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<p>On Thursday, CNN's Chris Cillizza issued perhaps his most embarrassing tweet yet, a string of breathless OHMYGODs in response to a report that the wife of Polish President Andrzej Duda supposedly stiffed President Trump's handshake.</p>
<p>The false report eventually made its way to President Duda himself, who took to Twitter on Thursday to smack down the "FAKE NEWS" pushed by CNN and others.</p>
<p>"Contrary to some surprising reports my wife did shake hands with Mrs. and Mr. Trump @POTUS after a great visit. Let's FIGHT FAKE NEWS," wrote Duda.</p>
<p>It's moments like these that you'd hope that Cillizza and his colleagues at CNN would take a breath, recommit to good old fashioned journalistic standards, and agree to count to ten before tweeting or reporting or opinionating in an effort to save their sinking brand. But even as their ratings collapse (here's a look at <a href="" type="internal">the numbers from last week</a> — they're devastating for the formerly "Most Trusted Name In News"), CNN continues its unhinged crusade against Trump, which is clearly doing far more damage to them than him.</p>
<p>As for those <a href="" type="internal">plummeting ratings</a>, for some perspective, not only is CNN trailing far behind both Fox News and MSNBC now (check out the numbers from last Tuesday below), it's now losing to ... <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/06/ratings-collapse-cnn-now-losing-nick-nite-prime-time-ratings-war/" type="external">Nick-at-Nite</a>. Ouch.</p>
<p />
|
Polish President Slams 'FAKE NEWS' Report About His Wife Pushed By CNN
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/18352/polish-president-slams-fake-news-report-about-his-james-barrett
|
2017-07-07
| 0right
|
Polish President Slams 'FAKE NEWS' Report About His Wife Pushed By CNN
<p>On Thursday, CNN's Chris Cillizza issued perhaps his most embarrassing tweet yet, a string of breathless OHMYGODs in response to a report that the wife of Polish President Andrzej Duda supposedly stiffed President Trump's handshake.</p>
<p>The false report eventually made its way to President Duda himself, who took to Twitter on Thursday to smack down the "FAKE NEWS" pushed by CNN and others.</p>
<p>"Contrary to some surprising reports my wife did shake hands with Mrs. and Mr. Trump @POTUS after a great visit. Let's FIGHT FAKE NEWS," wrote Duda.</p>
<p>It's moments like these that you'd hope that Cillizza and his colleagues at CNN would take a breath, recommit to good old fashioned journalistic standards, and agree to count to ten before tweeting or reporting or opinionating in an effort to save their sinking brand. But even as their ratings collapse (here's a look at <a href="" type="internal">the numbers from last week</a> — they're devastating for the formerly "Most Trusted Name In News"), CNN continues its unhinged crusade against Trump, which is clearly doing far more damage to them than him.</p>
<p>As for those <a href="" type="internal">plummeting ratings</a>, for some perspective, not only is CNN trailing far behind both Fox News and MSNBC now (check out the numbers from last Tuesday below), it's now losing to ... <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/06/ratings-collapse-cnn-now-losing-nick-nite-prime-time-ratings-war/" type="external">Nick-at-Nite</a>. Ouch.</p>
<p />
| 6,700 |
<p>Benjamin Netanyahu can be stopped. If only all his opponents could jettison their pre-conceived ideas, they could put together an alliance that would halt the Netanyahu bandwagon. If Jews and Arabs plus Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews lined up together, Bibi could be blocked, but it takes a leap of imagination to conceive this scenario. So he almost certainly won’t be.</p>
<p>Many political commentators here wrote the script as soon as the coming Israeli elections were scheduled. Netanyahu, they pronounced, will be the next prime minister whatever happens. Since then they have fallen over themselves to prove the rightness of their forecast.</p>
<p>It’s not that they like Netanyahu—most of them don’t—but they cannot bear to be wrong. Thus every move made by the Labor Party chairman Shelly Yachimovich, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who heads Hatnuah is immediately ridiculed. “I promise you,” announced a prominent television commentator, when it was announced that the three centrist leaders would meet to coordinate tactics against the right, “I promise you that this will be the only meeting of the three, and nothing will come of it!”</p>
<p>As it turned out, he was right. So far the only thing that emerged from their meeting was mutual recrimination, but this was not pre-ordained. It was a good idea to get together: Bibi is vulnerable. He has made several gross mistakes, but here again our local reporters and columnists are at fault. They are focusing on his row with Naftali Bennett, the new young leader of the religious-nationalist Bait Hayehudi party. While it is true that Netanyahu has proved inept at tackling this challenge from the right, it is not significant. Bennett is part of the rightwing bloc, which is not, as a whole, weakened by the fracas.</p>
<p>Bibi’s first major error was his tie-up with Yisrael Beitenu, the maverick party led by Avigdor Lieberman. It led to an immediate plunge in the polls, as members of both parties showed how they felt about the deal, and today, with Lieberman facing a very real threat of a seven year exile from Israeli politics, the idea looks even worse that when it was first conceived.</p>
<p>His second blunder is a direct result of the first: his alienation of the religious Sephardi party, Shas. This party has always been the linchpin of his power, but prodded by the (secular Russian immigrant) Lieberman party, Bibi threatened to take two key ministries away from them. Although Shas is currently paying lip-service to the “Netanyahu will be prime minister” mantra, it is no longer in Bibi’s pocket, as it was in the past.</p>
<p>His third blunder was to permit his young party colleagues to take the lead in trying to prevent Hanin Zuabi, a militant Israeli Arab Knesset Member, from running in the election. The insult to Israel’s Arab citizens was manifest. The Arab voters represent the joker in the pack of the Israeli elections. As I and others have <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/12/12/a-moderate-coalition-that-includes-arab-parties.html" type="external">noted</a> in Open Zion, they vote heavily in municipal elections, but only around half of them cast their ballots in the national poll. They have the capacity to be the game-changer. They could vote as many as 17 Knesset Members into Israel’s parliament.</p>
<p>All of which brings us back to our three heroes from the center-left. The idea of Livni, Yachimovich, and Lapid collaborating to block Bibi is fundamentally sound, but they should cast their net much wider. To the left, they should include the Zionist left-wing party Meretz in their alliance, but also the Jewish-Arab Hadash party, and Taal, the Arab party led by Ahmad Tibi, one of the most active and intelligent Knesset Members. They should not, however, only look further left: Shas should also be invited into the anti-Bibi coalition.</p>
<p>Shas, which moved right under its former leader Eli Yishai, has recently veered leftwards (at least on social issues) under its new triumvirate that includes the (formerly dovish) Aryeh Deri. A coalition from Deri to Tibi really could muster enough votes to defeat the right. With some compromises by all its constituents, it could also hammer out a joint policy, but sadly it will almost definitely not come about.</p>
<p>Even if the Jewish parties could get their heads around cooperating with the Arab parties—and that is by no means certain—the centrists will be far too “pure” to cooperate with Deri, who has served time in jail after being found guilty of corruption. Never mind that he was by far the most effective Minister of the Interior that Israel ever had, our pious centrists will not be prepared to soil their hands by contact with him.</p>
<p>The tragic result is that, although almost two thirds of Israelis are in favor of territorial compromise and a two-state solution, they will elect an extreme rightwing government that will make this impossible. Bibi’s new government will build more settlements, will continue to undermine Palestinian moderate Mahmud Abbas (Abu-Mazen,) and will hunker down behind our separation fence, while proclaiming that the whole world is against us.</p>
<p>This nightmare doesn’t have to happen, but sadly it is the most likely outcome of our elections on January 22.</p>
|
Why Israel's Center-left Won’t Block Bibi
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/why-israels-center-left-wont-block-bibi
|
2018-10-06
| 4left
|
Why Israel's Center-left Won’t Block Bibi
<p>Benjamin Netanyahu can be stopped. If only all his opponents could jettison their pre-conceived ideas, they could put together an alliance that would halt the Netanyahu bandwagon. If Jews and Arabs plus Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews lined up together, Bibi could be blocked, but it takes a leap of imagination to conceive this scenario. So he almost certainly won’t be.</p>
<p>Many political commentators here wrote the script as soon as the coming Israeli elections were scheduled. Netanyahu, they pronounced, will be the next prime minister whatever happens. Since then they have fallen over themselves to prove the rightness of their forecast.</p>
<p>It’s not that they like Netanyahu—most of them don’t—but they cannot bear to be wrong. Thus every move made by the Labor Party chairman Shelly Yachimovich, Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who heads Hatnuah is immediately ridiculed. “I promise you,” announced a prominent television commentator, when it was announced that the three centrist leaders would meet to coordinate tactics against the right, “I promise you that this will be the only meeting of the three, and nothing will come of it!”</p>
<p>As it turned out, he was right. So far the only thing that emerged from their meeting was mutual recrimination, but this was not pre-ordained. It was a good idea to get together: Bibi is vulnerable. He has made several gross mistakes, but here again our local reporters and columnists are at fault. They are focusing on his row with Naftali Bennett, the new young leader of the religious-nationalist Bait Hayehudi party. While it is true that Netanyahu has proved inept at tackling this challenge from the right, it is not significant. Bennett is part of the rightwing bloc, which is not, as a whole, weakened by the fracas.</p>
<p>Bibi’s first major error was his tie-up with Yisrael Beitenu, the maverick party led by Avigdor Lieberman. It led to an immediate plunge in the polls, as members of both parties showed how they felt about the deal, and today, with Lieberman facing a very real threat of a seven year exile from Israeli politics, the idea looks even worse that when it was first conceived.</p>
<p>His second blunder is a direct result of the first: his alienation of the religious Sephardi party, Shas. This party has always been the linchpin of his power, but prodded by the (secular Russian immigrant) Lieberman party, Bibi threatened to take two key ministries away from them. Although Shas is currently paying lip-service to the “Netanyahu will be prime minister” mantra, it is no longer in Bibi’s pocket, as it was in the past.</p>
<p>His third blunder was to permit his young party colleagues to take the lead in trying to prevent Hanin Zuabi, a militant Israeli Arab Knesset Member, from running in the election. The insult to Israel’s Arab citizens was manifest. The Arab voters represent the joker in the pack of the Israeli elections. As I and others have <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/12/12/a-moderate-coalition-that-includes-arab-parties.html" type="external">noted</a> in Open Zion, they vote heavily in municipal elections, but only around half of them cast their ballots in the national poll. They have the capacity to be the game-changer. They could vote as many as 17 Knesset Members into Israel’s parliament.</p>
<p>All of which brings us back to our three heroes from the center-left. The idea of Livni, Yachimovich, and Lapid collaborating to block Bibi is fundamentally sound, but they should cast their net much wider. To the left, they should include the Zionist left-wing party Meretz in their alliance, but also the Jewish-Arab Hadash party, and Taal, the Arab party led by Ahmad Tibi, one of the most active and intelligent Knesset Members. They should not, however, only look further left: Shas should also be invited into the anti-Bibi coalition.</p>
<p>Shas, which moved right under its former leader Eli Yishai, has recently veered leftwards (at least on social issues) under its new triumvirate that includes the (formerly dovish) Aryeh Deri. A coalition from Deri to Tibi really could muster enough votes to defeat the right. With some compromises by all its constituents, it could also hammer out a joint policy, but sadly it will almost definitely not come about.</p>
<p>Even if the Jewish parties could get their heads around cooperating with the Arab parties—and that is by no means certain—the centrists will be far too “pure” to cooperate with Deri, who has served time in jail after being found guilty of corruption. Never mind that he was by far the most effective Minister of the Interior that Israel ever had, our pious centrists will not be prepared to soil their hands by contact with him.</p>
<p>The tragic result is that, although almost two thirds of Israelis are in favor of territorial compromise and a two-state solution, they will elect an extreme rightwing government that will make this impossible. Bibi’s new government will build more settlements, will continue to undermine Palestinian moderate Mahmud Abbas (Abu-Mazen,) and will hunker down behind our separation fence, while proclaiming that the whole world is against us.</p>
<p>This nightmare doesn’t have to happen, but sadly it is the most likely outcome of our elections on January 22.</p>
| 6,701 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FARMINGTON, N.M. — A recent increase in the number of drilling rigs operating in the San Juan Basin is sparking optimism that the downturn in oil and gas production may turn around.</p>
<p>The Daily Times of Farmington, New Mexico, reports (https://goo.gl/qOFesS ) there currently are four active rigs in the basin — a significant jump in 16 months.</p>
<p>The last time a weekly rig report listed four or more active drilling rigs in the basin was November 2015. During subsequent months, that number gradually dwindled to just one rig.</p>
<p>New Mexico Oil and Gas Association spokesman Wally Drangmeister says each operating drilling rig creates around 50 to 75 full-time jobs.</p>
<p>Two of the active rigs belong to BP America. One belongs to Encana Corp. and the other to WPX Energy.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Daily Times, <a href="http://www.daily-times.com" type="external">http://www.daily-times.com</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Number of drilling rigs in San Juan Basin sparks optimism
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/963427/number-of-drilling-rigs-in-san-juan-basin-sparks-optimism.html
|
2017-03-07
| 2least
|
Number of drilling rigs in San Juan Basin sparks optimism
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FARMINGTON, N.M. — A recent increase in the number of drilling rigs operating in the San Juan Basin is sparking optimism that the downturn in oil and gas production may turn around.</p>
<p>The Daily Times of Farmington, New Mexico, reports (https://goo.gl/qOFesS ) there currently are four active rigs in the basin — a significant jump in 16 months.</p>
<p>The last time a weekly rig report listed four or more active drilling rigs in the basin was November 2015. During subsequent months, that number gradually dwindled to just one rig.</p>
<p>New Mexico Oil and Gas Association spokesman Wally Drangmeister says each operating drilling rig creates around 50 to 75 full-time jobs.</p>
<p>Two of the active rigs belong to BP America. One belongs to Encana Corp. and the other to WPX Energy.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Daily Times, <a href="http://www.daily-times.com" type="external">http://www.daily-times.com</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 6,702 |
<p>The resignation of Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana has sparked a debate about bipartisanship, ideology, and the institution of Congress. According to Bayh, “There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress, too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous national challenge, the people's business is not getting done.”</p>
<p>This critique is like catnip to the media and has unleashed a predictable wave of sympathetic coverage. Let's examine these arguments, however, beginning with the assertion that “the people's business is not being done.”</p>
<p>Actually, the people's business is getting done. In this case, “the people's business” was to stop ObamaCare, which the public opposes in significant numbers (the spread between those who oppose ObamaCare and those who support it is 15-20 percentage points). Most Americans think the Democratic health care plans are badly flawed and a majority of them want Congress to begin over again.</p>
<p>The dominant narrative manifests a particular cast of mind, one that equates “the people's business” with passing legislation that increases the size, cost, and reach of government. In fact, sometimes the people's business involves stopping bad ideas from becoming law.</p>
<p>It's worth recalling that the Founders set up a system of government with what James Madison called the “auxiliary precautions” of American government — meaning the separation of powers, bicameralism, and other checks and balances. Madison, who was shipped what he called a “literary cargo” of books on history and politics by Thomas Jefferson, rigorously studied the historical record of past governments. Out of that study Madison and his colleagues decided to put the emphasis on braking mechanisms, which they thought would help preserve liberty by limiting the power of government.</p>
<p>Then there is Bayh's attack on “ideology.” Ideology can imply embracing a doctrine that is abstract and rigid, one that is anti-empirical and ignores experience. That is a problem. But ideology can also be another word for convictions — and one person's “ideologue” is another person's principled politician. A persistent criticism of both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was that they were “ideologues.” In fact, they were people who took seriously a coherent set of ideas. It isn't terribly helpful to go on a rant against “ideology” without saying specifically which ideas and principles one is attacking. What matters are the quality of those ideas. Arguably what we need more of in Congress are people who take ideas and political principles seriously — who grapple with them, who understand them, and who are willing to fight passionately for the right ones.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the common complaint that we're not seeing enough “bipartisanship” between the two major political parties. Let's stipulate that all of us would like to see more bipartisanship for the ideas we support. If, on the other hand, we disagree with the ideas being championed by the party in power, we applaud “principled opposition.” The fixation on bipartisanship is fixation on process rather than substance. The question always needs to be asked: Bipartisanship for what end? For example, should champions of civil rights legislation in the 1960s have been more “bipartisan” if it would have led to legislation that was less just? Should Ronald Reagan have given up his commitment to a strategic defense initiative, or George W. Bush his commitment to the surge in Iraq, in order to win the favor of their critics? Should Lincoln have reached a bipartisan accommodation with Stephen Douglas on the doctrine of “popular sovereignty”?</p>
<p>Many of the greatest political figures in American history — whether we're talking about Reagan or Roosevelt, Lincoln or King, Jefferson or Hamilton — are recognized for substance rather than process, for their commitment to American ideals rather than bipartisanship, for what they did rather than the manner in which they did it.</p>
<p>We should be clear about what's going on here. A Democratic president, with strong Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, was on the cusp of passing a massive change in our health care system. It stalled because of strong public opposition. This failure has created an existential crisis among much of the political class. And so it is said that America is “ungovernable,” that the public is stupid, that Republicans are nihilists, that Congress is broken, that the filibuster is evil, and so forth and so on.</p>
<p>It's worth recalling that in 2005 George W. Bush made a big push to reform Social Security. I thought then, and think now, that his plan was wise and necessary. But it was also undeniably unpopular, and the effort failed. Its failure did not trigger the kind of Camus-like despair we are now seeing. No one in the commentariat argued that America was, in Joe Klein's phrase, a “nation of dodos” or that Social Security's failure could be laid at James Madison's feet.</p>
<p>We are not facing a governing crisis today. What we are seeing is an emerging crisis for modern liberalism. And the reason is fairly straightforward: the public, having been exposed to a liberal governing agenda for the last year, is repudiating it. Liberals cannot seem to accept that, so they are lashing out at everything else. It is unwarranted and somewhat childish; and it will only accelerate The Fall.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the Bush White House as director of the office of strategic initiatives.</p>
|
Evan Bayh and the Legends of The Fall
| false |
https://eppc.org/publications/evan-bayh-and-the-legends-of-the-fall/
| 1right-center
|
Evan Bayh and the Legends of The Fall
<p>The resignation of Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana has sparked a debate about bipartisanship, ideology, and the institution of Congress. According to Bayh, “There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress, too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous national challenge, the people's business is not getting done.”</p>
<p>This critique is like catnip to the media and has unleashed a predictable wave of sympathetic coverage. Let's examine these arguments, however, beginning with the assertion that “the people's business is not being done.”</p>
<p>Actually, the people's business is getting done. In this case, “the people's business” was to stop ObamaCare, which the public opposes in significant numbers (the spread between those who oppose ObamaCare and those who support it is 15-20 percentage points). Most Americans think the Democratic health care plans are badly flawed and a majority of them want Congress to begin over again.</p>
<p>The dominant narrative manifests a particular cast of mind, one that equates “the people's business” with passing legislation that increases the size, cost, and reach of government. In fact, sometimes the people's business involves stopping bad ideas from becoming law.</p>
<p>It's worth recalling that the Founders set up a system of government with what James Madison called the “auxiliary precautions” of American government — meaning the separation of powers, bicameralism, and other checks and balances. Madison, who was shipped what he called a “literary cargo” of books on history and politics by Thomas Jefferson, rigorously studied the historical record of past governments. Out of that study Madison and his colleagues decided to put the emphasis on braking mechanisms, which they thought would help preserve liberty by limiting the power of government.</p>
<p>Then there is Bayh's attack on “ideology.” Ideology can imply embracing a doctrine that is abstract and rigid, one that is anti-empirical and ignores experience. That is a problem. But ideology can also be another word for convictions — and one person's “ideologue” is another person's principled politician. A persistent criticism of both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher was that they were “ideologues.” In fact, they were people who took seriously a coherent set of ideas. It isn't terribly helpful to go on a rant against “ideology” without saying specifically which ideas and principles one is attacking. What matters are the quality of those ideas. Arguably what we need more of in Congress are people who take ideas and political principles seriously — who grapple with them, who understand them, and who are willing to fight passionately for the right ones.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the common complaint that we're not seeing enough “bipartisanship” between the two major political parties. Let's stipulate that all of us would like to see more bipartisanship for the ideas we support. If, on the other hand, we disagree with the ideas being championed by the party in power, we applaud “principled opposition.” The fixation on bipartisanship is fixation on process rather than substance. The question always needs to be asked: Bipartisanship for what end? For example, should champions of civil rights legislation in the 1960s have been more “bipartisan” if it would have led to legislation that was less just? Should Ronald Reagan have given up his commitment to a strategic defense initiative, or George W. Bush his commitment to the surge in Iraq, in order to win the favor of their critics? Should Lincoln have reached a bipartisan accommodation with Stephen Douglas on the doctrine of “popular sovereignty”?</p>
<p>Many of the greatest political figures in American history — whether we're talking about Reagan or Roosevelt, Lincoln or King, Jefferson or Hamilton — are recognized for substance rather than process, for their commitment to American ideals rather than bipartisanship, for what they did rather than the manner in which they did it.</p>
<p>We should be clear about what's going on here. A Democratic president, with strong Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, was on the cusp of passing a massive change in our health care system. It stalled because of strong public opposition. This failure has created an existential crisis among much of the political class. And so it is said that America is “ungovernable,” that the public is stupid, that Republicans are nihilists, that Congress is broken, that the filibuster is evil, and so forth and so on.</p>
<p>It's worth recalling that in 2005 George W. Bush made a big push to reform Social Security. I thought then, and think now, that his plan was wise and necessary. But it was also undeniably unpopular, and the effort failed. Its failure did not trigger the kind of Camus-like despair we are now seeing. No one in the commentariat argued that America was, in Joe Klein's phrase, a “nation of dodos” or that Social Security's failure could be laid at James Madison's feet.</p>
<p>We are not facing a governing crisis today. What we are seeing is an emerging crisis for modern liberalism. And the reason is fairly straightforward: the public, having been exposed to a liberal governing agenda for the last year, is repudiating it. Liberals cannot seem to accept that, so they are lashing out at everything else. It is unwarranted and somewhat childish; and it will only accelerate The Fall.</p>
<p>Peter Wehner is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the Bush White House as director of the office of strategic initiatives.</p>
| 6,703 |
|
<p>Red squirrels in the UK are having a pretty hard time at the moment.</p>
<p>Their numbers have been declining for years and they have been driven out of many British forests by rival American gray squirrels. But&#160;now there's a new threat:&#160;leprosy.</p>
<p>The disease was first detected in Scotland in 2014, but has since spread to other areas around the UK.</p>
<p>“We don’t know why it’s only red squirrels," says Anna Meredith from the University of Edinburgh. “We haven’t found it in any other species of squirrel yet. And we don’t really know how badly it’s affecting them and what impact it’s having on the population.”</p>
<p>But they are trying to find out.</p>
<p>Meredith is leading a new research project on Brownsea Island, just off the south coast of England.</p>
<p>Her team will monitor red squirrel numbers and will try to determine how leprosy is spreading around the population.</p>
<p />
<p>Brownsea Island off the south coast of England</p>
<p>Chris Lacey, National Trust.</p>
<p>“We are using an island because it creates a really nice environment to run a study. It’s contained and we know there’s a good population of around 200 squirrels,” she says. &#160;</p>
<p>“But it’s also very important because it’s about the only place in England where red squirrels are left.”</p>
<p>The population elsewhere in the UK, Meredith says, has been devastated by the gray squirrel, which was introduced from North America toward&#160;the end of the 19th century.</p>
<p>Gray squirrels are larger, more aggressive&#160;and better at finding food. But crucially, they also spread a disease called squirrel pox, which is deadly to red squirrels.</p>
<p>“In the UK we consider [the red squirrel] a priority species for conservation,” Meredith says. “About 75 percent&#160;of the remaining red squirrels in the UK are in Scotland. There are very concerted efforts there to halt the spread of the gray squirrel.”</p>
<p>With the new threat of leprosy, and the existing threats from the gray&#160;squirrel, Meredith says something must be done to save the red squirrel.</p>
<p>“They are an iconic species and much loved by the British public,” she says. “It’s a real shame to lose any species ...&#160;and essentially lose it through the actions of people.”</p>
<p>“We introduced the gray squirrels. We have cut down a lot of the trees and destroyed the habitat where the native red squirrel lives.&#160;I think we have a moral obligation to try and limit some of that damage and reverse the change to save this very iconic species.”</p>
<p>A previous version of this story misstated where&#160;Anna Meredith teaches.</p>
|
The already troubled British red squirrel has a new problem – leprosy
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2016-05-10/already-troubled-british-red-squirrel-has-new-problem-leprosy
|
2016-05-10
| 3left-center
|
The already troubled British red squirrel has a new problem – leprosy
<p>Red squirrels in the UK are having a pretty hard time at the moment.</p>
<p>Their numbers have been declining for years and they have been driven out of many British forests by rival American gray squirrels. But&#160;now there's a new threat:&#160;leprosy.</p>
<p>The disease was first detected in Scotland in 2014, but has since spread to other areas around the UK.</p>
<p>“We don’t know why it’s only red squirrels," says Anna Meredith from the University of Edinburgh. “We haven’t found it in any other species of squirrel yet. And we don’t really know how badly it’s affecting them and what impact it’s having on the population.”</p>
<p>But they are trying to find out.</p>
<p>Meredith is leading a new research project on Brownsea Island, just off the south coast of England.</p>
<p>Her team will monitor red squirrel numbers and will try to determine how leprosy is spreading around the population.</p>
<p />
<p>Brownsea Island off the south coast of England</p>
<p>Chris Lacey, National Trust.</p>
<p>“We are using an island because it creates a really nice environment to run a study. It’s contained and we know there’s a good population of around 200 squirrels,” she says. &#160;</p>
<p>“But it’s also very important because it’s about the only place in England where red squirrels are left.”</p>
<p>The population elsewhere in the UK, Meredith says, has been devastated by the gray squirrel, which was introduced from North America toward&#160;the end of the 19th century.</p>
<p>Gray squirrels are larger, more aggressive&#160;and better at finding food. But crucially, they also spread a disease called squirrel pox, which is deadly to red squirrels.</p>
<p>“In the UK we consider [the red squirrel] a priority species for conservation,” Meredith says. “About 75 percent&#160;of the remaining red squirrels in the UK are in Scotland. There are very concerted efforts there to halt the spread of the gray squirrel.”</p>
<p>With the new threat of leprosy, and the existing threats from the gray&#160;squirrel, Meredith says something must be done to save the red squirrel.</p>
<p>“They are an iconic species and much loved by the British public,” she says. “It’s a real shame to lose any species ...&#160;and essentially lose it through the actions of people.”</p>
<p>“We introduced the gray squirrels. We have cut down a lot of the trees and destroyed the habitat where the native red squirrel lives.&#160;I think we have a moral obligation to try and limit some of that damage and reverse the change to save this very iconic species.”</p>
<p>A previous version of this story misstated where&#160;Anna Meredith teaches.</p>
| 6,704 |
<p />
<p>The United States hasn’t had much luck, over five decades, in changing the political leadership in Cuba; Cubans, though, might well hold the key to this year’s U.S. presidential election.</p>
<p>And, yes, that means Florida might swing the election again. To explain: Florida — Miami in particular — is home to 850,000 Cubans and Cuban-Americans, half of whom are registered voters. As we know, unlike most Latinos, they generally vote Republican, because they like the hawkish GOP line on Castro. They certainly went for Bush in a big way in 2000. A quarter of a million more Cuban-Americans chose Bush than Gore, and the Cuban community aggressively–in some cases, physically–protested the recount in the state, where 537 ballots–and the good offices of the U.S. Supreme Court–decided the presidency.</p>
<p>Jeb Bush, Florida’s governor, has made a point of cultivating the Cuban community, and the community has responded in kind. But there are signs that his brother, the president, has upset Cubans by being — as they see it — soft on Castro. (Of course, a lot of Cubans in Florida won’t be satisfied with anything short of military invasion and regime change. Bush has tightened the flow of U.S. tourism and business to Cuba to further isolate Castro; but that’s clearly not enough.)</p>
<p>Many Cubans who were angry that Clinton returned Elian Gonzalez to relatives in Cuba are now ticked off that Bush left Fidel Castro in power even as he drove Saddam Hussein from Baghdad. More than 30 percent of Cubans polled recently by Univision <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/8156352.htm" type="external">disapproved</a> of Bush’s handling of Castro.</p>
<p>It’s not as if there’s a major defection in the works (after all, is it realistic to think Kerry would be harder on Castro?). But there’s a definite sense that the Cuban vote is up for grabs in a way that it hasn’t been for years.</p>
<p>Kerry <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/8129764.htm" type="external">is beating Bush</a> by 6 points in Florida, according to a poll done by the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times. Of Cubans polled, 56 percent favor Bush — a big drop from the 81 percent who voted for him four years ago.</p>
<p>For Cuban exiles, Castro’s takeover, in 1959, is a wound that just won’t heal. In the current New Yorker, William Finnegan describes the Miami’s “wormholes in time”:</p>
<p />
<p>You’ll be driving along a Miami freeway in 2004, listening to Radio Mambí-that’s a big Spanish-language talk station-and suddenly you’ll be in Cuba, 1961. Callers will be arguing bitterly about Che Guevara’s misunderstanding of the sugar industry. An old man will start telling the story of his brother’s violent death, at the hands of neighborhood militants, in Santiago de Cuba. He’ll describe every detail, until you can taste the day. Then he’ll start sobbing. The silence around his voice will grow while he tries to go on. He has wept every night in the decades since his brother’s death, he says, and he prays to God that justice will someday be done … This sort of thing is just electrifying to hear, and completely horrifying, but it’s also normal, everyday Miami.</p>
<p>A popular salsa tune on Miami airwaves sings of Bush’s betrayal of recent refugees. U.S. authorities allowed 69 percent of 25,000 Cuban refugees to stay in this country in 2002, but media images of boat exiles turned away from the Florida coast last year are causing anger.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help Bush that the Treasury Department is trying to put limits on the $1 billion that Cubans send annually to their families still living on the island.</p>
<p>The University of Florida’s Paolo Spadoni describes in the Orlando Sentinel the <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.intercept" type="external">mixed message</a> this sends:</p>
<p />
<p>At a time when the Bush administration is attempting to woo Cuban voters leading up to the presidential election, why would it take steps to cut off this aid? The idea of restricting money transfers could reflect an increasing frustration in Washington with the ironic results of the Cuban embargo.</p>
<p>The most contradictory element of the embargo is the establishment of a dual approach that severely restricts travel and financial transactions with respect to Cuba by American citizens of non-Cuban descent while granting Cuban-Americans special exemptions for family-related visits to the island and remittances. While U.S. policy was originally conceived as a way to increase economic pressure on the Castro government (and eventually hasten its demise) by stemming the flow of hard currency reaching Cuba, this “two-track” policy ended up throwing a lifeline to the same government it was supposed to undermine.</p>
<p>Harvard government professor Jorge Domínguez angered conservative Cuban leaders when he suggested that Bush and Castro, despite their mutual vitriol, <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/8000295.htm" type="external">are allied</a> on immigration policy, the drug war, and trade. Last month Castro accused Bush at least twice of trying to assassinate him to please Cuban exiles. On the other hand, food exports to Cuba <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/02/17/rtr1264091.html" type="external">have grown by 80 percent</a> in the past year, making Cuba the 35th top U.S. agriculture market.</p>
<p>Cubans first flocked en masse to the United States during the 1959 revolution. Hard as it is to believe now, Cubans initially leaned Democratic because of the party’s support for civil rights, social welfare programs, and Cuban refugee assistance. But half of the island’s outflow to the U.S. mainland came after 1980, just as Ronald Reagan’s anti-Communist crusade was drawing exiles to the GOP. Jeb Bush cemented the party’s alliance with Cuban émigrés as chair, beginning in 1984, of the Miami-Dade Republican Party. Sixty-eight percent of Cuban-Americans were registered Republicans in 1988, an increase of 19 percent from 1979, a jump credited largely to Jeb’s shrewd courting of Cuban politicians. He recognized early that harnessing the political clout of Cuban exiles would pay off as the community expanded, and he was right.</p>
<p>The Bush administration made more steps to appeal to this constituency, appointing the first Cuban-American, former HUD secretary Mel Martinez, to his Cabinet.</p>
<p>Jeb Bush, a fluent Spanish speaker whose wife grew up in a small Mexican town, is very popular with Florida’s Cubans. But, as Finnegan explains, their support isn’t a given even for him:</p>
<p />
<p>The Cuban exiles are not … just another constituency for Jeb Bush. Their pathos, their myopia, and his surprisingly deep involvement in their affairs-not to mention his own Presidential ambitions-make for an unusually delicate, powerful alliance.</p>
<p>The views of Florida’s two Cuban-American Members of Congress Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are unpredictable, for example. They oppose Castro but also NAFTA. Finnegan explains:</p>
<p />
<p>These are not, in other words, your grandfather’s right-wingers. Indeed, Diaz-Balart told me that his grandparents were, back in Cuba, great admirers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.</p>
<p>Bill Clinton won in 1996 with help from Cubans in Florida, one-third of whom voted for him. Democrats reason that Kerry could tie up the state if he grabs at least that share of the Cuban vote. They’re hoping he can capitalize on Bush’s failure to establish democracy in Cuba, and to provide Cuban-Americans with jobs, and on the president’s unpopular cuts for school and student loan funds. The Massachusetts senator’s strategy will reportedly <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/09/latino.bush/index.html" type="external">focus on exactly these issues</a>. And he’s been making the mandatory anti-Castro noises, too. He recently <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/%208156676.htm" type="external">described Cuba</a> to a Miami reporter as a “Stalinist, dictatorial state”</p>
<p>For these and other reasons, Florida, in the words of Karl Rove, is likely to be “ground zero” for the November election. Again.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Close (but no Cigar?)
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/close-no-cigar/
|
2004-03-12
| 4left
|
Close (but no Cigar?)
<p />
<p>The United States hasn’t had much luck, over five decades, in changing the political leadership in Cuba; Cubans, though, might well hold the key to this year’s U.S. presidential election.</p>
<p>And, yes, that means Florida might swing the election again. To explain: Florida — Miami in particular — is home to 850,000 Cubans and Cuban-Americans, half of whom are registered voters. As we know, unlike most Latinos, they generally vote Republican, because they like the hawkish GOP line on Castro. They certainly went for Bush in a big way in 2000. A quarter of a million more Cuban-Americans chose Bush than Gore, and the Cuban community aggressively–in some cases, physically–protested the recount in the state, where 537 ballots–and the good offices of the U.S. Supreme Court–decided the presidency.</p>
<p>Jeb Bush, Florida’s governor, has made a point of cultivating the Cuban community, and the community has responded in kind. But there are signs that his brother, the president, has upset Cubans by being — as they see it — soft on Castro. (Of course, a lot of Cubans in Florida won’t be satisfied with anything short of military invasion and regime change. Bush has tightened the flow of U.S. tourism and business to Cuba to further isolate Castro; but that’s clearly not enough.)</p>
<p>Many Cubans who were angry that Clinton returned Elian Gonzalez to relatives in Cuba are now ticked off that Bush left Fidel Castro in power even as he drove Saddam Hussein from Baghdad. More than 30 percent of Cubans polled recently by Univision <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/8156352.htm" type="external">disapproved</a> of Bush’s handling of Castro.</p>
<p>It’s not as if there’s a major defection in the works (after all, is it realistic to think Kerry would be harder on Castro?). But there’s a definite sense that the Cuban vote is up for grabs in a way that it hasn’t been for years.</p>
<p>Kerry <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/8129764.htm" type="external">is beating Bush</a> by 6 points in Florida, according to a poll done by the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times. Of Cubans polled, 56 percent favor Bush — a big drop from the 81 percent who voted for him four years ago.</p>
<p>For Cuban exiles, Castro’s takeover, in 1959, is a wound that just won’t heal. In the current New Yorker, William Finnegan describes the Miami’s “wormholes in time”:</p>
<p />
<p>You’ll be driving along a Miami freeway in 2004, listening to Radio Mambí-that’s a big Spanish-language talk station-and suddenly you’ll be in Cuba, 1961. Callers will be arguing bitterly about Che Guevara’s misunderstanding of the sugar industry. An old man will start telling the story of his brother’s violent death, at the hands of neighborhood militants, in Santiago de Cuba. He’ll describe every detail, until you can taste the day. Then he’ll start sobbing. The silence around his voice will grow while he tries to go on. He has wept every night in the decades since his brother’s death, he says, and he prays to God that justice will someday be done … This sort of thing is just electrifying to hear, and completely horrifying, but it’s also normal, everyday Miami.</p>
<p>A popular salsa tune on Miami airwaves sings of Bush’s betrayal of recent refugees. U.S. authorities allowed 69 percent of 25,000 Cuban refugees to stay in this country in 2002, but media images of boat exiles turned away from the Florida coast last year are causing anger.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help Bush that the Treasury Department is trying to put limits on the $1 billion that Cubans send annually to their families still living on the island.</p>
<p>The University of Florida’s Paolo Spadoni describes in the Orlando Sentinel the <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/services/site/premium/access-registered.intercept" type="external">mixed message</a> this sends:</p>
<p />
<p>At a time when the Bush administration is attempting to woo Cuban voters leading up to the presidential election, why would it take steps to cut off this aid? The idea of restricting money transfers could reflect an increasing frustration in Washington with the ironic results of the Cuban embargo.</p>
<p>The most contradictory element of the embargo is the establishment of a dual approach that severely restricts travel and financial transactions with respect to Cuba by American citizens of non-Cuban descent while granting Cuban-Americans special exemptions for family-related visits to the island and remittances. While U.S. policy was originally conceived as a way to increase economic pressure on the Castro government (and eventually hasten its demise) by stemming the flow of hard currency reaching Cuba, this “two-track” policy ended up throwing a lifeline to the same government it was supposed to undermine.</p>
<p>Harvard government professor Jorge Domínguez angered conservative Cuban leaders when he suggested that Bush and Castro, despite their mutual vitriol, <a href="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/8000295.htm" type="external">are allied</a> on immigration policy, the drug war, and trade. Last month Castro accused Bush at least twice of trying to assassinate him to please Cuban exiles. On the other hand, food exports to Cuba <a href="http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/02/17/rtr1264091.html" type="external">have grown by 80 percent</a> in the past year, making Cuba the 35th top U.S. agriculture market.</p>
<p>Cubans first flocked en masse to the United States during the 1959 revolution. Hard as it is to believe now, Cubans initially leaned Democratic because of the party’s support for civil rights, social welfare programs, and Cuban refugee assistance. But half of the island’s outflow to the U.S. mainland came after 1980, just as Ronald Reagan’s anti-Communist crusade was drawing exiles to the GOP. Jeb Bush cemented the party’s alliance with Cuban émigrés as chair, beginning in 1984, of the Miami-Dade Republican Party. Sixty-eight percent of Cuban-Americans were registered Republicans in 1988, an increase of 19 percent from 1979, a jump credited largely to Jeb’s shrewd courting of Cuban politicians. He recognized early that harnessing the political clout of Cuban exiles would pay off as the community expanded, and he was right.</p>
<p>The Bush administration made more steps to appeal to this constituency, appointing the first Cuban-American, former HUD secretary Mel Martinez, to his Cabinet.</p>
<p>Jeb Bush, a fluent Spanish speaker whose wife grew up in a small Mexican town, is very popular with Florida’s Cubans. But, as Finnegan explains, their support isn’t a given even for him:</p>
<p />
<p>The Cuban exiles are not … just another constituency for Jeb Bush. Their pathos, their myopia, and his surprisingly deep involvement in their affairs-not to mention his own Presidential ambitions-make for an unusually delicate, powerful alliance.</p>
<p>The views of Florida’s two Cuban-American Members of Congress Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are unpredictable, for example. They oppose Castro but also NAFTA. Finnegan explains:</p>
<p />
<p>These are not, in other words, your grandfather’s right-wingers. Indeed, Diaz-Balart told me that his grandparents were, back in Cuba, great admirers of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.</p>
<p>Bill Clinton won in 1996 with help from Cubans in Florida, one-third of whom voted for him. Democrats reason that Kerry could tie up the state if he grabs at least that share of the Cuban vote. They’re hoping he can capitalize on Bush’s failure to establish democracy in Cuba, and to provide Cuban-Americans with jobs, and on the president’s unpopular cuts for school and student loan funds. The Massachusetts senator’s strategy will reportedly <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/09/latino.bush/index.html" type="external">focus on exactly these issues</a>. And he’s been making the mandatory anti-Castro noises, too. He recently <a href="http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/%208156676.htm" type="external">described Cuba</a> to a Miami reporter as a “Stalinist, dictatorial state”</p>
<p>For these and other reasons, Florida, in the words of Karl Rove, is likely to be “ground zero” for the November election. Again.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 6,705 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>This undated photo provided by J.C. Penney shows the company's ad for its new xclusive lingerie collection in the U.S. with a partnership with Elle Macpherson, who along with Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and others became part of a new generation of supermodels in the 1980s. The collection will be in 300 of Penney's 1,100 stores starting April 11, 2014. (AP Photo/ J.C. Penney)</p>
<p>NEW YORK - J.C. Penney is hoping that some supermodel magic will win over shoppers in the lingerie department.</p>
<p>The beleaguered department store chain is launching an exclusive lingerie collection in the U.S. with a partnership with Elle Macpherson, who along with Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and others became part of a new generation of supermodels in the 1980s.</p>
<p>The collection will be in 300 of Penney's 1,100 stores starting April 11. Penney says it will wait to see how the brand fares before deciding whether to roll it out to its other stores.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The collection, called The Body by Elle Macpherson, which refers to her nickname, offers bras and panties in mostly cotton. Its emphasis is on the smoothest, most precise fit that can be worn every day.</p>
<p>The collection builds on Macpherson's lingerie business she founded in 1990 with the launch of an upscale collection of lacy and silk lingerie that's sold at upscale stores here and abroad including Bloomingdale's and Harrod's.</p>
<p>The Body Bras top out at around $50, while bras in the Elle Macpherson Intimates Collection can go as high as $150. The bras have four distinct silhouettes designed to suit varying needs and body shapes: the push up, a sporty demi-cut version, an unlined alternative, and a subtle lift.</p>
<p>"I created this for myself, because I thought there was a gap," Macpherson told The Associated Press. "I really wanted to address this idea of shape."</p>
<p>Macpherson, who is creative director for a series of fashion business ventures, said Penney offers the opportunity to design for a wider audience.</p>
<p>The collection comes as Penney is trying to recover from a botched transformation spearheaded by its former CEO Ron Johnson, who was fired in April 2013 after 17 months on the job. That month, Mike Ullman, Johnson's predecessor, returned to the helm and has restored frequent sales events and basic merchandise to help reverse plunging sales and massive losses.</p>
<p>A key focus: revitalizing its lingerie business. The partnership with Macpherson was forged under Johnson's regime. But under the former Apple executive, Penney got rid of bra specialists and its store brand Ambrielle, a conservative line of lingerie. In February, Penney brought back the specialists and Ambrielle.</p>
<p>Also, more than 600 Penney stores will see their lingerie areas refreshed with new graphics and special fixtures.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Penney executives said Victoria's Secret benefited the most from Penney's woes when it came to lingerie sales.</p>
<p>"By offering the best brands, a greater level of service and an inspiring environment, J.C. Penney is making the necessary improvements to reclaim its market share," said Ivy Spargo, a senior vice president for Penney.</p>
<p>Macpherson's collection will be at the high end of Penney's offerings. Bras are priced anywhere from $40 to $49, while panties will be priced at $12 to $14.</p>
<p>Spargo says Penney shoppers will be able to relate to Macpherson outside of being a celebrity.</p>
<p>"She's a working mom. She's a business owner," she said.</p>
<p>Macpherson, who is based in London but travels around the world, says she's "passionate" about lingerie. It began in 1990 with her partnership with Bendon Limited Apparel, the same manufacturer that is producing the line for Penney. It marked one of the first examples of a model becoming a fashion brand.</p>
<p>Macpherson said she created her original collection back then because she saw a void between European-style lingerie and the comfort that American brands offered.</p>
<p>"As a model, I was constantly getting undressed," Macpherson added. "I wanted to make sure I looked good."</p>
|
Penney teams up with Elle Macpherson for lingerie
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/379083/penney-teams-up-with-elle-macpherson-for-lingerie.html
| 2least
|
Penney teams up with Elle Macpherson for lingerie
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>This undated photo provided by J.C. Penney shows the company's ad for its new xclusive lingerie collection in the U.S. with a partnership with Elle Macpherson, who along with Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and others became part of a new generation of supermodels in the 1980s. The collection will be in 300 of Penney's 1,100 stores starting April 11, 2014. (AP Photo/ J.C. Penney)</p>
<p>NEW YORK - J.C. Penney is hoping that some supermodel magic will win over shoppers in the lingerie department.</p>
<p>The beleaguered department store chain is launching an exclusive lingerie collection in the U.S. with a partnership with Elle Macpherson, who along with Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and others became part of a new generation of supermodels in the 1980s.</p>
<p>The collection will be in 300 of Penney's 1,100 stores starting April 11. Penney says it will wait to see how the brand fares before deciding whether to roll it out to its other stores.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The collection, called The Body by Elle Macpherson, which refers to her nickname, offers bras and panties in mostly cotton. Its emphasis is on the smoothest, most precise fit that can be worn every day.</p>
<p>The collection builds on Macpherson's lingerie business she founded in 1990 with the launch of an upscale collection of lacy and silk lingerie that's sold at upscale stores here and abroad including Bloomingdale's and Harrod's.</p>
<p>The Body Bras top out at around $50, while bras in the Elle Macpherson Intimates Collection can go as high as $150. The bras have four distinct silhouettes designed to suit varying needs and body shapes: the push up, a sporty demi-cut version, an unlined alternative, and a subtle lift.</p>
<p>"I created this for myself, because I thought there was a gap," Macpherson told The Associated Press. "I really wanted to address this idea of shape."</p>
<p>Macpherson, who is creative director for a series of fashion business ventures, said Penney offers the opportunity to design for a wider audience.</p>
<p>The collection comes as Penney is trying to recover from a botched transformation spearheaded by its former CEO Ron Johnson, who was fired in April 2013 after 17 months on the job. That month, Mike Ullman, Johnson's predecessor, returned to the helm and has restored frequent sales events and basic merchandise to help reverse plunging sales and massive losses.</p>
<p>A key focus: revitalizing its lingerie business. The partnership with Macpherson was forged under Johnson's regime. But under the former Apple executive, Penney got rid of bra specialists and its store brand Ambrielle, a conservative line of lingerie. In February, Penney brought back the specialists and Ambrielle.</p>
<p>Also, more than 600 Penney stores will see their lingerie areas refreshed with new graphics and special fixtures.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Penney executives said Victoria's Secret benefited the most from Penney's woes when it came to lingerie sales.</p>
<p>"By offering the best brands, a greater level of service and an inspiring environment, J.C. Penney is making the necessary improvements to reclaim its market share," said Ivy Spargo, a senior vice president for Penney.</p>
<p>Macpherson's collection will be at the high end of Penney's offerings. Bras are priced anywhere from $40 to $49, while panties will be priced at $12 to $14.</p>
<p>Spargo says Penney shoppers will be able to relate to Macpherson outside of being a celebrity.</p>
<p>"She's a working mom. She's a business owner," she said.</p>
<p>Macpherson, who is based in London but travels around the world, says she's "passionate" about lingerie. It began in 1990 with her partnership with Bendon Limited Apparel, the same manufacturer that is producing the line for Penney. It marked one of the first examples of a model becoming a fashion brand.</p>
<p>Macpherson said she created her original collection back then because she saw a void between European-style lingerie and the comfort that American brands offered.</p>
<p>"As a model, I was constantly getting undressed," Macpherson added. "I wanted to make sure I looked good."</p>
| 6,706 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Attorney Jason Flores-Williams said that his Whistleblower Defense League will seek to dissuade federal attorneys from indicting Deric Lostutter, 26, of Winchester, Ky.</p>
<p>Flores-Williams said his client, who is being represented pro bono by the attorney’s organization, is being targeted for speaking out about the infamous rape case in Steubenville, Ohio, where football players were accused of raping a drunken girl.</p>
<p>He said the April raid on Lostutter’s home by heavily armed agents in riot gear was “absolutely insane” and speaks to the fear the government has over those who use the Internet for activism.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“They sent an armed squadron into his home to seize all of his property,” Flores-Williams said.</p>
<p>The attorney said the Whistleblower Defense League, which he founded about three months ago, is a group of 25 criminal defense attorneys from across the country who volunteer their time to defend, he says, “anyone who speaks for open democracy.” Flores-Williams said his group is especially concerned with protecting whistle-blowers, journalists, bloggers and similar-minded people from legal threats from the U.S. government.</p>
<p>“(These people) are willing to put their lives on the line to maintain a democracy,” Flores-Williams said.</p>
<p>The organization raises money to cover its expenses through donations linked through its website, WhistleBlowerDefenseLeague.com. Lostutter’s defense fund has raised $44,629 as of Thursday. The money pays for attorneys’ travel fees, fees for expert witnesses, document transcription costs and, potentially, security for the legal team.</p>
<p>Lostutter identifies himself on his website as KYAnonymous, a member of the KnightSec group within the Anonymous hacker-activist collective. Lostutter states his home was raided by M16-wielding FBI agents who were investigating any link he could have to the hacking of RollRedRoll.com.</p>
<p>That website, according to the New York Times, is a fan page for the Steubenville High School Big Red football team in Ohio. Steubenville made national headlines last year after a 16-year-old girl was raped at parties following a football scrimmage in August. Two players from that team, Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, were found guilty of raping the girl and were sentenced to time in juvenile detention facilities.</p>
<p>A copy of the federal warrant served on Lostutter’s home states agents were seeking, among other things, records or information relating to a conspiracy to hack the website and the email of the site’s administrator.</p>
<p>FBI spokesman Todd Lindgren had nothing to say regarding the investigation and he would not respond to Lostutter’s allegations that the FBI used assault weapons to serve a warrant on someone being investigated for a computer crime.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I’m not aware of the incident you’re speaking of directly,” Lindgren said. “I have no knowledge of it.”</p>
<p>Flores-Williams said the FBI could have just called his client and he accused the government of sending the SWAT team to serve the warrant in an effort to intimidate whistle-blowers.</p>
<p>Flores-Williams described his client as a regular guy who’s into computers and DJ-ing.</p>
<p>“He’s a total Santa Fe dude,” Flores-Williams said.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
SF attorney on hacker case
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/211675/sf-attorney-on-hacker-case.html
|
2013-06-18
| 2least
|
SF attorney on hacker case
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Attorney Jason Flores-Williams said that his Whistleblower Defense League will seek to dissuade federal attorneys from indicting Deric Lostutter, 26, of Winchester, Ky.</p>
<p>Flores-Williams said his client, who is being represented pro bono by the attorney’s organization, is being targeted for speaking out about the infamous rape case in Steubenville, Ohio, where football players were accused of raping a drunken girl.</p>
<p>He said the April raid on Lostutter’s home by heavily armed agents in riot gear was “absolutely insane” and speaks to the fear the government has over those who use the Internet for activism.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“They sent an armed squadron into his home to seize all of his property,” Flores-Williams said.</p>
<p>The attorney said the Whistleblower Defense League, which he founded about three months ago, is a group of 25 criminal defense attorneys from across the country who volunteer their time to defend, he says, “anyone who speaks for open democracy.” Flores-Williams said his group is especially concerned with protecting whistle-blowers, journalists, bloggers and similar-minded people from legal threats from the U.S. government.</p>
<p>“(These people) are willing to put their lives on the line to maintain a democracy,” Flores-Williams said.</p>
<p>The organization raises money to cover its expenses through donations linked through its website, WhistleBlowerDefenseLeague.com. Lostutter’s defense fund has raised $44,629 as of Thursday. The money pays for attorneys’ travel fees, fees for expert witnesses, document transcription costs and, potentially, security for the legal team.</p>
<p>Lostutter identifies himself on his website as KYAnonymous, a member of the KnightSec group within the Anonymous hacker-activist collective. Lostutter states his home was raided by M16-wielding FBI agents who were investigating any link he could have to the hacking of RollRedRoll.com.</p>
<p>That website, according to the New York Times, is a fan page for the Steubenville High School Big Red football team in Ohio. Steubenville made national headlines last year after a 16-year-old girl was raped at parties following a football scrimmage in August. Two players from that team, Trent Mays, 17, and Ma’lik Richmond, 16, were found guilty of raping the girl and were sentenced to time in juvenile detention facilities.</p>
<p>A copy of the federal warrant served on Lostutter’s home states agents were seeking, among other things, records or information relating to a conspiracy to hack the website and the email of the site’s administrator.</p>
<p>FBI spokesman Todd Lindgren had nothing to say regarding the investigation and he would not respond to Lostutter’s allegations that the FBI used assault weapons to serve a warrant on someone being investigated for a computer crime.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“I’m not aware of the incident you’re speaking of directly,” Lindgren said. “I have no knowledge of it.”</p>
<p>Flores-Williams said the FBI could have just called his client and he accused the government of sending the SWAT team to serve the warrant in an effort to intimidate whistle-blowers.</p>
<p>Flores-Williams described his client as a regular guy who’s into computers and DJ-ing.</p>
<p>“He’s a total Santa Fe dude,” Flores-Williams said.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 6,707 |
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Monday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Pick 3 Day" game were:</p>
<p>2-4-2, Sum It Up: 8</p>
<p>(two, four, two; Sum It Up: eight)</p>
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Monday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Pick 3 Day" game were:</p>
<p>2-4-2, Sum It Up: 8</p>
<p>(two, four, two; Sum It Up: eight)</p>
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 3 Day' game
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/ef76e2adaacb4236994d3e1089a0c627
|
2018-01-01
| 2least
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 3 Day' game
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Monday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Pick 3 Day" game were:</p>
<p>2-4-2, Sum It Up: 8</p>
<p>(two, four, two; Sum It Up: eight)</p>
<p>AUSTIN, Texas (AP) _ The winning numbers in Monday afternoon's drawing of the Texas Lottery's "Pick 3 Day" game were:</p>
<p>2-4-2, Sum It Up: 8</p>
<p>(two, four, two; Sum It Up: eight)</p>
| 6,708 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Swedish melodic death metal band is promoting its latest album, “Atoma,” on its current tour, and the new music has been well-received.</p>
<p>“We’ve been really kind of focused on a lot of new material,” frontman Mikael Stanne said. “We play, I think, some six songs off the new album. It’s a little bit scary, but it’s proven to be very much appreciated. That’s the best review we can get for a new album. When you can get away playing many new songs then that’s awesome.”</p>
<p>Putting together a set list for the tour was a tedious task.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This is one of the longest shows that we’ve done, so we try to really put together a cool and interesting set list, but it’s always a pain in the ass to do that,” Stanne said. “It’s really difficult, but I think we’ve put together something that is amazing, and I think it feels like it’s sounding better than we’ve ever had. Our show is better than ever, and I couldn’t be happier.”</p>
<p>The title track, “Atoma,” has been Stanne’s favorite to perform live on this tour.</p>
<p>“It goes over really well, and it’s fun to sing,” he said. “It’s a perfect song in a live environment. Sometimes you don’t really know which songs will work and which won’t, but that song was kind of like, this is probably going to work pretty damn well on stage, and it really has.”</p>
<p>What began as a teenage pastime developed into a successful career for Dark Tranquillity.</p>
<p>“I remember laughing at bands who were in their 30s and (thinking) you still play metal after you’re 30 and here we are in our 40s and doing great,” Stanne said. “We started this band when we were 14-15 years old, and it was just something to kind of kill time and do something that was a fun thing to do, and here we are 27 years later.”</p>
<p>Dark Tranquillity seeks to raise the bar with each of its albums.</p>
<p>“We always try to change as much as possible within our kind of constraints or genre or whatever because it’s always easy to throw together a couple of riffs and melodies and call it an album,” Stanne said. “We could do that in a heartbeat. I guess we always set super-high goals for ourselves. Our expectations on ourselves and each other is super-high. We also always try to recapture that creative feeling we had as kids when we started the band, because that then was really exciting.”</p>
<p>A new approach is always a part of writing new music for Dark Tranquillity.</p>
<p>“You always try to find that creative feeling that, whoa, we should be doing something totally new now,” Stanne said. “It’s something that we haven’t done before. This is exciting. We always try to move as far away from ourselves when we start writing. … We always try to have a new approach with each album, a different mindset or different basic idea of what the song should be.”</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Swedish band Dark Tranquillity takes a new approach on each album
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/900154/fresh-metal.html
| 2least
|
Swedish band Dark Tranquillity takes a new approach on each album
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Swedish melodic death metal band is promoting its latest album, “Atoma,” on its current tour, and the new music has been well-received.</p>
<p>“We’ve been really kind of focused on a lot of new material,” frontman Mikael Stanne said. “We play, I think, some six songs off the new album. It’s a little bit scary, but it’s proven to be very much appreciated. That’s the best review we can get for a new album. When you can get away playing many new songs then that’s awesome.”</p>
<p>Putting together a set list for the tour was a tedious task.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This is one of the longest shows that we’ve done, so we try to really put together a cool and interesting set list, but it’s always a pain in the ass to do that,” Stanne said. “It’s really difficult, but I think we’ve put together something that is amazing, and I think it feels like it’s sounding better than we’ve ever had. Our show is better than ever, and I couldn’t be happier.”</p>
<p>The title track, “Atoma,” has been Stanne’s favorite to perform live on this tour.</p>
<p>“It goes over really well, and it’s fun to sing,” he said. “It’s a perfect song in a live environment. Sometimes you don’t really know which songs will work and which won’t, but that song was kind of like, this is probably going to work pretty damn well on stage, and it really has.”</p>
<p>What began as a teenage pastime developed into a successful career for Dark Tranquillity.</p>
<p>“I remember laughing at bands who were in their 30s and (thinking) you still play metal after you’re 30 and here we are in our 40s and doing great,” Stanne said. “We started this band when we were 14-15 years old, and it was just something to kind of kill time and do something that was a fun thing to do, and here we are 27 years later.”</p>
<p>Dark Tranquillity seeks to raise the bar with each of its albums.</p>
<p>“We always try to change as much as possible within our kind of constraints or genre or whatever because it’s always easy to throw together a couple of riffs and melodies and call it an album,” Stanne said. “We could do that in a heartbeat. I guess we always set super-high goals for ourselves. Our expectations on ourselves and each other is super-high. We also always try to recapture that creative feeling we had as kids when we started the band, because that then was really exciting.”</p>
<p>A new approach is always a part of writing new music for Dark Tranquillity.</p>
<p>“You always try to find that creative feeling that, whoa, we should be doing something totally new now,” Stanne said. “It’s something that we haven’t done before. This is exciting. We always try to move as far away from ourselves when we start writing. … We always try to have a new approach with each album, a different mindset or different basic idea of what the song should be.”</p>
<p />
<p />
| 6,709 |
|
<p>(The Sports Xchange) – The NBA and its Players Association announced Tuesday a new format for the 2018 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles that will abandon the traditional Eastern Conference versus Western Conference matchup.</p>
<p>Under the new format, two captains will pick the teams from a pool of 24 players who were voted in by fans, media and fellow players. The captains will be the top vote-getters from each conference as chosen by the fans.</p>
<p>“I’m thrilled with what the players and the league have done to improve the All-Star Game, which has been a priority for all of us,” NBPA president Chris Paul of the Houston Rockets said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to putting on an entertaining show in L.A.”</p>
<p>The voting process and process to pick the head coaches will remain unchanged. Additionally, each team will select a Los Angeles-based or national charity to raise donations for.</p>
<p>“We’re excited about the new All-Star format and appreciate the players’ willingness to try something new,” said Byron Spruell, the league’s president of league operations.</p>
<p>The 67th annual All-Star Game takes place February 18 at Staples Center.</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>
|
NBA: League unveils new All-Star Game format
| false |
https://newsline.com/nba-league-unveils-new-all-star-game-format/
|
2017-10-03
| 1right-center
|
NBA: League unveils new All-Star Game format
<p>(The Sports Xchange) – The NBA and its Players Association announced Tuesday a new format for the 2018 NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles that will abandon the traditional Eastern Conference versus Western Conference matchup.</p>
<p>Under the new format, two captains will pick the teams from a pool of 24 players who were voted in by fans, media and fellow players. The captains will be the top vote-getters from each conference as chosen by the fans.</p>
<p>“I’m thrilled with what the players and the league have done to improve the All-Star Game, which has been a priority for all of us,” NBPA president Chris Paul of the Houston Rockets said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to putting on an entertaining show in L.A.”</p>
<p>The voting process and process to pick the head coaches will remain unchanged. Additionally, each team will select a Los Angeles-based or national charity to raise donations for.</p>
<p>“We’re excited about the new All-Star format and appreciate the players’ willingness to try something new,” said Byron Spruell, the league’s president of league operations.</p>
<p>The 67th annual All-Star Game takes place February 18 at Staples Center.</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>
| 6,710 |
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — As lawmakers work on creating a task force meant to stamp out sexual harassment at the Washington Legislature, a Senate panel will consider bills meant to address such misconduct in all workplaces.</p>
<p>Democratic Sen. Karen Keiser of Des Moines has introduced three bills on the issue that are set to receive a public hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, of which she is chairwoman.</p>
<p>The bills include Senate Bill 5996, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements that prevent employees from disclosing sexual harassment or assault.</p>
<p>Another measure, Senate Bill 6313, would void any employment contract, including arbitration agreements, that don't have terms protecting an employee's rights to file sexual harassment or assault complaints with authorities.</p>
<p>The third bill, Senate Bill 6471, would direct the Human Rights Commission to create a work group — including representatives from the business community as well as advocates for those affected by sexual harassment — to develop model policies and best practices for employers and employees to keep workplaces safe from sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"We've all seen from the events of the past year that sexual harassment is a lot more prevalent than we have been aware of, sadly," Keiser said. "It's been a problem that's been swept under the rug. The only way to correct problems is to bring them out into the light. That's what these efforts are trying to do."</p>
<p>Leaders in the House and Senate have been reviewing policies and procedures on how best to move forward on addressing sexual harassment, training and reporting procedures following a series of stories and allegations that have arisen out of the Washington state Capitol in recent months.</p>
<p>More than 200 women — including lobbyists and lawmakers — signed a letter in November calling for a culture change at the Capitol. The signers, which included a bipartisan group of more than 40 lawmakers, wrote that as "women serving and working in the legislative and political realm, we add our voices to the chorus of 'enough.'"</p>
<p>Last week, the state House passed a resolution setting up a legislative task force on sexual harassment, and the Senate is expected to follow suit soon. Under the measure, the task force will include eight lawmakers representing the four political caucuses, four lobbyists and a representative from the offices of the secretary of the Senate and the chief clerk of the House.</p>
<p>The group will review and make recommendations regarding cultural changes in the legislative community, including adopting a code of conduct, as well as education and training on preventing sexual harassment.</p>
<p>Rebecca Johnson, a lobbyist who was involved with the November letter, said she was happy with the actions the Legislature has taken thus far, but added that the session is just the start of a long-term conversation surrounding sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"This is our best chance of really shifting the culture here and creating policies that work for everyone," she said.</p>
<p>Keiser said that it's important to use the momentum of the national conversation surrounding sexual harassment and assault to make meaningful changes.</p>
<p>"It's important to change our laws, not just our attitudes," she said.</p>
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — As lawmakers work on creating a task force meant to stamp out sexual harassment at the Washington Legislature, a Senate panel will consider bills meant to address such misconduct in all workplaces.</p>
<p>Democratic Sen. Karen Keiser of Des Moines has introduced three bills on the issue that are set to receive a public hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, of which she is chairwoman.</p>
<p>The bills include Senate Bill 5996, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements that prevent employees from disclosing sexual harassment or assault.</p>
<p>Another measure, Senate Bill 6313, would void any employment contract, including arbitration agreements, that don't have terms protecting an employee's rights to file sexual harassment or assault complaints with authorities.</p>
<p>The third bill, Senate Bill 6471, would direct the Human Rights Commission to create a work group — including representatives from the business community as well as advocates for those affected by sexual harassment — to develop model policies and best practices for employers and employees to keep workplaces safe from sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"We've all seen from the events of the past year that sexual harassment is a lot more prevalent than we have been aware of, sadly," Keiser said. "It's been a problem that's been swept under the rug. The only way to correct problems is to bring them out into the light. That's what these efforts are trying to do."</p>
<p>Leaders in the House and Senate have been reviewing policies and procedures on how best to move forward on addressing sexual harassment, training and reporting procedures following a series of stories and allegations that have arisen out of the Washington state Capitol in recent months.</p>
<p>More than 200 women — including lobbyists and lawmakers — signed a letter in November calling for a culture change at the Capitol. The signers, which included a bipartisan group of more than 40 lawmakers, wrote that as "women serving and working in the legislative and political realm, we add our voices to the chorus of 'enough.'"</p>
<p>Last week, the state House passed a resolution setting up a legislative task force on sexual harassment, and the Senate is expected to follow suit soon. Under the measure, the task force will include eight lawmakers representing the four political caucuses, four lobbyists and a representative from the offices of the secretary of the Senate and the chief clerk of the House.</p>
<p>The group will review and make recommendations regarding cultural changes in the legislative community, including adopting a code of conduct, as well as education and training on preventing sexual harassment.</p>
<p>Rebecca Johnson, a lobbyist who was involved with the November letter, said she was happy with the actions the Legislature has taken thus far, but added that the session is just the start of a long-term conversation surrounding sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"This is our best chance of really shifting the culture here and creating policies that work for everyone," she said.</p>
<p>Keiser said that it's important to use the momentum of the national conversation surrounding sexual harassment and assault to make meaningful changes.</p>
<p>"It's important to change our laws, not just our attitudes," she said.</p>
|
State Senate panel eyes slate of sexual harassment bills
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/8705fc5f7b4e4c6cbd9fced1db151352
|
2018-01-23
| 2least
|
State Senate panel eyes slate of sexual harassment bills
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — As lawmakers work on creating a task force meant to stamp out sexual harassment at the Washington Legislature, a Senate panel will consider bills meant to address such misconduct in all workplaces.</p>
<p>Democratic Sen. Karen Keiser of Des Moines has introduced three bills on the issue that are set to receive a public hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, of which she is chairwoman.</p>
<p>The bills include Senate Bill 5996, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements that prevent employees from disclosing sexual harassment or assault.</p>
<p>Another measure, Senate Bill 6313, would void any employment contract, including arbitration agreements, that don't have terms protecting an employee's rights to file sexual harassment or assault complaints with authorities.</p>
<p>The third bill, Senate Bill 6471, would direct the Human Rights Commission to create a work group — including representatives from the business community as well as advocates for those affected by sexual harassment — to develop model policies and best practices for employers and employees to keep workplaces safe from sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"We've all seen from the events of the past year that sexual harassment is a lot more prevalent than we have been aware of, sadly," Keiser said. "It's been a problem that's been swept under the rug. The only way to correct problems is to bring them out into the light. That's what these efforts are trying to do."</p>
<p>Leaders in the House and Senate have been reviewing policies and procedures on how best to move forward on addressing sexual harassment, training and reporting procedures following a series of stories and allegations that have arisen out of the Washington state Capitol in recent months.</p>
<p>More than 200 women — including lobbyists and lawmakers — signed a letter in November calling for a culture change at the Capitol. The signers, which included a bipartisan group of more than 40 lawmakers, wrote that as "women serving and working in the legislative and political realm, we add our voices to the chorus of 'enough.'"</p>
<p>Last week, the state House passed a resolution setting up a legislative task force on sexual harassment, and the Senate is expected to follow suit soon. Under the measure, the task force will include eight lawmakers representing the four political caucuses, four lobbyists and a representative from the offices of the secretary of the Senate and the chief clerk of the House.</p>
<p>The group will review and make recommendations regarding cultural changes in the legislative community, including adopting a code of conduct, as well as education and training on preventing sexual harassment.</p>
<p>Rebecca Johnson, a lobbyist who was involved with the November letter, said she was happy with the actions the Legislature has taken thus far, but added that the session is just the start of a long-term conversation surrounding sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"This is our best chance of really shifting the culture here and creating policies that work for everyone," she said.</p>
<p>Keiser said that it's important to use the momentum of the national conversation surrounding sexual harassment and assault to make meaningful changes.</p>
<p>"It's important to change our laws, not just our attitudes," she said.</p>
<p>OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — As lawmakers work on creating a task force meant to stamp out sexual harassment at the Washington Legislature, a Senate panel will consider bills meant to address such misconduct in all workplaces.</p>
<p>Democratic Sen. Karen Keiser of Des Moines has introduced three bills on the issue that are set to receive a public hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Labor and Commerce Committee, of which she is chairwoman.</p>
<p>The bills include Senate Bill 5996, which prohibits nondisclosure agreements that prevent employees from disclosing sexual harassment or assault.</p>
<p>Another measure, Senate Bill 6313, would void any employment contract, including arbitration agreements, that don't have terms protecting an employee's rights to file sexual harassment or assault complaints with authorities.</p>
<p>The third bill, Senate Bill 6471, would direct the Human Rights Commission to create a work group — including representatives from the business community as well as advocates for those affected by sexual harassment — to develop model policies and best practices for employers and employees to keep workplaces safe from sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"We've all seen from the events of the past year that sexual harassment is a lot more prevalent than we have been aware of, sadly," Keiser said. "It's been a problem that's been swept under the rug. The only way to correct problems is to bring them out into the light. That's what these efforts are trying to do."</p>
<p>Leaders in the House and Senate have been reviewing policies and procedures on how best to move forward on addressing sexual harassment, training and reporting procedures following a series of stories and allegations that have arisen out of the Washington state Capitol in recent months.</p>
<p>More than 200 women — including lobbyists and lawmakers — signed a letter in November calling for a culture change at the Capitol. The signers, which included a bipartisan group of more than 40 lawmakers, wrote that as "women serving and working in the legislative and political realm, we add our voices to the chorus of 'enough.'"</p>
<p>Last week, the state House passed a resolution setting up a legislative task force on sexual harassment, and the Senate is expected to follow suit soon. Under the measure, the task force will include eight lawmakers representing the four political caucuses, four lobbyists and a representative from the offices of the secretary of the Senate and the chief clerk of the House.</p>
<p>The group will review and make recommendations regarding cultural changes in the legislative community, including adopting a code of conduct, as well as education and training on preventing sexual harassment.</p>
<p>Rebecca Johnson, a lobbyist who was involved with the November letter, said she was happy with the actions the Legislature has taken thus far, but added that the session is just the start of a long-term conversation surrounding sexual harassment.</p>
<p>"This is our best chance of really shifting the culture here and creating policies that work for everyone," she said.</p>
<p>Keiser said that it's important to use the momentum of the national conversation surrounding sexual harassment and assault to make meaningful changes.</p>
<p>"It's important to change our laws, not just our attitudes," she said.</p>
| 6,711 |
<p>She’s got eight rugrats underfoot. Her <a href="http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20278472,00.html" type="external">husband Jon</a> may have a 23-year-old woman on the side. But what’s keeping Kate Gosselin, the matriarch of the “Jon &amp; Kate Plus 8″ brood, sane?</p>
<p>Her hair. It seems viewers can’t get enough of Kate’s hedgehog ‘do, which features long, highlighted strands in the front and spikes in the back. “Everybody wants it,” she bragged to Entertainment Weekly. “My hair stylist gets calls from all across the country.”</p>
<p>But you can’t have it, beyotch! “I have very, very thick hair, so it’s not going to work for everybody,” she warned.</p>
<p>You’ve got to admit, Kate personal life might become tabloid hell if “Jon &amp; Kate Head to Divorce Court,” but at least she loves her hair. Sometimes, we know, that’s all we need. [ <a href="http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/05/kate-gosselin-f.html" type="external">Entertainment Weekly</a>]</p>
|
At Least Kate Gosselin’s Got Great Hair, Right?
| true |
http://thefrisky.com/post/246-at-least-kate-gosselins-got-great-hair-right/
|
2018-10-04
| 4left
|
At Least Kate Gosselin’s Got Great Hair, Right?
<p>She’s got eight rugrats underfoot. Her <a href="http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20278472,00.html" type="external">husband Jon</a> may have a 23-year-old woman on the side. But what’s keeping Kate Gosselin, the matriarch of the “Jon &amp; Kate Plus 8″ brood, sane?</p>
<p>Her hair. It seems viewers can’t get enough of Kate’s hedgehog ‘do, which features long, highlighted strands in the front and spikes in the back. “Everybody wants it,” she bragged to Entertainment Weekly. “My hair stylist gets calls from all across the country.”</p>
<p>But you can’t have it, beyotch! “I have very, very thick hair, so it’s not going to work for everybody,” she warned.</p>
<p>You’ve got to admit, Kate personal life might become tabloid hell if “Jon &amp; Kate Head to Divorce Court,” but at least she loves her hair. Sometimes, we know, that’s all we need. [ <a href="http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/05/kate-gosselin-f.html" type="external">Entertainment Weekly</a>]</p>
| 6,712 |
<p>When George W. Bush nominated judges John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2010/05/10/flashback-flashback-nets-were-quick-tag-alito-and-roberts-ultra-and-har" type="external" /> <a href="" type="internal">the networks routinely described them</a> as "conservative" and even "very conservative" and "ultraconservative." Last year they applied <a href="" type="internal">more "conservative" tags to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's critics</a> than "liberal" labels to her. But the early stories on President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan routinely avoided describing her as a liberal.</p>
<p>In six evening news stories and eight morning news segments since her official press conference on Monday morning, the broadcast networks have employed only one liberal label, on CBS. ABC and NBC offered none.</p>
<p>On <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2010/05/10/only-cbs-ids-kagan-left-others-tout-her-powerhouse-accomplished-poker-p" type="external" /> <a href="" type="internal">Monday's Evening News</a>, CBS's Jan Crawford declared "her career has put her solidly on the left," but contended "she will have significant conservative support among academics and lawyers" and warned "that support alarms some liberals."But on <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2010/05/11/cbs-early-show-sees-kagan-not-liberal-enough-maybe-right" type="external" /> <a href="" type="internal">Tuesday's Early Show</a>, CBS insisted on pushing the notion that Kagan was a closet moderate. Co-host Harry Smith told Vice President Biden: "Liberals feel let down because she would be filling a seat left by John Paul Stevens, they don't feel like she's enough - has enough gravitas to fill his shoes."Co-host Maggie Rodriguez argued with Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions: "When she worked for the Clinton administration, Ms. Kagan asked the President to support a ban on all abortions of viable fetuses except when the mother's health was at risk. And some analysts have used that example to show that she may actually shift the court to the right, compared with Justice Stevens."Rodriguez seriously exaggerated Kagan's advice in 1997 to support a Tom Daschle compromise on a proposed ban on the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure - which is narrower and not synonymous with all late-term abortions. Sen. Sessions did insist on ABC "We know she is a very active, political Democrat, on the left side of the Democratic Party."The networks' intentional confusion of Kagan's political ideology stands in stark contrast with the Bush years. While ABC had no label for Kagan, on ABC's Good Morning America on <a href="http://newsbusters.org/node/2606" type="external">Halloween 2005,</a> Jessica Yellin (now with CNN) issued five scary conservative labels in under 50 seconds, describing Alito as someone who will please Bush's "conservative base," has "established conservative credentials," is "a law and order conservative," who is "in the mold of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia" and whose "writing is so similar to the conservative justice's, he's sometimes nicknamed 'Scalito.'"ABC, CBS, and NBC aggressively ignored documentary evidence that Kagan was a fervent liberal. On the Fox News Channel, reporter Shannon Bream quoted liberals downplaying her ideology, but also noted "Kagan wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper saying she, quote, 'absorbed liberal principles early,' and went on to lament the success of those she called, quote, 'anonymous but Moral Majority-backed avengers of innocent life.' Kagan also said she looked forward to a time when a, quote, 'more leftist left will once again come to the fore.'"Related BiasAlert: <a href="" type="internal">Ten Times More "Conservative" Tags for Samuel Alito than "Liberal" Labels for Elena Kagan</a>.</p>
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Pretending Elena Kagan's Mind Is a Mystery
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http://mrc.org/realitycheck/realitycheck/2010/20100511042940.aspx
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Pretending Elena Kagan's Mind Is a Mystery
<p>When George W. Bush nominated judges John Roberts and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court, <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2010/05/10/flashback-flashback-nets-were-quick-tag-alito-and-roberts-ultra-and-har" type="external" /> <a href="" type="internal">the networks routinely described them</a> as "conservative" and even "very conservative" and "ultraconservative." Last year they applied <a href="" type="internal">more "conservative" tags to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's critics</a> than "liberal" labels to her. But the early stories on President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan routinely avoided describing her as a liberal.</p>
<p>In six evening news stories and eight morning news segments since her official press conference on Monday morning, the broadcast networks have employed only one liberal label, on CBS. ABC and NBC offered none.</p>
<p>On <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2010/05/10/only-cbs-ids-kagan-left-others-tout-her-powerhouse-accomplished-poker-p" type="external" /> <a href="" type="internal">Monday's Evening News</a>, CBS's Jan Crawford declared "her career has put her solidly on the left," but contended "she will have significant conservative support among academics and lawyers" and warned "that support alarms some liberals."But on <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drennen/2010/05/11/cbs-early-show-sees-kagan-not-liberal-enough-maybe-right" type="external" /> <a href="" type="internal">Tuesday's Early Show</a>, CBS insisted on pushing the notion that Kagan was a closet moderate. Co-host Harry Smith told Vice President Biden: "Liberals feel let down because she would be filling a seat left by John Paul Stevens, they don't feel like she's enough - has enough gravitas to fill his shoes."Co-host Maggie Rodriguez argued with Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions: "When she worked for the Clinton administration, Ms. Kagan asked the President to support a ban on all abortions of viable fetuses except when the mother's health was at risk. And some analysts have used that example to show that she may actually shift the court to the right, compared with Justice Stevens."Rodriguez seriously exaggerated Kagan's advice in 1997 to support a Tom Daschle compromise on a proposed ban on the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure - which is narrower and not synonymous with all late-term abortions. Sen. Sessions did insist on ABC "We know she is a very active, political Democrat, on the left side of the Democratic Party."The networks' intentional confusion of Kagan's political ideology stands in stark contrast with the Bush years. While ABC had no label for Kagan, on ABC's Good Morning America on <a href="http://newsbusters.org/node/2606" type="external">Halloween 2005,</a> Jessica Yellin (now with CNN) issued five scary conservative labels in under 50 seconds, describing Alito as someone who will please Bush's "conservative base," has "established conservative credentials," is "a law and order conservative," who is "in the mold of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia" and whose "writing is so similar to the conservative justice's, he's sometimes nicknamed 'Scalito.'"ABC, CBS, and NBC aggressively ignored documentary evidence that Kagan was a fervent liberal. On the Fox News Channel, reporter Shannon Bream quoted liberals downplaying her ideology, but also noted "Kagan wrote an opinion piece for the student newspaper saying she, quote, 'absorbed liberal principles early,' and went on to lament the success of those she called, quote, 'anonymous but Moral Majority-backed avengers of innocent life.' Kagan also said she looked forward to a time when a, quote, 'more leftist left will once again come to the fore.'"Related BiasAlert: <a href="" type="internal">Ten Times More "Conservative" Tags for Samuel Alito than "Liberal" Labels for Elena Kagan</a>.</p>
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<p />
<p>Nearly 30 million Americans have diabetes -- a condition where the body fails to properly metabolize sugar. Left untreated, thatsugar builds up in the bloodstream and the body, which can lead to a number ofserious additional health problems such ascardiovascular disease, kidneydisease and eye disease.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Treating diabetes is expensive, costing America alone some $322 billion each year. Naturally, a market that big has attracted plenty of companies to focus on the disease state. Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO),Insulet (NASDAQ: PODD), and DexCom (NASDAQ: DXCM)are three such businesses, and I think that they all could be great choices for investors.</p>
<p>Image Source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Many people who have diabetes take drugs to help keep their blood sugar levels in check. One of the long-term leaders in the industry isNovo Nordisk, a Danish drugmaker that has been selling insulin for nearly a century.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Novo's top line has charged upward for years as it brought new treatments to market. Recent hits includeTresiba, a long-acting insulin that has been taking share from Sanofi's megahit Lantus, andVictoza, a GLP-1 inhibitor that lowers blood sugar levels and tends to help some patients lose weight. Novo also boasts a number of new drugs that should be coming to market soon, such as the recently FDA-approved Xultophy, which combines Victoza and Tresiba, andFiasp, an ultra-fast rapid-acting mealtime insulin.</p>
<p>And yet, despite its long history of successful drug development and its leadership position in treating an increasingly common disease, Novo's share price and valuation have been crushed over the past year.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/NVO" type="external">NVO</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>What gives? You can blame the decline on increasing <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/11/why-novo-nordisk-as-stock-dropped-136-in-october.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">pricing pressure Opens a New Window.</a>from insurers on the company's legacy products. To maintain its market share, Novo has been offering discounts. As a result, management dropped its long-term profit growth target from 10% to 5%.</p>
<p>While the waning profit growth is disappointing, I can't help but think that the markets have overreacted. Novo's still <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/03/novo-nordisk-as-closes-the-books-on-a-tough-year.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">cranking out profits, Opens a New Window.</a> and it has a huge tailwind at its back, so I can't help but like its long-term prospects. With shares trading at a discount and offering up a dividend yield approaching 4%, I think this is a top stock for conservative investors to consider.</p>
<p>Not every person who has diabetes requires insulin injections to stay healthy, but millions of them do. Those daily injections can be a pain, and dosing with precision can be difficult, which is why many insulin-dependent patients prefer instead to use an insulin pump.</p>
<p>However, wearing a pump presents its own issues. Traditional insulin pumps require tubing, which can easily get snagged or tangled during everyday living. To solve that problem, Insulet launched a patch pump called <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/07/insulet-earnings-revenue-soars-guidance-raised-and.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">the OmniPod Opens a New Window.</a> that is worn directly on the body and disposedof after three days of use. The device is alsowaterproof and features automatic cannula insertion, which makes it far easier for patients to place it in tough to reach spots.</p>
<p>Insulet's unique tube-free system has allowed it to gobble up market share over the last decade. Better yet, the company's "razor-and-blade" business model creates a lot of recurring revenue. When combined, the company's top-line -- and share price -- have soared.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/PODD/revenues_ttm" type="external">PODD Revenue (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>While Insulet is still losing money, there's reason to believe that profits could finally be on the horizon. Revenue from the company's core OmniPod business is still growing by <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/28/insulet-delivers-quarterly-revenue-growth-of-24-gu.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">double-digit percentages Opens a New Window.</a>both stateside and abroad. Meanwhile, the other drug delivery business is growing nicely, powered mostly by the company's partnership with Amgen. Margins are also on the riseand are expected to continue to push higher. Longer term, CEO Patrick Sullivan expects the company to pump out more than $1 billion in revenue. If the company can hit that ambitious target, its top line would nearly triple.</p>
<p>Of course, Wall Street is aware of the company's potential and has priced shares at more than seven times sales. While that's a pricey valuation, if the company can deliver on its growth targets, I could easily see shares continuing to outperform from here.</p>
<p>Many people with diabetes are required to measure their blood sugar levels at various times during theday in order to ensure it is within a healthy range. For most, this requires a finger prick to obtain a small blood sample that is tested on a monitor. As you may guess, this isn't a process that many people like.</p>
<p>In an effort to ease this burden, Dexcom launched <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/13/the-motley-fool-sits-down-with-the-ceo-of-dexcom-i.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">a small medical device Opens a New Window.</a> a decade ago that is worn on the body for up to seven days and continuously measures blood glucose levels. This information is then uploaded directly to a smartphone or other receiver, making it far easier for users to track their blood sugar, and allowing them to do it in real time.</p>
<p>This product -- now called the DexcomG5Mobile Continuous Glucose Monitoring System -- has been wildly successful. Like Insulet, Dexcom also benefits from a razor-and-blade business model, which has allowed the company's revenue to soar. In turn, long-term shareholders have been extremely well rewarded.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/DXCM/revenues_ttm" type="external">DXCM Revenue (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>Despite its history of success, there's reason to believe that DexCom's growth engine is just getting warmed up. The company only counts 200,000 patients as active users, just a small fraction of the415 million people with diabetes worldwide.</p>
<p>While Dexcom is still losing money, that's expected to change in 2017. However, Wall Street has caught on to this growth story and is valuing the company at 11 times sales. Despite that nose-bleed valuation, I still think shares could be worth owning since the company is closing in on profitability and staring down a massive growth opportunity. Share prices are likely to remain volatile for the foreseeable future, but if you are a growth investor at heart, I think that DexCom is certainly worthy of a closer look.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Novo NordiskWhen 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=86a1eed8-ba16-40a2-a103-5bb046883a7c&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 Novo Nordisk 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=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=86a1eed8-ba16-40a2-a103-5bb046883a7c&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 February 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFTypeoh/info.aspx" type="external">Brian Feroldi Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Insulet. The Motley Fool recommends Insulet and Novo Nordisk. 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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3 Top Diabetes Care Stocks to Buy in 2017
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2017-03-17
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3 Top Diabetes Care Stocks to Buy in 2017
<p />
<p>Nearly 30 million Americans have diabetes -- a condition where the body fails to properly metabolize sugar. Left untreated, thatsugar builds up in the bloodstream and the body, which can lead to a number ofserious additional health problems such ascardiovascular disease, kidneydisease and eye disease.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Treating diabetes is expensive, costing America alone some $322 billion each year. Naturally, a market that big has attracted plenty of companies to focus on the disease state. Novo Nordisk (NYSE: NVO),Insulet (NASDAQ: PODD), and DexCom (NASDAQ: DXCM)are three such businesses, and I think that they all could be great choices for investors.</p>
<p>Image Source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Many people who have diabetes take drugs to help keep their blood sugar levels in check. One of the long-term leaders in the industry isNovo Nordisk, a Danish drugmaker that has been selling insulin for nearly a century.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Novo's top line has charged upward for years as it brought new treatments to market. Recent hits includeTresiba, a long-acting insulin that has been taking share from Sanofi's megahit Lantus, andVictoza, a GLP-1 inhibitor that lowers blood sugar levels and tends to help some patients lose weight. Novo also boasts a number of new drugs that should be coming to market soon, such as the recently FDA-approved Xultophy, which combines Victoza and Tresiba, andFiasp, an ultra-fast rapid-acting mealtime insulin.</p>
<p>And yet, despite its long history of successful drug development and its leadership position in treating an increasingly common disease, Novo's share price and valuation have been crushed over the past year.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/NVO" type="external">NVO</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>What gives? You can blame the decline on increasing <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/11/why-novo-nordisk-as-stock-dropped-136-in-october.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">pricing pressure Opens a New Window.</a>from insurers on the company's legacy products. To maintain its market share, Novo has been offering discounts. As a result, management dropped its long-term profit growth target from 10% to 5%.</p>
<p>While the waning profit growth is disappointing, I can't help but think that the markets have overreacted. Novo's still <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/03/novo-nordisk-as-closes-the-books-on-a-tough-year.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">cranking out profits, Opens a New Window.</a> and it has a huge tailwind at its back, so I can't help but like its long-term prospects. With shares trading at a discount and offering up a dividend yield approaching 4%, I think this is a top stock for conservative investors to consider.</p>
<p>Not every person who has diabetes requires insulin injections to stay healthy, but millions of them do. Those daily injections can be a pain, and dosing with precision can be difficult, which is why many insulin-dependent patients prefer instead to use an insulin pump.</p>
<p>However, wearing a pump presents its own issues. Traditional insulin pumps require tubing, which can easily get snagged or tangled during everyday living. To solve that problem, Insulet launched a patch pump called <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/07/insulet-earnings-revenue-soars-guidance-raised-and.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">the OmniPod Opens a New Window.</a> that is worn directly on the body and disposedof after three days of use. The device is alsowaterproof and features automatic cannula insertion, which makes it far easier for patients to place it in tough to reach spots.</p>
<p>Insulet's unique tube-free system has allowed it to gobble up market share over the last decade. Better yet, the company's "razor-and-blade" business model creates a lot of recurring revenue. When combined, the company's top-line -- and share price -- have soared.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/PODD/revenues_ttm" type="external">PODD Revenue (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>While Insulet is still losing money, there's reason to believe that profits could finally be on the horizon. Revenue from the company's core OmniPod business is still growing by <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/28/insulet-delivers-quarterly-revenue-growth-of-24-gu.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">double-digit percentages Opens a New Window.</a>both stateside and abroad. Meanwhile, the other drug delivery business is growing nicely, powered mostly by the company's partnership with Amgen. Margins are also on the riseand are expected to continue to push higher. Longer term, CEO Patrick Sullivan expects the company to pump out more than $1 billion in revenue. If the company can hit that ambitious target, its top line would nearly triple.</p>
<p>Of course, Wall Street is aware of the company's potential and has priced shares at more than seven times sales. While that's a pricey valuation, if the company can deliver on its growth targets, I could easily see shares continuing to outperform from here.</p>
<p>Many people with diabetes are required to measure their blood sugar levels at various times during theday in order to ensure it is within a healthy range. For most, this requires a finger prick to obtain a small blood sample that is tested on a monitor. As you may guess, this isn't a process that many people like.</p>
<p>In an effort to ease this burden, Dexcom launched <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/13/the-motley-fool-sits-down-with-the-ceo-of-dexcom-i.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">a small medical device Opens a New Window.</a> a decade ago that is worn on the body for up to seven days and continuously measures blood glucose levels. This information is then uploaded directly to a smartphone or other receiver, making it far easier for users to track their blood sugar, and allowing them to do it in real time.</p>
<p>This product -- now called the DexcomG5Mobile Continuous Glucose Monitoring System -- has been wildly successful. Like Insulet, Dexcom also benefits from a razor-and-blade business model, which has allowed the company's revenue to soar. In turn, long-term shareholders have been extremely well rewarded.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/DXCM/revenues_ttm" type="external">DXCM Revenue (TTM)</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts</a></p>
<p>Despite its history of success, there's reason to believe that DexCom's growth engine is just getting warmed up. The company only counts 200,000 patients as active users, just a small fraction of the415 million people with diabetes worldwide.</p>
<p>While Dexcom is still losing money, that's expected to change in 2017. However, Wall Street has caught on to this growth story and is valuing the company at 11 times sales. Despite that nose-bleed valuation, I still think shares could be worth owning since the company is closing in on profitability and staring down a massive growth opportunity. Share prices are likely to remain volatile for the foreseeable future, but if you are a growth investor at heart, I think that DexCom is certainly worthy of a closer look.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Novo NordiskWhen 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=86a1eed8-ba16-40a2-a103-5bb046883a7c&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 Novo Nordisk 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=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=86a1eed8-ba16-40a2-a103-5bb046883a7c&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 February 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFTypeoh/info.aspx" type="external">Brian Feroldi Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Insulet. The Motley Fool recommends Insulet and Novo Nordisk. 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>
| 6,714 |
<p>The world’s central bankers met in Jackson Hole last weekend for their annual gathering. Undoubtedly one of the main topics of discussion was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Board chairman. His reappointment would almost certainly win the support of the vast majority of attendees. This should raise serious concerns.</p>
<p>This is the same group that in 2005 devoted their meeting to an Alan Greenspan retrospective (seriously). The world’s leading thinkers and practitioners of monetary policy debated whether Alan Greenspan was the greatest central banker of all time.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how the polling on this question turned out, but four years later the world is facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression because of Alan Greenspan’s failed monetary policy. Greenspan either did not recognize an $8 trillion housing bubble, or did not think it was a big enough deal to demand his attention. The collapse of this bubble gave us the financial panics of 2008 and, more importantly, led to the falloff in demand that produced the downturn.</p>
<p>None of this should have been a surprise to people who understand monetary policy. The housing bubble should have been easy to recognize. There was a 100-year long trend in which nationwide house prices in the United States had just tracked the overall rate of inflation. At the peak of the bubble in 2006, house prices had risen by more than 70 percent after adjusting for inflation.</p>
<p>There were no changes in the fundamentals of the supply or demand of housing that could provide a remotely plausible explanation for this unprecedented run-up in prices. Furthermore, rents were not outpacing inflation. If the run-up in house prices was being driven by fundamentals, then there should have been at least some upward pressure on prices in the rental market.</p>
<p>The bubble was very evidently driving the economy by the time of Greenspanfest ’05. The residential construction sector had expanded to more than 6 percent of GDP, an increase of more than 2 percentage points (@$300 billion a year) from its normal level. The $8 trillion in housing bubble wealth was also propelling consumption. Assuming a wealth effect of 6 cents on the dollar, the bubble wealth was generating close to $500 billion a year in increased consumption.</p>
<p>It was inevitable that both the construction and consumption demand would disappear when the bubble burst. What did Greenspan and his acolytes think would make up this lost demand?</p>
<p>Even the financial crisis was entirely predictable although the exact course of events could not be known to someone who lacked access to the information held by central bankers. Housing is always a highly leveraged asset and it was no secret that it had become much more so during the bubble years.</p>
<p>Down payment requirements were thrown out the door, as homebuyers often purchased homes with no money down; in many cases even borrowing more than the appraised value of a bubble-inflated house price. The explosion of subprime and Alt-A loans was also not classified information. How could any economist have been surprised by the flood of defaults and the resulting stress on banks following the collapse of the bubble? This was as predictable as the sunset at the end of the day.</p>
<p>But the attendees of GreenspanFest ’05, most of whom are back to attend GreenspanFest ’09, apparently were surprised. Remarkably, almost none of the attendees suffered any consequences from the failure to see the largest financial bubble in the history of the world. In the United States alone, 25 million people are either unemployed or underemployed in large part because of the failure of the GreenspanFest attendees to do their job. Yet, the GreenspanFest attendees are not among those fearing unemployment. The official slogan of GreenspanFest ’09 is: “who could have known?”</p>
<p>Ben Bernanke has moved very effectively in the last year to prevent the collapse of the financial system. However, even in this area there have been serious issues of unnecessary secrecy and failed regulation. (Isn’t Goldman Sachs supposed to be a bank holding company now?)</p>
<p>But more importantly, Bernanke is waist deep in responsibility for this mess. Before becoming Fed chairman in January of 2006 he had served on the Board of Governors since 2002, and had been head of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors from June of 2005. After Greenspan, there was probably no one else better positioned to combat the bubble.</p>
<p>The attendees of GreenspanFest ’09 may not want to be so rude as to discuss their culpability for this disaster, but that should not prevent the rest of us from raising the topic. It would be an insult to the tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs, their homes, and/or their life savings to see Bernanke reappointed. Failure should have consequences, even for central bank chairmen.</p>
<p>DEAN BAKER is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.</a></p>
<p>This column was originally published by <a href="http://www.wapost.com" type="external">The Guardian.</a></p>
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The Reappointment of Bernanke
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2009/08/26/the-reappointment-of-bernanke/
|
2009-08-26
| 4left
|
The Reappointment of Bernanke
<p>The world’s central bankers met in Jackson Hole last weekend for their annual gathering. Undoubtedly one of the main topics of discussion was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Board chairman. His reappointment would almost certainly win the support of the vast majority of attendees. This should raise serious concerns.</p>
<p>This is the same group that in 2005 devoted their meeting to an Alan Greenspan retrospective (seriously). The world’s leading thinkers and practitioners of monetary policy debated whether Alan Greenspan was the greatest central banker of all time.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how the polling on this question turned out, but four years later the world is facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression because of Alan Greenspan’s failed monetary policy. Greenspan either did not recognize an $8 trillion housing bubble, or did not think it was a big enough deal to demand his attention. The collapse of this bubble gave us the financial panics of 2008 and, more importantly, led to the falloff in demand that produced the downturn.</p>
<p>None of this should have been a surprise to people who understand monetary policy. The housing bubble should have been easy to recognize. There was a 100-year long trend in which nationwide house prices in the United States had just tracked the overall rate of inflation. At the peak of the bubble in 2006, house prices had risen by more than 70 percent after adjusting for inflation.</p>
<p>There were no changes in the fundamentals of the supply or demand of housing that could provide a remotely plausible explanation for this unprecedented run-up in prices. Furthermore, rents were not outpacing inflation. If the run-up in house prices was being driven by fundamentals, then there should have been at least some upward pressure on prices in the rental market.</p>
<p>The bubble was very evidently driving the economy by the time of Greenspanfest ’05. The residential construction sector had expanded to more than 6 percent of GDP, an increase of more than 2 percentage points (@$300 billion a year) from its normal level. The $8 trillion in housing bubble wealth was also propelling consumption. Assuming a wealth effect of 6 cents on the dollar, the bubble wealth was generating close to $500 billion a year in increased consumption.</p>
<p>It was inevitable that both the construction and consumption demand would disappear when the bubble burst. What did Greenspan and his acolytes think would make up this lost demand?</p>
<p>Even the financial crisis was entirely predictable although the exact course of events could not be known to someone who lacked access to the information held by central bankers. Housing is always a highly leveraged asset and it was no secret that it had become much more so during the bubble years.</p>
<p>Down payment requirements were thrown out the door, as homebuyers often purchased homes with no money down; in many cases even borrowing more than the appraised value of a bubble-inflated house price. The explosion of subprime and Alt-A loans was also not classified information. How could any economist have been surprised by the flood of defaults and the resulting stress on banks following the collapse of the bubble? This was as predictable as the sunset at the end of the day.</p>
<p>But the attendees of GreenspanFest ’05, most of whom are back to attend GreenspanFest ’09, apparently were surprised. Remarkably, almost none of the attendees suffered any consequences from the failure to see the largest financial bubble in the history of the world. In the United States alone, 25 million people are either unemployed or underemployed in large part because of the failure of the GreenspanFest attendees to do their job. Yet, the GreenspanFest attendees are not among those fearing unemployment. The official slogan of GreenspanFest ’09 is: “who could have known?”</p>
<p>Ben Bernanke has moved very effectively in the last year to prevent the collapse of the financial system. However, even in this area there have been serious issues of unnecessary secrecy and failed regulation. (Isn’t Goldman Sachs supposed to be a bank holding company now?)</p>
<p>But more importantly, Bernanke is waist deep in responsibility for this mess. Before becoming Fed chairman in January of 2006 he had served on the Board of Governors since 2002, and had been head of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors from June of 2005. After Greenspan, there was probably no one else better positioned to combat the bubble.</p>
<p>The attendees of GreenspanFest ’09 may not want to be so rude as to discuss their culpability for this disaster, but that should not prevent the rest of us from raising the topic. It would be an insult to the tens of millions of people who have lost their jobs, their homes, and/or their life savings to see Bernanke reappointed. Failure should have consequences, even for central bank chairmen.</p>
<p>DEAN BAKER is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of <a href="" type="internal">Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.</a></p>
<p>This column was originally published by <a href="http://www.wapost.com" type="external">The Guardian.</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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| 6,715 |
<p>INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say two people have been charged in a deadly shooting outside an Independence apartment complex during an attempt to rip off a drug dealer.</p>
<p>Twenty-four-year-old Valincia Alexander, of Independence, and 25-year-old David Racy III, of Kansas City, were charged Monday with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Alexander's boyfriend, Steven Ragsdale Jr. Bond is set at $200,000 each. No attorneys are listed for them in online court records.</p>
<p>Court records say Alexander told police the shooting happened Dec. 30 after she went on Facebook to set up a drug deal. She said she gave Racy a fake $100 bill, grabbed the marijuana and ran behind a building where Ragsdale was waiting. Police say that at some point, shots were fired and Ragdale was hit.</p>
<p>INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say two people have been charged in a deadly shooting outside an Independence apartment complex during an attempt to rip off a drug dealer.</p>
<p>Twenty-four-year-old Valincia Alexander, of Independence, and 25-year-old David Racy III, of Kansas City, were charged Monday with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Alexander's boyfriend, Steven Ragsdale Jr. Bond is set at $200,000 each. No attorneys are listed for them in online court records.</p>
<p>Court records say Alexander told police the shooting happened Dec. 30 after she went on Facebook to set up a drug deal. She said she gave Racy a fake $100 bill, grabbed the marijuana and ran behind a building where Ragsdale was waiting. Police say that at some point, shots were fired and Ragdale was hit.</p>
|
2 charged in deadly shooting during attempted drug robbery
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/5e114802e75a4a4290040a099b14d356
|
2018-01-09
| 2least
|
2 charged in deadly shooting during attempted drug robbery
<p>INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say two people have been charged in a deadly shooting outside an Independence apartment complex during an attempt to rip off a drug dealer.</p>
<p>Twenty-four-year-old Valincia Alexander, of Independence, and 25-year-old David Racy III, of Kansas City, were charged Monday with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Alexander's boyfriend, Steven Ragsdale Jr. Bond is set at $200,000 each. No attorneys are listed for them in online court records.</p>
<p>Court records say Alexander told police the shooting happened Dec. 30 after she went on Facebook to set up a drug deal. She said she gave Racy a fake $100 bill, grabbed the marijuana and ran behind a building where Ragsdale was waiting. Police say that at some point, shots were fired and Ragdale was hit.</p>
<p>INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP) — Authorities say two people have been charged in a deadly shooting outside an Independence apartment complex during an attempt to rip off a drug dealer.</p>
<p>Twenty-four-year-old Valincia Alexander, of Independence, and 25-year-old David Racy III, of Kansas City, were charged Monday with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of Alexander's boyfriend, Steven Ragsdale Jr. Bond is set at $200,000 each. No attorneys are listed for them in online court records.</p>
<p>Court records say Alexander told police the shooting happened Dec. 30 after she went on Facebook to set up a drug deal. She said she gave Racy a fake $100 bill, grabbed the marijuana and ran behind a building where Ragsdale was waiting. Police say that at some point, shots were fired and Ragdale was hit.</p>
| 6,716 |
<p>Dear New Frugal You,My husband and I have paid off our credit cards and are trying to repair the damage we have done to our credit scores. I read your September 23, 2010, article addressing a man's question as to whether or not he should go back to using credit cards. In the article you stated that, like alcohol, some people can handle credit cards and some can't. My husband and I have decided that we're the type of people who can't be trusted with credit cards. But if we don't use credit cards, what other options do we have to repair our credit scores? We are homeowners, and we make our mortgage payment, via ACH, on time every month. And I have student loans, which are on an in-school deferment and are not being paid on right now. What would you suggest? -- Credit Shy&#160;</p>
<p>Dear Credit Shy,You are right to be concerned with your credit score. It can affect your <a href="http://www.insurancequotes.com/" type="external">auto insurance quotes Opens a New Window.</a>, your ability to get a job or get into graduate school and more. So rebuilding your score is important. And, for someone who has handled credit badly in the past, it can be a daunting challenge. But, however, it is not an impossible task. The first thing to recognize is that the purpose of the credit score is to predict how well you handle credit, so you want to be perfect in meeting your financial commitments. That would include banking records (including any <a href="http://www.creditcards.com/glossary/term-overdraft-protection.php?aid=52aae854" type="external">overdraft</a> fees), utility bills, auto loans and your mortgage. Sounds like you have that part under control.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it's very hard to raise your <a href="http://www.creditcards.com/glossary/term-credit-score.php?aid=52aae854" type="external">credit score</a> without using credit, especially if you're trying to restore a score that's been dinged in the past.However, just because you were unable to control your spending in the past doesn't mean that you can't learn new behaviors and control it in the future. You might find that, if you're very careful, you can use credit cards. You could try getting a <a href="http://www.creditcards.com/bad-credit.php?aid=52aae854" type="external">low-limit credit card</a>. Choose one that will refuse to approve purchases above your limit. Use it for purchases that you're paying cash for now. As you make purchases, put the appropriate amount of cash into your checking account so that you can pay the entire amount when the bill arrives.If you really don't trust yourself, put the card in a place that makes it hard to use. Some people freeze their card in a block of ice or even put it in the safe deposit box at your bank. In any case, do not carry it with you on a daily basis. Make it impossible to use it on a spur-of-the-moment purchase. Bring it out once or twice a year to demonstrate activity.You would also be wise to examine what exactly went wrong with your past use of credit. There are two methods that could help find the answer.One is to look at your past purchases for patterns. What did they have in common? Were most at the mall? Were they online purchases? Were they made at a certain time of day or night or when you were in a certain mood? When you spot the pattern, figure out a way to avoid it. It could be that eliminating one or two behaviors could allow you to use credit cards safely.The second way to solve the problem is to look at the psychology behind your spending. Many people who struggle with spending are using money in an attempt to fulfill deep-seated emotional needs -- often needs that they may not even know they have. For them, the answer is to find out what those needs are and recognize that spending will not fill them. It's even better to have the needs fulfilled in an appropriate manner.One of my favorite books on the topic is called "The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge" by Ted Klontz, Rick Kahler and Brad Klontz. Charles Dickens' Christmas tale is used to study Scrooge's views on money. The reader is encouraged to consider their own money beliefs. It's an easy, enjoyable and enlightening read. Handling credit in a connected world is no easy task. But you're absolutely right to recognize that it's a challenge that you need to face.</p>
<p>More from CreditCards.com:</p>
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Been bad with credit cards? How to start handling them again, wisely
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2010/12/23/bad-credit-cards-start-handling-wisely.html
|
2016-03-17
| 0right
|
Been bad with credit cards? How to start handling them again, wisely
<p>Dear New Frugal You,My husband and I have paid off our credit cards and are trying to repair the damage we have done to our credit scores. I read your September 23, 2010, article addressing a man's question as to whether or not he should go back to using credit cards. In the article you stated that, like alcohol, some people can handle credit cards and some can't. My husband and I have decided that we're the type of people who can't be trusted with credit cards. But if we don't use credit cards, what other options do we have to repair our credit scores? We are homeowners, and we make our mortgage payment, via ACH, on time every month. And I have student loans, which are on an in-school deferment and are not being paid on right now. What would you suggest? -- Credit Shy&#160;</p>
<p>Dear Credit Shy,You are right to be concerned with your credit score. It can affect your <a href="http://www.insurancequotes.com/" type="external">auto insurance quotes Opens a New Window.</a>, your ability to get a job or get into graduate school and more. So rebuilding your score is important. And, for someone who has handled credit badly in the past, it can be a daunting challenge. But, however, it is not an impossible task. The first thing to recognize is that the purpose of the credit score is to predict how well you handle credit, so you want to be perfect in meeting your financial commitments. That would include banking records (including any <a href="http://www.creditcards.com/glossary/term-overdraft-protection.php?aid=52aae854" type="external">overdraft</a> fees), utility bills, auto loans and your mortgage. Sounds like you have that part under control.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Unfortunately, it's very hard to raise your <a href="http://www.creditcards.com/glossary/term-credit-score.php?aid=52aae854" type="external">credit score</a> without using credit, especially if you're trying to restore a score that's been dinged in the past.However, just because you were unable to control your spending in the past doesn't mean that you can't learn new behaviors and control it in the future. You might find that, if you're very careful, you can use credit cards. You could try getting a <a href="http://www.creditcards.com/bad-credit.php?aid=52aae854" type="external">low-limit credit card</a>. Choose one that will refuse to approve purchases above your limit. Use it for purchases that you're paying cash for now. As you make purchases, put the appropriate amount of cash into your checking account so that you can pay the entire amount when the bill arrives.If you really don't trust yourself, put the card in a place that makes it hard to use. Some people freeze their card in a block of ice or even put it in the safe deposit box at your bank. In any case, do not carry it with you on a daily basis. Make it impossible to use it on a spur-of-the-moment purchase. Bring it out once or twice a year to demonstrate activity.You would also be wise to examine what exactly went wrong with your past use of credit. There are two methods that could help find the answer.One is to look at your past purchases for patterns. What did they have in common? Were most at the mall? Were they online purchases? Were they made at a certain time of day or night or when you were in a certain mood? When you spot the pattern, figure out a way to avoid it. It could be that eliminating one or two behaviors could allow you to use credit cards safely.The second way to solve the problem is to look at the psychology behind your spending. Many people who struggle with spending are using money in an attempt to fulfill deep-seated emotional needs -- often needs that they may not even know they have. For them, the answer is to find out what those needs are and recognize that spending will not fill them. It's even better to have the needs fulfilled in an appropriate manner.One of my favorite books on the topic is called "The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge" by Ted Klontz, Rick Kahler and Brad Klontz. Charles Dickens' Christmas tale is used to study Scrooge's views on money. The reader is encouraged to consider their own money beliefs. It's an easy, enjoyable and enlightening read. Handling credit in a connected world is no easy task. But you're absolutely right to recognize that it's a challenge that you need to face.</p>
<p>More from CreditCards.com:</p>
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<p>An al-Qaida fighter stands guard after setting fire to an Iraqi police truck in front of the provincial government headquarters in Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014. On Wednesday, al-Qaida gunmen fanned out in the streets of towns in the volatile western province of Anbar amid Sunni anger over the arrest of a prominent Sunni lawmaker and the dismantlement of a year-long sit-in in the provincial capital Ramadi in recent days. Al-Qaida fighters brandished their weapons in the streets of Ramadi and other towns, taking over police stations and military posts after security forces left, a provincial spokesman said. (AP Photo)</p>
<p>BAGHDAD – The United Nations said Wednesday that violence claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians in Iraq in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.</p>
<p>Over eight months of escalated violence has sparked fears that the country may be returning to the widespread bloodshed of 2004-2007 that saw tens of thousands killed each year. Death tolls dipped after a U.S. troop surge and an alliance of Sunni militias with U.S. forces against al-Qaida, but soaring sectarian distrust appears to be allowing the extremist network to rebuild.</p>
<p>Violence spiked in April after the Shiite-led government staged a deadly crackdown on a Sunni protest camp. Iraq’s al-Qaida branch has fed on Sunni discontent and on the civil war in neighboring Syria, in which mostly Sunni rebels fight a government whose base is a Shiite offshoot sect. It has targeted civilians, particularly in Shiite areas of Baghdad, with waves of coordinated car bombings and other deadly attacks.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The U.N. figures gave a total of 759 people killed in December alone, including 661 civilians and 98 members of the security forces. Another 1,345 were wounded, the statement said. The U.N.’s monthly figures for both civilians and security forces over the year totaled 8,868.</p>
<p>Mission chief Nickolay Mladenov called on Iraqis to take the necessary steps to stem violence. “This is a sad and terrible record which confirms once again the urgent need for the Iraqi authorities to address the roots of violence to curb this infernal circle,” Mladenov was quoted in the statement as saying.</p>
<p>The insurgency appears to have capitalized on a protest movement by Sunnis angered at what they consider second-class treatment, and the government’s crackdown on it.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, al-Qaida gunmen fanned out in the streets of towns in the volatile western province of Anbar amid Sunni anger over the arrest of a prominent Sunni lawmaker and the dismantlement of a year-long sit-in the provincial capital Ramadi in recent days.</p>
<p>A provincial spokesman told The Associated Press that al-Qaida fighters brandished their weapons in the streets of Ramadi and other towns, taking over police stations and military posts after security forces left. Dhari al-Rishawi said in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, gunmen broke into the main police station, setting free dozens of inmates and taking weapons.</p>
<p>Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appealed to Sunni tribes to team up with security forces to fight the militants, expressing his government’s readiness to listen to Anbar residents to address their needs.</p>
<p>“I call upon on all generous tribes in Anbar to adopt a courageous stance … and other tribes in (the provinces of) Diyala, Salaheddin, Ninevah, Baghdad and other parts of Iraq to come together,” al-Maliki said in his weekly televised speech.</p>
<p>“I say that all our brothers in Anbar are welcomed for discussion or negotiations,” he said. “We want them to come here (in Baghdad) so that we can put our hands together for the sake of Anbar to protect it from foreign agendas and Takfiri ideology.” Takfirism refers to hard-liners who consider other Muslims to be infidels, and Maliki’s invocation of it appears to be an attempt to remind Sunnis in Anbar, who were among the first to turn on al-Qaida in 2005-2007, that they too had been targeted by extremists.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Maliki said that the Iraqi army would hand over control of cities in Anbar province to the local police, a main demand of discontented Sunni politicians who see the army as a tool in the hand of al-Maliki to target his rivals and consolidate power. But on Wednesday, his spokesman Ali al-Mussawi said that the prime minister ordered the army to return to Anbar, saying it was at the request of the people and local government of the province.</p>
<p>Anbar province spokesman Ahmed al-Duleimi said on local television that he had asked the army to return, citing al-Qaida activity in Fallujah.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in Iraq, gunmen attacked a police station in Tarmiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Baghdad, killing three police officers and wounding five, police said. They spoke anonymously as they were not allowed to talk to the media.</p>
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Iraq has highest death toll in years: 7,818 civilians
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https://abqjournal.com/329479/iraq-has-highest-death-toll-in-years-7818-civilians.html
| 2least
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Iraq has highest death toll in years: 7,818 civilians
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<p>An al-Qaida fighter stands guard after setting fire to an Iraqi police truck in front of the provincial government headquarters in Fallujah, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014. On Wednesday, al-Qaida gunmen fanned out in the streets of towns in the volatile western province of Anbar amid Sunni anger over the arrest of a prominent Sunni lawmaker and the dismantlement of a year-long sit-in in the provincial capital Ramadi in recent days. Al-Qaida fighters brandished their weapons in the streets of Ramadi and other towns, taking over police stations and military posts after security forces left, a provincial spokesman said. (AP Photo)</p>
<p>BAGHDAD – The United Nations said Wednesday that violence claimed the lives of 7,818 civilians in Iraq in 2013, the highest annual death toll in years.</p>
<p>Over eight months of escalated violence has sparked fears that the country may be returning to the widespread bloodshed of 2004-2007 that saw tens of thousands killed each year. Death tolls dipped after a U.S. troop surge and an alliance of Sunni militias with U.S. forces against al-Qaida, but soaring sectarian distrust appears to be allowing the extremist network to rebuild.</p>
<p>Violence spiked in April after the Shiite-led government staged a deadly crackdown on a Sunni protest camp. Iraq’s al-Qaida branch has fed on Sunni discontent and on the civil war in neighboring Syria, in which mostly Sunni rebels fight a government whose base is a Shiite offshoot sect. It has targeted civilians, particularly in Shiite areas of Baghdad, with waves of coordinated car bombings and other deadly attacks.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The U.N. figures gave a total of 759 people killed in December alone, including 661 civilians and 98 members of the security forces. Another 1,345 were wounded, the statement said. The U.N.’s monthly figures for both civilians and security forces over the year totaled 8,868.</p>
<p>Mission chief Nickolay Mladenov called on Iraqis to take the necessary steps to stem violence. “This is a sad and terrible record which confirms once again the urgent need for the Iraqi authorities to address the roots of violence to curb this infernal circle,” Mladenov was quoted in the statement as saying.</p>
<p>The insurgency appears to have capitalized on a protest movement by Sunnis angered at what they consider second-class treatment, and the government’s crackdown on it.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, al-Qaida gunmen fanned out in the streets of towns in the volatile western province of Anbar amid Sunni anger over the arrest of a prominent Sunni lawmaker and the dismantlement of a year-long sit-in the provincial capital Ramadi in recent days.</p>
<p>A provincial spokesman told The Associated Press that al-Qaida fighters brandished their weapons in the streets of Ramadi and other towns, taking over police stations and military posts after security forces left. Dhari al-Rishawi said in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, gunmen broke into the main police station, setting free dozens of inmates and taking weapons.</p>
<p>Iraq’s Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appealed to Sunni tribes to team up with security forces to fight the militants, expressing his government’s readiness to listen to Anbar residents to address their needs.</p>
<p>“I call upon on all generous tribes in Anbar to adopt a courageous stance … and other tribes in (the provinces of) Diyala, Salaheddin, Ninevah, Baghdad and other parts of Iraq to come together,” al-Maliki said in his weekly televised speech.</p>
<p>“I say that all our brothers in Anbar are welcomed for discussion or negotiations,” he said. “We want them to come here (in Baghdad) so that we can put our hands together for the sake of Anbar to protect it from foreign agendas and Takfiri ideology.” Takfirism refers to hard-liners who consider other Muslims to be infidels, and Maliki’s invocation of it appears to be an attempt to remind Sunnis in Anbar, who were among the first to turn on al-Qaida in 2005-2007, that they too had been targeted by extremists.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Maliki said that the Iraqi army would hand over control of cities in Anbar province to the local police, a main demand of discontented Sunni politicians who see the army as a tool in the hand of al-Maliki to target his rivals and consolidate power. But on Wednesday, his spokesman Ali al-Mussawi said that the prime minister ordered the army to return to Anbar, saying it was at the request of the people and local government of the province.</p>
<p>Anbar province spokesman Ahmed al-Duleimi said on local television that he had asked the army to return, citing al-Qaida activity in Fallujah.</p>
<p>Elsewhere in Iraq, gunmen attacked a police station in Tarmiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of Baghdad, killing three police officers and wounding five, police said. They spoke anonymously as they were not allowed to talk to the media.</p>
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />I think it goes without saying, as someone with my political views, I just don’t understand the inner workings of the mind of a Republican. &#160;I can still remember the first time someone explained trickle-down economics to me and thinking to myself, “That doesn’t make any sense.”</p>
<p>Something else Republicans seem to do that doesn’t make any sense to me is perpetuate this idea that fighting for equality for all Americans is somehow an attack on freedoms and liberty.</p>
<p>I mean, I get what they mean when they say it’s an attack on their freedom. &#160;See, what they many conservatives want is the freedom to discriminate against those they oppose. &#160;Giving women access to contraceptives is an attack on their personal religious views that seek to deny women access to birth control because they feel birth control leads to sex outside of marriage. &#160;Because, you know, if we just make access to birth control more difficult,&#160;that&#160;will cause more people to wait until marriage, right?</p>
<p>What they don’t understand is that a personal belief is exactly that—personal. &#160;</p>
<p>The same goes for the issue of same-sex marriage. &#160;The legalization of gay marriage, to many Republicans, is an attack on their “right” to restrict the rights of others.</p>
<p>You see this throughout history from those who actively want to discriminate against another group of people.</p>
<p>The freeing of slaves was an “attack” on the right for people to own slaves. &#160;Giving women the right to vote was an “attack” against those who wanted to continue to prevent them from doing so. &#160;The ending of segregation was an “attack” against white people who wanted to stay segregated from African Americans.</p>
<p>And yes, I know what I can already hear Republicans saying, “But Lincoln was a Republican and Democrats were the racists during segregation.” &#160;For that level if historical ignorance I suggest those people <a href="" type="internal">visit this informative link</a>. &#160;It explains why that argument is completely pointless.</p>
<p>It’s just astounding that there are millions of conservatives who somehow believe that preventing their attempts to restrict the rights of others is somehow an attack on&#160;their&#160;freedom. &#160;By supporting equal rights, the only thing that gets “attacked” is their “right” to discriminate against someone. &#160;That’s it.</p>
<p>Civil rights and equal rights should be the simplest thing we deal with in this country. &#160;They shouldn’t even be something that’s up for debate, because they’re just that simple.</p>
<p>If it’s a right given to the majority, it should be given to the minority. &#160;If a white person has a right, so should people of all colors. &#160;If a straight person enjoys a freedom, so should gay people. &#160;If men are given the ability to do something, then so should women.</p>
<p>This isn’t rocket science, some 20 page dissertation or complex math. &#160;Hell, it’s not even a simple True/False quiz.</p>
<p>It’s like a test with one question and only one possible answer—and that’s it.</p>
<p>Equality, freedom and liberty—for all. &#160;Straight, gay, black, white, man, woman, Christian, Muslim—every damn one of us.</p>
<p>And yes, it’s that simple.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Mike Huckabee's Sexist Comments Display Just How Ignorant Republicans Are About Women's Health</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">5 Examples Showing the Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives on "Religious Freedom"</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Republican and Conservative Stupidity Continues to Soar to New Heights</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p>
|
Only to Republicans is Supporting Equality Somehow an Attack on Freedom
| true |
http://forwardprogressives.com/only-to-republicans-is-supporting-equality-somehow-an-attack-on-freedom/
|
2013-11-18
| 4left
|
Only to Republicans is Supporting Equality Somehow an Attack on Freedom
<p><a href="" type="internal" />I think it goes without saying, as someone with my political views, I just don’t understand the inner workings of the mind of a Republican. &#160;I can still remember the first time someone explained trickle-down economics to me and thinking to myself, “That doesn’t make any sense.”</p>
<p>Something else Republicans seem to do that doesn’t make any sense to me is perpetuate this idea that fighting for equality for all Americans is somehow an attack on freedoms and liberty.</p>
<p>I mean, I get what they mean when they say it’s an attack on their freedom. &#160;See, what they many conservatives want is the freedom to discriminate against those they oppose. &#160;Giving women access to contraceptives is an attack on their personal religious views that seek to deny women access to birth control because they feel birth control leads to sex outside of marriage. &#160;Because, you know, if we just make access to birth control more difficult,&#160;that&#160;will cause more people to wait until marriage, right?</p>
<p>What they don’t understand is that a personal belief is exactly that—personal. &#160;</p>
<p>The same goes for the issue of same-sex marriage. &#160;The legalization of gay marriage, to many Republicans, is an attack on their “right” to restrict the rights of others.</p>
<p>You see this throughout history from those who actively want to discriminate against another group of people.</p>
<p>The freeing of slaves was an “attack” on the right for people to own slaves. &#160;Giving women the right to vote was an “attack” against those who wanted to continue to prevent them from doing so. &#160;The ending of segregation was an “attack” against white people who wanted to stay segregated from African Americans.</p>
<p>And yes, I know what I can already hear Republicans saying, “But Lincoln was a Republican and Democrats were the racists during segregation.” &#160;For that level if historical ignorance I suggest those people <a href="" type="internal">visit this informative link</a>. &#160;It explains why that argument is completely pointless.</p>
<p>It’s just astounding that there are millions of conservatives who somehow believe that preventing their attempts to restrict the rights of others is somehow an attack on&#160;their&#160;freedom. &#160;By supporting equal rights, the only thing that gets “attacked” is their “right” to discriminate against someone. &#160;That’s it.</p>
<p>Civil rights and equal rights should be the simplest thing we deal with in this country. &#160;They shouldn’t even be something that’s up for debate, because they’re just that simple.</p>
<p>If it’s a right given to the majority, it should be given to the minority. &#160;If a white person has a right, so should people of all colors. &#160;If a straight person enjoys a freedom, so should gay people. &#160;If men are given the ability to do something, then so should women.</p>
<p>This isn’t rocket science, some 20 page dissertation or complex math. &#160;Hell, it’s not even a simple True/False quiz.</p>
<p>It’s like a test with one question and only one possible answer—and that’s it.</p>
<p>Equality, freedom and liberty—for all. &#160;Straight, gay, black, white, man, woman, Christian, Muslim—every damn one of us.</p>
<p>And yes, it’s that simple.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Mike Huckabee's Sexist Comments Display Just How Ignorant Republicans Are About Women's Health</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">5 Examples Showing the Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives on "Religious Freedom"</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Republican and Conservative Stupidity Continues to Soar to New Heights</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p>
| 6,719 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexico’s unemployment rate and its job growth improved slightly in October, according to figures released Friday.</p>
<p>The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.5 percent, down from 6.6 percent in September and from 6.8 percent a year ago.</p>
<p>Unemployment rates fell in 34 U.S. states in October, a sign that steady hiring this year has been broadly dispersed through most of the country. The U.S. unemployment rate stood at 5.8 percent, a six-year low.</p>
<p>The number of jobs in New Mexico grew 1.1 percent in October compared to the same month last year, representing a gain of 9,100 jobs, according to the state Department of Workforce Solutions. Net job gains have been steadily increasing since June 2014 after eight months of year-over-year losses. Gains in nine industries more than offset losses in four others.</p>
<p>New Mexico’s education and health services continued to see more new jobs than other industries, with an increase of 4,900 jobs, or 3.9 percent, over the year. The last four months of employment gains in those fields have exceeded 4,000 and have been the highest since April 2009.</p>
<p>Government employment has seen a net loss of 200 jobs since October of last year, or a 0.1 percent decline. Most of the losses came within federal and state government, each of which shed 200 jobs. The local government sector gained 200 jobs, representing a 0.2 percent increase. In other areas:</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>— Financial activities continued to show positive signs, according to the department, with an increase of 2,000 jobs, or 5.9 percent, over the year.</p>
<p>— Mining posted its highest rate of growth of 2014, with employment up 1,700 jobs, or 6.4 percent.</p>
<p>— Retail trade’s growth was dampened in October compared with higher gains earlier in the year, adding 1,000 jobs, or 1.1 percent, over the year.</p>
<p>–Manufacturing was down 2,300 jobs, or 7.7 percent.</p>
<p>–Construction employment was down for the ninth consecutive month, though losses have settled at a lower rate than earlier in the year, losing 200 jobs, or 0.5 percent.</p>
|
NM jobs, unemployment rates show slight improvement
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/499955/new-mexico-unemployment-rate-drops-to-6-5-percent.html
|
2014-11-21
| 2least
|
NM jobs, unemployment rates show slight improvement
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexico’s unemployment rate and its job growth improved slightly in October, according to figures released Friday.</p>
<p>The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.5 percent, down from 6.6 percent in September and from 6.8 percent a year ago.</p>
<p>Unemployment rates fell in 34 U.S. states in October, a sign that steady hiring this year has been broadly dispersed through most of the country. The U.S. unemployment rate stood at 5.8 percent, a six-year low.</p>
<p>The number of jobs in New Mexico grew 1.1 percent in October compared to the same month last year, representing a gain of 9,100 jobs, according to the state Department of Workforce Solutions. Net job gains have been steadily increasing since June 2014 after eight months of year-over-year losses. Gains in nine industries more than offset losses in four others.</p>
<p>New Mexico’s education and health services continued to see more new jobs than other industries, with an increase of 4,900 jobs, or 3.9 percent, over the year. The last four months of employment gains in those fields have exceeded 4,000 and have been the highest since April 2009.</p>
<p>Government employment has seen a net loss of 200 jobs since October of last year, or a 0.1 percent decline. Most of the losses came within federal and state government, each of which shed 200 jobs. The local government sector gained 200 jobs, representing a 0.2 percent increase. In other areas:</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>— Financial activities continued to show positive signs, according to the department, with an increase of 2,000 jobs, or 5.9 percent, over the year.</p>
<p>— Mining posted its highest rate of growth of 2014, with employment up 1,700 jobs, or 6.4 percent.</p>
<p>— Retail trade’s growth was dampened in October compared with higher gains earlier in the year, adding 1,000 jobs, or 1.1 percent, over the year.</p>
<p>–Manufacturing was down 2,300 jobs, or 7.7 percent.</p>
<p>–Construction employment was down for the ninth consecutive month, though losses have settled at a lower rate than earlier in the year, losing 200 jobs, or 0.5 percent.</p>
| 6,720 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Stockmonkeys.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>One of the biggest tax breaks available to many regular workers is the flexible spending account. If you have an FSA, you can cover medical expenses while saving on several different types of taxes at the very same time. Below, you'll learn more about flexible spending accounts and how you can use them to maximum advantage.</p>
<p>What an FSA is and why you should use it A flexible spending account lets you divert money from your paycheck that you intend to use for future medical expenses. Later on, after you've received medical care, you can withdraw money from your FSA either to pay those expenses directly or to reimburse you for the money you already spent paying them.</p>
<p>The primary benefit of FSAs is that you can set aside pretax money for your healthcare expenses. Not only do you not have to pay income tax on money deposited in an FSA, but you also avoid paying payroll taxes on that money as well. That's a tax break that most other tax-favored vehicles can't match.</p>
<p>What you can spend FSA money onThe medical expenses you can use FSA money toward are quite varied. Prescription medications are covered, and if you get a doctor to write a prescription, you can also pay for over-the-counter medicines with money from a flexible spending account. Medical equipment such as crutches, supplies like bandages, and diagnostic devices like blood sugar test kits are also permissible expenses for reimbursement from an FSA.</p>
<p>If your health insurance charges you a copayment or deductible for services like doctor visits or hospital stays, then you're allowed to pay those amounts from your FSA. What you can't pay, though, are insurance premiums themselves.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>You can also pay for medical expenses for family members from your FSA. If you're married, your spouse's expenses can be covered, as well as those of any dependents that you claim.</p>
<p>Limits on FSAsFSAs do come with some restrictions and limitations. Perhaps the most important one is that for the most part, you need to spend down your FSA money each year. Until recently, if you didn't spend every single penny of your flexible spending account, you forfeited whatever was left. That often led to extravagant spending at the end of the year in order to use up the remaining FSA balance.</p>
<p>Recently, though, the IRS started giving people a choice of two different options that helped make FSAs more useful. Your employer can choose to provide a grace period of up to two-and-a-half additional months at the beginning of the following year in order to give workers more time to use up their remaining FSA money from the previous year. Alternatively, employers can allow you to carry forward up to $500 of your FSA money from last year into the current year. Employers aren't allowed to give their workers both options, and some employers choose not to provide either one to their employees.</p>
<p>There's a maximum amount you can contribute to an FSA. For 2016, that amount is $2,550. In some cases, employers choose to make contributions toward their workers' FSAs. Any employer contributions don't count toward the limits on employee contributions, but they're subject to the same forfeiture rules as any other contributions if you don't use them by the appropriate deadline.</p>
<p>Finally, there are some people who don't qualify for FSAs. If you're on Medicare, you're not allowed to use an FSA. Similarly, flexible spending accounts aren't available in conjunction with insurance plans offered by the insurance marketplace under Obamacare.</p>
<p>Flexible spending accounts are a common fringe benefit that employers offer, and many people underestimate their value. An FSA can be one of the richest tax breaks you'll ever get, and it pays to use it properly.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/04/10/what-you-need-to-know-about-fsa-taxes-in-2016.aspx" type="external">What You Need to Know About FSA Taxes in 2016 Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p>Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
What You Need to Know About FSA Taxes in 2016
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/04/10/what-need-to-know-about-fsa-taxes-in-2016.html
|
2016-04-10
| 0right
|
What You Need to Know About FSA Taxes in 2016
<p />
<p>Image source: Stockmonkeys.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>One of the biggest tax breaks available to many regular workers is the flexible spending account. If you have an FSA, you can cover medical expenses while saving on several different types of taxes at the very same time. Below, you'll learn more about flexible spending accounts and how you can use them to maximum advantage.</p>
<p>What an FSA is and why you should use it A flexible spending account lets you divert money from your paycheck that you intend to use for future medical expenses. Later on, after you've received medical care, you can withdraw money from your FSA either to pay those expenses directly or to reimburse you for the money you already spent paying them.</p>
<p>The primary benefit of FSAs is that you can set aside pretax money for your healthcare expenses. Not only do you not have to pay income tax on money deposited in an FSA, but you also avoid paying payroll taxes on that money as well. That's a tax break that most other tax-favored vehicles can't match.</p>
<p>What you can spend FSA money onThe medical expenses you can use FSA money toward are quite varied. Prescription medications are covered, and if you get a doctor to write a prescription, you can also pay for over-the-counter medicines with money from a flexible spending account. Medical equipment such as crutches, supplies like bandages, and diagnostic devices like blood sugar test kits are also permissible expenses for reimbursement from an FSA.</p>
<p>If your health insurance charges you a copayment or deductible for services like doctor visits or hospital stays, then you're allowed to pay those amounts from your FSA. What you can't pay, though, are insurance premiums themselves.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>You can also pay for medical expenses for family members from your FSA. If you're married, your spouse's expenses can be covered, as well as those of any dependents that you claim.</p>
<p>Limits on FSAsFSAs do come with some restrictions and limitations. Perhaps the most important one is that for the most part, you need to spend down your FSA money each year. Until recently, if you didn't spend every single penny of your flexible spending account, you forfeited whatever was left. That often led to extravagant spending at the end of the year in order to use up the remaining FSA balance.</p>
<p>Recently, though, the IRS started giving people a choice of two different options that helped make FSAs more useful. Your employer can choose to provide a grace period of up to two-and-a-half additional months at the beginning of the following year in order to give workers more time to use up their remaining FSA money from the previous year. Alternatively, employers can allow you to carry forward up to $500 of your FSA money from last year into the current year. Employers aren't allowed to give their workers both options, and some employers choose not to provide either one to their employees.</p>
<p>There's a maximum amount you can contribute to an FSA. For 2016, that amount is $2,550. In some cases, employers choose to make contributions toward their workers' FSAs. Any employer contributions don't count toward the limits on employee contributions, but they're subject to the same forfeiture rules as any other contributions if you don't use them by the appropriate deadline.</p>
<p>Finally, there are some people who don't qualify for FSAs. If you're on Medicare, you're not allowed to use an FSA. Similarly, flexible spending accounts aren't available in conjunction with insurance plans offered by the insurance marketplace under Obamacare.</p>
<p>Flexible spending accounts are a common fringe benefit that employers offer, and many people underestimate their value. An FSA can be one of the richest tax breaks you'll ever get, and it pays to use it properly.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2016/04/10/what-you-need-to-know-about-fsa-taxes-in-2016.aspx" type="external">What You Need to Know About FSA Taxes in 2016 Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p>Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 6,721 |
<p>Know your farmer, know your food? Oh no, you don't, says Virginia Foxx.</p>
<p />
<p>In my <a href="" type="internal">&#160;post on the recent House Republicans’ assault on progressive ag policy</a>, I mentioned the move to shut down USDA’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. The sponsor of the amendment that did the dirty deed is Rep. Virginia Foxx (R.-N.C.)—who, it turns, out, represents my district in Congress. This is the sort of thing she gets up to when she’s&#160; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8em9L3o1pk" type="external">not defending children from the scourge of gay marriage</a>, or <a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/86677/rep-foxx-i-agree-that-immigration-equals-invasion" type="external">&#160;lashing out at undocumented workers&#160;</a>(who, incidentally, form the backbone of our area’s Christmas tree and nursery industries.)</p>
<p>As I mentioned in my previous post, Know Your Farmer is essentially a <a href="http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/knowyourfarmer?navid=KNOWYOURFARMER" type="external">website</a>. it&#160;gathers up and&#160;spotlights a hodgepodge of existing programs, funded by the 2008 Farm Bill, that direct modest amounts of money to rebuilding local and regional food systems and supporting new farmers.</p>
<p />
<p>That’s actually a significant service. The USDA’s own site is infamously unwieldy and impossible to navigate. Without Know Your Farmer, the few progressive federal ag programs we have—for example, ones that that help&#160; <a href="http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/knowyourfarmer?contentid=kyf_grants_fns1_content.html&amp;navtype=KYF&amp;edeploymentaction=changenav" type="external">make farmers markets accessible to low-income mothers</a>, or <a href="http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/knowyourfarmer?contentid=kyf_grants_rd1_content.html&amp;navtype=KYF&amp;edeploymentaction=changenav" type="external">help small farmers launch profitable food businesses</a>—would likely wither on the vine.</p>
<p>But Know Your Farmer isn’t&#160;just&#160;a website. It’s also the USDA’s most high-profile acknowledgement since the post-war rise of industrial agriculture&#160;that alternative food systems exist, matter, and deserve support. For decades, the USDA’s approach to agriculture could be encapsulated in the famous mantra of Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s USDA chief: “Get big or get out.” That attitude still dominates our farm policy, but Know Your Farmer shows that a rogue faction now operates within the agency, one that acknowledges that the scaling up and corporate domination of US agriculture hasn’t redounded to the public good.&#160;</p>
<p>Overall, Obama’s Ag policy has been <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-24-usda-obama-monsanto-organic" type="external">wildly inconsistent</a>, and has more often than not <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-27-in-stunning-reversal-usda-chief-vilsack-greenlights-monsantos-al" type="external">tilted toward the interests of Big Ag</a>. But Know Your Farmer stands as his acknowledgement that the sustainable-food movement has earned a seat, even if not a particularly powerful one, at the ag-policy table after decades of grassroots policy work.</p>
<p>For Big Ag and the politicians who do its bidding, that’s apparently an unacceptable situation. Last year, three agribiz-aligned senators <a href="http://www.agri-pulse.com/20100429H1.asp" type="external">lashed out</a> at Know Your Farmer in an angry letter to USDA chief Tom Vilsack. The initiative&#160;“involves subsidizing the so-called locavore niche market,” the lawmakers complained, decorously neglecting to mention that Big Ag gets many times the support in the form of crops subsidies and <a href="" type="internal">various ethanol goodies</a>.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>And now we get a full-frontal attack from the House, in the form of the dread Rep. Foxx’s amendment to shut down Know Your Farmer.&#160;Like her stances on gay marriage and immigration, Foxx’s jihad against Know Your Farmer is absurd. She&#160; <a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/06/16/1277220/farmers-fight-for-a-website.html" type="external">mounted her attack</a>&#160;based on budget concerns; but the initiative has no budget of its own. As the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition&#160; <a href="http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/pingree-foxx-kyf2/" type="external">dryly put it recently</a>, “The practical impact of the Foxx amendment is unclear. The Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative is not a program per se and does not have its own budget. Hence it is difficult to know how USDA would interpret the restriction.”</p>
<p />
<p>I suspect Foxx’s move wasn’t really about saving money, since you don’t save much by shutting down a website; but rather about sending a message: The USDA belongs to the companies that dominate US food and ag, not to the communities working on the ground to create alternatives. There’s more at stake here than just a web site. The Know Your Farmer flap is really about whether our political system is capable of conducting even moderately progressive food and farm policy.&#160;</p>
<p />
|
There’s a Foxx Guarding the Ag-Policy Henhouse
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/foxx-guarding-ag-policy-coop/
|
2011-06-23
| 4left
|
There’s a Foxx Guarding the Ag-Policy Henhouse
<p>Know your farmer, know your food? Oh no, you don't, says Virginia Foxx.</p>
<p />
<p>In my <a href="" type="internal">&#160;post on the recent House Republicans’ assault on progressive ag policy</a>, I mentioned the move to shut down USDA’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative. The sponsor of the amendment that did the dirty deed is Rep. Virginia Foxx (R.-N.C.)—who, it turns, out, represents my district in Congress. This is the sort of thing she gets up to when she’s&#160; <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8em9L3o1pk" type="external">not defending children from the scourge of gay marriage</a>, or <a href="http://washingtonindependent.com/86677/rep-foxx-i-agree-that-immigration-equals-invasion" type="external">&#160;lashing out at undocumented workers&#160;</a>(who, incidentally, form the backbone of our area’s Christmas tree and nursery industries.)</p>
<p>As I mentioned in my previous post, Know Your Farmer is essentially a <a href="http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/knowyourfarmer?navid=KNOWYOURFARMER" type="external">website</a>. it&#160;gathers up and&#160;spotlights a hodgepodge of existing programs, funded by the 2008 Farm Bill, that direct modest amounts of money to rebuilding local and regional food systems and supporting new farmers.</p>
<p />
<p>That’s actually a significant service. The USDA’s own site is infamously unwieldy and impossible to navigate. Without Know Your Farmer, the few progressive federal ag programs we have—for example, ones that that help&#160; <a href="http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/knowyourfarmer?contentid=kyf_grants_fns1_content.html&amp;navtype=KYF&amp;edeploymentaction=changenav" type="external">make farmers markets accessible to low-income mothers</a>, or <a href="http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/knowyourfarmer?contentid=kyf_grants_rd1_content.html&amp;navtype=KYF&amp;edeploymentaction=changenav" type="external">help small farmers launch profitable food businesses</a>—would likely wither on the vine.</p>
<p>But Know Your Farmer isn’t&#160;just&#160;a website. It’s also the USDA’s most high-profile acknowledgement since the post-war rise of industrial agriculture&#160;that alternative food systems exist, matter, and deserve support. For decades, the USDA’s approach to agriculture could be encapsulated in the famous mantra of Ezra Taft Benson, Eisenhower’s USDA chief: “Get big or get out.” That attitude still dominates our farm policy, but Know Your Farmer shows that a rogue faction now operates within the agency, one that acknowledges that the scaling up and corporate domination of US agriculture hasn’t redounded to the public good.&#160;</p>
<p>Overall, Obama’s Ag policy has been <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-24-usda-obama-monsanto-organic" type="external">wildly inconsistent</a>, and has more often than not <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-27-in-stunning-reversal-usda-chief-vilsack-greenlights-monsantos-al" type="external">tilted toward the interests of Big Ag</a>. But Know Your Farmer stands as his acknowledgement that the sustainable-food movement has earned a seat, even if not a particularly powerful one, at the ag-policy table after decades of grassroots policy work.</p>
<p>For Big Ag and the politicians who do its bidding, that’s apparently an unacceptable situation. Last year, three agribiz-aligned senators <a href="http://www.agri-pulse.com/20100429H1.asp" type="external">lashed out</a> at Know Your Farmer in an angry letter to USDA chief Tom Vilsack. The initiative&#160;“involves subsidizing the so-called locavore niche market,” the lawmakers complained, decorously neglecting to mention that Big Ag gets many times the support in the form of crops subsidies and <a href="" type="internal">various ethanol goodies</a>.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>And now we get a full-frontal attack from the House, in the form of the dread Rep. Foxx’s amendment to shut down Know Your Farmer.&#160;Like her stances on gay marriage and immigration, Foxx’s jihad against Know Your Farmer is absurd. She&#160; <a href="http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/06/16/1277220/farmers-fight-for-a-website.html" type="external">mounted her attack</a>&#160;based on budget concerns; but the initiative has no budget of its own. As the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition&#160; <a href="http://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/pingree-foxx-kyf2/" type="external">dryly put it recently</a>, “The practical impact of the Foxx amendment is unclear. The Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative is not a program per se and does not have its own budget. Hence it is difficult to know how USDA would interpret the restriction.”</p>
<p />
<p>I suspect Foxx’s move wasn’t really about saving money, since you don’t save much by shutting down a website; but rather about sending a message: The USDA belongs to the companies that dominate US food and ag, not to the communities working on the ground to create alternatives. There’s more at stake here than just a web site. The Know Your Farmer flap is really about whether our political system is capable of conducting even moderately progressive food and farm policy.&#160;</p>
<p />
| 6,722 |
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<p />
<p>Francis used live animals that Christmas day in the small Italian village of Greccio. To this day, Italians love nativities; Naples devotes an entire street to selling them.</p>
<p>A raku pottery nativity from South Africa graces the cover of Susan Topp Weber’s book, “Nativities of the World.” (Photo by Randy Mace, courtesy of Gibb Smith Books)</p>
<p>Midwifed in Italy, by the 18th century the tradition had spread throughout Europe. In Naples, nativities grew more and more elaborate, Weber writes. The figures sported limbs with wires so they could be posed; artists dressed them in rich fabrics.</p>
<p>Churches and wealthy families started competing with one another for the most impressive Christmas scenes and the tradition then spread to Spain, where Carlos III began the practice of setting up annual displays in his royal palace in Madrid. In Munich, Oberammergau and Tyrol, artists developed “biblically correct” nativity scenes in the early 19th century, aspiring to historical accuracy.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Many of these sets have been preserved in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.</p>
<p>In the New World, indigenous people began interpreting nativities through their own cultures. Across the globe, wherever missionaries travelled, nativities emerged, often resembling the people who made them. Collectors began buying nativities by the mid-20th century, perhaps inspired by Museum of International Folk Art donor Alexander Girard’s famous collection of international sets popular at museum shows.</p>
<p>Navajo pictorial weaver Linda Nez created this hand-woven wool nativity in 2000. (Photo by Blair Clark, courtesy of Gibb Smith Books)</p>
<p>A national American organization called Friends of the Crèche was organized in 2000, modeled after similar groups in Europe.</p>
<p>The nativities in Weber’s book have never before appeared in a book, she said. Their materials range from wheat straw (Bangladesh) to wrought iron (Ecuador) to churro wool (Navajo) to felt (Kazakhstan) to stone (Peru). An Australian version features native animals, such as kangaroos.</p>
<p>A Slovakian artist created a nativity from cornhusks. A Czech fiber artist wove the Holy Family from bobbin lace. An Irish knitter stitched the stable scene in wool. An Hawaiian artist made the shelter from a coconut; the star above it is a tiny starfish.</p>
<p>Weber makes her own nativities from bread dough. She researched the project internationally, attending collectors’ events in both Europe and the U.S. Last November, she attended the International Congress of Crèche Collectors in Innsbruck, Austria. Nine hundred people from 17 countries showed up. She discovered a major collector in Denver, as well as nativity shows in both Los Alamos (at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and in Albuquerque (at the Sandia Presbyterian Church). This month, she plans to attend another collectors’ convention in Cleveland, Ohio.</p>
<p>This Australian nativity uses natural materials to portray the usual nativity figures as animals found in Australia. (Photo by Blair Clark, courtesy of Gibb Smith Books)</p>
<p>Her shop carries some 60 nativity sets, including one from the estate of a collector who had no children to inherit it.</p>
<p>“After a point, it gets to be ‘What do you do with them?’ ” she said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>One collector of 500 nativity sets displays the figures only at Christmas, then packs them all away. A Denver collector</p>
<p>lives in a house with three floors to display the sets year-round.</p>
<p>Prices may range from $10-$12 all the way up to $3,000.</p>
<p>In Europe, collectors tend to accumulate all of the figures and animals that can be contained within a crèche, as well as any accouterments the artist adds.</p>
<p>“There’s an impulse to collect everything from stamps to thimbles,” Weber said. “But with nativities, it tends to be a religious aspect.”</p>
<p />
<p />
|
New book on international nativities
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/275677/new-book-on-international-nativities.html
|
2013-10-05
| 2least
|
New book on international nativities
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Francis used live animals that Christmas day in the small Italian village of Greccio. To this day, Italians love nativities; Naples devotes an entire street to selling them.</p>
<p>A raku pottery nativity from South Africa graces the cover of Susan Topp Weber’s book, “Nativities of the World.” (Photo by Randy Mace, courtesy of Gibb Smith Books)</p>
<p>Midwifed in Italy, by the 18th century the tradition had spread throughout Europe. In Naples, nativities grew more and more elaborate, Weber writes. The figures sported limbs with wires so they could be posed; artists dressed them in rich fabrics.</p>
<p>Churches and wealthy families started competing with one another for the most impressive Christmas scenes and the tradition then spread to Spain, where Carlos III began the practice of setting up annual displays in his royal palace in Madrid. In Munich, Oberammergau and Tyrol, artists developed “biblically correct” nativity scenes in the early 19th century, aspiring to historical accuracy.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Many of these sets have been preserved in museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.</p>
<p>In the New World, indigenous people began interpreting nativities through their own cultures. Across the globe, wherever missionaries travelled, nativities emerged, often resembling the people who made them. Collectors began buying nativities by the mid-20th century, perhaps inspired by Museum of International Folk Art donor Alexander Girard’s famous collection of international sets popular at museum shows.</p>
<p>Navajo pictorial weaver Linda Nez created this hand-woven wool nativity in 2000. (Photo by Blair Clark, courtesy of Gibb Smith Books)</p>
<p>A national American organization called Friends of the Crèche was organized in 2000, modeled after similar groups in Europe.</p>
<p>The nativities in Weber’s book have never before appeared in a book, she said. Their materials range from wheat straw (Bangladesh) to wrought iron (Ecuador) to churro wool (Navajo) to felt (Kazakhstan) to stone (Peru). An Australian version features native animals, such as kangaroos.</p>
<p>A Slovakian artist created a nativity from cornhusks. A Czech fiber artist wove the Holy Family from bobbin lace. An Irish knitter stitched the stable scene in wool. An Hawaiian artist made the shelter from a coconut; the star above it is a tiny starfish.</p>
<p>Weber makes her own nativities from bread dough. She researched the project internationally, attending collectors’ events in both Europe and the U.S. Last November, she attended the International Congress of Crèche Collectors in Innsbruck, Austria. Nine hundred people from 17 countries showed up. She discovered a major collector in Denver, as well as nativity shows in both Los Alamos (at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and in Albuquerque (at the Sandia Presbyterian Church). This month, she plans to attend another collectors’ convention in Cleveland, Ohio.</p>
<p>This Australian nativity uses natural materials to portray the usual nativity figures as animals found in Australia. (Photo by Blair Clark, courtesy of Gibb Smith Books)</p>
<p>Her shop carries some 60 nativity sets, including one from the estate of a collector who had no children to inherit it.</p>
<p>“After a point, it gets to be ‘What do you do with them?’ ” she said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>One collector of 500 nativity sets displays the figures only at Christmas, then packs them all away. A Denver collector</p>
<p>lives in a house with three floors to display the sets year-round.</p>
<p>Prices may range from $10-$12 all the way up to $3,000.</p>
<p>In Europe, collectors tend to accumulate all of the figures and animals that can be contained within a crèche, as well as any accouterments the artist adds.</p>
<p>“There’s an impulse to collect everything from stamps to thimbles,” Weber said. “But with nativities, it tends to be a religious aspect.”</p>
<p />
<p />
| 6,723 |
<p>A federal judge in Detroit <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/washington/17cnd-nsa.html?hp&amp;ex=1155873600&amp;en=a6f8950517248da0&amp;ei=5094&amp;partner=homepage" type="external">ruled that the government’s eavesdropping program is illegal and unconstitutional</a>, and ordered an immediate halt to it.</p>
<p>“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” wrote district Judge Anna Diggs Taylor.</p>
<p>N.Y. Times:</p>
<p>A federal judge in Detroit ruled today that the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program is illegal and unconstitutional, and she ordered that it cease at once.</p>
<p />
<p>District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor found that President Bush exceeded his proper authority and that the eavesdropping without warrants violated the First and Fourth Amendment protections of free speech and privacy.</p>
<p>“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” she wrote.In becoming the first federal judge to declare the eavesdropping program unconstitutional, Judge Taylor rejected the administration’s assertion that to defend itself against a lawsuit would force it to divulge information that should be kept secret in the name of national security.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/washington/17cnd-nsa.html?hp&amp;ex=1155873600&amp;en=a6f8950517248da0&amp;ei=5094&amp;partner=homepage" type="external">Link</a></p>
|
Judge Orders End to Bush's Warrantless Wiretapping
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/judge-orders-end-to-bushs-warrantless-wiretapping/
|
2006-08-17
| 4left
|
Judge Orders End to Bush's Warrantless Wiretapping
<p>A federal judge in Detroit <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/washington/17cnd-nsa.html?hp&amp;ex=1155873600&amp;en=a6f8950517248da0&amp;ei=5094&amp;partner=homepage" type="external">ruled that the government’s eavesdropping program is illegal and unconstitutional</a>, and ordered an immediate halt to it.</p>
<p>“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” wrote district Judge Anna Diggs Taylor.</p>
<p>N.Y. Times:</p>
<p>A federal judge in Detroit ruled today that the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program is illegal and unconstitutional, and she ordered that it cease at once.</p>
<p />
<p>District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor found that President Bush exceeded his proper authority and that the eavesdropping without warrants violated the First and Fourth Amendment protections of free speech and privacy.</p>
<p>“It was never the intent of the Framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights,” she wrote.In becoming the first federal judge to declare the eavesdropping program unconstitutional, Judge Taylor rejected the administration’s assertion that to defend itself against a lawsuit would force it to divulge information that should be kept secret in the name of national security.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/washington/17cnd-nsa.html?hp&amp;ex=1155873600&amp;en=a6f8950517248da0&amp;ei=5094&amp;partner=homepage" type="external">Link</a></p>
| 6,724 |
<p>Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com</p>
<p>For Donald Trump, lying comes as easily as breathing, and perhaps it's even more effortless. He makes up falsehoods about not only big political issues or even sensitive personal matters, but everything. That includes the small stuff, especially if he thinks the lie will make him look good.</p>
<p>If he were smarter, he might choose not to lie about things that can be disproven with a Google search. As it stands, Trump’s claims about his achievements are pretty easy to discredit. That includes his lies about things he’s invented, a list that includes words, ideas, even nicknames. Because the only thing Trump has ever really invented was the idea of selling&#160; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Steaks" type="external">steaks through the Sharper Image catalog</a>.</p>
<p>Here are five things Trump has lied about inventing.</p>
<p>1. The word 'fake.'</p>
<p>On Sunday, Trump sat down with Mike Huckabee for an "interview,” if that is what you call it when one person compliments and stares adoringly at another person for half an hour. During this "conversation"—if that’s the word for a meeting between a sycophant and a narcissist fully acting out their respective roles—Trump decided to discuss his invention of the word “fake.”</p>
<p>"The media is—really, the word, one of the greatest of all terms I've come up with, is 'fake,'" Trump said. "I guess other people have used it perhaps over the years, but I've never noticed it."</p>
<p>The most fascinating thing about Trump’s contention is not that it’s patently untrue, but the unvarnished blend of insanity and stupidity in its suggestion that Trump invented a word that’s been in common parlance for hundreds of years. Merriam-Webster points out that usage of the word “fake”&#160; <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fake" type="external">dates back to the 15th century</a>. Even giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and assuming he actually meant to take credit for the term “fake news,” the claim still doesn’t hold up. Merriam-Webster points to specific&#160; <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-real-story-of-fake-news" type="external">citations of that phrase in the late 1800s</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to watch the entire Trump-Huckabee “discussion”—if that is the way to describe what happens when an owner makes a dog sit very still with a treat on its nose in some cruel, torturous approximation of a trick—it’s&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVQPVGPAUtc" type="external">in the video below</a>. It includes Huckabee calling Trump a “rock star,” among other embarrassments.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>2. An 84-year-old economic theory.</p>
<p>In May, Trump spoke with editors&#160; <a href="//www.economist.com/trumptranscript" type="external">from the Economist</a>, a publication staffed by people who know a lot about economics, the dead giveaway being the fact that it’s called the Economist. Unfortunately, there were no cameras running during the interview, so we can’t see the look on the editors’ faces when Trump insisted he invented a well-established economic theory.</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?</p>
<p>TRUMP: It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll… you understand the expression “prime the pump”?</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: Yes.</p>
<p>TRUMP: We have to prime the pump.</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: It’s very Keynesian.</p>
<p>TRUMP: We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: Priming the pump?</p>
<p>TRUMP: Yeah, have you heard it?</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: Yes.</p>
<p>TRUMP: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: It’s—</p>
<p>TRUMP: Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out.</p>
<p>Is there anything better than the end of the exchange, when the Economist editor, befuddled and stunned by the whole dumb conversation, starts to repeat Trump’s own words back to him, and instead of listening, Trump plows onward, proudly ignorant and obnoxious? Congratulations, America! You elected Michael Scott president.</p>
<p>There’s also the fact that Trump says he “came up with [‘prime the pump’] a couple of days ago,” despite the fact that he used the phrase multiple times before the Economist interview. Once while he was on Fox News a month prior, and&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/11/trump-says-he-invented-an-84-year-old-phrase-but-why/?utm_term=.1bd73d519984" type="external">twice during media appearances in 2016</a>.</p>
<p>For the record, the New York Times notes that prime the pump “ <a href="" type="internal">was in wide use by 1933</a>, when President Roosevelt fought the Great Depression with pump-priming stimulus.”</p>
<p>3. The border wall.</p>
<p>During the election, Trump riled his base of racists and xenophobes with promises of a useless, costly southern border wall to keep brown immigrants out. It wasn’t a new idea— <a href="//news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160304-us-mexico-border-fence-wall-photos-immigration/" type="external">a barrier that runs</a>&#160;850 miles along the dividing line was erected by Bush 43 in 2006, and the border patrol&#160; <a href="//www.dailynews.com/2016/07/20/donald-trump-isnt-the-first-to-call-for-mexico-wall/" type="external">was put in place in 1924</a>. But Trump accused his GOP primary competitor Ted Cruz and others for stealing an idea that hadn’t been his to begin with.</p>
<p>"People are picking up all of my ideas, including Ted, who started talking about building a wall two days ago,"&#160; <a href="//www.politico.com/story/2016/01/ted-cruz-donald-trump-border-wall-mexico-217372" type="external">Trump told Politico</a>&#160;in January 2016.</p>
<p>During an&#160; <a href="//www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-cruz-border-wall-amnesty-mexico-217299" type="external">episode of Face the Nation</a>, Trump said, "I was watching the other day. And I was watching Ted talk. And he said, 'We will build a wall.' The first time I've ever heard him say it. And my wife, who was sitting next to me, said, 'Oh, look. He's copying what you've been saying for a long period of time.'”</p>
<p>"Every time somebody says we want a wall, remember who said it first," Trump said at a New Hampshire rally. "Politicians do not give credit."</p>
<p>That seems to include “politicians” named Trump who rip off the many racist politicians who have come before them.</p>
<p>Added bonus: Trump also&#160; <a href="//www.newsweek.com/trump-says-his-plan-build-solar-wall-mexico-will-pay-itself-scientist-sort-628255" type="external">stole an idea for putting solar panels on the wall</a>. From a veteran.</p>
<p>4. The nickname 'Rocket Man' for the Supreme Leader of North Korea.</p>
<p />
<p>Hilariously, White House staffers have talked up Trump’s use of “Rocket Man” as a nickname for Kim Jong-un as proof that he’s a real-life Don Draper. “That's a President Trump original,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders&#160; <a href="https://www.metro.us/president-trump/trump-rocket-man-nickname-not-orginial" type="external">said on Fox &amp; Friends</a>. “As you know, he’s a master in branding.”</p>
<p>Is he, though?</p>
<p>Actually, this one may come as a bit of a surprise because it seemed just dumb enough to be a believable Trump (via Elton John) invention. But even this Trump creation originated somewhere else.</p>
<p>The cover of the July 8, 2006, issue of the Economist&#160; <a href="//time.com/4948559/donald-trump-rocket-man/" type="external">featured then-North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il</a>&#160;blasting off toward the sky, clouds of smoke billowing from his feet. “Rocket Man” the caption read, an allusion to the dictator’s nuclear ambitions. Trump has reapplied the moniker to his successor and son, Kim Jong-un, who by&#160; <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/trump-north-korea-kims" type="external">all indications he seems to think is the same guy</a>. What a shock that a raging racist can’t tell two totally different Asian men apart.</p>
<p>This isn’t to suggest Trump ever read an issue of the Economist aside from the one he was featured in (and even then, he probably only skimmed one-third of his interview). Maybe he saw it when he did an image search for “The Economist” the night before his interview.</p>
<p />
<p>5. The whole 'Make America Great Again' nonsense.</p>
<p>Trump told the&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/18/donald-trump-is-making-slogans-great-again-just-ask-him/?utm_term=.a04302539a8d" type="external">Washington Post</a>&#160;that the day after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss, he got to work on a new slogan for his campaign.</p>
<p>"I said, 'We'll make America great.' And I had started off 'We Will Make America Great.' That was my first idea, but I didn't like it. And then all of a sudden it was going to be 'Make America Great.' But that didn't work because that was a slight to America because that means it was never great before. And it has been great before. So I said, 'Make America Great Again.' I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote it down. I went to my lawyers…. said, 'See if you can have this registered and trademarked.'"</p>
<p>When Trump says America was “great before,” he is obviously referring either to the days of Jim Crow or slavery or Native American genocide, because that pretty much covers America up until this moment. For the record, "Let's Make America Great Again"&#160; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#1980_Reagan_presidential_campaign" type="external">was used by Ronald Reagan</a>’s 1980 election campaign. It seems fairly likely that Trump, who was a fully grown adult of voting age at the time, picked it up there. Realizing he might be called out on this, he responded with proactive defensiveness.</p>
<p>“You know, everyone said, “Oh, it was Ronald Reagan's." And then they found out they were wrong. His was—and I didn't know this at the time, I found it out a year ago. I found it out a year after I—his was, “Let's Make America Great.”</p>
<p>“But he didn't trademark it.”</p>
<p>Kali&#160;Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.</p>
|
5 Things Trump Lied About Inventing
| true |
https://alternet.org/election-2016/5-things-trump-lied-about-inventing
|
2017-10-10
| 4left
|
5 Things Trump Lied About Inventing
<p>Photo Credit: a katz / Shutterstock.com</p>
<p>For Donald Trump, lying comes as easily as breathing, and perhaps it's even more effortless. He makes up falsehoods about not only big political issues or even sensitive personal matters, but everything. That includes the small stuff, especially if he thinks the lie will make him look good.</p>
<p>If he were smarter, he might choose not to lie about things that can be disproven with a Google search. As it stands, Trump’s claims about his achievements are pretty easy to discredit. That includes his lies about things he’s invented, a list that includes words, ideas, even nicknames. Because the only thing Trump has ever really invented was the idea of selling&#160; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Steaks" type="external">steaks through the Sharper Image catalog</a>.</p>
<p>Here are five things Trump has lied about inventing.</p>
<p>1. The word 'fake.'</p>
<p>On Sunday, Trump sat down with Mike Huckabee for an "interview,” if that is what you call it when one person compliments and stares adoringly at another person for half an hour. During this "conversation"—if that’s the word for a meeting between a sycophant and a narcissist fully acting out their respective roles—Trump decided to discuss his invention of the word “fake.”</p>
<p>"The media is—really, the word, one of the greatest of all terms I've come up with, is 'fake,'" Trump said. "I guess other people have used it perhaps over the years, but I've never noticed it."</p>
<p>The most fascinating thing about Trump’s contention is not that it’s patently untrue, but the unvarnished blend of insanity and stupidity in its suggestion that Trump invented a word that’s been in common parlance for hundreds of years. Merriam-Webster points out that usage of the word “fake”&#160; <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fake" type="external">dates back to the 15th century</a>. Even giving Trump the benefit of the doubt and assuming he actually meant to take credit for the term “fake news,” the claim still doesn’t hold up. Merriam-Webster points to specific&#160; <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/the-real-story-of-fake-news" type="external">citations of that phrase in the late 1800s</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to watch the entire Trump-Huckabee “discussion”—if that is the way to describe what happens when an owner makes a dog sit very still with a treat on its nose in some cruel, torturous approximation of a trick—it’s&#160; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVQPVGPAUtc" type="external">in the video below</a>. It includes Huckabee calling Trump a “rock star,” among other embarrassments.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>2. An 84-year-old economic theory.</p>
<p>In May, Trump spoke with editors&#160; <a href="//www.economist.com/trumptranscript" type="external">from the Economist</a>, a publication staffed by people who know a lot about economics, the dead giveaway being the fact that it’s called the Economist. Unfortunately, there were no cameras running during the interview, so we can’t see the look on the editors’ faces when Trump insisted he invented a well-established economic theory.</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: But beyond that it’s OK if the tax plan increases the deficit?</p>
<p>TRUMP: It is OK, because it won’t increase it for long. You may have two years where you’ll… you understand the expression “prime the pump”?</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: Yes.</p>
<p>TRUMP: We have to prime the pump.</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: It’s very Keynesian.</p>
<p>TRUMP: We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. Have you heard that expression before, for this particular type of an event?</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: Priming the pump?</p>
<p>TRUMP: Yeah, have you heard it?</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: Yes.</p>
<p>TRUMP: Have you heard that expression used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just… I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do.</p>
<p>ECONOMIST: It’s—</p>
<p>TRUMP: Yeah, what you have to do is you have to put something in before you can get something out.</p>
<p>Is there anything better than the end of the exchange, when the Economist editor, befuddled and stunned by the whole dumb conversation, starts to repeat Trump’s own words back to him, and instead of listening, Trump plows onward, proudly ignorant and obnoxious? Congratulations, America! You elected Michael Scott president.</p>
<p>There’s also the fact that Trump says he “came up with [‘prime the pump’] a couple of days ago,” despite the fact that he used the phrase multiple times before the Economist interview. Once while he was on Fox News a month prior, and&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/11/trump-says-he-invented-an-84-year-old-phrase-but-why/?utm_term=.1bd73d519984" type="external">twice during media appearances in 2016</a>.</p>
<p>For the record, the New York Times notes that prime the pump “ <a href="" type="internal">was in wide use by 1933</a>, when President Roosevelt fought the Great Depression with pump-priming stimulus.”</p>
<p>3. The border wall.</p>
<p>During the election, Trump riled his base of racists and xenophobes with promises of a useless, costly southern border wall to keep brown immigrants out. It wasn’t a new idea— <a href="//news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160304-us-mexico-border-fence-wall-photos-immigration/" type="external">a barrier that runs</a>&#160;850 miles along the dividing line was erected by Bush 43 in 2006, and the border patrol&#160; <a href="//www.dailynews.com/2016/07/20/donald-trump-isnt-the-first-to-call-for-mexico-wall/" type="external">was put in place in 1924</a>. But Trump accused his GOP primary competitor Ted Cruz and others for stealing an idea that hadn’t been his to begin with.</p>
<p>"People are picking up all of my ideas, including Ted, who started talking about building a wall two days ago,"&#160; <a href="//www.politico.com/story/2016/01/ted-cruz-donald-trump-border-wall-mexico-217372" type="external">Trump told Politico</a>&#160;in January 2016.</p>
<p>During an&#160; <a href="//www.politico.com/story/2016/01/trump-cruz-border-wall-amnesty-mexico-217299" type="external">episode of Face the Nation</a>, Trump said, "I was watching the other day. And I was watching Ted talk. And he said, 'We will build a wall.' The first time I've ever heard him say it. And my wife, who was sitting next to me, said, 'Oh, look. He's copying what you've been saying for a long period of time.'”</p>
<p>"Every time somebody says we want a wall, remember who said it first," Trump said at a New Hampshire rally. "Politicians do not give credit."</p>
<p>That seems to include “politicians” named Trump who rip off the many racist politicians who have come before them.</p>
<p>Added bonus: Trump also&#160; <a href="//www.newsweek.com/trump-says-his-plan-build-solar-wall-mexico-will-pay-itself-scientist-sort-628255" type="external">stole an idea for putting solar panels on the wall</a>. From a veteran.</p>
<p>4. The nickname 'Rocket Man' for the Supreme Leader of North Korea.</p>
<p />
<p>Hilariously, White House staffers have talked up Trump’s use of “Rocket Man” as a nickname for Kim Jong-un as proof that he’s a real-life Don Draper. “That's a President Trump original,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders&#160; <a href="https://www.metro.us/president-trump/trump-rocket-man-nickname-not-orginial" type="external">said on Fox &amp; Friends</a>. “As you know, he’s a master in branding.”</p>
<p>Is he, though?</p>
<p>Actually, this one may come as a bit of a surprise because it seemed just dumb enough to be a believable Trump (via Elton John) invention. But even this Trump creation originated somewhere else.</p>
<p>The cover of the July 8, 2006, issue of the Economist&#160; <a href="//time.com/4948559/donald-trump-rocket-man/" type="external">featured then-North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il</a>&#160;blasting off toward the sky, clouds of smoke billowing from his feet. “Rocket Man” the caption read, an allusion to the dictator’s nuclear ambitions. Trump has reapplied the moniker to his successor and son, Kim Jong-un, who by&#160; <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/trump-north-korea-kims" type="external">all indications he seems to think is the same guy</a>. What a shock that a raging racist can’t tell two totally different Asian men apart.</p>
<p>This isn’t to suggest Trump ever read an issue of the Economist aside from the one he was featured in (and even then, he probably only skimmed one-third of his interview). Maybe he saw it when he did an image search for “The Economist” the night before his interview.</p>
<p />
<p>5. The whole 'Make America Great Again' nonsense.</p>
<p>Trump told the&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/18/donald-trump-is-making-slogans-great-again-just-ask-him/?utm_term=.a04302539a8d" type="external">Washington Post</a>&#160;that the day after Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss, he got to work on a new slogan for his campaign.</p>
<p>"I said, 'We'll make America great.' And I had started off 'We Will Make America Great.' That was my first idea, but I didn't like it. And then all of a sudden it was going to be 'Make America Great.' But that didn't work because that was a slight to America because that means it was never great before. And it has been great before. So I said, 'Make America Great Again.' I said, 'That is so good.' I wrote it down. I went to my lawyers…. said, 'See if you can have this registered and trademarked.'"</p>
<p>When Trump says America was “great before,” he is obviously referring either to the days of Jim Crow or slavery or Native American genocide, because that pretty much covers America up until this moment. For the record, "Let's Make America Great Again"&#160; <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again#1980_Reagan_presidential_campaign" type="external">was used by Ronald Reagan</a>’s 1980 election campaign. It seems fairly likely that Trump, who was a fully grown adult of voting age at the time, picked it up there. Realizing he might be called out on this, he responded with proactive defensiveness.</p>
<p>“You know, everyone said, “Oh, it was Ronald Reagan's." And then they found out they were wrong. His was—and I didn't know this at the time, I found it out a year ago. I found it out a year after I—his was, “Let's Make America Great.”</p>
<p>“But he didn't trademark it.”</p>
<p>Kali&#160;Holloway is a senior writer and the associate editor of media and culture at AlterNet.</p>
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<p />
<p>She retired Friday after 10 years as director of council services and more than 24 years at the city overall.</p>
<p>Mason is an attorney with an even-keeled personality. Her professional, nonpartisan approach to the job won praise from both Democrats and Republicans during her last council meeting, earlier this month.</p>
<p>Councilor Brad Winter, a Republican and the longest-tenured member of the council, said Mason excelled in a challenging job and always provided sound advice.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Can you imagine having nine elected bosses, and more coming every two years?” he asked.</p>
<p>Councilor Ken Sanchez, a Democrat, said Mason’s retirement is “a great loss to the council offices and city of Albuquerque. … You always seem to keep everyone working together.”</p>
<p>A selection committee has recommended that Jon Zaman succeed Mason as director of City Council services.</p>
<p>Zaman is also well-regarded within City Hall. He is now associate director of council services, with particular expertise in finance and budget matters.</p>
<p>Zaman has also worked for the Albuquerque Rescue Mission, which helps the homeless; the Realtors Association of New Mexico; the state Finance Authority and Legislative Council Service; and Denver City Council.</p>
<p>Zaman’s appointment could go before the council today.</p>
<p>It would be hard for the government shutdown that hit Washington, D.C., to be replicated at City Hall.</p>
<p>At the federal level, Congress failed to approve a spending plan for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, resulting in the partial government shutdown earlier this month.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In Albuquerque, the City Charter makes it difficult to end up without a budget.</p>
<p>The charter requires the mayor to propose a budget by April 1 for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The City Council then has two months to approve or amend the mayor’s plan.</p>
<p>If the council doesn’t approve a budget by May 31, the mayor’s proposal automatically goes into effect.</p>
<p>Contact Dan McKay at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
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Council staff director retires after 24 years with the city
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Council staff director retires after 24 years with the city
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<p />
<p>She retired Friday after 10 years as director of council services and more than 24 years at the city overall.</p>
<p>Mason is an attorney with an even-keeled personality. Her professional, nonpartisan approach to the job won praise from both Democrats and Republicans during her last council meeting, earlier this month.</p>
<p>Councilor Brad Winter, a Republican and the longest-tenured member of the council, said Mason excelled in a challenging job and always provided sound advice.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“Can you imagine having nine elected bosses, and more coming every two years?” he asked.</p>
<p>Councilor Ken Sanchez, a Democrat, said Mason’s retirement is “a great loss to the council offices and city of Albuquerque. … You always seem to keep everyone working together.”</p>
<p>A selection committee has recommended that Jon Zaman succeed Mason as director of City Council services.</p>
<p>Zaman is also well-regarded within City Hall. He is now associate director of council services, with particular expertise in finance and budget matters.</p>
<p>Zaman has also worked for the Albuquerque Rescue Mission, which helps the homeless; the Realtors Association of New Mexico; the state Finance Authority and Legislative Council Service; and Denver City Council.</p>
<p>Zaman’s appointment could go before the council today.</p>
<p>It would be hard for the government shutdown that hit Washington, D.C., to be replicated at City Hall.</p>
<p>At the federal level, Congress failed to approve a spending plan for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, resulting in the partial government shutdown earlier this month.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In Albuquerque, the City Charter makes it difficult to end up without a budget.</p>
<p>The charter requires the mayor to propose a budget by April 1 for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The City Council then has two months to approve or amend the mayor’s plan.</p>
<p>If the council doesn’t approve a budget by May 31, the mayor’s proposal automatically goes into effect.</p>
<p>Contact Dan McKay at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p />
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />Texas Governor Rick Perry is at it again, and by “at it” I mean <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/rick-perry-obamacare-95727.html?hp=f3" type="external">acting like a complete hypocrite</a>. &#160;The governor who has made a career out of attacking Washington is once again seeking money&#160;from&#160;Washington.</p>
<p>The governor that:</p>
<p>He’s now in talks with the Obama administration seeking money from “Obamacare” to expand health coverage for the elderly and disabled in Texas.</p>
<p>Do I disagree with his request? &#160;Absolutely not.</p>
<p>But his blatant hypocrisy is absolutely astounding. &#160;A man who’s done as much as possible to sabotage and oppose the law, once calling it a “monstrosity,” is now asking for&#160;$100 million&#160;from the Obama administration to help the elderly and disabled in Texas.</p>
<p>Like with most Republicans, they build careers out of attacking the “big bad federal government” yet are often the first ones with their hands out asking that same federal government for money when&#160;they&#160;need it.</p>
<p>But let’s look at what the Perry spokesperson said when asked why, if the governor is so against the law, he’s now seeking funds from it:</p>
<p>“Long before Obamacare was forced on the American people, Texas was implementing policies to provide those with intellectual disabilities more community options to enable them to live more independent lives, at a lower cost to taxpayers. &#160;The Texas Health and Human Services Commission will continue to move forward with these policies because they are right for our citizens and our state, regardless of whatever funding schemes may be found in Obamacare.”</p>
<p>In other words: “Oh we&#160;meant&#160;to do this before, and had plans to do this before, but thanks to Obamacare we now have the funding to do so. &#160;But the law is still terrible!”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ketknbc.com/news/david-dewhurst-congratulations-texas-legislature-o" type="external">Texas has a “rainy day fund” worth over $6 billion</a>. &#160;You’re telling me Rick Perry couldn’t take $100 million from that? &#160;After all, his spokesperson said “long before Obamacare” came along. &#160;What the heck were they waiting for?</p>
<p>Apparently—Obamacare.</p>
<p>And isn’t Rick Perry always talking about states’ rights and keeping the federal government out of state business? &#160;Shouldn’t he then be seeking&#160;less&#160;dependence from the federal government and using his own state revenue to fund this $100 million health care expansion for the elderly and disabled?</p>
<p>I’ll stop. &#160;I’m using too much common sense and logic. &#160;Two things Republicans don’t quite excel at using or understanding.</p>
<p>The bottom line is, this is just more hypocrisy about federal spending, our government and the Affordable Care Act coming from another prominent Republican.</p>
<p>It’s the attitude carried by many Republicans that when others need help,&#160;those people&#160;are&#160;abusing the system and just looking for a government handout. &#160;But when&#160;they&#160;need it, well then it’s perfectly acceptable.</p>
<p>But that’s what happens when you’re a political party <a href="" type="internal">built for sociopaths—by sociopaths</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Texas Representative Who Voted Against Sandy Relief Seeks Federal Money After Explosion</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Rick Perry's Idiocy Strikes Again as he calls the Implementation of "Obamacare" a Criminal Act</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Busted! Rick Perry Using "Nonprofit Corporation" Run By Governor's Office to Create Slush Fund</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p>
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Rick Perry is Now Asking President Obama for Funds From Obamacare
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http://forwardprogressives.com/rick-perry-is-now-asking-president-obama-for-funds-from-obamacare/
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2013-08-21
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Rick Perry is Now Asking President Obama for Funds From Obamacare
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Texas Governor Rick Perry is at it again, and by “at it” I mean <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/rick-perry-obamacare-95727.html?hp=f3" type="external">acting like a complete hypocrite</a>. &#160;The governor who has made a career out of attacking Washington is once again seeking money&#160;from&#160;Washington.</p>
<p>The governor that:</p>
<p>He’s now in talks with the Obama administration seeking money from “Obamacare” to expand health coverage for the elderly and disabled in Texas.</p>
<p>Do I disagree with his request? &#160;Absolutely not.</p>
<p>But his blatant hypocrisy is absolutely astounding. &#160;A man who’s done as much as possible to sabotage and oppose the law, once calling it a “monstrosity,” is now asking for&#160;$100 million&#160;from the Obama administration to help the elderly and disabled in Texas.</p>
<p>Like with most Republicans, they build careers out of attacking the “big bad federal government” yet are often the first ones with their hands out asking that same federal government for money when&#160;they&#160;need it.</p>
<p>But let’s look at what the Perry spokesperson said when asked why, if the governor is so against the law, he’s now seeking funds from it:</p>
<p>“Long before Obamacare was forced on the American people, Texas was implementing policies to provide those with intellectual disabilities more community options to enable them to live more independent lives, at a lower cost to taxpayers. &#160;The Texas Health and Human Services Commission will continue to move forward with these policies because they are right for our citizens and our state, regardless of whatever funding schemes may be found in Obamacare.”</p>
<p>In other words: “Oh we&#160;meant&#160;to do this before, and had plans to do this before, but thanks to Obamacare we now have the funding to do so. &#160;But the law is still terrible!”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ketknbc.com/news/david-dewhurst-congratulations-texas-legislature-o" type="external">Texas has a “rainy day fund” worth over $6 billion</a>. &#160;You’re telling me Rick Perry couldn’t take $100 million from that? &#160;After all, his spokesperson said “long before Obamacare” came along. &#160;What the heck were they waiting for?</p>
<p>Apparently—Obamacare.</p>
<p>And isn’t Rick Perry always talking about states’ rights and keeping the federal government out of state business? &#160;Shouldn’t he then be seeking&#160;less&#160;dependence from the federal government and using his own state revenue to fund this $100 million health care expansion for the elderly and disabled?</p>
<p>I’ll stop. &#160;I’m using too much common sense and logic. &#160;Two things Republicans don’t quite excel at using or understanding.</p>
<p>The bottom line is, this is just more hypocrisy about federal spending, our government and the Affordable Care Act coming from another prominent Republican.</p>
<p>It’s the attitude carried by many Republicans that when others need help,&#160;those people&#160;are&#160;abusing the system and just looking for a government handout. &#160;But when&#160;they&#160;need it, well then it’s perfectly acceptable.</p>
<p>But that’s what happens when you’re a political party <a href="" type="internal">built for sociopaths—by sociopaths</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Texas Representative Who Voted Against Sandy Relief Seeks Federal Money After Explosion</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Rick Perry's Idiocy Strikes Again as he calls the Implementation of "Obamacare" a Criminal Act</a></p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Busted! Rick Perry Using "Nonprofit Corporation" Run By Governor's Office to Create Slush Fund</a></p>
<p>0 Facebook comments</p>
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<p>The Bill Withers song has been covered by countless artists, but the rendition of "Lean on Me" performed in a duet on the season premiere of "Saturday Night Live" had novel poignancy.</p>
<p>It was sung by Kate McKinnon, the show's go-to impersonator of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and Mrs. Clinton herself. The appearance was an integral part of the Clinton campaign's much-touted re-re-re-rebranding push to make Clinton seem more spontaneous and relatable. And it was, by most accounts, a success.</p>
<p>The headline on the Daily Beast's review summed it up well: - "Saturday Night Live? Premiere Basically a Hillary Clinton Campaign Ad."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And, as the Daily Beast's senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon notes, it wasn't just the skit with Clinton's walk-on that was a gift. It was almost the whole show.</p>
<p>The "SNL" news segment took shots at potential Clinton opponent Joe Biden and New Hampshire Democratic primary front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders. Even the inevitable potshots at Donald Trump were aimed, at least in part, at making Clinton seem like the only safe choice in the 2016 race.</p>
<p>And that's fine. The First Amendment covers sketch comedy. And it's hardly as if Clinton were the first presidential candidate or politician to take advantage of "Saturday Night Live" or some other entertainment show.</p>
<p>In 1968, Richard Nixon had many of the same challenges Clinton faces today. He was seen, rightly, as stiff, aloof, conspiratorial and too self-serious. That's why he went on "Rowan &amp; Martin's Laugh-In" and said "sock it to me."</p>
<p>Nixon didn't win the very close presidential election because of one five-second bit on "Laugh-In." But he probably wouldn't have won if he hadn't followed the advice of a 28-year-old media consultant wunderkind named Roger Ailes, who helped choreograph Nixon's image makeover, and the "sock it to me" moment was arguably the most significant part of that effort. (Note: Ailes now runs Fox News, where I am a contributor.)</p>
<p>George Schlatter, the producer of "Laugh-In," later apologized for helping Nixon get elected.</p>
<p>If Hillary Clinton is elected president in 2016, I doubt Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," will express similar regrets.</p>
<p>And that's fine, too.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Again, "Saturday Night Live" has the same First Amendment rights as The New York Times and The Washington Post.</p>
<p>But you know who else has the same free-speech rights as the mainstream media? You and I - and George Soros, Charles and David Koch, and every other citizen of the United States.</p>
<p>And that's why the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United was correct. In that decision, the court held that everyone has the right to get their views and opinions out into the public conversation.</p>
<p>In the arguments before the court, the Obama administration took the position that the government could even ban books during election season if those books amounted to "express advocacy" for a candidate, even if that advocacy took the form of a single mention of a candidate.</p>
<p>The court rejected that argument, and President Obama, along with most liberals, has never forgiven the justices. Hillary Clinton is so opposed to the ruling she has made amending the First Amendment a cornerstone of her campaign.</p>
<p>Why do liberals hate Citizens United so much? No doubt there are many explanations, but one seems particularly obvious. In a world where only powerful institutions in the mainstream media have an unfettered right to make their case during elections, then the conversation is going to go in their favor.</p>
<p>Even if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were the monsters liberals claim they are, the scales still lean inarguably leftward when you include the biggest newspapers, the major TV networks, National Public Radio, and popular programs like "The Daily Show" and "60 Minutes."</p>
<p>None of these outlets would consider its editorials, news coverage and comedy sketches to be "in-kind donations," but from the perspective of political campaigns, that's a distinction without a difference. Because Democrats understand that, when they're not strong, they can lean on their friends to help them carry on.</p>
<p />
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Liberals don't need Citizens United
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Liberals don't need Citizens United
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<p />
<p>The Bill Withers song has been covered by countless artists, but the rendition of "Lean on Me" performed in a duet on the season premiere of "Saturday Night Live" had novel poignancy.</p>
<p>It was sung by Kate McKinnon, the show's go-to impersonator of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and Mrs. Clinton herself. The appearance was an integral part of the Clinton campaign's much-touted re-re-re-rebranding push to make Clinton seem more spontaneous and relatable. And it was, by most accounts, a success.</p>
<p>The headline on the Daily Beast's review summed it up well: - "Saturday Night Live? Premiere Basically a Hillary Clinton Campaign Ad."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And, as the Daily Beast's senior entertainment reporter Kevin Fallon notes, it wasn't just the skit with Clinton's walk-on that was a gift. It was almost the whole show.</p>
<p>The "SNL" news segment took shots at potential Clinton opponent Joe Biden and New Hampshire Democratic primary front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders. Even the inevitable potshots at Donald Trump were aimed, at least in part, at making Clinton seem like the only safe choice in the 2016 race.</p>
<p>And that's fine. The First Amendment covers sketch comedy. And it's hardly as if Clinton were the first presidential candidate or politician to take advantage of "Saturday Night Live" or some other entertainment show.</p>
<p>In 1968, Richard Nixon had many of the same challenges Clinton faces today. He was seen, rightly, as stiff, aloof, conspiratorial and too self-serious. That's why he went on "Rowan &amp; Martin's Laugh-In" and said "sock it to me."</p>
<p>Nixon didn't win the very close presidential election because of one five-second bit on "Laugh-In." But he probably wouldn't have won if he hadn't followed the advice of a 28-year-old media consultant wunderkind named Roger Ailes, who helped choreograph Nixon's image makeover, and the "sock it to me" moment was arguably the most significant part of that effort. (Note: Ailes now runs Fox News, where I am a contributor.)</p>
<p>George Schlatter, the producer of "Laugh-In," later apologized for helping Nixon get elected.</p>
<p>If Hillary Clinton is elected president in 2016, I doubt Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," will express similar regrets.</p>
<p>And that's fine, too.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Again, "Saturday Night Live" has the same First Amendment rights as The New York Times and The Washington Post.</p>
<p>But you know who else has the same free-speech rights as the mainstream media? You and I - and George Soros, Charles and David Koch, and every other citizen of the United States.</p>
<p>And that's why the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United was correct. In that decision, the court held that everyone has the right to get their views and opinions out into the public conversation.</p>
<p>In the arguments before the court, the Obama administration took the position that the government could even ban books during election season if those books amounted to "express advocacy" for a candidate, even if that advocacy took the form of a single mention of a candidate.</p>
<p>The court rejected that argument, and President Obama, along with most liberals, has never forgiven the justices. Hillary Clinton is so opposed to the ruling she has made amending the First Amendment a cornerstone of her campaign.</p>
<p>Why do liberals hate Citizens United so much? No doubt there are many explanations, but one seems particularly obvious. In a world where only powerful institutions in the mainstream media have an unfettered right to make their case during elections, then the conversation is going to go in their favor.</p>
<p>Even if Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were the monsters liberals claim they are, the scales still lean inarguably leftward when you include the biggest newspapers, the major TV networks, National Public Radio, and popular programs like "The Daily Show" and "60 Minutes."</p>
<p>None of these outlets would consider its editorials, news coverage and comedy sketches to be "in-kind donations," but from the perspective of political campaigns, that's a distinction without a difference. Because Democrats understand that, when they're not strong, they can lean on their friends to help them carry on.</p>
<p />
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<p>In February 2013, a buoy in the North Atlantic measured a towering 62-foot (19 meters) wave between Iceland and the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>In an announcement Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concluded it was “the highest significant wave height” ever recorded by a buoy, surpassing the previous highest wave, measured at 59.96 feet in December 2007, also in the North Atlantic.</p>
<p>The giant wave formed in the wake of a powerful cold front charging across the Atlantic. Winds gusted to 50 mph.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This is the first time we have ever measured a wave of 19 meters. It is a remarkable record,” said Wenjian Zhang, assistant secretary general of the WMO.</p>
<p>Wave height is defined as the distance between crest (or top) of one wave and the trough (or bottom) of the next.</p>
<p>The WMO explained the world’s biggest waves typically occur in the North Atlantic in winter as storms explosively intensify. “The area from the Grand Banks underwater plateaus off the Canadian coast around Newfoundland to south of Iceland and to the west coast of the UK, including the Rockall Trough, are prime candidates for wave records,” it said.</p>
<p>USA Today reported that larger waves have probably occurred than this 62-foot behemoth, but they have not been measured.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that this new record for “significant wave height” reflects the average height in a series of large waves.</p>
<p>Individual “rogue” waves, which are difficult to accurately measure, can be much higher. For example, during the October 1991 “Perfect Storm” off the East Coast of North America, a buoy 264 miles south-southeast of Halifax, Canada reported a peak wave height of 100 feet, according to Environment Canada.</p>
<p>The record for the highest wave ever surfed is a massive 78 feet (23 meters) at Nazare, Portugal, according to CNN.</p>
<p>The lag between the WMO announcement of the record wave and its occurrence on Feb. 4, 2013, resulted from the time needed to analyze and verify the data.</p>
<p>wave</p>
|
New world record: Scientists certify monster Atlantic wave 62 feet tall
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/909015/new-world-record-scientists-certify-monster-atlantic-wave-62-feet-tall.html
|
2016-12-14
| 2least
|
New world record: Scientists certify monster Atlantic wave 62 feet tall
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>In February 2013, a buoy in the North Atlantic measured a towering 62-foot (19 meters) wave between Iceland and the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>In an announcement Tuesday, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) concluded it was “the highest significant wave height” ever recorded by a buoy, surpassing the previous highest wave, measured at 59.96 feet in December 2007, also in the North Atlantic.</p>
<p>The giant wave formed in the wake of a powerful cold front charging across the Atlantic. Winds gusted to 50 mph.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>“This is the first time we have ever measured a wave of 19 meters. It is a remarkable record,” said Wenjian Zhang, assistant secretary general of the WMO.</p>
<p>Wave height is defined as the distance between crest (or top) of one wave and the trough (or bottom) of the next.</p>
<p>The WMO explained the world’s biggest waves typically occur in the North Atlantic in winter as storms explosively intensify. “The area from the Grand Banks underwater plateaus off the Canadian coast around Newfoundland to south of Iceland and to the west coast of the UK, including the Rockall Trough, are prime candidates for wave records,” it said.</p>
<p>USA Today reported that larger waves have probably occurred than this 62-foot behemoth, but they have not been measured.</p>
<p>It’s also worth noting that this new record for “significant wave height” reflects the average height in a series of large waves.</p>
<p>Individual “rogue” waves, which are difficult to accurately measure, can be much higher. For example, during the October 1991 “Perfect Storm” off the East Coast of North America, a buoy 264 miles south-southeast of Halifax, Canada reported a peak wave height of 100 feet, according to Environment Canada.</p>
<p>The record for the highest wave ever surfed is a massive 78 feet (23 meters) at Nazare, Portugal, according to CNN.</p>
<p>The lag between the WMO announcement of the record wave and its occurrence on Feb. 4, 2013, resulted from the time needed to analyze and verify the data.</p>
<p>wave</p>
| 6,729 |
<p>On Monday, the International Energy Administration <a href="http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2012/november/name,33015,en.html" type="external">released a new report</a> that projects that the US will pass Saudi Arabia as the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-12/u-dot-s-dot-to-overtake-saudi-arabia-s-oil-production-by-2020-iea-says" type="external">world’s leading producer</a> of oil in 2020. U-S-A! U-S-A!</p>
<p>IEA</p>
<p>“The United States, which currently imports around 20% of its total energy needs, becomes all but self sufficient in net terms—a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy importing countries,” the IEA concluded.</p>
<p>The projection, of course, flies in the face of the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/03/06/obamas-energy-policy-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/" type="external">allegation</a> that President Obama has destroyed the oil and gas industry in the US with his crushing regulatory agenda. <a href="" type="internal">He hasn’t.</a> Crude oil production actually&#160; <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/12/news/economy/us-oil-production-energy/" type="external">increased 14 percent</a> between 2008 and 2011.</p>
<p>Yet the amount of oil we produce is expected to decline again after 2020. Saudi Arabia is expected to retake the global lead by 2030. So maybe we should be thinking about a Plan B.</p>
|
US to Lead World Oil Production…for a Few Years
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/us-lead-world-oil-production-few-years/
|
2012-11-14
| 4left
|
US to Lead World Oil Production…for a Few Years
<p>On Monday, the International Energy Administration <a href="http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2012/november/name,33015,en.html" type="external">released a new report</a> that projects that the US will pass Saudi Arabia as the <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-11-12/u-dot-s-dot-to-overtake-saudi-arabia-s-oil-production-by-2020-iea-says" type="external">world’s leading producer</a> of oil in 2020. U-S-A! U-S-A!</p>
<p>IEA</p>
<p>“The United States, which currently imports around 20% of its total energy needs, becomes all but self sufficient in net terms—a dramatic reversal of the trend seen in most other energy importing countries,” the IEA concluded.</p>
<p>The projection, of course, flies in the face of the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/03/06/obamas-energy-policy-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/" type="external">allegation</a> that President Obama has destroyed the oil and gas industry in the US with his crushing regulatory agenda. <a href="" type="internal">He hasn’t.</a> Crude oil production actually&#160; <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/12/news/economy/us-oil-production-energy/" type="external">increased 14 percent</a> between 2008 and 2011.</p>
<p>Yet the amount of oil we produce is expected to decline again after 2020. Saudi Arabia is expected to retake the global lead by 2030. So maybe we should be thinking about a Plan B.</p>
| 6,730 |
<p>Istanbul.</p>
<p>On July 7, the Times [UK] carried <a href="" type="internal">a remarkable report</a> describing the trials and tribulations of the Welsh Guards, who are now engaged in the ongoing offensive against the Taliban in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It described in riveting detail how accumulating mental and physical stress are grinding down the bodies and minds of what are clearly highly-motivated, well-trained, and competently-led troops. My aim is to elaborate on the Times report by examining its information from a different perspective. My hope is that this will provide a better appreciation of the Taliban’s game.</p>
<p>With the exception of the last sentence in the penultimate paragraph (i.e., “The Taliban fight not to win but to outlast”), which is silly, the Times provides a graphic description of the pressures on the individual British soldiers, and it is an excellent window into the effects of the Taliban’s military art. The information suggests the Taliban’s strategic aim is to wear down their adversaries by keeping them under continual strain and by working on their psychology, or as the late American strategist John Boyd would say, by getting inside, slowing down, and disorienting their adversary’s Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA) loops. Moreover, the Taliban’s operational art seems particularly focused on the mental and moral levels of conflict. Outlasting, by running away to fight another day whenever faced with superior forces, is a central part of any winning strategy directed toward achieving this aim. (Interested readers can find a brief introduction to OODA loops in the last section of my remembrance of Boyd in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute, <a href="http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c199.htm" type="external">Genghis John.</a> And for an example of an implicit application at the mental and moral levels of conflict, see my essay in CounterPunch, <a href="" type="internal">How Obama Won</a>).</p>
<p>The Times report also contains information describing NATO’s operational art. It suggests that NATO’s operational focus is aimed at occupying or cutting lines of communication (LOCs) by occupying checkpoints or outposts. This operational level aim reflects NATO’s belief that control of checkpoints along the LOCs will make it possible to control movement of the Taliban, and thereby make it easier to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban. By definition, if successful, this outcome would slow down and physically disconnect the Taliban’s OODA loops from the political environment, thus establishing the blanket of military security needed for achieving the strategic aim of winning the hearts and minds of the people through political action. But we will see that this is more an exercise in self-referencing than in strategy.</p>
<p>The differences between the Taliban’s art of war and NATO’s art of war raise the question of who has and will maintain the initiative, or in the context of Boyd’s strategic theory, whose OODA loops are really being slowed down, disoriented, and made more predictable in what is an emerging war over the Afghan LOCs?</p>
<p>The Times report does not address this question, but it contains some very suggestive information in this regard.</p>
<p>The Taliban live off the land and have weapons/supply caches throughout Helmand province and Afghanistan. They can and indeed have been ordered by their leader in Helmand, Mullah Naim Barach, to concentrate and disperse at will. The Taliban can do this easily, because they can blend seamlessly into the local culture, should they choose to do so.</p>
<p>The deployed NATO units, on the other hand, are highly-visible alien conventional military forces. Moreover, the NATO foreigners are deployed in easily discerned, static positions: checkpoints, outposts, and base camps. The geographic distribution of the NATO forces in a large number of small outposts makes them vulnerable to a welter of float-like-a-butterfly, sting-like-a-bee attacks and ambushes, made at times and places of the Taliban’s choosing. The Times report makes it clear that Taliban attacks are aimed at isolating and stressing individual checkpoints and, perhaps, also at triggering a flow of reinforcements to these checkpoints, which could then be ambushed by the Taliban along the long, vulnerable LOCs.</p>
<p>Not mentioned in the Times report is a closely-related, important asymmetry: Conventional NATO forces can not live off the land and are entirely dependent on a massive thru-put of food, fuel, water, ammunition, and spare parts. In this regard, the report does describe a land resupply route along the canal. It says that British forces are forced to move at a snail’s pace, because of the uncertain menace posed Taliban’s ever-present mine threat.</p>
<p>Cheap mines and simple booby traps, which the Pentagon euphemistically labels as IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, as if they represented something new and unexpected, have long proven themselves to be one of the most effective ways to slow down, distract, and disrupt the OODA loops of an attacking adversary. That is because they directly attack the attacker’s mind and slow down or paralyze his decision cycle. Any soldier who has experienced the overwhelming sense of freezing fear created by the mental effect of finding himself ensnared in a minefield during a firefight knows how the known presence of mines can wreck even the best OODA loop.</p>
<p>With this background in mind, let us now place these observations and thoughts in a somewhat different context.</p>
<p>Every conflict, be it conventional or unconventional, embodies an amalgam of physical, mental, and moral effects. The great battlefield commanders have long recognized that strengths and weaknesses in moral and mental effects can be far more influential in shaping outcomes than physical effects. Napoleon, for example, pithily encapsulated this view by saying “the moral is to the material as three to one.” Viewed through a moral and mental lens, the Times report contains information that is strongly suggestive of an asymmetry in the opposing strategies that reflects long standing differences the eastern and western approaches to making war.</p>
<p>Without explicitly saying so, the Times report makes it clear that the Taliban’s strategic target is the mind of their adversary. Its operational schwerpunkt (i.e., main military effort to which all other efforts are subordinated) is also directly aimed at the mind of their adversaries, both in the field or in London and Washington. It is also pretty clear, that the Taliban’s operational schwerpunckt is to use an omnipresent physical menace (manifesting itself through a welter of large and small attacks, and when faced with opposition, running away to fight another day, as well as mine warfare, terror, etc.) is to undermine mental and moral stability of their adversaries. This focus on the mind is a way of war that is entirely consistent with the thinking expressed in the first book ever written on the art war by the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, as well as their modern incarnation in the guerrilla theories of Mao Zedong.</p>
<p>Like the Taliban, the strategic aim of the British operation is also directed toward the mental and moral levels of conflict — namely winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. But in sharp contrast to that of the Taliban, the operational-level schwerpunkt of the NATO forces is entirely physical. It is aimed directly at controlling checkpoints and lines of communication.</p>
<p>The theory behind NATO’s operational schwerpunckt — and remember, it is only a theory — is that through this physical control, NATO forces (i.e., alien outsiders) will provide the means to win at the mental and moral levels of conflict. Borrowing terminology from Mao and applying it to the culture of Afghanistan, NATO forces would do this by physically isolating the Taliban fish from a sea of a people supporting them — people who, in this case, have been conditioned by 30 years of violent civil war in what is perhaps the most xenophobic culture in the world. Once the Taliban are isolated, the NATO military forces would then be able to play the mental and moral game of winning the hearts and minds of the people by providing greater protection, economic aid, and the construction of economic and democratic political infrastructures.</p>
<p>This new strategy, named Clear, Hold, Build by the Americans, is actually the resurrection of a famous old colonialist strategy evolved by Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934) who eventually became a Marshall in the French army and ended his days as a virulent fascist. Lyautey’s theory, named Tache d’huile, a buzz word to connote the idea of spreading oil spots, posited that counterinsurgent forces should aim to secure an ever expanding geographic zone of security, like a spreading oil spot, and then use that security to win over the colonized people (presumably, so the French colonialists could continue to exploit the people and their resources). Each new area secured would provide a basis for further spreading, and so on, clearing and holding ever larger regions. Tache d’huile was tried by the French in Morocco, Vietnam and Algeria and by the Americans in Vietnam with the notorious Strategic Hamlets program. Although it worked sometimes in the short term, the long term results speak for themselves. (Some contemporary counterinsurgency specialists like to point to the case of Malaya as a successful counter-example of clearing and holding, but one must remember that the guerilla fighters in this case were ethnic Chinese who were hated by the ethnic Malayans.)</p>
<p>The problem is that to succeed in the moral and mental game in Afghanistan, NATO’s tache d’huile strategy must establish a blanket physical security so pervasive that highly visible alien aid providers and reformers spread thinly throughout a traumatized, xenophobic, clan-based population will not be picked off one by one by the Taliban, warlords, criminal gangs, or any others who feel threatened by their presence.</p>
<p>But there is more. Not only is the operational focus of the NATO forces physical, it is clearly reflective of and consistent with the interdiction theories of modern western conventional war, particularly those of Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini, a very influential 19th century French theoretician who tried to systematize Napoleon’s art of war. These theories reflect the incontestable fact that western combatant forces are heavily dependent on lines of communication (LOCs) for flows of supplies and reinforcements, and therefore, are highly vulnerable to physical disruption of LOCs. NATO’s heavy dependency raises the ominous question of whether the fallacy of mirror imaging — i.e., assuming the Taliban is vulnerable to something NATO is vulnerable to — is again creating the same mistake it did for the Americans in Vietnam.</p>
<p>History has shown repeatedly that conventionally-inspired military action (especially interdiction operations aimed at choking off the supplies and reinforcements and destroying the so-called safe havens of the adversary) aimed at achieving an unconventional end (winning hearts and minds of the people in a guerilla war) can easily degenerate into a mindless, fire-power centric war driven by conventional military thinking.</p>
<p>The Soviets, for example, tried to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, but lost sight of their goal and eventually became ensnared in a struggle for control of Afghan LOCs. This degenerated into a firepower intensive bloodbath in which the Soviets inflicted horrendous damage; but, in the end, they had to leave Afghanistan with their tail between their legs. Readers interested in the Soviet experience should <a href="" type="internal">click here</a> for a stunning lessons-learned analysis of how nation building Soviet-style failed in Afghanistan. The same kind of degeneration into a mindless applications of firepower happened to US forces in Vietnam. In both cases, all the noble sounding rhetoric about winning hearts and minds of the locals was drowned and forgotten in a sea of mindless body counts and wanton destruction.</p>
<p>As in Vietnam, the tempting response to the welter of Taliban attacks on NATO’s LOCs, checkpoints, and outposts in this war will be to increase NATO’s dependence on high speed reinforcements. But, as the Times report shows, the Brits are learning to their dismay that guerrilla surprise attacks and mine laying activities force ground reinforcements to move at a snail’s pace. The natural response by NATO will be toward a greater reliance on rapid-response reinforcements moved via air to threatened areas by helicopters and Marine V-22s, together with an increase in supporting firepower of air and artillery.</p>
<p>Such an evolution on a large scale would mean that costs to fight the most recent Afghan war will escalate ever more rapidly. Operating these aircraft in high mountain ranges or in the dusty high desert plateaus entails a host of very expensive logistics and operational problems. Moreover, by concentrating the troop reinforcement packages in vulnerable helos and V-22s, NATO will run the risk of far greater troop casualties, when the Taliban learn how to shoot down these reinforcing aircraft as they approach their landing zones, as they surely will. Counter insurgency strategists would do well to remember that the United States lost over 5,000 helicopters in Vietnam, mostly to small arms and machine gun fire as they approached hot landing zones. The Soviets relied more on ground reinforcements (which resulted in a large number of very bloody ambushes), but their helos also got plastered in Afghanistan. NATO strategists would also do well to remember how the “strategists” in both of these earlier wars insensibly became obsessed with bombing lines of communication. In the end, frustration, coupled with the insensible seduction of firepower and conventional dogma, led to attrition and destruction becoming ends in themselves, memorably encapsulated by the American officer who told a reporter, “we had to destroy the village to save it,” and thereby pushed the hearts and minds of the people into the welcoming arms of the insurgents.</p>
<p>No one knows if this kind of ruin is to be our future, but the Times report suggests many of the fatally flawed building blocks are now falling into place.</p>
<p>One unrelated final point: The Times report contains some very interesting information that should be of specific interest to those American officers who have a Haig-like affinity for the comfort of rear echelon command posts. Of the five battle deaths suffered by the Welsh Guards, the Times says three were commanding officers: one a platoon commander, another a company commander, and last, the regimental commander. The British officers at the pointy end of the spear seem to be setting high moral examples by sharing the risks and burdens of the grunts they are leading. It also would not be surprising if the Taliban are targeting commanding officers, but this high percentage of total losses (admittedly 60% of a tiny specific sample makes it impossible to extrapolate) makes one wonder if they are also receiving the requisite intelligence information to do so.</p>
<p>Franklin “Chuck” Spinney&#160;is a former military analyst for the Pentagon. He currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean and can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2009/07/14/the-taliban-rope-a-dope/
|
2009-07-14
| 4left
|
The Taliban Rope-a-Dope
<p>Istanbul.</p>
<p>On July 7, the Times [UK] carried <a href="" type="internal">a remarkable report</a> describing the trials and tribulations of the Welsh Guards, who are now engaged in the ongoing offensive against the Taliban in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It described in riveting detail how accumulating mental and physical stress are grinding down the bodies and minds of what are clearly highly-motivated, well-trained, and competently-led troops. My aim is to elaborate on the Times report by examining its information from a different perspective. My hope is that this will provide a better appreciation of the Taliban’s game.</p>
<p>With the exception of the last sentence in the penultimate paragraph (i.e., “The Taliban fight not to win but to outlast”), which is silly, the Times provides a graphic description of the pressures on the individual British soldiers, and it is an excellent window into the effects of the Taliban’s military art. The information suggests the Taliban’s strategic aim is to wear down their adversaries by keeping them under continual strain and by working on their psychology, or as the late American strategist John Boyd would say, by getting inside, slowing down, and disorienting their adversary’s Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA) loops. Moreover, the Taliban’s operational art seems particularly focused on the mental and moral levels of conflict. Outlasting, by running away to fight another day whenever faced with superior forces, is a central part of any winning strategy directed toward achieving this aim. (Interested readers can find a brief introduction to OODA loops in the last section of my remembrance of Boyd in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute, <a href="http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c199.htm" type="external">Genghis John.</a> And for an example of an implicit application at the mental and moral levels of conflict, see my essay in CounterPunch, <a href="" type="internal">How Obama Won</a>).</p>
<p>The Times report also contains information describing NATO’s operational art. It suggests that NATO’s operational focus is aimed at occupying or cutting lines of communication (LOCs) by occupying checkpoints or outposts. This operational level aim reflects NATO’s belief that control of checkpoints along the LOCs will make it possible to control movement of the Taliban, and thereby make it easier to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban. By definition, if successful, this outcome would slow down and physically disconnect the Taliban’s OODA loops from the political environment, thus establishing the blanket of military security needed for achieving the strategic aim of winning the hearts and minds of the people through political action. But we will see that this is more an exercise in self-referencing than in strategy.</p>
<p>The differences between the Taliban’s art of war and NATO’s art of war raise the question of who has and will maintain the initiative, or in the context of Boyd’s strategic theory, whose OODA loops are really being slowed down, disoriented, and made more predictable in what is an emerging war over the Afghan LOCs?</p>
<p>The Times report does not address this question, but it contains some very suggestive information in this regard.</p>
<p>The Taliban live off the land and have weapons/supply caches throughout Helmand province and Afghanistan. They can and indeed have been ordered by their leader in Helmand, Mullah Naim Barach, to concentrate and disperse at will. The Taliban can do this easily, because they can blend seamlessly into the local culture, should they choose to do so.</p>
<p>The deployed NATO units, on the other hand, are highly-visible alien conventional military forces. Moreover, the NATO foreigners are deployed in easily discerned, static positions: checkpoints, outposts, and base camps. The geographic distribution of the NATO forces in a large number of small outposts makes them vulnerable to a welter of float-like-a-butterfly, sting-like-a-bee attacks and ambushes, made at times and places of the Taliban’s choosing. The Times report makes it clear that Taliban attacks are aimed at isolating and stressing individual checkpoints and, perhaps, also at triggering a flow of reinforcements to these checkpoints, which could then be ambushed by the Taliban along the long, vulnerable LOCs.</p>
<p>Not mentioned in the Times report is a closely-related, important asymmetry: Conventional NATO forces can not live off the land and are entirely dependent on a massive thru-put of food, fuel, water, ammunition, and spare parts. In this regard, the report does describe a land resupply route along the canal. It says that British forces are forced to move at a snail’s pace, because of the uncertain menace posed Taliban’s ever-present mine threat.</p>
<p>Cheap mines and simple booby traps, which the Pentagon euphemistically labels as IEDs, or improvised explosive devices, as if they represented something new and unexpected, have long proven themselves to be one of the most effective ways to slow down, distract, and disrupt the OODA loops of an attacking adversary. That is because they directly attack the attacker’s mind and slow down or paralyze his decision cycle. Any soldier who has experienced the overwhelming sense of freezing fear created by the mental effect of finding himself ensnared in a minefield during a firefight knows how the known presence of mines can wreck even the best OODA loop.</p>
<p>With this background in mind, let us now place these observations and thoughts in a somewhat different context.</p>
<p>Every conflict, be it conventional or unconventional, embodies an amalgam of physical, mental, and moral effects. The great battlefield commanders have long recognized that strengths and weaknesses in moral and mental effects can be far more influential in shaping outcomes than physical effects. Napoleon, for example, pithily encapsulated this view by saying “the moral is to the material as three to one.” Viewed through a moral and mental lens, the Times report contains information that is strongly suggestive of an asymmetry in the opposing strategies that reflects long standing differences the eastern and western approaches to making war.</p>
<p>Without explicitly saying so, the Times report makes it clear that the Taliban’s strategic target is the mind of their adversary. Its operational schwerpunkt (i.e., main military effort to which all other efforts are subordinated) is also directly aimed at the mind of their adversaries, both in the field or in London and Washington. It is also pretty clear, that the Taliban’s operational schwerpunckt is to use an omnipresent physical menace (manifesting itself through a welter of large and small attacks, and when faced with opposition, running away to fight another day, as well as mine warfare, terror, etc.) is to undermine mental and moral stability of their adversaries. This focus on the mind is a way of war that is entirely consistent with the thinking expressed in the first book ever written on the art war by the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu, as well as their modern incarnation in the guerrilla theories of Mao Zedong.</p>
<p>Like the Taliban, the strategic aim of the British operation is also directed toward the mental and moral levels of conflict — namely winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. But in sharp contrast to that of the Taliban, the operational-level schwerpunkt of the NATO forces is entirely physical. It is aimed directly at controlling checkpoints and lines of communication.</p>
<p>The theory behind NATO’s operational schwerpunckt — and remember, it is only a theory — is that through this physical control, NATO forces (i.e., alien outsiders) will provide the means to win at the mental and moral levels of conflict. Borrowing terminology from Mao and applying it to the culture of Afghanistan, NATO forces would do this by physically isolating the Taliban fish from a sea of a people supporting them — people who, in this case, have been conditioned by 30 years of violent civil war in what is perhaps the most xenophobic culture in the world. Once the Taliban are isolated, the NATO military forces would then be able to play the mental and moral game of winning the hearts and minds of the people by providing greater protection, economic aid, and the construction of economic and democratic political infrastructures.</p>
<p>This new strategy, named Clear, Hold, Build by the Americans, is actually the resurrection of a famous old colonialist strategy evolved by Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934) who eventually became a Marshall in the French army and ended his days as a virulent fascist. Lyautey’s theory, named Tache d’huile, a buzz word to connote the idea of spreading oil spots, posited that counterinsurgent forces should aim to secure an ever expanding geographic zone of security, like a spreading oil spot, and then use that security to win over the colonized people (presumably, so the French colonialists could continue to exploit the people and their resources). Each new area secured would provide a basis for further spreading, and so on, clearing and holding ever larger regions. Tache d’huile was tried by the French in Morocco, Vietnam and Algeria and by the Americans in Vietnam with the notorious Strategic Hamlets program. Although it worked sometimes in the short term, the long term results speak for themselves. (Some contemporary counterinsurgency specialists like to point to the case of Malaya as a successful counter-example of clearing and holding, but one must remember that the guerilla fighters in this case were ethnic Chinese who were hated by the ethnic Malayans.)</p>
<p>The problem is that to succeed in the moral and mental game in Afghanistan, NATO’s tache d’huile strategy must establish a blanket physical security so pervasive that highly visible alien aid providers and reformers spread thinly throughout a traumatized, xenophobic, clan-based population will not be picked off one by one by the Taliban, warlords, criminal gangs, or any others who feel threatened by their presence.</p>
<p>But there is more. Not only is the operational focus of the NATO forces physical, it is clearly reflective of and consistent with the interdiction theories of modern western conventional war, particularly those of Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini, a very influential 19th century French theoretician who tried to systematize Napoleon’s art of war. These theories reflect the incontestable fact that western combatant forces are heavily dependent on lines of communication (LOCs) for flows of supplies and reinforcements, and therefore, are highly vulnerable to physical disruption of LOCs. NATO’s heavy dependency raises the ominous question of whether the fallacy of mirror imaging — i.e., assuming the Taliban is vulnerable to something NATO is vulnerable to — is again creating the same mistake it did for the Americans in Vietnam.</p>
<p>History has shown repeatedly that conventionally-inspired military action (especially interdiction operations aimed at choking off the supplies and reinforcements and destroying the so-called safe havens of the adversary) aimed at achieving an unconventional end (winning hearts and minds of the people in a guerilla war) can easily degenerate into a mindless, fire-power centric war driven by conventional military thinking.</p>
<p>The Soviets, for example, tried to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, but lost sight of their goal and eventually became ensnared in a struggle for control of Afghan LOCs. This degenerated into a firepower intensive bloodbath in which the Soviets inflicted horrendous damage; but, in the end, they had to leave Afghanistan with their tail between their legs. Readers interested in the Soviet experience should <a href="" type="internal">click here</a> for a stunning lessons-learned analysis of how nation building Soviet-style failed in Afghanistan. The same kind of degeneration into a mindless applications of firepower happened to US forces in Vietnam. In both cases, all the noble sounding rhetoric about winning hearts and minds of the locals was drowned and forgotten in a sea of mindless body counts and wanton destruction.</p>
<p>As in Vietnam, the tempting response to the welter of Taliban attacks on NATO’s LOCs, checkpoints, and outposts in this war will be to increase NATO’s dependence on high speed reinforcements. But, as the Times report shows, the Brits are learning to their dismay that guerrilla surprise attacks and mine laying activities force ground reinforcements to move at a snail’s pace. The natural response by NATO will be toward a greater reliance on rapid-response reinforcements moved via air to threatened areas by helicopters and Marine V-22s, together with an increase in supporting firepower of air and artillery.</p>
<p>Such an evolution on a large scale would mean that costs to fight the most recent Afghan war will escalate ever more rapidly. Operating these aircraft in high mountain ranges or in the dusty high desert plateaus entails a host of very expensive logistics and operational problems. Moreover, by concentrating the troop reinforcement packages in vulnerable helos and V-22s, NATO will run the risk of far greater troop casualties, when the Taliban learn how to shoot down these reinforcing aircraft as they approach their landing zones, as they surely will. Counter insurgency strategists would do well to remember that the United States lost over 5,000 helicopters in Vietnam, mostly to small arms and machine gun fire as they approached hot landing zones. The Soviets relied more on ground reinforcements (which resulted in a large number of very bloody ambushes), but their helos also got plastered in Afghanistan. NATO strategists would also do well to remember how the “strategists” in both of these earlier wars insensibly became obsessed with bombing lines of communication. In the end, frustration, coupled with the insensible seduction of firepower and conventional dogma, led to attrition and destruction becoming ends in themselves, memorably encapsulated by the American officer who told a reporter, “we had to destroy the village to save it,” and thereby pushed the hearts and minds of the people into the welcoming arms of the insurgents.</p>
<p>No one knows if this kind of ruin is to be our future, but the Times report suggests many of the fatally flawed building blocks are now falling into place.</p>
<p>One unrelated final point: The Times report contains some very interesting information that should be of specific interest to those American officers who have a Haig-like affinity for the comfort of rear echelon command posts. Of the five battle deaths suffered by the Welsh Guards, the Times says three were commanding officers: one a platoon commander, another a company commander, and last, the regimental commander. The British officers at the pointy end of the spear seem to be setting high moral examples by sharing the risks and burdens of the grunts they are leading. It also would not be surprising if the Taliban are targeting commanding officers, but this high percentage of total losses (admittedly 60% of a tiny specific sample makes it impossible to extrapolate) makes one wonder if they are also receiving the requisite intelligence information to do so.</p>
<p>Franklin “Chuck” Spinney&#160;is a former military analyst for the Pentagon. He currently lives on a sailboat in the Mediterranean and can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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| 6,731 |
<p>Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi was in Tehran on Thursday for consultations with the Iranian government (no, Abadi isn’t afraid of Trump.). During his meeting with Iranian vice president Ishaq Jahangiri, his office released a statement replying to Massoud Barzani.</p>
<p>Barzani is the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, an autonomous super-province of Iraq that recently tried to secede. After losing Kirkuk to the Iraqi army last week, Barzani issued a statement that he was suspending the results of the referendum on independence.</p>
<p>Abadi, however, is playing hardball. He said of the Kurdistan independence referendum, “The referendum was conducted during the time when we were engaged in a war on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). After we united to fight the organization, and we warned against conducting it [the referendum].”</p>
<p>He said of the Iraqi military advance into Kirkuk, that the Iraqi Arabs considered the extension of Baghdad’s control into Kirkuk to be a victory for all Iraqi people. “Our strategy,” he said, ” is to subordinate those regions to the authority of the [Federal] state, and we will accept nothing less than the complete annulment of the referendum, and adherence to the constitution.”</p>
<p />
<p>He added, “Strengthening relations between Iraq and Iran is important not only for us but for the entire region, and its security, stability and efflorescence. We call for cooperation and mutually beneficial exchanges in the service of our peoples, and an end to the interventions that led to more destruction and victims and displaced persons. For this reason we propose development instead of clashes and conflicts among the states of the region, so that its wealth and power can be spread around. We must invest in the power of our youth, which terrorist gangs attempted to attract away from us.”</p>
<p>One of Abadi’s aides had written on Facebook, “They speak of freezing the referendum, but we say to them that the referendum is history, and its time on earth has come to an end.”</p>
<p>The Kurdistan Regional Government had on Wednesday offered to freeze the outcome of the referendum (where 92 percent of Iraqi Kurds voted to secede), as a basis for dialogue with the Baghdad government.</p>
<p>In other developments, the office of KRG president Massoud Barzani on Thursday&#160;categorically denied a rumor making the rounds that he intended to resign. Barzani’s term as president has long since ended and conditions haven’t allowed new elections. But he has been acting high-handedly, and his quixotic decision to hold a referendum on independence was the last straw for many Kurds. His political future is certainly in doubt.</p>
|
Iraqi Prime Minister Insists Kurdish Referendum Be Annulled
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/iraqi-prime-minister-insists-kurdish-referendum-annulled/
|
2017-10-27
| 4left
|
Iraqi Prime Minister Insists Kurdish Referendum Be Annulled
<p>Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi was in Tehran on Thursday for consultations with the Iranian government (no, Abadi isn’t afraid of Trump.). During his meeting with Iranian vice president Ishaq Jahangiri, his office released a statement replying to Massoud Barzani.</p>
<p>Barzani is the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, an autonomous super-province of Iraq that recently tried to secede. After losing Kirkuk to the Iraqi army last week, Barzani issued a statement that he was suspending the results of the referendum on independence.</p>
<p>Abadi, however, is playing hardball. He said of the Kurdistan independence referendum, “The referendum was conducted during the time when we were engaged in a war on Daesh (ISIS, ISIL). After we united to fight the organization, and we warned against conducting it [the referendum].”</p>
<p>He said of the Iraqi military advance into Kirkuk, that the Iraqi Arabs considered the extension of Baghdad’s control into Kirkuk to be a victory for all Iraqi people. “Our strategy,” he said, ” is to subordinate those regions to the authority of the [Federal] state, and we will accept nothing less than the complete annulment of the referendum, and adherence to the constitution.”</p>
<p />
<p>He added, “Strengthening relations between Iraq and Iran is important not only for us but for the entire region, and its security, stability and efflorescence. We call for cooperation and mutually beneficial exchanges in the service of our peoples, and an end to the interventions that led to more destruction and victims and displaced persons. For this reason we propose development instead of clashes and conflicts among the states of the region, so that its wealth and power can be spread around. We must invest in the power of our youth, which terrorist gangs attempted to attract away from us.”</p>
<p>One of Abadi’s aides had written on Facebook, “They speak of freezing the referendum, but we say to them that the referendum is history, and its time on earth has come to an end.”</p>
<p>The Kurdistan Regional Government had on Wednesday offered to freeze the outcome of the referendum (where 92 percent of Iraqi Kurds voted to secede), as a basis for dialogue with the Baghdad government.</p>
<p>In other developments, the office of KRG president Massoud Barzani on Thursday&#160;categorically denied a rumor making the rounds that he intended to resign. Barzani’s term as president has long since ended and conditions haven’t allowed new elections. But he has been acting high-handedly, and his quixotic decision to hold a referendum on independence was the last straw for many Kurds. His political future is certainly in doubt.</p>
| 6,732 |
<p>The lofty motto of the Environmental Protection Agency is "protecting people and the environment." In practice, however, EPA bureaucrats faithfully protect their own people and preserve the government's cesspool of manipulation, cover-ups, and cronyism.</p>
<p>Just last week, Mark Levin and his vigilant Landmark Legal Foundation went to court to ask federal district judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA "for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages that may have helped document suspected agency efforts to influence the 2012 presidential election." The motion is part of a larger Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to force EPA to release emails and related records from former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and others "who may have delayed the release dates for hot-button environmental regulations until after the Nov. 6, 2012, presidential election."</p>
<p>Thanks to Levin and Landmark, Jackson, and other EPA officials admitted in depositions that they used personal, nongovernmental email accounts to hide communications about official EPA business sent and received on their government-issued BlackBerries and smart phones. The agency has continued to drag its feet for two years in response to Landmark's FOIA requests.</p>
<p />
<p>Levin minced no words: "The EPA is a toxic waste dump for lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution." Not to mention disdain for the public's right to know. As Levin added: "When any federal agency receives a FOIA request, the statute says it must preserve every significant repository of records, both paper and electronic, that may contain materials that could be responsive to that request."</p>
<p>The agency is legally obliged to notify all involved in the suit to preserve everything in their possession that could be discoverable in the litigation. But the feds have bent over backward to delay and deny. "(T)he people at the EPA, from the administrator on down, think they're above the law, that no one has the right to question what or how they do their jobs," Levin blasted. "Well, they're wrong. The laws apply to everyone, even federal bureaucrats."</p>
<p>That's a bedrock principle the EPA has defied over and over again. As I first reported 13 corruption-stained years ago in 2001, former EPA head Carol Browner oversaw the destruction of her computer files on her last day in office under the Clinton administration - in clear violation of a judge's order requiring the agency to preserve its records. Browner ordered a computer technician: "I would like my files deleted. I want you to delete my files." In 2003, the agency was held in contempt and fined more than $300,000 in connection with another email destruction incident under Browner's watch.</p>
<p>It was Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation - upheld by Judge Lamberth - that held the corruptocrats accountable then, as they are now.</p>
<p>As President Obama's energy czar, Browner went on to bully auto execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated on a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. She was also singled out by Obama's own independent oil-spill commission for repeatedly misrepresenting scientists' findings and doctoring data to justify the administration's draconian drilling moratorium.</p>
<p>Browner previously had been caught by a congressional subcommittee using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 left-wing environmental organizations. She abused her office to orchestrate a political campaign by liberal groups, who turned around and attacked Republican lawmakers for supporting regulatory reform.</p>
<p>The names may change, but the politicized rot stays the same. The GOP staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee issued a detailed report this week on the secretive "Billionaire's Club" behind EPA. The analysis exposed how a massive network of left-wing foundations, activists and wealthy donors exploits IRS-approved "charitable" status and tax-deductible donations to lobby illegally on behalf of the EPA and operate a "green revolving door" between government and far-left groups.</p>
<p>Among the key players: the Environmental Grantmakers Association, which coordinates green grants and refuses to divulge its membership list to Congress, and Democracy Alliance, the dark-money outfit led by Philip Gara LaMarche that does not disclose its members or donor-recipients.</p>
<p>"These entities propagate the false notion that they are independent citizen-funded groups working altruistically," according to the report. "In reality, they work in tandem with wealthy donors to maximize the value of the donors' tax-deductible donations and leverage their combined resources to influence elections and policy outcomes, with a focus on the EPA."</p>
<p>Saving the planet? Ha. The leftist-controlled Environmental Corruption Agency is only in business to serve its pals and subvert its political enemies, while endangering resource security and sabotaging the deliberative process. Real environmental protection starts with draining this fetid swamp.</p>
<p>Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" (Regnery 2010).</p>
<p />
|
The Environmental Corruption Agency
| true |
http://humanevents.com/2014/08/01/the-environmental-corruption-agency/?utm_source%3Dhefbp%26utm_medium%3Dfbpage%26utm_campaign%3Dheupdate
|
2014-08-01
| 0right
|
The Environmental Corruption Agency
<p>The lofty motto of the Environmental Protection Agency is "protecting people and the environment." In practice, however, EPA bureaucrats faithfully protect their own people and preserve the government's cesspool of manipulation, cover-ups, and cronyism.</p>
<p>Just last week, Mark Levin and his vigilant Landmark Legal Foundation went to court to ask federal district judge Royce Lamberth to sanction the EPA "for destroying or failing to preserve emails and text messages that may have helped document suspected agency efforts to influence the 2012 presidential election." The motion is part of a larger Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to force EPA to release emails and related records from former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and others "who may have delayed the release dates for hot-button environmental regulations until after the Nov. 6, 2012, presidential election."</p>
<p>Thanks to Levin and Landmark, Jackson, and other EPA officials admitted in depositions that they used personal, nongovernmental email accounts to hide communications about official EPA business sent and received on their government-issued BlackBerries and smart phones. The agency has continued to drag its feet for two years in response to Landmark's FOIA requests.</p>
<p />
<p>Levin minced no words: "The EPA is a toxic waste dump for lawlessness and disdain for the Constitution." Not to mention disdain for the public's right to know. As Levin added: "When any federal agency receives a FOIA request, the statute says it must preserve every significant repository of records, both paper and electronic, that may contain materials that could be responsive to that request."</p>
<p>The agency is legally obliged to notify all involved in the suit to preserve everything in their possession that could be discoverable in the litigation. But the feds have bent over backward to delay and deny. "(T)he people at the EPA, from the administrator on down, think they're above the law, that no one has the right to question what or how they do their jobs," Levin blasted. "Well, they're wrong. The laws apply to everyone, even federal bureaucrats."</p>
<p>That's a bedrock principle the EPA has defied over and over again. As I first reported 13 corruption-stained years ago in 2001, former EPA head Carol Browner oversaw the destruction of her computer files on her last day in office under the Clinton administration - in clear violation of a judge's order requiring the agency to preserve its records. Browner ordered a computer technician: "I would like my files deleted. I want you to delete my files." In 2003, the agency was held in contempt and fined more than $300,000 in connection with another email destruction incident under Browner's watch.</p>
<p>It was Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation - upheld by Judge Lamberth - that held the corruptocrats accountable then, as they are now.</p>
<p>As President Obama's energy czar, Browner went on to bully auto execs "to put nothing in writing, ever" regarding secret negotiations she orchestrated on a deal to increase federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. She was also singled out by Obama's own independent oil-spill commission for repeatedly misrepresenting scientists' findings and doctoring data to justify the administration's draconian drilling moratorium.</p>
<p>Browner previously had been caught by a congressional subcommittee using taxpayer funds to create and send out illegal lobbying material to more than 100 left-wing environmental organizations. She abused her office to orchestrate a political campaign by liberal groups, who turned around and attacked Republican lawmakers for supporting regulatory reform.</p>
<p>The names may change, but the politicized rot stays the same. The GOP staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee issued a detailed report this week on the secretive "Billionaire's Club" behind EPA. The analysis exposed how a massive network of left-wing foundations, activists and wealthy donors exploits IRS-approved "charitable" status and tax-deductible donations to lobby illegally on behalf of the EPA and operate a "green revolving door" between government and far-left groups.</p>
<p>Among the key players: the Environmental Grantmakers Association, which coordinates green grants and refuses to divulge its membership list to Congress, and Democracy Alliance, the dark-money outfit led by Philip Gara LaMarche that does not disclose its members or donor-recipients.</p>
<p>"These entities propagate the false notion that they are independent citizen-funded groups working altruistically," according to the report. "In reality, they work in tandem with wealthy donors to maximize the value of the donors' tax-deductible donations and leverage their combined resources to influence elections and policy outcomes, with a focus on the EPA."</p>
<p>Saving the planet? Ha. The leftist-controlled Environmental Corruption Agency is only in business to serve its pals and subvert its political enemies, while endangering resource security and sabotaging the deliberative process. Real environmental protection starts with draining this fetid swamp.</p>
<p>Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies" (Regnery 2010).</p>
<p />
| 6,733 |
<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Nine Florida State University fraternity members were charged with hazing Wednesday in the death of a 20-year-old pledge who authorities say drank a lethal amount of bourbon and malt liquor at an off-campus party overflowing with alcohol and strippers.</p>
<p>More details from the party were released as nine members of the now-closed Pi Kappa Phi FSU chapter face felony hazing charges in the death of Andrew Coffey. He was found unresponsive and died of alcohol poisoning Nov. 3, following the party the night before.</p>
<p>The state medical examiner said Coffey had a blood alcohol level of .447 at the time of the autopsy.</p>
<p>Investigators, who ultimately took the case to a grand jury, said in the report that even though two fraternity members remained sober to monitor the party, no one monitored the amount of alcohol anyone was consuming or stopped those underage from drinking. Investigators added this created "an environment and expectation of drinking in excess."</p>
<p>The nine members charged with "College Hazing-Cause Injury or Death" - a third-degree felony - are Luke E. Kluttz and Clayton M. Muehlstein, both 22; Brett A. Birmingham and Anthony Petagine, both 20; and Conner R. Ravelo, Christopher M. Hamlin, Anthony Oppenheimer, John B. "Jack" Ray and Kyle J. Bauer, all 21.</p>
<p>The charge is punishable up to five years in prison. All nine turned themselves in on Wednesday and posted bail before being released according to court records.</p>
<p>Ravelo was Coffey's "big brother" in the fraternity. The other eight are members of the fraternity's executive council, which organized the party.</p>
<p>Three days after Coffey's death, Florida State suspended its fraternities and sororities with no timetable on when they would be reinstated. Pi Kappa Phi's national office has closed the FSU chapter.</p>
<p>Florida State University President John Thrasher said in a statement that "these arrests are the first step in seeking justice for Andrew and his loved ones, and they will inform us on where we need to place our focus as we proceed. ... We hope all members and alumni of our Greek organizations are paying attention."</p>
<p>State attorney Jack Campbell said he has been in contact with the Coffey family about the charges.</p>
<p>"The circumstances are unique. There have not been many felony hazing cases brought forth in Florida," he said. "There was criminal conduct and we wanted to make the best decision on what to pursue."</p>
<p>The fraternity's "Big Brother Night" party was held at an off-campus home to skirt university and national chapter policies that prohibit underage drinking. Those who attended used a ride-sharing service so no one would drive while intoxicated.</p>
<p>The party introduced pledges to their big brothers and included drinking large amounts of liquor straight from the bottle. Ravelo, who was 20 at the time of the party, admitted to investigators that he used another person's identification card to purchase alcohol for the party, including a fifth (750 ml) of Wild Turkey 101 bourbon - which was Coffey's "family bottle" - and two bottles of a malt beverage.</p>
<p>Ravelo, who was interviewed by Tallahassee Police investigators the day Coffey died, said that Coffey consumed the contents of the bottles until he passed out on a futon outside the house. He was taken into the living room and laid on a couch, where he was described as "snoring loudly" while others played pool.</p>
<p>Ravelo returned home after placing Coffey on the couch. A fellow pledge tried to awaken Coffey the next morning and found he had no pulse. Phone records show the pledge called and texted five fraternity members before calling 911.</p>
<p>Tallahassee police late Tuesday night released the names of the nine being charged, which took the state attorney's office and defense attorneys by surprise.</p>
<p>Don Pumphrey, who represents Klutzz, said he was caught off guard by the release, but the state attorney tried to keep all parties up to date about the process.</p>
<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Nine Florida State University fraternity members were charged with hazing Wednesday in the death of a 20-year-old pledge who authorities say drank a lethal amount of bourbon and malt liquor at an off-campus party overflowing with alcohol and strippers.</p>
<p>More details from the party were released as nine members of the now-closed Pi Kappa Phi FSU chapter face felony hazing charges in the death of Andrew Coffey. He was found unresponsive and died of alcohol poisoning Nov. 3, following the party the night before.</p>
<p>The state medical examiner said Coffey had a blood alcohol level of .447 at the time of the autopsy.</p>
<p>Investigators, who ultimately took the case to a grand jury, said in the report that even though two fraternity members remained sober to monitor the party, no one monitored the amount of alcohol anyone was consuming or stopped those underage from drinking. Investigators added this created "an environment and expectation of drinking in excess."</p>
<p>The nine members charged with "College Hazing-Cause Injury or Death" - a third-degree felony - are Luke E. Kluttz and Clayton M. Muehlstein, both 22; Brett A. Birmingham and Anthony Petagine, both 20; and Conner R. Ravelo, Christopher M. Hamlin, Anthony Oppenheimer, John B. "Jack" Ray and Kyle J. Bauer, all 21.</p>
<p>The charge is punishable up to five years in prison. All nine turned themselves in on Wednesday and posted bail before being released according to court records.</p>
<p>Ravelo was Coffey's "big brother" in the fraternity. The other eight are members of the fraternity's executive council, which organized the party.</p>
<p>Three days after Coffey's death, Florida State suspended its fraternities and sororities with no timetable on when they would be reinstated. Pi Kappa Phi's national office has closed the FSU chapter.</p>
<p>Florida State University President John Thrasher said in a statement that "these arrests are the first step in seeking justice for Andrew and his loved ones, and they will inform us on where we need to place our focus as we proceed. ... We hope all members and alumni of our Greek organizations are paying attention."</p>
<p>State attorney Jack Campbell said he has been in contact with the Coffey family about the charges.</p>
<p>"The circumstances are unique. There have not been many felony hazing cases brought forth in Florida," he said. "There was criminal conduct and we wanted to make the best decision on what to pursue."</p>
<p>The fraternity's "Big Brother Night" party was held at an off-campus home to skirt university and national chapter policies that prohibit underage drinking. Those who attended used a ride-sharing service so no one would drive while intoxicated.</p>
<p>The party introduced pledges to their big brothers and included drinking large amounts of liquor straight from the bottle. Ravelo, who was 20 at the time of the party, admitted to investigators that he used another person's identification card to purchase alcohol for the party, including a fifth (750 ml) of Wild Turkey 101 bourbon - which was Coffey's "family bottle" - and two bottles of a malt beverage.</p>
<p>Ravelo, who was interviewed by Tallahassee Police investigators the day Coffey died, said that Coffey consumed the contents of the bottles until he passed out on a futon outside the house. He was taken into the living room and laid on a couch, where he was described as "snoring loudly" while others played pool.</p>
<p>Ravelo returned home after placing Coffey on the couch. A fellow pledge tried to awaken Coffey the next morning and found he had no pulse. Phone records show the pledge called and texted five fraternity members before calling 911.</p>
<p>Tallahassee police late Tuesday night released the names of the nine being charged, which took the state attorney's office and defense attorneys by surprise.</p>
<p>Don Pumphrey, who represents Klutzz, said he was caught off guard by the release, but the state attorney tried to keep all parties up to date about the process.</p>
|
Frat pledge's alcohol death leads to hazing charges for 9
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/699ab914082e4d1ea9d71173de1c3d0b
|
2018-01-18
| 2least
|
Frat pledge's alcohol death leads to hazing charges for 9
<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Nine Florida State University fraternity members were charged with hazing Wednesday in the death of a 20-year-old pledge who authorities say drank a lethal amount of bourbon and malt liquor at an off-campus party overflowing with alcohol and strippers.</p>
<p>More details from the party were released as nine members of the now-closed Pi Kappa Phi FSU chapter face felony hazing charges in the death of Andrew Coffey. He was found unresponsive and died of alcohol poisoning Nov. 3, following the party the night before.</p>
<p>The state medical examiner said Coffey had a blood alcohol level of .447 at the time of the autopsy.</p>
<p>Investigators, who ultimately took the case to a grand jury, said in the report that even though two fraternity members remained sober to monitor the party, no one monitored the amount of alcohol anyone was consuming or stopped those underage from drinking. Investigators added this created "an environment and expectation of drinking in excess."</p>
<p>The nine members charged with "College Hazing-Cause Injury or Death" - a third-degree felony - are Luke E. Kluttz and Clayton M. Muehlstein, both 22; Brett A. Birmingham and Anthony Petagine, both 20; and Conner R. Ravelo, Christopher M. Hamlin, Anthony Oppenheimer, John B. "Jack" Ray and Kyle J. Bauer, all 21.</p>
<p>The charge is punishable up to five years in prison. All nine turned themselves in on Wednesday and posted bail before being released according to court records.</p>
<p>Ravelo was Coffey's "big brother" in the fraternity. The other eight are members of the fraternity's executive council, which organized the party.</p>
<p>Three days after Coffey's death, Florida State suspended its fraternities and sororities with no timetable on when they would be reinstated. Pi Kappa Phi's national office has closed the FSU chapter.</p>
<p>Florida State University President John Thrasher said in a statement that "these arrests are the first step in seeking justice for Andrew and his loved ones, and they will inform us on where we need to place our focus as we proceed. ... We hope all members and alumni of our Greek organizations are paying attention."</p>
<p>State attorney Jack Campbell said he has been in contact with the Coffey family about the charges.</p>
<p>"The circumstances are unique. There have not been many felony hazing cases brought forth in Florida," he said. "There was criminal conduct and we wanted to make the best decision on what to pursue."</p>
<p>The fraternity's "Big Brother Night" party was held at an off-campus home to skirt university and national chapter policies that prohibit underage drinking. Those who attended used a ride-sharing service so no one would drive while intoxicated.</p>
<p>The party introduced pledges to their big brothers and included drinking large amounts of liquor straight from the bottle. Ravelo, who was 20 at the time of the party, admitted to investigators that he used another person's identification card to purchase alcohol for the party, including a fifth (750 ml) of Wild Turkey 101 bourbon - which was Coffey's "family bottle" - and two bottles of a malt beverage.</p>
<p>Ravelo, who was interviewed by Tallahassee Police investigators the day Coffey died, said that Coffey consumed the contents of the bottles until he passed out on a futon outside the house. He was taken into the living room and laid on a couch, where he was described as "snoring loudly" while others played pool.</p>
<p>Ravelo returned home after placing Coffey on the couch. A fellow pledge tried to awaken Coffey the next morning and found he had no pulse. Phone records show the pledge called and texted five fraternity members before calling 911.</p>
<p>Tallahassee police late Tuesday night released the names of the nine being charged, which took the state attorney's office and defense attorneys by surprise.</p>
<p>Don Pumphrey, who represents Klutzz, said he was caught off guard by the release, but the state attorney tried to keep all parties up to date about the process.</p>
<p>TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Nine Florida State University fraternity members were charged with hazing Wednesday in the death of a 20-year-old pledge who authorities say drank a lethal amount of bourbon and malt liquor at an off-campus party overflowing with alcohol and strippers.</p>
<p>More details from the party were released as nine members of the now-closed Pi Kappa Phi FSU chapter face felony hazing charges in the death of Andrew Coffey. He was found unresponsive and died of alcohol poisoning Nov. 3, following the party the night before.</p>
<p>The state medical examiner said Coffey had a blood alcohol level of .447 at the time of the autopsy.</p>
<p>Investigators, who ultimately took the case to a grand jury, said in the report that even though two fraternity members remained sober to monitor the party, no one monitored the amount of alcohol anyone was consuming or stopped those underage from drinking. Investigators added this created "an environment and expectation of drinking in excess."</p>
<p>The nine members charged with "College Hazing-Cause Injury or Death" - a third-degree felony - are Luke E. Kluttz and Clayton M. Muehlstein, both 22; Brett A. Birmingham and Anthony Petagine, both 20; and Conner R. Ravelo, Christopher M. Hamlin, Anthony Oppenheimer, John B. "Jack" Ray and Kyle J. Bauer, all 21.</p>
<p>The charge is punishable up to five years in prison. All nine turned themselves in on Wednesday and posted bail before being released according to court records.</p>
<p>Ravelo was Coffey's "big brother" in the fraternity. The other eight are members of the fraternity's executive council, which organized the party.</p>
<p>Three days after Coffey's death, Florida State suspended its fraternities and sororities with no timetable on when they would be reinstated. Pi Kappa Phi's national office has closed the FSU chapter.</p>
<p>Florida State University President John Thrasher said in a statement that "these arrests are the first step in seeking justice for Andrew and his loved ones, and they will inform us on where we need to place our focus as we proceed. ... We hope all members and alumni of our Greek organizations are paying attention."</p>
<p>State attorney Jack Campbell said he has been in contact with the Coffey family about the charges.</p>
<p>"The circumstances are unique. There have not been many felony hazing cases brought forth in Florida," he said. "There was criminal conduct and we wanted to make the best decision on what to pursue."</p>
<p>The fraternity's "Big Brother Night" party was held at an off-campus home to skirt university and national chapter policies that prohibit underage drinking. Those who attended used a ride-sharing service so no one would drive while intoxicated.</p>
<p>The party introduced pledges to their big brothers and included drinking large amounts of liquor straight from the bottle. Ravelo, who was 20 at the time of the party, admitted to investigators that he used another person's identification card to purchase alcohol for the party, including a fifth (750 ml) of Wild Turkey 101 bourbon - which was Coffey's "family bottle" - and two bottles of a malt beverage.</p>
<p>Ravelo, who was interviewed by Tallahassee Police investigators the day Coffey died, said that Coffey consumed the contents of the bottles until he passed out on a futon outside the house. He was taken into the living room and laid on a couch, where he was described as "snoring loudly" while others played pool.</p>
<p>Ravelo returned home after placing Coffey on the couch. A fellow pledge tried to awaken Coffey the next morning and found he had no pulse. Phone records show the pledge called and texted five fraternity members before calling 911.</p>
<p>Tallahassee police late Tuesday night released the names of the nine being charged, which took the state attorney's office and defense attorneys by surprise.</p>
<p>Don Pumphrey, who represents Klutzz, said he was caught off guard by the release, but the state attorney tried to keep all parties up to date about the process.</p>
| 6,734 |
<p>Lawrence P. Jackson’s sad biography of Chester B. Himes (born in 1909) is exhaustively researched and detailed and—in almost every way—a tragic account of an African American writer’s attempt and largely failure to become a successful writer in the United States, while attacking many of the norms of white middle-class morality. Beginning with the publication of his first novel, <a href="" type="internal">If He Hollers Let Him Go</a> (1945), Himes repeatedly depicted black men seducing white women—an issue so fraught with emotional terror for white readers—that Himes didn’t have a chance to have his work widely published or read. Worse, Himes appears to have delighted in offending white readers, editors, and publishers, who rarely treated him well, because his anger was never in short display. In his prologue, Jackson observes of him, “He specialized in biting the hand that fed him….” Other African American writers of his time (think of Richard Wright, especially) encountered obstacles in publishing, but were more successful in discovering ways to be accommodating. Himes would not and paid a decades-long price for his anger.</p>
<p>It didn’t need to be this way; it started rather well. Hines’ background was as close to black middle class as possible. Both parents were educators, teaching in black colleges in the Mid-west and the South. He grew up with better opportunities than most African Americans of the time, attending Ohio State University briefly in 1926. But he appears to have been more interested in sex and getting high than his studies. Before he was twenty, he had contracted VD, wasted time gambling and drinking, which led to hard drugs and armed robbery, after getting a girlfriend pregnant. At nineteen, he was sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in prison. He was incarcerated in the segregated Ohio state penitentiary in Columbus. Jackson writes of him after a riot in the prison, “His efforts to deal with the personal tragedy of incarceration, loneliness, physical vulnerability, the conflict of homosexual desire, and the gruesome slush of human entrails in the [prison] yard during the long night of April 21 launched his writing career.” That was in 1930.</p>
<p>He managed to buy a typewriter with his gambling profits, and he began writing short stories. By 1933, he was publishing stories is fairly respectable literary outlets, including one in Esquire, in 1934, most of them about prison life or black/white sexual encounters. In 1936, after eight years in prison, he was paroled. Living was difficult because of the Depression, and he survived for a time <a href="" type="internal" />by working for the WPA. He also married a black woman who brought in significant though sometimes erratic income. Stories and novels flowed quickly, even profusely. The two of them moved around, including to LA, where Himes hoped to be successful writing for Hollywood. But that did not happen. There was also a lengthy involvement with the Communist Party, ending because of his difficulty accepting the Party Line. In 1944, he successfully applied for and was awarded a Rosenwald fellowship, which made it possible to be a full-time writer for the first time since his prison days.</p>
<p>Himes and Ruth, his wife, moved to New York. Doubleday accepted If He Hollers Let Him Go and then spent months butchering the novel before releasing it. The book (which depicts an explosive relationship between a black man and a white woman) was published in 1945, by which time Himes had developed friendships with Richard Wright and numerous other black artists. Reviews of the novel were mostly nasty, but he persisted with novel after novel, accumulating agents and publishers along the way, and many other friends who were black writers. He spent some time at Yaddo, mostly drunk. Often, after he had spent the latest royalty check, the only jobs he could find were custodial. There were tensions with other writers (including Ralph Ellison) because their successes overshadowed his own. After the war, which he had been able to avoid, he decided to go to Europe and, once again, try to become a successful writer. Jackson’s title for the chapter about these years (1948-1952) is “Inflicting a Wound upon Himself,” and it pretty much nails Himes self-destructive character.</p>
<p>The first European trip was brief compared later ones. Back in the United States, he was desperate much of the time, trying to get advances for work from numerous publishers. Finally, a second book, <a href="" type="internal">Cast the First Stone</a>, was accepted, a novel he had worked on for fifteen years. As soon as he received the advance, he remarked, “The first thing I desired now that I had money was to sleep with a white woman….” When Ralph Ellison, published <a href="" type="internal">Invisible Man</a> (1952), Himes’ jealousy increased. In 1953, he returned to Europe, to Paris, where he would remain for much of the rest of his life. His biographer observes, “He left America ‘just to stay alive.’” (Wright was also in Paris).</p>
<p>There was a string of white women he would become involved with, often much younger than he, although he was still married to Jean because he didn’t have enough money to pay for a divorce. This is Himes’s observation about his depiction of black/white sexuality: “…the black American male is a handful of psychotic entanglements such as has never before existed. He’s a kind of social bastard, crushed by the vulgarity and immorality produced by our time. And there you have it, what the woman takes for a primitive.” By 1955, other novels had been accepted and the paperback royalties for reprints in the United States had significantly improved, but money problems often returned. There’s a reference to Himes and his current mistress trying to survive (in Paris) on dog food.</p>
<p>Finally, there is significant financial change, mostly because Himes began writing comic detective stories, set in Harlem. He created a number of popular characters, including Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. These novels, written in English, had to be translated into French, but by the end of the decade Himes’ popularity had considerably risen in France. Eventually it would surpass Richard Wright’s. Titles such as <a href="" type="internal">The Real Cool Killers</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Pinktoes</a>, and <a href="" type="internal">Cotton Comes to Harlem</a>not only brought him additional income but, in time, popularity with American readers. As a black expatriate living in Paris, he gained a certain stature, and the friendships of many black intellectuals, including James Baldwin and Malcolm X. Younger black writers began to seek Himes out.</p>
<p>In the 1960s when he enjoyed more success than ever before, there were also setbacks. He had a stroke in 1963, when he was visiting Mexico. The rise of Black Power in the United States also increased his fame. Himes could not remain silent about what was happening. He expressed his contempt for racism in the West (including in France) in essays published during the era. By 1964, there were multiple paperback reprints of his books by American publishers. Himes’ rage fit in with the times, the unrest in the United States and other places. Carlos Moore, a friend of his, said about Himes in the context of race riots and assassinations of American black leaders: “Chester was a very bitter, bitter, bitter person.” There was plenty of justification for his anger.</p>
<p>As the decade came to a close, his finances were in better shape than ever been. He spent several years in Spain, though he traveled increasingly. And there were additional health problems, including arthritis and problems with his teeth. His writings were often cited when there was racial unrest in the United States. About the Newark riots (1967), he observed, “The theory has always been that the way to treat black people is like children; that they have to be punished when they misbehave and make a nuisance of themselves such as asking for civil rights.” His anger at racism in the United States, especially, was eloquently expressed in these essays, perhaps more powerfully than in his novels. Still, there were serious questions about Himes’ depiction of black life and what he wrote in his detective stories about Harlem. One reviewer wrote, “His Harlem blacks look and sound like the kind of idiots and psychopaths and punks a white man of similar background might think them all to be.”</p>
<p>Then the end arrived, after movies were made of his Harlem novels and the first volume of his autobiography, <a href="" type="internal">The Quality of Hurt</a> (1976), was published. It wasn’t until 1978 that Himes divorced Jean because he was worried that the royalties from his work, after he died, would all go to her. He married Leslie Packard, the woman he had lived with during his declining years so that his estate would go to her. He died in 1984, following a second stroke. Two years earlier, his friend, Ishmael Reed, was successful in seeing that Himes was awarded the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.</p>
<p>Lawrence P. Jackson’s account of Chester B. Himes’ life is sometimes overly detailed, beginning with lengthy information about his parents and grandparents. I’ve often felt that contemporary biographers feel compelled to write stuffed accounts of their subject’s lives, assuming that the length will support their assumptions of their subject’s greatness. Himes, for me, has always been a second-tier novelist, though I would be the first to say that no writer should be forced to undergo so many of the humiliations as he did in getting published. He was certainly a fighter and a survivor, but often a rather nasty person, given to petty jealousies and not the best treatment of women. I confess I don’t understand why the women he lived with didn’t simply pack up and leave, though some of them did. The test for me of a biography of a writer is whether it compels me to return to that writer and re-read the books I first experienced years ago or some of the works I have never read. That compulsion was missing by the time I finished Chester B. Himes, yet I have to admire Jackson’s diligence.</p>
<p>Lawrence P. Jackson: <a href="" type="internal">Chester B. Himes</a>Norton, 606 pp., $35</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Review: Lawrence P. Jackson’s “Chester B. Himes”
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2017/08/18/review-lawrence-p-jacksons-chester-b-himes/
|
2017-08-18
| 4left
|
Review: Lawrence P. Jackson’s “Chester B. Himes”
<p>Lawrence P. Jackson’s sad biography of Chester B. Himes (born in 1909) is exhaustively researched and detailed and—in almost every way—a tragic account of an African American writer’s attempt and largely failure to become a successful writer in the United States, while attacking many of the norms of white middle-class morality. Beginning with the publication of his first novel, <a href="" type="internal">If He Hollers Let Him Go</a> (1945), Himes repeatedly depicted black men seducing white women—an issue so fraught with emotional terror for white readers—that Himes didn’t have a chance to have his work widely published or read. Worse, Himes appears to have delighted in offending white readers, editors, and publishers, who rarely treated him well, because his anger was never in short display. In his prologue, Jackson observes of him, “He specialized in biting the hand that fed him….” Other African American writers of his time (think of Richard Wright, especially) encountered obstacles in publishing, but were more successful in discovering ways to be accommodating. Himes would not and paid a decades-long price for his anger.</p>
<p>It didn’t need to be this way; it started rather well. Hines’ background was as close to black middle class as possible. Both parents were educators, teaching in black colleges in the Mid-west and the South. He grew up with better opportunities than most African Americans of the time, attending Ohio State University briefly in 1926. But he appears to have been more interested in sex and getting high than his studies. Before he was twenty, he had contracted VD, wasted time gambling and drinking, which led to hard drugs and armed robbery, after getting a girlfriend pregnant. At nineteen, he was sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in prison. He was incarcerated in the segregated Ohio state penitentiary in Columbus. Jackson writes of him after a riot in the prison, “His efforts to deal with the personal tragedy of incarceration, loneliness, physical vulnerability, the conflict of homosexual desire, and the gruesome slush of human entrails in the [prison] yard during the long night of April 21 launched his writing career.” That was in 1930.</p>
<p>He managed to buy a typewriter with his gambling profits, and he began writing short stories. By 1933, he was publishing stories is fairly respectable literary outlets, including one in Esquire, in 1934, most of them about prison life or black/white sexual encounters. In 1936, after eight years in prison, he was paroled. Living was difficult because of the Depression, and he survived for a time <a href="" type="internal" />by working for the WPA. He also married a black woman who brought in significant though sometimes erratic income. Stories and novels flowed quickly, even profusely. The two of them moved around, including to LA, where Himes hoped to be successful writing for Hollywood. But that did not happen. There was also a lengthy involvement with the Communist Party, ending because of his difficulty accepting the Party Line. In 1944, he successfully applied for and was awarded a Rosenwald fellowship, which made it possible to be a full-time writer for the first time since his prison days.</p>
<p>Himes and Ruth, his wife, moved to New York. Doubleday accepted If He Hollers Let Him Go and then spent months butchering the novel before releasing it. The book (which depicts an explosive relationship between a black man and a white woman) was published in 1945, by which time Himes had developed friendships with Richard Wright and numerous other black artists. Reviews of the novel were mostly nasty, but he persisted with novel after novel, accumulating agents and publishers along the way, and many other friends who were black writers. He spent some time at Yaddo, mostly drunk. Often, after he had spent the latest royalty check, the only jobs he could find were custodial. There were tensions with other writers (including Ralph Ellison) because their successes overshadowed his own. After the war, which he had been able to avoid, he decided to go to Europe and, once again, try to become a successful writer. Jackson’s title for the chapter about these years (1948-1952) is “Inflicting a Wound upon Himself,” and it pretty much nails Himes self-destructive character.</p>
<p>The first European trip was brief compared later ones. Back in the United States, he was desperate much of the time, trying to get advances for work from numerous publishers. Finally, a second book, <a href="" type="internal">Cast the First Stone</a>, was accepted, a novel he had worked on for fifteen years. As soon as he received the advance, he remarked, “The first thing I desired now that I had money was to sleep with a white woman….” When Ralph Ellison, published <a href="" type="internal">Invisible Man</a> (1952), Himes’ jealousy increased. In 1953, he returned to Europe, to Paris, where he would remain for much of the rest of his life. His biographer observes, “He left America ‘just to stay alive.’” (Wright was also in Paris).</p>
<p>There was a string of white women he would become involved with, often much younger than he, although he was still married to Jean because he didn’t have enough money to pay for a divorce. This is Himes’s observation about his depiction of black/white sexuality: “…the black American male is a handful of psychotic entanglements such as has never before existed. He’s a kind of social bastard, crushed by the vulgarity and immorality produced by our time. And there you have it, what the woman takes for a primitive.” By 1955, other novels had been accepted and the paperback royalties for reprints in the United States had significantly improved, but money problems often returned. There’s a reference to Himes and his current mistress trying to survive (in Paris) on dog food.</p>
<p>Finally, there is significant financial change, mostly because Himes began writing comic detective stories, set in Harlem. He created a number of popular characters, including Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones. These novels, written in English, had to be translated into French, but by the end of the decade Himes’ popularity had considerably risen in France. Eventually it would surpass Richard Wright’s. Titles such as <a href="" type="internal">The Real Cool Killers</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Pinktoes</a>, and <a href="" type="internal">Cotton Comes to Harlem</a>not only brought him additional income but, in time, popularity with American readers. As a black expatriate living in Paris, he gained a certain stature, and the friendships of many black intellectuals, including James Baldwin and Malcolm X. Younger black writers began to seek Himes out.</p>
<p>In the 1960s when he enjoyed more success than ever before, there were also setbacks. He had a stroke in 1963, when he was visiting Mexico. The rise of Black Power in the United States also increased his fame. Himes could not remain silent about what was happening. He expressed his contempt for racism in the West (including in France) in essays published during the era. By 1964, there were multiple paperback reprints of his books by American publishers. Himes’ rage fit in with the times, the unrest in the United States and other places. Carlos Moore, a friend of his, said about Himes in the context of race riots and assassinations of American black leaders: “Chester was a very bitter, bitter, bitter person.” There was plenty of justification for his anger.</p>
<p>As the decade came to a close, his finances were in better shape than ever been. He spent several years in Spain, though he traveled increasingly. And there were additional health problems, including arthritis and problems with his teeth. His writings were often cited when there was racial unrest in the United States. About the Newark riots (1967), he observed, “The theory has always been that the way to treat black people is like children; that they have to be punished when they misbehave and make a nuisance of themselves such as asking for civil rights.” His anger at racism in the United States, especially, was eloquently expressed in these essays, perhaps more powerfully than in his novels. Still, there were serious questions about Himes’ depiction of black life and what he wrote in his detective stories about Harlem. One reviewer wrote, “His Harlem blacks look and sound like the kind of idiots and psychopaths and punks a white man of similar background might think them all to be.”</p>
<p>Then the end arrived, after movies were made of his Harlem novels and the first volume of his autobiography, <a href="" type="internal">The Quality of Hurt</a> (1976), was published. It wasn’t until 1978 that Himes divorced Jean because he was worried that the royalties from his work, after he died, would all go to her. He married Leslie Packard, the woman he had lived with during his declining years so that his estate would go to her. He died in 1984, following a second stroke. Two years earlier, his friend, Ishmael Reed, was successful in seeing that Himes was awarded the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement.</p>
<p>Lawrence P. Jackson’s account of Chester B. Himes’ life is sometimes overly detailed, beginning with lengthy information about his parents and grandparents. I’ve often felt that contemporary biographers feel compelled to write stuffed accounts of their subject’s lives, assuming that the length will support their assumptions of their subject’s greatness. Himes, for me, has always been a second-tier novelist, though I would be the first to say that no writer should be forced to undergo so many of the humiliations as he did in getting published. He was certainly a fighter and a survivor, but often a rather nasty person, given to petty jealousies and not the best treatment of women. I confess I don’t understand why the women he lived with didn’t simply pack up and leave, though some of them did. The test for me of a biography of a writer is whether it compels me to return to that writer and re-read the books I first experienced years ago or some of the works I have never read. That compulsion was missing by the time I finished Chester B. Himes, yet I have to admire Jackson’s diligence.</p>
<p>Lawrence P. Jackson: <a href="" type="internal">Chester B. Himes</a>Norton, 606 pp., $35</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 6,735 |
<p>8 p.m. (WGHP)</p>
<p>The four remaining all-stars are given an extra dose of motivation when their families come to visit in this new episode.</p>
<p>For their challenge, the contestants are given a gift containing a secret ingredient that they must base their dish on.</p>
<p>9 p.m. (WFMY)</p>
<p>The Five-0 leaps into action to locate McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and Alicia (Claire Forlani) after they’re kidnapped by the serial killer that they’ve been hunting in this rebroadcast.</p>
<p>Scott Caan also stars in this remake of a classic series.</p>
<p>9:30 p.m. (FOOD NETWORK)</p>
<p>Co-hosts Mark Anderson and Ryan Fey sample a tender pork shank that’s been breaded and deep fried into crispy, juicy goodness in this new episode. Later, they check out a unique burrito featuring ingredients from a Vietnamese beef noodle soup.</p>
<p>10 p.m. (WXLV)</p>
<p>Elizabeth Vargas and David Muir and their colleagues bring viewers a mix of interviews, human-interest stories and investigative reports in this news magazine, which has been broadcast on ABC since it premiered in 1978.</p>
<p />
|
Friday's Best Bets on TV
| false |
http://greensboro.com/go_triad/film_tv/friday-s-best-bets-on-tv/article_077fff8b-0cf7-50a2-b5f5-ff14b70854ac.html
|
2018-01-26
| 3left-center
|
Friday's Best Bets on TV
<p>8 p.m. (WGHP)</p>
<p>The four remaining all-stars are given an extra dose of motivation when their families come to visit in this new episode.</p>
<p>For their challenge, the contestants are given a gift containing a secret ingredient that they must base their dish on.</p>
<p>9 p.m. (WFMY)</p>
<p>The Five-0 leaps into action to locate McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and Alicia (Claire Forlani) after they’re kidnapped by the serial killer that they’ve been hunting in this rebroadcast.</p>
<p>Scott Caan also stars in this remake of a classic series.</p>
<p>9:30 p.m. (FOOD NETWORK)</p>
<p>Co-hosts Mark Anderson and Ryan Fey sample a tender pork shank that’s been breaded and deep fried into crispy, juicy goodness in this new episode. Later, they check out a unique burrito featuring ingredients from a Vietnamese beef noodle soup.</p>
<p>10 p.m. (WXLV)</p>
<p>Elizabeth Vargas and David Muir and their colleagues bring viewers a mix of interviews, human-interest stories and investigative reports in this news magazine, which has been broadcast on ABC since it premiered in 1978.</p>
<p />
| 6,736 |
<p>There are many ways to study war and conflict — causes, effect, social constructs, literature of the era, resistance movements… the list goes on.</p>
<p>This particular project by Neil Halloran is, “an animated data-driven documentary about war and peace, The Fallen of World War II looks at the human cost of the second World War and sizes up the numbers to other wars in history, including trends in recent conflicts.”</p>
<p>The result is staggering:</p>
<p />
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/128373915" type="external">The Fallen of World War II</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user22627560" type="external">Neil Halloran</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com" type="external">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>Historical data is essential to keeping current conflicts in the right perspective. And that’s exactly what this mini documentary illustrates.</p>
<p>Follow Kemberlee on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/KemberleeKaye" type="external">@kemberleekaye</a></p>
|
Watch the Staggering Statistics on the Fallen of World War II
| true |
http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/12/watch-the-staggering-statistics-on-the-fallen-of-world-war-ii/
|
2015-12-30
| 0right
|
Watch the Staggering Statistics on the Fallen of World War II
<p>There are many ways to study war and conflict — causes, effect, social constructs, literature of the era, resistance movements… the list goes on.</p>
<p>This particular project by Neil Halloran is, “an animated data-driven documentary about war and peace, The Fallen of World War II looks at the human cost of the second World War and sizes up the numbers to other wars in history, including trends in recent conflicts.”</p>
<p>The result is staggering:</p>
<p />
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/128373915" type="external">The Fallen of World War II</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/user22627560" type="external">Neil Halloran</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com" type="external">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>Historical data is essential to keeping current conflicts in the right perspective. And that’s exactly what this mini documentary illustrates.</p>
<p>Follow Kemberlee on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/KemberleeKaye" type="external">@kemberleekaye</a></p>
| 6,737 |
<p>In what is already being called the worst flu season in a decade, an abnormally high number of influenza cases could end up costing employers billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The likely increase would be related to higher health-care costs and an expected decline in production as more employees miss work due to sick days.</p>
<p>When calculating the direct cost of hospitalizations and outpatient visits, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that an average seasonal flu outbreak costs the nation's employers $10.4 billion.</p>
<p>And that doesn't even include indirect costs such as the loss of productivity.</p>
<p>We're three months into the flu season and already it appears worse than usual, and the season's peak, typically January and February, is only just beginning.</p>
<p>So far, 29 of 41 states reporting flu cases said the outbreak is at "severe" levels. On Wednesday, a state of public health emergency was declared in Boston because of the expanding flu outbreak that has already killed 18 people in Massachusetts.&#160;</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>To put it in perspective, Boston has 700 confirmed cases of flu so far this year, up a whopping 900% from just 70 total cases last year.&#160;</p>
<p>Economically, this means companies that are already struggling to stay afloat as they loosen themselves from the clutches of 2008's Great Recession and take a breather from the uncertainty of the fiscal cliff, can look forward to another major road block -- a multi-billion-dollar one -- in the first eight weeks of 2013.</p>
<p>"Companies that may already be shorthanded coming out of the recession could find themselves struggling to keep up with demand in the weeks ahead as absenteeism claims more manpower," said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas, a Chicago-based executive outplacement firm.&#160;</p>
<p>Worsening matters, the still downtrodden economy has people fearsome of losing their jobs, and that is luring employees to work despite fighting the highly contagious illness.</p>
<p>Some advice from Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas:</p>
<p>For the sick person: stay out of work.</p>
<p>Influenza is highly contagious and rest is required for recovery. While coming in may seem like the valiant thing to do, it could actually lead to financial consequences as the virus not only lowers productivity but could cause coworkers to become infected.</p>
<p>That would ultimately lead to greater financial consequences for the employer as absenteeism surges and productivity slows, potentially cutting into the company's bottom line.</p>
<p>For the employer: Discourage workers from "toughing it out."</p>
<p>One way to do that is by implementing an effective leave policy so workers aren't afraid of losing their jobs should they need to call out. Preparing for the worst, companies should also have plans in place in the event of a massive outbreak.</p>
<p>That includes, if possible, not running at full capacity by building inventories, as well as taking appropriate measures to shift to telecom mode if necessary by giving employees the ability to efficiently set up shop and work from home.</p>
<p>Lastly, companies that host flu vaccinations, promote the importance of getting vaccinated and cut down on meetings when a flu outbreak begins are ahead of the game, Challenger said.</p>
<p />
|
Worst Flu Season in a Decade Could Cost Employers Billions
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/01/09/worsening-flu-season-could-costs-companies-billions.html
|
2013-01-09
| 0right
|
Worst Flu Season in a Decade Could Cost Employers Billions
<p>In what is already being called the worst flu season in a decade, an abnormally high number of influenza cases could end up costing employers billions of dollars.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The likely increase would be related to higher health-care costs and an expected decline in production as more employees miss work due to sick days.</p>
<p>When calculating the direct cost of hospitalizations and outpatient visits, the Centers for Disease Control estimates that an average seasonal flu outbreak costs the nation's employers $10.4 billion.</p>
<p>And that doesn't even include indirect costs such as the loss of productivity.</p>
<p>We're three months into the flu season and already it appears worse than usual, and the season's peak, typically January and February, is only just beginning.</p>
<p>So far, 29 of 41 states reporting flu cases said the outbreak is at "severe" levels. On Wednesday, a state of public health emergency was declared in Boston because of the expanding flu outbreak that has already killed 18 people in Massachusetts.&#160;</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>To put it in perspective, Boston has 700 confirmed cases of flu so far this year, up a whopping 900% from just 70 total cases last year.&#160;</p>
<p>Economically, this means companies that are already struggling to stay afloat as they loosen themselves from the clutches of 2008's Great Recession and take a breather from the uncertainty of the fiscal cliff, can look forward to another major road block -- a multi-billion-dollar one -- in the first eight weeks of 2013.</p>
<p>"Companies that may already be shorthanded coming out of the recession could find themselves struggling to keep up with demand in the weeks ahead as absenteeism claims more manpower," said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas, a Chicago-based executive outplacement firm.&#160;</p>
<p>Worsening matters, the still downtrodden economy has people fearsome of losing their jobs, and that is luring employees to work despite fighting the highly contagious illness.</p>
<p>Some advice from Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas:</p>
<p>For the sick person: stay out of work.</p>
<p>Influenza is highly contagious and rest is required for recovery. While coming in may seem like the valiant thing to do, it could actually lead to financial consequences as the virus not only lowers productivity but could cause coworkers to become infected.</p>
<p>That would ultimately lead to greater financial consequences for the employer as absenteeism surges and productivity slows, potentially cutting into the company's bottom line.</p>
<p>For the employer: Discourage workers from "toughing it out."</p>
<p>One way to do that is by implementing an effective leave policy so workers aren't afraid of losing their jobs should they need to call out. Preparing for the worst, companies should also have plans in place in the event of a massive outbreak.</p>
<p>That includes, if possible, not running at full capacity by building inventories, as well as taking appropriate measures to shift to telecom mode if necessary by giving employees the ability to efficiently set up shop and work from home.</p>
<p>Lastly, companies that host flu vaccinations, promote the importance of getting vaccinated and cut down on meetings when a flu outbreak begins are ahead of the game, Challenger said.</p>
<p />
| 6,738 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Visa.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>When it comes to the credit cards you use, it's likely that either Visa or American Express has a place in your wallet. Both American Express and Visa have played a vital role in the evolution of the payment-processing industry, taking the global economy away from cash-based transactions and working toward an increasingly electronic payment system. American Express has gone through some struggles lately that have led its stock to lag Visa, but investors want to know if that means that AmEx is now a bargain or if Visa is still a smarter play on the space. Let's take a look at Visa and American Express using some common metrics to see which looks like the better buy.</p>
<p>Stock performance and valuation Looking at their recent stock returns, Visa has crushed American Express. The stock behind the card that's everywhere you want to be has risen 23% over the past year. That compares to a 22% loss for shareholders in American Express.</p>
<p>Looking at simple valuation metrics, the differences in the fundamental performance of the two businesses don't seem nearly as wide as the share-price performance. Investors have rewarded Visa shares with a rich earnings multiple of 28 based on trailing earnings. American Express only manages to trade at about 12 times its trailing earnings, reflecting more than just the recent discontent among investors.</p>
<p>A small portion of the gap fades when you look at forward projections for earnings over the next year. Yet Visa's forward earnings multiple is still more than double that of American Express, weighing in at almost 25 for Visa compared to 11 for AmEx. Looking at valuation, American Express looks more attractive right now, especially for value-based investors who like earnings-based valuation methods.</p>
<p>DividendsAnother area where American Express looks better than Visa is in its dividend policy. American Express' dividend yield approaches 2%, having been helped by the recent decline in the stock price. By contrast, Visa pays a dividend yield of only 0.7%.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Dividend policy doesn't really explain the disparity in yields. The earnings payout ratios for both Visa and American Express are around 20%, and so most of the difference stems again from the wide gap in valuation. Visa has the more recent dividend increase, having boosted its payout to its current quarterly level of $0.14 per share last fall. American Express has made a practice recently of increasing its dividend around mid-year, making it likely that its current payment of $0.29 per share each quarter will rise in the near future. American Express is the more attractive of the two card stocks for dividend investors.</p>
<p>GrowthThe reason why investors are willing to pay up for Visa shares is that they see immense growth prospects for the global card giant. Visa itself is optimistic about its future, projecting full-year 2016 revenue growth in the high-single-digit to low-double-digit percentage range in constant currency terms. The strength of the U.S. dollar has held back Visa's results on a GAAP basis, but the local-currency numbers show the inherent strength of its business model and the fairly fast adoption rates within faster-growing emerging economies outside the U.S. and the other major countries that make up the bulk of world economic activity. Double-digit percentage growth in earnings should keep Visa shareholders satisfied as well.</p>
<p>By contrast, American Express has a much more uncertain future. The high-profile loss of business from big-box retailer Costco has hurt American Express' reputation, even though it now appears to have been a smart financial decision for the card giant. Nevertheless, AmEx will struggle to try to make up lost revenue and profits, and most investors expect to see flat to lower revenue in both 2016 and 2017 that will put a ceiling on the company's ability to produce substantial earnings growth. American Express has a valuable brand, but adverse trends at the luxury end of the retail spectrum could put pressure on AmEx's traditional command of the high-end space.</p>
<p>Different investors will find both of these stocks compelling, and which you pick depends on what you value most in a stock. Visa's growth prospects make it a natural pick for risk-taking investors despite its higher valuation and lower dividend. Value investors will see plenty to like about American Express' shares right now, given the general lack of short-term confidence that has the stock out of favor. Overall, American Express carries a slight edge, but either would make a good pick.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/15/better-buy-visa-inc-vs-american-express.aspx" type="external">Better Buy: Visa Inc. vs. American Express Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Costco Wholesale and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends American Express. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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Better Buy: Visa vs. American Express
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http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/04/15/better-buy-visa-vs-american-express.html
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2016-04-15
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Better Buy: Visa vs. American Express
<p />
<p>Image source: Visa.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>When it comes to the credit cards you use, it's likely that either Visa or American Express has a place in your wallet. Both American Express and Visa have played a vital role in the evolution of the payment-processing industry, taking the global economy away from cash-based transactions and working toward an increasingly electronic payment system. American Express has gone through some struggles lately that have led its stock to lag Visa, but investors want to know if that means that AmEx is now a bargain or if Visa is still a smarter play on the space. Let's take a look at Visa and American Express using some common metrics to see which looks like the better buy.</p>
<p>Stock performance and valuation Looking at their recent stock returns, Visa has crushed American Express. The stock behind the card that's everywhere you want to be has risen 23% over the past year. That compares to a 22% loss for shareholders in American Express.</p>
<p>Looking at simple valuation metrics, the differences in the fundamental performance of the two businesses don't seem nearly as wide as the share-price performance. Investors have rewarded Visa shares with a rich earnings multiple of 28 based on trailing earnings. American Express only manages to trade at about 12 times its trailing earnings, reflecting more than just the recent discontent among investors.</p>
<p>A small portion of the gap fades when you look at forward projections for earnings over the next year. Yet Visa's forward earnings multiple is still more than double that of American Express, weighing in at almost 25 for Visa compared to 11 for AmEx. Looking at valuation, American Express looks more attractive right now, especially for value-based investors who like earnings-based valuation methods.</p>
<p>DividendsAnother area where American Express looks better than Visa is in its dividend policy. American Express' dividend yield approaches 2%, having been helped by the recent decline in the stock price. By contrast, Visa pays a dividend yield of only 0.7%.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Dividend policy doesn't really explain the disparity in yields. The earnings payout ratios for both Visa and American Express are around 20%, and so most of the difference stems again from the wide gap in valuation. Visa has the more recent dividend increase, having boosted its payout to its current quarterly level of $0.14 per share last fall. American Express has made a practice recently of increasing its dividend around mid-year, making it likely that its current payment of $0.29 per share each quarter will rise in the near future. American Express is the more attractive of the two card stocks for dividend investors.</p>
<p>GrowthThe reason why investors are willing to pay up for Visa shares is that they see immense growth prospects for the global card giant. Visa itself is optimistic about its future, projecting full-year 2016 revenue growth in the high-single-digit to low-double-digit percentage range in constant currency terms. The strength of the U.S. dollar has held back Visa's results on a GAAP basis, but the local-currency numbers show the inherent strength of its business model and the fairly fast adoption rates within faster-growing emerging economies outside the U.S. and the other major countries that make up the bulk of world economic activity. Double-digit percentage growth in earnings should keep Visa shareholders satisfied as well.</p>
<p>By contrast, American Express has a much more uncertain future. The high-profile loss of business from big-box retailer Costco has hurt American Express' reputation, even though it now appears to have been a smart financial decision for the card giant. Nevertheless, AmEx will struggle to try to make up lost revenue and profits, and most investors expect to see flat to lower revenue in both 2016 and 2017 that will put a ceiling on the company's ability to produce substantial earnings growth. American Express has a valuable brand, but adverse trends at the luxury end of the retail spectrum could put pressure on AmEx's traditional command of the high-end space.</p>
<p>Different investors will find both of these stocks compelling, and which you pick depends on what you value most in a stock. Visa's growth prospects make it a natural pick for risk-taking investors despite its higher valuation and lower dividend. Value investors will see plenty to like about American Express' shares right now, given the general lack of short-term confidence that has the stock out of favor. Overall, American Express carries a slight edge, but either would make a good pick.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/15/better-buy-visa-inc-vs-american-express.aspx" type="external">Better Buy: Visa Inc. vs. American Express Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Costco Wholesale and Visa. The Motley Fool recommends American Express. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 6,739 |
<p />
<p>A class-action lawsuit seeking the return of deposits has been launched against the developer of a downtown Toronto hotel bearing the name of U.S. President Donald Trump, the lawyer who won an earlier test case for disgruntled investors said on Friday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The lawsuit filed against Talon International Inc in the name of Ashleka Persaud can be joined by as many as 210 other purchasers who paid deposits to buy hotel units in the tower but did not close their transactions, the filing said.</p>
<p>A lawyer for Talon was not immediately available to comment.</p>
<p>The Trump International Hotel &amp; Tower has been beset by troubles since opening its doors in 2012, and ownership of the tower itself looks set to fall to its main debt holder after a court-run sale process received no bids last month.</p>
<p>Talon, which licensed the Trump brand and hired a Trump-owned company to manage it, was ordered in October to pay damages to one buyer for "negligent misrepresentation" and for another sale to be rescinded. Those buyers were represented by Mitchell Wine, the same lawyer handling the new case.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court of Canada earlier this week dismissed Talon's request for it to hear an appeal of the lower court ruling.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The expansion of similar payouts to all buyers of the tower's hotel units, which were placed into a pool of rooms to be rented out at luxury rates, could amount to a total of C$25 million, the filing said.</p>
<p>The case is: Persaud v Talon; Ontario Superior Court of Justice file no: CV-17-569023-00CP</p>
<p>(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)</p>
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Developer of Trump Tower in Toronto faces class action lawsuit
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http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/03/10/developer-trump-tower-in-toronto-faces-class-action-lawsuit.html
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2017-03-17
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Developer of Trump Tower in Toronto faces class action lawsuit
<p />
<p>A class-action lawsuit seeking the return of deposits has been launched against the developer of a downtown Toronto hotel bearing the name of U.S. President Donald Trump, the lawyer who won an earlier test case for disgruntled investors said on Friday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The lawsuit filed against Talon International Inc in the name of Ashleka Persaud can be joined by as many as 210 other purchasers who paid deposits to buy hotel units in the tower but did not close their transactions, the filing said.</p>
<p>A lawyer for Talon was not immediately available to comment.</p>
<p>The Trump International Hotel &amp; Tower has been beset by troubles since opening its doors in 2012, and ownership of the tower itself looks set to fall to its main debt holder after a court-run sale process received no bids last month.</p>
<p>Talon, which licensed the Trump brand and hired a Trump-owned company to manage it, was ordered in October to pay damages to one buyer for "negligent misrepresentation" and for another sale to be rescinded. Those buyers were represented by Mitchell Wine, the same lawyer handling the new case.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court of Canada earlier this week dismissed Talon's request for it to hear an appeal of the lower court ruling.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The expansion of similar payouts to all buyers of the tower's hotel units, which were placed into a pool of rooms to be rented out at luxury rates, could amount to a total of C$25 million, the filing said.</p>
<p>The case is: Persaud v Talon; Ontario Superior Court of Justice file no: CV-17-569023-00CP</p>
<p>(Reporting by Alastair Sharp; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)</p>
| 6,740 |
<p />
<p>Today's workers have no shortage of flexible work opportunities. In <a href="https://www.worldatwork.org/adimLink?id=79192" type="external">a survey conducted by FlexJobs and WorldatWork Opens a New Window.</a>,&#160;80 percent of the companies surveyed offered some kind of work flexibility options to their employees. As work flexibility finds itself a solid place in the business world, certain trends are emerging and defining&#160;what flex work means to today's organizations and employees.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Below, we go beyond traditional remote work and look at some of these cool trends in workplace flex for 2017:</p>
<p>1. Digital Nomads</p>
<p>A " <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/digital-nomad/" type="external">digital nomad Opens a New Window.</a>" is someone who works remotely while traveling and living in different locations. Digital nomads use keen technology skills to stay available and connected to their coworkers and projects. Digital nomads usually benefit most from a 100 percent remote job as either an employee or a <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/freelance.html" type="external">freelancer Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>With so many tools out there (video conferencing, project management, instant messaging, etc.) the digital nomad lifestyle is likely to gain popularity&#160;as workers realize they can live and travel where they wish while also working fulfilling&#160;jobs.</p>
<p>2. The Gig Economy</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Side jobs, temporary work, freelance contracts – all of these make up the <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/the-gig-economy-booming-means/" type="external">gig economy Opens a New Window.</a>. More and more workers are choosing to have the ultimate in work flexibility by&#160;taking part in the gig economy and working on a&#160;project-by-project basis. This allows workers to pick and choose the projects they wish to work on and create their own schedules. The amount of hours and money made is up to the worker.</p>
<p>3. Flexibility Policies</p>
<p>Creating <a href="https://remote.co/5-tips-to-create-formal-remote-work-policies/" type="external">formal flexible work policies Opens a New Window.</a> is a recent trend&#160;arising from the fact that workplace flexibility is being seen more as a right and less as an earned benefit. As companies implement flexible work into their cultures, it's essential for them to to create formalized policies in order to clearly communicate rules and expectations.</p>
<p>Formalized flexibility policies can help companies solidify their flex work plans and determine what types of flexibility will be offered and to whom. A concrete policy will help give&#160;structure to any flexible work program.</p>
<p>4. Manager Training</p>
<p>Managing remote workers often requires different skills from the ones required to manage in-office workers. Despite the fact that more companies are offering remote work options, many managers lack training in this area. According to the FlexJobs/WorldatWork survey cited above,&#160;86 percent of managers lack&#160;training on how to manage flexible employees.</p>
<p>There are multiple resources available today to assist in training managers. Check out <a href="https://remote.co/" type="external">Remote.co Opens a New Window.</a>and the <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/employer-blog/" type="external">FlexJobs Employer blog Opens a New Window.</a> for tons of tips on managing remote workers.</p>
<p>5. Unlimited Vacation Policies</p>
<p>Often called " <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3052926/lessons-learned/we-offered-unlimited-vacation-for-one-year-heres-what-we-learned" type="external">open vacation policies Opens a New Window.</a>," unlimited vacation time has picked up speed in the last few years. Employers are trusting their employees to take the amount of time they need without limiting them to the typical two-week allotment. An unlimited vacation policy gives workers the flexibility and freedom to schedule time off according to their particular life situations, making it a definite cool trend for 2017.</p>
<p>6. Virtual Companies</p>
<p>A virtual company is an organization that has no physical office space. Companies are seeing the benefits of moving away from brick-and-mortar setups. With no rent payment, no utility payments, and no office supplies needed, operating virtually can save a lot of money.&#160;Operating remotely also allows a company to hire the best candidates, no matter where they live.</p>
<p>FlexJobs has kept tabs on how many companies work either mostly or completely remotely. In 2014, there were 26 companies on the list. In 2016, the list grew to a whopping <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/virtual-companies-that-embrace-remote-working/" type="external">125 companies Opens a New Window.</a>, making this a trend that's likely not going anywhere in 2017.</p>
<p>It's clear that workplace flexibility is here to stay. Use these cool trends to guide you as you incorporate flexibility into your workplace in 2017.</p>
<p>A version of this article originally appeared on <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/trends-in-workplace-flexibility-2017/" type="external">FlexJobs Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Rachel Jay is an online job researcher, copy editor, and writer for the award-winning site <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/" type="external">FlexJobs Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
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6 Trends That Will Define Workplace Flexibility in 2017
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http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/12/21/6-trends-that-will-define-workplace-flexibility-in-2017.html
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2016-12-26
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6 Trends That Will Define Workplace Flexibility in 2017
<p />
<p>Today's workers have no shortage of flexible work opportunities. In <a href="https://www.worldatwork.org/adimLink?id=79192" type="external">a survey conducted by FlexJobs and WorldatWork Opens a New Window.</a>,&#160;80 percent of the companies surveyed offered some kind of work flexibility options to their employees. As work flexibility finds itself a solid place in the business world, certain trends are emerging and defining&#160;what flex work means to today's organizations and employees.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Below, we go beyond traditional remote work and look at some of these cool trends in workplace flex for 2017:</p>
<p>1. Digital Nomads</p>
<p>A " <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/digital-nomad/" type="external">digital nomad Opens a New Window.</a>" is someone who works remotely while traveling and living in different locations. Digital nomads use keen technology skills to stay available and connected to their coworkers and projects. Digital nomads usually benefit most from a 100 percent remote job as either an employee or a <a href="https://www.recruiter.com/freelance.html" type="external">freelancer Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>With so many tools out there (video conferencing, project management, instant messaging, etc.) the digital nomad lifestyle is likely to gain popularity&#160;as workers realize they can live and travel where they wish while also working fulfilling&#160;jobs.</p>
<p>2. The Gig Economy</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Side jobs, temporary work, freelance contracts – all of these make up the <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/the-gig-economy-booming-means/" type="external">gig economy Opens a New Window.</a>. More and more workers are choosing to have the ultimate in work flexibility by&#160;taking part in the gig economy and working on a&#160;project-by-project basis. This allows workers to pick and choose the projects they wish to work on and create their own schedules. The amount of hours and money made is up to the worker.</p>
<p>3. Flexibility Policies</p>
<p>Creating <a href="https://remote.co/5-tips-to-create-formal-remote-work-policies/" type="external">formal flexible work policies Opens a New Window.</a> is a recent trend&#160;arising from the fact that workplace flexibility is being seen more as a right and less as an earned benefit. As companies implement flexible work into their cultures, it's essential for them to to create formalized policies in order to clearly communicate rules and expectations.</p>
<p>Formalized flexibility policies can help companies solidify their flex work plans and determine what types of flexibility will be offered and to whom. A concrete policy will help give&#160;structure to any flexible work program.</p>
<p>4. Manager Training</p>
<p>Managing remote workers often requires different skills from the ones required to manage in-office workers. Despite the fact that more companies are offering remote work options, many managers lack training in this area. According to the FlexJobs/WorldatWork survey cited above,&#160;86 percent of managers lack&#160;training on how to manage flexible employees.</p>
<p>There are multiple resources available today to assist in training managers. Check out <a href="https://remote.co/" type="external">Remote.co Opens a New Window.</a>and the <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/employer-blog/" type="external">FlexJobs Employer blog Opens a New Window.</a> for tons of tips on managing remote workers.</p>
<p>5. Unlimited Vacation Policies</p>
<p>Often called " <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/3052926/lessons-learned/we-offered-unlimited-vacation-for-one-year-heres-what-we-learned" type="external">open vacation policies Opens a New Window.</a>," unlimited vacation time has picked up speed in the last few years. Employers are trusting their employees to take the amount of time they need without limiting them to the typical two-week allotment. An unlimited vacation policy gives workers the flexibility and freedom to schedule time off according to their particular life situations, making it a definite cool trend for 2017.</p>
<p>6. Virtual Companies</p>
<p>A virtual company is an organization that has no physical office space. Companies are seeing the benefits of moving away from brick-and-mortar setups. With no rent payment, no utility payments, and no office supplies needed, operating virtually can save a lot of money.&#160;Operating remotely also allows a company to hire the best candidates, no matter where they live.</p>
<p>FlexJobs has kept tabs on how many companies work either mostly or completely remotely. In 2014, there were 26 companies on the list. In 2016, the list grew to a whopping <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/virtual-companies-that-embrace-remote-working/" type="external">125 companies Opens a New Window.</a>, making this a trend that's likely not going anywhere in 2017.</p>
<p>It's clear that workplace flexibility is here to stay. Use these cool trends to guide you as you incorporate flexibility into your workplace in 2017.</p>
<p>A version of this article originally appeared on <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/trends-in-workplace-flexibility-2017/" type="external">FlexJobs Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Rachel Jay is an online job researcher, copy editor, and writer for the award-winning site <a href="https://www.flexjobs.com/" type="external">FlexJobs Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 6,741 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Albuquerque, NM 87114</p>
<p>$305,990</p>
<p>1,961 sq. ft.</p>
<p>3 bed / 2 bath</p>
<p>Krystin Apodaca</p>
<p>505.205.3201</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>RayLee Realty</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Welcome to 10940 Esmeralda Drive. This beautiful RayLee model home is a blend of style and function with contemporary finishes throughout. It is located in RayLee Homes’ Saltillo community on Albuquerque’s westside near the Cottonwood Mall. This home is move-in ready and loaded with upgrades.</p>
<p>The home features tile backsplashes in the bathrooms, kitchen and dining area. The property boasts an open layout with natural light and spacious rooms. The living areas have wood look tile throughout. Relax after a long day on the spacious covered back patio – complete with backyard landscaping. The huge laundry room has ample cabinetry and a sink.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
|
About the cover: December 30, 2016
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/917771/about-the-cover-december-30-2016.html
| 2least
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About the cover: December 30, 2016
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Albuquerque, NM 87114</p>
<p>$305,990</p>
<p>1,961 sq. ft.</p>
<p>3 bed / 2 bath</p>
<p>Krystin Apodaca</p>
<p>505.205.3201</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>RayLee Realty</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Welcome to 10940 Esmeralda Drive. This beautiful RayLee model home is a blend of style and function with contemporary finishes throughout. It is located in RayLee Homes’ Saltillo community on Albuquerque’s westside near the Cottonwood Mall. This home is move-in ready and loaded with upgrades.</p>
<p>The home features tile backsplashes in the bathrooms, kitchen and dining area. The property boasts an open layout with natural light and spacious rooms. The living areas have wood look tile throughout. Relax after a long day on the spacious covered back patio – complete with backyard landscaping. The huge laundry room has ample cabinetry and a sink.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
| 6,742 |
|
<p>Vampires, mummies and corpses arent the only ones rising from their slumber on Halloween night.</p>
<p>October 31 marks the return of Sell in May traders as well. The Sell in May trading strategy is also referred to as the " <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sell-in-may-and-go-away.asp" type="external">Halloween Strategy Opens a New Window.</a>."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>With only two months left to go in 2016, the year is shaping up to be a solid one for stock investors. Barring a November or December collapse, the SPDR S&amp;P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) is in-line to finish the year with mid single-digit gains.</p>
<p>However, the sell in May crowd hasnt had such a great year. In fact, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/quote/etf/etf.html?symb=SPY" type="external">the SPY Opens a New Window.</a> is up 2.2 percent since May 1.</p>
<p>Historically, the stock market has performed much better in the six months from November through April than it has from May through October. Since 1950, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has averaged just a 0.3 percent return from May to October compared to a 7.5 percent gain from November to April. The sell in May trade involves traders dumping stocks on May 1 and buying back in on October 31.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for May sellers, the trade hasnt worked in <a href="http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/long-ideas/16/05/7913923/sell-in-may-averages-for-the-month-havent-declined-in-4-years" type="external">recent years Opens a New Window.</a>. Over the past four years, the S&amp;P 500 has averaged a 4.8 percent gain from May 1 to October 31.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Visit <a href="http://bit.ly/BZTeach" type="external">http://bit.ly/BZTeach Opens a New Window.</a> for more awesome educational content!</p>
<p>2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.</p>
|
Halloween Is The Day 'Sell In May And Go Away' Investors Come Back To Life
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/10/31/halloween-is-day-sell-in-may-and-go-away-investors-come-back-to-life.html
|
2016-10-31
| 0right
|
Halloween Is The Day 'Sell In May And Go Away' Investors Come Back To Life
<p>Vampires, mummies and corpses arent the only ones rising from their slumber on Halloween night.</p>
<p>October 31 marks the return of Sell in May traders as well. The Sell in May trading strategy is also referred to as the " <a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sell-in-may-and-go-away.asp" type="external">Halloween Strategy Opens a New Window.</a>."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>With only two months left to go in 2016, the year is shaping up to be a solid one for stock investors. Barring a November or December collapse, the SPDR S&amp;P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) is in-line to finish the year with mid single-digit gains.</p>
<p>However, the sell in May crowd hasnt had such a great year. In fact, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/quote/etf/etf.html?symb=SPY" type="external">the SPY Opens a New Window.</a> is up 2.2 percent since May 1.</p>
<p>Historically, the stock market has performed much better in the six months from November through April than it has from May through October. Since 1950, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has averaged just a 0.3 percent return from May to October compared to a 7.5 percent gain from November to April. The sell in May trade involves traders dumping stocks on May 1 and buying back in on October 31.</p>
<p>Unfortunately for May sellers, the trade hasnt worked in <a href="http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/long-ideas/16/05/7913923/sell-in-may-averages-for-the-month-havent-declined-in-4-years" type="external">recent years Opens a New Window.</a>. Over the past four years, the S&amp;P 500 has averaged a 4.8 percent gain from May 1 to October 31.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Visit <a href="http://bit.ly/BZTeach" type="external">http://bit.ly/BZTeach Opens a New Window.</a> for more awesome educational content!</p>
<p>2016 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.</p>
| 6,743 |
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class=" size-large wp-image-12255 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-1024x535.jpg" alt="ScalesofJustice" width="669" height="350" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-1024x535.jpg 1024w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-900x470.jpg 900w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 669px) 100vw, 669px" /&gt;</a></p>
<p>Dear Everyone who causes racial strife and division by being ass-hats (SJW’s for short),</p>
<p>Contrary to what pandering pundits tell you, there are simple solutions to our “complex” problems. Simple does not equate to “easy” however, because admitting it requires what were once commonly referred to as “balls.” Allow me to provide an example as simply and clearly as I know how:</p>
<p>If you want to fix crime you have to enforce the laws. Yes it is that simple, but here’s the caveat which is sure to send every leftist into a conniption fit that will last until Ramadan. You have to enforce the laws equally across all genders, races, religions. Lady Justice doesn’t wear a blindfold because it makes her look thin. Though a bold fashion statement it is.</p>
<p>No, we’re not disproportionately enforcing the laws on black people, despite what media and politicians who have agendas on&#160;their minds will tell you. The reason more black people go to prison than white people, is because black people, in the USA, in 2015, commit more crimes. Am I sorry that’s the truth? Absolutely, and I wish it were not so. But it’s the truth. You do not have the right to <a href="" type="internal">warm and fuzzy feelings</a>, and this is, sadly, one of those times were what you “feel” about current “social justice” initiatives&#160;has nothing to do with reality.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">67 percent of black children are raised in single parent households</a>, which is absolutely heartbreaking.&#160;A moral breakdown of the family of this magnitude inevitably leads to more problem children who turn into criminals. Hey, as it turns out, having a mom and a dad is&#160;kind of important in the upbringing of children. As a matter of fact, it’s <a href="" type="internal">the single greatest economic indicator of future education, wealth and success</a> that we have available. Not education, not poverty, but a daddy in the home&#160;who’s still with mommy. Period. Sorry single-mother feminists who think they’re brave and wonderful for raising children alone.</p>
<p>The HONEST solution: more dads in more black American houses, equals balanced children less likely to grow into criminals. And until we address the fundamental issue at hand, simply complaining about black crime in the echo chamber will help no one, least of all the fatherless black children. I know, I know. I can already hear the boos through my computer screen.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class="aligncenter wp-image-2177" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BooThisMan.gif" alt="BooThisMan" width="491" height="327" /&gt;</a></p>
<p>Okay, that sidestep about black family dynamics was more like a tango. Mambo? Shuck and jive? Eh, doesn’t matter, black people are better dancers than white people.&#160;Oh you leftists all in a twist,&#160;shut up and keep reading.</p>
<p>Let’s get back to the main point, because it’s important. Either we are a nation of laws or we’re not. Yes? Either we apply the laws equally or we don’t. If more black people are perpetrating crimes because they never had dads to set boundaries and establish respect, more black people will get arrested. It’s not racism, it’s probability. Sad?&#160;Yes. But inaccurate? No.</p>
<p>Similarly, if we enforce illegal immigration laws (even just the ones currently on the books), guess which group will be affected most? The group flooding across the Mexican border: Mexicans. Bordering Mexico doesn’t make the enforcement of our illegal immigration laws racist or xenophobic. It makes them laws. If an Italian crossed the Mexican border illegally, he too would be sent packing&#160;with a sub-par, hot lunch.</p>
<p>Similarly, we would and should treat all illegal Latvians, Lebanese or Norwegians the exact same way. We just don’t have them flooding the country illegally in record numbers due to a simple geographical advantage.</p>
<p>The onus of not breaking the law doesn’t fall upon our justice system, it falls on individuals. More specifically, those individuals breaking the law. It is not a&#160;police officer’s job to stop you from being a dumbass. It is the police officer’s job to protect the public from your illegal behavior and criminal acts. If a black person or a white person, a transgender man, or a cis-gendered woman who’s biracial, or maybe <a href="" type="internal">Rachael Dolezal and transracial</a>, commits a crime and gets caught, the responsibility falls on them. To attempt to rebuild an institution of justice to recognize and treat all of the growing “protected classes” differently is not only unfeasible, it’s immoral.</p>
<p>We apply the exact same laws to everyone, blanketed across the board fairly. Murder someone and you get time in prison, if you’re black, white, or cis-Mexican. A judge cannot mandate a woman marry the father of her five children anymore than the same judge can call up the president of Mexico and tell him to stop making Mexico such a crappy place to live. We cannot put the “hookup” culture up for a vote. People are free to make bad choices, and many of them do.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2591" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/IllDoWhatIWant.gif" alt="I'llDoWhatIWant" width="500" height="281" /&gt;</a></p>
<p>We’re defined by our choices. We chose our own destiny. The justice system isn’t there to “level the playing field” between political or cultural groups. It’s there to enforce the law fairly. Is it perfect? No. No human run organization is. But to use that as a reason to absolve people of personal responsibility is not only asinine, it’s immoral.</p>
<p>What do you think? Should lady justice still be blind? Comment below.</p>
<p>Or send your hate-tweets to <a href="http://twitter.com/scrowder" type="external">Steven Crowder</a> or <a href="http://twitter.com/truenorthe" type="external">Courtney Kirchoff</a></p>
<p />
|
Dear Social Justice Warriors: No, “Blind Justice” is Not Racism…
| true |
http://louderwithcrowder.com/dear-social-justice-warriors-no-blind-justice-is-not-racism/
|
2015-11-04
| 0right
|
Dear Social Justice Warriors: No, “Blind Justice” is Not Racism…
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class=" size-large wp-image-12255 aligncenter" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-1024x535.jpg" alt="ScalesofJustice" width="669" height="350" srcset="https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-1024x535.jpg 1024w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-300x157.jpg 300w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice-900x470.jpg 900w, https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ScalesofJustice.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 669px) 100vw, 669px" /&gt;</a></p>
<p>Dear Everyone who causes racial strife and division by being ass-hats (SJW’s for short),</p>
<p>Contrary to what pandering pundits tell you, there are simple solutions to our “complex” problems. Simple does not equate to “easy” however, because admitting it requires what were once commonly referred to as “balls.” Allow me to provide an example as simply and clearly as I know how:</p>
<p>If you want to fix crime you have to enforce the laws. Yes it is that simple, but here’s the caveat which is sure to send every leftist into a conniption fit that will last until Ramadan. You have to enforce the laws equally across all genders, races, religions. Lady Justice doesn’t wear a blindfold because it makes her look thin. Though a bold fashion statement it is.</p>
<p>No, we’re not disproportionately enforcing the laws on black people, despite what media and politicians who have agendas on&#160;their minds will tell you. The reason more black people go to prison than white people, is because black people, in the USA, in 2015, commit more crimes. Am I sorry that’s the truth? Absolutely, and I wish it were not so. But it’s the truth. You do not have the right to <a href="" type="internal">warm and fuzzy feelings</a>, and this is, sadly, one of those times were what you “feel” about current “social justice” initiatives&#160;has nothing to do with reality.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">67 percent of black children are raised in single parent households</a>, which is absolutely heartbreaking.&#160;A moral breakdown of the family of this magnitude inevitably leads to more problem children who turn into criminals. Hey, as it turns out, having a mom and a dad is&#160;kind of important in the upbringing of children. As a matter of fact, it’s <a href="" type="internal">the single greatest economic indicator of future education, wealth and success</a> that we have available. Not education, not poverty, but a daddy in the home&#160;who’s still with mommy. Period. Sorry single-mother feminists who think they’re brave and wonderful for raising children alone.</p>
<p>The HONEST solution: more dads in more black American houses, equals balanced children less likely to grow into criminals. And until we address the fundamental issue at hand, simply complaining about black crime in the echo chamber will help no one, least of all the fatherless black children. I know, I know. I can already hear the boos through my computer screen.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class="aligncenter wp-image-2177" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BooThisMan.gif" alt="BooThisMan" width="491" height="327" /&gt;</a></p>
<p>Okay, that sidestep about black family dynamics was more like a tango. Mambo? Shuck and jive? Eh, doesn’t matter, black people are better dancers than white people.&#160;Oh you leftists all in a twist,&#160;shut up and keep reading.</p>
<p>Let’s get back to the main point, because it’s important. Either we are a nation of laws or we’re not. Yes? Either we apply the laws equally or we don’t. If more black people are perpetrating crimes because they never had dads to set boundaries and establish respect, more black people will get arrested. It’s not racism, it’s probability. Sad?&#160;Yes. But inaccurate? No.</p>
<p>Similarly, if we enforce illegal immigration laws (even just the ones currently on the books), guess which group will be affected most? The group flooding across the Mexican border: Mexicans. Bordering Mexico doesn’t make the enforcement of our illegal immigration laws racist or xenophobic. It makes them laws. If an Italian crossed the Mexican border illegally, he too would be sent packing&#160;with a sub-par, hot lunch.</p>
<p>Similarly, we would and should treat all illegal Latvians, Lebanese or Norwegians the exact same way. We just don’t have them flooding the country illegally in record numbers due to a simple geographical advantage.</p>
<p>The onus of not breaking the law doesn’t fall upon our justice system, it falls on individuals. More specifically, those individuals breaking the law. It is not a&#160;police officer’s job to stop you from being a dumbass. It is the police officer’s job to protect the public from your illegal behavior and criminal acts. If a black person or a white person, a transgender man, or a cis-gendered woman who’s biracial, or maybe <a href="" type="internal">Rachael Dolezal and transracial</a>, commits a crime and gets caught, the responsibility falls on them. To attempt to rebuild an institution of justice to recognize and treat all of the growing “protected classes” differently is not only unfeasible, it’s immoral.</p>
<p>We apply the exact same laws to everyone, blanketed across the board fairly. Murder someone and you get time in prison, if you’re black, white, or cis-Mexican. A judge cannot mandate a woman marry the father of her five children anymore than the same judge can call up the president of Mexico and tell him to stop making Mexico such a crappy place to live. We cannot put the “hookup” culture up for a vote. People are free to make bad choices, and many of them do.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">&lt;img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-2591" src="http://www.louderwithcrowder.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/IllDoWhatIWant.gif" alt="I'llDoWhatIWant" width="500" height="281" /&gt;</a></p>
<p>We’re defined by our choices. We chose our own destiny. The justice system isn’t there to “level the playing field” between political or cultural groups. It’s there to enforce the law fairly. Is it perfect? No. No human run organization is. But to use that as a reason to absolve people of personal responsibility is not only asinine, it’s immoral.</p>
<p>What do you think? Should lady justice still be blind? Comment below.</p>
<p>Or send your hate-tweets to <a href="http://twitter.com/scrowder" type="external">Steven Crowder</a> or <a href="http://twitter.com/truenorthe" type="external">Courtney Kirchoff</a></p>
<p />
| 6,744 |
<p>On December 10, two Strykers, the Army’s newest armored personnel carrier, were patrolling near Balad, Iraq, when the embankment beneath them collapsed and the vehicles plunged into a rain-swollen river. Three soldiers died and another was severely injured. Three days later, another Stryker rolled over a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. The explosion left one soldier injured and the vehicle in flames.</p>
<p>It was an inglorious combat debut for the Army’s first new personnel carrier in thirty years. But it confirmed the worst fears of some of the Stryker’s critics that the vehicle is unsafe and its crews untrained for using it in combat conditions. One former Pentagon analyst described the 8-wheeled vehicle as “riding in dune buggy armored in tinfoil.”</p>
<p>The Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle is billed as the Pentagon’s latest weapon in its new high-tech Army, a fast moving carrier designed for the urban battlefield and unconventional wars. This fall the Army deployed 300 Stryker vehicles and 3,500 soldiers to Iraq’s notorious Sunni Triangle, the Iowa-sized area in central Iraq where the most intense guerrilla fighting is taking place.</p>
<p>But new documents reveal that Pentagon weapons testers had expressed serious reservations about the whether the Strykers were ready for battle. The Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, Tom Christie, warned in a classified letter to the Secretary of the Defense that the Stryker is especially vulnerable to rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices. These are, of course, precisely the kinds of threats faced by the Stryker brigades now in Iraq.</p>
<p>Advertised as rapid deployment vehicles, the Stryker brigades could in theory be rushed anywhere in the world within 96 hours by C-130 transport planes. But numerous internal studies have questioned whether the Stryker can be deployed by C-130s at all. Moreover, a newly released Government Accounting Office report scolded the Pentagon for a host of other problems with the carrier, which was meant to replace the much-maligned Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The GAO report points to serious problems with the Stryker’s design and maintenance and discloses deficiencies in training for its use.</p>
<p>Even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted to delay funding of additional Stryker brigades until more testing and training could be completed. But congress, ever an anxious to spread the pork around to as many districts as possible, didn’t heed the warning and approved the additional purchases.</p>
<p>The Stryker is a joint venture of two of the mightiest industrial corporations in America: General Dynamics and General Motors. These companies waged a fierce two-year long lobbying battle, stretching from Capitol Hill to the halls of the Pentagon, to win the $4 billion contract to build 2,131 Strykers, which was awarded in November 2000.</p>
<p>The first Strykers, which cost $3 million a piece, rolled off the assembly line in April 2002. Presiding over the ceremony at the Stryker rollout in Alabama was former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki. The Stryker was a key component in Shinseki’s plan to upgrade the Army, a scheme he outlined in a 1999 paper titled “Army Vision.” In that report, Shinseki called for the development of an interim armored brigade featuring “all-wheel formation”. This was a thinly veiled hint that the contract would be awarded to General Dynamics. The Stryker is a wheeled carrier, as opposed to the tank-like vehicles built by United Defense which run on tracks.</p>
<p>During Shinseki’s speech in Alabama, he pointedly singled out for special thanks David K. Heebner. Heebner, a former Army Lt. General, had been one of Shinseki’s top aides, serving as Assistant Vice Chief of Staff for the Army. As such, he played a key role in pushing for funding for Shinseki’s projects, including the Stryker. In November 1999, General Dynamics issued a press release announcing that they had hired Heebner as an executive at the company. The announcement came a full month before Heebner’s official retirement date of December 31, 1999. The timing of the announcement is curious for several reasons. Most glaringly, it’s clear that the Army was leaning toward handing a multi-billion dollar contract to General Dynamics at the very time Heebner may have been in negotiations with the company for a high-paying executive position.</p>
<p>Federal conflict of interest laws prohibit government employees from being engaged “personally or substantially in a particular matter in which an organization they are negotiating with, or have an agreement with for future employment, has a financial interest.” It’s not clear if Heebner recused himself from the negotiations with General Dynamics over the Stryker contract. However, it’s very clear that the Stryker deal, despite the reservations raised by Pentagon weapons testers and the GAO, proved to be very lucrative for both Heebner and General Dynamics. Off the strength of the Stryker deal, Heebner quickly rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President for Planning and Development for General Dynamics, the conduit between the nation’s number two defense contractor and the Pentagon. By the end of last year, Heebner amassed more than 13,600 shares of General Dynamics stock valued at more than $1.2 million. “Based on the circumstances surrounding General Heebner’s hiring and compensation, and internal Pentagon warnings about the Stryker’s vulnerability, further investigation of the Stryker program is required,” says Eric Miller, a senior defense investigator at the Project on Government Oversight.</p>
<p>This is the latest in a string of Pentagon scandals involving former Defense Department staffers who pushed for high-ticketed weapons programs, then cashed in by joining the very companies that were awarded with the contracts. Last year, POGO and CounterPunch exposed a sweetheart deal between Boeing and the Pentagon involving the leasing of 21 Boeing tankers to the Air Force. The chief broker of the deal was Darleen Druyun, who helped craft the scheme while working as deputy assistant secretary for Air Force acquisition and management , then lobbied congress to approve it as an executive at Boeing. Facing allegations of fraud and inside dealing, Boeing fired Druyun in December.</p>
<p>JEFFREY ST. CLAIR is co-editor of CounterPunch and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512585/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
A General, GM and the Army’s Latest Tank
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2004/04/24/a-general-gm-and-the-army-s-latest-tank/
|
2004-04-24
| 4left
|
A General, GM and the Army’s Latest Tank
<p>On December 10, two Strykers, the Army’s newest armored personnel carrier, were patrolling near Balad, Iraq, when the embankment beneath them collapsed and the vehicles plunged into a rain-swollen river. Three soldiers died and another was severely injured. Three days later, another Stryker rolled over a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. The explosion left one soldier injured and the vehicle in flames.</p>
<p>It was an inglorious combat debut for the Army’s first new personnel carrier in thirty years. But it confirmed the worst fears of some of the Stryker’s critics that the vehicle is unsafe and its crews untrained for using it in combat conditions. One former Pentagon analyst described the 8-wheeled vehicle as “riding in dune buggy armored in tinfoil.”</p>
<p>The Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle is billed as the Pentagon’s latest weapon in its new high-tech Army, a fast moving carrier designed for the urban battlefield and unconventional wars. This fall the Army deployed 300 Stryker vehicles and 3,500 soldiers to Iraq’s notorious Sunni Triangle, the Iowa-sized area in central Iraq where the most intense guerrilla fighting is taking place.</p>
<p>But new documents reveal that Pentagon weapons testers had expressed serious reservations about the whether the Strykers were ready for battle. The Pentagon’s chief weapons tester, Tom Christie, warned in a classified letter to the Secretary of the Defense that the Stryker is especially vulnerable to rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices. These are, of course, precisely the kinds of threats faced by the Stryker brigades now in Iraq.</p>
<p>Advertised as rapid deployment vehicles, the Stryker brigades could in theory be rushed anywhere in the world within 96 hours by C-130 transport planes. But numerous internal studies have questioned whether the Stryker can be deployed by C-130s at all. Moreover, a newly released Government Accounting Office report scolded the Pentagon for a host of other problems with the carrier, which was meant to replace the much-maligned Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The GAO report points to serious problems with the Stryker’s design and maintenance and discloses deficiencies in training for its use.</p>
<p>Even Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld wanted to delay funding of additional Stryker brigades until more testing and training could be completed. But congress, ever an anxious to spread the pork around to as many districts as possible, didn’t heed the warning and approved the additional purchases.</p>
<p>The Stryker is a joint venture of two of the mightiest industrial corporations in America: General Dynamics and General Motors. These companies waged a fierce two-year long lobbying battle, stretching from Capitol Hill to the halls of the Pentagon, to win the $4 billion contract to build 2,131 Strykers, which was awarded in November 2000.</p>
<p>The first Strykers, which cost $3 million a piece, rolled off the assembly line in April 2002. Presiding over the ceremony at the Stryker rollout in Alabama was former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki. The Stryker was a key component in Shinseki’s plan to upgrade the Army, a scheme he outlined in a 1999 paper titled “Army Vision.” In that report, Shinseki called for the development of an interim armored brigade featuring “all-wheel formation”. This was a thinly veiled hint that the contract would be awarded to General Dynamics. The Stryker is a wheeled carrier, as opposed to the tank-like vehicles built by United Defense which run on tracks.</p>
<p>During Shinseki’s speech in Alabama, he pointedly singled out for special thanks David K. Heebner. Heebner, a former Army Lt. General, had been one of Shinseki’s top aides, serving as Assistant Vice Chief of Staff for the Army. As such, he played a key role in pushing for funding for Shinseki’s projects, including the Stryker. In November 1999, General Dynamics issued a press release announcing that they had hired Heebner as an executive at the company. The announcement came a full month before Heebner’s official retirement date of December 31, 1999. The timing of the announcement is curious for several reasons. Most glaringly, it’s clear that the Army was leaning toward handing a multi-billion dollar contract to General Dynamics at the very time Heebner may have been in negotiations with the company for a high-paying executive position.</p>
<p>Federal conflict of interest laws prohibit government employees from being engaged “personally or substantially in a particular matter in which an organization they are negotiating with, or have an agreement with for future employment, has a financial interest.” It’s not clear if Heebner recused himself from the negotiations with General Dynamics over the Stryker contract. However, it’s very clear that the Stryker deal, despite the reservations raised by Pentagon weapons testers and the GAO, proved to be very lucrative for both Heebner and General Dynamics. Off the strength of the Stryker deal, Heebner quickly rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President for Planning and Development for General Dynamics, the conduit between the nation’s number two defense contractor and the Pentagon. By the end of last year, Heebner amassed more than 13,600 shares of General Dynamics stock valued at more than $1.2 million. “Based on the circumstances surrounding General Heebner’s hiring and compensation, and internal Pentagon warnings about the Stryker’s vulnerability, further investigation of the Stryker program is required,” says Eric Miller, a senior defense investigator at the Project on Government Oversight.</p>
<p>This is the latest in a string of Pentagon scandals involving former Defense Department staffers who pushed for high-ticketed weapons programs, then cashed in by joining the very companies that were awarded with the contracts. Last year, POGO and CounterPunch exposed a sweetheart deal between Boeing and the Pentagon involving the leasing of 21 Boeing tankers to the Air Force. The chief broker of the deal was Darleen Druyun, who helped craft the scheme while working as deputy assistant secretary for Air Force acquisition and management , then lobbied congress to approve it as an executive at Boeing. Facing allegations of fraud and inside dealing, Boeing fired Druyun in December.</p>
<p>JEFFREY ST. CLAIR is co-editor of CounterPunch and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512585/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 6,745 |
<p>Peter Rumble, an outgoing Sonoma County administrator, recently <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help" type="external">announced</a>the formation of California Clean Power, a new private company where he serves as CEO.</p>
<p>According to Rumble, the <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help?page=2" type="external">mission</a> of CCP is “to provide cleaner power at a lower cost with local control.” &#160;They plan to do this by helping cities and counties establish Community Choice&#160;power programs similar to the existing&#160;Sonoma Clean Power, which <a href="" type="internal">has replaced Pacific Gas &amp; Electric</a> in the vast majority of the homes and businesses it has targeted.</p>
<p>CCP, SCP and other firms are operating under&#160;California’s Community Choice Aggregation Act,&#160; <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/01-02/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/ab_117_bill_20020924_chaptered.pdf" type="external">Assembly Bill 117</a>. In&#160;2002 the Legislature&#160;passed AB117 and it was signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis a year before he was recalled.</p>
<p>The law defined CCAs as, “Any city, county, or city and county whose governing board elects to combine the loads of its residents, businesses, and municipal facilities in a communitywide electricity buyers’ program.”</p>
<p>So how is this process supposed to work in cities and counties across the state?</p>
<p>One model is&#160;Sonoma Clean Power. Its process of “opting in” new ratepayers is anything but transparent. If CCP and similar companies follow that model, the same questions about transparency will arise.</p>
<p>SCP owns or operates no power plants. It&#160;owns or maintains no power poles, power lines or maintenance equipment. But SCP now pockets most of the payments Sonoma County residents would normally make to PG&amp;E.</p>
<p>On their <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/about-scp/" type="external">website,</a> SCP wrote, “We&#160;provide everyone in participating cities with the option of&#160;using environmentally friendly power, generated by renewable sources, like&#160;solar, wind and geothermal, at competitive rates.”</p>
<p>But what, actually, does SCP do? According to a <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/SCP-Signs-First-Power-Contract-Nov-19-2013.pdf" type="external">press release</a> on the same website, &#160;“Electricity will continue to be delivered over PG&amp;E’ s transmission and distribution system, and PG&amp;E will maintain responsibility for meter reading, billing and maintenance.” In other words, PG&amp;E will continue to do all the actual work.</p>
<p>But instead of generating electricity, SCP buys power from <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/about-scp/power-sources/" type="external">a number of sources</a>, including Constellation, a Baltimore-based subsidiary of Chicago energy provider Exelon. SCP also has <a href="http://recurrentenergy.com/press-release/sonoma-clean-power-inks-deal-for-30-mw-solar-project/" type="external">signed</a>contracts for geothermal energy with Calpine’s local Geysers facilities and for solar power from <a href="http://www.recurrentenergy.com" type="external">Recurrent Energy.</a></p>
<p>There is one fact SCP is careful not to tell Sonoma County residents. To claim they are a cleaner provider, <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/SCP-2013-Electric-Power-Generation-Mix.pdf" type="external">they compare</a> their energy portfolio – 33 percent renewable&#160; — to PG&amp;E’s statewide portfolio – 19 percent renewable.</p>
<p>But in Sonoma County, already the great majority of electricity that PG&amp;E delivers is renewable, since it comes from Calpine, a completely green geothermal source. From the Calpine <a href="http://www.geysers.com/geothermal.aspxp" type="external">website:</a></p>
<p>“Calpine, the largest geothermal power producer in the U.S., owns and operates 15 power plants at The Geysers with a net generating capacity of about 725 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 725,000 homes…. The Geysers meets the typical power needs of Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties, as well a portion of the power needs of Marin and Napa counties. In fact, The Geysers satisfies nearly 60 percent of the average electricity demand in the North Coast region from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border.”</p>
<p>The only way SCP customers can get the same percentage of geothermal power that PG&amp;E already delivers in Sonoma County is the <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/your-options/evergreen/" type="external">SCP EverGreen Option,</a> which costs 20 percent more than their basic service, and asks customers to make a 12-month commitment, with a $100 charge for early termination.</p>
<p>SCP <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/for-my-home/rates/" type="external">claims</a> people should switch providers because it offers “cleaner energy at lower cost”. But obviously a stronger force is at work here.</p>
<p>AB117 tilts the playing field drastically in favor of CCAs and against PG&amp;E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas &amp; Electric. For SCP, for example, just 5 percent have opted out, 95&#160;percent automatically being included in SCP.</p>
<p>How? The unnaturally high adoption rate of any CCA is due to the automatic opt-in provision. Instead of giving residents the ability to choose the new government entity, California law states they are conscripted as CCA customers, unless they actively opt out and stay with&#160;the regular electricity provider.</p>
<p>To compound the situation, SCP makes it difficult for Sonoma County residents to even know their electricity provider has been switched. In early 2014, SCP sent out notices&#160;that it automatically had become residents’&#160;new power company. It was cleverly disguised to look like the kind of promotional piece that is easy to throw away.</p>
<p>Here’s how the envelope looked, as if it were just another piece of junk mail in this age of email and texting. Below it is the letter that was inside.</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Notice how the letter spends about 150 words describing how supposedly wonderful&#160;&#160;SCP is, and how it will “automatically start.”</p>
<p>Only way at the bottom does the letter mention, “You may opt out of Sonoma Clean Power and continue to purchase PG&amp;E’s standard service” — which, by implication after all that went before, costs more and is dirty energy.</p>
<p>The mailer says it’s necessary to have “your account information” ready to opt-out, which for most people would be too much of a bother.</p>
<p>It’s as if&#160;an election for governor automatically&#160;picks one person unless 51 percent of voters actually show up to the polls, provide all their “information” and choose someone else.</p>
<p>First Community President and CEO Debbie Meekins <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help?page=2" type="external">said</a> her bank got involved with SCP because the new agency offered communities such compelling benefits as choice, more renewable energy and local control. “With California Clean Power, we’re looking to do the same thing,” she&#160;said.</p>
<p>The company proposes to offer cities and counties turnkey solutions that include not only financing, but legal assistance, energy purchasing, public outreach, billing and other services.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help" type="external">Santa Rosa Press-Democrat</a>, the company’s other four owners and directors are:</p>
<p>In addition, “Gallaher and Bosco also are directors at First Community, which has provided $10 million in financing to Sonoma Clean Power, including a key startup loan of $2.5 million.”</p>
<p>Bosco served as U.S. congressman from the North Bay from 1982-1990.&#160;He was part of the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1992-03-20/local/me-4136_1_san-diego-county" type="external">Rubbergate</a> scandal of the early 1990s, when he bounced 124 checks worth over $537,985 on the bank of the U.S. House of Representatives.</p>
<p>CEO Rumble anticipates great demand for his new company’s offerings. “There are several communities that are really interested in this model,” he&#160;said.</p>
<p>With everything available on a platter, from financing to legal help, to a guaranteed, state-sponsored takeover of PG&amp;E’s customer base, why would they not be?</p>
<p>Greg Karraker is chief &#160;marketing officer of a big data company, and a follower of local politics across America. His blog is <a href="http://www.thelittlepicture.net" type="external">www.thelittlepicture.net</a></p>
|
Green power shocking big utilities
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2014/12/10/green-power-shocking-big-utilities/
|
2018-12-20
| 3left-center
|
Green power shocking big utilities
<p>Peter Rumble, an outgoing Sonoma County administrator, recently <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help" type="external">announced</a>the formation of California Clean Power, a new private company where he serves as CEO.</p>
<p>According to Rumble, the <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help?page=2" type="external">mission</a> of CCP is “to provide cleaner power at a lower cost with local control.” &#160;They plan to do this by helping cities and counties establish Community Choice&#160;power programs similar to the existing&#160;Sonoma Clean Power, which <a href="" type="internal">has replaced Pacific Gas &amp; Electric</a> in the vast majority of the homes and businesses it has targeted.</p>
<p>CCP, SCP and other firms are operating under&#160;California’s Community Choice Aggregation Act,&#160; <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/01-02/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/ab_117_bill_20020924_chaptered.pdf" type="external">Assembly Bill 117</a>. In&#160;2002 the Legislature&#160;passed AB117 and it was signed into law by Gov. Gray Davis a year before he was recalled.</p>
<p>The law defined CCAs as, “Any city, county, or city and county whose governing board elects to combine the loads of its residents, businesses, and municipal facilities in a communitywide electricity buyers’ program.”</p>
<p>So how is this process supposed to work in cities and counties across the state?</p>
<p>One model is&#160;Sonoma Clean Power. Its process of “opting in” new ratepayers is anything but transparent. If CCP and similar companies follow that model, the same questions about transparency will arise.</p>
<p>SCP owns or operates no power plants. It&#160;owns or maintains no power poles, power lines or maintenance equipment. But SCP now pockets most of the payments Sonoma County residents would normally make to PG&amp;E.</p>
<p>On their <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/about-scp/" type="external">website,</a> SCP wrote, “We&#160;provide everyone in participating cities with the option of&#160;using environmentally friendly power, generated by renewable sources, like&#160;solar, wind and geothermal, at competitive rates.”</p>
<p>But what, actually, does SCP do? According to a <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/SCP-Signs-First-Power-Contract-Nov-19-2013.pdf" type="external">press release</a> on the same website, &#160;“Electricity will continue to be delivered over PG&amp;E’ s transmission and distribution system, and PG&amp;E will maintain responsibility for meter reading, billing and maintenance.” In other words, PG&amp;E will continue to do all the actual work.</p>
<p>But instead of generating electricity, SCP buys power from <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/about-scp/power-sources/" type="external">a number of sources</a>, including Constellation, a Baltimore-based subsidiary of Chicago energy provider Exelon. SCP also has <a href="http://recurrentenergy.com/press-release/sonoma-clean-power-inks-deal-for-30-mw-solar-project/" type="external">signed</a>contracts for geothermal energy with Calpine’s local Geysers facilities and for solar power from <a href="http://www.recurrentenergy.com" type="external">Recurrent Energy.</a></p>
<p>There is one fact SCP is careful not to tell Sonoma County residents. To claim they are a cleaner provider, <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/SCP-2013-Electric-Power-Generation-Mix.pdf" type="external">they compare</a> their energy portfolio – 33 percent renewable&#160; — to PG&amp;E’s statewide portfolio – 19 percent renewable.</p>
<p>But in Sonoma County, already the great majority of electricity that PG&amp;E delivers is renewable, since it comes from Calpine, a completely green geothermal source. From the Calpine <a href="http://www.geysers.com/geothermal.aspxp" type="external">website:</a></p>
<p>“Calpine, the largest geothermal power producer in the U.S., owns and operates 15 power plants at The Geysers with a net generating capacity of about 725 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 725,000 homes…. The Geysers meets the typical power needs of Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino counties, as well a portion of the power needs of Marin and Napa counties. In fact, The Geysers satisfies nearly 60 percent of the average electricity demand in the North Coast region from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border.”</p>
<p>The only way SCP customers can get the same percentage of geothermal power that PG&amp;E already delivers in Sonoma County is the <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/your-options/evergreen/" type="external">SCP EverGreen Option,</a> which costs 20 percent more than their basic service, and asks customers to make a 12-month commitment, with a $100 charge for early termination.</p>
<p>SCP <a href="https://sonomacleanpower.org/for-my-home/rates/" type="external">claims</a> people should switch providers because it offers “cleaner energy at lower cost”. But obviously a stronger force is at work here.</p>
<p>AB117 tilts the playing field drastically in favor of CCAs and against PG&amp;E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas &amp; Electric. For SCP, for example, just 5 percent have opted out, 95&#160;percent automatically being included in SCP.</p>
<p>How? The unnaturally high adoption rate of any CCA is due to the automatic opt-in provision. Instead of giving residents the ability to choose the new government entity, California law states they are conscripted as CCA customers, unless they actively opt out and stay with&#160;the regular electricity provider.</p>
<p>To compound the situation, SCP makes it difficult for Sonoma County residents to even know their electricity provider has been switched. In early 2014, SCP sent out notices&#160;that it automatically had become residents’&#160;new power company. It was cleverly disguised to look like the kind of promotional piece that is easy to throw away.</p>
<p>Here’s how the envelope looked, as if it were just another piece of junk mail in this age of email and texting. Below it is the letter that was inside.</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Notice how the letter spends about 150 words describing how supposedly wonderful&#160;&#160;SCP is, and how it will “automatically start.”</p>
<p>Only way at the bottom does the letter mention, “You may opt out of Sonoma Clean Power and continue to purchase PG&amp;E’s standard service” — which, by implication after all that went before, costs more and is dirty energy.</p>
<p>The mailer says it’s necessary to have “your account information” ready to opt-out, which for most people would be too much of a bother.</p>
<p>It’s as if&#160;an election for governor automatically&#160;picks one person unless 51 percent of voters actually show up to the polls, provide all their “information” and choose someone else.</p>
<p>First Community President and CEO Debbie Meekins <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help?page=2" type="external">said</a> her bank got involved with SCP because the new agency offered communities such compelling benefits as choice, more renewable energy and local control. “With California Clean Power, we’re looking to do the same thing,” she&#160;said.</p>
<p>The company proposes to offer cities and counties turnkey solutions that include not only financing, but legal assistance, energy purchasing, public outreach, billing and other services.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.pressdemocrat.com/home/3168713-181/california-clean-power-to-help" type="external">Santa Rosa Press-Democrat</a>, the company’s other four owners and directors are:</p>
<p>In addition, “Gallaher and Bosco also are directors at First Community, which has provided $10 million in financing to Sonoma Clean Power, including a key startup loan of $2.5 million.”</p>
<p>Bosco served as U.S. congressman from the North Bay from 1982-1990.&#160;He was part of the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1992-03-20/local/me-4136_1_san-diego-county" type="external">Rubbergate</a> scandal of the early 1990s, when he bounced 124 checks worth over $537,985 on the bank of the U.S. House of Representatives.</p>
<p>CEO Rumble anticipates great demand for his new company’s offerings. “There are several communities that are really interested in this model,” he&#160;said.</p>
<p>With everything available on a platter, from financing to legal help, to a guaranteed, state-sponsored takeover of PG&amp;E’s customer base, why would they not be?</p>
<p>Greg Karraker is chief &#160;marketing officer of a big data company, and a follower of local politics across America. His blog is <a href="http://www.thelittlepicture.net" type="external">www.thelittlepicture.net</a></p>
| 6,746 |
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<p />
<p>Foreclosure starts have been waning in New Mexico in recent months, although clearly not to the extent reported by Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac this past spring.</p>
<p>The foreclosure-tracking and online market company reported 153 starts statewide in June, a dramatic plunge of 75 percent from 609 foreclosure starts in June 2012.</p>
<p>June’s 153 foreclosure starts, however, was an exponential increase from a mere five foreclosure starts reported by RealtyTrac for May and eight starts reported for April.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Statewide foreclosure starts in the single digits seemed totally wrong to retired commercial real-estate executive Phil Ward of Albuquerque.</p>
<p>“How can there only be ‘single-digit’ foreclosure starts in N.M. when the classifieds are full of new foreclosure suits every day?” he said in an email to the Journal in June.</p>
<p>In New Mexico, foreclosures are handled in state District Court. The first step is for the lender to file a civil suit against the defaulting homeowner for money owed on a mortgage, with a notice of the lawsuit, called a “lis pendens,” sent to the homeowner.</p>
<p>RealtyTrac acknowledged to Ward and the Journal a drastic undercount of foreclosure starts here during April and May.</p>
<p>“There was a disruption in RealtyTrac’s data collection of lis pendens … but we started collecting the data again in June,” explained RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist in an email. “We are working on collecting the back data from April and May as well but the June … and midyear numbers do not incorporate that data.”</p>
<p>RealtyTrac’s incomplete data for New Mexico show 3,142 homes somewhere in the foreclosure process in first six months of 2013, a drop of almost one-third from 4,596 homes somewhere in the process during the first six months of 2012.</p>
<p>If the back data result in 600 more foreclosure starts, a reasonable guess based on data from the first quarter of this year, then foreclosure starts still will be down by about 20 percent from a year earlier.</p>
<p>U.S. foreclosure starts dropped 23 percent during the first half of 2013 compared with the same period in 2012, RealtyTrac reported.</p>
<p>For June, there were 553 homes in New Mexico somewhere in the foreclosure process, close to the monthly pace for all of last year. In addition to foreclosure starts, the monthly total includes repossessed homes as well as homes scheduled for a court-ordered auction.</p>
<p>A general trend in New Mexico over the past year has been a decline in foreclosure starts and a rise in repossessions. The latter indicates banks and other lenders are taking advantage of improved housing markets to take ownership of homes lingering in foreclosure and sell them as bank-owned properties.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Realty report distorts data
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/220197/realty-report-distorts-data.html
| 2least
|
Realty report distorts data
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Foreclosure starts have been waning in New Mexico in recent months, although clearly not to the extent reported by Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac this past spring.</p>
<p>The foreclosure-tracking and online market company reported 153 starts statewide in June, a dramatic plunge of 75 percent from 609 foreclosure starts in June 2012.</p>
<p>June’s 153 foreclosure starts, however, was an exponential increase from a mere five foreclosure starts reported by RealtyTrac for May and eight starts reported for April.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Statewide foreclosure starts in the single digits seemed totally wrong to retired commercial real-estate executive Phil Ward of Albuquerque.</p>
<p>“How can there only be ‘single-digit’ foreclosure starts in N.M. when the classifieds are full of new foreclosure suits every day?” he said in an email to the Journal in June.</p>
<p>In New Mexico, foreclosures are handled in state District Court. The first step is for the lender to file a civil suit against the defaulting homeowner for money owed on a mortgage, with a notice of the lawsuit, called a “lis pendens,” sent to the homeowner.</p>
<p>RealtyTrac acknowledged to Ward and the Journal a drastic undercount of foreclosure starts here during April and May.</p>
<p>“There was a disruption in RealtyTrac’s data collection of lis pendens … but we started collecting the data again in June,” explained RealtyTrac Vice President Daren Blomquist in an email. “We are working on collecting the back data from April and May as well but the June … and midyear numbers do not incorporate that data.”</p>
<p>RealtyTrac’s incomplete data for New Mexico show 3,142 homes somewhere in the foreclosure process in first six months of 2013, a drop of almost one-third from 4,596 homes somewhere in the process during the first six months of 2012.</p>
<p>If the back data result in 600 more foreclosure starts, a reasonable guess based on data from the first quarter of this year, then foreclosure starts still will be down by about 20 percent from a year earlier.</p>
<p>U.S. foreclosure starts dropped 23 percent during the first half of 2013 compared with the same period in 2012, RealtyTrac reported.</p>
<p>For June, there were 553 homes in New Mexico somewhere in the foreclosure process, close to the monthly pace for all of last year. In addition to foreclosure starts, the monthly total includes repossessed homes as well as homes scheduled for a court-ordered auction.</p>
<p>A general trend in New Mexico over the past year has been a decline in foreclosure starts and a rise in repossessions. The latter indicates banks and other lenders are taking advantage of improved housing markets to take ownership of homes lingering in foreclosure and sell them as bank-owned properties.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 6,747 |
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<p />
<p />
<p>GOP Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina is asking his party to support a movement that will oust Paul Ryan from his position as House Speaker. According to Meadows, Ryan's lack of support for Donald Trump could threaten his presidency and the country if elected into office in November.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that Meadows took on the Speaker of the House. Last year, he filed a resolution to remove John Boehner from his position, which was then taken over by Ryan.</p>
<p>Now, it seems Meadows and his group the House Freedom Caucus will make the same move in removing Ryan from the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>"A lot of people who believe so desperately that we need to put Donald Trump in the White House they question the loyalty of the speaker," Meadows said, according to CNN.</p>
<p>The growing movement to oust Ryan emerged earlier this month after the House Speaker began making comments against Trump. This started after the tape showing the Republican nominee making lewd remarks towards women emerged. Then, earlier this week, Ryan told the House Republicans through a conference call that he will no longer show his support for the GOP's presidential frontrunner.</p>
<p>As noted by Meadows, this type of divide among the Republican Party that Ryan is causing because of his disloyalty could ultimately threaten the political stability of the country if Trump becomes president.</p>
<p>Although Meadows admits that Trump is not a traditional conservative party member, he still believes that members of the GOP should support their potential new leader.</p>
<p>"It's not as much about the shared values, because I'm certainly more conservative than [Trump]," he said. "But it's a shared concern about the direction the country is going."</p>
<p>Ryan, on the other hand, has not yet responded to Meadows' statements but a spokesperson for the House Speaker said that he is still determined to maintain stability within Congress by earning the respect of the other representatives.</p>
|
Republican Party Congressman Moves to Oust Paul Ryan for Lack of Support for Donald Trump
| true |
http://thegoldwater.com/news/252-Republican-Party-Congressman-Moves-to-Oust-Paul-Ryan-for-Lack-of-Support-for-Donald-Trump
|
2016-10-21
| 0right
|
Republican Party Congressman Moves to Oust Paul Ryan for Lack of Support for Donald Trump
<p />
<p />
<p>GOP Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina is asking his party to support a movement that will oust Paul Ryan from his position as House Speaker. According to Meadows, Ryan's lack of support for Donald Trump could threaten his presidency and the country if elected into office in November.</p>
<p>This is not the first time that Meadows took on the Speaker of the House. Last year, he filed a resolution to remove John Boehner from his position, which was then taken over by Ryan.</p>
<p>Now, it seems Meadows and his group the House Freedom Caucus will make the same move in removing Ryan from the House of Representatives.</p>
<p>"A lot of people who believe so desperately that we need to put Donald Trump in the White House they question the loyalty of the speaker," Meadows said, according to CNN.</p>
<p>The growing movement to oust Ryan emerged earlier this month after the House Speaker began making comments against Trump. This started after the tape showing the Republican nominee making lewd remarks towards women emerged. Then, earlier this week, Ryan told the House Republicans through a conference call that he will no longer show his support for the GOP's presidential frontrunner.</p>
<p>As noted by Meadows, this type of divide among the Republican Party that Ryan is causing because of his disloyalty could ultimately threaten the political stability of the country if Trump becomes president.</p>
<p>Although Meadows admits that Trump is not a traditional conservative party member, he still believes that members of the GOP should support their potential new leader.</p>
<p>"It's not as much about the shared values, because I'm certainly more conservative than [Trump]," he said. "But it's a shared concern about the direction the country is going."</p>
<p>Ryan, on the other hand, has not yet responded to Meadows' statements but a spokesperson for the House Speaker said that he is still determined to maintain stability within Congress by earning the respect of the other representatives.</p>
| 6,748 |
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<p>ALVARADO, Texas - Police have shot and killed a bull after the animal ran across Interstate 35 in North Texas, trampled two men and threatened other members of the public.</p>
<p>Alvarado (al-var-AY?-doh) police on Thursday said officers shot the bull because it posed a deadly threat.</p>
<p>Police in Alvarado, about 20 miles south of Fort Worth, responded to calls Wednesday afternoon about a fully grown bull on the loose. Officers arrived to see the bull charging at people and objects along an I-35 frontage road, then crossing the busy highway several times.</p>
<p>The bull jumped a fence and ran toward a business area, where two men were trampled. Both victims required hospital treatment.</p>
<p>Police then shot and killed the bull.</p>
<p>Authorities didn't immediately say who owns the bull or how it got loose.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
2 men trampled by fleeing bull in North Texas, animal killed
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/753015/2-men-trampled-by-fleeing-bull-in-north-texas-animal-killed.html
| 2least
|
2 men trampled by fleeing bull in North Texas, animal killed
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<p>ALVARADO, Texas - Police have shot and killed a bull after the animal ran across Interstate 35 in North Texas, trampled two men and threatened other members of the public.</p>
<p>Alvarado (al-var-AY?-doh) police on Thursday said officers shot the bull because it posed a deadly threat.</p>
<p>Police in Alvarado, about 20 miles south of Fort Worth, responded to calls Wednesday afternoon about a fully grown bull on the loose. Officers arrived to see the bull charging at people and objects along an I-35 frontage road, then crossing the busy highway several times.</p>
<p>The bull jumped a fence and ran toward a business area, where two men were trampled. Both victims required hospital treatment.</p>
<p>Police then shot and killed the bull.</p>
<p>Authorities didn't immediately say who owns the bull or how it got loose.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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<p />
<p>The brunt of the storm hit the San Francisco Bay Area, flooding freeways, toppling trees and keeping thousands of people home from work and school.</p>
<p>“It’s a big storm, as we expected, and it’s headed south with very powerful winds and heavy rainfall,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Will Pi.</p>
<p>In Oregon, strong winds felled a tree, killing a homeless man who was sleeping on a trail, and a teenage boy died after a large tree fell on the vehicle in which he was riding, causing it to swerve and hit another tree.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A huge gust blew down an 80-foot fir at a Santa Cruz elementary school, pinning a sixth-grader by the arm for 15 minutes until chain saws cut him free.</p>
<p>“Unexpected, very unexpected,” said the head of Gateway Elementary, Zachary Roberts, who closed the school as the boy was treated and released from a hospital.</p>
<p>This “Pineapple Express” storm carried warm air and vast amounts of water in a powerful current stretching from Hawaii to the mainland and up into the mountains, where gusts up to 140 mph blew through passes, damaging homes in the Lake Tahoe area.</p>
<p>The current left San Francisco drenched but balmy, with 60-degree temperatures, about 5 degrees above average for this time of year.</p>
<p>Waves slammed onto waterfronts around the Bay Area, ferries were bound to their docks, airplanes were grounded and many schools and businesses told people to stay home.</p>
<p>The gusts made motorists tightly grip their steering wheels on the Golden Gate Bridge, where managers created a buffer zone to prevent head-on collisions by swerving cars.</p>
<p>The iconic suspension bridge is engineered to swing in cross winds, so “the concern we have right now is more about vehicles,” spokeswoman Priya David Clemens said.</p>
<p>Sonoma County authorities recommended that hundreds of people evacuate at least 300 homes in the lowest lying areas near the Russian River, which was expected to start overflowing overnight. Peak flooding in the towns of Guerneville and Monte Rio was anticipated by 10 a.m. today, forecasters said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Authorities warned of minor flooding along the Sacramento River in Tehama County and Cache Creek in Yolo County.</p>
<p>Pacific Gas &amp; Electric Co. crews worked to restore power to 110,000 people, down from 166,000 earlier Thursday, with the largest concentration of 7,400 customers in San Francisco, the utility said. The utility’s online map showed lights out over thousands of square miles, from Humboldt near the Oregon border to Big Sur on the Central Coast.</p>
<p>In San Jose, the roof of a grocery store partially collapsed, exposing a 50-square-foot hole above the produce section. One person suffered a minor injury but details were not immediately available, the San Jose Mercury News reported.</p>
<p>There were multiple accidents on flooded roads, and several trees crunched cars. Interstate 5, California’s critical north-south thruway, was closed by flooding in the northern town of Weed. In Marin County, heavy rains washed out a portion of state Route 1, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.</p>
<p>“A lot of people took the day off,” CalTrans spokesman Bob Haus said. “That’s a good thing.”</p>
<p>Disembarking from a ferry in San Francisco, Malcolm Oubre said some people were overreacting.</p>
<p>“I know it’s a big storm supposedly, but they’re treating it like it’s a hurricane,” he said.</p>
<p>Teenagers drove trucks through a flooded Safeway parking lot to make waves for kayakers in Healdsburg as grocery shoppers trudged through several feet of water to get supplies.</p>
<p>East Coast kids revel in snow days, but closures are rare on the West Coast, so Thursday’s canceled classes were a novelty in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Sonoma and Santa Cruz County.</p>
<p>Ski resorts in the northern Sierra Nevada – where schools and roads were closed by whiteout conditions and power outages – were hoping for 3 feet of snow once it all settles.</p>
<p>While rains were expected to continue through this evening across much of California, California’s farmers would need more storms this size to even begin to recover from a record drought.</p>
<p>The storm was spreading into Southern California, areas that have suffered wildfires were preparing for mudslides.</p>
<p />
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‘Pineapple Express’ storm whacks Calif.
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‘Pineapple Express’ storm whacks Calif.
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<p />
<p>The brunt of the storm hit the San Francisco Bay Area, flooding freeways, toppling trees and keeping thousands of people home from work and school.</p>
<p>“It’s a big storm, as we expected, and it’s headed south with very powerful winds and heavy rainfall,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Will Pi.</p>
<p>In Oregon, strong winds felled a tree, killing a homeless man who was sleeping on a trail, and a teenage boy died after a large tree fell on the vehicle in which he was riding, causing it to swerve and hit another tree.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A huge gust blew down an 80-foot fir at a Santa Cruz elementary school, pinning a sixth-grader by the arm for 15 minutes until chain saws cut him free.</p>
<p>“Unexpected, very unexpected,” said the head of Gateway Elementary, Zachary Roberts, who closed the school as the boy was treated and released from a hospital.</p>
<p>This “Pineapple Express” storm carried warm air and vast amounts of water in a powerful current stretching from Hawaii to the mainland and up into the mountains, where gusts up to 140 mph blew through passes, damaging homes in the Lake Tahoe area.</p>
<p>The current left San Francisco drenched but balmy, with 60-degree temperatures, about 5 degrees above average for this time of year.</p>
<p>Waves slammed onto waterfronts around the Bay Area, ferries were bound to their docks, airplanes were grounded and many schools and businesses told people to stay home.</p>
<p>The gusts made motorists tightly grip their steering wheels on the Golden Gate Bridge, where managers created a buffer zone to prevent head-on collisions by swerving cars.</p>
<p>The iconic suspension bridge is engineered to swing in cross winds, so “the concern we have right now is more about vehicles,” spokeswoman Priya David Clemens said.</p>
<p>Sonoma County authorities recommended that hundreds of people evacuate at least 300 homes in the lowest lying areas near the Russian River, which was expected to start overflowing overnight. Peak flooding in the towns of Guerneville and Monte Rio was anticipated by 10 a.m. today, forecasters said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Authorities warned of minor flooding along the Sacramento River in Tehama County and Cache Creek in Yolo County.</p>
<p>Pacific Gas &amp; Electric Co. crews worked to restore power to 110,000 people, down from 166,000 earlier Thursday, with the largest concentration of 7,400 customers in San Francisco, the utility said. The utility’s online map showed lights out over thousands of square miles, from Humboldt near the Oregon border to Big Sur on the Central Coast.</p>
<p>In San Jose, the roof of a grocery store partially collapsed, exposing a 50-square-foot hole above the produce section. One person suffered a minor injury but details were not immediately available, the San Jose Mercury News reported.</p>
<p>There were multiple accidents on flooded roads, and several trees crunched cars. Interstate 5, California’s critical north-south thruway, was closed by flooding in the northern town of Weed. In Marin County, heavy rains washed out a portion of state Route 1, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.</p>
<p>“A lot of people took the day off,” CalTrans spokesman Bob Haus said. “That’s a good thing.”</p>
<p>Disembarking from a ferry in San Francisco, Malcolm Oubre said some people were overreacting.</p>
<p>“I know it’s a big storm supposedly, but they’re treating it like it’s a hurricane,” he said.</p>
<p>Teenagers drove trucks through a flooded Safeway parking lot to make waves for kayakers in Healdsburg as grocery shoppers trudged through several feet of water to get supplies.</p>
<p>East Coast kids revel in snow days, but closures are rare on the West Coast, so Thursday’s canceled classes were a novelty in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Sonoma and Santa Cruz County.</p>
<p>Ski resorts in the northern Sierra Nevada – where schools and roads were closed by whiteout conditions and power outages – were hoping for 3 feet of snow once it all settles.</p>
<p>While rains were expected to continue through this evening across much of California, California’s farmers would need more storms this size to even begin to recover from a record drought.</p>
<p>The storm was spreading into Southern California, areas that have suffered wildfires were preparing for mudslides.</p>
<p />
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<p>Albuquerque artist Lea Anderson talks about her large-scale mosaic masterpiece in the lobby of the Albuquerque Museum. Anderson was selected by the museum to create a temporary, large-scale art piece and talk to visitors about her work. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Lea Anderson sits atop a scissor lift in the Albuquerque Museum, carefully arranging transparent, multicolored pieces of plastic on a gigantic window and gluing them to the glass. Visitors mingle below, and look up and point to her mosaic masterpiece.</p>
<p>The museum selected Anderson to create a temporary large-scale art piece, or installation, in its lobby.</p>
<p>This is the fifth year the museum has invited an artist to work in the lobby and engage with visitors.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"We really like the idea of an artist making an object in front of the public so the public can interact with them, ask them questions and learn more about that creative process," said Andrew Connors, curator of art for the museum.</p>
<p />
<p>Connors added that each year museum staff seeks an artist working in a different style than the artist from the previous year and they try to focus on local artists because of the plethora of talent in New Mexico.</p>
<p>"I think all too often we tend to think that people coming from other places are going to be innately better than the artists that are here," he said. "But here in Albuquerque we have some of the best artists working in the United States today."</p>
<p>Anderson, described by Connors as a wonderful combination of painter and sculptor, works with two- and three-dimensional art, and has exhibited throughout New Mexico, the United States and in Thailand.</p>
<p>To create her installation, she first photographed one of her smaller, two-dimensional collage art pieces. Then, on a computer, she blew the image up to 20 feet wide and digitally altered it by changing the colors and using miniature versions of the bigger image to fill in thousands of tiny areas, much like a fractal.</p>
<p>By the end of her project, Anderson will have glued 10,000 pieces of plastic on the museum's large window.</p>
<p>The two-dimensional collage art piece that inspired Anderson's installation sits on an easel in front of the window. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>The inspiration behind her piece is the universe, she said.</p>
<p>How science is combined with the unknown, the mysterious workings of the world and a concept Anderson entirely made up herself: Meridiae, a plural word for meridian.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Anderson explains Meridiae as a portal, or a place of connection between the physical world and unseen cosmological entities.</p>
<p>"I love the idea that everything in the universe is made from the same basic material, but everything in the universe is unique," she said. "You can (demonstrate) that visually. All of these shapes are made from the same source, but yet they're all unique. The window is a connector - a connection from this interior world to an exterior one."</p>
<p>Museum staff sit at a table beneath the scissor lift and voluntarily help with the cutting of the 10,000 plastic pieces.</p>
<p>"I want to make a nod to the museum, because they're incredibly supportive of the local art community," Anderson said. She specifically named Connors, who she said makes an effort to connect with all of the local artists in town and visit their exhibitions.</p>
<p>"Artists really are very important in the community," Connors said. "Too often, people think of art as a luxury, but art really makes life worth living. Artists have selected one of the most impossible things to do: to make a living being creative, and to provoke us and encourage us to see the world differently."</p>
<p>Anderson is a full-time art instructor at Central New Mexico Community College.</p>
<p>She will work on her installation in the museum until July 26, when it will be completed and will then remain in the lobby for one year.</p>
<p />
<p />
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Art museum window gets new, mosaic-inspired look
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Art museum window gets new, mosaic-inspired look
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<p>Albuquerque artist Lea Anderson talks about her large-scale mosaic masterpiece in the lobby of the Albuquerque Museum. Anderson was selected by the museum to create a temporary, large-scale art piece and talk to visitors about her work. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Lea Anderson sits atop a scissor lift in the Albuquerque Museum, carefully arranging transparent, multicolored pieces of plastic on a gigantic window and gluing them to the glass. Visitors mingle below, and look up and point to her mosaic masterpiece.</p>
<p>The museum selected Anderson to create a temporary large-scale art piece, or installation, in its lobby.</p>
<p>This is the fifth year the museum has invited an artist to work in the lobby and engage with visitors.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"We really like the idea of an artist making an object in front of the public so the public can interact with them, ask them questions and learn more about that creative process," said Andrew Connors, curator of art for the museum.</p>
<p />
<p>Connors added that each year museum staff seeks an artist working in a different style than the artist from the previous year and they try to focus on local artists because of the plethora of talent in New Mexico.</p>
<p>"I think all too often we tend to think that people coming from other places are going to be innately better than the artists that are here," he said. "But here in Albuquerque we have some of the best artists working in the United States today."</p>
<p>Anderson, described by Connors as a wonderful combination of painter and sculptor, works with two- and three-dimensional art, and has exhibited throughout New Mexico, the United States and in Thailand.</p>
<p>To create her installation, she first photographed one of her smaller, two-dimensional collage art pieces. Then, on a computer, she blew the image up to 20 feet wide and digitally altered it by changing the colors and using miniature versions of the bigger image to fill in thousands of tiny areas, much like a fractal.</p>
<p>By the end of her project, Anderson will have glued 10,000 pieces of plastic on the museum's large window.</p>
<p>The two-dimensional collage art piece that inspired Anderson's installation sits on an easel in front of the window. (Jim Thompson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>The inspiration behind her piece is the universe, she said.</p>
<p>How science is combined with the unknown, the mysterious workings of the world and a concept Anderson entirely made up herself: Meridiae, a plural word for meridian.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Anderson explains Meridiae as a portal, or a place of connection between the physical world and unseen cosmological entities.</p>
<p>"I love the idea that everything in the universe is made from the same basic material, but everything in the universe is unique," she said. "You can (demonstrate) that visually. All of these shapes are made from the same source, but yet they're all unique. The window is a connector - a connection from this interior world to an exterior one."</p>
<p>Museum staff sit at a table beneath the scissor lift and voluntarily help with the cutting of the 10,000 plastic pieces.</p>
<p>"I want to make a nod to the museum, because they're incredibly supportive of the local art community," Anderson said. She specifically named Connors, who she said makes an effort to connect with all of the local artists in town and visit their exhibitions.</p>
<p>"Artists really are very important in the community," Connors said. "Too often, people think of art as a luxury, but art really makes life worth living. Artists have selected one of the most impossible things to do: to make a living being creative, and to provoke us and encourage us to see the world differently."</p>
<p>Anderson is a full-time art instructor at Central New Mexico Community College.</p>
<p>She will work on her installation in the museum until July 26, when it will be completed and will then remain in the lobby for one year.</p>
<p />
<p />
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<p />
<p>However, the idea and its $60 billion federal price tag over 10 years would have to make the grade with a Republican Congress that is showing little appetite for big new spending programs. Obama, who plans to push the issue in his Jan. 20 State of the Union address, argued that providing educational opportunity and creating a more skilled U.S. workforce shouldn’t be a partisan issue.</p>
<p>“Community college should be free for those willing to work for it because, in America, a quality education should not be a privilege that is reserved for a few,” he said in a speech at Pellissippi State Community College. He said a high school diploma is no longer enough for American workers to compete in the global economy and that a college degree is “the surest ticket to the middle class.”</p>
<p>The White House estimated that 9 million students could eventually participate and save an average of $3,800 in tuition per year if they attend fulltime. Students would qualify if they attend at least halftime, maintain a 2.5 grade point average and make progress toward completing a degree or certificate program. Participating schools would have to meet certain academic requirements.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>At North Lake College, part of the Dallas County Community College system, student Courtney Banks said such a program would help her and also allow others to enroll in classes.</p>
<p>“Other people, other young adults would be willing to get into school because it wouldn’t be so far out of reach,” she said. She added she’s still trying to pay back loans from a previous school. “It costs a lot of money,” she said.</p>
<p>The White House said the federal government would pick up 75 percent of the cost and the final quarter would come from states that opt into the program — a cost of $20 billion over 10 years. Spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama will propose new programs to pay for the federal portion in his budget next month.</p>
<p>Obama is calling the idea America’s College Promise, modeled after Tennessee Promise, which Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law last year to provide free community and technical college tuition for two years. It has drawn 58,000 applicants, almost 90 percent of the state’s high school seniors. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former White House chief of staff, has a similar program for students in his city.</p>
<p>“If a state with Republican leadership is doing this and a city with Democratic leadership is doing this, how about we all do it,” Obama said.</p>
<p>Obama brought Tennessee’s two Republican senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, with him on Air Force One for the event. But both said they thought states, not the federal government, should follow Tennessee’s lead.</p>
<p>“Creating a federal program to me is not the way to get good things to happen in education,” Corker told reporters from his seat in the third row of the speech. “You’re always better off letting states mimic each other.”</p>
<p>Alexander, a former education secretary who is set to take over the Senate committee that oversees education, said Washington’s role should be to reduce paperwork for student aid applications. Obama said he agrees and wants to see that happen this year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Obama also was joined on the trip by Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, who drew applause when she told the audience she’s been teaching English at community college for 20 years and still does as second lady. “This is the moment for community colleges to shine,” she said.</p>
<p>The president and vice president also were visiting a manufacturing facility, Techmer PM in Clinton, Tennessee, to promote a second proposal to create a fund to help low-wage workers with high potential get training in growing fields such as energy, information technology and advanced manufacturing.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Education Writer Kimberly Hefling in Washington and John Mone in Irving, Texas, contributed to this story</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler</p>
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<p />
<p>However, the idea and its $60 billion federal price tag over 10 years would have to make the grade with a Republican Congress that is showing little appetite for big new spending programs. Obama, who plans to push the issue in his Jan. 20 State of the Union address, argued that providing educational opportunity and creating a more skilled U.S. workforce shouldn’t be a partisan issue.</p>
<p>“Community college should be free for those willing to work for it because, in America, a quality education should not be a privilege that is reserved for a few,” he said in a speech at Pellissippi State Community College. He said a high school diploma is no longer enough for American workers to compete in the global economy and that a college degree is “the surest ticket to the middle class.”</p>
<p>The White House estimated that 9 million students could eventually participate and save an average of $3,800 in tuition per year if they attend fulltime. Students would qualify if they attend at least halftime, maintain a 2.5 grade point average and make progress toward completing a degree or certificate program. Participating schools would have to meet certain academic requirements.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>At North Lake College, part of the Dallas County Community College system, student Courtney Banks said such a program would help her and also allow others to enroll in classes.</p>
<p>“Other people, other young adults would be willing to get into school because it wouldn’t be so far out of reach,” she said. She added she’s still trying to pay back loans from a previous school. “It costs a lot of money,” she said.</p>
<p>The White House said the federal government would pick up 75 percent of the cost and the final quarter would come from states that opt into the program — a cost of $20 billion over 10 years. Spokesman Eric Schultz said Obama will propose new programs to pay for the federal portion in his budget next month.</p>
<p>Obama is calling the idea America’s College Promise, modeled after Tennessee Promise, which Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed into law last year to provide free community and technical college tuition for two years. It has drawn 58,000 applicants, almost 90 percent of the state’s high school seniors. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former White House chief of staff, has a similar program for students in his city.</p>
<p>“If a state with Republican leadership is doing this and a city with Democratic leadership is doing this, how about we all do it,” Obama said.</p>
<p>Obama brought Tennessee’s two Republican senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, with him on Air Force One for the event. But both said they thought states, not the federal government, should follow Tennessee’s lead.</p>
<p>“Creating a federal program to me is not the way to get good things to happen in education,” Corker told reporters from his seat in the third row of the speech. “You’re always better off letting states mimic each other.”</p>
<p>Alexander, a former education secretary who is set to take over the Senate committee that oversees education, said Washington’s role should be to reduce paperwork for student aid applications. Obama said he agrees and wants to see that happen this year.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Obama also was joined on the trip by Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, who drew applause when she told the audience she’s been teaching English at community college for 20 years and still does as second lady. “This is the moment for community colleges to shine,” she said.</p>
<p>The president and vice president also were visiting a manufacturing facility, Techmer PM in Clinton, Tennessee, to promote a second proposal to create a fund to help low-wage workers with high potential get training in growing fields such as energy, information technology and advanced manufacturing.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Education Writer Kimberly Hefling in Washington and John Mone in Irving, Texas, contributed to this story</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler</p>
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<p>PARIS (AP) — Designer Kris Van Assche travelled back in a fashion time machine Saturday while Robert Pattinson explained the importance of clothes for acting roles as he attended Dior Homme's Paris menswear collection.</p>
<p>Here are some highlights of the fourth day of fall-winter shows:</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>DIOR'S TATTOOED COUTURE</p>
<p>It was an ambitious fusion of two periods for Dior Homme: A sartorial homage to the past that twinned what the house called the "reckless abandon" of youth with the couture of Monsieur Dior's New Look.</p>
<p>Designer Van Assche used references to 1990s tattoo culture in prints and gothic silver jewelry alongside suit variations on the Bar Jacket from the famed 1947 collection that transformed Western fashion.</p>
<p>The two-periods theme in the 49 suit-heavy looks was also evident in the age range of the models, who were either very young, or over 40.</p>
<p>The first styles, accessorized with silk neck scarves, featured some beautifully refined single- and double-breasted suits with narrow waists that curved out in a slight peplum-shape. Suits are the bread-and-butter of the house.</p>
<p>"I thought it was a good moment for Dior to go back to its DNA, like really the sharply cut suit," the 41-year-old Van Assche told The Associated Press.</p>
<p>A flash of bright red across a striped T-shirt, meanwhile, turned the dial to the '90s with the appearance of a spiked tattoo motif on the shirt undergarment. Continuing that vibe were the baggy jeans, wooly tank tops and sneakers, which were worn by models with messy hair.</p>
<p>"It's looking back with a lot of love and sweet memories to when I myself was a teenager," Van Assche said.</p>
<p>It was an intentionally split aesthetic — and featured some very strong individual pieces.</p>
<p>Yet, the result was sometimes incongruous as a whole.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>PATTINSON SAYS CLOTHES HELP ACTING ROLE</p>
<p>"Twilight" star Robert Pattinson demonstrated why he'd been chosen as a Dior brand ambassador by extolling the influence of fashion and clothing on the ability of an actor to engage in a role.</p>
<p>"Shoes. I always find that when you play a character, if you find the right pair of shoes there's a trigger that happens inside you," said the 31-year-old who was dressed head to toe in Dior Homme.</p>
<p>"Or to have your pants up here, you feel like an entirely different person."</p>
<p>He added that "you can change your body language and your entire silhouette. It's all done through the clothing."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>FRONT ROW AT DIOR</p>
<p>Model Bella Hadid joined Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, sporting a chic new beard, alongside "Pearl Harbor" actor Josh Harnett on the Dior Homme front row.</p>
<p>A rare face on the Paris fashion scene, Harnett, 39, said he was invited by Dior since he was in town promoting his new movie "Oh Lucy!" It's a French-Japanese co-production that was screened in the International Critics' Week section of last year's Cannes Film Festival.</p>
<p>"It's a comedy and lot of it is a road trip with me and two older Japanese ladies not speaking the same language and having parallel crises," he said. "I think it's really funny."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WALKING IN A THOM BROWNE WONDERLAND</p>
<p>There was the real crunching sound of fake snow at Thom Browne's theatrical menswear display that wowed guests with its snowy white forest scene and tall silver birches lining the runway.</p>
<p>Equally impressive were the winter styles in the clothes.</p>
<p>With many designs channeling the sartorial vibe from which the New York City-based designer cut his cloth, Browne prepared his models to brave the harshest elements of the coldest months and in the process produced one of the best shows of the season.</p>
<p>Gray-blue knit ted caps, oversize knit scarves, red snow gloves and robust black hiking boots with thick lacing accessorized wrapped-up looks. They included block-like fur trims on cuffs and hems in the coat-heavy 32-look collection with classic tailoring in knit fabric.</p>
<p>Textured wool and checks motifs — that merged a winter scarf with a suit-style pattern — adored long A-line coats amid some of the thickest outerwear to be seen this fall-winter.</p>
<p>A touch of humor, in braided hair extensions with colored ribbons and sheeny ankle warmers that evoked a tied trash bag, was a crowd pleaser.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>BALMAIN HOMME'S ECLECTIC SPARKLE</p>
<p>Eclectic was the word for Olivier Rousteing's high-energy show for Balmain Homme.</p>
<p>Mixing menswear and the womenswear pre-collection designs, the 32-year-old designer referenced almost all of the thematic touchstones used in previous shows within the same collection.</p>
<p>The 64 looks — in mainly green, black and gold — were a glimmering treasure trove of ideas.</p>
<p>Silver sparkle on a women's singlet looked like chainmail, seen again in a men's statement coat which screamed 1980.</p>
<p>Tribal patterns — horizontal and vertical stripes, and a "V'' shape running down the torso — gave the designs a wild edge.</p>
<p>And 1980s peaked shoulders, slashed sections, black PVC pants and architectural, sculptured jackets gave the silhouette lots of sexy attitude.</p>
<p>Subtle is simply not a word in Rousteing's vocabulary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>SACAI REVAMPS THE PONCHO</p>
<p>One of Japan's most popular luxury brands, Sacai gave traditional Latin American styles an urban reworking for its Saturday morning show.</p>
<p>With its signature use layering, thick embroidered sweaters sported voluminous fringing that evoked ponchos that originated in the Andes region. Their hue of intense pastel red gave the statement garments a contemporary lift.</p>
<p>Then styles from the gaucho horse riders that were popular in 19th-century Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay were included.</p>
<p>Thigh-length soft leather riding boots were combined with highly embroidered patterns and fringing and myriad layers of material across the torso that created divergent lines in the silhouettes.</p>
<p>It was fun, and fall-winter saw a more coherent side to the designs than has been seen in recent seasons.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Thomas Adamson can be followed at <a href="http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K" type="external">http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K</a></p>
<p>PARIS (AP) — Designer Kris Van Assche travelled back in a fashion time machine Saturday while Robert Pattinson explained the importance of clothes for acting roles as he attended Dior Homme's Paris menswear collection.</p>
<p>Here are some highlights of the fourth day of fall-winter shows:</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>DIOR'S TATTOOED COUTURE</p>
<p>It was an ambitious fusion of two periods for Dior Homme: A sartorial homage to the past that twinned what the house called the "reckless abandon" of youth with the couture of Monsieur Dior's New Look.</p>
<p>Designer Van Assche used references to 1990s tattoo culture in prints and gothic silver jewelry alongside suit variations on the Bar Jacket from the famed 1947 collection that transformed Western fashion.</p>
<p>The two-periods theme in the 49 suit-heavy looks was also evident in the age range of the models, who were either very young, or over 40.</p>
<p>The first styles, accessorized with silk neck scarves, featured some beautifully refined single- and double-breasted suits with narrow waists that curved out in a slight peplum-shape. Suits are the bread-and-butter of the house.</p>
<p>"I thought it was a good moment for Dior to go back to its DNA, like really the sharply cut suit," the 41-year-old Van Assche told The Associated Press.</p>
<p>A flash of bright red across a striped T-shirt, meanwhile, turned the dial to the '90s with the appearance of a spiked tattoo motif on the shirt undergarment. Continuing that vibe were the baggy jeans, wooly tank tops and sneakers, which were worn by models with messy hair.</p>
<p>"It's looking back with a lot of love and sweet memories to when I myself was a teenager," Van Assche said.</p>
<p>It was an intentionally split aesthetic — and featured some very strong individual pieces.</p>
<p>Yet, the result was sometimes incongruous as a whole.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>PATTINSON SAYS CLOTHES HELP ACTING ROLE</p>
<p>"Twilight" star Robert Pattinson demonstrated why he'd been chosen as a Dior brand ambassador by extolling the influence of fashion and clothing on the ability of an actor to engage in a role.</p>
<p>"Shoes. I always find that when you play a character, if you find the right pair of shoes there's a trigger that happens inside you," said the 31-year-old who was dressed head to toe in Dior Homme.</p>
<p>"Or to have your pants up here, you feel like an entirely different person."</p>
<p>He added that "you can change your body language and your entire silhouette. It's all done through the clothing."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>FRONT ROW AT DIOR</p>
<p>Model Bella Hadid joined Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, sporting a chic new beard, alongside "Pearl Harbor" actor Josh Harnett on the Dior Homme front row.</p>
<p>A rare face on the Paris fashion scene, Harnett, 39, said he was invited by Dior since he was in town promoting his new movie "Oh Lucy!" It's a French-Japanese co-production that was screened in the International Critics' Week section of last year's Cannes Film Festival.</p>
<p>"It's a comedy and lot of it is a road trip with me and two older Japanese ladies not speaking the same language and having parallel crises," he said. "I think it's really funny."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WALKING IN A THOM BROWNE WONDERLAND</p>
<p>There was the real crunching sound of fake snow at Thom Browne's theatrical menswear display that wowed guests with its snowy white forest scene and tall silver birches lining the runway.</p>
<p>Equally impressive were the winter styles in the clothes.</p>
<p>With many designs channeling the sartorial vibe from which the New York City-based designer cut his cloth, Browne prepared his models to brave the harshest elements of the coldest months and in the process produced one of the best shows of the season.</p>
<p>Gray-blue knit ted caps, oversize knit scarves, red snow gloves and robust black hiking boots with thick lacing accessorized wrapped-up looks. They included block-like fur trims on cuffs and hems in the coat-heavy 32-look collection with classic tailoring in knit fabric.</p>
<p>Textured wool and checks motifs — that merged a winter scarf with a suit-style pattern — adored long A-line coats amid some of the thickest outerwear to be seen this fall-winter.</p>
<p>A touch of humor, in braided hair extensions with colored ribbons and sheeny ankle warmers that evoked a tied trash bag, was a crowd pleaser.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>BALMAIN HOMME'S ECLECTIC SPARKLE</p>
<p>Eclectic was the word for Olivier Rousteing's high-energy show for Balmain Homme.</p>
<p>Mixing menswear and the womenswear pre-collection designs, the 32-year-old designer referenced almost all of the thematic touchstones used in previous shows within the same collection.</p>
<p>The 64 looks — in mainly green, black and gold — were a glimmering treasure trove of ideas.</p>
<p>Silver sparkle on a women's singlet looked like chainmail, seen again in a men's statement coat which screamed 1980.</p>
<p>Tribal patterns — horizontal and vertical stripes, and a "V'' shape running down the torso — gave the designs a wild edge.</p>
<p>And 1980s peaked shoulders, slashed sections, black PVC pants and architectural, sculptured jackets gave the silhouette lots of sexy attitude.</p>
<p>Subtle is simply not a word in Rousteing's vocabulary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>SACAI REVAMPS THE PONCHO</p>
<p>One of Japan's most popular luxury brands, Sacai gave traditional Latin American styles an urban reworking for its Saturday morning show.</p>
<p>With its signature use layering, thick embroidered sweaters sported voluminous fringing that evoked ponchos that originated in the Andes region. Their hue of intense pastel red gave the statement garments a contemporary lift.</p>
<p>Then styles from the gaucho horse riders that were popular in 19th-century Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay were included.</p>
<p>Thigh-length soft leather riding boots were combined with highly embroidered patterns and fringing and myriad layers of material across the torso that created divergent lines in the silhouettes.</p>
<p>It was fun, and fall-winter saw a more coherent side to the designs than has been seen in recent seasons.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Thomas Adamson can be followed at <a href="http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K" type="external">http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K</a></p>
|
Dior travels back in time for couture-infused menswear
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/d2829692148e44b895c772afce6617f9
|
2018-01-20
| 2least
|
Dior travels back in time for couture-infused menswear
<p>PARIS (AP) — Designer Kris Van Assche travelled back in a fashion time machine Saturday while Robert Pattinson explained the importance of clothes for acting roles as he attended Dior Homme's Paris menswear collection.</p>
<p>Here are some highlights of the fourth day of fall-winter shows:</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>DIOR'S TATTOOED COUTURE</p>
<p>It was an ambitious fusion of two periods for Dior Homme: A sartorial homage to the past that twinned what the house called the "reckless abandon" of youth with the couture of Monsieur Dior's New Look.</p>
<p>Designer Van Assche used references to 1990s tattoo culture in prints and gothic silver jewelry alongside suit variations on the Bar Jacket from the famed 1947 collection that transformed Western fashion.</p>
<p>The two-periods theme in the 49 suit-heavy looks was also evident in the age range of the models, who were either very young, or over 40.</p>
<p>The first styles, accessorized with silk neck scarves, featured some beautifully refined single- and double-breasted suits with narrow waists that curved out in a slight peplum-shape. Suits are the bread-and-butter of the house.</p>
<p>"I thought it was a good moment for Dior to go back to its DNA, like really the sharply cut suit," the 41-year-old Van Assche told The Associated Press.</p>
<p>A flash of bright red across a striped T-shirt, meanwhile, turned the dial to the '90s with the appearance of a spiked tattoo motif on the shirt undergarment. Continuing that vibe were the baggy jeans, wooly tank tops and sneakers, which were worn by models with messy hair.</p>
<p>"It's looking back with a lot of love and sweet memories to when I myself was a teenager," Van Assche said.</p>
<p>It was an intentionally split aesthetic — and featured some very strong individual pieces.</p>
<p>Yet, the result was sometimes incongruous as a whole.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>PATTINSON SAYS CLOTHES HELP ACTING ROLE</p>
<p>"Twilight" star Robert Pattinson demonstrated why he'd been chosen as a Dior brand ambassador by extolling the influence of fashion and clothing on the ability of an actor to engage in a role.</p>
<p>"Shoes. I always find that when you play a character, if you find the right pair of shoes there's a trigger that happens inside you," said the 31-year-old who was dressed head to toe in Dior Homme.</p>
<p>"Or to have your pants up here, you feel like an entirely different person."</p>
<p>He added that "you can change your body language and your entire silhouette. It's all done through the clothing."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>FRONT ROW AT DIOR</p>
<p>Model Bella Hadid joined Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, sporting a chic new beard, alongside "Pearl Harbor" actor Josh Harnett on the Dior Homme front row.</p>
<p>A rare face on the Paris fashion scene, Harnett, 39, said he was invited by Dior since he was in town promoting his new movie "Oh Lucy!" It's a French-Japanese co-production that was screened in the International Critics' Week section of last year's Cannes Film Festival.</p>
<p>"It's a comedy and lot of it is a road trip with me and two older Japanese ladies not speaking the same language and having parallel crises," he said. "I think it's really funny."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WALKING IN A THOM BROWNE WONDERLAND</p>
<p>There was the real crunching sound of fake snow at Thom Browne's theatrical menswear display that wowed guests with its snowy white forest scene and tall silver birches lining the runway.</p>
<p>Equally impressive were the winter styles in the clothes.</p>
<p>With many designs channeling the sartorial vibe from which the New York City-based designer cut his cloth, Browne prepared his models to brave the harshest elements of the coldest months and in the process produced one of the best shows of the season.</p>
<p>Gray-blue knit ted caps, oversize knit scarves, red snow gloves and robust black hiking boots with thick lacing accessorized wrapped-up looks. They included block-like fur trims on cuffs and hems in the coat-heavy 32-look collection with classic tailoring in knit fabric.</p>
<p>Textured wool and checks motifs — that merged a winter scarf with a suit-style pattern — adored long A-line coats amid some of the thickest outerwear to be seen this fall-winter.</p>
<p>A touch of humor, in braided hair extensions with colored ribbons and sheeny ankle warmers that evoked a tied trash bag, was a crowd pleaser.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>BALMAIN HOMME'S ECLECTIC SPARKLE</p>
<p>Eclectic was the word for Olivier Rousteing's high-energy show for Balmain Homme.</p>
<p>Mixing menswear and the womenswear pre-collection designs, the 32-year-old designer referenced almost all of the thematic touchstones used in previous shows within the same collection.</p>
<p>The 64 looks — in mainly green, black and gold — were a glimmering treasure trove of ideas.</p>
<p>Silver sparkle on a women's singlet looked like chainmail, seen again in a men's statement coat which screamed 1980.</p>
<p>Tribal patterns — horizontal and vertical stripes, and a "V'' shape running down the torso — gave the designs a wild edge.</p>
<p>And 1980s peaked shoulders, slashed sections, black PVC pants and architectural, sculptured jackets gave the silhouette lots of sexy attitude.</p>
<p>Subtle is simply not a word in Rousteing's vocabulary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>SACAI REVAMPS THE PONCHO</p>
<p>One of Japan's most popular luxury brands, Sacai gave traditional Latin American styles an urban reworking for its Saturday morning show.</p>
<p>With its signature use layering, thick embroidered sweaters sported voluminous fringing that evoked ponchos that originated in the Andes region. Their hue of intense pastel red gave the statement garments a contemporary lift.</p>
<p>Then styles from the gaucho horse riders that were popular in 19th-century Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay were included.</p>
<p>Thigh-length soft leather riding boots were combined with highly embroidered patterns and fringing and myriad layers of material across the torso that created divergent lines in the silhouettes.</p>
<p>It was fun, and fall-winter saw a more coherent side to the designs than has been seen in recent seasons.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Thomas Adamson can be followed at <a href="http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K" type="external">http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K</a></p>
<p>PARIS (AP) — Designer Kris Van Assche travelled back in a fashion time machine Saturday while Robert Pattinson explained the importance of clothes for acting roles as he attended Dior Homme's Paris menswear collection.</p>
<p>Here are some highlights of the fourth day of fall-winter shows:</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>DIOR'S TATTOOED COUTURE</p>
<p>It was an ambitious fusion of two periods for Dior Homme: A sartorial homage to the past that twinned what the house called the "reckless abandon" of youth with the couture of Monsieur Dior's New Look.</p>
<p>Designer Van Assche used references to 1990s tattoo culture in prints and gothic silver jewelry alongside suit variations on the Bar Jacket from the famed 1947 collection that transformed Western fashion.</p>
<p>The two-periods theme in the 49 suit-heavy looks was also evident in the age range of the models, who were either very young, or over 40.</p>
<p>The first styles, accessorized with silk neck scarves, featured some beautifully refined single- and double-breasted suits with narrow waists that curved out in a slight peplum-shape. Suits are the bread-and-butter of the house.</p>
<p>"I thought it was a good moment for Dior to go back to its DNA, like really the sharply cut suit," the 41-year-old Van Assche told The Associated Press.</p>
<p>A flash of bright red across a striped T-shirt, meanwhile, turned the dial to the '90s with the appearance of a spiked tattoo motif on the shirt undergarment. Continuing that vibe were the baggy jeans, wooly tank tops and sneakers, which were worn by models with messy hair.</p>
<p>"It's looking back with a lot of love and sweet memories to when I myself was a teenager," Van Assche said.</p>
<p>It was an intentionally split aesthetic — and featured some very strong individual pieces.</p>
<p>Yet, the result was sometimes incongruous as a whole.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>PATTINSON SAYS CLOTHES HELP ACTING ROLE</p>
<p>"Twilight" star Robert Pattinson demonstrated why he'd been chosen as a Dior brand ambassador by extolling the influence of fashion and clothing on the ability of an actor to engage in a role.</p>
<p>"Shoes. I always find that when you play a character, if you find the right pair of shoes there's a trigger that happens inside you," said the 31-year-old who was dressed head to toe in Dior Homme.</p>
<p>"Or to have your pants up here, you feel like an entirely different person."</p>
<p>He added that "you can change your body language and your entire silhouette. It's all done through the clothing."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>FRONT ROW AT DIOR</p>
<p>Model Bella Hadid joined Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld, sporting a chic new beard, alongside "Pearl Harbor" actor Josh Harnett on the Dior Homme front row.</p>
<p>A rare face on the Paris fashion scene, Harnett, 39, said he was invited by Dior since he was in town promoting his new movie "Oh Lucy!" It's a French-Japanese co-production that was screened in the International Critics' Week section of last year's Cannes Film Festival.</p>
<p>"It's a comedy and lot of it is a road trip with me and two older Japanese ladies not speaking the same language and having parallel crises," he said. "I think it's really funny."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WALKING IN A THOM BROWNE WONDERLAND</p>
<p>There was the real crunching sound of fake snow at Thom Browne's theatrical menswear display that wowed guests with its snowy white forest scene and tall silver birches lining the runway.</p>
<p>Equally impressive were the winter styles in the clothes.</p>
<p>With many designs channeling the sartorial vibe from which the New York City-based designer cut his cloth, Browne prepared his models to brave the harshest elements of the coldest months and in the process produced one of the best shows of the season.</p>
<p>Gray-blue knit ted caps, oversize knit scarves, red snow gloves and robust black hiking boots with thick lacing accessorized wrapped-up looks. They included block-like fur trims on cuffs and hems in the coat-heavy 32-look collection with classic tailoring in knit fabric.</p>
<p>Textured wool and checks motifs — that merged a winter scarf with a suit-style pattern — adored long A-line coats amid some of the thickest outerwear to be seen this fall-winter.</p>
<p>A touch of humor, in braided hair extensions with colored ribbons and sheeny ankle warmers that evoked a tied trash bag, was a crowd pleaser.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>BALMAIN HOMME'S ECLECTIC SPARKLE</p>
<p>Eclectic was the word for Olivier Rousteing's high-energy show for Balmain Homme.</p>
<p>Mixing menswear and the womenswear pre-collection designs, the 32-year-old designer referenced almost all of the thematic touchstones used in previous shows within the same collection.</p>
<p>The 64 looks — in mainly green, black and gold — were a glimmering treasure trove of ideas.</p>
<p>Silver sparkle on a women's singlet looked like chainmail, seen again in a men's statement coat which screamed 1980.</p>
<p>Tribal patterns — horizontal and vertical stripes, and a "V'' shape running down the torso — gave the designs a wild edge.</p>
<p>And 1980s peaked shoulders, slashed sections, black PVC pants and architectural, sculptured jackets gave the silhouette lots of sexy attitude.</p>
<p>Subtle is simply not a word in Rousteing's vocabulary.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>SACAI REVAMPS THE PONCHO</p>
<p>One of Japan's most popular luxury brands, Sacai gave traditional Latin American styles an urban reworking for its Saturday morning show.</p>
<p>With its signature use layering, thick embroidered sweaters sported voluminous fringing that evoked ponchos that originated in the Andes region. Their hue of intense pastel red gave the statement garments a contemporary lift.</p>
<p>Then styles from the gaucho horse riders that were popular in 19th-century Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay were included.</p>
<p>Thigh-length soft leather riding boots were combined with highly embroidered patterns and fringing and myriad layers of material across the torso that created divergent lines in the silhouettes.</p>
<p>It was fun, and fall-winter saw a more coherent side to the designs than has been seen in recent seasons.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Thomas Adamson can be followed at <a href="http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K" type="external">http://Twitter.com/ThomasAdamson_K</a></p>
| 6,753 |
<p>The Hill <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/328980-trump-takes-detour-back-to-mar-a-lago-avoiding-tax-march" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>President Trump on Saturday reportedly took a longer route than usual on his way back to his Mar-a-Lago resort in what reporters said appeared to be an attempt to avoid large crowds of Tax March protesters.</p>
<p>According to pool reports, Trump’s motorcade made a long loop to get back to Mar-a-Lago after leaving Trump International Golf Club around 1:30 p.m.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, reporters traveling separately in press vans that continued on the shorter route back to the luxury resort immediately encountered “hundreds of protesters” demanding the president release his tax returns.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
FLORIDA: Trump’s Motorcade Takes Detour To Evade Hundreds Protesting His Hidden Tax Returns [VIDEO]
| true |
http://joemygod.com/2017/04/15/florida-trumps-motorcade-takes-detour-evade-hundreds-protesting-tax-returns-video/
|
2017-04-15
| 4left
|
FLORIDA: Trump’s Motorcade Takes Detour To Evade Hundreds Protesting His Hidden Tax Returns [VIDEO]
<p>The Hill <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/328980-trump-takes-detour-back-to-mar-a-lago-avoiding-tax-march" type="external">reports</a>:</p>
<p>President Trump on Saturday reportedly took a longer route than usual on his way back to his Mar-a-Lago resort in what reporters said appeared to be an attempt to avoid large crowds of Tax March protesters.</p>
<p>According to pool reports, Trump’s motorcade made a long loop to get back to Mar-a-Lago after leaving Trump International Golf Club around 1:30 p.m.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, reporters traveling separately in press vans that continued on the shorter route back to the luxury resort immediately encountered “hundreds of protesters” demanding the president release his tax returns.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 6,754 |
<p>He doesn't do it — but that's not the weird part. According to Evan Osnos of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired" type="external">The New Yorker</a>: "Other than golf, [Trump] considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy."</p>
<p>Mike Kranisch and Marc Fisher of The Washington Post <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/15/politics/donald-trump-exercise/" type="external">add</a>:</p>
<p>After college, after Trump mostly gave up his personal athletic interests, he came to view time spent playing sports as time wasted. Trump believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted. So he didn't work out. When he learned that John O'Donnell, one of his top casino executives, was training for an Ironman triathlon, he admonished him, "You are going to die young because of this."</p>
<p>In honor of President Trump's brilliant theory, The Daily Wire presents six other equally valid beliefs about exercise and the human body:</p>
<p>Food for thought.</p>
|
President Trump Has This One Weird Trick About Exercise
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/16469/president-trump-has-one-weird-trick-about-exercise-frank-camp
|
2017-05-15
| 0right
|
President Trump Has This One Weird Trick About Exercise
<p>He doesn't do it — but that's not the weird part. According to Evan Osnos of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired" type="external">The New Yorker</a>: "Other than golf, [Trump] considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy."</p>
<p>Mike Kranisch and Marc Fisher of The Washington Post <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/15/politics/donald-trump-exercise/" type="external">add</a>:</p>
<p>After college, after Trump mostly gave up his personal athletic interests, he came to view time spent playing sports as time wasted. Trump believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted. So he didn't work out. When he learned that John O'Donnell, one of his top casino executives, was training for an Ironman triathlon, he admonished him, "You are going to die young because of this."</p>
<p>In honor of President Trump's brilliant theory, The Daily Wire presents six other equally valid beliefs about exercise and the human body:</p>
<p>Food for thought.</p>
| 6,755 |
<p>Retail giant Steinhoff International Holdings NV, which owns American mattress brand Sleepy's and a string of chains across Europe, said its chief executive has resigned amid an investigation into accounting irregularities.</p>
<p>Shares in the company plunged more than 50% on Wednesday after it disclosed Markus Jooste's departure, halving the value of a company that had been worth more than $14 billion the day before.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Steinhoff, once dubbed "Africa's IKEA," has in recent years expanded aggressively outside of its home market of South Africa with acquisitions in the U.S. and U.K. Earlier this year, it spun off its African retail business entirely.</p>
<p>Despite its African roots, Steinhoff has grown into one of the world's biggest furniture holding companies. Last year, it made its first foray into the U.S., agreeing to pay $2.4 billion for Sleepy's owner Mattress Firm Holding Corp. The company also acquired British discount retailer Poundland Group PLC in 2016 for GBP597 million ($716 million).</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Steinhoff said it had approached accountancy firm PwC to conduct an independent investigation in light of what it said was new information relating to accounting irregularities. It didn't detail any specific issues. The company had been expected to release its results for the year ended Sept. 30 on Wednesday, but said it would now publish results when it was in a position to do so.</p>
<p>Steinhoff has appointed Chairman Christo Wiese, one of South Africa's richest men, as executive chairman on an interim basis, and said he would conduct a detailed review of the business.</p>
<p>Steinhoff had doubled down on Africa when it bought discount clothing retailer Pepkor in 2015 for about $5.7 billion at the time. Pepkor's Africa operations and Steinhoff's other African retail businesses now form Steinhoff Africa Retail Ltd., or STAR.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Steinhoff moved its primary listing to Frankfurt in late 2015, following the likes of other South African corporate giants, like Anglo American PLC and luxury-goods giant Cie. Financière Richemont SA, which have also relocated their primary listings to other financial capitals. Those companies all retain a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>The majority of Steinhoff's business is in Europe, where it sells furniture and bedding through a number of brands, from Germany and Switzerland to Poland and Bulgaria. It also has operations in Australia.</p>
<p>The move to Germany was a sort of homecoming for the company, founded by Bruno Steinhoff, who started his business in 1964, selling cheap furniture from West Germany to East Germans. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 put Mr. Steinhoff in a position to tap the growing consumer class in Eastern Europe. In 1997, the family acquired a stake in a South African furniture company, listing the combined entity on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1998 under the Steinhoff name.</p>
<p>Oliver Griffin contributed to this article</p>
<p>Write to Alexandra Wexler at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>December 06, 2017 05:05 ET (10:05 GMT)</p>
|
Steinhoff Shares Plunge After CEO Quits Amid Accounting Probe -- Update
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/12/06/steinhoff-shares-plunge-after-ceo-quits-amid-accounting-probe-update.html
|
2017-12-06
| 0right
|
Steinhoff Shares Plunge After CEO Quits Amid Accounting Probe -- Update
<p>Retail giant Steinhoff International Holdings NV, which owns American mattress brand Sleepy's and a string of chains across Europe, said its chief executive has resigned amid an investigation into accounting irregularities.</p>
<p>Shares in the company plunged more than 50% on Wednesday after it disclosed Markus Jooste's departure, halving the value of a company that had been worth more than $14 billion the day before.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Steinhoff, once dubbed "Africa's IKEA," has in recent years expanded aggressively outside of its home market of South Africa with acquisitions in the U.S. and U.K. Earlier this year, it spun off its African retail business entirely.</p>
<p>Despite its African roots, Steinhoff has grown into one of the world's biggest furniture holding companies. Last year, it made its first foray into the U.S., agreeing to pay $2.4 billion for Sleepy's owner Mattress Firm Holding Corp. The company also acquired British discount retailer Poundland Group PLC in 2016 for GBP597 million ($716 million).</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Steinhoff said it had approached accountancy firm PwC to conduct an independent investigation in light of what it said was new information relating to accounting irregularities. It didn't detail any specific issues. The company had been expected to release its results for the year ended Sept. 30 on Wednesday, but said it would now publish results when it was in a position to do so.</p>
<p>Steinhoff has appointed Chairman Christo Wiese, one of South Africa's richest men, as executive chairman on an interim basis, and said he would conduct a detailed review of the business.</p>
<p>Steinhoff had doubled down on Africa when it bought discount clothing retailer Pepkor in 2015 for about $5.7 billion at the time. Pepkor's Africa operations and Steinhoff's other African retail businesses now form Steinhoff Africa Retail Ltd., or STAR.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Steinhoff moved its primary listing to Frankfurt in late 2015, following the likes of other South African corporate giants, like Anglo American PLC and luxury-goods giant Cie. Financière Richemont SA, which have also relocated their primary listings to other financial capitals. Those companies all retain a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>The majority of Steinhoff's business is in Europe, where it sells furniture and bedding through a number of brands, from Germany and Switzerland to Poland and Bulgaria. It also has operations in Australia.</p>
<p>The move to Germany was a sort of homecoming for the company, founded by Bruno Steinhoff, who started his business in 1964, selling cheap furniture from West Germany to East Germans. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 put Mr. Steinhoff in a position to tap the growing consumer class in Eastern Europe. In 1997, the family acquired a stake in a South African furniture company, listing the combined entity on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1998 under the Steinhoff name.</p>
<p>Oliver Griffin contributed to this article</p>
<p>Write to Alexandra Wexler at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>December 06, 2017 05:05 ET (10:05 GMT)</p>
| 6,756 |
<p>BEIJING, China — In the past, stars like Jackie Chan would be featured in cheesy 80s-style “Just Say No” videos. But now Beijing is co-opting celebrities into their latest anti-drug campaign, whether they like it or not.</p>
<p>This week saw Jaycee Chan, son of "Rush Hour" actor Jackie, become the latest “celebrity” <a href="http://news.cntv.cn/2014/08/19/ARTI1408399910818917.shtml" type="external">paraded on TV screens</a>, after police raided his house in Beijing’s Dongcheng district following a supposed tip-off. They arrested several men.</p>
<p>More than 100 grams (about 3.5 ounces) of marijuana was found in a safe in the home of Jaycee, who now faces the serious charge of “accommodating drug users,” which carries a three-year penalty, after admitting to having smoked since 2006.</p>
<p>In response, both Chans have gone on the offensive: <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1576663/jackie-chans-son-jaycee-had-100-grams-marijuana-kai-ko-tears-tv?page=all" type="external">Jackie has flown to Beijing</a> to assist with his son’s case, his publicist confirmed, and publicly tweeted an apology, saying, “I feel very angry and very shocked. As a public figure, I’m very ashamed.” Meanwhile, in a bid to reduce his sentence, Jaycee has offered up the names of up to 120 fellow celebrity drugs users, Taiwanese newspaper <a href="http://www.ejinsight.com/20140822-jaycee-chan-blows-whistle-on-celebrities-who-take-drugs/" type="external">Liberty Times reported</a>.</p>
<p>Chan, the star of numerous flop films like "Double Trouble" (which garnered a UK box office of just under $10,000, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11041175/Jackie-Chans-son-arrested-in-Beijing-drug-bust.html" type="external">according to the Telegraph</a>), remains best known for his father — unlike his smoking partner, Taiwanese actor Ko Chen-tung, aka Kai Ko, whose hits include "You Are The Apple of My Eye." Ko, like Chan, also tested positive but will be detained on the lesser charge of marijuana use for up to 30 days.</p>
<p>The case has come under more public scrutiny than usual because of its uneasy mixture of celebrity glamour, the vagaries of fame in China, and the Party’s declaration of a zero-tolerance “people’s war” on drugs, in which the most talked-about casualties are prominent public figures.</p>
<p>These include recent meth arrests for "If You Are The One" guest <a href="http://english.cri.cn/12394/2014/07/07/3123s834766.htm" type="external">Chen Wan-ning</a>, 39, Mama director Zhang Yuan, reality star Li Daimo and "The Bullet Vanishes" actor <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/chinese-actor-gao-hu-charged-crackdown-illegal-drugs" type="external">Gao Hu</a>.</p>
<p>In each case, state media has dutifully reported the apparent incredulity of fans, detailed the accused’s penitence and pointed the finger at an <a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-06/28/content_17626607.htm" type="external">“avant garde” lifestyle</a>, which “can breed spiritual emptiness, which makes them susceptible to temptations” as China Daily noted. The implication is that such celebrities are outliers, and their misbehavior an aberration in society to be made an example of.</p>
<p>But the public is proving increasingly cynical of such narratives — and not just the stars’ relentless crocodile tears, but the entire tone of this campaign.</p>
<p>The use of televised confessions, which has re-emerged as a feature of modern Chinese policing since the arrest of internet celebrity Charles Xue for solicitation, and continued with high-profile cases against the likes of GSK investigator Peter Humphrey and alleged high-class hooker Guo Meimei, has come under particular fire.</p>
<p>The video, with faces pixelated, showed the bust seemingly in action (“Who gave you this?” the police ask. Jaycee replies, “I’ve had it for a long time.” “That’s a lot of marijuana,” an officer observes). The footage of Ko was a “vio-lation of human rights” said Chiu Hsien-chih, a former president of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, and opposition politicians in Taiwan have expressed concern about the judicial process.</p>
<p>Yu Guoming, a journalism professor at China’s Renmin University, said such confessions should only be “after a verdict has been delivered” (although with a 99.8 percent conviction rate, an arrest in China is tantamount to the same).</p>
<p>“It’s against the law,” Zhang Ming, a politics professor at the same university, <a href="http://weibo.com/1707683373/Bj8UC7m1i?mod=weibotime" type="external">argued on Weibo</a>. “Even if it’s a star I really don’t like … it’s no different from public shaming.”</p>
<p>The police have been forced to deny the existence of a special unit targeting celebrities for PR takedowns, while speculation has been rife as to motive — particularly as Chan Sr. was not only made a goodwill ambassador for the National Narcotics Control Commission in 2009, but is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (which advises the National Political Congress, commonly referred to as China’s “rubber stamp parlia-ment”) and has been a controversial advocate of authoritarian rule on the mainland.</p>
<p>It makes political sense to “go after the conspicuously wealthy” as a sop to China’s increasingly disenfranchised, non-wealthy majority, the <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/08/20/chinas-anti-drug-crackdown-nets-jackie-chans-son/" type="external">American Interest concluded</a>, adding that the arrests were further evidence of President Xi Jinping “consolidating power… by thinning out the top ranks.”</p>
<p>But this seems rather stodgy (and Jaycee Chan is hardly anyone’s political op-ponent).</p>
<p>The most credible explanation might be one offered Friday in Securities Daily newspaper <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-celebrity-drug-busts-may-really-be-just-business-2014-08-22" type="external">by entertainment venture capitalist Cao Haitiao</a>. Mergers and acquisitions in the sector have become increasingly cutthroat, meaning companies “may be weeded out through competitive selection.” Ko, who runs a production company, has lost endorsements and was due to appear in the Tiny Times 4, a lucrative Chinese franchise.</p>
<p>Competing companies can attempt to nobble each other with rumors and anonymous tip-offs (this week, a bemused-looking Sohu CEO Charles Zhang&#160; <a href="http://tv.sohu.com/20140820/n403618911.shtml" type="external">refuted claims</a> that he, too, had been detained for drugs). And who led the cops to Jaycee and Ko’s private house party? Police say it was an anonymous tip-off.</p>
|
China is increasingly arresting celebrities for drug use
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2014-08-25/china-increasingly-arresting-celebrities-drug-use
|
2014-08-25
| 3left-center
|
China is increasingly arresting celebrities for drug use
<p>BEIJING, China — In the past, stars like Jackie Chan would be featured in cheesy 80s-style “Just Say No” videos. But now Beijing is co-opting celebrities into their latest anti-drug campaign, whether they like it or not.</p>
<p>This week saw Jaycee Chan, son of "Rush Hour" actor Jackie, become the latest “celebrity” <a href="http://news.cntv.cn/2014/08/19/ARTI1408399910818917.shtml" type="external">paraded on TV screens</a>, after police raided his house in Beijing’s Dongcheng district following a supposed tip-off. They arrested several men.</p>
<p>More than 100 grams (about 3.5 ounces) of marijuana was found in a safe in the home of Jaycee, who now faces the serious charge of “accommodating drug users,” which carries a three-year penalty, after admitting to having smoked since 2006.</p>
<p>In response, both Chans have gone on the offensive: <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1576663/jackie-chans-son-jaycee-had-100-grams-marijuana-kai-ko-tears-tv?page=all" type="external">Jackie has flown to Beijing</a> to assist with his son’s case, his publicist confirmed, and publicly tweeted an apology, saying, “I feel very angry and very shocked. As a public figure, I’m very ashamed.” Meanwhile, in a bid to reduce his sentence, Jaycee has offered up the names of up to 120 fellow celebrity drugs users, Taiwanese newspaper <a href="http://www.ejinsight.com/20140822-jaycee-chan-blows-whistle-on-celebrities-who-take-drugs/" type="external">Liberty Times reported</a>.</p>
<p>Chan, the star of numerous flop films like "Double Trouble" (which garnered a UK box office of just under $10,000, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11041175/Jackie-Chans-son-arrested-in-Beijing-drug-bust.html" type="external">according to the Telegraph</a>), remains best known for his father — unlike his smoking partner, Taiwanese actor Ko Chen-tung, aka Kai Ko, whose hits include "You Are The Apple of My Eye." Ko, like Chan, also tested positive but will be detained on the lesser charge of marijuana use for up to 30 days.</p>
<p>The case has come under more public scrutiny than usual because of its uneasy mixture of celebrity glamour, the vagaries of fame in China, and the Party’s declaration of a zero-tolerance “people’s war” on drugs, in which the most talked-about casualties are prominent public figures.</p>
<p>These include recent meth arrests for "If You Are The One" guest <a href="http://english.cri.cn/12394/2014/07/07/3123s834766.htm" type="external">Chen Wan-ning</a>, 39, Mama director Zhang Yuan, reality star Li Daimo and "The Bullet Vanishes" actor <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/13/chinese-actor-gao-hu-charged-crackdown-illegal-drugs" type="external">Gao Hu</a>.</p>
<p>In each case, state media has dutifully reported the apparent incredulity of fans, detailed the accused’s penitence and pointed the finger at an <a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2014-06/28/content_17626607.htm" type="external">“avant garde” lifestyle</a>, which “can breed spiritual emptiness, which makes them susceptible to temptations” as China Daily noted. The implication is that such celebrities are outliers, and their misbehavior an aberration in society to be made an example of.</p>
<p>But the public is proving increasingly cynical of such narratives — and not just the stars’ relentless crocodile tears, but the entire tone of this campaign.</p>
<p>The use of televised confessions, which has re-emerged as a feature of modern Chinese policing since the arrest of internet celebrity Charles Xue for solicitation, and continued with high-profile cases against the likes of GSK investigator Peter Humphrey and alleged high-class hooker Guo Meimei, has come under particular fire.</p>
<p>The video, with faces pixelated, showed the bust seemingly in action (“Who gave you this?” the police ask. Jaycee replies, “I’ve had it for a long time.” “That’s a lot of marijuana,” an officer observes). The footage of Ko was a “vio-lation of human rights” said Chiu Hsien-chih, a former president of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights, and opposition politicians in Taiwan have expressed concern about the judicial process.</p>
<p>Yu Guoming, a journalism professor at China’s Renmin University, said such confessions should only be “after a verdict has been delivered” (although with a 99.8 percent conviction rate, an arrest in China is tantamount to the same).</p>
<p>“It’s against the law,” Zhang Ming, a politics professor at the same university, <a href="http://weibo.com/1707683373/Bj8UC7m1i?mod=weibotime" type="external">argued on Weibo</a>. “Even if it’s a star I really don’t like … it’s no different from public shaming.”</p>
<p>The police have been forced to deny the existence of a special unit targeting celebrities for PR takedowns, while speculation has been rife as to motive — particularly as Chan Sr. was not only made a goodwill ambassador for the National Narcotics Control Commission in 2009, but is a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (which advises the National Political Congress, commonly referred to as China’s “rubber stamp parlia-ment”) and has been a controversial advocate of authoritarian rule on the mainland.</p>
<p>It makes political sense to “go after the conspicuously wealthy” as a sop to China’s increasingly disenfranchised, non-wealthy majority, the <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/08/20/chinas-anti-drug-crackdown-nets-jackie-chans-son/" type="external">American Interest concluded</a>, adding that the arrests were further evidence of President Xi Jinping “consolidating power… by thinning out the top ranks.”</p>
<p>But this seems rather stodgy (and Jaycee Chan is hardly anyone’s political op-ponent).</p>
<p>The most credible explanation might be one offered Friday in Securities Daily newspaper <a href="http://www.marketwatch.com/story/chinas-celebrity-drug-busts-may-really-be-just-business-2014-08-22" type="external">by entertainment venture capitalist Cao Haitiao</a>. Mergers and acquisitions in the sector have become increasingly cutthroat, meaning companies “may be weeded out through competitive selection.” Ko, who runs a production company, has lost endorsements and was due to appear in the Tiny Times 4, a lucrative Chinese franchise.</p>
<p>Competing companies can attempt to nobble each other with rumors and anonymous tip-offs (this week, a bemused-looking Sohu CEO Charles Zhang&#160; <a href="http://tv.sohu.com/20140820/n403618911.shtml" type="external">refuted claims</a> that he, too, had been detained for drugs). And who led the cops to Jaycee and Ko’s private house party? Police say it was an anonymous tip-off.</p>
| 6,757 |
<p>President Obama is falsely claiming that his administration’s policies are responsible for “about 10 percent” of the deficits “over the last four years.” The cumulative deficit during that time is nearly $5.2 trillion. Obama signed two bills — the 2009 stimulus and the 2010 tax cut — that alone cost $1.6 trillion during that time, or nearly a third of the cumulative four-year deficit.</p>
<p>How could he have been so wrong? Although he said “the last four years,” the administration tells us that he was referring to a Treasury analysis of a 10-year period from 2002 to 2011 — which includes all eight years of the Bush administration and excludes the 2012 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30 with a $1.17 trillion deficit.</p>
<p>We’re also told that Obama meant 12 percent, not 10 percent, and that 12 percent figure does not represent a percentage of cumulative deficits ($6 trillion) during those 10 years. It’s 12 percent of $11.9 trillion — which is the difference between the Congressional Budget Office’s rosy 10-year budget projection issued in January 2001 ($5.9 trillion in cumulative surpluses from 2002 to 2011) and what actually happened ($6 trillion in deficits).</p>
<p>The Treasury Department analysis claims that Obama’s polices are responsible for 12 percent of “the changes in deficit projections since January 2001,” but even that figure is too low, as we will explain later.</p>
<p>Obama on Deficits</p>
<p>The federal government will end fiscal year 2012 in a few days (Sept. 30) with a $1.2 trillion deficit — marking the fourth consecutive year of trillion-plus deficits. In a recent <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2102-18560_162-57518495.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody" type="external">“60 Minutes” interview</a>, CBS’ Steve Kroft asked Obama about the sharp increase in the federal debt since he has become president.</p>
<p>Obama, Sept. 23: First of all, Steve, I think it’s important to understand the context here. When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10 percent of this increase in the deficit . . .</p>
<p>Obama stated it differently in a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/21/remarks-president-aarp-convention-satellite" type="external">speech</a> two days earlier to the AARP.</p>
<p>Obama, Sept. 21: I think it’s important for folks to know that 90 percent of the debt and deficits that we’re seeing right now are the result of choices that were made over the course of the last decade — two wars that weren’t paid for; tax cuts skewed towards the wealthy that were not paid for. So we made some decisions, and then when the Great Recession hit, that meant more money was going out and not as much money was coming in, and that has blown up our deficit and our debt.</p>
<p>Obama’s response leaves the false impression that President George W. Bush and the 2008 recession are responsible for a whopping 90 percent of the deficits in the last four years.</p>
<p>It’s true that Obama “inherited the biggest deficit in our history,” as he said on CBS. By the time Obama took office in January 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had already estimated that increased spending and decreased revenues would result in a $1.2 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009, which began Oct. 1, 2008. In a <a href="" type="internal">detailed analysis</a> of fiscal year 2009, we found that Obama was responsible for adding at most $203 billion to the deficit, which in the end topped $1.4 trillion that year.</p>
<p>But that was just the first of four years of trillion-plus deficits. The last three budgets fall squarely under Obama. And, during that time, the federal government ran up <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/HistoricalBudgetData.xls" type="external">deficits</a> of $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43572" type="external">about $1.2 trillion</a> in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 — for a total of nearly $5.2 trillion in deficit spending.</p>
<p>Now, affixing responsibility (i.e., blame) for mega-deficits and the ballooning federal debt is filled with ideological landmines. Obama doesn’t take responsibility for war spending, for example, even though he continued the spending and, in fact, increased U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. He also doesn’t want to take the blame for the expense of creating the Medicare prescription drug program — although his federal health care law increased funding for it. (The law will gradually <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/secretary/about/opeds/health-care-law.html" type="external">close</a> the notorious <a href="" type="internal">doughnut hole</a> that caused some seniors to pay nearly $2,000 in prescription drug costs because of a gap in coverage.)</p>
<p>Regardless of how you assess blame, this much we can say with certainty: Obama’s policies are responsible for more than 10 percent of the deficits accumulated over the last four years.</p>
<p>Consider that just two pieces of legislation he signed account for nearly a third of the $5.2 trillion in deficits since 2009:</p>
<p>The administration does not take responsibility for all of the spending in the 2010 tax act (which we will detail later). But Treasury accepts that the administration is responsible for another <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/US-Economy/PublishingImages/20120229_EssentialEcon9.jpg" type="external">$410 billion</a> in additional tax cuts and spending through 2011.</p>
<p>That means at a minimum the Obama administration is responsible for $2 trillion, or 39 percent of the $5.17 trillion in deficits since fiscal year 2009.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, Obama has promised if reelected to allow the Bush-era income tax cuts to expire for upper-income taxpayers, raising the top two tax rates from 33 percent and 35 percent to 36 percent and 39.6 percent. But he would keep the tax rates at the Bush-era levels for everyone else. Obama’s plan would cost the federal government <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/Taxunits_Affected.cfm" type="external">$3 trillion over 10 years</a> compared with $3.7 trillion if he allowed all of the Bush tax cuts to remain in place.</p>
<p>Treasury on Deficits</p>
<p>When we asked the Obama campaign about the president’s comments on “60 Minutes,” we were referred to a <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/US-Economy/PublishingImages/20120229_EssentialEcon9.jpg" type="external">Treasury analysis</a> of federal revenues and outlays from 2002 to 2011. The Treasury analysis is an exercise in fixing blame for how the U.S. ended up with $6 trillion in deficits over the 10-year period instead of amassing $5.9 trillion in surpluses — as originally projected by the CBO in its report “ <a href="http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/27xx/doc2727/entire-report.pdf" type="external">The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2002-2011</a>.”</p>
<p>CBO, January 2001: In the absence of significant legislative changes and assuming that the economy follows the path described in this report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the total surplus will reach $281 billion in 2001. Such surpluses are projected to rise in the future, approaching $889 billion in 2011 and accumulating to $5.6 trillion over the 2002-2011 period.</p>
<p>Oops.</p>
<p>CBO’s assumptions did not factor in <a href="http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html" type="external">two recessions</a> (2001, 2008), two wars and a slew of legislative changes from the Bush tax cuts to the Obama stimulus.</p>
<p>The difference between the projected surpluses and the actual deficits is $11.9 trillion over that 10-year period. Treasury concluded that Bush policies were to blame for 59 percent and Obama’s policies 12 percent. The rest — 29 percent — were what CBO calls “economic and technical changes,” mostly having to do with changing economic forecasts because of the recessions.</p>
<p>Treasury’s analysis was done by reviewing 36 CBO reports issued over the last 12 years: the biannual <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/topics/budget/budget-and-economic-outlook" type="external">Budget and Economic Outlook</a> and the CBO’s annual <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/topics/budget/analysis-of-the-presidents-budget" type="external">analysis of the president’s budget</a>. Treasury accounted for the changes in CBO’s revenue and outlay projections during that time period to determine how far the original 2001 CBO projections had deviated and where the deviations had occurred.</p>
<p>But even Treasury’s 12 percent figure is misleading given that Obama was talking about deficits “over the last four years” (CBS interview) and “deficits that we’re seeing right now” (AARP speech).</p>
<p>Here are some examples of what the Treasury report includes — and excludes:</p>
<p>Josh Gordon, policy director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates for “ <a href="http://www.concordcoalition.org/about-concord-coalition" type="external">responsible fiscal policy</a>,” notes the president wants to exclude spending on continuing Bush-era tax and war policies. “The problem is those pieces of legislation had his signatures,” he added.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/06-07-ChangesSince2001Baseline.pdf" type="external">CBO</a> and the nonpartisan <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Fact_Sheets/Economic_Policy/drivers_federal_debt_since_2001.pdf" type="external">Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative</a> each did their own postmortem analyses of what happened from 2002 to 2011. Without apportioning blame, both reports found the accumulation of legislation changes — tax cuts, war spending and stimulus measures under both presidents — was the “main driver,” as Pew put it.</p>
<p>Pew, April 2011: Fiscal projections a decade out, even by the best analysts, are inherently imperfect, and this fact sheet shows that forecasting uncertainty explains a meaningful part of the revisions to CBO’s debt projections. However, the main driver of the difference between the January 2001 projection and the reality a decade later has been legislative changes.</p>
<p>There is no disputing, of course, that President George W. Bush was president for nearly eight of those 10 fiscal years and holds more responsibility for them than Obama.</p>
<p>But Obama bears more responsibility than he is willing to accept, and misrepresents the Treasury analysis to minimize his responsibility.</p>
<p>The finger-pointing also does not advance the debate over how to solve what everyone recognizes is a huge problem for the next president and Congress.</p>
<p>“This whole debate really is missing the point,” Gordon said. “The point is where do we go forward from where we are, and who has a plan to reduce the deficits over the long term.”</p>
<p>— Eugene Kiely</p>
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Obama’s Deficit Dodge
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https://factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-deficit-dodge/
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2012-09-28
| 2least
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Obama’s Deficit Dodge
<p>President Obama is falsely claiming that his administration’s policies are responsible for “about 10 percent” of the deficits “over the last four years.” The cumulative deficit during that time is nearly $5.2 trillion. Obama signed two bills — the 2009 stimulus and the 2010 tax cut — that alone cost $1.6 trillion during that time, or nearly a third of the cumulative four-year deficit.</p>
<p>How could he have been so wrong? Although he said “the last four years,” the administration tells us that he was referring to a Treasury analysis of a 10-year period from 2002 to 2011 — which includes all eight years of the Bush administration and excludes the 2012 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30 with a $1.17 trillion deficit.</p>
<p>We’re also told that Obama meant 12 percent, not 10 percent, and that 12 percent figure does not represent a percentage of cumulative deficits ($6 trillion) during those 10 years. It’s 12 percent of $11.9 trillion — which is the difference between the Congressional Budget Office’s rosy 10-year budget projection issued in January 2001 ($5.9 trillion in cumulative surpluses from 2002 to 2011) and what actually happened ($6 trillion in deficits).</p>
<p>The Treasury Department analysis claims that Obama’s polices are responsible for 12 percent of “the changes in deficit projections since January 2001,” but even that figure is too low, as we will explain later.</p>
<p>Obama on Deficits</p>
<p>The federal government will end fiscal year 2012 in a few days (Sept. 30) with a $1.2 trillion deficit — marking the fourth consecutive year of trillion-plus deficits. In a recent <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/2102-18560_162-57518495.html?tag=contentMain;contentBody" type="external">“60 Minutes” interview</a>, CBS’ Steve Kroft asked Obama about the sharp increase in the federal debt since he has become president.</p>
<p>Obama, Sept. 23: First of all, Steve, I think it’s important to understand the context here. When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren’t paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren’t paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Now we took some emergency actions, but that accounts for about 10 percent of this increase in the deficit . . .</p>
<p>Obama stated it differently in a <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/09/21/remarks-president-aarp-convention-satellite" type="external">speech</a> two days earlier to the AARP.</p>
<p>Obama, Sept. 21: I think it’s important for folks to know that 90 percent of the debt and deficits that we’re seeing right now are the result of choices that were made over the course of the last decade — two wars that weren’t paid for; tax cuts skewed towards the wealthy that were not paid for. So we made some decisions, and then when the Great Recession hit, that meant more money was going out and not as much money was coming in, and that has blown up our deficit and our debt.</p>
<p>Obama’s response leaves the false impression that President George W. Bush and the 2008 recession are responsible for a whopping 90 percent of the deficits in the last four years.</p>
<p>It’s true that Obama “inherited the biggest deficit in our history,” as he said on CBS. By the time Obama took office in January 2009, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had already estimated that increased spending and decreased revenues would result in a $1.2 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2009, which began Oct. 1, 2008. In a <a href="" type="internal">detailed analysis</a> of fiscal year 2009, we found that Obama was responsible for adding at most $203 billion to the deficit, which in the end topped $1.4 trillion that year.</p>
<p>But that was just the first of four years of trillion-plus deficits. The last three budgets fall squarely under Obama. And, during that time, the federal government ran up <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/HistoricalBudgetData.xls" type="external">deficits</a> of $1.3 trillion in 2010, $1.3 trillion in 2011, and <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43572" type="external">about $1.2 trillion</a> in the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 — for a total of nearly $5.2 trillion in deficit spending.</p>
<p>Now, affixing responsibility (i.e., blame) for mega-deficits and the ballooning federal debt is filled with ideological landmines. Obama doesn’t take responsibility for war spending, for example, even though he continued the spending and, in fact, increased U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. He also doesn’t want to take the blame for the expense of creating the Medicare prescription drug program — although his federal health care law increased funding for it. (The law will gradually <a href="http://www.hhs.gov/secretary/about/opeds/health-care-law.html" type="external">close</a> the notorious <a href="" type="internal">doughnut hole</a> that caused some seniors to pay nearly $2,000 in prescription drug costs because of a gap in coverage.)</p>
<p>Regardless of how you assess blame, this much we can say with certainty: Obama’s policies are responsible for more than 10 percent of the deficits accumulated over the last four years.</p>
<p>Consider that just two pieces of legislation he signed account for nearly a third of the $5.2 trillion in deficits since 2009:</p>
<p>The administration does not take responsibility for all of the spending in the 2010 tax act (which we will detail later). But Treasury accepts that the administration is responsible for another <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/US-Economy/PublishingImages/20120229_EssentialEcon9.jpg" type="external">$410 billion</a> in additional tax cuts and spending through 2011.</p>
<p>That means at a minimum the Obama administration is responsible for $2 trillion, or 39 percent of the $5.17 trillion in deficits since fiscal year 2009.</p>
<p>Looking ahead, Obama has promised if reelected to allow the Bush-era income tax cuts to expire for upper-income taxpayers, raising the top two tax rates from 33 percent and 35 percent to 36 percent and 39.6 percent. But he would keep the tax rates at the Bush-era levels for everyone else. Obama’s plan would cost the federal government <a href="http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/Taxunits_Affected.cfm" type="external">$3 trillion over 10 years</a> compared with $3.7 trillion if he allowed all of the Bush tax cuts to remain in place.</p>
<p>Treasury on Deficits</p>
<p>When we asked the Obama campaign about the president’s comments on “60 Minutes,” we were referred to a <a href="http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/US-Economy/PublishingImages/20120229_EssentialEcon9.jpg" type="external">Treasury analysis</a> of federal revenues and outlays from 2002 to 2011. The Treasury analysis is an exercise in fixing blame for how the U.S. ended up with $6 trillion in deficits over the 10-year period instead of amassing $5.9 trillion in surpluses — as originally projected by the CBO in its report “ <a href="http://cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/27xx/doc2727/entire-report.pdf" type="external">The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2002-2011</a>.”</p>
<p>CBO, January 2001: In the absence of significant legislative changes and assuming that the economy follows the path described in this report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the total surplus will reach $281 billion in 2001. Such surpluses are projected to rise in the future, approaching $889 billion in 2011 and accumulating to $5.6 trillion over the 2002-2011 period.</p>
<p>Oops.</p>
<p>CBO’s assumptions did not factor in <a href="http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html" type="external">two recessions</a> (2001, 2008), two wars and a slew of legislative changes from the Bush tax cuts to the Obama stimulus.</p>
<p>The difference between the projected surpluses and the actual deficits is $11.9 trillion over that 10-year period. Treasury concluded that Bush policies were to blame for 59 percent and Obama’s policies 12 percent. The rest — 29 percent — were what CBO calls “economic and technical changes,” mostly having to do with changing economic forecasts because of the recessions.</p>
<p>Treasury’s analysis was done by reviewing 36 CBO reports issued over the last 12 years: the biannual <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/topics/budget/budget-and-economic-outlook" type="external">Budget and Economic Outlook</a> and the CBO’s annual <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/topics/budget/analysis-of-the-presidents-budget" type="external">analysis of the president’s budget</a>. Treasury accounted for the changes in CBO’s revenue and outlay projections during that time period to determine how far the original 2001 CBO projections had deviated and where the deviations had occurred.</p>
<p>But even Treasury’s 12 percent figure is misleading given that Obama was talking about deficits “over the last four years” (CBS interview) and “deficits that we’re seeing right now” (AARP speech).</p>
<p>Here are some examples of what the Treasury report includes — and excludes:</p>
<p>Josh Gordon, policy director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates for “ <a href="http://www.concordcoalition.org/about-concord-coalition" type="external">responsible fiscal policy</a>,” notes the president wants to exclude spending on continuing Bush-era tax and war policies. “The problem is those pieces of legislation had his signatures,” he added.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/06-07-ChangesSince2001Baseline.pdf" type="external">CBO</a> and the nonpartisan <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Fact_Sheets/Economic_Policy/drivers_federal_debt_since_2001.pdf" type="external">Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative</a> each did their own postmortem analyses of what happened from 2002 to 2011. Without apportioning blame, both reports found the accumulation of legislation changes — tax cuts, war spending and stimulus measures under both presidents — was the “main driver,” as Pew put it.</p>
<p>Pew, April 2011: Fiscal projections a decade out, even by the best analysts, are inherently imperfect, and this fact sheet shows that forecasting uncertainty explains a meaningful part of the revisions to CBO’s debt projections. However, the main driver of the difference between the January 2001 projection and the reality a decade later has been legislative changes.</p>
<p>There is no disputing, of course, that President George W. Bush was president for nearly eight of those 10 fiscal years and holds more responsibility for them than Obama.</p>
<p>But Obama bears more responsibility than he is willing to accept, and misrepresents the Treasury analysis to minimize his responsibility.</p>
<p>The finger-pointing also does not advance the debate over how to solve what everyone recognizes is a huge problem for the next president and Congress.</p>
<p>“This whole debate really is missing the point,” Gordon said. “The point is where do we go forward from where we are, and who has a plan to reduce the deficits over the long term.”</p>
<p>— Eugene Kiely</p>
| 6,758 |
<p>Dunkin’ Donuts is going on a diet, y’all! And the makeover has already improved sales.</p>
<p>As of November 2017, Dunkin’ slashes the variety of doughnuts it offers from 30 to 18. A few select stores will offer 24 varieties, according to&#160;Dunkin’s brand president,&#160;David Hoffman.</p>
<p>Dunkin’ Donuts downsized its menu to focus more on coffee. Now, it’ll take on java juggernaut Starbucks. (Instagram)</p>
<p>The rebranding is part of Dunkin’s plan to get its “doughnut mojo” back by simplifying its menu and focus more on selling coffee,&#160;which is more profitable than doughnuts.</p>
<p>“We’ve shrunk the amount of doughnut variety and we’re seeing a lift in those markets instantly,” Hoffman told&#160; <a href="http://www.nrn.com/operations/how-dunkin-brands-gets-its-doughnut-mojo-back?NL=NRN-02_&amp;Issue=NRN-02__20170929_NRN-02__764&amp;sfvc4enews=42&amp;cl=article_1_4&amp;utm_rid=CPG06000002569537&amp;utm_campaign=19075&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;elq2=18fb8ce078854eddac0989bea3ba8d66" type="external">Nation’s Restaurant News</a>.</p>
<p>Dunkin will focus on artisanal flavors like its best-selling maple with bacon doughnut and get rid of flavors that don’t appeal to customers.</p>
<p>(Photos: Instagram)</p>
<p>And that’s not the only change. In August 2017, the fast-food chain&#160;— which also offers a variety of breakfast sandwiches — announced it will drop “Donuts” from its name. As it is, “donuts” is the misspelled version of “doughnuts,” so this is probably not a bad idea.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Sheriff David Clarke: John Lewis is a grandstanding, irrelevant Democratic puppet</a></p>
<p>In November 2016, Dunkin Donuts made headlines after offering “Trump Wall” doughnuts in homage to Donald Trump’s winning the presidential election.</p>
<p>(Image: <a href="https://twitter.com/skrafftfox10/status/796778011341094912" type="external">Instagram</a>)</p>
<p>Predictably, leftist nutcases got triggered, claiming Dunkin’ was celebrating “families getting torn apart” because it supported a border wall. (*insert eye roll here.*) But conservatives were amused by Dunkin’s display of patriotism.</p>
<p>With its rebranding, Dunkin’&#160;— the seventh most successful fast food chain in the United States&#160;— is mounting a major challenge to coffee kingpin Starbucks. In this battle, we’re definitely rooting for the underdog.</p>
<p>In February, the left-leaning Starbucks got slammed after&#160; <a href="" type="internal">vowing to hire 10,000 refugees</a>&#160;while ignoring unemployed military veterans and other Americans.</p>
<p>In June, Starbucks was forced to apologize after <a href="" type="internal">its employees bullied and harassed a woman</a> customer for wearing a Trump t-shirt.</p>
<p>So yeah, good luck with the refugee workforce, Starbucks. Go get ’em, Dunkin.</p>
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Big changes coming for Dunkin’ Donuts: Can it take down Starbucks?
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http://bizpacreview.com/2017/10/04/big-changes-coming-dunkin-donuts-can-take-starbucks-542759
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2017-10-04
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Big changes coming for Dunkin’ Donuts: Can it take down Starbucks?
<p>Dunkin’ Donuts is going on a diet, y’all! And the makeover has already improved sales.</p>
<p>As of November 2017, Dunkin’ slashes the variety of doughnuts it offers from 30 to 18. A few select stores will offer 24 varieties, according to&#160;Dunkin’s brand president,&#160;David Hoffman.</p>
<p>Dunkin’ Donuts downsized its menu to focus more on coffee. Now, it’ll take on java juggernaut Starbucks. (Instagram)</p>
<p>The rebranding is part of Dunkin’s plan to get its “doughnut mojo” back by simplifying its menu and focus more on selling coffee,&#160;which is more profitable than doughnuts.</p>
<p>“We’ve shrunk the amount of doughnut variety and we’re seeing a lift in those markets instantly,” Hoffman told&#160; <a href="http://www.nrn.com/operations/how-dunkin-brands-gets-its-doughnut-mojo-back?NL=NRN-02_&amp;Issue=NRN-02__20170929_NRN-02__764&amp;sfvc4enews=42&amp;cl=article_1_4&amp;utm_rid=CPG06000002569537&amp;utm_campaign=19075&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;elq2=18fb8ce078854eddac0989bea3ba8d66" type="external">Nation’s Restaurant News</a>.</p>
<p>Dunkin will focus on artisanal flavors like its best-selling maple with bacon doughnut and get rid of flavors that don’t appeal to customers.</p>
<p>(Photos: Instagram)</p>
<p>And that’s not the only change. In August 2017, the fast-food chain&#160;— which also offers a variety of breakfast sandwiches — announced it will drop “Donuts” from its name. As it is, “donuts” is the misspelled version of “doughnuts,” so this is probably not a bad idea.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Sheriff David Clarke: John Lewis is a grandstanding, irrelevant Democratic puppet</a></p>
<p>In November 2016, Dunkin Donuts made headlines after offering “Trump Wall” doughnuts in homage to Donald Trump’s winning the presidential election.</p>
<p>(Image: <a href="https://twitter.com/skrafftfox10/status/796778011341094912" type="external">Instagram</a>)</p>
<p>Predictably, leftist nutcases got triggered, claiming Dunkin’ was celebrating “families getting torn apart” because it supported a border wall. (*insert eye roll here.*) But conservatives were amused by Dunkin’s display of patriotism.</p>
<p>With its rebranding, Dunkin’&#160;— the seventh most successful fast food chain in the United States&#160;— is mounting a major challenge to coffee kingpin Starbucks. In this battle, we’re definitely rooting for the underdog.</p>
<p>In February, the left-leaning Starbucks got slammed after&#160; <a href="" type="internal">vowing to hire 10,000 refugees</a>&#160;while ignoring unemployed military veterans and other Americans.</p>
<p>In June, Starbucks was forced to apologize after <a href="" type="internal">its employees bullied and harassed a woman</a> customer for wearing a Trump t-shirt.</p>
<p>So yeah, good luck with the refugee workforce, Starbucks. Go get ’em, Dunkin.</p>
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| 6,759 |
<p />
<p>A chorus of Republicans said Friday they would turn their attention to overhauling the U.S. tax code after their legislation to repeal and replace major provisions of the Affordable Care Act couldn't draw enough vote to clear the GOP-controlled House.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) said he had spoken with President Donald Trump and his top advisers about moving onto the tax plan. "We have more agreement on the need and nature of tax reform," Mr. Ryan told reporters.</p>
<p>From the Oval Office late Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump told reporters "we are going, right now, for tax reform."</p>
<p>Earlier Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, at an event in Washington sponsored by media company Axios, said the administration's forthcoming plan to overhaul the U.S. tax code would face smoother sailing than the plan to revamp health-insurance markets that unraveled Friday.</p>
<p>"Health care is a very, very complicated issue," Mr. Mnuchin said. Redesigning the tax code "is a lot simpler."</p>
<p>Taxes could be a challenge as well, however, and lawmakers have been talking about rewriting the tax code for years. President George W. Bush advanced a series of tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, but Washington hasn't completed a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. tax code since 1986.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Previous GOP attempts have barely gotten out of the gate, blocked by competing business interests and the difficult trade-offs needed to lower tax rates without drastically increasing budget deficits.</p>
<p>Republicans will also have to deal with other issues, including preventing a lapse in government funding in April and raising the federal debt limit in the fall.</p>
<p>Republicans have been planning to advance the tax bill through a process known as reconciliation that would allow them to pass it without Democratic votes. Those rules forbid the plan from increasing budget deficits beyond the budget window, typically 10 years.</p>
<p>Congressional leaders had attempted to use the same legislative vehicle to advance the health-care bill without attracting Democratic support. It ultimately left them with a thin margin for error in the face of internal party divisions.</p>
<p>The stalled effort to replace Obamacare creates new challenges for the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, a point Mr. Ryan conceded Friday. GOP leaders had said the health bill would pave the way to a major tax bill. Repealing Obamacare would cut spending on health-care subsidies and cut $1 trillion in taxes.</p>
<p>Mr. Ryan said Friday the health bill's taxes would now remain and that they wouldn't be repealed as part of the broader tax effort. The upshot is that levies on health-care providers and high-income individuals would remain in place for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>"Defeat on health care is a blow that could make it harder to pass a more ambitious tax plan such as the one proposed by House Republicans," said Andy Laperriere, a policy strategist at research firm Cornerstone Macro LP. He said the odds had gone up that the ultimate product "tinkers around the margins and is a disappointment to the market."</p>
<p>Mr. Mnuchin dismissed any suggestion that, for political expedience, the White House would forsake comprehensive legislation by seeking instead to pass a handful of smaller tax bills.</p>
<p>"We're not cutting this up and doing little pieces at a time," he said Friday.</p>
<p>Some Trump supporters have criticized the administration for pursuing health-care legislation ahead of the tax overhaul, but Mr. Mnuchin said the administration had taken that route because the tax plan wasn't finished.</p>
<p>"We are designing it from scratch," he said. "We would not have been ready to go a month ago on tax reform and now we are."</p>
<p>Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has said his panel will move a major tax bill by the end of the spring, but no bill has been released.</p>
<p>As on health care, Republicans already have faced some divisions on taxes, including over how much they should be allowed to add to deficits, and whether they should come up with new sources of revenue to make up for lower tax rates.</p>
<p>The House Republican plan includes a border-adjustment provision that would tax imports and remove taxes from U.S. exports to raise nearly $1 trillion in new revenue, but the provision has met fierce resistance from some Republican lawmakers in the Senate.</p>
<p>Mr. Mnuchin said the administration has reservations about the border-adjustment provision and said he was worried about how currency movements that result from those tax changes could create headwinds for U.S. exporters.</p>
<p>"It is a very complicated issue," he said. "Whatever we do, we want to make sure it's simple and it works."</p>
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Republicans Turn Eyes to Tax Overhaul After Health-Care Bill Falls Short
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http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/03/24/republicans-turn-eyes-to-tax-overhaul-after-health-care-bill-falls-short.html
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2017-03-24
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Republicans Turn Eyes to Tax Overhaul After Health-Care Bill Falls Short
<p />
<p>A chorus of Republicans said Friday they would turn their attention to overhauling the U.S. tax code after their legislation to repeal and replace major provisions of the Affordable Care Act couldn't draw enough vote to clear the GOP-controlled House.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) said he had spoken with President Donald Trump and his top advisers about moving onto the tax plan. "We have more agreement on the need and nature of tax reform," Mr. Ryan told reporters.</p>
<p>From the Oval Office late Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump told reporters "we are going, right now, for tax reform."</p>
<p>Earlier Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, at an event in Washington sponsored by media company Axios, said the administration's forthcoming plan to overhaul the U.S. tax code would face smoother sailing than the plan to revamp health-insurance markets that unraveled Friday.</p>
<p>"Health care is a very, very complicated issue," Mr. Mnuchin said. Redesigning the tax code "is a lot simpler."</p>
<p>Taxes could be a challenge as well, however, and lawmakers have been talking about rewriting the tax code for years. President George W. Bush advanced a series of tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, but Washington hasn't completed a comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. tax code since 1986.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Previous GOP attempts have barely gotten out of the gate, blocked by competing business interests and the difficult trade-offs needed to lower tax rates without drastically increasing budget deficits.</p>
<p>Republicans will also have to deal with other issues, including preventing a lapse in government funding in April and raising the federal debt limit in the fall.</p>
<p>Republicans have been planning to advance the tax bill through a process known as reconciliation that would allow them to pass it without Democratic votes. Those rules forbid the plan from increasing budget deficits beyond the budget window, typically 10 years.</p>
<p>Congressional leaders had attempted to use the same legislative vehicle to advance the health-care bill without attracting Democratic support. It ultimately left them with a thin margin for error in the face of internal party divisions.</p>
<p>The stalled effort to replace Obamacare creates new challenges for the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, a point Mr. Ryan conceded Friday. GOP leaders had said the health bill would pave the way to a major tax bill. Repealing Obamacare would cut spending on health-care subsidies and cut $1 trillion in taxes.</p>
<p>Mr. Ryan said Friday the health bill's taxes would now remain and that they wouldn't be repealed as part of the broader tax effort. The upshot is that levies on health-care providers and high-income individuals would remain in place for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>"Defeat on health care is a blow that could make it harder to pass a more ambitious tax plan such as the one proposed by House Republicans," said Andy Laperriere, a policy strategist at research firm Cornerstone Macro LP. He said the odds had gone up that the ultimate product "tinkers around the margins and is a disappointment to the market."</p>
<p>Mr. Mnuchin dismissed any suggestion that, for political expedience, the White House would forsake comprehensive legislation by seeking instead to pass a handful of smaller tax bills.</p>
<p>"We're not cutting this up and doing little pieces at a time," he said Friday.</p>
<p>Some Trump supporters have criticized the administration for pursuing health-care legislation ahead of the tax overhaul, but Mr. Mnuchin said the administration had taken that route because the tax plan wasn't finished.</p>
<p>"We are designing it from scratch," he said. "We would not have been ready to go a month ago on tax reform and now we are."</p>
<p>Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has said his panel will move a major tax bill by the end of the spring, but no bill has been released.</p>
<p>As on health care, Republicans already have faced some divisions on taxes, including over how much they should be allowed to add to deficits, and whether they should come up with new sources of revenue to make up for lower tax rates.</p>
<p>The House Republican plan includes a border-adjustment provision that would tax imports and remove taxes from U.S. exports to raise nearly $1 trillion in new revenue, but the provision has met fierce resistance from some Republican lawmakers in the Senate.</p>
<p>Mr. Mnuchin said the administration has reservations about the border-adjustment provision and said he was worried about how currency movements that result from those tax changes could create headwinds for U.S. exporters.</p>
<p>"It is a very complicated issue," he said. "Whatever we do, we want to make sure it's simple and it works."</p>
| 6,760 |
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<p>TUCSON, Ariz. — Authorities have found about 50 to 60 pounds of marijuana they believe smugglers tried to get into Arizona via a sewer pipe that runs through the U.S. and Mexico.</p>
<p>The four bundles caused the sewer line to back up and spill into a Nogales, Arizona, home. They believe smugglers sent the drugs through the sewer in Mexico and that someone in the U.S. side caught them by approaching the sewer through an illegal tunnel under the house.</p>
<p>City officials discovered waste coming out of the house on Sunday, said City Manager Shane Dille. A video feed showed bundles blocking the sewage line, but it was two days before the city could get to the packages.</p>
<p>The spill destroyed the house near the border and affected two businesses nearby. The city has been cleaning the area and on Tuesday night discovered the bundles of marijuana in the sewage line, Dille said.</p>
<p>Police have made no arrests, and an investigation is ongoing, Dille said.</p>
<p>Dille said it appears nobody lived at the house with the underground tunnel, and that the owner lives out of state and pays a local property management company to rent the home.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
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About 60 pounds of pot found in sewer line near border
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https://abqjournal.com/609744/about-60-pounds-of-pot-found-in-sewer-line-near-border.html
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2015-07-08
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About 60 pounds of pot found in sewer line near border
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>TUCSON, Ariz. — Authorities have found about 50 to 60 pounds of marijuana they believe smugglers tried to get into Arizona via a sewer pipe that runs through the U.S. and Mexico.</p>
<p>The four bundles caused the sewer line to back up and spill into a Nogales, Arizona, home. They believe smugglers sent the drugs through the sewer in Mexico and that someone in the U.S. side caught them by approaching the sewer through an illegal tunnel under the house.</p>
<p>City officials discovered waste coming out of the house on Sunday, said City Manager Shane Dille. A video feed showed bundles blocking the sewage line, but it was two days before the city could get to the packages.</p>
<p>The spill destroyed the house near the border and affected two businesses nearby. The city has been cleaning the area and on Tuesday night discovered the bundles of marijuana in the sewage line, Dille said.</p>
<p>Police have made no arrests, and an investigation is ongoing, Dille said.</p>
<p>Dille said it appears nobody lived at the house with the underground tunnel, and that the owner lives out of state and pays a local property management company to rent the home.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 6,761 |
<p>An 81-year-old woman is suing a Connecticut hospital over injuries she suffered after falling off an operating table post-surgery.</p>
<p>Attorneys for Florence Fiedler of New Canaan filed the lawsuit against Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven Superior Court, <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OPERATING_TABLE_FALL?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT" type="external">The Associated Press reported</a>.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/reagans-blood-be-auctioned-or-so-it-seems" type="external">Reagan's blood reportedly to be auctioned</a></p>
<p>According to the litigation, Fiedler fell off the operating table following pacemaker implant surgery in 2010. She suffered fractures of the hip and collarbone, a traumatic head injury that resulted in bleeding under her skull and other injuries, according to the AP.</p>
<p>"Despite months of therapy, Mrs. Fiedler now must face daily pain for the rest of her life. She had to relearn how to walk and was transformed from an independent spry energetic woman enjoying her golden years to someone dependent on others who is now a shut-in,"&#160;James Horwitz, who represents Fiedler, <a href="http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Suit-Woman-hurt-after-falling-off-operating-table-3577162.php" type="external">told the Connecticut Post</a>.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/facebook-linked-divorce-zuckerberg-marriage-doomed" type="external">Facebook linked to divorce: Is Zuckerberg marriage doomed?&#160;</a></p>
<p>The lawsuit alleges that Fiedler's doctor, Joseph Akar, and hospital officials left her unattended after the operation and did not realize she was still recovering from the medications she received during the surgery, putting her at higher risk for a fall, according to the Post.</p>
<p>The litigation, which also names the university, seeks more than $15,000 in damages.</p>
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Florence Fielder falls off operating table, sues Connecticut hospital
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https://pri.org/stories/2012-05-22/florence-fielder-falls-operating-table-sues-connecticut-hospital
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2012-05-22
| 3left-center
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Florence Fielder falls off operating table, sues Connecticut hospital
<p>An 81-year-old woman is suing a Connecticut hospital over injuries she suffered after falling off an operating table post-surgery.</p>
<p>Attorneys for Florence Fiedler of New Canaan filed the lawsuit against Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven Superior Court, <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OPERATING_TABLE_FALL?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT" type="external">The Associated Press reported</a>.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/reagans-blood-be-auctioned-or-so-it-seems" type="external">Reagan's blood reportedly to be auctioned</a></p>
<p>According to the litigation, Fiedler fell off the operating table following pacemaker implant surgery in 2010. She suffered fractures of the hip and collarbone, a traumatic head injury that resulted in bleeding under her skull and other injuries, according to the AP.</p>
<p>"Despite months of therapy, Mrs. Fiedler now must face daily pain for the rest of her life. She had to relearn how to walk and was transformed from an independent spry energetic woman enjoying her golden years to someone dependent on others who is now a shut-in,"&#160;James Horwitz, who represents Fiedler, <a href="http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Suit-Woman-hurt-after-falling-off-operating-table-3577162.php" type="external">told the Connecticut Post</a>.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/facebook-linked-divorce-zuckerberg-marriage-doomed" type="external">Facebook linked to divorce: Is Zuckerberg marriage doomed?&#160;</a></p>
<p>The lawsuit alleges that Fiedler's doctor, Joseph Akar, and hospital officials left her unattended after the operation and did not realize she was still recovering from the medications she received during the surgery, putting her at higher risk for a fall, according to the Post.</p>
<p>The litigation, which also names the university, seeks more than $15,000 in damages.</p>
| 6,762 |
<p>TOKYO — Nothing exposes the toothlessness of Japanese foreign policy quite like a bit of saber rattling on the Korean peninsula.</p>
<p>North Korea's launch of seven ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on July 4 have certainly raised fears here. The Pyongyang regime's choice of the U.S. independence holiday for its biggest single-day barrage of missiles in three years shows the display of military might was a message intended for Washington.</p>
<p>Tensions in Japan have been high since North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25, weeks after it test-fired a long-range rocket that flew over the Japanese archipelago before splashing harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>The trajectory of that missile is justification enough, Tokyo says, for treating every test as a dress rehearsal for a bona fide strike, with all the cataclysmic consequences that would have for the word’s second biggest economy.</p>
<p>Those fears were brought into even sharper focus with the July 4 missiles as well as an earlier launch of four short-range missiles last week.</p>
<p>In the past, as now, Japan’s response has been confined to spirited, though largely ignored, condemnations.</p>
<p>In many ways, Tokyo's lack of diplomatic clout has been mirrored in the U.N. Security Council: The May nuclear test was, after all, a brazen violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, agreed after the North’s first nuclear test in 2006, banning any activity related to its ballistic missile program.</p>
<p>It was only after the second nuclear test — a move that strained the North’s ties even with its allies in Beijing and Moscow — that the Security Council bared its teeth, calling on member states to enforce bans on all North Korean weapons exports and imports of all but the smallest arms.</p>
<p>Although the measures constitute a more muscular response than the presidential statement of concern that greeted North Korea’s ballistic missile test in early April, it remains to be seen whether they will be followed up in the face of increasingly unpredictable behavior by the regime.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Japan’s options for bilateral action appear limited.</p>
<p>Other correspondents have used this site to discuss the <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/southkorea/090527/time-encourage-japan-and-south-korea-go-nuclear" type="external">likelihood of Japan developing an independent nuclear deterrent</a>, a move that even with the biggest political will in the world seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>For now, the talk is of beefing up Japan’s conventional capabilities in tandem with fresh efforts to squeeze the money supply from ethnic North Koreans in Japan to their homeland.</p>
<p>For its part, North Korea has threatened to shoot down Japanese planes accused of spying on missile launch pads and a similarly fearsome response if Japan joins inspections of vessels suspected of carrying banned weapons.</p>
<p>Since the North sent an intercontinental Taepodong-2 missile fizzing over Japan in 1998, Tokyo has spent billions of dollars on developing a missile shield with the U.S. and launched satellites capable of spying on the secretive regime.</p>
<p>While recently published defense guidelines call for a bigger, better equipped military, government officials insist Japan will not waver from its constitutional commitment to act only in self-defense.</p>
<p>The idea that the world’s only officially pacifist nation will develop a first-strike capability is pure hawkish fantasy, said the defense minister, Yasukazu Hamada.</p>
<p>“We have … made clear that we do not use force in order to resolve conflict situations and so whatever steps we take will be only for defense,” he said.</p>
<p>But other defense experts in his Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council disagree, proposing recently that Japan acquire the capability to strike enemy bases when threatened with imminent attack.</p>
<p>While Japan’s neighbors fret over this potentially momentous change in its defense stature, the influential Yomiuri newspaper has weighed in with support for the hawks.</p>
<p>A healthy Japan-U.S. security partnership, it said, must allow the former “to effectively exercise its right of collective self-defense, which is currently banned by the government’s interpretation of the constitution.”</p>
<p>On the face of it, Japan has every reason to explore measures beyond those hammered out in New York last month.</p>
<p>While its long-range capability remains technologically flawed, North Korea is believed to possess around 200 medium-range Rodong missiles capable of striking Japan. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has done nothing to quell fears that Japan will be high on Pyongyang’s list of potential targets when, and if, his weapons experts succeed in miniaturizing nuclear warheads.</p>
<p>Yet despite the high stakes, Japan finds itself in the familiar role of bit-part player.</p>
<p>In an unprecedented move, the U.S. gave its ally no advance warning of North Korea's May 25 nuclear test. And while its nemesis across the Japan Sea seeks assurances for its survival well beyond the anticipated handover of power from the ailing Kim to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, those guarantees, if they ever materialize, will come from Washington, not Tokyo.</p>
<p>"If there is any point at which [North Korea] would be serious about stopping nuclear development, it will be when the U.S. fully recognizes it as a significant and meaningful nuclear power with a deterrent capability," said Hiroyasu Akutsu, a North Korean specialist at the National Institute for Defence Studies in Tokyo.</p>
<p>“Until then, North Korea will not stop developing nuclear weapons … in other words, until the U.S. and North Korea enter nuclear disarmament talks as equal nuclear powers.</p>
<p>“I think it’s unrealistic, but that’s their aim.”</p>
<p>All of Japan will be hoping that he is right about the first part.</p>
<p>More GlobalPost dispatches from Japan:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090522/ramen-empire" type="external">The Ramen Empire</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090518/hatoyama-dynasty" type="external">The Hatoyama dynasty</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090505/naked-drunk-and-screaming-tokyo" type="external">Naked, drunk and incoherent in Tokyo</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090425/holy-mackerel-breakthrough-tuna-science" type="external">Holy mackerel: A breakthrough in tuna science?</a></p>
|
North Korean tests scare Japan
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2009-07-05/north-korean-tests-scare-japan
|
2009-07-05
| 3left-center
|
North Korean tests scare Japan
<p>TOKYO — Nothing exposes the toothlessness of Japanese foreign policy quite like a bit of saber rattling on the Korean peninsula.</p>
<p>North Korea's launch of seven ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan on July 4 have certainly raised fears here. The Pyongyang regime's choice of the U.S. independence holiday for its biggest single-day barrage of missiles in three years shows the display of military might was a message intended for Washington.</p>
<p>Tensions in Japan have been high since North Korea conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25, weeks after it test-fired a long-range rocket that flew over the Japanese archipelago before splashing harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>The trajectory of that missile is justification enough, Tokyo says, for treating every test as a dress rehearsal for a bona fide strike, with all the cataclysmic consequences that would have for the word’s second biggest economy.</p>
<p>Those fears were brought into even sharper focus with the July 4 missiles as well as an earlier launch of four short-range missiles last week.</p>
<p>In the past, as now, Japan’s response has been confined to spirited, though largely ignored, condemnations.</p>
<p>In many ways, Tokyo's lack of diplomatic clout has been mirrored in the U.N. Security Council: The May nuclear test was, after all, a brazen violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, agreed after the North’s first nuclear test in 2006, banning any activity related to its ballistic missile program.</p>
<p>It was only after the second nuclear test — a move that strained the North’s ties even with its allies in Beijing and Moscow — that the Security Council bared its teeth, calling on member states to enforce bans on all North Korean weapons exports and imports of all but the smallest arms.</p>
<p>Although the measures constitute a more muscular response than the presidential statement of concern that greeted North Korea’s ballistic missile test in early April, it remains to be seen whether they will be followed up in the face of increasingly unpredictable behavior by the regime.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Japan’s options for bilateral action appear limited.</p>
<p>Other correspondents have used this site to discuss the <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/southkorea/090527/time-encourage-japan-and-south-korea-go-nuclear" type="external">likelihood of Japan developing an independent nuclear deterrent</a>, a move that even with the biggest political will in the world seems unlikely for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>For now, the talk is of beefing up Japan’s conventional capabilities in tandem with fresh efforts to squeeze the money supply from ethnic North Koreans in Japan to their homeland.</p>
<p>For its part, North Korea has threatened to shoot down Japanese planes accused of spying on missile launch pads and a similarly fearsome response if Japan joins inspections of vessels suspected of carrying banned weapons.</p>
<p>Since the North sent an intercontinental Taepodong-2 missile fizzing over Japan in 1998, Tokyo has spent billions of dollars on developing a missile shield with the U.S. and launched satellites capable of spying on the secretive regime.</p>
<p>While recently published defense guidelines call for a bigger, better equipped military, government officials insist Japan will not waver from its constitutional commitment to act only in self-defense.</p>
<p>The idea that the world’s only officially pacifist nation will develop a first-strike capability is pure hawkish fantasy, said the defense minister, Yasukazu Hamada.</p>
<p>“We have … made clear that we do not use force in order to resolve conflict situations and so whatever steps we take will be only for defense,” he said.</p>
<p>But other defense experts in his Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council disagree, proposing recently that Japan acquire the capability to strike enemy bases when threatened with imminent attack.</p>
<p>While Japan’s neighbors fret over this potentially momentous change in its defense stature, the influential Yomiuri newspaper has weighed in with support for the hawks.</p>
<p>A healthy Japan-U.S. security partnership, it said, must allow the former “to effectively exercise its right of collective self-defense, which is currently banned by the government’s interpretation of the constitution.”</p>
<p>On the face of it, Japan has every reason to explore measures beyond those hammered out in New York last month.</p>
<p>While its long-range capability remains technologically flawed, North Korea is believed to possess around 200 medium-range Rodong missiles capable of striking Japan. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has done nothing to quell fears that Japan will be high on Pyongyang’s list of potential targets when, and if, his weapons experts succeed in miniaturizing nuclear warheads.</p>
<p>Yet despite the high stakes, Japan finds itself in the familiar role of bit-part player.</p>
<p>In an unprecedented move, the U.S. gave its ally no advance warning of North Korea's May 25 nuclear test. And while its nemesis across the Japan Sea seeks assurances for its survival well beyond the anticipated handover of power from the ailing Kim to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, those guarantees, if they ever materialize, will come from Washington, not Tokyo.</p>
<p>"If there is any point at which [North Korea] would be serious about stopping nuclear development, it will be when the U.S. fully recognizes it as a significant and meaningful nuclear power with a deterrent capability," said Hiroyasu Akutsu, a North Korean specialist at the National Institute for Defence Studies in Tokyo.</p>
<p>“Until then, North Korea will not stop developing nuclear weapons … in other words, until the U.S. and North Korea enter nuclear disarmament talks as equal nuclear powers.</p>
<p>“I think it’s unrealistic, but that’s their aim.”</p>
<p>All of Japan will be hoping that he is right about the first part.</p>
<p>More GlobalPost dispatches from Japan:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090522/ramen-empire" type="external">The Ramen Empire</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090518/hatoyama-dynasty" type="external">The Hatoyama dynasty</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090505/naked-drunk-and-screaming-tokyo" type="external">Naked, drunk and incoherent in Tokyo</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090425/holy-mackerel-breakthrough-tuna-science" type="external">Holy mackerel: A breakthrough in tuna science?</a></p>
| 6,763 |
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<p />
<p>Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s first public court hearing was delayed to July 2 after defense lawyers and federal prosecutors filed a joint request for more time to prepare.</p>
<p>U.S. Magistrate Marianne Bowler in Boston approved the request for the delay in an order posted Tuesday on the case’s online docket. The hearing, on whether there is probable cause for the case to go to trial, had been set for May 30.</p>
<p>“In view of the complex factual and legal issues presented in this case and the need for adequate time to obtain and review evidence, the parties jointly move to continue the probable cause hearing,” lawyers for both sides said in a filing late Monday.</p>
<p>Tsarnaev, 19, is accused of carrying out the April 15 attack that killed three and injured 260 with his brother Tamerlan, 26, who died after a shootout with police. Tsarnaev is being held at the Federal Medical Center Devens in Ayer, Mass., where he is recovering from wounds suffered while he attempted to elude capture.</p>
<p>Separately, Tsarnaev’s lawyer, Federal Public Defender Miriam Conrad, won a court ruling Monday giving her team access to the suspect’s suicide watch logs in prison and other data kept to track his behavior behind bars.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Hearing delayed for Boston suspect
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/201832/hearing-delayed-for-boston-suspect.html
|
2013-05-22
| 2least
|
Hearing delayed for Boston suspect
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s first public court hearing was delayed to July 2 after defense lawyers and federal prosecutors filed a joint request for more time to prepare.</p>
<p>U.S. Magistrate Marianne Bowler in Boston approved the request for the delay in an order posted Tuesday on the case’s online docket. The hearing, on whether there is probable cause for the case to go to trial, had been set for May 30.</p>
<p>“In view of the complex factual and legal issues presented in this case and the need for adequate time to obtain and review evidence, the parties jointly move to continue the probable cause hearing,” lawyers for both sides said in a filing late Monday.</p>
<p>Tsarnaev, 19, is accused of carrying out the April 15 attack that killed three and injured 260 with his brother Tamerlan, 26, who died after a shootout with police. Tsarnaev is being held at the Federal Medical Center Devens in Ayer, Mass., where he is recovering from wounds suffered while he attempted to elude capture.</p>
<p>Separately, Tsarnaev’s lawyer, Federal Public Defender Miriam Conrad, won a court ruling Monday giving her team access to the suspect’s suicide watch logs in prison and other data kept to track his behavior behind bars.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 6,764 |
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<p>PHOENIX (AP) - The Arizona House of Representatives will vote on a Senate bill that would allow ranchers to kill endangered wolves in self-defense.</p>
<p>Senate Bill 1211 would allow livestock owners to kill a Mexican wolf if one was caught attacking livestock or a person.</p>
<p>Wildlife activists say the bill violates the federal Endangered Species Act. But the bill has been watered down and now meets constitutional requirements, a staff attorney says.</p>
<p>The House has approved a similar bill that is now making its way through the Senate. Proponents say the federal government is overstepping its boundaries with its wolf-recovery program which spans several states. There are 83 Mexican wolves in both Arizona and New Mexico.</p>
<p>The House will cast a final vote on the bill on Wednesday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Bill targets federal wolf-recovery program
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/384810/bill-targets-federal-wolf-recovery-program.html
| 2least
|
Bill targets federal wolf-recovery program
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>PHOENIX (AP) - The Arizona House of Representatives will vote on a Senate bill that would allow ranchers to kill endangered wolves in self-defense.</p>
<p>Senate Bill 1211 would allow livestock owners to kill a Mexican wolf if one was caught attacking livestock or a person.</p>
<p>Wildlife activists say the bill violates the federal Endangered Species Act. But the bill has been watered down and now meets constitutional requirements, a staff attorney says.</p>
<p>The House has approved a similar bill that is now making its way through the Senate. Proponents say the federal government is overstepping its boundaries with its wolf-recovery program which spans several states. There are 83 Mexican wolves in both Arizona and New Mexico.</p>
<p>The House will cast a final vote on the bill on Wednesday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 6,765 |
|
<p>Nov. 7 (UPI) — After a downgrade on its credit rating, Oklahoma’s governor urged House leaders to move quickly to pass a measure meant to close a looming budget gap.</p>
<p>House leaders in Oklahoma <a href="https://www.okhouse.gov/Media/News_Story.aspx?NewsID=5295" type="external">said last week</a> they were leading the way in working in bipartisan fashion to address lingering budget strains. Though rich in oil and gas, the state’s governor said looming pressures were addressed with only short-term solutions.</p>
<p>“I have warned lawmakers for the past three years that we need to address our budget’s structural deficits instead of continuing to kick the can down the road by depleting available cash and using one-time funds,” Gov. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mary-Fallin/" type="external">Mary Fallin</a> said in <a href="https://www.ok.gov/triton/modules/newsroom/newsroom_article.php?id=223&amp;article_id=37568" type="external">a statement</a>.</p>
<p>Oklahoma is one of the most significant producers of crude oil in the United States, accounting for about 4 percent of the nation’s total. It hosts some of the largest deposits of shale oil and gas in the country and the trading hub in Cushing is considered the most significant entity of its kind in North America.</p>
<p>Shale states like Oklahoma faced economic hardships last year because the low price of oil made it expensive to work in the cost-intensive basins in the state. Fallin <a href="https://www.upi.com/Shale-state-of-Oklahoma-says-thank-you-to-OPEC/9081480687179/" type="external">in December</a> said a decision by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to limit production was welcome news for her state.</p>
<p>The OPEC move, which could last into 2018, helped support higher crude oil prices. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark for the price of oil, hit its highest level in more than two years in Monday trading and is up nearly 10 percent since the start of the year.</p>
<p>Still, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday it issued a “credit-negative” rating to Oklahoma because of its inability to find lasting budget solutions. After six weeks in special session, the state Senate moved in favor of a budget measure, but <a href="https://www.ok.gov/triton/modules/newsroom/newsroom_article.php?id=223&amp;article_id=37569#" type="external">the governor said</a> “we will still have a budget hole” next year.</p>
<p>The bill, which now heads back to the state House, would double the tax rate on oil and gas production at new wells, impose higher motor fuel taxes and introduce a new sin tax on cigarettes.</p>
<p>Taxes on oil and gas production generated $52 million <a href="https://www.upi.com/Shale-rich-Oklahoma-sees-economic-gains/1241509968255/" type="external">in October</a>, a jump of 48.4 percent from last year. Compared with September, however, tax collections from oil and gas grew just 3.7 percent.</p>
|
Oklahoma still scrambling with budget despite oil price trends
| false |
https://newsline.com/oklahoma-still-scrambling-with-budget-despite-oil-price-trends/
|
2017-11-07
| 1right-center
|
Oklahoma still scrambling with budget despite oil price trends
<p>Nov. 7 (UPI) — After a downgrade on its credit rating, Oklahoma’s governor urged House leaders to move quickly to pass a measure meant to close a looming budget gap.</p>
<p>House leaders in Oklahoma <a href="https://www.okhouse.gov/Media/News_Story.aspx?NewsID=5295" type="external">said last week</a> they were leading the way in working in bipartisan fashion to address lingering budget strains. Though rich in oil and gas, the state’s governor said looming pressures were addressed with only short-term solutions.</p>
<p>“I have warned lawmakers for the past three years that we need to address our budget’s structural deficits instead of continuing to kick the can down the road by depleting available cash and using one-time funds,” Gov. <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Mary-Fallin/" type="external">Mary Fallin</a> said in <a href="https://www.ok.gov/triton/modules/newsroom/newsroom_article.php?id=223&amp;article_id=37568" type="external">a statement</a>.</p>
<p>Oklahoma is one of the most significant producers of crude oil in the United States, accounting for about 4 percent of the nation’s total. It hosts some of the largest deposits of shale oil and gas in the country and the trading hub in Cushing is considered the most significant entity of its kind in North America.</p>
<p>Shale states like Oklahoma faced economic hardships last year because the low price of oil made it expensive to work in the cost-intensive basins in the state. Fallin <a href="https://www.upi.com/Shale-state-of-Oklahoma-says-thank-you-to-OPEC/9081480687179/" type="external">in December</a> said a decision by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to limit production was welcome news for her state.</p>
<p>The OPEC move, which could last into 2018, helped support higher crude oil prices. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark for the price of oil, hit its highest level in more than two years in Monday trading and is up nearly 10 percent since the start of the year.</p>
<p>Still, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday it issued a “credit-negative” rating to Oklahoma because of its inability to find lasting budget solutions. After six weeks in special session, the state Senate moved in favor of a budget measure, but <a href="https://www.ok.gov/triton/modules/newsroom/newsroom_article.php?id=223&amp;article_id=37569#" type="external">the governor said</a> “we will still have a budget hole” next year.</p>
<p>The bill, which now heads back to the state House, would double the tax rate on oil and gas production at new wells, impose higher motor fuel taxes and introduce a new sin tax on cigarettes.</p>
<p>Taxes on oil and gas production generated $52 million <a href="https://www.upi.com/Shale-rich-Oklahoma-sees-economic-gains/1241509968255/" type="external">in October</a>, a jump of 48.4 percent from last year. Compared with September, however, tax collections from oil and gas grew just 3.7 percent.</p>
| 6,766 |
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) – Average retail U.S. gasoline prices rose by a further 1 percent to $2.621 a gallon on Sunday, even as several oil refineries began to recover operations after being knocked out by Hurricane Harvey, according to motorists advocacy group AAA.</p>
<p>Retail gasoline prices were up from 2.59 a gallon on Saturday and up 10.9 percent from the average price a week ago.</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>
|
U.S. average retail gasoline price rises again: AAA
| false |
https://newsline.com/u-s-average-retail-gasoline-price-rises-again-aaa/
|
2017-09-03
| 1right-center
|
U.S. average retail gasoline price rises again: AAA
<p>NEW YORK (Reuters) – Average retail U.S. gasoline prices rose by a further 1 percent to $2.621 a gallon on Sunday, even as several oil refineries began to recover operations after being knocked out by Hurricane Harvey, according to motorists advocacy group AAA.</p>
<p>Retail gasoline prices were up from 2.59 a gallon on Saturday and up 10.9 percent from the average price a week ago.</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>
| 6,767 |
<p>Bedford 57, Salem 27</p>
<p>Bishop Guertin 48, Merrimack 32</p>
<p>Bow 51, ConVal 29</p>
<p>Dover 67, Keene 54</p>
<p>Epping 42, Derryfield 21</p>
<p>Exeter 69, Spaulding 53</p>
<p>Hollis/Brookline 60, Kearsarge 32</p>
<p>Hopkinton 62, Winnisquam 25</p>
<p>Kennett 44, Bishop Brady 38</p>
<p>Laconia 52, Souhegan 40</p>
<p>Lebanon 64, Merrimack Valley 52</p>
<p>Littleton 41, Gorham 25</p>
<p>Londonderry 59, Concord 34</p>
<p>Mascenic Regional 55, Wilton-Lyndeborough 35</p>
<p>Monadnock 54, Hillsboro-Deering 17</p>
<p>Nashua North 49, Alvirne 29</p>
<p>Newfound Regional 49, Berlin 39</p>
<p>Pembroke Academy 51, Coe-Brown 26</p>
<p>Portsmouth 61, Manchester West 11</p>
<p>Raymond 66, Somersworth 32</p>
<p>White Mountains 50, Groveton 47</p>
<p>Windham 67, Timberlane 28</p>
<p>Winnacunnet 32, Manchester Central 24</p>
<p>Bedford 57, Salem 27</p>
<p>Bishop Guertin 48, Merrimack 32</p>
<p>Bow 51, ConVal 29</p>
<p>Dover 67, Keene 54</p>
<p>Epping 42, Derryfield 21</p>
<p>Exeter 69, Spaulding 53</p>
<p>Hollis/Brookline 60, Kearsarge 32</p>
<p>Hopkinton 62, Winnisquam 25</p>
<p>Kennett 44, Bishop Brady 38</p>
<p>Laconia 52, Souhegan 40</p>
<p>Lebanon 64, Merrimack Valley 52</p>
<p>Littleton 41, Gorham 25</p>
<p>Londonderry 59, Concord 34</p>
<p>Mascenic Regional 55, Wilton-Lyndeborough 35</p>
<p>Monadnock 54, Hillsboro-Deering 17</p>
<p>Nashua North 49, Alvirne 29</p>
<p>Newfound Regional 49, Berlin 39</p>
<p>Pembroke Academy 51, Coe-Brown 26</p>
<p>Portsmouth 61, Manchester West 11</p>
<p>Raymond 66, Somersworth 32</p>
<p>White Mountains 50, Groveton 47</p>
<p>Windham 67, Timberlane 28</p>
<p>Winnacunnet 32, Manchester Central 24</p>
|
Tuesday's Scores
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/831352df953e4715b273a1281635e847
|
2018-01-10
| 2least
|
Tuesday's Scores
<p>Bedford 57, Salem 27</p>
<p>Bishop Guertin 48, Merrimack 32</p>
<p>Bow 51, ConVal 29</p>
<p>Dover 67, Keene 54</p>
<p>Epping 42, Derryfield 21</p>
<p>Exeter 69, Spaulding 53</p>
<p>Hollis/Brookline 60, Kearsarge 32</p>
<p>Hopkinton 62, Winnisquam 25</p>
<p>Kennett 44, Bishop Brady 38</p>
<p>Laconia 52, Souhegan 40</p>
<p>Lebanon 64, Merrimack Valley 52</p>
<p>Littleton 41, Gorham 25</p>
<p>Londonderry 59, Concord 34</p>
<p>Mascenic Regional 55, Wilton-Lyndeborough 35</p>
<p>Monadnock 54, Hillsboro-Deering 17</p>
<p>Nashua North 49, Alvirne 29</p>
<p>Newfound Regional 49, Berlin 39</p>
<p>Pembroke Academy 51, Coe-Brown 26</p>
<p>Portsmouth 61, Manchester West 11</p>
<p>Raymond 66, Somersworth 32</p>
<p>White Mountains 50, Groveton 47</p>
<p>Windham 67, Timberlane 28</p>
<p>Winnacunnet 32, Manchester Central 24</p>
<p>Bedford 57, Salem 27</p>
<p>Bishop Guertin 48, Merrimack 32</p>
<p>Bow 51, ConVal 29</p>
<p>Dover 67, Keene 54</p>
<p>Epping 42, Derryfield 21</p>
<p>Exeter 69, Spaulding 53</p>
<p>Hollis/Brookline 60, Kearsarge 32</p>
<p>Hopkinton 62, Winnisquam 25</p>
<p>Kennett 44, Bishop Brady 38</p>
<p>Laconia 52, Souhegan 40</p>
<p>Lebanon 64, Merrimack Valley 52</p>
<p>Littleton 41, Gorham 25</p>
<p>Londonderry 59, Concord 34</p>
<p>Mascenic Regional 55, Wilton-Lyndeborough 35</p>
<p>Monadnock 54, Hillsboro-Deering 17</p>
<p>Nashua North 49, Alvirne 29</p>
<p>Newfound Regional 49, Berlin 39</p>
<p>Pembroke Academy 51, Coe-Brown 26</p>
<p>Portsmouth 61, Manchester West 11</p>
<p>Raymond 66, Somersworth 32</p>
<p>White Mountains 50, Groveton 47</p>
<p>Windham 67, Timberlane 28</p>
<p>Winnacunnet 32, Manchester Central 24</p>
| 6,768 |
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<p>Copyright © 2013 Albuquerque Journal</p>
<p>When it comes to plutonium accounting, 98.34 percent accuracy is not good enough.</p>
<p>In a recent random inspection by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General, Los Alamos National Laboratory fell short of the 99 percent accuracy rate in accounting for the lab’s inventory of weapons-grade nuclear materials, including plutonium used in the hearts of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Failure to meet the exacting standard was one of a number of issues called out by the inspection team, which concluded that the lab, six years after similar problems were documented, “continued to experience problems with the accountability of certain nuclear materials.”</p>
<p>Because of the attractiveness of plutonium and other weapons-usable nuclear material to terrorists and nations seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, U.S. accounting standards for the materials are strict.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>To test the lab’s performance, inspectors picked an inventory list of 1,564 items, which represented a subset of the lab’s nuclear materials in storage. Of that list, inventory listings for 1,538 matched the actual location and contents of the nuclear material storage containers, with 26 errors.</p>
<p>That was too many errors, according to inspectors, whose report was made public Tuesday. They also found cases where items were combined in a single container without updating records to reflect the change. And they found cases where felt-tip pens had been used to mark nuclear material containers, “causing difficulty in reading the item identification number.”</p>
<p>The problems, the inspectors found, were the result of lab managers who “did not always provide effective oversight to ensure the control and accountability of nuclear materials.”</p>
<p>A lab spokesman did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment about the report. But in written responses, lab management generally agreed with the findings, including a pledge to increase the number of routine inventories as needed. The National Nuclear Security Administration also agreed to review its policy on the use of felt-tip pens to mark nuclear material containers.</p>
|
Plutonium accounting falls short, DOE finds
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/225063/plutonium-accounting-falls-short-doe-finds.html
| 2least
|
Plutonium accounting falls short, DOE finds
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Copyright © 2013 Albuquerque Journal</p>
<p>When it comes to plutonium accounting, 98.34 percent accuracy is not good enough.</p>
<p>In a recent random inspection by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General, Los Alamos National Laboratory fell short of the 99 percent accuracy rate in accounting for the lab’s inventory of weapons-grade nuclear materials, including plutonium used in the hearts of nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>Failure to meet the exacting standard was one of a number of issues called out by the inspection team, which concluded that the lab, six years after similar problems were documented, “continued to experience problems with the accountability of certain nuclear materials.”</p>
<p>Because of the attractiveness of plutonium and other weapons-usable nuclear material to terrorists and nations seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, U.S. accounting standards for the materials are strict.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>To test the lab’s performance, inspectors picked an inventory list of 1,564 items, which represented a subset of the lab’s nuclear materials in storage. Of that list, inventory listings for 1,538 matched the actual location and contents of the nuclear material storage containers, with 26 errors.</p>
<p>That was too many errors, according to inspectors, whose report was made public Tuesday. They also found cases where items were combined in a single container without updating records to reflect the change. And they found cases where felt-tip pens had been used to mark nuclear material containers, “causing difficulty in reading the item identification number.”</p>
<p>The problems, the inspectors found, were the result of lab managers who “did not always provide effective oversight to ensure the control and accountability of nuclear materials.”</p>
<p>A lab spokesman did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment about the report. But in written responses, lab management generally agreed with the findings, including a pledge to increase the number of routine inventories as needed. The National Nuclear Security Administration also agreed to review its policy on the use of felt-tip pens to mark nuclear material containers.</p>
| 6,769 |
|
<p><a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire</a> says…</p>
<p>Not all music is mindless trash, some artists are working to spread important political messages. Is it any wonder that you probably haven’t heard of them?</p>
<p>In this new series of posts, we will be looking to bring you music and artists concerned with exposing the truth about political realities. Our first artist is NxtGen, from the hip-hop and grime genre, hailing from&#160;Loughborough, UK.</p>
<p>NxtGen’s song ‘God Save The Queen‘ takes aim at the unelected institution for being parasitic, sucking the life out of the British economy, while poor people are malnourished, using food banks and left to die in the streets.</p>
<p>Plato&#160;said “music gives soul to the universe”, so&#160;let’s make it a good soul.</p>
<p>Listen to the track, “Austerity” here…</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Please leave your comments on other artists you’d like to see in this series!</p>
<p>FIND MORE MUSIC WITH A MESSAGE SOON HERE:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Music&#160;Files</a>– <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
|
Music With A Message: NxtGen – ‘Austerity’
| true |
http://21stcenturywire.com/2015/02/10/music-with-a-message-nxtgen-god-save-the-queen/
|
2015-02-10
| 4left
|
Music With A Message: NxtGen – ‘Austerity’
<p><a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire</a> says…</p>
<p>Not all music is mindless trash, some artists are working to spread important political messages. Is it any wonder that you probably haven’t heard of them?</p>
<p>In this new series of posts, we will be looking to bring you music and artists concerned with exposing the truth about political realities. Our first artist is NxtGen, from the hip-hop and grime genre, hailing from&#160;Loughborough, UK.</p>
<p>NxtGen’s song ‘God Save The Queen‘ takes aim at the unelected institution for being parasitic, sucking the life out of the British economy, while poor people are malnourished, using food banks and left to die in the streets.</p>
<p>Plato&#160;said “music gives soul to the universe”, so&#160;let’s make it a good soul.</p>
<p>Listen to the track, “Austerity” here…</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Please leave your comments on other artists you’d like to see in this series!</p>
<p>FIND MORE MUSIC WITH A MESSAGE SOON HERE:&#160; <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Music&#160;Files</a>– <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
| 6,770 |
<p>RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - A massive bomb hidden in a box of fruit killed at least 20 people and injured some 70 at a farmers’ market in the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, officials said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Medical officials had initially put the death toll at 23 but later lowered it to 20. There was no explanation for the change. Ten of the injured were listed in critical condition, they said.</p>
<p>Body parts, stained clothes and patches of blood littered the ground in the wake of the attack in the wholesale fruit and vegetable market that lies between Islamabad and its twin city of Rawalpindi.</p>
<p>"I saw body parts flying in the air," fruit trader Afzal Khan told The Associated Press. "People were dying. People were crying. People were running."</p>
<p>The bomb, which officials say was in a crate of guavas, went off during morning rush hour.</p>
<p>The <a href="" type="internal">Taliban</a>initially denied responsibility for the attack in Rawalpindi, whose suburbs blend into the capital of Islamabad and which is home to the Pakistani military's headquarters. The blast occurred far from army buildings and the purpose of the attack was unclear.</p>
<p>Pakistan is in peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, which is supposed to be observing a ceasefire until April 10 but is riven with internal divisions. Militants are demanding the release of hundreds of prisoners and the withdrawal of the army from some of the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, a <a href="On%20Tuesday,%20a%20bomb%20blast%20killed%2017%20people%20and%20injured%2029%20when%20it%20ripped%20through%20a%20passenger%20train%20travelling%20through%20southern%20Pakistan%20on%20Tuesday,%20police%20said." type="external">bomb blast killed 17 people and injured 29</a> when it ripped through a passenger train travelling through southern Pakistan on Tuesday, police said.</p>
<p>Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p>
|
Bomb Hidden in Fruit Crate Kills 20 in Pakistan’s Capital
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/news/world/bomb-hidden-fruit-crate-kills-20-pakistans-capital-n75401
|
2014-04-09
| 3left-center
|
Bomb Hidden in Fruit Crate Kills 20 in Pakistan’s Capital
<p>RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - A massive bomb hidden in a box of fruit killed at least 20 people and injured some 70 at a farmers’ market in the outskirts of Pakistan’s capital, officials said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Medical officials had initially put the death toll at 23 but later lowered it to 20. There was no explanation for the change. Ten of the injured were listed in critical condition, they said.</p>
<p>Body parts, stained clothes and patches of blood littered the ground in the wake of the attack in the wholesale fruit and vegetable market that lies between Islamabad and its twin city of Rawalpindi.</p>
<p>"I saw body parts flying in the air," fruit trader Afzal Khan told The Associated Press. "People were dying. People were crying. People were running."</p>
<p>The bomb, which officials say was in a crate of guavas, went off during morning rush hour.</p>
<p>The <a href="" type="internal">Taliban</a>initially denied responsibility for the attack in Rawalpindi, whose suburbs blend into the capital of Islamabad and which is home to the Pakistani military's headquarters. The blast occurred far from army buildings and the purpose of the attack was unclear.</p>
<p>Pakistan is in peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, which is supposed to be observing a ceasefire until April 10 but is riven with internal divisions. Militants are demanding the release of hundreds of prisoners and the withdrawal of the army from some of the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, a <a href="On%20Tuesday,%20a%20bomb%20blast%20killed%2017%20people%20and%20injured%2029%20when%20it%20ripped%20through%20a%20passenger%20train%20travelling%20through%20southern%20Pakistan%20on%20Tuesday,%20police%20said." type="external">bomb blast killed 17 people and injured 29</a> when it ripped through a passenger train travelling through southern Pakistan on Tuesday, police said.</p>
<p>Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.</p>
| 6,771 |
<p>It was while standing naked in a room full of mosquitoes that Bart G.J. Knols, a Dutch entomologist, discovered that the insects were drawn to foot odor. The experiment was designed so that Knols could examine mosquito behavior; he wanted to learn where they would bite.</p>
<p>The information has proven valuable; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granted over $775,000 to a colleague of Knols who is designing an <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8632687/Smelly-feet-used-as-a-trap-for-mosquitoes.html" type="external">outdoor trap</a> to lure mosquitoes away from humans.&#160;</p>
<p>This isn't the only good news in malaria fighting this summer. Last week, researchers in Italy and the U.K. announced that they had successfully genetically altered male Anopheles mosquitoes to be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14422440" type="external">sterile</a>. The Anopheles mosquito which is responsible for carrying the malaria parasite, would still produce seminal fluid. As female mosquitoes only mate once in their lifetime, this innovation would result in sterile eggs.&#160;</p>
<p>These ideas, if successfully executed, will complement the already existing malaria prevention methods used today. &#160;These methods range from long lasting insecticide treated bed net and indoor residual spraying of insecticides to rapid diagnostic tests, and increases in trained health workers.&#160;[Update: A new study shows that these methods may not be as effective. <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/global-pulse/study-questions-current-malaria-prevention-approaches" type="external">Read more</a>]</p>
<p>The U.S. government, which has pledged $1.625 billion dollars as part of the President's Malaria Initiative, has been instrumental in the scale-up of these resources. Since 2005, when President Bush launched the program, over 30 million bed nets and more that 25 million rapid diagnostic tests have been distributed in the 15 focus countries.</p>
<p>The approach has worked; according to the World Health Organization, deaths due to malaria are decreasing. Between 2006 and 2008, 9 African countries including Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Ghana, have cut malaria deaths by 50 percent. However, it is estimated that 800,000 people still die from malaria each year, most of whom are children in Africa. &#160;</p>
<p>The U.S. is the second largest funder in the fight against malaria: &#160;</p>
<p />
|
U.S. Government spending on malaria
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2011-08-18/us-government-spending-malaria
|
2011-08-18
| 3left-center
|
U.S. Government spending on malaria
<p>It was while standing naked in a room full of mosquitoes that Bart G.J. Knols, a Dutch entomologist, discovered that the insects were drawn to foot odor. The experiment was designed so that Knols could examine mosquito behavior; he wanted to learn where they would bite.</p>
<p>The information has proven valuable; the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation granted over $775,000 to a colleague of Knols who is designing an <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8632687/Smelly-feet-used-as-a-trap-for-mosquitoes.html" type="external">outdoor trap</a> to lure mosquitoes away from humans.&#160;</p>
<p>This isn't the only good news in malaria fighting this summer. Last week, researchers in Italy and the U.K. announced that they had successfully genetically altered male Anopheles mosquitoes to be <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14422440" type="external">sterile</a>. The Anopheles mosquito which is responsible for carrying the malaria parasite, would still produce seminal fluid. As female mosquitoes only mate once in their lifetime, this innovation would result in sterile eggs.&#160;</p>
<p>These ideas, if successfully executed, will complement the already existing malaria prevention methods used today. &#160;These methods range from long lasting insecticide treated bed net and indoor residual spraying of insecticides to rapid diagnostic tests, and increases in trained health workers.&#160;[Update: A new study shows that these methods may not be as effective. <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/global-pulse/study-questions-current-malaria-prevention-approaches" type="external">Read more</a>]</p>
<p>The U.S. government, which has pledged $1.625 billion dollars as part of the President's Malaria Initiative, has been instrumental in the scale-up of these resources. Since 2005, when President Bush launched the program, over 30 million bed nets and more that 25 million rapid diagnostic tests have been distributed in the 15 focus countries.</p>
<p>The approach has worked; according to the World Health Organization, deaths due to malaria are decreasing. Between 2006 and 2008, 9 African countries including Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Ghana, have cut malaria deaths by 50 percent. However, it is estimated that 800,000 people still die from malaria each year, most of whom are children in Africa. &#160;</p>
<p>The U.S. is the second largest funder in the fight against malaria: &#160;</p>
<p />
| 6,772 |
<p>A UK professor reacted perfectly to Donald Trump’s tweet about the London attacks by suggesting Trump’s ignorance stems from a genetic source.</p>
<p>Donald Trump sent out a tweet that compared the&#160; <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/03/europe/london-bridge-incident/index.html" type="external">attack in London on Saturday</a>, in which 7 people were killed and 48 were injured, to the ongoing debate about gun safety in the United States.</p>
<p />
<p>UK professor Steve Peers took to Twitter to respond, suggesting that Trump had been “genetically engineered” to be “stupid.” The professor of EU Law at the University of Essex highlighted that terrorists would have been able to raise the death toll higher than 7 people if they had been armed with guns.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/03/politics/donald-trump-london-travel-ban/" type="external">Trump was also critical of the mayor of London Sadiq Khan</a> after the attacks launching a verbal assault via Twitter saying “at least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack” and “Mayor of London says there is “no reason to be alarmed!”</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
|
UK Professor Slams Trump’s Response To London Attacks With This Simple Question
| true |
http://resistancereport.com/news/uk-professor-slams-trumps-response-london-attacks-simple-question/
|
2017-06-04
| 4left
|
UK Professor Slams Trump’s Response To London Attacks With This Simple Question
<p>A UK professor reacted perfectly to Donald Trump’s tweet about the London attacks by suggesting Trump’s ignorance stems from a genetic source.</p>
<p>Donald Trump sent out a tweet that compared the&#160; <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/03/europe/london-bridge-incident/index.html" type="external">attack in London on Saturday</a>, in which 7 people were killed and 48 were injured, to the ongoing debate about gun safety in the United States.</p>
<p />
<p>UK professor Steve Peers took to Twitter to respond, suggesting that Trump had been “genetically engineered” to be “stupid.” The professor of EU Law at the University of Essex highlighted that terrorists would have been able to raise the death toll higher than 7 people if they had been armed with guns.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/03/politics/donald-trump-london-travel-ban/" type="external">Trump was also critical of the mayor of London Sadiq Khan</a> after the attacks launching a verbal assault via Twitter saying “at least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack” and “Mayor of London says there is “no reason to be alarmed!”</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
| 6,773 |
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Royals agreed with reliever Kelvin Herrera and starter Nate Karns on one-year contracts Friday to avoid arbitration, leaving reliever Brandon Maurer as their only player still on track for a hearing next month.</p>
<p>Herrera will make $7,937,500, an increase from $5,325,000. He would get a $50,000 bonus if he's an All-Star, which he was in 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>He was just 2-2 with a 4.25 ERA last season after taking on the full-time closer job.</p>
<p>Karns will make $1,375,000 in his first year of arbitration eligibility, an increase from the $571,000 he made last season. He would get a $12,500 each for 15 and 20 starts and $50,000 if he's an All-Star.</p>
<p>Karns missed most of last season after surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. He was 2-2 with a 4.17 ERA in nine games, eight of them starts, and is expected to compete for a rotation spot this spring.</p>
<p>Maurer asked for a raise from $1.9 million to $3.5 million and was offered $2.95 million.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP baseball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/MLBbaseball</a></p>
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Royals agreed with reliever Kelvin Herrera and starter Nate Karns on one-year contracts Friday to avoid arbitration, leaving reliever Brandon Maurer as their only player still on track for a hearing next month.</p>
<p>Herrera will make $7,937,500, an increase from $5,325,000. He would get a $50,000 bonus if he's an All-Star, which he was in 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>He was just 2-2 with a 4.25 ERA last season after taking on the full-time closer job.</p>
<p>Karns will make $1,375,000 in his first year of arbitration eligibility, an increase from the $571,000 he made last season. He would get a $12,500 each for 15 and 20 starts and $50,000 if he's an All-Star.</p>
<p>Karns missed most of last season after surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. He was 2-2 with a 4.17 ERA in nine games, eight of them starts, and is expected to compete for a rotation spot this spring.</p>
<p>Maurer asked for a raise from $1.9 million to $3.5 million and was offered $2.95 million.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP baseball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/MLBbaseball</a></p>
|
Kelvin Herrera, Nate Karns agree to deals with Royals
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/65fb116620ca44ffac0d04d86c00b302
|
2018-01-13
| 2least
|
Kelvin Herrera, Nate Karns agree to deals with Royals
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Royals agreed with reliever Kelvin Herrera and starter Nate Karns on one-year contracts Friday to avoid arbitration, leaving reliever Brandon Maurer as their only player still on track for a hearing next month.</p>
<p>Herrera will make $7,937,500, an increase from $5,325,000. He would get a $50,000 bonus if he's an All-Star, which he was in 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>He was just 2-2 with a 4.25 ERA last season after taking on the full-time closer job.</p>
<p>Karns will make $1,375,000 in his first year of arbitration eligibility, an increase from the $571,000 he made last season. He would get a $12,500 each for 15 and 20 starts and $50,000 if he's an All-Star.</p>
<p>Karns missed most of last season after surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. He was 2-2 with a 4.17 ERA in nine games, eight of them starts, and is expected to compete for a rotation spot this spring.</p>
<p>Maurer asked for a raise from $1.9 million to $3.5 million and was offered $2.95 million.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP baseball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/MLBbaseball</a></p>
<p>KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Royals agreed with reliever Kelvin Herrera and starter Nate Karns on one-year contracts Friday to avoid arbitration, leaving reliever Brandon Maurer as their only player still on track for a hearing next month.</p>
<p>Herrera will make $7,937,500, an increase from $5,325,000. He would get a $50,000 bonus if he's an All-Star, which he was in 2015 and 2016.</p>
<p>He was just 2-2 with a 4.25 ERA last season after taking on the full-time closer job.</p>
<p>Karns will make $1,375,000 in his first year of arbitration eligibility, an increase from the $571,000 he made last season. He would get a $12,500 each for 15 and 20 starts and $50,000 if he's an All-Star.</p>
<p>Karns missed most of last season after surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. He was 2-2 with a 4.17 ERA in nine games, eight of them starts, and is expected to compete for a rotation spot this spring.</p>
<p>Maurer asked for a raise from $1.9 million to $3.5 million and was offered $2.95 million.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP baseball: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/MLBbaseball</a></p>
| 6,774 |
<p>Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti won a confidence vote in the Lower House of Parliament on Friday, in support of the $39 billion austerity package which he plans will cause economic growth and reduce Europe's second-biggest debt, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-16/monti-s-cuts-win-broad-support-in-italian-confidence-vote.html" type="external">Bloomberg BusinessWeek</a> reported.</p>
<p>Monti easily won the vote, although there were some disagreements, with the Chamber of Deputies voting 495 to 88 in favor of the government. If the vote had been blocked, Monti and his technocrat government would have been forced to resign, just one month after he took the position, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/markets/transport-strikes-hit-italy-as-monti-puts-anti-crisis-austerity-package-to-confidence-vote/2011/12/16/gIQA63kixO_story.html" type="external">Associated Press</a>reported.</p>
<p>Read more at GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/italy/111115/italy-pm-monti-talks-government" type="external">Italy's new PM in talks with main parties</a></p>
<p>Now the measures will go to the Senate, which should vote on them before Dec. 25, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/world/europe/monti-wins-confidence-vote.html" type="external">The New York Times</a>reported. Just before the vote on Friday, Monti appeared at a conference and said Europe's response to the debt crisis "should be wrapped in a long-term sustainable approach, not just to feed short-term hunger for rigor in some countries," The Times reported.</p>
<p>"To help European construction evolve in a way that unites, not divides, we cannot afford that the crisis in the euro zone brings us ... the risk of conflicts between the virtuous North and an allegedly vicious South," he said, The Times reported.</p>
<p>Read more at GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/france/111124/italys-monti-debt-crisis-talks-sarkozy-and-merkel" type="external">Italy's Monti in crisis talks with Sarkozy, Merkel</a></p>
<p>The measures voted on by the Lower House include an overhaul of the pension system, the reinstatement of a levy on primary residences and proposals to boost growth and fight tax evasion, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported. Monti plans for this to protect Italy from the debt crisis and bring down borrowing costs. The Treasury had to pay 6.47 percent to sell five-year debt on Dec. 14, the most in more than 14 years, Bloomberg reported.</p>
<p>Right and left-wing lawmakers have both criticized Monti's reforms as too harsh on Italy's pension system, the AP reported. Monti took office just a month ago when former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was all but forced to resign. Some of Berlusconi's loyalists, who make up a large part of Parliament, denounced Monti's decision to revive a home property tax that Berlusconi eliminated in his 2008 campaign.</p>
<p>Read more at GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/italy/111117/mario-monti-save-italy-euro-crisis" type="external">Can Mario Monti save Italy?</a> &#160;</p>
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Italian PM Mario Monti easily wins confidence vote
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2011-12-16/italian-pm-mario-monti-easily-wins-confidence-vote
|
2011-12-16
| 3left-center
|
Italian PM Mario Monti easily wins confidence vote
<p>Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti won a confidence vote in the Lower House of Parliament on Friday, in support of the $39 billion austerity package which he plans will cause economic growth and reduce Europe's second-biggest debt, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-16/monti-s-cuts-win-broad-support-in-italian-confidence-vote.html" type="external">Bloomberg BusinessWeek</a> reported.</p>
<p>Monti easily won the vote, although there were some disagreements, with the Chamber of Deputies voting 495 to 88 in favor of the government. If the vote had been blocked, Monti and his technocrat government would have been forced to resign, just one month after he took the position, the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/markets/transport-strikes-hit-italy-as-monti-puts-anti-crisis-austerity-package-to-confidence-vote/2011/12/16/gIQA63kixO_story.html" type="external">Associated Press</a>reported.</p>
<p>Read more at GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/italy/111115/italy-pm-monti-talks-government" type="external">Italy's new PM in talks with main parties</a></p>
<p>Now the measures will go to the Senate, which should vote on them before Dec. 25, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/world/europe/monti-wins-confidence-vote.html" type="external">The New York Times</a>reported. Just before the vote on Friday, Monti appeared at a conference and said Europe's response to the debt crisis "should be wrapped in a long-term sustainable approach, not just to feed short-term hunger for rigor in some countries," The Times reported.</p>
<p>"To help European construction evolve in a way that unites, not divides, we cannot afford that the crisis in the euro zone brings us ... the risk of conflicts between the virtuous North and an allegedly vicious South," he said, The Times reported.</p>
<p>Read more at GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/france/111124/italys-monti-debt-crisis-talks-sarkozy-and-merkel" type="external">Italy's Monti in crisis talks with Sarkozy, Merkel</a></p>
<p>The measures voted on by the Lower House include an overhaul of the pension system, the reinstatement of a levy on primary residences and proposals to boost growth and fight tax evasion, Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported. Monti plans for this to protect Italy from the debt crisis and bring down borrowing costs. The Treasury had to pay 6.47 percent to sell five-year debt on Dec. 14, the most in more than 14 years, Bloomberg reported.</p>
<p>Right and left-wing lawmakers have both criticized Monti's reforms as too harsh on Italy's pension system, the AP reported. Monti took office just a month ago when former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was all but forced to resign. Some of Berlusconi's loyalists, who make up a large part of Parliament, denounced Monti's decision to revive a home property tax that Berlusconi eliminated in his 2008 campaign.</p>
<p>Read more at GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/italy/111117/mario-monti-save-italy-euro-crisis" type="external">Can Mario Monti save Italy?</a> &#160;</p>
| 6,775 |
<p>Renowned feminist Camille Paglia says the Democratic Party’s leaders are in “a nationwide orgy of rage and spite” that prevents them from connecting with millions of potential voters.</p>
<p>In a wide-ranging interview with The Weekly Standard, the author and professor, who supported Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders in the 2016 primary election and Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general election, said Democrats are widening an unnecessary political chasm with voters.</p>
<p>“In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite,” she <a href="https://www.weeklystandard.com/camille-paglia-on-trump-democrats-transgenderism-and-islamist-terror/article/2008464" type="external">said</a> in the interview published Thursday. “Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago — Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.</p>
<p>“How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?” she said.</p>
<p>Ms. Paglia said President Trump can be accused of “fanning the flames” of opposition, but in general he “seems to be methodically trying to fulfill his campaign promises.”</p>
<p>“There seems to be a huge conceptual gap between Trump and his most implacable critics on the left,” she said. “Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of ‘compassion’ (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) and yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers.</p>
<p>“These elite Democrats occupy an amorphous meta-realm of subjective emotion, theoretical abstractions, and refined language,” she said. “But Trump is by trade a builder who deals in the tangible, obdurate, objective world of physical materials, geometry, and construction projects, where communication often reverts to the brusque, coarse, high-impact level of pre-modern working-class life, whose daily focus was the barnyard. It’s no accident that bourgeois Victorians of the industrial era tried to purge ‘barnyard language’ out of English.”</p>
<p>Ms. Paglia concluded the interview by advising Democrats to get “off their high horse” if they plan to retake the White House in 2020.</p>
<p>The author’s latest book, “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism” is on sale now.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2017/jun/15/camille-paglia-democrats-in-nationwide-orgy-of-rag/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
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Camille Paglia: Democrats in ‘nationwide orgy of rage and spite’ over Donald Trump
| true |
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/15/camille-paglia-democrats-in-nationwide-orgy-of-rag/
|
2017-06-15
| 0right
|
Camille Paglia: Democrats in ‘nationwide orgy of rage and spite’ over Donald Trump
<p>Renowned feminist Camille Paglia says the Democratic Party’s leaders are in “a nationwide orgy of rage and spite” that prevents them from connecting with millions of potential voters.</p>
<p>In a wide-ranging interview with The Weekly Standard, the author and professor, who supported Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders in the 2016 primary election and Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the general election, said Democrats are widening an unnecessary political chasm with voters.</p>
<p>“In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite,” she <a href="https://www.weeklystandard.com/camille-paglia-on-trump-democrats-transgenderism-and-islamist-terror/article/2008464" type="external">said</a> in the interview published Thursday. “Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago — Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.</p>
<p>“How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?” she said.</p>
<p>Ms. Paglia said President Trump can be accused of “fanning the flames” of opposition, but in general he “seems to be methodically trying to fulfill his campaign promises.”</p>
<p>“There seems to be a huge conceptual gap between Trump and his most implacable critics on the left,” she said. “Many highly educated, upper-middle-class Democrats regard themselves as exemplars of ‘compassion’ (which they have elevated into a supreme political principle) and yet they routinely assail Trump voters as ignorant, callous hate-mongers.</p>
<p>“These elite Democrats occupy an amorphous meta-realm of subjective emotion, theoretical abstractions, and refined language,” she said. “But Trump is by trade a builder who deals in the tangible, obdurate, objective world of physical materials, geometry, and construction projects, where communication often reverts to the brusque, coarse, high-impact level of pre-modern working-class life, whose daily focus was the barnyard. It’s no accident that bourgeois Victorians of the industrial era tried to purge ‘barnyard language’ out of English.”</p>
<p>Ms. Paglia concluded the interview by advising Democrats to get “off their high horse” if they plan to retake the White House in 2020.</p>
<p>The author’s latest book, “Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism” is on sale now.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2017/jun/15/camille-paglia-democrats-in-nationwide-orgy-of-rag/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 6,776 |
<p>Lawmakers in Austin, Texas, stayed up late on Tuesday, thanks to State Representative Wendy Davis, who staged a filibuster to prevent a bill restricting abortion from passing before a midnight deadline expired.</p>
<p>Texas Republicans tried to push the bill through anyway, but eventually the bill missed that deadline.</p>
<p>Filibusters are pretty common here in the US but it's a tradition that often strikes outsiders as strange.</p>
<p>We wanted to find out more about filibusters: Where do they come from and what other countries, if any, use them?</p>
<p>So we contacted Gerry Loewenberg, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.</p>
|
Are Filibusters Used Outside the United States?
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2013-06-26/are-filibusters-used-outside-united-states
|
2013-06-26
| 3left-center
|
Are Filibusters Used Outside the United States?
<p>Lawmakers in Austin, Texas, stayed up late on Tuesday, thanks to State Representative Wendy Davis, who staged a filibuster to prevent a bill restricting abortion from passing before a midnight deadline expired.</p>
<p>Texas Republicans tried to push the bill through anyway, but eventually the bill missed that deadline.</p>
<p>Filibusters are pretty common here in the US but it's a tradition that often strikes outsiders as strange.</p>
<p>We wanted to find out more about filibusters: Where do they come from and what other countries, if any, use them?</p>
<p>So we contacted Gerry Loewenberg, a political science professor at the University of Iowa.</p>
| 6,777 |
<p>COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Maryland forward Ivan Bender will miss the remainder of the season with a knee injury.</p>
<p>Bender has a torn meniscus in his right knee, an injury that occurred Friday night in a game against Maryland-Baltimore County.</p>
<p>Coach Mark Turgeon said Sunday that the junior will have surgery this week.</p>
<p>Bender played in all 15 games this season, including a career-high seven starts. He was averaging 3.4 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.</p>
<p>Turgeon says of Bender: "He has developed into a strong contributor for our team and we are going to miss his leadership and presence on the court."</p>
<p>The announcement comes only days after Turgeon declared sophomore forward Justin Jackson would miss the rest of the season with a torn labrum.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="http://www.collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">www.collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
<p>COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Maryland forward Ivan Bender will miss the remainder of the season with a knee injury.</p>
<p>Bender has a torn meniscus in his right knee, an injury that occurred Friday night in a game against Maryland-Baltimore County.</p>
<p>Coach Mark Turgeon said Sunday that the junior will have surgery this week.</p>
<p>Bender played in all 15 games this season, including a career-high seven starts. He was averaging 3.4 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.</p>
<p>Turgeon says of Bender: "He has developed into a strong contributor for our team and we are going to miss his leadership and presence on the court."</p>
<p>The announcement comes only days after Turgeon declared sophomore forward Justin Jackson would miss the rest of the season with a torn labrum.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="http://www.collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">www.collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
|
Maryland forward Ivan Bender lost for season with injury
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/45d00f774e9b4e5a9b27ca5f97b52dba
|
2017-12-31
| 2least
|
Maryland forward Ivan Bender lost for season with injury
<p>COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Maryland forward Ivan Bender will miss the remainder of the season with a knee injury.</p>
<p>Bender has a torn meniscus in his right knee, an injury that occurred Friday night in a game against Maryland-Baltimore County.</p>
<p>Coach Mark Turgeon said Sunday that the junior will have surgery this week.</p>
<p>Bender played in all 15 games this season, including a career-high seven starts. He was averaging 3.4 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.</p>
<p>Turgeon says of Bender: "He has developed into a strong contributor for our team and we are going to miss his leadership and presence on the court."</p>
<p>The announcement comes only days after Turgeon declared sophomore forward Justin Jackson would miss the rest of the season with a torn labrum.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="http://www.collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">www.collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
<p>COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) — Maryland forward Ivan Bender will miss the remainder of the season with a knee injury.</p>
<p>Bender has a torn meniscus in his right knee, an injury that occurred Friday night in a game against Maryland-Baltimore County.</p>
<p>Coach Mark Turgeon said Sunday that the junior will have surgery this week.</p>
<p>Bender played in all 15 games this season, including a career-high seven starts. He was averaging 3.4 points and 2.9 rebounds per game.</p>
<p>Turgeon says of Bender: "He has developed into a strong contributor for our team and we are going to miss his leadership and presence on the court."</p>
<p>The announcement comes only days after Turgeon declared sophomore forward Justin Jackson would miss the rest of the season with a torn labrum.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP college basketball: <a href="http://www.collegebasketball.ap.org" type="external">www.collegebasketball.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_Top25</a></p>
| 6,778 |
<p>To a happily captive and wildly enthusiastic audience of cadets at West Point on May 27 Bush announced that “Difficult challenges remain in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but America is safer and the world is more secure because these two countries are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace.”</p>
<p>Three days later “US forces killed two Iraqi women – one of them about to give birth – when troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post.”</p>
<p>Then “a US artillery round landed in a small Iraqi town and police reported afterwards that two civilians were killed in [the] blast and one woman later died from her wounds, the US military said on Sunday. Three other people were also reported wounded and six houses were damaged in the town of Hibhib, north of Baghdad, after a US artillery unit fired a 155 mm round during training on Friday, it said in a statement.”</p>
<p>“The world is more secure” because American troops kill a pregnant woman and shell small Iraqi towns? Is this what the graduating class at West Point is looking forward to?</p>
<p>In Afghanistan US soldiers have been behaving in the same way as their colleagues in Iraq, opening fire on unarmed crowds and killing three Afghan policemen at a roadblock among other instances of undisciplined havoc, including the murder of helpless prisoners. Do these atrocities make the world more secure? They certainly make Afghans hate America even more, but it’s difficult to understand how that makes America safer.</p>
<p>Then there is the wondrous report from Iraq that “. . . the US military on Sunday . . . said it had detained 19 ‘terrorists’ during a search operation in eastern Baghdad on Saturday. One of the detainees ‘reported having difficulty breathing’ and died of a heart attack.” That would be funny if it did not describe such a devastating example of the treatment US soldiers and marines (especially marines) have been dealing out to detainees and others who have not been charged with carrying out a crime.</p>
<p>And it should be asked what transgression of whose laws the guerrillas effect when they fight against occupation troops in Iraq. After all, no member of the occupation forces is subject to Iraqi law or international law, or the Geneva Convention. But why should US soldiers be exempt from Iraqi national law in what Bush describes as a “democracy”?</p>
<p>No ‘Contractor’ (which is Newspeak for ‘Mercenary’) employed as a guard in Iraq or Afghanistan can be held accountable for killing an Iraqi or Afghan. And neither are soldiers of US, British and Australian Special Forces answerable to any sort of law. They kill people secretly and without being held to account for their actions by anyone on this earth. They act as police, judge, jury and executioner, all in one protected and inviolable majesty. They are the only beings in the world who can kill with complete assurance that their actions will never, ever, be questioned. How can their killings bring democracy to any country?</p>
<p>But we are assured by Bush and his minions that these people are making the world more secure by their blood-crazed cowboy antics. Not only does he make that fatuous claim but he announces, presumably seriously and without a knowing grin, that “the world is more secure because these two countries are now democracies”.</p>
<p>If Bush believes that Iraq and Afghanistan are democracies he is a lunatic. And when West Point cadets cheered his statement it showed, alas, that they have been thoroughly brainwashed. They are as blindly loyal to Bush as any member of the SS was to Adolf Hitler.</p>
<p>In Iraq and Afghanistan, both under US military domination, there is no semblance of democracy. Does anyone really think there are equal rights for women, for example? OK, if you do, then tell me this : How many women judges, clerics and police chiefs are there in Iraq and Afghanistan? How many female shopkeepers, even? And how many Christians are in positions of public responsibility? Are women’s rights covered in the West Point syllabus?</p>
<p>Both countries are Islamic. Fine. Islam is as good a religion as any other, providing brutal extremists don’t control innocent Believers. But has anyone ever seen a photograph of the wife of a political leader in Iraq or Afghanistan? There was one a few months ago when the wife of President Karzai of Afghanistan was made to sit with Laura Bush for an uncomfortable few minutes in a photo-op. Have there been any others, in these “democracies”? There are a few women politicians, for form’s sake. But women’s rights in Iraq and Afghanistan are on the same level as they are in Saudi Arabia, another Bush ally “in the cause of freedom and peace”. Women’s rights do not exist, and will never be permitted. For this reason alone it is bizarre that Bush to pronounce that there is ‘democracy’ in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Here’s a report from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Declan Walsh on June 25:</p>
<p>“Last month, inside the new national assembly in Kabul, turbaned lawmakers hurled water bottles and bloody threats at Malalai Joya, a firebrand female deputy who criticized the country’s mujahideen fighters. Now Joya says she stays in different safe houses every night and travels with three armed bodyguards.” This is democracy? How on earth can Bush state categorically that Afghanistan is ‘democratic’?</p>
<p>A recently leaked cable from America’s embassy in Iraq stated that :</p>
<p>“Two of our three female employees report stepped up harassment beginning in mid-May. One, a Shia who favors Western clothing, was advised by an unknown woman in her Baghdad neighborhood to wear a veil and not to drive her own car. She said some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.”</p>
<p>“Even at its most conservative” is Newspeak for “when Saddam Hussain was President”. But is this democracy? How can Bush even dare to speak of democracy in Iraq when his own foreign service officials are sending back information that directly contradicts his assertions? But he can. He does. And he will continue to do so.</p>
<p>Bush lives in a different world to the rest of us. It seems that nobody dares tell him what is really going on.</p>
<p>Take Afghanistan where “On June 12, representatives of Afghanistan’s major media outlets were summoned to a meeting at the National Security Directorate where they first received the list of press restrictions [which restrict] among other things, ‘Those reports that aim to represent that the fighting spirit in Afghanistan’s armed forces is weak,’ and ‘Negative propaganda, interviews and reports which are provocative or slanderous and which are against the presence [in Afghanistan] of the international coalition forces and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force]’.”</p>
<p>How can this sort of tyranny be equated with democracy? Why can nobody tell Bush what is really going on in the world?</p>
<p>His complacent and dangerous ignorance is equalled by that of the Legislature where “Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said extending amnesty to anyone responsible for killing US troops was “unconscionable.” “For heaven’s sake, we liberated that country,” Levin said on Fox News Sunday. “We got rid of a horrific dictator. We’ve paid a tremendous price. More than 2,500 Americans have given up their lives.”</p>
<p>Forget the amnesty nonsense, if only because no genuine guerrilla will take up the offer. What is astonishing is that the moron Levin imagines Bush “liberated that country”.</p>
<p>Levin’s country has certainly “paid a tremendous price” in American soldiers’ lives following the illegal Bush invasion of Iraq. (What price has Levin paid, himself, one wonders?) Nobody knows how many Iraqis have been killed, but Levin and his tub-thumping friends don’t care about them. They simply do not matter.</p>
<p>What Levin demands is that the subjugated Iraqi people who are crushed by the boots, fists and rifles of occupying troops and terrified by equally brutal Islamic militias should welcome their conquerors. They should, according to Levin, rejoice that they are liable to be blown up at any time of the day or night. They ought to be happy that their houses can be wrecked, their men tortured and killed and their women and children murdered by gung-ho happy killers wearing the uniform of liberation. The fact that US “liberators” are unable to stop them being killed by other people is irrelevant to dolts like Levin.</p>
<p>Saddam Hussain is a lousy bastard who killed thousands of people. And he, like lots of dictators round the world who either died in their beds, were killed by their own people, or prospered and are still in power, enjoyed the support of the US government for a long time. But during his regime there were never headlines like ­ and I choose this one at random from today’s news ­ “BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) June 26 – Bombs killed at least 40 people at markets in two Iraqi cities Monday.” That sort of thing simply didn’t happen before the US invasion. But Bush and Levin and the rest of the morons don’t care about reality. It doesn’t matter to them.</p>
<p>What matters to all the rest of us, however, is the conviction of the booby Levin and his dingbat followers that Iraq was in some fashion “liberated”. This is self-delusion on a grand scale.</p>
<p>But the greatest concern is the pronouncement by Bush that Iraq and Afghanistan “are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace.” If he truly believes this to be a fact, then there is no hope for either Iraq or Afghanistan. And there isn’t much hope for America, either.</p>
<p>BRIAN CLOUGHLEY writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website <a href="http://www.briancloughley.com/" type="external">www.briancloughley.com</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Different Worlds
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2006/07/01/different-worlds/
|
2006-07-01
| 4left
|
Different Worlds
<p>To a happily captive and wildly enthusiastic audience of cadets at West Point on May 27 Bush announced that “Difficult challenges remain in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but America is safer and the world is more secure because these two countries are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace.”</p>
<p>Three days later “US forces killed two Iraqi women – one of them about to give birth – when troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post.”</p>
<p>Then “a US artillery round landed in a small Iraqi town and police reported afterwards that two civilians were killed in [the] blast and one woman later died from her wounds, the US military said on Sunday. Three other people were also reported wounded and six houses were damaged in the town of Hibhib, north of Baghdad, after a US artillery unit fired a 155 mm round during training on Friday, it said in a statement.”</p>
<p>“The world is more secure” because American troops kill a pregnant woman and shell small Iraqi towns? Is this what the graduating class at West Point is looking forward to?</p>
<p>In Afghanistan US soldiers have been behaving in the same way as their colleagues in Iraq, opening fire on unarmed crowds and killing three Afghan policemen at a roadblock among other instances of undisciplined havoc, including the murder of helpless prisoners. Do these atrocities make the world more secure? They certainly make Afghans hate America even more, but it’s difficult to understand how that makes America safer.</p>
<p>Then there is the wondrous report from Iraq that “. . . the US military on Sunday . . . said it had detained 19 ‘terrorists’ during a search operation in eastern Baghdad on Saturday. One of the detainees ‘reported having difficulty breathing’ and died of a heart attack.” That would be funny if it did not describe such a devastating example of the treatment US soldiers and marines (especially marines) have been dealing out to detainees and others who have not been charged with carrying out a crime.</p>
<p>And it should be asked what transgression of whose laws the guerrillas effect when they fight against occupation troops in Iraq. After all, no member of the occupation forces is subject to Iraqi law or international law, or the Geneva Convention. But why should US soldiers be exempt from Iraqi national law in what Bush describes as a “democracy”?</p>
<p>No ‘Contractor’ (which is Newspeak for ‘Mercenary’) employed as a guard in Iraq or Afghanistan can be held accountable for killing an Iraqi or Afghan. And neither are soldiers of US, British and Australian Special Forces answerable to any sort of law. They kill people secretly and without being held to account for their actions by anyone on this earth. They act as police, judge, jury and executioner, all in one protected and inviolable majesty. They are the only beings in the world who can kill with complete assurance that their actions will never, ever, be questioned. How can their killings bring democracy to any country?</p>
<p>But we are assured by Bush and his minions that these people are making the world more secure by their blood-crazed cowboy antics. Not only does he make that fatuous claim but he announces, presumably seriously and without a knowing grin, that “the world is more secure because these two countries are now democracies”.</p>
<p>If Bush believes that Iraq and Afghanistan are democracies he is a lunatic. And when West Point cadets cheered his statement it showed, alas, that they have been thoroughly brainwashed. They are as blindly loyal to Bush as any member of the SS was to Adolf Hitler.</p>
<p>In Iraq and Afghanistan, both under US military domination, there is no semblance of democracy. Does anyone really think there are equal rights for women, for example? OK, if you do, then tell me this : How many women judges, clerics and police chiefs are there in Iraq and Afghanistan? How many female shopkeepers, even? And how many Christians are in positions of public responsibility? Are women’s rights covered in the West Point syllabus?</p>
<p>Both countries are Islamic. Fine. Islam is as good a religion as any other, providing brutal extremists don’t control innocent Believers. But has anyone ever seen a photograph of the wife of a political leader in Iraq or Afghanistan? There was one a few months ago when the wife of President Karzai of Afghanistan was made to sit with Laura Bush for an uncomfortable few minutes in a photo-op. Have there been any others, in these “democracies”? There are a few women politicians, for form’s sake. But women’s rights in Iraq and Afghanistan are on the same level as they are in Saudi Arabia, another Bush ally “in the cause of freedom and peace”. Women’s rights do not exist, and will never be permitted. For this reason alone it is bizarre that Bush to pronounce that there is ‘democracy’ in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Here’s a report from the San Francisco Chronicle’s Declan Walsh on June 25:</p>
<p>“Last month, inside the new national assembly in Kabul, turbaned lawmakers hurled water bottles and bloody threats at Malalai Joya, a firebrand female deputy who criticized the country’s mujahideen fighters. Now Joya says she stays in different safe houses every night and travels with three armed bodyguards.” This is democracy? How on earth can Bush state categorically that Afghanistan is ‘democratic’?</p>
<p>A recently leaked cable from America’s embassy in Iraq stated that :</p>
<p>“Two of our three female employees report stepped up harassment beginning in mid-May. One, a Shia who favors Western clothing, was advised by an unknown woman in her Baghdad neighborhood to wear a veil and not to drive her own car. She said some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.”</p>
<p>“Even at its most conservative” is Newspeak for “when Saddam Hussain was President”. But is this democracy? How can Bush even dare to speak of democracy in Iraq when his own foreign service officials are sending back information that directly contradicts his assertions? But he can. He does. And he will continue to do so.</p>
<p>Bush lives in a different world to the rest of us. It seems that nobody dares tell him what is really going on.</p>
<p>Take Afghanistan where “On June 12, representatives of Afghanistan’s major media outlets were summoned to a meeting at the National Security Directorate where they first received the list of press restrictions [which restrict] among other things, ‘Those reports that aim to represent that the fighting spirit in Afghanistan’s armed forces is weak,’ and ‘Negative propaganda, interviews and reports which are provocative or slanderous and which are against the presence [in Afghanistan] of the international coalition forces and ISAF [International Security Assistance Force]’.”</p>
<p>How can this sort of tyranny be equated with democracy? Why can nobody tell Bush what is really going on in the world?</p>
<p>His complacent and dangerous ignorance is equalled by that of the Legislature where “Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said extending amnesty to anyone responsible for killing US troops was “unconscionable.” “For heaven’s sake, we liberated that country,” Levin said on Fox News Sunday. “We got rid of a horrific dictator. We’ve paid a tremendous price. More than 2,500 Americans have given up their lives.”</p>
<p>Forget the amnesty nonsense, if only because no genuine guerrilla will take up the offer. What is astonishing is that the moron Levin imagines Bush “liberated that country”.</p>
<p>Levin’s country has certainly “paid a tremendous price” in American soldiers’ lives following the illegal Bush invasion of Iraq. (What price has Levin paid, himself, one wonders?) Nobody knows how many Iraqis have been killed, but Levin and his tub-thumping friends don’t care about them. They simply do not matter.</p>
<p>What Levin demands is that the subjugated Iraqi people who are crushed by the boots, fists and rifles of occupying troops and terrified by equally brutal Islamic militias should welcome their conquerors. They should, according to Levin, rejoice that they are liable to be blown up at any time of the day or night. They ought to be happy that their houses can be wrecked, their men tortured and killed and their women and children murdered by gung-ho happy killers wearing the uniform of liberation. The fact that US “liberators” are unable to stop them being killed by other people is irrelevant to dolts like Levin.</p>
<p>Saddam Hussain is a lousy bastard who killed thousands of people. And he, like lots of dictators round the world who either died in their beds, were killed by their own people, or prospered and are still in power, enjoyed the support of the US government for a long time. But during his regime there were never headlines like ­ and I choose this one at random from today’s news ­ “BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) June 26 – Bombs killed at least 40 people at markets in two Iraqi cities Monday.” That sort of thing simply didn’t happen before the US invasion. But Bush and Levin and the rest of the morons don’t care about reality. It doesn’t matter to them.</p>
<p>What matters to all the rest of us, however, is the conviction of the booby Levin and his dingbat followers that Iraq was in some fashion “liberated”. This is self-delusion on a grand scale.</p>
<p>But the greatest concern is the pronouncement by Bush that Iraq and Afghanistan “are now democracies and they are allies in the cause of freedom and peace.” If he truly believes this to be a fact, then there is no hope for either Iraq or Afghanistan. And there isn’t much hope for America, either.</p>
<p>BRIAN CLOUGHLEY writes on military and political affairs. He can be reached through his website <a href="http://www.briancloughley.com/" type="external">www.briancloughley.com</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 6,779 |
<p>Muslim protesters kneel down to pray at an event challenging the NYPD's surveillance program.&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/samgracelewis/6814465813/in/photostream"&gt;Sam Lewis&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>Sayed Farhaj Hassan began basic training in the US Army the day before 9/11. Two years later, he deployed to Iraq. Then a few months ago, he learned that the New Jersey mosque he had attended for 16 years, Astaana-e-Zehra, had turned up in a New York Police Department document assessing the threat of Iran-sponsored terrorism to New York City.</p>
<p>“I felt violated,” says Hassan, who is still an Army reservist. “Everything I signed up to defend in the Army was being thrown away by the New York City Police Department.”</p>
<p>Hassan is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleging that the NYPD violated the constitutional rights of New Jersey’s Muslim community through a massive CIA-assisted surveillance program, which was <a href="http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD" type="external">first revealed by the Associated Press</a>. Documents released by the AP show that beginning in 2002 the NYPD covertly monitored Muslim neighborhoods, mosques, and businesses. The case is the first to challenge the NYPD’s sweeping surveillance program.</p>
<p>The case was brought by California-based Muslim Advocates, a group led by Farhana Khera, a former aide to Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). The suit represents a growing conflict over the legality of post-9/11 security tactics that critics allege amount to racial profiling of Muslim Americans. And the NYPD’s sweeping program provides an appropriate test case of law enforcement authority in this arena. While New York City officials like Mayor Michael Bloomberg have said the program was legal and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/04/new-york-times-mayor-michael-bloomberg-nypd-muslim-spying_n_1319414.html" type="external">that the NYPD was “following leads</a>” and not profiling on the basis of religion, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/09/nypd-docs-focus-scrutiny-on-muslim-americans/#ixzz1x1ZtvOL" type="external">the AP notes</a> that there is “no indication that criminal leads prompted any of the [NYPD surveillance] reports.” The documents themselves contain maps showing the locations of mosques and dossiers on Muslim-owned businesses.</p>
<p>“For a number of years, there was a certainly a feeling that people were being singled out and targeted for scrutiny by law enforcement,” Khera says. “It created a lot of fear and concern in the community, but also a lot of tremendous anger and frustration. Americans who are simply going about their daily lives, attending school, running their businesses, attending their places of worship, and haven’t engaged in wrongdoing—and yet they’re being subjected to surveillance by the largest police department in the country.”</p>
<p>Shortly after the AP story broke, Muslim Advocates began reaching out to individuals in New Jersey whose businesses, mosques, or organizations had been named in the NYPD records. Aide from Hassan, the plaintiffs include two imams, a college student, and two business owners.</p>
<p>The NYPD documents show that&#160; <a href="http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2012/NYPD-monitored-Muslim-students-all-over-Northeast%22scrutinized" type="external">the department scrutinized Muslim student organizations</a>&#160;all over the region, including at local universities. “It was shocking to everyone, especially on the Rutgers campus,” says Moiz Mohammed, a Rutgers student who is a plaintiff in the suit. “After that point onwards, I was more conscious of my religious practices, I made sure no one was around when I was praying.”</p>
<p>The NYPD monitoring effort has sparked fears among New Jersey Muslims that they could be targeted in sting operations, which have become a staple of <a href="" type="internal">post-9/11 terrorism cases involving the FBI</a>. “Now we’re concerned about, will someone come into the masjid and intentionally try and incite something? Will there be someone intentionally hired by law enforcement to try and bait someone into doing something they wouldn’t normally do?” says Imam Deen Shareef, another plaintiff, who heads the Council of Imams of New Jersey. Two mosques represented by the council were named in NYPD documents.</p>
<p>The limits on the powers of law enforcement post-9/11 are anything but clear. Technically, the NYPD’s authorities are governed by the so-called Handschu Guidelines, which arose from a 1971 court case involving activists who were spied on by the New York police. The guidelines specify that the NYPD is not allowed to monitor individuals without evidence of criminal wrongdoing.&#160; <a href="http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-23/news/31093115_1_new-rules-nypd-handschu-guidelines" type="external">But subsequent legal fights over the rules have been resolved in the NYPD’s favor</a>. Avoiding the murky Handschu rules is at least part of the reason why the lawsuit was filed in New Jersey, instead of New York.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs are hoping for a result that prevents the kind of blanket surveillance engaged in by the NYPD from happening again.</p>
<p>“What’s next? Where does it stop?” Hassan asks. “Where is the right to privacy? It doesn’t exist if you’re a Muslim anymore. This is what this tells us.”</p>
<p />
|
“Where Is the Right to Privacy? It Doesn’t Exist If You’re a Muslim”
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/muslims-nypd-spying-lawsuit/
|
2012-06-06
| 4left
|
“Where Is the Right to Privacy? It Doesn’t Exist If You’re a Muslim”
<p>Muslim protesters kneel down to pray at an event challenging the NYPD's surveillance program.&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/samgracelewis/6814465813/in/photostream"&gt;Sam Lewis&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
<p />
<p>Sayed Farhaj Hassan began basic training in the US Army the day before 9/11. Two years later, he deployed to Iraq. Then a few months ago, he learned that the New Jersey mosque he had attended for 16 years, Astaana-e-Zehra, had turned up in a New York Police Department document assessing the threat of Iran-sponsored terrorism to New York City.</p>
<p>“I felt violated,” says Hassan, who is still an Army reservist. “Everything I signed up to defend in the Army was being thrown away by the New York City Police Department.”</p>
<p>Hassan is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed Wednesday alleging that the NYPD violated the constitutional rights of New Jersey’s Muslim community through a massive CIA-assisted surveillance program, which was <a href="http://www.ap.org/Index/AP-In-The-News/NYPD" type="external">first revealed by the Associated Press</a>. Documents released by the AP show that beginning in 2002 the NYPD covertly monitored Muslim neighborhoods, mosques, and businesses. The case is the first to challenge the NYPD’s sweeping surveillance program.</p>
<p>The case was brought by California-based Muslim Advocates, a group led by Farhana Khera, a former aide to Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). The suit represents a growing conflict over the legality of post-9/11 security tactics that critics allege amount to racial profiling of Muslim Americans. And the NYPD’s sweeping program provides an appropriate test case of law enforcement authority in this arena. While New York City officials like Mayor Michael Bloomberg have said the program was legal and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/04/new-york-times-mayor-michael-bloomberg-nypd-muslim-spying_n_1319414.html" type="external">that the NYPD was “following leads</a>” and not profiling on the basis of religion, <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/09/nypd-docs-focus-scrutiny-on-muslim-americans/#ixzz1x1ZtvOL" type="external">the AP notes</a> that there is “no indication that criminal leads prompted any of the [NYPD surveillance] reports.” The documents themselves contain maps showing the locations of mosques and dossiers on Muslim-owned businesses.</p>
<p>“For a number of years, there was a certainly a feeling that people were being singled out and targeted for scrutiny by law enforcement,” Khera says. “It created a lot of fear and concern in the community, but also a lot of tremendous anger and frustration. Americans who are simply going about their daily lives, attending school, running their businesses, attending their places of worship, and haven’t engaged in wrongdoing—and yet they’re being subjected to surveillance by the largest police department in the country.”</p>
<p>Shortly after the AP story broke, Muslim Advocates began reaching out to individuals in New Jersey whose businesses, mosques, or organizations had been named in the NYPD records. Aide from Hassan, the plaintiffs include two imams, a college student, and two business owners.</p>
<p>The NYPD documents show that&#160; <a href="http://www.ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2012/NYPD-monitored-Muslim-students-all-over-Northeast%22scrutinized" type="external">the department scrutinized Muslim student organizations</a>&#160;all over the region, including at local universities. “It was shocking to everyone, especially on the Rutgers campus,” says Moiz Mohammed, a Rutgers student who is a plaintiff in the suit. “After that point onwards, I was more conscious of my religious practices, I made sure no one was around when I was praying.”</p>
<p>The NYPD monitoring effort has sparked fears among New Jersey Muslims that they could be targeted in sting operations, which have become a staple of <a href="" type="internal">post-9/11 terrorism cases involving the FBI</a>. “Now we’re concerned about, will someone come into the masjid and intentionally try and incite something? Will there be someone intentionally hired by law enforcement to try and bait someone into doing something they wouldn’t normally do?” says Imam Deen Shareef, another plaintiff, who heads the Council of Imams of New Jersey. Two mosques represented by the council were named in NYPD documents.</p>
<p>The limits on the powers of law enforcement post-9/11 are anything but clear. Technically, the NYPD’s authorities are governed by the so-called Handschu Guidelines, which arose from a 1971 court case involving activists who were spied on by the New York police. The guidelines specify that the NYPD is not allowed to monitor individuals without evidence of criminal wrongdoing.&#160; <a href="http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-23/news/31093115_1_new-rules-nypd-handschu-guidelines" type="external">But subsequent legal fights over the rules have been resolved in the NYPD’s favor</a>. Avoiding the murky Handschu rules is at least part of the reason why the lawsuit was filed in New Jersey, instead of New York.</p>
<p>The plaintiffs are hoping for a result that prevents the kind of blanket surveillance engaged in by the NYPD from happening again.</p>
<p>“What’s next? Where does it stop?” Hassan asks. “Where is the right to privacy? It doesn’t exist if you’re a Muslim anymore. This is what this tells us.”</p>
<p />
| 6,780 |
<p>Romenesko LettersMichael David Smith <a href="" type="internal">points out</a> that Opensecrets.org lists Washington Post reporter Spencer Hsu as a Republican Party of Virginia contributor. Not true, says Post assistant managing editor/metro news Robert McCartney. He <a href="" type="internal">writes</a>: "This payment was not a political contribution or donation of any kind. It was reimbursement to the Virginia Republican Party for a hotel room for Mr. Hsu during the Republican National Convention in New York. Mr. Hsu was covering the Virginia delegation to the convention. Standard practice was to house the reporter with the delegation, and to reimburse the delegation later for the cost."</p>
|
WP: Opensecrets.org's Hsu contribution listing is wrong
| false |
https://poynter.org/news/wp-opensecretsorgs-hsu-contribution-listing-wrong
|
2005-09-12
| 2least
|
WP: Opensecrets.org's Hsu contribution listing is wrong
<p>Romenesko LettersMichael David Smith <a href="" type="internal">points out</a> that Opensecrets.org lists Washington Post reporter Spencer Hsu as a Republican Party of Virginia contributor. Not true, says Post assistant managing editor/metro news Robert McCartney. He <a href="" type="internal">writes</a>: "This payment was not a political contribution or donation of any kind. It was reimbursement to the Virginia Republican Party for a hotel room for Mr. Hsu during the Republican National Convention in New York. Mr. Hsu was covering the Virginia delegation to the convention. Standard practice was to house the reporter with the delegation, and to reimburse the delegation later for the cost."</p>
| 6,781 |
<p>New Hampshire social workers are all too familiar with how opioid abuse can push children into foster care. They see it all the time.</p>
<p>The chain of events is often the same: After being approached by social workers, addicted parents continue to overdose or start dodging them. State officials deem the home unsafe and seek a court’s permission to remove the children.</p>
<p>Then comes a knock at the family’s door.</p>
<p>It’s a last resort, reflecting what appears to be a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4328307-New-Hampshire-DCYF-Data-Related-to-Opioid-Crisis.html" type="external">&#160;stark trend</a>&#160;across the state: Since 2010, the number of child removals in which substance abuse was a factor has nearly quadrupled. The number of children entering out-of-home care has nearly doubled. And between 2012 and 2016, the number of children born drug exposed tripled.</p>
<p />
<p>Yet directly connecting child removals to the source of the problem is nearly impossible. That’s because in New Hampshire’s&#160; <a href="http://nhdcyf.info/nhbridges/intro.html" type="external">electronic child welfare database</a>, there’s no way to specify opioids – or any other drug – as a contributing factor.</p>
<p>That’s also true in other states hit hard by the opioid epidemic – even where lawmakers have highlighted the issue publicly.</p>
<p>In May, Pennsylvania lawmakers heard testimony about how the opioid crisis <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/aging-edge/aging-edge-reports/2017/05/12/Challenges-mount-for-grandparents-due-to-opioid-crisis/stories/201705120192" type="external">&#160;is turning scores of grandparents into primary caregivers</a>. But when asked to provide drug-specific detail on foster care placements, a Department of Human Services representative said the data “ <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327245-Pennsylvania-Response.html" type="external">is not captured to the level of detail that encompasses the type of drug</a>.”</p>
<p>In Massachusetts, where&#160; <a href="https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/12/04/Opioid-related%20Overdose%20Deaths%20among%20MA%20Residents%20-%20Revised%20December%202017.pdf" type="external">nearly 2,200 people</a>&#160;died of opioid overdoses in 2016, child welfare advocates say “ <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/10/07/drug-addiction-epidemic-creates-crisis-in-foster-care" type="external">there was no time to gear up</a>” for an opioid-linked surge in the foster care population. Between 2011 and 2016, the state saw an <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327246-Massachusetts-Response.html" type="external">&#160;increase</a>&#160;of more than 2,000 children in foster care and a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327248-Massachusetts-Total-Annual-Cost-for-Foster-Care.html" type="external">total annual cost increase of nearly $68 million</a>. But the state has no idea how many of those kids entered because of parents’ opioid use.</p>
<p>These gaps make the task of developing family welfare policies a guessing game, said Elissa Glucksman Hyne, a senior policy analyst at the child welfare nonprofit Children’s Rights.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to have enough substance abuse services for these families if we don’t have an accurate idea of how many families are actually being affected by opioid abuse,” she said.</p>
<p>Blame the knowledge gap on a patchwork of requirements and technologies. Caseworkers can’t always prove the presence of drugs in a home. Some have to conduct short substance abuse assessments on their own; others get help from treatment agencies. And although evidence of specific drugs often is noted in narrative reports, those details don’t end up in state or federal statistics.</p>
<p>The result: America’s foster care data is severely lagging behind the opioid crisis’ deadly momentum. Citing unreliable state reporting, the federal Children’s Bureau, part of the Administration for Children and Families, didn’t start publicly specifying why children were removed from parents’ custody until 2015. In a <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/afcarsreport24.pdf" type="external">&#160;report published Nov. 30</a>, parental drug abuse contributed to more than 92,000 removals in fiscal year 2016 – 34 percent of the nation’s total. Still, no one can say what types of drugs were involved.</p>
<p>State officials say tracking the problem conjures up larger questions about policy, practice and training.</p>
<p>“If the state were to begin requiring caseworkers to check the box for, say, opioid use, by what criteria would you instruct that worker to do so?” said Rob Johnson, a spokesman for Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services. “What she suspects? What she observes in the home? What she’s heard from relatives? Or only if corroborated by drug tests? What if there are multiple drugs? How do you develop the guiding policies and training? What happens when a new drug arrives on the scene?”</p>
<p>To get a clearer picture of the issue, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting submitted public records requests to a dozen states where age-adjusted rates of drug overdose deaths are the highest in the nation, according to the&#160; <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html" type="external">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>.</p>
<p>What emerged was evidence of a serious crisis with blurred contours.</p>
<p>In Ohio, for example, Attorney General Mike DeWine in August&#160; <a href="http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/News-Releases/August-2017/Attorney-General-DeWine-Highlights-Need-for-More-F" type="external">urged residents</a>&#160;to become foster parents, citing a wave of kids “who enter the child welfare system because one or both of their parents are drug addicts.”</p>
<p>The number of children in Ohio’s system has <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327224-Ohio-Kids-in-Care.html" type="external">&#160;increased steadily for years</a>, and the annual cost of foster care <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327225-Ohio-Taxpayer-Cost.html" type="external">&#160;has risen</a>&#160;more than $100 million since 2011. Foster homes are full in some counties, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/07/children-ohio-opioid-epidemic/" type="external">&#160;Mother Jones reported</a>&#160;last year. Yet no one’s sure of the exact impact opioids have had. Although caseworkers can select “drug abuse of parent” in the state’s reporting system, that total is most likely an undercount, according to a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Job and Family Services. Plus, there’s significant variation in how such data is collected among the state’s 88 counties.</p>
<p>In West Virginia, more than 6,100 children were in foster care at the beginning of October – the vast majority because of&#160; <a href="https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/drug-epidemic-drives-increase-in-foster-care-numbers-commissioner-says/article_9c3ae89e-cc74-5979-8ef9-85dbd4afd6f9.html?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=user-share" type="external">parental drug abuse</a>. And in recent years, the state has seen steady increases in the <a href="http://dhhr.wv.gov/bcf/Reports/Pages/Legislative-Foster-Care-Reports.aspx" type="external">&#160;number of children</a>&#160;in care. Yet when it comes to statewide data, there’s no mechanism for sorting by drug type. “Substance abuse” is all that gets logged, according to a representative from the Department of Health and Human Resources.</p>
<p>The list goes on: New Mexico, Kentucky and Utah are seeing surges in foster care placements; none can say for sure how many are due to opioid misuse.</p>
<p>“What we do know anecdotally is that some number are directly linked,” said Adam Pertman, founder of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency. “Because the worker sees the parent, the worker sees the circumstances and can identify the direct link. But for every one they can identify as a direct link, there’s an unknowable number that we can safely assume occur.”</p>
<p>In late 2017, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/americas-heroin-epidemic/opioid-crisis-strains-foster-system-kids-pried-homes-n828831" type="external">&#160;took a step closer</a>&#160;to understanding the issue in fine detail. By examining foster care statistics from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, journalists found a correlation between counties with higher levels of opioid prescribing and opioid death and those with higher shares of foster cases linked to drugs.</p>
<p>Their analysis is a good start, but it’s a half-drawn picture of a full-blown crisis. Meanwhile, social workers across the U.S. continue to voice concerns about the detail and integrity of available information.</p>
<p>“We have been to all but one state in the country and asked child welfare professionals if they believe these data represent the prevalence of parental substance use in their cases,” Nancy K. Young, executive director of <a href="https://www.cffutures.org/" type="external">&#160;Children and Family Futures</a>, said in 2016 <a href="https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/23feb2016Young.pdf" type="external">&#160;Senate testimony</a>. “Not a single state believes these data accurately reflect their experience.”</p>
<p>Rather, she said, most believe they greatly understate the problem.</p>
|
States Not Tracking Role of Opioid Crisis in Foster Placements
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/opioid-crisis-strains-foster-care-states-arent-tracking-damage/
|
2018-01-11
| 4left
|
States Not Tracking Role of Opioid Crisis in Foster Placements
<p>New Hampshire social workers are all too familiar with how opioid abuse can push children into foster care. They see it all the time.</p>
<p>The chain of events is often the same: After being approached by social workers, addicted parents continue to overdose or start dodging them. State officials deem the home unsafe and seek a court’s permission to remove the children.</p>
<p>Then comes a knock at the family’s door.</p>
<p>It’s a last resort, reflecting what appears to be a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4328307-New-Hampshire-DCYF-Data-Related-to-Opioid-Crisis.html" type="external">&#160;stark trend</a>&#160;across the state: Since 2010, the number of child removals in which substance abuse was a factor has nearly quadrupled. The number of children entering out-of-home care has nearly doubled. And between 2012 and 2016, the number of children born drug exposed tripled.</p>
<p />
<p>Yet directly connecting child removals to the source of the problem is nearly impossible. That’s because in New Hampshire’s&#160; <a href="http://nhdcyf.info/nhbridges/intro.html" type="external">electronic child welfare database</a>, there’s no way to specify opioids – or any other drug – as a contributing factor.</p>
<p>That’s also true in other states hit hard by the opioid epidemic – even where lawmakers have highlighted the issue publicly.</p>
<p>In May, Pennsylvania lawmakers heard testimony about how the opioid crisis <a href="http://www.post-gazette.com/aging-edge/aging-edge-reports/2017/05/12/Challenges-mount-for-grandparents-due-to-opioid-crisis/stories/201705120192" type="external">&#160;is turning scores of grandparents into primary caregivers</a>. But when asked to provide drug-specific detail on foster care placements, a Department of Human Services representative said the data “ <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327245-Pennsylvania-Response.html" type="external">is not captured to the level of detail that encompasses the type of drug</a>.”</p>
<p>In Massachusetts, where&#160; <a href="https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2017/12/04/Opioid-related%20Overdose%20Deaths%20among%20MA%20Residents%20-%20Revised%20December%202017.pdf" type="external">nearly 2,200 people</a>&#160;died of opioid overdoses in 2016, child welfare advocates say “ <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/10/07/drug-addiction-epidemic-creates-crisis-in-foster-care" type="external">there was no time to gear up</a>” for an opioid-linked surge in the foster care population. Between 2011 and 2016, the state saw an <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327246-Massachusetts-Response.html" type="external">&#160;increase</a>&#160;of more than 2,000 children in foster care and a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327248-Massachusetts-Total-Annual-Cost-for-Foster-Care.html" type="external">total annual cost increase of nearly $68 million</a>. But the state has no idea how many of those kids entered because of parents’ opioid use.</p>
<p>These gaps make the task of developing family welfare policies a guessing game, said Elissa Glucksman Hyne, a senior policy analyst at the child welfare nonprofit Children’s Rights.</p>
<p>“It’s hard to have enough substance abuse services for these families if we don’t have an accurate idea of how many families are actually being affected by opioid abuse,” she said.</p>
<p>Blame the knowledge gap on a patchwork of requirements and technologies. Caseworkers can’t always prove the presence of drugs in a home. Some have to conduct short substance abuse assessments on their own; others get help from treatment agencies. And although evidence of specific drugs often is noted in narrative reports, those details don’t end up in state or federal statistics.</p>
<p>The result: America’s foster care data is severely lagging behind the opioid crisis’ deadly momentum. Citing unreliable state reporting, the federal Children’s Bureau, part of the Administration for Children and Families, didn’t start publicly specifying why children were removed from parents’ custody until 2015. In a <a href="https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/afcarsreport24.pdf" type="external">&#160;report published Nov. 30</a>, parental drug abuse contributed to more than 92,000 removals in fiscal year 2016 – 34 percent of the nation’s total. Still, no one can say what types of drugs were involved.</p>
<p>State officials say tracking the problem conjures up larger questions about policy, practice and training.</p>
<p>“If the state were to begin requiring caseworkers to check the box for, say, opioid use, by what criteria would you instruct that worker to do so?” said Rob Johnson, a spokesman for Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services. “What she suspects? What she observes in the home? What she’s heard from relatives? Or only if corroborated by drug tests? What if there are multiple drugs? How do you develop the guiding policies and training? What happens when a new drug arrives on the scene?”</p>
<p>To get a clearer picture of the issue, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting submitted public records requests to a dozen states where age-adjusted rates of drug overdose deaths are the highest in the nation, according to the&#160; <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/data/statedeaths.html" type="external">Centers for Disease Control and Prevention</a>.</p>
<p>What emerged was evidence of a serious crisis with blurred contours.</p>
<p>In Ohio, for example, Attorney General Mike DeWine in August&#160; <a href="http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Media/News-Releases/August-2017/Attorney-General-DeWine-Highlights-Need-for-More-F" type="external">urged residents</a>&#160;to become foster parents, citing a wave of kids “who enter the child welfare system because one or both of their parents are drug addicts.”</p>
<p>The number of children in Ohio’s system has <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327224-Ohio-Kids-in-Care.html" type="external">&#160;increased steadily for years</a>, and the annual cost of foster care <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4327225-Ohio-Taxpayer-Cost.html" type="external">&#160;has risen</a>&#160;more than $100 million since 2011. Foster homes are full in some counties, <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/07/children-ohio-opioid-epidemic/" type="external">&#160;Mother Jones reported</a>&#160;last year. Yet no one’s sure of the exact impact opioids have had. Although caseworkers can select “drug abuse of parent” in the state’s reporting system, that total is most likely an undercount, according to a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Job and Family Services. Plus, there’s significant variation in how such data is collected among the state’s 88 counties.</p>
<p>In West Virginia, more than 6,100 children were in foster care at the beginning of October – the vast majority because of&#160; <a href="https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/health/drug-epidemic-drives-increase-in-foster-care-numbers-commissioner-says/article_9c3ae89e-cc74-5979-8ef9-85dbd4afd6f9.html?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=user-share" type="external">parental drug abuse</a>. And in recent years, the state has seen steady increases in the <a href="http://dhhr.wv.gov/bcf/Reports/Pages/Legislative-Foster-Care-Reports.aspx" type="external">&#160;number of children</a>&#160;in care. Yet when it comes to statewide data, there’s no mechanism for sorting by drug type. “Substance abuse” is all that gets logged, according to a representative from the Department of Health and Human Resources.</p>
<p>The list goes on: New Mexico, Kentucky and Utah are seeing surges in foster care placements; none can say for sure how many are due to opioid misuse.</p>
<p>“What we do know anecdotally is that some number are directly linked,” said Adam Pertman, founder of the National Center on Adoption and Permanency. “Because the worker sees the parent, the worker sees the circumstances and can identify the direct link. But for every one they can identify as a direct link, there’s an unknowable number that we can safely assume occur.”</p>
<p>In late 2017, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/americas-heroin-epidemic/opioid-crisis-strains-foster-system-kids-pried-homes-n828831" type="external">&#160;took a step closer</a>&#160;to understanding the issue in fine detail. By examining foster care statistics from the National Data Archive on Child Abuse and Neglect, journalists found a correlation between counties with higher levels of opioid prescribing and opioid death and those with higher shares of foster cases linked to drugs.</p>
<p>Their analysis is a good start, but it’s a half-drawn picture of a full-blown crisis. Meanwhile, social workers across the U.S. continue to voice concerns about the detail and integrity of available information.</p>
<p>“We have been to all but one state in the country and asked child welfare professionals if they believe these data represent the prevalence of parental substance use in their cases,” Nancy K. Young, executive director of <a href="https://www.cffutures.org/" type="external">&#160;Children and Family Futures</a>, said in 2016 <a href="https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/23feb2016Young.pdf" type="external">&#160;Senate testimony</a>. “Not a single state believes these data accurately reflect their experience.”</p>
<p>Rather, she said, most believe they greatly understate the problem.</p>
| 6,782 |
<p>Nancy Kaszerman/ZUMA Press</p>
<p />
<p>Niger Innis, a tea party activist who <a href="http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/137/14031151137/14031151137.pdf#navpanes=0" type="external">filed papers</a> to run for Congress in Nevada last week, is best-known for filling up the conservative airwaves with race-inflected denouncements of the Obama administration. Last February, as the president mounted new gun control efforts, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/22/black-conservatives-gun-control-has-racist-roots-video/#ixzz2qaVbJQCS" type="external">Innis said</a>, “For black Americans, we know that gun control…sprouts from racist soil—be it after the, or during the infamous Dred Scott case where black man’s humanity was not recognized.” In October, <a href="http://www.tpnn.com/2013/10/23/black-tea-party-leader-niger-innis-the-slaves-had-food-stamps-too-it-was-called-scraps-from-massas-table/" type="external">Innis appeared</a> on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show to decry food stamp assistance in the farm bill. “The slaves had food stamps, too,” he said. “It was called ‘scraps from Massa’s table.'”</p>
<p>Innis, who <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jan/15/former-tea-party-strategist-announces-bid-horsford/" type="external">announced</a> in mid-January that he is running for Congress, has always had this flair for hyperbole. When he kicked off his campaign for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s sprawling fourth district last week—if chosen, he will challenge first-term Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford—Innis cast himself as an outsider waging war on “go-along, get-along Republicans.” But only recently has the 45-year-old gained very much name recognition, with most of that star power owing to his role as a sound-bite-ready strategist for TheTeaParty.net. “[Innis] has not been active in Republican politics until recently, clearly as a prelude to his congressional run,” says Jon Ralston, a longtime Nevada political reporter and commentator. “Today he’s this aggressive media hound…Nobody in Nevada could have told you who Niger Innis was a year ago.” Indeed, Innis maintained a much lower profile in the job that preceded his tea party work: spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights legacy institution which helped organize the 1963 March on Washington and the Freedom Rides.</p>
<p>But if the average Nevadan would not have known who Innis was one year ago, the average environmental activist certainly would have. Before he was a Fox News go-to, Innis spent a decade-plus as the face of various anti-environmentalist campaigns paid for by the country’s largest energy corporations. These campaigns deployed an unusual line of attack against environmental activists: rather than simply arguing that climate change fears were overblown or insupportable, Innis’ campaigns accused green groups of pushing policies that devastated the poor—particularly poor blacks.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Innis made those accusations mainly through his work with CORE, which his father, Roy Innis, has controlled since 1968. CORE swung hard to the right under the leadership of the elder Innis (who is on the <a href="" type="internal">National Rifle Association’s board of directors</a>). Its many pro-business campaigns have moved prominent civil rights figures to <a href="" type="internal">accuse CORE of renting out its reputation</a> to any corporation that will pay. One frequent CORE patron was ExxonMobil. Using data from Exxon’s annual giving disclosures, Greenpeace <a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=111" type="external">calculated</a> that CORE received more than $300,000 from Exxon—some of which was earmarked for “climate change outreach efforts”—from 2003 to 2008.</p>
<p>During that time period, Innis teamed up with or founded several groups to push for greater domestic energy production. He frequently characterized environmentalists as elitist or <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040102005348/http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewBusiness.asp?Page=/Business/archive/200205/BUS20020529a.html" type="external">the remnants of</a> “the anarchists, socialists, communist types of the 1960s.”</p>
<p>A representative sample of Innis’ message can be seen in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti_kw6DjeOY" type="external">video</a> taken by Right Wing Watch, a website that tracks conservatives, in 2008. Innis had convened a press conference with CORE and Americans for American Energy, a non-profit group financed by an energy lobbyist, to launch <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080912202930/http://stopwaronpoor.org/home.aspx" type="external">a campaign</a> titled “Stop the War on the Poor.” In his remarks, Innis proclaims the fight to allow drilling in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be “very much like the civil rights revolution in its diversity and in its moral passion.” A representative of Americans for American Energy <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/astroturf-groups-claim-environmentalist-%E2%80%9Cwar-poor%E2%80%9D" type="external">dinged</a> green activists as “environmental racists.”</p>
<p>Around that same time, Americans for American Energy <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_11455096" type="external">circulated an email</a> “linking wilderness supporters with Osama bin Laden, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”</p>
<p>At a 2005 National Press Club event marking Earth Day, Innis <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eco-imperialism-reflections-on-earth-day-72622877.html" type="external">said</a>:</p>
<p>“We must stop trying to protect our planet from every imaginable, exaggerated or imaginary risk. And we must stop trying to protect it on the backs, and the graves, of the nation’s and world’s most powerless and impoverished people. If people of conscience join us, we will challenge and end this scourge of eco-imperialism, and ensure that Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream will become a reality for poor people throughout the United States and world.”</p>
<p>In fact, the victims of pollution that environmental campaigns aim to protect are <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pollution-poverty-people-color-asthma-inner-city/" type="external">disproportionately poor</a>. Landmark environmental achievements, such as the Clean Air Act, have been shown to have a negligible impact on American household energy prices—while bringing about billions in <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/how-the-clean-air-act-has-saved-22-trillion-in-health-care-costs/262071/" type="external">health care savings</a>. Nonetheless, by 2010, Innis increased his activism with another pro-energy group, the Affordable Power Alliance, and under that banner <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/harryrjacksonjr/2010/04/19/a_tea_party_diary" type="external">appeared before</a> tea party rallies around the country. In its founding manifesto, leaders of the Affordable Power Alliance blamed environmental activists for the deaths of multitudes of poor Americans. “Thousands of Americans become sick and die each year because high energy costs that prevent them from adequately heating or cooling their homes, buying the medicines they need, and practicing better health prevention measures,” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100820081442/http://www.affordablepoweralliance.org/AboutUs.aspx" type="external">it read</a>.</p>
<p>Innis and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment about his past advocacy work. But on January 17, Innis appeared on Ralston’s talk show and spoke about his work with energy interests.</p>
<p>“I don’t give a darn about coal or about oil,” Innis said. “I do give a darn about oil jobs. I do give a darn about the jobs that coal can bring…I am against the Obama administration demonizing certain forms of energy and glorying others. I say, bring it all in.”</p>
<p>In theory, Innis’ transparent arrangement with companies such as Exxon poses a problem for the political outsider strains of his nascent campaign. When he officially kicked off his run, Innis <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jan/15/former-tea-party-strategist-announces-bid-horsford/" type="external">boasted</a> that his political team “is not made up of Carson City elites or the princes of power of this state.” He declined to mention the literal power princes who paid a portion of his salary for the better part of the last decade.</p>
<p>But Nevada is a state where the term “Republican establishment” has ceased to mean very much. “Beyond [Gov. Brian] Sandoval and [Sen. Dean] Heller, the Republican party here is in disarray,” says Ralston. “And I am using disarray in the most generous way possible.” Ralston says Innis’ televisual verve, and the fact that his most likely primary opponent, state Assemblyman Cresent Hardy, is neither as charismatic nor as convincing on federal issues as Innis, will probably trump any difficulties Innis has in playing the outsider.</p>
<p>And that’s lucky for Innis. In the congressional district where he’s running, 85 percent of votes come from urban, Democratic areas like the city of North Las Vegas. Horsford’s seat is one of those that Republicans could dream of taking only in a midterm election when the president is suffering in popularity—and even then, only if the Republican establishment is willing to put up substantial dough. So by the time Innis launched his congressional exploratory committee in November, supporters had already circulated <a href="http://politicalpartytime.org/party/36094/" type="external">invitations</a> for a committee fundraiser which guests would pay a minimum of $500 to attend—co-chaired by Republican megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.</p>
<p />
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How Oil Drilling Is Like the “Civil Rights Revolution,” and Other Gems From the Tea Party’s Rising Star
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/niger-innis-core-congress-exxon-tea-party/
|
2014-01-23
| 4left
|
How Oil Drilling Is Like the “Civil Rights Revolution,” and Other Gems From the Tea Party’s Rising Star
<p>Nancy Kaszerman/ZUMA Press</p>
<p />
<p>Niger Innis, a tea party activist who <a href="http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/137/14031151137/14031151137.pdf#navpanes=0" type="external">filed papers</a> to run for Congress in Nevada last week, is best-known for filling up the conservative airwaves with race-inflected denouncements of the Obama administration. Last February, as the president mounted new gun control efforts, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/22/black-conservatives-gun-control-has-racist-roots-video/#ixzz2qaVbJQCS" type="external">Innis said</a>, “For black Americans, we know that gun control…sprouts from racist soil—be it after the, or during the infamous Dred Scott case where black man’s humanity was not recognized.” In October, <a href="http://www.tpnn.com/2013/10/23/black-tea-party-leader-niger-innis-the-slaves-had-food-stamps-too-it-was-called-scraps-from-massas-table/" type="external">Innis appeared</a> on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show to decry food stamp assistance in the farm bill. “The slaves had food stamps, too,” he said. “It was called ‘scraps from Massa’s table.'”</p>
<p>Innis, who <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jan/15/former-tea-party-strategist-announces-bid-horsford/" type="external">announced</a> in mid-January that he is running for Congress, has always had this flair for hyperbole. When he kicked off his campaign for the Republican nomination in Nevada’s sprawling fourth district last week—if chosen, he will challenge first-term Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford—Innis cast himself as an outsider waging war on “go-along, get-along Republicans.” But only recently has the 45-year-old gained very much name recognition, with most of that star power owing to his role as a sound-bite-ready strategist for TheTeaParty.net. “[Innis] has not been active in Republican politics until recently, clearly as a prelude to his congressional run,” says Jon Ralston, a longtime Nevada political reporter and commentator. “Today he’s this aggressive media hound…Nobody in Nevada could have told you who Niger Innis was a year ago.” Indeed, Innis maintained a much lower profile in the job that preceded his tea party work: spokesperson for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a civil rights legacy institution which helped organize the 1963 March on Washington and the Freedom Rides.</p>
<p>But if the average Nevadan would not have known who Innis was one year ago, the average environmental activist certainly would have. Before he was a Fox News go-to, Innis spent a decade-plus as the face of various anti-environmentalist campaigns paid for by the country’s largest energy corporations. These campaigns deployed an unusual line of attack against environmental activists: rather than simply arguing that climate change fears were overblown or insupportable, Innis’ campaigns accused green groups of pushing policies that devastated the poor—particularly poor blacks.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Innis made those accusations mainly through his work with CORE, which his father, Roy Innis, has controlled since 1968. CORE swung hard to the right under the leadership of the elder Innis (who is on the <a href="" type="internal">National Rifle Association’s board of directors</a>). Its many pro-business campaigns have moved prominent civil rights figures to <a href="" type="internal">accuse CORE of renting out its reputation</a> to any corporation that will pay. One frequent CORE patron was ExxonMobil. Using data from Exxon’s annual giving disclosures, Greenpeace <a href="http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=111" type="external">calculated</a> that CORE received more than $300,000 from Exxon—some of which was earmarked for “climate change outreach efforts”—from 2003 to 2008.</p>
<p>During that time period, Innis teamed up with or founded several groups to push for greater domestic energy production. He frequently characterized environmentalists as elitist or <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040102005348/http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewBusiness.asp?Page=/Business/archive/200205/BUS20020529a.html" type="external">the remnants of</a> “the anarchists, socialists, communist types of the 1960s.”</p>
<p>A representative sample of Innis’ message can be seen in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti_kw6DjeOY" type="external">video</a> taken by Right Wing Watch, a website that tracks conservatives, in 2008. Innis had convened a press conference with CORE and Americans for American Energy, a non-profit group financed by an energy lobbyist, to launch <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080912202930/http://stopwaronpoor.org/home.aspx" type="external">a campaign</a> titled “Stop the War on the Poor.” In his remarks, Innis proclaims the fight to allow drilling in places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be “very much like the civil rights revolution in its diversity and in its moral passion.” A representative of Americans for American Energy <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/astroturf-groups-claim-environmentalist-%E2%80%9Cwar-poor%E2%80%9D" type="external">dinged</a> green activists as “environmental racists.”</p>
<p>Around that same time, Americans for American Energy <a href="http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_11455096" type="external">circulated an email</a> “linking wilderness supporters with Osama bin Laden, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez, and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”</p>
<p>At a 2005 National Press Club event marking Earth Day, Innis <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eco-imperialism-reflections-on-earth-day-72622877.html" type="external">said</a>:</p>
<p>“We must stop trying to protect our planet from every imaginable, exaggerated or imaginary risk. And we must stop trying to protect it on the backs, and the graves, of the nation’s and world’s most powerless and impoverished people. If people of conscience join us, we will challenge and end this scourge of eco-imperialism, and ensure that Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream will become a reality for poor people throughout the United States and world.”</p>
<p>In fact, the victims of pollution that environmental campaigns aim to protect are <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pollution-poverty-people-color-asthma-inner-city/" type="external">disproportionately poor</a>. Landmark environmental achievements, such as the Clean Air Act, have been shown to have a negligible impact on American household energy prices—while bringing about billions in <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/how-the-clean-air-act-has-saved-22-trillion-in-health-care-costs/262071/" type="external">health care savings</a>. Nonetheless, by 2010, Innis increased his activism with another pro-energy group, the Affordable Power Alliance, and under that banner <a href="http://townhall.com/columnists/harryrjacksonjr/2010/04/19/a_tea_party_diary" type="external">appeared before</a> tea party rallies around the country. In its founding manifesto, leaders of the Affordable Power Alliance blamed environmental activists for the deaths of multitudes of poor Americans. “Thousands of Americans become sick and die each year because high energy costs that prevent them from adequately heating or cooling their homes, buying the medicines they need, and practicing better health prevention measures,” <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100820081442/http://www.affordablepoweralliance.org/AboutUs.aspx" type="external">it read</a>.</p>
<p>Innis and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment about his past advocacy work. But on January 17, Innis appeared on Ralston’s talk show and spoke about his work with energy interests.</p>
<p>“I don’t give a darn about coal or about oil,” Innis said. “I do give a darn about oil jobs. I do give a darn about the jobs that coal can bring…I am against the Obama administration demonizing certain forms of energy and glorying others. I say, bring it all in.”</p>
<p>In theory, Innis’ transparent arrangement with companies such as Exxon poses a problem for the political outsider strains of his nascent campaign. When he officially kicked off his run, Innis <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/jan/15/former-tea-party-strategist-announces-bid-horsford/" type="external">boasted</a> that his political team “is not made up of Carson City elites or the princes of power of this state.” He declined to mention the literal power princes who paid a portion of his salary for the better part of the last decade.</p>
<p>But Nevada is a state where the term “Republican establishment” has ceased to mean very much. “Beyond [Gov. Brian] Sandoval and [Sen. Dean] Heller, the Republican party here is in disarray,” says Ralston. “And I am using disarray in the most generous way possible.” Ralston says Innis’ televisual verve, and the fact that his most likely primary opponent, state Assemblyman Cresent Hardy, is neither as charismatic nor as convincing on federal issues as Innis, will probably trump any difficulties Innis has in playing the outsider.</p>
<p>And that’s lucky for Innis. In the congressional district where he’s running, 85 percent of votes come from urban, Democratic areas like the city of North Las Vegas. Horsford’s seat is one of those that Republicans could dream of taking only in a midterm election when the president is suffering in popularity—and even then, only if the Republican establishment is willing to put up substantial dough. So by the time Innis launched his congressional exploratory committee in November, supporters had already circulated <a href="http://politicalpartytime.org/party/36094/" type="external">invitations</a> for a committee fundraiser which guests would pay a minimum of $500 to attend—co-chaired by Republican megadonors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson.</p>
<p />
| 6,783 |
<p>Greeley resident Samuel Adams put an American flag up on his apartment complex balcony, then the apartment manager ordered him to take it down.</p>
<p>The incident didn’t sit well with Adams, whose father and grandfather served in the Armed Forces, and he vented his frustrations in an online video that’s since gone viral, the <a href="http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/22630370-113/greeley-resident-asked-to-remove-american-flag-from" type="external">Greeley Tribune</a> reports.</p>
<p>In the video, posted to Facebook and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfnVFGBLWwk" type="external">YouTube</a>, Adams identified himself as a resident of Sterling Heights Apartment complex in Greeley, Colorado, and explained that he decorated his balcony in anticipation of the July 4 holiday.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“Today is June 22, and as you may know we are approaching the July 4 holiday, which I am prepared for,” Adams said.</p>
<p>“However, today when I came home I received this letter from the management of Sterling Heights Apartments,” he said before reading the letter from his balcony, which is still adorned with Old Glory.</p>
<p>The letter states that “it has come to management’s attention that you have an American flag on the balcony/patio area” in violation of a signed “Community Policies” agreement.</p>
<p>The letter quotes the policies, which specifically state that “the use of balconies and patios for the purpose of storage and/or laundry drying is prohibited. Breezeways are not to be used as a patio or storage. Please do not clutter with personal belongings. Balconies and patios must be maintained in a neat, clean and attractive condition. Outdoor and/or patio furniture is welcomed on your patio or balcony only. Gasoline and other hazardous materials are not to be stored in your apartment or storage area. Retain from having dead plants, boxes or garbage on balcony/patios at any time.”</p>
<p>Apartment manager Pamela Buchanan told the Tribune in an email that “Sterling Heights seeks to be fair to residents by limiting displays as there could be signs, flags or decorations that may be offensive and disruptive to the community.”</p>
<p>The apartment complex’s senior regional manager, Amie Robertshaw, told the Tribune other residents were also cited for balcony violations. The complex will allow flag displays for Independence Day, but that’s it, she said.</p>
<p>“We really try hard to keep a nice, neat community and are diligent about our efforts to keep uniformity in appearance in the areas visible to others,” Robertshaw wrote in an email.</p>
<p>The letter to Adams encouraged him to contact Buchanan or the apartment office with questions or concerns.</p>
<p>“This will serve, Sterling Heights, as my contact …” Adams said in the video. “Thank you, America, I look forward to your feedback.”</p>
<p>Adams told the Tribune he has no plans to take the flag down.</p>
<p>“I thought it was ust going to be a whisper but it has avalanched,” he said. “I’m the kind of guy that when I see a man or woman in uniform, I go up to them and say, ‘thank you for your service.’ I gladly accept the responsibility given to me of standing up for the veterans and families that have reached out to me.”</p>
<p>The Facebook video has been shared more than 1,500 times and generated a lot of comments, according to the Tribune.</p>
<p>Folks posted mixed reactions to Adams’ video on YouTube.</p>
<p>“You are improperly displaying the flag. When hung against a wall it needs to unfurl stripes down,” Ernie Fingerblatz wrote. “Ignore the apartment letter and forward it to an attorney. Sue their ass for infringing on your right to freedom of expression of national pride.”</p>
<p>“Get your own house/property and do with it as you like,” graftonreed posted. “The apartment owners are just that … the owners.”</p>
<p>“This is America? Is that the flag of our country? What’s wrong with people?” bluenite5 added.</p>
<p>“Stay the course, and simply tell management to f*** off,” JD Webb added. “It’s that simple.”</p>
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Apartment building orders tenant to take down American flag
| true |
http://theamericanmirror.com/video-apartment-management-demands-patriot-remove-american-flag-balcony/
|
2016-06-28
| 0right
|
Apartment building orders tenant to take down American flag
<p>Greeley resident Samuel Adams put an American flag up on his apartment complex balcony, then the apartment manager ordered him to take it down.</p>
<p>The incident didn’t sit well with Adams, whose father and grandfather served in the Armed Forces, and he vented his frustrations in an online video that’s since gone viral, the <a href="http://www.greeleytribune.com/news/22630370-113/greeley-resident-asked-to-remove-american-flag-from" type="external">Greeley Tribune</a> reports.</p>
<p>In the video, posted to Facebook and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfnVFGBLWwk" type="external">YouTube</a>, Adams identified himself as a resident of Sterling Heights Apartment complex in Greeley, Colorado, and explained that he decorated his balcony in anticipation of the July 4 holiday.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>“Today is June 22, and as you may know we are approaching the July 4 holiday, which I am prepared for,” Adams said.</p>
<p>“However, today when I came home I received this letter from the management of Sterling Heights Apartments,” he said before reading the letter from his balcony, which is still adorned with Old Glory.</p>
<p>The letter states that “it has come to management’s attention that you have an American flag on the balcony/patio area” in violation of a signed “Community Policies” agreement.</p>
<p>The letter quotes the policies, which specifically state that “the use of balconies and patios for the purpose of storage and/or laundry drying is prohibited. Breezeways are not to be used as a patio or storage. Please do not clutter with personal belongings. Balconies and patios must be maintained in a neat, clean and attractive condition. Outdoor and/or patio furniture is welcomed on your patio or balcony only. Gasoline and other hazardous materials are not to be stored in your apartment or storage area. Retain from having dead plants, boxes or garbage on balcony/patios at any time.”</p>
<p>Apartment manager Pamela Buchanan told the Tribune in an email that “Sterling Heights seeks to be fair to residents by limiting displays as there could be signs, flags or decorations that may be offensive and disruptive to the community.”</p>
<p>The apartment complex’s senior regional manager, Amie Robertshaw, told the Tribune other residents were also cited for balcony violations. The complex will allow flag displays for Independence Day, but that’s it, she said.</p>
<p>“We really try hard to keep a nice, neat community and are diligent about our efforts to keep uniformity in appearance in the areas visible to others,” Robertshaw wrote in an email.</p>
<p>The letter to Adams encouraged him to contact Buchanan or the apartment office with questions or concerns.</p>
<p>“This will serve, Sterling Heights, as my contact …” Adams said in the video. “Thank you, America, I look forward to your feedback.”</p>
<p>Adams told the Tribune he has no plans to take the flag down.</p>
<p>“I thought it was ust going to be a whisper but it has avalanched,” he said. “I’m the kind of guy that when I see a man or woman in uniform, I go up to them and say, ‘thank you for your service.’ I gladly accept the responsibility given to me of standing up for the veterans and families that have reached out to me.”</p>
<p>The Facebook video has been shared more than 1,500 times and generated a lot of comments, according to the Tribune.</p>
<p>Folks posted mixed reactions to Adams’ video on YouTube.</p>
<p>“You are improperly displaying the flag. When hung against a wall it needs to unfurl stripes down,” Ernie Fingerblatz wrote. “Ignore the apartment letter and forward it to an attorney. Sue their ass for infringing on your right to freedom of expression of national pride.”</p>
<p>“Get your own house/property and do with it as you like,” graftonreed posted. “The apartment owners are just that … the owners.”</p>
<p>“This is America? Is that the flag of our country? What’s wrong with people?” bluenite5 added.</p>
<p>“Stay the course, and simply tell management to f*** off,” JD Webb added. “It’s that simple.”</p>
| 6,784 |
<p>Aug. 31, 2012</p>
<p>By Katy Grimes</p>
<p>Farm workers and nannies have a couple of glaring things in common–they are jobs predominantly held by Hispanic men and women, currently exempted from overtime laws, and are&#160;being targeted by labor unions for takeover.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Democrats and labor unions are pushing to force employers to give nannies and farm workers overtime pay, workers compensation insurance, and mandatory breaks. But Democrats in the Assembly never once acknowledged that not all employers can provide a standardized eight-hour workday because of seasonal production or the need for some work to be done in concentrated periods.</p>
<p>Instead, Democrats arrogantly said that the industry can just absorb the costs.</p>
<p>But if industry can’t absorb the costs, it will be workers who pay the price.</p>
<p>California is a nanny state–literally. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, authored <a href="http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_889/20112012/" type="external">AB 889</a>, requiring domestic workers to be paid overtime, given workers compensation insurance, and receive regular breaks and standard meal periods.</p>
<p>In the Assembly Thursday, Ammiano said that his bill was aimed at “giving these women a chance for advancement, and chance for employers to be fair,” and said “they have lived in the shadows too long.”</p>
<p>The nanny bill would require that caregivers in private households, over the age of 18, be paid overtime after eight hours, receive meals and rest periods, and have uninterrupted sleep periods and compensation for interruptions.</p>
<p>Even mothers don’t receive compensation for the interruptions they endure during the night. And who will relieve the babysitter during her breaks and meal periods?</p>
<p>The bill is just another a union-sponsored bill, and Ammiano is just another California Democrat who receives <a href="http://maplight.org/california/legislator/1245-tom-ammiano" type="external">the maximum contributions</a> from the state’s <a href="http://maplight.org/california/interest#industry=General%20Trade%20Unions" type="external">labor and public employee unions</a>.</p>
<p>Earlier in the year, another bill, <a href="http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_101/20112012/" type="external">AB 101</a>, was an attempt to unionize licensed child-care providers who run small, in-home day cares and relatives who take care of family members and receive a state subsidy. Assembly Speaker John Perez, the bill’s author, insisted that the bill’s purpose was to provide better working conditions for child-care providers.</p>
<p>AB 101 was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.</p>
<p>But at the heart of these bills are labor unions. There is no denying the relationship between Democratic legislators and labor unions. The SEIU, AFSCME and the CTA benefit greatly whenever another industry is taken over through legislation, or weakened by additional stringent labor laws. Every time Democrats vote to expand the size of unions by taking over another industry, union membership and dues increase in value.</p>
<p>Agriculture workers aren’t the only employees exempted from the state’s overtime laws. There have been several bills aimed at&#160;removing the overtime exemption for agricultural employees.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_1313/20112012/" type="external">AB 1313</a>, by Assemblyman Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, would change the law to require payment of overtime after an eight-hour workday, or 40 hours per week. But what Democrats will not admit is that AB 1313 would hurt both the farm worker and employer by limiting worker hours, resulting in the employer to hire more workers to make up the production difference.</p>
<p>Agricultural workers are already entitled to California overtime for all work beyond 10 hours in a workday, as well as weekly overtime pay. The California Farm Bureau reports that only three other states require overtime pay for agricultural workers, and none has such low thresholds as proposed in AB 1313.</p>
<p>The exemptions to overtime laws are extensive. Most interesting, however, is that overtime wage orders expressly exempt public employees. Under listed exemptions, the Department of Industrial Relations website reads, “Employees directly employed by the State or any political subdivision thereof, including any city, county or special district.” So it exempts state employees from state law, but requires private sector employers to comply.</p>
<p>Legislators regularly approve laws and regulations but exempt the state from the restrictions.</p>
<p>Public employees are not the only employees exempted from the state’s overtime laws according to the DIR. The list of exempt jobs is long:</p>
<p>* Unionized employees working under a collective bargaining agreement</p>
<p>* Truck drivers</p>
<p>* Computer software employees</p>
<p>* Airline employees</p>
<p>* Sales representatives</p>
<p>* Taxi-cab drivers</p>
<p>* Nurses and student nurses</p>
<p>* Professional actors and film projector operators</p>
<p>* Commercial fishing employees</p>
<p>* Radio or television announcers and news editors</p>
<p>* Sheepherders</p>
<p>* Irrigators</p>
<p>* Personal attendants</p>
<p>* Babysitters</p>
<p>California’s overtime laws are complex and largely appear to be driven by the political party in power.</p>
<p>Overtime was enacted many years ago, to compensate employees who were being “overworked” by employers, defined by the government as working employees beyond eight hours in one workday. Overtime law requires employers to pay employees overtime equaling and one-half of employees’ hourly pay for working more than eight hours in one day, as well as more than 40 hours in one week. Double-time is paid after 12 hours in one day, and again on the seventh consecutive workday in one week.</p>
<p>In effect through 1997, the old daily overtime rules required only certain industries that had specific wage orders regulating them to pay overtime daily. Manufacturing and clerical workers were subjected to the daily overtime laws, but construction, mining and logging were not, so they could instead opt to pay daily overtime or defer to the federal standard of paying overtime after 40 hours worked in a workweek.</p>
<p>In 1998, Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation relieving California’s employers from the state’s daily overtime laws, allowing employers to pay overtime after 40 hours in one week, instead of the daily overtime. Widely hailed as a pro-business move, Wilson’s goal was to give employers and employees more flexibility in production and schedules. Labor union representatives were outraged, and claimed their members would lose income with the overtime change.</p>
<p>Almost immediately, Assemblyman Wally Knox, D-Los Angeles, authored AB 60, which was referred to as organized labor’s reaction to Wilson’s elimination of daily overtime. In 1999, Gov. Gray Davis signed AB60, called the “Eight Hour Day Restoration and Workplace Flexibility Act of 1999,” dramatically changing the state’s overtime compensation laws. The act went into effect for most employers on January 1, 2000. However, the list of exemptions was long, and included public employees.</p>
<p>The 1999 act’s most dramatic change was the restoration of the daily overtime requirement. Ironically, union employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement were not covered by AB 60, nor were public employees.</p>
<p>Federal law, and the vast majority of states, only require that overtime be paid for hours worked in excess of 40 per week. However, California requires that overtime be paid after eight hours’ work in one workday and after 40 hours work in one workweek.</p>
<p>The daily overtime requirements must be met regardless of the total number of hours worked during the week. For employees who work seven consecutive days during the workweek, the act requires that the employee be paid one-and-a-half times the regular rate of pay for the first eight hours worked on the seventh day of work in a work week, and two times the regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight on the seventh day. Irrespective of the amount of time the employee has worked during the preceding six days, on the seventh day, the pay requirements apply.</p>
<p>OT doesn’t work in some industries. Look at the list of exemptions; most of the jobs are largely production related and require periods of work in order to meet production. They can’t be molded into a standard 8-hour, state office worker workday. These people work when the work is there, and they work long hours when they need to. When they work is not available, they do not get paid.</p>
<p>Long-time seasonable or production employees understand that they make a great deal of money during some seasons, and can work long hours.</p>
<p>Ammiano’s AB 889 is unworkable, and if passed, would be back next year for technical clean ups. Babysitters and caregivers can’t take traditional breaks and have meal periods. Nor can they have uninterrupted sleep if they work overnight.</p>
<p>Even Democrats who were involved in the floor debate Thursday did not have valid points for support. “This will allow the DIR to have a thoughful conversation,” said Assemblyman V. Manuel Perez, D-Coachella.</p>
<p>“When we put people in charge of our loved ones, we need to make sure they have the same rights as other employees; then they can give us more confident care of our loved ones,” said Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.</p>
<p>“This establishes basic rights and principles for nannies, elders, cooks, and provides basic rights all workers should have,” said Assemblyman Warren Furutani, D-Long Beach.</p>
<p>Support speeches for AB 1313, the farm worker bill, were just as asinine. Democrats never addressed the nature of the seasonal work, nor the reality of varying production needs. And why should they–most have never worked outside of government jobs, law firms or labor unions.</p>
<p>Deaf to the real issues faced by California employers, Allen said, “This industry will absorb the costs, and will pay overtime if necessary. You can’t put a price on equity.”</p>
|
Unions target nannies and farm workers
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2012/08/31/nannies-and-farm-workers-targeted-by-unions/
|
2018-08-20
| 3left-center
|
Unions target nannies and farm workers
<p>Aug. 31, 2012</p>
<p>By Katy Grimes</p>
<p>Farm workers and nannies have a couple of glaring things in common–they are jobs predominantly held by Hispanic men and women, currently exempted from overtime laws, and are&#160;being targeted by labor unions for takeover.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Democrats and labor unions are pushing to force employers to give nannies and farm workers overtime pay, workers compensation insurance, and mandatory breaks. But Democrats in the Assembly never once acknowledged that not all employers can provide a standardized eight-hour workday because of seasonal production or the need for some work to be done in concentrated periods.</p>
<p>Instead, Democrats arrogantly said that the industry can just absorb the costs.</p>
<p>But if industry can’t absorb the costs, it will be workers who pay the price.</p>
<p>California is a nanny state–literally. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, authored <a href="http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_889/20112012/" type="external">AB 889</a>, requiring domestic workers to be paid overtime, given workers compensation insurance, and receive regular breaks and standard meal periods.</p>
<p>In the Assembly Thursday, Ammiano said that his bill was aimed at “giving these women a chance for advancement, and chance for employers to be fair,” and said “they have lived in the shadows too long.”</p>
<p>The nanny bill would require that caregivers in private households, over the age of 18, be paid overtime after eight hours, receive meals and rest periods, and have uninterrupted sleep periods and compensation for interruptions.</p>
<p>Even mothers don’t receive compensation for the interruptions they endure during the night. And who will relieve the babysitter during her breaks and meal periods?</p>
<p>The bill is just another a union-sponsored bill, and Ammiano is just another California Democrat who receives <a href="http://maplight.org/california/legislator/1245-tom-ammiano" type="external">the maximum contributions</a> from the state’s <a href="http://maplight.org/california/interest#industry=General%20Trade%20Unions" type="external">labor and public employee unions</a>.</p>
<p>Earlier in the year, another bill, <a href="http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_101/20112012/" type="external">AB 101</a>, was an attempt to unionize licensed child-care providers who run small, in-home day cares and relatives who take care of family members and receive a state subsidy. Assembly Speaker John Perez, the bill’s author, insisted that the bill’s purpose was to provide better working conditions for child-care providers.</p>
<p>AB 101 was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.</p>
<p>But at the heart of these bills are labor unions. There is no denying the relationship between Democratic legislators and labor unions. The SEIU, AFSCME and the CTA benefit greatly whenever another industry is taken over through legislation, or weakened by additional stringent labor laws. Every time Democrats vote to expand the size of unions by taking over another industry, union membership and dues increase in value.</p>
<p>Agriculture workers aren’t the only employees exempted from the state’s overtime laws. There have been several bills aimed at&#160;removing the overtime exemption for agricultural employees.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aroundthecapitol.com/Bills/AB_1313/20112012/" type="external">AB 1313</a>, by Assemblyman Michael Allen, D-Santa Rosa, would change the law to require payment of overtime after an eight-hour workday, or 40 hours per week. But what Democrats will not admit is that AB 1313 would hurt both the farm worker and employer by limiting worker hours, resulting in the employer to hire more workers to make up the production difference.</p>
<p>Agricultural workers are already entitled to California overtime for all work beyond 10 hours in a workday, as well as weekly overtime pay. The California Farm Bureau reports that only three other states require overtime pay for agricultural workers, and none has such low thresholds as proposed in AB 1313.</p>
<p>The exemptions to overtime laws are extensive. Most interesting, however, is that overtime wage orders expressly exempt public employees. Under listed exemptions, the Department of Industrial Relations website reads, “Employees directly employed by the State or any political subdivision thereof, including any city, county or special district.” So it exempts state employees from state law, but requires private sector employers to comply.</p>
<p>Legislators regularly approve laws and regulations but exempt the state from the restrictions.</p>
<p>Public employees are not the only employees exempted from the state’s overtime laws according to the DIR. The list of exempt jobs is long:</p>
<p>* Unionized employees working under a collective bargaining agreement</p>
<p>* Truck drivers</p>
<p>* Computer software employees</p>
<p>* Airline employees</p>
<p>* Sales representatives</p>
<p>* Taxi-cab drivers</p>
<p>* Nurses and student nurses</p>
<p>* Professional actors and film projector operators</p>
<p>* Commercial fishing employees</p>
<p>* Radio or television announcers and news editors</p>
<p>* Sheepherders</p>
<p>* Irrigators</p>
<p>* Personal attendants</p>
<p>* Babysitters</p>
<p>California’s overtime laws are complex and largely appear to be driven by the political party in power.</p>
<p>Overtime was enacted many years ago, to compensate employees who were being “overworked” by employers, defined by the government as working employees beyond eight hours in one workday. Overtime law requires employers to pay employees overtime equaling and one-half of employees’ hourly pay for working more than eight hours in one day, as well as more than 40 hours in one week. Double-time is paid after 12 hours in one day, and again on the seventh consecutive workday in one week.</p>
<p>In effect through 1997, the old daily overtime rules required only certain industries that had specific wage orders regulating them to pay overtime daily. Manufacturing and clerical workers were subjected to the daily overtime laws, but construction, mining and logging were not, so they could instead opt to pay daily overtime or defer to the federal standard of paying overtime after 40 hours worked in a workweek.</p>
<p>In 1998, Gov. Pete Wilson signed legislation relieving California’s employers from the state’s daily overtime laws, allowing employers to pay overtime after 40 hours in one week, instead of the daily overtime. Widely hailed as a pro-business move, Wilson’s goal was to give employers and employees more flexibility in production and schedules. Labor union representatives were outraged, and claimed their members would lose income with the overtime change.</p>
<p>Almost immediately, Assemblyman Wally Knox, D-Los Angeles, authored AB 60, which was referred to as organized labor’s reaction to Wilson’s elimination of daily overtime. In 1999, Gov. Gray Davis signed AB60, called the “Eight Hour Day Restoration and Workplace Flexibility Act of 1999,” dramatically changing the state’s overtime compensation laws. The act went into effect for most employers on January 1, 2000. However, the list of exemptions was long, and included public employees.</p>
<p>The 1999 act’s most dramatic change was the restoration of the daily overtime requirement. Ironically, union employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement were not covered by AB 60, nor were public employees.</p>
<p>Federal law, and the vast majority of states, only require that overtime be paid for hours worked in excess of 40 per week. However, California requires that overtime be paid after eight hours’ work in one workday and after 40 hours work in one workweek.</p>
<p>The daily overtime requirements must be met regardless of the total number of hours worked during the week. For employees who work seven consecutive days during the workweek, the act requires that the employee be paid one-and-a-half times the regular rate of pay for the first eight hours worked on the seventh day of work in a work week, and two times the regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight on the seventh day. Irrespective of the amount of time the employee has worked during the preceding six days, on the seventh day, the pay requirements apply.</p>
<p>OT doesn’t work in some industries. Look at the list of exemptions; most of the jobs are largely production related and require periods of work in order to meet production. They can’t be molded into a standard 8-hour, state office worker workday. These people work when the work is there, and they work long hours when they need to. When they work is not available, they do not get paid.</p>
<p>Long-time seasonable or production employees understand that they make a great deal of money during some seasons, and can work long hours.</p>
<p>Ammiano’s AB 889 is unworkable, and if passed, would be back next year for technical clean ups. Babysitters and caregivers can’t take traditional breaks and have meal periods. Nor can they have uninterrupted sleep if they work overnight.</p>
<p>Even Democrats who were involved in the floor debate Thursday did not have valid points for support. “This will allow the DIR to have a thoughful conversation,” said Assemblyman V. Manuel Perez, D-Coachella.</p>
<p>“When we put people in charge of our loved ones, we need to make sure they have the same rights as other employees; then they can give us more confident care of our loved ones,” said Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley.</p>
<p>“This establishes basic rights and principles for nannies, elders, cooks, and provides basic rights all workers should have,” said Assemblyman Warren Furutani, D-Long Beach.</p>
<p>Support speeches for AB 1313, the farm worker bill, were just as asinine. Democrats never addressed the nature of the seasonal work, nor the reality of varying production needs. And why should they–most have never worked outside of government jobs, law firms or labor unions.</p>
<p>Deaf to the real issues faced by California employers, Allen said, “This industry will absorb the costs, and will pay overtime if necessary. You can’t put a price on equity.”</p>
| 6,785 |
<p>In a secret vote held behind closed doors Monday night, House Republicans voted to cripple the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body created in 2008 to rein in corruption and other misconduct by members of Congress.</p>
<p>The move was spearheaded “by <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-own-oversight-233111" type="external">lawmakers who have come under investigation</a> in recent years,” according to Politico. Among those speaking in favor of the changes were Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), who was accused by a staffer of sexual harassment, and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), who allegedly received “an impermissible gift when he and his wife traveled to Taiwan in October 2011.”</p>
<p>Under the new rules, the Office of Congressional Ethics would be renamed the Office of Congressional Complaint Review and, critically, lose its independence. It would be placed under the auspices of the House Ethics Committee, which famously has turned a blind eye to wrongdoing by members of Congress. It became clear that an independent body was necessary after scandals largely ignored by the the Ethics Committee sent several members of Congress, including Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Bob Ney, to jail.</p>
<p>Many of the new restrictions on the body appear designed to make it easier to sweep misconduct under the rug.</p>
<p>The new Office of Congressional Complaint Review <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3249488-Goodlatte-OCE-Amendment-to-House-Rules.html" type="external">cannot make any of its findings public</a> — or make any other public statement — without the approval of the House Ethics Committee.</p>
<p>Even if the Office of Congressional Complaint Review finds evidence of criminal conduct, it <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3249488-Goodlatte-OCE-Amendment-to-House-Rules.html" type="external">cannot report it to the police without prior approval</a>.</p>
<p>The rules also prohibit the new office from considering anonymous complaints or investigating any conduct that occurred before 2011.</p>
<p>Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi immediately blasted the proposed rules, declaring that “ <a href="http://www.democraticleader.gov/newsroom/12172/" type="external">ethics are the first casualty</a> of the new Republican Congress.” Her sentiments were echoed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).</p>
<p />
<p>The rules were pushed by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte.</p>
<p />
<p>The move was reportedly opposed by House Speaker Paul Ryan and others in the Congressional leadership. President-elect Trump ran on a promise to “drain the swamp.”</p>
<p>The House leadership will get a chance to prove their opposition Tuesday, when a public vote on a rules package that includes the changes to ethics oversight will occur on the House floor.</p>
|
House Republicans secretly vote to gut Office of Congressional Ethics
| true |
https://thinkprogress.org/house-republicans-secretly-vote-to-gut-office-of-congressional-ethics-f6eae60baea4?source%3Dcollection_home---7------0----------
|
2017-01-03
| 4left
|
House Republicans secretly vote to gut Office of Congressional Ethics
<p>In a secret vote held behind closed doors Monday night, House Republicans voted to cripple the Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent body created in 2008 to rein in corruption and other misconduct by members of Congress.</p>
<p>The move was spearheaded “by <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-own-oversight-233111" type="external">lawmakers who have come under investigation</a> in recent years,” according to Politico. Among those speaking in favor of the changes were Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX), who was accused by a staffer of sexual harassment, and Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), who allegedly received “an impermissible gift when he and his wife traveled to Taiwan in October 2011.”</p>
<p>Under the new rules, the Office of Congressional Ethics would be renamed the Office of Congressional Complaint Review and, critically, lose its independence. It would be placed under the auspices of the House Ethics Committee, which famously has turned a blind eye to wrongdoing by members of Congress. It became clear that an independent body was necessary after scandals largely ignored by the the Ethics Committee sent several members of Congress, including Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Bob Ney, to jail.</p>
<p>Many of the new restrictions on the body appear designed to make it easier to sweep misconduct under the rug.</p>
<p>The new Office of Congressional Complaint Review <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3249488-Goodlatte-OCE-Amendment-to-House-Rules.html" type="external">cannot make any of its findings public</a> — or make any other public statement — without the approval of the House Ethics Committee.</p>
<p>Even if the Office of Congressional Complaint Review finds evidence of criminal conduct, it <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3249488-Goodlatte-OCE-Amendment-to-House-Rules.html" type="external">cannot report it to the police without prior approval</a>.</p>
<p>The rules also prohibit the new office from considering anonymous complaints or investigating any conduct that occurred before 2011.</p>
<p>Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi immediately blasted the proposed rules, declaring that “ <a href="http://www.democraticleader.gov/newsroom/12172/" type="external">ethics are the first casualty</a> of the new Republican Congress.” Her sentiments were echoed by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).</p>
<p />
<p>The rules were pushed by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte.</p>
<p />
<p>The move was reportedly opposed by House Speaker Paul Ryan and others in the Congressional leadership. President-elect Trump ran on a promise to “drain the swamp.”</p>
<p>The House leadership will get a chance to prove their opposition Tuesday, when a public vote on a rules package that includes the changes to ethics oversight will occur on the House floor.</p>
| 6,786 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said Thursday that 48 vehicles earned its highest rating of "Top Safety Pick Plus." That's up from 33 a year ago.</p>
<p>Toyota, Honda and Subaru had the most winners, with 23 combined. Volkswagen and its luxury brand, Audi, had seven winners. Volvo, Hyundai and Mazda each had multiple winners. The Chrysler 200 was the only domestic car to earn the designation.</p>
<p>To be a "Top Safety Pick Plus," vehicles must get the top score in all five of the group's crash tests. Winners must also offer advanced front crash-prevention systems with automatic emergency braking. The institute says several vehicles added automatic braking in 2016 so they could compete for the top prize, including the Nissan Maxima and Toyota Avalon.</p>
<p>Before this year, winners could get a lower score on the small overlap front crash test, which is the institute's newest and most challenging test. It replicates what happens when the front corner of a car hits a fixed object. Some previous winners, such as the Toyota Sienna minivan, dropped off the list this year because they didn't earn the top score on that test.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Adrian Lund, the institute's president, said the group tightened its requirements in order to recognize the progress that some automakers are making and encourage others to follow.</p>
<p>The institute noted that automatic braking is standard on the Scion iA, a $16,000 subcompact. It was the only minicar to earn the designation. Only a handful of other vehicles, all of them luxury models, offer automatic braking as a standard feature. Most offer it as an option.</p>
<p>Thirteen vehicles, including five made by General Motors Co., earned the institute's second-highest rating of "Top Safety Pick." Among those was the Buick Encore, which earned the highest scores on the institute's crash tests but doesn't offer automatic braking.</p>
<p>Rankings from the Insurance Institute - which is funded by the insurance industry - are closely watched by automakers and consumers.</p>
|
Japanese cars do best in insurance industry safety rankings
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/688816/japanese-cars-do-best-in-insurance-industry-safety-rankings.html
| 2least
|
Japanese cars do best in insurance industry safety rankings
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said Thursday that 48 vehicles earned its highest rating of "Top Safety Pick Plus." That's up from 33 a year ago.</p>
<p>Toyota, Honda and Subaru had the most winners, with 23 combined. Volkswagen and its luxury brand, Audi, had seven winners. Volvo, Hyundai and Mazda each had multiple winners. The Chrysler 200 was the only domestic car to earn the designation.</p>
<p>To be a "Top Safety Pick Plus," vehicles must get the top score in all five of the group's crash tests. Winners must also offer advanced front crash-prevention systems with automatic emergency braking. The institute says several vehicles added automatic braking in 2016 so they could compete for the top prize, including the Nissan Maxima and Toyota Avalon.</p>
<p>Before this year, winners could get a lower score on the small overlap front crash test, which is the institute's newest and most challenging test. It replicates what happens when the front corner of a car hits a fixed object. Some previous winners, such as the Toyota Sienna minivan, dropped off the list this year because they didn't earn the top score on that test.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Adrian Lund, the institute's president, said the group tightened its requirements in order to recognize the progress that some automakers are making and encourage others to follow.</p>
<p>The institute noted that automatic braking is standard on the Scion iA, a $16,000 subcompact. It was the only minicar to earn the designation. Only a handful of other vehicles, all of them luxury models, offer automatic braking as a standard feature. Most offer it as an option.</p>
<p>Thirteen vehicles, including five made by General Motors Co., earned the institute's second-highest rating of "Top Safety Pick." Among those was the Buick Encore, which earned the highest scores on the institute's crash tests but doesn't offer automatic braking.</p>
<p>Rankings from the Insurance Institute - which is funded by the insurance industry - are closely watched by automakers and consumers.</p>
| 6,787 |
|
<p />
<p>A contributor to the National Rifle Association's (NRA) Frontlines series suggested that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on America could kill 90 percent of the population and cause people on food assistance to start "eating each other in the streets."</p>
<p>The NRA routinely fearmongers that an EMP attack -- where a nuclear bomb is detonated in space, supposedly causing the destruction of the power grid -- would cause widespread chaos and death, even though <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131008110652/http:/www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/23/the_empire_strikes_back_emp?" type="external">experts</a>&#160;have dismissed such claims as coming from a "crowd of cranks and threat inflators."</p>
<p>During the September 22 broadcast of the NRA's radio show Cam &amp; Company, Frontlines contributor Chuck Holton promoted an episode of his series featuring former CIA director James Woolsey. Called "The Fight for Light: The Coming Catastrophe," the <a href="https://www.nranews.com/series/frontlines/video/frontlines-the-fight-for-light-the-coming-catastrophe/episode/frontlines-season-4-episode-6-the-fight-for-light-the-coming-catastrophe" type="external">episode</a> largely speculated about the prospect of North Korea using a satellite to detonate a nuclear bomb in space to destroy the United States' power grid.</p>
<p>Frontlines is <a href="https://www.nranews.com/series/frontlines" type="external">hosted</a> by NRA board member and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North and takes viewers "inside the most dangerous threats and critical events concerning your freedom."</p>
<p>While promoting the North Korea EMP episode, Holton said on Cam &amp; Company, "Like Admiral Woolsey said in that piece -- you know, this is the former director of the CIA, it's not just some old guy that we found on the street, OK? He knows what he is talking about. And they're estimating that 90 percent of Americans would die in the case of a large-scale grid down situation."</p>
<p>"You're talking about mass starvation, disease breaking out," Holton continued. "It's not just like people are going to die because their iPhone doesn't work anymore, you're talking about large scale -- people eating each other in the streets, because when you have these sort of systemic issues in our government of nearly half of the people in the United States receiving some sort of subsidy from the government, imagine what happens when all the EBT cards start flashing zeroes."</p>
<p />
<p>The NRA's claims about the chance of an EMP attack are greatly overblown. For one thing, North Korean satellites are not sophisticated enough to be used as reliable delivery systems for nuclear bombs (and <a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/12/launch/" type="external">look</a> nothing like the <a href="/static/uploader/image/2015/09/23/nranorthkorea.jpg" type="external">highly-sophisticated</a> satellite depicted as exploding over the United States in the Frontlines' episode.)</p>
<p>As&#160;Wired <a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/12/launch/" type="external">noted</a> after "hysterical headlines" in 2012 about how North Korea had "finally managed to put an object into orbit around the Earth after 14 years of trying," North Korea's satellite is 2.5 feet by 3.5 feet tall and weighs just 220 pounds. While the satellite was supposed to transmit "scientific data when orbiting over the DPRK and the hymns of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il the rest of the time," it is apparently non-functional.</p>
<p>Woolsey, whom the NRA's considers its expert on EMP attacks, has also been criticized for his EMP claims and promotion of the conspiracy theory that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131008110652/http:/www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/23/the_empire_strikes_back_emp?" type="external">Iraqis were responsible</a> for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.</p>
<p>In a 2013 article in Foreign Policy, nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis criticized Woolsey for a Wall Street Journal op-ed <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324482504578455451910706908?cb=logged0.9123094973283358" type="external">suggesting</a> the United States should launch pre-emptive strike on North Korea to prevent an EMP attack on the United States.</p>
<p>Even if an EMP attack somehow occurred, Lewis <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131007125254/http:/www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/23/the_empire_strikes_back_emp?page=0,1" type="external">demonstrated</a> how past experimentation suggests that the "EMP crowd" has baselessly speculated about what would actually happen during an attack:</p>
<p>Even if we understand how an electromagnetic pulse works and have data about the vulnerability of equipment, a modern system like a power grid or communications network presents just too complex a set of resiliencies and vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>The solution of the EMP Commission was simply to collect more data, essentially creating laundry lists of things that might go wrong. For example, the EMP Commission exposed 37 cars and 18 trucks to EMP effects in a laboratory environment. While EMP advocates claim the results of an EMP attack would be "planes falling from the sky, cars stalling on the roadways, electrical networks failing, food rotting," the actual results were much more modest. Of the 55 vehicles exposed to EMP, six at the highest levels of exposure needed to be restarted. A few more showed "nuisance" damage to electronics, such as blinking dashboard displays.</p>
<p>The NRA routinely fills its magazines <a href="/blog/2015/05/27/nra-magazine-features-a-lamp-that-celebrates-th/203759" type="external">with advertisements</a> for bulk survival food and alternative power sources in case the grid goes offline.</p>
<p>Just before the 2014 elections, NRA leader Wayne LaPierre <a href="/blog/2014/10/27/nras-election-message-vote-your-guns-because-is/201329" type="external">urged supporters</a> to "vote your guns" while fear mongering over the prospect of a <a href="http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/a9f484ab#/a9f484ab/93" type="external">Russia, China or North Korea-led EMP attack</a> that could kill "as much as 90 percent of the population of the U.S." by bringing about the reemergence of "Third World" diseases like "amoebic dysentery, typhoid, [and] cholera -- killing our youngest and frailest family members."</p>
|
NRA Contributor: People On Food Stamps Will Be "Eating Each Other In The Streets" Following EMP Attack By North Korea
| true |
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/09/23/nra-contributor-people-on-food-stamps-will-be-e/205752
|
2015-09-23
| 4left
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NRA Contributor: People On Food Stamps Will Be "Eating Each Other In The Streets" Following EMP Attack By North Korea
<p />
<p>A contributor to the National Rifle Association's (NRA) Frontlines series suggested that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on America could kill 90 percent of the population and cause people on food assistance to start "eating each other in the streets."</p>
<p>The NRA routinely fearmongers that an EMP attack -- where a nuclear bomb is detonated in space, supposedly causing the destruction of the power grid -- would cause widespread chaos and death, even though <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131008110652/http:/www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/23/the_empire_strikes_back_emp?" type="external">experts</a>&#160;have dismissed such claims as coming from a "crowd of cranks and threat inflators."</p>
<p>During the September 22 broadcast of the NRA's radio show Cam &amp; Company, Frontlines contributor Chuck Holton promoted an episode of his series featuring former CIA director James Woolsey. Called "The Fight for Light: The Coming Catastrophe," the <a href="https://www.nranews.com/series/frontlines/video/frontlines-the-fight-for-light-the-coming-catastrophe/episode/frontlines-season-4-episode-6-the-fight-for-light-the-coming-catastrophe" type="external">episode</a> largely speculated about the prospect of North Korea using a satellite to detonate a nuclear bomb in space to destroy the United States' power grid.</p>
<p>Frontlines is <a href="https://www.nranews.com/series/frontlines" type="external">hosted</a> by NRA board member and Iran-Contra figure Oliver North and takes viewers "inside the most dangerous threats and critical events concerning your freedom."</p>
<p>While promoting the North Korea EMP episode, Holton said on Cam &amp; Company, "Like Admiral Woolsey said in that piece -- you know, this is the former director of the CIA, it's not just some old guy that we found on the street, OK? He knows what he is talking about. And they're estimating that 90 percent of Americans would die in the case of a large-scale grid down situation."</p>
<p>"You're talking about mass starvation, disease breaking out," Holton continued. "It's not just like people are going to die because their iPhone doesn't work anymore, you're talking about large scale -- people eating each other in the streets, because when you have these sort of systemic issues in our government of nearly half of the people in the United States receiving some sort of subsidy from the government, imagine what happens when all the EBT cards start flashing zeroes."</p>
<p />
<p>The NRA's claims about the chance of an EMP attack are greatly overblown. For one thing, North Korean satellites are not sophisticated enough to be used as reliable delivery systems for nuclear bombs (and <a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/12/launch/" type="external">look</a> nothing like the <a href="/static/uploader/image/2015/09/23/nranorthkorea.jpg" type="external">highly-sophisticated</a> satellite depicted as exploding over the United States in the Frontlines' episode.)</p>
<p>As&#160;Wired <a href="http://www.wired.com/2012/12/launch/" type="external">noted</a> after "hysterical headlines" in 2012 about how North Korea had "finally managed to put an object into orbit around the Earth after 14 years of trying," North Korea's satellite is 2.5 feet by 3.5 feet tall and weighs just 220 pounds. While the satellite was supposed to transmit "scientific data when orbiting over the DPRK and the hymns of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il the rest of the time," it is apparently non-functional.</p>
<p>Woolsey, whom the NRA's considers its expert on EMP attacks, has also been criticized for his EMP claims and promotion of the conspiracy theory that <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131008110652/http:/www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/23/the_empire_strikes_back_emp?" type="external">Iraqis were responsible</a> for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.</p>
<p>In a 2013 article in Foreign Policy, nonproliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis criticized Woolsey for a Wall Street Journal op-ed <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324482504578455451910706908?cb=logged0.9123094973283358" type="external">suggesting</a> the United States should launch pre-emptive strike on North Korea to prevent an EMP attack on the United States.</p>
<p>Even if an EMP attack somehow occurred, Lewis <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131007125254/http:/www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/23/the_empire_strikes_back_emp?page=0,1" type="external">demonstrated</a> how past experimentation suggests that the "EMP crowd" has baselessly speculated about what would actually happen during an attack:</p>
<p>Even if we understand how an electromagnetic pulse works and have data about the vulnerability of equipment, a modern system like a power grid or communications network presents just too complex a set of resiliencies and vulnerabilities.</p>
<p>The solution of the EMP Commission was simply to collect more data, essentially creating laundry lists of things that might go wrong. For example, the EMP Commission exposed 37 cars and 18 trucks to EMP effects in a laboratory environment. While EMP advocates claim the results of an EMP attack would be "planes falling from the sky, cars stalling on the roadways, electrical networks failing, food rotting," the actual results were much more modest. Of the 55 vehicles exposed to EMP, six at the highest levels of exposure needed to be restarted. A few more showed "nuisance" damage to electronics, such as blinking dashboard displays.</p>
<p>The NRA routinely fills its magazines <a href="/blog/2015/05/27/nra-magazine-features-a-lamp-that-celebrates-th/203759" type="external">with advertisements</a> for bulk survival food and alternative power sources in case the grid goes offline.</p>
<p>Just before the 2014 elections, NRA leader Wayne LaPierre <a href="/blog/2014/10/27/nras-election-message-vote-your-guns-because-is/201329" type="external">urged supporters</a> to "vote your guns" while fear mongering over the prospect of a <a href="http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/a9f484ab#/a9f484ab/93" type="external">Russia, China or North Korea-led EMP attack</a> that could kill "as much as 90 percent of the population of the U.S." by bringing about the reemergence of "Third World" diseases like "amoebic dysentery, typhoid, [and] cholera -- killing our youngest and frailest family members."</p>
| 6,788 |
<p>CRH PLC (CRG.DB) on Thursday reported a 27% jump in first-half pretax profit, and said that it has decided to sell its Americas distribution business to Beacon Roofing Supply Inc. (BECN) for $2.63 billion in cash as part of its portfolio management and capital reallocation strategy.</p>
<p>The building materials company added that it will use the proceeds from the divestment to acquire German lime and aggregates business Fels for around 600 million euros ($706.5 million).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>CRH, which manufactures and supplies aggregates, cement and concrete to the construction industry, recorded pretax profit of EUR517 million for the six months to the end of June, up from a EUR407 million pretax profit a year earlier, on a revenue of EUR13 billion and EUR12.69 billion, respectively.</p>
<p>Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization totaled EUR1.18 billion, up from EUR1.12 billion.</p>
<p>"For the second half of the year, despite currency headwinds and continuing challenging conditions in the Philippines, we expect a continuation of the first-half momentum experienced in Europe and Ebitda growth in the Americas, which will result in another year of progress for the group," said Chief Executive Albert Manifold.</p>
<p>CRH has raised its interim dividend payment by 2% to 19.2 cents a share.</p>
<p>Write to Tapan Panchal at [email protected]</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 24, 2017 02:52 ET (06:52 GMT)</p>
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CRH Reports 1st Half Profit Rise, Plans to Sell Americas Distribution Unit
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/24/crh-reports-1st-half-profit-rise-plans-to-sell-americas-distribution-unit.html
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2017-08-24
| 0right
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CRH Reports 1st Half Profit Rise, Plans to Sell Americas Distribution Unit
<p>CRH PLC (CRG.DB) on Thursday reported a 27% jump in first-half pretax profit, and said that it has decided to sell its Americas distribution business to Beacon Roofing Supply Inc. (BECN) for $2.63 billion in cash as part of its portfolio management and capital reallocation strategy.</p>
<p>The building materials company added that it will use the proceeds from the divestment to acquire German lime and aggregates business Fels for around 600 million euros ($706.5 million).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>CRH, which manufactures and supplies aggregates, cement and concrete to the construction industry, recorded pretax profit of EUR517 million for the six months to the end of June, up from a EUR407 million pretax profit a year earlier, on a revenue of EUR13 billion and EUR12.69 billion, respectively.</p>
<p>Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization totaled EUR1.18 billion, up from EUR1.12 billion.</p>
<p>"For the second half of the year, despite currency headwinds and continuing challenging conditions in the Philippines, we expect a continuation of the first-half momentum experienced in Europe and Ebitda growth in the Americas, which will result in another year of progress for the group," said Chief Executive Albert Manifold.</p>
<p>CRH has raised its interim dividend payment by 2% to 19.2 cents a share.</p>
<p>Write to Tapan Panchal at [email protected]</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>August 24, 2017 02:52 ET (06:52 GMT)</p>
| 6,789 |
<p />
<p>President Donald Trump, after nearly a month in power, has yet to unveil major legislation or publicly endorse bills from others, getting Republicans off to a slow start on the sweeping reforms they promised on the campaign trail.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As Trump and Republicans ricochet from crisis to crisis, lawmakers have lowered expectations for legislative action in 2017 on tax reform, health care, financial regulation, jobs and infrastructure, with some urging more White House guidance.</p>
<p>Trump has spelled out few specifics on such issues in his more than two dozen executive orders, proclamations and memoranda. A temporary ban on U.S. entry by refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries was blocked in court.</p>
<p>Ambitious campaign promises by Trump helped the Republicans make a clean sweep of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives in November's national elections.</p>
<p>Movement on legislation could come soon now that the Senate has confirmed nine of Trump's Cabinet nominees and is poised to approve others soon, despite delays by Democrats.</p>
<p>But concern is mounting among some Republicans and moderate Democrats who had hoped for more at this stage.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>On taxes, for instance, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Reuters, "What I'd like to see the administration do is lead on this issue." The White House needs to "either come out with their own tax cut plan or weigh in pretty quickly," he said, "I'm getting unnerved that there's lack of coordination."</p>
<p>Last week, Trump promised a "phenomenal" tax plan within weeks but offered no details. Nor has he firmly endorsed or opposed tax reform proposals being debated in Congress.</p>
<p>At a party retreat last month, lawmakers warmed to remarks by Trump that seemed to show support for a House Republican "border adjustment" tax to encourage exports and discourage imports. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement saying Congress and Trump were "on the same page."</p>
<p>But the enthusiasm was short-lived. The White House later said border adjustment was only one option. After a week, Ryan said tax reform legislation would not appear until mid-2017.</p>
<p>Democratic Representative Jim Himes, who has talked about working with Republicans, said in an interview that promises of "day one" action have rung hollow. "Instead, we are torn apart by poorly drafted executive orders, tweets, Russian ties to the White House," he said.</p>
<p>At a press conference on Thursday, Trump said he would submit an "initial plan" on health care in March and tackle tax reform after that. He said, "Tax reform's going to happen fairly quickly. We're doing Obamacare. We're in the final stages."</p>
<p>CONTRAST WITH PREDECESSORS</p>
<p>Trump's legislative record lags some, but not all, recent presidents. Democrat Barack Obama laid out an economic stimulus plan days after his January 2009 swearing in and signed it into law less than a month later. Republican George W. Bush sent a tax cut proposal to Congress less than three weeks after taking office in January 2001. It was enacted four months later.</p>
<p>Democrat Bill Clinton fulfilled a central campaign promise in his first weeks in office when he enacted a family-leave bill on Feb. 5, 1993. Republican George H.W. Bush accomplished little of note in his first 100 days, while his predecessor Republican Ronald Reagan sent dozens of detailed budget cut plans to Congress less than a month after his 1981 swearing in.</p>
<p>In an Oct. 22 campaign speech, Trump vowed to work with Congress to introduce "broader legislative measures" in the first 100 days of his administration to reform the tax code, repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, boost job creation, curb job offshoring, spend $1 trillion on infrastructure and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<p>In his first 27 days, Trump has not yet offered any legislation to advance these goals.</p>
<p>Investors have not been deterred. The Dow Jones industrial average has surged roughly 12 percent since he was elected.</p>
<p>"Right now there is a lot of hope in the market, but so far I haven't seen Trump show that he knows how to manage policy or have much of a plan," said Thyra Zerhusen, co-chief investment officer of Fairpointe Capital in Chicago.</p>
<p>'PROCEEDING WELL' -HENSARLING</p>
<p>Trump signed a bill into law on Tuesday repealing an Obama administration anti-corruption rule that required oil and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign officials.</p>
<p>Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling, who attended the signing ceremony, said, "Things are proceeding well."</p>
<p>Legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and replace parts of it will be unveiled after a 10-day House recess that begins on Friday, Ryan said on Thursday.</p>
<p>Republicans have been struggling to come up with a detailed plan for replacing Obama's signature domestic policy that they have vowed to repeal.</p>
<p>At the outset of Trump's term, Republican lawmakers, lobbyists and tax experts were planning to repeal Obamacare in February, then begin revamping the tax code in March.</p>
<p>Now, House Republicans say they may pass a tax-reform bill by August. That would force the Senate to take up the issue at the start of the 2018 midterm election season, a bad time for lawmakers to be making hard decisions.</p>
<p>From the start of the new administration, some Republicans had jitters about Trump's moves, such as his battle with the media over the size of the crowd at his swearing-in ceremony.</p>
<p>"He should be talking about how we're going to be reforming healthcare," Republican Representative Charlie Dent told reporters on Jan. 24. "I hope he gets more focused on policy."</p>
|
Republicans Slow to Tackle Trump's Big Issues
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/02/16/republicans-slow-to-tackle-trumps-big-issues.html
|
2017-02-16
| 0right
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Republicans Slow to Tackle Trump's Big Issues
<p />
<p>President Donald Trump, after nearly a month in power, has yet to unveil major legislation or publicly endorse bills from others, getting Republicans off to a slow start on the sweeping reforms they promised on the campaign trail.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As Trump and Republicans ricochet from crisis to crisis, lawmakers have lowered expectations for legislative action in 2017 on tax reform, health care, financial regulation, jobs and infrastructure, with some urging more White House guidance.</p>
<p>Trump has spelled out few specifics on such issues in his more than two dozen executive orders, proclamations and memoranda. A temporary ban on U.S. entry by refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries was blocked in court.</p>
<p>Ambitious campaign promises by Trump helped the Republicans make a clean sweep of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives in November's national elections.</p>
<p>Movement on legislation could come soon now that the Senate has confirmed nine of Trump's Cabinet nominees and is poised to approve others soon, despite delays by Democrats.</p>
<p>But concern is mounting among some Republicans and moderate Democrats who had hoped for more at this stage.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>On taxes, for instance, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Reuters, "What I'd like to see the administration do is lead on this issue." The White House needs to "either come out with their own tax cut plan or weigh in pretty quickly," he said, "I'm getting unnerved that there's lack of coordination."</p>
<p>Last week, Trump promised a "phenomenal" tax plan within weeks but offered no details. Nor has he firmly endorsed or opposed tax reform proposals being debated in Congress.</p>
<p>At a party retreat last month, lawmakers warmed to remarks by Trump that seemed to show support for a House Republican "border adjustment" tax to encourage exports and discourage imports. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement saying Congress and Trump were "on the same page."</p>
<p>But the enthusiasm was short-lived. The White House later said border adjustment was only one option. After a week, Ryan said tax reform legislation would not appear until mid-2017.</p>
<p>Democratic Representative Jim Himes, who has talked about working with Republicans, said in an interview that promises of "day one" action have rung hollow. "Instead, we are torn apart by poorly drafted executive orders, tweets, Russian ties to the White House," he said.</p>
<p>At a press conference on Thursday, Trump said he would submit an "initial plan" on health care in March and tackle tax reform after that. He said, "Tax reform's going to happen fairly quickly. We're doing Obamacare. We're in the final stages."</p>
<p>CONTRAST WITH PREDECESSORS</p>
<p>Trump's legislative record lags some, but not all, recent presidents. Democrat Barack Obama laid out an economic stimulus plan days after his January 2009 swearing in and signed it into law less than a month later. Republican George W. Bush sent a tax cut proposal to Congress less than three weeks after taking office in January 2001. It was enacted four months later.</p>
<p>Democrat Bill Clinton fulfilled a central campaign promise in his first weeks in office when he enacted a family-leave bill on Feb. 5, 1993. Republican George H.W. Bush accomplished little of note in his first 100 days, while his predecessor Republican Ronald Reagan sent dozens of detailed budget cut plans to Congress less than a month after his 1981 swearing in.</p>
<p>In an Oct. 22 campaign speech, Trump vowed to work with Congress to introduce "broader legislative measures" in the first 100 days of his administration to reform the tax code, repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, boost job creation, curb job offshoring, spend $1 trillion on infrastructure and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.</p>
<p>In his first 27 days, Trump has not yet offered any legislation to advance these goals.</p>
<p>Investors have not been deterred. The Dow Jones industrial average has surged roughly 12 percent since he was elected.</p>
<p>"Right now there is a lot of hope in the market, but so far I haven't seen Trump show that he knows how to manage policy or have much of a plan," said Thyra Zerhusen, co-chief investment officer of Fairpointe Capital in Chicago.</p>
<p>'PROCEEDING WELL' -HENSARLING</p>
<p>Trump signed a bill into law on Tuesday repealing an Obama administration anti-corruption rule that required oil and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign officials.</p>
<p>Republican Representative Jeb Hensarling, who attended the signing ceremony, said, "Things are proceeding well."</p>
<p>Legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, and replace parts of it will be unveiled after a 10-day House recess that begins on Friday, Ryan said on Thursday.</p>
<p>Republicans have been struggling to come up with a detailed plan for replacing Obama's signature domestic policy that they have vowed to repeal.</p>
<p>At the outset of Trump's term, Republican lawmakers, lobbyists and tax experts were planning to repeal Obamacare in February, then begin revamping the tax code in March.</p>
<p>Now, House Republicans say they may pass a tax-reform bill by August. That would force the Senate to take up the issue at the start of the 2018 midterm election season, a bad time for lawmakers to be making hard decisions.</p>
<p>From the start of the new administration, some Republicans had jitters about Trump's moves, such as his battle with the media over the size of the crowd at his swearing-in ceremony.</p>
<p>"He should be talking about how we're going to be reforming healthcare," Republican Representative Charlie Dent told reporters on Jan. 24. "I hope he gets more focused on policy."</p>
| 6,790 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO – <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article168277612.html" type="external">California’s Legislature is back</a> from its recess and legislators kicked off the session by focusing on two highly partisan matters.</p>
<p>Assembly Republicans first voted to keep Chad Mayes as Republican leader, despite pressure from activists to oust him because of his vote to extend the governor’s cap-and-trade system. But Mayes said Thursday that he will step down and will be replaced by Brian Dahle, R-Bieber. Democrats pushed new legislation that would change state election rules to help Democratic Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton thwart a high-profile recall effort.</p>
<p>As divisive political wrangling settles down, legislators do plan to address some substantive policy issues. At the top of the list is housing. Before the recess, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic leadership promised to introduce a <a href="http://caeconomy.org/reporting/entry/ca-economic-summit-urges-legislature-to-act-on-housing-package-highlights-w" type="external">package of bills to help boost housing supply</a>, given that escalating home prices have reached crisis levels.</p>
<p>Keep an eye on <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB35" type="external">Senate Bill 35</a>, which would create “a streamlined, ministerial approval process for development proponents of multi-family housing” in localities that have “not produced enough housing units to meet its regional housing needs assessment.” A ministerial approval would spare developers from a drawn-out process before planning commissions and city councils.</p>
<p>Local governments are opposed to the bill because it limits their authority, but backers say the measure is needed to <a href="http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20161015/we-can-build-our-way-out-of-housing-crisis-steven-greenhut" type="external">jump-start some types of housing</a> projects, given that local growth controls and environmental lawsuits have slowed housing construction.</p>
<p>The bill recently was <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article167197852.html" type="external">amended</a> to expand its application beyond big urban centers to include smaller cities and suburban locales. It’s a rare instance where Republicans and Democrats have some common ground, with the former wanting to encourage private companies to build more and the latter hoping to see the construction of high-density housing. The building industry opposes provisions that would require paying union wage scales.</p>
<p>There’s more controversy over two other housing-related measures. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB2" type="external">Senate Bill 2</a> would impose $75 to $225 fees on property transfers (excluding home sales) to fund government-subsidized affordable housing. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB35" type="external">Senate Bill 3</a> would put a $3 billion housing bond on the November 2018 ballot, which also would fund housing subsidies.</p>
<p>Another top Capitol priority is passage of <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/21/editorial-union-bill-in-california-legislature-to-limit-local-cities-contracting-decisions-is-an-ambiguous-mess/" type="external">Assembly Bill 1250</a>, which essentially would ban 56 of California’s 58 counties from outsourcing certain services to private contractors. It is backed by a vast array of public-sector unions.</p>
<p>“While cheaper services and employee layoffs may appear to save dollars in the short term, the savings are often illusory with hidden costs that are not accounted for and diminished services or contractor failures that require cities and counties to ultimately re-hire and/or re-train staff to provide the outsourced service,” <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB1250" type="external">argues author</a> Reginald Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles.</p>
<p>But county governments, and companies that provide myriad services to them, argue that the bill will dramatically raise costs for taxpayers and will lead to diminished services. Given increasing costs of <a href="http://www.ppic.org/publication/public-pension-liabilities-in-california/" type="external">pensions</a>, medical care and other employee benefits, these governments say they can’t afford to hire permanent employees. This is likely to be one of the most contentious bills to make its way through the Legislature during the final month of session.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, activists promoting bail reform held an event on the Capitol grounds, thus highlighting a growing reform movement. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB10" type="external">Senate Bill 10&#160;</a>— by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys — would replace the current system of money bail with a judicial-based pre-trial system, whereby defendants are released or kept in custody based on an assessment of their flight risk and the nature of their alleged crimes.</p>
<p>Opponents of the current <a href="" type="internal">bail system</a> argue that it’s unfair to keep people in jail, as they await trial, based solely on their ability to post a bond. Studies show that low-income people are more likely to accept plea bargains – largely so they can get out of jail and get back to work and caring for their children. The bail-bonds industry sees the legislation as an existential threat, and Republicans fear that the new system could make it tough to keep dangerous people behind bars.</p>
<p><a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB54" type="external">Senate Bill 54</a>, which would turn California into a so-called sanctuary state by limiting “the involvement of state and local law enforcement agencies in federal immigration enforcement,” is another hot-button issue in the waning days of the session. As the Sacramento Bee reported, the measure “sailed through the Senate and appears likely to pass the Assembly with a majority vote,” but “it’s unclear where Brown stands on the issue.”</p>
<p>Its passage would put the state on a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/trump-admin-sanctuary-cities/index.html" type="external">collision course with the Trump administration</a>, which has threatened to halt crime-fighting funds to cities — and presumably, states — that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.</p>
<p>Legislators and activists have talked about other, less-substantive but highly controversial issues, as well. Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon promised in a speech this week to hold hearings on white supremacists in California, which he called <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article168495752.html" type="external">“a cancer on our nation.”</a> Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Draper, who had failed to qualify for the November 2016 ballot a measure to break up California into six states, filed a new measure to split up California into three states.</p>
<p>There’s plenty to watch as the legislative session winds down – and as political battles heat up for the 2018 election.</p>
<p>Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at [email protected].</p>
|
Legislature is back and focused on housing, recall and bail
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2017/08/24/legislature-back-focused-housing-recall-bail/
|
2018-08-20
| 3left-center
|
Legislature is back and focused on housing, recall and bail
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO – <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article168277612.html" type="external">California’s Legislature is back</a> from its recess and legislators kicked off the session by focusing on two highly partisan matters.</p>
<p>Assembly Republicans first voted to keep Chad Mayes as Republican leader, despite pressure from activists to oust him because of his vote to extend the governor’s cap-and-trade system. But Mayes said Thursday that he will step down and will be replaced by Brian Dahle, R-Bieber. Democrats pushed new legislation that would change state election rules to help Democratic Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton thwart a high-profile recall effort.</p>
<p>As divisive political wrangling settles down, legislators do plan to address some substantive policy issues. At the top of the list is housing. Before the recess, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic leadership promised to introduce a <a href="http://caeconomy.org/reporting/entry/ca-economic-summit-urges-legislature-to-act-on-housing-package-highlights-w" type="external">package of bills to help boost housing supply</a>, given that escalating home prices have reached crisis levels.</p>
<p>Keep an eye on <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB35" type="external">Senate Bill 35</a>, which would create “a streamlined, ministerial approval process for development proponents of multi-family housing” in localities that have “not produced enough housing units to meet its regional housing needs assessment.” A ministerial approval would spare developers from a drawn-out process before planning commissions and city councils.</p>
<p>Local governments are opposed to the bill because it limits their authority, but backers say the measure is needed to <a href="http://www.dailynews.com/general-news/20161015/we-can-build-our-way-out-of-housing-crisis-steven-greenhut" type="external">jump-start some types of housing</a> projects, given that local growth controls and environmental lawsuits have slowed housing construction.</p>
<p>The bill recently was <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article167197852.html" type="external">amended</a> to expand its application beyond big urban centers to include smaller cities and suburban locales. It’s a rare instance where Republicans and Democrats have some common ground, with the former wanting to encourage private companies to build more and the latter hoping to see the construction of high-density housing. The building industry opposes provisions that would require paying union wage scales.</p>
<p>There’s more controversy over two other housing-related measures. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB2" type="external">Senate Bill 2</a> would impose $75 to $225 fees on property transfers (excluding home sales) to fund government-subsidized affordable housing. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB35" type="external">Senate Bill 3</a> would put a $3 billion housing bond on the November 2018 ballot, which also would fund housing subsidies.</p>
<p>Another top Capitol priority is passage of <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/04/21/editorial-union-bill-in-california-legislature-to-limit-local-cities-contracting-decisions-is-an-ambiguous-mess/" type="external">Assembly Bill 1250</a>, which essentially would ban 56 of California’s 58 counties from outsourcing certain services to private contractors. It is backed by a vast array of public-sector unions.</p>
<p>“While cheaper services and employee layoffs may appear to save dollars in the short term, the savings are often illusory with hidden costs that are not accounted for and diminished services or contractor failures that require cities and counties to ultimately re-hire and/or re-train staff to provide the outsourced service,” <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB1250" type="external">argues author</a> Reginald Jones-Sawyer, D-Los Angeles.</p>
<p>But county governments, and companies that provide myriad services to them, argue that the bill will dramatically raise costs for taxpayers and will lead to diminished services. Given increasing costs of <a href="http://www.ppic.org/publication/public-pension-liabilities-in-california/" type="external">pensions</a>, medical care and other employee benefits, these governments say they can’t afford to hire permanent employees. This is likely to be one of the most contentious bills to make its way through the Legislature during the final month of session.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, activists promoting bail reform held an event on the Capitol grounds, thus highlighting a growing reform movement. <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB10" type="external">Senate Bill 10&#160;</a>— by Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys — would replace the current system of money bail with a judicial-based pre-trial system, whereby defendants are released or kept in custody based on an assessment of their flight risk and the nature of their alleged crimes.</p>
<p>Opponents of the current <a href="" type="internal">bail system</a> argue that it’s unfair to keep people in jail, as they await trial, based solely on their ability to post a bond. Studies show that low-income people are more likely to accept plea bargains – largely so they can get out of jail and get back to work and caring for their children. The bail-bonds industry sees the legislation as an existential threat, and Republicans fear that the new system could make it tough to keep dangerous people behind bars.</p>
<p><a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB54" type="external">Senate Bill 54</a>, which would turn California into a so-called sanctuary state by limiting “the involvement of state and local law enforcement agencies in federal immigration enforcement,” is another hot-button issue in the waning days of the session. As the Sacramento Bee reported, the measure “sailed through the Senate and appears likely to pass the Assembly with a majority vote,” but “it’s unclear where Brown stands on the issue.”</p>
<p>Its passage would put the state on a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/25/politics/trump-admin-sanctuary-cities/index.html" type="external">collision course with the Trump administration</a>, which has threatened to halt crime-fighting funds to cities — and presumably, states — that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration officials.</p>
<p>Legislators and activists have talked about other, less-substantive but highly controversial issues, as well. Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon promised in a speech this week to hold hearings on white supremacists in California, which he called <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article168495752.html" type="external">“a cancer on our nation.”</a> Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Draper, who had failed to qualify for the November 2016 ballot a measure to break up California into six states, filed a new measure to split up California into three states.</p>
<p>There’s plenty to watch as the legislative session winds down – and as political battles heat up for the 2018 election.</p>
<p>Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at [email protected].</p>
| 6,791 |
<p>The American Baptist Churches USA is shutting down its communications department-the latest step in budget cuts and restructuring brought on by declining funds and theological division in the denominational group.</p>
<p>Although the ABC national office is experiencing funding losses due to divisions over homosexuality, the venerable denominational group, based in Valley Forge, Pa. is not collapsing, said Roy Medley, ABC general secretary.</p>
<p>Richard Schramm, spokesman for the 1.5 million-member denomination since 1996, will leave his position Oct. 31, along with an associate director and a media assistant in the office of communication. Schramm will serve as a consultant to the ABC.</p>
<p>Medley said the cuts were based on recommendations from consultants McConkey and Johnston and resulted in the merger of two divisions-communications and missions/stewardship development.</p>
<p>“We have formed a new division called mission resource development,” said Medley. “This new entity will be responsible for communicating the ABC story effectively with our family and the larger church as well.”</p>
<p>Medley said the restructuring is similar to what the Baptist World Alliance did following the withdrawal of funding from the Southern Baptist Convention. The new effort, he said, will focus on electronic communication.</p>
<p>Tensions over the issue of homosexuality have come to a head in recent months in the ABC, which counts 5,836 churches. Although the group adopted a resolution opposing homosexual conduct in 1992, many conservatives in the denomination have complained ABC leaders have done little to enforce it on the denomination's agencies or congregations.</p>
<p>In September, directors of the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest, which includes Southern California, initiated the process of separating from the denomination by the end of the year. While some other regional bodies of American Baptists still debate the issue, the full impact of the controversy remains undetermined.</p>
<p>Regional fellowships are the channel through which local congregations relate to the national body. In recent years, several gay-friendly churches have been expelled from some of those regional bodies.</p>
<p>But Medley said talk of the ABC's demise is unfounded.</p>
<p>“Some of the headlines, like in a Christian Century web article, which speak of a stampede are just untrue,” said Medley. “At our biennial meeting, which was held in Denver this past year, two-thirds to three-fourths of the delegates clearly expressed their commitment to remaining united through this time of dissension.”</p>
<p>Medley said he and Pacific Southwest executive minister Dale Salico have sought to avoid “an atmosphere of charge-countercharge” in the media. “We have consistently communicated to PSW that it is not our wish that they withdraw from the covenant of relationships,” said Medley. “Our polity grants them the freedom to order their life as a region as they choose, as it does other regions.”</p>
<p>Despite dealing with significant fallout over the homosexuality controversy, the ABC has adopted a new mission statement, Medley said. He added that American Baptists are “energized” by growing relationships with other groups such as the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Church of the Brethren.</p>
<p>“The ABC is not collapsing,” said Medley. “Our mission focus and call are clear. We intend to focus on them like a laser beam.”</p>
<p>Associated Baptist Press</p>
|
American Baptists cut staff, but ‘not collapsing,’ says general secretary
| false |
https://baptistnews.com/article/americanbaptistscutstaffbutnotcollapsingsaysgeneralsecretary/
| 3left-center
|
American Baptists cut staff, but ‘not collapsing,’ says general secretary
<p>The American Baptist Churches USA is shutting down its communications department-the latest step in budget cuts and restructuring brought on by declining funds and theological division in the denominational group.</p>
<p>Although the ABC national office is experiencing funding losses due to divisions over homosexuality, the venerable denominational group, based in Valley Forge, Pa. is not collapsing, said Roy Medley, ABC general secretary.</p>
<p>Richard Schramm, spokesman for the 1.5 million-member denomination since 1996, will leave his position Oct. 31, along with an associate director and a media assistant in the office of communication. Schramm will serve as a consultant to the ABC.</p>
<p>Medley said the cuts were based on recommendations from consultants McConkey and Johnston and resulted in the merger of two divisions-communications and missions/stewardship development.</p>
<p>“We have formed a new division called mission resource development,” said Medley. “This new entity will be responsible for communicating the ABC story effectively with our family and the larger church as well.”</p>
<p>Medley said the restructuring is similar to what the Baptist World Alliance did following the withdrawal of funding from the Southern Baptist Convention. The new effort, he said, will focus on electronic communication.</p>
<p>Tensions over the issue of homosexuality have come to a head in recent months in the ABC, which counts 5,836 churches. Although the group adopted a resolution opposing homosexual conduct in 1992, many conservatives in the denomination have complained ABC leaders have done little to enforce it on the denomination's agencies or congregations.</p>
<p>In September, directors of the American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest, which includes Southern California, initiated the process of separating from the denomination by the end of the year. While some other regional bodies of American Baptists still debate the issue, the full impact of the controversy remains undetermined.</p>
<p>Regional fellowships are the channel through which local congregations relate to the national body. In recent years, several gay-friendly churches have been expelled from some of those regional bodies.</p>
<p>But Medley said talk of the ABC's demise is unfounded.</p>
<p>“Some of the headlines, like in a Christian Century web article, which speak of a stampede are just untrue,” said Medley. “At our biennial meeting, which was held in Denver this past year, two-thirds to three-fourths of the delegates clearly expressed their commitment to remaining united through this time of dissension.”</p>
<p>Medley said he and Pacific Southwest executive minister Dale Salico have sought to avoid “an atmosphere of charge-countercharge” in the media. “We have consistently communicated to PSW that it is not our wish that they withdraw from the covenant of relationships,” said Medley. “Our polity grants them the freedom to order their life as a region as they choose, as it does other regions.”</p>
<p>Despite dealing with significant fallout over the homosexuality controversy, the ABC has adopted a new mission statement, Medley said. He added that American Baptists are “energized” by growing relationships with other groups such as the Progressive National Baptist Convention, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Church of the Brethren.</p>
<p>“The ABC is not collapsing,” said Medley. “Our mission focus and call are clear. We intend to focus on them like a laser beam.”</p>
<p>Associated Baptist Press</p>
| 6,792 |
|
<p>On March 1, the $85 billion collection of budget cuts known as the sequester could wipe out federal programs at such varied places as national parks, the Pentagon and the FBI. Hidden among those cuts are reductions in services that are crucial to Americans’ everyday lives — education, health care and jobs. The Guardian tells us what to expect.</p>
<p>The cuts are a consequence of the so-called fiscal cliff deal reached by lawmakers led by Republicans John Boehner and Mitch McConnell with President Obama late last year. A majority of the cuts — $47 billion worth — would hit defense programs. But the public would feel the $9.9 billion cut from Medicare and the $27.8 billion reduction in “domestic discretionary programs” most.</p>
<p>A full detailing of those programs can be seen in a “thorough but largely unreadable report” published last summer by the White House. The Guardian’s Heidi Moore writes that “[t]here are so many programs implicated in the sequester that it would take months, and a team of data scientists” to determine which will be hardest hit.</p>
<p>Some facts are known, however. For example, public housing subsidies would be slashed by $1.9 billion, “just as the costs for household items like food and gas rise.” Some estimates say those reductions could hurt about 125,000 poor families. A few details on health care, education and jobs are available as well.</p>
<p />
<p>Click through to get the rest of the story at The Guardian.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p>Overall, about $1.3bn will be cut from the education budget, which will start hitting schools this fall. According to an analysis last summer by Tom Harkin, educational programs for disadvantaged children are likely to be harder hit, with a loss of $2.7bn.</p>
<p>… In other health concerns, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will see its budget cut by $350m if the sequester goes through. That will reduce a lot of preventative or diagnostic care, like thousands of fewers breast cancer screenings, flu vaccines and HIV tests.</p>
<p>… The sequester may … end 750,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. ThinkProgress, a thinktank, roughly backs that number up with an independent analysis. Macroeconomic Advisers predicts the effect will be to raise the unemployment rate, and since those jobs are not coming back, it predicts, “the higher unemployment would linger for several years.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/22/us-sequester-guide-spending-cuts" type="external">Read more</a></p>
|
Your Guide to the Sequestration Horrors
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/your-guide-to-the-sequestration-horrors/
|
2013-02-23
| 4left
|
Your Guide to the Sequestration Horrors
<p>On March 1, the $85 billion collection of budget cuts known as the sequester could wipe out federal programs at such varied places as national parks, the Pentagon and the FBI. Hidden among those cuts are reductions in services that are crucial to Americans’ everyday lives — education, health care and jobs. The Guardian tells us what to expect.</p>
<p>The cuts are a consequence of the so-called fiscal cliff deal reached by lawmakers led by Republicans John Boehner and Mitch McConnell with President Obama late last year. A majority of the cuts — $47 billion worth — would hit defense programs. But the public would feel the $9.9 billion cut from Medicare and the $27.8 billion reduction in “domestic discretionary programs” most.</p>
<p>A full detailing of those programs can be seen in a “thorough but largely unreadable report” published last summer by the White House. The Guardian’s Heidi Moore writes that “[t]here are so many programs implicated in the sequester that it would take months, and a team of data scientists” to determine which will be hardest hit.</p>
<p>Some facts are known, however. For example, public housing subsidies would be slashed by $1.9 billion, “just as the costs for household items like food and gas rise.” Some estimates say those reductions could hurt about 125,000 poor families. A few details on health care, education and jobs are available as well.</p>
<p />
<p>Click through to get the rest of the story at The Guardian.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p>Overall, about $1.3bn will be cut from the education budget, which will start hitting schools this fall. According to an analysis last summer by Tom Harkin, educational programs for disadvantaged children are likely to be harder hit, with a loss of $2.7bn.</p>
<p>… In other health concerns, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will see its budget cut by $350m if the sequester goes through. That will reduce a lot of preventative or diagnostic care, like thousands of fewers breast cancer screenings, flu vaccines and HIV tests.</p>
<p>… The sequester may … end 750,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. ThinkProgress, a thinktank, roughly backs that number up with an independent analysis. Macroeconomic Advisers predicts the effect will be to raise the unemployment rate, and since those jobs are not coming back, it predicts, “the higher unemployment would linger for several years.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/22/us-sequester-guide-spending-cuts" type="external">Read more</a></p>
| 6,793 |
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<p>Joaquin Phoenix is the perpetually befuddled and stoned Doc in “Inherent Vice.”</p>
<p>If “The Maltese Falcon” met “The Big Lebowski” met “Chinatown” met “The Long Goodbye” – well, first of all, that’s the beginning of a great film festival, and also you’d get “Inherent Vice.”</p>
<p>In a movie world where “Mark Wahlberg takes on giant talking robots” is a typical plot description, here we have the great stylist Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood”) turning a Thomas Pynchon novel into a 148-minute head trip starring Joaquin Phoenix as a barefoot hippie detective with Neil Young sideburns named Doc, who gets embroiled in a tangled web involving a former girlfriend named Shasta, who wants to stop a plot to have her married lover committed to a mental institution, even as a square-jawed cop named Bigfoot is obsessed with bringing down Doc.</p>
<p>And that’s just the start of the madness.</p>
<p>Phoenix is perfectly cast as the perpetually befuddled Doc, a private detective of sorts who immerses himself in pot as he wryly observes his own misadventures almost as if they’re happening to someone else.</p>
<p>It’s Los Angeles, 1970. The bloom is off the peace-and-love psychedelic era. (The Manson trial is a running backdrop.) As is the case with so many film noirs – even film noirs bathed in the relentless sunshine of Southern California – it all begins with a visit from a femme fatale. Katherine Waterston is Doc’s ex, one Shasta Fay Hepworth, who’s all long legs and cut-off jean shorts and manipulative trouble. (It’s a brave performance from Ms. Waterston, including a scene in which she bares all and messes with Doc’s mind and his heart and everything else in a way seldom seen in a mainstream film.)</p>
<p>Doc is so stoned he’s not even sure Shasta’s really there in the room with him – but she is, and she needs his help. Shasta is currently involved with a mysterious and scary businessman named Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts, in a terrific extended cameo), and she needs Doc’s help in thwarting the plot by Mickey’s wife and the wife’s lover.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And off we go. Instead of telling Shasta to take a hike, Doc plunges right through the rabbit hole.</p>
<p>Michael K. Williams is a member of the Black Panthers trying to track down one of Mickey’s bodyguards, and that leads to Doc being framed for a murder. Owen Wilson is a musician who might be dead or could be underground. Reese Witherspoon is a district attorney who has a thing for Doc. Benicio Del Toro is one of Doc’s few real friends in the world. Martin Short KILLS as a coked-up dentist who surrounds himself with a bevy of beautiful girls.</p>
<p>And then there’s Josh Brolin’s Bigfoot, a ham-fisted copper who has bit parts on TV shows such as “Adam-12” and is always on the verge of exploding with rage.</p>
<p>You could watch “Inherent Vice” with a notebook, putting together one of those cop-movie flow charts with Doc’s name in a box at the top and all kinds of lines connecting the rest of the characters. Don’t do that. That would be crazy.</p>
<p />
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Joaquin Phoenix as Doc finds himself in a tangled web in ‘Inherent Vice’
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/523296/joaquin-phoenix-as-doc-finds-himself-in-a-tangled-web-in-inherent-vice.html
| 2least
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Joaquin Phoenix as Doc finds himself in a tangled web in ‘Inherent Vice’
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Joaquin Phoenix is the perpetually befuddled and stoned Doc in “Inherent Vice.”</p>
<p>If “The Maltese Falcon” met “The Big Lebowski” met “Chinatown” met “The Long Goodbye” – well, first of all, that’s the beginning of a great film festival, and also you’d get “Inherent Vice.”</p>
<p>In a movie world where “Mark Wahlberg takes on giant talking robots” is a typical plot description, here we have the great stylist Paul Thomas Anderson (“Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood”) turning a Thomas Pynchon novel into a 148-minute head trip starring Joaquin Phoenix as a barefoot hippie detective with Neil Young sideburns named Doc, who gets embroiled in a tangled web involving a former girlfriend named Shasta, who wants to stop a plot to have her married lover committed to a mental institution, even as a square-jawed cop named Bigfoot is obsessed with bringing down Doc.</p>
<p>And that’s just the start of the madness.</p>
<p>Phoenix is perfectly cast as the perpetually befuddled Doc, a private detective of sorts who immerses himself in pot as he wryly observes his own misadventures almost as if they’re happening to someone else.</p>
<p>It’s Los Angeles, 1970. The bloom is off the peace-and-love psychedelic era. (The Manson trial is a running backdrop.) As is the case with so many film noirs – even film noirs bathed in the relentless sunshine of Southern California – it all begins with a visit from a femme fatale. Katherine Waterston is Doc’s ex, one Shasta Fay Hepworth, who’s all long legs and cut-off jean shorts and manipulative trouble. (It’s a brave performance from Ms. Waterston, including a scene in which she bares all and messes with Doc’s mind and his heart and everything else in a way seldom seen in a mainstream film.)</p>
<p>Doc is so stoned he’s not even sure Shasta’s really there in the room with him – but she is, and she needs his help. Shasta is currently involved with a mysterious and scary businessman named Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts, in a terrific extended cameo), and she needs Doc’s help in thwarting the plot by Mickey’s wife and the wife’s lover.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And off we go. Instead of telling Shasta to take a hike, Doc plunges right through the rabbit hole.</p>
<p>Michael K. Williams is a member of the Black Panthers trying to track down one of Mickey’s bodyguards, and that leads to Doc being framed for a murder. Owen Wilson is a musician who might be dead or could be underground. Reese Witherspoon is a district attorney who has a thing for Doc. Benicio Del Toro is one of Doc’s few real friends in the world. Martin Short KILLS as a coked-up dentist who surrounds himself with a bevy of beautiful girls.</p>
<p>And then there’s Josh Brolin’s Bigfoot, a ham-fisted copper who has bit parts on TV shows such as “Adam-12” and is always on the verge of exploding with rage.</p>
<p>You could watch “Inherent Vice” with a notebook, putting together one of those cop-movie flow charts with Doc’s name in a box at the top and all kinds of lines connecting the rest of the characters. Don’t do that. That would be crazy.</p>
<p />
| 6,794 |
|
<p />
<p>In February, conservatives from around the country will gather in Washington for the annual <a href="http://www.cpac.org/" type="external">Conservative Political Action Conference</a>, a major pow wow for aspiring candidates and activists alike. Anyone looking to run for the GOP presidential nomination for 2012 will likely be there to greet the faithful. But socially conservative Christians, including Jerry Falwell Jr. and the <a href="http://action.afa.net/" type="external">American Family Association</a>, are threatening to boycott the influential event this year. Why? Because the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, has allowed a gay group to co-sponsor the event. <a href="http://goproud.org/" type="external">GOProud</a> members, like the usual CPAC attendees, are committed to free markets, individual freedoms, and limited government. The group was formed by gay conservatives who found the Log Cabin Republicans too liberal for their tastes. But in mid-December, <a href="http://www.lc.org/index.cfm" type="external">Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber</a> started spreading the alarm about GOProud’s participation in CPAC. He <a href="http://americansfortruth.com/news/liberty-counsel-may-lead-pullout-of-cpac-if-homosexual-group-goproud-remains-as-co-sponsor.html" type="external">wrote in an email</a>:</p>
<p>“I was disturbed to learn that CPAC is allowing the ‘Republican’ homosexual activist group GOProud to sponsor a booth at the 2010 conference. Among other things, GOProud advocates in favor of both ‘gay marriage’ and ‘civil unions,’ against pro-marriage constitutional amendments ; is pushing for the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and advocates in favor of federal ‘partnership benefits’ for homosexuals. This group is pushing a radical leftist agenda that is an affront to the GOP platform, conservatism and, most importantly, the Word of God.”</p>
<p>Liberty Counsel and others have given CPAC organizers an ultimatum, threatening to urge all social conservatives to withdraw from the event if GOProud isn’t booted. To its credit, CPAC seems to be standing firm. Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud’s executive director, says that while the program has yet to be set, his group has all the privileges of any other co-sponsor at this point, and he directed me to a statement from CPAC director Lisa De Pasquale, who said i <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/16/goproud-at-cpac-creates-controversy-calls-for-boycotts/" type="external">n response to the boycott threats</a>, “CPAC is a coalition of nearly 100 conservative groups, some of which may disagree with one another on a handful of issues.&#160; But, at the end of the day, we all agree on core conservative principles…. After talking with their leadership and reviewing their website, I am satisfied that they do not represent a “radical leftist agenda,” as some have stated, and should not be rejected as a CPAC cosponsor.”&#160;</p>
<p>CPAC’s response sets up an interesting dynamic: Will conservative Christians follow through on their threat and give up their kingmaking role at CPAC and influence on the 2012 presidential election just because they don’t want to be in the room with a few gay guys? My guess is that they will suck it up and still show up in force in February.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
|
Are Gay Conservatives Welcome at CPAC?
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/are-gay-conservatives-welcome-cpac/
|
2009-12-30
| 4left
|
Are Gay Conservatives Welcome at CPAC?
<p />
<p>In February, conservatives from around the country will gather in Washington for the annual <a href="http://www.cpac.org/" type="external">Conservative Political Action Conference</a>, a major pow wow for aspiring candidates and activists alike. Anyone looking to run for the GOP presidential nomination for 2012 will likely be there to greet the faithful. But socially conservative Christians, including Jerry Falwell Jr. and the <a href="http://action.afa.net/" type="external">American Family Association</a>, are threatening to boycott the influential event this year. Why? Because the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, has allowed a gay group to co-sponsor the event. <a href="http://goproud.org/" type="external">GOProud</a> members, like the usual CPAC attendees, are committed to free markets, individual freedoms, and limited government. The group was formed by gay conservatives who found the Log Cabin Republicans too liberal for their tastes. But in mid-December, <a href="http://www.lc.org/index.cfm" type="external">Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber</a> started spreading the alarm about GOProud’s participation in CPAC. He <a href="http://americansfortruth.com/news/liberty-counsel-may-lead-pullout-of-cpac-if-homosexual-group-goproud-remains-as-co-sponsor.html" type="external">wrote in an email</a>:</p>
<p>“I was disturbed to learn that CPAC is allowing the ‘Republican’ homosexual activist group GOProud to sponsor a booth at the 2010 conference. Among other things, GOProud advocates in favor of both ‘gay marriage’ and ‘civil unions,’ against pro-marriage constitutional amendments ; is pushing for the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and advocates in favor of federal ‘partnership benefits’ for homosexuals. This group is pushing a radical leftist agenda that is an affront to the GOP platform, conservatism and, most importantly, the Word of God.”</p>
<p>Liberty Counsel and others have given CPAC organizers an ultimatum, threatening to urge all social conservatives to withdraw from the event if GOProud isn’t booted. To its credit, CPAC seems to be standing firm. Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud’s executive director, says that while the program has yet to be set, his group has all the privileges of any other co-sponsor at this point, and he directed me to a statement from CPAC director Lisa De Pasquale, who said i <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/16/goproud-at-cpac-creates-controversy-calls-for-boycotts/" type="external">n response to the boycott threats</a>, “CPAC is a coalition of nearly 100 conservative groups, some of which may disagree with one another on a handful of issues.&#160; But, at the end of the day, we all agree on core conservative principles…. After talking with their leadership and reviewing their website, I am satisfied that they do not represent a “radical leftist agenda,” as some have stated, and should not be rejected as a CPAC cosponsor.”&#160;</p>
<p>CPAC’s response sets up an interesting dynamic: Will conservative Christians follow through on their threat and give up their kingmaking role at CPAC and influence on the 2012 presidential election just because they don’t want to be in the room with a few gay guys? My guess is that they will suck it up and still show up in force in February.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
| 6,795 |
<p>It is amazing yet somehow impressive how Washington manages to make so many countries irritated and resentful. There’s an art in it, really. Take the case of Turkey, Pakistan and pilot training.</p>
<p>Following an attempted coup in Turkey last year its air force ran short of pilots, which wasn’t surprising because several of them flew their aircraft in support of the rebels and were promptly&#160; <a href="" type="internal">punished</a>&#160;after the uprising collapsed.&#160;&#160;680 pilots (of a total 1,380) were&#160; <a href="" type="internal">dismissed</a>&#160;in President Erdogan’s post-coup purge.&#160;&#160;So it became necessary to train more pilots to fly the Turkish Air Force’s 240 Lockheed Martin F-16 multirole strike aircraft that it bought from the United States.</p>
<p>Irrespective of whether we consider Erdogan to be an admirable pillar of righteous freedom or a malevolently vicious near-dictator, the fact remains that Turkey is a member of the US-NATO military alliance whose Secretary General, the internationally important Jens Stoltenberg, has&#160; <a href="http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_143329.htm" type="external">said</a>&#160;that “Turkey is a key ally for many reasons, but especially for its strategic geographic location [being] . . .&#160;close to Russia in the Black Sea.”&#160;&#160;That partnership appears to be especially valued by the rabidly anti-Russian Stoltenberg, but perhaps not so much by the United States, whose recent refusal of cooperation in provision of Turkish Air Force pilot training was a diplomatic disaster.</p>
<p>According to Turkey’s&#160;Hürriyet&#160; <a href="" type="internal">newspaper</a>, “the United States has refused to send F-16 warplane trainers to Turkey after Ankara requested them in order to fill the gap in the number of Turkish jet pilots.”&#160;&#160;So Turkey asked Pakistan to send three instructors, but “the US objected to Pakistan sending F-16 jet pilot trainers to Turkey, based on the agreement that US-origin equipment’s purchase, sale, maintenance and training between third countries needed approval from Washington.”</p>
<p>Why deny approval?&#160;&#160;Here are two countries, both of which have ties to the US and operate US-supplied F-16 aircraft and they want to get together and help each other in training pilots to fly these planes.&#160;&#160;What’s the problem?</p>
<p>Surely the provision of three flying instructors to a NATO country by Pakistan, a country that was&#160; <a href="" type="internal">declared</a>&#160;a “Major Non-NATO Ally” in 2004 by no less a figure than President George W Bush, can’t be controversial?&#160;&#160;After all, the designation of “Major Non-NATO Ally”&#160; <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/mnna.htm" type="external">is a distinction</a>&#160;“given by the US government to exceptionally close allies.”</p>
<p>But this “exceptionally close ally” whose own air force has 70 US-supplied F-16 aircraft is not permitted to send three F-16 instructors to train pilots of US-supplied F-16 aircraft in an air force of a country that is a major member of the US-NATO military alliance.&#160;&#160;That is bizarre.</p>
<p>In May 2017 President Trump&#160; <a href="" type="internal">declared</a>&#160;that it was “a great honor to welcome the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the White House.”&#160;&#160;Relations were obviously cordial.&#160;&#160;And Mr Trump had been even more effusive about Pakistan’s corrupt (and since dismissed) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, just after his election, when he&#160; <a href="" type="internal">said in a phone call</a>&#160;that “you are a terrific guy. You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way. I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems . . .&#160;&#160;Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people.”</p>
<p>But times change, and the fantasy world of Trump Tweet has taken over US policy. Pakistan is now,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">according to Trump</a>, an outcast nation that has “sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting.”&#160;&#160;Pakistanis are no longer considered to be “one of the most intelligent people.”</p>
<p>But the United States has been waging a worsening war in Afghanistan for sixteen years and wants desperately to escape, and Pakistan can help it get out of its catastrophic disaster.</p>
<p>The US needs Pakistan as an ally, not an enemy.</p>
<p>As to Turkey, it is doubtful that Trump understands the intricacies of its politics and especially its relations with its Kurdish population and diaspora. As&#160; <a href="" type="internal">put so well</a>&#160;by&#160;The Atlantic&#160;on August 23, there is a “thicket of competing interests that characterizes one of America’s most important military partnerships. At the center of the difficulty is American efforts in Syria, which rely fundamentally on a collection of local forces among whom are actors Turkey considers terrorists.”</p>
<p>This is an extremely complex and sensitive situation. It demands most careful and circumspect diplomacy, fine-tuned to achieve the US objective of defeating Islamic State while furthering trust and cooperation with Turkey.</p>
<p>The US State Department&#160; <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3432.htm" type="external">declares</a>&#160;that “Turkey is an important US security partner [and] has been a valued North Atlantic Treaty Organization Ally since 1952 . . .”&#160;&#160;In other words, Turkey is a vital cog in the US war machine that has geared up for ultimate confrontation with Russia.</p>
<p>The Pentagon doesn’t admit it has nuclear weapons in Turkey, but as the&#160;Washington Post&#160; <a href="" type="internal">recorded last year</a>, “US officials are loath to discuss the location of nuclear weapons, but&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Air Force budget documents</a>&#160;state that ‘special weapons’ are stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. That’s a delicate way of saying nuclear weapons . . .”</p>
<p>It is hardly a secret that the weapons in the bunkers at Incirlik&#160; <a href="http://www.incirlik.af.mil/" type="external">air base</a>&#160;are B-61 nuclear bombs intended for delivery by US F-16s.</p>
<p>Incirlik has an interesting history, and the USAF&#160; <a href="" type="internal">writes that</a>&#160;“the base was the main U-2 operating location until May 1960, when Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 aircraft succumbed to a volley of Soviet surface-to-air missiles over Sverdlovsk.” You would think from this statement that the U-2 flew from Incirlik on its illegal spying mission over Russia.&#160;&#160;But it didn’t.</p>
<p>It&#160; <a href="" type="internal">flew from</a>&#160;an airbase at Peshawar in Pakistan, a valued US ally in the Cold War, and an important partner in all sorts of US initiatives. For example, it was&#160; <a href="https://www.laprogressive.com/henry-kissinger/" type="external">used</a>&#160;by Henry Kissinger to disguise his epoch-making trip to China in 1971 which had been facilitated by Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan who had gone to Beijing and “secretly discussed a future visit to China by an American envoy.”&#160;&#160;The level of trust between China and Pakistan remains a major factor in international affairs, as does that between Pakistan and Turkey.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Washington is now in the process of tearing up Pakistan and throwing it away, and there’s nothing Pakistan can do about it.&#160;&#160;But Turkey has reacted firmly to US fandangos and on September 12 the BBC&#160; <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41237812" type="external">reported that</a>&#160;Turkey “signed a controversial deal with Russia to arm its forces with Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a deposit had already been paid. The deal is thought to be worth $ 2.5 billion.”</p>
<p>We are now in the realms of Alice in Wonderland when the Cheshire Cat&#160; <a href="http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/chapters-script/alice-in-wonderland-quotes/" type="external">told her</a>&#160;that “If you don’t know where you are going any road can take you there.”</p>
<p>The United States has nuclear weapons stored in a country that is a partner in a military alliance that is strategically directed to the military defeat of Russia. And Russia is about to supply Turkey with weapons for national defense, including that of the base at which these nuclear weapons are stored.</p>
<p>But all that the Generals trying to run the Trump administration can do is to alienate yet another country by jabbing a silly pinprick.&#160;&#160;US diplomacy is foundering on the rocks of ignorance and arrogance, and Washington is losing friends and alienating people at an alarming rate.</p>
|
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2017/09/15/how-to-lose-friends-and-alienate-people-2/
|
2017-09-15
| 4left
|
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
<p>It is amazing yet somehow impressive how Washington manages to make so many countries irritated and resentful. There’s an art in it, really. Take the case of Turkey, Pakistan and pilot training.</p>
<p>Following an attempted coup in Turkey last year its air force ran short of pilots, which wasn’t surprising because several of them flew their aircraft in support of the rebels and were promptly&#160; <a href="" type="internal">punished</a>&#160;after the uprising collapsed.&#160;&#160;680 pilots (of a total 1,380) were&#160; <a href="" type="internal">dismissed</a>&#160;in President Erdogan’s post-coup purge.&#160;&#160;So it became necessary to train more pilots to fly the Turkish Air Force’s 240 Lockheed Martin F-16 multirole strike aircraft that it bought from the United States.</p>
<p>Irrespective of whether we consider Erdogan to be an admirable pillar of righteous freedom or a malevolently vicious near-dictator, the fact remains that Turkey is a member of the US-NATO military alliance whose Secretary General, the internationally important Jens Stoltenberg, has&#160; <a href="http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_143329.htm" type="external">said</a>&#160;that “Turkey is a key ally for many reasons, but especially for its strategic geographic location [being] . . .&#160;close to Russia in the Black Sea.”&#160;&#160;That partnership appears to be especially valued by the rabidly anti-Russian Stoltenberg, but perhaps not so much by the United States, whose recent refusal of cooperation in provision of Turkish Air Force pilot training was a diplomatic disaster.</p>
<p>According to Turkey’s&#160;Hürriyet&#160; <a href="" type="internal">newspaper</a>, “the United States has refused to send F-16 warplane trainers to Turkey after Ankara requested them in order to fill the gap in the number of Turkish jet pilots.”&#160;&#160;So Turkey asked Pakistan to send three instructors, but “the US objected to Pakistan sending F-16 jet pilot trainers to Turkey, based on the agreement that US-origin equipment’s purchase, sale, maintenance and training between third countries needed approval from Washington.”</p>
<p>Why deny approval?&#160;&#160;Here are two countries, both of which have ties to the US and operate US-supplied F-16 aircraft and they want to get together and help each other in training pilots to fly these planes.&#160;&#160;What’s the problem?</p>
<p>Surely the provision of three flying instructors to a NATO country by Pakistan, a country that was&#160; <a href="" type="internal">declared</a>&#160;a “Major Non-NATO Ally” in 2004 by no less a figure than President George W Bush, can’t be controversial?&#160;&#160;After all, the designation of “Major Non-NATO Ally”&#160; <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/mnna.htm" type="external">is a distinction</a>&#160;“given by the US government to exceptionally close allies.”</p>
<p>But this “exceptionally close ally” whose own air force has 70 US-supplied F-16 aircraft is not permitted to send three F-16 instructors to train pilots of US-supplied F-16 aircraft in an air force of a country that is a major member of the US-NATO military alliance.&#160;&#160;That is bizarre.</p>
<p>In May 2017 President Trump&#160; <a href="" type="internal">declared</a>&#160;that it was “a great honor to welcome the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the White House.”&#160;&#160;Relations were obviously cordial.&#160;&#160;And Mr Trump had been even more effusive about Pakistan’s corrupt (and since dismissed) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, just after his election, when he&#160; <a href="" type="internal">said in a phone call</a>&#160;that “you are a terrific guy. You are doing amazing work which is visible in every way. I am ready and willing to play any role that you want me to play to address and find solutions to the outstanding problems . . .&#160;&#160;Your country is amazing with tremendous opportunities. Pakistanis are one of the most intelligent people.”</p>
<p>But times change, and the fantasy world of Trump Tweet has taken over US policy. Pakistan is now,&#160; <a href="" type="internal">according to Trump</a>, an outcast nation that has “sheltered the same organizations that try every single day to kill our people. We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting.”&#160;&#160;Pakistanis are no longer considered to be “one of the most intelligent people.”</p>
<p>But the United States has been waging a worsening war in Afghanistan for sixteen years and wants desperately to escape, and Pakistan can help it get out of its catastrophic disaster.</p>
<p>The US needs Pakistan as an ally, not an enemy.</p>
<p>As to Turkey, it is doubtful that Trump understands the intricacies of its politics and especially its relations with its Kurdish population and diaspora. As&#160; <a href="" type="internal">put so well</a>&#160;by&#160;The Atlantic&#160;on August 23, there is a “thicket of competing interests that characterizes one of America’s most important military partnerships. At the center of the difficulty is American efforts in Syria, which rely fundamentally on a collection of local forces among whom are actors Turkey considers terrorists.”</p>
<p>This is an extremely complex and sensitive situation. It demands most careful and circumspect diplomacy, fine-tuned to achieve the US objective of defeating Islamic State while furthering trust and cooperation with Turkey.</p>
<p>The US State Department&#160; <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3432.htm" type="external">declares</a>&#160;that “Turkey is an important US security partner [and] has been a valued North Atlantic Treaty Organization Ally since 1952 . . .”&#160;&#160;In other words, Turkey is a vital cog in the US war machine that has geared up for ultimate confrontation with Russia.</p>
<p>The Pentagon doesn’t admit it has nuclear weapons in Turkey, but as the&#160;Washington Post&#160; <a href="" type="internal">recorded last year</a>, “US officials are loath to discuss the location of nuclear weapons, but&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Air Force budget documents</a>&#160;state that ‘special weapons’ are stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. That’s a delicate way of saying nuclear weapons . . .”</p>
<p>It is hardly a secret that the weapons in the bunkers at Incirlik&#160; <a href="http://www.incirlik.af.mil/" type="external">air base</a>&#160;are B-61 nuclear bombs intended for delivery by US F-16s.</p>
<p>Incirlik has an interesting history, and the USAF&#160; <a href="" type="internal">writes that</a>&#160;“the base was the main U-2 operating location until May 1960, when Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 aircraft succumbed to a volley of Soviet surface-to-air missiles over Sverdlovsk.” You would think from this statement that the U-2 flew from Incirlik on its illegal spying mission over Russia.&#160;&#160;But it didn’t.</p>
<p>It&#160; <a href="" type="internal">flew from</a>&#160;an airbase at Peshawar in Pakistan, a valued US ally in the Cold War, and an important partner in all sorts of US initiatives. For example, it was&#160; <a href="https://www.laprogressive.com/henry-kissinger/" type="external">used</a>&#160;by Henry Kissinger to disguise his epoch-making trip to China in 1971 which had been facilitated by Pakistan’s President Yahya Khan who had gone to Beijing and “secretly discussed a future visit to China by an American envoy.”&#160;&#160;The level of trust between China and Pakistan remains a major factor in international affairs, as does that between Pakistan and Turkey.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Washington is now in the process of tearing up Pakistan and throwing it away, and there’s nothing Pakistan can do about it.&#160;&#160;But Turkey has reacted firmly to US fandangos and on September 12 the BBC&#160; <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41237812" type="external">reported that</a>&#160;Turkey “signed a controversial deal with Russia to arm its forces with Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a deposit had already been paid. The deal is thought to be worth $ 2.5 billion.”</p>
<p>We are now in the realms of Alice in Wonderland when the Cheshire Cat&#160; <a href="http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/chapters-script/alice-in-wonderland-quotes/" type="external">told her</a>&#160;that “If you don’t know where you are going any road can take you there.”</p>
<p>The United States has nuclear weapons stored in a country that is a partner in a military alliance that is strategically directed to the military defeat of Russia. And Russia is about to supply Turkey with weapons for national defense, including that of the base at which these nuclear weapons are stored.</p>
<p>But all that the Generals trying to run the Trump administration can do is to alienate yet another country by jabbing a silly pinprick.&#160;&#160;US diplomacy is foundering on the rocks of ignorance and arrogance, and Washington is losing friends and alienating people at an alarming rate.</p>
| 6,796 |
<p>In examining immigration policy, those interested in the topic are apt to first look to traditional, English speaking media covering the matter.&#160; For Californians, this means reading the LA Times, The Daily News, The Sac Bee, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc.</p>
<p>In becoming preoccupied with English speaking outlets, the immigration issue from the “other perspective” gets shoved into a blind spot.&#160; A disclaimer: This isn’t a call to put on the suit of multiculturalism or to adopt the “other perspective” as one’s own.</p>
<p>Instead, it’s essentially a call similar to the wise maxim for watching cable political pundits: Consider more than one perspective to see an argument from the big picture.&#160; Looking to only one perspective risks turning one into a mindless, partisan cheerleader.</p>
<p>To be aware of what the other side has to say about current immigration issues aids in more effectively assessing the immigration situation.&#160; In this awareness, there’s still a need to read with a critical eye, considering whether certain concerns are fair ones.</p>
<p>In a fascinating angle of examining immigration, the Hispanic community voice raises a legitimate concern. Namely, it notes that both parties are solidly out of touch with proposing a solution to the immigration problem.</p>
<p>The Hispanic publication La Opinion recently <a href="http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3e3f4cf7466906da6e930d76d8648a68" type="external">reported</a> about the split within the Republican Party over immigration reform. Steve Poizner, running for the gubernatorial nomination against Meg Whitman, takes a hard stance on the immigration issue.&#160; Poizner, according to La Opinion, said that “illegal immigrants are overwhelming our education, health care and public benefits systems.”&#160;&#160; Meanwhile, his counterpart, Whitman, advocates a more moderate approach to immigration reform, according to the same publication.</p>
<p>The implication is that the Republican Party lacks consensus on immigration reform, a more than accurate assessment <a href="http://www.caivn.org/article/2010/02/23/cpac-exposes-gop-split-over-illegal-immigration" type="external">highlighted</a> at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).&#160; This lack of consensus in the Republican Party is certainly a factor continuing to plague it, despite an effort by conservatives to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703791504575079732815974568.html" type="external">push</a> more Hispanic conservative candidates.</p>
<p>As much as the the Hispanic community gives grief to Republicans for lack of vision, Democrats aren’t exempted from Hispanic ire.&#160; The liberal organization, the National Council of La Raza (NCLA), called out President Obama for his unkept promise to implement immigration reform in a timely manner.</p>
<p>NCLA recently released a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKkrdIqjSaw&amp;feature=player_embedded" type="external">video</a> of President Obama addressing a Hispanic crowd earlier last year, showering them with immigration reform promises.&#160; Agree or disagree with NCLA in terms of their ultimate vision for an immigration reform bill, they too make an overall valid criticism of current political party structure.</p>
<p>Their point? Democratic leadership has labeled itself as the party of minorities and of diversity.&#160; But when it comes to actually delivering the goods, there are more politically expedient measures to focus on (i.e. Healthcare reform).&#160; It’s actually worse to promise something and not deliver it.&#160; It ultimately begs the question, do the Democratic elites really care for minorities?</p>
<p>The biggest implication is that both parties seem to be out of touch with minorities, being more concerned with pandering to their base and courting special interest money.&#160; In a sense, independents and Hispanics share a commonality.&#160; Both parties are ignoring their concerns and needs.</p>
<p>This isn’t necessarily a call for instituting a third party, but a call for a better class of candidates to come forward in future elections. Citizens need candidates who are actually interested in the well-being of their constituents and&#160;in making the American dream available to those willing to work within the system in a fair manner.</p>
|
Both parties out of touch with Hispanics on immigration reform
| false |
https://ivn.us/2010/03/05/both-parties-out-touch-hispanics-immigration-reform/
|
2010-03-05
| 2least
|
Both parties out of touch with Hispanics on immigration reform
<p>In examining immigration policy, those interested in the topic are apt to first look to traditional, English speaking media covering the matter.&#160; For Californians, this means reading the LA Times, The Daily News, The Sac Bee, The San Francisco Chronicle, etc.</p>
<p>In becoming preoccupied with English speaking outlets, the immigration issue from the “other perspective” gets shoved into a blind spot.&#160; A disclaimer: This isn’t a call to put on the suit of multiculturalism or to adopt the “other perspective” as one’s own.</p>
<p>Instead, it’s essentially a call similar to the wise maxim for watching cable political pundits: Consider more than one perspective to see an argument from the big picture.&#160; Looking to only one perspective risks turning one into a mindless, partisan cheerleader.</p>
<p>To be aware of what the other side has to say about current immigration issues aids in more effectively assessing the immigration situation.&#160; In this awareness, there’s still a need to read with a critical eye, considering whether certain concerns are fair ones.</p>
<p>In a fascinating angle of examining immigration, the Hispanic community voice raises a legitimate concern. Namely, it notes that both parties are solidly out of touch with proposing a solution to the immigration problem.</p>
<p>The Hispanic publication La Opinion recently <a href="http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3e3f4cf7466906da6e930d76d8648a68" type="external">reported</a> about the split within the Republican Party over immigration reform. Steve Poizner, running for the gubernatorial nomination against Meg Whitman, takes a hard stance on the immigration issue.&#160; Poizner, according to La Opinion, said that “illegal immigrants are overwhelming our education, health care and public benefits systems.”&#160;&#160; Meanwhile, his counterpart, Whitman, advocates a more moderate approach to immigration reform, according to the same publication.</p>
<p>The implication is that the Republican Party lacks consensus on immigration reform, a more than accurate assessment <a href="http://www.caivn.org/article/2010/02/23/cpac-exposes-gop-split-over-illegal-immigration" type="external">highlighted</a> at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).&#160; This lack of consensus in the Republican Party is certainly a factor continuing to plague it, despite an effort by conservatives to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703791504575079732815974568.html" type="external">push</a> more Hispanic conservative candidates.</p>
<p>As much as the the Hispanic community gives grief to Republicans for lack of vision, Democrats aren’t exempted from Hispanic ire.&#160; The liberal organization, the National Council of La Raza (NCLA), called out President Obama for his unkept promise to implement immigration reform in a timely manner.</p>
<p>NCLA recently released a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKkrdIqjSaw&amp;feature=player_embedded" type="external">video</a> of President Obama addressing a Hispanic crowd earlier last year, showering them with immigration reform promises.&#160; Agree or disagree with NCLA in terms of their ultimate vision for an immigration reform bill, they too make an overall valid criticism of current political party structure.</p>
<p>Their point? Democratic leadership has labeled itself as the party of minorities and of diversity.&#160; But when it comes to actually delivering the goods, there are more politically expedient measures to focus on (i.e. Healthcare reform).&#160; It’s actually worse to promise something and not deliver it.&#160; It ultimately begs the question, do the Democratic elites really care for minorities?</p>
<p>The biggest implication is that both parties seem to be out of touch with minorities, being more concerned with pandering to their base and courting special interest money.&#160; In a sense, independents and Hispanics share a commonality.&#160; Both parties are ignoring their concerns and needs.</p>
<p>This isn’t necessarily a call for instituting a third party, but a call for a better class of candidates to come forward in future elections. Citizens need candidates who are actually interested in the well-being of their constituents and&#160;in making the American dream available to those willing to work within the system in a fair manner.</p>
| 6,797 |
<p />
<p>Sorry to be so monotonous, but the holiday week has left people with an absence of news and a lot of time to speculate on all things Libby. So here’s some more worthwhile block quoting. Did Libby’s defense team threaten to expose Dick Cheney’s crimes during the trial? And did they only back off after being guaranteed a commutation or pardon? <a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/05/turley-outlines-libbys-team-putting-the-squeeze-on-cheney/" type="external">Follow the clues</a>, it makes a lot of sense…</p>
<p>If you ask any criminal defense attorney, they said we would make Dick Cheney the focus of the trial. He is perfect. He’s all over this case. It really was an investigation about what Dick Cheney ordered, what Dick Cheney said, what Dick Cheney did. It’s just that Dick Cheney wasn’t indicted.</p>
<p>So no one was that surprised when the defense team made it clear they were going to call him to the trial and they were going to take the gloves off. And then suddenly, it changed and they said they were not going to call him.</p>
<p>They barely talked about him in any sinister way. And they adopted what could only be described as a passive defense. They virtually walked Libby into a conviction. I don’t mean to be too harsh, but it seemed to me a pretty passive performance.</p>
<p>Well some of us speculated at the time that it seemed to be preserving the chance for a pardon. He was a loyal soldier. He took the hit in court and he remained quiet even after his conviction and even after his sentencing.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/05/turley-outlines-libbys-team-putting-the-squeeze-on-cheney/" type="external">Crooks and Liars</a> has video.</p>
<p />
|
Why Didn’t Libby’s Defense Team Focus on Cheney?
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/07/why-didnt-libbys-defense-team-focus-cheney/
|
2007-07-06
| 4left
|
Why Didn’t Libby’s Defense Team Focus on Cheney?
<p />
<p>Sorry to be so monotonous, but the holiday week has left people with an absence of news and a lot of time to speculate on all things Libby. So here’s some more worthwhile block quoting. Did Libby’s defense team threaten to expose Dick Cheney’s crimes during the trial? And did they only back off after being guaranteed a commutation or pardon? <a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/05/turley-outlines-libbys-team-putting-the-squeeze-on-cheney/" type="external">Follow the clues</a>, it makes a lot of sense…</p>
<p>If you ask any criminal defense attorney, they said we would make Dick Cheney the focus of the trial. He is perfect. He’s all over this case. It really was an investigation about what Dick Cheney ordered, what Dick Cheney said, what Dick Cheney did. It’s just that Dick Cheney wasn’t indicted.</p>
<p>So no one was that surprised when the defense team made it clear they were going to call him to the trial and they were going to take the gloves off. And then suddenly, it changed and they said they were not going to call him.</p>
<p>They barely talked about him in any sinister way. And they adopted what could only be described as a passive defense. They virtually walked Libby into a conviction. I don’t mean to be too harsh, but it seemed to me a pretty passive performance.</p>
<p>Well some of us speculated at the time that it seemed to be preserving the chance for a pardon. He was a loyal soldier. He took the hit in court and he remained quiet even after his conviction and even after his sentencing.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/05/turley-outlines-libbys-team-putting-the-squeeze-on-cheney/" type="external">Crooks and Liars</a> has video.</p>
<p />
| 6,798 |
<p>Republican lawmakers in 20 states have proposed bills that would put limits on the right to assemble and protest, according to a report by the <a href="https://stateinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2017-SiX-EOSR.pdf" type="external">State Innovation Exchange</a>, a Democratic-aligned group.</p>
<p>“These bills would create a new set of crimes, significantly harsher penalties, and costly fines that could apply broadly to anyone—whether they are supporters of the president, members of the Tea Party, or just concerned parents speaking out at a school board meeting,” read an advance copy of the State Innovation Exchange report.</p>
<p>“Given this passage rate, there is every reason to think we will see more of these efforts in 2018,” the report said.</p>
<p>Six of those states — Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Georgia, and South Dakota — have already approved “anti-protester” legislation, according to the Exchange report.</p>
<p>Examples in the report include an “anti-loitering” bill in Arkansas that sets an offense for an individual who “lingers, remains or prowls in a public place or the premises of another without apparent reason or under circumstances that warrant alarm or concern for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.”</p>
<p>Rep. Nick Zerwas, who sponsored a Minnesota bill that did not pass, said he wanted to increase penalties on actions that were already offenses that would result in fines.</p>
<p>“It was very narrow in scope and aimed to increase criminal penalties for a few specific violations. What we’ve seen is a pattern of behavior in which individuals are closing down airports or blocking freeways in violation of existing law,” Zerwas told <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/29/report-anti-protester-bills-gain-traction-state-legislatures/608609001/" type="external">USA Today</a>.</p>
<p>The State Innovation Exchange faces an uphill battle in combating the bills, according to USA Today, which notes that only 16 states have Democratic governors. Republicans control both the governorship and both legislator chambers in 25 states, while Democrats only control all the chambers in five states.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/anti-protest-bills-around-country" type="external">American Civil Liberties Union</a> has put together a list of states that have anti-protest bills, which is current as of June 23.</p>
|
Report: GOP Legislators in 20 States Propose Restrictions on Protests
| false |
https://newsline.com/report-gop-legislators-in-20-states-propose-restrictions-on-protests/
|
2017-08-29
| 1right-center
|
Report: GOP Legislators in 20 States Propose Restrictions on Protests
<p>Republican lawmakers in 20 states have proposed bills that would put limits on the right to assemble and protest, according to a report by the <a href="https://stateinnovation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/2017-SiX-EOSR.pdf" type="external">State Innovation Exchange</a>, a Democratic-aligned group.</p>
<p>“These bills would create a new set of crimes, significantly harsher penalties, and costly fines that could apply broadly to anyone—whether they are supporters of the president, members of the Tea Party, or just concerned parents speaking out at a school board meeting,” read an advance copy of the State Innovation Exchange report.</p>
<p>“Given this passage rate, there is every reason to think we will see more of these efforts in 2018,” the report said.</p>
<p>Six of those states — Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Georgia, and South Dakota — have already approved “anti-protester” legislation, according to the Exchange report.</p>
<p>Examples in the report include an “anti-loitering” bill in Arkansas that sets an offense for an individual who “lingers, remains or prowls in a public place or the premises of another without apparent reason or under circumstances that warrant alarm or concern for the safety of persons or property in the vicinity.”</p>
<p>Rep. Nick Zerwas, who sponsored a Minnesota bill that did not pass, said he wanted to increase penalties on actions that were already offenses that would result in fines.</p>
<p>“It was very narrow in scope and aimed to increase criminal penalties for a few specific violations. What we’ve seen is a pattern of behavior in which individuals are closing down airports or blocking freeways in violation of existing law,” Zerwas told <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/29/report-anti-protester-bills-gain-traction-state-legislatures/608609001/" type="external">USA Today</a>.</p>
<p>The State Innovation Exchange faces an uphill battle in combating the bills, according to USA Today, which notes that only 16 states have Democratic governors. Republicans control both the governorship and both legislator chambers in 25 states, while Democrats only control all the chambers in five states.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/anti-protest-bills-around-country" type="external">American Civil Liberties Union</a> has put together a list of states that have anti-protest bills, which is current as of June 23.</p>
| 6,799 |
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