science is that chance events matter much more in life outcomes than most people imagine. We have a kind of hindsight bias. We see a successful outcome, we look at the usual explanations for outcomes like that — hard work, talent and those are almost always important. But what we don’t see when we think about those things that way is that there are lots and lots of people who were just as talented and hardworking who didn’t succeed. Why didn’t they succeed?</p>
<p>Well, maybe the promotion that they would’ve gotten had it not been for a slightly more qualified candidate didn’t come at the right time and so they missed some train, or there was a teacher that kept them out of trouble in the 11th grade. That teacher wasn’t there. Those kinds of things don’t really enter into people’s narratives about why they’re successful and I think the evidence is pretty clear that if you think you did it all yourself, you’re way more determined to keep every nickel that comes your way. And so I think it’s that and much more of the income is going to people who, if not for luck, would never have succeeded in these winner-take-all markets.</p>
<p>They’re talented and hardworking, to be sure, but they needed luck too. And the fact that they think they did it all on their own makes them determined to hold onto every nickel, and because they have so much, they’re able to hire the political system to give them tax cuts —</p>
<p>Kiely: So it’s an entitlement mentality that you’re trying to combat.</p>
<p>Frank: Yeah. And the irony is that that doesn’t serve them well. So they can build bigger mansions — so what? Have more expensive parties? That just raises the bar when they all do it. And if they were a little bit more willing to embrace the fact that they were lucky, they would actually be happier. You know, people would like them better. You know, who would you rather have dinner with, the guy who says, “We worked hard, but yeah, we had some lucky breaks along the way” or the person who stubbornly insists he did it all himself? You know, that’s an easy call.</p>
<p>Kiely: So it sounds like some of this revenue might have to be used to put extremely wealthy people on the couch so they can get their head shrunk down a little bit and understand that they can be happier with a smaller house —</p>
<p>Frank: Well, all you have to do is talk to them. It doesn’t work to remind them that they’ve been lucky. That’s what Obama tried to do in his “you didn’t build that” speech: “Well, look, if it hadn’t been for the system we all built, you couldn’t have succeeded in that way.” Oh, they got so angry when they heard that. Elizabeth Warren, the same thing. There was vitriol all over the internet about those speeches.</p>
<p>But what I’ve discovered is that if you don’t remind a successful person that she’s been lucky, if you instead say, “Can you think of any examples of lucky breaks you enjoyed along the way to the top?” they seem to find the question interesting. They don’t get angry that you posed it. They think of examples. Their eyes light up. They want to tell you about them. When they tell you about one, that kindles the memory of another and then pretty soon they’re asking, “Why aren’t we supporting these public investments we were talking about?” So how you frame it really does matter. But we’re learning more about that now, I think.</p>
<p>Kiely: All right. Robert Frank, soon-to-be psychiatrist-in-chief for the nation. [laughter] Thank you so much for your time.</p>
<p>Kathy Kiely, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and teacher, has reported on national politics for a number of news organizations, including USA TODAY, National Journal, the New York Daily News and The Houston Post. She’s been involved in the coverage of every presidential campaign since 1980.</p>
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Robert Frank Talks ‘Radical Pragmatism’ and the Economy (Audio)
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https://truthdig.com/articles/robert-frank-talks-radical-pragmatism-and-the-economy-audio/
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2016-10-31
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Robert Frank Talks ‘Radical Pragmatism’ and the Economy (Audio)
<p>By Kathy Kiely / <a href="http://billmoyers.com/story/robert-frank-talks-radical-pragmatism-economy/" type="external">Moyers &amp; Company</a></p>
<p />
<p>&#160; &#160; Economist Robert Frank. (Robert Frank)</p>
<p>Robert H. Frank is one of America’s leading economists. In addition to reams of textbooks, he has written a number of books looking at the impact of the nation’s widening income gap and the habits of the people who inhabit the economic stratosphere. The most recent is <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10663.html" type="external">Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy</a>. Recently, he stopped by the offices of BillMoyers.com for a conversation about the economic challenges facing the nation and the issues that he thinks the next president will have to address. This transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.</p>
<p />
<p>Kathy Kiely: So tell me a little bit about, Robert Frank, your intellectual history. How did you come to be so interested in income inequality?</p>
<p>Robert Frank: I started writing about competition for rank back in the early 1980s, late 1970s. The standard economic models assume that people care only about their absolute levels of consumption — you know, how big is their house, how fast is their car — in absolute terms. But those kinds of evaluations are almost always heavily context-dependent, so if you ask yourself, “Is my house okay?” the answer to that question would depend really on the context that you’re in.</p>
<p>I was a Peace Corps volunteer before I went to graduate school and I lived in a two-room house with no electricity, no plumbing, in rural Nepal. Never once during the two years I lived in that house did it ever occur to me for an instant that the house was unsatisfactory in any way. It was a really quite nice house actually, in the context where I was living then. If I lived in a house like that in Ithaca, or any US city really, my kids would’ve been ashamed for their friends to see where we lived. It would’ve been shameful for me to have people know that we lived in a house like that. It would be a clear signal that I’d failed in some spectacular way to meet even the minimal expectations of society.</p>
<p>And so, you know, is my house okay? The answer is that depends, and it depends on context and the context is very local.</p>
<p>So if context matters, then the standard economic models that assume it doesn’t matter lead you to many wrong conclusions. So I’ve been writing about that now for 35 years. And the entry point for inequality is that, as I say, context is local, but for technological reasons, which I’ve written about elsewhere too, we’ve seen a move to markets that <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/329317/the-winner-take-all-society-by-robert-frank/9780140259957/" type="external">Phil Cook and I call winner take all markets</a>.</p>
<p>These are — I mean, in your industry it’s very prominent. You don’t need the local newspaper columnist or radio reporter. Everything is available on the internet to everyone at any moment, and so whoever is best at the particular task at hand, that person gets the whole market. It’s not quite that exaggerated, but that’s the trend that we’ve been seeing, and with that have come many benefits. It’s better to consume the best than the third best.</p>
<p>&#160; The Winner-Take-All Effect</p>
<p>But at the same time, it’s led to an enormous concentration of economic rewards in the hands of the people who are judged to be best. They’re often best by only a barely perceptible margin. Maybe they’re not even best. Maybe they just got a lucky break and came to people’s attention before the truly best performer did and then the initial success built on itself.</p>
<p>But anyway, the trend has been for income to concentrate at the top of the ladder, and when that happens — you know, people at the top of the ladder are normal. They do what you and I do, what everyone else does when they have more income. They spend it and they build bigger houses, they buy more expensive automobiles, they take more expensive vacations, the diamonds they get for their partners are bigger. All those things are normal, and there’s no indication I’ve ever seen that people in the middle class get angry about that. If anything, they’re interested. They want to see pictures of the mansions and the yachts and read about what the rich people do.</p>
<p>Kiely: Then why are people so angry in this election?</p>
<p>Frank: The translation of what the people at the top do to the people in the middle is indirect. The people in the middle, as I say, don’t seem to care that the people at the top have a lot. You’re right, now there does seem to be some concern that people like Donald Trump, who claims to have billions, also admits to not having paid any federal income tax for a long time. That I think does arouse anger and concern across a pretty broad spectrum of the population. But in terms of the actual things rich people buy, I think most people feel that the people at the top earned their money fair and square—that’s true in some cases, not true in others.</p>
<p>But the people just below the top, they travel in the same social circles as the people at the top. They go to the same weddings, the same parties, the same gatherings, they belong to the same clubs. When they see that the very richest people are now hosting their daughters’ wedding receptions at home rather than in a hotel or country club, they then feel, “We need a ballroom,” so they build a bigger house.</p>
<p>Then there’s a group just below them, maybe it’s the custom now to have dinner parties for 24, not 18: “We need a bigger dining room.” They build bigger, and one step at a time, it cascades all the way down the income ladder. And unless you invoke something like that spending cascade is what I call it, you can’t really make sense of the fact that the family in the middle, the median earner, whose real income is essentially the same as it was four decades ago, why is that family buying a house that’s 50 percent bigger than what the median family bought four decades ago? What’s driving that? It’s not that they have more money. That’s not the reason for it.</p>
<p>Kiely: Is it keeping up with the Joneses on steroids?</p>
<p>Frank: I’ve never liked that term. Somebody who’s trying to — but, yes, in a manner of speaking, it is that. The term to me evokes a deep human frailty. Somebody is trying to appear richer that he is. He’s insecure, he’s trying to mimic a standard that he’s not really entitled to on the merits of his own income.</p>
<p>So, yes, that a pejorative term in my experience of how people use it, and the phenomenon I’m trying to call attention to would exist even if there were none of that. So the median family, it’s gone into debt to buy a house that’s at least 50&#160;or 75 percent more expensive than what the median family was spending in 1970.</p>
<p>&#160; Why Context Matters</p>
<p>The reason it’s done that is much less because they envy the houses of other people like them. It’s because unless you spend as much as other people like you are spending on a house, your kids will go to bad schools. The link between school quality and neighborhood house prices in the school areas is very strong and direct. The better schools are located in the neighborhoods where the houses are more expensive. So if you’re the family in the middle and it’s your aim to have your kids attend a school of just average quality — you know, we would judge harshly a parent who wasn’t at least that ambitious — then what do you have to do? You have to buy a house that’s roughly near the price of what people like you are spending on houses.</p>
<p>When all the families in that middle of the income distribution do that, what do they achieve? Nothing. You know, they just bid up the prices of the houses in the better school districts. Still half of all kids go to bottom-half schools, the exact same as before. But now families are in debt, they’re not able to meet their bills month by month. Many of them file for bankruptcy. It’s just been an enormous squeeze on the people in the middle, and that’s driven by the spending at the top. And the reason we see more of it now is that the spending on the top is so much greater in relation to spending elsewhere in the income distribution.</p>
<p>That’s happened before. You know, when do you read about luxury? You read about it when the people at the top have been pulling away from everyone else. We read about it in the Gilded Age, the great fortunes of the late 19th century. You notice it when there’s that contrast. But it’s still going on under normal circumstances. Right after World War II, incomes were growing at about the same rate for families up and down the income ladder and it was still true that what the family in the middle spent on a house depended on what the people at the top spent, but it wasn’t — there was growth in balance up and down the line, so we didn’t notice that families were getting squeezed relative to last year. Those stories didn’t break through.</p>
<p>Again, it’s context. If you saw a seventh grader in the third grade, everybody would notice and remark on that. If you see a seven-footer at an NBA game, it’s normal.</p>
<p>Kiely: So is the answer to try to escape context or what’s the answer?</p>
<p>Frank: Well you cannot escape context, that’s just the way we’re wired. “Are we almost there yet?” Well, if there’s five miles to go, “Are we almost there yet?” If it’s a 500–mile trip, yes, we’re almost there. If it’s a six-mile trip, we’re not almost there. It’s just inescapably shaped by context.</p>
<p>So if you can’t change the fact that we’re sensitive to context what can you do? Well, the claim is that people at the top are spending their money in ways that don’t do them any good really but at the same time cause problems for others, the people in the middle who are put under pressure by that spending. Why doesn’t it help the people that are rich? Why do they do it if it doesn’t help them? Well, they think they’ll be happier if they buy a bigger house because when I think about my bigger house, I imagine I’ll a relatively big house. But everybody’s buying a bigger house. And when that happens it just raises the bar that defines big. Forty thousand square feet in Dallas isn’t big anymore. So there’s no evidence whatsoever that the people at the top would be happier if they all had 100,000-square-foot mansions than if they all had 50,000-square-foot mansions.</p>
<p>I think if the truth could be known, it would be clear that they’d be less happy. It’s just such a nuisance to manage a property that’s twice as big. Once you get up to a certain size there’s just no gain. But if everybody else has one and you don’t, then people begin to talk, “His business is slipping. Is he not able to compete any longer?” Or you can’t entertain in the style that’s expected of people in that circle. So yes there’s a sense in which people are a prisoner of what others do. If you want to see well and others stand up, you have to stand up, but if everybody stands up, nobody sees any better than before. So there are lots of situations that have that character and this is one of them.</p>
<p>Kiely: Is this a problem that we should be talking about in the presidential campaign?</p>
<p>Frank: In general it’s a problem that we can solve politically. Given that we can solve it and that the gains from solving it would be so enormous, it’s a crime that we’re not talking about it.</p>
<p>Kiely: And how could we solve it?</p>
<p>Frank: Well if the incentive to have a more expensive party is misleadingly large for the individual, and it is, what do parents want? They want the people who attend their daughter’s wedding to go away feeling like they had a good time. If they serve McDonald’s hamburgers, everyone’s going to go away saying, “Oh, didn’t they understand what an important occasion this was?” The cost of admission is to spend roughly what other families like you typically spend on a wedding. In 1980 the average expenditure is the US was about $10,000. Last year it was $31,000.</p>
<p>Nobody thinks the people getting married who are spending $31,000 are happier because of that fact than the people who were getting married at $10,000 in 1980. In fact, there’s some evidence that they’re less happy because the extra debt they take on creates problems for them. And yet the individual incentives are to spend more if others are spending more. So the simplest solution to that is the one we use in other policy domains. If the problem is people put too much CO2 in the air, we have to ask why are they doing it? Because it’s free to do it. It causes harm to others and it’s expensive to filter it out and if it’s free just to dump it and the harm to you of any one person dumping it is negligible, then of course people are going to dump it.</p>
<p>The simple solution, charge them for dumping it. And what we know is that when we have implemented fees for activities that cause harm to others, people clean up their act in short order. It’s a very powerful effect. And so the analogous solution in this case would be to scrap the income tax completely. In its place adopt a much more steeply progressive consumption tax. And what that would mean —</p>
<p>&#160; Don’t tax income; tax consumption</p>
<p>Kiely: So you agree with the flat taxers?</p>
<p>Frank: No.</p>
<p>Kiely: A fair tax, is that what they call it?</p>
<p>Frank: The fair tax is anything but fair. It’s a gratuitously regressive tax. It would be an awful burden for low-income families. It would be a huge windfall for the very rich. No, the tax that would address this expenditure cascades is a steeply progressive consumption tax. And the way it would work — it sounds frighteningly complicated, but the way it would work would actually be simple. You’d report your income to the IRS just like you do now; we should simplify that while we’re at it. In addition, people would report how much they’d increased their stock of savings during the year. People do that now for 401(k) plans and other things. The difference between those two numbers, your income minus your savings, that’s how much you spent during the year.</p>
<p>We don’t have to keep track of receipts for every individual item to figure out how much you spend. Your spending can only go into two buckets, your savings and your consumption. If we know your income and we know your savings, then we can back out what your consumption must have been. So income minus savings, that’s your consumption. Then knock off a big standard deduction, let’s say $30,000 for a family of four. That’s your taxable consumption. Rates start low. People in the bottom half and slightly above would pay no more tax than they do under the current system. Once your consumption goes up beyond a certain point though, the rates begin rising and at really high levels of consumption, the rates can be extremely high.</p>
<p>Kiely: How high? What would the highest level be in your dream tax scheme?</p>
<p>Frank: Let me not frighten you but I’ll say, suppose it were 100 percent for people consuming already $5 million a year or more, what would that mean? We could never have a tax that high at the margin on income. People would say, rationally, “Why should I work to get more income, they’re going to take all of it if I do.”</p>
<p>If you have 100 percent rate on consumption beyond $5 million a year, what does that mean? That means the next thing you were thinking about buying — which, let’s be clear, it was not something urgent; it was something special that you were hoping to get. That thing, instead of costing $1 now costs you $2 — the $1 you pay for the thing and the $1 of extra tax that you’re levied because of that purchase. So by making additional purchases for people at the top of the ladder much more expensive, that would steer money out of those purchases and into savings and investment.</p>
<p>Kiely: So what would you say to somebody who’s the florist who supplies the flowers at the $31,000 wedding or paints the $40,000 mansion? There are those people who would say the excess spending helps fuel the economy. What do you say to those folks? The trickle-down effect.</p>
<p>Frank: The point’s often made that the spending of the rich does help employ people, to which I say, “Especially since we’re in a situation now where we have not fully recovered from the Great Recession, don’t implement this tax now.” Instead, announce that it’s going to be phased in once the labor market becomes tight, which may happen in the next year or two years or three years from now. If we did that we would see an explosion of new spending right away, not one nickel of it at government expense. People would be, “Oh, if we’re going to build that wing on the mansion we better do it now before they come after us with this progressive consumption tax.</p>
<p>That would put more people to work — florists, all of them. Then once the economy’s back at full employment, phase the tax in gradually. What that would do would be to cause a gradual shift away from consumption toward extra savings and investment. Again, the incomes are growing very rapidly at the top of the income ladder. So what we would see would be a less rapid rate of growth of demand for stuff that the high-end people buy and a more rapid rate of growth of demand for everything else. Public goods — we could use some of the tax revenue generated by this tax to fix the potholes in the roads.</p>
<p>Who’s happier — a guy driving a $300,000 Ferrari on roads riddled with foot-deep potholes or somebody driving a $150,000 Porsche 911 Turbo on well-maintained roads? It’s a choice. We could have either one of those. Right now we have the potholes and the more expensive cars. You don’t give up much when you scale back from the Ferrari to the Porsche, that’s still a pretty good car. It’s got all of the design features that really matter.</p>
<p>Kiely: Have you checked this out personally?</p>
<p>Frank: I’m a car buff, yes, I know these things [laughs]. So that’s the response. But there are many ways to generate employment. Florists and gratuitously expensive weddings aren’t inherently a better form of employment that people planting landscaping in public spaces. There are lots of things we could do that would generate employment that I think in general people would value more highly.</p>
<p>Kiely: So have you run the numbers on this? How would the revenue to the government compare to what it is now under the income tax?</p>
<p>Frank: Well, what we know is that even the rich respond to higher prices. There are in New York many billionaires, they could afford to buy the whole building they live in, so why would a progressive consumption tax get them to choose a smaller dwelling to live in? The reason is, what we know from the evidence is that in cities where real estate prices per square foot are very high, even the billionaires live in much smaller spaces than in other cities where real estate prices are lower. So it’s quite common for a billionaire to live in an apartment that’s under 10,000 square feet in New York City.</p>
<p>Kiely: Poor baby.</p>
<p>Frank: It’s so expensive in New York City, everybody lives in more cramped spaces here so 10,000 space in this context feels like a lot of space. In Dallas that same man would be buying a 40,000-square-foot mansion somewhere in the suburbs. So we know the rich would respond. We don’t know exactly how much they would respond. The proposal that makes the most sense, and it’s due to <a href="http://www1.udel.edu/PR/Messenger/99/3/chaplin.html" type="external">Larry Seidman</a> at the University of Delaware, is to start off with a progressive consumption surtax, levy it only on consumption above half a million dollars a year.</p>
<p>&#160; A gradual changeover</p>
<p>See how people respond and then gradually increase the rates on it while you’re reducing the rates on the income tax so that over a period of time the consumption tax would replace the income tax and we could calibrate the rates in accordance with what we saw in the way of revenue coming in, consumption, adaptations to the new prices and so on.</p>
<p>Kiely: So this is a pretty radical shift, right? It sounds like you’re shifting from an economy that is really — in many ways, our economy is consumer-based. We talk about when we try to evaluate how well or how badly we’re doing as a country economically we talk about consumer confidence. Talk a little bit about what the implications would be for us as a society.</p>
<p>Frank: Well, consumption is about two-thirds of all spending. And people worry that a consumption tax would depress the economy because it would depress consumption spending. What matters for output and employment is not consumption spending but total spending. Total spending is the sum of three or four major categories.</p>
<p>The big three in our economy are consumption, the biggest, next comes investment, spending by private firms on capital investments. Government is another big one. So if we shift spending as a proportion of the national income away from consumption and toward investment or public production, a good life can never be had with just private consumption. You need good schools, you need good roads, you need safety features to keep people from harm. And those expenditures contribute to well-being too. The trick is to find a balance and there’s very good reason to believe that we’ve strayed from the best balance in the US economy.</p>
<p>Kiely: Why do you say that? What are some of the reasons to believe that?</p>
<p>Frank: Just the evidence is very clear that when all the mansions double in size the rich don’t get any happier than before. That’s a lot of money being spent to yield zero measurable result. When all the weddings get twice as expensive, nobody gets any happier. So that’s like pouring money down the toilet. It’s not a productive use of resources. We know that research on diseases that cause premature death yields real benefits for people, the fact that if you kid gets a cancer now there’s a good chance that it could be treated and they’ll survive into adulthood. Those things matter.</p>
<p>Kiely: What do you think are the chances of this proposal being seriously considered in a country where after 9/11 our president told us, “Let’s go shopping”?</p>
<p>Frank: You know, this is not a natural way for people to think about things. If you think about how a tax increase would affect you, it’s a completely natural way to think about that is that it’s going to make it more difficult for me to buy what I want. Why is that? Well, if I have a tax increase that means I’ll have less money.</p>
<p>The natural thing to would be to think back to the last time there was a big tax increase and see how it affected you. Well, the problem with that is that there hasn’t been a tax increase that anyone can remember — not one of a significant magnitude. So the next best thing is just to think back to the times when by circumstance you have had less money.</p>
<p>That might be when you got divorced, might be when you lost your job or your business had a bad year or you have a home fire — who knows? All those things are things that caused you to have less money but didn’t affect the money incomes of anyone else around you. So those things, those things that caused you to have less money really did make you less able to buy what you want. If everybody like you had less money, the effect would be completely different.</p>
<p>But I don’t expect people to come upon that realization of their own accord overnight. That’s kind of a subtle one. If somebody naturally thought about that, I would think that was a weird person in a way. What we know though is that progress can still happen over time.</p>
<p>When for the example the economists were first proposing that we ought to have tradable pollution permits as a way to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from the coal plants in the Midwest, the environmental groups were livid, they said, “Oh, the economists are so immoral they’re proposing that we let polluters pollute to their heart’s content just by paying a fee.” What a strange way to conceptualize what firms do. They’re not saying, “Oh, they’re going to let me buy permits now.” Firms don’t want to pollute, they just pollute because it’s cheaper to pollute than not to pollute. If you have to pay to pollute, then you figure out ways to filter the smoke out.</p>
<p>&#160; Don’t tax income; tax consumption</p>
<p>How did that change get adopted? It didn’t get adopted because the public demanded it; it got adopted because freshmen took Economics 101, they learned about the logic of effluent charges from their professors in those courses. Then they went to work on the Hill in Washington, some of them, and they painstakingly educated their congressmen that pollution charges actually makes good sense.</p>
<p>And 25 years after the idea was first proposed, it was adopted as an amendment to the Clean Air Act in 1995. And overnight the pollution targets started getting hit faster than they expected; the cost of hitting them fell precipitously. It was a huge stampede to do it once the idea demonstrated that it made sense. And I think that’s the route along which this will happen if it happens.</p>
<p>Kiely: So do you see any interest in the policymaking community and your proposal?</p>
<p>Frank: Oh absolutely. I mean, the progressive consumption tax has been proposed at various junctures in history. Irving Fisher proposed it in the early 20th century. It was proposed in 1995 in the Senate by Sam Nunn and Pete Domenici — a Democrat and Republican bipartisan bill. It never came up for a vote. People moved on, there were other battles.</p>
<p>But two years ago, two economists at the American Enterprise Institute published a book advocating the progressive consumption tax. It’s a policy that could win support across both sides of the aisle. It has a long history of bipartisan advocacy.</p>
<p>And so when we ever find ourselves in a political climate in which we could ask what’s the right thing to do to make progress, I think that will be one of the first things at the top of the discussion list. We’re not in a climate like that yet but that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t soon find ourselves in one. The same-sex marriage transformation of public opinion caught everybody off guard, but once people start thinking in a different way about a subject and talking with one another, things can flip surprisingly quickly.</p>
<p>Kiely: And how would you assess Hillary Clinton’s economic policies?</p>
<p>Frank: They’re quite pragmatic. I think they come from a deep policy wonk tradition. You know, the recent proposal she made for a refundable tax credit to help alleviate deep poverty is in line with what serious public policy students on both sides of the aisle have been writing for decades. There’s nothing radical in her proposal. It’s a more progressive agenda than we’ve seen from any candidate in the past, but I think it’s not outside the mainstream by any stretch.</p>
<p>Kiely: Does the next president need to get outside the mainstream?</p>
<p>Frank: You know, things happen incrementally until they don’t. I don’t sense that the American public is ripe for revolution. There are other environments where inequality has provoked much more anger and resentment than it seems to have done so far here. But revolutions, when they come, are never widely predicted.</p>
<p>There was the Arab Spring that occurred — nobody was predicting that to happen. The Soviet Union countries all dropped off the Soviet Bloc one after another in the late 1980s; nobody was predicting that except for a handful of people who’d been predicting it every year for 30 years. You know, the dynamics of public opinion are very difficult to forecast.</p>
<p>What you believe depends on what others you talk to believe. That’s true for me, that’s true for everyone. And when one belief changes, that means everybody who talks to that person is exposed to a different belief and if it’s a reasonable new belief, they can change their minds and then they’ll talk to people. So we do see prairie fires.</p>
<p>Kiely: If you were advising the next president of the United States, what would you tell that person to think about? What are the economic issues on the horizon as you see them that we as a country should be talking about and thinking about?</p>
<p>Frank: I think one of our main problems going forward is to redress the long neglected maintenance of our stock of infrastructure. There’s a report card put out by the American Society of Civil Engineers periodically and it gives American infrastructure a D+ rating. And the figure they estimate is $3.6 trillion of overdue maintenance, never mind building a high-speed train.</p>
<p>That’s off the table. Just patching stuff that’s broken, dams that could collapse at any moment, roads that are substandard — this is one of the most desperately needed things to attend to and now’s a good time to do it because interest rates are at historical lows and there are still unemployed people who know how to do the tasks that need to be done.</p>
<p>Then I think longer term there’s concern that the new advances in AI, artificial intelligence, are putting people out of work who never thought they’d be automated out of their jobs.</p>
<p>Kiely: Such as?</p>
<p>Frank: The radiologists, for example, used to sit there in front of their screens and stare intently at the X-rays and try to spot anomalies. Now algorithms can spot anomalies better than they can and one machine that’s got an algorithm like that embedded in it can replace a thousand radiologists.</p>
<p>Those people are educated, they’ll find something useful to do without question, but there are lots of things like that where — you know, we’ve heard predictions that there’d be a shortage of things for people to do for a long time. Historically, that’s not proved accurate. Every time technology has wiped out a certain group of jobs — tollbooth collectors, things like that — other jobs have emerged to take their place. That could still happen, but I think the concern that it won’t happen is greater now.</p>
<p>You know, the labor market has been the primary source of income for people. Going forward we may not be able to rely on that as a primary source of income. It’s not that we’ll be too poor to support people. There’ll be more income as a result of these technologies, but how do we get it into the hands of people? And so we’ve started to hear now even conservatives calling cautiously for a basic income guarantee.</p>
<p>&#160; The case for a basic income</p>
<p>Kiely: Do you think that’s a good idea?</p>
<p>Frank: It’s not going to work in the form that it’s traditionally proposed. There are many ways in which it is a good idea. Milton Friedman proposed it in the form of a negative income tax back in the 1950s. The idea would be everybody gets a payment every year, no matter whether you’re rich or poor, and then other forms of income get taxed, so if you’re Bill Gates, this payment you get gets wiped out by all the tax you paid, but the payment in his scheme would be big enough to lift an urban family from poverty. So today that would be about $25,000 a year.</p>
<p>If you gave people a payment large enough to lift an urban family from poverty, the effect of that would be that a group of, let’s say, 10 families could form, pool their payments — so we’ve got 10 families, $250,000 a year. They would buy some acreage in Oregon, they would start a commune, they would raise chickens and goats, they would grow vegetables. They could practice their guitars in the morning, they could debate politics and the arts in the afternoon and they could go skinny dipping in the pond, all completely at taxpayer expense.</p>
<p>And so if you imagine what would happen in that — and it might not be very many who did that, but some would. Then there would soon be an eager audience for video footage of them on the nightly news. You know, you’re going to work every day, paying taxes, doing a hard job, these people are having fun all day at your expense. That would not be politically sustainable, in my opinion.</p>
<p>What we could do is give a much smaller basic income grant, much too small to form a group that could live wholly at taxpayer expense like that, and then offer to supplement that by extending an opportunity to perform useful tasks in the public realm for a small wage, smaller than the private sector wage, which in combination with the basic income grant, would lift you from poverty.</p>
<p>Kiely: So what kind of tasks do you have in mind?</p>
<p>Frank: Oh, there’s been a lot of research on this. You know, transporting elderly and infirm people around, there’s not nearly enough of that done by the private sector. Planting seedlings on hillsides that are eroding, graffiti removal and staffing daycare centers. There’s all sorts of things that people without a lot of skill could do with proper supervision. You could contract the management of tasks like that out to the private sector if you’re worried about government bureaucracy expanding too much.</p>
<p>There’s sort of an old tradition of public service employment. The WPA projects produced some wonderful additions to the nation’s stock of capital, and I think at a time when there aren’t enough jobs to keep people busy in the private sector, attending to obviously useful tasks in the public sector would be something we would want to do anyway, quite apart from the need to get income into people’s hands.</p>
<p>Kiely: If I had to ask you for a shorthand — maybe a word or a couple of words to describe the type of economic philosophy you’re proposing — what would it be? Have you thought about that?</p>
<p>Frank: I was once thinking to title a book Radical Pragmatism. The publisher didn’t like the title so I didn’t use it, but it always seemed like it was kind of a pair of words that captured the essence of the thinking behind proposals like these. They’re at one level radical. They’re outside the mainstream, certainly. But at another level, they’re deeply pragmatic and they’re rooted in what we know about human psychology and political reality as it exists.</p>
<p>Kiely: Let me just ask you one last question, and that’s about your latest book, which is kind of about the conflation of luck and skill, or the notion that a lucky person is skillful. Why did you write that book and does it fit into what you’ve been talking about, and how?</p>
<p>Frank: Yeah, I think the tendency — what we know from the social science is that chance events matter much more in life outcomes than most people imagine. We have a kind of hindsight bias. We see a successful outcome, we look at the usual explanations for outcomes like that — hard work, talent and those are almost always important. But what we don’t see when we think about those things that way is that there are lots and lots of people who were just as talented and hardworking who didn’t succeed. Why didn’t they succeed?</p>
<p>Well, maybe the promotion that they would’ve gotten had it not been for a slightly more qualified candidate didn’t come at the right time and so they missed some train, or there was a teacher that kept them out of trouble in the 11th grade. That teacher wasn’t there. Those kinds of things don’t really enter into people’s narratives about why they’re successful and I think the evidence is pretty clear that if you think you did it all yourself, you’re way more determined to keep every nickel that comes your way. And so I think it’s that and much more of the income is going to people who, if not for luck, would never have succeeded in these winner-take-all markets.</p>
<p>They’re talented and hardworking, to be sure, but they needed luck too. And the fact that they think they did it all on their own makes them determined to hold onto every nickel, and because they have so much, they’re able to hire the political system to give them tax cuts —</p>
<p>Kiely: So it’s an entitlement mentality that you’re trying to combat.</p>
<p>Frank: Yeah. And the irony is that that doesn’t serve them well. So they can build bigger mansions — so what? Have more expensive parties? That just raises the bar when they all do it. And if they were a little bit more willing to embrace the fact that they were lucky, they would actually be happier. You know, people would like them better. You know, who would you rather have dinner with, the guy who says, “We worked hard, but yeah, we had some lucky breaks along the way” or the person who stubbornly insists he did it all himself? You know, that’s an easy call.</p>
<p>Kiely: So it sounds like some of this revenue might have to be used to put extremely wealthy people on the couch so they can get their head shrunk down a little bit and understand that they can be happier with a smaller house —</p>
<p>Frank: Well, all you have to do is talk to them. It doesn’t work to remind them that they’ve been lucky. That’s what Obama tried to do in his “you didn’t build that” speech: “Well, look, if it hadn’t been for the system we all built, you couldn’t have succeeded in that way.” Oh, they got so angry when they heard that. Elizabeth Warren, the same thing. There was vitriol all over the internet about those speeches.</p>
<p>But what I’ve discovered is that if you don’t remind a successful person that she’s been lucky, if you instead say, “Can you think of any examples of lucky breaks you enjoyed along the way to the top?” they seem to find the question interesting. They don’t get angry that you posed it. They think of examples. Their eyes light up. They want to tell you about them. When they tell you about one, that kindles the memory of another and then pretty soon they’re asking, “Why aren’t we supporting these public investments we were talking about?” So how you frame it really does matter. But we’re learning more about that now, I think.</p>
<p>Kiely: All right. Robert Frank, soon-to-be psychiatrist-in-chief for the nation. [laughter] Thank you so much for your time.</p>
<p>Kathy Kiely, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and teacher, has reported on national politics for a number of news organizations, including USA TODAY, National Journal, the New York Daily News and The Houston Post. She’s been involved in the coverage of every presidential campaign since 1980.</p>
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<p />
<p>The legislative Science, Technology and Telecommunications Committee met in Albuquerque to hear from a panel of experts about the advancement of the technology and its possible uses as well as concerns about privacy.</p>
<p>Committee Chair Rep. James Smith, R-Sandia Park, said future legislation will have to target the uses and issues that stem from those uses given that the technology is always evolving. "We have some work to do," he told the committee.</p>
<p>New Mexico will be playing catch-up as more than two dozen other states already have enacted laws addressing unmanned aircraft systems.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Maryland lawmakers decided earlier this year that only the state, and not local governments, can enact a law or take other action to prohibit, restrict or regulate the testing or operation of unmanned aircraft. In Virginia, lawmakers passed a bill that requires law enforcement agencies to obtain a search warrant for use of drones.</p>
<p>Legislation that would have prohibited individuals or a state agency from using a drone or unmanned aircraft to gather evidence or conduct surveillance without a warrant or other consent unanimously passed the New Mexico Senate. The measure stalled in the House.</p>
<p>It's unclear when lawmakers will have another chance to debate the issue given that the next session in January is dedicated to the budget and other fiscal matters.</p>
<p>Some who testified before the committee cited instances where drones have harassed livestock, interrupted outdoor activities and trespassed over private property. They argued that proposed rules being considered by the Federal Aviation Administration deal more with economic and safety benefits rather than privacy issues - and that's where state legislatures have room to set policy.</p>
<p>Janet Jarratt, a Valencia County farmer and board member of the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, said current law doesn't allow property owners to protect themselves from the trespass of drones.</p>
<p>"I don't think we can underestimate the potential for the misuse of these things," she said. "The Legislature has it in its power to ensure the protection of its constituents while allowing the legal use with property owners' permission."</p>
<p>Dennis Zaklan, deputy director of New Mexico State University's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Test Center in Las Cruces, told lawmakers there's also growing interest among state agencies, cities and counties to use drones as a tool for everything from inspecting infrastructure and collecting data about city parks and desert landscapes to enforcing the law.</p>
<p>Zaklan suggested lawmakers consider creating a state office that would be dedicated to helping agencies and municipalities with their drone needs and pilot training to ensure tax dollars are spent efficiently.</p>
<p />
<p />
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NM lawmakers discuss regulations for drones
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https://abqjournal.com/608822/nm-lawmakers-play-catchup-on-drone-regulations.html
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NM lawmakers discuss regulations for drones
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<p />
<p>The legislative Science, Technology and Telecommunications Committee met in Albuquerque to hear from a panel of experts about the advancement of the technology and its possible uses as well as concerns about privacy.</p>
<p>Committee Chair Rep. James Smith, R-Sandia Park, said future legislation will have to target the uses and issues that stem from those uses given that the technology is always evolving. "We have some work to do," he told the committee.</p>
<p>New Mexico will be playing catch-up as more than two dozen other states already have enacted laws addressing unmanned aircraft systems.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Maryland lawmakers decided earlier this year that only the state, and not local governments, can enact a law or take other action to prohibit, restrict or regulate the testing or operation of unmanned aircraft. In Virginia, lawmakers passed a bill that requires law enforcement agencies to obtain a search warrant for use of drones.</p>
<p>Legislation that would have prohibited individuals or a state agency from using a drone or unmanned aircraft to gather evidence or conduct surveillance without a warrant or other consent unanimously passed the New Mexico Senate. The measure stalled in the House.</p>
<p>It's unclear when lawmakers will have another chance to debate the issue given that the next session in January is dedicated to the budget and other fiscal matters.</p>
<p>Some who testified before the committee cited instances where drones have harassed livestock, interrupted outdoor activities and trespassed over private property. They argued that proposed rules being considered by the Federal Aviation Administration deal more with economic and safety benefits rather than privacy issues - and that's where state legislatures have room to set policy.</p>
<p>Janet Jarratt, a Valencia County farmer and board member of the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau, said current law doesn't allow property owners to protect themselves from the trespass of drones.</p>
<p>"I don't think we can underestimate the potential for the misuse of these things," she said. "The Legislature has it in its power to ensure the protection of its constituents while allowing the legal use with property owners' permission."</p>
<p>Dennis Zaklan, deputy director of New Mexico State University's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Test Center in Las Cruces, told lawmakers there's also growing interest among state agencies, cities and counties to use drones as a tool for everything from inspecting infrastructure and collecting data about city parks and desert landscapes to enforcing the law.</p>
<p>Zaklan suggested lawmakers consider creating a state office that would be dedicated to helping agencies and municipalities with their drone needs and pilot training to ensure tax dollars are spent efficiently.</p>
<p />
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<p>The Guardian reports that New Mexico, with its thousands of square miles of sun-soaked, wind-swept land, is vying to become the epicenter of the new green economy. Given the right tax breaks and technological breakthroughs, the Land of Enchantment could become the Saudi Arabia of sun.</p>
<p>Guardian:</p>
<p>Wind and biomass are popular in New Mexico, but the desert sun that draws millions of tourists here also makes its solar power potential the second largest in America.</p>
<p>So it is that the Clean Energy State’s future just may lie in the south corner of the capital city, at the end of a dry road marked by a mile-long sculpture of a snake with jewelled eyes.</p>
<p />
<p>The road ends at Mesa del Sol, a 13,000-acre development area that is poised to become a hotbed of the US solar industry.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/24/energy.energyefficiency" type="external">Read more</a></p>
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The Clean-Energy State
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/the-clean-energy-state/
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2008-06-24
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The Clean-Energy State
<p>The Guardian reports that New Mexico, with its thousands of square miles of sun-soaked, wind-swept land, is vying to become the epicenter of the new green economy. Given the right tax breaks and technological breakthroughs, the Land of Enchantment could become the Saudi Arabia of sun.</p>
<p>Guardian:</p>
<p>Wind and biomass are popular in New Mexico, but the desert sun that draws millions of tourists here also makes its solar power potential the second largest in America.</p>
<p>So it is that the Clean Energy State’s future just may lie in the south corner of the capital city, at the end of a dry road marked by a mile-long sculpture of a snake with jewelled eyes.</p>
<p />
<p>The road ends at Mesa del Sol, a 13,000-acre development area that is poised to become a hotbed of the US solar industry.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jun/24/energy.energyefficiency" type="external">Read more</a></p>
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<p>Photo by Nathaniel St. Clair</p>
<p>“He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.”</p>
<p>– President Trump, re Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”</p>
<p>Numerous US intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.”</p>
<p>As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this of course is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that.</p>
<p>Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media which has questioned this thesis.</p>
<p>What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind:</p>
<p>How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets. The&#160;Washington Post&#160;has as well reported that Twitter “makes it easy for users to hide their true identities.”&#160;&#160;&#160;Even if these communications were actually sent from Russia, how do we know that they came from the Russian government, and not from any of the other 144.3 million residents of Russia?</p>
<p>Even if they were sent by the Russian government, we have to ask: Why would they do that? Do the Russians think the United States is a Third World, under-developed, backward Banana Republic easily influenced and moved by a bunch of simple condemnations of the plight of blacks in America and the Clinton “dynasty”? Or clichéd statements about other controversial issues, such as gun rights and immigration? If so, many Democratic and Republican officials would love to know the secret of the Russians’ method. Consider also that Facebook has stated that 90 percent of the alleged-Russian-bought content that ran on its network did not even mention Trump or Clinton.</p>
<p>On top of all this is the complete absence of even the charge, much less with any supporting evidence, of Russian interference in the actual voting or counting of votes.</p>
<p>After his remark suggesting he believed Putin’s assertion that there had been no Russian meddling in the election, Trump – of course, as usual – attempted to backtrack and distant himself from his words after drawing criticism at home; while James Clapper declared: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.”</p>
<p>Given Clapper’s large-size lie referred to above, can Trump be faulted for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s Holy Writ? Purposeful lies of the intelligence community during the first Cold War were legendary, many hailed as brilliant tactics when later revealed. The CIA, for example, had phoney articles and editorials planted in foreign newspapers (real Fake News), made sex films of target subjects caught&#160;in flagrante delicto&#160;who had been lured to Agency safe houses by female agents, had Communist embassy personnel expelled because of phoney CIA documents, and much more.</p>
<p>The&#160;Post&#160;recently published an article entitled “How did Russian trolls get into your Facebook feed? Silicon Valley made it easy.” In the midst of this “exposé,” The&#160;Post&#160;stated: “There’s no way to tell if you personally saw a Russian post or tweet.”&#160;&#160;&#160;So … Do the Cold Warriors have a case to make or do they not? Or do they just want us to remember that the Russkis are bad? So it goes.</p>
<p>An organization in Czechoslovakia with the self-appointed name of European Values has produced a lengthy report entitled “ <a href="" type="internal">The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact</a>”. It includes a long list of people who have appeared on the Russian-owned TV station RT (formerly&#160;Russia Today), which can be seen in the US, the UK and other countries. Those who’ve been guests on RT are the “idiots” useful to Moscow. (The list is not complete. I’ve been on RT about five times, but I’m not listed. Where is my Idiot Badge?)</p>
<p>RT’s YouTube channel has more than two million followers and claims to be the “most-watched news network” on the video site. Its Facebook page has more than 4 million likes and followers. Can this explain why the powers-that-be forget about a thing called freedom-of-speech and treat the station like an enemy? The US government recently forced&#160;RT America&#160;to register as a foreign agent and has cut off the station’s Congressional press credentials.</p>
<p>The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically:</p>
<p>“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”</p>
<p>Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.”</p>
<p>So let’s see what other brilliance the New Cold War brings us. … Ah yes, another headline in the&#160;Post&#160;(November 18, 2017): “British alarm rising over possible Russian meddling in Brexit”. Of course, why else would the British people have voted to leave the European Union? But wait a moment, again, one of the British researchers behind the report “said that the accounts they analyzed – which claimed Russian as their language when they were set up but tweeted in English – posted a mixture of pro-‘leave’ and pro-‘remain’ messages regarding Brexit. Commentators have said that the goal may simply have been to sow discord and division in society.”</p>
<p>Was there ever a time when the&#160;Post&#160;would have been embarrassed to be so openly, amateurishly biased about Russia? Perhaps during the few years between the two Cold Wars.</p>
<p>In case you don’t remember how stupid Cold War Number One was …</p>
<p>+ 1948: ThePittsburgh Press&#160;published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party. This, and a number of other lists of “communists”, published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments.</p>
<p>+ Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.” This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean:</p>
<p>Q: What would happen to my insurance?</p>
<p>A: It would go to the Communists.</p>
<p>Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?</p>
<p>A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor.</p>
<p>+ 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools.</p>
<p>+ As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.” One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being ‘perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.’ Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take ‘perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy’?”</p>
<p>+ Throughout the cold war, traffic in phoney Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years. Here’s U.&#160;S. News and World Report&#160;in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war. Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists.</p>
<p>“First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the&#160;Congressional Record&#160;in 1962. This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin.</p>
<p>+ A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States. Here’s a small sample:</p>
<p>Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”</p>
<p>Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the&#160;American Legion Magazine: Interviewer: “I’ve been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina. Is that true?”</p>
<p>Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it’s true. There’s a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China. … There’s no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese. It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation’s moral fiber.”</p>
<p>Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin – marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin – are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country. Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.”</p>
<p>We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America’s spirit was fluoridation of the water.</p>
<p>+ Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anti-communist thriller mysteries. Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night”, boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets. After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. … They were Commies. … Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing. God, but it was fun!”</p>
<p>+ 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because it was tainted with “atheism and communism”, and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism. Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States. A bill in the US Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.” There was also opposition to UNESCO’s association with the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights.</p>
<p>+ 1955: A US Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist”, informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace. Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as “chauvinism”, “book-burning”, “colonialism”, “demagogy”, “witch hunt”, “reactionary”, “progressive”, and “exploitation”. Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.” After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet.</p>
<p>+ 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my innocent youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in “big time” football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard “is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities.”</p>
<p>+ 1960: US General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: “The whole idea is tokill&#160;the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”</p>
<p>+ 1966: The Boys Club of America is of course wholesome and patriotic. Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs. (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.) When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do. They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco. Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity. The ‘DuBois Clubs’ are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.”</p>
<p>+ 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan”, by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”). Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare … Nature of Red Record Companies … Destructive Nature of Beatle Music … Communist Subversion of Folk Music … Folk Music and the Negro Revolution … Folk Music and the College Revolution</p>
<p>+ 1968: William Calley, US Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: “In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by – I don’t know – pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh. I was there to destroy communism. We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies.”</p>
<p>+ 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy. They made life difficult for the lead scientist. The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.”</p>
<p>+ 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children’s ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can’t find a dictionary now that isn’t under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles.</p>
<p>+ The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-called “yellow rain” – and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead.</p>
<p>+ 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn’t care about soldiers’ social lives – “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said.</p>
<p>+ 1983: The US invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written “AA”, symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: “Eat shit, commie faggot.” … “I want to fuck communism out of this little island,” says a marine, “and fuck it right back to Moscow.”</p>
<p>+ 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” His words were picked up by at least two radio networks.</p>
<p>+ 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the US and Russia, the president replied: “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.” (The word is “svoboda”.)</p>
<p>+ 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism”. Russian film-maker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.”</p>
<p>+ 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears.</p>
<p>+1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don’t want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere.” As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his news gathering.</p>
<p>+ 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the US news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the&#160;Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists’ slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.” But it was all someone’s fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner.</p>
<p>NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others.</p>
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Cold War Number One: 70 Years of Daily National Stupidity; Cold War Number Two: Still in Its Youth, But Just as Stupid
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https://counterpunch.org/2017/12/07/cold-war-number-one-70-years-of-daily-national-stupidity-cold-war-number-two-still-in-its-youth-but-just-as-stupid/
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2017-12-07
| 4left
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Cold War Number One: 70 Years of Daily National Stupidity; Cold War Number Two: Still in Its Youth, But Just as Stupid
<p>Photo by Nathaniel St. Clair</p>
<p>“He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did.”</p>
<p>– President Trump, re Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”</p>
<p>Numerous US intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.”</p>
<p>As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this of course is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that.</p>
<p>Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media which has questioned this thesis.</p>
<p>What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind:</p>
<p>How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets. The&#160;Washington Post&#160;has as well reported that Twitter “makes it easy for users to hide their true identities.”&#160;&#160;&#160;Even if these communications were actually sent from Russia, how do we know that they came from the Russian government, and not from any of the other 144.3 million residents of Russia?</p>
<p>Even if they were sent by the Russian government, we have to ask: Why would they do that? Do the Russians think the United States is a Third World, under-developed, backward Banana Republic easily influenced and moved by a bunch of simple condemnations of the plight of blacks in America and the Clinton “dynasty”? Or clichéd statements about other controversial issues, such as gun rights and immigration? If so, many Democratic and Republican officials would love to know the secret of the Russians’ method. Consider also that Facebook has stated that 90 percent of the alleged-Russian-bought content that ran on its network did not even mention Trump or Clinton.</p>
<p>On top of all this is the complete absence of even the charge, much less with any supporting evidence, of Russian interference in the actual voting or counting of votes.</p>
<p>After his remark suggesting he believed Putin’s assertion that there had been no Russian meddling in the election, Trump – of course, as usual – attempted to backtrack and distant himself from his words after drawing criticism at home; while James Clapper declared: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.”</p>
<p>Given Clapper’s large-size lie referred to above, can Trump be faulted for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s Holy Writ? Purposeful lies of the intelligence community during the first Cold War were legendary, many hailed as brilliant tactics when later revealed. The CIA, for example, had phoney articles and editorials planted in foreign newspapers (real Fake News), made sex films of target subjects caught&#160;in flagrante delicto&#160;who had been lured to Agency safe houses by female agents, had Communist embassy personnel expelled because of phoney CIA documents, and much more.</p>
<p>The&#160;Post&#160;recently published an article entitled “How did Russian trolls get into your Facebook feed? Silicon Valley made it easy.” In the midst of this “exposé,” The&#160;Post&#160;stated: “There’s no way to tell if you personally saw a Russian post or tweet.”&#160;&#160;&#160;So … Do the Cold Warriors have a case to make or do they not? Or do they just want us to remember that the Russkis are bad? So it goes.</p>
<p>An organization in Czechoslovakia with the self-appointed name of European Values has produced a lengthy report entitled “ <a href="" type="internal">The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact</a>”. It includes a long list of people who have appeared on the Russian-owned TV station RT (formerly&#160;Russia Today), which can be seen in the US, the UK and other countries. Those who’ve been guests on RT are the “idiots” useful to Moscow. (The list is not complete. I’ve been on RT about five times, but I’m not listed. Where is my Idiot Badge?)</p>
<p>RT’s YouTube channel has more than two million followers and claims to be the “most-watched news network” on the video site. Its Facebook page has more than 4 million likes and followers. Can this explain why the powers-that-be forget about a thing called freedom-of-speech and treat the station like an enemy? The US government recently forced&#160;RT America&#160;to register as a foreign agent and has cut off the station’s Congressional press credentials.</p>
<p>The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically:</p>
<p>“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”</p>
<p>Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.”</p>
<p>So let’s see what other brilliance the New Cold War brings us. … Ah yes, another headline in the&#160;Post&#160;(November 18, 2017): “British alarm rising over possible Russian meddling in Brexit”. Of course, why else would the British people have voted to leave the European Union? But wait a moment, again, one of the British researchers behind the report “said that the accounts they analyzed – which claimed Russian as their language when they were set up but tweeted in English – posted a mixture of pro-‘leave’ and pro-‘remain’ messages regarding Brexit. Commentators have said that the goal may simply have been to sow discord and division in society.”</p>
<p>Was there ever a time when the&#160;Post&#160;would have been embarrassed to be so openly, amateurishly biased about Russia? Perhaps during the few years between the two Cold Wars.</p>
<p>In case you don’t remember how stupid Cold War Number One was …</p>
<p>+ 1948: ThePittsburgh Press&#160;published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party. This, and a number of other lists of “communists”, published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments.</p>
<p>+ Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.” This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean:</p>
<p>Q: What would happen to my insurance?</p>
<p>A: It would go to the Communists.</p>
<p>Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?</p>
<p>A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor.</p>
<p>+ 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools.</p>
<p>+ As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.” One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being ‘perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.’ Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take ‘perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy’?”</p>
<p>+ Throughout the cold war, traffic in phoney Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years. Here’s U.&#160;S. News and World Report&#160;in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war. Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists.</p>
<p>“First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the&#160;Congressional Record&#160;in 1962. This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin.</p>
<p>+ A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States. Here’s a small sample:</p>
<p>Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”</p>
<p>Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the&#160;American Legion Magazine: Interviewer: “I’ve been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina. Is that true?”</p>
<p>Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it’s true. There’s a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China. … There’s no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese. It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation’s moral fiber.”</p>
<p>Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin – marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin – are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country. Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.”</p>
<p>We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America’s spirit was fluoridation of the water.</p>
<p>+ Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anti-communist thriller mysteries. Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night”, boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets. After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. … They were Commies. … Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing. God, but it was fun!”</p>
<p>+ 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because it was tainted with “atheism and communism”, and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism. Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States. A bill in the US Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.” There was also opposition to UNESCO’s association with the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights.</p>
<p>+ 1955: A US Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist”, informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace. Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as “chauvinism”, “book-burning”, “colonialism”, “demagogy”, “witch hunt”, “reactionary”, “progressive”, and “exploitation”. Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.” After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet.</p>
<p>+ 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my innocent youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in “big time” football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard “is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities.”</p>
<p>+ 1960: US General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: “The whole idea is tokill&#160;the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.”</p>
<p>+ 1966: The Boys Club of America is of course wholesome and patriotic. Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs. (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.) When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do. They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco. Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity. The ‘DuBois Clubs’ are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.”</p>
<p>+ 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan”, by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”). Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare … Nature of Red Record Companies … Destructive Nature of Beatle Music … Communist Subversion of Folk Music … Folk Music and the Negro Revolution … Folk Music and the College Revolution</p>
<p>+ 1968: William Calley, US Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: “In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by – I don’t know – pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh. I was there to destroy communism. We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies.”</p>
<p>+ 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy. They made life difficult for the lead scientist. The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.”</p>
<p>+ 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children’s ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can’t find a dictionary now that isn’t under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles.</p>
<p>+ The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-called “yellow rain” – and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead.</p>
<p>+ 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn’t care about soldiers’ social lives – “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said.</p>
<p>+ 1983: The US invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written “AA”, symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: “Eat shit, commie faggot.” … “I want to fuck communism out of this little island,” says a marine, “and fuck it right back to Moscow.”</p>
<p>+ 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” His words were picked up by at least two radio networks.</p>
<p>+ 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the US and Russia, the president replied: “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.” (The word is “svoboda”.)</p>
<p>+ 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism”. Russian film-maker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.”</p>
<p>+ 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears.</p>
<p>+1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don’t want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere.” As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his news gathering.</p>
<p>+ 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the US news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the&#160;Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists’ slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.” But it was all someone’s fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner.</p>
<p>NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others.</p>
| 5,655 |
<p />
<p>With the end of 2013 right around the corner, now is the time to undertake a bit of tax planning to ensure your liability will be covered come April 15.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Major life events</a> like buying or selling a home or getting married or divorced will bring major tax implications, but there is one major unknown that could bring significant changes: Congress.</p>
<p>There is little one can do about what Congress will decide to change in the final hours of the tax year. We are often surprised (and sometimes not) by what goes down at the last minute and this does not make for good tax planning.</p>
<p>While it’s impossible to know for sure what might be coming down the pipeline from Capitol Hill, some tax experts have sniffed the air and are preparing for some changes.</p>
<p>David Hryck, a renowned tax lawyer to stars and billionaire businessmen with the law firm <a href="http://www.reedsmith.com/" type="external">ReedSmith Opens a New Window.</a>, says filers can expect changes on deductions and capital gains.</p>
<p>Hryck, who has more than 16 years of experience representing high net worth individuals, is preparing for the following changes to go into effect for 2013 that should be factored in your tax plans:</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“Dividends were taxed as capital gains at 15% but &#160;the legislation was expiring which would have treated &#160;dividends as ordinary income (taxed at 39.6% in the highest bracket); &#160;instead, the legislation continues to treat dividends as capital gains and tax them at 20% (plus Obama care of 3.8%). I think this overall was a good deal for taxpayers as there is still meaningful tax planning that can be done particularly where taxpayers have businesses abroad and can repatriate the cash from overseas operations at capital gains rates,”&#160;&#160;says Hryck.</p>
<p>He also suggests keeping an eye on:</p>
<p>He also suggests married same sex couples should also consider the benefits of filing an amended</p>
<p>tax return for prior tax years to the extent possible (generally three years) and of course for future years. “Now that the federal government recognizes same sex marriages, same sex married couples can take advantage of the tax benefits allowable to married couples on a retroactive basis.”</p>
<p>Many other tax law changes that went into effect during 2012 are established as permanent according to legislation passed at the end of 2013. However, tax law changes every 20 minutes or so leaving us wondering at the definition of “permanent.”</p>
|
2013 Tax Planning: Start Preparing Now
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/11/07/2013-tax-planning-start-preparing-now.html
|
2016-03-06
| 0right
|
2013 Tax Planning: Start Preparing Now
<p />
<p>With the end of 2013 right around the corner, now is the time to undertake a bit of tax planning to ensure your liability will be covered come April 15.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Major life events</a> like buying or selling a home or getting married or divorced will bring major tax implications, but there is one major unknown that could bring significant changes: Congress.</p>
<p>There is little one can do about what Congress will decide to change in the final hours of the tax year. We are often surprised (and sometimes not) by what goes down at the last minute and this does not make for good tax planning.</p>
<p>While it’s impossible to know for sure what might be coming down the pipeline from Capitol Hill, some tax experts have sniffed the air and are preparing for some changes.</p>
<p>David Hryck, a renowned tax lawyer to stars and billionaire businessmen with the law firm <a href="http://www.reedsmith.com/" type="external">ReedSmith Opens a New Window.</a>, says filers can expect changes on deductions and capital gains.</p>
<p>Hryck, who has more than 16 years of experience representing high net worth individuals, is preparing for the following changes to go into effect for 2013 that should be factored in your tax plans:</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“Dividends were taxed as capital gains at 15% but &#160;the legislation was expiring which would have treated &#160;dividends as ordinary income (taxed at 39.6% in the highest bracket); &#160;instead, the legislation continues to treat dividends as capital gains and tax them at 20% (plus Obama care of 3.8%). I think this overall was a good deal for taxpayers as there is still meaningful tax planning that can be done particularly where taxpayers have businesses abroad and can repatriate the cash from overseas operations at capital gains rates,”&#160;&#160;says Hryck.</p>
<p>He also suggests keeping an eye on:</p>
<p>He also suggests married same sex couples should also consider the benefits of filing an amended</p>
<p>tax return for prior tax years to the extent possible (generally three years) and of course for future years. “Now that the federal government recognizes same sex marriages, same sex married couples can take advantage of the tax benefits allowable to married couples on a retroactive basis.”</p>
<p>Many other tax law changes that went into effect during 2012 are established as permanent according to legislation passed at the end of 2013. However, tax law changes every 20 minutes or so leaving us wondering at the definition of “permanent.”</p>
| 5,656 |
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<p>HOUSTON — A 53-year-old man who authorities say fatally shot his estranged wife and a second person before later shooting and injuring another person in the Houston area has been arrested following a manhunt.</p>
<p>The Harris County sheriff’s office says Russell Cormier was arrested in an area park Friday morning.</p>
<p>Authorities say Cormier killed 61-year-old Fannie McWhite on Monday, took her pickup, drove to the trailer where he lived and set it on fire. He later drove to a business and fatally shot a 60-year-old man. Officials say Cormier went to a home early Tuesday and shot a man once, injuring him.</p>
<p>Cormier, who is charged with murder in McWhite’s death, was in jail Friday morning on $500,000 bond. Jail records didn’t list an attorney for him.</p>
<p>Investigators haven’t revealed a motive.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Man suspected in 2 Houston-area slayings this week arrested
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/991297/man-suspected-in-2-houston-area-slayings-this-week-arrested.html
| 2least
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Man suspected in 2 Houston-area slayings this week arrested
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>HOUSTON — A 53-year-old man who authorities say fatally shot his estranged wife and a second person before later shooting and injuring another person in the Houston area has been arrested following a manhunt.</p>
<p>The Harris County sheriff’s office says Russell Cormier was arrested in an area park Friday morning.</p>
<p>Authorities say Cormier killed 61-year-old Fannie McWhite on Monday, took her pickup, drove to the trailer where he lived and set it on fire. He later drove to a business and fatally shot a 60-year-old man. Officials say Cormier went to a home early Tuesday and shot a man once, injuring him.</p>
<p>Cormier, who is charged with murder in McWhite’s death, was in jail Friday morning on $500,000 bond. Jail records didn’t list an attorney for him.</p>
<p>Investigators haven’t revealed a motive.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,657 |
|
<p />
<p>If you’re like me, and you have trouble keeping friendly frontal hugs from turning into full-on depraved bonefests, you’ll appreciate the advice of these&#160;side-hug-advocating,&#160;Jesus-loving white rappers (h/t&#160; <a href="http://therumpus.net/" type="external">the Rumpus</a>):&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Honestly, even though my Catholic-school teachers forced me to watch graphic abortion videos when I was a child, I&#160;had a hard time believing a big Christian group would really endorse something this misguided. Forget that even&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Bristol Palin knows</a>&#160;that abstinence-only education is&#160; <a href="" type="internal">just silly</a>;&#160;what’s with the gunfire and sirens?&#160;But consider the matter fact-checked: “Mm-hm, that was us,” the&#160; <a href="http://egconference.org" type="external">Encounter Generation Conference</a>&#160;secretary told me this morning. “The side hug is just a little rule we have around here, to encourage kids to keep their hands off each other.” Apparently they’ve also recorded songs set to the Phantom of the Opera theme and Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” Since&#160;those are, unfortunately, not available on the Internet, I offer you&#160;Christian punk band Lust Control’s catchy anti-masturbation screed. My favorite part is where they remind you that Jesus “sees everything you do”—though it’s a slightly less creepy deterrent than what I was taught in grade school, which is that if you touch yourself, Jesus AND your dead relatives will watch.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Best Abstinence Advice Ever
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/11/best-abstinence-advice-ever/
|
2009-11-24
| 4left
|
Best Abstinence Advice Ever
<p />
<p>If you’re like me, and you have trouble keeping friendly frontal hugs from turning into full-on depraved bonefests, you’ll appreciate the advice of these&#160;side-hug-advocating,&#160;Jesus-loving white rappers (h/t&#160; <a href="http://therumpus.net/" type="external">the Rumpus</a>):&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Honestly, even though my Catholic-school teachers forced me to watch graphic abortion videos when I was a child, I&#160;had a hard time believing a big Christian group would really endorse something this misguided. Forget that even&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Bristol Palin knows</a>&#160;that abstinence-only education is&#160; <a href="" type="internal">just silly</a>;&#160;what’s with the gunfire and sirens?&#160;But consider the matter fact-checked: “Mm-hm, that was us,” the&#160; <a href="http://egconference.org" type="external">Encounter Generation Conference</a>&#160;secretary told me this morning. “The side hug is just a little rule we have around here, to encourage kids to keep their hands off each other.” Apparently they’ve also recorded songs set to the Phantom of the Opera theme and Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” Since&#160;those are, unfortunately, not available on the Internet, I offer you&#160;Christian punk band Lust Control’s catchy anti-masturbation screed. My favorite part is where they remind you that Jesus “sees everything you do”—though it’s a slightly less creepy deterrent than what I was taught in grade school, which is that if you touch yourself, Jesus AND your dead relatives will watch.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
| 5,658 |
<p>The company that operates twin oil pipelines in the waterway linking Lake Huron and Lake Michigan said Wednesday it has found a number of gaps in a protective layer of enamel coating on the pipes.</p>
<p>Enbridge Inc.'s disclosure prompted criticism from Michigan's governor and other officials about the condition of the pipelines, which traverse the bottomlands of the Straits of Mackinac, a nearly 5-mile (8-kilometer) wide area between the state's lower and upper peninsulas.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>They are part of Enbridge's Line 5, which carries about 23 million gallons (87 million liters) of crude oil and liquid natural gas daily. It crosses parts of northern Wisconsin and Michigan on its way to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario.</p>
<p>Enbridge has been conducting studies, maintenance projects and inspections in response to questions from state agencies about Line 5. During a recent examination, divers spotted a gap in the coating a few inches (centimeters) long on one pipeline and four smaller gaps close together on the other, company spokesman Ryan Duffy said.</p>
<p>A third spot also may have bare metal and is being evaluated, he said, adding that the damage probably happened as steel anchors were installed to provide additional support for the lines.</p>
<p>"There's no safety or integrity issue with the steel pipe itself, no corrosion," Duffy said. "Our safety management program worked as intended."</p>
<p>But environmental groups said the discovery underscores the need to decommission the 64-year-old pipeline, which they contend presents a growing risk of rupturing and doing catastrophic damage to the straits area's environment, wildlife and tourism industry.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Even Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who has stopped short of endorsing a shutdown, said he was "greatly concerned."</p>
<p>"I have directed our departments to accelerate an aggressive review of Enbridge operations and maintenance procedures throughout the state," Snyder said.</p>
<p>State Attorney General Bill Schuette, who is expected to seek the GOP nomination for governor next year, reiterated his earlier call to close the pipeline. Valerie Brader, executive director of the Michigan Agency for Energy, said it was worrisome that the coating gaps apparently resulted from human error.</p>
<p>"Human error was a major factor in Enbridge's spill into the Kalamazoo River," Brader said, referring to a 2010 release of more than 840,000 gallons (3.1 million liters) of oil from another of the company's pipelines.</p>
<p>The state Department of Environmental Quality demanded more information from the inspections and an immediate check of areas around all Line 5 anchors.</p>
<p>Enbridge insists Line 5 is in good shape and is inspected regularly with underwater cameras and interior tools. An electric current runs continuously through the lines to prevent corrosion, Duffy said.</p>
<p>A consulting firm retained by the state issued a report in June that said the pipelines could operate indefinitely but listed several alternatives, including shutting it down and installing a new straits pipeline that would run through a trench or tunnel.</p>
<p>The inspection that turned up the coating gaps was part of an Enbridge study to determine whether clumps of mussels or other organisms attached to the lines have done damage.</p>
<p>The company will fix the coating when the inspections are finished and any necessary permits obtained, Duffy said.</p>
<p>Critics said that wasn't enough.</p>
<p>"Today's news only strengthens the case for the Snyder administration to do what needs to be done by shutting down this outdated, poorly maintained and dangerous pipeline," said Lisa Wozniak of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow John Flesher on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/johnflesher</p>
|
Company finds gaps in underwater oil pipeline's coating
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/30/company-finds-gaps-in-underwater-oil-pipelines-coating.html
|
2017-08-30
| 0right
|
Company finds gaps in underwater oil pipeline's coating
<p>The company that operates twin oil pipelines in the waterway linking Lake Huron and Lake Michigan said Wednesday it has found a number of gaps in a protective layer of enamel coating on the pipes.</p>
<p>Enbridge Inc.'s disclosure prompted criticism from Michigan's governor and other officials about the condition of the pipelines, which traverse the bottomlands of the Straits of Mackinac, a nearly 5-mile (8-kilometer) wide area between the state's lower and upper peninsulas.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>They are part of Enbridge's Line 5, which carries about 23 million gallons (87 million liters) of crude oil and liquid natural gas daily. It crosses parts of northern Wisconsin and Michigan on its way to refineries in Sarnia, Ontario.</p>
<p>Enbridge has been conducting studies, maintenance projects and inspections in response to questions from state agencies about Line 5. During a recent examination, divers spotted a gap in the coating a few inches (centimeters) long on one pipeline and four smaller gaps close together on the other, company spokesman Ryan Duffy said.</p>
<p>A third spot also may have bare metal and is being evaluated, he said, adding that the damage probably happened as steel anchors were installed to provide additional support for the lines.</p>
<p>"There's no safety or integrity issue with the steel pipe itself, no corrosion," Duffy said. "Our safety management program worked as intended."</p>
<p>But environmental groups said the discovery underscores the need to decommission the 64-year-old pipeline, which they contend presents a growing risk of rupturing and doing catastrophic damage to the straits area's environment, wildlife and tourism industry.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Even Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who has stopped short of endorsing a shutdown, said he was "greatly concerned."</p>
<p>"I have directed our departments to accelerate an aggressive review of Enbridge operations and maintenance procedures throughout the state," Snyder said.</p>
<p>State Attorney General Bill Schuette, who is expected to seek the GOP nomination for governor next year, reiterated his earlier call to close the pipeline. Valerie Brader, executive director of the Michigan Agency for Energy, said it was worrisome that the coating gaps apparently resulted from human error.</p>
<p>"Human error was a major factor in Enbridge's spill into the Kalamazoo River," Brader said, referring to a 2010 release of more than 840,000 gallons (3.1 million liters) of oil from another of the company's pipelines.</p>
<p>The state Department of Environmental Quality demanded more information from the inspections and an immediate check of areas around all Line 5 anchors.</p>
<p>Enbridge insists Line 5 is in good shape and is inspected regularly with underwater cameras and interior tools. An electric current runs continuously through the lines to prevent corrosion, Duffy said.</p>
<p>A consulting firm retained by the state issued a report in June that said the pipelines could operate indefinitely but listed several alternatives, including shutting it down and installing a new straits pipeline that would run through a trench or tunnel.</p>
<p>The inspection that turned up the coating gaps was part of an Enbridge study to determine whether clumps of mussels or other organisms attached to the lines have done damage.</p>
<p>The company will fix the coating when the inspections are finished and any necessary permits obtained, Duffy said.</p>
<p>Critics said that wasn't enough.</p>
<p>"Today's news only strengthens the case for the Snyder administration to do what needs to be done by shutting down this outdated, poorly maintained and dangerous pipeline," said Lisa Wozniak of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow John Flesher on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/johnflesher</p>
| 5,659 |
<p>Adversity during childhood can help someone build persistence and self-control a new study suggests, with implications for nature vs. nurture arguments.</p>
<p>Researchers at the University of Toronto found that an interaction between biology and life experience work to alter human development.</p>
<p>"Biologists used to think that our differences are pre-programmed in our genes, while psychologists argued that babies are born with a blank slate and their experience writes on it to shape them into the adults they become."</p>
<p>Instead, the important question to be asking is, 'How is our experience in early life getting embedded in our biology?'" said Marla Sokolowski of the University of Toronto, <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121025130918.htm" type="external">reported for Science Daily</a>.</p>
<p>The study used fruit flies, which are surprisingly similar to humans, and deprived them of food and nutrition while they were young.</p>
<p>They used two kinds of fruit flies: rovers that forage and sitters that, well, sit, while food is present.</p>
<p>Rover flies, both when well fed and not, explored for food.</p>
<p>Reproductive fitness was also decreased in sitters deprived of food but not in rovers.</p>
<p>"The foraging gene makes an enzyme called PKG, which is found in the fly as well as in most other organisms, including humans. When faced with a nutritionally adverse environment while growing up, the levels of the enzyme dropped in flies," said Sokolowski, <a href="http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/10/25/university.toronto.study.demonstrates.impact.adversity.early.life.development" type="external">according to E! Science News</a>.</p>
<p>"This told us that the foraging gene listens to its environment."</p>
<p>This has implications for how humans deal with early adversity and deprivation, showing that it was able to change the genes within the so-called "sitters" who were biologically-programmed not to forage.</p>
<p>Without food they became persistent and took control of their brief lives in search of food.</p>
<p>The new study was published in the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/" type="external">Proceedings of the National Academy of Science</a>.</p>
|
Adversity gives you persistence and self-control, study suggests
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2012-10-25/adversity-gives-you-persistence-and-self-control-study-suggests
|
2012-10-25
| 3left-center
|
Adversity gives you persistence and self-control, study suggests
<p>Adversity during childhood can help someone build persistence and self-control a new study suggests, with implications for nature vs. nurture arguments.</p>
<p>Researchers at the University of Toronto found that an interaction between biology and life experience work to alter human development.</p>
<p>"Biologists used to think that our differences are pre-programmed in our genes, while psychologists argued that babies are born with a blank slate and their experience writes on it to shape them into the adults they become."</p>
<p>Instead, the important question to be asking is, 'How is our experience in early life getting embedded in our biology?'" said Marla Sokolowski of the University of Toronto, <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121025130918.htm" type="external">reported for Science Daily</a>.</p>
<p>The study used fruit flies, which are surprisingly similar to humans, and deprived them of food and nutrition while they were young.</p>
<p>They used two kinds of fruit flies: rovers that forage and sitters that, well, sit, while food is present.</p>
<p>Rover flies, both when well fed and not, explored for food.</p>
<p>Reproductive fitness was also decreased in sitters deprived of food but not in rovers.</p>
<p>"The foraging gene makes an enzyme called PKG, which is found in the fly as well as in most other organisms, including humans. When faced with a nutritionally adverse environment while growing up, the levels of the enzyme dropped in flies," said Sokolowski, <a href="http://esciencenews.com/articles/2012/10/25/university.toronto.study.demonstrates.impact.adversity.early.life.development" type="external">according to E! Science News</a>.</p>
<p>"This told us that the foraging gene listens to its environment."</p>
<p>This has implications for how humans deal with early adversity and deprivation, showing that it was able to change the genes within the so-called "sitters" who were biologically-programmed not to forage.</p>
<p>Without food they became persistent and took control of their brief lives in search of food.</p>
<p>The new study was published in the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/" type="external">Proceedings of the National Academy of Science</a>.</p>
| 5,660 |
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Stars coach Ken Hitchcock played a hunch early Saturday, and it paid off quickly.</p>
<p>Alexander Radulov, Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin - put together on the same line in the early going - scored first-period goals within a span of 6 1/2 minutes, leading the Stars past the Edmonton Oilers 5-1.</p>
<p>Seguin also had two assists. John Klingberg had a goal and two assists, and Mattias Janmark had a goal and an assist for Dallas.</p>
<p>The Stars have won six of their past eight games.</p>
<p>Radulov assisted on the other first-period goals, giving him two goals and four assists in Dallas' past two games. He had three goals and five assists in the Stars' three games against Edmonton this season.</p>
<p>Radulov has 16 goals in 43 games after scoring 18 in 76 games last season for the Montreal Canadiens. He came to Dallas as a free agent last summer.</p>
<p>"Sometimes it's happening, sometimes it's going well, and we worked hard and got rewarded," Radulov said.</p>
<p>Hitchcock opened the game with Benn and Seguin playing with Brett Ritchie for the second consecutive game but quickly put Radulov back with the team's top two scorers, where he has played previously this season.</p>
<p>"I felt the way the rotations of the line were going that it was a better matchup if I put Rads' there," said Hitchcock, third in career NHL coaching wins at 805. "He had a bead in on the game, and I had to get him out there as much as I could early and often."</p>
<p>"We didn't have an answer for that line," Oilers coach Todd McLelland said. "They scored just about every way they could except for on the power play. They created a lot of havoc for us in our end on a lot of lateral plays."</p>
<p>"He's such a dynamic player," Benn said of Radulov. "He's taking his game to another level."</p>
<p>Leon Draisaitl's power-play goal for the Oilers at 2:04 of the third period denied Ben Bishop his fifth shutout of the season.</p>
<p>Oilers goalie Cam Talbot was pulled at 4:45 of the second period after allowing four goals on 19 shots. He was replaced by Al Montoya, who was acquired on Thursday from Montreal and had not played since Nov. 4 because of concussion symptoms.</p>
<p>"It was a long road back," Montoya said. "I'm just happy to be back. I haven't had much time to skate, but I feel good, which goes a long way."</p>
<p>Dallas' three first-period goals were all backdoor one-timers. Radulov opened the scoring at 10:21, beating Talbot to the glove side. He was fed by Seguin, who received a cross-ice breakout pass from Klingberg.</p>
<p>Radulov passed to Benn less than three minutes later for an easy backhand.</p>
<p>Seguin tapped in a cross-crease pass from Radulov at 16:32, Klingberg getting the other assist.</p>
<p>Janmark scored when attempting to pass from the goal line to Brett Ritchie in the crease. The puck caromed off the skate of Oilers defenseman Andrej Sekera past Talbot.</p>
<p>As Talbot skated off the ice toward the locker room, backup goalie Kari Lehtonen was standing in the tunnel and gave him a good-luck tap with his stick.</p>
<p>Edmonton has lost three of its past four and has been outscored 16-2.</p>
<p>"I don't think it's a lack of effort," Connor McDavid said. "We just have to get it done."</p>
<p>NOTES: Seguin leads Dallas with 21 goals this season. ... With Montoya activated, the Oilers waived goaltender Laurent Brossoit. Brossoit was 3-7-1 with a 3.22 goals-against average as Talbot's backup this season. ... Oilers forward Patrick Maroon served the second and last game of a suspension for a hit on Los Angeles' Drew Doughty on Tuesday. ... Dallas defenseman Marc Methot was a late scratch with a sore knee, replaced by Julius Honka. Methot had returned to the lineup Thursday after missing 26 games with a knee injury.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Oilers: Play at Chicago on Sunday.</p>
<p>Stars: Host Colorado next Saturday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</p>
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Stars coach Ken Hitchcock played a hunch early Saturday, and it paid off quickly.</p>
<p>Alexander Radulov, Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin - put together on the same line in the early going - scored first-period goals within a span of 6 1/2 minutes, leading the Stars past the Edmonton Oilers 5-1.</p>
<p>Seguin also had two assists. John Klingberg had a goal and two assists, and Mattias Janmark had a goal and an assist for Dallas.</p>
<p>The Stars have won six of their past eight games.</p>
<p>Radulov assisted on the other first-period goals, giving him two goals and four assists in Dallas' past two games. He had three goals and five assists in the Stars' three games against Edmonton this season.</p>
<p>Radulov has 16 goals in 43 games after scoring 18 in 76 games last season for the Montreal Canadiens. He came to Dallas as a free agent last summer.</p>
<p>"Sometimes it's happening, sometimes it's going well, and we worked hard and got rewarded," Radulov said.</p>
<p>Hitchcock opened the game with Benn and Seguin playing with Brett Ritchie for the second consecutive game but quickly put Radulov back with the team's top two scorers, where he has played previously this season.</p>
<p>"I felt the way the rotations of the line were going that it was a better matchup if I put Rads' there," said Hitchcock, third in career NHL coaching wins at 805. "He had a bead in on the game, and I had to get him out there as much as I could early and often."</p>
<p>"We didn't have an answer for that line," Oilers coach Todd McLelland said. "They scored just about every way they could except for on the power play. They created a lot of havoc for us in our end on a lot of lateral plays."</p>
<p>"He's such a dynamic player," Benn said of Radulov. "He's taking his game to another level."</p>
<p>Leon Draisaitl's power-play goal for the Oilers at 2:04 of the third period denied Ben Bishop his fifth shutout of the season.</p>
<p>Oilers goalie Cam Talbot was pulled at 4:45 of the second period after allowing four goals on 19 shots. He was replaced by Al Montoya, who was acquired on Thursday from Montreal and had not played since Nov. 4 because of concussion symptoms.</p>
<p>"It was a long road back," Montoya said. "I'm just happy to be back. I haven't had much time to skate, but I feel good, which goes a long way."</p>
<p>Dallas' three first-period goals were all backdoor one-timers. Radulov opened the scoring at 10:21, beating Talbot to the glove side. He was fed by Seguin, who received a cross-ice breakout pass from Klingberg.</p>
<p>Radulov passed to Benn less than three minutes later for an easy backhand.</p>
<p>Seguin tapped in a cross-crease pass from Radulov at 16:32, Klingberg getting the other assist.</p>
<p>Janmark scored when attempting to pass from the goal line to Brett Ritchie in the crease. The puck caromed off the skate of Oilers defenseman Andrej Sekera past Talbot.</p>
<p>As Talbot skated off the ice toward the locker room, backup goalie Kari Lehtonen was standing in the tunnel and gave him a good-luck tap with his stick.</p>
<p>Edmonton has lost three of its past four and has been outscored 16-2.</p>
<p>"I don't think it's a lack of effort," Connor McDavid said. "We just have to get it done."</p>
<p>NOTES: Seguin leads Dallas with 21 goals this season. ... With Montoya activated, the Oilers waived goaltender Laurent Brossoit. Brossoit was 3-7-1 with a 3.22 goals-against average as Talbot's backup this season. ... Oilers forward Patrick Maroon served the second and last game of a suspension for a hit on Los Angeles' Drew Doughty on Tuesday. ... Dallas defenseman Marc Methot was a late scratch with a sore knee, replaced by Julius Honka. Methot had returned to the lineup Thursday after missing 26 games with a knee injury.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Oilers: Play at Chicago on Sunday.</p>
<p>Stars: Host Colorado next Saturday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</p>
|
Stars cruise past Oilers for 5-1 victory
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/8bad7c84c19f4d389b5fa5ad8c0ca8bc
|
2018-01-07
| 2least
|
Stars cruise past Oilers for 5-1 victory
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Stars coach Ken Hitchcock played a hunch early Saturday, and it paid off quickly.</p>
<p>Alexander Radulov, Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin - put together on the same line in the early going - scored first-period goals within a span of 6 1/2 minutes, leading the Stars past the Edmonton Oilers 5-1.</p>
<p>Seguin also had two assists. John Klingberg had a goal and two assists, and Mattias Janmark had a goal and an assist for Dallas.</p>
<p>The Stars have won six of their past eight games.</p>
<p>Radulov assisted on the other first-period goals, giving him two goals and four assists in Dallas' past two games. He had three goals and five assists in the Stars' three games against Edmonton this season.</p>
<p>Radulov has 16 goals in 43 games after scoring 18 in 76 games last season for the Montreal Canadiens. He came to Dallas as a free agent last summer.</p>
<p>"Sometimes it's happening, sometimes it's going well, and we worked hard and got rewarded," Radulov said.</p>
<p>Hitchcock opened the game with Benn and Seguin playing with Brett Ritchie for the second consecutive game but quickly put Radulov back with the team's top two scorers, where he has played previously this season.</p>
<p>"I felt the way the rotations of the line were going that it was a better matchup if I put Rads' there," said Hitchcock, third in career NHL coaching wins at 805. "He had a bead in on the game, and I had to get him out there as much as I could early and often."</p>
<p>"We didn't have an answer for that line," Oilers coach Todd McLelland said. "They scored just about every way they could except for on the power play. They created a lot of havoc for us in our end on a lot of lateral plays."</p>
<p>"He's such a dynamic player," Benn said of Radulov. "He's taking his game to another level."</p>
<p>Leon Draisaitl's power-play goal for the Oilers at 2:04 of the third period denied Ben Bishop his fifth shutout of the season.</p>
<p>Oilers goalie Cam Talbot was pulled at 4:45 of the second period after allowing four goals on 19 shots. He was replaced by Al Montoya, who was acquired on Thursday from Montreal and had not played since Nov. 4 because of concussion symptoms.</p>
<p>"It was a long road back," Montoya said. "I'm just happy to be back. I haven't had much time to skate, but I feel good, which goes a long way."</p>
<p>Dallas' three first-period goals were all backdoor one-timers. Radulov opened the scoring at 10:21, beating Talbot to the glove side. He was fed by Seguin, who received a cross-ice breakout pass from Klingberg.</p>
<p>Radulov passed to Benn less than three minutes later for an easy backhand.</p>
<p>Seguin tapped in a cross-crease pass from Radulov at 16:32, Klingberg getting the other assist.</p>
<p>Janmark scored when attempting to pass from the goal line to Brett Ritchie in the crease. The puck caromed off the skate of Oilers defenseman Andrej Sekera past Talbot.</p>
<p>As Talbot skated off the ice toward the locker room, backup goalie Kari Lehtonen was standing in the tunnel and gave him a good-luck tap with his stick.</p>
<p>Edmonton has lost three of its past four and has been outscored 16-2.</p>
<p>"I don't think it's a lack of effort," Connor McDavid said. "We just have to get it done."</p>
<p>NOTES: Seguin leads Dallas with 21 goals this season. ... With Montoya activated, the Oilers waived goaltender Laurent Brossoit. Brossoit was 3-7-1 with a 3.22 goals-against average as Talbot's backup this season. ... Oilers forward Patrick Maroon served the second and last game of a suspension for a hit on Los Angeles' Drew Doughty on Tuesday. ... Dallas defenseman Marc Methot was a late scratch with a sore knee, replaced by Julius Honka. Methot had returned to the lineup Thursday after missing 26 games with a knee injury.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Oilers: Play at Chicago on Sunday.</p>
<p>Stars: Host Colorado next Saturday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</p>
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Stars coach Ken Hitchcock played a hunch early Saturday, and it paid off quickly.</p>
<p>Alexander Radulov, Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin - put together on the same line in the early going - scored first-period goals within a span of 6 1/2 minutes, leading the Stars past the Edmonton Oilers 5-1.</p>
<p>Seguin also had two assists. John Klingberg had a goal and two assists, and Mattias Janmark had a goal and an assist for Dallas.</p>
<p>The Stars have won six of their past eight games.</p>
<p>Radulov assisted on the other first-period goals, giving him two goals and four assists in Dallas' past two games. He had three goals and five assists in the Stars' three games against Edmonton this season.</p>
<p>Radulov has 16 goals in 43 games after scoring 18 in 76 games last season for the Montreal Canadiens. He came to Dallas as a free agent last summer.</p>
<p>"Sometimes it's happening, sometimes it's going well, and we worked hard and got rewarded," Radulov said.</p>
<p>Hitchcock opened the game with Benn and Seguin playing with Brett Ritchie for the second consecutive game but quickly put Radulov back with the team's top two scorers, where he has played previously this season.</p>
<p>"I felt the way the rotations of the line were going that it was a better matchup if I put Rads' there," said Hitchcock, third in career NHL coaching wins at 805. "He had a bead in on the game, and I had to get him out there as much as I could early and often."</p>
<p>"We didn't have an answer for that line," Oilers coach Todd McLelland said. "They scored just about every way they could except for on the power play. They created a lot of havoc for us in our end on a lot of lateral plays."</p>
<p>"He's such a dynamic player," Benn said of Radulov. "He's taking his game to another level."</p>
<p>Leon Draisaitl's power-play goal for the Oilers at 2:04 of the third period denied Ben Bishop his fifth shutout of the season.</p>
<p>Oilers goalie Cam Talbot was pulled at 4:45 of the second period after allowing four goals on 19 shots. He was replaced by Al Montoya, who was acquired on Thursday from Montreal and had not played since Nov. 4 because of concussion symptoms.</p>
<p>"It was a long road back," Montoya said. "I'm just happy to be back. I haven't had much time to skate, but I feel good, which goes a long way."</p>
<p>Dallas' three first-period goals were all backdoor one-timers. Radulov opened the scoring at 10:21, beating Talbot to the glove side. He was fed by Seguin, who received a cross-ice breakout pass from Klingberg.</p>
<p>Radulov passed to Benn less than three minutes later for an easy backhand.</p>
<p>Seguin tapped in a cross-crease pass from Radulov at 16:32, Klingberg getting the other assist.</p>
<p>Janmark scored when attempting to pass from the goal line to Brett Ritchie in the crease. The puck caromed off the skate of Oilers defenseman Andrej Sekera past Talbot.</p>
<p>As Talbot skated off the ice toward the locker room, backup goalie Kari Lehtonen was standing in the tunnel and gave him a good-luck tap with his stick.</p>
<p>Edmonton has lost three of its past four and has been outscored 16-2.</p>
<p>"I don't think it's a lack of effort," Connor McDavid said. "We just have to get it done."</p>
<p>NOTES: Seguin leads Dallas with 21 goals this season. ... With Montoya activated, the Oilers waived goaltender Laurent Brossoit. Brossoit was 3-7-1 with a 3.22 goals-against average as Talbot's backup this season. ... Oilers forward Patrick Maroon served the second and last game of a suspension for a hit on Los Angeles' Drew Doughty on Tuesday. ... Dallas defenseman Marc Methot was a late scratch with a sore knee, replaced by Julius Honka. Methot had returned to the lineup Thursday after missing 26 games with a knee injury.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Oilers: Play at Chicago on Sunday.</p>
<p>Stars: Host Colorado next Saturday night.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</p>
| 5,661 |
<p>Dec. 13 (UPI) — Pregnant singer Christina Perri is a married woman.</p>
<p>The 31-year-old recording artist tied the knot with Paul Costabile, an entertainment reporter, at a courthouse wedding Tuesday in New York.</p>
<p>Perri announced the news by sharing a photo on Instagram of herself and Costabile in their wedding attire. The couple, who both wore black, said their “I dos” on their four-year anniversary.</p>
<p>“On this day four years ago, we met,” Perri captioned the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BcnMC3lloua/" type="external">picture</a>. “Today, WE GOT MARRIED!!!”</p>
<p>Costabile also posted a snapshot on his own account. He said in his accompanying post that he and Perri plan to celebrate with family and friends at an official party “soon.”</p>
<p>“4 years ago today I met my dream girl in this room. 4 years later today I married my dream girl and best friend. Pretty sure I’m the proudest I’ve EVER been to be able to call the most bellissima person + woman I’ve ever known my wife!!!” the reporter gushed.</p>
<p>Perri and Costabile got engaged in June, and announced in August that they’re expecting their first child. The singer <a href="https://www.upi.com/Singer-Christina-Perri-expecting-first-child-Coming-soon/4911502122204/" type="external">shared the news by posting a photo</a> of her niece Tesla holding her baby bump.</p>
<p>“guess what?” she captioned the picture, which read, “Tesla’s little cousin is coming soon.”</p>
<p>Perri is known for the singles “Jar of Hearts” and “A Thousand Years.” She last released the album Head or Heart in 2014.</p>
|
Christina Perri marries Paul Costabile amid first pregnancy
| false |
https://newsline.com/christina-perri-marries-paul-costabile-amid-first-pregnancy/
|
2017-12-13
| 1right-center
|
Christina Perri marries Paul Costabile amid first pregnancy
<p>Dec. 13 (UPI) — Pregnant singer Christina Perri is a married woman.</p>
<p>The 31-year-old recording artist tied the knot with Paul Costabile, an entertainment reporter, at a courthouse wedding Tuesday in New York.</p>
<p>Perri announced the news by sharing a photo on Instagram of herself and Costabile in their wedding attire. The couple, who both wore black, said their “I dos” on their four-year anniversary.</p>
<p>“On this day four years ago, we met,” Perri captioned the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BcnMC3lloua/" type="external">picture</a>. “Today, WE GOT MARRIED!!!”</p>
<p>Costabile also posted a snapshot on his own account. He said in his accompanying post that he and Perri plan to celebrate with family and friends at an official party “soon.”</p>
<p>“4 years ago today I met my dream girl in this room. 4 years later today I married my dream girl and best friend. Pretty sure I’m the proudest I’ve EVER been to be able to call the most bellissima person + woman I’ve ever known my wife!!!” the reporter gushed.</p>
<p>Perri and Costabile got engaged in June, and announced in August that they’re expecting their first child. The singer <a href="https://www.upi.com/Singer-Christina-Perri-expecting-first-child-Coming-soon/4911502122204/" type="external">shared the news by posting a photo</a> of her niece Tesla holding her baby bump.</p>
<p>“guess what?” she captioned the picture, which read, “Tesla’s little cousin is coming soon.”</p>
<p>Perri is known for the singles “Jar of Hearts” and “A Thousand Years.” She last released the album Head or Heart in 2014.</p>
| 5,662 |
<p>Martin Gruenberg, the chairman of the FDIC, and Paul Tucker Martin, the deputy governor for financial stability at the Bank of England, believe we must. They identify a <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fd66d172-3fd4-11e2-b0ce-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EaYeAl6t" type="external">path forward</a> in the Financial Times:</p>
<p>Over the past year, the FDIC and the Bank of England, in conjunction with the prudential regulators in our jurisdictions, have been working to develop contingency plans for the failure of globally systemic banks that have core operations in both the US and UK. Of the world's 28 GSifis, 12 are headquartered in the US or UK. Because many of these institutions have operations that are concentrated in our two jurisdictions, we have a shared interest in ensuring that, when such a business fails, it can be resolved at no cost to taxpayers and without placing the financial system at risk. Importantly, a shared strategy will help us to avoid working at cross purposes or being blind to each other's plans.</p>
<p>Our joint paper outlines a strategy we believe can accomplish our objectives. Under the plan, the resolution authority will take control of the parent of the GSifi group, apportion losses to the company's shareholders and unsecured debtholders and remove senior management. In all likelihood, the organisation's shareholders would lose all value.</p>
<p>The unsecured debtholders can expect that their claims would be written down to reflect any losses that shareholders could not cover. Sound subsidiaries (domestic and foreign) would be kept open and operating, thereby limiting contagion effects and cross-border complications. In both countries, whether during execution of the resolution or thereafter, restructuring measures may be taken, especially in the parts of the business responsible for the group's distress. Those businesses could be shrunk, broken into smaller entities, or certain operations could be liquidated or closed. A portion of the surviving unsecured debt would be converted into equity, where needed, to provide capital to support the process.</p>
|
Shall We Bid Adieu to 'Too Big to Fail?'
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/shall-we-bid-adieu-to-too-big-to-fail
|
2018-10-04
| 4left
|
Shall We Bid Adieu to 'Too Big to Fail?'
<p>Martin Gruenberg, the chairman of the FDIC, and Paul Tucker Martin, the deputy governor for financial stability at the Bank of England, believe we must. They identify a <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fd66d172-3fd4-11e2-b0ce-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EaYeAl6t" type="external">path forward</a> in the Financial Times:</p>
<p>Over the past year, the FDIC and the Bank of England, in conjunction with the prudential regulators in our jurisdictions, have been working to develop contingency plans for the failure of globally systemic banks that have core operations in both the US and UK. Of the world's 28 GSifis, 12 are headquartered in the US or UK. Because many of these institutions have operations that are concentrated in our two jurisdictions, we have a shared interest in ensuring that, when such a business fails, it can be resolved at no cost to taxpayers and without placing the financial system at risk. Importantly, a shared strategy will help us to avoid working at cross purposes or being blind to each other's plans.</p>
<p>Our joint paper outlines a strategy we believe can accomplish our objectives. Under the plan, the resolution authority will take control of the parent of the GSifi group, apportion losses to the company's shareholders and unsecured debtholders and remove senior management. In all likelihood, the organisation's shareholders would lose all value.</p>
<p>The unsecured debtholders can expect that their claims would be written down to reflect any losses that shareholders could not cover. Sound subsidiaries (domestic and foreign) would be kept open and operating, thereby limiting contagion effects and cross-border complications. In both countries, whether during execution of the resolution or thereafter, restructuring measures may be taken, especially in the parts of the business responsible for the group's distress. Those businesses could be shrunk, broken into smaller entities, or certain operations could be liquidated or closed. A portion of the surviving unsecured debt would be converted into equity, where needed, to provide capital to support the process.</p>
| 5,663 |
<p>It is amazing how the elite media can be dragged along by their noses into accepting that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) can have a big impact on trade and growth. If I had a dollar for every time the deal was described as “massive,” or that we were told <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/more-legacy-making-the-nyt-really-really-likes-the-tpp" type="external">what share of world trade</a> will be covered by the TPP, I would be richer than Bill Gates. The reality is that the vast majority of the trade between the countries in the TPP is already covered by trade agreements, as can be seen:</p>
<p>TPP countries with and without current trade agreements with the US. Source: <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=61&amp;pr.y=6&amp;sy=2015&amp;ey=2015&amp;scsm=1&amp;ssd=1&amp;sort=country&amp;ds=.&amp;br=1&amp;c=193%2C548%2C273%2C516%2C196%2C156%2C228%2C293%2C576%2C158%2C111%2C582&amp;s=NGDPD&amp;grp=0&amp;a=" type="external">International Monetary Fund</a></p>
<p>We continue to hear superlatives even as the evidence suggests the trade impact will be trivial. For example, the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/business/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal-is-reached.html" type="external">reported</a> that US tariffs on Japanese cars will be phased out over 30 years. Wow! The <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/donald-trump-says-his-tax-cut-will-lead-to-6-gdp-growth-and-president-obama-says-tpp-will-boost-growth" type="external">most optimistic growth estimates</a> show a cumulative gain by 2027 of less than 0.4 percent, roughly two months of normal GDP growth.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean that the TPP can’t have an impact. It will lock in a <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/tpp-a-ttip-are-not-your-grandfathers-trade-agreements" type="external">regulatory structure</a>, the exact parameters of which are yet to be seen. We do know that the folks at the table came from places like General Electric and Monsanto, not the AFL-CIO and the Sierra Club. We also know that it will mean paying more for drugs and other patent and copyright-protected material (forms of protection, whose <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-problem-of-protectionism-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership?" type="external">negative impact</a> is never included in growth projections), but we don’t yet know how much.</p>
<p>We also know that the Obama administration gave up an opportunity to include <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/u-s-trade-policy-is-pro-rich-not-free-trade" type="external">currency rules</a>. This means that trade deficit is likely to persist long into the future. This deficit has been a persistent source of gap in demand, leading to millions of lost jobs. We filled this demand in the 1990s with the stock bubble and in the last decade in the housing bubble. It seems the latest plan from the Fed is that we simply won’t fill the gap in this decade.</p>
<p>Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press ( <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/that-massive-tpp" type="external">10/6/15</a>).</p>
|
‘Massive’ Media Hype for TPP
| true |
http://fair.org/home/massive-media-hype-for-tpp/
|
2015-10-06
| 4left
|
‘Massive’ Media Hype for TPP
<p>It is amazing how the elite media can be dragged along by their noses into accepting that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) can have a big impact on trade and growth. If I had a dollar for every time the deal was described as “massive,” or that we were told <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/more-legacy-making-the-nyt-really-really-likes-the-tpp" type="external">what share of world trade</a> will be covered by the TPP, I would be richer than Bill Gates. The reality is that the vast majority of the trade between the countries in the TPP is already covered by trade agreements, as can be seen:</p>
<p>TPP countries with and without current trade agreements with the US. Source: <a href="http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=61&amp;pr.y=6&amp;sy=2015&amp;ey=2015&amp;scsm=1&amp;ssd=1&amp;sort=country&amp;ds=.&amp;br=1&amp;c=193%2C548%2C273%2C516%2C196%2C156%2C228%2C293%2C576%2C158%2C111%2C582&amp;s=NGDPD&amp;grp=0&amp;a=" type="external">International Monetary Fund</a></p>
<p>We continue to hear superlatives even as the evidence suggests the trade impact will be trivial. For example, the New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/06/business/trans-pacific-partnership-trade-deal-is-reached.html" type="external">reported</a> that US tariffs on Japanese cars will be phased out over 30 years. Wow! The <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/donald-trump-says-his-tax-cut-will-lead-to-6-gdp-growth-and-president-obama-says-tpp-will-boost-growth" type="external">most optimistic growth estimates</a> show a cumulative gain by 2027 of less than 0.4 percent, roughly two months of normal GDP growth.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean that the TPP can’t have an impact. It will lock in a <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/tpp-a-ttip-are-not-your-grandfathers-trade-agreements" type="external">regulatory structure</a>, the exact parameters of which are yet to be seen. We do know that the folks at the table came from places like General Electric and Monsanto, not the AFL-CIO and the Sierra Club. We also know that it will mean paying more for drugs and other patent and copyright-protected material (forms of protection, whose <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/the-problem-of-protectionism-in-the-trans-pacific-partnership?" type="external">negative impact</a> is never included in growth projections), but we don’t yet know how much.</p>
<p>We also know that the Obama administration gave up an opportunity to include <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/u-s-trade-policy-is-pro-rich-not-free-trade" type="external">currency rules</a>. This means that trade deficit is likely to persist long into the future. This deficit has been a persistent source of gap in demand, leading to millions of lost jobs. We filled this demand in the 1990s with the stock bubble and in the last decade in the housing bubble. It seems the latest plan from the Fed is that we simply won’t fill the gap in this decade.</p>
<p>Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press ( <a href="http://www.cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/that-massive-tpp" type="external">10/6/15</a>).</p>
| 5,664 |
<p>When Violet Phiri looks at the unjust criminal charges confronting her daughter Tianna, she sees the ‘Old South’ all over again – an era of rigid racial disparities she thought she left long ago.</p>
<p>That ‘Old South’ Phiri sees is not the awful segregation of Jim Crow America but the atrocious apartheid of South Africa – the homeland Phiri fled two decades ago to avoid arrest for her anti-apartheid activism.</p>
<p>Phiri’s daughter is now on trial in a Philadelphia, Pa suburb for aggravated assault and three other felony charges arising from a brief fight near her old high school earlier this year where Tianna was not a participant.</p>
<p>If convicted on these specious charges, Tianna, currently attending a Philadelphia area university on an academic scholarship, will have a criminal record that could cripple her dream of attending law school and becoming a lawyer.</p>
<p>Both Phiri’s apartheid South Africa and America’s Ole South shared many racially discriminatory similarities – one being authorities quickly accepting the word of a white as positive proof of wrongdoing by a black.</p>
<p>Police and prosecutors in Delaware County, Pa – acting solely on the word of white students – charged Tianna with recruiting a few black male friends to assault a white male student at Archbishop Carroll High School in upscale Radnor, Pa whom Tianna had argued with about a racially insensitive classroom remark.</p>
<p>Tianna “took it upon herself to seek revenge for a comment,” said Delco prosecutor Thomas Laurie, who defends Tianna being the only person charged in relation to that March 17, 2009 fight that produced a bruised ego but no serious injuries.</p>
<p>She “arranged” the assault, Laurie said, curtly casting Tianna’s actions as remotely comparable to hiring hit men.</p>
<p>The petite Tianna said that larger white male student – Steven Farley – had verbally harassed and physically menaced her during the 24-hours before that off-campus fight where tormentor Farley was quickly knocked down by Tianna’s former boyfriend who is smaller than Farley.</p>
<p>Tianna, an honor roll student involved in extra-curricular activities throughout her career at Carroll, readily acknowledges contacting her ex-boyfriend Jamar Cann on March 17th asking him to come to Carroll for her personal protection – not to fight Farley.</p>
<p>“Jamar came up to the school to protect me, not fight with Steven. I was afraid of Steven. He’s big,” said Tianna Drummond-Phiri, a college freshman fearful of a conviction when her trial resumes on December 18th.</p>
<p>Tianna and Jamar both acknowledge that Jamar punched Farley after Farley and his friends surrounded Jamar in the parking lot a train station near Carroll High. Tianna commuted to Carroll by train from her home in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>The arrest report prepared, by a Radnor police detective, quotes Cann saying that he came to Carroll to “ride the train home with Phiri to make her feel comfortable.”</p>
<p>The bulk of the arrest report, seemingly reflecting an apartheid white-is-right dynamic, consists of claims against Tianna from Farley backed by female classmates of Farley.</p>
<p>That report prepared by 13-year-veteran Radnor Detective Jim Santoliquito boasts of an investigation where he “identified and interviewed” those female classmates who advised him “that Phiri was sending text messages” to arrange the fight.</p>
<p>Yet, Santoliquito’s report does not explain how those classmates knew that the content of those text messages specifically was Tianna setting up a beat-down of Farley.</p>
<p>Santoliquito’s report includes the names of two female students who were with Tianna at the train station. But Santoliquito’s allegedly thorough investigation apparently did not include interviewing those two students because his report includes no statements from either about events before, during and after that fight.</p>
<p>“The detective kept badgering me,” Tianna said of her interview with Santoliquito inside Carroll two days after that fight. “I felt he had his mind made up about me. He never asked me if I was involved in the fight…which I wasn’t.”</p>
<p>Santoliquito declined to comment on his investigation and arrest report, referring questions to prosecutor Laurie.</p>
<p>The arrest report claims Tianna made at least four violent threats against Farley in the 24-hours before the fight – threats Tianna denies making.</p>
<p>Farley testified at the preliminary hearing that those threats scared him yet he admitted that he and a group of his friends appeared at the train station where Tianna allegedly told Farley her friends would “shoot and stab” him.</p>
<p>Farley went to the station to fight, said Tianna’s lawyer William Cincaglini.</p>
<p>Prosecutor Laurie contends Farley showed up at the train station unaware of the planned assault, an assertion contradicted by Santoliquito’s arrest report and Farley’s own testimony.</p>
<p>While the criminal case against Violet Phiri’s daughter admittedly is small in the larger scheme of things, it symbolizes disparities in how authorities approach infractions by youths differently based along racial lines.</p>
<p>Santoliquito’s arrest report, for example, casually notes how Carroll students frequent that train station after school to “smoke cigarettes” – an arguably innocuous act yet an illegal one for teens.</p>
<p>Farley spent the St. Patrick’s Day evening after that fight drinking with friends at a bonfire according to Facebook postings and court testimony. Yet Delco prosecutors and police ignored that underage drinking and the law enforcement issue of how those teens acquired the alcohol they photographed themselves consuming.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of persons serving life sentences for crimes committed as teens – nearly 500 – the overwhelming majority being black.</p>
<p>Further, blacks in Pa are ten times more likely than whites to face adult adjudication for crimes committed as juveniles according to an examination by Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>The case of a former Carroll High student is an example of disparities in handling crimes by teens.</p>
<p>In 2006, that student, Sean O’Neill Jr., fatally shot his Catholic school classmate in the driveway of his parent’s posh estate while playing with a pistol during a night of heavy drinking and vandalism.</p>
<p>Although authorities initially charged O’Neill as an adult, a judge ordered a wrist-slap juvenile adjudication of nine months ‘treatment’ for that drunken fatal shooting despite a drug arrest of O’Neill months before that shooting and two violent assaults by O’Neill following the shooting but before his trial.</p>
<p>When O’Neill violated parole just weeks after his release from treatment, the judge didn’t incarcerate him until age 21 as the law recommends but committed him to a forest work camp for six months.</p>
<p>Racist practices are “often not even recognized as such” because racism is so deeply infused in the “DNA of almost every institution in society” writer William Gumede noted in a perceptive article published in mid-November.</p>
<p>While Gumede’s assessment actually centered on the racially impacted nation of his birth – South Africa – his observations initially published in the famous Sowetan newspaper are applicable to America.</p>
<p>Philadelphia area Catholic school authorities had permitted Sean O’Neill to transfer into Carroll from another parochial high school following his arrest for that drunken fatal shooting.</p>
<p>That accommodation for O’Neill contracts sharply to authorities quickly suspending Tianna Drummond-Phiri weeks before police formally lodged any charges against her.</p>
<p>Following that suspension two days after the fight, Carroll authorities barred Tianna from participating in the prom and graduation ceremonies.</p>
<p>“I was a wreck over not being able to go to the prom and graduation,” Tianna said. “Seeing the pictures of the prom and graduation on Facebook…I felt robbed…I worked so hard for four years and it was all gone…”</p>
<p>Violet Phiri faults authorities at Carroll for quickly suspending her daughter – seeing an apartheid-like reaction of differing treatment of white O’Neill and her black daughter.</p>
<p>“I guess murder charges are not serious enough for the Archdiocese as Tianna’s charges are,” Phiri said.&#160;“This leaves me to conclude in my mind that the seriousness of offense to cause expulsion from catholic school is determined by the color of your skin not the seriousness of the crime itself.”</p>
<p>Violet Phiri had to fight with Carroll authorities to arrange for Tianna to complete her school work at home – an arrangement that cost Phiri and her husband additional fees beyond Tianna’s tuition payments.</p>
<p>Carroll authorities mailed Tianna her high school diploma.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for Archdiocesan of Philadelphia schools said Carroll authorities suspended Tianna because they felt her actions were “very serious.” But this spokesperson wouldn’t comment on specifics saying it was a police matter.</p>
<p>“She was eligible for expulsion, but the school did not expel her based on her previous good behavior and her cooperation with police,” said Archdiocesan spokesperson Donna Farrell.</p>
<p>Farrell declined to comment on the differing dispositions accorded O’Neill and Drummond-Phiri, referring inquires to Delco prosecutors.</p>
<p>A source who investigated Tianna’s case feels authorities at Carroll, the Radnor Police Department and the Delaware County DA’s Office all overreacted, inflating things way out of proportion and context.</p>
<p>Police and prosecutors contend that an unidentified friend of Jamar Cann sucker-punched Farley during the fight causing him to “fall to the ground” according to the arrest report.</p>
<p>But this source said that contention defies common sense and court testimony. “If it wasn’t a one-on-one fair fight Steven’s friends would have jumped in and they didn’t.”</p>
<p>The fact that Delco prosecutors are pressing felony charges against Tianna doesn’t surprise Linda Osinupedi, president of the Yeadon, Pa NAACP branch in Delaware County.</p>
<p>“There is definite racial overtone out here in Delaware County with the DA’s Office,” said Osinupedi who called the prosecution of Tianna ridiculous and sickening.</p>
<p>Violet Phiri, like South African writer William Gumede, believes that shouting racism to deflect attention from wrong-doing is wrong.</p>
<p>“It hurts to have experienced what we did in our country and to come here and experience it again. This is so sad,” said Phiri, who husband spent time in a South African prison facing execution for his anti-apartheid activism.</p>
<p>“It’s not right that in 2009 these things are happening here in America and you have to worry about being in a white neighborhood,” Phiri said – seeing reflections of apartheid.</p>
<p>LINN WASHINGTON JR. is a columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune who writes frequently about inequities in the US justice system.</p>
<p />
|
Juvenile Injustice in a Philly Suburb
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2009/12/04/juvenile-injustice-in-a-philly-suburb/
|
2009-12-04
| 4left
|
Juvenile Injustice in a Philly Suburb
<p>When Violet Phiri looks at the unjust criminal charges confronting her daughter Tianna, she sees the ‘Old South’ all over again – an era of rigid racial disparities she thought she left long ago.</p>
<p>That ‘Old South’ Phiri sees is not the awful segregation of Jim Crow America but the atrocious apartheid of South Africa – the homeland Phiri fled two decades ago to avoid arrest for her anti-apartheid activism.</p>
<p>Phiri’s daughter is now on trial in a Philadelphia, Pa suburb for aggravated assault and three other felony charges arising from a brief fight near her old high school earlier this year where Tianna was not a participant.</p>
<p>If convicted on these specious charges, Tianna, currently attending a Philadelphia area university on an academic scholarship, will have a criminal record that could cripple her dream of attending law school and becoming a lawyer.</p>
<p>Both Phiri’s apartheid South Africa and America’s Ole South shared many racially discriminatory similarities – one being authorities quickly accepting the word of a white as positive proof of wrongdoing by a black.</p>
<p>Police and prosecutors in Delaware County, Pa – acting solely on the word of white students – charged Tianna with recruiting a few black male friends to assault a white male student at Archbishop Carroll High School in upscale Radnor, Pa whom Tianna had argued with about a racially insensitive classroom remark.</p>
<p>Tianna “took it upon herself to seek revenge for a comment,” said Delco prosecutor Thomas Laurie, who defends Tianna being the only person charged in relation to that March 17, 2009 fight that produced a bruised ego but no serious injuries.</p>
<p>She “arranged” the assault, Laurie said, curtly casting Tianna’s actions as remotely comparable to hiring hit men.</p>
<p>The petite Tianna said that larger white male student – Steven Farley – had verbally harassed and physically menaced her during the 24-hours before that off-campus fight where tormentor Farley was quickly knocked down by Tianna’s former boyfriend who is smaller than Farley.</p>
<p>Tianna, an honor roll student involved in extra-curricular activities throughout her career at Carroll, readily acknowledges contacting her ex-boyfriend Jamar Cann on March 17th asking him to come to Carroll for her personal protection – not to fight Farley.</p>
<p>“Jamar came up to the school to protect me, not fight with Steven. I was afraid of Steven. He’s big,” said Tianna Drummond-Phiri, a college freshman fearful of a conviction when her trial resumes on December 18th.</p>
<p>Tianna and Jamar both acknowledge that Jamar punched Farley after Farley and his friends surrounded Jamar in the parking lot a train station near Carroll High. Tianna commuted to Carroll by train from her home in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>The arrest report prepared, by a Radnor police detective, quotes Cann saying that he came to Carroll to “ride the train home with Phiri to make her feel comfortable.”</p>
<p>The bulk of the arrest report, seemingly reflecting an apartheid white-is-right dynamic, consists of claims against Tianna from Farley backed by female classmates of Farley.</p>
<p>That report prepared by 13-year-veteran Radnor Detective Jim Santoliquito boasts of an investigation where he “identified and interviewed” those female classmates who advised him “that Phiri was sending text messages” to arrange the fight.</p>
<p>Yet, Santoliquito’s report does not explain how those classmates knew that the content of those text messages specifically was Tianna setting up a beat-down of Farley.</p>
<p>Santoliquito’s report includes the names of two female students who were with Tianna at the train station. But Santoliquito’s allegedly thorough investigation apparently did not include interviewing those two students because his report includes no statements from either about events before, during and after that fight.</p>
<p>“The detective kept badgering me,” Tianna said of her interview with Santoliquito inside Carroll two days after that fight. “I felt he had his mind made up about me. He never asked me if I was involved in the fight…which I wasn’t.”</p>
<p>Santoliquito declined to comment on his investigation and arrest report, referring questions to prosecutor Laurie.</p>
<p>The arrest report claims Tianna made at least four violent threats against Farley in the 24-hours before the fight – threats Tianna denies making.</p>
<p>Farley testified at the preliminary hearing that those threats scared him yet he admitted that he and a group of his friends appeared at the train station where Tianna allegedly told Farley her friends would “shoot and stab” him.</p>
<p>Farley went to the station to fight, said Tianna’s lawyer William Cincaglini.</p>
<p>Prosecutor Laurie contends Farley showed up at the train station unaware of the planned assault, an assertion contradicted by Santoliquito’s arrest report and Farley’s own testimony.</p>
<p>While the criminal case against Violet Phiri’s daughter admittedly is small in the larger scheme of things, it symbolizes disparities in how authorities approach infractions by youths differently based along racial lines.</p>
<p>Santoliquito’s arrest report, for example, casually notes how Carroll students frequent that train station after school to “smoke cigarettes” – an arguably innocuous act yet an illegal one for teens.</p>
<p>Farley spent the St. Patrick’s Day evening after that fight drinking with friends at a bonfire according to Facebook postings and court testimony. Yet Delco prosecutors and police ignored that underage drinking and the law enforcement issue of how those teens acquired the alcohol they photographed themselves consuming.</p>
<p>Pennsylvania leads the nation in the number of persons serving life sentences for crimes committed as teens – nearly 500 – the overwhelming majority being black.</p>
<p>Further, blacks in Pa are ten times more likely than whites to face adult adjudication for crimes committed as juveniles according to an examination by Human Rights Watch.</p>
<p>The case of a former Carroll High student is an example of disparities in handling crimes by teens.</p>
<p>In 2006, that student, Sean O’Neill Jr., fatally shot his Catholic school classmate in the driveway of his parent’s posh estate while playing with a pistol during a night of heavy drinking and vandalism.</p>
<p>Although authorities initially charged O’Neill as an adult, a judge ordered a wrist-slap juvenile adjudication of nine months ‘treatment’ for that drunken fatal shooting despite a drug arrest of O’Neill months before that shooting and two violent assaults by O’Neill following the shooting but before his trial.</p>
<p>When O’Neill violated parole just weeks after his release from treatment, the judge didn’t incarcerate him until age 21 as the law recommends but committed him to a forest work camp for six months.</p>
<p>Racist practices are “often not even recognized as such” because racism is so deeply infused in the “DNA of almost every institution in society” writer William Gumede noted in a perceptive article published in mid-November.</p>
<p>While Gumede’s assessment actually centered on the racially impacted nation of his birth – South Africa – his observations initially published in the famous Sowetan newspaper are applicable to America.</p>
<p>Philadelphia area Catholic school authorities had permitted Sean O’Neill to transfer into Carroll from another parochial high school following his arrest for that drunken fatal shooting.</p>
<p>That accommodation for O’Neill contracts sharply to authorities quickly suspending Tianna Drummond-Phiri weeks before police formally lodged any charges against her.</p>
<p>Following that suspension two days after the fight, Carroll authorities barred Tianna from participating in the prom and graduation ceremonies.</p>
<p>“I was a wreck over not being able to go to the prom and graduation,” Tianna said. “Seeing the pictures of the prom and graduation on Facebook…I felt robbed…I worked so hard for four years and it was all gone…”</p>
<p>Violet Phiri faults authorities at Carroll for quickly suspending her daughter – seeing an apartheid-like reaction of differing treatment of white O’Neill and her black daughter.</p>
<p>“I guess murder charges are not serious enough for the Archdiocese as Tianna’s charges are,” Phiri said.&#160;“This leaves me to conclude in my mind that the seriousness of offense to cause expulsion from catholic school is determined by the color of your skin not the seriousness of the crime itself.”</p>
<p>Violet Phiri had to fight with Carroll authorities to arrange for Tianna to complete her school work at home – an arrangement that cost Phiri and her husband additional fees beyond Tianna’s tuition payments.</p>
<p>Carroll authorities mailed Tianna her high school diploma.</p>
<p>A spokesperson for Archdiocesan of Philadelphia schools said Carroll authorities suspended Tianna because they felt her actions were “very serious.” But this spokesperson wouldn’t comment on specifics saying it was a police matter.</p>
<p>“She was eligible for expulsion, but the school did not expel her based on her previous good behavior and her cooperation with police,” said Archdiocesan spokesperson Donna Farrell.</p>
<p>Farrell declined to comment on the differing dispositions accorded O’Neill and Drummond-Phiri, referring inquires to Delco prosecutors.</p>
<p>A source who investigated Tianna’s case feels authorities at Carroll, the Radnor Police Department and the Delaware County DA’s Office all overreacted, inflating things way out of proportion and context.</p>
<p>Police and prosecutors contend that an unidentified friend of Jamar Cann sucker-punched Farley during the fight causing him to “fall to the ground” according to the arrest report.</p>
<p>But this source said that contention defies common sense and court testimony. “If it wasn’t a one-on-one fair fight Steven’s friends would have jumped in and they didn’t.”</p>
<p>The fact that Delco prosecutors are pressing felony charges against Tianna doesn’t surprise Linda Osinupedi, president of the Yeadon, Pa NAACP branch in Delaware County.</p>
<p>“There is definite racial overtone out here in Delaware County with the DA’s Office,” said Osinupedi who called the prosecution of Tianna ridiculous and sickening.</p>
<p>Violet Phiri, like South African writer William Gumede, believes that shouting racism to deflect attention from wrong-doing is wrong.</p>
<p>“It hurts to have experienced what we did in our country and to come here and experience it again. This is so sad,” said Phiri, who husband spent time in a South African prison facing execution for his anti-apartheid activism.</p>
<p>“It’s not right that in 2009 these things are happening here in America and you have to worry about being in a white neighborhood,” Phiri said – seeing reflections of apartheid.</p>
<p>LINN WASHINGTON JR. is a columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune who writes frequently about inequities in the US justice system.</p>
<p />
| 5,665 |
<p>Oct. 12 (UPI) — An animal rescuer in Australia responded to an early morning call to remove a baby possum that somehow ended up stuck in a resident’s toilet.</p>
<p>Nigel Williamson of Nigel’s Animal Rescue and Pest Control said <a href="https://www.3aw.com.au/baby-possum-finds-itself-in-a-spot-of-bother/" type="external">he received a call</a> Tuesday night from a man who discovered a baby possum that appeared to be stuck in the drain of his toilet.</p>
<p>“It’s the first time in 30 years that I’ve ever heard of a possum coming up through the toilet system,” Williamson <a href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/37440941/brushtail-possum-rescued-after-discovered-in-melbourne-toilet/" type="external">told 7 News</a>. “I’ve heard of rats before but never a possum.”</p>
<p>Williamson said the resident told him the lid to the toilet had been closed, leading him to believe the small marsupial made its way up through the plumbing system.</p>
<p>“Glad he looked down before he sat down,” Williamson said.</p>
<p>Williamson’s partner, a veterinary nurse, drove about an hour to the Montrose, Victoria, home.</p>
<p>She posted a video to the business’ <a href="https://www.facebook.com/animalrescuepestcontrol/videos/122762808423490/" type="external">Facebook page</a> showing the 4- to 5-month-old possum’s predicament.</p>
<p>Williamson said the nurse was able to pluck the possum out of the water, dry it off and warm it with her body heat on the drive home.</p>
<p>He said the possum is doing well and they plan to release it near the man’s home.</p>
<p>“[He was] not showing any trauma from his ordeal,” Williamson said.</p>
|
Baby possum rescued after climbing up through toilet
| false |
https://newsline.com/baby-possum-rescued-after-climbing-up-through-toilet/
|
2017-10-12
| 1right-center
|
Baby possum rescued after climbing up through toilet
<p>Oct. 12 (UPI) — An animal rescuer in Australia responded to an early morning call to remove a baby possum that somehow ended up stuck in a resident’s toilet.</p>
<p>Nigel Williamson of Nigel’s Animal Rescue and Pest Control said <a href="https://www.3aw.com.au/baby-possum-finds-itself-in-a-spot-of-bother/" type="external">he received a call</a> Tuesday night from a man who discovered a baby possum that appeared to be stuck in the drain of his toilet.</p>
<p>“It’s the first time in 30 years that I’ve ever heard of a possum coming up through the toilet system,” Williamson <a href="https://au.news.yahoo.com/vic/a/37440941/brushtail-possum-rescued-after-discovered-in-melbourne-toilet/" type="external">told 7 News</a>. “I’ve heard of rats before but never a possum.”</p>
<p>Williamson said the resident told him the lid to the toilet had been closed, leading him to believe the small marsupial made its way up through the plumbing system.</p>
<p>“Glad he looked down before he sat down,” Williamson said.</p>
<p>Williamson’s partner, a veterinary nurse, drove about an hour to the Montrose, Victoria, home.</p>
<p>She posted a video to the business’ <a href="https://www.facebook.com/animalrescuepestcontrol/videos/122762808423490/" type="external">Facebook page</a> showing the 4- to 5-month-old possum’s predicament.</p>
<p>Williamson said the nurse was able to pluck the possum out of the water, dry it off and warm it with her body heat on the drive home.</p>
<p>He said the possum is doing well and they plan to release it near the man’s home.</p>
<p>“[He was] not showing any trauma from his ordeal,” Williamson said.</p>
| 5,666 |
<p>Russian Defense ministry has released short videos, where it says the country’s airspace forces are hitting terrorist positions and combat vehicles in Syria.</p>
<p>New combat footage, captured by surveillance planes and drones observing airstrikes in Syria, was released by Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday. Four undated short clips show the Russian Air Force targeting terrorist-held areas of the country.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/405121-russian-air-strikes-kill-2000-isis/" type="external">WATCH MORE:&#160;Russian air strikes kill 2,000+ ISIS, Al-Nusra terrorists in Syria in 11 days – military (VIDEO)</a></p>
<p>One clip shows a precise strike on a munitions stockpile, according the Defense Ministry. The location is completely obliterated in the massive blast.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Another clip demonstrates a direct hit on what the military says was a terrorist field command point. Following the powerful blast, the building can be seen razed to the ground.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>This video demonstrates an airstrike on apparent terrorist headquarters at an unknown location. Several vehicles can be seen in front of the building moments before an aerial bomb hits it.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>The last one shows the Russian Air Force targeting a terrorist combat vehicle, the ministry said. Following the explosion, burning remains of the vehicle can be seen scattered on the ground.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
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Russian MoD releases videos of Air Force hitting ‘terrorist vehicles & hideouts’ in Syria
| false |
https://newsline.com/russian-mod-releases-videos-of-air-force-hitting-terrorist-vehicles-hideouts-in-syria/
|
2017-10-03
| 1right-center
|
Russian MoD releases videos of Air Force hitting ‘terrorist vehicles & hideouts’ in Syria
<p>Russian Defense ministry has released short videos, where it says the country’s airspace forces are hitting terrorist positions and combat vehicles in Syria.</p>
<p>New combat footage, captured by surveillance planes and drones observing airstrikes in Syria, was released by Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday. Four undated short clips show the Russian Air Force targeting terrorist-held areas of the country.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/405121-russian-air-strikes-kill-2000-isis/" type="external">WATCH MORE:&#160;Russian air strikes kill 2,000+ ISIS, Al-Nusra terrorists in Syria in 11 days – military (VIDEO)</a></p>
<p>One clip shows a precise strike on a munitions stockpile, according the Defense Ministry. The location is completely obliterated in the massive blast.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Another clip demonstrates a direct hit on what the military says was a terrorist field command point. Following the powerful blast, the building can be seen razed to the ground.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>This video demonstrates an airstrike on apparent terrorist headquarters at an unknown location. Several vehicles can be seen in front of the building moments before an aerial bomb hits it.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>The last one shows the Russian Air Force targeting a terrorist combat vehicle, the ministry said. Following the explosion, burning remains of the vehicle can be seen scattered on the ground.</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
| 5,667 |
<p>Aug. 10 (UPI) — The New York City Council voted this week to raise the minimum price of a pack of cigarettes to $13, and ban their sales in pharmacies.</p>
<p>New York City Mayor <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bill-de-Blasio/" type="external">Bill de Blasio</a> personally introduced the plan to city lawmakers in April and is expected to sign the legislation passed by the council on Wednesday, reported the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/city-council-raises-cigarette-pack-price-13-minimum-article-1.3397730" type="external">New York Daily News</a>.</p>
<p>The minimum price for a pack of cigarettes in the city is currently $10.50, and the average price is $11.23.</p>
<p>By raising the price even further, city health officials believe more people will stop smoking.</p>
<p>“As bargain cigarettes are forced to increase prices, we speculate that premium brands may increase their prices too to maintain separation from the lower tier of the market,” Department of Health spokesman Christopher Miller said.</p>
<p>Nine lawmakers voted against the hike. Councilman Steve Levin, a former smoker, did so because smokers will be hit harder “in the pocketbook.”</p>
<p>“I know how difficult it can be to quit and there are a lot of people who would love to quit and are unable to do so,” he told <a href="http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/nyc-approves-bill-to-hike-pack-of-cigarettes-to-13-1.13962850" type="external">Newsday</a>.</p>
<p>The cigarette price hike was one of seven bills passed by city lawmakers aimed at reducing the use of tobacco. There will also be an additional 10 percent tax on all non-cigarette tobacco products, a cap on tobacco retailers, and a rise in the cost for a tobacco-selling license.</p>
<p>Lawmakers are also imposing restrictions on e-cigarettes by requiring a license to sell them and include them in areas where smoking is banned.</p>
|
NYC to raise minimum price of cigarettes to $13 per pack
| false |
https://newsline.com/nyc-to-raise-minimum-price-of-cigarettes-to-13-per-pack/
|
2017-08-11
| 1right-center
|
NYC to raise minimum price of cigarettes to $13 per pack
<p>Aug. 10 (UPI) — The New York City Council voted this week to raise the minimum price of a pack of cigarettes to $13, and ban their sales in pharmacies.</p>
<p>New York City Mayor <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Bill-de-Blasio/" type="external">Bill de Blasio</a> personally introduced the plan to city lawmakers in April and is expected to sign the legislation passed by the council on Wednesday, reported the <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/city-council-raises-cigarette-pack-price-13-minimum-article-1.3397730" type="external">New York Daily News</a>.</p>
<p>The minimum price for a pack of cigarettes in the city is currently $10.50, and the average price is $11.23.</p>
<p>By raising the price even further, city health officials believe more people will stop smoking.</p>
<p>“As bargain cigarettes are forced to increase prices, we speculate that premium brands may increase their prices too to maintain separation from the lower tier of the market,” Department of Health spokesman Christopher Miller said.</p>
<p>Nine lawmakers voted against the hike. Councilman Steve Levin, a former smoker, did so because smokers will be hit harder “in the pocketbook.”</p>
<p>“I know how difficult it can be to quit and there are a lot of people who would love to quit and are unable to do so,” he told <a href="http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/nyc-approves-bill-to-hike-pack-of-cigarettes-to-13-1.13962850" type="external">Newsday</a>.</p>
<p>The cigarette price hike was one of seven bills passed by city lawmakers aimed at reducing the use of tobacco. There will also be an additional 10 percent tax on all non-cigarette tobacco products, a cap on tobacco retailers, and a rise in the cost for a tobacco-selling license.</p>
<p>Lawmakers are also imposing restrictions on e-cigarettes by requiring a license to sell them and include them in areas where smoking is banned.</p>
| 5,668 |
<p />
<p>There may come a time in your career when you need to consider taking a cut&#160;in <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/salary.html" type="external">salary Opens a New Window.</a>. This could happen during a realignment of work and&#160;life priorities – e.g., taking a back seat in the office to get more time with the kids – or if you're making&#160;a career change and have to step down to build up experience.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As much as it may pain you to see the reduction in&#160;your pay stub, it will likely be worth it in the long run. But first, you have to make it through that transition period. To help you do so, I offer these six practical strategies you can implement immediately:</p>
<p>1. Set New Budgets</p>
<p>Reassess your budgets. How much do you currently spend on different categories each month – e.g., shopping, bills, eating out, hobbies, savings, etc.? After you've worked this out, figure out how much you can realistic spend on each item in your new circumstances. Could you reduce your number of nights out? Could you minimize your TV package or switch energy providers for a better deal? Even small savings across the spectrum can&#160;add up and lessen your financial strain.</p>
<p>There are now apps available that can help track your spending and keep it within limits. Otherwise, you can make a good, old-fashioned spreadsheet.</p>
<p>2. Savvy Shopping</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Food shopping is often a sizable expense, but it can be curtailed in several ways. Despite being fairly brand-orientated myself, I know that being fussy is not an option when you're facing a salary cut. Changing where you shop or&#160;what products you buy can have a huge impact on your weekly spend.</p>
<p>There are some great budget supermarkets and products available, so consider switching to these cheaper alternatives. Perhaps you could buy frozen meat and vegetables rather than fresh? Maybe you can start buying in bulk or sign up to a loyalty program? Another helpful tip is to divide your shopping list into two sections, one for items you need right now and another for products you will need to buy soon. Keep an eye on the second section and strive to pick up these goods when they are on sale,&#160;rather than full price, to make your money go further.</p>
<p>3. Cut&#160;Out Your Vices</p>
<p>Whether it's smoking, drinking, gambling, or snacking, cutting out your vices will inevitably free up some cash. It will probably benefit your well-being, too.</p>
<p>Consider how eliminating a bad habit you currently have could further you financially. Calculate the daily, weekly, and yearly savings you'll see in order to&#160;emphasize the gains and motivate yourself. Research successful techniques you can use to quit. Find a piggy bank you can use to watch the savings grow. Set a date and do it. Times of financial change can also be great catalysts for lifestyle improvements, so make the most of the opportunity.</p>
<p>4. Learn to Cook</p>
<p>Health and fitness have become prominent societal concerns, and the result has been an influx&#160;of cheap, fast, and nutritious home-cooking recipes. Start&#160;searching the web for inspiration and make your way into the kitchen.</p>
<p>Takeout costs can add up quickly, but it's&#160;easy to avoid them. If you prepare your own meals, you won't have to buy lunch every day or dine out frequently.</p>
<p>Consider reserving your Sunday nights for batch-cooking and <a href="https://www.kaylaitsines.com/blogs/lifestyle/18903859-meal-prep-101-for-beginners" type="external">meal prep Opens a New Window.</a>. Find ways to store your food to keep it fresh and a radio channel that will get you in the mood to&#160;whip up some delicious, cost-effective food. This technique can make a huge difference&#160;in your weekly budget, so get cooking!</p>
<p>5. Safe Saving</p>
<p>Saving is a very sensible, commendable act, but only when you can afford to do so. Be realistic and evaluate whether your new financial position will allow you to continue as before. It's far better to adjust how much you put away than run up your credit card or make yourself miserable living on bread and jam.</p>
<p>I generally&#160;transfer money into my savings account as soon as I am&#160;paid because this is the "safest" time for me to do so, but if you're navigating a period of reduced income, leave it until the end of the month. That way, you'll be able to&#160;take care of expenses first and only put away what is leftover. It may not be as much as you were able to accumulate previously, but it will be manageable, and that's what adapting to a salary cut is all about.</p>
<p>6. Pick Up Extra Work</p>
<p>Finally, there may be ways to&#160;boost your income through supplementary channels. Could you pick up some freelancing work or tutor during the evenings? Would clearing out the attic and selling stuff online cultivate extra cash? I'm a recruiter, so I could set up a resume-writing service and leverage my expertise in return for a small fee.</p>
<p>Think about how your skills could be turned into a service, your hobby into a business, or your interest into a blog, and then take it from there.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>Best of luck with your future career choices! Remember that high salaries aren't the only dream to chase, and surviving a cut&#160;may be easier than you think!</p>
<p>Lauren is a recruiter, blogger, and millennial with a marketing degree from the triple-accredited Strathclyde Business School. Follow her on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenlindsay?authType=NAME_SEARCHauthToken=MyZLlocale=en_UStrk=tyahtrkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A59578179%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-3-3%2CtarId%3A1482943670879%2Ctas%3Alauren" type="external">LinkedIn Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
How to Survive a Pay Cut
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/12/28/how-to-survive-pay-cut.html
|
2017-01-02
| 0right
|
How to Survive a Pay Cut
<p />
<p>There may come a time in your career when you need to consider taking a cut&#160;in <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/salary.html" type="external">salary Opens a New Window.</a>. This could happen during a realignment of work and&#160;life priorities – e.g., taking a back seat in the office to get more time with the kids – or if you're making&#160;a career change and have to step down to build up experience.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As much as it may pain you to see the reduction in&#160;your pay stub, it will likely be worth it in the long run. But first, you have to make it through that transition period. To help you do so, I offer these six practical strategies you can implement immediately:</p>
<p>1. Set New Budgets</p>
<p>Reassess your budgets. How much do you currently spend on different categories each month – e.g., shopping, bills, eating out, hobbies, savings, etc.? After you've worked this out, figure out how much you can realistic spend on each item in your new circumstances. Could you reduce your number of nights out? Could you minimize your TV package or switch energy providers for a better deal? Even small savings across the spectrum can&#160;add up and lessen your financial strain.</p>
<p>There are now apps available that can help track your spending and keep it within limits. Otherwise, you can make a good, old-fashioned spreadsheet.</p>
<p>2. Savvy Shopping</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Food shopping is often a sizable expense, but it can be curtailed in several ways. Despite being fairly brand-orientated myself, I know that being fussy is not an option when you're facing a salary cut. Changing where you shop or&#160;what products you buy can have a huge impact on your weekly spend.</p>
<p>There are some great budget supermarkets and products available, so consider switching to these cheaper alternatives. Perhaps you could buy frozen meat and vegetables rather than fresh? Maybe you can start buying in bulk or sign up to a loyalty program? Another helpful tip is to divide your shopping list into two sections, one for items you need right now and another for products you will need to buy soon. Keep an eye on the second section and strive to pick up these goods when they are on sale,&#160;rather than full price, to make your money go further.</p>
<p>3. Cut&#160;Out Your Vices</p>
<p>Whether it's smoking, drinking, gambling, or snacking, cutting out your vices will inevitably free up some cash. It will probably benefit your well-being, too.</p>
<p>Consider how eliminating a bad habit you currently have could further you financially. Calculate the daily, weekly, and yearly savings you'll see in order to&#160;emphasize the gains and motivate yourself. Research successful techniques you can use to quit. Find a piggy bank you can use to watch the savings grow. Set a date and do it. Times of financial change can also be great catalysts for lifestyle improvements, so make the most of the opportunity.</p>
<p>4. Learn to Cook</p>
<p>Health and fitness have become prominent societal concerns, and the result has been an influx&#160;of cheap, fast, and nutritious home-cooking recipes. Start&#160;searching the web for inspiration and make your way into the kitchen.</p>
<p>Takeout costs can add up quickly, but it's&#160;easy to avoid them. If you prepare your own meals, you won't have to buy lunch every day or dine out frequently.</p>
<p>Consider reserving your Sunday nights for batch-cooking and <a href="https://www.kaylaitsines.com/blogs/lifestyle/18903859-meal-prep-101-for-beginners" type="external">meal prep Opens a New Window.</a>. Find ways to store your food to keep it fresh and a radio channel that will get you in the mood to&#160;whip up some delicious, cost-effective food. This technique can make a huge difference&#160;in your weekly budget, so get cooking!</p>
<p>5. Safe Saving</p>
<p>Saving is a very sensible, commendable act, but only when you can afford to do so. Be realistic and evaluate whether your new financial position will allow you to continue as before. It's far better to adjust how much you put away than run up your credit card or make yourself miserable living on bread and jam.</p>
<p>I generally&#160;transfer money into my savings account as soon as I am&#160;paid because this is the "safest" time for me to do so, but if you're navigating a period of reduced income, leave it until the end of the month. That way, you'll be able to&#160;take care of expenses first and only put away what is leftover. It may not be as much as you were able to accumulate previously, but it will be manageable, and that's what adapting to a salary cut is all about.</p>
<p>6. Pick Up Extra Work</p>
<p>Finally, there may be ways to&#160;boost your income through supplementary channels. Could you pick up some freelancing work or tutor during the evenings? Would clearing out the attic and selling stuff online cultivate extra cash? I'm a recruiter, so I could set up a resume-writing service and leverage my expertise in return for a small fee.</p>
<p>Think about how your skills could be turned into a service, your hobby into a business, or your interest into a blog, and then take it from there.</p>
<p>–</p>
<p>Best of luck with your future career choices! Remember that high salaries aren't the only dream to chase, and surviving a cut&#160;may be easier than you think!</p>
<p>Lauren is a recruiter, blogger, and millennial with a marketing degree from the triple-accredited Strathclyde Business School. Follow her on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenlindsay?authType=NAME_SEARCHauthToken=MyZLlocale=en_UStrk=tyahtrkInfo=clickedVertical%3Amynetwork%2CclickedEntityId%3A59578179%2CauthType%3ANAME_SEARCH%2Cidx%3A1-3-3%2CtarId%3A1482943670879%2Ctas%3Alauren" type="external">LinkedIn Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 5,669 |
<p>LIMA, Peru — If you thought smoking cigarettes was on the way out, think again.</p>
<p>That may be true in the United States and other developed countries after decades of campaigning against a product experts say kills up to half its consumers. But globally sales have grown as tobacco companies target new markets in developing nations.</p>
<p>The result, according to the World Health Organization, is that smoking is set to kill <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/" type="external">1 billion people</a> this century, most of them in poor countries. That's 10 times the 20th century death toll of 100 million.</p>
<p>That truly scary statistic has now motivated Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to launch the Anti-Tobacco Litigation Fund.</p>
<p>Unveiled this week, it is intended to help pay for the legal defense of poor countries when big tobacco companies challenge their anti-smoking legislation, often using obscure clauses from trade treaties aimed at ensuring fair competition.</p>
<p>That tactic has become increasingly common around the world, from Asia to Latin America, as the tobacco giants seek to head off the kind of tough regulation that has helped drive down demand in the US.</p>
<p>Just think of tiny Uruguay, locked in a ferocious battle with Marlboro manufacturer Philip Morris since 2010 over a law that bans heavy branding and requires cigarette packs to carry graphic images of disease caused by smoking.</p>
<p>The company claims that the measure violates its intellectual property rights — in other words, its cigarette trademarks — which are protected by the trade treaty.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140714/uruguay-v-philip-morris-tobacco-smoking" type="external">Why Uruguay’s David and Goliath fight with big tobacco really matters</a></p>
<p>Middle-income Uruguay, which has managed to defend against Philip Morris so far, is relatively wealthy compared to many of the impoverished nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia that now stand to benefit from the legal fund. It will be administered by the <a href="http://global.tobaccofreekids.org/en" type="external">Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids</a>, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit.</p>
<p>“These trade lawsuits have been intended to stop countries from taking bold action against smoking and, in some ways, they have succeeded,” the group’s president, Matthew Myers, told GlobalPost.</p>
<p>“The fund sends a clear message to the tobacco companies that they will not be able to bully low- and middle-income countries in the way they have tried to do with Uruguay.”</p>
<p>Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have together contributed an initial $4 million to the fund and are now hoping to bring on board other donors.</p>
<p>“Bloomberg has made clear that if the fund needs more money, then it can count on him and Bill Gates to make sure that it gets it,” added Myers.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.org/press/releases/bloomberg-philanthropies-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-launch-anti-tobacco-trade-litigation-fund/" type="external">statement</a>, Bloomberg said: “We are at a critical moment in the global effort to reduce tobacco use, because the significant gains we have seen are at risk of being undermined by the tobacco industry’s use of trade agreements and litigation.”</p>
<p>The pair of billionaire philanthropists will also help governments access top specialist lawyers, and provide other technical assistance. That will include expert support in drafting anti-smoking laws to ensure they don’t gift loopholes to big tobacco that allow it to continue pushing its lethal product.</p>
<p>Bloomberg has long campaigned against smoking, donating a total of $600 million to the cause since 2007. But this will be the first time that Gates, who has a longstanding interest in public health, has backed the global anti-smoking battle with his cash.</p>
|
Gates and Bloomberg set up global anti-tobacco legal defense fund
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2015-03-21/gates-and-bloomberg-set-global-anti-tobacco-legal-defense-fund
|
2015-03-21
| 3left-center
|
Gates and Bloomberg set up global anti-tobacco legal defense fund
<p>LIMA, Peru — If you thought smoking cigarettes was on the way out, think again.</p>
<p>That may be true in the United States and other developed countries after decades of campaigning against a product experts say kills up to half its consumers. But globally sales have grown as tobacco companies target new markets in developing nations.</p>
<p>The result, according to the World Health Organization, is that smoking is set to kill <a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/" type="external">1 billion people</a> this century, most of them in poor countries. That's 10 times the 20th century death toll of 100 million.</p>
<p>That truly scary statistic has now motivated Microsoft founder Bill Gates and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to launch the Anti-Tobacco Litigation Fund.</p>
<p>Unveiled this week, it is intended to help pay for the legal defense of poor countries when big tobacco companies challenge their anti-smoking legislation, often using obscure clauses from trade treaties aimed at ensuring fair competition.</p>
<p>That tactic has become increasingly common around the world, from Asia to Latin America, as the tobacco giants seek to head off the kind of tough regulation that has helped drive down demand in the US.</p>
<p>Just think of tiny Uruguay, locked in a ferocious battle with Marlboro manufacturer Philip Morris since 2010 over a law that bans heavy branding and requires cigarette packs to carry graphic images of disease caused by smoking.</p>
<p>The company claims that the measure violates its intellectual property rights — in other words, its cigarette trademarks — which are protected by the trade treaty.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/140714/uruguay-v-philip-morris-tobacco-smoking" type="external">Why Uruguay’s David and Goliath fight with big tobacco really matters</a></p>
<p>Middle-income Uruguay, which has managed to defend against Philip Morris so far, is relatively wealthy compared to many of the impoverished nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia that now stand to benefit from the legal fund. It will be administered by the <a href="http://global.tobaccofreekids.org/en" type="external">Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids</a>, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit.</p>
<p>“These trade lawsuits have been intended to stop countries from taking bold action against smoking and, in some ways, they have succeeded,” the group’s president, Matthew Myers, told GlobalPost.</p>
<p>“The fund sends a clear message to the tobacco companies that they will not be able to bully low- and middle-income countries in the way they have tried to do with Uruguay.”</p>
<p>Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have together contributed an initial $4 million to the fund and are now hoping to bring on board other donors.</p>
<p>“Bloomberg has made clear that if the fund needs more money, then it can count on him and Bill Gates to make sure that it gets it,” added Myers.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.org/press/releases/bloomberg-philanthropies-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-launch-anti-tobacco-trade-litigation-fund/" type="external">statement</a>, Bloomberg said: “We are at a critical moment in the global effort to reduce tobacco use, because the significant gains we have seen are at risk of being undermined by the tobacco industry’s use of trade agreements and litigation.”</p>
<p>The pair of billionaire philanthropists will also help governments access top specialist lawyers, and provide other technical assistance. That will include expert support in drafting anti-smoking laws to ensure they don’t gift loopholes to big tobacco that allow it to continue pushing its lethal product.</p>
<p>Bloomberg has long campaigned against smoking, donating a total of $600 million to the cause since 2007. But this will be the first time that Gates, who has a longstanding interest in public health, has backed the global anti-smoking battle with his cash.</p>
| 5,670 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>But Centennial had bigger guns.</p>
<p>And more guns.</p>
<p>The top-seeded Hawks, quicker and more diverse offensively and defensively than their northern visitors, didn't encounter much resistance from the Pintos on Friday night at the Field of Dreams, steamrolling Moriarty 42-0 in the Class 5A state semifinals.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"We're hungry," said sophomore tailback Joaquin Gutierrez, who rushed for 208 yards on just 14 carries with three touchdowns. "We're hungry. We ain't gonna stop."</p>
<p>Centennial (12-0) plays host next week to either Artesia or Piedra Vista in the championship game. The Bulldogs and Panthers meet this afternoon in 5A's second semi in Artesia.</p>
<p>The Hawks dominated every statistical category.</p>
<p>The first downs (17-8), rushing yardage (291 for the Hawks, compared to a meager 40 for Moriarty) and the passing numbers (177-15) all heavily favored Centennial.</p>
<p>"Our defense played real well," Centennial coach Aaron Ocampo said. "We gave up a couple of drives, but they stepped up in the red zone."</p>
<p>For Ocampo, this will be his second title game. He also got there with Manzano in 2010.</p>
<p>His offense was a bit slow starting, but the Hawks were always in complete command during the cold evening.</p>
<p>Keath Jasso's first-quarter TD run was followed by a 6-yarder from Gutierrez and a 48-yard TD pass from Dante Lopez to Chase Austin in the second quarter.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Gutierrez added a 15-yard score in the first minute of the third quarter, and Lopez fired 51 yards to Bryce Rewalt to make it 35-0. Gutierrez had the game's final score, an 83-yard scamper early in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>"Joaquin is a tough, strong, speedy kid," Ocampo said. "He's learning as he goes, but he's so athletic and fast and powerful."</p>
<p>The Hawks outgained the fourth-seeded Pintos (9-3) by a wide margin (468-55). Moriarty's run-dominant offense - coach Joe Anaya said his team would not deviate from its ground-game approach almost no matter what the score - was limited to 40 yards on 37 carries.</p>
<p>"They do such a good job with that, and nobody runs the Wing-T now," Ocampo said.</p>
<p>"Fortunately, I've got my years going against Judge Chavez at Cibola and San Juan (Mendoza at St. Pius) running it, and we came up with a pretty good game plan."</p>
<p>Moriarty was in its first state semifinal in 24 years. This is Centennial's first championship game appearance. The Hawks, who are moving up to Class 6A in 2016-17, fell to Belen in last year's 5A semis.</p>
<p />
|
Class 5A football: Moriarty falls big to Centennial
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/682650/hawks-demolish-pintos.html
| 2least
|
Class 5A football: Moriarty falls big to Centennial
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>But Centennial had bigger guns.</p>
<p>And more guns.</p>
<p>The top-seeded Hawks, quicker and more diverse offensively and defensively than their northern visitors, didn't encounter much resistance from the Pintos on Friday night at the Field of Dreams, steamrolling Moriarty 42-0 in the Class 5A state semifinals.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"We're hungry," said sophomore tailback Joaquin Gutierrez, who rushed for 208 yards on just 14 carries with three touchdowns. "We're hungry. We ain't gonna stop."</p>
<p>Centennial (12-0) plays host next week to either Artesia or Piedra Vista in the championship game. The Bulldogs and Panthers meet this afternoon in 5A's second semi in Artesia.</p>
<p>The Hawks dominated every statistical category.</p>
<p>The first downs (17-8), rushing yardage (291 for the Hawks, compared to a meager 40 for Moriarty) and the passing numbers (177-15) all heavily favored Centennial.</p>
<p>"Our defense played real well," Centennial coach Aaron Ocampo said. "We gave up a couple of drives, but they stepped up in the red zone."</p>
<p>For Ocampo, this will be his second title game. He also got there with Manzano in 2010.</p>
<p>His offense was a bit slow starting, but the Hawks were always in complete command during the cold evening.</p>
<p>Keath Jasso's first-quarter TD run was followed by a 6-yarder from Gutierrez and a 48-yard TD pass from Dante Lopez to Chase Austin in the second quarter.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Gutierrez added a 15-yard score in the first minute of the third quarter, and Lopez fired 51 yards to Bryce Rewalt to make it 35-0. Gutierrez had the game's final score, an 83-yard scamper early in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>"Joaquin is a tough, strong, speedy kid," Ocampo said. "He's learning as he goes, but he's so athletic and fast and powerful."</p>
<p>The Hawks outgained the fourth-seeded Pintos (9-3) by a wide margin (468-55). Moriarty's run-dominant offense - coach Joe Anaya said his team would not deviate from its ground-game approach almost no matter what the score - was limited to 40 yards on 37 carries.</p>
<p>"They do such a good job with that, and nobody runs the Wing-T now," Ocampo said.</p>
<p>"Fortunately, I've got my years going against Judge Chavez at Cibola and San Juan (Mendoza at St. Pius) running it, and we came up with a pretty good game plan."</p>
<p>Moriarty was in its first state semifinal in 24 years. This is Centennial's first championship game appearance. The Hawks, who are moving up to Class 6A in 2016-17, fell to Belen in last year's 5A semis.</p>
<p />
| 5,671 |
|
<p>CLEVELAND (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Ohio Lottery's "Classic Lotto" game were:</p>
<p>24-29-38-40-41-48, Kicker: -8-9-4-8-4</p>
<p>(twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-eight, forty, forty-one, forty-eight; Kicker: zero, eight, nine, four, eight, four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1.2 million</p>
<p>CLEVELAND (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Ohio Lottery's "Classic Lotto" game were:</p>
<p>24-29-38-40-41-48, Kicker: -8-9-4-8-4</p>
<p>(twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-eight, forty, forty-one, forty-eight; Kicker: zero, eight, nine, four, eight, four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1.2 million</p>
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Classic Lotto' game
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/808e692bf187475b90ce2dcb698a1748
|
2018-01-18
| 2least
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Classic Lotto' game
<p>CLEVELAND (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Ohio Lottery's "Classic Lotto" game were:</p>
<p>24-29-38-40-41-48, Kicker: -8-9-4-8-4</p>
<p>(twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-eight, forty, forty-one, forty-eight; Kicker: zero, eight, nine, four, eight, four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1.2 million</p>
<p>CLEVELAND (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Ohio Lottery's "Classic Lotto" game were:</p>
<p>24-29-38-40-41-48, Kicker: -8-9-4-8-4</p>
<p>(twenty-four, twenty-nine, thirty-eight, forty, forty-one, forty-eight; Kicker: zero, eight, nine, four, eight, four)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $1.2 million</p>
| 5,672 |
<p>Imagine that Yasser Arafat had succeeded in ending Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Now imagine that 10 or 15 years later, new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to hand over control of his country’s budget to the IMF so his people’s future would be controlled by outsiders. Do you think Palestinians would praise Abbas as a patriot or denounce him as a traitor?</p>
<p>Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen is Mahmoud Abbas. He’s caved in to the demands of foreign capital and transferred control over the nation’s budget to the EU and the IMF. Here’s an excerpt from a November 24, article in Reuters:</p>
<p>“Ireland’s teetering government will announce plans on Wednesday to cut welfare spending sharply and raise taxes to help pay for the country’s catastrophic banking crisis and meet the terms of an international bailout.</p>
<p>The four-year plan to save 15 billion euros is a condition for an EU/IMF rescue under negotiation for a country long feted as a model of economic development that has become the latest casualty in the euro zone’s emergency ward.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Brian Cowen told parliament no final figure had been agreed for financial assistance, “but an amount of the order of 85 billion (euros) has been discussed.</p>
<p>The finance ministry said the austerity plan would be published at 1400 GMT and posted on the official government website.” (Reuters)</p>
<p>This is a black day for Ireland. The Irish people will now face a decade or more of grinding poverty and depression thanks to their venal leaders. As soon as the ink dries on the IMF loans, the second occupation of Ireland will begin, only this time there won’t be armored cars and Paramilitaries in fatigues, but nerdy-looking bureaucrats trained in the art of spreading misery. In fact, the loans haven’t even been signed yet, and already IMF officials are urging the government to cut jobless benefits and the minimum wage. They’re literally champing at the bit. They just can’t wait to get their hands on the budget and start slashing away.</p>
<p>And don’t believe the hype about European unity or saving Ireland. My ass. This is about bailing out the banks. The bondholders get a free ride while workers get kicked to the curb. Here’s a clip from the Financial Times that spells it out in black and white:</p>
<p>“According to data compiled by the Bank of International Settlements, the three largest creditors to the Irish economy at the end of June…were Germany to the tune of €109bn, the UK at €100bn and France at €40bn. These sums amount to 2 per cent of France’s gross domestic product, 4.5 per cent of Germany’s GDP, and 7 per cent of British GDP.”</p>
<p>See? Another bank bailout. Ireland is being asked to cut to social services, slash wages, renegotiate contracts, and dismantle the welfare state so that undercapitalized banks in France and Germany can get their pound of flesh. But, why? They’re the ones who bought the bonds. No one put a gun to their head. They knew they could lose money if Irish banks went south. That’s the risk they took. “You pays your money, and you takes your chances.” Right? That’s how capitalism works.</p>
<p>Not any more, it doesn’t. Not while Cowen’s in charge, at least. The Irish PM has decided to bail them out; make all the bondholders “whole again.” But who made Cowen God? Who gave Cowen the right to hand over his country to the IMF?</p>
<p>No one. Cowen is a rogue agent kowtowing to international capital. After he finishes his work in Ireland, he’ll probably join globalist Tony Blair on the French Riviera for a little hobnobbing with the tuxedo crowd.</p>
<p>It’s revealing to watch the way Cowen works, as though the interests of foreign bankers mean more to him than those of his own people. For example, the Green Party withdrew from the government last night calling for new elections, but even though the government is in a shambles, the slippery Taoiseach wants to stay in power long enough to push through a new 4-year budget that will leave Irish workers on the brink of destitution. Who is Cowen working for anyway?</p>
<p>This is from the Irish Times:</p>
<p>“Opposition parties have today stepped up pressure on the Government as it seeks to push ahead with passing next month’s budget.</p>
<p>Fine Gael again called for an immediate general election and said the four-year budgetary plan should only be implemented by a Government which has a proper mandate….</p>
<p>“What is best for the country is that the negotiation about a programme for four years be done by a government which has four years to serve, that has a mandate from the public so that it has the authority and the credibility to not only develop and negotiate it but to implement it. I think that is in Ireland’s best interest,” he said. (“Opposition steps up pressure”, Charlie Taylor, Irish Times)</p>
<p>The prospective belt-tightening measures will include the firing of 28,000 public employees, a boost in property taxes, a 10 percent cut in welfare benefits, and higher taxes on low-wage workers. Cowen believes that taxing low income families is preferable to making billionaire bondholders eat their losses. The whole thing stinks to high-heaven.</p>
<p>Is there a way out for Ireland? Economist Mark Weisbrot thinks so. Here’s what he thinks should happen:</p>
<p>“The European authorities and IMF can loan Ireland any funds needed in the next year or two at very low interest rates….Once these borrowing needs are guaranteed, Ireland would not have to worry about spikes in its borrowing costs like the one that provoked the current crisis….The European authorities could scrap their pro-cyclical conditions and, instead, allow for Ireland to undertake a temporary fiscal stimulus to get their economy growing again. That is the most feasible, practical alternative to continued recession.</p>
<p>Instead, the European authorities are trying what the IMF… calls an “internal devaluation”. This is a process of shrinking the economy and creating so much unemployment that wages fall dramatically, and the Irish economy becomes more competitive internationally on the basis of lower unit labour costs.”</p>
<p>It’s all de rigeur for the IMF. It wouldn’t be an IMF program unless someone was starving. That’s the benchmark for success.</p>
<p>Ireland doesn’t need structural adjustment programs that shrink GDP, dismantle popular social programs and strip wealth from workers when low interest funding and fiscal stimulus can bring the economy back to life. This is politics not economics. The EU and IMF are using the crisis to push through their own agenda. Their real goal is to crush the unions, shred the social safety net, and roll back the gains of the Progressive Era.</p>
<p>The Irish people are left with no choice but to resist. Presently the Cowen government is collapsing. Bravo. Now it’s off to the barricades to see if the damage can be undone. Ireland needs to withdraw from the EU and start fresh. It’ll be a bumpy road at first, but there’s no other way. Economist Dean Baker sums it up like this in an article in The Guardian. Here’s what he said:</p>
<p>“Even a relatively small country like Ireland has options. Specifically, they could drop out of the euro and default on their debt….Like Ireland, Argentina had also been a poster child of the neoliberal crew before it ran into difficulties.</p>
<p>But the IMF can turn quickly. Its austerity programme lowered GDP by almost 10% and pushed the unemployment rate well into the double digits. By the end of the 2001, it was politically impossible for the Argentine government to agree to more austerity. As a result, it broke the supposedly unbreakable link between its currency and the dollar and defaulted on its debt.</p>
<p>The immediate effect was to make the economy worse, but by the second half of 2002, the economy was again growing. This was the start of five and a half years of solid growth, until the world economic crisis eventually took its toll in 2009.”</p>
<p>The Irish people didn’t struggle through centuries of famine and foreign occupation so they could be debt-peons in the EU’s corporate Uberstate. Like Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said, “We don’t need anyone coming in to run the place for us. We can run it ourselves.” Right. Tell the EU plutocrats to take their Utopian Bankstate and shove it.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state and can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
|
Memo to Ireland
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2010/11/25/memo-to-ireland/
|
2010-11-25
| 4left
|
Memo to Ireland
<p>Imagine that Yasser Arafat had succeeded in ending Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Now imagine that 10 or 15 years later, new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, agreed to hand over control of his country’s budget to the IMF so his people’s future would be controlled by outsiders. Do you think Palestinians would praise Abbas as a patriot or denounce him as a traitor?</p>
<p>Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen is Mahmoud Abbas. He’s caved in to the demands of foreign capital and transferred control over the nation’s budget to the EU and the IMF. Here’s an excerpt from a November 24, article in Reuters:</p>
<p>“Ireland’s teetering government will announce plans on Wednesday to cut welfare spending sharply and raise taxes to help pay for the country’s catastrophic banking crisis and meet the terms of an international bailout.</p>
<p>The four-year plan to save 15 billion euros is a condition for an EU/IMF rescue under negotiation for a country long feted as a model of economic development that has become the latest casualty in the euro zone’s emergency ward.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Brian Cowen told parliament no final figure had been agreed for financial assistance, “but an amount of the order of 85 billion (euros) has been discussed.</p>
<p>The finance ministry said the austerity plan would be published at 1400 GMT and posted on the official government website.” (Reuters)</p>
<p>This is a black day for Ireland. The Irish people will now face a decade or more of grinding poverty and depression thanks to their venal leaders. As soon as the ink dries on the IMF loans, the second occupation of Ireland will begin, only this time there won’t be armored cars and Paramilitaries in fatigues, but nerdy-looking bureaucrats trained in the art of spreading misery. In fact, the loans haven’t even been signed yet, and already IMF officials are urging the government to cut jobless benefits and the minimum wage. They’re literally champing at the bit. They just can’t wait to get their hands on the budget and start slashing away.</p>
<p>And don’t believe the hype about European unity or saving Ireland. My ass. This is about bailing out the banks. The bondholders get a free ride while workers get kicked to the curb. Here’s a clip from the Financial Times that spells it out in black and white:</p>
<p>“According to data compiled by the Bank of International Settlements, the three largest creditors to the Irish economy at the end of June…were Germany to the tune of €109bn, the UK at €100bn and France at €40bn. These sums amount to 2 per cent of France’s gross domestic product, 4.5 per cent of Germany’s GDP, and 7 per cent of British GDP.”</p>
<p>See? Another bank bailout. Ireland is being asked to cut to social services, slash wages, renegotiate contracts, and dismantle the welfare state so that undercapitalized banks in France and Germany can get their pound of flesh. But, why? They’re the ones who bought the bonds. No one put a gun to their head. They knew they could lose money if Irish banks went south. That’s the risk they took. “You pays your money, and you takes your chances.” Right? That’s how capitalism works.</p>
<p>Not any more, it doesn’t. Not while Cowen’s in charge, at least. The Irish PM has decided to bail them out; make all the bondholders “whole again.” But who made Cowen God? Who gave Cowen the right to hand over his country to the IMF?</p>
<p>No one. Cowen is a rogue agent kowtowing to international capital. After he finishes his work in Ireland, he’ll probably join globalist Tony Blair on the French Riviera for a little hobnobbing with the tuxedo crowd.</p>
<p>It’s revealing to watch the way Cowen works, as though the interests of foreign bankers mean more to him than those of his own people. For example, the Green Party withdrew from the government last night calling for new elections, but even though the government is in a shambles, the slippery Taoiseach wants to stay in power long enough to push through a new 4-year budget that will leave Irish workers on the brink of destitution. Who is Cowen working for anyway?</p>
<p>This is from the Irish Times:</p>
<p>“Opposition parties have today stepped up pressure on the Government as it seeks to push ahead with passing next month’s budget.</p>
<p>Fine Gael again called for an immediate general election and said the four-year budgetary plan should only be implemented by a Government which has a proper mandate….</p>
<p>“What is best for the country is that the negotiation about a programme for four years be done by a government which has four years to serve, that has a mandate from the public so that it has the authority and the credibility to not only develop and negotiate it but to implement it. I think that is in Ireland’s best interest,” he said. (“Opposition steps up pressure”, Charlie Taylor, Irish Times)</p>
<p>The prospective belt-tightening measures will include the firing of 28,000 public employees, a boost in property taxes, a 10 percent cut in welfare benefits, and higher taxes on low-wage workers. Cowen believes that taxing low income families is preferable to making billionaire bondholders eat their losses. The whole thing stinks to high-heaven.</p>
<p>Is there a way out for Ireland? Economist Mark Weisbrot thinks so. Here’s what he thinks should happen:</p>
<p>“The European authorities and IMF can loan Ireland any funds needed in the next year or two at very low interest rates….Once these borrowing needs are guaranteed, Ireland would not have to worry about spikes in its borrowing costs like the one that provoked the current crisis….The European authorities could scrap their pro-cyclical conditions and, instead, allow for Ireland to undertake a temporary fiscal stimulus to get their economy growing again. That is the most feasible, practical alternative to continued recession.</p>
<p>Instead, the European authorities are trying what the IMF… calls an “internal devaluation”. This is a process of shrinking the economy and creating so much unemployment that wages fall dramatically, and the Irish economy becomes more competitive internationally on the basis of lower unit labour costs.”</p>
<p>It’s all de rigeur for the IMF. It wouldn’t be an IMF program unless someone was starving. That’s the benchmark for success.</p>
<p>Ireland doesn’t need structural adjustment programs that shrink GDP, dismantle popular social programs and strip wealth from workers when low interest funding and fiscal stimulus can bring the economy back to life. This is politics not economics. The EU and IMF are using the crisis to push through their own agenda. Their real goal is to crush the unions, shred the social safety net, and roll back the gains of the Progressive Era.</p>
<p>The Irish people are left with no choice but to resist. Presently the Cowen government is collapsing. Bravo. Now it’s off to the barricades to see if the damage can be undone. Ireland needs to withdraw from the EU and start fresh. It’ll be a bumpy road at first, but there’s no other way. Economist Dean Baker sums it up like this in an article in The Guardian. Here’s what he said:</p>
<p>“Even a relatively small country like Ireland has options. Specifically, they could drop out of the euro and default on their debt….Like Ireland, Argentina had also been a poster child of the neoliberal crew before it ran into difficulties.</p>
<p>But the IMF can turn quickly. Its austerity programme lowered GDP by almost 10% and pushed the unemployment rate well into the double digits. By the end of the 2001, it was politically impossible for the Argentine government to agree to more austerity. As a result, it broke the supposedly unbreakable link between its currency and the dollar and defaulted on its debt.</p>
<p>The immediate effect was to make the economy worse, but by the second half of 2002, the economy was again growing. This was the start of five and a half years of solid growth, until the world economic crisis eventually took its toll in 2009.”</p>
<p>The Irish people didn’t struggle through centuries of famine and foreign occupation so they could be debt-peons in the EU’s corporate Uberstate. Like Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said, “We don’t need anyone coming in to run the place for us. We can run it ourselves.” Right. Tell the EU plutocrats to take their Utopian Bankstate and shove it.</p>
<p>MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state and can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
| 5,673 |
<p>The three top credit bureaus have a major influence over nearly every consumer, yet many people aren't really aware of who these companies are and what they do. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are for-profit companies that have carved out a unique niche in the financial industry.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A credit bureau, also known as a credit reporting agency, collects financial information about consumers and pulls this information together into a single report -- namely, your credit report. Because the credit bureaus operate independently of each other, the credit report that one bureau generates for an individual may be slightly different from the other bureaus' reports. While there are many smaller credit bureaus, the three major ones control the lion's share of this market.</p>
<p>The credit bureaus have an interesting profit model. Banks, lenders, and many other companies share information about their clients with the credit bureaus at no charge. The credit bureaus then compile this information and sell it, in the form of credit reports, to various parties that need some insight into your financial history -- lenders, insurers, potential employers, landlords, and more.</p>
<p>These credit reports are extremely valuable to financial institutions, because they help lenders determine which individuals would be profitable clients. Without a credit report, your bank wouldn't know how much money it's safe to lend you or what interest rate it should charge on the loan. For landlords, your credit report serves as an indicator of how likely you are to keep up with rent, and for employers, a spotless credit report is a sign of reliability.</p>
<p>Your credit report contains some (but not all) of the most important financial data from your past and present. Credit reports include a list of your current and past credit products (credit cards, loans, lines of credit, and so on), the amount of debt you're currently carrying, and any late payments or other payment problems you may have had in the last few years. Serious credit issues like tax liens and bankruptcies will also appear on your report. However, your credit report will not include details of your job history or employment status, your income, or certain personal information such as your marital status.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Your <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/07/could-you-pass-the-credit-score-knowledge-quiz.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">credit score Opens a New Window.</a> is the result of a complicated calculation done by the credit bureau that sums up everything from your credit report to determine how much risk you present for lenders. A high score means that you have a strong track record of keeping up with payments, keeping your debt load low, and generally acting responsibly to lenders, which makes you a low-risk client. A low credit score means that you have a somewhat shadier financial past, such as a history of late payments or collections activity. If you have little or no credit history, you'll have a low score because the credit bureaus don't have enough information about you to decide if you're a risk or not.</p>
<p>The problem with credit scores is that there are tons of different ways to calculate them, so most people have several different credit scores depending on which credit bureau is providing the score. The two basic credit scoring models are <a href="http://www.fool.com/credit-cards/2017/02/13/why-do-i-have-3-different-credit-scores.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">FICO and VantageScore Opens a New Window.</a>, but each of these two scoring models comes in multiple variations. On top of that, some items from your financial history may not make it to all three credit bureaus, which can create a considerable difference in your scores from those bureaus.</p>
<p>It's a bit creepy knowing that the three credit bureaus are collecting all your sensitive financial data, especially in the wake of the <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/08/143-million-americans-may-be-at-risk-of-identity-t.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Equifax hack Opens a New Window.</a>. Unfortunately, there's no way to keep lenders and collections agencies from reporting your information to these companies.</p>
<p>You can minimize any potential problems related to the credit bureaus by checking your credit reports on a regular basis and acting promptly if you find any <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/08/5-credit-report-errors-that-will-cost-you.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">errors Opens a New Window.</a>. It's also wise to keep an eye on your credit cards and other open credit products to make sure no one's misusing those accounts. If you have a card that you rarely use, sign up for alerts on that card so that you'll be notified if any transactions occur, and periodically review the statements for your more active cards. Finally, if you see any signs of fraud or identity theft, consider placing a <a href="http://www.fool.com/credit-cards/2017/09/14/worried-about-the-equifax-data-breach-heres-how-to.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">credit freeze Opens a New Window.</a> (or at least a <a href="http://www.fool.com/credit-cards/2017/09/10/the-equifax-data-breach-is-massive-heres-how-to-pr.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">fraud alert Opens a New Window.</a>) with the three credit bureaus, and be especially diligent about monitoring your credit card activity in the future.</p>
<p>The $16,122 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $16,122 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after.&#160; <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?aid=8727&amp;source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>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=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
The 3 Major Credit Bureaus and How They Work
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/08/3-major-credit-bureaus-and-how-work.html
|
2017-10-08
| 0right
|
The 3 Major Credit Bureaus and How They Work
<p>The three top credit bureaus have a major influence over nearly every consumer, yet many people aren't really aware of who these companies are and what they do. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion are for-profit companies that have carved out a unique niche in the financial industry.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A credit bureau, also known as a credit reporting agency, collects financial information about consumers and pulls this information together into a single report -- namely, your credit report. Because the credit bureaus operate independently of each other, the credit report that one bureau generates for an individual may be slightly different from the other bureaus' reports. While there are many smaller credit bureaus, the three major ones control the lion's share of this market.</p>
<p>The credit bureaus have an interesting profit model. Banks, lenders, and many other companies share information about their clients with the credit bureaus at no charge. The credit bureaus then compile this information and sell it, in the form of credit reports, to various parties that need some insight into your financial history -- lenders, insurers, potential employers, landlords, and more.</p>
<p>These credit reports are extremely valuable to financial institutions, because they help lenders determine which individuals would be profitable clients. Without a credit report, your bank wouldn't know how much money it's safe to lend you or what interest rate it should charge on the loan. For landlords, your credit report serves as an indicator of how likely you are to keep up with rent, and for employers, a spotless credit report is a sign of reliability.</p>
<p>Your credit report contains some (but not all) of the most important financial data from your past and present. Credit reports include a list of your current and past credit products (credit cards, loans, lines of credit, and so on), the amount of debt you're currently carrying, and any late payments or other payment problems you may have had in the last few years. Serious credit issues like tax liens and bankruptcies will also appear on your report. However, your credit report will not include details of your job history or employment status, your income, or certain personal information such as your marital status.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Your <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/07/could-you-pass-the-credit-score-knowledge-quiz.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">credit score Opens a New Window.</a> is the result of a complicated calculation done by the credit bureau that sums up everything from your credit report to determine how much risk you present for lenders. A high score means that you have a strong track record of keeping up with payments, keeping your debt load low, and generally acting responsibly to lenders, which makes you a low-risk client. A low credit score means that you have a somewhat shadier financial past, such as a history of late payments or collections activity. If you have little or no credit history, you'll have a low score because the credit bureaus don't have enough information about you to decide if you're a risk or not.</p>
<p>The problem with credit scores is that there are tons of different ways to calculate them, so most people have several different credit scores depending on which credit bureau is providing the score. The two basic credit scoring models are <a href="http://www.fool.com/credit-cards/2017/02/13/why-do-i-have-3-different-credit-scores.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">FICO and VantageScore Opens a New Window.</a>, but each of these two scoring models comes in multiple variations. On top of that, some items from your financial history may not make it to all three credit bureaus, which can create a considerable difference in your scores from those bureaus.</p>
<p>It's a bit creepy knowing that the three credit bureaus are collecting all your sensitive financial data, especially in the wake of the <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/08/143-million-americans-may-be-at-risk-of-identity-t.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Equifax hack Opens a New Window.</a>. Unfortunately, there's no way to keep lenders and collections agencies from reporting your information to these companies.</p>
<p>You can minimize any potential problems related to the credit bureaus by checking your credit reports on a regular basis and acting promptly if you find any <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/08/5-credit-report-errors-that-will-cost-you.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">errors Opens a New Window.</a>. It's also wise to keep an eye on your credit cards and other open credit products to make sure no one's misusing those accounts. If you have a card that you rarely use, sign up for alerts on that card so that you'll be notified if any transactions occur, and periodically review the statements for your more active cards. Finally, if you see any signs of fraud or identity theft, consider placing a <a href="http://www.fool.com/credit-cards/2017/09/14/worried-about-the-equifax-data-breach-heres-how-to.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">credit freeze Opens a New Window.</a> (or at least a <a href="http://www.fool.com/credit-cards/2017/09/10/the-equifax-data-breach-is-massive-heres-how-to-pr.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">fraud alert Opens a New Window.</a>) with the three credit bureaus, and be especially diligent about monitoring your credit card activity in the future.</p>
<p>The $16,122 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $16,122 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after.&#160; <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?aid=8727&amp;source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>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=3f31150a-a541-11e7-ab1d-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 5,674 |
<p>With doomsayers flooding the market with warnings of a looming crash even as the broader indices are hitting all-time highs, I don't blame you if you're losing sleep over your portfolio. But there's a way to sleep soundly through market ups and downs: owning stocks that can withstand volatility and keep your portfolio in good shape regardless of the state of the markets. Three fine examples are Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP),&#160;Waste Management (NYSE: WM), and MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA).</p>
<p>Each of these stocks has a unique growth catalyst that should help them keep their heads above water during times of crisis. Waste Management is the leader in an indispensable industry, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is a solid dividend growth stock in the making, and MasterCard is poised to ride a huge emerging global trend. Read on for more.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A high-yield stock can be your best friend during down markets, and even more so when the dividends are stable and growing.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/13/3-things-you-didnt-know-about-brookfield-infrastru.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">master limited partnership Opens a New Window.</a>, Brookfield Infrastructure pays out 60% to 70% of its <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/ffo-vs-cash-flow.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">funds from operations Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;(FFO) in dividends. Backed by a large and growing portfolio of essential-services infrastructure assets such as power transmission lines, railroads, toll roads, gas pipelines, and cellular towers, Brookfield has grown&#160;its FFO and dividends per share by compounded average rates of 24% and 12%, respectively, since 2009. By doing so, Brookfield has proved its mettle for buying high-quality, distressed assets and converting them into money-minting machines.</p>
<p>Because 95%&#160;of Brookfield's revenue is contracted or regulated, its cash flows are highly sustainable. Not surprisingly, management is confident of boosting&#160;dividends by 5%-9% annually. With the company <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/08/why-brookfield-infrastructure-partners-lp-investor.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">aggressively eyeing growth projects Opens a New Window.</a> in high-potential countries like India, investors can trust management's dividend goals.</p>
<p>With a beta rating of 1, Brookfield stock moves pretty much in line with the markets, but its 4% yield gives it an edge when the markets fall, making it the kind of stock you'd want to buy and forget.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The business of managing waste might sound boring, but one glimpse of the industry leader's growth in recent years is bound to pique your interest in the stock.</p>
<p>So how is Waste Management pulling it off? For starters, we're generating a lot of waste. According to the most recent available statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. generated&#160;258 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2014, making it the largest&#160;trash producer in the world. That's big business for Waste Management, which currently serves nearly 21 million customers in the U.S. and Canada. Competition isn't a concern, as the company dominates the industry today, and building landfills and recycling facilities requires boatloads of money and time, acting as a solid entry barrier.</p>
<p>Over the years, a resilient business, innovative leadership, and an expanding footprint have helped Waste Management grow by leaps and bounds, encouraging management to increase dividends every year since 2003. That means Waste Management also makes for a great dividend growth stock, currently yielding 2.2%.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/beta.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">beta Opens a New Window.</a> of only 0.71 means Waste Management stock is also less volatile than the overall markets, mirroring only about 70% of their rise or fall any given day. During market downturns, a low-beta dividend-paying stock can singlehandedly save your portfolio from nasty shocks.</p>
<p>MasterCard represents the future of payments, both cashless and digital. Credit and debit cards may have become a way of life for you, but you'd be surprised to know that some of the largest economies of the world, including India, still run primarily on cash. For payments-processing giant MasterCard, which is roaring ahead with aggressive growth moves such as its Vocalink acquisition under the able leadership of Indian origin CEO Ajay Banga, the world's secular shift away from cash <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/13/why-india-not-china-is-mastercards-biggest-interna.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">represents opportunities Opens a New Window.</a> that could run into trillions of dollars.</p>
<p>The company has already proved its worth on the operational front by growing its constant currency net revenue and earnings per share by&#160;13% and 19%, respectively, in the past five years. Its free cash flows, meanwhile, have grown nearly 50% during the period. In recent years, MasterCard has also started paying out <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/06/30/5-dividend-stocks-that-are-minting-money.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">higher dividends to shareholders Opens a New Window.</a>, nearly doubling the payout since 2014.</p>
<p>MasterCard now expects&#160;to generate a "minimum" operating margin of 50% and grow its EPS at a compounded average clip of 20% through 2018. A beta of 1.19 means MasterCard may move a bit more than the market either side, but going by the company's growth potential and projections, the share price should stay on the right side of the market, allowing you to sleep well at night.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Waste ManagementWhen 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=7b055f5d-2bfb-471e-a4b8-f6dfe53a3cb4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Waste Management 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=7b055f5d-2bfb-471e-a4b8-f6dfe53a3cb4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&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 September 5, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Nehams/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Neha Chamaria Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends MasterCard. The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. 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=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
Losing Sleep Over Your Portfolio? Consider These 3 Stocks
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/03/losing-sleep-over-your-portfolio-consider-these-3-stocks.html
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2017-10-03
| 0right
|
Losing Sleep Over Your Portfolio? Consider These 3 Stocks
<p>With doomsayers flooding the market with warnings of a looming crash even as the broader indices are hitting all-time highs, I don't blame you if you're losing sleep over your portfolio. But there's a way to sleep soundly through market ups and downs: owning stocks that can withstand volatility and keep your portfolio in good shape regardless of the state of the markets. Three fine examples are Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. (NYSE: BIP),&#160;Waste Management (NYSE: WM), and MasterCard Inc. (NYSE: MA).</p>
<p>Each of these stocks has a unique growth catalyst that should help them keep their heads above water during times of crisis. Waste Management is the leader in an indispensable industry, Brookfield Infrastructure Partners is a solid dividend growth stock in the making, and MasterCard is poised to ride a huge emerging global trend. Read on for more.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A high-yield stock can be your best friend during down markets, and even more so when the dividends are stable and growing.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/13/3-things-you-didnt-know-about-brookfield-infrastru.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">master limited partnership Opens a New Window.</a>, Brookfield Infrastructure pays out 60% to 70% of its <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/ffo-vs-cash-flow.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">funds from operations Opens a New Window.</a>&#160;(FFO) in dividends. Backed by a large and growing portfolio of essential-services infrastructure assets such as power transmission lines, railroads, toll roads, gas pipelines, and cellular towers, Brookfield has grown&#160;its FFO and dividends per share by compounded average rates of 24% and 12%, respectively, since 2009. By doing so, Brookfield has proved its mettle for buying high-quality, distressed assets and converting them into money-minting machines.</p>
<p>Because 95%&#160;of Brookfield's revenue is contracted or regulated, its cash flows are highly sustainable. Not surprisingly, management is confident of boosting&#160;dividends by 5%-9% annually. With the company <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/08/why-brookfield-infrastructure-partners-lp-investor.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">aggressively eyeing growth projects Opens a New Window.</a> in high-potential countries like India, investors can trust management's dividend goals.</p>
<p>With a beta rating of 1, Brookfield stock moves pretty much in line with the markets, but its 4% yield gives it an edge when the markets fall, making it the kind of stock you'd want to buy and forget.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The business of managing waste might sound boring, but one glimpse of the industry leader's growth in recent years is bound to pique your interest in the stock.</p>
<p>So how is Waste Management pulling it off? For starters, we're generating a lot of waste. According to the most recent available statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. generated&#160;258 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2014, making it the largest&#160;trash producer in the world. That's big business for Waste Management, which currently serves nearly 21 million customers in the U.S. and Canada. Competition isn't a concern, as the company dominates the industry today, and building landfills and recycling facilities requires boatloads of money and time, acting as a solid entry barrier.</p>
<p>Over the years, a resilient business, innovative leadership, and an expanding footprint have helped Waste Management grow by leaps and bounds, encouraging management to increase dividends every year since 2003. That means Waste Management also makes for a great dividend growth stock, currently yielding 2.2%.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/beta.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">beta Opens a New Window.</a> of only 0.71 means Waste Management stock is also less volatile than the overall markets, mirroring only about 70% of their rise or fall any given day. During market downturns, a low-beta dividend-paying stock can singlehandedly save your portfolio from nasty shocks.</p>
<p>MasterCard represents the future of payments, both cashless and digital. Credit and debit cards may have become a way of life for you, but you'd be surprised to know that some of the largest economies of the world, including India, still run primarily on cash. For payments-processing giant MasterCard, which is roaring ahead with aggressive growth moves such as its Vocalink acquisition under the able leadership of Indian origin CEO Ajay Banga, the world's secular shift away from cash <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/13/why-india-not-china-is-mastercards-biggest-interna.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">represents opportunities Opens a New Window.</a> that could run into trillions of dollars.</p>
<p>The company has already proved its worth on the operational front by growing its constant currency net revenue and earnings per share by&#160;13% and 19%, respectively, in the past five years. Its free cash flows, meanwhile, have grown nearly 50% during the period. In recent years, MasterCard has also started paying out <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/06/30/5-dividend-stocks-that-are-minting-money.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">higher dividends to shareholders Opens a New Window.</a>, nearly doubling the payout since 2014.</p>
<p>MasterCard now expects&#160;to generate a "minimum" operating margin of 50% and grow its EPS at a compounded average clip of 20% through 2018. A beta of 1.19 means MasterCard may move a bit more than the market either side, but going by the company's growth potential and projections, the share price should stay on the right side of the market, allowing you to sleep well at night.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Waste ManagementWhen 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=7b055f5d-2bfb-471e-a4b8-f6dfe53a3cb4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Waste Management 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=7b055f5d-2bfb-471e-a4b8-f6dfe53a3cb4&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&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 September 5, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/Nehams/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Neha Chamaria Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends MasterCard. The Motley Fool recommends Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. 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=2ea3130a-89c1-11e7-a7b2-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 5,675 |
<p>Few decisions may be as important as that of where you or a loved one will choose to live as you reach the ‘golden years.’</p>
<p>Few decisions may be as important or life-impacting as that of where you or a loved one will choose to live as you reach the “golden years.” There are a multitude of options available, but if you’re planning for the long run, one excellent choice may be a continuing care retirement community – or CCRC – which offers all levels of care to its residents, from independent living, to assisted living and skilled nursing.</p>
<p>If you think a CCRC might be a good fit for you or your loved one, I recommend that you explore all of the communities available in your area and consider the following points:</p>
<p>There are three types of CCRC contracts, each one bringing different cost and payment options to the table. When exploring the financial component of each contract, be sure to weigh it against your health needs to determine which one makes the most sense.</p>
<p>Type A is a life care contract that typically involves a relatively higher entrance fee and monthly fees. All assisted living and skilled nursing are pre-paid, use it or not.</p>
<p>Type B: Under a Type B or modified contract, a resident will pay a lower entrance fee than with Type A and an ongoing monthly fee to live in an apartment.&#160;In a Type B contract, a CCRC is obligated to provide an appropriate level of assisted living or skilled nursing as in a Type A contract, but only for a specific period of time.</p>
<p>Type C also includes an entrance fee and a monthly fee, and can sometimes include the option of a refundable plan. Skilled nursing services are provided at market rate and on an as-needed basis. They are not pre-paid as in Type A or Type B.</p>
<p>If you are interested in CCRCs, you are likely attracted to the long-term nature of the living arrangement. Make sure the community is well-established and thriving to ensure it will be operating for years to come.</p>
<p>Learn about the culture of the CCRC. You want to be sure that the community is a place where you will fully enjoy spending your time and be welcomed. We recommend engaging candidly with current residents to better understand the environment and what day-to-day life is like in the community, and whether you’d enjoy your time there. You can also inquire about staying for a few days at the CCRC to try it out. Here are a few questions to help you learn more about the community’s culture: What is the occupancy? What kind of life-enrichment programs are offered? What are some of the characteristics of the staff? Are they an “inclusive living community?” Will you continue to grow there?</p>
<p>Above all, when choosing a residence don’t forget your instincts. Trust your intuition and consider these questions: How do you feel when you walk into the place? Do you feel a sense of respect and trust established within the community? Could you see this being a happy home for you or your loved one?</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Monique Eliezer is chief of sales, marketing &amp; strategies officer at Ingleside, a premier provider of comprehensive senior living opportunities in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Reach her at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">CCRC</a> <a href="" type="internal">retirement</a> <a href="" type="internal">retirement community</a></p>
|
Keys to selecting a retirement community
| false |
http://washingtonblade.com/2016/01/08/keys-to-selecting-a-retirement-community/
| 3left-center
|
Keys to selecting a retirement community
<p>Few decisions may be as important as that of where you or a loved one will choose to live as you reach the ‘golden years.’</p>
<p>Few decisions may be as important or life-impacting as that of where you or a loved one will choose to live as you reach the “golden years.” There are a multitude of options available, but if you’re planning for the long run, one excellent choice may be a continuing care retirement community – or CCRC – which offers all levels of care to its residents, from independent living, to assisted living and skilled nursing.</p>
<p>If you think a CCRC might be a good fit for you or your loved one, I recommend that you explore all of the communities available in your area and consider the following points:</p>
<p>There are three types of CCRC contracts, each one bringing different cost and payment options to the table. When exploring the financial component of each contract, be sure to weigh it against your health needs to determine which one makes the most sense.</p>
<p>Type A is a life care contract that typically involves a relatively higher entrance fee and monthly fees. All assisted living and skilled nursing are pre-paid, use it or not.</p>
<p>Type B: Under a Type B or modified contract, a resident will pay a lower entrance fee than with Type A and an ongoing monthly fee to live in an apartment.&#160;In a Type B contract, a CCRC is obligated to provide an appropriate level of assisted living or skilled nursing as in a Type A contract, but only for a specific period of time.</p>
<p>Type C also includes an entrance fee and a monthly fee, and can sometimes include the option of a refundable plan. Skilled nursing services are provided at market rate and on an as-needed basis. They are not pre-paid as in Type A or Type B.</p>
<p>If you are interested in CCRCs, you are likely attracted to the long-term nature of the living arrangement. Make sure the community is well-established and thriving to ensure it will be operating for years to come.</p>
<p>Learn about the culture of the CCRC. You want to be sure that the community is a place where you will fully enjoy spending your time and be welcomed. We recommend engaging candidly with current residents to better understand the environment and what day-to-day life is like in the community, and whether you’d enjoy your time there. You can also inquire about staying for a few days at the CCRC to try it out. Here are a few questions to help you learn more about the community’s culture: What is the occupancy? What kind of life-enrichment programs are offered? What are some of the characteristics of the staff? Are they an “inclusive living community?” Will you continue to grow there?</p>
<p>Above all, when choosing a residence don’t forget your instincts. Trust your intuition and consider these questions: How do you feel when you walk into the place? Do you feel a sense of respect and trust established within the community? Could you see this being a happy home for you or your loved one?</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Monique Eliezer is chief of sales, marketing &amp; strategies officer at Ingleside, a premier provider of comprehensive senior living opportunities in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Reach her at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">CCRC</a> <a href="" type="internal">retirement</a> <a href="" type="internal">retirement community</a></p>
| 5,676 |
|
<p>Actor Charlie Sheen confirmed on Tuesday morning that he is HIV positive and has known about his diagnosis for about four years.</p>
<p>“I am here to admit that I am in fact HIV positive,” he told Matt Lauer on the <a href="http://www.today.com/health/charlie-sheen-reveals-hes-hiv-positive-today-show-exclusive-t56391" type="external">Today</a> show.</p>
<p>“It’s a hard three letters to absorb,” he said. “It’s a turning point in one’s life.”</p>
<p>The troubled television actor also revealed he has been the victim of several extortion plots and has paid people millions to keep them from going public with his diagnosis. Sheen told Lauer that the sexual partners he had unprotected sex with after he was diagnosed were being cared for by his doctor.</p>
<p>Sheen’s revelation comes one day after a National Enquirer cover story speculated on his diagnosis. Rumors about the 50-year-old actor’s health started swirling after several <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/charlie-sheen-i-am-in-fact-hiv-positive?s=mobile_app#.yvpj125q4" type="external">blind item reports</a> were published, including a RadarOnline story that appeared two weeks prior. Many of the stories were believed to be pointing to Sheen.</p>
<p>“I have to put a stop to this onslaught, this barrage of attacks and of sub-truths and very harmful and mercurial stories that are about me, that threaten the health of so many others that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said on Tuesday, alluding to the mounting tabloid reports.</p>
|
Charlie Sheen Reveals He Is HIV Positive
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2015/11/charlie-sheen-hiv-positive/
|
2015-11-17
| 4left
|
Charlie Sheen Reveals He Is HIV Positive
<p>Actor Charlie Sheen confirmed on Tuesday morning that he is HIV positive and has known about his diagnosis for about four years.</p>
<p>“I am here to admit that I am in fact HIV positive,” he told Matt Lauer on the <a href="http://www.today.com/health/charlie-sheen-reveals-hes-hiv-positive-today-show-exclusive-t56391" type="external">Today</a> show.</p>
<p>“It’s a hard three letters to absorb,” he said. “It’s a turning point in one’s life.”</p>
<p>The troubled television actor also revealed he has been the victim of several extortion plots and has paid people millions to keep them from going public with his diagnosis. Sheen told Lauer that the sexual partners he had unprotected sex with after he was diagnosed were being cared for by his doctor.</p>
<p>Sheen’s revelation comes one day after a National Enquirer cover story speculated on his diagnosis. Rumors about the 50-year-old actor’s health started swirling after several <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/kateaurthur/charlie-sheen-i-am-in-fact-hiv-positive?s=mobile_app#.yvpj125q4" type="external">blind item reports</a> were published, including a RadarOnline story that appeared two weeks prior. Many of the stories were believed to be pointing to Sheen.</p>
<p>“I have to put a stop to this onslaught, this barrage of attacks and of sub-truths and very harmful and mercurial stories that are about me, that threaten the health of so many others that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said on Tuesday, alluding to the mounting tabloid reports.</p>
| 5,677 |
<p />
<p>Older Americans look forward to becoming eligible for Medicare for the first time, because the program provides healthcare benefits that last the rest of your life. However, signing up for Medicare involves some difficult choices, and it's essential to make the right decisions for your personal situation. If you want to get the most from Medicare, you'll need to pay special attention to four key aspects of the program and how they apply to you.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>For most Americans, Medicare first becomes available at age 65. But that doesn't mean you should wait until your 65th birthday to sign up for the program. You're allowed to apply for Medicare beginning three months before you turn 65, and that's the best time to move forward.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>The reason is that it takes time for Medicare to process paperwork and get you active in the system. If you apply early, then you can be assured that your Medicare coverage will start promptly on your 65th birthday. If you wait, however, then delays of up to three months can occur before your coverage will start. That can be a costly mistake if something happens in the interim.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The other reason why it makes sense not to delay signing up for Medicare is that there are costly penalties that you could have to pay if you don't. These <a href="https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/07/30/what-you-dont-know-about-medicare-could-cost-you.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">penalties vary for each part of Medicare Opens a New Window.</a>. For Part A hospital insurance, a 10% penalty applies, and you'll have to pay it for two years for every year that you were late in enrolling. However, that penalty is only applicable if you didn't earn free Part A coverage during your career, and so only a small number of people pay Part A penalties.</p>
<p>However, Part B medical coverage and Part D prescription drug coverage impose penalties that are more commonly owed and can be even more punitive. Medicare Part B charges a 10% penalty for each 12-month period that you were late taking benefits, so if you missed the deadline for two years, then you'd pay a 20% penalty on your monthly premiums for the rest of your life. Medicare Part D has a more complicated formula that imposes a 1% penalty surcharge for every month that you didn't have coverage. All combined, these penalties make it valuable to get coverage when you first need it.</p>
<p>Those who have coverage under an employer group health plan either from their own employer or from a spouse's employer don't have to sign up for Medicare during their initial enrollment period when they turn 65, and they can avoid penalties. Instead, you'll be able to enroll during a special enrollment period when your group health coverage goes away.</p>
<p>However, some group health plans will require that you sign up for Medicare even while you're still covered. If your employer has 20 or more employees, then group coverage is the primary coverage, and Medicare picks up secondary costs. For employers with fewer than 20 employees, that relationship is reversed, making Medicare the primary payer. In that case, employers often require workers to take Medicare in order to allow the private group health plan to take the backup role. It's worth talking to your HR department to find out how Medicare interacts with your group coverage.</p>
<p>Medicare doesn't cover all of your healthcare needs. To fill the gaps, you have two options. Medicare supplemental insurance, also known as <a href="https://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/05/30/should-you-get-a-medigap-plan.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Medigap policies Opens a New Window.</a>, will pay things like copayments, deductibles, and coinsurance amounts that regular Medicare doesn't cover. In addition, Medigap policies provide out-of-pocket maximums that put an upward cap on your total expenses if you face a major health problem, which Medicare doesn't do by itself.</p>
<p>The other option is to choose a <a href="https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/09/11/3-smart-medicare-advantage-questions-to-ask-right.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Medicare Advantage plan Opens a New Window.</a> in lieu of original Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans are offered by health insurers, and they are required to offer many of the same baseline benefits as original Medicare, as well as added features that can make them more attractive. Medicare Advantage plans have out-of-pocket maximums as well, limiting potential health-related financial losses.</p>
<p>Medicare is a valuable benefit, but you have to make the most of it. By knowing these aspects of Medicare in advance, you'll be in a better position to make smart decisions with your healthcare.</p>
<p>The $16,122 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $16,122 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?aid=8727&amp;source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>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>
|
Read This Before You Take Medicare Benefits
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/02/read-this-before-take-medicare-benefits.html
|
2017-03-17
| 0right
|
Read This Before You Take Medicare Benefits
<p />
<p>Older Americans look forward to becoming eligible for Medicare for the first time, because the program provides healthcare benefits that last the rest of your life. However, signing up for Medicare involves some difficult choices, and it's essential to make the right decisions for your personal situation. If you want to get the most from Medicare, you'll need to pay special attention to four key aspects of the program and how they apply to you.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>For most Americans, Medicare first becomes available at age 65. But that doesn't mean you should wait until your 65th birthday to sign up for the program. You're allowed to apply for Medicare beginning three months before you turn 65, and that's the best time to move forward.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>The reason is that it takes time for Medicare to process paperwork and get you active in the system. If you apply early, then you can be assured that your Medicare coverage will start promptly on your 65th birthday. If you wait, however, then delays of up to three months can occur before your coverage will start. That can be a costly mistake if something happens in the interim.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The other reason why it makes sense not to delay signing up for Medicare is that there are costly penalties that you could have to pay if you don't. These <a href="https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/07/30/what-you-dont-know-about-medicare-could-cost-you.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">penalties vary for each part of Medicare Opens a New Window.</a>. For Part A hospital insurance, a 10% penalty applies, and you'll have to pay it for two years for every year that you were late in enrolling. However, that penalty is only applicable if you didn't earn free Part A coverage during your career, and so only a small number of people pay Part A penalties.</p>
<p>However, Part B medical coverage and Part D prescription drug coverage impose penalties that are more commonly owed and can be even more punitive. Medicare Part B charges a 10% penalty for each 12-month period that you were late taking benefits, so if you missed the deadline for two years, then you'd pay a 20% penalty on your monthly premiums for the rest of your life. Medicare Part D has a more complicated formula that imposes a 1% penalty surcharge for every month that you didn't have coverage. All combined, these penalties make it valuable to get coverage when you first need it.</p>
<p>Those who have coverage under an employer group health plan either from their own employer or from a spouse's employer don't have to sign up for Medicare during their initial enrollment period when they turn 65, and they can avoid penalties. Instead, you'll be able to enroll during a special enrollment period when your group health coverage goes away.</p>
<p>However, some group health plans will require that you sign up for Medicare even while you're still covered. If your employer has 20 or more employees, then group coverage is the primary coverage, and Medicare picks up secondary costs. For employers with fewer than 20 employees, that relationship is reversed, making Medicare the primary payer. In that case, employers often require workers to take Medicare in order to allow the private group health plan to take the backup role. It's worth talking to your HR department to find out how Medicare interacts with your group coverage.</p>
<p>Medicare doesn't cover all of your healthcare needs. To fill the gaps, you have two options. Medicare supplemental insurance, also known as <a href="https://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/05/30/should-you-get-a-medigap-plan.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Medigap policies Opens a New Window.</a>, will pay things like copayments, deductibles, and coinsurance amounts that regular Medicare doesn't cover. In addition, Medigap policies provide out-of-pocket maximums that put an upward cap on your total expenses if you face a major health problem, which Medicare doesn't do by itself.</p>
<p>The other option is to choose a <a href="https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/09/11/3-smart-medicare-advantage-questions-to-ask-right.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Medicare Advantage plan Opens a New Window.</a> in lieu of original Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans are offered by health insurers, and they are required to offer many of the same baseline benefits as original Medicare, as well as added features that can make them more attractive. Medicare Advantage plans have out-of-pocket maximums as well, limiting potential health-related financial losses.</p>
<p>Medicare is a valuable benefit, but you have to make the most of it. By knowing these aspects of Medicare in advance, you'll be in a better position to make smart decisions with your healthcare.</p>
<p>The $16,122 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: one easy trick could pay you as much as $16,122 more... each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?aid=8727&amp;source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>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>
| 5,678 |
<p>The ongoing Miami “mega mall” project continues to be an issue that we are following very closely, as the proposed American Dream Miami mall and entertainment center in the northwest sector of Miami-Dade County is slated to begin construction in the very near future.</p>
<p>Project developer, Triple 5, who predicts that the project will draw 300,000 daily visitors and create close to 15,000 permanent jobs, has been out tackling and explains how its project will not cause the traffic snafu that its detractors say it will cause. Traffic is bad in south Florida to begin with, and could get worse if the project comes to bear.</p>
<p>In reality, the Miami “mega mall” which is modeled after the delay-plagued American Dream Meadowlands in New Jersey, should actually be called a “theme park,” if anything.</p>
<p>While there will be considerable amount of shopping outlets available to&#160; consumers, the theme park’s main draw will be all the attractions that it will have to lure visitors.</p>
<p>The park plans to offer an indoor ski slope, a submarine ride, a skating rink, a water park, not to mention all of the place visitors will need to stuff their faces with.</p>
<p>The project will also include movie theaters, a performing arts center and a great big 2,000 hotel. Not to shabby, right?</p>
<p>The proposed theme park will need to live up to its name. Malls around the country are closing, so the entertainment aspect of the project will need to be the focal point. If the visitors are not impressed with the amusement park rides and attractions, the project’s days could, and probably would be numbered.</p>
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Proposed Miami “Theme Park” Expects To Draw 300,000 Daily Visitors
| true |
http://shark-tank.com/2017/06/07/proposed-miami-theme-park-expects-draw-300000-daily-visitors/
| 0right
|
Proposed Miami “Theme Park” Expects To Draw 300,000 Daily Visitors
<p>The ongoing Miami “mega mall” project continues to be an issue that we are following very closely, as the proposed American Dream Miami mall and entertainment center in the northwest sector of Miami-Dade County is slated to begin construction in the very near future.</p>
<p>Project developer, Triple 5, who predicts that the project will draw 300,000 daily visitors and create close to 15,000 permanent jobs, has been out tackling and explains how its project will not cause the traffic snafu that its detractors say it will cause. Traffic is bad in south Florida to begin with, and could get worse if the project comes to bear.</p>
<p>In reality, the Miami “mega mall” which is modeled after the delay-plagued American Dream Meadowlands in New Jersey, should actually be called a “theme park,” if anything.</p>
<p>While there will be considerable amount of shopping outlets available to&#160; consumers, the theme park’s main draw will be all the attractions that it will have to lure visitors.</p>
<p>The park plans to offer an indoor ski slope, a submarine ride, a skating rink, a water park, not to mention all of the place visitors will need to stuff their faces with.</p>
<p>The project will also include movie theaters, a performing arts center and a great big 2,000 hotel. Not to shabby, right?</p>
<p>The proposed theme park will need to live up to its name. Malls around the country are closing, so the entertainment aspect of the project will need to be the focal point. If the visitors are not impressed with the amusement park rides and attractions, the project’s days could, and probably would be numbered.</p>
| 5,679 |
|
<p>“Men use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.”</p>
<p>(Voltaire: Dialogue XIV, Le Chapon et la Poularde)</p>
<p>Voltaire’s wit often illuminates truth. Consider this revealing “thought” as expressed recently in Alert, the voice of AIPAC to its membership: “Some Americans believe if the Israelis strike Iran, the U.S. will pay the political costs anyway, so it would be better for the Americans to do the job and do it properly. Their clock is a bit different from the one the Israelis hear. Because of their vastly superior firepower, the Americans could strike Iran later, more devastatingly and more sustainably.” How just is it for AIPAC’s mouthpiece to declare that America should “devastate” Iran because it has “vastly more firepower” than Israel and could “do a better job” and “do it properly,” as though this were a clean-up “job” of a waste dump and not an illegal invasion of a member country of the United Nations that has done nothing under international law to threaten the U.S. much less attack it, while the Israeli government and its IDF look on happily content that it is American boys and girls suffering the consequences of the unwarranted attacks and not Jewish boys and girls? Has it come to this, that unnamed Israeli spokespeople, voicing AIPAC’s policies, determine what nation the U.S. should invade without consultation with the representatives of the American people?</p>
<p>Not that this sentiment has not been expressed before. Netanyahu told Piers Morgan the same thing in an interview last year, as I have quoted in previous articles, noting Israel’s Zionist government’s desire to use America’s military as their own claiming that what is good for Israel is good for America. That protestation completes the wit contained in Voltaire’s quote: because Israel is America’s only friend in the mid-east, <a href="" type="internal" />and the only Democracy, and the only nation in that part of the world aligned with the west, it alone deserves America’s “unquestionable” and “unbreakable” support.</p>
<p>Speech that conceals fails to mention that being Israel’s “only friend” has made the U.S. a pariah among nations in the world and made its touted “Democratic freedoms” a laughing stock as the other nations in the UN watch America “support” the Zionists’ agenda to attack Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza, abort international law as it, like Israel, commits extrajudicial executions in foreign states, equips Israel when it invades its neighbors to the north and attacks peace activists aboard vessels from peaceful nations including Turkey, and, ironically sits silently by as Israel dismantles what little of a democracy existed in that nation by creating new laws that deny full citizenship to anyone not a Jew. Thus have we become a nation supportive of a militaristic Theocracy while we continue to mouth the principle of separation of church and state, a principle founded on tolerance, concealing the truth that there are more than 20 great religions with well over a billion people who accept no religion (Adherents.com) all of whom deserve recognition and, as necessary, support from America.</p>
<p>Clearly Israel’s needs are not America’s needs if we mean by that more war in the mid-east.&#160; Have we pulled our troops from Iraq just to move them into Iran? Does any sensible person believe that the Iranians have a “need” or desire to attack the people of the United States? Our forces completely surround Iran. We are the nation with atomic weaponry, not Iran. What possible good would Iran achieve by having a nuclear weapon? Hasn’t Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement while Israel, who damns Iran for its nuclear “ambitions,” has an arsenal of nuclear bombs and has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. Which of these nations is to be feared? Iran has never attacked a neighbor; Israel attacks and occupies its neighbors at will.</p>
<p>Have the Iranians reason to fear control of the U.S. military by Israeli operatives using this nation as its power because Israel wants to devastate Iran the way Iraq has been devastated? Yes. Israel’s ultimate goal is control of the mid-east by surgically cutting it into small indefensible sections that can be dominated by Israeli money and American forces. It would appear, however, that Israel fears America does not desire to follow Israel’s advice to “take out” Iran the way they convinced the Bush administration to “take out” Saddam Hussein. Hence the constant barrage that characterizes Iran as a warlike state set on wiping Israel off the map and becoming the dominant power in the mid-east.</p>
<p>It’s time, I believe, for the U.S. and the UN to consider how to avoid yet more devastation in the mid-east, not by expanding military operations there but by seeking peace through negotiations and cooperative support for the people of the mid-east. Both Israel and the United States must confront the reality on the ground today that they no longer have control over the people of the mid-east, and recognize the colonial drives that Zionism had designed for Israel are no longer tenable.</p>
<p>While Israeli control of America in the form of Las Vegas billionaires buying the presidency continues in the United States, and Republican candidates crawl to the altar of Mammon to remove Obama, who has already sold his soul to the forces of Evil, the people of the world look on in disbelief, having witnessed for sixty years the dominance of Zionist deceit, treachery, and manipulation of America as it savaged the mid-east in the name of friendship, democracy and shared values. But now, they have moved to take control of their own lives as they watch Israel corrode from within as it metamorphoses into a tribalistic, superstitious people further isolating themselves from the community of nations.</p>
<p>Can they not see that the people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and, arguably, in Yemen and Saudi Arabia have had enough of dictators imposed by the U.S. and Israel to control their governments; can they not see that Turkey broke with the Zionist forces that demanded compliance with their rule regardless of international law and due respect for neighboring nations; are they blind to the &#160;Jordanian efforts to take seriously their role as a Palestinian neighbor; do they not see that the people of Egypt have made possible the opening of Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza, that the people of the world have given notice that they will not cease to break that siege with boats entering Gaza through international waters, that the Iraqi people have made clear that they will not cave in to America’s continued control of their country by proxy power, that the peoples of Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia have openly condemned Israel’s injustices to the Palestinian people regardless of their governments paid presidents and prime ministers that claim otherwise; have they stood by blind to the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee issuing its recent report condemning Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians in the West Bank, blind to Secretary Ban’s clear call to Israel that it must withdraw from the occupied territories, blind to the European Union as it issued its recent report critical of the Israeli government’s on-going occupation and settlement of Palestinian land, blind as well as Russia, China, Iran and numerous other mid-east nations put into practice what they have agreed upon by resorting to other currencies than the dollar to be the international means of finance; unable to see that once the people of the world have had an opportunity to view the critically acclaimed, dramatically powerful, passionately presented film, The Promise, by director Peter Kosminsky of the United Kingdom, where the inhumane policies of the Zionist criminals erupts in all its unguarded ferocity, the veil of respectability will be removed from Israelis’ atrocities for all, and blind, totally blind to the United Nations as it acts upon a resolution to recognize the rights of the Palestinian people to a state of their own, must they not see, both Israel and its people, as well as all Americans, that they must accept the reality that no single nation can force its will on all other nations with impunity; that time is over.</p>
<p>Clearly Israel’s militaristic approach to neighborliness does not work. Israel fears “delegitimization,” it fears boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and it fears total isolation from the world’s communities. Should the U.S. become financially incapacitated through the devaluing of its currency, should it not be able to create adequate jobs for its citizens, should its investment in Israel estimated at $8.2 million per day for a population that is approximately 7 million impair its stability, should the people of America awaken to the control AIPAC has over their President and representatives and the total disregard of America’s security as a result, then Israel could lose both the American veto that has protected it from world condemnation of its policies and America’s military support for its aggressiveness against its neighbors. That would leave Israel isolated, wrapped in fear, and psychologically unstable. Israel’s alternative can only be constant instability, never ending terror and war, hatred by their neighbors, innate, simmering self-hate, and mental anguish resulting from exclusionism that leaves open wounds of distrust and self-questioning, a state terribly close to insanity.</p>
<p>Is it not time for Israel to seek peace with its neighbors? Since no sensible person in the mid-east believes that the U.S. can act credibly as a broker for peace, Israel must seek other partners from the UN who can serve that purpose. It must be willing to accept as a premise for peace, justice as defined by the UN’s International Courts and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It must understand that the occupied territories must be returned to their native inhabitants, that the Partition Plan of November 1947 must be a basis for negotiations if only to provide a foundation for equitable land for both peoples. Modification of land distribution could follow as well as a means of providing for the rights of those displaced in the Nakba. The world peace body could serve to protect both peoples as generations come and go until a free movement of all is possible. Then perhaps we could say, men use thoughts to find justice and speech to communicate it.</p>
<p>William A. Cook&#160;is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Plight of the Palestinians</a>&#160;published a year ago.&#160; He can be reached at&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>&#160;or through his web site <a href="http://www.drwilliamacook.com/" type="external">www.drwilliamacook.com</a>.</p>
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Yet Another War for Israel?
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2012/02/07/yet-another-war-for-israel/
|
2012-02-07
| 4left
|
Yet Another War for Israel?
<p>“Men use thought only to justify their injustices, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.”</p>
<p>(Voltaire: Dialogue XIV, Le Chapon et la Poularde)</p>
<p>Voltaire’s wit often illuminates truth. Consider this revealing “thought” as expressed recently in Alert, the voice of AIPAC to its membership: “Some Americans believe if the Israelis strike Iran, the U.S. will pay the political costs anyway, so it would be better for the Americans to do the job and do it properly. Their clock is a bit different from the one the Israelis hear. Because of their vastly superior firepower, the Americans could strike Iran later, more devastatingly and more sustainably.” How just is it for AIPAC’s mouthpiece to declare that America should “devastate” Iran because it has “vastly more firepower” than Israel and could “do a better job” and “do it properly,” as though this were a clean-up “job” of a waste dump and not an illegal invasion of a member country of the United Nations that has done nothing under international law to threaten the U.S. much less attack it, while the Israeli government and its IDF look on happily content that it is American boys and girls suffering the consequences of the unwarranted attacks and not Jewish boys and girls? Has it come to this, that unnamed Israeli spokespeople, voicing AIPAC’s policies, determine what nation the U.S. should invade without consultation with the representatives of the American people?</p>
<p>Not that this sentiment has not been expressed before. Netanyahu told Piers Morgan the same thing in an interview last year, as I have quoted in previous articles, noting Israel’s Zionist government’s desire to use America’s military as their own claiming that what is good for Israel is good for America. That protestation completes the wit contained in Voltaire’s quote: because Israel is America’s only friend in the mid-east, <a href="" type="internal" />and the only Democracy, and the only nation in that part of the world aligned with the west, it alone deserves America’s “unquestionable” and “unbreakable” support.</p>
<p>Speech that conceals fails to mention that being Israel’s “only friend” has made the U.S. a pariah among nations in the world and made its touted “Democratic freedoms” a laughing stock as the other nations in the UN watch America “support” the Zionists’ agenda to attack Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza, abort international law as it, like Israel, commits extrajudicial executions in foreign states, equips Israel when it invades its neighbors to the north and attacks peace activists aboard vessels from peaceful nations including Turkey, and, ironically sits silently by as Israel dismantles what little of a democracy existed in that nation by creating new laws that deny full citizenship to anyone not a Jew. Thus have we become a nation supportive of a militaristic Theocracy while we continue to mouth the principle of separation of church and state, a principle founded on tolerance, concealing the truth that there are more than 20 great religions with well over a billion people who accept no religion (Adherents.com) all of whom deserve recognition and, as necessary, support from America.</p>
<p>Clearly Israel’s needs are not America’s needs if we mean by that more war in the mid-east.&#160; Have we pulled our troops from Iraq just to move them into Iran? Does any sensible person believe that the Iranians have a “need” or desire to attack the people of the United States? Our forces completely surround Iran. We are the nation with atomic weaponry, not Iran. What possible good would Iran achieve by having a nuclear weapon? Hasn’t Iran signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement while Israel, who damns Iran for its nuclear “ambitions,” has an arsenal of nuclear bombs and has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. Which of these nations is to be feared? Iran has never attacked a neighbor; Israel attacks and occupies its neighbors at will.</p>
<p>Have the Iranians reason to fear control of the U.S. military by Israeli operatives using this nation as its power because Israel wants to devastate Iran the way Iraq has been devastated? Yes. Israel’s ultimate goal is control of the mid-east by surgically cutting it into small indefensible sections that can be dominated by Israeli money and American forces. It would appear, however, that Israel fears America does not desire to follow Israel’s advice to “take out” Iran the way they convinced the Bush administration to “take out” Saddam Hussein. Hence the constant barrage that characterizes Iran as a warlike state set on wiping Israel off the map and becoming the dominant power in the mid-east.</p>
<p>It’s time, I believe, for the U.S. and the UN to consider how to avoid yet more devastation in the mid-east, not by expanding military operations there but by seeking peace through negotiations and cooperative support for the people of the mid-east. Both Israel and the United States must confront the reality on the ground today that they no longer have control over the people of the mid-east, and recognize the colonial drives that Zionism had designed for Israel are no longer tenable.</p>
<p>While Israeli control of America in the form of Las Vegas billionaires buying the presidency continues in the United States, and Republican candidates crawl to the altar of Mammon to remove Obama, who has already sold his soul to the forces of Evil, the people of the world look on in disbelief, having witnessed for sixty years the dominance of Zionist deceit, treachery, and manipulation of America as it savaged the mid-east in the name of friendship, democracy and shared values. But now, they have moved to take control of their own lives as they watch Israel corrode from within as it metamorphoses into a tribalistic, superstitious people further isolating themselves from the community of nations.</p>
<p>Can they not see that the people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and, arguably, in Yemen and Saudi Arabia have had enough of dictators imposed by the U.S. and Israel to control their governments; can they not see that Turkey broke with the Zionist forces that demanded compliance with their rule regardless of international law and due respect for neighboring nations; are they blind to the &#160;Jordanian efforts to take seriously their role as a Palestinian neighbor; do they not see that the people of Egypt have made possible the opening of Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza, that the people of the world have given notice that they will not cease to break that siege with boats entering Gaza through international waters, that the Iraqi people have made clear that they will not cave in to America’s continued control of their country by proxy power, that the peoples of Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia have openly condemned Israel’s injustices to the Palestinian people regardless of their governments paid presidents and prime ministers that claim otherwise; have they stood by blind to the French Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee issuing its recent report condemning Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians in the West Bank, blind to Secretary Ban’s clear call to Israel that it must withdraw from the occupied territories, blind to the European Union as it issued its recent report critical of the Israeli government’s on-going occupation and settlement of Palestinian land, blind as well as Russia, China, Iran and numerous other mid-east nations put into practice what they have agreed upon by resorting to other currencies than the dollar to be the international means of finance; unable to see that once the people of the world have had an opportunity to view the critically acclaimed, dramatically powerful, passionately presented film, The Promise, by director Peter Kosminsky of the United Kingdom, where the inhumane policies of the Zionist criminals erupts in all its unguarded ferocity, the veil of respectability will be removed from Israelis’ atrocities for all, and blind, totally blind to the United Nations as it acts upon a resolution to recognize the rights of the Palestinian people to a state of their own, must they not see, both Israel and its people, as well as all Americans, that they must accept the reality that no single nation can force its will on all other nations with impunity; that time is over.</p>
<p>Clearly Israel’s militaristic approach to neighborliness does not work. Israel fears “delegitimization,” it fears boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), and it fears total isolation from the world’s communities. Should the U.S. become financially incapacitated through the devaluing of its currency, should it not be able to create adequate jobs for its citizens, should its investment in Israel estimated at $8.2 million per day for a population that is approximately 7 million impair its stability, should the people of America awaken to the control AIPAC has over their President and representatives and the total disregard of America’s security as a result, then Israel could lose both the American veto that has protected it from world condemnation of its policies and America’s military support for its aggressiveness against its neighbors. That would leave Israel isolated, wrapped in fear, and psychologically unstable. Israel’s alternative can only be constant instability, never ending terror and war, hatred by their neighbors, innate, simmering self-hate, and mental anguish resulting from exclusionism that leaves open wounds of distrust and self-questioning, a state terribly close to insanity.</p>
<p>Is it not time for Israel to seek peace with its neighbors? Since no sensible person in the mid-east believes that the U.S. can act credibly as a broker for peace, Israel must seek other partners from the UN who can serve that purpose. It must be willing to accept as a premise for peace, justice as defined by the UN’s International Courts and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It must understand that the occupied territories must be returned to their native inhabitants, that the Partition Plan of November 1947 must be a basis for negotiations if only to provide a foundation for equitable land for both peoples. Modification of land distribution could follow as well as a means of providing for the rights of those displaced in the Nakba. The world peace body could serve to protect both peoples as generations come and go until a free movement of all is possible. Then perhaps we could say, men use thoughts to find justice and speech to communicate it.</p>
<p>William A. Cook&#160;is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, and&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Plight of the Palestinians</a>&#160;published a year ago.&#160; He can be reached at&#160; <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>&#160;or through his web site <a href="http://www.drwilliamacook.com/" type="external">www.drwilliamacook.com</a>.</p>
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<p />
<p>Image courtesy of <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usembassyjakarta/6334111888/" type="external">Flickr</a></p>
<p />
<p>Is it surprising then that Politico is reporting on Wednesday that some of New York’s most exclusive golf clubs turned away the President over Labor Day Weekend. The President was in New York to attend a wedding and some fundraisers.</p>
<p>The three courses in question were the Trump National Golf Club, Winged Food and Willow Ridge. Apparently, they didn’t want to inconvenience members.</p>
<p>White House staffers allegedly gave just a day or two of notice to golf courses in the area where the president was scheduled to stay on Friday evening after attending fundraising events in New York and Rhode Island.</p>
<p>Representatives of all three golf courses declined to comment to POLITICO. The White House did not immediately respond to POLITICO for comment.</p>
<p>Labor Day weekend is one of the busiest times for golf courses, and courses may not have wanted to inconvenience members, who can pay $100,000 a year or more in initiation fees, it was reported.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/obama-golf-new-york-rejects-110796.html" type="external">Politico</a></p>
<p>Yes, it’s possible that they didn’t want to inconvenience their members and to be fair, they didn’t only turn down the black guy (who Donald Trump happens to hate). They also turned down the Middle Eastern guy. The <a href="http://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/President-Obama-Rejected-Trump-Golf-Course-Westchester-274423351.html" type="external">King of Morocco</a> was turned down on the same weekend.</p>
<p>Here’s the video:</p>
<p />
<p />
|
President Obama Turned Away From Country Clubs (VIDEO)
| true |
http://addictinginfo.org/2014/09/10/president-obama-turned-away-from-country-clubs-video/
|
2014-09-10
| 4left
|
President Obama Turned Away From Country Clubs (VIDEO)
<p />
<p>Image courtesy of <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usembassyjakarta/6334111888/" type="external">Flickr</a></p>
<p />
<p>Is it surprising then that Politico is reporting on Wednesday that some of New York’s most exclusive golf clubs turned away the President over Labor Day Weekend. The President was in New York to attend a wedding and some fundraisers.</p>
<p>The three courses in question were the Trump National Golf Club, Winged Food and Willow Ridge. Apparently, they didn’t want to inconvenience members.</p>
<p>White House staffers allegedly gave just a day or two of notice to golf courses in the area where the president was scheduled to stay on Friday evening after attending fundraising events in New York and Rhode Island.</p>
<p>Representatives of all three golf courses declined to comment to POLITICO. The White House did not immediately respond to POLITICO for comment.</p>
<p>Labor Day weekend is one of the busiest times for golf courses, and courses may not have wanted to inconvenience members, who can pay $100,000 a year or more in initiation fees, it was reported.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/obama-golf-new-york-rejects-110796.html" type="external">Politico</a></p>
<p>Yes, it’s possible that they didn’t want to inconvenience their members and to be fair, they didn’t only turn down the black guy (who Donald Trump happens to hate). They also turned down the Middle Eastern guy. The <a href="http://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/President-Obama-Rejected-Trump-Golf-Course-Westchester-274423351.html" type="external">King of Morocco</a> was turned down on the same weekend.</p>
<p>Here’s the video:</p>
<p />
<p />
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<p />
<p>That could mean kindling a roaring fire, snuggling under a cozy throw or pulling on a thick sweater. It also means gift possibilities galore.</p>
<p>Helping your friends and family stave off winter’s chill without blasting the heat also is a noble cause – it saves money and helps out the environment. Shoppers will find a wealth of options everywhere from department stores to small specialty shops.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Dillard’s, for example, has a wide selection of throw blankets starting at $39 and going all the way up to more than $200 for a Pendleton wool blanket, says Betty Van Osdol, manager of the home store at the Winrock Dillard’s.</p>
<p>“There’s just a variety – many, many kinds,” she says. “I think this year we’ve gotten in more than in the past.”</p>
<p>Choices include sweater throws, ultrasoft bamboo, luxurious cashmere and throws with matching lounge socks.</p>
<p>Dillard’s also carries a brown and tan Ponderosa Sherpa throw that mimics the look of leather and real fleece.</p>
<p>“Those are wonderful, too, a little more masculine looking,” Van Osdol says.</p>
<p>On the other side of the style spectrum are the faux fur throws, including a Marilyn Monroe-inspired throw.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“They come in all colors, all animal prints and then some come with a little bit of bling on them,” Van Osdol says.</p>
<p>Whatever style strikes your fancy, throws make an excellent gift, she says, adding that she always gives them to her employees at Christmas.</p>
<p>“It’s nice to have one on your bed,” Van Osdol says. “Everyone likes to have them on your sofa, your favorite sitting chair.”</p>
<p>Some stores also carry electric throw blankets that deliver an extra dose of warmth.</p>
<p>For those who want to indulge in something truly special, Miriam’s Well in Santa Fe carries hand-woven blankets and shawls starting at $250.</p>
<p>Boutique owner and weaver Miriam Leth-Espensen also offers hand-knit and hand-woven scarves, sweaters, vests, socks and hand warmers made of natural fibers, including wool, alpaca, merino, angora, silk and bamboo.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I use only the finest fibers available on the U.S. market,” she says.</p>
<p>Prices range from $55 for hand warmers and $95 for socks to $350 to $450 for vests and sweaters.</p>
<p>“They are very practical,” Leth-Espensen says. “They’re for everyday use.”</p>
<p>For many people, keeping their feet warm is a big challenge -and a great gift opportunity. In fact, slipper sales always take off right after Thanksgiving as shoppers start buying holiday presents, says Saundra Thompson, comfort buyer for Shoes on a Shoestring.</p>
<p>“I think slippers are a great gift,” she says.</p>
<p>Shoes on a Shoestring, which has stores in the Northeast Heights and on the West Side, carries several brands of slippers, including Old Friends, Bearpaw, Lamo and Ugg, with prices ranging from $29.99 to $69.99.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Slippers made with real sheepskin linings are especially nice, Thompson says.</p>
<p>“They’re really cozy in the wintertime, but you can also wear them around the house in the summertime because it regulates the temperature,” she says.</p>
<p>Rubber soles also are a plus because they can be worn outside to get the mail, for example, she says.</p>
<p>For younger girls, Shoes on a Shoestring carries the Roxy line of fashion slippers.</p>
<p>“What’s nice is they come in a lot of different colors so you can pick out their favorite,” Thompson says.</p>
<p>To make gift giving easier, the store offers an extended return policy that allows people to exchange slippers after Christmas.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Need more than slippers to get those feet warm? Brookstone in Coronado Mall stocks a Luxe Massaging Foot Warmer for $49.99. That special person on your gift list can slip his or her feet into the plush fabric for a soothing and warm massage.</p>
<p>The store also carries a towel warmer that’s a real treat. Pop a towel or two in before getting in the shower and it will be toasty in just 10 minutes. It’s priced at $89.99.</p>
<p>High-tech not your thing? How about getting back to basics with a good old-fashioned fire?</p>
<p>Carefree Spas sells Lennox brand pellet, wood, natural gas and propane stoves and stove inserts that fit inside existing masonry fireplaces.</p>
<p>The kinds of fireplaces that Santa Claus comes down are “not very efficient at all,” says general manager Shane Brummett, but an insert can take a fireplace from being 10 percent efficient to 90 percent efficient and capable of heating 2,000 square feet.</p>
<p>Wood and pellet stoves also are much cleaner and have lower emissions than traditional wood fireplaces. They are priced from $1,500 to $6,000. “They’re very clean, very nice for the environment,” Brummett says.</p>
<p>For people who already have a fireplace or stove, Carefree sells plenty of accessories ranging in price from $40 to $200 that would make a nice gift, he says.</p>
<p>Choices include fireproof rugs, fireplace screens and grates and cast iron kettles that can be placed on top of a stove to heat water or to humidify the air – something that’s always welcome in New Mexico’s dry winter climate.</p>
<p>“We also sell tool sets that are really popular around Christmas,” Brummett says.</p>
<p>There are so many other great ways to keep warm that also can become gift ideas. Hot drinks are good, so a gourmet cocoa or spiced cider mix would be welcome. Other options include bath salts and accessories for a hot soak, an electric blanket to take the chill off the sheets at bedtime or a fun draft stopper to keep the cold from blowing in.</p>
|
Warm ways: The gift of Christmas cozy
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/153427/warm-ways-the-gift-of-christmas-cozy.html
|
2012-12-15
| 2least
|
Warm ways: The gift of Christmas cozy
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>That could mean kindling a roaring fire, snuggling under a cozy throw or pulling on a thick sweater. It also means gift possibilities galore.</p>
<p>Helping your friends and family stave off winter’s chill without blasting the heat also is a noble cause – it saves money and helps out the environment. Shoppers will find a wealth of options everywhere from department stores to small specialty shops.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Dillard’s, for example, has a wide selection of throw blankets starting at $39 and going all the way up to more than $200 for a Pendleton wool blanket, says Betty Van Osdol, manager of the home store at the Winrock Dillard’s.</p>
<p>“There’s just a variety – many, many kinds,” she says. “I think this year we’ve gotten in more than in the past.”</p>
<p>Choices include sweater throws, ultrasoft bamboo, luxurious cashmere and throws with matching lounge socks.</p>
<p>Dillard’s also carries a brown and tan Ponderosa Sherpa throw that mimics the look of leather and real fleece.</p>
<p>“Those are wonderful, too, a little more masculine looking,” Van Osdol says.</p>
<p>On the other side of the style spectrum are the faux fur throws, including a Marilyn Monroe-inspired throw.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“They come in all colors, all animal prints and then some come with a little bit of bling on them,” Van Osdol says.</p>
<p>Whatever style strikes your fancy, throws make an excellent gift, she says, adding that she always gives them to her employees at Christmas.</p>
<p>“It’s nice to have one on your bed,” Van Osdol says. “Everyone likes to have them on your sofa, your favorite sitting chair.”</p>
<p>Some stores also carry electric throw blankets that deliver an extra dose of warmth.</p>
<p>For those who want to indulge in something truly special, Miriam’s Well in Santa Fe carries hand-woven blankets and shawls starting at $250.</p>
<p>Boutique owner and weaver Miriam Leth-Espensen also offers hand-knit and hand-woven scarves, sweaters, vests, socks and hand warmers made of natural fibers, including wool, alpaca, merino, angora, silk and bamboo.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I use only the finest fibers available on the U.S. market,” she says.</p>
<p>Prices range from $55 for hand warmers and $95 for socks to $350 to $450 for vests and sweaters.</p>
<p>“They are very practical,” Leth-Espensen says. “They’re for everyday use.”</p>
<p>For many people, keeping their feet warm is a big challenge -and a great gift opportunity. In fact, slipper sales always take off right after Thanksgiving as shoppers start buying holiday presents, says Saundra Thompson, comfort buyer for Shoes on a Shoestring.</p>
<p>“I think slippers are a great gift,” she says.</p>
<p>Shoes on a Shoestring, which has stores in the Northeast Heights and on the West Side, carries several brands of slippers, including Old Friends, Bearpaw, Lamo and Ugg, with prices ranging from $29.99 to $69.99.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Slippers made with real sheepskin linings are especially nice, Thompson says.</p>
<p>“They’re really cozy in the wintertime, but you can also wear them around the house in the summertime because it regulates the temperature,” she says.</p>
<p>Rubber soles also are a plus because they can be worn outside to get the mail, for example, she says.</p>
<p>For younger girls, Shoes on a Shoestring carries the Roxy line of fashion slippers.</p>
<p>“What’s nice is they come in a lot of different colors so you can pick out their favorite,” Thompson says.</p>
<p>To make gift giving easier, the store offers an extended return policy that allows people to exchange slippers after Christmas.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Need more than slippers to get those feet warm? Brookstone in Coronado Mall stocks a Luxe Massaging Foot Warmer for $49.99. That special person on your gift list can slip his or her feet into the plush fabric for a soothing and warm massage.</p>
<p>The store also carries a towel warmer that’s a real treat. Pop a towel or two in before getting in the shower and it will be toasty in just 10 minutes. It’s priced at $89.99.</p>
<p>High-tech not your thing? How about getting back to basics with a good old-fashioned fire?</p>
<p>Carefree Spas sells Lennox brand pellet, wood, natural gas and propane stoves and stove inserts that fit inside existing masonry fireplaces.</p>
<p>The kinds of fireplaces that Santa Claus comes down are “not very efficient at all,” says general manager Shane Brummett, but an insert can take a fireplace from being 10 percent efficient to 90 percent efficient and capable of heating 2,000 square feet.</p>
<p>Wood and pellet stoves also are much cleaner and have lower emissions than traditional wood fireplaces. They are priced from $1,500 to $6,000. “They’re very clean, very nice for the environment,” Brummett says.</p>
<p>For people who already have a fireplace or stove, Carefree sells plenty of accessories ranging in price from $40 to $200 that would make a nice gift, he says.</p>
<p>Choices include fireproof rugs, fireplace screens and grates and cast iron kettles that can be placed on top of a stove to heat water or to humidify the air – something that’s always welcome in New Mexico’s dry winter climate.</p>
<p>“We also sell tool sets that are really popular around Christmas,” Brummett says.</p>
<p>There are so many other great ways to keep warm that also can become gift ideas. Hot drinks are good, so a gourmet cocoa or spiced cider mix would be welcome. Other options include bath salts and accessories for a hot soak, an electric blanket to take the chill off the sheets at bedtime or a fun draft stopper to keep the cold from blowing in.</p>
| 5,682 |
<p>By Michael Parnell</p>
<p>Calvary begins in a confessional in Ireland. Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) listens to a man describe how he was raped as child by a priest. The man then tells Father James that he will kill him the next Sunday on the beach. The way the confessor figures, a good priest will die for a bad one.</p>
<p>What follows is the week that Father James spends doing what he always does: caring for the people of his parish. And this is a motley group.</p>
<p>There is Veronica (Oria O’Rouke) who is married to Jack (Chris O’Dowd), the local butcher. Veronica is having an affair with Simon (Issach De Bankolé), an African immigrant. Veronica flaunts her actions and her husband is aware of her bed hopping but seems to be fine with it.</p>
<p>Also part of the parish is the local pub owner who has nothing good to say. A very non-affable fellow is he. There is the doctor who tells a horrible story of why he is an atheist. The richest man in the county is one step away from the jailhouse, so he drinks to excess and wants to soothe his conscious by donating money to the church. The nicely dressed young man of the church is socially inept and wants to join the army. Father James tells him he thinks that joining the army in peace time is inherently psychopathic. In Father James’s view the only reason you join the army is to try and find out what it is like to kill someone.</p>
<p>Even Father James’s daughter is a mess of a person. Father James was once married, but his wife died. When his daughter (Kelly Reilly) enters the story she is coming off a failed attempt at suicide. At one point she goes enters the confessional to tell her father, “I belong to myself, and no one else.” Which brings this reply from her father:“True, false.”</p>
<p>The only people who seem remotely well-adjusted are an old writer (M. Emmett Walsh) and a French woman (Marie-Josée Croze) whose husband dies and for whom Father James performs last rites. The writer jokes about dying, while the wife speaks and models great faith.</p>
<p>As the movie moves along its path, the threat of Father James’s death lingers in the back of your mind. But that is not what we see in the character. What you are struck by is the goodness of this man of God. In the face of the burning of his church he remains committed. His only moments of wavering come later in the movie, when a horrible act is visited upon him, but he continues onward.</p>
<p>John Michael McDonagh, who writes and directs this film, makes it work a bit differently than most movies do. Almost all the scenes include only two characters, primarily Father James and another person. It is as though the entire movie is a confessional between the father and another character who reveals something and to whom Father James offers advice or absolution. This allows the characters to grow. Yet growth does not mean maturing. Most of the characters here do little of that. They only grow in depth.</p>
<p>I was arrested by how this movie works as a theological metaphor. What the confessor says is going to happen is that a good man will die for a bad man. That is a concept of atonement. The good man, Christ, dies for the bad people. McDonagh creates a character in Father James who is a good priest who cares deeply for his flock, in spite of their flaws and faults.</p>
<p>Brendan Gleeson is a revelation as Father James. He brings humanity to the role, showing a priest who walks with his people and loves them as they are. He is not daunted by the death threat. The actor shows us one who believes in God and is resigned to God’s will for his life. That is why he never reports the threat to the authorities.</p>
<p>Father James show real love for those he ministers to — not a saccharin kind of false love, but a compassion for the waywardness in the lives of the people he walks with in life.</p>
<p>As Father James is confronting a fellow priest, Father Leary (David Wilmot), he tells his fellow servant he needs to find another vocation. With genuine love Father James says Father Leary lacks integrity. He declares that lack of integrity is the worst thing he can say about someone.</p>
<p>Gleeson brings large amounts of integrity to this role. He is the reason to see this movie.</p>
<p>Calvary</p>
<p>Rated R for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use</p>
<p>Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh</p>
<p>With: Brendan Gleeson (Father James Lavelle), Kelly Reilly (Fiona Lavelle), Chris O’Dowd (Jack Brennan), M. Emmett Walsh (The Writer), Oria O’Rouke (Veronica), Marie-Josée Croze (Teresa), Issach De Bankolé (Simon)</p>
|
Like its name, ‘Calvary’ offers view of atonement
| false |
https://baptistnews.com/article/like-its-name-calvary-offers-view-of-atonement/
| 3left-center
|
Like its name, ‘Calvary’ offers view of atonement
<p>By Michael Parnell</p>
<p>Calvary begins in a confessional in Ireland. Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) listens to a man describe how he was raped as child by a priest. The man then tells Father James that he will kill him the next Sunday on the beach. The way the confessor figures, a good priest will die for a bad one.</p>
<p>What follows is the week that Father James spends doing what he always does: caring for the people of his parish. And this is a motley group.</p>
<p>There is Veronica (Oria O’Rouke) who is married to Jack (Chris O’Dowd), the local butcher. Veronica is having an affair with Simon (Issach De Bankolé), an African immigrant. Veronica flaunts her actions and her husband is aware of her bed hopping but seems to be fine with it.</p>
<p>Also part of the parish is the local pub owner who has nothing good to say. A very non-affable fellow is he. There is the doctor who tells a horrible story of why he is an atheist. The richest man in the county is one step away from the jailhouse, so he drinks to excess and wants to soothe his conscious by donating money to the church. The nicely dressed young man of the church is socially inept and wants to join the army. Father James tells him he thinks that joining the army in peace time is inherently psychopathic. In Father James’s view the only reason you join the army is to try and find out what it is like to kill someone.</p>
<p>Even Father James’s daughter is a mess of a person. Father James was once married, but his wife died. When his daughter (Kelly Reilly) enters the story she is coming off a failed attempt at suicide. At one point she goes enters the confessional to tell her father, “I belong to myself, and no one else.” Which brings this reply from her father:“True, false.”</p>
<p>The only people who seem remotely well-adjusted are an old writer (M. Emmett Walsh) and a French woman (Marie-Josée Croze) whose husband dies and for whom Father James performs last rites. The writer jokes about dying, while the wife speaks and models great faith.</p>
<p>As the movie moves along its path, the threat of Father James’s death lingers in the back of your mind. But that is not what we see in the character. What you are struck by is the goodness of this man of God. In the face of the burning of his church he remains committed. His only moments of wavering come later in the movie, when a horrible act is visited upon him, but he continues onward.</p>
<p>John Michael McDonagh, who writes and directs this film, makes it work a bit differently than most movies do. Almost all the scenes include only two characters, primarily Father James and another person. It is as though the entire movie is a confessional between the father and another character who reveals something and to whom Father James offers advice or absolution. This allows the characters to grow. Yet growth does not mean maturing. Most of the characters here do little of that. They only grow in depth.</p>
<p>I was arrested by how this movie works as a theological metaphor. What the confessor says is going to happen is that a good man will die for a bad man. That is a concept of atonement. The good man, Christ, dies for the bad people. McDonagh creates a character in Father James who is a good priest who cares deeply for his flock, in spite of their flaws and faults.</p>
<p>Brendan Gleeson is a revelation as Father James. He brings humanity to the role, showing a priest who walks with his people and loves them as they are. He is not daunted by the death threat. The actor shows us one who believes in God and is resigned to God’s will for his life. That is why he never reports the threat to the authorities.</p>
<p>Father James show real love for those he ministers to — not a saccharin kind of false love, but a compassion for the waywardness in the lives of the people he walks with in life.</p>
<p>As Father James is confronting a fellow priest, Father Leary (David Wilmot), he tells his fellow servant he needs to find another vocation. With genuine love Father James says Father Leary lacks integrity. He declares that lack of integrity is the worst thing he can say about someone.</p>
<p>Gleeson brings large amounts of integrity to this role. He is the reason to see this movie.</p>
<p>Calvary</p>
<p>Rated R for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use</p>
<p>Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh</p>
<p>With: Brendan Gleeson (Father James Lavelle), Kelly Reilly (Fiona Lavelle), Chris O’Dowd (Jack Brennan), M. Emmett Walsh (The Writer), Oria O’Rouke (Veronica), Marie-Josée Croze (Teresa), Issach De Bankolé (Simon)</p>
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<p />
<p>At a news conference on Monday, Police Chief Ray Schultz identified the two officers who shot and killed 66-year-old Vincent Wood on Friday as rookie Jeff Bludworth and Katherine Wright, who has been with APD since 2009.</p>
<p>A security guard at a business located near the intersection of San Mateo and Montgomery NE had called 911 at 7:39 p.m., the chief said, to report that a man matching Wood’s description had threatened two teenage boys with two “big ol’ butcher knives.”</p>
<p>The knives used by Vietnam War veteran Vincent Wood,, fatally shot by Albuquerque Police officers are seen during a press briefing held on Monday July 8, 2013 . (Adolphe Pierre-Louis-Journal)</p>
<p>The security guard told police dispatchers he had dealt with the man before and that he was both “extremely crazy” and “extremely dangerous.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>That information was relayed to the officers.</p>
<p>Preliminary results from an investigation being conducted by APD and several other law enforcement agencies show Wright likely fired first as Wood advanced on Bludworth with two large Bowie-type knives, Schultz said.</p>
<p>He said he didn’t know how many times either officer fired, or how many times Wood was struck.</p>
<p>At 7:42 p.m., Bludworth arrived on scene and found Wood, the chief said. The officer saw no weapons in Wood’s hands and called him toward his police car.</p>
<p>Wood took a detour around Bludworth’s car, Schultz said, then produced the knives from a satchel he had slung around his shoulder. As he backed away from Wood, Bludworth reached into his holster for his gun and began commanding him to drop the knives.</p>
<p>Wright arrived around that time and, “in fear for officer Bludworth,” fired at Wood, Schultz said. Wright believed she may have recognized Wood from a previous encounter.</p>
<p>About a minute passed from the time Bludworth arrived in the parking lot and when Wood was shot, he said.</p>
<p>The chief said Wood had brandished knives at police officers, including APD officers, during previous incidents.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Family criticism</p>
<p>Wood’s sister-in-law, Cynthia Allen, questioned why the officers used their guns at all.</p>
<p>“I can understand if this was a man in his prime coming at police officers with knives,” Allen said Monday in a telephone interview from her home in Florida. “But why couldn’t they use Tasers? Or shoot him in the knee caps? Vincent has come at my husband with a machete before, and he was able to handle the situation without a gun.”</p>
<p>Schultz said he “would assume” the officers were carrying electronic stun guns – which APD requires all officers to do – at the time of the shooting. But neither officer used one.</p>
<p>Wood, Schultz said, was between four and eight feet from Bludworth when he was shot.</p>
<p>Both officers had their department-issued lapel cameras turned on during the shooting, and one of the cameras captured video and audio of the shooting, Schultz said.</p>
<p>The video was not shown to reporters at the news conference.</p>
<p>Schultz said Wood has been arrested 14 times since 1998 in New Mexico and Colorado. Only one of those arrests resulted in a conviction.</p>
<p>Wood also has been transported to mental health facilities six times by law enforcement, the chief said, including to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Albuquerque.</p>
<p>Most recently, in June, he refused to come out of the motel where he was staying after police were called to the area because of a disturbance, Schultz said. Wood was not arrested on that occasion.</p>
<p>Allen said Wood had been hospitalized as recently as a few months ago.</p>
<p>“We’ve been trying to get him home and in a safe place for the last year,” she said. “The VA wouldn’t provide any of his information and, even though we knew he was in Albuquerque, we didn’t know exactly where he was. The last we heard, he was back on his medication and doing fine. The next thing we know, he’s dead.”</p>
<p>Michael Allen, Wood’s half brother, told the Journal over the weekend that Wood had one grown daughter and had been traveling in the Southwest since his grandmother died in the early 1990s, a death Wood took very hard.</p>
<p>That death, coupled with the post-traumatic stress disorder Wood suffered after serving as an infantryman in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, left Wood drifting, Michael Allen said. Wood had been living in Albuquerque for 10 to 15 years, he said.</p>
<p>Policy change</p>
<p>In the aftermath of a spike in shootings by APD officers that began in 2010 and levelled off last year, department brass implemented several policies in an attempt to slow the rate of deadly police-citizen encounters.</p>
<p>Requiring all officers to use lapel cameras every time they contact a citizen was one such change. Another was requiring supervisors to respond to all scenes that have a high potential for volatility in an effort to slow down such situations.</p>
<p>In the Wood shooting case, the second for APD this year, those “protocols were followed,” Schultz said.</p>
<p>A crisis intervention officer had just arrived at the scene as Wood was being shot and a sergeant was en route, he said.</p>
<p>The high number of police shootings, 29 since 2010, and several other excessive force cases prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a sweeping civil rights investigation of APD, which is ongoing.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
APD officer fired gun as fellow cop attacked
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/218948/apd-officer-fired-gun-as-fellow-cop-attacked.html
|
2013-07-09
| 2least
|
APD officer fired gun as fellow cop attacked
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>At a news conference on Monday, Police Chief Ray Schultz identified the two officers who shot and killed 66-year-old Vincent Wood on Friday as rookie Jeff Bludworth and Katherine Wright, who has been with APD since 2009.</p>
<p>A security guard at a business located near the intersection of San Mateo and Montgomery NE had called 911 at 7:39 p.m., the chief said, to report that a man matching Wood’s description had threatened two teenage boys with two “big ol’ butcher knives.”</p>
<p>The knives used by Vietnam War veteran Vincent Wood,, fatally shot by Albuquerque Police officers are seen during a press briefing held on Monday July 8, 2013 . (Adolphe Pierre-Louis-Journal)</p>
<p>The security guard told police dispatchers he had dealt with the man before and that he was both “extremely crazy” and “extremely dangerous.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>That information was relayed to the officers.</p>
<p>Preliminary results from an investigation being conducted by APD and several other law enforcement agencies show Wright likely fired first as Wood advanced on Bludworth with two large Bowie-type knives, Schultz said.</p>
<p>He said he didn’t know how many times either officer fired, or how many times Wood was struck.</p>
<p>At 7:42 p.m., Bludworth arrived on scene and found Wood, the chief said. The officer saw no weapons in Wood’s hands and called him toward his police car.</p>
<p>Wood took a detour around Bludworth’s car, Schultz said, then produced the knives from a satchel he had slung around his shoulder. As he backed away from Wood, Bludworth reached into his holster for his gun and began commanding him to drop the knives.</p>
<p>Wright arrived around that time and, “in fear for officer Bludworth,” fired at Wood, Schultz said. Wright believed she may have recognized Wood from a previous encounter.</p>
<p>About a minute passed from the time Bludworth arrived in the parking lot and when Wood was shot, he said.</p>
<p>The chief said Wood had brandished knives at police officers, including APD officers, during previous incidents.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Family criticism</p>
<p>Wood’s sister-in-law, Cynthia Allen, questioned why the officers used their guns at all.</p>
<p>“I can understand if this was a man in his prime coming at police officers with knives,” Allen said Monday in a telephone interview from her home in Florida. “But why couldn’t they use Tasers? Or shoot him in the knee caps? Vincent has come at my husband with a machete before, and he was able to handle the situation without a gun.”</p>
<p>Schultz said he “would assume” the officers were carrying electronic stun guns – which APD requires all officers to do – at the time of the shooting. But neither officer used one.</p>
<p>Wood, Schultz said, was between four and eight feet from Bludworth when he was shot.</p>
<p>Both officers had their department-issued lapel cameras turned on during the shooting, and one of the cameras captured video and audio of the shooting, Schultz said.</p>
<p>The video was not shown to reporters at the news conference.</p>
<p>Schultz said Wood has been arrested 14 times since 1998 in New Mexico and Colorado. Only one of those arrests resulted in a conviction.</p>
<p>Wood also has been transported to mental health facilities six times by law enforcement, the chief said, including to the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in Albuquerque.</p>
<p>Most recently, in June, he refused to come out of the motel where he was staying after police were called to the area because of a disturbance, Schultz said. Wood was not arrested on that occasion.</p>
<p>Allen said Wood had been hospitalized as recently as a few months ago.</p>
<p>“We’ve been trying to get him home and in a safe place for the last year,” she said. “The VA wouldn’t provide any of his information and, even though we knew he was in Albuquerque, we didn’t know exactly where he was. The last we heard, he was back on his medication and doing fine. The next thing we know, he’s dead.”</p>
<p>Michael Allen, Wood’s half brother, told the Journal over the weekend that Wood had one grown daughter and had been traveling in the Southwest since his grandmother died in the early 1990s, a death Wood took very hard.</p>
<p>That death, coupled with the post-traumatic stress disorder Wood suffered after serving as an infantryman in Vietnam in the mid-1960s, left Wood drifting, Michael Allen said. Wood had been living in Albuquerque for 10 to 15 years, he said.</p>
<p>Policy change</p>
<p>In the aftermath of a spike in shootings by APD officers that began in 2010 and levelled off last year, department brass implemented several policies in an attempt to slow the rate of deadly police-citizen encounters.</p>
<p>Requiring all officers to use lapel cameras every time they contact a citizen was one such change. Another was requiring supervisors to respond to all scenes that have a high potential for volatility in an effort to slow down such situations.</p>
<p>In the Wood shooting case, the second for APD this year, those “protocols were followed,” Schultz said.</p>
<p>A crisis intervention officer had just arrived at the scene as Wood was being shot and a sergeant was en route, he said.</p>
<p>The high number of police shootings, 29 since 2010, and several other excessive force cases prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to launch a sweeping civil rights investigation of APD, which is ongoing.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 5,684 |
<p>CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man is facing federal charges after threatening to kill several FBI employees.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report 33-year-old Marcus Strickland was arraigned in federal court on Wednesday on three counts of transmitting threats using interstate commerce.</p>
<p>Strickland was indicted earlier this month. Court documents say he called an FBI employee on August 3 and said he would, "gun y'all down, beat y'all."</p>
<p>Weeks later, authorities say Strickland made more telephone calls to the FBI, saying, "I'll kill y'all, blow your head off."</p>
<p>Strickland was taken back to jail after pleading not guilty, and prosecutors want him mentally evaluated. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney.</p>
<p>CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man is facing federal charges after threatening to kill several FBI employees.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report 33-year-old Marcus Strickland was arraigned in federal court on Wednesday on three counts of transmitting threats using interstate commerce.</p>
<p>Strickland was indicted earlier this month. Court documents say he called an FBI employee on August 3 and said he would, "gun y'all down, beat y'all."</p>
<p>Weeks later, authorities say Strickland made more telephone calls to the FBI, saying, "I'll kill y'all, blow your head off."</p>
<p>Strickland was taken back to jail after pleading not guilty, and prosecutors want him mentally evaluated. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney.</p>
|
S. Carolina man charged with threatening to kill FBI agents
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/0fe12af936d8406cbaa668d449713e6f
|
2017-12-28
| 2least
|
S. Carolina man charged with threatening to kill FBI agents
<p>CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man is facing federal charges after threatening to kill several FBI employees.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report 33-year-old Marcus Strickland was arraigned in federal court on Wednesday on three counts of transmitting threats using interstate commerce.</p>
<p>Strickland was indicted earlier this month. Court documents say he called an FBI employee on August 3 and said he would, "gun y'all down, beat y'all."</p>
<p>Weeks later, authorities say Strickland made more telephone calls to the FBI, saying, "I'll kill y'all, blow your head off."</p>
<p>Strickland was taken back to jail after pleading not guilty, and prosecutors want him mentally evaluated. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney.</p>
<p>CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina man is facing federal charges after threatening to kill several FBI employees.</p>
<p>Local media outlets report 33-year-old Marcus Strickland was arraigned in federal court on Wednesday on three counts of transmitting threats using interstate commerce.</p>
<p>Strickland was indicted earlier this month. Court documents say he called an FBI employee on August 3 and said he would, "gun y'all down, beat y'all."</p>
<p>Weeks later, authorities say Strickland made more telephone calls to the FBI, saying, "I'll kill y'all, blow your head off."</p>
<p>Strickland was taken back to jail after pleading not guilty, and prosecutors want him mentally evaluated. It wasn't clear if he had an attorney.</p>
| 5,685 |
<p />
<p>Apple Music. Image source: Apple.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The first time around, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) helped the music industry navigate the digital transition. The challenge in the late '90s that the industry faced was the rise of piracy, as digital files of music were easily copied and shared illegally. Apple's role was to help consumers come to terms will opening up their wallets in a digital world, in part by making it easier to buy digital music legally.</p>
<p>This time around, the Mac maker is helping the music industry navigate the streaming transition. The challenge now is that the early innings were dominated by ad-supported models where users more or less got to listen for free. The basic goal remains the same: Convince consumers that music is still worth paying for.</p>
<p>The RIAA has released its <a href="http://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/RIAAMidyear16.pdf" type="external">midyear 2016 report Opens a New Window.</a> (link opens PDF) on industry revenue, and revenue from subscription services is helping the industry grow despite falling unit sales of both physical and digital copies. Retail revenue rose 8% to $3.4 billion, putting up the best growth in decades. Notably, streaming subscription revenue accounted for nearly half (47%) of that total. Streaming revenue is driving growth of digital music revenue, while permanent downloads are relatively flat.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Image source: RIAA.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, ad-supported on-demand streaming has stagnated. This is the part of the market that the industry has always hated, since not only is the revenue modest but it cheapens the value that consumers place on music in general. Consumers expecting to get music for free if they endure ads is not a good thing for the viability of the industry.</p>
<p>Image source: RIAA.</p>
<p>However, Apple isn't alone in helping to transform the industry. Spotify is by far the biggest player when it comes to paid subscriptions, with 40 million paid subscribers. That's <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/15/apple-inc-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-to-catch-spot.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">more than twice Opens a New Window.</a> Apple's 17 million paid subscribers.</p>
<p>Data sources: Apple and Spotify. Chart by author.</p>
<p>But the big difference is that Spotify still offers an ad-supported on-demand service, while simultaneously offering a paid subscription that includes a wide range of additional features such as unlimited skips and offline listening. Spotify hit 100 million total active users in June, meaning it has convinced roughly 40% of its user base to pay up for premium. On the other hand, Apple only offers a paid version (after a three-month free trial). That's a strategic decision that has undoubtedly won the Mac maker many friends within the music industry.</p>
<p>Apple and Spotify both sit at the same price points with individual and family plans (at least if you don't subscribe to Spotify through the app). Paying subscribers now pay $120 per year, which is far more than the average person previously spent on music annually in the pre-streaming era. More importantly, consumers now get a lot more for their money. Instead of adding a few albums a year, people have access to more music than they could possibly need.</p>
<p>This probably won't be the last time that Apple helps usher in a new model for the music industry.</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=2668&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/TMFNewCow/info.aspx" type="external">Evan Niu, CFA Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. 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>
|
Apple, Inc. Just Helped Resurrect the Music Industry. Again.
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/20/apple-inc-just-helped-resurrect-music-industry-again.html
|
2016-09-20
| 0right
|
Apple, Inc. Just Helped Resurrect the Music Industry. Again.
<p />
<p>Apple Music. Image source: Apple.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The first time around, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) helped the music industry navigate the digital transition. The challenge in the late '90s that the industry faced was the rise of piracy, as digital files of music were easily copied and shared illegally. Apple's role was to help consumers come to terms will opening up their wallets in a digital world, in part by making it easier to buy digital music legally.</p>
<p>This time around, the Mac maker is helping the music industry navigate the streaming transition. The challenge now is that the early innings were dominated by ad-supported models where users more or less got to listen for free. The basic goal remains the same: Convince consumers that music is still worth paying for.</p>
<p>The RIAA has released its <a href="http://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/RIAAMidyear16.pdf" type="external">midyear 2016 report Opens a New Window.</a> (link opens PDF) on industry revenue, and revenue from subscription services is helping the industry grow despite falling unit sales of both physical and digital copies. Retail revenue rose 8% to $3.4 billion, putting up the best growth in decades. Notably, streaming subscription revenue accounted for nearly half (47%) of that total. Streaming revenue is driving growth of digital music revenue, while permanent downloads are relatively flat.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Image source: RIAA.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, ad-supported on-demand streaming has stagnated. This is the part of the market that the industry has always hated, since not only is the revenue modest but it cheapens the value that consumers place on music in general. Consumers expecting to get music for free if they endure ads is not a good thing for the viability of the industry.</p>
<p>Image source: RIAA.</p>
<p>However, Apple isn't alone in helping to transform the industry. Spotify is by far the biggest player when it comes to paid subscriptions, with 40 million paid subscribers. That's <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/15/apple-inc-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-to-catch-spot.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">more than twice Opens a New Window.</a> Apple's 17 million paid subscribers.</p>
<p>Data sources: Apple and Spotify. Chart by author.</p>
<p>But the big difference is that Spotify still offers an ad-supported on-demand service, while simultaneously offering a paid subscription that includes a wide range of additional features such as unlimited skips and offline listening. Spotify hit 100 million total active users in June, meaning it has convinced roughly 40% of its user base to pay up for premium. On the other hand, Apple only offers a paid version (after a three-month free trial). That's a strategic decision that has undoubtedly won the Mac maker many friends within the music industry.</p>
<p>Apple and Spotify both sit at the same price points with individual and family plans (at least if you don't subscribe to Spotify through the app). Paying subscribers now pay $120 per year, which is far more than the average person previously spent on music annually in the pre-streaming era. More importantly, consumers now get a lot more for their money. Instead of adding a few albums a year, people have access to more music than they could possibly need.</p>
<p>This probably won't be the last time that Apple helps usher in a new model for the music industry.</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=2668&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/TMFNewCow/info.aspx" type="external">Evan Niu, CFA Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. 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>
| 5,686 |
<p>SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — The European Union looks set to make an opening to help improve badly damaged relations with Turkey in the near future, boosted by recent talks between Turkish and French and German leaders and officials.</p>
<p>After more than a year of insults and a diplomatic standoff between EU member nations and Turkey, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva told a small group of reporters Thursday that the EU would be working hard to improve ties while her country holds the EU presidency over the next six months.</p>
<p>Zaharieva said the European Commission and Council of member states have already discussed the possibility of a high-level meeting with Turkey during the Bulgarian presidency to reinvigorate relations.</p>
<p>She couldn’t pin down a date yet, but when pressed whether it would happen during her presidency, she said “We didn’t schedule the date but I think ‘why not, why not.’”</p>
<p>Last week brought the first major breakthrough when French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and suggested that the EU develop a special partnership with Turkey since EU membership negotiations have been in a rut for decades.</p>
<p>Zaharieva, who will preside over all meetings of EU foreign ministers until the summer, backed Macron and said it was “more realistic” for now to target a special partnership than full-blown EU membership. When asked if she would back it if an EU consensus was within reach, she said “yes, yes.”</p>
<p>Highlighting the difficult relationship between the huge Muslim country and the largely Christian club has been the inability of both sides to get close to a membership deal for Turkey first envisaged over half a century ago.</p>
<p>Ties between Turkey and Europe worsened last year amid mass arrests and firings carried out by Erdogan’s government following a July 2016 coup attempt. Relations deteriorated further after authorities in several countries prevented Turkish ministers from holding political rallies to court expatriates’ votes in a referendum to expand the president’s powers.</p>
<p>Erdogan unleashed a series of insults at NATO allies, accusing European officials of racism, harboring terrorists and behaving like Nazis.</p>
<p>That tone has changed in the new year.</p>
<p>Bulgaria, which shares a border with Turkey, realizes the strategic importance of its neighbor.</p>
<p>Zaharieva pointed out Turkey’s important role as a NATO member, a military alliance to which most EU nations belong. She also said that Turkey remains a key partner in managing the flow of migrants from the Middle East. And she highlighted the economic clout of Ankara.</p>
<p>She insisted though that any new dialogue should happen “without closing eyes for the problems,” among which she listed media freedom and human rights issues.</p>
<p>Since the failed coup in July 2016, about 50,000 people have been arrested and 110,000 others removed from public sector jobs in Turkey. Many have protested they are innocent.</p>
<p>SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — The European Union looks set to make an opening to help improve badly damaged relations with Turkey in the near future, boosted by recent talks between Turkish and French and German leaders and officials.</p>
<p>After more than a year of insults and a diplomatic standoff between EU member nations and Turkey, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva told a small group of reporters Thursday that the EU would be working hard to improve ties while her country holds the EU presidency over the next six months.</p>
<p>Zaharieva said the European Commission and Council of member states have already discussed the possibility of a high-level meeting with Turkey during the Bulgarian presidency to reinvigorate relations.</p>
<p>She couldn’t pin down a date yet, but when pressed whether it would happen during her presidency, she said “We didn’t schedule the date but I think ‘why not, why not.’”</p>
<p>Last week brought the first major breakthrough when French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and suggested that the EU develop a special partnership with Turkey since EU membership negotiations have been in a rut for decades.</p>
<p>Zaharieva, who will preside over all meetings of EU foreign ministers until the summer, backed Macron and said it was “more realistic” for now to target a special partnership than full-blown EU membership. When asked if she would back it if an EU consensus was within reach, she said “yes, yes.”</p>
<p>Highlighting the difficult relationship between the huge Muslim country and the largely Christian club has been the inability of both sides to get close to a membership deal for Turkey first envisaged over half a century ago.</p>
<p>Ties between Turkey and Europe worsened last year amid mass arrests and firings carried out by Erdogan’s government following a July 2016 coup attempt. Relations deteriorated further after authorities in several countries prevented Turkish ministers from holding political rallies to court expatriates’ votes in a referendum to expand the president’s powers.</p>
<p>Erdogan unleashed a series of insults at NATO allies, accusing European officials of racism, harboring terrorists and behaving like Nazis.</p>
<p>That tone has changed in the new year.</p>
<p>Bulgaria, which shares a border with Turkey, realizes the strategic importance of its neighbor.</p>
<p>Zaharieva pointed out Turkey’s important role as a NATO member, a military alliance to which most EU nations belong. She also said that Turkey remains a key partner in managing the flow of migrants from the Middle East. And she highlighted the economic clout of Ankara.</p>
<p>She insisted though that any new dialogue should happen “without closing eyes for the problems,” among which she listed media freedom and human rights issues.</p>
<p>Since the failed coup in July 2016, about 50,000 people have been arrested and 110,000 others removed from public sector jobs in Turkey. Many have protested they are innocent.</p>
|
EU looks set to boost strained ties with Turkey
| false |
https://apnews.com/3ac3b066365a42c89f750ac695ade12e
|
2018-01-11
| 2least
|
EU looks set to boost strained ties with Turkey
<p>SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — The European Union looks set to make an opening to help improve badly damaged relations with Turkey in the near future, boosted by recent talks between Turkish and French and German leaders and officials.</p>
<p>After more than a year of insults and a diplomatic standoff between EU member nations and Turkey, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva told a small group of reporters Thursday that the EU would be working hard to improve ties while her country holds the EU presidency over the next six months.</p>
<p>Zaharieva said the European Commission and Council of member states have already discussed the possibility of a high-level meeting with Turkey during the Bulgarian presidency to reinvigorate relations.</p>
<p>She couldn’t pin down a date yet, but when pressed whether it would happen during her presidency, she said “We didn’t schedule the date but I think ‘why not, why not.’”</p>
<p>Last week brought the first major breakthrough when French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and suggested that the EU develop a special partnership with Turkey since EU membership negotiations have been in a rut for decades.</p>
<p>Zaharieva, who will preside over all meetings of EU foreign ministers until the summer, backed Macron and said it was “more realistic” for now to target a special partnership than full-blown EU membership. When asked if she would back it if an EU consensus was within reach, she said “yes, yes.”</p>
<p>Highlighting the difficult relationship between the huge Muslim country and the largely Christian club has been the inability of both sides to get close to a membership deal for Turkey first envisaged over half a century ago.</p>
<p>Ties between Turkey and Europe worsened last year amid mass arrests and firings carried out by Erdogan’s government following a July 2016 coup attempt. Relations deteriorated further after authorities in several countries prevented Turkish ministers from holding political rallies to court expatriates’ votes in a referendum to expand the president’s powers.</p>
<p>Erdogan unleashed a series of insults at NATO allies, accusing European officials of racism, harboring terrorists and behaving like Nazis.</p>
<p>That tone has changed in the new year.</p>
<p>Bulgaria, which shares a border with Turkey, realizes the strategic importance of its neighbor.</p>
<p>Zaharieva pointed out Turkey’s important role as a NATO member, a military alliance to which most EU nations belong. She also said that Turkey remains a key partner in managing the flow of migrants from the Middle East. And she highlighted the economic clout of Ankara.</p>
<p>She insisted though that any new dialogue should happen “without closing eyes for the problems,” among which she listed media freedom and human rights issues.</p>
<p>Since the failed coup in July 2016, about 50,000 people have been arrested and 110,000 others removed from public sector jobs in Turkey. Many have protested they are innocent.</p>
<p>SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — The European Union looks set to make an opening to help improve badly damaged relations with Turkey in the near future, boosted by recent talks between Turkish and French and German leaders and officials.</p>
<p>After more than a year of insults and a diplomatic standoff between EU member nations and Turkey, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva told a small group of reporters Thursday that the EU would be working hard to improve ties while her country holds the EU presidency over the next six months.</p>
<p>Zaharieva said the European Commission and Council of member states have already discussed the possibility of a high-level meeting with Turkey during the Bulgarian presidency to reinvigorate relations.</p>
<p>She couldn’t pin down a date yet, but when pressed whether it would happen during her presidency, she said “We didn’t schedule the date but I think ‘why not, why not.’”</p>
<p>Last week brought the first major breakthrough when French President Emmanuel Macron hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and suggested that the EU develop a special partnership with Turkey since EU membership negotiations have been in a rut for decades.</p>
<p>Zaharieva, who will preside over all meetings of EU foreign ministers until the summer, backed Macron and said it was “more realistic” for now to target a special partnership than full-blown EU membership. When asked if she would back it if an EU consensus was within reach, she said “yes, yes.”</p>
<p>Highlighting the difficult relationship between the huge Muslim country and the largely Christian club has been the inability of both sides to get close to a membership deal for Turkey first envisaged over half a century ago.</p>
<p>Ties between Turkey and Europe worsened last year amid mass arrests and firings carried out by Erdogan’s government following a July 2016 coup attempt. Relations deteriorated further after authorities in several countries prevented Turkish ministers from holding political rallies to court expatriates’ votes in a referendum to expand the president’s powers.</p>
<p>Erdogan unleashed a series of insults at NATO allies, accusing European officials of racism, harboring terrorists and behaving like Nazis.</p>
<p>That tone has changed in the new year.</p>
<p>Bulgaria, which shares a border with Turkey, realizes the strategic importance of its neighbor.</p>
<p>Zaharieva pointed out Turkey’s important role as a NATO member, a military alliance to which most EU nations belong. She also said that Turkey remains a key partner in managing the flow of migrants from the Middle East. And she highlighted the economic clout of Ankara.</p>
<p>She insisted though that any new dialogue should happen “without closing eyes for the problems,” among which she listed media freedom and human rights issues.</p>
<p>Since the failed coup in July 2016, about 50,000 people have been arrested and 110,000 others removed from public sector jobs in Turkey. Many have protested they are innocent.</p>
| 5,687 |
<p>Treasury prices rose, pushing yields lower, on Tuesday as investors braced for the Fed minutes from September's policy meeting on Wednesday.</p>
<p>What are government bonds doing?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The 10-year Treasury note yield slipped to 2.333% from 2.370% on late Friday in New York. The 2-year Treasury note yield was down to 1.488% from 1.511%, while the 30-year Treasury bond yield fell to 2.869% from 2.907%. Bond prices move in the opposite direction of yields.</p>
<p>Treasurys weren't traded on Monday in observance of Columbus Day (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/columbus-day-which-markets-are-closed-2017-10-09).</p>
<p>What is driving markets?</p>
<p>Traders are pricing in an 87% chance of a quarter-percentage point rate increase by the Federal Reserve when it convenes in December, data from CME Group show (http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html). Investors, meanwhile, will await the minutes from the policy setting Federal Open Market Committee's September meeting, where further clues about monetary policy might be gleaned. At the meeting, the majority of its members were in favor of an additional rate increase this year (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/text-of-september-fomc-statement-2017-09-20), according to a plot of policy maker's projections, known as the dot plot.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Catalan parliament is meeting on Tuesday (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-reprieve-in-spain-catalonia-tensions-gives-investors-a-break-for-now-2017-10-09). If they declare independence, it could lead to a flare-up in regional tensions between the government accused of resorting to heavy-handed tactics and the regional government which has ignored the Spanish constitution. Heightened geopolitical concerns could push investors to funnel money into government paper and assets perceived as safe.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>What do market participants say?</p>
<p>"I really think that people are coming to their senses a bit, and they're saying we're not going to see higher rates after all. Especially, if we get some geopolitical risk like the Catalan independence and the North Korean situation," said Tom di Galoma, managing director of Treasurys trading at Seaport Global Securities. He suggested the recent selloff seen last Friday was overstretched, when the 10-year Treasury yield threatened to break past key psychological level of 2.40%.</p>
<p>"The FOMC Minutes may offer insight on the Fed's current hawkish policy lean," wrote Aaron Kohli, interest-rate strategist for BMO Capital Markets in Tuesday note. "The minutes will provide an opportunity for a broader range of opinions on the near-term headwinds in the real economy to be voiced."</p>
<p>Which central bankers are on the docket?</p>
<p>What data is on investors' radar?</p>
<p>How are other assets doing?</p>
<p>The dollartipped lower after the euro strengthened from (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dollar-loses-ground-as-euro-climbs-on-tapering-hopes-2017-10-10) hawkish comments by Lautenschalger. A currency tends to strengthen when expectations for tighter monetary policy grow. Geopolitical tensions between U.S. and North Korea continued to stir up appetite for haven assets, with gold futures (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-rises-on-track-for-longest-string-of-gains-in-5-weeks-2017-10-10) on track for the longest win streak in five weeks and the Japanese yen strengthening.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 10, 2017 12:48 ET (16:48 GMT)</p>
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BOND REPORT: Treasurys See Buying As Investors Await Fed Minutes
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/10/bond-report-treasurys-see-buying-as-investors-await-fed-minutes.html
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2017-10-10
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BOND REPORT: Treasurys See Buying As Investors Await Fed Minutes
<p>Treasury prices rose, pushing yields lower, on Tuesday as investors braced for the Fed minutes from September's policy meeting on Wednesday.</p>
<p>What are government bonds doing?</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The 10-year Treasury note yield slipped to 2.333% from 2.370% on late Friday in New York. The 2-year Treasury note yield was down to 1.488% from 1.511%, while the 30-year Treasury bond yield fell to 2.869% from 2.907%. Bond prices move in the opposite direction of yields.</p>
<p>Treasurys weren't traded on Monday in observance of Columbus Day (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/columbus-day-which-markets-are-closed-2017-10-09).</p>
<p>What is driving markets?</p>
<p>Traders are pricing in an 87% chance of a quarter-percentage point rate increase by the Federal Reserve when it convenes in December, data from CME Group show (http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html). Investors, meanwhile, will await the minutes from the policy setting Federal Open Market Committee's September meeting, where further clues about monetary policy might be gleaned. At the meeting, the majority of its members were in favor of an additional rate increase this year (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/text-of-september-fomc-statement-2017-09-20), according to a plot of policy maker's projections, known as the dot plot.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Catalan parliament is meeting on Tuesday (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-reprieve-in-spain-catalonia-tensions-gives-investors-a-break-for-now-2017-10-09). If they declare independence, it could lead to a flare-up in regional tensions between the government accused of resorting to heavy-handed tactics and the regional government which has ignored the Spanish constitution. Heightened geopolitical concerns could push investors to funnel money into government paper and assets perceived as safe.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>What do market participants say?</p>
<p>"I really think that people are coming to their senses a bit, and they're saying we're not going to see higher rates after all. Especially, if we get some geopolitical risk like the Catalan independence and the North Korean situation," said Tom di Galoma, managing director of Treasurys trading at Seaport Global Securities. He suggested the recent selloff seen last Friday was overstretched, when the 10-year Treasury yield threatened to break past key psychological level of 2.40%.</p>
<p>"The FOMC Minutes may offer insight on the Fed's current hawkish policy lean," wrote Aaron Kohli, interest-rate strategist for BMO Capital Markets in Tuesday note. "The minutes will provide an opportunity for a broader range of opinions on the near-term headwinds in the real economy to be voiced."</p>
<p>Which central bankers are on the docket?</p>
<p>What data is on investors' radar?</p>
<p>How are other assets doing?</p>
<p>The dollartipped lower after the euro strengthened from (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dollar-loses-ground-as-euro-climbs-on-tapering-hopes-2017-10-10) hawkish comments by Lautenschalger. A currency tends to strengthen when expectations for tighter monetary policy grow. Geopolitical tensions between U.S. and North Korea continued to stir up appetite for haven assets, with gold futures (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-rises-on-track-for-longest-string-of-gains-in-5-weeks-2017-10-10) on track for the longest win streak in five weeks and the Japanese yen strengthening.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 10, 2017 12:48 ET (16:48 GMT)</p>
| 5,688 |
<p>A blue search light from a South Korean Coast Guard helicopter illuminates an overturned ferry in the water off the southern coast near Jindo, South Korea, on Thursday. Some 475 passengers and crew were on the vessel when it suddenly listed and sank into the sea early Wednesday, many of them teenagers on a field trip. Eighteen people are confirmed dead and 278 remain missing.</p>
|
Capsized South Korean Ferry Bathed in Eerie Light
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http://nbcnews.com/storyline/south-korea-ferry-disaster/capsized-south-korean-ferry-bathed-eerie-light-n83296
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2014-04-17
| 3left-center
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Capsized South Korean Ferry Bathed in Eerie Light
<p>A blue search light from a South Korean Coast Guard helicopter illuminates an overturned ferry in the water off the southern coast near Jindo, South Korea, on Thursday. Some 475 passengers and crew were on the vessel when it suddenly listed and sank into the sea early Wednesday, many of them teenagers on a field trip. Eighteen people are confirmed dead and 278 remain missing.</p>
| 5,689 |
<p>The words "shareholder dilution" might send shivers down investors' spines, but it's not always a bad thing.</p>
<p>In this clip from crossover week on <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Healthcare Opens a New Window.</a>,analysts Gaby Lapera and Kristine Harjes break down the basics of shareholder dilution and reveal how sometimes it can actually be beneficial for investors.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</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=irbeditxt0000138&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable&amp;ftm_pit=6450&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>This podcast was recorded on Nov. 16, 2016.</p>
<p>Kristine Harjes: I figure we'll start off with some basics. Gaby,do you want to kick it off and tell us about what dilution is, and why it matters?</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Gaby Lapera:Yes, I would love to. Dilution,much like the chemistry term,means that you are becoming less concentrated. Shareholder dilation in particular means tworeally important things: one, that theeconomic power of the share that you hold is less, and two, your voting rights are lessbecause the share makes up less of the company. Let's back up a little bit, because I realized I just jumped straight into theconclusions of dilution anddidn't actually explain what it was. When companies decide to issue more stock, they don't magically have more assets, so the stock becomes less in price because there are more of them. It's a very simple equation.</p>
<p>Harjes:I think of it like a pie. You have the same size pie -- you can chop it up into however many pieces, but you still have the same pie at the end of the day.I think that's why there's such a negative perception of shareholder dilution, because if you areholding on to this piece of pie that you paid good money for,you don't want to see it suddenly get smaller. But there are good reasons why companies will dilute. Some of the really common ones are, for example, to pay for an acquisition. Sometimes it's to raise money. Maybe you need that to service your debt, or something like that. Another really common reason why shares become diluted is the conversion of stock options granted to employees or board members. A bunch of companies will give their executives, or theiremployees in general, the option to convertthese securities into common shares. Andwhen they actually do exercise that option, it dilutes thecurrent shareholder base.</p>
<p>So, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. It'slargely a bad thing. Most people are not pleasedwhen they hear that they're being diluted. Butit actually could be a good thing,which is kind of an interesting case. Say, for example, yourcompany is overvalued, and you know it. Which,hopefully, you bought it when they were undervalued, and now you're sitting on an overvalued company. Regardless -- say a company is overvalued, and the company goes to pay for anacquisition using stock. That'ssmarter thandoing that using cash, because the shares are worth more than the cash value. At that point, you could be very happy to see that,because this slice of pie that you have accumulatedis suddenly a bigger pie. It's cut up more ways, but the pie is bigger, so that's a good thing. But in general, it's not the best. Many times, you canperceive it as a transfer of wealth from the retail investor to the insiders, when you have the exercise of stock options.</p>
<p>Youalso have the option of it being pretty neutral,which is kind of the same as the case when it's good,except that that would be if you're using it in an acquisition where you're paying a fair price,and the company that you own is also fairly valued. That's net-net -- your slice of the pie is smaller,but the pie is proportionately bigger, so it's pretty neutral.</p>
<p>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>
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What Is Shareholder Dilution?
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http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/27/what-is-shareholder-dilution.html
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2016-11-27
| 0right
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What Is Shareholder Dilution?
<p>The words "shareholder dilution" might send shivers down investors' spines, but it's not always a bad thing.</p>
<p>In this clip from crossover week on <a href="http://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Industry Focus: Healthcare Opens a New Window.</a>,analysts Gaby Lapera and Kristine Harjes break down the basics of shareholder dilution and reveal how sometimes it can actually be beneficial for investors.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</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=irbeditxt0000138&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable&amp;ftm_pit=6450&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>This podcast was recorded on Nov. 16, 2016.</p>
<p>Kristine Harjes: I figure we'll start off with some basics. Gaby,do you want to kick it off and tell us about what dilution is, and why it matters?</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Gaby Lapera:Yes, I would love to. Dilution,much like the chemistry term,means that you are becoming less concentrated. Shareholder dilation in particular means tworeally important things: one, that theeconomic power of the share that you hold is less, and two, your voting rights are lessbecause the share makes up less of the company. Let's back up a little bit, because I realized I just jumped straight into theconclusions of dilution anddidn't actually explain what it was. When companies decide to issue more stock, they don't magically have more assets, so the stock becomes less in price because there are more of them. It's a very simple equation.</p>
<p>Harjes:I think of it like a pie. You have the same size pie -- you can chop it up into however many pieces, but you still have the same pie at the end of the day.I think that's why there's such a negative perception of shareholder dilution, because if you areholding on to this piece of pie that you paid good money for,you don't want to see it suddenly get smaller. But there are good reasons why companies will dilute. Some of the really common ones are, for example, to pay for an acquisition. Sometimes it's to raise money. Maybe you need that to service your debt, or something like that. Another really common reason why shares become diluted is the conversion of stock options granted to employees or board members. A bunch of companies will give their executives, or theiremployees in general, the option to convertthese securities into common shares. Andwhen they actually do exercise that option, it dilutes thecurrent shareholder base.</p>
<p>So, this can be a good thing or a bad thing. It'slargely a bad thing. Most people are not pleasedwhen they hear that they're being diluted. Butit actually could be a good thing,which is kind of an interesting case. Say, for example, yourcompany is overvalued, and you know it. Which,hopefully, you bought it when they were undervalued, and now you're sitting on an overvalued company. Regardless -- say a company is overvalued, and the company goes to pay for anacquisition using stock. That'ssmarter thandoing that using cash, because the shares are worth more than the cash value. At that point, you could be very happy to see that,because this slice of pie that you have accumulatedis suddenly a bigger pie. It's cut up more ways, but the pie is bigger, so that's a good thing. But in general, it's not the best. Many times, you canperceive it as a transfer of wealth from the retail investor to the insiders, when you have the exercise of stock options.</p>
<p>Youalso have the option of it being pretty neutral,which is kind of the same as the case when it's good,except that that would be if you're using it in an acquisition where you're paying a fair price,and the company that you own is also fairly valued. That's net-net -- your slice of the pie is smaller,but the pie is proportionately bigger, so it's pretty neutral.</p>
<p>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>
| 5,690 |
<p>The investors controlling Miramax are rolling around an option for sale worth nearly $1 billion to worthy buyers detailed in a <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/miramax-said-to-be-exploring-a-sale-115071800638_1.html" type="external">Business Standard report.</a></p>
<p>The household name in movie production includes a rolodex of celebrated films such as Oscar winners Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction. Those speaking anonymously for the company are exploring a sale to appease a growing demand for online content.</p>
<p>Billionaire Thomas Barrack Jr.’s Colony Capital and Qatar Holding, the two major investors, are opening up to a selection of banks.</p>
<p>Investment in the sector has dragged since the financial crisis and thereafter but is making a resurgence with 2015 expected to be successful year at the box office, but moreover for the burgeoning demand created by digital streaming services like Amazon and Netflix Inc.</p>
<p>The procedure is being managed by Miramax’s board of directors, headed by Chairman Barrack, the founder of Colony Capital. The board projects that Miramax’s other signature films, No Country for&#160;Old Men and Good Will Hunting among its other 700 films will fetch a healthy profit.</p>
<p>Neither Kat Kleiner, a spokewoman for Miramax, nor Kristin Celauro for Colony Capital, provided a statement. A representative for Qatar Holding also declined comment.</p>
<p>Miramax, initially founded and helmed by brothers Harvy and Bob Weinstein, sold the franchise to Disney in 1993, and splintered off in 2005. The two brothers re-aligned with Disney in 2013 to formulate TV show concepts and distribute currently derived content. They now operate The Weinstein Co., based in New York City.</p>
<p>Colony Capital, Qatar Holding, and Ron Tutor purchased Miramax from Walt Disney Co. for $600 million in 2010. Ron Tutor later sold his shares to Qatar Holding.</p>
<p>One potential buyer is showing interest.</p>
<p>Weinstein Co. has recently connected with Miramax to produce new films, TV shows, and state productions based off its current library, including Mr. Holmes with Ian McKellen.</p>
<p>Miramax paid a $142 million dividend to shareholders in 2011 as part of a broader refinancing structure.</p>
<p />
|
Miramax scouting buyers
| false |
http://natmonitor.com/2015/07/18/miramax-scouting-buyers/
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2015-07-18
| 3left-center
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Miramax scouting buyers
<p>The investors controlling Miramax are rolling around an option for sale worth nearly $1 billion to worthy buyers detailed in a <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/international/miramax-said-to-be-exploring-a-sale-115071800638_1.html" type="external">Business Standard report.</a></p>
<p>The household name in movie production includes a rolodex of celebrated films such as Oscar winners Shakespeare in Love and Pulp Fiction. Those speaking anonymously for the company are exploring a sale to appease a growing demand for online content.</p>
<p>Billionaire Thomas Barrack Jr.’s Colony Capital and Qatar Holding, the two major investors, are opening up to a selection of banks.</p>
<p>Investment in the sector has dragged since the financial crisis and thereafter but is making a resurgence with 2015 expected to be successful year at the box office, but moreover for the burgeoning demand created by digital streaming services like Amazon and Netflix Inc.</p>
<p>The procedure is being managed by Miramax’s board of directors, headed by Chairman Barrack, the founder of Colony Capital. The board projects that Miramax’s other signature films, No Country for&#160;Old Men and Good Will Hunting among its other 700 films will fetch a healthy profit.</p>
<p>Neither Kat Kleiner, a spokewoman for Miramax, nor Kristin Celauro for Colony Capital, provided a statement. A representative for Qatar Holding also declined comment.</p>
<p>Miramax, initially founded and helmed by brothers Harvy and Bob Weinstein, sold the franchise to Disney in 1993, and splintered off in 2005. The two brothers re-aligned with Disney in 2013 to formulate TV show concepts and distribute currently derived content. They now operate The Weinstein Co., based in New York City.</p>
<p>Colony Capital, Qatar Holding, and Ron Tutor purchased Miramax from Walt Disney Co. for $600 million in 2010. Ron Tutor later sold his shares to Qatar Holding.</p>
<p>One potential buyer is showing interest.</p>
<p>Weinstein Co. has recently connected with Miramax to produce new films, TV shows, and state productions based off its current library, including Mr. Holmes with Ian McKellen.</p>
<p>Miramax paid a $142 million dividend to shareholders in 2011 as part of a broader refinancing structure.</p>
<p />
| 5,691 |
<p>The market's been booming and things have been going well since the end of the Great Recession, but that doesn't mean things are going to be sunny forever. Another recession is bound to happen and surviving one without losing their shirt is every investor's goal.</p>
<p>Three Motley Fool investors have identified Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN), Johnson &amp; Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), and Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) as dividend stocks that not only will survive, but should thrive in the next recession.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFishBiz/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Keith Speights Opens a New Window.</a> (Amgen): One of the best ways to find out which stocks will perform best in future downturns is to look back at previous significant market downturns. In the last bear market that began in 2008, one stock that performed quite well was Amgen. Shares of the big biotech actually increased nearly 24% in 2008.</p>
<p>Companies with stocks that thrive in bear markets tend to have a common denominator: They sell products that people need regardless of the economic climate. That's certainly the case for Amgen. The company's top products include autoimmune-disease drug Enbrel, and Neulasta, which helps cancer patients on chemotherapy fight off infections.</p>
<p>The Amgen of today isn't the same as the Amgen of the last downturn, however. On the positive side, the company now pays a nice dividend with a current yield of just under 2.5%. The negative for Amgen is that sales for both Enbrel and Neulasta are declining.</p>
<p>Amgen appears to be in a good position to overcome the headwinds to its top products, though. Significant potential remains for cholesterol drug Repatha. The biotech expects great things for experimental migraine drug erenumab, with an approval decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration due by May 2018.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In addition, Amgen has an enormous cash stockpile of around $40 billion (including cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities.) Amgen CEO Robert Bradway <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/12/3-things-amgen-incs-management-just-said-that-youl.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">recently stated Opens a New Window.</a> that the biotech "is trying to find acquisitions that add value for our shareholders." I look for the company to make good on Bradway's goal in 2018, if not sooner. A smart acquisition or two by Amgen should help keep this big biotech a good choice for investors in bull or bear markets.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFCheesehead/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Brian Stoffel Opens a New Window.</a> (Johnson &amp; Johnson): I'm not one to position my portfolio based upon the fear of a recession around the corner. I have over three decades until retirement will hit, and have plenty of time to ride the economy's cycles. That's why I don't personally own my pick today: Johnson &amp; Johnson.</p>
<p>But if I were in retirement, Johnson &amp; Johnson would be at the <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/31/3-dividend-stocks-perfect-for-senior-citizens.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">top of my list Opens a New Window.</a> for potential stocks. The company has three divisions, all protected by different moats:</p>
<p>While spending might subside during a recession, all of these are necessary contributions to the medical world no matter the economic climate.</p>
<p>Currently, Johnson &amp; Johnson offers a solid 2.5% dividend yield. Over the past 12 months, only half of the <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/free-cash-flow.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free cash flow Opens a New Window.</a> has been used on the payout, meaning it both is safe during a downturn, and has lots of room for future growth.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fool.com/about/staff/RichDuprey/author.htm?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Rich Duprey Opens a New Window.</a> (Wal-Mart): Supermarkets generally can do well during recessions because, as the saying goes, people still have to eat. But Wal-Mart -- which sells groceries and so much more -- fares <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/11/13/is-wal-mart-really-recession-proof.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">better than most</a> because of the value proposition it brings to the everyday lives of consumers, by allowing them to stretch their budget. In periods of relative prosperity Wal-Mart does well, though with some ups and downs as competitors try to take away its share, but when crisis strikes, as it did during the Great Recession, then we get to see just how resilient the retail giant is.</p>
<p>Yet Wal-Mart is also a global giant, meaning it isn't very dependent upon a single region's economy. Moreover, during the last big market downturn, the retailer increased its dividend twice, a nice salve for investors who may have been otherwise bruised. The dividend currently yields 2.6%, and with a payout ratio of 48.6%, the dividend has plenty of room for further growth while remaining safe from being suspended or cut. In short, expect Wal-Mart to thrive in the next bear market, just as it did in the last.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Wal-Mart StoresWhen 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=62f07e81-033d-4755-98bb-b0392a45e5a6&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Wal-Mart Stores 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=62f07e81-033d-4755-98bb-b0392a45e5a6&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&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 September 5, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFCop/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Rich Duprey Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Johnson &amp; Johnson. 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=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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3 Dividend Stocks Should Thrive in a Recession
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http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/10/04/3-dividend-stocks-should-thrive-in-recession.html
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2017-10-04
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3 Dividend Stocks Should Thrive in a Recession
<p>The market's been booming and things have been going well since the end of the Great Recession, but that doesn't mean things are going to be sunny forever. Another recession is bound to happen and surviving one without losing their shirt is every investor's goal.</p>
<p>Three Motley Fool investors have identified Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN), Johnson &amp; Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), and Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT) as dividend stocks that not only will survive, but should thrive in the next recession.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFishBiz/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Keith Speights Opens a New Window.</a> (Amgen): One of the best ways to find out which stocks will perform best in future downturns is to look back at previous significant market downturns. In the last bear market that began in 2008, one stock that performed quite well was Amgen. Shares of the big biotech actually increased nearly 24% in 2008.</p>
<p>Companies with stocks that thrive in bear markets tend to have a common denominator: They sell products that people need regardless of the economic climate. That's certainly the case for Amgen. The company's top products include autoimmune-disease drug Enbrel, and Neulasta, which helps cancer patients on chemotherapy fight off infections.</p>
<p>The Amgen of today isn't the same as the Amgen of the last downturn, however. On the positive side, the company now pays a nice dividend with a current yield of just under 2.5%. The negative for Amgen is that sales for both Enbrel and Neulasta are declining.</p>
<p>Amgen appears to be in a good position to overcome the headwinds to its top products, though. Significant potential remains for cholesterol drug Repatha. The biotech expects great things for experimental migraine drug erenumab, with an approval decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration due by May 2018.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>In addition, Amgen has an enormous cash stockpile of around $40 billion (including cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities.) Amgen CEO Robert Bradway <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/09/12/3-things-amgen-incs-management-just-said-that-youl.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">recently stated Opens a New Window.</a> that the biotech "is trying to find acquisitions that add value for our shareholders." I look for the company to make good on Bradway's goal in 2018, if not sooner. A smart acquisition or two by Amgen should help keep this big biotech a good choice for investors in bull or bear markets.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFCheesehead/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Brian Stoffel Opens a New Window.</a> (Johnson &amp; Johnson): I'm not one to position my portfolio based upon the fear of a recession around the corner. I have over three decades until retirement will hit, and have plenty of time to ride the economy's cycles. That's why I don't personally own my pick today: Johnson &amp; Johnson.</p>
<p>But if I were in retirement, Johnson &amp; Johnson would be at the <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/31/3-dividend-stocks-perfect-for-senior-citizens.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">top of my list Opens a New Window.</a> for potential stocks. The company has three divisions, all protected by different moats:</p>
<p>While spending might subside during a recession, all of these are necessary contributions to the medical world no matter the economic climate.</p>
<p>Currently, Johnson &amp; Johnson offers a solid 2.5% dividend yield. Over the past 12 months, only half of the <a href="https://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/free-cash-flow.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free cash flow Opens a New Window.</a> has been used on the payout, meaning it both is safe during a downturn, and has lots of room for future growth.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fool.com/about/staff/RichDuprey/author.htm?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Rich Duprey Opens a New Window.</a> (Wal-Mart): Supermarkets generally can do well during recessions because, as the saying goes, people still have to eat. But Wal-Mart -- which sells groceries and so much more -- fares <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/11/13/is-wal-mart-really-recession-proof.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">better than most</a> because of the value proposition it brings to the everyday lives of consumers, by allowing them to stretch their budget. In periods of relative prosperity Wal-Mart does well, though with some ups and downs as competitors try to take away its share, but when crisis strikes, as it did during the Great Recession, then we get to see just how resilient the retail giant is.</p>
<p>Yet Wal-Mart is also a global giant, meaning it isn't very dependent upon a single region's economy. Moreover, during the last big market downturn, the retailer increased its dividend twice, a nice salve for investors who may have been otherwise bruised. The dividend currently yields 2.6%, and with a payout ratio of 48.6%, the dividend has plenty of room for further growth while remaining safe from being suspended or cut. In short, expect Wal-Mart to thrive in the next bear market, just as it did in the last.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Wal-Mart StoresWhen 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=62f07e81-033d-4755-98bb-b0392a45e5a6&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Wal-Mart Stores 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=62f07e81-033d-4755-98bb-b0392a45e5a6&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&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 September 5, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFCop/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Rich Duprey Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Johnson &amp; Johnson. 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=da608cf4-a447-11e7-800d-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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<p>SAN DIEGO – Now that it has dropped the term “illegal immigrant” from its stylebook, The Associated Press should admit its mistake and print a correction.</p>
<p>This change isn’t about journalism. It’s about political correctness. The two should not mix.</p>
<p>Even the official explanation by AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll is incomprehensible. In a blog post, Carroll wrote:</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”</p>
<p>If you’re scratching your head right now, you’re not alone. Carroll’s explanation is as convoluted as they come. It mixes together – in one big rhetorical stew – nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. You can say someone immigrated illegally but you can’t call him an illegal immigrant? That makes no sense.</p>
<p>Just a few months ago, the AP was in the opposite camp. When activists pressured it to dump what they call the “I-word,” the news agency showed some spine and refused.</p>
<p>That’s what journalists are supposed to do. It’s not our job to play the role of defense attorneys who want to lessen the offenses their clients are charged with. That’s what this campaign is really about – slowly convincing Americans that the estimated 11 million people who are in the United States without proper documents did nothing wrong, have nothing for which to apologize or make amends, and should just be left alone.</p>
<p>Of course, the activists don’t want Congress to leave the undocumented alone. They want lawmakers to grant them legal status, on the condition that illegal immigrants will do whatever is necessary to right the wrong that, the activists insist, they never committed.</p>
<p>Welcome to Wonderland. I’ll be your guide. Not a week goes by that I don’t get an email from someone urging me to stop using the “I-word.”</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s not going to happen.</p>
<p>For one thing, I’m not a latecomer to the larger cause. As a Latino columnist who has defended illegal immigrants against scapegoating by Republicans and Democrats alike for more than 20 years, I don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Besides, this whole debate over the “I-word” is a distraction from issues that really matter. It puts a bright light on the hypocrisy of liberals who are tough on words but soft on an administration that has been like a plague set loose on Latino immigrants in the United States.</p>
<p>Here’s some recent news that immigrant advocates might have missed while crusading against the “I-word”:</p>
<p>♦ Citing budget constraints, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 2,228 incarcerated individuals that White House press secretary Jay Carney characterized as “low-risk, non-criminal detainees.” These are precisely the kind of people that President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have repeatedly said would not be detained, but there they are.</p>
<p>♦ U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Buffalo, N.Y., office have, in recent years, been rewarded with cash bonuses and gift cards as part of a quota system. According to a report by the New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, the program – whose annual budget had been ramped up to nearly $200,000 as of 2011 – is part of an agency culture that “maximizes arrest rates.” The result: ethnic profiling of Hispanics.</p>
<p>♦ The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina obtained emails showing that ICE officials have developed strategies – i.e., staking out traffic safety checkpoints by local police departments – in order to boost deportation figures. During each year of the Obama administration, about 400,000 illegal immigrants have been deported. Despite administration claims that only serious criminals are being removed, the emails show that immigrants convicted of minor crimes or no crimes at all are also targeted. The result: more profiling.</p>
<p>By the end of 2013, a staggering 2 million illegal immigrants will have been rounded up and deported by immigration officials. This includes many people the administration said would not be deported.</p>
<p>We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of broken homes, divided families, and children raised without parents.</p>
<p>About this, many of the activists battling the “I-word” have said, well, nothing or next to nothing. Yet, if all this damage had been done by a Republican administration, you can bet they would have said a lot.</p>
<p>How about we make a deal?</p>
<p>The Obama administration brings back everyone it deported by hook or by crook. And, when these people get here, you can call them whatever you want.</p>
<p>E-mail: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. Copyright, The Washington Post Writers Group.</p>
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Semantics obscures immigrant issues
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2013-04-07
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Semantics obscures immigrant issues
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<p />
<p>SAN DIEGO – Now that it has dropped the term “illegal immigrant” from its stylebook, The Associated Press should admit its mistake and print a correction.</p>
<p>This change isn’t about journalism. It’s about political correctness. The two should not mix.</p>
<p>Even the official explanation by AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll is incomprehensible. In a blog post, Carroll wrote:</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term ‘illegal immigrant’ or the use of ‘illegal’ to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that ‘illegal’ should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”</p>
<p>If you’re scratching your head right now, you’re not alone. Carroll’s explanation is as convoluted as they come. It mixes together – in one big rhetorical stew – nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. You can say someone immigrated illegally but you can’t call him an illegal immigrant? That makes no sense.</p>
<p>Just a few months ago, the AP was in the opposite camp. When activists pressured it to dump what they call the “I-word,” the news agency showed some spine and refused.</p>
<p>That’s what journalists are supposed to do. It’s not our job to play the role of defense attorneys who want to lessen the offenses their clients are charged with. That’s what this campaign is really about – slowly convincing Americans that the estimated 11 million people who are in the United States without proper documents did nothing wrong, have nothing for which to apologize or make amends, and should just be left alone.</p>
<p>Of course, the activists don’t want Congress to leave the undocumented alone. They want lawmakers to grant them legal status, on the condition that illegal immigrants will do whatever is necessary to right the wrong that, the activists insist, they never committed.</p>
<p>Welcome to Wonderland. I’ll be your guide. Not a week goes by that I don’t get an email from someone urging me to stop using the “I-word.”</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s not going to happen.</p>
<p>For one thing, I’m not a latecomer to the larger cause. As a Latino columnist who has defended illegal immigrants against scapegoating by Republicans and Democrats alike for more than 20 years, I don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Besides, this whole debate over the “I-word” is a distraction from issues that really matter. It puts a bright light on the hypocrisy of liberals who are tough on words but soft on an administration that has been like a plague set loose on Latino immigrants in the United States.</p>
<p>Here’s some recent news that immigrant advocates might have missed while crusading against the “I-word”:</p>
<p>♦ Citing budget constraints, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 2,228 incarcerated individuals that White House press secretary Jay Carney characterized as “low-risk, non-criminal detainees.” These are precisely the kind of people that President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have repeatedly said would not be detained, but there they are.</p>
<p>♦ U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Buffalo, N.Y., office have, in recent years, been rewarded with cash bonuses and gift cards as part of a quota system. According to a report by the New York University School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic, the program – whose annual budget had been ramped up to nearly $200,000 as of 2011 – is part of an agency culture that “maximizes arrest rates.” The result: ethnic profiling of Hispanics.</p>
<p>♦ The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina obtained emails showing that ICE officials have developed strategies – i.e., staking out traffic safety checkpoints by local police departments – in order to boost deportation figures. During each year of the Obama administration, about 400,000 illegal immigrants have been deported. Despite administration claims that only serious criminals are being removed, the emails show that immigrants convicted of minor crimes or no crimes at all are also targeted. The result: more profiling.</p>
<p>By the end of 2013, a staggering 2 million illegal immigrants will have been rounded up and deported by immigration officials. This includes many people the administration said would not be deported.</p>
<p>We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of broken homes, divided families, and children raised without parents.</p>
<p>About this, many of the activists battling the “I-word” have said, well, nothing or next to nothing. Yet, if all this damage had been done by a Republican administration, you can bet they would have said a lot.</p>
<p>How about we make a deal?</p>
<p>The Obama administration brings back everyone it deported by hook or by crook. And, when these people get here, you can call them whatever you want.</p>
<p>E-mail: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. Copyright, The Washington Post Writers Group.</p>
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<p>Aerialist Crystal Worl. (Photo by Terrance Clifford Photography)</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. — Crystal Worl had a surprise this past weekend for people who think Native American performance arts are limited to drumming, tribal dancing and appearances in occasional movies. What’s to stop them from dancing through the air from hanging fabrics?</p>
<p>Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan), from Anchorage, Alaska, offered a new entertainment option at the Winter Indian Market in Santa Fe as an aerialist spinning and posing from hanging fabric. A graduate of the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, she has been traveling but came back to perform at last weekend’s market.</p>
<p>“Crystal’s performance adds another dimension to live cultural, traditional and contemporary Native American performance. We (the Santa Fe Indian Market) want to keep current and expand people’s perceptions of Native art and culture,” said the Market’s John Paul Rangel in a news release.</p>
<p>In this case, the sky really is the limit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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Native aerialist brings new performance style to Winter Indian Market
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Native aerialist brings new performance style to Winter Indian Market
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<p>Aerialist Crystal Worl. (Photo by Terrance Clifford Photography)</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. — Crystal Worl had a surprise this past weekend for people who think Native American performance arts are limited to drumming, tribal dancing and appearances in occasional movies. What’s to stop them from dancing through the air from hanging fabrics?</p>
<p>Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan), from Anchorage, Alaska, offered a new entertainment option at the Winter Indian Market in Santa Fe as an aerialist spinning and posing from hanging fabric. A graduate of the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, she has been traveling but came back to perform at last weekend’s market.</p>
<p>“Crystal’s performance adds another dimension to live cultural, traditional and contemporary Native American performance. We (the Santa Fe Indian Market) want to keep current and expand people’s perceptions of Native art and culture,” said the Market’s John Paul Rangel in a news release.</p>
<p>In this case, the sky really is the limit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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<p />
<p>“I feel so lucky every day,” Powell said.</p>
<p>At 42, he’s a new addition to the ranks of men who intentionally seek the role of single father. While some opt for adoption, others yearn to have children with genetic ties and are willing to invest $100,000 or more to make that happen.</p>
<p>There are no firm numbers of how many men have taken this route. It’s clearly still a rarity, although Growing Generations, a leading for-profit surrogacy agency in Los Angeles, says its caseload of single men has risen steadily and totaled about 25 cases last year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Experts say the driving force is generally a male equivalent of the “biological clock” that prompts some unmarried women to have children while they’re still fertile.</p>
<p>“They say they’ve always wanted to be a dad, they haven’t found a partner that they want to start a family with, they’re getting older and just don’t want to wait – the same things single women say,” said Madeline Feingold, an Oakland, Calif., psychologist who has done extensive counseling related to surrogacy.</p>
<p>That was the case for Powell, a pharmaceutical company executive in Seattle who spent three years futilely trying to adopt.</p>
<p>“I was in an adoption pool for a year and half, didn’t get any calls and got bummed about the whole experience,” he said. “I just wanted to be a dad. Time was not on my side, and I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for an ideal mate.”</p>
<p>Before approaching Growing Generations, Powell discussed his options at length with family members and with people who’d been through surrogacy. There was a lot of self-interrogation.</p>
<p>“If something happens to me, who’s going to take care of my daughters? Is this an egotistical, selfish thing?” he recalled asking himself. “I had to be sure it was the right thing to do.”</p>
<p>Now, he says, fatherhood is the focus of his life – a transformation made easier because he often works from home and can afford a full-time nanny.</p>
<p>That level of affluence is a virtual prerequisite for men pursuing the option of fatherhood via surrogacy.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We tell people to budget $125,000 to $150,000 for a single baby, and $150,000 to $175,000 for twins,” said Stuart Bell, co-owner of Growing Generations.</p>
<p>Those figures include compensation of $8,000 to $10,000 for the egg donor and at least $25,000 for the surrogate mother who gives birth after being impregnated with an implanted embryo.</p>
<p>Though male clients have the option of enlisting an egg donor on their own, Bell said most make their choice from a pool of women recruited by Growing Generations. The clients aren’t told the names of the possible egg donors, but see videos of them and learn extensive details about their health, education and genetic history.</p>
<p>The process also entails psychological screening, plus detailed legal negotiations to minimize any chance that the egg donor or surrogate mother might claim parental rights.</p>
<p>By the time the process is done, the aspiring father’s commitment is usually apparent, said Denise Bierly, a State College, Pa., attorney specializing in adoption and surrogacy law,</p>
<p>“With men especially, the process gets so well thought through,” she said. “They go into this having talked about it with their friends, relatives. There’s nothing spontaneous about it.”</p>
<p>Alan Bernstein, a dad raising three surrogacy-born children in Los Angeles, describes single parenting as “an insanely hard job” and also as deeply rewarding.</p>
<p>“It helps to be really passionate about it,” he said.</p>
<p>Bernstein, 48, is president of a property management company, able to adjust his working hours and also to afford an au pair who helps care for 9-year-old Isaac and 7-year-old twins Natalie and Naomi.</p>
<p>Like Trey Powell, Bernstein is gay and grew into adulthood never expecting that fatherhood would be a realistic and enticing option.</p>
<p>“When I came out in my early 20s, I felt it was a choice of leading an honest life but giving up on the idea of family,” he said. “I’d always liked children – but for many years I didn’t allow myself to think about it. It seemed sad and inevitable that I wouldn’t have any.”</p>
<p>Though gays account for a substantial portion of Growing Generations’ single-father clientele, it also caters to straight men, such as New York City lawyer Steven Harris, 58, whose 6-year-old son, Ben, is about to start first grade.</p>
<p>“Everybody thinks you’re real sensitive. ‘What a guy,’ ” Harris said. “They don’t realize it’s fun and wonderful.”</p>
<p>He’s had a few conversations with other men wondering whether to follow his example.</p>
<p>“I tell them, don’t even think twice. Just do it,” he said. “There’s no downside, if you really want a child.”</p>
<p>State laws on surrogacy vary widely. Some states forbid commercial transactions, while California has a reputation as perhaps the most receptive state. Worldwide, commercial surrogacy is banned in most countries, and two that do allow it – India and Ukraine – have decided not make it available to single men. As a result, Growing Generations’ clientele of single men includes an increasing number of foreigners seeking the option of a safe, legal surrogacy.</p>
<p>One thing single moms and single dads have in common: Parenthood can complicate the prospects of kindling a romance.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
More single dads turn to surrogacy to build a family
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/251934/more-single-dads-turn-to-surrogacy-to-build-a-family.html
|
2013-08-23
| 2least
|
More single dads turn to surrogacy to build a family
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>“I feel so lucky every day,” Powell said.</p>
<p>At 42, he’s a new addition to the ranks of men who intentionally seek the role of single father. While some opt for adoption, others yearn to have children with genetic ties and are willing to invest $100,000 or more to make that happen.</p>
<p>There are no firm numbers of how many men have taken this route. It’s clearly still a rarity, although Growing Generations, a leading for-profit surrogacy agency in Los Angeles, says its caseload of single men has risen steadily and totaled about 25 cases last year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Experts say the driving force is generally a male equivalent of the “biological clock” that prompts some unmarried women to have children while they’re still fertile.</p>
<p>“They say they’ve always wanted to be a dad, they haven’t found a partner that they want to start a family with, they’re getting older and just don’t want to wait – the same things single women say,” said Madeline Feingold, an Oakland, Calif., psychologist who has done extensive counseling related to surrogacy.</p>
<p>That was the case for Powell, a pharmaceutical company executive in Seattle who spent three years futilely trying to adopt.</p>
<p>“I was in an adoption pool for a year and half, didn’t get any calls and got bummed about the whole experience,” he said. “I just wanted to be a dad. Time was not on my side, and I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for an ideal mate.”</p>
<p>Before approaching Growing Generations, Powell discussed his options at length with family members and with people who’d been through surrogacy. There was a lot of self-interrogation.</p>
<p>“If something happens to me, who’s going to take care of my daughters? Is this an egotistical, selfish thing?” he recalled asking himself. “I had to be sure it was the right thing to do.”</p>
<p>Now, he says, fatherhood is the focus of his life – a transformation made easier because he often works from home and can afford a full-time nanny.</p>
<p>That level of affluence is a virtual prerequisite for men pursuing the option of fatherhood via surrogacy.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“We tell people to budget $125,000 to $150,000 for a single baby, and $150,000 to $175,000 for twins,” said Stuart Bell, co-owner of Growing Generations.</p>
<p>Those figures include compensation of $8,000 to $10,000 for the egg donor and at least $25,000 for the surrogate mother who gives birth after being impregnated with an implanted embryo.</p>
<p>Though male clients have the option of enlisting an egg donor on their own, Bell said most make their choice from a pool of women recruited by Growing Generations. The clients aren’t told the names of the possible egg donors, but see videos of them and learn extensive details about their health, education and genetic history.</p>
<p>The process also entails psychological screening, plus detailed legal negotiations to minimize any chance that the egg donor or surrogate mother might claim parental rights.</p>
<p>By the time the process is done, the aspiring father’s commitment is usually apparent, said Denise Bierly, a State College, Pa., attorney specializing in adoption and surrogacy law,</p>
<p>“With men especially, the process gets so well thought through,” she said. “They go into this having talked about it with their friends, relatives. There’s nothing spontaneous about it.”</p>
<p>Alan Bernstein, a dad raising three surrogacy-born children in Los Angeles, describes single parenting as “an insanely hard job” and also as deeply rewarding.</p>
<p>“It helps to be really passionate about it,” he said.</p>
<p>Bernstein, 48, is president of a property management company, able to adjust his working hours and also to afford an au pair who helps care for 9-year-old Isaac and 7-year-old twins Natalie and Naomi.</p>
<p>Like Trey Powell, Bernstein is gay and grew into adulthood never expecting that fatherhood would be a realistic and enticing option.</p>
<p>“When I came out in my early 20s, I felt it was a choice of leading an honest life but giving up on the idea of family,” he said. “I’d always liked children – but for many years I didn’t allow myself to think about it. It seemed sad and inevitable that I wouldn’t have any.”</p>
<p>Though gays account for a substantial portion of Growing Generations’ single-father clientele, it also caters to straight men, such as New York City lawyer Steven Harris, 58, whose 6-year-old son, Ben, is about to start first grade.</p>
<p>“Everybody thinks you’re real sensitive. ‘What a guy,’ ” Harris said. “They don’t realize it’s fun and wonderful.”</p>
<p>He’s had a few conversations with other men wondering whether to follow his example.</p>
<p>“I tell them, don’t even think twice. Just do it,” he said. “There’s no downside, if you really want a child.”</p>
<p>State laws on surrogacy vary widely. Some states forbid commercial transactions, while California has a reputation as perhaps the most receptive state. Worldwide, commercial surrogacy is banned in most countries, and two that do allow it – India and Ukraine – have decided not make it available to single men. As a result, Growing Generations’ clientele of single men includes an increasing number of foreigners seeking the option of a safe, legal surrogacy.</p>
<p>One thing single moms and single dads have in common: Parenthood can complicate the prospects of kindling a romance.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 5,695 |
<p>Former NBC News anchor Matt Lauer ranks first on Google’s list of its top trending people for 2017 in the U.S., according to <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/yis/2017/US/" type="external">data</a> the search giant released Wednesday.</p>
<p>Actress Meghan Markle, a future member of Britain’s royal family, took second place behind the former co-host of NBC’s “Today.”</p>
<p>Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein placed third after scores of women accused him of sexual misconduct this year.</p>
<p>Michael Flynn – who is President Trump’s former national security adviser – took Google’s forth spot, while actor Kevin Spacey rounded out the tech company’s top five names.</p>
<p>Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly grabbed Google’s sixth slot, while first lady Melania Trump nabbed its seventh.</p>
<p>Comedian Kathy Griffin snagged eighth place, while far-right media personality Milo Yiannopoulos and actress Gal Gadot completed Google’s top ten.</p>
<p>Google’s list of the people who trended the most in 2017 notably includes four names involved in sexual misconduct scandals this year.</p>
<p>NBC News fired Lauer last month after several women accused him of past inappropriate behavior, including one woman who claimed he sexually assaulted her in 2001.</p>
<p>Fox News sacked O’Reilly last April after reports emerged that the network had settled several sexual harassment lawsuits involving him.</p>
<p>Netflix severed ties with Spacey after the first of numerous men accused him of sexual assault or harassment in October.</p>
<p>Weinstein had perhaps the most drastic fall from grace, with the major Hollywood company he co-chaired booting the same month over his alleged sexual misconduct.</p>
<p>The film producer’s ouster has since generated a global reckoning over sexual misconduct, with many powerful male figures facing backlash for allegedly mistreating women in the past.</p>
<p>Google on Wednesday also listed Hurricane Irma as its top trending search item for 2017 in the U.S., with Lauer’s name ranking second.</p>
<p>The company additionally revealed that Irma ranked first among its top trending news topics this year, followed by last October’s mass shooting in Las Vegas.</p>
|
Matt Lauer was Google's top trending person of 2017 in the US
| false |
https://circa.com/story/2017/12/13/nation/matt-lauer-is-google-top-trending-person-of-2017-in-us
|
2017-12-13
| 1right-center
|
Matt Lauer was Google's top trending person of 2017 in the US
<p>Former NBC News anchor Matt Lauer ranks first on Google’s list of its top trending people for 2017 in the U.S., according to <a href="https://trends.google.com/trends/yis/2017/US/" type="external">data</a> the search giant released Wednesday.</p>
<p>Actress Meghan Markle, a future member of Britain’s royal family, took second place behind the former co-host of NBC’s “Today.”</p>
<p>Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein placed third after scores of women accused him of sexual misconduct this year.</p>
<p>Michael Flynn – who is President Trump’s former national security adviser – took Google’s forth spot, while actor Kevin Spacey rounded out the tech company’s top five names.</p>
<p>Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly grabbed Google’s sixth slot, while first lady Melania Trump nabbed its seventh.</p>
<p>Comedian Kathy Griffin snagged eighth place, while far-right media personality Milo Yiannopoulos and actress Gal Gadot completed Google’s top ten.</p>
<p>Google’s list of the people who trended the most in 2017 notably includes four names involved in sexual misconduct scandals this year.</p>
<p>NBC News fired Lauer last month after several women accused him of past inappropriate behavior, including one woman who claimed he sexually assaulted her in 2001.</p>
<p>Fox News sacked O’Reilly last April after reports emerged that the network had settled several sexual harassment lawsuits involving him.</p>
<p>Netflix severed ties with Spacey after the first of numerous men accused him of sexual assault or harassment in October.</p>
<p>Weinstein had perhaps the most drastic fall from grace, with the major Hollywood company he co-chaired booting the same month over his alleged sexual misconduct.</p>
<p>The film producer’s ouster has since generated a global reckoning over sexual misconduct, with many powerful male figures facing backlash for allegedly mistreating women in the past.</p>
<p>Google on Wednesday also listed Hurricane Irma as its top trending search item for 2017 in the U.S., with Lauer’s name ranking second.</p>
<p>The company additionally revealed that Irma ranked first among its top trending news topics this year, followed by last October’s mass shooting in Las Vegas.</p>
| 5,696 |
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<p>LOS ANGELES - Google says one of its self-driving cars has been involved in an injury accident for the first time.</p>
<p>The tech giant disclosed Thursday that one of its SUVs was rear-ended in its home city of Mountain View, and the three people on board complained of minor whiplash. All were released from the hospital soon after the July 1 collision.</p>
<p>In California, a person must be behind the wheel of a self-driving car prototype being tested on public roads. There were also two passengers.</p>
<p>According to Google, its SUV was stopped near an intersection when another car hit it at about 17 mph. On-board sensors showed the other car did not brake.</p>
<p>Google Inc. has pioneered self-driving technology. It says that in six years of testing, its cars have been hit 14 times.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Google self-driving car involved in first injury accident
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/613674/google-self-driving-car-involved-in-first-injury-accident.html
| 2least
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Google self-driving car involved in first injury accident
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>LOS ANGELES - Google says one of its self-driving cars has been involved in an injury accident for the first time.</p>
<p>The tech giant disclosed Thursday that one of its SUVs was rear-ended in its home city of Mountain View, and the three people on board complained of minor whiplash. All were released from the hospital soon after the July 1 collision.</p>
<p>In California, a person must be behind the wheel of a self-driving car prototype being tested on public roads. There were also two passengers.</p>
<p>According to Google, its SUV was stopped near an intersection when another car hit it at about 17 mph. On-board sensors showed the other car did not brake.</p>
<p>Google Inc. has pioneered self-driving technology. It says that in six years of testing, its cars have been hit 14 times.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 5,697 |
|
<p>BERLIN (Reuters) – The European Union’s economic and financial committee has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic policy and is worried that his efforts to boost protectionism pose a threat to the global economy, a German magazine reported on Saturday.</p>
<p>“The effects of that could be much more damaging than had been thought until now,” Der Spiegel said, citing an internal paper from a committee of top officials from the finance ministries of EU member states.</p>
<p>It also said the Europeans were concerned by the Trump administration’s spending plans, saying that because “public debt is already on a path that is not sustainable” this policy contained “short-term risks for the global economy”.</p>
<p>It said lenders had recently avoided the United States.</p>
<p>“The decline in international investments is a possible vulnerability,” Der Spiegel cited the paper as saying of the United States.</p>
<p>It also said plans to reform taxes in a way that would especially reduce the burden on top earners would “exacerbate the challenges the U.S. economy faces rather than alleviate them”.</p>
<p>Trump has listed his broad principles for tax reform as simplifying the U.S. tax code and providing tax relief to middle-class Americans, ideas he has been talking about since his 2016 presidential campaign.</p>
<p>The European Commission declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. A spokesman for the Estonian Presidency said he was unaware of any paper singling out Trump.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p>
|
EU criticizes Trump's economic policy: report
| false |
https://newsline.com/eu-criticizes-trump039s-economic-policy-report/
|
2017-09-09
| 1right-center
|
EU criticizes Trump's economic policy: report
<p>BERLIN (Reuters) – The European Union’s economic and financial committee has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic policy and is worried that his efforts to boost protectionism pose a threat to the global economy, a German magazine reported on Saturday.</p>
<p>“The effects of that could be much more damaging than had been thought until now,” Der Spiegel said, citing an internal paper from a committee of top officials from the finance ministries of EU member states.</p>
<p>It also said the Europeans were concerned by the Trump administration’s spending plans, saying that because “public debt is already on a path that is not sustainable” this policy contained “short-term risks for the global economy”.</p>
<p>It said lenders had recently avoided the United States.</p>
<p>“The decline in international investments is a possible vulnerability,” Der Spiegel cited the paper as saying of the United States.</p>
<p>It also said plans to reform taxes in a way that would especially reduce the burden on top earners would “exacerbate the challenges the U.S. economy faces rather than alleviate them”.</p>
<p>Trump has listed his broad principles for tax reform as simplifying the U.S. tax code and providing tax relief to middle-class Americans, ideas he has been talking about since his 2016 presidential campaign.</p>
<p>The European Commission declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. A spokesman for the Estonian Presidency said he was unaware of any paper singling out Trump.</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p>
| 5,698 |
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Iran sanctions and the 2015 nuclear deal (all times local):</p>
<p>2:15 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump has extended waivers of nuclear sanctions against Iran. That keeps the landmark 2015 nuclear deal alive for at least another several months, despite Trump’s past vows to scuttle the accord.</p>
<p>But he also made clear these waivers will be the last, unless what he calls serious flaws in the agreement are addressed by the spring.</p>
<p>The waivers were accompanied by other non-nuclear sanctions and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the deal if the fixes aren’t made.</p>
<p>In a statement, Trump says the U.S. will would work with European partners to resolve flaws in the nuclear deal by trying to negotiate a follow-up agreement.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:52 a.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump on Friday will extend waivers on Iran nuclear sanctions, keeping alive the landmark 2015 deal for at least another several months despite his past vows to scuttle the deal, officials said</p>
<p>Three officials said the waivers will be accompanied by other, targeted sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration if fixes aren’t made by spring. The next deadline for extending nuclear sanctions relief will come in mid-May.</p>
<p>The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly preview the decision. They said Trump’s waiver announcement will also include harsh criticism of Iran’s response to recent protests against the Islamic Republic’s leadership.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision has been expected since earlier this week. Officials, congressional aides and outside administration advisers said the president would likely extend the sanctions waivers, citing progress in amending U.S. legislation that governs Washington’s participation in the accord.</p>
<p>Trump received a formal recommendation from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Thursday, officials said. Their advice is opposed by some Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>The sanctions that Trump has to waive deal with Iran’s central bank. During Barack Obama’s presidency, these penalties largely cut Iran out of the international financial system, until they were suspended under the nuclear deal. While Trump will continue that suspension, he is preparing to impose penalties on Iranian entities for other behavior the U.S. finds objectionable, such as missile testing and alleged human rights violations.</p>
<p>That balance is aimed at satisfying Trump’s demand to raise pressure on Iran, while not embarking on a frontal assault on the most central trade-offs of the nuclear agreement. While the U.S. and other world powers rolled back economic restrictions on Tehran, the Iranians severely curtailed their enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activity. Trump has complained that many of the Iranian restrictions expire next decade and has vacillated between talk of toughening the deal and pulling the U.S. out entirely.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the administration is trying to secure a face-saving fix from Congress on the requirement for Trump to address Iran’s compliance every three months. In October, Trump decertified the nuclear deal under U.S. law, saying the sanctions relief was disproportionate to Iran’s nuclear concessions, and describing the arrangement as contrary to America’s national security interests.</p>
<p>Trump has particularly bristled at having to give Iran a “thumbs up” every few months by acknowledging that it is meeting its nuclear requirements, which should allow it to invest in foreign banks, sell petroleum overseas, buy U.S. and European aircraft, and so forth.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Iran sanctions and the 2015 nuclear deal (all times local):</p>
<p>2:15 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump has extended waivers of nuclear sanctions against Iran. That keeps the landmark 2015 nuclear deal alive for at least another several months, despite Trump’s past vows to scuttle the accord.</p>
<p>But he also made clear these waivers will be the last, unless what he calls serious flaws in the agreement are addressed by the spring.</p>
<p>The waivers were accompanied by other non-nuclear sanctions and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the deal if the fixes aren’t made.</p>
<p>In a statement, Trump says the U.S. will would work with European partners to resolve flaws in the nuclear deal by trying to negotiate a follow-up agreement.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:52 a.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump on Friday will extend waivers on Iran nuclear sanctions, keeping alive the landmark 2015 deal for at least another several months despite his past vows to scuttle the deal, officials said</p>
<p>Three officials said the waivers will be accompanied by other, targeted sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration if fixes aren’t made by spring. The next deadline for extending nuclear sanctions relief will come in mid-May.</p>
<p>The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly preview the decision. They said Trump’s waiver announcement will also include harsh criticism of Iran’s response to recent protests against the Islamic Republic’s leadership.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision has been expected since earlier this week. Officials, congressional aides and outside administration advisers said the president would likely extend the sanctions waivers, citing progress in amending U.S. legislation that governs Washington’s participation in the accord.</p>
<p>Trump received a formal recommendation from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Thursday, officials said. Their advice is opposed by some Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>The sanctions that Trump has to waive deal with Iran’s central bank. During Barack Obama’s presidency, these penalties largely cut Iran out of the international financial system, until they were suspended under the nuclear deal. While Trump will continue that suspension, he is preparing to impose penalties on Iranian entities for other behavior the U.S. finds objectionable, such as missile testing and alleged human rights violations.</p>
<p>That balance is aimed at satisfying Trump’s demand to raise pressure on Iran, while not embarking on a frontal assault on the most central trade-offs of the nuclear agreement. While the U.S. and other world powers rolled back economic restrictions on Tehran, the Iranians severely curtailed their enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activity. Trump has complained that many of the Iranian restrictions expire next decade and has vacillated between talk of toughening the deal and pulling the U.S. out entirely.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the administration is trying to secure a face-saving fix from Congress on the requirement for Trump to address Iran’s compliance every three months. In October, Trump decertified the nuclear deal under U.S. law, saying the sanctions relief was disproportionate to Iran’s nuclear concessions, and describing the arrangement as contrary to America’s national security interests.</p>
<p>Trump has particularly bristled at having to give Iran a “thumbs up” every few months by acknowledging that it is meeting its nuclear requirements, which should allow it to invest in foreign banks, sell petroleum overseas, buy U.S. and European aircraft, and so forth.</p>
|
The Latest: Iran nuke deal survives with Trump waivers
| false |
https://apnews.com/6dc3216613ca46bab8420fd23439b1fb
|
2018-01-12
| 2least
|
The Latest: Iran nuke deal survives with Trump waivers
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Iran sanctions and the 2015 nuclear deal (all times local):</p>
<p>2:15 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump has extended waivers of nuclear sanctions against Iran. That keeps the landmark 2015 nuclear deal alive for at least another several months, despite Trump’s past vows to scuttle the accord.</p>
<p>But he also made clear these waivers will be the last, unless what he calls serious flaws in the agreement are addressed by the spring.</p>
<p>The waivers were accompanied by other non-nuclear sanctions and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the deal if the fixes aren’t made.</p>
<p>In a statement, Trump says the U.S. will would work with European partners to resolve flaws in the nuclear deal by trying to negotiate a follow-up agreement.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:52 a.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump on Friday will extend waivers on Iran nuclear sanctions, keeping alive the landmark 2015 deal for at least another several months despite his past vows to scuttle the deal, officials said</p>
<p>Three officials said the waivers will be accompanied by other, targeted sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration if fixes aren’t made by spring. The next deadline for extending nuclear sanctions relief will come in mid-May.</p>
<p>The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly preview the decision. They said Trump’s waiver announcement will also include harsh criticism of Iran’s response to recent protests against the Islamic Republic’s leadership.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision has been expected since earlier this week. Officials, congressional aides and outside administration advisers said the president would likely extend the sanctions waivers, citing progress in amending U.S. legislation that governs Washington’s participation in the accord.</p>
<p>Trump received a formal recommendation from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Thursday, officials said. Their advice is opposed by some Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>The sanctions that Trump has to waive deal with Iran’s central bank. During Barack Obama’s presidency, these penalties largely cut Iran out of the international financial system, until they were suspended under the nuclear deal. While Trump will continue that suspension, he is preparing to impose penalties on Iranian entities for other behavior the U.S. finds objectionable, such as missile testing and alleged human rights violations.</p>
<p>That balance is aimed at satisfying Trump’s demand to raise pressure on Iran, while not embarking on a frontal assault on the most central trade-offs of the nuclear agreement. While the U.S. and other world powers rolled back economic restrictions on Tehran, the Iranians severely curtailed their enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activity. Trump has complained that many of the Iranian restrictions expire next decade and has vacillated between talk of toughening the deal and pulling the U.S. out entirely.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the administration is trying to secure a face-saving fix from Congress on the requirement for Trump to address Iran’s compliance every three months. In October, Trump decertified the nuclear deal under U.S. law, saying the sanctions relief was disproportionate to Iran’s nuclear concessions, and describing the arrangement as contrary to America’s national security interests.</p>
<p>Trump has particularly bristled at having to give Iran a “thumbs up” every few months by acknowledging that it is meeting its nuclear requirements, which should allow it to invest in foreign banks, sell petroleum overseas, buy U.S. and European aircraft, and so forth.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Iran sanctions and the 2015 nuclear deal (all times local):</p>
<p>2:15 p.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump has extended waivers of nuclear sanctions against Iran. That keeps the landmark 2015 nuclear deal alive for at least another several months, despite Trump’s past vows to scuttle the accord.</p>
<p>But he also made clear these waivers will be the last, unless what he calls serious flaws in the agreement are addressed by the spring.</p>
<p>The waivers were accompanied by other non-nuclear sanctions and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the deal if the fixes aren’t made.</p>
<p>In a statement, Trump says the U.S. will would work with European partners to resolve flaws in the nuclear deal by trying to negotiate a follow-up agreement.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:52 a.m.</p>
<p>President Donald Trump on Friday will extend waivers on Iran nuclear sanctions, keeping alive the landmark 2015 deal for at least another several months despite his past vows to scuttle the deal, officials said</p>
<p>Three officials said the waivers will be accompanied by other, targeted sanctions on Iran for human rights abuses and a stern warning that Trump will pull out of the nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration if fixes aren’t made by spring. The next deadline for extending nuclear sanctions relief will come in mid-May.</p>
<p>The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly preview the decision. They said Trump’s waiver announcement will also include harsh criticism of Iran’s response to recent protests against the Islamic Republic’s leadership.</p>
<p>Trump’s decision has been expected since earlier this week. Officials, congressional aides and outside administration advisers said the president would likely extend the sanctions waivers, citing progress in amending U.S. legislation that governs Washington’s participation in the accord.</p>
<p>Trump received a formal recommendation from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster on Thursday, officials said. Their advice is opposed by some Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>The sanctions that Trump has to waive deal with Iran’s central bank. During Barack Obama’s presidency, these penalties largely cut Iran out of the international financial system, until they were suspended under the nuclear deal. While Trump will continue that suspension, he is preparing to impose penalties on Iranian entities for other behavior the U.S. finds objectionable, such as missile testing and alleged human rights violations.</p>
<p>That balance is aimed at satisfying Trump’s demand to raise pressure on Iran, while not embarking on a frontal assault on the most central trade-offs of the nuclear agreement. While the U.S. and other world powers rolled back economic restrictions on Tehran, the Iranians severely curtailed their enrichment of uranium and other nuclear activity. Trump has complained that many of the Iranian restrictions expire next decade and has vacillated between talk of toughening the deal and pulling the U.S. out entirely.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the administration is trying to secure a face-saving fix from Congress on the requirement for Trump to address Iran’s compliance every three months. In October, Trump decertified the nuclear deal under U.S. law, saying the sanctions relief was disproportionate to Iran’s nuclear concessions, and describing the arrangement as contrary to America’s national security interests.</p>
<p>Trump has particularly bristled at having to give Iran a “thumbs up” every few months by acknowledging that it is meeting its nuclear requirements, which should allow it to invest in foreign banks, sell petroleum overseas, buy U.S. and European aircraft, and so forth.</p>
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