news_text
stringlengths 0
312k
| title
stringlengths 0
11.1k
| hyperpartisan
bool 2
classes | url
stringlengths 20
344
| published_at
stringlengths 0
10
| bias
class label 5
classes | text
stringlengths 19
312k
| uid
int64 0
600k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
<p />
<p>Italian politics took a dark turn when March elections overthrew the country’s scandal-ridden establishment but shifted power to the right-wing Alliance for Freedom coalition.</p>
<p>The main party, Forza Italia, is led by media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. The other coalition parties agree only on closing the borders to dark-skinned immigrants. While the neo-fascist National Alliance demands a strong central government, Lega Nord separatists want to divide Italy into autonomous mini-states, relieving the prosperous north of responsibility for the poor, Mafia-plagued south.</p>
<p>The division may have occurred already: The elections effectively split the world’s fifth leading industrial power into three parts–the center of the country mostly with the left; the south mixed, with neo-fascists rising; and the north belonging to Lega Nord voters who mistrust conventional politics.</p>
<p />
|
No Lega to stand on
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/1994/07/no-lega-stand/
|
2018-07-01
| 4left
|
No Lega to stand on
<p />
<p>Italian politics took a dark turn when March elections overthrew the country’s scandal-ridden establishment but shifted power to the right-wing Alliance for Freedom coalition.</p>
<p>The main party, Forza Italia, is led by media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. The other coalition parties agree only on closing the borders to dark-skinned immigrants. While the neo-fascist National Alliance demands a strong central government, Lega Nord separatists want to divide Italy into autonomous mini-states, relieving the prosperous north of responsibility for the poor, Mafia-plagued south.</p>
<p>The division may have occurred already: The elections effectively split the world’s fifth leading industrial power into three parts–the center of the country mostly with the left; the south mixed, with neo-fascists rising; and the north belonging to Lega Nord voters who mistrust conventional politics.</p>
<p />
| 7,300 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>So I’ve been shopping around for a new religion to see me through the next four years. Too many of my fellow Christians voted for selfishness and for degradation of the beautiful world God created. I guess they figured that by the time the planet is a smoky wasteland, they’d be nice and comfy in heaven, so wotthehell. Anyhow, I’m looking around for other options.</p>
<p>Buddhism involves way too much sitting still for my taste; the Dalai Lama basically says, “Be gentle. Listen to the universe. Live in the moment. Let happiness flow through you.” And I think to myself, “This man has never had children.” Hinduism includes sacred cows and my experience with cattle makes it impossible for me to revere them; they are stubborn and stupid and letting them wander loose in the streets — why? Prime rib is their proper destiny.</p>
<p>Islam is great and so is Judaism but they’re so complicated! You can’t just walk into a temple and listen to a holy person and burst into tears and throw yourself down on the floor, as you can with Christianity, and say, “I believe!” and get dunked in water and, shazam, you’re in.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And spirituality is no go for me, like what you read about in books with sentences like “Creativity is the journey of channeling connectedness and realizing the potentiality of being.” Don’t want that. I want a religion.</p>
<p>At the moment, Zoroastrianism is looking good to me. Compared with other religions, it feels comfortable, something a guy could get used to. (It has nothing to do with the masked adventure hero, Zorro, by the way. Or his ass.) They believe in one Great Almighty Spirit of Good who is in combat against evil forces, and Goodness prevails in the end. There is no self-flagellation or staring at the sun or snake-handling. In the afterlife you will basically reap what you sowed in life. If you were industrious, generous and kind, you’ll be okay, and if you lied and cheated and didn’t pay your bills and plastered your name on big buildings, beware.</p>
<p>If I embraced it, I’d be one of the very few Zoroastrians in Minnesota and I could start my own First Reformed Zoroastrian church and pretty much write my own ticket. This is a huge advantage over the old system of adopting the religion of your forefathers. My parents were Bible-believing Christians, but I don’t get the parable where the latecomers get the same pay as the early birds and also the part about lust in your heart being the same as committing adultery itself: where did that come from? A Christian who believes in those things is not going to be a happy person.</p>
<p>My religion would be a gentle faith that believes in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer. You worship the Lord by sitting on the porch and sipping iced tea and dozing off over a good book. Baseball is part of Reformed Zoroastrianism, and the number 3, and Ferris wheels and deep-fried cheese curds. A tolerant religion but it would come down hard on tailgaters and the writers of technical manuals and people who butt in when you’re busy working. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” they say. Well, then don’t, OK?</p>
<p>But then I stop and think about all the work involved in starting up a new religion and deciding on dogma and having mystical visions, and proclaiming the truth to people who don’t care, and dealing with the oddballs and misfits who’d be attracted to the thing, and I think, “No way.”</p>
<p>So I am left with Confucianism, accepting the sacredness of confusion. Life is messy and it always has been. We work hard to earn money, we neglect our health and then we pay the money to restore our health, meanwhile we forgot how to enjoy life, so what good is health anyway, and now 80,000 people in three states have elected a president who can’t focus on anything for more than a couple sentences and who contradicts himself every other day. So it goes. Have mercy.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>(c) Garrison Keillor, distributed by The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News.</p>
|
I think I need a new religion
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/929468/i-think-i-need-a-new-religion.html
|
2017-01-17
| 2least
|
I think I need a new religion
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>So I’ve been shopping around for a new religion to see me through the next four years. Too many of my fellow Christians voted for selfishness and for degradation of the beautiful world God created. I guess they figured that by the time the planet is a smoky wasteland, they’d be nice and comfy in heaven, so wotthehell. Anyhow, I’m looking around for other options.</p>
<p>Buddhism involves way too much sitting still for my taste; the Dalai Lama basically says, “Be gentle. Listen to the universe. Live in the moment. Let happiness flow through you.” And I think to myself, “This man has never had children.” Hinduism includes sacred cows and my experience with cattle makes it impossible for me to revere them; they are stubborn and stupid and letting them wander loose in the streets — why? Prime rib is their proper destiny.</p>
<p>Islam is great and so is Judaism but they’re so complicated! You can’t just walk into a temple and listen to a holy person and burst into tears and throw yourself down on the floor, as you can with Christianity, and say, “I believe!” and get dunked in water and, shazam, you’re in.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>And spirituality is no go for me, like what you read about in books with sentences like “Creativity is the journey of channeling connectedness and realizing the potentiality of being.” Don’t want that. I want a religion.</p>
<p>At the moment, Zoroastrianism is looking good to me. Compared with other religions, it feels comfortable, something a guy could get used to. (It has nothing to do with the masked adventure hero, Zorro, by the way. Or his ass.) They believe in one Great Almighty Spirit of Good who is in combat against evil forces, and Goodness prevails in the end. There is no self-flagellation or staring at the sun or snake-handling. In the afterlife you will basically reap what you sowed in life. If you were industrious, generous and kind, you’ll be okay, and if you lied and cheated and didn’t pay your bills and plastered your name on big buildings, beware.</p>
<p>If I embraced it, I’d be one of the very few Zoroastrians in Minnesota and I could start my own First Reformed Zoroastrian church and pretty much write my own ticket. This is a huge advantage over the old system of adopting the religion of your forefathers. My parents were Bible-believing Christians, but I don’t get the parable where the latecomers get the same pay as the early birds and also the part about lust in your heart being the same as committing adultery itself: where did that come from? A Christian who believes in those things is not going to be a happy person.</p>
<p>My religion would be a gentle faith that believes in the sacredness of leisure. Napping as a form of prayer. You worship the Lord by sitting on the porch and sipping iced tea and dozing off over a good book. Baseball is part of Reformed Zoroastrianism, and the number 3, and Ferris wheels and deep-fried cheese curds. A tolerant religion but it would come down hard on tailgaters and the writers of technical manuals and people who butt in when you’re busy working. “I’m sorry to disturb you,” they say. Well, then don’t, OK?</p>
<p>But then I stop and think about all the work involved in starting up a new religion and deciding on dogma and having mystical visions, and proclaiming the truth to people who don’t care, and dealing with the oddballs and misfits who’d be attracted to the thing, and I think, “No way.”</p>
<p>So I am left with Confucianism, accepting the sacredness of confusion. Life is messy and it always has been. We work hard to earn money, we neglect our health and then we pay the money to restore our health, meanwhile we forgot how to enjoy life, so what good is health anyway, and now 80,000 people in three states have elected a president who can’t focus on anything for more than a couple sentences and who contradicts himself every other day. So it goes. Have mercy.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>(c) Garrison Keillor, distributed by The Washington Post News Service with Bloomberg News.</p>
| 7,301 |
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal" />On Tuesday, the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-want-to-keep-fake-news-out-of-your-1479260297-htmlstory.html" type="external">Los Angeles Times</a> and others published what can only be called a blacklist of sites compiled by Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication&#160;at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. The list includes well-known “fake” sites like National Report, The Onion and the Daily Currant.&#160; But the list also includes several well-known and trafficked sites like <a href="http://www.breitbart.com" type="external">Breitbart.com</a>, the Daily Wire, the Independent Journal Review, <a href="http://www.twitchy.com" type="external">Twitchy</a> and Liberty Unyielding.</p>
<p>Alex Jones’ Infowars also made the list as did The Blaze and RedState.</p>
<p>According to Jessica Roy, many “of the sites on the list are aggregators – they take news stories from other sources and rewrite them with more inflammatory headlines and without contextual facts.”</p>
<p>Really?&#160; You mean headlines like “Want to keep fake news out of your newsfeed? College professor creates list of sites to avoid,” which, by the way, happens to be the headline topping Roy’s article.&#160; The implication is clear: All of these sites are FAKE, even though she admits some aren’t.</p>
<p>Writing at the <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/10838/new-blacklist-daily-wire-added-fake-news-directory-john-nolte" type="external">Daily Wire</a>, John Nolte said:</p>
<p>Also on this Blacklist are InfoWars, Breitbart News, Red State, The Blaze, and ZeroHedge. Oddly enough, their left-wing counterparts, like Raw Story, Talking Points Memo and The Huffington Post, did not make the cut.</p>
<p>In other words, The Daily Wire, and a number of other perfectly legitimate right-leaning outlets that dare to challenge the status quo, are now being lumped in with the “The Onion” as spreaders of Fake News.</p>
<p>We can all see what’s going on here, correct?</p>
<p>Sure we do.&#160; Especially given that this list comes on the heels of a report that Google and Facebook are <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/15/technology/facebook-google-fake-news-presidential-election/" type="external">working to keep ads off</a> of “fake” news sites.</p>
<p>Zimdars explained the four categories of sites on her <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53V_81ZyitM/preview" type="external">Google document</a>:</p>
<p>CATEGORY 1: Below is a list of fake, false, or regularly misleading websites that are shared on Facebook and social media. Some of these websites may rely on “outrage” by using distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious information in order to generate likes, shares, and profits. These websites are categorized with the number 1 next to them.</p>
<p>CATEGORY 2: Some websites on this list may circulate misleading and/or potentially unreliable information, and they are marked with a 2.</p>
<p>CATEGORY 3: Other websites on this list sometimes use clickbait-y headlines and social media descriptions, and they are marked with a 3.</p>
<p>CATEGORY 4: Other sources on this list are purposefully fake with the intent of satire/comedy, which can offer important critical commentary on politics and society, but have the potential to be shared as actual/literal news. I’m including them here, for now, because 1.) they have the potential to perpetuate misinformation based on different audience (mis)interpretations and 2.) to make sure anyone who reads a story by The Onion, for example, understands its purpose. If you think this is unnecessary, please see <a href="http://literallyunbelievable.org/" type="external">Literally Unbelievable</a>.</p>
<p>Breitbart was marked with a 2 and a 3, meaning that Zimdars thinks the site is unreliable and uses “clickbaity” headlines.</p>
<p>The National Report, a well-known satire site, had no designation whatsoever.&#160; Neither did the reliable conservative site <a href="http://libertyunyielding.com" type="external">Liberty Unyielding</a>.</p>
<p>Howard Portnoy wrote:</p>
<p>Wow, what a distinction! LU hasn’t been so honored since we made&#160; <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/the_top_40_conservative_websites_june_18_2015_edition.html" type="external">the list of top conservative websites in 2015</a>.</p>
<p>This time, the conferee is&#160;Melissa (“Mish”) Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at&#160;Merrimack College&#160;in North Andover, Mass. We learn from Mish’s faculty profile that “when she’s not researching and teaching, Dr. Zimdars has a&#160; <a href="https://thefuzzfix.com/" type="external">radio show</a>&#160;on Merrimack College’s station, WMCK, and spends a lot of time going to shows in the Boston area, listening to records, and eating fried foods that she should probably avoid.”</p>
<p>Maybe all that dietary fat is dulling her senses since her <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53V_81ZyitM/preview" type="external">list, titled “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News’ Sources,”</a>&#160;attempts to codify entries using a numerical code but then stops short of applying said code to every site named. I can’t say, therefore,&#160;which of the named offenses she believes LU to be guilty of.</p>
<p>Portnoy added:</p>
<p>According to the many mainstream media sources that have picked up&#160;Zimdars’s list, which include the Los Angeles Times, <a href="http://www.kmov.com/story/33713839/professor-compiles-list-of-fake-misleading-news-websites" type="external">station KMOV</a> in St. Louis promises that&#160;Zimdars has only begun to fight and that she “is is [sic] reviewing hundreds of other websites and news organizations, including the popular Huffington Post.” You might be wondering why the HuffPo failed to make the first cut, but if so, you may want to cut down on the fried food, yourself.</p>
<p>(Note: I’ve had a chance to correspond with Portnoy about this, and I must say, so far he’s been much more gracious about this than I would have been.)</p>
<p>Zimdars further noted:</p>
<p>I will be updating the categorizations and adding links gradually through the next couple of days.</p>
<p>Many of the websites on this list continue to offer valuable journalism and/or satirical commentary. For example, a website included on this list wrote an <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://www.inquisitr.com/3718361/list-of-141-fake-news-websites-goes-viral-after-trump-wins-presidency-secret-facebook-employees-revolt/%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;ust%3D1479334692033000%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNH3jCeDCNpSTpBVQ6EIPPHEM_9W5w&amp;sa=D&amp;ust=1479334692188000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHJ_OekAERicIsFurTK11Vsb3lLCg" type="external">overall thoughtful piece about the list</a>, but the headline suggests that every source on this list is fake, which misrepresents the list. Finally, I do not condone plug-ins that automatically block any of the websites listed below. And as a reminder, not all of the sources listed below should be considered fake.</p>
<p>It should be noted that she added this dislaimer at the top, perhaps in an effort to protect herself from potential legal action: ” All of the contents in this document reflect the opinion of the author and are for educational purposes only.”</p>
<p>Right…</p>
<p>It’s not known at this time what action, if any, site owners intend to take against Zimdars or the media outlets that published this list.&#160; We’ll update you when we hear something.</p>
<p>As a final note, we reached out to Ms. Roy to find out if she personally reviewed the sites on Zimdars’ list, or if she simply took her at her word.&#160; So far, we have not received a response.</p>
<p>Color us not surprised.</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p>If you haven’t checked out and liked our&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">Facebook</a>&#160;page, please go&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">here</a>&#160;and do so.</p>
<p>And if you’re as concerned about Facebook censorship as we are, go&#160; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Banned-Facebook-Enables-Militant-Islamic/dp/1944212221/" type="external">here</a>&#160;and order this new book:</p>
|
LA Times, others publish hit list of ‘fake’ conservative sites like Breitbart and Twitchy
| true |
http://conservativefiringline.com/la-times-others-publish-hit-list-fake-conservative-sites-breitbart-twitchy/
|
2016-11-16
| 0right
|
LA Times, others publish hit list of ‘fake’ conservative sites like Breitbart and Twitchy
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal" />On Tuesday, the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-want-to-keep-fake-news-out-of-your-1479260297-htmlstory.html" type="external">Los Angeles Times</a> and others published what can only be called a blacklist of sites compiled by Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication&#160;at Merrimack College in Massachusetts. The list includes well-known “fake” sites like National Report, The Onion and the Daily Currant.&#160; But the list also includes several well-known and trafficked sites like <a href="http://www.breitbart.com" type="external">Breitbart.com</a>, the Daily Wire, the Independent Journal Review, <a href="http://www.twitchy.com" type="external">Twitchy</a> and Liberty Unyielding.</p>
<p>Alex Jones’ Infowars also made the list as did The Blaze and RedState.</p>
<p>According to Jessica Roy, many “of the sites on the list are aggregators – they take news stories from other sources and rewrite them with more inflammatory headlines and without contextual facts.”</p>
<p>Really?&#160; You mean headlines like “Want to keep fake news out of your newsfeed? College professor creates list of sites to avoid,” which, by the way, happens to be the headline topping Roy’s article.&#160; The implication is clear: All of these sites are FAKE, even though she admits some aren’t.</p>
<p>Writing at the <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/10838/new-blacklist-daily-wire-added-fake-news-directory-john-nolte" type="external">Daily Wire</a>, John Nolte said:</p>
<p>Also on this Blacklist are InfoWars, Breitbart News, Red State, The Blaze, and ZeroHedge. Oddly enough, their left-wing counterparts, like Raw Story, Talking Points Memo and The Huffington Post, did not make the cut.</p>
<p>In other words, The Daily Wire, and a number of other perfectly legitimate right-leaning outlets that dare to challenge the status quo, are now being lumped in with the “The Onion” as spreaders of Fake News.</p>
<p>We can all see what’s going on here, correct?</p>
<p>Sure we do.&#160; Especially given that this list comes on the heels of a report that Google and Facebook are <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/15/technology/facebook-google-fake-news-presidential-election/" type="external">working to keep ads off</a> of “fake” news sites.</p>
<p>Zimdars explained the four categories of sites on her <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53V_81ZyitM/preview" type="external">Google document</a>:</p>
<p>CATEGORY 1: Below is a list of fake, false, or regularly misleading websites that are shared on Facebook and social media. Some of these websites may rely on “outrage” by using distorted headlines and decontextualized or dubious information in order to generate likes, shares, and profits. These websites are categorized with the number 1 next to them.</p>
<p>CATEGORY 2: Some websites on this list may circulate misleading and/or potentially unreliable information, and they are marked with a 2.</p>
<p>CATEGORY 3: Other websites on this list sometimes use clickbait-y headlines and social media descriptions, and they are marked with a 3.</p>
<p>CATEGORY 4: Other sources on this list are purposefully fake with the intent of satire/comedy, which can offer important critical commentary on politics and society, but have the potential to be shared as actual/literal news. I’m including them here, for now, because 1.) they have the potential to perpetuate misinformation based on different audience (mis)interpretations and 2.) to make sure anyone who reads a story by The Onion, for example, understands its purpose. If you think this is unnecessary, please see <a href="http://literallyunbelievable.org/" type="external">Literally Unbelievable</a>.</p>
<p>Breitbart was marked with a 2 and a 3, meaning that Zimdars thinks the site is unreliable and uses “clickbaity” headlines.</p>
<p>The National Report, a well-known satire site, had no designation whatsoever.&#160; Neither did the reliable conservative site <a href="http://libertyunyielding.com" type="external">Liberty Unyielding</a>.</p>
<p>Howard Portnoy wrote:</p>
<p>Wow, what a distinction! LU hasn’t been so honored since we made&#160; <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/06/the_top_40_conservative_websites_june_18_2015_edition.html" type="external">the list of top conservative websites in 2015</a>.</p>
<p>This time, the conferee is&#160;Melissa (“Mish”) Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at&#160;Merrimack College&#160;in North Andover, Mass. We learn from Mish’s faculty profile that “when she’s not researching and teaching, Dr. Zimdars has a&#160; <a href="https://thefuzzfix.com/" type="external">radio show</a>&#160;on Merrimack College’s station, WMCK, and spends a lot of time going to shows in the Boston area, listening to records, and eating fried foods that she should probably avoid.”</p>
<p>Maybe all that dietary fat is dulling her senses since her <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eA5-mCZLSS4MQY5QGb5ewC3VAL6pLkT53V_81ZyitM/preview" type="external">list, titled “False, Misleading, Clickbait-y, and/or Satirical ‘News’ Sources,”</a>&#160;attempts to codify entries using a numerical code but then stops short of applying said code to every site named. I can’t say, therefore,&#160;which of the named offenses she believes LU to be guilty of.</p>
<p>Portnoy added:</p>
<p>According to the many mainstream media sources that have picked up&#160;Zimdars’s list, which include the Los Angeles Times, <a href="http://www.kmov.com/story/33713839/professor-compiles-list-of-fake-misleading-news-websites" type="external">station KMOV</a> in St. Louis promises that&#160;Zimdars has only begun to fight and that she “is is [sic] reviewing hundreds of other websites and news organizations, including the popular Huffington Post.” You might be wondering why the HuffPo failed to make the first cut, but if so, you may want to cut down on the fried food, yourself.</p>
<p>(Note: I’ve had a chance to correspond with Portnoy about this, and I must say, so far he’s been much more gracious about this than I would have been.)</p>
<p>Zimdars further noted:</p>
<p>I will be updating the categorizations and adding links gradually through the next couple of days.</p>
<p>Many of the websites on this list continue to offer valuable journalism and/or satirical commentary. For example, a website included on this list wrote an <a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.google.com/url?q%3Dhttp://www.inquisitr.com/3718361/list-of-141-fake-news-websites-goes-viral-after-trump-wins-presidency-secret-facebook-employees-revolt/%26amp;sa%3DD%26amp;ust%3D1479334692033000%26amp;usg%3DAFQjCNH3jCeDCNpSTpBVQ6EIPPHEM_9W5w&amp;sa=D&amp;ust=1479334692188000&amp;usg=AFQjCNHJ_OekAERicIsFurTK11Vsb3lLCg" type="external">overall thoughtful piece about the list</a>, but the headline suggests that every source on this list is fake, which misrepresents the list. Finally, I do not condone plug-ins that automatically block any of the websites listed below. And as a reminder, not all of the sources listed below should be considered fake.</p>
<p>It should be noted that she added this dislaimer at the top, perhaps in an effort to protect herself from potential legal action: ” All of the contents in this document reflect the opinion of the author and are for educational purposes only.”</p>
<p>Right…</p>
<p>It’s not known at this time what action, if any, site owners intend to take against Zimdars or the media outlets that published this list.&#160; We’ll update you when we hear something.</p>
<p>As a final note, we reached out to Ms. Roy to find out if she personally reviewed the sites on Zimdars’ list, or if she simply took her at her word.&#160; So far, we have not received a response.</p>
<p>Color us not surprised.</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p>If you haven’t checked out and liked our&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">Facebook</a>&#160;page, please go&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">here</a>&#160;and do so.</p>
<p>And if you’re as concerned about Facebook censorship as we are, go&#160; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Banned-Facebook-Enables-Militant-Islamic/dp/1944212221/" type="external">here</a>&#160;and order this new book:</p>
| 7,302 |
<p>The Stormy Daniels affair is turning into one of the most persistent scandals of Donald Trump’s presidency. And given the sheer volume of scandals, that’s really saying something. It doesn’t help that this incident involves Trump’s own personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 in hush money to keep Trump’s infidelity out of the news. Cohen is a long-time Trump toady who can always be relied on to prop up his pal, no matter how repulsive his behavior.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2068659326482185" type="external" /></p>
<p>Having made himself the subject of the Stormy affair by asserting that he paid her from his own funds, Cohen is now as much an accomplice as he is an attorney. And his story that he ponied up the cash out of the kindness of his heart is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michael-cohen-used-trump-org-email-stormy-daniels-arrangements-n855021" type="external">falling apart</a>. Consequently, he is adopting the tactics of his boss in order to deflect attention from his own potential criminal liability. On Saturday morning he tweeted this:</p>
<p />
<p>Cohen has somehow gotten the impression that the media is obsessed with his email account. In fact, they are just being responsible journalists by reporting that his contacts with Stormy were made using his Trump Organization email address. That’s relevant due to his prior insistence that the arrangements he made with Stormy had nothing to do with Trump and Trump knew nothing about them. By the way, that would be a violation of the New York Bar Association’s standards of conduct. An attorney may not take actions on behalf of a client without full disclosure and permission.</p>
<p>Having no other defense, Cohen is resorting to attacking the media on a completely different topic. And, much like Trump, his attack is rooted in deliberate falsification of reality. Cohen saying that he didn’t see reporting about the jobs numbers anywhere except for Fox News is really just a confession that he doesn’t watch anything but Fox News. Every other major news organization reported these numbers, as they do every time they are released. Just a few obvious examples:</p>
<p>So Cohen didn’t see or hear any of this? Is he blind and deaf? Or is he just a lying, propaganda sewer who parrots the anti-media bullshit of Donald Trump? If nothing else, he’s exposing his fear about the legal walls that are closing in around him. This painfully desperate tweet is evidence of his knowledge that he and his favorite client are going down fast. And there’s nothing he an do about it.</p>
<p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p>
|
Trump’s Lawyer Tries to Deflect Crimes with Desperate and Obviously False Attacks on the Media
| true |
http://newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p%3D35115
| 4left
|
Trump’s Lawyer Tries to Deflect Crimes with Desperate and Obviously False Attacks on the Media
<p>The Stormy Daniels affair is turning into one of the most persistent scandals of Donald Trump’s presidency. And given the sheer volume of scandals, that’s really saying something. It doesn’t help that this incident involves Trump’s own personal attorney, Michael Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 in hush money to keep Trump’s infidelity out of the news. Cohen is a long-time Trump toady who can always be relied on to prop up his pal, no matter how repulsive his behavior.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.facebook.com/NewsCorpse/posts/2068659326482185" type="external" /></p>
<p>Having made himself the subject of the Stormy affair by asserting that he paid her from his own funds, Cohen is now as much an accomplice as he is an attorney. And his story that he ponied up the cash out of the kindness of his heart is <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/michael-cohen-used-trump-org-email-stormy-daniels-arrangements-n855021" type="external">falling apart</a>. Consequently, he is adopting the tactics of his boss in order to deflect attention from his own potential criminal liability. On Saturday morning he tweeted this:</p>
<p />
<p>Cohen has somehow gotten the impression that the media is obsessed with his email account. In fact, they are just being responsible journalists by reporting that his contacts with Stormy were made using his Trump Organization email address. That’s relevant due to his prior insistence that the arrangements he made with Stormy had nothing to do with Trump and Trump knew nothing about them. By the way, that would be a violation of the New York Bar Association’s standards of conduct. An attorney may not take actions on behalf of a client without full disclosure and permission.</p>
<p>Having no other defense, Cohen is resorting to attacking the media on a completely different topic. And, much like Trump, his attack is rooted in deliberate falsification of reality. Cohen saying that he didn’t see reporting about the jobs numbers anywhere except for Fox News is really just a confession that he doesn’t watch anything but Fox News. Every other major news organization reported these numbers, as they do every time they are released. Just a few obvious examples:</p>
<p>So Cohen didn’t see or hear any of this? Is he blind and deaf? Or is he just a lying, propaganda sewer who parrots the anti-media bullshit of Donald Trump? If nothing else, he’s exposing his fear about the legal walls that are closing in around him. This painfully desperate tweet is evidence of his knowledge that he and his favorite client are going down fast. And there’s nothing he an do about it.</p>
<p>How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00QSSMOES/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B00QSSMOES&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=newscorpsecom-20&amp;linkId=TLI6JC2OYE22MUTS" type="external">Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.</a> Available now at Amazon.</p>
| 7,303 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>PHOENIX — Phoenix’s plan to divert green waste and recyclables away from landfills is suffering due to poor participation in the curbside composting program.</p>
<p>Public Works Assistant Director Joe Giudice said less than 4 percent of the 158,000 eligible properties are participating in the city’s composting program, the Arizona Capitol Times reported ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2fdGezn)" type="external">http://bit.ly/2fdGezn)</a> Monday.</p>
<p>The curbside pilot program allows residents to send green waste to a composting facility through a separate bin that the city collects weekly. Residents in certain areas can acquire the bin for a fee.</p>
<p>The program is part of the Reimagine Phoenix plan to reach a 40 percent diversion rate by 2020 and have zero waste by 2050. The rate has reached 20 percent, but it moved only 4 percent since the program began in 2013. The city plans to release new rate numbers in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>The Public Works Department completed a $13.3 million composting facility in April that it hopes will spur momentum in the program. Giudice said the department moved slowly until it had the ability to compost on a larger scale, so he’s still hopeful that the city can reach the rate goal by 2020.</p>
<p>The compost center is currently able to turn 55,000 tons of organic green waste into compost each year, but it is operating close to full capacity. The city plans to double the amount in coming years.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Programs in other cities have had different results.</p>
<p>Officials in Boise, Idaho, launched a curbside composting program earlier this year and saw composting rates far higher than anticipated. Boise spokesman Colin Hickman told the Idaho Statesman newspaper in July that the city had expected to compost an average of 45 tons of material a day at first. Instead, it has collected an average of 66 tons per day, with trash volumes decreasing accordingly.</p>
<p>Boise residents were automatically enrolled in the program but could opt out if they weren’t interested. The city also made it cheaper to compost than not, raising garbage, recycling and compost rates for all customers and then offering up to $10 in rebates to composters and recyclers.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Arizona Capitol Times, <a href="http://www.arizonacapitoltimes.com" type="external">http://www.arizonacapitoltimes.com</a></p>
|
Phoenix recycling program plagued with low participation
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/1061887/phoenix-recycling-program-plagued-with-low-participation.html
|
2017-09-11
| 2least
|
Phoenix recycling program plagued with low participation
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>PHOENIX — Phoenix’s plan to divert green waste and recyclables away from landfills is suffering due to poor participation in the curbside composting program.</p>
<p>Public Works Assistant Director Joe Giudice said less than 4 percent of the 158,000 eligible properties are participating in the city’s composting program, the Arizona Capitol Times reported ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2fdGezn)" type="external">http://bit.ly/2fdGezn)</a> Monday.</p>
<p>The curbside pilot program allows residents to send green waste to a composting facility through a separate bin that the city collects weekly. Residents in certain areas can acquire the bin for a fee.</p>
<p>The program is part of the Reimagine Phoenix plan to reach a 40 percent diversion rate by 2020 and have zero waste by 2050. The rate has reached 20 percent, but it moved only 4 percent since the program began in 2013. The city plans to release new rate numbers in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>The Public Works Department completed a $13.3 million composting facility in April that it hopes will spur momentum in the program. Giudice said the department moved slowly until it had the ability to compost on a larger scale, so he’s still hopeful that the city can reach the rate goal by 2020.</p>
<p>The compost center is currently able to turn 55,000 tons of organic green waste into compost each year, but it is operating close to full capacity. The city plans to double the amount in coming years.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Programs in other cities have had different results.</p>
<p>Officials in Boise, Idaho, launched a curbside composting program earlier this year and saw composting rates far higher than anticipated. Boise spokesman Colin Hickman told the Idaho Statesman newspaper in July that the city had expected to compost an average of 45 tons of material a day at first. Instead, it has collected an average of 66 tons per day, with trash volumes decreasing accordingly.</p>
<p>Boise residents were automatically enrolled in the program but could opt out if they weren’t interested. The city also made it cheaper to compost than not, raising garbage, recycling and compost rates for all customers and then offering up to $10 in rebates to composters and recyclers.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Arizona Capitol Times, <a href="http://www.arizonacapitoltimes.com" type="external">http://www.arizonacapitoltimes.com</a></p>
| 7,304 |
<p>It all begins with a storm — a typhoon sweeping past the Philippines, a tropical cyclone growing near Australia, or a hurricane building along the Mexican coast. These are sources of swell, an undulation that can trundle mile upon mile across the open ocean.</p>
<p>As it approaches shore, wind, bathymetry (the topography of the sea floor)&#160;and obstacles such as islands or jutting peninsulas all shape the way the swell transforms into a wave that crashes on the beach.</p>
<p>For surfers, catching a suitable wave was long an exercise in intuition and luck. These days, however, they can tap a suite of tools&#160;that help&#160;take the guesswork out of the game. In addition to HD cameras now set up at surf spots around the world, there are also websites and apps that cull atmospheric and oceanic data from a variety of sources — including NASA satellites, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) buoys, and wind anemometers — in order to provide timely surf forecasts.</p>
<p>Jake Kean Mayman, who lives in Venice Beach, California, is one surfer who’s found this influx of tools useful. He admits that he’s “kind of gotten addicted” to websites that help decipher all the available data on surf and wind conditions, and to the webcams that reveal the status of his preferred breaks.</p>
<p>For the edge that this technology has given them, surfers like Kean Mayman largely have a surfer named Sean Collins to thank. With only a couple meteorology courses at Long Beach Community College under his belt, but extensive time spent studying the subject on his own, in 1985 Collins was recruited to join&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/home/index.cfm" type="external">Surfline</a>, the nation’s first commercial surf prediction center geared toward surfers.</p>
<p>He grew the company&#160;into a global enterprise that provides weather and forecasting services not just to surfers, but to all lifeguard agencies in California, as well as the Coast Guard, US&#160;Navy SEALs, the National Weather Service&#160;and television and movie production companies, among other entities, according to a&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/sean-collins-1952-2011_64380/" type="external">profile</a>&#160;on Surfline.com about Collins, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 59.</p>
<p>“[Collins] completely changed what it means to be a surfer,” says Chris Dixon, the founding online editor for&#160;Surfer&#160;magazine who first met Collins in 1996. “Surfers used to be perceived as beach bums because they had to drop everything when waves came. If you were going to be an addicted, devoted surfer, you couldn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend or a steady job. He made it possible to know when waves were coming and altered the definition of who surfers are.”</p>
<p>Collins grew up in Southern California&#160;and started surfing at Seal Beach in Orange County when he was just 8. In those days, the only way for surfers to figure out if a wave was worth the ride was to either test the waters for themselves, or wait for a phone call from&#160;friends already scoping the scene, says Dixon, who’s also the author of&#160;Ghost Wave: The Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth.</p>
<p>As a teenager, Collins spent time sailing with his father, which buoyed his interest in meteorology, according to his son, AJ Collins. In the 1970s, Collins became engrossed with&#160;surf prediction, poring over charts for clues into the nature of swells. “Part of [my father’s] aim was to refine his understanding of his environment,” says 25-year-old AJ.</p>
<p>To hone&#160;his formulas, Collins also studied the research of famed physical oceanographer Walter Munk, who pioneered wave prediction techniques to help Allied forces better execute amphibious missions during World War II. And Collins made his own surf observations.</p>
<p>He would sit atop his house in Seal Beach, peering out at the Pacific, according to&#160;Dixon. From that vantage point, he’d keep track of how large the waves were, how many arrived in sets, the number of seconds between the waves (called wave period), and the directions from which they were coming, for example. But to really understand&#160;why and how the waves arrived when they did, Collins would then compare what he saw on his hometown beach with week-old weather reports from other locales in the Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>Understanding weather events in far-flung regions was a key step in developing prescient wave models, according to Dixon. “Sean had this amazing ability to take disparate sources of information and turn them into a forecast,” he says.</p>
<p>After informally fielding calls for several years from friends seeking surf tips, Collins realized there was a need and market for forecasting services. That’s when he helped found the first iteration of Surfline, a call-in surf forecasting phone service.</p>
<p>Two years later, Collins left the business and started a rival company, Wavetrack. But he later bought out Surfline and merged the two companies. Surfline’s current home base is fitting: Huntington Beach, California, also known as Surf City, USA.</p>
<p>In 1992, Surfline expanded from providing forecasts by&#160;phone to disseminating them via fax to a few spots around Southern California. During that time, Collins and his team relied on weather charts, observational data, wave physics equations, and Collins’ own algorithms to make their predictions. Because of inherent uncertainty in their forecasts, however, “there was a lot of anticipation and a lot of nerves” the night before monster waves had been predicted to arrive, recalls Surfline’s chief meteorologist Mark Willis, who joined the company in 2000.</p>
<p>Still, WaveFax, as the product was known, was a game changer for surfers, according to Dixon. “The copy machine at&#160;Surfer&#160;would just get burned up with this,” he says. “It’s tough to express how important it was when that WaveFax came in, because that’s how we planned our lives.”</p>
<p>These days, those intermittent faxes&#160;are a quaint memory. Now surfers can go to Surfline’s&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/home/index.cfm" type="external">website</a>, which Collins launched in 1995, or open its app and hone in on local conditions — including wave height, wind direction, tide, swell — for 3,690 beaches around the world, from Santa Monica, California, to Skagen, Denmark. With a paid subscription, users can access even more detailed data and get predictions for swells more than two weeks away.</p>
<p>The accuracy of Surfline’s forecasts have improved, too, as a result of advancements in wave modeling techniques, a proliferation of observational ocean data, and importantly, the development of&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/surf-science/what-is-lola---forecaster-blog_61031/" type="external">LOLA</a>. That’s the company’s predictive swell-modeling tool, which crunches real-time data on ocean conditions to provide forecasts on weather, surf heights, and wave period, among other things. Collins began developing this proprietary computer program in 1999 with William O’Reilly, an oceanographer with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who continues to work with Surfline as a lead wave modeler.</p>
<p>The data feeding into LOLA comes from myriad sources, including NOAA, offshore buoys, NASA satellites — and Surfline’s nine full-time forecasters. “We basically apply our own secret sauce to make an accurate surf prediction,” says Willis. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the models.” In other words, Willis’ team tweaks the data&#160;LOLA’s churning out in order to incorporate local knowledge about the peculiarities of individual surf spots, including expanses of reef, ocean floor depth&#160;and features such as islands or offshore canyons.&#160;(Not all of the forecasts on Surfline’s website incorporate human wisdom, however. Some are entirely automated.)</p>
<p>Surfline’s forecasters also vet their predictions by cross-checking with other ocean weather tracking systems. For example, Willis recalls a scenario where LOLA was showing 30-foot waves for a swell generated by a storm near Japan and moving toward Hawaii and Micronesia. The team then consulted a NASA satellite — which just so happened to pass over the exact point that LOLA had measured — and observed that waves in the same spot were 35 feet high. Not too shabby, but they corrected their forecast accordingly. “We can adjust a forecast on the fly,” says Willis.</p>
<p>The team can spot-check predictions, too, by inspecting surf conditions on the beach, using their extensive system of HD cameras, the first of which Collins installed about two decades ago. Dixon remembers when Collins sent him a link to view a camera at Huntington Beach. “My jaw hit the floor,” he says. “To be able to look in real-time at the waves at Huntington Beach in the mid- to late-1990s was a complete game changer.”</p>
<p>Surfline operates 210 (and growing)&#160;HD cameras&#160;spread along coasts across the globe — the largest number of any surf forecasting company. “As the sun starts to come up, we start to look at the cameras and we see how the surf is all up and down the coast,” says Jonathan Warren, another Surfline forecaster. He gets up around dawn so his first surf report of the day for his beaches around Southern California are posted within 20 minutes after sunrise. He checks what the models are saying, then double checks using the HD cameras in order to produce the most accurate rundown of surf conditions.</p>
<p>As a surfer, Warren has a personal stake in ensuring that their models match what’s happening at the beach. “If the surf looks like crap we go back to sleep, but if it looks good, we’ll grab our boards and validate it.”</p>
<p>While Surfline was a pioneer in surf forecasting,&#160;it’s not the only game in town. Other surfing organizations and companies also operate HD cameras and offer predictions, many free of charge. Surfer Kean Mayman, for instance, often relies on the cameras operated by&#160; <a href="http://swellmagnet.com/" type="external">SwellMagnet.com</a>, a Southern California-based company. And&#160; <a href="http://magicseaweed.com/" type="external">MagicSeaweed.com</a>,&#160; <a href="http://www.swellinfo.com/" type="external">Swellinfo.com</a>, and&#160; <a href="http://www.surfingmagazine.com/" type="external">SURFING&#160;magazine</a>&#160;offer surf predictions, as does&#160; <a href="http://www.stormsurf.com/" type="external">Stormsurf.com</a>, which surfer Mark Sponsler founded in the mid-’90s.</p>
<p>“Surfline surely has more competition than they did,” says Dixon, “but I think the reason people still subscribe to them is because their forecasts are generally considered to be the most reliable and definitive.”</p>
<p>A surfer named Adam&#160;in northern Los Angeles and Santa Barbara&#160;checks Stormsurf and&#160;SURFING&#160;magazine’s&#160; <a href="http://forecasts.surfingmagazine.com/" type="external">SwellWatch</a>, but he also pays for a subscription to Surfline and has been using the site for the last five years. “I need to know if I need to clear my schedule on Sunday and blow everything off,” he says.</p>
<p>Despite the appeal&#160;of available data and HD cameras, however, some surfers scoff at the idea of relying on a website or an app. Surfing “takes it roots really seriously, [and] it is always striving for this romantic notion of the past,” says surfer Kean Mayman. “And that’s why you hear people criticize the fact that we do have too many technology options.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, AJ Collins, who is a competitive surfer himself, sees all surfers as data collectors in their own way. “Some people collect data just by looking at the ocean. Some people collect data by looking at the data itself,” he says. Ultimately, “each surfer has their unique connection with the ocean.”</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/catching-a-break/" type="external">story</a> first aired as an interview on <a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/" type="external">Science Friday</a> with Ira Flatow.</p>
|
How he caught the wave ... of predicting surf
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2015-12-30/how-self-taught-meteorologist-turned-call-surf-forecasting-company-global
|
2015-12-30
| 3left-center
|
How he caught the wave ... of predicting surf
<p>It all begins with a storm — a typhoon sweeping past the Philippines, a tropical cyclone growing near Australia, or a hurricane building along the Mexican coast. These are sources of swell, an undulation that can trundle mile upon mile across the open ocean.</p>
<p>As it approaches shore, wind, bathymetry (the topography of the sea floor)&#160;and obstacles such as islands or jutting peninsulas all shape the way the swell transforms into a wave that crashes on the beach.</p>
<p>For surfers, catching a suitable wave was long an exercise in intuition and luck. These days, however, they can tap a suite of tools&#160;that help&#160;take the guesswork out of the game. In addition to HD cameras now set up at surf spots around the world, there are also websites and apps that cull atmospheric and oceanic data from a variety of sources — including NASA satellites, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) buoys, and wind anemometers — in order to provide timely surf forecasts.</p>
<p>Jake Kean Mayman, who lives in Venice Beach, California, is one surfer who’s found this influx of tools useful. He admits that he’s “kind of gotten addicted” to websites that help decipher all the available data on surf and wind conditions, and to the webcams that reveal the status of his preferred breaks.</p>
<p>For the edge that this technology has given them, surfers like Kean Mayman largely have a surfer named Sean Collins to thank. With only a couple meteorology courses at Long Beach Community College under his belt, but extensive time spent studying the subject on his own, in 1985 Collins was recruited to join&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/home/index.cfm" type="external">Surfline</a>, the nation’s first commercial surf prediction center geared toward surfers.</p>
<p>He grew the company&#160;into a global enterprise that provides weather and forecasting services not just to surfers, but to all lifeguard agencies in California, as well as the Coast Guard, US&#160;Navy SEALs, the National Weather Service&#160;and television and movie production companies, among other entities, according to a&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/sean-collins-1952-2011_64380/" type="external">profile</a>&#160;on Surfline.com about Collins, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 59.</p>
<p>“[Collins] completely changed what it means to be a surfer,” says Chris Dixon, the founding online editor for&#160;Surfer&#160;magazine who first met Collins in 1996. “Surfers used to be perceived as beach bums because they had to drop everything when waves came. If you were going to be an addicted, devoted surfer, you couldn’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend or a steady job. He made it possible to know when waves were coming and altered the definition of who surfers are.”</p>
<p>Collins grew up in Southern California&#160;and started surfing at Seal Beach in Orange County when he was just 8. In those days, the only way for surfers to figure out if a wave was worth the ride was to either test the waters for themselves, or wait for a phone call from&#160;friends already scoping the scene, says Dixon, who’s also the author of&#160;Ghost Wave: The Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth.</p>
<p>As a teenager, Collins spent time sailing with his father, which buoyed his interest in meteorology, according to his son, AJ Collins. In the 1970s, Collins became engrossed with&#160;surf prediction, poring over charts for clues into the nature of swells. “Part of [my father’s] aim was to refine his understanding of his environment,” says 25-year-old AJ.</p>
<p>To hone&#160;his formulas, Collins also studied the research of famed physical oceanographer Walter Munk, who pioneered wave prediction techniques to help Allied forces better execute amphibious missions during World War II. And Collins made his own surf observations.</p>
<p>He would sit atop his house in Seal Beach, peering out at the Pacific, according to&#160;Dixon. From that vantage point, he’d keep track of how large the waves were, how many arrived in sets, the number of seconds between the waves (called wave period), and the directions from which they were coming, for example. But to really understand&#160;why and how the waves arrived when they did, Collins would then compare what he saw on his hometown beach with week-old weather reports from other locales in the Pacific Ocean.</p>
<p>Understanding weather events in far-flung regions was a key step in developing prescient wave models, according to Dixon. “Sean had this amazing ability to take disparate sources of information and turn them into a forecast,” he says.</p>
<p>After informally fielding calls for several years from friends seeking surf tips, Collins realized there was a need and market for forecasting services. That’s when he helped found the first iteration of Surfline, a call-in surf forecasting phone service.</p>
<p>Two years later, Collins left the business and started a rival company, Wavetrack. But he later bought out Surfline and merged the two companies. Surfline’s current home base is fitting: Huntington Beach, California, also known as Surf City, USA.</p>
<p>In 1992, Surfline expanded from providing forecasts by&#160;phone to disseminating them via fax to a few spots around Southern California. During that time, Collins and his team relied on weather charts, observational data, wave physics equations, and Collins’ own algorithms to make their predictions. Because of inherent uncertainty in their forecasts, however, “there was a lot of anticipation and a lot of nerves” the night before monster waves had been predicted to arrive, recalls Surfline’s chief meteorologist Mark Willis, who joined the company in 2000.</p>
<p>Still, WaveFax, as the product was known, was a game changer for surfers, according to Dixon. “The copy machine at&#160;Surfer&#160;would just get burned up with this,” he says. “It’s tough to express how important it was when that WaveFax came in, because that’s how we planned our lives.”</p>
<p>These days, those intermittent faxes&#160;are a quaint memory. Now surfers can go to Surfline’s&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/home/index.cfm" type="external">website</a>, which Collins launched in 1995, or open its app and hone in on local conditions — including wave height, wind direction, tide, swell — for 3,690 beaches around the world, from Santa Monica, California, to Skagen, Denmark. With a paid subscription, users can access even more detailed data and get predictions for swells more than two weeks away.</p>
<p>The accuracy of Surfline’s forecasts have improved, too, as a result of advancements in wave modeling techniques, a proliferation of observational ocean data, and importantly, the development of&#160; <a href="http://www.surfline.com/surf-science/what-is-lola---forecaster-blog_61031/" type="external">LOLA</a>. That’s the company’s predictive swell-modeling tool, which crunches real-time data on ocean conditions to provide forecasts on weather, surf heights, and wave period, among other things. Collins began developing this proprietary computer program in 1999 with William O’Reilly, an oceanographer with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who continues to work with Surfline as a lead wave modeler.</p>
<p>The data feeding into LOLA comes from myriad sources, including NOAA, offshore buoys, NASA satellites — and Surfline’s nine full-time forecasters. “We basically apply our own secret sauce to make an accurate surf prediction,” says Willis. “There’s still a lot of uncertainty in the models.” In other words, Willis’ team tweaks the data&#160;LOLA’s churning out in order to incorporate local knowledge about the peculiarities of individual surf spots, including expanses of reef, ocean floor depth&#160;and features such as islands or offshore canyons.&#160;(Not all of the forecasts on Surfline’s website incorporate human wisdom, however. Some are entirely automated.)</p>
<p>Surfline’s forecasters also vet their predictions by cross-checking with other ocean weather tracking systems. For example, Willis recalls a scenario where LOLA was showing 30-foot waves for a swell generated by a storm near Japan and moving toward Hawaii and Micronesia. The team then consulted a NASA satellite — which just so happened to pass over the exact point that LOLA had measured — and observed that waves in the same spot were 35 feet high. Not too shabby, but they corrected their forecast accordingly. “We can adjust a forecast on the fly,” says Willis.</p>
<p>The team can spot-check predictions, too, by inspecting surf conditions on the beach, using their extensive system of HD cameras, the first of which Collins installed about two decades ago. Dixon remembers when Collins sent him a link to view a camera at Huntington Beach. “My jaw hit the floor,” he says. “To be able to look in real-time at the waves at Huntington Beach in the mid- to late-1990s was a complete game changer.”</p>
<p>Surfline operates 210 (and growing)&#160;HD cameras&#160;spread along coasts across the globe — the largest number of any surf forecasting company. “As the sun starts to come up, we start to look at the cameras and we see how the surf is all up and down the coast,” says Jonathan Warren, another Surfline forecaster. He gets up around dawn so his first surf report of the day for his beaches around Southern California are posted within 20 minutes after sunrise. He checks what the models are saying, then double checks using the HD cameras in order to produce the most accurate rundown of surf conditions.</p>
<p>As a surfer, Warren has a personal stake in ensuring that their models match what’s happening at the beach. “If the surf looks like crap we go back to sleep, but if it looks good, we’ll grab our boards and validate it.”</p>
<p>While Surfline was a pioneer in surf forecasting,&#160;it’s not the only game in town. Other surfing organizations and companies also operate HD cameras and offer predictions, many free of charge. Surfer Kean Mayman, for instance, often relies on the cameras operated by&#160; <a href="http://swellmagnet.com/" type="external">SwellMagnet.com</a>, a Southern California-based company. And&#160; <a href="http://magicseaweed.com/" type="external">MagicSeaweed.com</a>,&#160; <a href="http://www.swellinfo.com/" type="external">Swellinfo.com</a>, and&#160; <a href="http://www.surfingmagazine.com/" type="external">SURFING&#160;magazine</a>&#160;offer surf predictions, as does&#160; <a href="http://www.stormsurf.com/" type="external">Stormsurf.com</a>, which surfer Mark Sponsler founded in the mid-’90s.</p>
<p>“Surfline surely has more competition than they did,” says Dixon, “but I think the reason people still subscribe to them is because their forecasts are generally considered to be the most reliable and definitive.”</p>
<p>A surfer named Adam&#160;in northern Los Angeles and Santa Barbara&#160;checks Stormsurf and&#160;SURFING&#160;magazine’s&#160; <a href="http://forecasts.surfingmagazine.com/" type="external">SwellWatch</a>, but he also pays for a subscription to Surfline and has been using the site for the last five years. “I need to know if I need to clear my schedule on Sunday and blow everything off,” he says.</p>
<p>Despite the appeal&#160;of available data and HD cameras, however, some surfers scoff at the idea of relying on a website or an app. Surfing “takes it roots really seriously, [and] it is always striving for this romantic notion of the past,” says surfer Kean Mayman. “And that’s why you hear people criticize the fact that we do have too many technology options.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, AJ Collins, who is a competitive surfer himself, sees all surfers as data collectors in their own way. “Some people collect data just by looking at the ocean. Some people collect data by looking at the data itself,” he says. Ultimately, “each surfer has their unique connection with the ocean.”</p>
<p>This <a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/catching-a-break/" type="external">story</a> first aired as an interview on <a href="http://www.sciencefriday.com/" type="external">Science Friday</a> with Ira Flatow.</p>
| 7,305 |
<p>On Thursday, The Washington Post <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/11/woman_hijab_attack_louisiana.html" type="external">reported</a>that a female Muslim college student at the University of Louisiana was assaulted and robbed by two white male Trump supporters, apparently sporting white "Trump" hats during the incident. The left, of course, jumped all over the attack, as it fed into their narrative that Trump supporters are the violent ones; not the <a href="" type="internal">violent thugs</a> currently committing arson, <a href="" type="internal">fighting each other</a>, smashing car windows and <a href="" type="internal">assaulting</a>Trump voters to demonstrate that "love trumps hate," or what have you.</p>
<p>But here's the only problem: The accuser later confessed that this never happened. This "hate crime" was a complete fabrication; just another left-wing hoax manufactured to perpetuate a false narrative and vilify political opponents.</p>
<p>Here's the initial falsified report:</p>
<p>Around 11 a.m., a female UL-Lafayette student was walking down a residential street near campus when two white males jumped out of a gray four-door sedan and hit her with a metal object, knocking her to the ground, university police told the Advertiser. The men tore off the woman’s head wrap, took her wallet and hit her while she was down, police said. The woman reported one of the suspects was wearing a white hat that had “Trump” on it.</p>
<p>But on Thursday night, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/10/us/ap-us-student-assaulted-headscarf.html?_r=2" type="external">reported</a>that the accuser recanted, admitting that she made up the entire story. Per the Lafayette Police Department:</p>
<p>During the course of the investigation, the female complainant admitted that she fabricated the story about her physical attack as well as the removal of her hijab and wallet by two white males.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/police-muslim-student-fabricated-report-about-being-assaulted-by-man-in-trump-hat/" type="external">noted</a>by Mediaite, the ACLU of Louisiana sounded-off on the hoax on Thursday, harshly condemning President-elect Donald Trump as well as the fictitious assaulting Trump supporters.</p>
<p>The ACLU of Louisiana is outraged at the news of a young Muslim woman being assaulted and robbed of her hijab in Lafayette yesterday morning. The report that her attackers also shouted slurs and wore Donald Trump clothing is especially troubling in light of Mr. Trump’s frequent use of anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail.</p>
<p>We condemn this rhetoric and this behavior. We call on all Louisianians to reject anti-Muslim bigotry. Muslim Americans and residents have the same rights that we all do: to practice our religion freely and openly, to live and work without fear, and to participate equally in public life. To act otherwise is in direct contradiction of the values enshrined in our founding documents and our laws.</p>
<p>One would think that after the news hit confirming that the assault and robbery was a complete and utter hoax, the ACLU would apologize for their condemnation. But this is the ACLU we're talking about, so they instead doubled-down on their condemnation of the nonexistent Trump backers and Trump himself. Makes sense.</p>
<p>The Lafayette Police Department has announced that it has dismissed its investigation of an anti-Muslim attack after the victim recanted her story. We don’t know the full story of what happened yesterday, and we don’t know what caused her to recant.</p>
<p>What we do know: Threats, harassment, and violence against Muslim men and women, as well as people of color, immigrants, and LGBT people, have been occurring across the nation in recent days. This is not a coincidence.</p>
<p>We stand by our call for all Louisianians to reject anti-Muslim bigotry. Our Muslim neighbors’ rights remain unchanged. We will continue to speak out against this harassment and bigotry, and call for equal protection under the law.</p>
<p>This is the ACLU we're talking about, so they instead doubled-down on their condemnation of the nonexistent Trump backers and Trump himself.</p>
<p>Even if a hate crime is made-up, it's still Trump's fault. Interesting logic.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/police-muslim-student-fabricated-report-about-being-assaulted-by-man-in-trump-hat/" type="external">H/T</a> Mediaite</p>
|
Muslim College Student Said Trump Supporters Assaulted Her. Here's The Truth.
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/10719/muslim-college-student-says-trump-supporters-amanda-prestigiacomo
|
2016-11-11
| 0right
|
Muslim College Student Said Trump Supporters Assaulted Her. Here's The Truth.
<p>On Thursday, The Washington Post <a href="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/11/woman_hijab_attack_louisiana.html" type="external">reported</a>that a female Muslim college student at the University of Louisiana was assaulted and robbed by two white male Trump supporters, apparently sporting white "Trump" hats during the incident. The left, of course, jumped all over the attack, as it fed into their narrative that Trump supporters are the violent ones; not the <a href="" type="internal">violent thugs</a> currently committing arson, <a href="" type="internal">fighting each other</a>, smashing car windows and <a href="" type="internal">assaulting</a>Trump voters to demonstrate that "love trumps hate," or what have you.</p>
<p>But here's the only problem: The accuser later confessed that this never happened. This "hate crime" was a complete fabrication; just another left-wing hoax manufactured to perpetuate a false narrative and vilify political opponents.</p>
<p>Here's the initial falsified report:</p>
<p>Around 11 a.m., a female UL-Lafayette student was walking down a residential street near campus when two white males jumped out of a gray four-door sedan and hit her with a metal object, knocking her to the ground, university police told the Advertiser. The men tore off the woman’s head wrap, took her wallet and hit her while she was down, police said. The woman reported one of the suspects was wearing a white hat that had “Trump” on it.</p>
<p>But on Thursday night, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/10/us/ap-us-student-assaulted-headscarf.html?_r=2" type="external">reported</a>that the accuser recanted, admitting that she made up the entire story. Per the Lafayette Police Department:</p>
<p>During the course of the investigation, the female complainant admitted that she fabricated the story about her physical attack as well as the removal of her hijab and wallet by two white males.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/police-muslim-student-fabricated-report-about-being-assaulted-by-man-in-trump-hat/" type="external">noted</a>by Mediaite, the ACLU of Louisiana sounded-off on the hoax on Thursday, harshly condemning President-elect Donald Trump as well as the fictitious assaulting Trump supporters.</p>
<p>The ACLU of Louisiana is outraged at the news of a young Muslim woman being assaulted and robbed of her hijab in Lafayette yesterday morning. The report that her attackers also shouted slurs and wore Donald Trump clothing is especially troubling in light of Mr. Trump’s frequent use of anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail.</p>
<p>We condemn this rhetoric and this behavior. We call on all Louisianians to reject anti-Muslim bigotry. Muslim Americans and residents have the same rights that we all do: to practice our religion freely and openly, to live and work without fear, and to participate equally in public life. To act otherwise is in direct contradiction of the values enshrined in our founding documents and our laws.</p>
<p>One would think that after the news hit confirming that the assault and robbery was a complete and utter hoax, the ACLU would apologize for their condemnation. But this is the ACLU we're talking about, so they instead doubled-down on their condemnation of the nonexistent Trump backers and Trump himself. Makes sense.</p>
<p>The Lafayette Police Department has announced that it has dismissed its investigation of an anti-Muslim attack after the victim recanted her story. We don’t know the full story of what happened yesterday, and we don’t know what caused her to recant.</p>
<p>What we do know: Threats, harassment, and violence against Muslim men and women, as well as people of color, immigrants, and LGBT people, have been occurring across the nation in recent days. This is not a coincidence.</p>
<p>We stand by our call for all Louisianians to reject anti-Muslim bigotry. Our Muslim neighbors’ rights remain unchanged. We will continue to speak out against this harassment and bigotry, and call for equal protection under the law.</p>
<p>This is the ACLU we're talking about, so they instead doubled-down on their condemnation of the nonexistent Trump backers and Trump himself.</p>
<p>Even if a hate crime is made-up, it's still Trump's fault. Interesting logic.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/police-muslim-student-fabricated-report-about-being-assaulted-by-man-in-trump-hat/" type="external">H/T</a> Mediaite</p>
| 7,306 |
<p>On <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/ex-general-kelly-considered-for-trump-cabinet-827212355613" type="external">MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports</a>, Rep. Peter King said that he agrees with the intelligence community who has concluded thatRussia was involved in hacking our election process.</p>
<p>That's in direct conflict with Donald Trump, who told <a href="http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2016-donald-trump-choice/" type="external">Time Magazine</a> that he didn't believe Russia interfered.</p>
<p>Andrea Mitchell asked, "I wanted to ask you about some comments that Donald Trump made in his "Time" magazine "Man of the Year" interview where he questioned whether or not the intelligence community's unanimous conclusion that Russia was behind some -- the hacking that targeted Democratic organizations, Democratic institutions, the potential that they weren't going to influence our elections."</p>
<p>She continued, "That conclusion -- and he said I just -- I don't believe it. I don't believe they interfered, Trump said. He still is refusing to acknowledge something that DNI Clapper said was the conclusion. What do you think of that?"</p>
<p>Rep King replied, "I would think as far as the public statement that the director of National Intelligence made about the Democratic National Committee, I think the evidence is strong that the Russians were involved there."</p>
<p>Rep. King remained uncertain if the Russians hacked John Podesta's emails, however.</p>
<p>He continued, " Yes, I -- I do believe that the Democratic National Committee, the Intelligence Committee -- the intelligence community is of pretty much one mind that Russia was involved in that, was behind that."</p>
<p>I think it's fair to say that Russia was deeply involved in tampering with our general election and they targeted the Democratic party throughout and succeeded mightily.</p>
<p>It's also very strange that president-elect Trump still willfully denies Russia's involvement, including telling Time Magazine that he thought they were being political about their reporting.</p>
|
Rep. Peter King Agrees With Intel Community: Russia Hacked Election Process
| true |
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/12/rep-peter-king-agrees-intel-commnity
|
2016-12-08
| 4left
|
Rep. Peter King Agrees With Intel Community: Russia Hacked Election Process
<p>On <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/andrea-mitchell-reports/watch/ex-general-kelly-considered-for-trump-cabinet-827212355613" type="external">MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports</a>, Rep. Peter King said that he agrees with the intelligence community who has concluded thatRussia was involved in hacking our election process.</p>
<p>That's in direct conflict with Donald Trump, who told <a href="http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2016-donald-trump-choice/" type="external">Time Magazine</a> that he didn't believe Russia interfered.</p>
<p>Andrea Mitchell asked, "I wanted to ask you about some comments that Donald Trump made in his "Time" magazine "Man of the Year" interview where he questioned whether or not the intelligence community's unanimous conclusion that Russia was behind some -- the hacking that targeted Democratic organizations, Democratic institutions, the potential that they weren't going to influence our elections."</p>
<p>She continued, "That conclusion -- and he said I just -- I don't believe it. I don't believe they interfered, Trump said. He still is refusing to acknowledge something that DNI Clapper said was the conclusion. What do you think of that?"</p>
<p>Rep King replied, "I would think as far as the public statement that the director of National Intelligence made about the Democratic National Committee, I think the evidence is strong that the Russians were involved there."</p>
<p>Rep. King remained uncertain if the Russians hacked John Podesta's emails, however.</p>
<p>He continued, " Yes, I -- I do believe that the Democratic National Committee, the Intelligence Committee -- the intelligence community is of pretty much one mind that Russia was involved in that, was behind that."</p>
<p>I think it's fair to say that Russia was deeply involved in tampering with our general election and they targeted the Democratic party throughout and succeeded mightily.</p>
<p>It's also very strange that president-elect Trump still willfully denies Russia's involvement, including telling Time Magazine that he thought they were being political about their reporting.</p>
| 7,307 |
<p>If you take a taxi across Mexico City on a warm Saturday morning you can't miss the city's dozens of parks filled with elderly dancers.</p>
<p>They are all practicing Danzón, a dance form which started in Cuba in the late 1800s, but now is most popular in Mexico. The dance is formal, and known for its long pauses and stylized flirting.</p>
<p>Clubs all over town have danzón nights, but those events cost money. The park gatherings on Saturdays are free and open to all.</p>
<p>Even this inexperienced gringo got in on the action. Antonio Romer Guitierrez, one of my dancer partners, explained there was nothing to be shy about. "You just learn a few moves, you start to gain confidence, and then you start doing other dance moves," she told me.</p>
<p>Before long, like hundreds of other dancers, I was floating across the plaza, catching colonial fountains in the corner of my eye.</p>
<p>The dance itself is a formal partner dance. Long pauses punctuate established four and eight beat sequences. During the pauses, dancers mingle, flirt and walk on and off the dance floor.</p>
<p>The popularly of danzón has ebbed and flowed. A huge resurgence in the 90's, led by senor citizens, is responsible for its widespread popularity today. In 1991, the film "Danzón" brought the dance to the big screen.</p>
<p>Beyond Mexico City, Danzón is also popular in Veracruz, Mexico</p>
<p>Danzón shows no sign of going anywhere, despite its migration from Cuba to Mexico and continually shifting demographics. In fact, that's what might keep it alive indefinitely.</p>
<p>"In the past they used to say that this music is for older people, for people over 60 years old," said Guitierrez. "But slowly, a lot of young people have started dancing, even children. They come here and take classes. So they take classes, get prepared and they become really good, do their own shows, it’s very cool."</p>
<p>Other stories from Mexico <a href="" type="internal">This canary in Mexico City will tell you your fortune</a> <a href="" type="internal">If dolls freak you out, this island in Mexico will give you nightmares</a> <a href="" type="internal">At Mexico's Day of the Dead Parade, lives lost in the 7.1 earthquake are remembered</a></p>
|
Danzón is a dance filled with pauses and flirting. We went to Mexico to take lessons.
| false |
https://circa.com/story/2017/12/08/travel/danzon-is-a-dance-with-cuban-origins-but-it-lives-on-in-mexico-city
|
2017-12-08
| 1right-center
|
Danzón is a dance filled with pauses and flirting. We went to Mexico to take lessons.
<p>If you take a taxi across Mexico City on a warm Saturday morning you can't miss the city's dozens of parks filled with elderly dancers.</p>
<p>They are all practicing Danzón, a dance form which started in Cuba in the late 1800s, but now is most popular in Mexico. The dance is formal, and known for its long pauses and stylized flirting.</p>
<p>Clubs all over town have danzón nights, but those events cost money. The park gatherings on Saturdays are free and open to all.</p>
<p>Even this inexperienced gringo got in on the action. Antonio Romer Guitierrez, one of my dancer partners, explained there was nothing to be shy about. "You just learn a few moves, you start to gain confidence, and then you start doing other dance moves," she told me.</p>
<p>Before long, like hundreds of other dancers, I was floating across the plaza, catching colonial fountains in the corner of my eye.</p>
<p>The dance itself is a formal partner dance. Long pauses punctuate established four and eight beat sequences. During the pauses, dancers mingle, flirt and walk on and off the dance floor.</p>
<p>The popularly of danzón has ebbed and flowed. A huge resurgence in the 90's, led by senor citizens, is responsible for its widespread popularity today. In 1991, the film "Danzón" brought the dance to the big screen.</p>
<p>Beyond Mexico City, Danzón is also popular in Veracruz, Mexico</p>
<p>Danzón shows no sign of going anywhere, despite its migration from Cuba to Mexico and continually shifting demographics. In fact, that's what might keep it alive indefinitely.</p>
<p>"In the past they used to say that this music is for older people, for people over 60 years old," said Guitierrez. "But slowly, a lot of young people have started dancing, even children. They come here and take classes. So they take classes, get prepared and they become really good, do their own shows, it’s very cool."</p>
<p>Other stories from Mexico <a href="" type="internal">This canary in Mexico City will tell you your fortune</a> <a href="" type="internal">If dolls freak you out, this island in Mexico will give you nightmares</a> <a href="" type="internal">At Mexico's Day of the Dead Parade, lives lost in the 7.1 earthquake are remembered</a></p>
| 7,308 |
<p>LONDON, UK — In a society that loves its class distinctions, they’re a rare and special breed — the knights, dames, officers and others called to join the monarch in the grandly named Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.</p>
<p>Founded in 1917 by King George V, the chivalric order honors service to Britain of all sorts. Those tapped in the last year include the singer Adele, an internationally renowned expert on octopus brains, the justice-seeking parents of a murdered child, a former cricket champion and David Cameron’s hairdresser.</p>
<p>Honorees are nominated by the government or a member of the public and selected by the Cabinet Office in a process shrouded in secrecy.</p>
<p>Being seen to promote oneself or grasp at titles is about the most un-British thing one can do. But for those who like the sound of their name with a few extra letters after it, a London-based consulting firm claims it can quietly guide a nomination from daydream to reality.&#160;</p>
<p>“A lot of people think you just have to wait for the phone to ring and someone at Buckingham Palace will be on the other end saying, ‘Congratulations, the queen’s going to give you an OBE,’” says Mark Llewellyn-Slade, founder of Awards Intelligence.</p>
<p>But getting the kind of help his agency offers comes at a price. The company’s packages start at around $10,000 and go to $16,700 for an 8,000-word nomination letter and up to 15 drafted recommendation letters.</p>
<p>Awards Intelligence puts forward about 100 successful nominations a year, a roughly 50 percent success rate, Llewellyn-Slade says.</p>
<p>But he’s mum on which knights, dames and other notables have used his company’s services.</p>
<p>“Our belief is that if you receive a queen’s honor, you should take all the glory for that and we wouldn’t want people saying, ‘Oh, that person only got a queen’s honor because they used an expert service,’” he says.</p>
<p>Discretion isn’t the only factor in the company’s success. More people are becoming aware of the importance of “personal reputation management,” Llewellyn-Slade says. “Getting the honor is fantastic publicity.”</p>
<p>Awards Intelligence recently launched a new line of business: helping people get into the House of Lords, the government’s uppermost lawmaking body.</p>
<p>“You can go on to the House of Lords website, download the application and complete it as if you were applying for a job at Google,” he says.</p>
<p>He’s <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/jobs/Lords-HR-application-form-v1.02-final.pdf" type="external">right</a>.</p>
<p>The Lords appoint two to three new members each year. Llewellyn-Slade declined to say whether any Awards Intelligence clients are now making laws for Britain.</p>
<p>Not everyone is pleased. The company’s rise has brought complaints from some quarters that its services violate the honors’ spirit if not the letter of the law.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the Cabinet Office responded to questions from GlobalPost by pointing to language on the nomination form that asks nominees to disclose whether they’ve paid for help with the application.</p>
<p>“Honours cannot be bought: they are available to all,” the application states. “The Cabinet Office does not endorse the use of fee-charging drafting services when completing this form.”</p>
<p>About 2,500 new honors are given annually at New Year’s and the queen’s official birthday, which will be celebrated on Saturday.</p>
<p>Honorees get to tag themselves with the letters MBE, OBE or CBE — member, officer or commander of the British Empire, in ascending importance.</p>
<p>Those at the very tip-top get to kneel before the queen and rise as a knight or dame.</p>
<p>“A queen’s honor will help to raise the profile of that individual significantly,” Llewellyn-Slade says. “It will enhance their reputation. It will open doors for them. And it will instill that vital ingredient for success, which is trust. People will trust someone with a queen’s honor and want to invite them to their dinners, and that kind of thing.”</p>
<p>The process has been tainted by corruption in the past. There was a robust trade in knighthoods and other noble titles under King James I in the 1600s.</p>
<p>In the 1920s, a British theater producer raised millions swapping peerage titles for political donations, leading to a law banning the sale of honors.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in 2006 and 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service investigated a group of Labour Party donors who made large secret loans to the party just before the 2005 general election and were later nominated for peerages.</p>
<p>Virtually every round of honors brings grumbling in the press about the smack of cronyism, particularly when political party donors and close friends of government leaders end up on the list.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/140610/the-real-jon-snow-at-the-real-winterfell" type="external">Two minutes with the 'real' Jon Snow (at the real Winterfell)</a></p>
<p>Some people have proved to be less than good and great after their investiture. Around three dozen people have been stripped of honors, mostly due to criminal convictions.</p>
<p>Former Royal Bank of Scotland chair Fred Goodwin had his knighthood cancelled in 2012 after the bank endured the largest annual loss in British history.</p>
<p>Robert Mugabe was booted out of the Honorary Knights Grand Cross Order of the Bath, a civil and military chivalry order headed by the queen, for, well, being Robert Mugabe.</p>
<p>Non-Brits can be honorary knights and dames if they’ve made a significant contribution to British life. Awards Intelligence recently started advertising in the US and the Middle East.</p>
<p>American knights don’t get to call themselves “Sir” but can use their award’s post-nominal letters, KBE. They include Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Alan Greenspan and Rudy Giuliani — the makings of an interesting roundtable, to say the least.&#160;</p>
|
Psst… Wanna buy a knighthood?
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2014-06-13/psst-wanna-buy-knighthood
|
2014-06-13
| 3left-center
|
Psst… Wanna buy a knighthood?
<p>LONDON, UK — In a society that loves its class distinctions, they’re a rare and special breed — the knights, dames, officers and others called to join the monarch in the grandly named Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.</p>
<p>Founded in 1917 by King George V, the chivalric order honors service to Britain of all sorts. Those tapped in the last year include the singer Adele, an internationally renowned expert on octopus brains, the justice-seeking parents of a murdered child, a former cricket champion and David Cameron’s hairdresser.</p>
<p>Honorees are nominated by the government or a member of the public and selected by the Cabinet Office in a process shrouded in secrecy.</p>
<p>Being seen to promote oneself or grasp at titles is about the most un-British thing one can do. But for those who like the sound of their name with a few extra letters after it, a London-based consulting firm claims it can quietly guide a nomination from daydream to reality.&#160;</p>
<p>“A lot of people think you just have to wait for the phone to ring and someone at Buckingham Palace will be on the other end saying, ‘Congratulations, the queen’s going to give you an OBE,’” says Mark Llewellyn-Slade, founder of Awards Intelligence.</p>
<p>But getting the kind of help his agency offers comes at a price. The company’s packages start at around $10,000 and go to $16,700 for an 8,000-word nomination letter and up to 15 drafted recommendation letters.</p>
<p>Awards Intelligence puts forward about 100 successful nominations a year, a roughly 50 percent success rate, Llewellyn-Slade says.</p>
<p>But he’s mum on which knights, dames and other notables have used his company’s services.</p>
<p>“Our belief is that if you receive a queen’s honor, you should take all the glory for that and we wouldn’t want people saying, ‘Oh, that person only got a queen’s honor because they used an expert service,’” he says.</p>
<p>Discretion isn’t the only factor in the company’s success. More people are becoming aware of the importance of “personal reputation management,” Llewellyn-Slade says. “Getting the honor is fantastic publicity.”</p>
<p>Awards Intelligence recently launched a new line of business: helping people get into the House of Lords, the government’s uppermost lawmaking body.</p>
<p>“You can go on to the House of Lords website, download the application and complete it as if you were applying for a job at Google,” he says.</p>
<p>He’s <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/jobs/Lords-HR-application-form-v1.02-final.pdf" type="external">right</a>.</p>
<p>The Lords appoint two to three new members each year. Llewellyn-Slade declined to say whether any Awards Intelligence clients are now making laws for Britain.</p>
<p>Not everyone is pleased. The company’s rise has brought complaints from some quarters that its services violate the honors’ spirit if not the letter of the law.</p>
<p>A spokesman for the Cabinet Office responded to questions from GlobalPost by pointing to language on the nomination form that asks nominees to disclose whether they’ve paid for help with the application.</p>
<p>“Honours cannot be bought: they are available to all,” the application states. “The Cabinet Office does not endorse the use of fee-charging drafting services when completing this form.”</p>
<p>About 2,500 new honors are given annually at New Year’s and the queen’s official birthday, which will be celebrated on Saturday.</p>
<p>Honorees get to tag themselves with the letters MBE, OBE or CBE — member, officer or commander of the British Empire, in ascending importance.</p>
<p>Those at the very tip-top get to kneel before the queen and rise as a knight or dame.</p>
<p>“A queen’s honor will help to raise the profile of that individual significantly,” Llewellyn-Slade says. “It will enhance their reputation. It will open doors for them. And it will instill that vital ingredient for success, which is trust. People will trust someone with a queen’s honor and want to invite them to their dinners, and that kind of thing.”</p>
<p>The process has been tainted by corruption in the past. There was a robust trade in knighthoods and other noble titles under King James I in the 1600s.</p>
<p>In the 1920s, a British theater producer raised millions swapping peerage titles for political donations, leading to a law banning the sale of honors.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in 2006 and 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service investigated a group of Labour Party donors who made large secret loans to the party just before the 2005 general election and were later nominated for peerages.</p>
<p>Virtually every round of honors brings grumbling in the press about the smack of cronyism, particularly when political party donors and close friends of government leaders end up on the list.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/140610/the-real-jon-snow-at-the-real-winterfell" type="external">Two minutes with the 'real' Jon Snow (at the real Winterfell)</a></p>
<p>Some people have proved to be less than good and great after their investiture. Around three dozen people have been stripped of honors, mostly due to criminal convictions.</p>
<p>Former Royal Bank of Scotland chair Fred Goodwin had his knighthood cancelled in 2012 after the bank endured the largest annual loss in British history.</p>
<p>Robert Mugabe was booted out of the Honorary Knights Grand Cross Order of the Bath, a civil and military chivalry order headed by the queen, for, well, being Robert Mugabe.</p>
<p>Non-Brits can be honorary knights and dames if they’ve made a significant contribution to British life. Awards Intelligence recently started advertising in the US and the Middle East.</p>
<p>American knights don’t get to call themselves “Sir” but can use their award’s post-nominal letters, KBE. They include Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Alan Greenspan and Rudy Giuliani — the makings of an interesting roundtable, to say the least.&#160;</p>
| 7,309 |
<p>After news broke on Thursday that the Trump administration had authorized the military to use the so-called “Mother Of All Bombs” (MOAB) on ISIS in Afghanistan, killing 36 ISIS terrorists and destroying underground tunnels and ordnance, Daily Beast columnist Dean Obeidallah tweeted:</p>
<p>There are several reasons this is incredibly stupid.</p>
<p>1. You Can’t Pay Terrorists To Stop Being Terrorists. It’s one of the great myths of the Left that crime and terrorism spring from poverty, rather than the other way around. The fact is that culture trumps economic status, which is why the uber-wealthy Osama Bin Laden became a global terror leader, why the hijackers on 9/11 all came from middle class families. In 2002, this stupidity <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110911119848561282" type="external">was debunked</a> by economists Alan Kruger of Princeton and Jitka Maleckova of Charles University in Prague. They found that over half of Palestinian Arab suicide bombers had post-high school education.</p>
<p>2. All Attempts To Try To Pay Off Terrorists Have Caused More Terrorism. The same leftists who decry American intervention in Afghanistan on behalf of the mujahideen thanks to the rise of Al Qaeda think that paying off terrorists is good strategy. Israel has been attempting to pay off terrorists for years, handing over millions to the Palestinian Authority; Palestinians promptly elected Hamas, and the PA is now in a unity government with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. President Obama handed over billions to the Iranian government in the hopes it would mainstream them; instead, they’ve used some of that cash to expand terror operations.</p>
<p>3. American Lives Are Worth Something, Too. The notion that we should hand over $440,000 to terrorists means we’d first have to capture them. As Kurt Schlichter, a lieutenant colonel, says, how many American lives would have to be expended in that effort, even assuming it worked? And wouldn’t those lives be worth more than $440,000?</p>
<p>You can’t pay terrorists to stop being terrorists. You have to kill enough of them that they realize their cause is futile and turn to other action. That’s how every successful counterterrorism operation in history has worked. While the Left always thinks throwing money at problems makes them go away, when it comes to terrorism, it only makes terrorists that much richer and that much more aggressive.</p>
|
Daily Beast Columnist: Skip ‘Mother Of All Bombs,’ Pay Terrorists Off Instead
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/15411/daily-beast-columnist-skip-mother-all-bombs-pay-ben-shapiro
|
2017-04-14
| 0right
|
Daily Beast Columnist: Skip ‘Mother Of All Bombs,’ Pay Terrorists Off Instead
<p>After news broke on Thursday that the Trump administration had authorized the military to use the so-called “Mother Of All Bombs” (MOAB) on ISIS in Afghanistan, killing 36 ISIS terrorists and destroying underground tunnels and ordnance, Daily Beast columnist Dean Obeidallah tweeted:</p>
<p>There are several reasons this is incredibly stupid.</p>
<p>1. You Can’t Pay Terrorists To Stop Being Terrorists. It’s one of the great myths of the Left that crime and terrorism spring from poverty, rather than the other way around. The fact is that culture trumps economic status, which is why the uber-wealthy Osama Bin Laden became a global terror leader, why the hijackers on 9/11 all came from middle class families. In 2002, this stupidity <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB110911119848561282" type="external">was debunked</a> by economists Alan Kruger of Princeton and Jitka Maleckova of Charles University in Prague. They found that over half of Palestinian Arab suicide bombers had post-high school education.</p>
<p>2. All Attempts To Try To Pay Off Terrorists Have Caused More Terrorism. The same leftists who decry American intervention in Afghanistan on behalf of the mujahideen thanks to the rise of Al Qaeda think that paying off terrorists is good strategy. Israel has been attempting to pay off terrorists for years, handing over millions to the Palestinian Authority; Palestinians promptly elected Hamas, and the PA is now in a unity government with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. President Obama handed over billions to the Iranian government in the hopes it would mainstream them; instead, they’ve used some of that cash to expand terror operations.</p>
<p>3. American Lives Are Worth Something, Too. The notion that we should hand over $440,000 to terrorists means we’d first have to capture them. As Kurt Schlichter, a lieutenant colonel, says, how many American lives would have to be expended in that effort, even assuming it worked? And wouldn’t those lives be worth more than $440,000?</p>
<p>You can’t pay terrorists to stop being terrorists. You have to kill enough of them that they realize their cause is futile and turn to other action. That’s how every successful counterterrorism operation in history has worked. While the Left always thinks throwing money at problems makes them go away, when it comes to terrorism, it only makes terrorists that much richer and that much more aggressive.</p>
| 7,310 |
<p>(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>It’s all Pride, all the time next weekend in D.C.</p>
<p>Victory Institute hosts Congressional Pride Reception at Rayburn House Office Building (50 Independence Ave., S.W.) on Thursday, June 8 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, GLASS and the LGBT Congressional Staff Association will celebrate Pride in the foyer of the Rayburn building. Refreshments will be provided. For more details and to RSVP, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/victoryinst" type="external">facebook.com/victoryinst</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride hosts its Rooftop Pool Party at Vida Fitness at the Yards (1212 Fourth St., N.W.) on Thursday, June 8 from 7-11 p.m. Tickets are $30. Admission includes two free drink tickets and light appetizers. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Latino GLBT History Project hosts La Fiesta: “La Resistencia,” a Latinx LGBT dance party, at Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) on Thursday, June 8 from 9 p.m.-2 a.m. The party will honor past Project queens and will feature community performances. DJ El Especialista will spin tracks. Event is 18 and over. Admission is $10 at the door or online. For more details, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/latinoglbthistory" type="external">facebook.com/latinoglbthistory</a>.</p>
<p>Uproar Lounge &amp; Restaurant hosts Happy Pride Week, an extended happy hour, on Friday, June 9 from 5 p.m.-3 a.m. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/uproarloungedc" type="external">facebook.com/uproarloungedc</a>.</p>
<p>The Dirty Goose (913 U St., N.W.) hosts Ladies of Pop: Pride Edition on Friday, June 9 from 5 p.m.-3 a.m.There will be surprise drink specials all night. Music playlist will be the biggest hits from pop divas. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/thedirtygoosedc" type="external">facebook.com/thedirtygoosedc</a>.</p>
<p>D.C. Front Runners hosts its sold-out Pride Run &amp; Walk 5K at Congressional Cemetery (1801 E St., S.E.) on Friday, June 9 at 7 p.m. There will be a Finish Line Party following the run. For more details, visit <a href="http://dcfrpriderun.com/" type="external">dcfrpriderun.com</a>.</p>
<p>The Washington Blade hosts Kate Clinton’s stand-up comedy show “Knock! Knock! Who’s There? Zombie Apocalypse!” at Studio Theatre (1501 14th St., N.W.) on Friday, June 9 from 7-8 p.m. VIP tickets are $100 and include front-row seating and a meet and greet. General admission tickets range from $40-60. For more information, visit <a href="" type="internal">washingtonblade.com/kate</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride and Brightest Young Things hosts the official Pride 2017 opening party, Rainbow Resistance, at the Rainbow Warehouse (1585 New York Ave., N.E.) on Friday, June 9 from 9 p.m.-2 a.m. The “Star Wars”-themed party will feature live performances from Tiffany, Ultra Naté and Cupcakke. DJ Will Eastman, DJ Lemz and DJ Rosie will spin tracks. Tickets are $30. Day-of tickets will be available. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/opening" type="external">capitalpride.org/opening</a>.</p>
<p>Green Lantern (1335 Green Ct., N.W.) hosts Otter Crossing Pride on Friday, June 9 from 10 p.m.-2:30 a.m.Bright Light Bright Light will headline the event. Cover is $10. A portion of proceeds will benefit Immigration Equality. For more details, visit <a href="http://greenlanterndc.com/" type="external">greenlanterndc.com</a>.</p>
<p>DCMJ hosts Cannabis Pride All-Nighter at Dupont Circle (1 Dupont Circle, N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 at 9 a.m. until Sunday, June 11 at 9 a.m. The 24-hour event will feature speakers, DJs and a Liberty Pole to support cannabis pride. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/dcmj2014" type="external">facebook.com/dcmj2014</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride Parade kicks off at 22nd Street and P Street on Saturday, June 10 from 4:30-7:30 p.m. The route travels through the Dupont Circle and Logan Circle neighborhoods. The parade will include Capital Pride Heroes, Engendered Spirit awardees, floats, walkers, dancers, entertainment, politicians and more. There will be a Pride Parade VIP viewing stand on the corner of 14th Street and P Street. VIP tickets are $25. For more details, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride Block Party will be on 15th Street N.W. between P Street and Church Street on Saturday, June 10 from 4-10 p.m. There will be a beer garden, food and entertainment. Entry is free. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Resist This hosts No Justice No Pride: D.C. Day of Action, a day of multiple events in resistance of Capital Pride, on Saturday, June 10. Direct Action March will be from 9 a..m.- 1 p.m. Location is to be determined. The Night March will follow that evening from 7 p.m.-1 a.m. on 18th Street. Resist This and Trans Women of Color Collective host QT Night of Healing and Resistance at the Festival Center (1640 Columbia Rd., N.W.) from 7-10 p.m. There will be food, art, entertainment and an open mic for people to share their talents or reflections. For more details, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/resistthis" type="external">facebook.com/ResistThis</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride hosts Crack of Noon Pride Brunch at the Showroom (1099 14th St., N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 from 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. The Crack of Noon Pride Brunch is from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. It includes a brunch buffet, open bar and meet and greet with Pride VIPs. Liquid Brunch is from 1-4 p.m. and features an open bar, light food and entertainment. DJ Matt Bailer will play music. Both events include bottomless champagne, mimosas, Bloody Marys, cocktails and beer. Crack of Noon Brunch is $105 and includes access to the Liquid Brunch. Liquid Brunch tickets range from $70-80. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/events/parade-brunch-2017" type="external">capitalpride.org/events/parade-brunch-2017</a>.</p>
<p>Lure D.C. hosts Fuse: Capital Pride’s Main Women’s Event, at the Howard Theatre (620 T St., N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 from 10 p.m.-3 a.m. DJ Jai Syncere, DJ Tezrah and DJ Elet()x will play music. The DystRucXion Dancers will perform with special guest Fierce Collabo. Drink specials all night. Admission is $15. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/lurewdc" type="external">facebook.com/lurewdc</a>.</p>
<p>Distrkt C hosts a two-day music festival and dance party at the D.C. Eagle (3701 Benning Rd., N.E.). On Saturday, June 10 the party is from 10 p.m.-8 a.m. DJ Jared Conner, DJ Joe Gauthreaux and DJ Grind will play music. Inaya Day will perform. On Sunday, June 11, doors open at 5 p.m. There will be a live concert outside with Crystal Waters, Kristine W and Kim English at 8:30 p.m. Amuka will perform inside at 10 p.m. DJs for the day evening include DJ Billy Carroll, DJ X Gonzalez, DJ Twisted Dee Martello and more. Ms. Brittany Lynn hosts both days. Saturday tickets are $80 and Sunday tickets are $85. Two-day passes are $150. For more details and to purchase tickets, visit <a href="http://disrktc.com/" type="external">disrktc.com</a>.</p>
<p>Mixtape hosts its Pride Party at 9:30 Club (815 V St., N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 from 11 p.m.-4 a.m. DJ Shea Van Horn and DJ Matt bailer will play a mix of indie dance, electronic and house. Cover is $15. Event is all ages. For more details, visit <a href="http://mixtapedc.com/" type="external">mixtapedc.com</a>.</p>
<p>The Equality March for Unity and Pride is on Sunday, June 11 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The route begins on I Street and 17th Street N.W. and will head south on 15th Street N.W. to Constitution Avenue.The march ends on the National Mall at Seventh Street N.W. Line-up begins at 9 a.m. on I Street between 14th Street and 17th Street. For more details, visit <a href="http://equalitymarch2017.org/" type="external">equalitymarch2017.org</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride Festival is on Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. between Third Street and Seventh Street N.W. on Sunday, June 11 from noon-7 p.m. There will be 300 exhibitors featuring local and community groups, businesses, food vendors and more. Exhibit hours are from noon-7 p.m. The Capital Pride concert will feature performances from Miley Cyrus, the Pointer Sisters, Tinashe and VASSY. Concert hours are from 1-9 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride hosts its free Sunset Dance Party in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue on Sunday, June 11from 8-9:45 p.m. DJ Tracy Young will play electronic music. For more details, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Pride Fund to End Gun Violence holds a candlelight vigil to remember Pulse at the fountain in Dupont Circle (1 Dupont Circle, N.W.) on Monday, June 12 from 7-8 p.m. Attendees are asked to bring their own candle as there will be a limited supply. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/pridefund" type="external">facebook.com/pridefund</a>.</p>
<p>Team D.C. hosts Night Out at the Nationals versus the Atlanta Braves at Nationals Park (1500 S Capitol St., S.E.) on Tuesday, June 13 from 7:05-10:05 p.m. Happy hour begins at 4 p.m. and pre-game ceremonies start at 6:30 p.m.Tickets are $28. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit Team D.C.’s Student-Athlete Scholarships. For more information, visit <a href="http://teamdc.org/" type="external">teamdc.org</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Capital Pride parade</a> <a href="" type="internal">Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus</a> <a href="" type="internal">Congressional Pride</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dupont Circle</a> <a href="" type="internal">GLASS</a> <a href="" type="internal">Kate Clinton</a> <a href="" type="internal">LGBT Congressional Staff Association</a> <a href="" type="internal">Logan Circle</a> <a href="" type="internal">No Justice No Pride</a> <a href="" type="internal">Pride Run &amp; Walk 5K</a> <a href="" type="internal">The Dirty Goose</a> <a href="" type="internal">UpRoar Lounge &amp; Restaurant</a> <a href="" type="internal">Victory Institute</a> <a href="" type="internal">Vida Fitness at the Yards</a></p>
|
Pride galore
| false |
http://washingtonblade.com/2017/06/01/pride-galore/
| 3left-center
|
Pride galore
<p>(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>It’s all Pride, all the time next weekend in D.C.</p>
<p>Victory Institute hosts Congressional Pride Reception at Rayburn House Office Building (50 Independence Ave., S.W.) on Thursday, June 8 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, GLASS and the LGBT Congressional Staff Association will celebrate Pride in the foyer of the Rayburn building. Refreshments will be provided. For more details and to RSVP, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/victoryinst" type="external">facebook.com/victoryinst</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride hosts its Rooftop Pool Party at Vida Fitness at the Yards (1212 Fourth St., N.W.) on Thursday, June 8 from 7-11 p.m. Tickets are $30. Admission includes two free drink tickets and light appetizers. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Latino GLBT History Project hosts La Fiesta: “La Resistencia,” a Latinx LGBT dance party, at Town (2009 8th St., N.W.) on Thursday, June 8 from 9 p.m.-2 a.m. The party will honor past Project queens and will feature community performances. DJ El Especialista will spin tracks. Event is 18 and over. Admission is $10 at the door or online. For more details, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/latinoglbthistory" type="external">facebook.com/latinoglbthistory</a>.</p>
<p>Uproar Lounge &amp; Restaurant hosts Happy Pride Week, an extended happy hour, on Friday, June 9 from 5 p.m.-3 a.m. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/uproarloungedc" type="external">facebook.com/uproarloungedc</a>.</p>
<p>The Dirty Goose (913 U St., N.W.) hosts Ladies of Pop: Pride Edition on Friday, June 9 from 5 p.m.-3 a.m.There will be surprise drink specials all night. Music playlist will be the biggest hits from pop divas. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/thedirtygoosedc" type="external">facebook.com/thedirtygoosedc</a>.</p>
<p>D.C. Front Runners hosts its sold-out Pride Run &amp; Walk 5K at Congressional Cemetery (1801 E St., S.E.) on Friday, June 9 at 7 p.m. There will be a Finish Line Party following the run. For more details, visit <a href="http://dcfrpriderun.com/" type="external">dcfrpriderun.com</a>.</p>
<p>The Washington Blade hosts Kate Clinton’s stand-up comedy show “Knock! Knock! Who’s There? Zombie Apocalypse!” at Studio Theatre (1501 14th St., N.W.) on Friday, June 9 from 7-8 p.m. VIP tickets are $100 and include front-row seating and a meet and greet. General admission tickets range from $40-60. For more information, visit <a href="" type="internal">washingtonblade.com/kate</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride and Brightest Young Things hosts the official Pride 2017 opening party, Rainbow Resistance, at the Rainbow Warehouse (1585 New York Ave., N.E.) on Friday, June 9 from 9 p.m.-2 a.m. The “Star Wars”-themed party will feature live performances from Tiffany, Ultra Naté and Cupcakke. DJ Will Eastman, DJ Lemz and DJ Rosie will spin tracks. Tickets are $30. Day-of tickets will be available. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/opening" type="external">capitalpride.org/opening</a>.</p>
<p>Green Lantern (1335 Green Ct., N.W.) hosts Otter Crossing Pride on Friday, June 9 from 10 p.m.-2:30 a.m.Bright Light Bright Light will headline the event. Cover is $10. A portion of proceeds will benefit Immigration Equality. For more details, visit <a href="http://greenlanterndc.com/" type="external">greenlanterndc.com</a>.</p>
<p>DCMJ hosts Cannabis Pride All-Nighter at Dupont Circle (1 Dupont Circle, N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 at 9 a.m. until Sunday, June 11 at 9 a.m. The 24-hour event will feature speakers, DJs and a Liberty Pole to support cannabis pride. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/dcmj2014" type="external">facebook.com/dcmj2014</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride Parade kicks off at 22nd Street and P Street on Saturday, June 10 from 4:30-7:30 p.m. The route travels through the Dupont Circle and Logan Circle neighborhoods. The parade will include Capital Pride Heroes, Engendered Spirit awardees, floats, walkers, dancers, entertainment, politicians and more. There will be a Pride Parade VIP viewing stand on the corner of 14th Street and P Street. VIP tickets are $25. For more details, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride Block Party will be on 15th Street N.W. between P Street and Church Street on Saturday, June 10 from 4-10 p.m. There will be a beer garden, food and entertainment. Entry is free. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Resist This hosts No Justice No Pride: D.C. Day of Action, a day of multiple events in resistance of Capital Pride, on Saturday, June 10. Direct Action March will be from 9 a..m.- 1 p.m. Location is to be determined. The Night March will follow that evening from 7 p.m.-1 a.m. on 18th Street. Resist This and Trans Women of Color Collective host QT Night of Healing and Resistance at the Festival Center (1640 Columbia Rd., N.W.) from 7-10 p.m. There will be food, art, entertainment and an open mic for people to share their talents or reflections. For more details, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/resistthis" type="external">facebook.com/ResistThis</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride hosts Crack of Noon Pride Brunch at the Showroom (1099 14th St., N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 from 11:30 a.m.-4 p.m. The Crack of Noon Pride Brunch is from 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. It includes a brunch buffet, open bar and meet and greet with Pride VIPs. Liquid Brunch is from 1-4 p.m. and features an open bar, light food and entertainment. DJ Matt Bailer will play music. Both events include bottomless champagne, mimosas, Bloody Marys, cocktails and beer. Crack of Noon Brunch is $105 and includes access to the Liquid Brunch. Liquid Brunch tickets range from $70-80. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/events/parade-brunch-2017" type="external">capitalpride.org/events/parade-brunch-2017</a>.</p>
<p>Lure D.C. hosts Fuse: Capital Pride’s Main Women’s Event, at the Howard Theatre (620 T St., N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 from 10 p.m.-3 a.m. DJ Jai Syncere, DJ Tezrah and DJ Elet()x will play music. The DystRucXion Dancers will perform with special guest Fierce Collabo. Drink specials all night. Admission is $15. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/lurewdc" type="external">facebook.com/lurewdc</a>.</p>
<p>Distrkt C hosts a two-day music festival and dance party at the D.C. Eagle (3701 Benning Rd., N.E.). On Saturday, June 10 the party is from 10 p.m.-8 a.m. DJ Jared Conner, DJ Joe Gauthreaux and DJ Grind will play music. Inaya Day will perform. On Sunday, June 11, doors open at 5 p.m. There will be a live concert outside with Crystal Waters, Kristine W and Kim English at 8:30 p.m. Amuka will perform inside at 10 p.m. DJs for the day evening include DJ Billy Carroll, DJ X Gonzalez, DJ Twisted Dee Martello and more. Ms. Brittany Lynn hosts both days. Saturday tickets are $80 and Sunday tickets are $85. Two-day passes are $150. For more details and to purchase tickets, visit <a href="http://disrktc.com/" type="external">disrktc.com</a>.</p>
<p>Mixtape hosts its Pride Party at 9:30 Club (815 V St., N.W.) on Saturday, June 10 from 11 p.m.-4 a.m. DJ Shea Van Horn and DJ Matt bailer will play a mix of indie dance, electronic and house. Cover is $15. Event is all ages. For more details, visit <a href="http://mixtapedc.com/" type="external">mixtapedc.com</a>.</p>
<p>The Equality March for Unity and Pride is on Sunday, June 11 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. The route begins on I Street and 17th Street N.W. and will head south on 15th Street N.W. to Constitution Avenue.The march ends on the National Mall at Seventh Street N.W. Line-up begins at 9 a.m. on I Street between 14th Street and 17th Street. For more details, visit <a href="http://equalitymarch2017.org/" type="external">equalitymarch2017.org</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride Festival is on Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. between Third Street and Seventh Street N.W. on Sunday, June 11 from noon-7 p.m. There will be 300 exhibitors featuring local and community groups, businesses, food vendors and more. Exhibit hours are from noon-7 p.m. The Capital Pride concert will feature performances from Miley Cyrus, the Pointer Sisters, Tinashe and VASSY. Concert hours are from 1-9 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Capital Pride hosts its free Sunset Dance Party in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue on Sunday, June 11from 8-9:45 p.m. DJ Tracy Young will play electronic music. For more details, visit <a href="http://capitalpride.org/" type="external">capitalpride.org</a>.</p>
<p>Pride Fund to End Gun Violence holds a candlelight vigil to remember Pulse at the fountain in Dupont Circle (1 Dupont Circle, N.W.) on Monday, June 12 from 7-8 p.m. Attendees are asked to bring their own candle as there will be a limited supply. For more information, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/pridefund" type="external">facebook.com/pridefund</a>.</p>
<p>Team D.C. hosts Night Out at the Nationals versus the Atlanta Braves at Nationals Park (1500 S Capitol St., S.E.) on Tuesday, June 13 from 7:05-10:05 p.m. Happy hour begins at 4 p.m. and pre-game ceremonies start at 6:30 p.m.Tickets are $28. Proceeds from ticket sales benefit Team D.C.’s Student-Athlete Scholarships. For more information, visit <a href="http://teamdc.org/" type="external">teamdc.org</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Capital Pride parade</a> <a href="" type="internal">Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus</a> <a href="" type="internal">Congressional Pride</a> <a href="" type="internal">Dupont Circle</a> <a href="" type="internal">GLASS</a> <a href="" type="internal">Kate Clinton</a> <a href="" type="internal">LGBT Congressional Staff Association</a> <a href="" type="internal">Logan Circle</a> <a href="" type="internal">No Justice No Pride</a> <a href="" type="internal">Pride Run &amp; Walk 5K</a> <a href="" type="internal">The Dirty Goose</a> <a href="" type="internal">UpRoar Lounge &amp; Restaurant</a> <a href="" type="internal">Victory Institute</a> <a href="" type="internal">Vida Fitness at the Yards</a></p>
| 7,311 |
|
<p />
<p>It's probably obvious even to non-smokers that cigarettes have gotten more costly over the years. About 20 years ago, in 1996, the average retail price of a pack of cigarettes was around$1.85. Today, it's closeto $7.30. That's just the average, though -- the price varies extremely widely depending on a purchaser's location. No matter where you live or how much you pay per pack, your smoking habit is stealing from your retirement.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Check out the table below, which presents the average price of a pack of cigarettes in 2016 for each of our 50 states and the District of Columbia. The averages are from the folks at <a href="https://theawl.com/what-a-pack-of-cigarettes-costs-in-every-state-266d285b8a68#.5wvtucilh" type="external">TheAwl.com Opens a New Window.</a>, which issues a price roundup each year. (Note that a sizable chunk of most of the prices is made up of state excisetaxes, which ranged from $0.17 per pack in Missouri to $4.35 per pack in New York, as of August. Many cities and/or counties in each state also impose taxes.)</p>
<p>Data source: Theawl.com, author calculations.</p>
<p>Clearly, a single pack of cigarettes is rather costly in many locations. Even the lowest price, in Kentucky, costs more than $5 -- and in 20 states, the average price tops $7.25, the current federal minimum wage rate.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>That can certainly put a crimp in a smoker's spending money, but it can have an even more disastrous effect on their financial future. Every dollar that goes toward cigarettes is a dollar that could have been deployed in some other way, such as on contributions to retirement accounts. The table above shows just how much is lost via a smoking habit. Imagine, for example, that you're in Michigan with a one-pack-a-day habit. That's costing you around $2,774 per year -- not that far from $3,000! And over 20 years, it's more than $55,000. It will likely be much more than that, though, as the price won't stay at $7.60 per pack, but will likely keep rising over time. Smoke two packs per day? You're looking at losses well above $100,000 over 20 years, enough to make a very meaningful difference to your financial security in retirement.</p>
<p>Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>As some ads say, "But wait -- there's more!" You're actually losing more than that $55,000 or $100,000-plus from our example above. That's because if you spend $3,000 per year on cigarettes instead of, say, retirement savings, you're not just giving up the $3,000 -- you're also giving up what it would have grown into over time. For example, if you were to invest $3,000 each year for 20 years, and it grew by an annual average of 10%, you'd end up with about $189,000. Two packs a day? $378,000! And remember -- in many states, it would be far more than that.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, know that the average Social Security retirement benefit was recently $1,348per month. If you're spending $3,000 per year on smokes, that's more than two months' worth of your Social Security income, up in smoke.</p>
<p>Don't let yourself be smug if you're a nonsmoker. All of us routinely spend dollars in ways that don't serve us best. There's little harm in treating yourself to a fancy coffee now and then, but if you're spending $5 per day on a large coffee concoction, you're giving up as much as many smokers do. Think about your drinking habits, too. If you're spending $5 to $10 per day on beer, wine, scotch, or a relaxing margarita or two, you're losing out on substantial retirement savings just like smokers are.</p>
<p>Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>Of course, smoking is costly in other ways, too. It's harmful to your health and is the leading causeof preventable deaths in the U.S. Those who smoke tend to live 10 feweryears than non-smokers -- so you're most likely literally losing years of life by smoking. Smoking is also costly to society. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notesthat tobacco use costs the United States more than $300 billion a year, including nearly $170 billion in direct medical care for adults and more than $156 billion in lost productivity.</p>
<p>Quitting smoking is notoriously hard but also extremely worthwhile, as it will likely have you gaining thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars and gaining years of life to enjoy, too -- years that are likely to feature better health. If you smoke, consider whether you want to double down on trying to quit. If you're a non-smoker, consider sharing this article with a smoker you care about -- and think about what costs of your own you might cut in order to turbocharge your very important retirement savings.</p>
<p>The $15,834 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: One easy trick could pay you as much as $15,834 more...each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?aid=8727&amp;source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Longtime Fool specialist <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSelena/info.aspx" type="external">Selena Maranjian Opens a New Window.</a>, whom you can <a href="http://twitter.com/SelenaMaranjian" type="external">follow on Twitter Opens a New Window.</a>, owns no shares of any company mentioned in this article.Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
How Cigarettes Could Send Your Retirement Up in Smoke
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/12/how-cigarettes-could-send-your-retirement-up-in-smoke.html
|
2016-09-12
| 0right
|
How Cigarettes Could Send Your Retirement Up in Smoke
<p />
<p>It's probably obvious even to non-smokers that cigarettes have gotten more costly over the years. About 20 years ago, in 1996, the average retail price of a pack of cigarettes was around$1.85. Today, it's closeto $7.30. That's just the average, though -- the price varies extremely widely depending on a purchaser's location. No matter where you live or how much you pay per pack, your smoking habit is stealing from your retirement.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Check out the table below, which presents the average price of a pack of cigarettes in 2016 for each of our 50 states and the District of Columbia. The averages are from the folks at <a href="https://theawl.com/what-a-pack-of-cigarettes-costs-in-every-state-266d285b8a68#.5wvtucilh" type="external">TheAwl.com Opens a New Window.</a>, which issues a price roundup each year. (Note that a sizable chunk of most of the prices is made up of state excisetaxes, which ranged from $0.17 per pack in Missouri to $4.35 per pack in New York, as of August. Many cities and/or counties in each state also impose taxes.)</p>
<p>Data source: Theawl.com, author calculations.</p>
<p>Clearly, a single pack of cigarettes is rather costly in many locations. Even the lowest price, in Kentucky, costs more than $5 -- and in 20 states, the average price tops $7.25, the current federal minimum wage rate.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>That can certainly put a crimp in a smoker's spending money, but it can have an even more disastrous effect on their financial future. Every dollar that goes toward cigarettes is a dollar that could have been deployed in some other way, such as on contributions to retirement accounts. The table above shows just how much is lost via a smoking habit. Imagine, for example, that you're in Michigan with a one-pack-a-day habit. That's costing you around $2,774 per year -- not that far from $3,000! And over 20 years, it's more than $55,000. It will likely be much more than that, though, as the price won't stay at $7.60 per pack, but will likely keep rising over time. Smoke two packs per day? You're looking at losses well above $100,000 over 20 years, enough to make a very meaningful difference to your financial security in retirement.</p>
<p>Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>As some ads say, "But wait -- there's more!" You're actually losing more than that $55,000 or $100,000-plus from our example above. That's because if you spend $3,000 per year on cigarettes instead of, say, retirement savings, you're not just giving up the $3,000 -- you're also giving up what it would have grown into over time. For example, if you were to invest $3,000 each year for 20 years, and it grew by an annual average of 10%, you'd end up with about $189,000. Two packs a day? $378,000! And remember -- in many states, it would be far more than that.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, know that the average Social Security retirement benefit was recently $1,348per month. If you're spending $3,000 per year on smokes, that's more than two months' worth of your Social Security income, up in smoke.</p>
<p>Don't let yourself be smug if you're a nonsmoker. All of us routinely spend dollars in ways that don't serve us best. There's little harm in treating yourself to a fancy coffee now and then, but if you're spending $5 per day on a large coffee concoction, you're giving up as much as many smokers do. Think about your drinking habits, too. If you're spending $5 to $10 per day on beer, wine, scotch, or a relaxing margarita or two, you're losing out on substantial retirement savings just like smokers are.</p>
<p>Image source: Pixabay.</p>
<p>Of course, smoking is costly in other ways, too. It's harmful to your health and is the leading causeof preventable deaths in the U.S. Those who smoke tend to live 10 feweryears than non-smokers -- so you're most likely literally losing years of life by smoking. Smoking is also costly to society. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notesthat tobacco use costs the United States more than $300 billion a year, including nearly $170 billion in direct medical care for adults and more than $156 billion in lost productivity.</p>
<p>Quitting smoking is notoriously hard but also extremely worthwhile, as it will likely have you gaining thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars and gaining years of life to enjoy, too -- years that are likely to feature better health. If you smoke, consider whether you want to double down on trying to quit. If you're a non-smoker, consider sharing this article with a smoker you care about -- and think about what costs of your own you might cut in order to turbocharge your very important retirement savings.</p>
<p>The $15,834 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook If you're like most Americans, you're a few years (or more) behind on your retirement savings. But a handful of little-known "Social Security secrets" could help ensure a boost in your retirement income. For example: One easy trick could pay you as much as $15,834 more...each year! Once you learn how to maximize your Social Security benefits, we think you could retire confidently with the peace of mind we're all after. <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-social-security?aid=8727&amp;source=irreditxt0000002&amp;ftm_cam=ryr-ss-intro-report&amp;ftm_pit=3186&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Simply click here to discover how to learn more about these strategies. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Longtime Fool specialist <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSelena/info.aspx" type="external">Selena Maranjian Opens a New Window.</a>, whom you can <a href="http://twitter.com/SelenaMaranjian" type="external">follow on Twitter Opens a New Window.</a>, owns no shares of any company mentioned in this article.Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 7,312 |
<p>Vermont’s Governor elect - Peter Shumlin - promised during his campaign this year to deliver single payer health insurance to state’s residents.</p>
<p>And also earlier this year, the government of Vermont called on Harvard School of Public Health Economics Professor William Hsiao to come up with three health care plans.</p>
<p>Plan one - a pure single payer plan.</p>
<p>Plan two - a public option plan.</p>
<p>And plan three - what Hsiao calls “a viable and practical single payer plan.”</p>
<p>We reached Professor Hsiao last night working late at his office.</p>
<p>Hsiao says he plans to deliver the three plans to Vermont sometime around January 15, 2011.</p>
<p>We wanted to know why Professor Hsiao would develop plan one - a pure single payer plan - and then plan three - what he calls “a viable and practical single payer plan.”</p>
<p>Aren’t they the same thing?</p>
<p>“In the Vermont first plan, the Vermont legislature calls for comprehensive coverage of services,” Hsiao said. “That includes prevention, ambulatory care, in-patient hospital, drugs, and nursing home. That’s one form of single payer. Besides universal coverage, plan one calls for covering everything.”</p>
<p>Hsiao calls this “pure single payer.”</p>
<p>Taxpayer funded.</p>
<p>Get rid of the health insurance companies.</p>
<p>Cover everyone.</p>
<p>Cover everything.</p>
<p>Hsiao says that in putting forth a pure single plan, the Vermont law “ignored reality.”</p>
<p>The first reality that it ignored - the legal barriers.</p>
<p>Take, for example, ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.)</p>
<p>ERISA prevents states from enacting legislation if it is “related to” an employee benefits plan.</p>
<p>Then there are political barriers, Hsiao says.</p>
<p>But isn’t a pure single payer plan the one Hsiao helped developed for Taiwan?</p>
<p>Isn’t it the same plan that was featured in the April 2008 PBS television special - Sick Around the World?</p>
<p>The PBS special that featured Hsiao?</p>
<p>And if he doesn’t recommend a pure single payer plan, won’t Vermonters ask - why pure single payer for Taiwan and not for Vermont?</p>
<p>There are obvious differences between the situation in Taiwan in the 1990s and Vermont today.</p>
<p>Before single payer arrived in Taiwan in the mid-1990s, fifty percent of the people in Taiwan had no health insurance.</p>
<p>In Vermont, only seven percent have no health insurance (it’s ten percent nationally.)</p>
<p>“Eighty-five percent of employed people in Vermont are covered with employer insurance,” Hsiao says.</p>
<p>“Let’s take a hypothetical case where health insurance premiums for an employed individual is $4000 a year.”</p>
<p>“The employer right now pays $3000 of that, the worker pays $1000.”</p>
<p>“In a pure single payer system, you have to raise that $4000 through income tax,” Hsiao says. “The whole $4000 through income tax.”</p>
<p>“In a pure single payer system, more than half of the employed people in Vermont will be paying more in taxes than they currently pay in premiums,” Hsiao said.</p>
<p>And Hsiao says that the Vermont pure single payer proposal is even more pure than Taiwan’s single payer.</p>
<p>“The Taiwanese plan doesn’t cover institutional long term care,” Hsiao says. “Vermont’s pure single payer system would.”</p>
<p>And Vermont’s plan calls for a government agency to run the single payer insurance plan.</p>
<p>Taiwan’s is a quasi-government agency.</p>
<p>This was done, Hsiao says, because Taiwan’s civil service rules would make it difficult for physician experts, for example, to be hired by the agency.</p>
<p>If it were a government agency, the physician experts would have to pass a series of tests.</p>
<p>“The starting position in Taiwan was different from the United States,” Hsiao says. “The United States has multiple insurance companies offering insurance and employers already providing insurance. For 85 percent of the employed people in Vermont, they already have employee provided insurance. And on average, the employers provide roughly about 75 percent of the premium.”</p>
<p>So, are you saying that pure single payer is viable in Vermont, or not?</p>
<p>“That is what we are investigating,” Hsiao says. “If it is not viable, we would have to change the features.”</p>
<p>If Hsiao determines that plan number one - pure single payer - is viable, there is no plan number three, right?</p>
<p>“They will be the same,” Hsiao says.</p>
<p>But during the interview, Hsiao clearly signaled that pure single payer for Vermont is not viable.</p>
<p>So, plan three - what Hsiao calls “viable single payer” - will be Hsiao’s recommended plan for Vermont, right?</p>
<p>“That is the likely outcome, yes,” Hsiao says. “We will show the state what a pure single payer system will cost, how that will impact on households, the different income levels.”</p>
<p>It’s clear that Hsiao is leaning away from a pure single payer model.</p>
<p>He challenges every assumption about “pure single payer.”</p>
<p>I ask - what about the most basic definition of single payer - one public single payer?</p>
<p>“You mean one public payer to providers?” he asks.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I answer.</p>
<p>“Well, Germany has a single payer to providers,” Hsiao says. “But Germany has several hundred non profit insurers. So, is that a single payer or not?”</p>
<p>“We have to disentangle all of that for Vermont,” Hsiao says. “I did not know what I took on when I agreed to this.”</p>
<p>“But we want to do what is best for the people of Vermont as well as for the American people,” Hsiao says. “I can assure you. My heart and mind are devoted to that. I don’t even get paid for this project. The people I hire, the people who are doing the modeling - yes they are paid. But personally, I do not get a penny on this.”</p>
<p>And Hsiao said that he does not do outside consulting.</p>
<p>Vermont’s health insurance market is dominated by one non profit - Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which takes in 70 to 75 percent of premiums.</p>
<p>The rest of the market is split between two for profits - CIGNA and MVP.</p>
<p>Can Hsiao conceive of a single payer system that would keep those three health insurance companies in business in Vermont?</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Hsiao says. “That would not be the ideal situation, but there are legal restrictions.”</p>
<p>“If you look at ERISA, you will see how difficult it is.”</p>
<p>Hsiao says that legislatures in states like California that have passed single payer laws “just assumed they could get a waiver from ERISA.”</p>
<p>“Well, that’s a big assumption,” Hsiao said. “No state or no political jurisdiction has been able to get a waiver yet from ERISA.”</p>
<p>“I can tell you I can reduce my workload by half,” Hsiao said. “I can assume away a lot of real world problems.”</p>
<p>There has always been an underlying debate in the single payer community over whether it is more feasible to get single payer at the national level or the state level.</p>
<p>Could it be that the state level single payer is not possible?</p>
<p>“When our report comes out, you will see what is possible and what is not possible,” Hsiao says.</p>
<p>RUSSELL MOKHIBER edits <a href="http://www.singlepayeraction.org" type="external">Single Payer Action</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
|
Single Payer and Professor Hsiao
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2010/12/13/single-payer-and-professor-hsiao/
|
2010-12-13
| 4left
|
Single Payer and Professor Hsiao
<p>Vermont’s Governor elect - Peter Shumlin - promised during his campaign this year to deliver single payer health insurance to state’s residents.</p>
<p>And also earlier this year, the government of Vermont called on Harvard School of Public Health Economics Professor William Hsiao to come up with three health care plans.</p>
<p>Plan one - a pure single payer plan.</p>
<p>Plan two - a public option plan.</p>
<p>And plan three - what Hsiao calls “a viable and practical single payer plan.”</p>
<p>We reached Professor Hsiao last night working late at his office.</p>
<p>Hsiao says he plans to deliver the three plans to Vermont sometime around January 15, 2011.</p>
<p>We wanted to know why Professor Hsiao would develop plan one - a pure single payer plan - and then plan three - what he calls “a viable and practical single payer plan.”</p>
<p>Aren’t they the same thing?</p>
<p>“In the Vermont first plan, the Vermont legislature calls for comprehensive coverage of services,” Hsiao said. “That includes prevention, ambulatory care, in-patient hospital, drugs, and nursing home. That’s one form of single payer. Besides universal coverage, plan one calls for covering everything.”</p>
<p>Hsiao calls this “pure single payer.”</p>
<p>Taxpayer funded.</p>
<p>Get rid of the health insurance companies.</p>
<p>Cover everyone.</p>
<p>Cover everything.</p>
<p>Hsiao says that in putting forth a pure single plan, the Vermont law “ignored reality.”</p>
<p>The first reality that it ignored - the legal barriers.</p>
<p>Take, for example, ERISA (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.)</p>
<p>ERISA prevents states from enacting legislation if it is “related to” an employee benefits plan.</p>
<p>Then there are political barriers, Hsiao says.</p>
<p>But isn’t a pure single payer plan the one Hsiao helped developed for Taiwan?</p>
<p>Isn’t it the same plan that was featured in the April 2008 PBS television special - Sick Around the World?</p>
<p>The PBS special that featured Hsiao?</p>
<p>And if he doesn’t recommend a pure single payer plan, won’t Vermonters ask - why pure single payer for Taiwan and not for Vermont?</p>
<p>There are obvious differences between the situation in Taiwan in the 1990s and Vermont today.</p>
<p>Before single payer arrived in Taiwan in the mid-1990s, fifty percent of the people in Taiwan had no health insurance.</p>
<p>In Vermont, only seven percent have no health insurance (it’s ten percent nationally.)</p>
<p>“Eighty-five percent of employed people in Vermont are covered with employer insurance,” Hsiao says.</p>
<p>“Let’s take a hypothetical case where health insurance premiums for an employed individual is $4000 a year.”</p>
<p>“The employer right now pays $3000 of that, the worker pays $1000.”</p>
<p>“In a pure single payer system, you have to raise that $4000 through income tax,” Hsiao says. “The whole $4000 through income tax.”</p>
<p>“In a pure single payer system, more than half of the employed people in Vermont will be paying more in taxes than they currently pay in premiums,” Hsiao said.</p>
<p>And Hsiao says that the Vermont pure single payer proposal is even more pure than Taiwan’s single payer.</p>
<p>“The Taiwanese plan doesn’t cover institutional long term care,” Hsiao says. “Vermont’s pure single payer system would.”</p>
<p>And Vermont’s plan calls for a government agency to run the single payer insurance plan.</p>
<p>Taiwan’s is a quasi-government agency.</p>
<p>This was done, Hsiao says, because Taiwan’s civil service rules would make it difficult for physician experts, for example, to be hired by the agency.</p>
<p>If it were a government agency, the physician experts would have to pass a series of tests.</p>
<p>“The starting position in Taiwan was different from the United States,” Hsiao says. “The United States has multiple insurance companies offering insurance and employers already providing insurance. For 85 percent of the employed people in Vermont, they already have employee provided insurance. And on average, the employers provide roughly about 75 percent of the premium.”</p>
<p>So, are you saying that pure single payer is viable in Vermont, or not?</p>
<p>“That is what we are investigating,” Hsiao says. “If it is not viable, we would have to change the features.”</p>
<p>If Hsiao determines that plan number one - pure single payer - is viable, there is no plan number three, right?</p>
<p>“They will be the same,” Hsiao says.</p>
<p>But during the interview, Hsiao clearly signaled that pure single payer for Vermont is not viable.</p>
<p>So, plan three - what Hsiao calls “viable single payer” - will be Hsiao’s recommended plan for Vermont, right?</p>
<p>“That is the likely outcome, yes,” Hsiao says. “We will show the state what a pure single payer system will cost, how that will impact on households, the different income levels.”</p>
<p>It’s clear that Hsiao is leaning away from a pure single payer model.</p>
<p>He challenges every assumption about “pure single payer.”</p>
<p>I ask - what about the most basic definition of single payer - one public single payer?</p>
<p>“You mean one public payer to providers?” he asks.</p>
<p>“Yes,” I answer.</p>
<p>“Well, Germany has a single payer to providers,” Hsiao says. “But Germany has several hundred non profit insurers. So, is that a single payer or not?”</p>
<p>“We have to disentangle all of that for Vermont,” Hsiao says. “I did not know what I took on when I agreed to this.”</p>
<p>“But we want to do what is best for the people of Vermont as well as for the American people,” Hsiao says. “I can assure you. My heart and mind are devoted to that. I don’t even get paid for this project. The people I hire, the people who are doing the modeling - yes they are paid. But personally, I do not get a penny on this.”</p>
<p>And Hsiao said that he does not do outside consulting.</p>
<p>Vermont’s health insurance market is dominated by one non profit - Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which takes in 70 to 75 percent of premiums.</p>
<p>The rest of the market is split between two for profits - CIGNA and MVP.</p>
<p>Can Hsiao conceive of a single payer system that would keep those three health insurance companies in business in Vermont?</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Hsiao says. “That would not be the ideal situation, but there are legal restrictions.”</p>
<p>“If you look at ERISA, you will see how difficult it is.”</p>
<p>Hsiao says that legislatures in states like California that have passed single payer laws “just assumed they could get a waiver from ERISA.”</p>
<p>“Well, that’s a big assumption,” Hsiao said. “No state or no political jurisdiction has been able to get a waiver yet from ERISA.”</p>
<p>“I can tell you I can reduce my workload by half,” Hsiao said. “I can assume away a lot of real world problems.”</p>
<p>There has always been an underlying debate in the single payer community over whether it is more feasible to get single payer at the national level or the state level.</p>
<p>Could it be that the state level single payer is not possible?</p>
<p>“When our report comes out, you will see what is possible and what is not possible,” Hsiao says.</p>
<p>RUSSELL MOKHIBER edits <a href="http://www.singlepayeraction.org" type="external">Single Payer Action</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
| 7,313 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>I began with what the ballot says about state Constitutional Amendment 1:</p>
<p>“Proposing to amend Article 7, Section 1 of the Constitution of New Mexico to provide that school elections shall be held at different times from partisan elections.”</p>
<p>I was confused. I thought that the state constitution already prohibits school elections from being held at the same time as partisan elections (?).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Then, I turned to the Journal’s endorsement for possible clarification: It endorsed Amendment 1 since in its view it “would change the outdated practice of holding school elections separate from all other elections.”</p>
<p>But wait, the language on the ballot says that it provides “that school elections shall be held at different times from partisan elections.”</p>
<p>This left me in total confusion.</p>
<p>What is the intent of Amendment 1? Not having Internet access, I called the New Mexico Legislative Council Service to get to the bottom of this discrepancy.</p>
<p>The Council Service sent me their publication, “Summary of and Arguments For and Against the Constitutional Amendments Proposed by the Legislature in 2013 and 2014.”</p>
<p>I learned that the language for Amendment 1 on the November ballot is taken verbatim from the title of the amendment. It’s only in the Summary of Proposed Constitutional Amendment 1 that we learn what’s really going on:</p>
<p>“Constitutional Amendment 1 would … replace the prohibition against holding school elections with any other elections with a more limited prohibition against holding school elections with partisan elections. If the amendment is adopted by voters, school elections could be held at the same time as nonpartisan elections, including municipal elections, bond elections, conservancy district elections and other special district elections.”</p>
<p>OK, now I get it!</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>So Amendment 1 will continue to disallow school elections to be held with some elections (partisan), but change the Constitution to allow school elections to be held only with nonpartisan elections.</p>
<p>It would be nice if a) the ballot would have said this in the first place, and b) the Secretary of State’s Office would mail all registered voters a “Voter’s Guide” about candidates, amendments and bond issues so that it is possible for us to cast an informed vote. Many of us after all, do not have Internet access.</p>
<p>And I ask each of you who has Internet access whether you have taken the time to access the Voter’s Guide that is posted online for the upcoming election to ensure that all of your votes will mean what you intend them to mean?</p>
<p>A representative of the Secretary of State’s Office whom I contacted said the practice of mailing printed Voter’s Guides has been discontinued “because we simply don’t have the money in the budget for it.”</p>
<p>Voting in an informed manner is the single most important responsibility of citizens in any democracy. Can we afford not to mail out printed Voter’s Guides?</p>
<p />
|
State amendment needs clarification
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/486212/state-amendment-needs-clarification.html
| 2least
|
State amendment needs clarification
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>I began with what the ballot says about state Constitutional Amendment 1:</p>
<p>“Proposing to amend Article 7, Section 1 of the Constitution of New Mexico to provide that school elections shall be held at different times from partisan elections.”</p>
<p>I was confused. I thought that the state constitution already prohibits school elections from being held at the same time as partisan elections (?).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Then, I turned to the Journal’s endorsement for possible clarification: It endorsed Amendment 1 since in its view it “would change the outdated practice of holding school elections separate from all other elections.”</p>
<p>But wait, the language on the ballot says that it provides “that school elections shall be held at different times from partisan elections.”</p>
<p>This left me in total confusion.</p>
<p>What is the intent of Amendment 1? Not having Internet access, I called the New Mexico Legislative Council Service to get to the bottom of this discrepancy.</p>
<p>The Council Service sent me their publication, “Summary of and Arguments For and Against the Constitutional Amendments Proposed by the Legislature in 2013 and 2014.”</p>
<p>I learned that the language for Amendment 1 on the November ballot is taken verbatim from the title of the amendment. It’s only in the Summary of Proposed Constitutional Amendment 1 that we learn what’s really going on:</p>
<p>“Constitutional Amendment 1 would … replace the prohibition against holding school elections with any other elections with a more limited prohibition against holding school elections with partisan elections. If the amendment is adopted by voters, school elections could be held at the same time as nonpartisan elections, including municipal elections, bond elections, conservancy district elections and other special district elections.”</p>
<p>OK, now I get it!</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>So Amendment 1 will continue to disallow school elections to be held with some elections (partisan), but change the Constitution to allow school elections to be held only with nonpartisan elections.</p>
<p>It would be nice if a) the ballot would have said this in the first place, and b) the Secretary of State’s Office would mail all registered voters a “Voter’s Guide” about candidates, amendments and bond issues so that it is possible for us to cast an informed vote. Many of us after all, do not have Internet access.</p>
<p>And I ask each of you who has Internet access whether you have taken the time to access the Voter’s Guide that is posted online for the upcoming election to ensure that all of your votes will mean what you intend them to mean?</p>
<p>A representative of the Secretary of State’s Office whom I contacted said the practice of mailing printed Voter’s Guides has been discontinued “because we simply don’t have the money in the budget for it.”</p>
<p>Voting in an informed manner is the single most important responsibility of citizens in any democracy. Can we afford not to mail out printed Voter’s Guides?</p>
<p />
| 7,314 |
|
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Washington Free Beacon Staff</a>May 14, 2012 10:13 am</p>
<p>Former Obama administration auto czar Steve Rattner criticized a <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/05/obamas-bain-ad-like-watching-an-old-friend-bleed-to-123343.html" type="external">new Obama campaign ad</a>, which attacks Mitt Romney for his time at Bain Capital, calling the ad "unfair," during a panel discussion on "Morning Joe."</p>
<p>JOE SCARBOROUGH: Steve Rattner, are you embarrassed by this ad, knowing what you know? Are you embarrassed by this ad by the Obama campaign?</p>
<p>STEVE RATTNER: I think the ad is unfair. Look, Mitt Romney made a mistake ever talking about the fact that he created 100,000 jobs. Bain Capital's responsibility was not to create 100,000 jobs or some other number. It was to make profits for his investors, most of whom were pension funds, endowments, and foundations. and it did it superbly, acting within the rules and very responsibly and was a leading firm. So, yeah, I do think to pick out an example of somebody who lost their job unfortunately, this is part of capitalism. This is part of life. And I don't think there's anything Bain Capital did that they need to be embarrassed about.</p>
<p>SCARBOROUGH: And, Willie, you hurt for the guys that are being filmed there. But they’re being used on a commercial that certainly just — it's demagogic, to suggest that Mitt Romney created unemployment and that, you know, you do anything for as long as he worked at Bain Capital, there are going to be successes and some failures. But here, I just don't think America is going to buy that nonsense.</p>
|
Obama Adviser Slams Obama Video
| true |
http://freebeacon.com/obama-adviser-slams-obama-video/
|
2012-05-14
| 0right
|
Obama Adviser Slams Obama Video
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Washington Free Beacon Staff</a>May 14, 2012 10:13 am</p>
<p>Former Obama administration auto czar Steve Rattner criticized a <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/05/obamas-bain-ad-like-watching-an-old-friend-bleed-to-123343.html" type="external">new Obama campaign ad</a>, which attacks Mitt Romney for his time at Bain Capital, calling the ad "unfair," during a panel discussion on "Morning Joe."</p>
<p>JOE SCARBOROUGH: Steve Rattner, are you embarrassed by this ad, knowing what you know? Are you embarrassed by this ad by the Obama campaign?</p>
<p>STEVE RATTNER: I think the ad is unfair. Look, Mitt Romney made a mistake ever talking about the fact that he created 100,000 jobs. Bain Capital's responsibility was not to create 100,000 jobs or some other number. It was to make profits for his investors, most of whom were pension funds, endowments, and foundations. and it did it superbly, acting within the rules and very responsibly and was a leading firm. So, yeah, I do think to pick out an example of somebody who lost their job unfortunately, this is part of capitalism. This is part of life. And I don't think there's anything Bain Capital did that they need to be embarrassed about.</p>
<p>SCARBOROUGH: And, Willie, you hurt for the guys that are being filmed there. But they’re being used on a commercial that certainly just — it's demagogic, to suggest that Mitt Romney created unemployment and that, you know, you do anything for as long as he worked at Bain Capital, there are going to be successes and some failures. But here, I just don't think America is going to buy that nonsense.</p>
| 7,315 |
<p>Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) recently introduced a bill in Congress at the behest of a group of mountain biking proponents that would eviscerate the 1964 Wilderness Act and allow bicycles in every Wilderness in the nation.</p>
<p>The bill, HR 1349, was introduced on March 15th on behalf of the mountain biker organization, the Sustainable Trails Coalition (STC).&#160; This bill would amend the Wilderness Act to allow bikes, strollers, wheelbarrows, game carts, survey wheels, and measuring wheels in every unit of the National Wilderness Preservation System.&#160; In an especially cynical and disingenuous move, the mountain bikers seem to hide behind people with disabilities in their effort to make America’s wildest places merely a playground for cycling: the mountain bikers list “motorized wheelchairs” and “non-motorized wheelchairs” as the first uses to be authorized in Wilderness under their bill (even prior to the listing of “bicycles”), though the 1990 amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have clearly allowed wheelchairs in designated Wilderness for more than a quarter-century.</p>
<p>The STC had a bill introduced last year in the U.S. Senate by the two Utah Senators, Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch, whose lifetime conservation voting records as compiled by the nonpartisan League of Conservation Voters are just a paltry 9% and 10% respectively. That bill would have opened the Wilderness System to mountain bikes, and also to chainsaws.&#160; Fortunately, last year’s bill went nowhere.&#160; Unfortunately, the new bill could very well advance in the current anti-wilderness Congress, allied with the new Administration that seems hostile to environmental protection.&#160; Rep. McClintock, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, also chairs that panel’s Subcommittee on Federal Lands. This means he is in a significant position of leadership, and could mean that this year’s mountain bike bill might well advance in Congress.&#160; McClintock’s lifetime conservation voting record is even worse than those of the Utah Senators, at a barely-registering 4%.</p>
<p>Last year, anticipating the 2016 Senate bill to open Wilderness to mountain bikes, Wilderness Watch spearheaded a sign-on letter to Congress in opposition to opening up the National Wilderness Preservation System to bikes. It resulted in a total of 114 wilderness-supporting organizations from around the nation signing on, clearly showing that the conservation community is united in its opposition to the mountain bikers’ efforts.</p>
<p>The 1964 Wilderness Act prohibits bicycles in the National Wilderness Preservation System. The law (36 U.S.C. 1131-1136) bans all types of bicycles as well as all other forms of mechanical transportation in designated Wilderness. Section 4(c) of that act states, “[T]here shall be…no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation within any such area.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, Congress stated the purpose of the Wilderness Act was, in part, to protect these areas from “expanding settlement and growing mechanization….” (emphasis added) (Wilderness Act, Section 2[a].)</p>
<p>In a deft use of falsehoods and “fake news,” the mountain bikers have claimed that the Wilderness Act actually allows bikes in Wilderness.&#160; They claim that the U.S. Forest Service put the ban in place in 1984 when the agency explicitly named bicycles as one of the prohibited forms of mechanical transport in Wilderness (the agency’s earlier wilderness regulations, written in 1965, did not specifically name bikes as a prohibited use since mountain bikes had not yet been invented). These false claims (among many others by the STC) ignore the clear language of the Wilderness Act and the regulations of the other three federal agencies that have from the beginning clearly banned bikes from the Wildernesses they administer.&#160; For more information, see “ <a href="" type="internal">5 Lies Being Used to Get Mountain Bikes into Wilderness</a>”.</p>
<p>The STC arguments also evince an incredibly narrow and selfish view of Wilderness as just a recreation “pie” to be divided up among competing recreation user groups, with seemingly no regard for wildness, wildlife habitat, solitude, or future generations’ desires for truly wild Wilderness.</p>
<p>For over a half century, the Wilderness Act has protected these areas designated by Congress from mechanization and mechanical transport, even if no motors were involved with such activities.&#160; This has meant, as Congress intended, that Wildernesses have been kept free from bicycles and other types of machines.&#160; Wilderness advocates believe that this protection has served our Nation well, and that the “benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness” (as the Wilderness Act eloquently declares) would be forever lost by allowing mechanized transport in these areas.</p>
<p>WHAT YOU CAN DO: Contact your U.S. Senators and Representative and urge them to oppose HR 1349 and similar bills that would weaken the Wilderness Act: <a href="http://bit.ly/2pzxqHa" type="external">bit.ly/2pzxqHa</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Mountain Bikers Seek to Gut Wilderness Act
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2017/05/12/mountain-bikers-seek-to-gut-wilderness-act/
|
2017-05-12
| 4left
|
Mountain Bikers Seek to Gut Wilderness Act
<p>Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) recently introduced a bill in Congress at the behest of a group of mountain biking proponents that would eviscerate the 1964 Wilderness Act and allow bicycles in every Wilderness in the nation.</p>
<p>The bill, HR 1349, was introduced on March 15th on behalf of the mountain biker organization, the Sustainable Trails Coalition (STC).&#160; This bill would amend the Wilderness Act to allow bikes, strollers, wheelbarrows, game carts, survey wheels, and measuring wheels in every unit of the National Wilderness Preservation System.&#160; In an especially cynical and disingenuous move, the mountain bikers seem to hide behind people with disabilities in their effort to make America’s wildest places merely a playground for cycling: the mountain bikers list “motorized wheelchairs” and “non-motorized wheelchairs” as the first uses to be authorized in Wilderness under their bill (even prior to the listing of “bicycles”), though the 1990 amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have clearly allowed wheelchairs in designated Wilderness for more than a quarter-century.</p>
<p>The STC had a bill introduced last year in the U.S. Senate by the two Utah Senators, Mike Lee and Orrin Hatch, whose lifetime conservation voting records as compiled by the nonpartisan League of Conservation Voters are just a paltry 9% and 10% respectively. That bill would have opened the Wilderness System to mountain bikes, and also to chainsaws.&#160; Fortunately, last year’s bill went nowhere.&#160; Unfortunately, the new bill could very well advance in the current anti-wilderness Congress, allied with the new Administration that seems hostile to environmental protection.&#160; Rep. McClintock, a member of the House Natural Resources Committee, also chairs that panel’s Subcommittee on Federal Lands. This means he is in a significant position of leadership, and could mean that this year’s mountain bike bill might well advance in Congress.&#160; McClintock’s lifetime conservation voting record is even worse than those of the Utah Senators, at a barely-registering 4%.</p>
<p>Last year, anticipating the 2016 Senate bill to open Wilderness to mountain bikes, Wilderness Watch spearheaded a sign-on letter to Congress in opposition to opening up the National Wilderness Preservation System to bikes. It resulted in a total of 114 wilderness-supporting organizations from around the nation signing on, clearly showing that the conservation community is united in its opposition to the mountain bikers’ efforts.</p>
<p>The 1964 Wilderness Act prohibits bicycles in the National Wilderness Preservation System. The law (36 U.S.C. 1131-1136) bans all types of bicycles as well as all other forms of mechanical transportation in designated Wilderness. Section 4(c) of that act states, “[T]here shall be…no use of motor vehicles, motorized equipment or motorboats, no landing of aircraft, no other form of mechanical transport, and no structure or installation within any such area.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, Congress stated the purpose of the Wilderness Act was, in part, to protect these areas from “expanding settlement and growing mechanization….” (emphasis added) (Wilderness Act, Section 2[a].)</p>
<p>In a deft use of falsehoods and “fake news,” the mountain bikers have claimed that the Wilderness Act actually allows bikes in Wilderness.&#160; They claim that the U.S. Forest Service put the ban in place in 1984 when the agency explicitly named bicycles as one of the prohibited forms of mechanical transport in Wilderness (the agency’s earlier wilderness regulations, written in 1965, did not specifically name bikes as a prohibited use since mountain bikes had not yet been invented). These false claims (among many others by the STC) ignore the clear language of the Wilderness Act and the regulations of the other three federal agencies that have from the beginning clearly banned bikes from the Wildernesses they administer.&#160; For more information, see “ <a href="" type="internal">5 Lies Being Used to Get Mountain Bikes into Wilderness</a>”.</p>
<p>The STC arguments also evince an incredibly narrow and selfish view of Wilderness as just a recreation “pie” to be divided up among competing recreation user groups, with seemingly no regard for wildness, wildlife habitat, solitude, or future generations’ desires for truly wild Wilderness.</p>
<p>For over a half century, the Wilderness Act has protected these areas designated by Congress from mechanization and mechanical transport, even if no motors were involved with such activities.&#160; This has meant, as Congress intended, that Wildernesses have been kept free from bicycles and other types of machines.&#160; Wilderness advocates believe that this protection has served our Nation well, and that the “benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness” (as the Wilderness Act eloquently declares) would be forever lost by allowing mechanized transport in these areas.</p>
<p>WHAT YOU CAN DO: Contact your U.S. Senators and Representative and urge them to oppose HR 1349 and similar bills that would weaken the Wilderness Act: <a href="http://bit.ly/2pzxqHa" type="external">bit.ly/2pzxqHa</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,316 |
<p>Book - W.W. Norton &amp; Company</p>
<p />
<p>Nearly three thousand people died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In Lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomoc, the United States suffered the single largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its soil.</p>
<p>In November 2002 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush established by law the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission. This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks, identify lessons learned, and provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism.</p>
<p>This volume is the authorized edition of the Commission's final report.</p>
<p />
|
The 9/11 Commission Report
| false |
http://belfercenter.org/publication/911-commission-report
|
2004-07-22
| 2least
|
The 9/11 Commission Report
<p>Book - W.W. Norton &amp; Company</p>
<p />
<p>Nearly three thousand people died in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In Lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomoc, the United States suffered the single largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its soil.</p>
<p>In November 2002 the United States Congress and President George W. Bush established by law the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9/11 Commission. This independent, bipartisan panel was directed to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks, identify lessons learned, and provide recommendations to safeguard against future acts of terrorism.</p>
<p>This volume is the authorized edition of the Commission's final report.</p>
<p />
| 7,317 |
<p>Published time: 14 Dec, 2017 02:33</p>
<p>Coffee giant Starbucks has confirmed that the free Wi-Fi in at least one of its Argentina stores has been infecting its customers’ electronic devices with a malicious code to mine cryptocurrencies.</p>
<p>The issue was initially reported early in December by an executive of a New York-based technology company, who noticed that while he got coffee in a Starbucks store in Buenos Aires, his laptop received a malicious crypto-currency mining code.</p>
<p>While the initial report stated the malicious code was mining bitcoins, other Twitter users pointed out that the website hosting the script was mining another cryptocurrency, monero.</p>
<p>Starbucks acknowledged the issue on Monday. The coffee giant said it had investigated the report and “took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely.”</p>
<p>As soon as we were alerted of the situation in this specific store last week, we took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely.</p>
<p>— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) <a href="https://twitter.com/Starbucks/status/940369255031128064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 11, 2017</a></p>
<p>The malicious code problem appeared to be not widespread, but a local one, according to the company, which shifted the blame for the script injection onto its Wi-Fi provider.“Last week, we were alerted to the issue and we reached out to our internet service provider—the Wi-Fi is not run by Starbucks, it’s not something we own or control,” Starbucks’ spokesperson <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyd5xq/starbucks-wi-fi-hijacked-peoples-laptops-to-mine-cryptocurrency-coinhive" type="external">told</a> the Motherboard. “We don’t have any concern that this is widespread across any of our stores.”</p>
<p>The monero token appears to be quite popular with so-called “crypto-jackers,” as it can be mined on home computers without any specialized hardware. The Starbucks’ acknowledgment has come at the same time as a <a href="https://www.rt.com/business/412978-online-video-cryptocurrency-mining-hackers/" type="external">report</a> alleging that a number of popular video sites, including Openload, Streamango, Rapidvideo, and OnlineVideoConverter, have been infecting users’ devices with a code to mine monero.</p>
|
Wi-Fi at Starbucks hijacked computers to mine cryptocurrencies
| false |
https://newsline.com/wi-fi-at-starbucks-hijacked-computers-to-mine-cryptocurrencies/
|
2017-12-13
| 1right-center
|
Wi-Fi at Starbucks hijacked computers to mine cryptocurrencies
<p>Published time: 14 Dec, 2017 02:33</p>
<p>Coffee giant Starbucks has confirmed that the free Wi-Fi in at least one of its Argentina stores has been infecting its customers’ electronic devices with a malicious code to mine cryptocurrencies.</p>
<p>The issue was initially reported early in December by an executive of a New York-based technology company, who noticed that while he got coffee in a Starbucks store in Buenos Aires, his laptop received a malicious crypto-currency mining code.</p>
<p>While the initial report stated the malicious code was mining bitcoins, other Twitter users pointed out that the website hosting the script was mining another cryptocurrency, monero.</p>
<p>Starbucks acknowledged the issue on Monday. The coffee giant said it had investigated the report and “took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely.”</p>
<p>As soon as we were alerted of the situation in this specific store last week, we took swift action to ensure our internet provider resolved the issue and made the changes needed in order to ensure our customers could use Wi-Fi in our store safely.</p>
<p>— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) <a href="https://twitter.com/Starbucks/status/940369255031128064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">December 11, 2017</a></p>
<p>The malicious code problem appeared to be not widespread, but a local one, according to the company, which shifted the blame for the script injection onto its Wi-Fi provider.“Last week, we were alerted to the issue and we reached out to our internet service provider—the Wi-Fi is not run by Starbucks, it’s not something we own or control,” Starbucks’ spokesperson <a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyd5xq/starbucks-wi-fi-hijacked-peoples-laptops-to-mine-cryptocurrency-coinhive" type="external">told</a> the Motherboard. “We don’t have any concern that this is widespread across any of our stores.”</p>
<p>The monero token appears to be quite popular with so-called “crypto-jackers,” as it can be mined on home computers without any specialized hardware. The Starbucks’ acknowledgment has come at the same time as a <a href="https://www.rt.com/business/412978-online-video-cryptocurrency-mining-hackers/" type="external">report</a> alleging that a number of popular video sites, including Openload, Streamango, Rapidvideo, and OnlineVideoConverter, have been infecting users’ devices with a code to mine monero.</p>
| 7,318 |
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man apologized for the “unforgivable” slayings of his three children as he was sentenced to life in prison.</p>
<p>The Sacramento Bee newspaper <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article195573614.html" type="external">reports</a> that Robert Hodges apologized Friday to his wife for destroying the life they had built together by suffocating infant Lucas Hodges and strangling 9-year-old Julie Hodges and 11-year-old Kelvin Hodges. He also attacked his wife, Mai Hodges, in their West Sacramento apartment in September.</p>
<p>Yolo County Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg calls it the “darkest, most depraved case” he’s handled. He calls Hodges a “serial killer of his own children.”</p>
<p>The 32-year-old was sentenced to three life terms under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.</p>
<p>Investigators previously said Hodges was in financial trouble and had considered killing himself and his family for a year.</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man apologized for the “unforgivable” slayings of his three children as he was sentenced to life in prison.</p>
<p>The Sacramento Bee newspaper <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article195573614.html" type="external">reports</a> that Robert Hodges apologized Friday to his wife for destroying the life they had built together by suffocating infant Lucas Hodges and strangling 9-year-old Julie Hodges and 11-year-old Kelvin Hodges. He also attacked his wife, Mai Hodges, in their West Sacramento apartment in September.</p>
<p>Yolo County Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg calls it the “darkest, most depraved case” he’s handled. He calls Hodges a “serial killer of his own children.”</p>
<p>The 32-year-old was sentenced to three life terms under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.</p>
<p>Investigators previously said Hodges was in financial trouble and had considered killing himself and his family for a year.</p>
|
Life term for California man’s ‘unforgivable’ child slayings
| false |
https://apnews.com/888ebabe7cd447849d3bee831d20c35c
|
2018-01-19
| 2least
|
Life term for California man’s ‘unforgivable’ child slayings
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man apologized for the “unforgivable” slayings of his three children as he was sentenced to life in prison.</p>
<p>The Sacramento Bee newspaper <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article195573614.html" type="external">reports</a> that Robert Hodges apologized Friday to his wife for destroying the life they had built together by suffocating infant Lucas Hodges and strangling 9-year-old Julie Hodges and 11-year-old Kelvin Hodges. He also attacked his wife, Mai Hodges, in their West Sacramento apartment in September.</p>
<p>Yolo County Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg calls it the “darkest, most depraved case” he’s handled. He calls Hodges a “serial killer of his own children.”</p>
<p>The 32-year-old was sentenced to three life terms under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.</p>
<p>Investigators previously said Hodges was in financial trouble and had considered killing himself and his family for a year.</p>
<p>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California man apologized for the “unforgivable” slayings of his three children as he was sentenced to life in prison.</p>
<p>The Sacramento Bee newspaper <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article195573614.html" type="external">reports</a> that Robert Hodges apologized Friday to his wife for destroying the life they had built together by suffocating infant Lucas Hodges and strangling 9-year-old Julie Hodges and 11-year-old Kelvin Hodges. He also attacked his wife, Mai Hodges, in their West Sacramento apartment in September.</p>
<p>Yolo County Superior Court Judge David Rosenberg calls it the “darkest, most depraved case” he’s handled. He calls Hodges a “serial killer of his own children.”</p>
<p>The 32-year-old was sentenced to three life terms under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.</p>
<p>Investigators previously said Hodges was in financial trouble and had considered killing himself and his family for a year.</p>
| 7,319 |
<p>In a glowing and laudatory report on college students who join the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at nearby schools while enrolled at prestigious universities from whence ROTC was banned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the New York Times has eased the way for colleges such as Harvard to ditch their ROTC ban and become in practice, not just in theory, fully supportive of the US government’s militarized foreign policy.</p>
<p>The New York Times ( <a href="" type="internal">The ROTC Dilemma</a>) presents us with the travails of Harvard undergrads who have to rise at 4:45am and shave then drive or jog across the beloved and revered (no matter how compromised) River Charles in order to reach Boston University, where, “under a system developed by the military that allows host universities to serve nearby campuses”(NYT 10/26/09), they may be trained as officers ready to serve the interests of their country’s leadership. The car used for this daily trip costs between $250 to $300 a month to maintain, the Times also lets us know, as if the civilians of Cambridge and Boston get a discount.</p>
<p>“It’s worse at Yale,” laments the Times’ author, Michael Winerip, who reports that there anyone wanting to be in ROTC must endure a 90 minute drive to UConn and request class notes from a friend. Winerip notes that this June, only 8 ROTC members will graduate while a half century ago, in 1959, 121 seniors were commissioned as officers.</p>
<p>Winerip continues, “The Harvard Crimson, which for decades attacked R.O.T.C., praised classmates who had joined the program. “They demonstrate a commitment to service that should be admired and followed by the rest of the student body,” The Crimson said. The Yale, Columbia and Brown student papers have all published editorials in the recent past calling for the return of R.O.T.C. to their campuses.”</p>
<p>Not only the student body of America’s elite schools but also their preferred presidential candidate endorsed university militarization. “During a campaign visit to Columbia University, Barack Obama, a favorite on the Ivy campuses, called the R.O.T.C. ban there wrong. (R.O.T.C. students at Columbia, in Manhattan, go to Fordham University or Manhattan College, both in the Bronx, for training). “The notion that young people here at Columbia, or anywhere, in any university, aren’t offered the choice, the option of participating in military service, I think is a mistake,” Mr. Obama said.”</p>
<p>Clearly, Mr. Obama was speaking for the class he serves, who refuse to participate in something so undignified as a training regimen outside their pet private universities, such as Officer Candidate School (OCS) or attending another university that offers ROTC.</p>
<p>The most shameful part of all of this rests firmly on Harvard’s leadership, who are either hiding behind a smokescreen of gay rights of who have signed on to the American government’s imperial ambitions and desire to contribute not only future intellectuals and captains of industry, but in addition, fresh cannon fodder. The official position against ROTC is now, officially, that Harvard cannot allow any organization to which open gays and lesbians are refused membership.</p>
<p>Harvard’s president, Dr. Faust, said, according to the Times, “‘Harvard commits itself to training leaders of all kinds, and we should be training leaders for the military.” She added, “We want to have students in R.O.T.C. I am the president of Harvard and I am their president and Harvard is their university. But we also have gay and lesbian students and I am their president and Harvard is their university.””</p>
<p>The campus revolts against both imperialism and the suppression of ideas and speech decades ago led to the removal of ROTC from many private universities. Now, however, the Harvard leadership and, not surprisingly, the current student body, see nothing wrong with the militarization of their environments, as long as that military is gay-friendly. It’s a classic case of the failure of liberalism: eclipsing any analysis of class with concerns for cultural and racial equality only creates a more diverse country club. If the President or Congress repealed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and gays could serve openly in the military then the only difference would be that gays too can now pilot assassination drones, wipe out wedding parties, or be shipped home in boxes labeled, “This side up.” Don’t expect the smart set from a future Harvard ROTC to change foreign policy either; that’s the job of our civilian leaders. If Harvard’s reputation of having the best and the brightest is true and if foreign policy remains the same, then the only thing we can conclude about the results of a future Harvard ROTC program is that killing will be more efficiently managed.</p>
<p>As for free speech and the free exchange of ideas, it’s a wonder how, in an institution that is supposedly a safe haven for such things, President Faust can really claim that she wants ROTC on campus. What do the Harvard students who participate in other ROTC programs think about homosexuality?</p>
<p>“As for the R.O.T.C. members, they have been trained not to answer political questions from reporters. None of the 15 interviewed would discuss their feelings about “don’t ask, don’t tell.””</p>
<p>It gets worse: “I have no personal opinion,” said Vanessa Esch, 21, a naval R.O.T.C. midshipman who graduated from M.I.T. in June. “I was politically active in high school but as I got closer to serve, I got away from the nitty-gritty of these issues. My professionalism as an officer depends on not giving answers to those kinds of questions. The commander-in-chief does that.”</p>
<p>What a disgrace. In the halls of Higher Learning walk students who look like everyone else (except when in uniform) but are, in fact, professionally silent citizens. A program which requires that its members trump integrity with professionalism is desired keenly by President Faust, as long as gay students be given the same “privilege”.</p>
<p>Justification for this resides in that enduring platitude, “serving one’s country”. But does the “country” in that formula equal, in practice, the people? Clearly not. The US military’s own scholars study exactly what constitutes the “country” the military serves. Dr. Stephen Blank, professor of National Security Studies at the US Army War College, in a paper titled The Strategic Importance of Central Asia: An American View, describes the post-9/11 military actions against terrorists and their potential hosts as only “second” to the task of securing the natural resources of Central Asia for billion dollar corporations:</p>
<p>…important interests for the United States are based on what might be termed an “open door” or “equal access” policy for American firms seeking energy exploration, refining, and marketing. To the extent that Central Asia’s large energy holdings are monopolized by Russia due mainly to the dearth of pipelines, regional governments are not able to exercise effective economic or foreign policy independence. Therefore, energy access on equal terms with America or other western nations is closely linked to the overarching objective of safeguarding the independence, sovereignty, and prospects for development of these nations and their economies. Again, it is Washington, not Moscow or Beijing, that champions the economic and political freedom of these states.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the leitmotif of US energy policy has been focused on fostering the development of multiple pipelines and links to foreign consumers and producers of energy, one recent example including electricity to India. Central Asian energy states recognize that their security and prosperity are inextricably linked to the diversification of pipelines; a goal placing US and Central Asian interests in harmony. Washington has continuously sought the prevention of a Russian energy monopoly related to oil and has received considerable support from other nations in the global oil market. Unfortunately, America has not achieved as much success with regard to the natural gas market. At the same time America has sought to isolate Iran from inroads into Central Asian energy by urging various nations to build pipelines bypassing that country and by placing sanctions against those countries and firms that would trade with Iran.</p>
<p>Anyone able to read can between those lines. Dr. Blank is no doubt correct about the heavy handedness of the Russians and the Chinese. What he fails to elaborate on is the the definition of “economic and political freedom” of which the US is such a champion. The people of Central Asia can only be free and happy by handing over their natural resources to giant American firms. Venerating Corporate America as the Mediatrix of all Political Graces is the official religion of US foreign policy. Only megalomaniacal narcissism explains the psychopathology of the ruling class who not only send armies abroad to acquire other peoples’ natural wealth, but also believe this to be an act of charity that only they can provide. Proposing that a people own their own resources is an intolerable effrontery, as the case of Mohammed Mossedegh proves. Prime Minister of Iran until 1953, Mossedegh attempted to nationalize the Iranian oil industry which had been under the control of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now known as British Petroleum (BP), a transgression for which he was overthrown during the successful execution of Operation Ajax, the CIA’s orchestrated coup. The “freedom” for which American armies fight is the freedom to work for Corporate America and its Washington tools. Additionally, this is a job that you can’t quit without facing serious punishments, just take a look at that last line about Iran above from Dr. Blank who continues to clarify American goals in Central Asia:</p>
<p>While Washington admittedly seeks energy access for US firms on a competitive basis, it knows full well that it cannot completely supplant Russian or Chinese interests in the region. Rather, in keeping with the geopolitical imperative of preventing any imperial revival in Eurasia, America simply wants to prevent Russia or any other foreign power from dominating Central Asian energy markets.</p>
<p>If images of bombs and blood from an expanding theater of war look to you like imperialism, then the American ruling class would like you to think of US policy as a bit like Magritte’s Pipe: this is not an “imperial revival”. Only the images, the sounds, and the smells are the same. Other than that, claim the ruling class, it’s totally different and totally justified, good, and valorous.</p>
<p>Colleges like Harvard banned ROTC in protest of precisely this rapacious aggression. Now, however, Harvard laments its lack of ROTC and seems poised to reintroduce it if only President Obama would repeal the technicality of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, allowing for an inclusive and properly diverse killing machine.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s not so surprising. Recently, 80% of the students at Harvard Business School declined to sign a voluntary “M.B.A. Oath” which would have pledged them to outlandish activities such as “pursue my work in an ethical manner”. Meanwhile, the professors and visiting lecturers at Harvard’s JFK School of Government who have any real political influence ask deep questions like, “Should we send more troops or should we send a lot more troops?” The JFK School of Government and Harvard Business School are, respectively, the American empire’s Schools of War and Capitalism. It’s sad but fitting that ROTC might officially return to campus since the university actively supports the imperial project outlined by the military’s own academics. It’s also sad to see some of the most privileged and capable young people in America sign up for the undertaking. Can we honestly tell ourselves that people at a place with the intellectual reputation of Harvard’s have been fooled into thinking that “serving one’s country” meant something else? Can people at a place like Harvard claim ignorance about America’s wars being an enterprise for corporate profits? Most of the world’s peoples belong to the have-nots and we, the haves, make unending war on them to keep it that way. Didn’t you know that, soldier?</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, jokes were made about this or that politician being, “the Senator for Standard Oil” whenever it was abundantly clear that a public servant represented the interests of big business, such as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, over those of the people. In the future, as the real nature of American war dawns on more and more people, we might look at ROTC cadets at a place like Harvard, whose students have all the options and opportunities of the world, and say there go the Soldiers from Standard Oil.</p>
<p>BRIAN GALLAGHER can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p />
|
The Soldiers From Standard Oil
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2009/11/05/the-soldiers-from-standard-oil/
|
2009-11-05
| 4left
|
The Soldiers From Standard Oil
<p>In a glowing and laudatory report on college students who join the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at nearby schools while enrolled at prestigious universities from whence ROTC was banned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the New York Times has eased the way for colleges such as Harvard to ditch their ROTC ban and become in practice, not just in theory, fully supportive of the US government’s militarized foreign policy.</p>
<p>The New York Times ( <a href="" type="internal">The ROTC Dilemma</a>) presents us with the travails of Harvard undergrads who have to rise at 4:45am and shave then drive or jog across the beloved and revered (no matter how compromised) River Charles in order to reach Boston University, where, “under a system developed by the military that allows host universities to serve nearby campuses”(NYT 10/26/09), they may be trained as officers ready to serve the interests of their country’s leadership. The car used for this daily trip costs between $250 to $300 a month to maintain, the Times also lets us know, as if the civilians of Cambridge and Boston get a discount.</p>
<p>“It’s worse at Yale,” laments the Times’ author, Michael Winerip, who reports that there anyone wanting to be in ROTC must endure a 90 minute drive to UConn and request class notes from a friend. Winerip notes that this June, only 8 ROTC members will graduate while a half century ago, in 1959, 121 seniors were commissioned as officers.</p>
<p>Winerip continues, “The Harvard Crimson, which for decades attacked R.O.T.C., praised classmates who had joined the program. “They demonstrate a commitment to service that should be admired and followed by the rest of the student body,” The Crimson said. The Yale, Columbia and Brown student papers have all published editorials in the recent past calling for the return of R.O.T.C. to their campuses.”</p>
<p>Not only the student body of America’s elite schools but also their preferred presidential candidate endorsed university militarization. “During a campaign visit to Columbia University, Barack Obama, a favorite on the Ivy campuses, called the R.O.T.C. ban there wrong. (R.O.T.C. students at Columbia, in Manhattan, go to Fordham University or Manhattan College, both in the Bronx, for training). “The notion that young people here at Columbia, or anywhere, in any university, aren’t offered the choice, the option of participating in military service, I think is a mistake,” Mr. Obama said.”</p>
<p>Clearly, Mr. Obama was speaking for the class he serves, who refuse to participate in something so undignified as a training regimen outside their pet private universities, such as Officer Candidate School (OCS) or attending another university that offers ROTC.</p>
<p>The most shameful part of all of this rests firmly on Harvard’s leadership, who are either hiding behind a smokescreen of gay rights of who have signed on to the American government’s imperial ambitions and desire to contribute not only future intellectuals and captains of industry, but in addition, fresh cannon fodder. The official position against ROTC is now, officially, that Harvard cannot allow any organization to which open gays and lesbians are refused membership.</p>
<p>Harvard’s president, Dr. Faust, said, according to the Times, “‘Harvard commits itself to training leaders of all kinds, and we should be training leaders for the military.” She added, “We want to have students in R.O.T.C. I am the president of Harvard and I am their president and Harvard is their university. But we also have gay and lesbian students and I am their president and Harvard is their university.””</p>
<p>The campus revolts against both imperialism and the suppression of ideas and speech decades ago led to the removal of ROTC from many private universities. Now, however, the Harvard leadership and, not surprisingly, the current student body, see nothing wrong with the militarization of their environments, as long as that military is gay-friendly. It’s a classic case of the failure of liberalism: eclipsing any analysis of class with concerns for cultural and racial equality only creates a more diverse country club. If the President or Congress repealed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and gays could serve openly in the military then the only difference would be that gays too can now pilot assassination drones, wipe out wedding parties, or be shipped home in boxes labeled, “This side up.” Don’t expect the smart set from a future Harvard ROTC to change foreign policy either; that’s the job of our civilian leaders. If Harvard’s reputation of having the best and the brightest is true and if foreign policy remains the same, then the only thing we can conclude about the results of a future Harvard ROTC program is that killing will be more efficiently managed.</p>
<p>As for free speech and the free exchange of ideas, it’s a wonder how, in an institution that is supposedly a safe haven for such things, President Faust can really claim that she wants ROTC on campus. What do the Harvard students who participate in other ROTC programs think about homosexuality?</p>
<p>“As for the R.O.T.C. members, they have been trained not to answer political questions from reporters. None of the 15 interviewed would discuss their feelings about “don’t ask, don’t tell.””</p>
<p>It gets worse: “I have no personal opinion,” said Vanessa Esch, 21, a naval R.O.T.C. midshipman who graduated from M.I.T. in June. “I was politically active in high school but as I got closer to serve, I got away from the nitty-gritty of these issues. My professionalism as an officer depends on not giving answers to those kinds of questions. The commander-in-chief does that.”</p>
<p>What a disgrace. In the halls of Higher Learning walk students who look like everyone else (except when in uniform) but are, in fact, professionally silent citizens. A program which requires that its members trump integrity with professionalism is desired keenly by President Faust, as long as gay students be given the same “privilege”.</p>
<p>Justification for this resides in that enduring platitude, “serving one’s country”. But does the “country” in that formula equal, in practice, the people? Clearly not. The US military’s own scholars study exactly what constitutes the “country” the military serves. Dr. Stephen Blank, professor of National Security Studies at the US Army War College, in a paper titled The Strategic Importance of Central Asia: An American View, describes the post-9/11 military actions against terrorists and their potential hosts as only “second” to the task of securing the natural resources of Central Asia for billion dollar corporations:</p>
<p>…important interests for the United States are based on what might be termed an “open door” or “equal access” policy for American firms seeking energy exploration, refining, and marketing. To the extent that Central Asia’s large energy holdings are monopolized by Russia due mainly to the dearth of pipelines, regional governments are not able to exercise effective economic or foreign policy independence. Therefore, energy access on equal terms with America or other western nations is closely linked to the overarching objective of safeguarding the independence, sovereignty, and prospects for development of these nations and their economies. Again, it is Washington, not Moscow or Beijing, that champions the economic and political freedom of these states.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the leitmotif of US energy policy has been focused on fostering the development of multiple pipelines and links to foreign consumers and producers of energy, one recent example including electricity to India. Central Asian energy states recognize that their security and prosperity are inextricably linked to the diversification of pipelines; a goal placing US and Central Asian interests in harmony. Washington has continuously sought the prevention of a Russian energy monopoly related to oil and has received considerable support from other nations in the global oil market. Unfortunately, America has not achieved as much success with regard to the natural gas market. At the same time America has sought to isolate Iran from inroads into Central Asian energy by urging various nations to build pipelines bypassing that country and by placing sanctions against those countries and firms that would trade with Iran.</p>
<p>Anyone able to read can between those lines. Dr. Blank is no doubt correct about the heavy handedness of the Russians and the Chinese. What he fails to elaborate on is the the definition of “economic and political freedom” of which the US is such a champion. The people of Central Asia can only be free and happy by handing over their natural resources to giant American firms. Venerating Corporate America as the Mediatrix of all Political Graces is the official religion of US foreign policy. Only megalomaniacal narcissism explains the psychopathology of the ruling class who not only send armies abroad to acquire other peoples’ natural wealth, but also believe this to be an act of charity that only they can provide. Proposing that a people own their own resources is an intolerable effrontery, as the case of Mohammed Mossedegh proves. Prime Minister of Iran until 1953, Mossedegh attempted to nationalize the Iranian oil industry which had been under the control of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now known as British Petroleum (BP), a transgression for which he was overthrown during the successful execution of Operation Ajax, the CIA’s orchestrated coup. The “freedom” for which American armies fight is the freedom to work for Corporate America and its Washington tools. Additionally, this is a job that you can’t quit without facing serious punishments, just take a look at that last line about Iran above from Dr. Blank who continues to clarify American goals in Central Asia:</p>
<p>While Washington admittedly seeks energy access for US firms on a competitive basis, it knows full well that it cannot completely supplant Russian or Chinese interests in the region. Rather, in keeping with the geopolitical imperative of preventing any imperial revival in Eurasia, America simply wants to prevent Russia or any other foreign power from dominating Central Asian energy markets.</p>
<p>If images of bombs and blood from an expanding theater of war look to you like imperialism, then the American ruling class would like you to think of US policy as a bit like Magritte’s Pipe: this is not an “imperial revival”. Only the images, the sounds, and the smells are the same. Other than that, claim the ruling class, it’s totally different and totally justified, good, and valorous.</p>
<p>Colleges like Harvard banned ROTC in protest of precisely this rapacious aggression. Now, however, Harvard laments its lack of ROTC and seems poised to reintroduce it if only President Obama would repeal the technicality of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, allowing for an inclusive and properly diverse killing machine.</p>
<p>Perhaps it’s not so surprising. Recently, 80% of the students at Harvard Business School declined to sign a voluntary “M.B.A. Oath” which would have pledged them to outlandish activities such as “pursue my work in an ethical manner”. Meanwhile, the professors and visiting lecturers at Harvard’s JFK School of Government who have any real political influence ask deep questions like, “Should we send more troops or should we send a lot more troops?” The JFK School of Government and Harvard Business School are, respectively, the American empire’s Schools of War and Capitalism. It’s sad but fitting that ROTC might officially return to campus since the university actively supports the imperial project outlined by the military’s own academics. It’s also sad to see some of the most privileged and capable young people in America sign up for the undertaking. Can we honestly tell ourselves that people at a place with the intellectual reputation of Harvard’s have been fooled into thinking that “serving one’s country” meant something else? Can people at a place like Harvard claim ignorance about America’s wars being an enterprise for corporate profits? Most of the world’s peoples belong to the have-nots and we, the haves, make unending war on them to keep it that way. Didn’t you know that, soldier?</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, jokes were made about this or that politician being, “the Senator for Standard Oil” whenever it was abundantly clear that a public servant represented the interests of big business, such as Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, over those of the people. In the future, as the real nature of American war dawns on more and more people, we might look at ROTC cadets at a place like Harvard, whose students have all the options and opportunities of the world, and say there go the Soldiers from Standard Oil.</p>
<p>BRIAN GALLAGHER can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p />
| 7,320 |
<p>The newest numbers are staggering.</p>
<p>A decade of Democrat-engineered Obamacare will increase budget deficits by $1 trillion and cost the economy the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs, the <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45010-Outlook2014.pdf" type="external">Congressional Budget Office reported</a> Tuesday.</p>
<p>Photo: Politico</p>
<p><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/197365-cbo-o-care-slowing-growth" type="external">According to The Hill</a>, the new estimated job loss thanks to President Obama's "signature" achievement is three times higher than the CBO's previous estimate of 800,000 jobs lost.</p>
<p>That should be sobering news for Democrat mouthpieces like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee keeps repeating that Obamacare is something Democrats will be bragging about come November.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Coke's "un-American" Super Bowl ad sparks instant, intense outrage</a></p>
<p>The higher number is a combination of employers offering few working hours - to avoid expense of providing the health insurance required for all employees who work more than 30 hours a week, and people choosing not to work because the benefits from the government outweigh what they could get from working, according to The Hill.</p>
<p>"All our analysis led us to conclude the effects of [Obamacare] on labor force participation would be a good deal larger than we had though originally," CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said, according to The Hill.</p>
<p>"Fundamentally, the Affordable Care Act provides subsidies to lower income people and those subsidies phase out - that will have some effects on discouraging labor supply."</p>
<p>In other words, as <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/cbo-obamacare-2-million/2014/02/04/id/550803?promo_code=12CCC-1&amp;utm_source=biz%20pac%20review&amp;utm_medium=nmwidget&amp;utm_campaign=widgetphase1" type="external">Newsmax puts it</a>, "the 2010 Affordable Care Act is driving businesses and people to choose government-sponsored benefits rather than work."</p>
<p>Most of those work hours lost will be of the low-wage, low-skilled variety held by just the people Democrats claim to care so much about. According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cbo-botched-health-care-law-rollout-will-reduce-signups-by-1-million-people/2014/02/04/c78577d0-8dac-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html," type="external">the Washington Post</a> "low-wage workers are the most likely to drop out of the workforce as a result of the law," meaning they're not going to have any prospects of moving up in income.</p>
<p>Photo: <a href="http://patdollard.com/2013/10/paul-ryan-declares-war-on-ted-cruz-tea-party/" type="external">Patdollard.com</a></p>
<p>In a statement, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the CBO report is the latest wakeup call for a country saddled with a Democrat dream that's turning predictably nightmarish.</p>
<p>"This costly law is not only pushing government spending to new heights, it is disrupting coverage and leaving millions of Americans worse off. CBO says the law will push 2.3 million people out of the workforce and will insure far fewer people than previously expected," he said.</p>
<p>"We can't afford more of the same. Today's report is an important reminder that the debt won't take care of itself - we must take action."</p>
<p>That action should start in November.</p>
|
CBO reports a nightmare for America; Obamacare to cost US 2.5 million jobs
| true |
http://bizpacreview.com/2014/02/04/cbo-reports-a-nightmare-for-america-obamacare-to-cost-us-2-5-million-jobs-98703
|
2014-02-04
| 0right
|
CBO reports a nightmare for America; Obamacare to cost US 2.5 million jobs
<p>The newest numbers are staggering.</p>
<p>A decade of Democrat-engineered Obamacare will increase budget deficits by $1 trillion and cost the economy the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs, the <a href="http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45010-Outlook2014.pdf" type="external">Congressional Budget Office reported</a> Tuesday.</p>
<p>Photo: Politico</p>
<p><a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/197365-cbo-o-care-slowing-growth" type="external">According to The Hill</a>, the new estimated job loss thanks to President Obama's "signature" achievement is three times higher than the CBO's previous estimate of 800,000 jobs lost.</p>
<p>That should be sobering news for Democrat mouthpieces like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., who as chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee keeps repeating that Obamacare is something Democrats will be bragging about come November.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Coke's "un-American" Super Bowl ad sparks instant, intense outrage</a></p>
<p>The higher number is a combination of employers offering few working hours - to avoid expense of providing the health insurance required for all employees who work more than 30 hours a week, and people choosing not to work because the benefits from the government outweigh what they could get from working, according to The Hill.</p>
<p>"All our analysis led us to conclude the effects of [Obamacare] on labor force participation would be a good deal larger than we had though originally," CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said, according to The Hill.</p>
<p>"Fundamentally, the Affordable Care Act provides subsidies to lower income people and those subsidies phase out - that will have some effects on discouraging labor supply."</p>
<p>In other words, as <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/cbo-obamacare-2-million/2014/02/04/id/550803?promo_code=12CCC-1&amp;utm_source=biz%20pac%20review&amp;utm_medium=nmwidget&amp;utm_campaign=widgetphase1" type="external">Newsmax puts it</a>, "the 2010 Affordable Care Act is driving businesses and people to choose government-sponsored benefits rather than work."</p>
<p>Most of those work hours lost will be of the low-wage, low-skilled variety held by just the people Democrats claim to care so much about. According to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/cbo-botched-health-care-law-rollout-will-reduce-signups-by-1-million-people/2014/02/04/c78577d0-8dac-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html," type="external">the Washington Post</a> "low-wage workers are the most likely to drop out of the workforce as a result of the law," meaning they're not going to have any prospects of moving up in income.</p>
<p>Photo: <a href="http://patdollard.com/2013/10/paul-ryan-declares-war-on-ted-cruz-tea-party/" type="external">Patdollard.com</a></p>
<p>In a statement, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the CBO report is the latest wakeup call for a country saddled with a Democrat dream that's turning predictably nightmarish.</p>
<p>"This costly law is not only pushing government spending to new heights, it is disrupting coverage and leaving millions of Americans worse off. CBO says the law will push 2.3 million people out of the workforce and will insure far fewer people than previously expected," he said.</p>
<p>"We can't afford more of the same. Today's report is an important reminder that the debt won't take care of itself - we must take action."</p>
<p>That action should start in November.</p>
| 7,321 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>BERLIN — German police say a Humboldt penguin has been stolen out of its cage from a zoo in the southwestern city of Mannheim, and zookeepers say the bird could easily die if it’s not returned soon.</p>
<p>Zookeepers noticed the penguin missing during a routine count Saturday of the South American birds, the dpa news agency reported Monday.</p>
<p>After a search of the grounds, zoo personnel were unable to find any signs that the flight-less penguin, which is 50 centimeters (20 inches) tall and weighs 5 kilograms (11 pounds), escaped. They concluded it was stolen.</p>
<p>The bird has a number 53 on its wing and an implanted chip to identify it.</p>
<p>Zookeepers are pleading for the return of the bird, saying that without its special diet and controlled environment it will not survive.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Humboldt penguin is stolen from German zoo; keepers fearful
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/948999/humboldt-penguin-stolen-from-zoo-in-german-city-of-mannheim.html
|
2017-02-13
| 2least
|
Humboldt penguin is stolen from German zoo; keepers fearful
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>BERLIN — German police say a Humboldt penguin has been stolen out of its cage from a zoo in the southwestern city of Mannheim, and zookeepers say the bird could easily die if it’s not returned soon.</p>
<p>Zookeepers noticed the penguin missing during a routine count Saturday of the South American birds, the dpa news agency reported Monday.</p>
<p>After a search of the grounds, zoo personnel were unable to find any signs that the flight-less penguin, which is 50 centimeters (20 inches) tall and weighs 5 kilograms (11 pounds), escaped. They concluded it was stolen.</p>
<p>The bird has a number 53 on its wing and an implanted chip to identify it.</p>
<p>Zookeepers are pleading for the return of the bird, saying that without its special diet and controlled environment it will not survive.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,322 |
<p>In a special report, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html" type="external">The Washington Post said</a> that papers found in Osama bin Laden's compound indicated that he was plotting attacks on President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.</p>
<p>The plan would have involved organizing special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack aircrafts carrying the President and Gen. Petraeus. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html" type="external">Bin Laden said</a>, "The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency. - Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour - and killing him would alter the war's path."</p>
<p>Officials from the Obama administration said on Friday that the plot was never considered a serious threat.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan/120316/afghan-prison-rebuked-vaginal-searches" type="external">Afghan prison rebuked for vaginal searches</a></p>
<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/papers-show-osama-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama-and-david-petraeus/" type="external">ABC News confirmed</a> the papers and a national security official downplayed the plot, telling ABC that bin Laden wanted to kill as many innocent people as possible. The official said, "Al Qaeda's capabilities did not match bin Laden's intent. Leading up to and since bin Laden's death we know that Al Qaeda's capacity to pull off those types of complex attacks has been greatly diminished, and that bin Laden himself spent much of his time brooding and providing guidance that often fell on deaf ears."</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan/120316/afghan-massacre-suspect-was-drinking-reports-s" type="external">Afghan massacre suspect was drinking, reports say</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html" type="external">According to The Post</a>, bin Laden wrote to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman that he was hoping Ilyas Kashmiri could carry out the attacks. Kashimiri was killed in a drone attack a month after bin Laden's death.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/9149000/Osama-bin-Laden-ordered-al-Qaeda-to-kill-Barack-Obama-and-David-Petraeus.html" type="external">The Telegraph also reported</a> that bin Laden was concerned with Al Qaeda's image. He noted that the Obama administration's reframing of the war from a "war on terror" to a war against Al Qaeda had damaged its image among Muslims. The group was apparently hoping to launch an attack on the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/120312/burma-economy-myanmar-sanctions" type="external">Promises, pitfalls await investors in Burma's frontier economy</a></p>
|
Osama bin Laden plotted to kill President Obama
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2012-03-16/osama-bin-laden-plotted-kill-president-obama
|
2012-03-16
| 3left-center
|
Osama bin Laden plotted to kill President Obama
<p>In a special report, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html" type="external">The Washington Post said</a> that papers found in Osama bin Laden's compound indicated that he was plotting attacks on President Barack Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.</p>
<p>The plan would have involved organizing special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack aircrafts carrying the President and Gen. Petraeus. <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html" type="external">Bin Laden said</a>, "The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency. - Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour - and killing him would alter the war's path."</p>
<p>Officials from the Obama administration said on Friday that the plot was never considered a serious threat.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan/120316/afghan-prison-rebuked-vaginal-searches" type="external">Afghan prison rebuked for vaginal searches</a></p>
<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/papers-show-osama-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama-and-david-petraeus/" type="external">ABC News confirmed</a> the papers and a national security official downplayed the plot, telling ABC that bin Laden wanted to kill as many innocent people as possible. The official said, "Al Qaeda's capabilities did not match bin Laden's intent. Leading up to and since bin Laden's death we know that Al Qaeda's capacity to pull off those types of complex attacks has been greatly diminished, and that bin Laden himself spent much of his time brooding and providing guidance that often fell on deaf ears."</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/afghanistan/120316/afghan-massacre-suspect-was-drinking-reports-s" type="external">Afghan massacre suspect was drinking, reports say</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bin-laden-plot-to-kill-president-obama/2012/03/16/gIQAwN5RGS_story.html" type="external">According to The Post</a>, bin Laden wrote to Atiyah Abd al-Rahman that he was hoping Ilyas Kashmiri could carry out the attacks. Kashimiri was killed in a drone attack a month after bin Laden's death.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/9149000/Osama-bin-Laden-ordered-al-Qaeda-to-kill-Barack-Obama-and-David-Petraeus.html" type="external">The Telegraph also reported</a> that bin Laden was concerned with Al Qaeda's image. He noted that the Obama administration's reframing of the war from a "war on terror" to a war against Al Qaeda had damaged its image among Muslims. The group was apparently hoping to launch an attack on the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.</p>
<p>More on GlobalPost: <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/120312/burma-economy-myanmar-sanctions" type="external">Promises, pitfalls await investors in Burma's frontier economy</a></p>
| 7,323 |
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“Equal rights for all; special privileges for none.”</p>
<p>“Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable . . . the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.”</p>
<p>“[The purpose of representative government is] to curb the excesses of the monied interests.”</p>
<p>“The influence over government must be shared among the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates in the ultimate authority, the government will be safe; because the corrupting of the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth.”</p>
<p>“Peace, then, has been our principle, peace is our interest, and peace has saved to the world this only plant of free and rational government now existing in it.”</p>
<p>“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”</p>
<p>— Thomas Jefferson</p>
<p>You asked for a treatise to explain my support for the “lunatic” Ron Paul. Since you asked, I’ll send you some thoughts.</p>
<p>Why should Americans left-of-center–with commitments to peace, justice, and democracy–see Congressman Paul as a real option rather than as a right-wing wacko? That’s the question. Several years ago, I was hoping that Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) would run for president in 2008. He’s a principled statesman with a consistent record of opposition to war and empire, and support for democracy and civil liberties. He also has the potential to reach beyond his base of liberal Democrats to conservatives and libertarians with his stance on government frugality and bureaucratic waste. So, I was excited about a Feingold candidacy until he bowed out of the race.</p>
<p>Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) did not appeal to very many voters in 2004 and he is repeating that dismal showing in 2008. Part of his problem was his flip-flop on abortion when he entered the ’04 race. A principled pro-choicer like Feingold and a principled pro-lifer like Paul can earn respect from a wide range of people, but it’s hard to admire someone who jumped from pro-life to pro-choice seemingly as a matter of political convenience. As if the Democratic power brokers would ever consent to the nomination of Kucinich, regardless of how enthusiastic he becomes for “reproductive freedom”! So, from the get-go, Kucinich hobbled his efforts by undercutting his strongest selling point: his integrity.</p>
<p>My favorite candidate for the ’08 Democratic presidential nomination is Mike Gravel, former U.S. Senator from Alaska. But Gravel, like Kucinich, is treated as a joke by the mainstream media, has not raised substantial money, and languishes at the bottom of the polls. Thomas Jefferson was not perfect, but the founder of the Democratic Party had a platform that is not only remarkably good but still applicable and popular in 21st century America. Leavened with the racial egalitarianism of King, Abernathy, and Hamer, the Jeffersonian platform could be used by politicians for electoral success and wise policy.</p>
<p>Senator Feingold and Representative Paul, who have often voted together on major issues of the day despite being tagged as a “liberal Democrat” and “conservative Republican,” are examples of modern Jeffersonians. Senator Gravel is the most Jeffersonian candidate running among the Democrats this year, but he has failed to catch on with a wide portion of the citizenry. That’s where Ron Paul comes in.</p>
<p>Not only does Ron Paul represent Jeffersonian values usually termed “conservative” or “libertarian” today (fidelity to the Constitution, frugal government, states’ rights, Second Amendment, national sovereignty), but he is also a leading example of support for Jeffersonian positions nowadays described as “liberal” or “leftist” (e.g. opposition not only to the Iraq War but to war in general, anti-imperialism, ending the federal war on drugs, hostility to the Patriot Act and other violations of civil liberties). This accounts for the wide appeal of the Paul campaign. It’s precisely the sort of trans-ideological, cross-generational populist-libertarian-moralist coalition that I was hoping to see with a Feingold presidential campaign.</p>
<p>If we stipulate that a candidate polling at least 5% in national polls is a “major candidate,” there is simply no other major candidate in 2008 who is more Jeffersonian, more committed to peace, justice, and democracy, than Ron Paul. He puts pretenders like Edwards and Obama to shame. I like a lot of what John Edwards is saying on the campaign trail today, but I don’t think he means a word of it. He’s a limousine liberal phony when it comes to the rich/poor issue. He supported the Iraq War until it became widely unpopular. He voted for the Patriot Act. He claims to be against outsourcing of American jobs but he voted for permanent normalized trade relations (MFN) for China.</p>
<p>I think Barack Obama would be much preferable to Hillary Clinton as president, but his campaign is built on glossy generalities like “hope,” “youth,” and “unity.” It’s more about style than substance. If you study what he’s had to say about foreign policy when addressing elite audiences, you see that he’s not much different from Clinton and the DLC crowd. He’s in the mainstream of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and its perpetual commitment to empire and globalization. Even his strongest selling point for the left–his opposition to the Iraq War in 2002-03–is suspect upon close examination. In his October 2002 speech, he told the anti-war crowd FOUR times that he was not opposed “to all wars.” He summed up his philosophy by saying, “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” There is nothing about war in general that is offensive to Obama. He objected to the Iraq War only on strategic grounds, not ethical grounds.</p>
<p>Referring to the U.S. Senate authorization vote of 2002, in July 2004, Obama told the New York Times, “What would I have done? I don’t know.” Asked about the pro-war votes of Kerry and Edwards, Obama told NPR, “I don’t consider that to have been an easy decision, and certainly, I wasn’t in the position to actually cast a vote on it. I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision.” Not exactly a stunning statement of the peace position! Obama told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in November 2006, “We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. 9/11 showed us that try as we might to ignore the rest of the world, our enemies will no longer ignore us. And so we need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world.” So 9/11 occurred during a period in our history when we were minding our own business (practicing “isolationism”)? That’s a novel explanation of events!</p>
<p>In April 2007, Obama told the CCGA, “I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so.” Spoken like a true neoconservative. This messianic imperialism continues throughout the speech: “In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. . . . World opinion has turned against us. And after all the lives lost and the billions of dollars spent, many Americans may find it tempting to turn inward, and cede our claim of leadership in world affairs. I insist, however, that such an abandonment of our leadership is a mistake we must not make. . . . We must lead the world, by deed and example.”</p>
<p>Obama even endorsed the Persian Gulf War of 1991, a bloodletting that had nothing to do with U.S. national security: “No President should ever hesitate to use force–unilaterally if necessary–to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened. But when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others–the kind of burden-sharing and support President George H.W. Bush mustered before he launched Operation Desert Storm.”</p>
<p>In contrast to Obama’s narrow and perhaps opportunistic reasons for opposing the Iraq War, Ron Paul has consistently opposed every U.S. military intervention since the 1970s. He’s the only major candidate who openly speaks out against the American empire and imperialism. Can you even imagine Hillary Clinton or John Edwards using the e-word or the i-word? Not in connection with our own government! When it comes to foreign policy, Ron Paul sounds as radical as Noam Chomsky. In fact, Paul is more radical because he refused to vote for Bush in 2004 while Chomsky was willing to vote for Kerry over a real anti-empire candidate like Nader. Paul not only talks the talk; he walks the walk. Yet he’s more acceptable to Middle America than someone like Chomsky or Howard Zinn because he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1960s and he has an obvious patriotism that makes him less vulnerable to the “hate-America” smear.</p>
<p>Ron Paul is the only major contender who calls for cutting off the billions of dollars of foreign aid we give to the Israeli government each year (and all other foreign aid as well, including the money going to Egypt and Colombia). None of the “progressive” Democrats care about justice for the Palestinians or dare to question the power of the pro-Israeli-government lobby. Congressman Paul does. None of the leading Democrats voted against the Iraq War or the Patriot Act. Paul voted against both. All of the leading Democrats have voted time and again to fund the war in Iraq, thereby ceding the only power they have to end the war. Paul has always voted against Defense Department appropriations which include funding for the war. Unlike leading Democrats in the Clinton-Gore-Kerry tradition, Ron Paul opposes the death penalty because he believes in the sanctity of life.</p>
<p>Only Ron Paul funds his campaign without the assistance of PACs and the corporate rich. There is simply no other Democrat, including John Edwards, who has an equal record when it comes to relying on grassroots support, opposing plutocratic policies, and earning the enmity of Big Business. This is why the Wall Street Journal and FOX News detest the “Ron Paul Revolution.” The revolution includes stripping the overprivileged of many of their political and economic privileges. While the Manhattan-K Street-Hollywood crowd disdain Paul, supporters working on his behalf raise $6 million in a single day from the “common people” (average contribution: $100). If that’s not democracy at work, I don’t know what it is.</p>
<p>Ron Paul opposes both the warfare state and the welfare state. The welfare state includes much-publicized handouts to poor people (although far fewer than in the past, thanks to the Bill Clinton-Newt Gingrich gutting of AFDC), but even more importantly it includes middle-class entitlements and billions in taxpayer giveaways to the wealthy. Paul’s opposition to NAFTA and GATT is motivated not only by his belief in national sovereignty, but also by his suspicion of cozy deals between Big Government and Big Business.</p>
<p>Ron Paul does not play favorites. He wants to end corporate welfare across the board. His monetary policy of using sound, constitutional money would help the poor by curtailing the hidden “inflation tax.” A Paul effort to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and other manifestations of federal big government would make special interest lobbies unhappy but they would not hurt poor or average citizens. On the contrary, it would free up money and power to deal with problems at the state and local levels. Lower levels of government have been far more “progressive” than the feds in most policy areas over the years, in things ranging from corporate regulation to health policy to medicinal use of marijuana.</p>
<p>Ron Paul is not perfect as either a candidate or a policy maker. I don’t agree with him on everything. He has a few personal flaws and weaknesses. He has some disreputable supporters (e.g., racists and anti-Semites who like his opposition to globalization and plutocracy). As I write in my book, in contrasting the mainstream media’s depiction of politicians like John Kerry to more genuine liberals like Cynthia McKinney, “The disingenuous nature of their careers and campaigns is politely ignored while the flaws, real and imagined, of party mavericks are trumpeted by the smug talking heads and the frothy news magazines.” (p. 256) As with possible Green Party candidate McKinney, Paul’s real and imagined flaws are in the process of being magnified by the mainstream media as his popularity rises.</p>
<p>Journalists with the corporate press are enthusiasts of war, empire, global capitalism, political correctness, Leviathan statism, and other respectable projects of the Power Elite. Such things are the antithesis of Ron Paul. If you’re forming your opinion of Paul on the basis of coverage by the New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR, it’s not surprising that you think he’s a “lunatic.” If you listen carefully, you’ll “learn” that he’s not only a lunatic, but a dangerous “racist lunatic.” It’s not true, but the truth is irrelevant when the special interests of the wealthy and powerful are threatened.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a principled leftist like Alexander Cockburn recently wrote, “Huckabee’s single rival as a genuinely interesting candidate is another Republican, Ron Paul, who set a record a few days ago, by raising $6 million in a single day. Unlike Huckabee, Paul’s core issues are opposition to the war and to George Bush’s abuse of civil liberties inscribed in the U.S. Constitution. His appeal, far more than Huckabee, is to the redneck rebel strain in American political life–the populist beast that the US two-party system is designed to suppress. On Monday night Paul was asked on Fox News about Huckabee’s Christmas ad, which shows the governor backed by a shining cross. Actually it’s the mullions of the window behind him, but the illusion is perfect. Paul said the ad reminded him of Sinclair Lewis’s line, that ‘when fascism comes to this country it will be wrapped in a flag and bearing a cross.’ In the unlikely event they had read Lewis, no other candidate would dare quote that line.” (CounterPunch, December 22/23, https://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12222007.html)</p>
<p>Even though they disagree on some policies, Cockburn can respect a Republican who publicly warns against imperialism and fascism, and who views the Constitution as a still-binding set of rules . . . instead of “just a G**-d***** piece of paper,” as George W. Bush was quoted as saying to members of Congress in 2005. (http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml)</p>
<p>I know it’s hard for many to see the possibility of any good Republican, but it’s worth remembering that the GOP heritage includes not only the plutocracy of Calvin Coolidge but also the democracy of Robert La Follette, not only the Wall Street of Thomas Dewey but also the Main Street of Robert Taft. Paul is in that La Follette-Taft tradition of anti-monopoly at home and non-intervention abroad. If the Gravel or Kucinich campaigns had caught fire during the past year, we would see some anti-war Republicans crossing party lines to support one of their candidacies as the vehicle of choice in 2008. Instead, we’re seeing some Democrats backing Paul.</p>
<p>While the stray neo-Confederate may like Ron Paul, he is also the recipient of more African American support than any other Republican. Paul is backed by both realistic veterans and idealistic pacifists, Christians and atheists, John Birchers and NORML members. It’s a kaleidoscope campaign–not of pandering or double-talking but of an honest commitment to an array of deeply held American values. Liberty and peace are popular. It’s not a cult of personality like Obama.</p>
<p>Who’s the real kook: the middle-class woman in Peoria concerned about the unconstitutional monetary system or the neoconservative in Washington who wants to remake the world in our image through the barrel of a gun? Who’s the real threat: the yahoo in Mississippi who thinks multiculturalism is destroying our traditional culture or the corporate lobbyist who buys and sells elected officials? Who’s the real isolationist: the young person who doesn’t want to tell people in other countries how to live their lives or the intellectual who turns our nation into the pariah of the world by sending Americans off to kill foreigners?</p>
<p>I don’t expect that you’ll support Ron Paul during the primary season, but I wanted you to at least understand why he could have some appeal for a three-time Nader voter such as myself. Many anti-war, pro-limited-government, grassroots democracy advocates will support Edwards, Obama, or some other mainstream candidate in the coming months, but I think we’re selling ourselves short when we do so. We may well end up with crumbs from the table in the end because that’s how the system is set up. But if we start the process by making it clear that we’ll settle for crumbs, we assure that we’ll never get anything more. Radical change will never happen because the Establishment understands that progressive voters can be taken for granted. In the end, most will fall into line behind the candidate with the (D) behind her/his name, no matter how unprogressive s/he is.</p>
<p>To me, voting for Kucinich, Gravel, McKinney, or Paul makes some sense even though they’re unlikely to win. At least we’re asking for something honest and principled during the first round of voting. Ron Paul isn’t the perfect candidate and his Jeffersonianism is not as full-bodied as I would prefer (e.g., he’s too weak on the ecological dimension), but at least he’s a step in the right direction and his ability to attract a wide range of grassroots support is commendable. He’s not the only good choice, but he’s no lunatic and there is some logic behind his campaign. It’s not everything, but it is something. In a rigged system with a populace divided by secondary issues and exploited by a bipartisan elite, it may be the best we can do in 2008.</p>
<p>The Ron Paul campaign does not represent a madness brought on by the moon. It’s closer to the truth to say it’s a hopeful manifestation of the sun shining on the political realm. It brings some clarity and accountability to government.</p>
<p>JEFF TAYLOR is a political scientist. His book <a href="" type="internal">Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy</a>was published last year&#160;by University of Missouri Press. He contributed a chapter to the book <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">A Dime’s Worth of Difference</a> (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.). For more information, see: <a href="http://www.popcorn78.blogspot.com/" type="external">http://www.popcorn78.blogspot.com</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The Left and Ron Paul
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2008/01/02/the-left-and-ron-paul/
|
2008-01-02
| 4left
|
The Left and Ron Paul
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“Equal rights for all; special privileges for none.”</p>
<p>“Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable . . . the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.”</p>
<p>“[The purpose of representative government is] to curb the excesses of the monied interests.”</p>
<p>“The influence over government must be shared among the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates in the ultimate authority, the government will be safe; because the corrupting of the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth.”</p>
<p>“Peace, then, has been our principle, peace is our interest, and peace has saved to the world this only plant of free and rational government now existing in it.”</p>
<p>“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”</p>
<p>— Thomas Jefferson</p>
<p>You asked for a treatise to explain my support for the “lunatic” Ron Paul. Since you asked, I’ll send you some thoughts.</p>
<p>Why should Americans left-of-center–with commitments to peace, justice, and democracy–see Congressman Paul as a real option rather than as a right-wing wacko? That’s the question. Several years ago, I was hoping that Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) would run for president in 2008. He’s a principled statesman with a consistent record of opposition to war and empire, and support for democracy and civil liberties. He also has the potential to reach beyond his base of liberal Democrats to conservatives and libertarians with his stance on government frugality and bureaucratic waste. So, I was excited about a Feingold candidacy until he bowed out of the race.</p>
<p>Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) did not appeal to very many voters in 2004 and he is repeating that dismal showing in 2008. Part of his problem was his flip-flop on abortion when he entered the ’04 race. A principled pro-choicer like Feingold and a principled pro-lifer like Paul can earn respect from a wide range of people, but it’s hard to admire someone who jumped from pro-life to pro-choice seemingly as a matter of political convenience. As if the Democratic power brokers would ever consent to the nomination of Kucinich, regardless of how enthusiastic he becomes for “reproductive freedom”! So, from the get-go, Kucinich hobbled his efforts by undercutting his strongest selling point: his integrity.</p>
<p>My favorite candidate for the ’08 Democratic presidential nomination is Mike Gravel, former U.S. Senator from Alaska. But Gravel, like Kucinich, is treated as a joke by the mainstream media, has not raised substantial money, and languishes at the bottom of the polls. Thomas Jefferson was not perfect, but the founder of the Democratic Party had a platform that is not only remarkably good but still applicable and popular in 21st century America. Leavened with the racial egalitarianism of King, Abernathy, and Hamer, the Jeffersonian platform could be used by politicians for electoral success and wise policy.</p>
<p>Senator Feingold and Representative Paul, who have often voted together on major issues of the day despite being tagged as a “liberal Democrat” and “conservative Republican,” are examples of modern Jeffersonians. Senator Gravel is the most Jeffersonian candidate running among the Democrats this year, but he has failed to catch on with a wide portion of the citizenry. That’s where Ron Paul comes in.</p>
<p>Not only does Ron Paul represent Jeffersonian values usually termed “conservative” or “libertarian” today (fidelity to the Constitution, frugal government, states’ rights, Second Amendment, national sovereignty), but he is also a leading example of support for Jeffersonian positions nowadays described as “liberal” or “leftist” (e.g. opposition not only to the Iraq War but to war in general, anti-imperialism, ending the federal war on drugs, hostility to the Patriot Act and other violations of civil liberties). This accounts for the wide appeal of the Paul campaign. It’s precisely the sort of trans-ideological, cross-generational populist-libertarian-moralist coalition that I was hoping to see with a Feingold presidential campaign.</p>
<p>If we stipulate that a candidate polling at least 5% in national polls is a “major candidate,” there is simply no other major candidate in 2008 who is more Jeffersonian, more committed to peace, justice, and democracy, than Ron Paul. He puts pretenders like Edwards and Obama to shame. I like a lot of what John Edwards is saying on the campaign trail today, but I don’t think he means a word of it. He’s a limousine liberal phony when it comes to the rich/poor issue. He supported the Iraq War until it became widely unpopular. He voted for the Patriot Act. He claims to be against outsourcing of American jobs but he voted for permanent normalized trade relations (MFN) for China.</p>
<p>I think Barack Obama would be much preferable to Hillary Clinton as president, but his campaign is built on glossy generalities like “hope,” “youth,” and “unity.” It’s more about style than substance. If you study what he’s had to say about foreign policy when addressing elite audiences, you see that he’s not much different from Clinton and the DLC crowd. He’s in the mainstream of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and its perpetual commitment to empire and globalization. Even his strongest selling point for the left–his opposition to the Iraq War in 2002-03–is suspect upon close examination. In his October 2002 speech, he told the anti-war crowd FOUR times that he was not opposed “to all wars.” He summed up his philosophy by saying, “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” There is nothing about war in general that is offensive to Obama. He objected to the Iraq War only on strategic grounds, not ethical grounds.</p>
<p>Referring to the U.S. Senate authorization vote of 2002, in July 2004, Obama told the New York Times, “What would I have done? I don’t know.” Asked about the pro-war votes of Kerry and Edwards, Obama told NPR, “I don’t consider that to have been an easy decision, and certainly, I wasn’t in the position to actually cast a vote on it. I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision.” Not exactly a stunning statement of the peace position! Obama told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in November 2006, “We cannot afford to be a country of isolationists right now. 9/11 showed us that try as we might to ignore the rest of the world, our enemies will no longer ignore us. And so we need to maintain a strong foreign policy, relentless in pursuing our enemies and hopeful in promoting our values around the world.” So 9/11 occurred during a period in our history when we were minding our own business (practicing “isolationism”)? That’s a novel explanation of events!</p>
<p>In April 2007, Obama told the CCGA, “I reject the notion that the American moment has passed. I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another when, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, we lead the world in battling immediate evils and promoting the ultimate good. I still believe that America is the last, best hope of Earth. We just have to show the world why this is so.” Spoken like a true neoconservative. This messianic imperialism continues throughout the speech: “In today’s globalized world, the security of the American people is inextricably linked to the security of all people. . . . World opinion has turned against us. And after all the lives lost and the billions of dollars spent, many Americans may find it tempting to turn inward, and cede our claim of leadership in world affairs. I insist, however, that such an abandonment of our leadership is a mistake we must not make. . . . We must lead the world, by deed and example.”</p>
<p>Obama even endorsed the Persian Gulf War of 1991, a bloodletting that had nothing to do with U.S. national security: “No President should ever hesitate to use force–unilaterally if necessary–to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened. But when we use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others–the kind of burden-sharing and support President George H.W. Bush mustered before he launched Operation Desert Storm.”</p>
<p>In contrast to Obama’s narrow and perhaps opportunistic reasons for opposing the Iraq War, Ron Paul has consistently opposed every U.S. military intervention since the 1970s. He’s the only major candidate who openly speaks out against the American empire and imperialism. Can you even imagine Hillary Clinton or John Edwards using the e-word or the i-word? Not in connection with our own government! When it comes to foreign policy, Ron Paul sounds as radical as Noam Chomsky. In fact, Paul is more radical because he refused to vote for Bush in 2004 while Chomsky was willing to vote for Kerry over a real anti-empire candidate like Nader. Paul not only talks the talk; he walks the walk. Yet he’s more acceptable to Middle America than someone like Chomsky or Howard Zinn because he volunteered to serve in the U.S. Air Force in the early 1960s and he has an obvious patriotism that makes him less vulnerable to the “hate-America” smear.</p>
<p>Ron Paul is the only major contender who calls for cutting off the billions of dollars of foreign aid we give to the Israeli government each year (and all other foreign aid as well, including the money going to Egypt and Colombia). None of the “progressive” Democrats care about justice for the Palestinians or dare to question the power of the pro-Israeli-government lobby. Congressman Paul does. None of the leading Democrats voted against the Iraq War or the Patriot Act. Paul voted against both. All of the leading Democrats have voted time and again to fund the war in Iraq, thereby ceding the only power they have to end the war. Paul has always voted against Defense Department appropriations which include funding for the war. Unlike leading Democrats in the Clinton-Gore-Kerry tradition, Ron Paul opposes the death penalty because he believes in the sanctity of life.</p>
<p>Only Ron Paul funds his campaign without the assistance of PACs and the corporate rich. There is simply no other Democrat, including John Edwards, who has an equal record when it comes to relying on grassroots support, opposing plutocratic policies, and earning the enmity of Big Business. This is why the Wall Street Journal and FOX News detest the “Ron Paul Revolution.” The revolution includes stripping the overprivileged of many of their political and economic privileges. While the Manhattan-K Street-Hollywood crowd disdain Paul, supporters working on his behalf raise $6 million in a single day from the “common people” (average contribution: $100). If that’s not democracy at work, I don’t know what it is.</p>
<p>Ron Paul opposes both the warfare state and the welfare state. The welfare state includes much-publicized handouts to poor people (although far fewer than in the past, thanks to the Bill Clinton-Newt Gingrich gutting of AFDC), but even more importantly it includes middle-class entitlements and billions in taxpayer giveaways to the wealthy. Paul’s opposition to NAFTA and GATT is motivated not only by his belief in national sovereignty, but also by his suspicion of cozy deals between Big Government and Big Business.</p>
<p>Ron Paul does not play favorites. He wants to end corporate welfare across the board. His monetary policy of using sound, constitutional money would help the poor by curtailing the hidden “inflation tax.” A Paul effort to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and other manifestations of federal big government would make special interest lobbies unhappy but they would not hurt poor or average citizens. On the contrary, it would free up money and power to deal with problems at the state and local levels. Lower levels of government have been far more “progressive” than the feds in most policy areas over the years, in things ranging from corporate regulation to health policy to medicinal use of marijuana.</p>
<p>Ron Paul is not perfect as either a candidate or a policy maker. I don’t agree with him on everything. He has a few personal flaws and weaknesses. He has some disreputable supporters (e.g., racists and anti-Semites who like his opposition to globalization and plutocracy). As I write in my book, in contrasting the mainstream media’s depiction of politicians like John Kerry to more genuine liberals like Cynthia McKinney, “The disingenuous nature of their careers and campaigns is politely ignored while the flaws, real and imagined, of party mavericks are trumpeted by the smug talking heads and the frothy news magazines.” (p. 256) As with possible Green Party candidate McKinney, Paul’s real and imagined flaws are in the process of being magnified by the mainstream media as his popularity rises.</p>
<p>Journalists with the corporate press are enthusiasts of war, empire, global capitalism, political correctness, Leviathan statism, and other respectable projects of the Power Elite. Such things are the antithesis of Ron Paul. If you’re forming your opinion of Paul on the basis of coverage by the New York Times, The New Yorker, and NPR, it’s not surprising that you think he’s a “lunatic.” If you listen carefully, you’ll “learn” that he’s not only a lunatic, but a dangerous “racist lunatic.” It’s not true, but the truth is irrelevant when the special interests of the wealthy and powerful are threatened.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, a principled leftist like Alexander Cockburn recently wrote, “Huckabee’s single rival as a genuinely interesting candidate is another Republican, Ron Paul, who set a record a few days ago, by raising $6 million in a single day. Unlike Huckabee, Paul’s core issues are opposition to the war and to George Bush’s abuse of civil liberties inscribed in the U.S. Constitution. His appeal, far more than Huckabee, is to the redneck rebel strain in American political life–the populist beast that the US two-party system is designed to suppress. On Monday night Paul was asked on Fox News about Huckabee’s Christmas ad, which shows the governor backed by a shining cross. Actually it’s the mullions of the window behind him, but the illusion is perfect. Paul said the ad reminded him of Sinclair Lewis’s line, that ‘when fascism comes to this country it will be wrapped in a flag and bearing a cross.’ In the unlikely event they had read Lewis, no other candidate would dare quote that line.” (CounterPunch, December 22/23, https://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12222007.html)</p>
<p>Even though they disagree on some policies, Cockburn can respect a Republican who publicly warns against imperialism and fascism, and who views the Constitution as a still-binding set of rules . . . instead of “just a G**-d***** piece of paper,” as George W. Bush was quoted as saying to members of Congress in 2005. (http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml)</p>
<p>I know it’s hard for many to see the possibility of any good Republican, but it’s worth remembering that the GOP heritage includes not only the plutocracy of Calvin Coolidge but also the democracy of Robert La Follette, not only the Wall Street of Thomas Dewey but also the Main Street of Robert Taft. Paul is in that La Follette-Taft tradition of anti-monopoly at home and non-intervention abroad. If the Gravel or Kucinich campaigns had caught fire during the past year, we would see some anti-war Republicans crossing party lines to support one of their candidacies as the vehicle of choice in 2008. Instead, we’re seeing some Democrats backing Paul.</p>
<p>While the stray neo-Confederate may like Ron Paul, he is also the recipient of more African American support than any other Republican. Paul is backed by both realistic veterans and idealistic pacifists, Christians and atheists, John Birchers and NORML members. It’s a kaleidoscope campaign–not of pandering or double-talking but of an honest commitment to an array of deeply held American values. Liberty and peace are popular. It’s not a cult of personality like Obama.</p>
<p>Who’s the real kook: the middle-class woman in Peoria concerned about the unconstitutional monetary system or the neoconservative in Washington who wants to remake the world in our image through the barrel of a gun? Who’s the real threat: the yahoo in Mississippi who thinks multiculturalism is destroying our traditional culture or the corporate lobbyist who buys and sells elected officials? Who’s the real isolationist: the young person who doesn’t want to tell people in other countries how to live their lives or the intellectual who turns our nation into the pariah of the world by sending Americans off to kill foreigners?</p>
<p>I don’t expect that you’ll support Ron Paul during the primary season, but I wanted you to at least understand why he could have some appeal for a three-time Nader voter such as myself. Many anti-war, pro-limited-government, grassroots democracy advocates will support Edwards, Obama, or some other mainstream candidate in the coming months, but I think we’re selling ourselves short when we do so. We may well end up with crumbs from the table in the end because that’s how the system is set up. But if we start the process by making it clear that we’ll settle for crumbs, we assure that we’ll never get anything more. Radical change will never happen because the Establishment understands that progressive voters can be taken for granted. In the end, most will fall into line behind the candidate with the (D) behind her/his name, no matter how unprogressive s/he is.</p>
<p>To me, voting for Kucinich, Gravel, McKinney, or Paul makes some sense even though they’re unlikely to win. At least we’re asking for something honest and principled during the first round of voting. Ron Paul isn’t the perfect candidate and his Jeffersonianism is not as full-bodied as I would prefer (e.g., he’s too weak on the ecological dimension), but at least he’s a step in the right direction and his ability to attract a wide range of grassroots support is commendable. He’s not the only good choice, but he’s no lunatic and there is some logic behind his campaign. It’s not everything, but it is something. In a rigged system with a populace divided by secondary issues and exploited by a bipartisan elite, it may be the best we can do in 2008.</p>
<p>The Ron Paul campaign does not represent a madness brought on by the moon. It’s closer to the truth to say it’s a hopeful manifestation of the sun shining on the political realm. It brings some clarity and accountability to government.</p>
<p>JEFF TAYLOR is a political scientist. His book <a href="" type="internal">Where Did the Party Go?: William Jennings Bryan, Hubert Humphrey, and the Jeffersonian Legacy</a>was published last year&#160;by University of Missouri Press. He contributed a chapter to the book <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">A Dime’s Worth of Difference</a> (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.). For more information, see: <a href="http://www.popcorn78.blogspot.com/" type="external">http://www.popcorn78.blogspot.com</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,324 |
<p>With a GDP of $19 trillion, America is the richest country in the world. However, the IMD World Competitiveness Center recently ranked our education system as 24th out of 61 countries, and the American Society of Civil Engineers recently rated our infrastructure—the roads, bridges, and water systems that were once the envy of the world—as a D+.</p>
<p>These failings are so often cited that we have become numb to them. If our education and infrastructure systems, which are largely managed and paid for by state and local governments, were improving, these poor ratings would be easier to tolerate. But the opposite is true.</p>
<p>We all know that the federal budget is under tremendous pressure, but the budgets of states, cities, and other local governments (SLGs) are under even greater pressure. This pressure will not ease for a generation, if then. The inescapable consequence is that the funding of education and infrastructure will continue to be under immense pressure for as far into the future as we can realistically see.</p>
<p>The issue is this—for years SLGs’ expenses have been relatively constant as a percent of GDP, yet their pension and Medicaid costs have been skyrocketing, crowding out investment in education and infrastructure. It will take a radical, perhaps even heretical, new approach to these expenses to restore our ability to properly invest in these two areas.</p>
<p>Federal budget expenses, which are endlessly scrutinized, are currently about $4.2 trillion or 23 percent of GDP. The expenses of SLGs, when added together, come to a half again that amount (net of federal subsidies and pass-throughs)—another $2.1 trillion or 11.5 percent of GDP. This is a massive amount that deserves almost as much scrutiny as federal spending. Together, federal, state, and local governments spend 34 percent of our national income.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, over the last 30 years, SLG budgets have been relatively flat in relation to GDP, at roughly 12 percent. (Federal expenses have ranged, in that period, from highs of 24 percent under President Reagan and 26.5 percent after the 2008 financial crisis under President Obama, toc a low of 19 percent under President Clinton.) Because total SLG spending has been roughly constant compared to GDP, the issues in SLG spending have been issues of mix—increases in relative spending in one area have been offset by decreases in relative spending in another area.</p>
<p>How do SLGs spend their money? Most is spent on education —$890 billion, or 34 percent of all spending. That is followed by $666 billion, or 26 percent spent on social benefits, including Medicaid. Next comes “economic affairs,” mainly highways, transportation, and other infrastructure, at $334 billion, or 13 percent. Chart 1 provides an overview. All these numbers are before the receipt of federal grants or reimbursements of $531 billion—including $340 billion for Medicaid.</p>
<p />
<p>Source- BEA; Pension Contributions- Census</p>
<p>Importantly, approximately 75 percent of all spending on infrastructure and education comes from SLGs. If you want to fix schools, roads, bridges, or water systems, the place to go is to SLGs. Even the hopes of the current Administration for an incremental $1 trillion in infrastructure investment places much of that burden onto SLGs.</p>
<p>However, as a practical matter, SLGs are more limited than the federal government in how much they can spend and invest. Many states are required, by their own laws, to maintain a balanced budget, and even if this restriction did not exist, states have a constraint on debt issuance that means they need to stay closer to a balanced budget. That constraint is the lower debt ratings and higher interest costs that too much debt issuance would bring. Currently, all SLG debt totals $3 trillion. That’s about 17 percent of GDP, not that much higher than where it stood in 1970. In that same timeframe, federal debt has skyrocketed from 38 percent to 108 percent of GDP, a whopping $20 trillion total. Yet federal debt has maintained its pristine credit rating. Why are SLGs constrained in how much debt they can issue when the federal government is not? Largely because, through its Treasury and the Federal Reserve, the U.S. government can “print” money, while SLGs can’t and therefore have to live within their means. This makes the pressure on SLG expenditures more immediate, real, and painful.</p>
<p>As mentioned, the combined expenses of SLGs have been relatively flat at roughly 12 percent of GDP for the last 30 years. If that is true, then, again, why are they under so much budget pressure? Carefully examining these expenses over an extended time frame shows that there are two pressure points where expenses have been increasing at a problematically high pace—Medicaid and public pension costs. (See Chart 2.) As a percent of GDP, Medicaid costs have increased by an equivalent of $52 billion and pension costs by $61 billion in the past 15 years, for a combined impact of $113 billion. Since overall expenses have been roughly flat, that means $113 billion a year in spending has had to be taken away from other categories. Medicaid costs were increasing rapidly even before the ACA. What’s worse, it is probable that in ten more years, based on both our own estimates and the Congressional Budget Office’s projections, these pension and Medicaid expenses will have increased by the equivalent of another $100 to $150 billion. This will crowd out yet more funding for other programs unless taxes or fees are dramatically increased. (Medicaid cuts have recently been proposed by the Republican Party, along with an overall repeal of the ACA. Although none of these initiatives have yet succeeded, Medicaid cost increases would likely remain a problem under any of them, not to mention the substitute costs states would likely incur if Medicaid were curbed.)</p>
<p>There is risk in attributing to a single SLG any of the trends observed for the whole, and of course the trends we highlight in this article are not true of all SLGs. But directionally they should be helpful in illuminating trends and issues that are impacting a significant number of them.</p>
<p>This article focuses primarily on the pension expense problem, but will offer a few words on Medicaid as well.</p>
<p />
<p>Source: BEA; Pension Contributions- Census</p>
<p>What expenses have been crowded out? What expenses have declined the most as a percent of total SLG spending during this period? The answer is both capital spending, which is primarily infrastructure, and education. (See Chart 3.) On a relative basis in ratio to GDP, education spending is down $40 billion and capital outlays are down $56 billion over this same 15-year period. Notably, these are the very areas where we have regressed so markedly in comparison to our own historical standards and to the rest of the world.</p>
<p />
<p>Source: BEA, Census</p>
<p>Before I go further, I would point out that education, infrastructure, pensions, and health care for the poor (Medicaid) are as important and as emotionally charged as any government policies I could mention. As I have examined the budgets of SLGs, been confronted by these trends, and then shared these finding with various audiences, I have encountered pushback from those who hope and believe that we should not, and do not, need to curtail spending in any of these areas.</p>
<p>Given this, I must quickly set forth that I am in wholehearted favor of strong investment in education, health care, and infrastructure. And I fully support defined benefit pensions for existing public employees. Our public-sector workers are crucially important, healing, protecting, teaching, and serving all of us. But this article is about finances. It is about what things cost today and what they are almost certain to cost in the future, and what the implications of that are likely to be.</p>
<p>Of course, SLGs can overcome this expense limitation by raising taxes and fees. But there are 50 states and hundreds of cities, almost all of which are constantly and energetically trying to “poach” businesses away from other cities and states. As a result, the strategy of raising taxes is fraught with the risk of driving away businesses and households to those other cities and states. Further, the Republican Party, for which it is a central tenet to keep governments small and taxes low, controls 60 percent of state legislatures. The net of this is that the remedy of significantly higher taxes and fees is currently unlikely, leaving intact the problem of diminishing education and infrastructure investment.</p>
<p>Pension benefits paid have been increasing at 6.3 percent per annum over the last ten years, almost double the rate of economic growth. And the “employer contributions” of SLGs have had to increase as well, rising by 8 percent per annum over the last five years. Pension costs are rising because of increased pension benefits and an aging workforce. In New York’s State Teachers Retirement System, employer contributions have had to increase by $2.6 billion in 2015 versus 2001, as pension benefit payouts have grown by 120 percent. And New York is one of the few states with well-funded pension plans.</p>
<p>Unlike New York, most SLGs pensions are underfunded, so what was already a budget issue for those few states with well-funded pension plans has become an even more intense problem for those with underfunded plans. According to data from the Federal Reserve, in aggregate, the SLG pensions funding ratio is only 67 percent, which means they are underfunded by a whopping $1.9 trillion. That’s equal to 10 percent of GDP. This is explained by the fact that, for many years, a large number of SLGs have simply not been making the employer contributions they should have been making.</p>
<p />
<p>Source- PEW Charitable Trusts</p>
<p>In one small but representative example of pension underfunding, the city of Philadelphia has a $8 billion annual “all funds” budget and an overall pension obligation of $11 billion, but only $4.5 billion of this obligation has been funded. The numbers make the story painfully clear. There is simply no way to increase employer contributions from a $8 billion general operating budget enough to make up a $6.5 billion deficit without radically impacting other expenses or adding a major new tax burden—even if you have years to do it.</p>
<p>So why haven’t SLGs been required to make the high level of contributions that would have truly kept these pensions fully funded? The short answer is that they have, to a large extent, been able to make their own rules. And in the context of perennial and increasing budget challenges, they and their actuaries have made overly optimistic pension forecasts which have resulted in lower-than-needed pension contributions.</p>
<p>Decades ago, corporations often found themselves in a similar position, but many of their practices were reformed under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), from which SLG pensions were exempted. In the years since then, SLG pensions have become broadly underfunding. (See Chart 3.) During this time, some SLG pensions have been criticized for poor management—including paying unduly high investment-management fees and allowing questionable practices such as “pay to play”—whereby political contributions are parlayed into lucrative pension money management contracts,</p>
<p>Though exempt from ERISA, there are a number of more recent laws and regulations that have gradually increased the urgency with which SLGs are now trying to address these pension deficits. These include the Pension Protection Act of 2006 and a Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) pronouncement that mandates that SLGs make a more overt disclosure of pension underfunding in their financial statements. This GASB pronouncement makes it much more likely that rating agencies will take these unfunded positions into account when rating the debt of these SLGs, impacting both the rates SLGs pay on their debts and the amount of new debt they are able to issue. There are also state laws, state-level court cases, and pension boards which govern and influence the management of these pensions. Further, there are provisions regarding pension funding in the SLG union contracts themselves.</p>
<p>All this has increased the pressure on SLGs to make larger pension contributions, which simply makes it more likely that other non-pension categories of spending will get less.</p>
<p />
<p>Source: Federal Reserve</p>
<p>To try and keep up with rising pension costs and address pension underfunding, SLGs, in aggregate, have increased “employer contributions” by 8 percent per annum during the last decade—which means they contributed a total of $76 billion more in 2015 as compared to ten years before—for a total employer contribution of $132 billion in 2015. Yet even with this rather massive increase, they continue to lose ground and, in aggregate, the SLG pension funding ratio has plummeted from 92 percent in 2006 to 67 percent in 2016. Even though contributions have been rising, they have not been increasing nearly enough to keep pace with growing pension liabilities.</p>
<p>The numbers for 2015 illustrate the dilemma. In aggregate during 2015, SLGs made employer contributions of $132 billion, up by $45 billion over the same contribution just five years earlier. Add to that employee contributions of another $48 billion, and investment returns which were $169 billion, all against a $286 billion in benefit payouts. So far so good. However, pension liabilities increased by $262 billion, so the overall pension funding gap increased by $200 billion in that period. Indeed, it is a daunting equation.</p>
<p />
<p>Going forward, even if SLGs increase employer contribution levels by 8 percent per year, which is far greater than the rate of GDP growth, I estimate that the funded ratio will not improve from the current 67 percent ratio. In fact, it may even decline. I estimate that it will take an additional $100 to $200 billion each year over the next 20 years beyond recent aggregate employer contribution levels to reach the fully funded level. In other words, it’s a fiasco.</p>
<p>How did we get in this mess? Well, it didn’t take long. These pensions were actually more than fully funded as recently as 2000. That happy circumstance came after the extraordinary bull market that accompanied the first Internet boom of the late 1990s. As of January of 1999, stocks had gained an incredible 28 percent per year over the prior four years. The Internet revolution had seemingly ushered in a new era in stock performance—at least in the minds of pension managers and actuaries. To them, the pension investment return projections of 5 to 8 percent that had historically been used in establishing required employer contributions seemed unnecessarily tame, and SLGs aggressively raised these forecasts. The sky was the limit.</p>
<p>In the wake of this heady period, many SLGs significantly increased pension benefits to their employees. Then came the inevitable correction. In the ten-year period through January 2009, stocks declined by 30 percent, decimating the forecasts of pension managers. That, when paired with the large increases in benefits that had been granted, yielded the ugly underfunding we see today. While the investment return assumptions that led to this seem naïve in hindsight, at the time, sweetening pension benefits seemed like a no cost bargaining chip in union negotiations.</p>
<p>Facing this funding challenge, for those cities in the very worst shape, bankruptcy is an option. This was shown in the bankruptcy of Detroit, where the general retirement fund reached a low of 53 percent funded and was a major part of the financial dilemma. But states can’t declare bankruptcy, and state pensions are 82 percent of all SLG pensions.</p>
<p>Why, then, aren’t SLGs renegotiating with employee unions to reduce benefits? Actually, these discussions are occurring widely, but the unions fiercely defend these pension benefit gains and generally have significant political clout, so the modifications have been small.</p>
<p>Can SLGs address this underfunding problem by pursuing higher return investments? They have certainly tried. Historically, pensions have invested conservatively, investing primarily in bonds, stocks, and cash. But large funding deficits have caused many SLG pensions to consider alternative investments that hold the hope of higher returns, including hedge funds. But those alternatives have largely not met these higher return expectations and thus have not reduced the funding deficit.</p>
<p>Stuck between Scylla and Charybdis, many SLGs are doing as much as is politically feasible and, in an already challenging budget environment, battling to modify pension benefits and increase pension contributions. Many of these efforts and attempts are bold and admirable—moving some component of plans to a defined contribution structure, which I’ll discuss below, or introducing some other creative form of risk-sharing and benefit reduction. These SLGs are then coupling these changes with brave assumptions on investment returns, benefit payouts, and increased employer contributions to create new long-term pension forecasts which show funding reaching acceptably high levels. And then they are declaring victory.</p>
<p>We have seen a number of these new forecasts. However, when we have examined them ourselves, we have come to much less optimistic conclusions. As an example, Philadelphia, with a funded ratio of 45 percent, now forecasts that its pension liabilities will be at 93 percent funded by 2035. But to achieve that, it forecasts an investment return of over 7.7 percent per annum, instead of the roughly 5 percent that has actually been achieved by most pension managers over the last decade or the roughly 4 percent return Philadelphia achieved over the last 5 years. If Philadelphia had used 5.5 percent instead of 7.7 percent in its projections, its funded ratio in 2035 would have been 62 percent instead of 93 percent. Add in slightly less positive assumptions about employer contributions and benefit payouts and the funded ratio in 2035 could fall below 50 percent. Philadelphia is not unique as regards this issue.</p>
<p>The Kentucky Teachers Retirement System takes this optimism in reporting a step further and actually publishes two different funded ratios for the same period. The first fulfills their GASB reporting requirement and shows a 35 percent current funding ratio. The second is produced for the Kentucky legislature and shows a 54 percent funding ratio.</p>
<p>These pension changes and optimistic forecasts serve an important related purpose. Credit ratings analysts will be less concerned about the impact of pension underfunding on a given city or state’s overall credit rating if there is a plausible plan to achieve a high level of funding over a 10 to 20 years time horizon. There is an incentive to put forward an optimistic forecast.</p>
<p>So, while the efforts of SLGs to make changes to their contributions and other program aspects have helped, they have not solved the problem. Instead, for the most part, the net impact of these efforts in a given city or state has been to push back the problem by a few years.</p>
<p>The aggregate national numbers for SLG expenses paint a picture that is bleak but clear. If the net annual SLG expense budget is $2.1 trillion, and every bit of that is spoken for every year, how in the world will SLGs ever make up a whopping $1.9 trillion pension funding deficit without compromising spending in key areas, even if they have decades to do it?</p>
<p>Which brings us to the one thing that, ironically, may be the biggest problem of all—almost none of these pension funds will actually run dry any time soon. Even New Jersey, which has been criticized for poor pension funding and management practices, has $84 billion in its collective funds, enough to sustain benefit payouts for as much as 20 years with no additional employer contributions. Because of this, an emergency that would prompt truly radical change to these programs simply doesn’t exist. And so the pattern I have just described will continue to repeat itself.</p>
<p>The house is not on fire, but the foundation is crumbling.</p>
<p>First, a little background.</p>
<p>Conventional pension plans, including most SLG pension plans, have almost all been defined benefit (DB) plans. With these, the employer (and often the employee) makes regular contributions to employees’ pensions, and, after retirement, the employee gets a pre-determined monthly payment (e.g. 70 percent of their highest salary level), usually for the rest of their lives. The employee gets this “defined benefit” no matter how successful or unsuccessful the investment of the pension funds has been. Though a highly popular benefit provided by large corporations to their employees in the decades after World War II, the majority of corporations have abandoned this type of plan because it has proven to be difficult to manage financially. A corporation may have made all the required contributions and yet face a crisis in a given year by having to make an unexpected and extraordinarily large pension contribution because of changes in interest rates, changes in projected life expectancy, poor investment performance, or other factors. The long-term nature of pensions means that small changes in trends or key assumptions, when considered over the decades-long timelines of these plans, can result in huge and unwelcome changes in the current required pension contribution.</p>
<p>Further, if, at a given company, the benefits of a pension plan are high relative to the amount contributed, these plans depend on a continually rising employee headcount to remain fully funded, and quickly develop problems with funded levels if hiring slows down or declines.</p>
<p>Given these issues, the vast majority of corporations have replaced these “defined benefit” (DB) pensions with programs such as 401ks that are considered “defined contribution” (DC) plans. With these, the employee, often in conjunction with the employer, makes regular contributions to the plan. The ultimate retirement benefit paid to employees is a function of how much is contributed and the actual investment returns on those funds. The employee assumes the risk of changes in investment performance and other factors. Some have protested that it is unwise to move these risks to the employee, since many are not sophisticated enough to manage their own retirement funds. Yet I am assuming that protections and aids can be legislated to minimize these problems. It should be noted that having the risk reside with the SLGs instead of with the employees has not been without its own downside—the education and infrastructure downside to taxpayers described in this article.</p>
<p>These defined contribution plans have none of the volatility and accounting surprises associated with DB plans, and they have almost none of the employer underfunding problems either. There is no possible mystery or ambiguity as to how much a given employer needs to contribute. They either make these contributions or they don’t.</p>
<p>By and large, however, the employees of SLGs have remained on DB plans and therefore pension liabilities continue to skyrocket, increasing by an average of $232 billion a year over the past five years—and we have the $1.9 trillion pension funding gap to show for it. Further, since they have remained on DB plans, they remain subject to this volatility and the propensity to underfund.</p>
<p>As a first step to fixing the problem and preventing further funding abuses, SLGs should convert to DC plans for any employees they hire in the future. Initiatives to do this have been taken in many cities and states with some initial success, but not without concerted opposition and numerous legal, contractual, and regulatory barriers to its achievement. Make no mistake, these DC plans can be structured to be as generous as a DB plan. Furthermore, when corporations have moved from DB plans to DC plans, they have kept existing employees on DB plans, and that would be done here as well. Unless this—or something very close to it—is done, the already-formidable pension problem will simply compound and the costs will become even more overwhelming.</p>
<p>A recommendation that employees hired in the future be given DC plans instead of DB plans should come as no surprise. The vast majority of corporations have long since concluded that DB plans were not feasible and made that change. The problems related to existing increases in payouts and existing underfunding will not vanish even if new employees are placed on DC plans. But since no new employees will be added to these DB plans, at least the problem will be capped.</p>
<p>Once capped, pension plan liability growth would begin moderating over time. But moving to DC plans is only a first step, since SLGs will still need to increase employer contributions or make other changes to address the benefit obligations already embedded. As mentioned above, by my estimate, these could reach an additional $100 to $200 billion each year above current contribution levels. It will be enormously difficult for SLGs to increase contributions to these levels, so we will need to take additional steps—steps that bridge the funding gap for those employees still in DB plans, but also leave enough room in SLG budgets for increased investment in other SLG priorities.</p>
<p>I have three radical suggestions on how this funding gap could be bridged. Each is controversial. But I would strongly suggest they be considered—if only to spark more ideas and debate— since this problem will continue to compound unless we address it head on:</p>
<p>1. Federal Funding Guarantee The federal government could assume responsibility for the unfunded liabilities of those SLGs in need. The federal government has the capacity to do this. In this scenario, the SLGs would continue to make employer contributions for the 67 percent portion of pensions already funded, using the investment income on pension funds to pay benefits, and paying any portion not covered by investment funds out of other funds. The Federal government would then pay the pension benefits on the 33 percent of SLG pensions that are unfunded, an amount we would estimate as roughly $90 billion for 2017. This would free that level of funds in SLG budgets, allowing them to accelerate investment in education and infrastructure, revitalizing our nation’s performance in those areas, and igniting a jobs revolution as well.</p>
<p>Suffice to say, that is an enormous amount of money—which unfortunately reflects the magnitude of the problem. Given that the federal government is wrestling with its own $20 trillion in debt and its own annual deficits, this scenario is highly unlikely. This brings us to the two proposals below, which both provide a solution without the same onerous current expense consequences.</p>
<p>But first a dose of heresy. Why do we need to fully pre-fund our future SLG pension obligations? I ask this question only in light of the $1.9 trillion size of the pension funding deficit and the acuteness of the need in education and infrastructure. I would hasten to note that this particular heresy depends on pensions being converted to DC plans for futures hires and thus capping future liability—I would not dare make these suggestions otherwise. The answer is this: the reason to pre-fund retirement obligations in the form of a pension fund is to guarantee that the funds will be there when the pensioner retires. It’s a credit guarantee. But it isn’t a given that we have to have the credit guarantee for state pensions that a fully funded pension provides. After all, states (which are 82 percent of all SLG pension dollars) can’t declare bankruptcy, and the full taxing authority of the states serves as a guarantee that pensions will be paid.</p>
<p>A fully funded pension is a form of credit guarantee absolutely necessary for private sector pensions that may not be needed for the public sector. Furthermore, a guaranty from the Federal government, which would entail no direct cost to the Federal government, could be employed if further credit assurance were somehow needed. By pre-funding future SLG pension obligations, we have locked up $3.9 trillion in these funds—the 67 percent that is funded—that could instead be used for investment. If future pension obligations don’t need to be fully funded, then SLGs don’t need to try to make the arduous climb back from being 67 percent funded to being 100 percent funded. The annual cost difference between the two is enormous.</p>
<p>2. Lower Funding Requirements</p>
<p>In this approach, SLG’s would abandon their attempt to achieve a fully funded ratio, and instead simply maintain their current funded ratio. If, for example, a given SLG was at a 60 percent funded ratio, it would no longer even attempt to return to a 100 percent funded level, but instead would make an iron-clad commitment to stay at a 60 percent funded level (and do this through operations rather than by issuing debt). In our view, for many SLGs, it will be hard enough to simply stay at the current funded ratio. This may very well still require big increases in current employer contributions, but at least that SLG could abandon the even bigger increases required to get the fund back to 100 percent. By our calculation, this would reduce the current annual aggregate SLG employer contribution requirement by over $100 billion each year over the next twenty years from the level truly required to become fully funded. This would free this sum for a tremendous increase in productive, job creating investment. After that 20-year period, since all new employees will have been hired into DC plans, liabilities will be smaller than they otherwise would have been, and therefore benefits paid in the year 2037 forward will likely be readily manageable.</p>
<p>(I believe that even though SLGs purport that they will achieve a 100 percent funding level through time, in reality many will not. Instead, they are using overly optimistic payout and return assumptions and will do well just to maintain their current funding ratios)</p>
<p>3. Even Lower Funding Requirements</p>
<p>If a state truly doesn’t need full funding as a credit guarantee, why even aim for the 60 percent funding level mentioned above? Thus an even more radical variation on Option 2 above would be to allow the funded ratio to decline through time to some minimum threshold—e.g. 30 percent—over a strictly defined period of time—say 20 years—and then make an iron-clad commitment to stay at that 30 percent thereafter. (Someone more radical than I might even suggest a lower threshold). The 30 percent would serve as a credit reserve. In addition, as suggested above, a federal guarantee could added if required. This more radical version would eliminate the current annual aggregate SLG employer contribution requirement for the next twenty years, freeing an even greater sum for productive, job creating investment in areas like infrastructure and education. Employer contributions should be manageable after that as described for Option 2 above.</p>
<p>Both #2 and #3 face objections and a daunting gauntlet of legal and regulatory obstacles and would require any numbers of changes. I have reviewed the sources of these obstacles briefly above—state law, IRS law, court decisions, GASB pronouncements, union contracts, and more. But because this is a multi-trillion dollar issue, and the alternative is a continued long-term erosion of other needed SLG investment, they are worth considering nonetheless.</p>
<p>Conceptually, both #1 and #2 suffer from an element of unfairness, since states that have been responsible in maintaining high levels of funding would receive no greater benefit than profligate states. Option 3 has the distinct advantage of a greater reward for states that have been responsible, since their reduction in required employer contributions would be far greater than for those that haven’t.</p>
<p>Option 3 could be a radical, era-redefining breakthrough for what has heretofore been an intractable, unsolvable problem.</p>
<p>The Medicaid cost issue is every bit as difficult. The crucial thing to note is that the CBO is forecasting that the program’s costs will rise at a rate of 5.5 percent per year through 2025 when the economy itself is projected to grow at 3 percent or less per year. If true, it could crowd out an even greater portion of other SLG spending. This cost projection may be optimistic, since these costs were rising an average of 7 percent in the decade before the ACA.</p>
<p>There is an avalanche of activity by insurers, hospitals, and other health-care providers aimed at reducing health-care expenses, and overall, progress is being made in addressing high costs. Further, as I have examined healthcare systems in Europe and Asia, I am increasingly convinced that substantial breakthroughs in healthcare expenses are possible. We have among the highest per capita costs and among the least favorable healthcare outcomes. As the cliché goes, if we put a man on the moon, surely we can make substantial improvements in healthcare costs. We will likely achieve these in ways not currently contemplated by either Republicans or Democrats.</p>
<p>Yet any such progress is hard-pressed to overcome a colossal obstacle—Americans are getting older and the percent living at or under the poverty line remains stubbornly high. An estimated 80 percent of health-care costs are associated with just four disease categories—cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s—and as we age, the frequency of these diseases inevitably increases.</p>
<p>We will not be able to make radical, breakthrough reductions in health-care costs until we make substantial progress toward cures in those four areas. It is within our grasp to do so, but only through concerted, well-funded academic medical research. Yet, astonishingly, we have been reducing federal support for this research in real dollars. If we look over any long time horizon, there will be a direct link between federal spending on research for cures and our ability to curb the rising trend in Medicaid and health-care costs.</p>
<p>States will be wrestling with rising Medicaid costs for years to come.</p>
<p>The pension expenses of state, cities, and other local governments, along with that portion of Medicaid expenses borne by those same governments, are growing faster than the economy, and this has been crowding out expenditures in other key areas, most notably education and infrastructure. Absent large tax increases or some other bold strategies, this will continue unabated.</p>
<p>The financial consequences of this are increasingly clear. And while we have grown accustomed to the behavior of our federal government, whereby tough choices among competing expenditures are routinely avoided with the result of huge annual deficits and $20 trillion in accumulated debt, SLGs are much more fiscally limited, and so these hard choices can less readily be escaped.</p>
<p>The infrastructure and education systems of SLGs are slowly being starved of critical investment. Unless SLGs find a way to slow the march of pension and Medicaid expenses, the years will turn into decades and the quality of our infrastructure and education will continue to erode.</p>
|
The Monster Eating Our States and Cities
| true |
http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/46/the-monster-eating-our-states-and-cities/
|
2019-09-23
| 4left
|
The Monster Eating Our States and Cities
<p>With a GDP of $19 trillion, America is the richest country in the world. However, the IMD World Competitiveness Center recently ranked our education system as 24th out of 61 countries, and the American Society of Civil Engineers recently rated our infrastructure—the roads, bridges, and water systems that were once the envy of the world—as a D+.</p>
<p>These failings are so often cited that we have become numb to them. If our education and infrastructure systems, which are largely managed and paid for by state and local governments, were improving, these poor ratings would be easier to tolerate. But the opposite is true.</p>
<p>We all know that the federal budget is under tremendous pressure, but the budgets of states, cities, and other local governments (SLGs) are under even greater pressure. This pressure will not ease for a generation, if then. The inescapable consequence is that the funding of education and infrastructure will continue to be under immense pressure for as far into the future as we can realistically see.</p>
<p>The issue is this—for years SLGs’ expenses have been relatively constant as a percent of GDP, yet their pension and Medicaid costs have been skyrocketing, crowding out investment in education and infrastructure. It will take a radical, perhaps even heretical, new approach to these expenses to restore our ability to properly invest in these two areas.</p>
<p>Federal budget expenses, which are endlessly scrutinized, are currently about $4.2 trillion or 23 percent of GDP. The expenses of SLGs, when added together, come to a half again that amount (net of federal subsidies and pass-throughs)—another $2.1 trillion or 11.5 percent of GDP. This is a massive amount that deserves almost as much scrutiny as federal spending. Together, federal, state, and local governments spend 34 percent of our national income.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, over the last 30 years, SLG budgets have been relatively flat in relation to GDP, at roughly 12 percent. (Federal expenses have ranged, in that period, from highs of 24 percent under President Reagan and 26.5 percent after the 2008 financial crisis under President Obama, toc a low of 19 percent under President Clinton.) Because total SLG spending has been roughly constant compared to GDP, the issues in SLG spending have been issues of mix—increases in relative spending in one area have been offset by decreases in relative spending in another area.</p>
<p>How do SLGs spend their money? Most is spent on education —$890 billion, or 34 percent of all spending. That is followed by $666 billion, or 26 percent spent on social benefits, including Medicaid. Next comes “economic affairs,” mainly highways, transportation, and other infrastructure, at $334 billion, or 13 percent. Chart 1 provides an overview. All these numbers are before the receipt of federal grants or reimbursements of $531 billion—including $340 billion for Medicaid.</p>
<p />
<p>Source- BEA; Pension Contributions- Census</p>
<p>Importantly, approximately 75 percent of all spending on infrastructure and education comes from SLGs. If you want to fix schools, roads, bridges, or water systems, the place to go is to SLGs. Even the hopes of the current Administration for an incremental $1 trillion in infrastructure investment places much of that burden onto SLGs.</p>
<p>However, as a practical matter, SLGs are more limited than the federal government in how much they can spend and invest. Many states are required, by their own laws, to maintain a balanced budget, and even if this restriction did not exist, states have a constraint on debt issuance that means they need to stay closer to a balanced budget. That constraint is the lower debt ratings and higher interest costs that too much debt issuance would bring. Currently, all SLG debt totals $3 trillion. That’s about 17 percent of GDP, not that much higher than where it stood in 1970. In that same timeframe, federal debt has skyrocketed from 38 percent to 108 percent of GDP, a whopping $20 trillion total. Yet federal debt has maintained its pristine credit rating. Why are SLGs constrained in how much debt they can issue when the federal government is not? Largely because, through its Treasury and the Federal Reserve, the U.S. government can “print” money, while SLGs can’t and therefore have to live within their means. This makes the pressure on SLG expenditures more immediate, real, and painful.</p>
<p>As mentioned, the combined expenses of SLGs have been relatively flat at roughly 12 percent of GDP for the last 30 years. If that is true, then, again, why are they under so much budget pressure? Carefully examining these expenses over an extended time frame shows that there are two pressure points where expenses have been increasing at a problematically high pace—Medicaid and public pension costs. (See Chart 2.) As a percent of GDP, Medicaid costs have increased by an equivalent of $52 billion and pension costs by $61 billion in the past 15 years, for a combined impact of $113 billion. Since overall expenses have been roughly flat, that means $113 billion a year in spending has had to be taken away from other categories. Medicaid costs were increasing rapidly even before the ACA. What’s worse, it is probable that in ten more years, based on both our own estimates and the Congressional Budget Office’s projections, these pension and Medicaid expenses will have increased by the equivalent of another $100 to $150 billion. This will crowd out yet more funding for other programs unless taxes or fees are dramatically increased. (Medicaid cuts have recently been proposed by the Republican Party, along with an overall repeal of the ACA. Although none of these initiatives have yet succeeded, Medicaid cost increases would likely remain a problem under any of them, not to mention the substitute costs states would likely incur if Medicaid were curbed.)</p>
<p>There is risk in attributing to a single SLG any of the trends observed for the whole, and of course the trends we highlight in this article are not true of all SLGs. But directionally they should be helpful in illuminating trends and issues that are impacting a significant number of them.</p>
<p>This article focuses primarily on the pension expense problem, but will offer a few words on Medicaid as well.</p>
<p />
<p>Source: BEA; Pension Contributions- Census</p>
<p>What expenses have been crowded out? What expenses have declined the most as a percent of total SLG spending during this period? The answer is both capital spending, which is primarily infrastructure, and education. (See Chart 3.) On a relative basis in ratio to GDP, education spending is down $40 billion and capital outlays are down $56 billion over this same 15-year period. Notably, these are the very areas where we have regressed so markedly in comparison to our own historical standards and to the rest of the world.</p>
<p />
<p>Source: BEA, Census</p>
<p>Before I go further, I would point out that education, infrastructure, pensions, and health care for the poor (Medicaid) are as important and as emotionally charged as any government policies I could mention. As I have examined the budgets of SLGs, been confronted by these trends, and then shared these finding with various audiences, I have encountered pushback from those who hope and believe that we should not, and do not, need to curtail spending in any of these areas.</p>
<p>Given this, I must quickly set forth that I am in wholehearted favor of strong investment in education, health care, and infrastructure. And I fully support defined benefit pensions for existing public employees. Our public-sector workers are crucially important, healing, protecting, teaching, and serving all of us. But this article is about finances. It is about what things cost today and what they are almost certain to cost in the future, and what the implications of that are likely to be.</p>
<p>Of course, SLGs can overcome this expense limitation by raising taxes and fees. But there are 50 states and hundreds of cities, almost all of which are constantly and energetically trying to “poach” businesses away from other cities and states. As a result, the strategy of raising taxes is fraught with the risk of driving away businesses and households to those other cities and states. Further, the Republican Party, for which it is a central tenet to keep governments small and taxes low, controls 60 percent of state legislatures. The net of this is that the remedy of significantly higher taxes and fees is currently unlikely, leaving intact the problem of diminishing education and infrastructure investment.</p>
<p>Pension benefits paid have been increasing at 6.3 percent per annum over the last ten years, almost double the rate of economic growth. And the “employer contributions” of SLGs have had to increase as well, rising by 8 percent per annum over the last five years. Pension costs are rising because of increased pension benefits and an aging workforce. In New York’s State Teachers Retirement System, employer contributions have had to increase by $2.6 billion in 2015 versus 2001, as pension benefit payouts have grown by 120 percent. And New York is one of the few states with well-funded pension plans.</p>
<p>Unlike New York, most SLGs pensions are underfunded, so what was already a budget issue for those few states with well-funded pension plans has become an even more intense problem for those with underfunded plans. According to data from the Federal Reserve, in aggregate, the SLG pensions funding ratio is only 67 percent, which means they are underfunded by a whopping $1.9 trillion. That’s equal to 10 percent of GDP. This is explained by the fact that, for many years, a large number of SLGs have simply not been making the employer contributions they should have been making.</p>
<p />
<p>Source- PEW Charitable Trusts</p>
<p>In one small but representative example of pension underfunding, the city of Philadelphia has a $8 billion annual “all funds” budget and an overall pension obligation of $11 billion, but only $4.5 billion of this obligation has been funded. The numbers make the story painfully clear. There is simply no way to increase employer contributions from a $8 billion general operating budget enough to make up a $6.5 billion deficit without radically impacting other expenses or adding a major new tax burden—even if you have years to do it.</p>
<p>So why haven’t SLGs been required to make the high level of contributions that would have truly kept these pensions fully funded? The short answer is that they have, to a large extent, been able to make their own rules. And in the context of perennial and increasing budget challenges, they and their actuaries have made overly optimistic pension forecasts which have resulted in lower-than-needed pension contributions.</p>
<p>Decades ago, corporations often found themselves in a similar position, but many of their practices were reformed under the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), from which SLG pensions were exempted. In the years since then, SLG pensions have become broadly underfunding. (See Chart 3.) During this time, some SLG pensions have been criticized for poor management—including paying unduly high investment-management fees and allowing questionable practices such as “pay to play”—whereby political contributions are parlayed into lucrative pension money management contracts,</p>
<p>Though exempt from ERISA, there are a number of more recent laws and regulations that have gradually increased the urgency with which SLGs are now trying to address these pension deficits. These include the Pension Protection Act of 2006 and a Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) pronouncement that mandates that SLGs make a more overt disclosure of pension underfunding in their financial statements. This GASB pronouncement makes it much more likely that rating agencies will take these unfunded positions into account when rating the debt of these SLGs, impacting both the rates SLGs pay on their debts and the amount of new debt they are able to issue. There are also state laws, state-level court cases, and pension boards which govern and influence the management of these pensions. Further, there are provisions regarding pension funding in the SLG union contracts themselves.</p>
<p>All this has increased the pressure on SLGs to make larger pension contributions, which simply makes it more likely that other non-pension categories of spending will get less.</p>
<p />
<p>Source: Federal Reserve</p>
<p>To try and keep up with rising pension costs and address pension underfunding, SLGs, in aggregate, have increased “employer contributions” by 8 percent per annum during the last decade—which means they contributed a total of $76 billion more in 2015 as compared to ten years before—for a total employer contribution of $132 billion in 2015. Yet even with this rather massive increase, they continue to lose ground and, in aggregate, the SLG pension funding ratio has plummeted from 92 percent in 2006 to 67 percent in 2016. Even though contributions have been rising, they have not been increasing nearly enough to keep pace with growing pension liabilities.</p>
<p>The numbers for 2015 illustrate the dilemma. In aggregate during 2015, SLGs made employer contributions of $132 billion, up by $45 billion over the same contribution just five years earlier. Add to that employee contributions of another $48 billion, and investment returns which were $169 billion, all against a $286 billion in benefit payouts. So far so good. However, pension liabilities increased by $262 billion, so the overall pension funding gap increased by $200 billion in that period. Indeed, it is a daunting equation.</p>
<p />
<p>Going forward, even if SLGs increase employer contribution levels by 8 percent per year, which is far greater than the rate of GDP growth, I estimate that the funded ratio will not improve from the current 67 percent ratio. In fact, it may even decline. I estimate that it will take an additional $100 to $200 billion each year over the next 20 years beyond recent aggregate employer contribution levels to reach the fully funded level. In other words, it’s a fiasco.</p>
<p>How did we get in this mess? Well, it didn’t take long. These pensions were actually more than fully funded as recently as 2000. That happy circumstance came after the extraordinary bull market that accompanied the first Internet boom of the late 1990s. As of January of 1999, stocks had gained an incredible 28 percent per year over the prior four years. The Internet revolution had seemingly ushered in a new era in stock performance—at least in the minds of pension managers and actuaries. To them, the pension investment return projections of 5 to 8 percent that had historically been used in establishing required employer contributions seemed unnecessarily tame, and SLGs aggressively raised these forecasts. The sky was the limit.</p>
<p>In the wake of this heady period, many SLGs significantly increased pension benefits to their employees. Then came the inevitable correction. In the ten-year period through January 2009, stocks declined by 30 percent, decimating the forecasts of pension managers. That, when paired with the large increases in benefits that had been granted, yielded the ugly underfunding we see today. While the investment return assumptions that led to this seem naïve in hindsight, at the time, sweetening pension benefits seemed like a no cost bargaining chip in union negotiations.</p>
<p>Facing this funding challenge, for those cities in the very worst shape, bankruptcy is an option. This was shown in the bankruptcy of Detroit, where the general retirement fund reached a low of 53 percent funded and was a major part of the financial dilemma. But states can’t declare bankruptcy, and state pensions are 82 percent of all SLG pensions.</p>
<p>Why, then, aren’t SLGs renegotiating with employee unions to reduce benefits? Actually, these discussions are occurring widely, but the unions fiercely defend these pension benefit gains and generally have significant political clout, so the modifications have been small.</p>
<p>Can SLGs address this underfunding problem by pursuing higher return investments? They have certainly tried. Historically, pensions have invested conservatively, investing primarily in bonds, stocks, and cash. But large funding deficits have caused many SLG pensions to consider alternative investments that hold the hope of higher returns, including hedge funds. But those alternatives have largely not met these higher return expectations and thus have not reduced the funding deficit.</p>
<p>Stuck between Scylla and Charybdis, many SLGs are doing as much as is politically feasible and, in an already challenging budget environment, battling to modify pension benefits and increase pension contributions. Many of these efforts and attempts are bold and admirable—moving some component of plans to a defined contribution structure, which I’ll discuss below, or introducing some other creative form of risk-sharing and benefit reduction. These SLGs are then coupling these changes with brave assumptions on investment returns, benefit payouts, and increased employer contributions to create new long-term pension forecasts which show funding reaching acceptably high levels. And then they are declaring victory.</p>
<p>We have seen a number of these new forecasts. However, when we have examined them ourselves, we have come to much less optimistic conclusions. As an example, Philadelphia, with a funded ratio of 45 percent, now forecasts that its pension liabilities will be at 93 percent funded by 2035. But to achieve that, it forecasts an investment return of over 7.7 percent per annum, instead of the roughly 5 percent that has actually been achieved by most pension managers over the last decade or the roughly 4 percent return Philadelphia achieved over the last 5 years. If Philadelphia had used 5.5 percent instead of 7.7 percent in its projections, its funded ratio in 2035 would have been 62 percent instead of 93 percent. Add in slightly less positive assumptions about employer contributions and benefit payouts and the funded ratio in 2035 could fall below 50 percent. Philadelphia is not unique as regards this issue.</p>
<p>The Kentucky Teachers Retirement System takes this optimism in reporting a step further and actually publishes two different funded ratios for the same period. The first fulfills their GASB reporting requirement and shows a 35 percent current funding ratio. The second is produced for the Kentucky legislature and shows a 54 percent funding ratio.</p>
<p>These pension changes and optimistic forecasts serve an important related purpose. Credit ratings analysts will be less concerned about the impact of pension underfunding on a given city or state’s overall credit rating if there is a plausible plan to achieve a high level of funding over a 10 to 20 years time horizon. There is an incentive to put forward an optimistic forecast.</p>
<p>So, while the efforts of SLGs to make changes to their contributions and other program aspects have helped, they have not solved the problem. Instead, for the most part, the net impact of these efforts in a given city or state has been to push back the problem by a few years.</p>
<p>The aggregate national numbers for SLG expenses paint a picture that is bleak but clear. If the net annual SLG expense budget is $2.1 trillion, and every bit of that is spoken for every year, how in the world will SLGs ever make up a whopping $1.9 trillion pension funding deficit without compromising spending in key areas, even if they have decades to do it?</p>
<p>Which brings us to the one thing that, ironically, may be the biggest problem of all—almost none of these pension funds will actually run dry any time soon. Even New Jersey, which has been criticized for poor pension funding and management practices, has $84 billion in its collective funds, enough to sustain benefit payouts for as much as 20 years with no additional employer contributions. Because of this, an emergency that would prompt truly radical change to these programs simply doesn’t exist. And so the pattern I have just described will continue to repeat itself.</p>
<p>The house is not on fire, but the foundation is crumbling.</p>
<p>First, a little background.</p>
<p>Conventional pension plans, including most SLG pension plans, have almost all been defined benefit (DB) plans. With these, the employer (and often the employee) makes regular contributions to employees’ pensions, and, after retirement, the employee gets a pre-determined monthly payment (e.g. 70 percent of their highest salary level), usually for the rest of their lives. The employee gets this “defined benefit” no matter how successful or unsuccessful the investment of the pension funds has been. Though a highly popular benefit provided by large corporations to their employees in the decades after World War II, the majority of corporations have abandoned this type of plan because it has proven to be difficult to manage financially. A corporation may have made all the required contributions and yet face a crisis in a given year by having to make an unexpected and extraordinarily large pension contribution because of changes in interest rates, changes in projected life expectancy, poor investment performance, or other factors. The long-term nature of pensions means that small changes in trends or key assumptions, when considered over the decades-long timelines of these plans, can result in huge and unwelcome changes in the current required pension contribution.</p>
<p>Further, if, at a given company, the benefits of a pension plan are high relative to the amount contributed, these plans depend on a continually rising employee headcount to remain fully funded, and quickly develop problems with funded levels if hiring slows down or declines.</p>
<p>Given these issues, the vast majority of corporations have replaced these “defined benefit” (DB) pensions with programs such as 401ks that are considered “defined contribution” (DC) plans. With these, the employee, often in conjunction with the employer, makes regular contributions to the plan. The ultimate retirement benefit paid to employees is a function of how much is contributed and the actual investment returns on those funds. The employee assumes the risk of changes in investment performance and other factors. Some have protested that it is unwise to move these risks to the employee, since many are not sophisticated enough to manage their own retirement funds. Yet I am assuming that protections and aids can be legislated to minimize these problems. It should be noted that having the risk reside with the SLGs instead of with the employees has not been without its own downside—the education and infrastructure downside to taxpayers described in this article.</p>
<p>These defined contribution plans have none of the volatility and accounting surprises associated with DB plans, and they have almost none of the employer underfunding problems either. There is no possible mystery or ambiguity as to how much a given employer needs to contribute. They either make these contributions or they don’t.</p>
<p>By and large, however, the employees of SLGs have remained on DB plans and therefore pension liabilities continue to skyrocket, increasing by an average of $232 billion a year over the past five years—and we have the $1.9 trillion pension funding gap to show for it. Further, since they have remained on DB plans, they remain subject to this volatility and the propensity to underfund.</p>
<p>As a first step to fixing the problem and preventing further funding abuses, SLGs should convert to DC plans for any employees they hire in the future. Initiatives to do this have been taken in many cities and states with some initial success, but not without concerted opposition and numerous legal, contractual, and regulatory barriers to its achievement. Make no mistake, these DC plans can be structured to be as generous as a DB plan. Furthermore, when corporations have moved from DB plans to DC plans, they have kept existing employees on DB plans, and that would be done here as well. Unless this—or something very close to it—is done, the already-formidable pension problem will simply compound and the costs will become even more overwhelming.</p>
<p>A recommendation that employees hired in the future be given DC plans instead of DB plans should come as no surprise. The vast majority of corporations have long since concluded that DB plans were not feasible and made that change. The problems related to existing increases in payouts and existing underfunding will not vanish even if new employees are placed on DC plans. But since no new employees will be added to these DB plans, at least the problem will be capped.</p>
<p>Once capped, pension plan liability growth would begin moderating over time. But moving to DC plans is only a first step, since SLGs will still need to increase employer contributions or make other changes to address the benefit obligations already embedded. As mentioned above, by my estimate, these could reach an additional $100 to $200 billion each year above current contribution levels. It will be enormously difficult for SLGs to increase contributions to these levels, so we will need to take additional steps—steps that bridge the funding gap for those employees still in DB plans, but also leave enough room in SLG budgets for increased investment in other SLG priorities.</p>
<p>I have three radical suggestions on how this funding gap could be bridged. Each is controversial. But I would strongly suggest they be considered—if only to spark more ideas and debate— since this problem will continue to compound unless we address it head on:</p>
<p>1. Federal Funding Guarantee The federal government could assume responsibility for the unfunded liabilities of those SLGs in need. The federal government has the capacity to do this. In this scenario, the SLGs would continue to make employer contributions for the 67 percent portion of pensions already funded, using the investment income on pension funds to pay benefits, and paying any portion not covered by investment funds out of other funds. The Federal government would then pay the pension benefits on the 33 percent of SLG pensions that are unfunded, an amount we would estimate as roughly $90 billion for 2017. This would free that level of funds in SLG budgets, allowing them to accelerate investment in education and infrastructure, revitalizing our nation’s performance in those areas, and igniting a jobs revolution as well.</p>
<p>Suffice to say, that is an enormous amount of money—which unfortunately reflects the magnitude of the problem. Given that the federal government is wrestling with its own $20 trillion in debt and its own annual deficits, this scenario is highly unlikely. This brings us to the two proposals below, which both provide a solution without the same onerous current expense consequences.</p>
<p>But first a dose of heresy. Why do we need to fully pre-fund our future SLG pension obligations? I ask this question only in light of the $1.9 trillion size of the pension funding deficit and the acuteness of the need in education and infrastructure. I would hasten to note that this particular heresy depends on pensions being converted to DC plans for futures hires and thus capping future liability—I would not dare make these suggestions otherwise. The answer is this: the reason to pre-fund retirement obligations in the form of a pension fund is to guarantee that the funds will be there when the pensioner retires. It’s a credit guarantee. But it isn’t a given that we have to have the credit guarantee for state pensions that a fully funded pension provides. After all, states (which are 82 percent of all SLG pension dollars) can’t declare bankruptcy, and the full taxing authority of the states serves as a guarantee that pensions will be paid.</p>
<p>A fully funded pension is a form of credit guarantee absolutely necessary for private sector pensions that may not be needed for the public sector. Furthermore, a guaranty from the Federal government, which would entail no direct cost to the Federal government, could be employed if further credit assurance were somehow needed. By pre-funding future SLG pension obligations, we have locked up $3.9 trillion in these funds—the 67 percent that is funded—that could instead be used for investment. If future pension obligations don’t need to be fully funded, then SLGs don’t need to try to make the arduous climb back from being 67 percent funded to being 100 percent funded. The annual cost difference between the two is enormous.</p>
<p>2. Lower Funding Requirements</p>
<p>In this approach, SLG’s would abandon their attempt to achieve a fully funded ratio, and instead simply maintain their current funded ratio. If, for example, a given SLG was at a 60 percent funded ratio, it would no longer even attempt to return to a 100 percent funded level, but instead would make an iron-clad commitment to stay at a 60 percent funded level (and do this through operations rather than by issuing debt). In our view, for many SLGs, it will be hard enough to simply stay at the current funded ratio. This may very well still require big increases in current employer contributions, but at least that SLG could abandon the even bigger increases required to get the fund back to 100 percent. By our calculation, this would reduce the current annual aggregate SLG employer contribution requirement by over $100 billion each year over the next twenty years from the level truly required to become fully funded. This would free this sum for a tremendous increase in productive, job creating investment. After that 20-year period, since all new employees will have been hired into DC plans, liabilities will be smaller than they otherwise would have been, and therefore benefits paid in the year 2037 forward will likely be readily manageable.</p>
<p>(I believe that even though SLGs purport that they will achieve a 100 percent funding level through time, in reality many will not. Instead, they are using overly optimistic payout and return assumptions and will do well just to maintain their current funding ratios)</p>
<p>3. Even Lower Funding Requirements</p>
<p>If a state truly doesn’t need full funding as a credit guarantee, why even aim for the 60 percent funding level mentioned above? Thus an even more radical variation on Option 2 above would be to allow the funded ratio to decline through time to some minimum threshold—e.g. 30 percent—over a strictly defined period of time—say 20 years—and then make an iron-clad commitment to stay at that 30 percent thereafter. (Someone more radical than I might even suggest a lower threshold). The 30 percent would serve as a credit reserve. In addition, as suggested above, a federal guarantee could added if required. This more radical version would eliminate the current annual aggregate SLG employer contribution requirement for the next twenty years, freeing an even greater sum for productive, job creating investment in areas like infrastructure and education. Employer contributions should be manageable after that as described for Option 2 above.</p>
<p>Both #2 and #3 face objections and a daunting gauntlet of legal and regulatory obstacles and would require any numbers of changes. I have reviewed the sources of these obstacles briefly above—state law, IRS law, court decisions, GASB pronouncements, union contracts, and more. But because this is a multi-trillion dollar issue, and the alternative is a continued long-term erosion of other needed SLG investment, they are worth considering nonetheless.</p>
<p>Conceptually, both #1 and #2 suffer from an element of unfairness, since states that have been responsible in maintaining high levels of funding would receive no greater benefit than profligate states. Option 3 has the distinct advantage of a greater reward for states that have been responsible, since their reduction in required employer contributions would be far greater than for those that haven’t.</p>
<p>Option 3 could be a radical, era-redefining breakthrough for what has heretofore been an intractable, unsolvable problem.</p>
<p>The Medicaid cost issue is every bit as difficult. The crucial thing to note is that the CBO is forecasting that the program’s costs will rise at a rate of 5.5 percent per year through 2025 when the economy itself is projected to grow at 3 percent or less per year. If true, it could crowd out an even greater portion of other SLG spending. This cost projection may be optimistic, since these costs were rising an average of 7 percent in the decade before the ACA.</p>
<p>There is an avalanche of activity by insurers, hospitals, and other health-care providers aimed at reducing health-care expenses, and overall, progress is being made in addressing high costs. Further, as I have examined healthcare systems in Europe and Asia, I am increasingly convinced that substantial breakthroughs in healthcare expenses are possible. We have among the highest per capita costs and among the least favorable healthcare outcomes. As the cliché goes, if we put a man on the moon, surely we can make substantial improvements in healthcare costs. We will likely achieve these in ways not currently contemplated by either Republicans or Democrats.</p>
<p>Yet any such progress is hard-pressed to overcome a colossal obstacle—Americans are getting older and the percent living at or under the poverty line remains stubbornly high. An estimated 80 percent of health-care costs are associated with just four disease categories—cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s—and as we age, the frequency of these diseases inevitably increases.</p>
<p>We will not be able to make radical, breakthrough reductions in health-care costs until we make substantial progress toward cures in those four areas. It is within our grasp to do so, but only through concerted, well-funded academic medical research. Yet, astonishingly, we have been reducing federal support for this research in real dollars. If we look over any long time horizon, there will be a direct link between federal spending on research for cures and our ability to curb the rising trend in Medicaid and health-care costs.</p>
<p>States will be wrestling with rising Medicaid costs for years to come.</p>
<p>The pension expenses of state, cities, and other local governments, along with that portion of Medicaid expenses borne by those same governments, are growing faster than the economy, and this has been crowding out expenditures in other key areas, most notably education and infrastructure. Absent large tax increases or some other bold strategies, this will continue unabated.</p>
<p>The financial consequences of this are increasingly clear. And while we have grown accustomed to the behavior of our federal government, whereby tough choices among competing expenditures are routinely avoided with the result of huge annual deficits and $20 trillion in accumulated debt, SLGs are much more fiscally limited, and so these hard choices can less readily be escaped.</p>
<p>The infrastructure and education systems of SLGs are slowly being starved of critical investment. Unless SLGs find a way to slow the march of pension and Medicaid expenses, the years will turn into decades and the quality of our infrastructure and education will continue to erode.</p>
| 7,325 |
<p>A Real Estate Owned property (REO) is a property that has reverted to the mortgage lender after an unsuccessful foreclosure auction. REOs are a large part of the housing market these days. In September 2010, distressed properties -- many of them REOs -- accounted for nearly 48 percent of home-purchase transactions, according to the Campbell Inside Mortgage Finance Survey.</p>
<p>Many banks have an entire department set up to sell REOs. Bank-owned properties can offer great deals for buyers, as they often sell for less than a typical resale home, but there are several things you need to know before investing in an REO property.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Even though REOs can be a bargain, that doesn't mean you should jump in with your eyes closed. "REO buyers need to do their homework so they understand the property, the market, the neighborhood, and the process," says Tom Kelly, a spokesperson for Chase Bank.</p>
<p>Here's what you need to know as a potential buyer of REO property in today's market.</p>
<p>How to find REOs</p>
<p>Real estate agents can pull up REO offerings for you. Most <a href="http://www.hsh.com/lshow.html?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">mortgage lenders Opens a New Window.</a> want their REO properties listed on the multiple listing service (MLS) so that any real estate agent can show them to potential buyers. Many banks also have websites specifically dedicated to their REO listings (go to a bank's website and look for links).</p>
<p>Here are a few major listings to get your browsing started:</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Get your own appraisal</p>
<p>Discounts on REOs vary greatly, depending on whether the homes are severely damaged and where they're located in the country. Although damaged REOs might sell for a relatively minor discount -- 5 percent to 7 percent off comparable private sales of non-damaged homes -- some might offer as much as a 30 percent discount.</p>
<p>But being listed as an REO doesn't mean that a property will automatically be a bargain. Banks are in business to make money, so of course they're going to price homes as competitively as possible. This is why it's important to always ask for an appraisal on the home you plan to purchase, advises Cliff Roe of Cliff Roe Realty, an REO specialist in Seminole, Florida. But keep in mind that an appraisal is going to cost you a few hundred dollars.</p>
<p>Get it inspected</p>
<p>REOs are sold "as-is," and that's why you need a home inspection before committing to a purchase. A thorough inspection is even more important for an REO than for a standard property.</p>
<p>"REOs tend to be sitting for six months to two years," says Roe, "so while you're getting a bargain on price, it's just compensation for the work you'll have to put back in."</p>
<p>A good home inspection should only cost you a few hundred dollars and can save you a lot of heartache. (Find a home inspector online at the American Society of Home Inspector's website, http://www.ashi.org.) An inspection might turn up minor damage and neglect, such as stains, missing appliances, or an unkempt yard. It may also uncover the need to address larger problems, such as holes in walls or major leaks.</p>
<p>The good news: According to Roe, only a small percentage of REO homes have major damage, and many repair issues are apparent as soon as you walk in.</p>
<p>Be financially savvy</p>
<p>"We encourage potential buyers to get prequalified for a loan so that the seller knows the borrower will be able to close," says Kelly.</p>
<p>If you want to buy an REO property, will you have trouble getting a mortgage? If the property you're considering is in good condition, you shouldn't have more trouble qualifying simply on the basis of the home being REO, and likewise, you won't pay higher <a href="http://www.hsh.com?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">mortgage rates Opens a New Window.</a> just because the lender knows you want to buy REO.</p>
<p>However, a significantly damaged property may close off some options for financing, because few mortgage financing programs exist for these types of homes.</p>
<p>"Federal Housing Administration ( <a href="http://www.hsh.com/fha_va-showcase.html?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">FHA Opens a New Window.</a>) has 'purchase and rehab' mortgages available, and Fannie Mae was offering a 'HomeStyle' mortgage, which was similar," says Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH.com. If the damage to the REO property rules out some options, you may need to come up with cash or finance your purchase through hard money loans.</p>
<p>Closing may take awhile</p>
<p>Bidding on an REO isn't quite like making an offer on a privately-owned home, where you hear back from an owner fairly quickly. Instead, you'll submit your bid then you'll wait for a response with a counteroffer. Since a bank is a business, you may end up dealing with more than one person or department, and it can take awhile to get all of the paperwork processed.</p>
<p>"The process can be frustrating and take more time," says Gumbinger. On the other hand, because the home is an REO, the bank will already have taken care of any liens on the property, so your title search should be a breeze.</p>
<p>It's possible to turn a fixer-upper into your own personal castle, as long as you are patient and don't expect that an REO listing means an automatic windfall.</p>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="http://www.hsh.com?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">HSH.com Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>var gDomain='www.qsstats.com', gDcsId='dcsvwt4y610000o2mpcappf90_1x7g', gFpc='WT_FPC', gConvert=true, gTag=''+'IPT&gt;);'; if((typeof(gConvert)!='undefined') &amp;&amp; gConvert &amp;&amp; (document.cookie.indexOf(gFpc+'=') == -1) &amp;&amp; (document.cookie.indexOf('WTLOPTOUT=')==-1)){document.write(gTag);} function dcsAdditionalParameters(){ WT.qs_osrc="FXN"; }</p>
|
5 keys to buying a bank-owned property
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2010/12/17/keys-buying-bank-owned-property.html
|
2016-03-17
| 0right
|
5 keys to buying a bank-owned property
<p>A Real Estate Owned property (REO) is a property that has reverted to the mortgage lender after an unsuccessful foreclosure auction. REOs are a large part of the housing market these days. In September 2010, distressed properties -- many of them REOs -- accounted for nearly 48 percent of home-purchase transactions, according to the Campbell Inside Mortgage Finance Survey.</p>
<p>Many banks have an entire department set up to sell REOs. Bank-owned properties can offer great deals for buyers, as they often sell for less than a typical resale home, but there are several things you need to know before investing in an REO property.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Even though REOs can be a bargain, that doesn't mean you should jump in with your eyes closed. "REO buyers need to do their homework so they understand the property, the market, the neighborhood, and the process," says Tom Kelly, a spokesperson for Chase Bank.</p>
<p>Here's what you need to know as a potential buyer of REO property in today's market.</p>
<p>How to find REOs</p>
<p>Real estate agents can pull up REO offerings for you. Most <a href="http://www.hsh.com/lshow.html?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">mortgage lenders Opens a New Window.</a> want their REO properties listed on the multiple listing service (MLS) so that any real estate agent can show them to potential buyers. Many banks also have websites specifically dedicated to their REO listings (go to a bank's website and look for links).</p>
<p>Here are a few major listings to get your browsing started:</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Get your own appraisal</p>
<p>Discounts on REOs vary greatly, depending on whether the homes are severely damaged and where they're located in the country. Although damaged REOs might sell for a relatively minor discount -- 5 percent to 7 percent off comparable private sales of non-damaged homes -- some might offer as much as a 30 percent discount.</p>
<p>But being listed as an REO doesn't mean that a property will automatically be a bargain. Banks are in business to make money, so of course they're going to price homes as competitively as possible. This is why it's important to always ask for an appraisal on the home you plan to purchase, advises Cliff Roe of Cliff Roe Realty, an REO specialist in Seminole, Florida. But keep in mind that an appraisal is going to cost you a few hundred dollars.</p>
<p>Get it inspected</p>
<p>REOs are sold "as-is," and that's why you need a home inspection before committing to a purchase. A thorough inspection is even more important for an REO than for a standard property.</p>
<p>"REOs tend to be sitting for six months to two years," says Roe, "so while you're getting a bargain on price, it's just compensation for the work you'll have to put back in."</p>
<p>A good home inspection should only cost you a few hundred dollars and can save you a lot of heartache. (Find a home inspector online at the American Society of Home Inspector's website, http://www.ashi.org.) An inspection might turn up minor damage and neglect, such as stains, missing appliances, or an unkempt yard. It may also uncover the need to address larger problems, such as holes in walls or major leaks.</p>
<p>The good news: According to Roe, only a small percentage of REO homes have major damage, and many repair issues are apparent as soon as you walk in.</p>
<p>Be financially savvy</p>
<p>"We encourage potential buyers to get prequalified for a loan so that the seller knows the borrower will be able to close," says Kelly.</p>
<p>If you want to buy an REO property, will you have trouble getting a mortgage? If the property you're considering is in good condition, you shouldn't have more trouble qualifying simply on the basis of the home being REO, and likewise, you won't pay higher <a href="http://www.hsh.com?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">mortgage rates Opens a New Window.</a> just because the lender knows you want to buy REO.</p>
<p>However, a significantly damaged property may close off some options for financing, because few mortgage financing programs exist for these types of homes.</p>
<p>"Federal Housing Administration ( <a href="http://www.hsh.com/fha_va-showcase.html?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">FHA Opens a New Window.</a>) has 'purchase and rehab' mortgages available, and Fannie Mae was offering a 'HomeStyle' mortgage, which was similar," says Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH.com. If the damage to the REO property rules out some options, you may need to come up with cash or finance your purchase through hard money loans.</p>
<p>Closing may take awhile</p>
<p>Bidding on an REO isn't quite like making an offer on a privately-owned home, where you hear back from an owner fairly quickly. Instead, you'll submit your bid then you'll wait for a response with a counteroffer. Since a bank is a business, you may end up dealing with more than one person or department, and it can take awhile to get all of the paperwork processed.</p>
<p>"The process can be frustrating and take more time," says Gumbinger. On the other hand, because the home is an REO, the bank will already have taken care of any liens on the property, so your title search should be a breeze.</p>
<p>It's possible to turn a fixer-upper into your own personal castle, as long as you are patient and don't expect that an REO listing means an automatic windfall.</p>
<p>This article was originally published on <a href="http://www.hsh.com?WT.qs_osrc=FXN" type="external">HSH.com Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>var gDomain='www.qsstats.com', gDcsId='dcsvwt4y610000o2mpcappf90_1x7g', gFpc='WT_FPC', gConvert=true, gTag=''+'IPT&gt;);'; if((typeof(gConvert)!='undefined') &amp;&amp; gConvert &amp;&amp; (document.cookie.indexOf(gFpc+'=') == -1) &amp;&amp; (document.cookie.indexOf('WTLOPTOUT=')==-1)){document.write(gTag);} function dcsAdditionalParameters(){ WT.qs_osrc="FXN"; }</p>
| 7,326 |
<p>President Donald Trump gives a speech about taxes in Indianapolis in September. <a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Tax-Overhaul-Cost/2a366f55ead046879ca368adea9b5a35/265/0" type="external">Michael Conroy/AP</a></p>
<p>On Tuesday, President Donald Trump&#160; <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-tells-democrats-he-ll-get-killed-financially-without-estate-n818706" type="external">told</a> a group of Democratic Senators: “My accountant called me and said ‘you’re going to get killed in this [tax] bill,” <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-tells-democrats-he-ll-get-killed-financially-without-estate-n818706" type="external">NBC News reported</a>. If true, Trump has managed to hire a spectacularly <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/donald-trump-says-he-has-no-clue-about-who-would-be-helped-by-his-tax-plan" type="external">incompetent</a> accountant. Another possibility is that Trump is lying.</p>
<p>There’s a lot we don’t know about Trump’s finances. Trump broke from more than <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/sep/28/tammy-baldwin/donald-trump-only-major-party-nominee-40-years-not/" type="external">30-years</a> of precedent by refusing to release any of his tax returns during last year’s presidential campaign. But thanks to a leaked&#160;portion of Trump’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/14/us/politics/document-Donald-Trump-2005-Tax.html" type="external">2005 tax return</a> and a <a href="https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Tax_Doc.pdf" type="external">2016 letter</a> from his tax lawyers,&#160;it’s clear that Trump is likely to be one of the biggest winners under Republicans’ plan. It’s not for nothing that&#160;New York Times&#160;columnist Paul Krugman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/opinion/gop-taxes-paul-ryan.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=opinion&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=2&amp;pgtype=collection" type="external">wrote</a>&#160;last week that you “won’t go far wrong if you think of the big tax cuts in the law as having been custom designed to benefit the Trump family.”</p>
<p>Trump’s tax plan would benefit him in three major ways. The <a href="" type="internal">Tax Cuts and Jobs Act</a> introduced by House Republicans eliminates the Alternative Minimum Tax, which cost the president <a href="" type="internal">$31 million</a> in 2005. It cuts income taxes for the types of businesses—known as “pass-throughs”—that Trump favors from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. And, most importantly, it gets rid of taxes on inherited wealth. A rough calculation shows that could give his children <a href="" type="internal">$620 million</a>.</p>
<p>Trump also claimed he would be a “big loser” under his tax cut, according to the&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/conservatives-demand-changes-to-house-gop-tax-bill/2017/11/07/e70046a4-c3cb-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html?utm_term=.a45003ee25e7" type="external">Washington Post</a>. “The deal is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something,” he said. That is not true. The left-leaning Institute on Taxation on Economic Policy finds that the top 1 percent of Americans would get a tax break of <a href="" type="internal">nearly $50,000</a> next year as a result of the House bill. The working class would receive <a href="https://itep.org/housetaxplan/" type="external">$360</a> on average.</p>
<p>And as Jonathan Chait <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/had-to-give-the-rich-something-trump-tells-senate-democrats.html?utm_source=nym&amp;utm_medium=f1&amp;utm_campaign=feed-part" type="external">writes</a> for New York, Congress’ nonpartisan tax committee does not include the estate tax in its projections. The committee still finds that <a href="" type="internal">two-thirds</a> of taxpayers who make more than $1 million per year would get at least $500 from the Republican bill in 2027, compared to 5 percent of people who make between $30,000 and $40,000 per year. Overall, <a href="" type="internal">more than half</a> of taxpayers—including about 40 percent of the middle class—would either pay more taxes or get less than $100 in 2027 as a result of House Republicans’ tax plan.</p>
<p>It is theoretically possible that Trump would pay more taxes under his plan, but all the evidence suggests otherwise. The only way to know for sure is for Trump to release his tax returns.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Donald Trump Is Either Lying or Using a Terrible Accountant
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/11/donald-trump-is-either-lying-or-using-a-terrible-accountant/
|
2017-11-08
| 4left
|
Donald Trump Is Either Lying or Using a Terrible Accountant
<p>President Donald Trump gives a speech about taxes in Indianapolis in September. <a href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Tax-Overhaul-Cost/2a366f55ead046879ca368adea9b5a35/265/0" type="external">Michael Conroy/AP</a></p>
<p>On Tuesday, President Donald Trump&#160; <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-tells-democrats-he-ll-get-killed-financially-without-estate-n818706" type="external">told</a> a group of Democratic Senators: “My accountant called me and said ‘you’re going to get killed in this [tax] bill,” <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-tells-democrats-he-ll-get-killed-financially-without-estate-n818706" type="external">NBC News reported</a>. If true, Trump has managed to hire a spectacularly <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/donald-trump-says-he-has-no-clue-about-who-would-be-helped-by-his-tax-plan" type="external">incompetent</a> accountant. Another possibility is that Trump is lying.</p>
<p>There’s a lot we don’t know about Trump’s finances. Trump broke from more than <a href="http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2016/sep/28/tammy-baldwin/donald-trump-only-major-party-nominee-40-years-not/" type="external">30-years</a> of precedent by refusing to release any of his tax returns during last year’s presidential campaign. But thanks to a leaked&#160;portion of Trump’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/14/us/politics/document-Donald-Trump-2005-Tax.html" type="external">2005 tax return</a> and a <a href="https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Tax_Doc.pdf" type="external">2016 letter</a> from his tax lawyers,&#160;it’s clear that Trump is likely to be one of the biggest winners under Republicans’ plan. It’s not for nothing that&#160;New York Times&#160;columnist Paul Krugman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/opinion/gop-taxes-paul-ryan.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=opinion&amp;region=stream&amp;module=stream_unit&amp;version=latest&amp;contentPlacement=2&amp;pgtype=collection" type="external">wrote</a>&#160;last week that you “won’t go far wrong if you think of the big tax cuts in the law as having been custom designed to benefit the Trump family.”</p>
<p>Trump’s tax plan would benefit him in three major ways. The <a href="" type="internal">Tax Cuts and Jobs Act</a> introduced by House Republicans eliminates the Alternative Minimum Tax, which cost the president <a href="" type="internal">$31 million</a> in 2005. It cuts income taxes for the types of businesses—known as “pass-throughs”—that Trump favors from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. And, most importantly, it gets rid of taxes on inherited wealth. A rough calculation shows that could give his children <a href="" type="internal">$620 million</a>.</p>
<p>Trump also claimed he would be a “big loser” under his tax cut, according to the&#160; <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/conservatives-demand-changes-to-house-gop-tax-bill/2017/11/07/e70046a4-c3cb-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html?utm_term=.a45003ee25e7" type="external">Washington Post</a>. “The deal is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something,” he said. That is not true. The left-leaning Institute on Taxation on Economic Policy finds that the top 1 percent of Americans would get a tax break of <a href="" type="internal">nearly $50,000</a> next year as a result of the House bill. The working class would receive <a href="https://itep.org/housetaxplan/" type="external">$360</a> on average.</p>
<p>And as Jonathan Chait <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/had-to-give-the-rich-something-trump-tells-senate-democrats.html?utm_source=nym&amp;utm_medium=f1&amp;utm_campaign=feed-part" type="external">writes</a> for New York, Congress’ nonpartisan tax committee does not include the estate tax in its projections. The committee still finds that <a href="" type="internal">two-thirds</a> of taxpayers who make more than $1 million per year would get at least $500 from the Republican bill in 2027, compared to 5 percent of people who make between $30,000 and $40,000 per year. Overall, <a href="" type="internal">more than half</a> of taxpayers—including about 40 percent of the middle class—would either pay more taxes or get less than $100 in 2027 as a result of House Republicans’ tax plan.</p>
<p>It is theoretically possible that Trump would pay more taxes under his plan, but all the evidence suggests otherwise. The only way to know for sure is for Trump to release his tax returns.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,327 |
<p>Hillary Clinton leads by five points in the latest national poll from <a href="https://www.qu.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2378" type="external">Quinnipiac University,</a> but Donald Trump edges closer to her lead when third party candidates are included.</p>
<p />
<p>Clinton leads Trump, 48-43, among likely voters polled throughout the US.</p>
<p>Her lead decreases dramatically when including third party candidates, to 41-39, with Libertarian Gary Johnson polling at 13 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at 4 percent.</p>
<p>This latest poll marks a decrease in Clinton’s lead nationally since <a href="https://www.qu.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2375" type="external">Quinnipiac</a>polled in August, where she led Trump by 10 points, 51-41.</p>
<p>In August, Clinton led by seven points, 45-38, with Johnson at 10 percent and Stein at 4 percent, in the four-way race.</p>
<p>The Quinnipiac national poll was conducted Sept. 8-13 among 960 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">TPM’s PollTracker Average</a> shows Clinton leading Trump, 45.9 to 42.5.</p>
<p />
|
Clinton Comes Out Five Points Ahead In Quinnipiac National Poll
| true |
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/clinton-comes-five-points-ahead-q-poll
| 4left
|
Clinton Comes Out Five Points Ahead In Quinnipiac National Poll
<p>Hillary Clinton leads by five points in the latest national poll from <a href="https://www.qu.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2378" type="external">Quinnipiac University,</a> but Donald Trump edges closer to her lead when third party candidates are included.</p>
<p />
<p>Clinton leads Trump, 48-43, among likely voters polled throughout the US.</p>
<p>Her lead decreases dramatically when including third party candidates, to 41-39, with Libertarian Gary Johnson polling at 13 percent and the Green Party’s Jill Stein at 4 percent.</p>
<p>This latest poll marks a decrease in Clinton’s lead nationally since <a href="https://www.qu.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2375" type="external">Quinnipiac</a>polled in August, where she led Trump by 10 points, 51-41.</p>
<p>In August, Clinton led by seven points, 45-38, with Johnson at 10 percent and Stein at 4 percent, in the four-way race.</p>
<p>The Quinnipiac national poll was conducted Sept. 8-13 among 960 likely voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">TPM’s PollTracker Average</a> shows Clinton leading Trump, 45.9 to 42.5.</p>
<p />
| 7,328 |
|
<p>Late in the afternoon on September 4th, 1970 a crowd gathered in central Santiago, Chile to celebrate the election of socialist president Salvador Allende. Among the participants in the celebration were the leftist folk singer Victor Jara and his wife Joan.</p>
<p>In her book, <a href="" type="internal">Victor: An Unfinished Song</a>, Joan Jara recounts this scene “full of happiness, hugs and tears.” People pushed through the crowd, eager to congratulate Allende. When Joan neared the president-elect she remembers embracing him in a cathartic, bear-like hug. Allende said to her, “Hug me harder, compañera! This is not a time for timidity!”</p>
<p>The hope of that day ended in bloodshed just three years later. On September 11th, 1973 Allende was overthrown in a US-backed coup. The military dictator Augusto Pinochet took power, and led the country in a reign of terror which left thousands dead, tortured and traumatized. Among the coup’s victims were Victor Jara and Allende.</p>
<p>As part of the crackdown, armed forces searched the home of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda told the soldiers, “Look around—there’s only one thing of danger for you here—poetry.” He died days later of heart failure, on September 23rd.</p>
<p>Though the dictator and many of his accomplices have escaped justice – Pinochet died in 2006 at age 91 – the horrors of Pinochet’s reign are widely documented. The book <a href="" type="internal">Clandestine in Chile: The Adventure of Miguel Littín</a>by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, tells the story of Littín’s 1985 return to Chile after living in exile since the coup. The story was told from Littín’s perspective.</p>
<p>Hunkered down in the Basque city of San Sebastián, the leftist laments cutting off his beard in preparation for his return to Chile under a new identity. “The first thing to go was my beard. This was not just a simple matter of shaving. The beard had created a personality for me that I now had to shed.” To cushion the shock, he took the beard off gradually.</p>
<p>Reflecting on Chile under Pinochet, Littín remembers the tireless struggle of coal miner Sebastián Acevedo, who fought to end the torture of his twenty-two-year-old son and twenty-year-old daughter. The desperate Acevedo ultimately warned public officials, journalists and religious leaders, “If you don’t do something to stop the torture of my children, I will soak myself with gasoline and set myself on fire in the atrium of the [Concepción] cathedral.” Acevedo followed through with the threat, and became a haunting symbol of the fight against the dictatorship.</p>
<p>Non-violent demonstrations against Pinochet’s crimes followed the death of Acevedo. Littín described the confrontation. “The police attacked the group [of protesters] with water canons while more than two hundred of them, soaked to the skin, stood impassively against a wall, singing hymns of love.”</p>
<p>Before he left the country in 1973, soldier’s burned Littín’s books in a bonfire constructed in the garden of his home. Over a decade later, in 1986, Pinochet was still burning books. The dictator himself ordered 15,000 copies of Clandestine in Chile to be destroyed.</p>
<p>On September 11, 2010, over six thousand people gathered to mark the anniversary of the coup. Participants converged in homage to the victims of the dictatorship, as well as to demand justice and respect for human rights under the current Sebastián Piñera administration. Chile’s right wing President Piñera, one of the wealthiest people in the country, did not participate in the acts that commemorated the start of the dictatorship.</p>
<p>“We are living under a right wing regime which participated in the dictatorship and even today is justifying the [dictatorship’s] human rights violations,” Mireya García, the vice president of the Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared, told Telesur.</p>
<p>Some members of Piñera’s administration also worked in the Pinochet dictatorship and have not been brought to justice for their crimes. Speaking of the 37th anniversary of the September 11th coup, Piñera said that Chileans should move beyond the conflicts of the past. “We should not remain trapped in the same fights and divisions.”</p>
<p>Allende warned against the tyranny of forgetting. In his final radio broadcast to the Chilean people, the president condemned the coup plotters, “I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.”</p>
<p>BENJAMIN DANGL is currently based in Paraguay and is the author of “ <a href="" type="internal">The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia</a>” (AK Press) and the forthcoming books: Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press) and, with co-author Chris O’Brien, Bottoms Up: A People’s Guide to Beer (PM Press).Email: Bendangl(at)gmail(dot)com.</p>
|
Chile’s Ghosts
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2010/09/14/chile-s-ghosts/
|
2010-09-14
| 4left
|
Chile’s Ghosts
<p>Late in the afternoon on September 4th, 1970 a crowd gathered in central Santiago, Chile to celebrate the election of socialist president Salvador Allende. Among the participants in the celebration were the leftist folk singer Victor Jara and his wife Joan.</p>
<p>In her book, <a href="" type="internal">Victor: An Unfinished Song</a>, Joan Jara recounts this scene “full of happiness, hugs and tears.” People pushed through the crowd, eager to congratulate Allende. When Joan neared the president-elect she remembers embracing him in a cathartic, bear-like hug. Allende said to her, “Hug me harder, compañera! This is not a time for timidity!”</p>
<p>The hope of that day ended in bloodshed just three years later. On September 11th, 1973 Allende was overthrown in a US-backed coup. The military dictator Augusto Pinochet took power, and led the country in a reign of terror which left thousands dead, tortured and traumatized. Among the coup’s victims were Victor Jara and Allende.</p>
<p>As part of the crackdown, armed forces searched the home of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Neruda told the soldiers, “Look around—there’s only one thing of danger for you here—poetry.” He died days later of heart failure, on September 23rd.</p>
<p>Though the dictator and many of his accomplices have escaped justice – Pinochet died in 2006 at age 91 – the horrors of Pinochet’s reign are widely documented. The book <a href="" type="internal">Clandestine in Chile: The Adventure of Miguel Littín</a>by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, tells the story of Littín’s 1985 return to Chile after living in exile since the coup. The story was told from Littín’s perspective.</p>
<p>Hunkered down in the Basque city of San Sebastián, the leftist laments cutting off his beard in preparation for his return to Chile under a new identity. “The first thing to go was my beard. This was not just a simple matter of shaving. The beard had created a personality for me that I now had to shed.” To cushion the shock, he took the beard off gradually.</p>
<p>Reflecting on Chile under Pinochet, Littín remembers the tireless struggle of coal miner Sebastián Acevedo, who fought to end the torture of his twenty-two-year-old son and twenty-year-old daughter. The desperate Acevedo ultimately warned public officials, journalists and religious leaders, “If you don’t do something to stop the torture of my children, I will soak myself with gasoline and set myself on fire in the atrium of the [Concepción] cathedral.” Acevedo followed through with the threat, and became a haunting symbol of the fight against the dictatorship.</p>
<p>Non-violent demonstrations against Pinochet’s crimes followed the death of Acevedo. Littín described the confrontation. “The police attacked the group [of protesters] with water canons while more than two hundred of them, soaked to the skin, stood impassively against a wall, singing hymns of love.”</p>
<p>Before he left the country in 1973, soldier’s burned Littín’s books in a bonfire constructed in the garden of his home. Over a decade later, in 1986, Pinochet was still burning books. The dictator himself ordered 15,000 copies of Clandestine in Chile to be destroyed.</p>
<p>On September 11, 2010, over six thousand people gathered to mark the anniversary of the coup. Participants converged in homage to the victims of the dictatorship, as well as to demand justice and respect for human rights under the current Sebastián Piñera administration. Chile’s right wing President Piñera, one of the wealthiest people in the country, did not participate in the acts that commemorated the start of the dictatorship.</p>
<p>“We are living under a right wing regime which participated in the dictatorship and even today is justifying the [dictatorship’s] human rights violations,” Mireya García, the vice president of the Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared, told Telesur.</p>
<p>Some members of Piñera’s administration also worked in the Pinochet dictatorship and have not been brought to justice for their crimes. Speaking of the 37th anniversary of the September 11th coup, Piñera said that Chileans should move beyond the conflicts of the past. “We should not remain trapped in the same fights and divisions.”</p>
<p>Allende warned against the tyranny of forgetting. In his final radio broadcast to the Chilean people, the president condemned the coup plotters, “I say to them that I am certain that the seeds which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.”</p>
<p>BENJAMIN DANGL is currently based in Paraguay and is the author of “ <a href="" type="internal">The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia</a>” (AK Press) and the forthcoming books: Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press) and, with co-author Chris O’Brien, Bottoms Up: A People’s Guide to Beer (PM Press).Email: Bendangl(at)gmail(dot)com.</p>
| 7,329 |
<p>BOSTON (MA)The New York TimesBy KATIE ZEZIMAPublished: December 21, 2003</p>
<p>OSTON, Dec. 20 — Hundreds of people who say they were abused by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston learned on Saturday how much money they would receive as part of an $85 million settlement reached with the church in September.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Each plaintiff will get $80,000 to $300,000. An arbitrator who met individually with plaintiffs and their lawyers over the past six weeks determined the amount. The amounts were based on type and duration of abuse and how it affected the victim.</p>
<p>The checks will be written on Monday, the Rev. Christopher Coyne, an archdiocesan spokesman, said.</p>
<p>Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley said in a statement that no amount of money could completely compensate those who were abused.</p>
<p>However, he said, "we hope that the conclusion of this phase of the settlement will provide survivors and their loved ones with some measure of healing and peace."</p>
<p>The revelation of the settlement amounts, which were delivered to lawyers' offices on Saturday morning, ends nearly two years of legal wrangling between the church and lawyers for the 542 victims who signed the agreement, the largest ever by an American diocese to resolve sexual abuse claims. Only 10 victims did not participate in the settlement.</p>
|
People Claiming Priest Abuse Learn of Settlement Amounts
| false |
https://poynter.org/news/people-claiming-priest-abuse-learn-settlement-amounts
|
2003-12-20
| 2least
|
People Claiming Priest Abuse Learn of Settlement Amounts
<p>BOSTON (MA)The New York TimesBy KATIE ZEZIMAPublished: December 21, 2003</p>
<p>OSTON, Dec. 20 — Hundreds of people who say they were abused by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston learned on Saturday how much money they would receive as part of an $85 million settlement reached with the church in September.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Each plaintiff will get $80,000 to $300,000. An arbitrator who met individually with plaintiffs and their lawyers over the past six weeks determined the amount. The amounts were based on type and duration of abuse and how it affected the victim.</p>
<p>The checks will be written on Monday, the Rev. Christopher Coyne, an archdiocesan spokesman, said.</p>
<p>Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley said in a statement that no amount of money could completely compensate those who were abused.</p>
<p>However, he said, "we hope that the conclusion of this phase of the settlement will provide survivors and their loved ones with some measure of healing and peace."</p>
<p>The revelation of the settlement amounts, which were delivered to lawyers' offices on Saturday morning, ends nearly two years of legal wrangling between the church and lawyers for the 542 victims who signed the agreement, the largest ever by an American diocese to resolve sexual abuse claims. Only 10 victims did not participate in the settlement.</p>
| 7,330 |
<p>BEIRUT (AP) — Government forces battled with rebels and al-Qaida militants on two fronts in Syria on Sunday as the country prepared to close out another violent year since the country descended into civil war in 2011.</p>
<p>Rebels supported by an al-Qaida-linked cell renewed their assault against pro-government forces that have been holding a vast pocket of the Damascus suburbs under siege, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A second front between many of the same groups saw fresh fighting in northwest Syria, along the border between Idlib and Hama provinces, according to the Observatory and Syrian military media.</p>
<p>The fighting outside Damascus was concentrated around the contested town of Harasta and a nearby military installation. The insurgents flanked the installation on Sunday, trapping an unknown number of pro-government forces inside, reported the Observatory. The local, activist-run Ghouta Media Center reported fierce clashes and dense government airstrikes.</p>
<p>Twenty-one soldiers and 26 rebels and al-Qaida fighters were killed in two days of clashes, according to the Observatory's director, Rami Abdurrahman.</p>
<p>Rebels first attacked the installation seven weeks ago. The government responded with waves of indiscriminate air strikes and artillery attacks that killed more than 250 civilians in what are called the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, which are still under rebel control.</p>
<p>The Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, also known as the White Helmets, said shelling and rocket fire killed 19 people in eastern Ghouta on Saturday, one day after medical evacuations were completed to save the lives of 29 others. The Red Cross and Red Crescent took three days to evacuate 29 patients from the besieged suburbs to receive urgent medical care at government hospitals in Damascus.</p>
<p>The U.N. says government forces are holding 400,000 people under siege in eastern Ghouta. The region was once a hotbed of protest against President Bashar Assad's government. The subsequent crackdown on demonstrations in Ghouta and other parts of the country in 2011 sparked the ongoing civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced half of Syria's population.</p>
<p>BEIRUT (AP) — Government forces battled with rebels and al-Qaida militants on two fronts in Syria on Sunday as the country prepared to close out another violent year since the country descended into civil war in 2011.</p>
<p>Rebels supported by an al-Qaida-linked cell renewed their assault against pro-government forces that have been holding a vast pocket of the Damascus suburbs under siege, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A second front between many of the same groups saw fresh fighting in northwest Syria, along the border between Idlib and Hama provinces, according to the Observatory and Syrian military media.</p>
<p>The fighting outside Damascus was concentrated around the contested town of Harasta and a nearby military installation. The insurgents flanked the installation on Sunday, trapping an unknown number of pro-government forces inside, reported the Observatory. The local, activist-run Ghouta Media Center reported fierce clashes and dense government airstrikes.</p>
<p>Twenty-one soldiers and 26 rebels and al-Qaida fighters were killed in two days of clashes, according to the Observatory's director, Rami Abdurrahman.</p>
<p>Rebels first attacked the installation seven weeks ago. The government responded with waves of indiscriminate air strikes and artillery attacks that killed more than 250 civilians in what are called the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, which are still under rebel control.</p>
<p>The Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, also known as the White Helmets, said shelling and rocket fire killed 19 people in eastern Ghouta on Saturday, one day after medical evacuations were completed to save the lives of 29 others. The Red Cross and Red Crescent took three days to evacuate 29 patients from the besieged suburbs to receive urgent medical care at government hospitals in Damascus.</p>
<p>The U.N. says government forces are holding 400,000 people under siege in eastern Ghouta. The region was once a hotbed of protest against President Bashar Assad's government. The subsequent crackdown on demonstrations in Ghouta and other parts of the country in 2011 sparked the ongoing civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced half of Syria's population.</p>
|
Battles on 2 fronts as Syria closes out another violent year
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/5b133bd87db24c98bf0133c8b850fe65
|
2017-12-31
| 2least
|
Battles on 2 fronts as Syria closes out another violent year
<p>BEIRUT (AP) — Government forces battled with rebels and al-Qaida militants on two fronts in Syria on Sunday as the country prepared to close out another violent year since the country descended into civil war in 2011.</p>
<p>Rebels supported by an al-Qaida-linked cell renewed their assault against pro-government forces that have been holding a vast pocket of the Damascus suburbs under siege, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A second front between many of the same groups saw fresh fighting in northwest Syria, along the border between Idlib and Hama provinces, according to the Observatory and Syrian military media.</p>
<p>The fighting outside Damascus was concentrated around the contested town of Harasta and a nearby military installation. The insurgents flanked the installation on Sunday, trapping an unknown number of pro-government forces inside, reported the Observatory. The local, activist-run Ghouta Media Center reported fierce clashes and dense government airstrikes.</p>
<p>Twenty-one soldiers and 26 rebels and al-Qaida fighters were killed in two days of clashes, according to the Observatory's director, Rami Abdurrahman.</p>
<p>Rebels first attacked the installation seven weeks ago. The government responded with waves of indiscriminate air strikes and artillery attacks that killed more than 250 civilians in what are called the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, which are still under rebel control.</p>
<p>The Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, also known as the White Helmets, said shelling and rocket fire killed 19 people in eastern Ghouta on Saturday, one day after medical evacuations were completed to save the lives of 29 others. The Red Cross and Red Crescent took three days to evacuate 29 patients from the besieged suburbs to receive urgent medical care at government hospitals in Damascus.</p>
<p>The U.N. says government forces are holding 400,000 people under siege in eastern Ghouta. The region was once a hotbed of protest against President Bashar Assad's government. The subsequent crackdown on demonstrations in Ghouta and other parts of the country in 2011 sparked the ongoing civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced half of Syria's population.</p>
<p>BEIRUT (AP) — Government forces battled with rebels and al-Qaida militants on two fronts in Syria on Sunday as the country prepared to close out another violent year since the country descended into civil war in 2011.</p>
<p>Rebels supported by an al-Qaida-linked cell renewed their assault against pro-government forces that have been holding a vast pocket of the Damascus suburbs under siege, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. A second front between many of the same groups saw fresh fighting in northwest Syria, along the border between Idlib and Hama provinces, according to the Observatory and Syrian military media.</p>
<p>The fighting outside Damascus was concentrated around the contested town of Harasta and a nearby military installation. The insurgents flanked the installation on Sunday, trapping an unknown number of pro-government forces inside, reported the Observatory. The local, activist-run Ghouta Media Center reported fierce clashes and dense government airstrikes.</p>
<p>Twenty-one soldiers and 26 rebels and al-Qaida fighters were killed in two days of clashes, according to the Observatory's director, Rami Abdurrahman.</p>
<p>Rebels first attacked the installation seven weeks ago. The government responded with waves of indiscriminate air strikes and artillery attacks that killed more than 250 civilians in what are called the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, which are still under rebel control.</p>
<p>The Syrian Civil Defense search-and-rescue group, also known as the White Helmets, said shelling and rocket fire killed 19 people in eastern Ghouta on Saturday, one day after medical evacuations were completed to save the lives of 29 others. The Red Cross and Red Crescent took three days to evacuate 29 patients from the besieged suburbs to receive urgent medical care at government hospitals in Damascus.</p>
<p>The U.N. says government forces are holding 400,000 people under siege in eastern Ghouta. The region was once a hotbed of protest against President Bashar Assad's government. The subsequent crackdown on demonstrations in Ghouta and other parts of the country in 2011 sparked the ongoing civil war that has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced half of Syria's population.</p>
| 7,331 |
<p>Despite Rick Santorum’s successes this week in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, the Republican establishment should still be able to get its way, notwithstanding Sheldon Adelson’s money and spirited resistance from the party’s base.&#160; The only contender for the Republican nomination whom they deem fit to do their bidding, Mitt Romney, will still, in all likelihood, become the Republican nominee.</p>
<p>Too bad for them, though, that they will then be saddled with such an unappealing standard bearer, and that their party will be divided against itself.&#160; Therefore, even in this post-Citizens’ United world, where corporations and plutocrats are free to spend all they want, Obama – who is no slouch at raising malefactor money in his own right — can hardly lose.&#160; That should be OK with Romney’s backers; they like Mitt better, but they win either way.</p>
<p>And they can still hope: the Israel lobby, with Congress in tow, could force Obama to stumble into a devastating war with Iran – spreading death and destruction and economic catastrophe.&#160; (Could installing a Republican in the White House be among Israel’s reasons for pushing so hard for a war with Iran?)&#160; Or the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could come back to bite him.&#160; Or the economy could go south again, thanks to austerity in Europe and at home or to another financial meltdown.&#160; Nevertheless, the smart money has to be on Obama.&#160; This is good for those of us who can’t stomach the prospect of having Mitt Romney in our lives for the next four or eight years.&#160; The chameleon is sure to flip back to his governor of Massachusetts persona just as soon as he no longer needs to pander to his party’s base, but it is still a <a href="" type="internal" />horrifying thought.&#160; If only on aesthetic grounds, we dislike Obama less, but this too hardly matters; we lose either way.</p>
<p>But we too can also hope: with what remains of organized labor finally beginning to fight back, and with the Occupy movements of last fall getting ready to burst forth again, American politics is no longer just an electoral circus in which two semi-established parties huckster their offerings to “moderate” voters.&#160; Because Democrats and Republicans are beholden to the same interests and because there are few differences between them that are not merely stylistic or cosmetic, our electoral politics has long been mainly of sociological or even clinical interest; what called for an explanation was why two such likeminded parties became so polarized, why they couldn’t “all just get along.”&#160; Now we have more important things to concern us; real politics is back.</p>
<p>But Obama is still relevant, especially in an election year, when our media can be counted on to work overtime covering every facet of the horse race, while ignoring matters of graver consequence.&#160; It is therefore timely to reflect on the trajectory of Obama’s governance to this point, and on one rather startling development in the Obama story that has emerged in recent weeks – his newfound willingness to trumpet neoconservative ideas.</p>
<p>Obama, or at least the Obama of term one, will be remembered, above all, for disappointing the hopes of the constituencies that put him in office.&#160; He will also be remembered not just for having raised the level of ambient hypocrisy, but for the audacity with which he talks the talk, while walking a very different walk.&#160; The more Obama waxes ‘populist,’ the better the rich do, and the more corporate criminality flourishes. &#160; The more he speaks of peace, the more the drones fly, and the more his very own Murder Incorporated (Navy Seals and the rest) spread murder and mayhem.</p>
<p>He gets away with it, in large part, because he’s good at fooling some of the people all of the time – not all liberals, but a sizeable number of them.&#160; Once it becomes clear to all that the Republicans will nominate their least scary contender, expect those liberals to make fools of themselves big time.&#160; No longer can they make a case for Obama by playing up the absurdity of a Trump or Cain or Bachmann presidency.&#160; Soon, they won’t have Newt Gingrich to kick around any more either.&#160; Expect Rick Santorum too to go the way of what Google says he is — unless, as in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Romney again miscalculates and underspends.&#160; And since, from their point of view, the less said about Ron Paul the better, the Democratic Party cheerleaders on MSNBC and Current TV will soon find themselves with nothing to talk about except Romney’s latest blunder — unless they scratch their heads and come up with some accomplishments of Obama’s presidency that they can plausibly defend.</p>
<p>The Nation is already on the job: witness Bernard Avishai’s sneering rebuke of all us “f..ing retards,” as Rahm Emanuel calls us, who fault Obama’s (Romney-inspired) health care reforms.&#160; Avishai’s piece is a review of Paul Starr’s <a href="" type="internal">Remedy and Reaction</a>.&#160; Yes, Starr is still at it, arguing that Democrats, since even before the Clinton era, have bravely given progress on health care reform its best shot.&#160; Expect to hear more along those lines in the months ahead.&#160; If you can’t scare them into voting for Obama, then tell them how, in the face of powerful entrenched interests and Republican obstinacy, he has been the best of all possible presidents.&#160; It is a nauseating prospect.</p>
<p>And it is happening just when, for the first time since before he ordered Guantanamo closed within a year, Obama actually is putting his words and his deeds in line.</p>
<p>The problem is that this small victory for honesty isn’t happening in the way that Obamamaniacal voters four years ago assumed it would.&#160; In taking up where Bush and Cheney left off, Obama has always conducted a neoconservative foreign and military policy.&#160; Now he seems to be moving towards talking up a neoconservative line as well.&#160; It isn’t clear why; one would think that there would be as little percentage in talking that talk now as there was four years ago.&#160; But it is happening, and whatever Obama’s reasons are, it is a disturbing development.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The Obama administration’s Original Sin was “looking forward” – not holding George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking Bush era war criminals accountable.&#160; This was disappointing, but predictable.&#160; So too was Obama’s continuation of the wars they started and lost, and his rebranding of their Global War on Terror.&#160; That he would show so little regard for Constitutional protections and other longstanding legal norms while continuing Bush era policies was more surprising; no one expected &#160; someone credentialed in Constitutional law who had never before deviated from mainstream jurisprudence to be so awful in this regard.&#160; But even Obama’s offenses against the rule of law, though disappointing and surprising, hardly rise to the level of the truly amazing, at least not for anyone who had been paying attention all along.</p>
<p>Obama’s economic and social policies fall out along similar lines; they have been disappointing and surprising, even to those of us who never expected anything approximating the “change” Obama promised (without ever quite saying what he meant).&#160; But, in this department too, nothing that has happened has been so unpredictable as to genuinely amaze.</p>
<p>But Obama’s readiness of late to signal approval for neoconservative ideology marks a new departure.&#160; What makes it all the more astonishing is how unnecessary it is.&#160; It is not as if anything is changing at the policy level.&#160; In deeds, not words, Obama has always been a practicing neocon; from Day One he could justifiably have declared “we are all neoconservatives now.” But he had too much sense to do anything of the sort — then.</p>
<p>By 2008, perhaps even by 2006, after so many neocon-inspired debacles in the Middle East, even Republicans were reluctant to talk that talk.&#160; They still are. In their debates, the Republican contenders endorse the vilest and most foolish nostrums, but none of them has a kind word to say about the principal neocon enablers, George Bush and Dick Cheney, much less about the foreign policy doctrines of the neocons themselves.&#160; It is astonishing that Obama is not similarly discreet.</p>
<p>Instead, in recent weeks he has conspicuously paraded about with Robert Kagan’s latest book-length neocon apologia, <a href="" type="internal">The World America Made</a>.&#160; How far we have come from those halcyon days when it was just the anodyne pop history of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s <a href="" type="internal">Team of Rivals</a> upon which the Presidential blessing was conferred.</p>
<p>These days, Kagan is an advisor to Mitt Romney.&#160; Along with others in the neocon cabal, he is plainly itching to move out of the think tank world, back into offices where he can ply his trade more directly.&#160; How amazing that the change President is helping him along, doing product placement in his behalf.</p>
<p>Unless we have all been wrong about how smart Obama is, it could hardly be because he finds neocon musings intellectually engaging.&#160; And we can only hope that he isn’t testing the waters, seeing how much liberals of the Obama-is-the-best-of-all-possible-presidents school will accept.&#160; The most likely explanation is that, with an election coming, this is a calculated move on Obama’s part to close what space there is that separates him from Romney, the better to capture the rightward veering center.</p>
<p>Whatever the cause, there are indications of late that Obama has taken on board Kagan’s main contention – that American power is not in decline; that, quite the contrary, we are on the threshold of another glorious American century.&#160; The plain implication is that there is no hard crash in the offing, and therefore no need for the empire to change course.&#160; American world dominance isn’t over yet, and won’t be for the foreseeable future.&#160; And for this, the argument goes, the world can only be grateful.</p>
<p>This conceit was especially evident in Obama’s State of the Union address, where it was directly proclaimed.&#160; And it is implicit in Obama’s increasingly frequent harping on military themes.</p>
<p>In recent decades, liberals have erected a taboo – not to say anything derogatory about “the troops” and, by extension, the military generally.&#160; Their rationale has nothing to do with seeking justice for economic conscripts.&#160; It is based on urban legends about returning Vietnam veterans being spat upon by unruly anti-war protestors, and on the conventional wisdom that it can never hurt a politician to praise the armed forces.&#160; But Obama’s words, in the State of the Union and other venues, are above and beyond the now customary norm; increasingly, he sounds more like an ardent militarist than a Nobel laureate burdened with tragic choices.</p>
<p>Along with unflinching obeisance towards the government of Israel, the idea that military power is indispensable for American world supremacy, and that it should and will remain so, is neoconservatism’s core principle: overwhelming might, combined with “American exceptionalism” makes right.&#160; Forget the Wilsonian nonsense we heard so much about after 9/11, when the neocons were all the rage; it’s not about spreading democracy.&#160; Forget too the prattle back then about Leo Strauss, a political philosopher of modest gifts who, though forty years gone, remains influential in a few political science departments.&#160; In the minds of some prominent neocons, students of his at the University of Chicago, Strauss was a Master Thinker.&#160; That is, to put it mildly, an exaggeration.&#160; But no matter: the connections between Strauss’s philosophical views and their policy positions are attenuated at best.</p>
<p>Strauss was smitten by Plato’s idea that “philosopher kings” should keep their less enlightened subjects in line by telling them “golden lies.”&#160; Neoconservatives, who see themselves as philosopher kings graced with the esoteric wisdom of Strauss’s favorite philosophers, agree.&#160; But it is not clear what, if anything, this conviction amounts to in practice.</p>
<p>And apart from it, there is nothing even remotely philosophical in neoconservative ideology.&#160; Nor is there anything that connects Strauss with the anti-Muslim, “clash of civilizations” doctrines that neoconservatives effectively accept.&#160; Neoconservatism is a geopolitical doctrine about how to keep the American empire going.&#160; Its principal contention is that the way to do so is through war and preparation for war, and that the point of America’s wars should be&#160; “regime change” undertaken to make the world safe for American domination, neoliberal globalization, and Israel – not necessarily in that order.&#160; There isn’t much more to it than that.</p>
<p>Obama has been walking the neocon walk since Day One.&#160; Despite mighty America’s (unacknowledged) differences with tiny Israel, he hasn’t even pushed back against Benjamin Netanyahu’s bullying; he doesn’t dare with Congress in AIPAC’s pocket.&#160; And he could hardly be more subservient to the Pentagon brass.&#160; But until now he has at least tried to be discreet about it; he was just a closet neocon.&#160; Now that is changing.&#160; Is it because he feels that the pressure to go to war against Iran is becoming irresistible, and that the wisest course for him, in an election year, is: if you can’t beat them, to join them?&#160; All that is clear for now is that the neocon con is back, and that it is happening not just in the Romney campaign – and, for what difference it makes, also in Gingrich’s and Santorum’s — but also, blatantly, at Obama’s instigation.</p>
<p>Why is impossible to say because while Obama’s governing style and his willingness to be pushed around by the powers that be are there for all to see, his deepest wishes remain obscure.&#160; As term one winds down with term two in the offing, the deepest mystery about this President remains unsolved: what is he up to with his countless capitulations and his vain efforts to strike “bipartisan” compromises?&#160; What does he really want?</p>
|
Why the Neo-Con Turn?
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2012/02/09/why-the-neo-con-turn/
|
2012-02-09
| 4left
|
Why the Neo-Con Turn?
<p>Despite Rick Santorum’s successes this week in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, the Republican establishment should still be able to get its way, notwithstanding Sheldon Adelson’s money and spirited resistance from the party’s base.&#160; The only contender for the Republican nomination whom they deem fit to do their bidding, Mitt Romney, will still, in all likelihood, become the Republican nominee.</p>
<p>Too bad for them, though, that they will then be saddled with such an unappealing standard bearer, and that their party will be divided against itself.&#160; Therefore, even in this post-Citizens’ United world, where corporations and plutocrats are free to spend all they want, Obama – who is no slouch at raising malefactor money in his own right — can hardly lose.&#160; That should be OK with Romney’s backers; they like Mitt better, but they win either way.</p>
<p>And they can still hope: the Israel lobby, with Congress in tow, could force Obama to stumble into a devastating war with Iran – spreading death and destruction and economic catastrophe.&#160; (Could installing a Republican in the White House be among Israel’s reasons for pushing so hard for a war with Iran?)&#160; Or the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could come back to bite him.&#160; Or the economy could go south again, thanks to austerity in Europe and at home or to another financial meltdown.&#160; Nevertheless, the smart money has to be on Obama.&#160; This is good for those of us who can’t stomach the prospect of having Mitt Romney in our lives for the next four or eight years.&#160; The chameleon is sure to flip back to his governor of Massachusetts persona just as soon as he no longer needs to pander to his party’s base, but it is still a <a href="" type="internal" />horrifying thought.&#160; If only on aesthetic grounds, we dislike Obama less, but this too hardly matters; we lose either way.</p>
<p>But we too can also hope: with what remains of organized labor finally beginning to fight back, and with the Occupy movements of last fall getting ready to burst forth again, American politics is no longer just an electoral circus in which two semi-established parties huckster their offerings to “moderate” voters.&#160; Because Democrats and Republicans are beholden to the same interests and because there are few differences between them that are not merely stylistic or cosmetic, our electoral politics has long been mainly of sociological or even clinical interest; what called for an explanation was why two such likeminded parties became so polarized, why they couldn’t “all just get along.”&#160; Now we have more important things to concern us; real politics is back.</p>
<p>But Obama is still relevant, especially in an election year, when our media can be counted on to work overtime covering every facet of the horse race, while ignoring matters of graver consequence.&#160; It is therefore timely to reflect on the trajectory of Obama’s governance to this point, and on one rather startling development in the Obama story that has emerged in recent weeks – his newfound willingness to trumpet neoconservative ideas.</p>
<p>Obama, or at least the Obama of term one, will be remembered, above all, for disappointing the hopes of the constituencies that put him in office.&#160; He will also be remembered not just for having raised the level of ambient hypocrisy, but for the audacity with which he talks the talk, while walking a very different walk.&#160; The more Obama waxes ‘populist,’ the better the rich do, and the more corporate criminality flourishes. &#160; The more he speaks of peace, the more the drones fly, and the more his very own Murder Incorporated (Navy Seals and the rest) spread murder and mayhem.</p>
<p>He gets away with it, in large part, because he’s good at fooling some of the people all of the time – not all liberals, but a sizeable number of them.&#160; Once it becomes clear to all that the Republicans will nominate their least scary contender, expect those liberals to make fools of themselves big time.&#160; No longer can they make a case for Obama by playing up the absurdity of a Trump or Cain or Bachmann presidency.&#160; Soon, they won’t have Newt Gingrich to kick around any more either.&#160; Expect Rick Santorum too to go the way of what Google says he is — unless, as in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, Romney again miscalculates and underspends.&#160; And since, from their point of view, the less said about Ron Paul the better, the Democratic Party cheerleaders on MSNBC and Current TV will soon find themselves with nothing to talk about except Romney’s latest blunder — unless they scratch their heads and come up with some accomplishments of Obama’s presidency that they can plausibly defend.</p>
<p>The Nation is already on the job: witness Bernard Avishai’s sneering rebuke of all us “f..ing retards,” as Rahm Emanuel calls us, who fault Obama’s (Romney-inspired) health care reforms.&#160; Avishai’s piece is a review of Paul Starr’s <a href="" type="internal">Remedy and Reaction</a>.&#160; Yes, Starr is still at it, arguing that Democrats, since even before the Clinton era, have bravely given progress on health care reform its best shot.&#160; Expect to hear more along those lines in the months ahead.&#160; If you can’t scare them into voting for Obama, then tell them how, in the face of powerful entrenched interests and Republican obstinacy, he has been the best of all possible presidents.&#160; It is a nauseating prospect.</p>
<p>And it is happening just when, for the first time since before he ordered Guantanamo closed within a year, Obama actually is putting his words and his deeds in line.</p>
<p>The problem is that this small victory for honesty isn’t happening in the way that Obamamaniacal voters four years ago assumed it would.&#160; In taking up where Bush and Cheney left off, Obama has always conducted a neoconservative foreign and military policy.&#160; Now he seems to be moving towards talking up a neoconservative line as well.&#160; It isn’t clear why; one would think that there would be as little percentage in talking that talk now as there was four years ago.&#160; But it is happening, and whatever Obama’s reasons are, it is a disturbing development.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The Obama administration’s Original Sin was “looking forward” – not holding George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking Bush era war criminals accountable.&#160; This was disappointing, but predictable.&#160; So too was Obama’s continuation of the wars they started and lost, and his rebranding of their Global War on Terror.&#160; That he would show so little regard for Constitutional protections and other longstanding legal norms while continuing Bush era policies was more surprising; no one expected &#160; someone credentialed in Constitutional law who had never before deviated from mainstream jurisprudence to be so awful in this regard.&#160; But even Obama’s offenses against the rule of law, though disappointing and surprising, hardly rise to the level of the truly amazing, at least not for anyone who had been paying attention all along.</p>
<p>Obama’s economic and social policies fall out along similar lines; they have been disappointing and surprising, even to those of us who never expected anything approximating the “change” Obama promised (without ever quite saying what he meant).&#160; But, in this department too, nothing that has happened has been so unpredictable as to genuinely amaze.</p>
<p>But Obama’s readiness of late to signal approval for neoconservative ideology marks a new departure.&#160; What makes it all the more astonishing is how unnecessary it is.&#160; It is not as if anything is changing at the policy level.&#160; In deeds, not words, Obama has always been a practicing neocon; from Day One he could justifiably have declared “we are all neoconservatives now.” But he had too much sense to do anything of the sort — then.</p>
<p>By 2008, perhaps even by 2006, after so many neocon-inspired debacles in the Middle East, even Republicans were reluctant to talk that talk.&#160; They still are. In their debates, the Republican contenders endorse the vilest and most foolish nostrums, but none of them has a kind word to say about the principal neocon enablers, George Bush and Dick Cheney, much less about the foreign policy doctrines of the neocons themselves.&#160; It is astonishing that Obama is not similarly discreet.</p>
<p>Instead, in recent weeks he has conspicuously paraded about with Robert Kagan’s latest book-length neocon apologia, <a href="" type="internal">The World America Made</a>.&#160; How far we have come from those halcyon days when it was just the anodyne pop history of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s <a href="" type="internal">Team of Rivals</a> upon which the Presidential blessing was conferred.</p>
<p>These days, Kagan is an advisor to Mitt Romney.&#160; Along with others in the neocon cabal, he is plainly itching to move out of the think tank world, back into offices where he can ply his trade more directly.&#160; How amazing that the change President is helping him along, doing product placement in his behalf.</p>
<p>Unless we have all been wrong about how smart Obama is, it could hardly be because he finds neocon musings intellectually engaging.&#160; And we can only hope that he isn’t testing the waters, seeing how much liberals of the Obama-is-the-best-of-all-possible-presidents school will accept.&#160; The most likely explanation is that, with an election coming, this is a calculated move on Obama’s part to close what space there is that separates him from Romney, the better to capture the rightward veering center.</p>
<p>Whatever the cause, there are indications of late that Obama has taken on board Kagan’s main contention – that American power is not in decline; that, quite the contrary, we are on the threshold of another glorious American century.&#160; The plain implication is that there is no hard crash in the offing, and therefore no need for the empire to change course.&#160; American world dominance isn’t over yet, and won’t be for the foreseeable future.&#160; And for this, the argument goes, the world can only be grateful.</p>
<p>This conceit was especially evident in Obama’s State of the Union address, where it was directly proclaimed.&#160; And it is implicit in Obama’s increasingly frequent harping on military themes.</p>
<p>In recent decades, liberals have erected a taboo – not to say anything derogatory about “the troops” and, by extension, the military generally.&#160; Their rationale has nothing to do with seeking justice for economic conscripts.&#160; It is based on urban legends about returning Vietnam veterans being spat upon by unruly anti-war protestors, and on the conventional wisdom that it can never hurt a politician to praise the armed forces.&#160; But Obama’s words, in the State of the Union and other venues, are above and beyond the now customary norm; increasingly, he sounds more like an ardent militarist than a Nobel laureate burdened with tragic choices.</p>
<p>Along with unflinching obeisance towards the government of Israel, the idea that military power is indispensable for American world supremacy, and that it should and will remain so, is neoconservatism’s core principle: overwhelming might, combined with “American exceptionalism” makes right.&#160; Forget the Wilsonian nonsense we heard so much about after 9/11, when the neocons were all the rage; it’s not about spreading democracy.&#160; Forget too the prattle back then about Leo Strauss, a political philosopher of modest gifts who, though forty years gone, remains influential in a few political science departments.&#160; In the minds of some prominent neocons, students of his at the University of Chicago, Strauss was a Master Thinker.&#160; That is, to put it mildly, an exaggeration.&#160; But no matter: the connections between Strauss’s philosophical views and their policy positions are attenuated at best.</p>
<p>Strauss was smitten by Plato’s idea that “philosopher kings” should keep their less enlightened subjects in line by telling them “golden lies.”&#160; Neoconservatives, who see themselves as philosopher kings graced with the esoteric wisdom of Strauss’s favorite philosophers, agree.&#160; But it is not clear what, if anything, this conviction amounts to in practice.</p>
<p>And apart from it, there is nothing even remotely philosophical in neoconservative ideology.&#160; Nor is there anything that connects Strauss with the anti-Muslim, “clash of civilizations” doctrines that neoconservatives effectively accept.&#160; Neoconservatism is a geopolitical doctrine about how to keep the American empire going.&#160; Its principal contention is that the way to do so is through war and preparation for war, and that the point of America’s wars should be&#160; “regime change” undertaken to make the world safe for American domination, neoliberal globalization, and Israel – not necessarily in that order.&#160; There isn’t much more to it than that.</p>
<p>Obama has been walking the neocon walk since Day One.&#160; Despite mighty America’s (unacknowledged) differences with tiny Israel, he hasn’t even pushed back against Benjamin Netanyahu’s bullying; he doesn’t dare with Congress in AIPAC’s pocket.&#160; And he could hardly be more subservient to the Pentagon brass.&#160; But until now he has at least tried to be discreet about it; he was just a closet neocon.&#160; Now that is changing.&#160; Is it because he feels that the pressure to go to war against Iran is becoming irresistible, and that the wisest course for him, in an election year, is: if you can’t beat them, to join them?&#160; All that is clear for now is that the neocon con is back, and that it is happening not just in the Romney campaign – and, for what difference it makes, also in Gingrich’s and Santorum’s — but also, blatantly, at Obama’s instigation.</p>
<p>Why is impossible to say because while Obama’s governing style and his willingness to be pushed around by the powers that be are there for all to see, his deepest wishes remain obscure.&#160; As term one winds down with term two in the offing, the deepest mystery about this President remains unsolved: what is he up to with his countless capitulations and his vain efforts to strike “bipartisan” compromises?&#160; What does he really want?</p>
| 7,332 |
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Saturday evening's drawing of the North Carolina Lottery's "Pick 3 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>5-2-7, Lucky Sum: 14</p>
<p>(five, two, seven; Lucky Sum: fourteen)</p>
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Saturday evening's drawing of the North Carolina Lottery's "Pick 3 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>5-2-7, Lucky Sum: 14</p>
<p>(five, two, seven; Lucky Sum: fourteen)</p>
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 3 Evening' game
| false |
https://apnews.com/5c95572ab52240209eb9130c3a8c520e
|
2018-01-07
| 2least
|
Winning numbers drawn in 'Pick 3 Evening' game
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Saturday evening's drawing of the North Carolina Lottery's "Pick 3 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>5-2-7, Lucky Sum: 14</p>
<p>(five, two, seven; Lucky Sum: fourteen)</p>
<p>RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Saturday evening's drawing of the North Carolina Lottery's "Pick 3 Evening" game were:</p>
<p>5-2-7, Lucky Sum: 14</p>
<p>(five, two, seven; Lucky Sum: fourteen)</p>
| 7,333 |
<p />
<p>The Pentagon plans to announce the repeal of its ban on openly serving transgender service members next month, US defence officials have said. One of the US officials said on Saturday that parts of the repeal would come into effect immediately. But the plan would also direct each branch of the armed services to implement new…</p>
<p />
<p><a href="//www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/pentagon-lift-ban-transgender-service-members-160625184114003.html" type="external">Al Jazeera</a>&#160;source:&#160; <a href="//www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-pentagon-idUSKCN0ZA3GU" type="external">Reuters</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
Pentagon to Lift Ban on Transgender Service Members
| true |
http://alternet.org/gender/pentagon-lifts-transgender-ban
|
2016-06-26
| 4left
|
Pentagon to Lift Ban on Transgender Service Members
<p />
<p>The Pentagon plans to announce the repeal of its ban on openly serving transgender service members next month, US defence officials have said. One of the US officials said on Saturday that parts of the repeal would come into effect immediately. But the plan would also direct each branch of the armed services to implement new…</p>
<p />
<p><a href="//www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/06/pentagon-lift-ban-transgender-service-members-160625184114003.html" type="external">Al Jazeera</a>&#160;source:&#160; <a href="//www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lgbt-pentagon-idUSKCN0ZA3GU" type="external">Reuters</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,334 |
<p>The Senate on Friday approved a $60.4 billion aid package to pay for reconstruction costs from Superstorm Sandy, after defeating Republican efforts to trim the bill's cost.</p>
<p>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to quickly take up the bill.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Both chambers have to agreed on a package by Jan 2, when the current term of Congress is expected to end, or restart the process of crafting legislation in 2013.</p>
<p>The bill's chances in the next few days could depend on whether President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reach a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts set to begin kicking in the new year.</p>
<p>Republicans complain the $60.4 billion reconstruction package requested by Obama is more than the annual budgets for the departments of Interior, Labor, Treasury and Transportation combined. They have urged a slower relief approach based on a congressional assessment of needs.</p>
<p>The Congressional Budget Office has estimated about $8.97 billion of the Senate bill would be spent in 2013, with another $12.66 billion spent in 2014 and $11.59 billion spent in 2015</p>
|
Senate Approves $60.4B Superstorm Sandy Bill
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2012/12/28/senate-oks-604b-superstorm-sandy-bill.html
|
2016-03-03
| 0right
|
Senate Approves $60.4B Superstorm Sandy Bill
<p>The Senate on Friday approved a $60.4 billion aid package to pay for reconstruction costs from Superstorm Sandy, after defeating Republican efforts to trim the bill's cost.</p>
<p>Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to quickly take up the bill.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Both chambers have to agreed on a package by Jan 2, when the current term of Congress is expected to end, or restart the process of crafting legislation in 2013.</p>
<p>The bill's chances in the next few days could depend on whether President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reach a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and spending cuts set to begin kicking in the new year.</p>
<p>Republicans complain the $60.4 billion reconstruction package requested by Obama is more than the annual budgets for the departments of Interior, Labor, Treasury and Transportation combined. They have urged a slower relief approach based on a congressional assessment of needs.</p>
<p>The Congressional Budget Office has estimated about $8.97 billion of the Senate bill would be spent in 2013, with another $12.66 billion spent in 2014 and $11.59 billion spent in 2015</p>
| 7,335 |
<p>Last week’s Weekend Update: Summer Edition saw former Saturday Night Live cast member Bill Hader <a href="" type="internal">taking on Anthony Scaramucci</a>. This week, it was Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers’ turn to take on a couple of slave-owning founding fathers.</p>
<p>“You’re not going to believe this, but President Trump's approval rating is down,” Colin Jost began. “Trump can't believe it either because everywhere he goes people are always waving to him,” he added, showing a photo of neo-Nazis giving the Sieg Heil salute in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to do this,” a clearly fed-up Michael Che said. “Nazis? Confederates? What is with these old-timey threats making a comeback? What's next, Vikings? Polio?” In response to Trump’s assertion that there were “fine people” on “both sides” of the protests in Charlottesville, Che said, “OK, but if you are a fine person and you happen to be at a rally filled with Nazis, at what point do you stop and think, ‘Hey, am I being unreasonable?’”</p>
<p>Multiple times over the past few days, President Trump has <a href="" type="internal">drawn comparisons between Confederate General Robert E. Lee and George Washington</a>. So there to defend himself Thursday night was Washington himself, played by The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon.</p>
<p>“About this whole Robert E. Lee thing, I'm nothing like that guy,” Washington said. “I created this country, he tried to tear it apart. I rebelled against England, he rebelled against America.”</p>
<p>Ultimately, Che had to confront Washington about owning slaves. “Right, that was bad, that was wrong,” he said. &#160;“But if you want to talk about owning slaves, you should really talk about Thomas Jefferson.”</p>
<p>In that moment Seth Meyers emerged as Jefferson to defend his honor. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re gonna throw me under the carriage like that?” he asked. “You're going to make me the slave guy? Really? Come on! What more do you want? You are the one on the quarter. I'm on the nickel and two dollar bill, joke money!”</p>
<p>“You have to remember, it was a different time, man,” Meyers’ Jefferson added. “It was the '70s, man.” The 1770s. “Look, we have all done bad things, but the difference between us and Robert E. Lee is we did good things. I wrote the Declaration of Independence.”</p>
<p>“Not to be a jerk, but I won my war,” Washington chimed in.</p>
<p>“Yeah, and I’m sorry Robert E. Lee, but I prefer generals who win wars,” Jefferson added.</p>
|
Jimmy Fallon’s Washington and Seth Meyers’ Jefferson Defend Themselves From Trump on ‘Weekend Update’
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/jimmy-fallons-washington-and-seth-meyers-jefferson-defend-themselves-from-trump-on-weekend-update
|
2018-10-06
| 4left
|
Jimmy Fallon’s Washington and Seth Meyers’ Jefferson Defend Themselves From Trump on ‘Weekend Update’
<p>Last week’s Weekend Update: Summer Edition saw former Saturday Night Live cast member Bill Hader <a href="" type="internal">taking on Anthony Scaramucci</a>. This week, it was Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers’ turn to take on a couple of slave-owning founding fathers.</p>
<p>“You’re not going to believe this, but President Trump's approval rating is down,” Colin Jost began. “Trump can't believe it either because everywhere he goes people are always waving to him,” he added, showing a photo of neo-Nazis giving the Sieg Heil salute in Charlottesville.</p>
<p>“I don’t want to do this,” a clearly fed-up Michael Che said. “Nazis? Confederates? What is with these old-timey threats making a comeback? What's next, Vikings? Polio?” In response to Trump’s assertion that there were “fine people” on “both sides” of the protests in Charlottesville, Che said, “OK, but if you are a fine person and you happen to be at a rally filled with Nazis, at what point do you stop and think, ‘Hey, am I being unreasonable?’”</p>
<p>Multiple times over the past few days, President Trump has <a href="" type="internal">drawn comparisons between Confederate General Robert E. Lee and George Washington</a>. So there to defend himself Thursday night was Washington himself, played by The Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon.</p>
<p>“About this whole Robert E. Lee thing, I'm nothing like that guy,” Washington said. “I created this country, he tried to tear it apart. I rebelled against England, he rebelled against America.”</p>
<p>Ultimately, Che had to confront Washington about owning slaves. “Right, that was bad, that was wrong,” he said. &#160;“But if you want to talk about owning slaves, you should really talk about Thomas Jefferson.”</p>
<p>In that moment Seth Meyers emerged as Jefferson to defend his honor. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’re gonna throw me under the carriage like that?” he asked. “You're going to make me the slave guy? Really? Come on! What more do you want? You are the one on the quarter. I'm on the nickel and two dollar bill, joke money!”</p>
<p>“You have to remember, it was a different time, man,” Meyers’ Jefferson added. “It was the '70s, man.” The 1770s. “Look, we have all done bad things, but the difference between us and Robert E. Lee is we did good things. I wrote the Declaration of Independence.”</p>
<p>“Not to be a jerk, but I won my war,” Washington chimed in.</p>
<p>“Yeah, and I’m sorry Robert E. Lee, but I prefer generals who win wars,” Jefferson added.</p>
| 7,336 |
<p>The souvenir booklet from the dedication of the building was fittingly lavish for a church edifice which rivaled any house of worship in America. Exactly a century ago, in 1908, the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis, Mo., then the oldest Protestant church in the city, entered a grand building built in the Italianate style. The main sanctuary seated 1,700 and was a basilica with a rose window 14 feet across. There were vaulted side arches reminiscent of the cathedrals of Europe. The interior columns were of green stone on marble bases and with golden capitals. The botanical designs over the windows were reflective of plants mentioned in the Bible. At the front was a magnificent display of organ pipes.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Fred Anderson</p>
<p>Second Baptist had a state-of-the-art educational plant for the beginning of the 20th-century. A banquet hall would seat 300. A free-standing bell tower, illuminated in the evenings, soared over 240 feet into the sky and near the top, there was a balcony from which 100 persons could stand and view the city. An inner courtyard included a 40-foot-long reflecting pool with a fountain which supplied the water from a lion's mouth.</p>
<p>The interior photographs in the souvenir booklet show oak pews, throne-like pulpit furniture, a ladies' parlor with loveseat and rockers around a fireplace and a Sunday school assembly room with hundreds of bentwood chairs ready to receive the pupils. The photos, deplete of people, have the eerie resemblance to those of the staterooms from the Titanic.</p>
<p>But there were people to fill the rooms in 1908. On the dedication Sunday, “a large congregation, taxing the utmost capacity,” gathered for the services. These began with the baptism of 12 persons. As the pastor descended into the baptistery, he held a jar of water from the Jordan and said: “I mingle the waters of the Jordan and those of the Mississippi, in token of the fact that the sacred stream of the East and the waters of the West could be consecrated to no nobler purpose than that of serving the beautiful ordinance ….”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>St. Louis's Second Baptist Church</p>
<p>The church embraced the life and work of both the Northern and Southern Baptist conventions in a grand experiment of cooperation. The building had been built for the ages. But by the mid-20th-century, a combination of factors brought great decline and eventually a relocation to a smaller building and the abandonment of the dual affiliation with both conventions.</p>
<p>Tucked on the last pages of the old booklet is a statement of the church's ideals. It is one of the finest surveys of Baptist principles and distinctives. In part, it reads as follows:</p>
<p>“The foundation tenet of Baptists is that God and every soul are so related that nothing is to be thrust between them. We hold to the ‘competency of the soul Godward.' Hence we reject priesthoods, disbelieve in any spiritual efficacy of baptismal waters or of communion bread and wine, and refuse to recognize human authority in the religious life. Jesus, the Christ, who makes known to us God's moral character, is our only spiritual Authority.</p>
<p>“All members of a Baptist church have equal rights and privileges. Their duties and influence are measured by personal ability. The minister serves, teaches and leads according to his gifts. His rank depends upon his character and mental and social equipment.</p>
<p>“No local church, any more than a civil power, can invade a member's conscience, or interfere with his right of private interpretation of the Scriptures, or with his pursuit of truth anywhere. Every Baptist, unfettered by an authoritative creed, is free to think, and should do so aided by the help that the God of light gives to all seekers for truth.</p>
<p>“Each Baptist church, therefore, is independent of every other. Churches in a city, state or nation voluntarily associate for larger and better service to mankind than one church alone could render. Such organizations, however, can neither legislate for, nor act as courts of appeal from, a local church.</p>
<p>“It follows that types of Baptist churches vary according to the prevailing views of those who compose them. These variations should be expected, and have a right to exist. Uniformity, in creed, or worship, or activity, or attitude towards questions current at any given time, is not a Baptist ideal. True liberalism grants liberty to others, and loves them none the less for taking it. Both among members of a church, and in the relations of churches to one another, our unity is that of the spirit, and our bond is love. Our oneness is not due to outside ecclesiastical pressure, but to inner spiritual kinship. We value organization only as it promotes life.</p>
<p>“Our ideals are to help every person to live ‘the eternal life,' or the life of fellowship with God here and now, as shown by Jesus in his spirit, aims and service to mankind, and to promote ‘the kingdom of God,' or that world-wide social condition in which all persons shall live as children of the heavenly Father, and therefore as members of his family.</p>
<p>“All truth, through whatever medium it comes, is God's truth. It is to be reverently and thankfully received and obeyed in life. Our pulpit aims to appreciate and to use the spiritual value of all facts that our wonderful world of education is so richly revealing. Truth and the soul were made for each other as seed and soil. We trust the ‘Spirit of truth' to use his own implement to culture our religious lives.”</p>
<p>The grand building served Second Church only a relatively short time. The church experienced changes. But the ideals — the last and least part of the souvenir booklet from a century ago — remain characteristic of many churches which yet wear the name of Baptist. Sometimes what remains is the most important thing of all.</p>
<p>Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.</p>
|
What remains
| false |
https://baptistnews.com/article/whatremains/
| 3left-center
|
What remains
<p>The souvenir booklet from the dedication of the building was fittingly lavish for a church edifice which rivaled any house of worship in America. Exactly a century ago, in 1908, the Second Baptist Church of St. Louis, Mo., then the oldest Protestant church in the city, entered a grand building built in the Italianate style. The main sanctuary seated 1,700 and was a basilica with a rose window 14 feet across. There were vaulted side arches reminiscent of the cathedrals of Europe. The interior columns were of green stone on marble bases and with golden capitals. The botanical designs over the windows were reflective of plants mentioned in the Bible. At the front was a magnificent display of organ pipes.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Fred Anderson</p>
<p>Second Baptist had a state-of-the-art educational plant for the beginning of the 20th-century. A banquet hall would seat 300. A free-standing bell tower, illuminated in the evenings, soared over 240 feet into the sky and near the top, there was a balcony from which 100 persons could stand and view the city. An inner courtyard included a 40-foot-long reflecting pool with a fountain which supplied the water from a lion's mouth.</p>
<p>The interior photographs in the souvenir booklet show oak pews, throne-like pulpit furniture, a ladies' parlor with loveseat and rockers around a fireplace and a Sunday school assembly room with hundreds of bentwood chairs ready to receive the pupils. The photos, deplete of people, have the eerie resemblance to those of the staterooms from the Titanic.</p>
<p>But there were people to fill the rooms in 1908. On the dedication Sunday, “a large congregation, taxing the utmost capacity,” gathered for the services. These began with the baptism of 12 persons. As the pastor descended into the baptistery, he held a jar of water from the Jordan and said: “I mingle the waters of the Jordan and those of the Mississippi, in token of the fact that the sacred stream of the East and the waters of the West could be consecrated to no nobler purpose than that of serving the beautiful ordinance ….”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>St. Louis's Second Baptist Church</p>
<p>The church embraced the life and work of both the Northern and Southern Baptist conventions in a grand experiment of cooperation. The building had been built for the ages. But by the mid-20th-century, a combination of factors brought great decline and eventually a relocation to a smaller building and the abandonment of the dual affiliation with both conventions.</p>
<p>Tucked on the last pages of the old booklet is a statement of the church's ideals. It is one of the finest surveys of Baptist principles and distinctives. In part, it reads as follows:</p>
<p>“The foundation tenet of Baptists is that God and every soul are so related that nothing is to be thrust between them. We hold to the ‘competency of the soul Godward.' Hence we reject priesthoods, disbelieve in any spiritual efficacy of baptismal waters or of communion bread and wine, and refuse to recognize human authority in the religious life. Jesus, the Christ, who makes known to us God's moral character, is our only spiritual Authority.</p>
<p>“All members of a Baptist church have equal rights and privileges. Their duties and influence are measured by personal ability. The minister serves, teaches and leads according to his gifts. His rank depends upon his character and mental and social equipment.</p>
<p>“No local church, any more than a civil power, can invade a member's conscience, or interfere with his right of private interpretation of the Scriptures, or with his pursuit of truth anywhere. Every Baptist, unfettered by an authoritative creed, is free to think, and should do so aided by the help that the God of light gives to all seekers for truth.</p>
<p>“Each Baptist church, therefore, is independent of every other. Churches in a city, state or nation voluntarily associate for larger and better service to mankind than one church alone could render. Such organizations, however, can neither legislate for, nor act as courts of appeal from, a local church.</p>
<p>“It follows that types of Baptist churches vary according to the prevailing views of those who compose them. These variations should be expected, and have a right to exist. Uniformity, in creed, or worship, or activity, or attitude towards questions current at any given time, is not a Baptist ideal. True liberalism grants liberty to others, and loves them none the less for taking it. Both among members of a church, and in the relations of churches to one another, our unity is that of the spirit, and our bond is love. Our oneness is not due to outside ecclesiastical pressure, but to inner spiritual kinship. We value organization only as it promotes life.</p>
<p>“Our ideals are to help every person to live ‘the eternal life,' or the life of fellowship with God here and now, as shown by Jesus in his spirit, aims and service to mankind, and to promote ‘the kingdom of God,' or that world-wide social condition in which all persons shall live as children of the heavenly Father, and therefore as members of his family.</p>
<p>“All truth, through whatever medium it comes, is God's truth. It is to be reverently and thankfully received and obeyed in life. Our pulpit aims to appreciate and to use the spiritual value of all facts that our wonderful world of education is so richly revealing. Truth and the soul were made for each other as seed and soil. We trust the ‘Spirit of truth' to use his own implement to culture our religious lives.”</p>
<p>The grand building served Second Church only a relatively short time. The church experienced changes. But the ideals — the last and least part of the souvenir booklet from a century ago — remain characteristic of many churches which yet wear the name of Baptist. Sometimes what remains is the most important thing of all.</p>
<p>Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.</p>
| 7,337 |
|
<p>There’s America the mythical, with the White House Easter Egg Roll scheduled for next Monday and activities, in the words of the White House press release, designed to “encourage children to lead healthy and active lives and follow the First Lady’s ‘Let’s Move!’ initiative, a national campaign to combat childhood obesity. The White House will open its South Lawn for children aged 12 years and younger and their families.”</p>
<p>Then there’s America the Real, where on March 23 a big fire&#160;in Ohio in a warehouse at a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, owned by Ohio Fresh Eggs, prompted the euthanizing of 250,000 laying hens after – in the words of a local news report – “electricity in some of the buildings had to be shut off, and some of the birds suffered from issues with ventilation and smoke inhalation.”</p>
<p>Rotten luck on the birds, of course. But, fire or no fire, their future was not bright. The same news story quoted Kevin Elder, executive director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Livestock Environmental Permitting program, as saying Ohio Fresh Eggs was permitted to keep 2.4 million birds and had about 2.2 million on hand. He said the birds were euthanized according to industry standards and none were known to have died in the fire. He said those euthanized were nearing the end of their laying cycle and would have been euthanized soon, regardless of the fire.”</p>
<p>As Martha Rosenberg, a freelance journalist who covers America’s ghastly agro-industrial landscape wrote <a href="" type="internal">on this site</a>, “At Ohio Fresh Eggs, only eight employees were tending 16 barns when the fire was reported … What kind of ‘care’ can workers give animals in fume-filled barns the size of football fields? Removing the dead and putting the half dead into kill carts, say those who’ve worked there.”</p>
<p>Mythical America is interminably featured in pastoral commercials and cute cartoons, where contentment reigns at Animal Farm. The cackle of chickens mingles euphonically with the grunts of what Bertie Wooster, commenting to Jeeves on his breakfast bacon,&#160;invoked as coming&#160;from “contented pigs.”</p>
<p>There aren’t many contented pigs on this continent, certainly not those imprisoned in the&#160;Netley Hutterite Colony hog farm in Manitoba, where 8,700 pigs perished in a 2008 fire. Witnesses reported hearing the animals’ “ear shattering” squeals and “screams.” Only six full-time employees tended the animals, and bulldozers could not breach the factory farm manure pits. Fires at two other Hutterite Colonies, Vermillion Farms and Rainbow, both near Winnipeg, incinerated 8,500 pigs previously.</p>
<p>Every Thanksgiving, the U.S. president pardons a turkey, a cute&#160;ceremony – in fairness, Obama did not look enthusiastic – as repulsive as would have been the spectacle of Adolf Hitler excusing from the gas chamber on each anniversary of Kristalnacht&#160;a Jew imported for the ceremony from Auschwitz.</p>
<p>Michele Obama has planted an organic garden on the White House grounds. The symbolism would be more admirable if one did not know that Obama installed as his secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa and&#160;a notorious supporter of everything that is awful in the mass production of food in America – from bioengineered crops from Monsanto to the treatment of compromised meat with ammonia to produce what one USDA microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called “pink slime,”&#160;saying to colleagues in an email, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”&#160; It’s in fast-food chain hamburger and school meals.</p>
<p>These days, animals in the days before slaughter are dosed with a dangerous chemical additive fed to animals in the last days before slaughter. To quote Rosenberg again, “Ractopamine, aka Paylean and Optaflexx, is banned in 160 countries, including Europe, Taiwan and China… Yet, in the United States 45 per cent of pigs, 30 per cent of ration-fed cattle, and an unknown percentage of turkeys are pumped full of this drug in the days leading up to slaughter. This drug increases protein synthesis. In other words, it makes animals more muscular … and this increases the food growers’ bottom line.” How does a drug marked, “Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask” become “safe” in human food? With no washout period?” asks&#160; Rosenberg. She answers:</p>
<p>“The same way Elanco’s other two blockbusters, Stilbosol (diethylstilbestrol or DES), now withdrawn, and Posilac or bovine growth hormone (rBST), bought from Monsanto in 2008, became part of the nation’s food supply: shameless corporate lobbying.”</p>
<p>Across rural America, in the past fifteen years have spring up CAFOs. As Steve Higgs writes in <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">our current&#160; newsletter</a> “ In most instances, the C in CAFO means ‘concentrated,’ but it can also stand for ‘confined,’ as in Confined Feeding Operations (CFOs). Regardless what the letters stand for, the meaning is the same: the concentration and confinement of huge numbers of hogs, cows, chickens and turkeys in places where sustainable agriculture had served both farmers and society for centuries.”&#160; These animal gulags emit appalling stinks, clouds of methane so toxic that they kill, sewage filling vast poisonous lagoons.</p>
<p>America the Mythical loves backyard barbecue. America the Real services the myth with hogs from Gulag-Ag. The coastal plains and piedmont of North Carolina, and now many other states, are pocked by vast pig factories and pig slaughterhouses. People living there sicken from the stink of twenty-five-foot deep lagoons of pig shit, which have poisoned the water table and decanted nitrogen and phosphorous-laced sludge into such rivers as the Neuse, the Tar-Pamlico and the Albemarle. Ammonia gas burdens the air. In North Carolina, it is as though the sewage of fifteen million people were being flushed into open pits and sprayed onto fields, with almost no restrictions. That’s where the millions of pigs’ worth of manure go.</p>
<p>The reeking lagoons surround darkened warehouses of animals trapped in metal crates barely larger than their bodies, tails chopped off, pumped with corn, soy beans and chemicals until, in six months, they weigh about 240 pounds, at which point they are shipped off to abattoirs to be killed, sometimes by prisoners on work release from the county jail. The sows are killed after about two years or whenever their reproductive performance declines. It takes maybe eight to ten people to run a sow factory, overseeing two thousand sows, boars and piglets. A computerized “finishing” farm, where the pigs are fattened, may just require a part-time caretaker to check the equipment and clean up between arriving and departing cohorts of hogs.</p>
<p>The noise in these factories is ghastly, and many workers wear ear pads against the squealing and crashing of the animals in their cages. When the Raleigh News and Observer did a series on North Carolina’s pig barons in the mid 1990s, readers were told they could call the paper’s number in Raleigh, 549­5100, extension 4647, and listen to a recording of this terrible sound.</p>
<p>America’s food corporations, only a handful of them,&#160;wield huge political power. Their lobbyists shuttle in and out of government. Their bought politicians safeguard the CAFOs from local regulation and okay “organic” standards designed to destroy the small farmers and processors.</p>
<p>Only last week Obama recess-appointed Islam Siddiqui to be chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the U.S. trade representative. Dr. Siddiqui’s nomination had been held up in the Senate and was opposed by the Center for Biological Diversity and more than 80 other environmental, small-farm, and consumer groups. More than 90,000 concerned citizens contacted the White House and Senate to oppose the nomination. Siddiqui is a former pesticide lobbyist and is currently vice president of science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America, a biotech and pesticide trade group that lobbies to weaken environmental laws.</p>
<p>As the Center for Biological Diversity remarked, “As undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Siddiqui oversaw the development of the first national organic labeling standards, which allowed sewage sludge-fertilized, genetically modified, and irradiated food to be labeled as organic before public outcry forced more stringent standards. Siddiqui has derided the European Union’s ban on hormone-treated beef and has vowed to pressure the European Union to accept more genetically modified crops.”</p>
<p>Michele Obama campaigns against obesity. She doesn’t campaign against Chicken McNuggets, as sold by the McDonalds Corporation and devoured by kids across America. Here’s a slice of America the Real, from Michael Pollan’s <a href="" type="internal">The Omnivore’s Dilemma</a>:</p>
<p>“Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn starting with the corn-fed chicken itself …McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasi-edible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant … But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to ‘help preserve freshness.’ According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: it can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause ‘nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.’ Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”</p>
<p>Many Americans&#160; eat at fast food outlets because it’s all they can afford or have time for. I count myself lucky. I live in the country, and I take care to know which pasture and farm yard the pig, the steer and the lamb in my freezer came from. There’s no reason why there couldn’t be mass online ordering from small farms and real-time footage to show how the creatures are treated. No, it’s not veganism, thank God, but it would be progress nonetheless.</p>
<p>Aside on Pope Benedict XVI</p>
<p>I laugh when I read furious appeals by unbelievers that Pope&#160; Benedict should quit, on the grounds he’s bringing the Catholic Church into disrepute. It’s like the progressives’ fury against Bush Jr for making America a laughing stock among the nations. Isn’t that what we want? For the mighty to be brought low?&#160; There are noble, radical Catholic priests. Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previous name: “Office of the Holy Inquisition”) has spent his career seeking to destroy them, with kindred energies devoted to crushing overpowering testimony about Catholic priests abusing boys.&#160; Does he not bear the marks of the classic closet case, savagely denouncing homosexuality while effectively protecting child abuse? The Italian press loses no opportunity to comment on the manly beauty and stylish apparel of his personal secretary and constant companion, <a href="" type="internal">Monsignor Georg Ganswein.</a></p>
<p>As Mathew Fox, formerly a Dominican, kicked out by Ratzinger&#160; for denying&#160; the concept of original sin, and now an Episcopalian,&#160; wrote in Tikkun, “Over the course of the last twenty-three years, Cardinal Ratzinger (with the complete approval of John Paul II) brought back the Inquisition. One prominent theologian, Father Bernard Haering, who was the first church thinker to be attacked by Ratzinger, had also been interrogated by the Nazis [ no doubt many of them Bavarian Catholics] &#160;during the Second World War. He reported that his interrogations in Ratzinger’s office were far more scary. Ratzinger’s attitude has been that he alone (or the pope, in his name) knows theology, and that all real theologians can find work elsewhere. Similarly, Ratzinger denies women any church leadership roles, even though the best scholarship today makes it clear that women were leading from the get-go in the early Christian movement.</p>
<p>“This first ever Chief Inquisitor-made-pope (who appointed 112 of the 115 cardinals who elected him pope) pushed through in record time the canonization of a Hitler-admiring, Franco-supporting, fascist priest named Jose Escriva founder of the infamous and secretive Opus Dei Society. This clandestine group the present pope and the past one used as a bludgeon to kill off liberation theologian and base communities in Latin American (with CIA assistance) and substitute its motto of ‘a preferential option for the poor’ &#160;with a preferential option for the rich and powerful.”</p>
<p>Google’s Secret World</p>
<p>Don’t miss the launch of our newsletter series on Google! Part One: the real story behind the Google/China stand-off. Also in our new, subscriber-only newsletter: Computers stolen, a man driven to his death – the vicious wars of Canada’s Israel lobby. PLUS The animal factory-prisons that are poisoning America.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Subscribe Now!</a></p>
<p>How the Economy Was Lost</p>
<p>We’re &#160;proud to publish How the Economy Was Lost, Paul Craig Roberts’ searing, testament on how the U.S. economy has been captured by a gangster elite. Roberts gives us the shortest, sharpest outline of economics for the new century ever put between covers.</p>
<p>Go to our <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">bookstore</a>. Buy it now!</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/" type="external">WORDS THAT STICK</a></p>
|
The White House Egg Roll v. Gulag Ag
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2010/04/02/the-white-house-egg-roll-v-gulag-ag/
|
2010-04-02
| 4left
|
The White House Egg Roll v. Gulag Ag
<p>There’s America the mythical, with the White House Easter Egg Roll scheduled for next Monday and activities, in the words of the White House press release, designed to “encourage children to lead healthy and active lives and follow the First Lady’s ‘Let’s Move!’ initiative, a national campaign to combat childhood obesity. The White House will open its South Lawn for children aged 12 years and younger and their families.”</p>
<p>Then there’s America the Real, where on March 23 a big fire&#160;in Ohio in a warehouse at a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, owned by Ohio Fresh Eggs, prompted the euthanizing of 250,000 laying hens after – in the words of a local news report – “electricity in some of the buildings had to be shut off, and some of the birds suffered from issues with ventilation and smoke inhalation.”</p>
<p>Rotten luck on the birds, of course. But, fire or no fire, their future was not bright. The same news story quoted Kevin Elder, executive director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture’s Livestock Environmental Permitting program, as saying Ohio Fresh Eggs was permitted to keep 2.4 million birds and had about 2.2 million on hand. He said the birds were euthanized according to industry standards and none were known to have died in the fire. He said those euthanized were nearing the end of their laying cycle and would have been euthanized soon, regardless of the fire.”</p>
<p>As Martha Rosenberg, a freelance journalist who covers America’s ghastly agro-industrial landscape wrote <a href="" type="internal">on this site</a>, “At Ohio Fresh Eggs, only eight employees were tending 16 barns when the fire was reported … What kind of ‘care’ can workers give animals in fume-filled barns the size of football fields? Removing the dead and putting the half dead into kill carts, say those who’ve worked there.”</p>
<p>Mythical America is interminably featured in pastoral commercials and cute cartoons, where contentment reigns at Animal Farm. The cackle of chickens mingles euphonically with the grunts of what Bertie Wooster, commenting to Jeeves on his breakfast bacon,&#160;invoked as coming&#160;from “contented pigs.”</p>
<p>There aren’t many contented pigs on this continent, certainly not those imprisoned in the&#160;Netley Hutterite Colony hog farm in Manitoba, where 8,700 pigs perished in a 2008 fire. Witnesses reported hearing the animals’ “ear shattering” squeals and “screams.” Only six full-time employees tended the animals, and bulldozers could not breach the factory farm manure pits. Fires at two other Hutterite Colonies, Vermillion Farms and Rainbow, both near Winnipeg, incinerated 8,500 pigs previously.</p>
<p>Every Thanksgiving, the U.S. president pardons a turkey, a cute&#160;ceremony – in fairness, Obama did not look enthusiastic – as repulsive as would have been the spectacle of Adolf Hitler excusing from the gas chamber on each anniversary of Kristalnacht&#160;a Jew imported for the ceremony from Auschwitz.</p>
<p>Michele Obama has planted an organic garden on the White House grounds. The symbolism would be more admirable if one did not know that Obama installed as his secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa and&#160;a notorious supporter of everything that is awful in the mass production of food in America – from bioengineered crops from Monsanto to the treatment of compromised meat with ammonia to produce what one USDA microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called “pink slime,”&#160;saying to colleagues in an email, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”&#160; It’s in fast-food chain hamburger and school meals.</p>
<p>These days, animals in the days before slaughter are dosed with a dangerous chemical additive fed to animals in the last days before slaughter. To quote Rosenberg again, “Ractopamine, aka Paylean and Optaflexx, is banned in 160 countries, including Europe, Taiwan and China… Yet, in the United States 45 per cent of pigs, 30 per cent of ration-fed cattle, and an unknown percentage of turkeys are pumped full of this drug in the days leading up to slaughter. This drug increases protein synthesis. In other words, it makes animals more muscular … and this increases the food growers’ bottom line.” How does a drug marked, “Not for use in humans. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask” become “safe” in human food? With no washout period?” asks&#160; Rosenberg. She answers:</p>
<p>“The same way Elanco’s other two blockbusters, Stilbosol (diethylstilbestrol or DES), now withdrawn, and Posilac or bovine growth hormone (rBST), bought from Monsanto in 2008, became part of the nation’s food supply: shameless corporate lobbying.”</p>
<p>Across rural America, in the past fifteen years have spring up CAFOs. As Steve Higgs writes in <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">our current&#160; newsletter</a> “ In most instances, the C in CAFO means ‘concentrated,’ but it can also stand for ‘confined,’ as in Confined Feeding Operations (CFOs). Regardless what the letters stand for, the meaning is the same: the concentration and confinement of huge numbers of hogs, cows, chickens and turkeys in places where sustainable agriculture had served both farmers and society for centuries.”&#160; These animal gulags emit appalling stinks, clouds of methane so toxic that they kill, sewage filling vast poisonous lagoons.</p>
<p>America the Mythical loves backyard barbecue. America the Real services the myth with hogs from Gulag-Ag. The coastal plains and piedmont of North Carolina, and now many other states, are pocked by vast pig factories and pig slaughterhouses. People living there sicken from the stink of twenty-five-foot deep lagoons of pig shit, which have poisoned the water table and decanted nitrogen and phosphorous-laced sludge into such rivers as the Neuse, the Tar-Pamlico and the Albemarle. Ammonia gas burdens the air. In North Carolina, it is as though the sewage of fifteen million people were being flushed into open pits and sprayed onto fields, with almost no restrictions. That’s where the millions of pigs’ worth of manure go.</p>
<p>The reeking lagoons surround darkened warehouses of animals trapped in metal crates barely larger than their bodies, tails chopped off, pumped with corn, soy beans and chemicals until, in six months, they weigh about 240 pounds, at which point they are shipped off to abattoirs to be killed, sometimes by prisoners on work release from the county jail. The sows are killed after about two years or whenever their reproductive performance declines. It takes maybe eight to ten people to run a sow factory, overseeing two thousand sows, boars and piglets. A computerized “finishing” farm, where the pigs are fattened, may just require a part-time caretaker to check the equipment and clean up between arriving and departing cohorts of hogs.</p>
<p>The noise in these factories is ghastly, and many workers wear ear pads against the squealing and crashing of the animals in their cages. When the Raleigh News and Observer did a series on North Carolina’s pig barons in the mid 1990s, readers were told they could call the paper’s number in Raleigh, 549­5100, extension 4647, and listen to a recording of this terrible sound.</p>
<p>America’s food corporations, only a handful of them,&#160;wield huge political power. Their lobbyists shuttle in and out of government. Their bought politicians safeguard the CAFOs from local regulation and okay “organic” standards designed to destroy the small farmers and processors.</p>
<p>Only last week Obama recess-appointed Islam Siddiqui to be chief agricultural negotiator in the office of the U.S. trade representative. Dr. Siddiqui’s nomination had been held up in the Senate and was opposed by the Center for Biological Diversity and more than 80 other environmental, small-farm, and consumer groups. More than 90,000 concerned citizens contacted the White House and Senate to oppose the nomination. Siddiqui is a former pesticide lobbyist and is currently vice president of science and regulatory affairs at CropLife America, a biotech and pesticide trade group that lobbies to weaken environmental laws.</p>
<p>As the Center for Biological Diversity remarked, “As undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Siddiqui oversaw the development of the first national organic labeling standards, which allowed sewage sludge-fertilized, genetically modified, and irradiated food to be labeled as organic before public outcry forced more stringent standards. Siddiqui has derided the European Union’s ban on hormone-treated beef and has vowed to pressure the European Union to accept more genetically modified crops.”</p>
<p>Michele Obama campaigns against obesity. She doesn’t campaign against Chicken McNuggets, as sold by the McDonalds Corporation and devoured by kids across America. Here’s a slice of America the Real, from Michael Pollan’s <a href="" type="internal">The Omnivore’s Dilemma</a>:</p>
<p>“Of the thirty-eight ingredients it takes to make a McNugget, I counted thirteen that can be derived from corn starting with the corn-fed chicken itself …McNuggets also contain several completely synthetic ingredients, quasi-edible substances that ultimately come not from a corn or soybean field but from a petroleum refinery or chemical plant … But perhaps the most alarming ingredient in a Chicken McNugget is tertiary butylhydroquinone, or TBHQ, an antioxidant derived from petroleum that is either sprayed directly on the nugget or the inside of the box it comes in to ‘help preserve freshness.’ According to A Consumer’s Dictionary of Food Additives, TBHQ is a form of butane (i.e., lighter fluid) the FDA allows processors to use sparingly in our food: it can comprise no more than 0.02 percent of the oil in a nugget. Which is probably just as well, considering that ingesting a single gram of TBHQ can cause ‘nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse.’ Ingesting five grams of TBHQ can kill.”</p>
<p>Many Americans&#160; eat at fast food outlets because it’s all they can afford or have time for. I count myself lucky. I live in the country, and I take care to know which pasture and farm yard the pig, the steer and the lamb in my freezer came from. There’s no reason why there couldn’t be mass online ordering from small farms and real-time footage to show how the creatures are treated. No, it’s not veganism, thank God, but it would be progress nonetheless.</p>
<p>Aside on Pope Benedict XVI</p>
<p>I laugh when I read furious appeals by unbelievers that Pope&#160; Benedict should quit, on the grounds he’s bringing the Catholic Church into disrepute. It’s like the progressives’ fury against Bush Jr for making America a laughing stock among the nations. Isn’t that what we want? For the mighty to be brought low?&#160; There are noble, radical Catholic priests. Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (previous name: “Office of the Holy Inquisition”) has spent his career seeking to destroy them, with kindred energies devoted to crushing overpowering testimony about Catholic priests abusing boys.&#160; Does he not bear the marks of the classic closet case, savagely denouncing homosexuality while effectively protecting child abuse? The Italian press loses no opportunity to comment on the manly beauty and stylish apparel of his personal secretary and constant companion, <a href="" type="internal">Monsignor Georg Ganswein.</a></p>
<p>As Mathew Fox, formerly a Dominican, kicked out by Ratzinger&#160; for denying&#160; the concept of original sin, and now an Episcopalian,&#160; wrote in Tikkun, “Over the course of the last twenty-three years, Cardinal Ratzinger (with the complete approval of John Paul II) brought back the Inquisition. One prominent theologian, Father Bernard Haering, who was the first church thinker to be attacked by Ratzinger, had also been interrogated by the Nazis [ no doubt many of them Bavarian Catholics] &#160;during the Second World War. He reported that his interrogations in Ratzinger’s office were far more scary. Ratzinger’s attitude has been that he alone (or the pope, in his name) knows theology, and that all real theologians can find work elsewhere. Similarly, Ratzinger denies women any church leadership roles, even though the best scholarship today makes it clear that women were leading from the get-go in the early Christian movement.</p>
<p>“This first ever Chief Inquisitor-made-pope (who appointed 112 of the 115 cardinals who elected him pope) pushed through in record time the canonization of a Hitler-admiring, Franco-supporting, fascist priest named Jose Escriva founder of the infamous and secretive Opus Dei Society. This clandestine group the present pope and the past one used as a bludgeon to kill off liberation theologian and base communities in Latin American (with CIA assistance) and substitute its motto of ‘a preferential option for the poor’ &#160;with a preferential option for the rich and powerful.”</p>
<p>Google’s Secret World</p>
<p>Don’t miss the launch of our newsletter series on Google! Part One: the real story behind the Google/China stand-off. Also in our new, subscriber-only newsletter: Computers stolen, a man driven to his death – the vicious wars of Canada’s Israel lobby. PLUS The animal factory-prisons that are poisoning America.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Subscribe Now!</a></p>
<p>How the Economy Was Lost</p>
<p>We’re &#160;proud to publish How the Economy Was Lost, Paul Craig Roberts’ searing, testament on how the U.S. economy has been captured by a gangster elite. Roberts gives us the shortest, sharpest outline of economics for the new century ever put between covers.</p>
<p>Go to our <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/CounterPunch_Books.html" type="external">bookstore</a>. Buy it now!</p>
<p>ALEXANDER COCKBURN can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://greentags.bigcartel.com/" type="external">WORDS THAT STICK</a></p>
| 7,338 |
<p>Flint resident LeeAnne Walters shows water samples from her home to emergency manager Jerry Ambrose at a town hall meeting.William Archie/Detroit Free Press/ZUMA</p>
<p />
<p>Update (2/2/2016): Darnell Earley announced plans to <a href="http://www.freep.com/story/news/2016/02/02/earley-leaving/79690856/" type="external">step down</a> as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools, saying the “initiatives implemented over the past year were completed ahead of my 18-month schedule.” Gov. Rick Snyder plans to appoint a transition leader by the end of the month.</p>
<p>Michigan is having a rough year, to put it mildly. Flint is reeling from the news that its water supply was contaminated with lead for 17 months. In Detroit, teacher “sick-outs” have been shutting down schools; 88 of the city’s 104 schools were closed on January 21. These two seemingly unrelated episodes are joined by a common policy: Both Detroit’s school system and Flint’s water system have been under the control of emergency managers, unelected officials who are empowered to make sweeping decisions and override local policies in the name of balancing budgets.</p>
<p>What’s an emergency manager? Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was elected in 2010 on a platform of fiscal austerity. Snyder, the former head of Gateway computers and a darling of the <a href="" type="internal">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, promised to run the state like a company, complete with “outcomes” and “deliverables.” In 2011, he introduced a signature piece of legislation, Public Act 4, which expanded the state’s authority to take over financially troubled cities and school districts. Similar laws exist in about 20 states, but Michigan’s is the most expansive: Emergency managers picked by the governor have the power to renegotiate or cancel city contracts, unilaterally draft policy, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even fire elected officials.</p>
<p>Since 2011, <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/treasury/0,4679,7-121-1751_51556_64472-201116--,00.html" type="external">17 municipalities</a> or school districts in Michigan have been assigned emergency managers. The majority of them are in poor, predominantly African-American communities that have been hit hard by depressed economies and shrinking populations. Some EMs have worked with communities to generate local buy-in, but their outsider status, lack of accountability, and <a href="" type="internal">propensity for</a> <a href="" type="internal">cutting public services</a> to save money have generated harsh criticism. As Michael Steinberg, the legal director for the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said a&#160; <a href="http://www.aclumich.org/article/groups-file-federal-lawsuit-secure-safe-drinking-water-flint" type="external">recent statement,</a> “Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city.”</p>
<p>So what does this have to do with Flint? Flint was one of the the first cities to be assigned an emergency manager, in 2011; it would have four EMs in as many years. In 2013, its city council voted to build a pipeline to Lake Huron that would free the city of its dependence on Detroit’s water system by 2017. Ed Kurtz, the then-emergency manager, signed off on the plan, and the question became where Flint would source its water in the intervening years. According to a recent <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/24/exclusive-gov-rick-snyder-s-men-originally-rejected-using-flint-s-toxic-river.html" type="external">Daily Beast</a> investigation, Kurtz rejected the idea of using Flint River water based on conversations with Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Longtime Flint residents were also skeptical of the idea: General Motors, which calls Flint home, had used the river as a dumping ground for years.</p>
<p>Yet in 2014, under emergency manager Darnell Earley, the city switched water sources to the Flint River. It remains unclear what led authorities to believe that Flint River water was safe to drink; Earley maintains the decision was supported in a vote by the city council, though there is no record of such a vote. Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint, told the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/24/exclusive-gov-rick-snyder-s-men-originally-rejected-using-flint-s-toxic-river.html" type="external">ACLU</a> that the decision was financial, had been reviewed by state authorities, and went “all the way to the governor’s office.”</p>
<p>In March of 2015, after months of residents reporting unusual health symptoms and foul-smelling, tainted water coming from their taps, the Flint City Council voted to “do all things necessary” to switch back to Detroit’s water system. Then-acting emergency manager Jerry Ambrose <a href="" type="internal">nixed the vote</a>, calling it “incomprehensible.”</p>
<p>And what about Detroit? For the past few weeks, Detroit teachers have been protesting with coordinated sick days that have caused dozens of temporary school closures. The sick-outs, the teachers say, are in response to disgraceful school conditions, from black mold and dead rodents in classrooms to class sizes of more than 40 students.</p>
<p>The Detroit Public School system has been under the authority of an emergency manager since 2009, when the beleaguered system of roughly 100,000 students was mired in debt. Today, after six years under four emergency managers, the number of students has shrunk by about 50 percent while the system’s debt has ballooned to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/19/us/detroit-public-schools-michigan-governor/" type="external">$515 million</a>. It risks going bankrupt by <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/01/06/3736565/detroit-public-schools-fiscal-crisis/" type="external">April</a>. Over the past five years, every public school employee has taken a 10 percent wage cut.</p>
<p>“Emergency management is not working,” Ivy Bailey, the president of Detroit Federation of Teachers, told CNN. “If the goal was to destroy DPS, emergency management has done an excellent job.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Governor Snyder’s latest pick for DPS emergency manager was Darnell Earley, the same official who oversaw Flint’s transition to corrosive river water. On January 21, the day 88 schools were shut down, the school system filed a restraining order against the protesting teachers meant to stop them from calling in sick. The motion was denied. On January 23, Earley posted <a href="http://detroitk12.org/content/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2016-EMDE-03_FINAL.pdf" type="external">new rules</a> requiring teachers to submit a written report to him if they learn about their fellow employees organizing a strike. “Failure to immediately comply with this order may be grounds for discipline up to and including termination,” the rules read. Earley’s office did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>What’s next for Michigan’s emergency managers?</p>
<p>There are currently no Michigan cities with emergency managers, though three school districts still them. But they remain unpopular with many Michiganders. Democratic legislators say they will introduce a bill to <a href="http://fox17online.com/2016/01/27/michigan-democrats-seek-repeal-of-emergency-manager-law/" type="external">repeal the EM law</a>. Voters already overturned the EM law in a November 2012 referendum, but a month later, the Republican-led state legislature passed a nearly identical law attached to an appropriations bill that is immune to voter referendum.</p>
<p>“Appointing an emergency manager is the last thing I ever want to do,” wrote Snyder in a <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/snyder/0,4668,7-277-57577_60279-283632--,00.html" type="external">2012 blog post</a>entitled “Why Michigan Needs Its Emergency Manager Law,” written just before the voter referendum. “But if worse comes to worse, the state has a responsibility to protect the health, welfare and safety of its citizens. We can’t stand by and watch schools fail, water shut off, or police protection disappear.”</p>
<p />
|
What Flint’s Dirty Water and Detroit’s Angry Teachers Have in Common
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2016/01/emergency-managers-michigan-flint-detroit/
|
2016-01-28
| 4left
|
What Flint’s Dirty Water and Detroit’s Angry Teachers Have in Common
<p>Flint resident LeeAnne Walters shows water samples from her home to emergency manager Jerry Ambrose at a town hall meeting.William Archie/Detroit Free Press/ZUMA</p>
<p />
<p>Update (2/2/2016): Darnell Earley announced plans to <a href="http://www.freep.com/story/news/2016/02/02/earley-leaving/79690856/" type="external">step down</a> as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools, saying the “initiatives implemented over the past year were completed ahead of my 18-month schedule.” Gov. Rick Snyder plans to appoint a transition leader by the end of the month.</p>
<p>Michigan is having a rough year, to put it mildly. Flint is reeling from the news that its water supply was contaminated with lead for 17 months. In Detroit, teacher “sick-outs” have been shutting down schools; 88 of the city’s 104 schools were closed on January 21. These two seemingly unrelated episodes are joined by a common policy: Both Detroit’s school system and Flint’s water system have been under the control of emergency managers, unelected officials who are empowered to make sweeping decisions and override local policies in the name of balancing budgets.</p>
<p>What’s an emergency manager? Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was elected in 2010 on a platform of fiscal austerity. Snyder, the former head of Gateway computers and a darling of the <a href="" type="internal">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> and the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, promised to run the state like a company, complete with “outcomes” and “deliverables.” In 2011, he introduced a signature piece of legislation, Public Act 4, which expanded the state’s authority to take over financially troubled cities and school districts. Similar laws exist in about 20 states, but Michigan’s is the most expansive: Emergency managers picked by the governor have the power to renegotiate or cancel city contracts, unilaterally draft policy, privatize public services, sell off city property, and even fire elected officials.</p>
<p>Since 2011, <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/treasury/0,4679,7-121-1751_51556_64472-201116--,00.html" type="external">17 municipalities</a> or school districts in Michigan have been assigned emergency managers. The majority of them are in poor, predominantly African-American communities that have been hit hard by depressed economies and shrinking populations. Some EMs have worked with communities to generate local buy-in, but their outsider status, lack of accountability, and <a href="" type="internal">propensity for</a> <a href="" type="internal">cutting public services</a> to save money have generated harsh criticism. As Michael Steinberg, the legal director for the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said a&#160; <a href="http://www.aclumich.org/article/groups-file-federal-lawsuit-secure-safe-drinking-water-flint" type="external">recent statement,</a> “Flint is Exhibit A for what happens when a state suspends democracy and installs unaccountable bean counters to run a city.”</p>
<p>So what does this have to do with Flint? Flint was one of the the first cities to be assigned an emergency manager, in 2011; it would have four EMs in as many years. In 2013, its city council voted to build a pipeline to Lake Huron that would free the city of its dependence on Detroit’s water system by 2017. Ed Kurtz, the then-emergency manager, signed off on the plan, and the question became where Flint would source its water in the intervening years. According to a recent <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/24/exclusive-gov-rick-snyder-s-men-originally-rejected-using-flint-s-toxic-river.html" type="external">Daily Beast</a> investigation, Kurtz rejected the idea of using Flint River water based on conversations with Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality. Longtime Flint residents were also skeptical of the idea: General Motors, which calls Flint home, had used the river as a dumping ground for years.</p>
<p>Yet in 2014, under emergency manager Darnell Earley, the city switched water sources to the Flint River. It remains unclear what led authorities to believe that Flint River water was safe to drink; Earley maintains the decision was supported in a vote by the city council, though there is no record of such a vote. Howard Croft, the former director of public works for Flint, told the <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/24/exclusive-gov-rick-snyder-s-men-originally-rejected-using-flint-s-toxic-river.html" type="external">ACLU</a> that the decision was financial, had been reviewed by state authorities, and went “all the way to the governor’s office.”</p>
<p>In March of 2015, after months of residents reporting unusual health symptoms and foul-smelling, tainted water coming from their taps, the Flint City Council voted to “do all things necessary” to switch back to Detroit’s water system. Then-acting emergency manager Jerry Ambrose <a href="" type="internal">nixed the vote</a>, calling it “incomprehensible.”</p>
<p>And what about Detroit? For the past few weeks, Detroit teachers have been protesting with coordinated sick days that have caused dozens of temporary school closures. The sick-outs, the teachers say, are in response to disgraceful school conditions, from black mold and dead rodents in classrooms to class sizes of more than 40 students.</p>
<p>The Detroit Public School system has been under the authority of an emergency manager since 2009, when the beleaguered system of roughly 100,000 students was mired in debt. Today, after six years under four emergency managers, the number of students has shrunk by about 50 percent while the system’s debt has ballooned to <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/19/us/detroit-public-schools-michigan-governor/" type="external">$515 million</a>. It risks going bankrupt by <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2016/01/06/3736565/detroit-public-schools-fiscal-crisis/" type="external">April</a>. Over the past five years, every public school employee has taken a 10 percent wage cut.</p>
<p>“Emergency management is not working,” Ivy Bailey, the president of Detroit Federation of Teachers, told CNN. “If the goal was to destroy DPS, emergency management has done an excellent job.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Governor Snyder’s latest pick for DPS emergency manager was Darnell Earley, the same official who oversaw Flint’s transition to corrosive river water. On January 21, the day 88 schools were shut down, the school system filed a restraining order against the protesting teachers meant to stop them from calling in sick. The motion was denied. On January 23, Earley posted <a href="http://detroitk12.org/content/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2016-EMDE-03_FINAL.pdf" type="external">new rules</a> requiring teachers to submit a written report to him if they learn about their fellow employees organizing a strike. “Failure to immediately comply with this order may be grounds for discipline up to and including termination,” the rules read. Earley’s office did not respond to requests for comment.</p>
<p>What’s next for Michigan’s emergency managers?</p>
<p>There are currently no Michigan cities with emergency managers, though three school districts still them. But they remain unpopular with many Michiganders. Democratic legislators say they will introduce a bill to <a href="http://fox17online.com/2016/01/27/michigan-democrats-seek-repeal-of-emergency-manager-law/" type="external">repeal the EM law</a>. Voters already overturned the EM law in a November 2012 referendum, but a month later, the Republican-led state legislature passed a nearly identical law attached to an appropriations bill that is immune to voter referendum.</p>
<p>“Appointing an emergency manager is the last thing I ever want to do,” wrote Snyder in a <a href="http://www.michigan.gov/snyder/0,4668,7-277-57577_60279-283632--,00.html" type="external">2012 blog post</a>entitled “Why Michigan Needs Its Emergency Manager Law,” written just before the voter referendum. “But if worse comes to worse, the state has a responsibility to protect the health, welfare and safety of its citizens. We can’t stand by and watch schools fail, water shut off, or police protection disappear.”</p>
<p />
| 7,339 |
<p>Stocks surged on Wednesday, with major indices adding 1 percent or more after U.S. industrial production rose more than projected and Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen repeated her pledge to hold down interest rates while the economy is still recovering from the recession.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed unofficially 162 points higher, the S&amp;P 500 added 19 points and the Nasdaq rose 52 points, or 1.29 percent.</p>
<p>Stocks held most of their gains as Yellen addressed the Economic Club of New York and after the release of the Fed's Beige Book, which found the U.S. economy bounced back from weather-related declines in recent weeks, with modest or moderate economic activity in eight of the Fed's 12 districts.</p>
<p>"The economy is still moving forward. What is happening in the marketplace is outside the scope of the Beige Book; what you're seeing in the marketplace is a question of valuation," said Frank Fantozzi, CEO of Planned Financial Services in Cleveland, Ohio.</p>
<p>In her speech, Yellen reiterated her intention to support the recovery even as the labor market improves, with the 6.7 percent unemployment rate in March still a percentage point higher than the central bank's projection of full employment.</p>
<p>"I hope it's completely clear that while monetary policy is very accommodating at this point, and I focused on the need to keep it so or to adjust it to make sure the recovery remains on track," she said. "As the recovery proceeds and healing occurs, it's obvious that we will need to tighten monetary policy to avoid overshooting our target."</p>
<p>Economic data had U.S. manufacturing output rising for a second straight month in March, with factory production up 0.5 percent last month and overall industrial production climbing 0.7 percent, beating expectations.</p>
<p>Another report from the Commerce Department said the pace of U.S. home construction bounced back less than expected last month, with the data coming after a report Tuesday that showed home builder confidence rising less than projected in April.</p>
|
Stocks Surge, Dow Adds 160 Points on Yellen’s Economy Comments
| false |
http://nbcnews.com/business/markets/stocks-surge-dow-adds-160-points-yellens-economy-comments-n81861
|
2014-04-16
| 3left-center
|
Stocks Surge, Dow Adds 160 Points on Yellen’s Economy Comments
<p>Stocks surged on Wednesday, with major indices adding 1 percent or more after U.S. industrial production rose more than projected and Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen repeated her pledge to hold down interest rates while the economy is still recovering from the recession.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed unofficially 162 points higher, the S&amp;P 500 added 19 points and the Nasdaq rose 52 points, or 1.29 percent.</p>
<p>Stocks held most of their gains as Yellen addressed the Economic Club of New York and after the release of the Fed's Beige Book, which found the U.S. economy bounced back from weather-related declines in recent weeks, with modest or moderate economic activity in eight of the Fed's 12 districts.</p>
<p>"The economy is still moving forward. What is happening in the marketplace is outside the scope of the Beige Book; what you're seeing in the marketplace is a question of valuation," said Frank Fantozzi, CEO of Planned Financial Services in Cleveland, Ohio.</p>
<p>In her speech, Yellen reiterated her intention to support the recovery even as the labor market improves, with the 6.7 percent unemployment rate in March still a percentage point higher than the central bank's projection of full employment.</p>
<p>"I hope it's completely clear that while monetary policy is very accommodating at this point, and I focused on the need to keep it so or to adjust it to make sure the recovery remains on track," she said. "As the recovery proceeds and healing occurs, it's obvious that we will need to tighten monetary policy to avoid overshooting our target."</p>
<p>Economic data had U.S. manufacturing output rising for a second straight month in March, with factory production up 0.5 percent last month and overall industrial production climbing 0.7 percent, beating expectations.</p>
<p>Another report from the Commerce Department said the pace of U.S. home construction bounced back less than expected last month, with the data coming after a report Tuesday that showed home builder confidence rising less than projected in April.</p>
| 7,340 |
<p>The Supreme Court has sided with the Obama administration in upholding a rule making mortgage brokers eligible for overtime pay under federal labor law.</p>
<p>The justices unanimously agreed Monday to throw out a lower court ruling that faulted the administration for trying to change overtime rules without following proper procedures.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The case turned on rules put in place by the Department of Labor that would make the mortgage brokers eligible for overtime pay under federal labor law. The rules were changed twice in a four-year period that spanned the Bush and Obama administrations.</p>
<p>In 2006, the Labor Department said the mortgage brokers were like executives and thus not covered by the overtime provision. In 2010, the department reversed itself.</p>
|
Supreme Court upholds Obama rule making mortgage brokers eligible for overtime pay
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/03/09/supreme-court-upholds-obama-rule-making-mortgage-brokers-eligible-for-overtime.html
|
2016-03-09
| 0right
|
Supreme Court upholds Obama rule making mortgage brokers eligible for overtime pay
<p>The Supreme Court has sided with the Obama administration in upholding a rule making mortgage brokers eligible for overtime pay under federal labor law.</p>
<p>The justices unanimously agreed Monday to throw out a lower court ruling that faulted the administration for trying to change overtime rules without following proper procedures.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The case turned on rules put in place by the Department of Labor that would make the mortgage brokers eligible for overtime pay under federal labor law. The rules were changed twice in a four-year period that spanned the Bush and Obama administrations.</p>
<p>In 2006, the Labor Department said the mortgage brokers were like executives and thus not covered by the overtime provision. In 2010, the department reversed itself.</p>
| 7,341 |
<p>Oct. 5 (UPI) — A federal judge ordered the release of former <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/U.S._Rep._William_Jefferson/" type="external">U.S. Rep. William Jefferson</a>, D-La., from prison after tossing seven of 11 charges for which he was convicted in 2009.</p>
<p>U.S. District Judge <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/T.S._Ellis/" type="external">T.S. Ellis</a> on Wednesday said Jefferson <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/courts/article_5fa243ee-a9de-11e7-823d-4323eed5722a.html" type="external">could remain free</a> until Dec. 1, when he’ll be re-sentenced for the three corruption charges left intact; one other conviction was removed in 2016.</p>
<p>Jefferson, 70, is five years into a <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/03/27/10-charges-against-ex-lawmaker-upheld/28531332867243/" type="external">13-year sentence</a>.</p>
<p>Jefferson was convicted in 2009 after prosecutors argued he used his position to seek payments to promote the interests of African businesses in the United States. Investigators found $90,000 in case in the refrigerator of Jefferson’s New Orleans home.</p>
<p>Ellis ruled it was <a href="http://www.nola.com/national_politics/2017/10/william_jefferson_ordered_rele.html" type="external">hard to determine</a> that Jefferson’s actions in exchange for the cash constituted an “official act.”</p>
<p>“Because there is no assurance that Jefferson would be required to serve a sentence beyond what he has already served,” Ellis wrote, his order “will require his immediate release, followed by a prompt re-sentencing.”</p>
<p>Jefferson was first held at Beaumont Correctional Center in Texas, but was transferred to a federal prison in Oakdale, La., in January 2014.</p>
<p>Jefferson served nine terms in Congress prior to his conviction. His sentence was the longest one ever handed down to a congressman.</p>
<p>The tossed charges include two counts of solicitation of bribes by a public official, two counts of depriving citizens of honest services by wire fraud and three counts of money laundering. The three charges still intact are conspiracy to solicit bribes, conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and violating the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO.</p>
|
Former Rep. William Jefferson released from prison
| false |
https://newsline.com/former-rep-william-jefferson-released-from-prison/
|
2017-10-05
| 1right-center
|
Former Rep. William Jefferson released from prison
<p>Oct. 5 (UPI) — A federal judge ordered the release of former <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/U.S._Rep._William_Jefferson/" type="external">U.S. Rep. William Jefferson</a>, D-La., from prison after tossing seven of 11 charges for which he was convicted in 2009.</p>
<p>U.S. District Judge <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/T.S._Ellis/" type="external">T.S. Ellis</a> on Wednesday said Jefferson <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/courts/article_5fa243ee-a9de-11e7-823d-4323eed5722a.html" type="external">could remain free</a> until Dec. 1, when he’ll be re-sentenced for the three corruption charges left intact; one other conviction was removed in 2016.</p>
<p>Jefferson, 70, is five years into a <a href="https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/03/27/10-charges-against-ex-lawmaker-upheld/28531332867243/" type="external">13-year sentence</a>.</p>
<p>Jefferson was convicted in 2009 after prosecutors argued he used his position to seek payments to promote the interests of African businesses in the United States. Investigators found $90,000 in case in the refrigerator of Jefferson’s New Orleans home.</p>
<p>Ellis ruled it was <a href="http://www.nola.com/national_politics/2017/10/william_jefferson_ordered_rele.html" type="external">hard to determine</a> that Jefferson’s actions in exchange for the cash constituted an “official act.”</p>
<p>“Because there is no assurance that Jefferson would be required to serve a sentence beyond what he has already served,” Ellis wrote, his order “will require his immediate release, followed by a prompt re-sentencing.”</p>
<p>Jefferson was first held at Beaumont Correctional Center in Texas, but was transferred to a federal prison in Oakdale, La., in January 2014.</p>
<p>Jefferson served nine terms in Congress prior to his conviction. His sentence was the longest one ever handed down to a congressman.</p>
<p>The tossed charges include two counts of solicitation of bribes by a public official, two counts of depriving citizens of honest services by wire fraud and three counts of money laundering. The three charges still intact are conspiracy to solicit bribes, conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and violating the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act, or RICO.</p>
| 7,342 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>The early voter and absentee ballot turnout for the runoff election for mayor and the District 5 city council seat has defied expectations.</p>
<p>We hope that continues to be the case on Tuesday when the polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at four voting convenience centers.</p>
<p>This is an important election and we encourage all registered voters to get out and vote if you haven't already.</p>
<p>It's your community. Make your voice heard.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
OUR VIEW: Runoff is Tuesday - Get out and vote
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/382865/runoff-is-tuesday-mdash-get-out-and-vote.html
| 2least
|
OUR VIEW: Runoff is Tuesday - Get out and vote
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>The early voter and absentee ballot turnout for the runoff election for mayor and the District 5 city council seat has defied expectations.</p>
<p>We hope that continues to be the case on Tuesday when the polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at four voting convenience centers.</p>
<p>This is an important election and we encourage all registered voters to get out and vote if you haven't already.</p>
<p>It's your community. Make your voice heard.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,343 |
|
<p>On Monday, British scientist Stephen Hawking, widely regarded as a highly intelligent man, made a rather ignorant statement when speaking with Piers Morgan ITV’s Good Morning Britain, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_FDFY-SJ-4" type="external">saying</a> he feared he “would not be welcome” in the United States now that Donald Trump is President.</p>
<p>Hawking started by stating:</p>
<p>Trump was elected by people who felt disenfranchised by a governing elite in a revolt against globalization.His priority will be to satisfy an electorate who are neither liberal nor well-informed. We have already seen this in the promise to build a wall along the Mexican border and the sanctioning of two oil pipelines and the appointment of the Environment Protection Agency of Scott Pruitt. A man who does not believe carbon dioxide causes climate change.</p>
<p>Asked by Morgan if the worldwide reaction to Trump’s election was a bit hysterical, Hawking replied:</p>
<p>The reaction to the election of Donald Trump may have been overdone, but it represents a definite swing to a more right-wing authoritarian approach. There was reported to be a memo that government scientists must get White House approval for any announcements; a similar ruling in Canada had a chilling effect on scientists there. Everyday life in the United States continues much the same. I have many friends and colleagues there, and it is still a place I like and admire in many ways, but I fear that I may not be welcome.</p>
<p>Hawking was referring to a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/dinograndoni/trump-usda?utm_term=.ys7gg2lVxl#.gyovvrY1lY" type="external">memo</a> sent only days after Trump’s inauguration by Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) that stated, “Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content.”</p>
<p>That order was <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/dinograndoni/trump-agriculture-department?utm_term=.glYYY316v1#.io811VP5zP" type="external">rescinded</a> the next day.</p>
<p>Last May, Hawking <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/politics/stephen-hawking-donald-trump-demagogue/" type="external">referred</a> to Trump as "a demagogue, who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."</p>
<p>Video of Hawking and Morgan below:</p>
|
Stephen Hawking Is A Very Smart Man. He Just Said A Very Stupid Thing.
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/14587/stephen-hawking-very-smart-man-he-just-said-very-hank-berrien
|
2017-03-20
| 0right
|
Stephen Hawking Is A Very Smart Man. He Just Said A Very Stupid Thing.
<p>On Monday, British scientist Stephen Hawking, widely regarded as a highly intelligent man, made a rather ignorant statement when speaking with Piers Morgan ITV’s Good Morning Britain, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_FDFY-SJ-4" type="external">saying</a> he feared he “would not be welcome” in the United States now that Donald Trump is President.</p>
<p>Hawking started by stating:</p>
<p>Trump was elected by people who felt disenfranchised by a governing elite in a revolt against globalization.His priority will be to satisfy an electorate who are neither liberal nor well-informed. We have already seen this in the promise to build a wall along the Mexican border and the sanctioning of two oil pipelines and the appointment of the Environment Protection Agency of Scott Pruitt. A man who does not believe carbon dioxide causes climate change.</p>
<p>Asked by Morgan if the worldwide reaction to Trump’s election was a bit hysterical, Hawking replied:</p>
<p>The reaction to the election of Donald Trump may have been overdone, but it represents a definite swing to a more right-wing authoritarian approach. There was reported to be a memo that government scientists must get White House approval for any announcements; a similar ruling in Canada had a chilling effect on scientists there. Everyday life in the United States continues much the same. I have many friends and colleagues there, and it is still a place I like and admire in many ways, but I fear that I may not be welcome.</p>
<p>Hawking was referring to a <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/dinograndoni/trump-usda?utm_term=.ys7gg2lVxl#.gyovvrY1lY" type="external">memo</a> sent only days after Trump’s inauguration by Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) that stated, “Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents. This includes, but is not limited to, news releases, photos, fact sheets, news feeds, and social media content.”</p>
<p>That order was <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/dinograndoni/trump-agriculture-department?utm_term=.glYYY316v1#.io811VP5zP" type="external">rescinded</a> the next day.</p>
<p>Last May, Hawking <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/31/politics/stephen-hawking-donald-trump-demagogue/" type="external">referred</a> to Trump as "a demagogue, who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator."</p>
<p>Video of Hawking and Morgan below:</p>
| 7,344 |
<p>Tin soldiers and Obama coming, we’re finally on our own,&#160;this summer I heard <a href="http://youtu.be/9GXtQfXBAmM" type="external">the rumbling</a>, four tanks in Ohio:</p>
<p>(Ohio State is ready)</p>
<p>We could have used those up in Vermont:</p>
<p>First they came for the c**t coloring books:</p>
<p>He wanted them to be dust in the wind:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Tip No. 1 in my house:&#160;Get OUT!</p>
<p>As long as they don’t reproduce Miley Cyrus:</p>
<p>The Constitution is like, really old, almost as old as rotary phones:</p>
<p>Who are you to judge?</p>
<p>Racist!</p>
<p>Wait, what?!?</p>
<p>Heard to say, “no one told me there was anything wrong with it”:</p>
<p>There is no hope, none, give up now, this is our future:</p>
<p />
<p>You think I’m kidding?</p>
|
“Tin Soldiers and Obama Coming” Week at College Insurrection
| true |
http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/09/tin-soldiers-and-obama-coming-week-at-college-insurrection/
|
2013-09-21
| 0right
|
“Tin Soldiers and Obama Coming” Week at College Insurrection
<p>Tin soldiers and Obama coming, we’re finally on our own,&#160;this summer I heard <a href="http://youtu.be/9GXtQfXBAmM" type="external">the rumbling</a>, four tanks in Ohio:</p>
<p>(Ohio State is ready)</p>
<p>We could have used those up in Vermont:</p>
<p>First they came for the c**t coloring books:</p>
<p>He wanted them to be dust in the wind:</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Tip No. 1 in my house:&#160;Get OUT!</p>
<p>As long as they don’t reproduce Miley Cyrus:</p>
<p>The Constitution is like, really old, almost as old as rotary phones:</p>
<p>Who are you to judge?</p>
<p>Racist!</p>
<p>Wait, what?!?</p>
<p>Heard to say, “no one told me there was anything wrong with it”:</p>
<p>There is no hope, none, give up now, this is our future:</p>
<p />
<p>You think I’m kidding?</p>
| 7,345 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — This year’s morning drinking festival in Flagstaff was relatively tame, prompting only 5 arrests compare to last year’s 41.</p>
<p>The Arizona Daily Sun reports ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2dW5bym" type="external">http://bit.ly/2dW5bym</a> ) that new venues near Northern Arizona University’s campus helped keep participants in Tequila Sunrise closer to the school, thinning drunken crowds in downtown Flagstaff.</p>
<p>Arrests were made for underage drinking and urinating in public. All five arrests were made near the university.</p>
<p>The Flagstaff Fire Department CART Team responded to seven medical emergency calls while it was on Tequila Sunrise duty</p>
<p>Last year, the Flagstaff City Council questioned the event after so many arrests and complaints were made.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Arizona Daily Sun, <a href="http://www.azdailysun.com/" type="external">http://www.azdailysun.com/</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Few arrests made at Flagstaff morning drinking festival
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/868914/few-arrests-made-at-flagstaff-morning-drinking-festival.html
| 2least
|
Few arrests made at Flagstaff morning drinking festival
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — This year’s morning drinking festival in Flagstaff was relatively tame, prompting only 5 arrests compare to last year’s 41.</p>
<p>The Arizona Daily Sun reports ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2dW5bym" type="external">http://bit.ly/2dW5bym</a> ) that new venues near Northern Arizona University’s campus helped keep participants in Tequila Sunrise closer to the school, thinning drunken crowds in downtown Flagstaff.</p>
<p>Arrests were made for underage drinking and urinating in public. All five arrests were made near the university.</p>
<p>The Flagstaff Fire Department CART Team responded to seven medical emergency calls while it was on Tequila Sunrise duty</p>
<p>Last year, the Flagstaff City Council questioned the event after so many arrests and complaints were made.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: Arizona Daily Sun, <a href="http://www.azdailysun.com/" type="external">http://www.azdailysun.com/</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,346 |
|
<p>When Afghans Ajmal Faqiri and Janis Shinwari signed on to work as&#160;interpreters with US troops in Afghanistan, they took a gamble with their lives.</p>
<p>They risked being killed for&#160;helping the Americans&#160;and, in return, got&#160;a promise that they and their families would be resettled to the US if they found themselves on Taliban hit lists.</p>
<p>That gamble seems to have finally paid off this week.</p>
<p>The two men, their wives and their children celebrated a holiday lunch together Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia.&#160;“We said, if we go to the United States, if we go, we will stay together, close to each other,” Shinwari says. “That was our dream.”</p>
<p>But making good on the promise&#160;wasn’t easy.</p>
<p>In spite of Shinwari's&#160;service, he and his family were denied a US visa. They got help from&#160;Matt Zeller, a&#160;veteran of Afghanistan who&#160;credits Shinwari with saving his life on the&#160;battlefield there.</p>
<p>When Shinwari started receiving death threats from the Taliban in 2009, Zeller made it a personal mission to get him to America.&#160;The four-year bureaucratic&#160;ordeal is <a href="" type="internal">an amazing story</a>,&#160;and ended with&#160;the family&#160;settling&#160;in Virginia in 2013. Veteran Matt Zeller has since founded&#160; <a href="http://www.nooneleft.org/" type="external">No One Left Behind</a>,&#160;a group to help&#160;Afghan and Iraqi interpreters.</p>
<p />
<p>Afghan Ajmal Faqiri, wearing a&#160;scarf,&#160;served as a translator for former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.</p>
<p>Courtesy of&#160;Ajmal Faqiri</p>
<p>Faqiri’s relocation to America was even more complicated, even though he had&#160;ascended the ranks of interpreters and landed a job as a&#160;personal translator for former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.</p>
<p>When Faqiri finally&#160;got his visa last year, he, his wife and two children had to leave Afghanistan with no contacts or cash.&#160;According to Zeller, the State Department "botched” Faqiri’s&#160;visa.&#160;</p>
<p>“I had to catch the first flight to wherever in the United States,” Faqiri says. “When I came out of the airport, I was like, ‘Man, where should I go now?’”</p>
<p>Interpreter's visas usually allow their holders&#160;six months to travel, but&#160;Faqiri’s document required him to get to the US within 72 hours. &#160;</p>
<p>“They had nowhere to go, no one who had been planning for their arrival because it had happened so suddenly,” Zeller says. “He ended up actually homeless&#160;on the streets of San Francisco,&#160;with his wife and two young children,&#160;in the middle of winter.”</p>
<p>Faqiri and his family wandered the streets of San Francisco for days until an Afghan American found them and offered to help. That’s when Faqiri located Shinwari’s contact information&#160;on Facebook and called his longtime friend. &#160;</p>
<p>“That was my happiest moment in my life, when I got the call from Ajmal,” Shinwari says. “I said, ‘OK,&#160;now&#160;I’m not alone.’”</p>
<p>Zeller gathered money&#160;for tickets&#160;and arranged for Faqiri and his family to travel to Virginia. Shinwari crowded his old friend’s family into his two bedroom apartment.&#160;“When Ajmal’s family arrived, we started a new life together,” Shinwari says.</p>
<p>Both men found employment. Faqiri worked at a car wash and then as a pizza delivery person. Now he works for a shipping company. Shinwari has a job in accounting.</p>
<p>Zeller says nothing the US does for these Afghans&#160;can&#160;welcome them enough.&#160;“Just like folks would call me a veteran —&#160;well, these guys, to me, they’re just as much a veteran as I am, if not more."</p>
<p>“I had the luxury of leaving when my tour of duty was over," he says.&#160;"They just went on to the next one, and the next one and the next one.”</p>
|
Two Afghan interpreters, targeted for helping the US military, finally make it to America
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2014-11-29/two-afghan-interpreters-targeted-helping-us-military-finally-make-it-america
|
2014-11-29
| 3left-center
|
Two Afghan interpreters, targeted for helping the US military, finally make it to America
<p>When Afghans Ajmal Faqiri and Janis Shinwari signed on to work as&#160;interpreters with US troops in Afghanistan, they took a gamble with their lives.</p>
<p>They risked being killed for&#160;helping the Americans&#160;and, in return, got&#160;a promise that they and their families would be resettled to the US if they found themselves on Taliban hit lists.</p>
<p>That gamble seems to have finally paid off this week.</p>
<p>The two men, their wives and their children celebrated a holiday lunch together Thursday in Alexandria, Virginia.&#160;“We said, if we go to the United States, if we go, we will stay together, close to each other,” Shinwari says. “That was our dream.”</p>
<p>But making good on the promise&#160;wasn’t easy.</p>
<p>In spite of Shinwari's&#160;service, he and his family were denied a US visa. They got help from&#160;Matt Zeller, a&#160;veteran of Afghanistan who&#160;credits Shinwari with saving his life on the&#160;battlefield there.</p>
<p>When Shinwari started receiving death threats from the Taliban in 2009, Zeller made it a personal mission to get him to America.&#160;The four-year bureaucratic&#160;ordeal is <a href="" type="internal">an amazing story</a>,&#160;and ended with&#160;the family&#160;settling&#160;in Virginia in 2013. Veteran Matt Zeller has since founded&#160; <a href="http://www.nooneleft.org/" type="external">No One Left Behind</a>,&#160;a group to help&#160;Afghan and Iraqi interpreters.</p>
<p />
<p>Afghan Ajmal Faqiri, wearing a&#160;scarf,&#160;served as a translator for former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.</p>
<p>Courtesy of&#160;Ajmal Faqiri</p>
<p>Faqiri’s relocation to America was even more complicated, even though he had&#160;ascended the ranks of interpreters and landed a job as a&#160;personal translator for former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates.</p>
<p>When Faqiri finally&#160;got his visa last year, he, his wife and two children had to leave Afghanistan with no contacts or cash.&#160;According to Zeller, the State Department "botched” Faqiri’s&#160;visa.&#160;</p>
<p>“I had to catch the first flight to wherever in the United States,” Faqiri says. “When I came out of the airport, I was like, ‘Man, where should I go now?’”</p>
<p>Interpreter's visas usually allow their holders&#160;six months to travel, but&#160;Faqiri’s document required him to get to the US within 72 hours. &#160;</p>
<p>“They had nowhere to go, no one who had been planning for their arrival because it had happened so suddenly,” Zeller says. “He ended up actually homeless&#160;on the streets of San Francisco,&#160;with his wife and two young children,&#160;in the middle of winter.”</p>
<p>Faqiri and his family wandered the streets of San Francisco for days until an Afghan American found them and offered to help. That’s when Faqiri located Shinwari’s contact information&#160;on Facebook and called his longtime friend. &#160;</p>
<p>“That was my happiest moment in my life, when I got the call from Ajmal,” Shinwari says. “I said, ‘OK,&#160;now&#160;I’m not alone.’”</p>
<p>Zeller gathered money&#160;for tickets&#160;and arranged for Faqiri and his family to travel to Virginia. Shinwari crowded his old friend’s family into his two bedroom apartment.&#160;“When Ajmal’s family arrived, we started a new life together,” Shinwari says.</p>
<p>Both men found employment. Faqiri worked at a car wash and then as a pizza delivery person. Now he works for a shipping company. Shinwari has a job in accounting.</p>
<p>Zeller says nothing the US does for these Afghans&#160;can&#160;welcome them enough.&#160;“Just like folks would call me a veteran —&#160;well, these guys, to me, they’re just as much a veteran as I am, if not more."</p>
<p>“I had the luxury of leaving when my tour of duty was over," he says.&#160;"They just went on to the next one, and the next one and the next one.”</p>
| 7,347 |
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ These New Mexico lotteries were drawn Tuesday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-11-23-29-59, Mega Ball: 18, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, eleven, twenty-three, twenty-nine, fifty-nine; Mega Ball: eighteen; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>6-2-4</p>
<p>(six, two, four)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>2-5-9</p>
<p>(two, five, nine)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $62 million</p>
<p>Roadrunner Cash</p>
<p>05-17-18-20-36</p>
<p>(five, seventeen, eighteen, twenty, thirty-six)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $33,000</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ These New Mexico lotteries were drawn Tuesday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-11-23-29-59, Mega Ball: 18, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, eleven, twenty-three, twenty-nine, fifty-nine; Mega Ball: eighteen; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>6-2-4</p>
<p>(six, two, four)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>2-5-9</p>
<p>(two, five, nine)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $62 million</p>
<p>Roadrunner Cash</p>
<p>05-17-18-20-36</p>
<p>(five, seventeen, eighteen, twenty, thirty-six)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $33,000</p>
|
NM Lottery
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/8b838c4b446a477ca171f910076526ac
|
2018-01-17
| 2least
|
NM Lottery
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ These New Mexico lotteries were drawn Tuesday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-11-23-29-59, Mega Ball: 18, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, eleven, twenty-three, twenty-nine, fifty-nine; Mega Ball: eighteen; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>6-2-4</p>
<p>(six, two, four)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>2-5-9</p>
<p>(two, five, nine)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $62 million</p>
<p>Roadrunner Cash</p>
<p>05-17-18-20-36</p>
<p>(five, seventeen, eighteen, twenty, thirty-six)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $33,000</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) _ These New Mexico lotteries were drawn Tuesday:</p>
<p>Mega Millions</p>
<p>03-11-23-29-59, Mega Ball: 18, Megaplier: 3</p>
<p>(three, eleven, twenty-three, twenty-nine, fifty-nine; Mega Ball: eighteen; Megaplier: three)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $50 million</p>
<p>Pick 3 Day</p>
<p>6-2-4</p>
<p>(six, two, four)</p>
<p>Pick 3 Evening</p>
<p>2-5-9</p>
<p>(two, five, nine)</p>
<p>Powerball</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $62 million</p>
<p>Roadrunner Cash</p>
<p>05-17-18-20-36</p>
<p>(five, seventeen, eighteen, twenty, thirty-six)</p>
<p>Estimated jackpot: $33,000</p>
| 7,348 |
<p>Mr. Vice President.</p>
<p>Biden has been <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/280538/bidens-choice-support-our-jobs-bill-or-support-rape-andrew-stiles" type="external">playing the rape card</a>, arguing that if the federal government does not subsidize police union contracts which states and local governments cannot afford, more women will get raped.</p>
<p>This is part of a theme, with Biden earlier this month claiming that rapes were up in Flint, Michigan because of a decrease in police.</p>
<p />
<p>But as&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280849/joe-biden-cops-and-crime-andrew-stiles" type="external">Andrew Stiles at NRO</a>&#160;documents, Biden’s numbers were not even close to the truth, as rapes actually have declined:</p>
<p>Biden’s remarks echoed <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX46sbLhjQI" type="external">comments</a> he made earlier this month in Flint, Mich., where he suggested that violent crimes could continue to increase if Congress did not pass the president’s proposal. “In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city,” he said. “In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the [number of murders] climbed to 65 and rapes — just to pick two categories — climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don’t rectify it.”</p>
<p>Putting aside the crude, inflammatory nature of his rhetoric, it turns out that Biden’s numbers are incorrect. According to statistics compiled by the FBI, the figures cited by the vice president are slightly off, but not egregiously so, when it comes to the size of the police force and the murder rate in Flint. According to the FBI data, the city employed 201 police officers in <a href="http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/documents/08tbl78mi.xls" type="external">2008</a> and 132 officers in <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/table-78/10tbl78mi.xls" type="external">2010</a>. There were 32 reported murders in <a href="http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/documents/08tbl08mi.xls" type="external">2008</a>, which rose to 53 in <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/table-8/10tbl08mi.xls" type="external">2010</a>. With respect to the rape figures, however, Biden is way off. FBI data show that the incidence of reported forcible rapes actually dropped, with 103 rapes reported in 2008, but just 92 in 2010. Hardly the 150 percent increase Biden cited.</p>
<p>Update 10-21-2011:&#160; <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/bidens-absurd-claims-about-rising-rape-and-murder-rates/2011/10/20/gIQAkq0y1L_blog.html" type="external">The Washington Post</a>&#160;(h/t <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47023" type="external">John Hayward</a>) fact checker gives Biden Four Pinnochios (“A Whopper”) for the falsehood.</p>
|
What do you call someone who lies about rape for political gain?
| true |
http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/10/what-do-you-call-someone-who-lies-about-rape-for-political-gain/
|
2011-10-20
| 0right
|
What do you call someone who lies about rape for political gain?
<p>Mr. Vice President.</p>
<p>Biden has been <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/280538/bidens-choice-support-our-jobs-bill-or-support-rape-andrew-stiles" type="external">playing the rape card</a>, arguing that if the federal government does not subsidize police union contracts which states and local governments cannot afford, more women will get raped.</p>
<p>This is part of a theme, with Biden earlier this month claiming that rapes were up in Flint, Michigan because of a decrease in police.</p>
<p />
<p>But as&#160; <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/280849/joe-biden-cops-and-crime-andrew-stiles" type="external">Andrew Stiles at NRO</a>&#160;documents, Biden’s numbers were not even close to the truth, as rapes actually have declined:</p>
<p>Biden’s remarks echoed <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX46sbLhjQI" type="external">comments</a> he made earlier this month in Flint, Mich., where he suggested that violent crimes could continue to increase if Congress did not pass the president’s proposal. “In 2008, when Flint had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city,” he said. “In 2010, when Flint had only 144 police officers, the [number of murders] climbed to 65 and rapes — just to pick two categories — climbed to 229. In 2011, you now only have 125 shields. God only knows what the numbers will be this year for Flint if we don’t rectify it.”</p>
<p>Putting aside the crude, inflammatory nature of his rhetoric, it turns out that Biden’s numbers are incorrect. According to statistics compiled by the FBI, the figures cited by the vice president are slightly off, but not egregiously so, when it comes to the size of the police force and the murder rate in Flint. According to the FBI data, the city employed 201 police officers in <a href="http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/documents/08tbl78mi.xls" type="external">2008</a> and 132 officers in <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/table-78/10tbl78mi.xls" type="external">2010</a>. There were 32 reported murders in <a href="http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/documents/08tbl08mi.xls" type="external">2008</a>, which rose to 53 in <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/table-8/10tbl08mi.xls" type="external">2010</a>. With respect to the rape figures, however, Biden is way off. FBI data show that the incidence of reported forcible rapes actually dropped, with 103 rapes reported in 2008, but just 92 in 2010. Hardly the 150 percent increase Biden cited.</p>
<p>Update 10-21-2011:&#160; <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/bidens-absurd-claims-about-rising-rape-and-murder-rates/2011/10/20/gIQAkq0y1L_blog.html" type="external">The Washington Post</a>&#160;(h/t <a href="http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47023" type="external">John Hayward</a>) fact checker gives Biden Four Pinnochios (“A Whopper”) for the falsehood.</p>
| 7,349 |
<p>Published time: 14 Nov, 2017 05:21</p>
<p>To force RT America to register as a foreign agent is “unprecedented,” Georgetown University journalism professor Chris Chambers says. The law used against the network was first used to combat Nazi propaganda, but has never been applied to a news network.</p>
<p>RT America host Ed Schultz spoke with Chambers on Monday, following a similar reaction from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which called the US government’s designation of RT America under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) “a troubling precedent” and a “bad idea.”</p>
<p>FARA became law in 1938, when the US sought to prevent Nazi propaganda before officially entering World War II. The 79-year-old law has never been used against a news network.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/409780-rt-foreign-agent-reactions/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Schultz said it was “selectively applied to RT to put pressure on perspectives some people in the government, especially Democrats, would rather not hear.”</p>
<p>“Now this is coming from, I believe, Democratic senators such as Jeanne Shaheen and Amy Klobuchar, who supported Hillary Clinton to the hilt and want to retaliate against the Trump presidency. That’s my opinion,” Schultz said on ‘News with Ed’ Monday night.</p>
<p>“It should be pointed out that no employee from RT has ever been invited to testify under oath on Capitol Hill,” Schultz continued. “I ask tonight, where’s the fairness? Because Google and Facebook testified openly just within the last 10 days that RT had a minimal footprint in social media leading up to the election.”</p>
<p>Schultz added that “no one in Congress has pointed to any stories that we have done that are not journalistically-based, that are not fair to the viewer.”</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Chambers estimated that the law has been used “maybe 20 times in 70 years.”</p>
<p>“Basically, you register as a lobbyist or some other organization that is supposedly speaking for another country and another country’s best interests,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s not the government coming after you with full fangs and claws. It’s the government coming at you like a weasel,” Chambers said. “There’s a difference between a lion coming after you with full fangs and claws and a weasel coming after you through the backdoor. And this is basically backdoor censorship.”</p>
<p>RT America “has the same First Amendment rights as Comcast Universal does with NBC,” Chambers told Schultz. “But they can’t infringe on those rights without doing a backdoor to RT, because they don’t like the content. I mean, it’s clear that they don’t like the content.”</p>
<p>“If it’s a problem with a foreign media outlet,” he continued, “why isn’t it done to the BBC? Why isn’t it done to China national television or the Japanese or any number of other media outlets that, say, the Saudis might contribute to?”</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
|
US used ‘backdoor censorship,’ attacked RT ‘like a weasel’ – journalism prof (VIDEO)
| false |
https://newsline.com/us-used-backdoor-censorship-attacked-rt-like-a-weasel-journalism-prof-video/
|
2017-11-14
| 1right-center
|
US used ‘backdoor censorship,’ attacked RT ‘like a weasel’ – journalism prof (VIDEO)
<p>Published time: 14 Nov, 2017 05:21</p>
<p>To force RT America to register as a foreign agent is “unprecedented,” Georgetown University journalism professor Chris Chambers says. The law used against the network was first used to combat Nazi propaganda, but has never been applied to a news network.</p>
<p>RT America host Ed Schultz spoke with Chambers on Monday, following a similar reaction from the Committee to Protect Journalists, which called the US government’s designation of RT America under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) “a troubling precedent” and a “bad idea.”</p>
<p>FARA became law in 1938, when the US sought to prevent Nazi propaganda before officially entering World War II. The 79-year-old law has never been used against a news network.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/409780-rt-foreign-agent-reactions/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Schultz said it was “selectively applied to RT to put pressure on perspectives some people in the government, especially Democrats, would rather not hear.”</p>
<p>“Now this is coming from, I believe, Democratic senators such as Jeanne Shaheen and Amy Klobuchar, who supported Hillary Clinton to the hilt and want to retaliate against the Trump presidency. That’s my opinion,” Schultz said on ‘News with Ed’ Monday night.</p>
<p>“It should be pointed out that no employee from RT has ever been invited to testify under oath on Capitol Hill,” Schultz continued. “I ask tonight, where’s the fairness? Because Google and Facebook testified openly just within the last 10 days that RT had a minimal footprint in social media leading up to the election.”</p>
<p>Schultz added that “no one in Congress has pointed to any stories that we have done that are not journalistically-based, that are not fair to the viewer.”</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
<p>Chambers estimated that the law has been used “maybe 20 times in 70 years.”</p>
<p>“Basically, you register as a lobbyist or some other organization that is supposedly speaking for another country and another country’s best interests,” he said.</p>
<p>“It’s not the government coming after you with full fangs and claws. It’s the government coming at you like a weasel,” Chambers said. “There’s a difference between a lion coming after you with full fangs and claws and a weasel coming after you through the backdoor. And this is basically backdoor censorship.”</p>
<p>RT America “has the same First Amendment rights as Comcast Universal does with NBC,” Chambers told Schultz. “But they can’t infringe on those rights without doing a backdoor to RT, because they don’t like the content. I mean, it’s clear that they don’t like the content.”</p>
<p>“If it’s a problem with a foreign media outlet,” he continued, “why isn’t it done to the BBC? Why isn’t it done to China national television or the Japanese or any number of other media outlets that, say, the Saudis might contribute to?”</p>
<p>[embedded content]</p>
| 7,350 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Hostess Brands LLC says the spongy yellow cakes will have a shelf life of 45 days when they start hitting shelves again July 15. That’s nearly three weeks longer than the 26 days the previous owner had stated as the shelf life for Twinkies.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Hostess, Hannah Arnold, says the change to extend the shelf life was actually made by the old company that went bankrupt, with the longer-lasting cakes first hitting shelves on Nov. 1 of last year.</p>
<p>But the old company went out of business and stopped production just weeks after that, meaning the Twinkies most people are familiar with had the shorter lifespan.</p>
<p>Arnold declined to say what changes were made to extend the shelf life, saying that it is proprietary information.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The New York Post also reported last week that Hostess will start freezing some of its cakes to extend their shelf life. That means that Twinkies would be delivered to stores frozen so retailers can stamp their own expiration dates on the cakes.</p>
<p>Arnold said in a statement that “a select number of retail customers,” whom she declined to identify, representing about 10 percent of its distribution made the request for frozen products.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Shelf life extended for Twinkies
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/218868/shelf-life-extended-for-twinkies.html
| 2least
|
Shelf life extended for Twinkies
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Hostess Brands LLC says the spongy yellow cakes will have a shelf life of 45 days when they start hitting shelves again July 15. That’s nearly three weeks longer than the 26 days the previous owner had stated as the shelf life for Twinkies.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Hostess, Hannah Arnold, says the change to extend the shelf life was actually made by the old company that went bankrupt, with the longer-lasting cakes first hitting shelves on Nov. 1 of last year.</p>
<p>But the old company went out of business and stopped production just weeks after that, meaning the Twinkies most people are familiar with had the shorter lifespan.</p>
<p>Arnold declined to say what changes were made to extend the shelf life, saying that it is proprietary information.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The New York Post also reported last week that Hostess will start freezing some of its cakes to extend their shelf life. That means that Twinkies would be delivered to stores frozen so retailers can stamp their own expiration dates on the cakes.</p>
<p>Arnold said in a statement that “a select number of retail customers,” whom she declined to identify, representing about 10 percent of its distribution made the request for frozen products.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 7,351 |
|
<p>President Obama’s day is going poorly.</p>
<p>It was going just as expected – full of media excitement and White House eagerness in preparation for President Obama’s ultimate State of the Union address – until the Iranians, our new friends, decided to seize two US Navy vessels. According to the <a href="" type="internal">Associated Press</a>, “The crew of two small Navy craft are being held by Iran, but American officials have received assurances from Tehran that the crew and vessels will be returned safely and promptly.”</p>
<p>The Pentagon <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAN_US_NAVY_BOATS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2016-01-12-16-04-56" type="external">claims</a> that 10 US Navy sailors drifted into Iranian waters after their two boats encountered mechanical problems. The Iranians say they won’t turn over the sailors until the morning at the earliest. The Iranians also say that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard took action because American sailors were trespassing in Iranian waters – they said the Americans were “snooping.” One of the ten sailors is a woman.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry called his good friend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, to “try to get to this outcome.” Meanwhile, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that it was to solve situations like this – i.e. the Iranian seizure of American vessels – that the Obama administration signed off on the devastating Iran nuclear deal. Earnest <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/12/politics/10-u-s-sailors-in-iranian-custody/" type="external">expanded</a> on this laughable position, telling CNN, “Certainly, everybody should be aware of the fact we have been in touch with the Iranians and they have ensured us that our sailors are safe and that they’ll be allowed to continue their journey promptly.”</p>
<p>The Obama administration is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/world/middleeast/iran-holds-us-navy-boats-crew.html?_r=0" type="external">supposed to release</a> $100 billion in assets to the Iranian government in just a few days.</p>
<p>The Obama team has said their man will not address the Iranian sailor situation tonight. Presumably, he will mention the fact that today the Pentagon <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=3&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjy2_-uu6XKAhVJLmMKHd7LCrIQqQIIKDAC&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2F01%2F12%2Ften-detainees-leaving-gitmo-in-bulk-transfer-thursday-defense-officials-say.html&amp;usg=AFQjCNG-ojJaW0zvHE4F3fT1FPy_8OgzWw&amp;sig2=qr2a5hHOT70bY2QduIEWcg" type="external">announced it would release 10 Gitmo detainees</a>.</p>
<p>The Iranians obviously intend to humiliate President Obama. That’s the goal – that’s why they’re holding the sailors until morning. And the entire situation creates uncomfortable questions for the White House: What were the rules of engagement here? Why didn’t the Obama administration achieve the sailors’ immediate release? How did the sailors end up in Iranian territorial waters, which were wildly out of the path of their journey? How did two boats simultaneously break down?</p>
<p>No answers are forthcoming. But there will be no #EmptySeat for the American sailors. There will be no hashtagging #BringBackOurSailors. There will instead be some happy talk about how President Obama’s warm relationship with Iran has averted catastrophic war – even though it’s brought us to the point where our sailors are now being arrested by the Iranians.</p>
<p>America used to be a country where our Navy blockaded the Soviet Navy to prevent the importation of missiles into Cuba. Now we’re a country blockaded by the Iranians, who attempt to achieve a nuclear weapon with our go-ahead.</p>
<p>The state of our union is, as of tonight, pathetic.</p>
<p>UPDATE: Kerry has spoken out on Twitter:</p>
<p>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hhigginbottom" type="external">@HHigginbottom</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ABlinken" type="external">@ABlinken</a> take part in <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse" type="external">@WhiteHouse</a>’s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BigBlockOfCheeseDay?src=hash" type="external">#BigBlockOfCheeseDay</a> tomorrow. Send them your toughest <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/foreignpolicy?src=hash" type="external">#foreignpolicy</a> questions.</p>
|
Iran Humiliates Obama, Arrests American Sailors On Eve Of State Of The Union
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/2560/iran-humiliates-obama-arrests-american-sailors-eve-ben-shapiro
|
2016-01-12
| 0right
|
Iran Humiliates Obama, Arrests American Sailors On Eve Of State Of The Union
<p>President Obama’s day is going poorly.</p>
<p>It was going just as expected – full of media excitement and White House eagerness in preparation for President Obama’s ultimate State of the Union address – until the Iranians, our new friends, decided to seize two US Navy vessels. According to the <a href="" type="internal">Associated Press</a>, “The crew of two small Navy craft are being held by Iran, but American officials have received assurances from Tehran that the crew and vessels will be returned safely and promptly.”</p>
<p>The Pentagon <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRAN_US_NAVY_BOATS?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;CTIME=2016-01-12-16-04-56" type="external">claims</a> that 10 US Navy sailors drifted into Iranian waters after their two boats encountered mechanical problems. The Iranians say they won’t turn over the sailors until the morning at the earliest. The Iranians also say that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard took action because American sailors were trespassing in Iranian waters – they said the Americans were “snooping.” One of the ten sailors is a woman.</p>
<p>Secretary of State John Kerry called his good friend, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, to “try to get to this outcome.” Meanwhile, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that it was to solve situations like this – i.e. the Iranian seizure of American vessels – that the Obama administration signed off on the devastating Iran nuclear deal. Earnest <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/12/politics/10-u-s-sailors-in-iranian-custody/" type="external">expanded</a> on this laughable position, telling CNN, “Certainly, everybody should be aware of the fact we have been in touch with the Iranians and they have ensured us that our sailors are safe and that they’ll be allowed to continue their journey promptly.”</p>
<p>The Obama administration is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/world/middleeast/iran-holds-us-navy-boats-crew.html?_r=0" type="external">supposed to release</a> $100 billion in assets to the Iranian government in just a few days.</p>
<p>The Obama team has said their man will not address the Iranian sailor situation tonight. Presumably, he will mention the fact that today the Pentagon <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=3&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjy2_-uu6XKAhVJLmMKHd7LCrIQqQIIKDAC&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fpolitics%2F2016%2F01%2F12%2Ften-detainees-leaving-gitmo-in-bulk-transfer-thursday-defense-officials-say.html&amp;usg=AFQjCNG-ojJaW0zvHE4F3fT1FPy_8OgzWw&amp;sig2=qr2a5hHOT70bY2QduIEWcg" type="external">announced it would release 10 Gitmo detainees</a>.</p>
<p>The Iranians obviously intend to humiliate President Obama. That’s the goal – that’s why they’re holding the sailors until morning. And the entire situation creates uncomfortable questions for the White House: What were the rules of engagement here? Why didn’t the Obama administration achieve the sailors’ immediate release? How did the sailors end up in Iranian territorial waters, which were wildly out of the path of their journey? How did two boats simultaneously break down?</p>
<p>No answers are forthcoming. But there will be no #EmptySeat for the American sailors. There will be no hashtagging #BringBackOurSailors. There will instead be some happy talk about how President Obama’s warm relationship with Iran has averted catastrophic war – even though it’s brought us to the point where our sailors are now being arrested by the Iranians.</p>
<p>America used to be a country where our Navy blockaded the Soviet Navy to prevent the importation of missiles into Cuba. Now we’re a country blockaded by the Iranians, who attempt to achieve a nuclear weapon with our go-ahead.</p>
<p>The state of our union is, as of tonight, pathetic.</p>
<p>UPDATE: Kerry has spoken out on Twitter:</p>
<p>. <a href="https://twitter.com/hhigginbottom" type="external">@HHigginbottom</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/ABlinken" type="external">@ABlinken</a> take part in <a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse" type="external">@WhiteHouse</a>’s <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BigBlockOfCheeseDay?src=hash" type="external">#BigBlockOfCheeseDay</a> tomorrow. Send them your toughest <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/foreignpolicy?src=hash" type="external">#foreignpolicy</a> questions.</p>
| 7,352 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The festivities include appearances by a dozen Cowboy legends, including Super Bowl winner and three-time Pro Bowl participant Billy Joe Dupree, three-time Super Bowl winner and All-Pro honoree Kevin “Pup” Smith, and two-time Super Bowl winner and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Mel Renfro.</p>
<p>The Dallas Cowboy Legends Weekend is Saturday and Sunday.</p>
<p>“The Dallas Cowboys are one of the most popular professional sports teams in New Mexico, so we are thrilled to give Santa Ana Star Casino guests the opportunity to meet true legends of the franchise,” said Tammy Neil, Star Casino director of marketing.</p>
<p>“This group of storied athletes represents all five of the Cowboys’ Super Bowl victories, as well as 10 All-Pro selections and more than 20 Pro Bowl appearances. For most people, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”</p>
<p>Also at the Star Casino this weekend will be former players Raghib “Rocket” Ismail (1999- 2001), Brock Marion (1993-97), Kevin Williams (1993-96), Tony Casillas (1991-93), Dixon Edwards (1991-95), George Teague (1996; 1998-2001), Thomas Everett (1992-93), Larry Brown (1991-95) and Everson Walls (1981-89).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The fun starts Saturday at 10 p.m. with the Dallas Cowboy Legends VIP Party at The Stage. DJ Automatic will perform as guests mix and mingle with Dallas Cowboy legends and cheerleaders. Tickets for the VIP party cost $25 and can be purchased at the door.</p>
<p>On Sunday, guests are invited to join the Dallas Cowboy legends to watch the Cowboys (3-3) take on the Philadelphia Eagles (3-3) at Lincoln Financial Field. Kickoff is set for 11 a.m.</p>
<p>During the event, which starts at 10 a.m., the Cowboys legends and cheerleaders will pose for photographs with fans, and guests can enter to win official signed Dallas Cowboys memorabilia.</p>
<p>Admission is free, but guests must be at least 21 years or older to attend. (thestageatthestar.com)</p>
|
Former Dallas Cowboys gather at Star Casino
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/282795/former-dallas-cowboys-gather-at-star-casino.html
|
2013-10-16
| 2least
|
Former Dallas Cowboys gather at Star Casino
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The festivities include appearances by a dozen Cowboy legends, including Super Bowl winner and three-time Pro Bowl participant Billy Joe Dupree, three-time Super Bowl winner and All-Pro honoree Kevin “Pup” Smith, and two-time Super Bowl winner and Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Mel Renfro.</p>
<p>The Dallas Cowboy Legends Weekend is Saturday and Sunday.</p>
<p>“The Dallas Cowboys are one of the most popular professional sports teams in New Mexico, so we are thrilled to give Santa Ana Star Casino guests the opportunity to meet true legends of the franchise,” said Tammy Neil, Star Casino director of marketing.</p>
<p>“This group of storied athletes represents all five of the Cowboys’ Super Bowl victories, as well as 10 All-Pro selections and more than 20 Pro Bowl appearances. For most people, this is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”</p>
<p>Also at the Star Casino this weekend will be former players Raghib “Rocket” Ismail (1999- 2001), Brock Marion (1993-97), Kevin Williams (1993-96), Tony Casillas (1991-93), Dixon Edwards (1991-95), George Teague (1996; 1998-2001), Thomas Everett (1992-93), Larry Brown (1991-95) and Everson Walls (1981-89).</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The fun starts Saturday at 10 p.m. with the Dallas Cowboy Legends VIP Party at The Stage. DJ Automatic will perform as guests mix and mingle with Dallas Cowboy legends and cheerleaders. Tickets for the VIP party cost $25 and can be purchased at the door.</p>
<p>On Sunday, guests are invited to join the Dallas Cowboy legends to watch the Cowboys (3-3) take on the Philadelphia Eagles (3-3) at Lincoln Financial Field. Kickoff is set for 11 a.m.</p>
<p>During the event, which starts at 10 a.m., the Cowboys legends and cheerleaders will pose for photographs with fans, and guests can enter to win official signed Dallas Cowboys memorabilia.</p>
<p>Admission is free, but guests must be at least 21 years or older to attend. (thestageatthestar.com)</p>
| 7,353 |
<p>CHIANG SAEN, Thailand — Somewhere in the pantheon of blue-blood sporting, that exclusive world where men hunt foxes and race yachts, there is a place for polo on elephant-back.</p>
<p>Elephant polo is half sport, half high-society lark. Like its equestrian counterpart, it couples man and creature, adds a ball and long mallets, and engages two teams in a soccer-style scoring match.</p>
<p>But this is where the similarities end and the weirdness begins.</p>
<p>Only in elephant polo can spectators hear the dry hiss of pachyderms brushing hides as they scramble towards a ball. Only in elephant polo does the announcer gush, “What a beautiful under-the-trunk shot.”</p>
<p>Playing elephant polo is a bit like being driven around in a convertible jeep, while sitting on a high chair, and swatting at a ball with a 7-foot-long stick. Which is exactly how oil tycoon Ed Story practices on his Texas ranch.</p>
<p>“If we have to explain it, you’ll never get it,” said Story, CEO of SOCO International, an oil and gas exploration and production company.</p>
<p>Story and his competitors — business magnates, equestrian polo lovers and others — face off several times a year in exotic locales. Their most recent contest was the World Elephant Polo Association’s “King’s Cup,” held last week in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle.</p>
<p>Beside a glittering Mekong tributary, on a pitch spotted with small pyramids of dung, six elephants faced off during each match. It is a game that peaks and wanes. There is sometimes a wild snarl of trunks and clacking of sticks as elephants pursue a fist-sized ball. There are also long bouts when elephants, trunks dragging across the grass, waddle about and squawk.</p>
<p>All of this is narrated in a style typically reserved for racetrack announcers — though with a fine veneer of posh.</p>
<p>“He tries to swing, but there’s a forest of legs!” said David Wilbridge, an announcer, polo sportsman and airplane captain. “And now he’s taken it away from the Dark Horse of Delhi … going around the trunk now … and that’s a lovely under-the-belly shot!”</p>
<p>Like Little League baseball, each team is sponsored. Unlike Little League, the sponsors include IBM, Mercedes Benz and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Sample match: Audemars Piguet, maker of luxury watches vs. Moet &amp; Chandon, maker of luxury champagne.</p>
<p>Elephant polo was invented 27 years ago by two Brits: Former U.K. Olympic bobsled champ and South American treasure hunter, James Manclark, and the recently deceased Jim Edwards, a hotel impresario who by the early 1980s had amassed one of the world’s largest elephant flotillas in Nepal.</p>
<p>According to lore, on April 1, 1982, Manclark sent to Edwards a telex message reading, “HAVE LONG STICKS. GET ELEPHANTS READY.”</p>
<p>Though they’d previously chatted about the possibility of elephant polo over dinner in Switzerland, Edwards took this message as an April Fool’s joke.</p>
<p>Then Manclark showed up with long sticks.</p>
<p>The game has since accumulated strict rules, many of them directed towards the elephants. No lifting the ball with your trunk. No trampling the ball. And no more than two elephants on one half of the field during play.</p>
<p>Four players attacking one ball doesn’t work so well, said Raj Kalaan, an elephant polo forerunner. “Can you imagine the elephants rushing together?” he said. “You can’t get to the ball. Sixteen legs? Impossible! It’s like a shield.”</p>
<p>Elephant polo is, by all accounts, as difficult as it is rare. “We have had sportsmen from across the world come to play,” said veteran Peter Prentice, an executive with scotch whiskey maker Chivas Regal.</p>
<p>“Most of them have struggled,” said Prentice. But elephant polo, he added, “is a box every human being with a flair for life needs to tick.”</p>
<p>Each player works in concert with a “mahout,” a man trained in the dying art of elephant handling. Mahouts, perched barefoot on the elephant’s prickly scalp, steer the creatures by humping the neck and prodding the beast with a small hook.</p>
<p>Once used in tribal battles, more recently used in the timber trade, Thai elephants and their masters now long for work. Many resort to wandering the parts of Bangkok “your wife wouldn’t want you to visit,” as one organizer put it.</p>
<p>These are the neon-drenched, brothel-lined strips in Bangkok where men succumb to charms of bar girls and elephants alike. The mahouts are reduced to charging tipsy tourists $1 for the privilege of feeding elephants unpeeled bananas — and watching the animal chuck the fruit into its droopy maw.</p>
<p>Elephant polo, however, has offered both man and beast a better path. All but two of the 50 or so elephants, who live year-round at the Anantara Golden Triangle Resort, were rescued from Bangkok along with their mahouts. And during post-game fundraisers, players keep the donations coming. Last week, during one evening gala, they raised more than $56,000.</p>
<p>Resisting the ample flow of good drink — and foisting stiff rounds on opponents — is a crucial element in pre-game “strategy sessions,” according to Story. “We make sure they’re good and drunk,” he said, “even if we’re sober.”</p>
<p>Of those saved from the streets, only the best pachyderms play. Most are backbenchers, lolling by the river and swiping Cessna-sized dragonflies with their tails. But during elephant polo week, even the sideline elephants are fed extra vitamins and high-protein dinners. So pampered are the beasts that, when they make dung piles on the pitch, gloved mahouts rush in to hand-scoop the leavings into trash bags.</p>
<p>“The elephants, this is their moment,” Prentice said. “They’re right here on the mighty banks of the Mekong. They play polo and dive in for a swim. It’s about as good as it gets in the life of an Asian elephant.”</p>
<p>Read more about elephants:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/south-africa/090225/planned-parenthood-elephants" type="external">Planned parenthood for elephants</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/south-africa/090104/kill-elephant" type="external">To kill an elephant</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/egypt/090204/face-time-at-the-cairo-zoo" type="external">Face time at the Cairo zoo</a></p>
|
Elephant polo: It's kind of a big deal
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2009-04-03/elephant-polo-its-kind-big-deal
|
2009-04-03
| 3left-center
|
Elephant polo: It's kind of a big deal
<p>CHIANG SAEN, Thailand — Somewhere in the pantheon of blue-blood sporting, that exclusive world where men hunt foxes and race yachts, there is a place for polo on elephant-back.</p>
<p>Elephant polo is half sport, half high-society lark. Like its equestrian counterpart, it couples man and creature, adds a ball and long mallets, and engages two teams in a soccer-style scoring match.</p>
<p>But this is where the similarities end and the weirdness begins.</p>
<p>Only in elephant polo can spectators hear the dry hiss of pachyderms brushing hides as they scramble towards a ball. Only in elephant polo does the announcer gush, “What a beautiful under-the-trunk shot.”</p>
<p>Playing elephant polo is a bit like being driven around in a convertible jeep, while sitting on a high chair, and swatting at a ball with a 7-foot-long stick. Which is exactly how oil tycoon Ed Story practices on his Texas ranch.</p>
<p>“If we have to explain it, you’ll never get it,” said Story, CEO of SOCO International, an oil and gas exploration and production company.</p>
<p>Story and his competitors — business magnates, equestrian polo lovers and others — face off several times a year in exotic locales. Their most recent contest was the World Elephant Polo Association’s “King’s Cup,” held last week in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle.</p>
<p>Beside a glittering Mekong tributary, on a pitch spotted with small pyramids of dung, six elephants faced off during each match. It is a game that peaks and wanes. There is sometimes a wild snarl of trunks and clacking of sticks as elephants pursue a fist-sized ball. There are also long bouts when elephants, trunks dragging across the grass, waddle about and squawk.</p>
<p>All of this is narrated in a style typically reserved for racetrack announcers — though with a fine veneer of posh.</p>
<p>“He tries to swing, but there’s a forest of legs!” said David Wilbridge, an announcer, polo sportsman and airplane captain. “And now he’s taken it away from the Dark Horse of Delhi … going around the trunk now … and that’s a lovely under-the-belly shot!”</p>
<p>Like Little League baseball, each team is sponsored. Unlike Little League, the sponsors include IBM, Mercedes Benz and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Sample match: Audemars Piguet, maker of luxury watches vs. Moet &amp; Chandon, maker of luxury champagne.</p>
<p>Elephant polo was invented 27 years ago by two Brits: Former U.K. Olympic bobsled champ and South American treasure hunter, James Manclark, and the recently deceased Jim Edwards, a hotel impresario who by the early 1980s had amassed one of the world’s largest elephant flotillas in Nepal.</p>
<p>According to lore, on April 1, 1982, Manclark sent to Edwards a telex message reading, “HAVE LONG STICKS. GET ELEPHANTS READY.”</p>
<p>Though they’d previously chatted about the possibility of elephant polo over dinner in Switzerland, Edwards took this message as an April Fool’s joke.</p>
<p>Then Manclark showed up with long sticks.</p>
<p>The game has since accumulated strict rules, many of them directed towards the elephants. No lifting the ball with your trunk. No trampling the ball. And no more than two elephants on one half of the field during play.</p>
<p>Four players attacking one ball doesn’t work so well, said Raj Kalaan, an elephant polo forerunner. “Can you imagine the elephants rushing together?” he said. “You can’t get to the ball. Sixteen legs? Impossible! It’s like a shield.”</p>
<p>Elephant polo is, by all accounts, as difficult as it is rare. “We have had sportsmen from across the world come to play,” said veteran Peter Prentice, an executive with scotch whiskey maker Chivas Regal.</p>
<p>“Most of them have struggled,” said Prentice. But elephant polo, he added, “is a box every human being with a flair for life needs to tick.”</p>
<p>Each player works in concert with a “mahout,” a man trained in the dying art of elephant handling. Mahouts, perched barefoot on the elephant’s prickly scalp, steer the creatures by humping the neck and prodding the beast with a small hook.</p>
<p>Once used in tribal battles, more recently used in the timber trade, Thai elephants and their masters now long for work. Many resort to wandering the parts of Bangkok “your wife wouldn’t want you to visit,” as one organizer put it.</p>
<p>These are the neon-drenched, brothel-lined strips in Bangkok where men succumb to charms of bar girls and elephants alike. The mahouts are reduced to charging tipsy tourists $1 for the privilege of feeding elephants unpeeled bananas — and watching the animal chuck the fruit into its droopy maw.</p>
<p>Elephant polo, however, has offered both man and beast a better path. All but two of the 50 or so elephants, who live year-round at the Anantara Golden Triangle Resort, were rescued from Bangkok along with their mahouts. And during post-game fundraisers, players keep the donations coming. Last week, during one evening gala, they raised more than $56,000.</p>
<p>Resisting the ample flow of good drink — and foisting stiff rounds on opponents — is a crucial element in pre-game “strategy sessions,” according to Story. “We make sure they’re good and drunk,” he said, “even if we’re sober.”</p>
<p>Of those saved from the streets, only the best pachyderms play. Most are backbenchers, lolling by the river and swiping Cessna-sized dragonflies with their tails. But during elephant polo week, even the sideline elephants are fed extra vitamins and high-protein dinners. So pampered are the beasts that, when they make dung piles on the pitch, gloved mahouts rush in to hand-scoop the leavings into trash bags.</p>
<p>“The elephants, this is their moment,” Prentice said. “They’re right here on the mighty banks of the Mekong. They play polo and dive in for a swim. It’s about as good as it gets in the life of an Asian elephant.”</p>
<p>Read more about elephants:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/south-africa/090225/planned-parenthood-elephants" type="external">Planned parenthood for elephants</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/south-africa/090104/kill-elephant" type="external">To kill an elephant</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/egypt/090204/face-time-at-the-cairo-zoo" type="external">Face time at the Cairo zoo</a></p>
| 7,354 |
<p>HOUSTON (AP) — Brian Gaine has had a long journey to the top.</p>
<p>After 19 years serving in various roles in the personnel departments of several NFL teams, Gaine is the one calling the shots now.</p>
<p>"I started at the bottom and worked my way to the top at every level of every organization that I've been in," said Gaine, who was introduced as the Houston Texans' general manager on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Gaine spent time as a player for three seasons before turning to the other side of the game in 1999 as a scout with the New York Jets. He has also worked with Dallas (2005-07), Miami (2008-13), Houston (2014-16) and Buffalo (2017) — most recently as the vice president of player personnel.</p>
<p>"I do believe, with a great amount of humility, I've been in five different organizations, so I have a unique perspective on what it has taken to win and what it has taken to achieve," Gaine said. "I've had a chance to play a small part in going to the playoffs and winning division titles in each of those organizations. But most importantly, I think it requires good people, people that love football and are passionate about winning. Equally, a good process.</p>
<p>"I've seen varying processes in terms of how to build a roster and how to build a championship-caliber team, and I hope to implement some of those things here at the Texans."</p>
<p>When Gaine last worked for the Texans, he served as the director of pro personnel in 2014 and then as the director of player personnel for two years. Heading into this new role with Houston, Gaine said he will work collaboratively with Texans coach Bill O'Brien, who recently received a four-year extension.</p>
<p>"What you see on Sundays obviously is the result of player acquisition and coaching, but there's a process that's involved in terms of getting to Sunday," he said. "Bill and I are very philosophically aligned in terms of how to do that, how to build a right program, how to build a right culture, and it's not just the football roster, but it's also the football operation and that requires every aspect that touches the game and touches the locker room.</p>
<p>"All those aspects of the football operation, Bill and I are philosophically aligned in terms of how to run it and how to do it."</p>
<p>One position on the Texans' roster that Gaine won't have to worry much about is quarterback — once Deshaun Watson returns from injury.</p>
<p>Watson tore a knee ligament during a practice on Nov. 2, but quickly established himself as an exciting playmaker. He finished his rookie season passing for 1,699 yards and 19 touchdowns - the most TD throws in a quarterback's first seven career games since 1970.</p>
<p>"He's certainly a foundational piece for us, in terms of what we can build around," Gaine said. "It certainly would be an advantage for any general manager coming into a team to have a quarterback in place that you believe in, that you know that can help you win football games."</p>
<p>Having a high-caliber player such as Watson at their disposal, Gaine — who has been evaluating players since arriving back in Houston — understands they have to put pieces around him to help him succeed on the field.</p>
<p>Some of that will be done through free agency, but also in the draft, in which the Texans will not have a pick in the first or second rounds this year.</p>
<p>"We will pursue every avenue to improve this roster, as it relates to the draft, to free agency, to waiver claims, to trades, to practice squad steals, to tryouts, workouts," Gaine said. "Whatever we have to do to upgrade the roster in any aspect of the operation, we'll continue to do that. If free agency presents the opportunity for us to add a championship piece to the roster, we certainly will pursue that."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP NFL website: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>HOUSTON (AP) — Brian Gaine has had a long journey to the top.</p>
<p>After 19 years serving in various roles in the personnel departments of several NFL teams, Gaine is the one calling the shots now.</p>
<p>"I started at the bottom and worked my way to the top at every level of every organization that I've been in," said Gaine, who was introduced as the Houston Texans' general manager on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Gaine spent time as a player for three seasons before turning to the other side of the game in 1999 as a scout with the New York Jets. He has also worked with Dallas (2005-07), Miami (2008-13), Houston (2014-16) and Buffalo (2017) — most recently as the vice president of player personnel.</p>
<p>"I do believe, with a great amount of humility, I've been in five different organizations, so I have a unique perspective on what it has taken to win and what it has taken to achieve," Gaine said. "I've had a chance to play a small part in going to the playoffs and winning division titles in each of those organizations. But most importantly, I think it requires good people, people that love football and are passionate about winning. Equally, a good process.</p>
<p>"I've seen varying processes in terms of how to build a roster and how to build a championship-caliber team, and I hope to implement some of those things here at the Texans."</p>
<p>When Gaine last worked for the Texans, he served as the director of pro personnel in 2014 and then as the director of player personnel for two years. Heading into this new role with Houston, Gaine said he will work collaboratively with Texans coach Bill O'Brien, who recently received a four-year extension.</p>
<p>"What you see on Sundays obviously is the result of player acquisition and coaching, but there's a process that's involved in terms of getting to Sunday," he said. "Bill and I are very philosophically aligned in terms of how to do that, how to build a right program, how to build a right culture, and it's not just the football roster, but it's also the football operation and that requires every aspect that touches the game and touches the locker room.</p>
<p>"All those aspects of the football operation, Bill and I are philosophically aligned in terms of how to run it and how to do it."</p>
<p>One position on the Texans' roster that Gaine won't have to worry much about is quarterback — once Deshaun Watson returns from injury.</p>
<p>Watson tore a knee ligament during a practice on Nov. 2, but quickly established himself as an exciting playmaker. He finished his rookie season passing for 1,699 yards and 19 touchdowns - the most TD throws in a quarterback's first seven career games since 1970.</p>
<p>"He's certainly a foundational piece for us, in terms of what we can build around," Gaine said. "It certainly would be an advantage for any general manager coming into a team to have a quarterback in place that you believe in, that you know that can help you win football games."</p>
<p>Having a high-caliber player such as Watson at their disposal, Gaine — who has been evaluating players since arriving back in Houston — understands they have to put pieces around him to help him succeed on the field.</p>
<p>Some of that will be done through free agency, but also in the draft, in which the Texans will not have a pick in the first or second rounds this year.</p>
<p>"We will pursue every avenue to improve this roster, as it relates to the draft, to free agency, to waiver claims, to trades, to practice squad steals, to tryouts, workouts," Gaine said. "Whatever we have to do to upgrade the roster in any aspect of the operation, we'll continue to do that. If free agency presents the opportunity for us to add a championship piece to the roster, we certainly will pursue that."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP NFL website: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
|
Brian Gaine introduced as Texans general manager
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/3af59acfb5be47e8bdc037084e70c4b3
|
2018-01-18
| 2least
|
Brian Gaine introduced as Texans general manager
<p>HOUSTON (AP) — Brian Gaine has had a long journey to the top.</p>
<p>After 19 years serving in various roles in the personnel departments of several NFL teams, Gaine is the one calling the shots now.</p>
<p>"I started at the bottom and worked my way to the top at every level of every organization that I've been in," said Gaine, who was introduced as the Houston Texans' general manager on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Gaine spent time as a player for three seasons before turning to the other side of the game in 1999 as a scout with the New York Jets. He has also worked with Dallas (2005-07), Miami (2008-13), Houston (2014-16) and Buffalo (2017) — most recently as the vice president of player personnel.</p>
<p>"I do believe, with a great amount of humility, I've been in five different organizations, so I have a unique perspective on what it has taken to win and what it has taken to achieve," Gaine said. "I've had a chance to play a small part in going to the playoffs and winning division titles in each of those organizations. But most importantly, I think it requires good people, people that love football and are passionate about winning. Equally, a good process.</p>
<p>"I've seen varying processes in terms of how to build a roster and how to build a championship-caliber team, and I hope to implement some of those things here at the Texans."</p>
<p>When Gaine last worked for the Texans, he served as the director of pro personnel in 2014 and then as the director of player personnel for two years. Heading into this new role with Houston, Gaine said he will work collaboratively with Texans coach Bill O'Brien, who recently received a four-year extension.</p>
<p>"What you see on Sundays obviously is the result of player acquisition and coaching, but there's a process that's involved in terms of getting to Sunday," he said. "Bill and I are very philosophically aligned in terms of how to do that, how to build a right program, how to build a right culture, and it's not just the football roster, but it's also the football operation and that requires every aspect that touches the game and touches the locker room.</p>
<p>"All those aspects of the football operation, Bill and I are philosophically aligned in terms of how to run it and how to do it."</p>
<p>One position on the Texans' roster that Gaine won't have to worry much about is quarterback — once Deshaun Watson returns from injury.</p>
<p>Watson tore a knee ligament during a practice on Nov. 2, but quickly established himself as an exciting playmaker. He finished his rookie season passing for 1,699 yards and 19 touchdowns - the most TD throws in a quarterback's first seven career games since 1970.</p>
<p>"He's certainly a foundational piece for us, in terms of what we can build around," Gaine said. "It certainly would be an advantage for any general manager coming into a team to have a quarterback in place that you believe in, that you know that can help you win football games."</p>
<p>Having a high-caliber player such as Watson at their disposal, Gaine — who has been evaluating players since arriving back in Houston — understands they have to put pieces around him to help him succeed on the field.</p>
<p>Some of that will be done through free agency, but also in the draft, in which the Texans will not have a pick in the first or second rounds this year.</p>
<p>"We will pursue every avenue to improve this roster, as it relates to the draft, to free agency, to waiver claims, to trades, to practice squad steals, to tryouts, workouts," Gaine said. "Whatever we have to do to upgrade the roster in any aspect of the operation, we'll continue to do that. If free agency presents the opportunity for us to add a championship piece to the roster, we certainly will pursue that."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP NFL website: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>HOUSTON (AP) — Brian Gaine has had a long journey to the top.</p>
<p>After 19 years serving in various roles in the personnel departments of several NFL teams, Gaine is the one calling the shots now.</p>
<p>"I started at the bottom and worked my way to the top at every level of every organization that I've been in," said Gaine, who was introduced as the Houston Texans' general manager on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Gaine spent time as a player for three seasons before turning to the other side of the game in 1999 as a scout with the New York Jets. He has also worked with Dallas (2005-07), Miami (2008-13), Houston (2014-16) and Buffalo (2017) — most recently as the vice president of player personnel.</p>
<p>"I do believe, with a great amount of humility, I've been in five different organizations, so I have a unique perspective on what it has taken to win and what it has taken to achieve," Gaine said. "I've had a chance to play a small part in going to the playoffs and winning division titles in each of those organizations. But most importantly, I think it requires good people, people that love football and are passionate about winning. Equally, a good process.</p>
<p>"I've seen varying processes in terms of how to build a roster and how to build a championship-caliber team, and I hope to implement some of those things here at the Texans."</p>
<p>When Gaine last worked for the Texans, he served as the director of pro personnel in 2014 and then as the director of player personnel for two years. Heading into this new role with Houston, Gaine said he will work collaboratively with Texans coach Bill O'Brien, who recently received a four-year extension.</p>
<p>"What you see on Sundays obviously is the result of player acquisition and coaching, but there's a process that's involved in terms of getting to Sunday," he said. "Bill and I are very philosophically aligned in terms of how to do that, how to build a right program, how to build a right culture, and it's not just the football roster, but it's also the football operation and that requires every aspect that touches the game and touches the locker room.</p>
<p>"All those aspects of the football operation, Bill and I are philosophically aligned in terms of how to run it and how to do it."</p>
<p>One position on the Texans' roster that Gaine won't have to worry much about is quarterback — once Deshaun Watson returns from injury.</p>
<p>Watson tore a knee ligament during a practice on Nov. 2, but quickly established himself as an exciting playmaker. He finished his rookie season passing for 1,699 yards and 19 touchdowns - the most TD throws in a quarterback's first seven career games since 1970.</p>
<p>"He's certainly a foundational piece for us, in terms of what we can build around," Gaine said. "It certainly would be an advantage for any general manager coming into a team to have a quarterback in place that you believe in, that you know that can help you win football games."</p>
<p>Having a high-caliber player such as Watson at their disposal, Gaine — who has been evaluating players since arriving back in Houston — understands they have to put pieces around him to help him succeed on the field.</p>
<p>Some of that will be done through free agency, but also in the draft, in which the Texans will not have a pick in the first or second rounds this year.</p>
<p>"We will pursue every avenue to improve this roster, as it relates to the draft, to free agency, to waiver claims, to trades, to practice squad steals, to tryouts, workouts," Gaine said. "Whatever we have to do to upgrade the roster in any aspect of the operation, we'll continue to do that. If free agency presents the opportunity for us to add a championship piece to the roster, we certainly will pursue that."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP NFL website: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
| 7,355 |
<p><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/michele%20bachmann.png" type="external" /></p>
<p>It’s Sunday morning, the day after the closely-watched Ames, Iowa Presidential Straw Poll. On MSNBC‘s Meet The Press, panelist Chuck Todd <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/44136741#44136741" type="external">opines</a>:</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; “We have a top tier. It is Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann.” He adds that some other candidates had a good showing in the straw poll and that Ron Paul proved that he could “be a nuisance to the field.”</p>
<p>On CBS‘s Sunday morning show, Face The Nation, political analyst John Dickerson <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7376836n&amp;tag=contentMain;contentBody" type="external">declares</a>: “We have a new top tier and it’s Perry, Mitt Romney, and Bachmann.” He goes on to say the real question is which Republican contender can best communicate Tea Party values and actually win in a general election against President Obama.</p>
<p>On <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday/index.html" type="external">Fox News Sunday</a>, Chris Wallace says: “There’s now a top tier in this race, at least for now, of Romney, Perry, and Bachmann.” Though just to be sure not to leave anyone out who deserved honorable mention, Wallace quickly added: “and you know we haven’t mentioned, and we should, Rick Santorum who did really surprisingly well.”</p>
<p>With commentary like that from the mainstream press, a viewer might be tempted to think that first, second, and third place went to Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry, and that Rick Santorum and Ron Paul might have finished a close fourth and a solid fifth in the historic poll one day before. But that’s not what happened. Michele Bachmann did finish in first place with 4823 votes, but placing a very close second and statistically tying Bachmann for first with 4671 votes, was Ron Paul, who Chuck Todd dismissed as a mere “nuisance” despite conferring top tier status to Bachmann for her strong finish.</p>
<p>How did the other candidates perform?</p>
<p>Rick Perry, who hasn’t been in any of the three nationally-televised debates and only announced his candidacy the day of the Iowa straw poll, finished in sixth place with 718 write-in votes. Mitt Romney placed seventh with 567 votes. Neither actually bothered to show up for or compete in the straw poll. It is perfectly understandable to include Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in the top tier despite their absence at the recent straw poll because of their strong showing in scientific national and state polls for the 2012 Republican nomination.</p>
<p>But to add Michele Bachmann as a frontrunner because of her big win at the Iowa straw poll while omitting Ron Paul, who statistically tied her for first at Ames and who statistically ties her for third <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2011-08-08-poll-gallup-election_n.htm?csp=34news" type="external">in national polls</a>, should raise questions about the commentators’ objectivity.</p>
<p>As a media analyst for The Politico <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61430.html" type="external">reported</a> late Monday:</p>
<p>“Ron Paul finished just 152 votes behind Michele Bachmann in the Ames Straw Poll, but from the headlines and TV news coverage, it’s hard to tell he even showed up.</p>
<p>With the exception of The New York Times and The Des Moines Register, most major newspaper headlines didn’t even mention his name in their reports of Saturday’s contest. Nor was he anywhere to be found on the Sunday morning talk shows.</p>
<p>By Monday’s second-day stories, Paul had disappeared from the prevailing narrative of the Republican primary race altogether, as consensus coalesced around the dynamics between Bachmann, newcomer Rick Perry and front-runner Mitt Romney.”</p>
<p>What possible reason could the mainstream media have for such a glaring omission of Ron Paul from its commentary and analysis? Especially when his strong polling is also considered in light of his remarkably consistent voting record as a U.S. congressman and his prescient warnings about the credit bubble, the housing market, the national debt, and the wars overseas.</p>
<p>John Dickerson argues that the Republican Party is looking for a candidate that can best communicate the Tea Party’s values and go on to defeat President Obama in the general election. In addition to being called the “godfather” of the Tea Party movement by multiple mainstream journalists– including Chris Wallace, who omitted Paul from his top tier list Sunday– Ron Paul was recently called “Tea Party patient zero,” by comedian Jon Stewart.</p>
<p>In a Daily Show <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-scolds-media-for-ignoring-rep-ron-paul-i-mean-fck-that-guy-right/" type="external">segment</a> about the media’s unfair coverage of Ron Paul after the Ames Straw Poll, Jon Stewart remarked of him:</p>
<p>“He is Tea Party patient zero. All that small government grassroots business– he planted that grass. These other folks– they’re just Moral Majorities in a tri-cornered hat. Ron Paul’s the real deal and Fox News should love this guy!”</p>
<p>Now Fox News, CBS, MSNBC, and every other mainstream source of news have no obligation at all to “love” Ron Paul as Stewart suggests, nor to agree with his political positions. But they do have a certain obligation to report and analyze the news with some level of objectivity. With Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul– both strong voices in the Tea Party– statistically tied on a national level and in the recent Ames Iowa Straw Poll, there’s no substantive reason for media analysts to hail one as a “top tier” contender and deride the other as a nuisance.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>2011 Straw Poll Full Results (Votes, %)</p>
<p>1. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (4823, 28.55%)</p>
<p>2. Congressman Ron Paul (4671, 27.65%)</p>
<p>3. Governor Tim Pawlenty (2293, 13.57%)</p>
<p>4. Senator Rick Santorum (1657, 9.81%)</p>
<p>5. Herman Cain(1456, 8.62%)</p>
<p>6. Governor Rick Perry (718, 3.62%) write-in</p>
<p>7. Governor Mitt Romney (567, 3.36%)</p>
<p>8. Speaker Newt Gingrich (385, 2.28%)</p>
<p>9. Governor Jon Huntsman (69, 0.41%)</p>
<p>10. Congressman Thad McCotter (35, 0.21%)</p>
<p>(Source: <a href="http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/13/7366544-bachmann-wins-ames-straw-poll" type="external">MSNBC</a>)</p>
|
Mainstream media largely silent after Ron Paul’s strong showing at Ames Straw Poll
| false |
https://ivn.us/2011/08/16/mainstream-media-largely-silent-after-ron-pauls-strong-showing-ames-straw-poll/
|
2011-08-16
| 2least
|
Mainstream media largely silent after Ron Paul’s strong showing at Ames Straw Poll
<p><a href="/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/michele%20bachmann.png" type="external" /></p>
<p>It’s Sunday morning, the day after the closely-watched Ames, Iowa Presidential Straw Poll. On MSNBC‘s Meet The Press, panelist Chuck Todd <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/44136741#44136741" type="external">opines</a>:</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; “We have a top tier. It is Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann.” He adds that some other candidates had a good showing in the straw poll and that Ron Paul proved that he could “be a nuisance to the field.”</p>
<p>On CBS‘s Sunday morning show, Face The Nation, political analyst John Dickerson <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7376836n&amp;tag=contentMain;contentBody" type="external">declares</a>: “We have a new top tier and it’s Perry, Mitt Romney, and Bachmann.” He goes on to say the real question is which Republican contender can best communicate Tea Party values and actually win in a general election against President Obama.</p>
<p>On <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday/index.html" type="external">Fox News Sunday</a>, Chris Wallace says: “There’s now a top tier in this race, at least for now, of Romney, Perry, and Bachmann.” Though just to be sure not to leave anyone out who deserved honorable mention, Wallace quickly added: “and you know we haven’t mentioned, and we should, Rick Santorum who did really surprisingly well.”</p>
<p>With commentary like that from the mainstream press, a viewer might be tempted to think that first, second, and third place went to Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry, and that Rick Santorum and Ron Paul might have finished a close fourth and a solid fifth in the historic poll one day before. But that’s not what happened. Michele Bachmann did finish in first place with 4823 votes, but placing a very close second and statistically tying Bachmann for first with 4671 votes, was Ron Paul, who Chuck Todd dismissed as a mere “nuisance” despite conferring top tier status to Bachmann for her strong finish.</p>
<p>How did the other candidates perform?</p>
<p>Rick Perry, who hasn’t been in any of the three nationally-televised debates and only announced his candidacy the day of the Iowa straw poll, finished in sixth place with 718 write-in votes. Mitt Romney placed seventh with 567 votes. Neither actually bothered to show up for or compete in the straw poll. It is perfectly understandable to include Mitt Romney and Rick Perry in the top tier despite their absence at the recent straw poll because of their strong showing in scientific national and state polls for the 2012 Republican nomination.</p>
<p>But to add Michele Bachmann as a frontrunner because of her big win at the Iowa straw poll while omitting Ron Paul, who statistically tied her for first at Ames and who statistically ties her for third <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/2011-08-08-poll-gallup-election_n.htm?csp=34news" type="external">in national polls</a>, should raise questions about the commentators’ objectivity.</p>
<p>As a media analyst for The Politico <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61430.html" type="external">reported</a> late Monday:</p>
<p>“Ron Paul finished just 152 votes behind Michele Bachmann in the Ames Straw Poll, but from the headlines and TV news coverage, it’s hard to tell he even showed up.</p>
<p>With the exception of The New York Times and The Des Moines Register, most major newspaper headlines didn’t even mention his name in their reports of Saturday’s contest. Nor was he anywhere to be found on the Sunday morning talk shows.</p>
<p>By Monday’s second-day stories, Paul had disappeared from the prevailing narrative of the Republican primary race altogether, as consensus coalesced around the dynamics between Bachmann, newcomer Rick Perry and front-runner Mitt Romney.”</p>
<p>What possible reason could the mainstream media have for such a glaring omission of Ron Paul from its commentary and analysis? Especially when his strong polling is also considered in light of his remarkably consistent voting record as a U.S. congressman and his prescient warnings about the credit bubble, the housing market, the national debt, and the wars overseas.</p>
<p>John Dickerson argues that the Republican Party is looking for a candidate that can best communicate the Tea Party’s values and go on to defeat President Obama in the general election. In addition to being called the “godfather” of the Tea Party movement by multiple mainstream journalists– including Chris Wallace, who omitted Paul from his top tier list Sunday– Ron Paul was recently called “Tea Party patient zero,” by comedian Jon Stewart.</p>
<p>In a Daily Show <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-scolds-media-for-ignoring-rep-ron-paul-i-mean-fck-that-guy-right/" type="external">segment</a> about the media’s unfair coverage of Ron Paul after the Ames Straw Poll, Jon Stewart remarked of him:</p>
<p>“He is Tea Party patient zero. All that small government grassroots business– he planted that grass. These other folks– they’re just Moral Majorities in a tri-cornered hat. Ron Paul’s the real deal and Fox News should love this guy!”</p>
<p>Now Fox News, CBS, MSNBC, and every other mainstream source of news have no obligation at all to “love” Ron Paul as Stewart suggests, nor to agree with his political positions. But they do have a certain obligation to report and analyze the news with some level of objectivity. With Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul– both strong voices in the Tea Party– statistically tied on a national level and in the recent Ames Iowa Straw Poll, there’s no substantive reason for media analysts to hail one as a “top tier” contender and deride the other as a nuisance.</p>
<p>—</p>
<p>2011 Straw Poll Full Results (Votes, %)</p>
<p>1. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (4823, 28.55%)</p>
<p>2. Congressman Ron Paul (4671, 27.65%)</p>
<p>3. Governor Tim Pawlenty (2293, 13.57%)</p>
<p>4. Senator Rick Santorum (1657, 9.81%)</p>
<p>5. Herman Cain(1456, 8.62%)</p>
<p>6. Governor Rick Perry (718, 3.62%) write-in</p>
<p>7. Governor Mitt Romney (567, 3.36%)</p>
<p>8. Speaker Newt Gingrich (385, 2.28%)</p>
<p>9. Governor Jon Huntsman (69, 0.41%)</p>
<p>10. Congressman Thad McCotter (35, 0.21%)</p>
<p>(Source: <a href="http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/13/7366544-bachmann-wins-ames-straw-poll" type="external">MSNBC</a>)</p>
| 7,356 |
<p />
<p>With today’s job market still highly competitive, it can be tempting for job seekers to pad their resumes. Saying you are fluent in a Spanish because you can hold a basic-level conversation or adding a higher-level when you took a few classes might seem like harmless enhancers, but they can have career-ending consequences.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>And experts say these augmentations always find their way to the surface. Just this week, Elizabeth O’Bagy, a so-called expert on Syria, lost her job as an analyst at The Institute for the Study of War for lying about having a PhD., a few days after being cited by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain. (O’Bagy has also appeared on several TV networks, including FOX Business and FOX News.)</p>
<p>Career coach Kathy Caprino says lying on a resume is common among job applicants looking to fill in gaps or boost their titles and experience level.</p>
<p>“People always want to embellish the truth because they don’t know how to effectively explain what the real situation is, or don’t have a compelling story around it,” she says. “But there’s nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about [for example] taking five years off to raise your children. People feel that limits opportunities for them, but it’s all about confidence.”</p>
<p>Why Honesty is the Best Policy</p>
<p>Career coach Roy Cohen author of <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2egf2wj" type="external">The Wall Street Professional's Survival Guide Opens a New Window.</a>, says that telling the truth is always better than embellishing the resume.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“Anthony Weiner is a good example of this,” he says. “He and others think, ‘If I position a lie in a way I can talk my way through it,’ but at some point you can’t because the magnitude of the decision [to lie] is greater than the technicality.”</p>
<p>He adds that people are physically more comfortable telling the truth. “It takes the energy out of you, to maintain the lie,” she says. “And when you are focusing on maintaining a lie, you get weaker. You don’t look as powerful, or as confident as you do when you are speaking the truth.”</p>
<p>Also, it’s possible to get your entire organization in hot water if you choose to lie, Cohen says.</p>
<p>“If you misrepresent yourself, you can misrepresent or discredit an entire organization,” he says. “And if that organization is sued, you put your colleagues at risk for falsely representing yourself.”</p>
<p>How to Effectively Fill in the Gaps</p>
<p>Caprino says that candidates tend to start embellish their expertise or experience when they feel like that don’t deserve an opportunity or aren’t qualified for a role. Instead, they should focus on their strengths.</p>
<p>“Say you are proactively addressing closing that gap,” Caprino says. “If you need a master’s in IT to do your job, sign up for an online course. And when you are signed up, you can speak powerfully about it.”</p>
<p>Or be sure to explain why a gap in skills or employment exists, rather than just glossing over it.</p>
<p>“Maybe you didn’t graduate from college or you have an incomplete degree,” Cohen says. “Say you are in the process of completing it, rather than saying you dropped out of it. It’s just as good because it shows you are still in the program.”</p>
<p>What to Do if You Get Caught</p>
<p>Again, Cohen says let honesty lead the way. Own up to the mistakes and do work to fix the situation.</p>
<p>“Thanks to reality TV, there is a belief that we can all live out loud, but that doesn’t apply to the rest of us,” he says. “On TV, that is entertainment—it gives people permission to think they can make things up. Remember, it takes years to build up a reputation and a moment to destroy it.”</p>
|
Why Lying on Your Resume is Never Worth It
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/09/13/why-should-never-lie-on-your-resume.html
|
2016-03-04
| 0right
|
Why Lying on Your Resume is Never Worth It
<p />
<p>With today’s job market still highly competitive, it can be tempting for job seekers to pad their resumes. Saying you are fluent in a Spanish because you can hold a basic-level conversation or adding a higher-level when you took a few classes might seem like harmless enhancers, but they can have career-ending consequences.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>And experts say these augmentations always find their way to the surface. Just this week, Elizabeth O’Bagy, a so-called expert on Syria, lost her job as an analyst at The Institute for the Study of War for lying about having a PhD., a few days after being cited by Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain. (O’Bagy has also appeared on several TV networks, including FOX Business and FOX News.)</p>
<p>Career coach Kathy Caprino says lying on a resume is common among job applicants looking to fill in gaps or boost their titles and experience level.</p>
<p>“People always want to embellish the truth because they don’t know how to effectively explain what the real situation is, or don’t have a compelling story around it,” she says. “But there’s nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about [for example] taking five years off to raise your children. People feel that limits opportunities for them, but it’s all about confidence.”</p>
<p>Why Honesty is the Best Policy</p>
<p>Career coach Roy Cohen author of <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2egf2wj" type="external">The Wall Street Professional's Survival Guide Opens a New Window.</a>, says that telling the truth is always better than embellishing the resume.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>“Anthony Weiner is a good example of this,” he says. “He and others think, ‘If I position a lie in a way I can talk my way through it,’ but at some point you can’t because the magnitude of the decision [to lie] is greater than the technicality.”</p>
<p>He adds that people are physically more comfortable telling the truth. “It takes the energy out of you, to maintain the lie,” she says. “And when you are focusing on maintaining a lie, you get weaker. You don’t look as powerful, or as confident as you do when you are speaking the truth.”</p>
<p>Also, it’s possible to get your entire organization in hot water if you choose to lie, Cohen says.</p>
<p>“If you misrepresent yourself, you can misrepresent or discredit an entire organization,” he says. “And if that organization is sued, you put your colleagues at risk for falsely representing yourself.”</p>
<p>How to Effectively Fill in the Gaps</p>
<p>Caprino says that candidates tend to start embellish their expertise or experience when they feel like that don’t deserve an opportunity or aren’t qualified for a role. Instead, they should focus on their strengths.</p>
<p>“Say you are proactively addressing closing that gap,” Caprino says. “If you need a master’s in IT to do your job, sign up for an online course. And when you are signed up, you can speak powerfully about it.”</p>
<p>Or be sure to explain why a gap in skills or employment exists, rather than just glossing over it.</p>
<p>“Maybe you didn’t graduate from college or you have an incomplete degree,” Cohen says. “Say you are in the process of completing it, rather than saying you dropped out of it. It’s just as good because it shows you are still in the program.”</p>
<p>What to Do if You Get Caught</p>
<p>Again, Cohen says let honesty lead the way. Own up to the mistakes and do work to fix the situation.</p>
<p>“Thanks to reality TV, there is a belief that we can all live out loud, but that doesn’t apply to the rest of us,” he says. “On TV, that is entertainment—it gives people permission to think they can make things up. Remember, it takes years to build up a reputation and a moment to destroy it.”</p>
| 7,357 |
<p>LISBON, Portugal — Europe's twin nightmares have collided this week, forcing the continent's leaders into desperate efforts to head off the risk of wider conflict with Russia and a breakup of the euro zone economic bloc.</p>
<p>Russian forces and their local allies have pushed ahead with a land grab in eastern Ukraine, in defiance of a cease-fire agreement. With concern growing, senior officials are now talking openly of the risk of conflict between Russia and the West.</p>
<p>"I believe the Russians are mobilizing right now for a war that they think is going to happen in five or six years," the US Army's commander in Europe Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told the Wall Street Journal last week.</p>
<p>Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who stepped down as NATO's secretary general in October, warns there's a "high probability" Russian leader Vladimir Putin will soon test the alliance's collective defense commitments by intervening in the Baltic States.</p>
<p>"This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power,” Fogh Rasmussen told London's Daily Telegraph newspaper.</p>
<p>British diplomats warn Russian defense planners have lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons — and are seeking to intimidate the West with unannounced flights over Europe by nuclear-armed bombers.</p>
<p>Against that background German Chancellor Angela Merkel has relaunched a peace initiative to halt fighting in Ukraine. She's met Putin, US President Barrack Obama and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the past few days.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, she hopes to bring Putin and Poroshenko together with herself and French President Francois Hollande for talks in Minsk, Belarus, where the last ceasefire was signed in September.</p>
<p>“If we don’t manage to find not just a compromise but a lasting peace agreement, we know perfectly well what the scenario will be. It has a name, it’s called war,” Hollande cautioned over the weekend.</p>
<p>House of cards</p>
<p>Obama said Monday the US will <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/150202/us-ponders-military-aid-ukraine-fighting-intensifies" type="external">consider sending arms to Ukraine's</a> embattled armed forces if peace talks fail, a move Merkel fears will bring a dangerous escalation of the crisis.</p>
<p>The German leader is also central to hopes of defusing the other looming threat to Europe's established order: Greece.</p>
<p>Germany is leading resistance to efforts by the new Greek government — led by the radical left SYRIZA party — to get a new deal from its international creditors that will allow it to abandon six years of austerity policies it blames for miring the country in a deep economic depression.</p>
<p>If Greece fails to strike a compromise with Germany and its other euro zone partners, the country could be forced out of the currency bloc. Many fear the long-dreaded "Grexit" could trigger a wider euro zone unraveling.</p>
<p>"The euro is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told Italian TV on Sunday. He warned that Portugal and Italy could be the next to fall.</p>
<p>“Do we really want Europe to break apart?" Varoufakis asked. "Anybody who is tempted to think it possible to amputate Greece strategically from Europe should be careful. It is very dangerous."</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Europe's double crises are linked.</p>
<p>The new government in <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/150207/greece-pro-russia-foreign-policy" type="external">Greece has made no secret of its sympathies with Russia</a>. It could block tougher EU or NATO measures over Ukraine.</p>
<p>For the first time since its election on Jan. 25, the Greek government on Monday raised the prospect of turning to Russia for economic help if it cannot get a deal from the EU.</p>
<p>"If we see that Germany remains unbending and wants to blow Europe apart, then we have the obligation to go to Plan B," said Defense Minister Panos Kammenos. "Plan B is to get funding from another source."</p>
<p>He suggested that other source could be the United States, China, or Russia. While there is little sign of Washington or Beijing stepping forward, Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has announced Moscow is open to an aid request from Athens.</p>
<p>Greece's Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is heading for talks in Moscow on Wednesday, on the eve of the European Union summit in Brussels that will debate the Greece and Ukraine crises.</p>
<p>Euro zone finance ministers are also set to meet at EU headquarters in Brussels to discuss Greece's proposals for a new deal. Without one, Greece could run out of money as soon as next month.</p>
<p>Dividing Ukraine: The best-case scenario?</p>
<p>There's another link between the two crises. Diplomats who accompanied European leaders in meetings with Putin before the Ukraine conflict erupted in late 2013 say he regarded the EU's disorganized and divided response to the euro zone debt crisis as a sign of weakness.</p>
<p>They believe that convinced him he could get away with intervention in Ukraine without fear of a muscular European response.</p>
<p>The EU has joined the US in imposing economic sanctions that have hurt Russia, but in recent months the Europeans have been reluctant to take tougher steps.</p>
<p>European nations are divided over sanctions, and there is little support for the idea of arming the Ukrainians if talks fail.</p>
<p>At a White House news conference with Obama on Monday dominated by Ukraine, Merkel stressed that such conflicts need a political solution.</p>
<p>Putin may not be convinced. His forces have over recent years imposed military solutions in Chechnya, Transnistria, Georgia and Crimea, and are pressing ahead in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Reports from the ground say pro-Moscow forces are closing in on the key railway town of Debaltseve and are massing near the Black Sea port of Mariupol. Nobody is sure where they will stop.</p>
<p>Western options if Putin doesn't order a halt currently do not look dissuasive. Experts say that even if the US does authorize supplies of defensive weapons to Ukraine it could be months before they are effective on the battlefield.</p>
<p>Obama himself acknowledged the lethal aid being considered would not be sufficient to allow Ukraine's army to repulse a determined Russian attack.</p>
<p>The EU is looking at further economic sanctions, but many European nations are wary of provoking Putin with tougher action.</p>
<p>On Monday, EU foreign ministers delayed a plan to add just five relatively minor Russian officials to a travel and banking blacklist in order not to jeopardize this week's talks.</p>
<p>That means the biggest concrete threat the EU is brandishing going into the negotiations with Putin is that one of his deputy ministers may not be able to vacation in Spain or stash his cash in a Luxembourg bank.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Nevertheless, diplomats are hopeful the talks might bring a solution.</p>
<p>Leaked details of European proposals suggest a de facto division of Ukraine with a demilitarized line of control separating east from west. Eastern territories occupied by pro-Moscow forces would remain technically part of Ukraine but have wide autonomy.</p>
<p>Comparisons have been drawn with the division of Cyprus after the Turkish invasion of 1974, or the emergence of East and West Germany following World War II.</p>
<p>Optimistic Europeans hope that would bring peace, while over the longer term economic support from the United States and EU would see the western part of Ukraine flourish, eventually creating a re-unification movement in the east.</p>
<p>But it’s not certain Putin will buy into that. The Russian parliament is currently mulling a resolution to denounce the reunification of Germany in 1990 as an illegal "annexation" by the West.</p>
<p>At a conference in Munich over the weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov drew a direct line to Ukraine, suggesting German re-unification had less legitimacy than Moscow's takeover of Crimea last year.</p>
|
Greece and Ukraine have something in common: They could both sink the euro zone
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2015-02-11/greece-and-ukraine-have-something-common-they-could-both-sink-euro-zone
|
2015-02-11
| 3left-center
|
Greece and Ukraine have something in common: They could both sink the euro zone
<p>LISBON, Portugal — Europe's twin nightmares have collided this week, forcing the continent's leaders into desperate efforts to head off the risk of wider conflict with Russia and a breakup of the euro zone economic bloc.</p>
<p>Russian forces and their local allies have pushed ahead with a land grab in eastern Ukraine, in defiance of a cease-fire agreement. With concern growing, senior officials are now talking openly of the risk of conflict between Russia and the West.</p>
<p>"I believe the Russians are mobilizing right now for a war that they think is going to happen in five or six years," the US Army's commander in Europe Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told the Wall Street Journal last week.</p>
<p>Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who stepped down as NATO's secretary general in October, warns there's a "high probability" Russian leader Vladimir Putin will soon test the alliance's collective defense commitments by intervening in the Baltic States.</p>
<p>"This is not about Ukraine. Putin wants to restore Russia to its former position as a great power,” Fogh Rasmussen told London's Daily Telegraph newspaper.</p>
<p>British diplomats warn Russian defense planners have lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons — and are seeking to intimidate the West with unannounced flights over Europe by nuclear-armed bombers.</p>
<p>Against that background German Chancellor Angela Merkel has relaunched a peace initiative to halt fighting in Ukraine. She's met Putin, US President Barrack Obama and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the past few days.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, she hopes to bring Putin and Poroshenko together with herself and French President Francois Hollande for talks in Minsk, Belarus, where the last ceasefire was signed in September.</p>
<p>“If we don’t manage to find not just a compromise but a lasting peace agreement, we know perfectly well what the scenario will be. It has a name, it’s called war,” Hollande cautioned over the weekend.</p>
<p>House of cards</p>
<p>Obama said Monday the US will <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/150202/us-ponders-military-aid-ukraine-fighting-intensifies" type="external">consider sending arms to Ukraine's</a> embattled armed forces if peace talks fail, a move Merkel fears will bring a dangerous escalation of the crisis.</p>
<p>The German leader is also central to hopes of defusing the other looming threat to Europe's established order: Greece.</p>
<p>Germany is leading resistance to efforts by the new Greek government — led by the radical left SYRIZA party — to get a new deal from its international creditors that will allow it to abandon six years of austerity policies it blames for miring the country in a deep economic depression.</p>
<p>If Greece fails to strike a compromise with Germany and its other euro zone partners, the country could be forced out of the currency bloc. Many fear the long-dreaded "Grexit" could trigger a wider euro zone unraveling.</p>
<p>"The euro is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told Italian TV on Sunday. He warned that Portugal and Italy could be the next to fall.</p>
<p>“Do we really want Europe to break apart?" Varoufakis asked. "Anybody who is tempted to think it possible to amputate Greece strategically from Europe should be careful. It is very dangerous."</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Europe's double crises are linked.</p>
<p>The new government in <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/150207/greece-pro-russia-foreign-policy" type="external">Greece has made no secret of its sympathies with Russia</a>. It could block tougher EU or NATO measures over Ukraine.</p>
<p>For the first time since its election on Jan. 25, the Greek government on Monday raised the prospect of turning to Russia for economic help if it cannot get a deal from the EU.</p>
<p>"If we see that Germany remains unbending and wants to blow Europe apart, then we have the obligation to go to Plan B," said Defense Minister Panos Kammenos. "Plan B is to get funding from another source."</p>
<p>He suggested that other source could be the United States, China, or Russia. While there is little sign of Washington or Beijing stepping forward, Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has announced Moscow is open to an aid request from Athens.</p>
<p>Greece's Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is heading for talks in Moscow on Wednesday, on the eve of the European Union summit in Brussels that will debate the Greece and Ukraine crises.</p>
<p>Euro zone finance ministers are also set to meet at EU headquarters in Brussels to discuss Greece's proposals for a new deal. Without one, Greece could run out of money as soon as next month.</p>
<p>Dividing Ukraine: The best-case scenario?</p>
<p>There's another link between the two crises. Diplomats who accompanied European leaders in meetings with Putin before the Ukraine conflict erupted in late 2013 say he regarded the EU's disorganized and divided response to the euro zone debt crisis as a sign of weakness.</p>
<p>They believe that convinced him he could get away with intervention in Ukraine without fear of a muscular European response.</p>
<p>The EU has joined the US in imposing economic sanctions that have hurt Russia, but in recent months the Europeans have been reluctant to take tougher steps.</p>
<p>European nations are divided over sanctions, and there is little support for the idea of arming the Ukrainians if talks fail.</p>
<p>At a White House news conference with Obama on Monday dominated by Ukraine, Merkel stressed that such conflicts need a political solution.</p>
<p>Putin may not be convinced. His forces have over recent years imposed military solutions in Chechnya, Transnistria, Georgia and Crimea, and are pressing ahead in eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>Reports from the ground say pro-Moscow forces are closing in on the key railway town of Debaltseve and are massing near the Black Sea port of Mariupol. Nobody is sure where they will stop.</p>
<p>Western options if Putin doesn't order a halt currently do not look dissuasive. Experts say that even if the US does authorize supplies of defensive weapons to Ukraine it could be months before they are effective on the battlefield.</p>
<p>Obama himself acknowledged the lethal aid being considered would not be sufficient to allow Ukraine's army to repulse a determined Russian attack.</p>
<p>The EU is looking at further economic sanctions, but many European nations are wary of provoking Putin with tougher action.</p>
<p>On Monday, EU foreign ministers delayed a plan to add just five relatively minor Russian officials to a travel and banking blacklist in order not to jeopardize this week's talks.</p>
<p>That means the biggest concrete threat the EU is brandishing going into the negotiations with Putin is that one of his deputy ministers may not be able to vacation in Spain or stash his cash in a Luxembourg bank.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Nevertheless, diplomats are hopeful the talks might bring a solution.</p>
<p>Leaked details of European proposals suggest a de facto division of Ukraine with a demilitarized line of control separating east from west. Eastern territories occupied by pro-Moscow forces would remain technically part of Ukraine but have wide autonomy.</p>
<p>Comparisons have been drawn with the division of Cyprus after the Turkish invasion of 1974, or the emergence of East and West Germany following World War II.</p>
<p>Optimistic Europeans hope that would bring peace, while over the longer term economic support from the United States and EU would see the western part of Ukraine flourish, eventually creating a re-unification movement in the east.</p>
<p>But it’s not certain Putin will buy into that. The Russian parliament is currently mulling a resolution to denounce the reunification of Germany in 1990 as an illegal "annexation" by the West.</p>
<p>At a conference in Munich over the weekend, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov drew a direct line to Ukraine, suggesting German re-unification had less legitimacy than Moscow's takeover of Crimea last year.</p>
| 7,358 |
<p>In the aftermath of last week’s elections, debate continues over whom President-Elect Donald Trump should choose to replace the late Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), as a prospective conservative justice, has surfaced to the conversation several times. As one of the most hardline conservative Republicans in the Senate, Cruz has never wavered in his determination to stop the Supreme Court from shifting to the left politically, even as the less conservative Senate Republicans danced with the idea of letting Obama confirm a Supreme Court nominee.</p>
<p>Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) thinks Cruz could not only get enough votes to win a justice position; he would make an excellent Scalia replacement. Despite Cruz’s well-known unpopularity in the Senate and in the public eye now as well, if he ran for a justice position, Graham <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lindsey-graham-ted-cruz-supreme-court_us_582ba677e4b01d8a014b4490" type="external">said</a> earlier this week, “I think he’d get a lot of votes.”</p>
<p>Cruz has stated repeatedly he does not want a position on the Supreme Court. However, after Cruz was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/15/politics/ted-cruz-donald-trump-meeting/" type="external">seen</a> leaving a meeting with Trump at the Trump Towers on Tuesday, he did not deny possibly considering the position. His spokesperson simply said he "looks forward to assisting the Trump administration" in furthering conservative policies.</p>
<p>Graham called Cruz a “Scalia-type figure” who would “fit the bill” as a conservative Supreme Court appointee, in a statement to The Daily Wire Thursday.</p>
<p>“We are replacing Justice Scalia, who was probably the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court,” he said. “Ted Cruz is a constitutional conservative in the mold of Justice Scalia.”</p>
<p>Graham said despite having had disagreements in the past with the former Supreme Court clerk, “even his worst critics cannot say Ted Cruz is not one of the smartest, most gifted lawyers in the country.”</p>
<p>“If you are looking for someone like Justice Scalia to serve on the Supreme Court, take a look at Ted Cruz,” he concluded.</p>
<p>In a Fox News interview this morning, Cruz <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/ted-cruz-trump-win-democrats-231543" type="external">said</a> his Tuesday meeting with Trump was spent discussing the “incredible opportunities” that lay ahead for Republicans after a Trump win, specifically repealing Obamacare and confirming conservative justices on the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>“All of the folks jumped on their high horse and were lecturing to President-elect Trump, 'You've got to accept the results of the election,’” he said Thursday morning. “Look, these are now the idiots who are laying their bodies down in front of cars and disrupting traffic. We had an election. The people spoke. Democracy is a powerful, powerful way of choosing.”</p>
<p>Follow Pardes Seleh on <a href="https://twitter.com/PardesSeleh" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
|
Graham: Put Cruz On The Supreme Court
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/10903/graham-put-cruz-supreme-court-pardes-seleh
|
2016-11-17
| 0right
|
Graham: Put Cruz On The Supreme Court
<p>In the aftermath of last week’s elections, debate continues over whom President-Elect Donald Trump should choose to replace the late Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), as a prospective conservative justice, has surfaced to the conversation several times. As one of the most hardline conservative Republicans in the Senate, Cruz has never wavered in his determination to stop the Supreme Court from shifting to the left politically, even as the less conservative Senate Republicans danced with the idea of letting Obama confirm a Supreme Court nominee.</p>
<p>Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) thinks Cruz could not only get enough votes to win a justice position; he would make an excellent Scalia replacement. Despite Cruz’s well-known unpopularity in the Senate and in the public eye now as well, if he ran for a justice position, Graham <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lindsey-graham-ted-cruz-supreme-court_us_582ba677e4b01d8a014b4490" type="external">said</a> earlier this week, “I think he’d get a lot of votes.”</p>
<p>Cruz has stated repeatedly he does not want a position on the Supreme Court. However, after Cruz was <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/15/politics/ted-cruz-donald-trump-meeting/" type="external">seen</a> leaving a meeting with Trump at the Trump Towers on Tuesday, he did not deny possibly considering the position. His spokesperson simply said he "looks forward to assisting the Trump administration" in furthering conservative policies.</p>
<p>Graham called Cruz a “Scalia-type figure” who would “fit the bill” as a conservative Supreme Court appointee, in a statement to The Daily Wire Thursday.</p>
<p>“We are replacing Justice Scalia, who was probably the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court,” he said. “Ted Cruz is a constitutional conservative in the mold of Justice Scalia.”</p>
<p>Graham said despite having had disagreements in the past with the former Supreme Court clerk, “even his worst critics cannot say Ted Cruz is not one of the smartest, most gifted lawyers in the country.”</p>
<p>“If you are looking for someone like Justice Scalia to serve on the Supreme Court, take a look at Ted Cruz,” he concluded.</p>
<p>In a Fox News interview this morning, Cruz <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/ted-cruz-trump-win-democrats-231543" type="external">said</a> his Tuesday meeting with Trump was spent discussing the “incredible opportunities” that lay ahead for Republicans after a Trump win, specifically repealing Obamacare and confirming conservative justices on the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>“All of the folks jumped on their high horse and were lecturing to President-elect Trump, 'You've got to accept the results of the election,’” he said Thursday morning. “Look, these are now the idiots who are laying their bodies down in front of cars and disrupting traffic. We had an election. The people spoke. Democracy is a powerful, powerful way of choosing.”</p>
<p>Follow Pardes Seleh on <a href="https://twitter.com/PardesSeleh" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
| 7,359 |
<p>BOSTON (AP) — A 3-pointer at the end of the opening half was just a small sign of what was coming from Boston College guard Ky Bowman.</p>
<p>Bowman scored 19 points after being held scoreless nearly the entire first half, Jerome Robinson had 17 points and the Eagles rebounded from an ugly loss by beating Dartmouth 86-72 on Saturday.</p>
<p>"To get him going, it was important," BC coach Jim Christian said. "They were doing a good job corralling him and not letting him make plays."</p>
<p>Bowman's first points of the game — an off-balance 3 from the top of the key — gave the Eagles a 41-38 edge at halftime.</p>
<p>He then opened the second half with a 3-point play and followed that with a 3 from the top of the key after his dribble and quick stop sent his defender stumbling backward to the floor, capping a personal 9-0 spurt.</p>
<p>After a basket by Dartmouth, the Eagles broke it open by scoring 17 of the next 19 points. Bowman had a pair of 3s - both from the right corner - and a windmill breakaway jam in the spree, giving him 12 points in the opening 4½ minutes of the half.</p>
<p>"He made some plays. That's going to happen. He's a very, very talented player," Dartmouth coach David McLaughlin said. "He knows who he is as a player."</p>
<p>Jordan Chatman scored 15, Nik Popovic added 14 with eight rebounds and Steffon Mitchell had 10 points with 10 boards for Boston College (12-6). The Eagles lost at No. 20 North Carolina by 30 points on Tuesday.</p>
<p>"We were really hungry because that was a really bad game against UNC," Popovic said. "It was really important to come back. I played a really bad game that day and it was important for a lot of guys, too."</p>
<p>Ian Sistare led Dartmouth (4-10) with 14 points. The Big Green dropped their fourth straight.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Decent 3-point shooting can keep the Big Green in games this season. They hit 15 in a loss against Notre Dame in their only other matchup against an Atlantic Coast Conference team this season, on Dec. 19. They went 9 for 23 in the loss Saturday.</p>
<p>"I think anytime you can get open 3 looks, especially after the ball goes inside or hits the paint or makes the defense move, that's definitely a strength of ours," McLaughlin said.</p>
<p>Boston College: Coming off their lopsided loss at North Carolina, the Eagles needed to gain confidence, especially on the boards where they were outrebounded 58-23 by NC. BC owned a 35-26 edge over Dartmouth.</p>
<p>"We're a good rebounding team," Christian said. "We were bad rebounding the ball that particular night against a hungry North Carolina team. Hopefully we learned our lesson."</p>
<p>VERBAL BUZZ</p>
<p>There was added excitement around BC's program after highly-touted recruit Jairus Hamilton, a 6-foot-8 forward from Concord, North Carolina, announced on Twitter Thursday that he's verbally committed to the school. His brother Jared, a 6-foot-4 guard, sat on the Eagles' bench wearing a BC sweatshirt. Sources in the program said an announcement is expected soon that he'll transfer from Georgia Southern.</p>
<p>"I can't talk about recruiting," Christian said.</p>
<p>LONGTIME SERIES</p>
<p>BC owns a 22-9 edge in the series, which dates back to 1904-05. The Eagles are 7-0 at home.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Hosts Harvard next Saturday in an Ivy League matchup.</p>
<p>Boston College: Returns to league play on Monday, hosting No. 23 Florida State. The Eagles have played three Top-25 teams in their last five games.</p>
<p>BOSTON (AP) — A 3-pointer at the end of the opening half was just a small sign of what was coming from Boston College guard Ky Bowman.</p>
<p>Bowman scored 19 points after being held scoreless nearly the entire first half, Jerome Robinson had 17 points and the Eagles rebounded from an ugly loss by beating Dartmouth 86-72 on Saturday.</p>
<p>"To get him going, it was important," BC coach Jim Christian said. "They were doing a good job corralling him and not letting him make plays."</p>
<p>Bowman's first points of the game — an off-balance 3 from the top of the key — gave the Eagles a 41-38 edge at halftime.</p>
<p>He then opened the second half with a 3-point play and followed that with a 3 from the top of the key after his dribble and quick stop sent his defender stumbling backward to the floor, capping a personal 9-0 spurt.</p>
<p>After a basket by Dartmouth, the Eagles broke it open by scoring 17 of the next 19 points. Bowman had a pair of 3s - both from the right corner - and a windmill breakaway jam in the spree, giving him 12 points in the opening 4½ minutes of the half.</p>
<p>"He made some plays. That's going to happen. He's a very, very talented player," Dartmouth coach David McLaughlin said. "He knows who he is as a player."</p>
<p>Jordan Chatman scored 15, Nik Popovic added 14 with eight rebounds and Steffon Mitchell had 10 points with 10 boards for Boston College (12-6). The Eagles lost at No. 20 North Carolina by 30 points on Tuesday.</p>
<p>"We were really hungry because that was a really bad game against UNC," Popovic said. "It was really important to come back. I played a really bad game that day and it was important for a lot of guys, too."</p>
<p>Ian Sistare led Dartmouth (4-10) with 14 points. The Big Green dropped their fourth straight.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Decent 3-point shooting can keep the Big Green in games this season. They hit 15 in a loss against Notre Dame in their only other matchup against an Atlantic Coast Conference team this season, on Dec. 19. They went 9 for 23 in the loss Saturday.</p>
<p>"I think anytime you can get open 3 looks, especially after the ball goes inside or hits the paint or makes the defense move, that's definitely a strength of ours," McLaughlin said.</p>
<p>Boston College: Coming off their lopsided loss at North Carolina, the Eagles needed to gain confidence, especially on the boards where they were outrebounded 58-23 by NC. BC owned a 35-26 edge over Dartmouth.</p>
<p>"We're a good rebounding team," Christian said. "We were bad rebounding the ball that particular night against a hungry North Carolina team. Hopefully we learned our lesson."</p>
<p>VERBAL BUZZ</p>
<p>There was added excitement around BC's program after highly-touted recruit Jairus Hamilton, a 6-foot-8 forward from Concord, North Carolina, announced on Twitter Thursday that he's verbally committed to the school. His brother Jared, a 6-foot-4 guard, sat on the Eagles' bench wearing a BC sweatshirt. Sources in the program said an announcement is expected soon that he'll transfer from Georgia Southern.</p>
<p>"I can't talk about recruiting," Christian said.</p>
<p>LONGTIME SERIES</p>
<p>BC owns a 22-9 edge in the series, which dates back to 1904-05. The Eagles are 7-0 at home.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Hosts Harvard next Saturday in an Ivy League matchup.</p>
<p>Boston College: Returns to league play on Monday, hosting No. 23 Florida State. The Eagles have played three Top-25 teams in their last five games.</p>
|
Bowman's quick start in 2nd half carries BC past Dartmouth
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/0e474e15bbea47cc862eb4459ffe2c44
|
2018-01-13
| 2least
|
Bowman's quick start in 2nd half carries BC past Dartmouth
<p>BOSTON (AP) — A 3-pointer at the end of the opening half was just a small sign of what was coming from Boston College guard Ky Bowman.</p>
<p>Bowman scored 19 points after being held scoreless nearly the entire first half, Jerome Robinson had 17 points and the Eagles rebounded from an ugly loss by beating Dartmouth 86-72 on Saturday.</p>
<p>"To get him going, it was important," BC coach Jim Christian said. "They were doing a good job corralling him and not letting him make plays."</p>
<p>Bowman's first points of the game — an off-balance 3 from the top of the key — gave the Eagles a 41-38 edge at halftime.</p>
<p>He then opened the second half with a 3-point play and followed that with a 3 from the top of the key after his dribble and quick stop sent his defender stumbling backward to the floor, capping a personal 9-0 spurt.</p>
<p>After a basket by Dartmouth, the Eagles broke it open by scoring 17 of the next 19 points. Bowman had a pair of 3s - both from the right corner - and a windmill breakaway jam in the spree, giving him 12 points in the opening 4½ minutes of the half.</p>
<p>"He made some plays. That's going to happen. He's a very, very talented player," Dartmouth coach David McLaughlin said. "He knows who he is as a player."</p>
<p>Jordan Chatman scored 15, Nik Popovic added 14 with eight rebounds and Steffon Mitchell had 10 points with 10 boards for Boston College (12-6). The Eagles lost at No. 20 North Carolina by 30 points on Tuesday.</p>
<p>"We were really hungry because that was a really bad game against UNC," Popovic said. "It was really important to come back. I played a really bad game that day and it was important for a lot of guys, too."</p>
<p>Ian Sistare led Dartmouth (4-10) with 14 points. The Big Green dropped their fourth straight.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Decent 3-point shooting can keep the Big Green in games this season. They hit 15 in a loss against Notre Dame in their only other matchup against an Atlantic Coast Conference team this season, on Dec. 19. They went 9 for 23 in the loss Saturday.</p>
<p>"I think anytime you can get open 3 looks, especially after the ball goes inside or hits the paint or makes the defense move, that's definitely a strength of ours," McLaughlin said.</p>
<p>Boston College: Coming off their lopsided loss at North Carolina, the Eagles needed to gain confidence, especially on the boards where they were outrebounded 58-23 by NC. BC owned a 35-26 edge over Dartmouth.</p>
<p>"We're a good rebounding team," Christian said. "We were bad rebounding the ball that particular night against a hungry North Carolina team. Hopefully we learned our lesson."</p>
<p>VERBAL BUZZ</p>
<p>There was added excitement around BC's program after highly-touted recruit Jairus Hamilton, a 6-foot-8 forward from Concord, North Carolina, announced on Twitter Thursday that he's verbally committed to the school. His brother Jared, a 6-foot-4 guard, sat on the Eagles' bench wearing a BC sweatshirt. Sources in the program said an announcement is expected soon that he'll transfer from Georgia Southern.</p>
<p>"I can't talk about recruiting," Christian said.</p>
<p>LONGTIME SERIES</p>
<p>BC owns a 22-9 edge in the series, which dates back to 1904-05. The Eagles are 7-0 at home.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Hosts Harvard next Saturday in an Ivy League matchup.</p>
<p>Boston College: Returns to league play on Monday, hosting No. 23 Florida State. The Eagles have played three Top-25 teams in their last five games.</p>
<p>BOSTON (AP) — A 3-pointer at the end of the opening half was just a small sign of what was coming from Boston College guard Ky Bowman.</p>
<p>Bowman scored 19 points after being held scoreless nearly the entire first half, Jerome Robinson had 17 points and the Eagles rebounded from an ugly loss by beating Dartmouth 86-72 on Saturday.</p>
<p>"To get him going, it was important," BC coach Jim Christian said. "They were doing a good job corralling him and not letting him make plays."</p>
<p>Bowman's first points of the game — an off-balance 3 from the top of the key — gave the Eagles a 41-38 edge at halftime.</p>
<p>He then opened the second half with a 3-point play and followed that with a 3 from the top of the key after his dribble and quick stop sent his defender stumbling backward to the floor, capping a personal 9-0 spurt.</p>
<p>After a basket by Dartmouth, the Eagles broke it open by scoring 17 of the next 19 points. Bowman had a pair of 3s - both from the right corner - and a windmill breakaway jam in the spree, giving him 12 points in the opening 4½ minutes of the half.</p>
<p>"He made some plays. That's going to happen. He's a very, very talented player," Dartmouth coach David McLaughlin said. "He knows who he is as a player."</p>
<p>Jordan Chatman scored 15, Nik Popovic added 14 with eight rebounds and Steffon Mitchell had 10 points with 10 boards for Boston College (12-6). The Eagles lost at No. 20 North Carolina by 30 points on Tuesday.</p>
<p>"We were really hungry because that was a really bad game against UNC," Popovic said. "It was really important to come back. I played a really bad game that day and it was important for a lot of guys, too."</p>
<p>Ian Sistare led Dartmouth (4-10) with 14 points. The Big Green dropped their fourth straight.</p>
<p>BIG PICTURE</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Decent 3-point shooting can keep the Big Green in games this season. They hit 15 in a loss against Notre Dame in their only other matchup against an Atlantic Coast Conference team this season, on Dec. 19. They went 9 for 23 in the loss Saturday.</p>
<p>"I think anytime you can get open 3 looks, especially after the ball goes inside or hits the paint or makes the defense move, that's definitely a strength of ours," McLaughlin said.</p>
<p>Boston College: Coming off their lopsided loss at North Carolina, the Eagles needed to gain confidence, especially on the boards where they were outrebounded 58-23 by NC. BC owned a 35-26 edge over Dartmouth.</p>
<p>"We're a good rebounding team," Christian said. "We were bad rebounding the ball that particular night against a hungry North Carolina team. Hopefully we learned our lesson."</p>
<p>VERBAL BUZZ</p>
<p>There was added excitement around BC's program after highly-touted recruit Jairus Hamilton, a 6-foot-8 forward from Concord, North Carolina, announced on Twitter Thursday that he's verbally committed to the school. His brother Jared, a 6-foot-4 guard, sat on the Eagles' bench wearing a BC sweatshirt. Sources in the program said an announcement is expected soon that he'll transfer from Georgia Southern.</p>
<p>"I can't talk about recruiting," Christian said.</p>
<p>LONGTIME SERIES</p>
<p>BC owns a 22-9 edge in the series, which dates back to 1904-05. The Eagles are 7-0 at home.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Dartmouth: Hosts Harvard next Saturday in an Ivy League matchup.</p>
<p>Boston College: Returns to league play on Monday, hosting No. 23 Florida State. The Eagles have played three Top-25 teams in their last five games.</p>
| 7,360 |
<p>Chief Sealth International, a Seattle, Washington public school, is implanting IUDs in children as young as in the 6th grade, according to&#160; <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/02/schools-implant-iuds-in-girls-as-young-as-6th-grade-without-their-parents-knowing/" type="external">this report in LifeNews.com</a>. &#160;The program is funded by Medicare through a program called Take Charge, and is advocated by&#160; <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/02/schools-implant-iuds-in-girls-as-young-as-6th-grade-without-their-parents-knowing/" type="external">Planned Parenthood</a>. &#160; <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/kathleen-brown/seattle-6th-graders-cant-get-coke-school-can-get-iud" type="external">Cnsnews</a>&#160;reports that at least 13 Seattle-area public schools are also participating. &#160;Cnsnews quotes a Take Charge spokesman as saying ““We encourage all Take Charge providers to offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) in their clinics. A young person does not need parental consent to obtain a LARC or any other contraceptive method…If the young person is not choosing abstinence, she would be able to select a LARC and have it inserted without parental consent.”</p>
<p>Ironically, Seattle school age children are banned from getting <a href="https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/school/seattleban090604.php" type="external">soda and junk food</a>&#160;due to a 2004 law, but are now encouraged by state and federal officials to get a “full array of covered family planning services” a clinics in schools, if either their parents can demonstrate they meet the income standards. &#160;But children can also shield their parents knowledge by applying using their own income.</p>
<p>The program is also supported by the non-profit&#160; <a href="https://www.neighborcare.org/about-us" type="external">Neighborcare Health</a>, which runs 12 area school-based health centers, as well as other health services for &#160;low-income and the uninsured. Katie Acker, health educator at two of those clinics, is quoted by <a href="http://grist.org/living/a-seattle-high-school-is-taking-birth-control-access-to-the-next-level/" type="external">The Grist</a>:&#160;“The birth control culture, for lack of a better term, and the conversations have just changed so much. Even for me, starting in September of 2013 to now, seeing the change — conversations are just happening so openly and so excitedly. There’s so much pride around, ‘I’ve got this method, I’ve got this method.’ It’s not a hush-hush thing anymore … So many students will come in and say, ‘Oh, my friend got the IUD, can I make an appointment?’”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
|
Feds funding schools to implant IUDs in pre-teen Girls without Parents knowledge
| false |
http://natmonitor.com/2015/07/03/feds-funding-school-to-implant-iuds-in-young-girls-without-parents-knowledge/
|
2015-07-03
| 3left-center
|
Feds funding schools to implant IUDs in pre-teen Girls without Parents knowledge
<p>Chief Sealth International, a Seattle, Washington public school, is implanting IUDs in children as young as in the 6th grade, according to&#160; <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/02/schools-implant-iuds-in-girls-as-young-as-6th-grade-without-their-parents-knowing/" type="external">this report in LifeNews.com</a>. &#160;The program is funded by Medicare through a program called Take Charge, and is advocated by&#160; <a href="http://www.lifenews.com/2015/07/02/schools-implant-iuds-in-girls-as-young-as-6th-grade-without-their-parents-knowing/" type="external">Planned Parenthood</a>. &#160; <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/kathleen-brown/seattle-6th-graders-cant-get-coke-school-can-get-iud" type="external">Cnsnews</a>&#160;reports that at least 13 Seattle-area public schools are also participating. &#160;Cnsnews quotes a Take Charge spokesman as saying ““We encourage all Take Charge providers to offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) in their clinics. A young person does not need parental consent to obtain a LARC or any other contraceptive method…If the young person is not choosing abstinence, she would be able to select a LARC and have it inserted without parental consent.”</p>
<p>Ironically, Seattle school age children are banned from getting <a href="https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/school/seattleban090604.php" type="external">soda and junk food</a>&#160;due to a 2004 law, but are now encouraged by state and federal officials to get a “full array of covered family planning services” a clinics in schools, if either their parents can demonstrate they meet the income standards. &#160;But children can also shield their parents knowledge by applying using their own income.</p>
<p>The program is also supported by the non-profit&#160; <a href="https://www.neighborcare.org/about-us" type="external">Neighborcare Health</a>, which runs 12 area school-based health centers, as well as other health services for &#160;low-income and the uninsured. Katie Acker, health educator at two of those clinics, is quoted by <a href="http://grist.org/living/a-seattle-high-school-is-taking-birth-control-access-to-the-next-level/" type="external">The Grist</a>:&#160;“The birth control culture, for lack of a better term, and the conversations have just changed so much. Even for me, starting in September of 2013 to now, seeing the change — conversations are just happening so openly and so excitedly. There’s so much pride around, ‘I’ve got this method, I’ve got this method.’ It’s not a hush-hush thing anymore … So many students will come in and say, ‘Oh, my friend got the IUD, can I make an appointment?’”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
| 7,361 |
<p>ELLIJAY, Georgia (AP) — The First Baptist Church auditorium was filling with an expectant crowd, friends and family who had been through so much. Kim Silvers' three young daughters were there, all dressed up and eager for the graduation, hoping to mark the end of years of heartache visited on them all by their mother's addiction.</p>
<p>They had begged her to stop using opioids and heard her promise to do so, only to break that vow over and over. They'd cried when she abandoned them, and again when they were split apart and sent to three different foster homes. Then their mother signed on for a rigorous court-run treatment program — her best, last chance to avoid the permanent loss of her children.</p>
<p>On this Tuesday evening, the program's culmination was at hand. The would-be graduates just had one final duty: providing another batch of urine samples to be drug-tested. "We hold them accountable to the end," case manager Jackie Bramlett said.</p>
<p>Across the United States, the opioid epidemic has caused tragedies too numerous to count. One bitter way to quantify the scourge is the documented spike in the number of children removed from the custody of addicted parents. One of the most dramatic increases has been in Georgia, where the foster care population soared from about 7,600 in September 2013 to more than 13,700 as of August. Parental substance abuse of all kinds, the state says, now accounts for about 40 percent of foster care entries.</p>
<p>In response, family drug courts like the program Silvers entered have been spreading nationwide. There are hundreds of them across the U.S., though they still only reach a small fraction of parents with addiction.</p>
<p>Looking back, Silvers says drugs had so taken over her life that she'd likely be dead without this type of help — the constant monitoring and testing, mandatory classes in parenting, curfews and court appearances, jail time for infractions. There were times when she desperately wanted to quit the program.</p>
<p>"I never thought I would have 30 days clean, you know?" the 34-year-old mother confides. "And once I had 30 days, and six months, it wasn't an option. ... I knew I had to do this for my girls. I knew there was a better purpose for my life."</p>
<p>Substance abuse cast a shadow on Silvers' life from her girlhood in this mountainous area of north Georgia; both her parents were alcoholics. By the time she turned 22, Silvers and a boyfriend were parents to three little girls: Emily, Kelsey and Allison. She started drinking heavily herself after Allie, her youngest, was born in 2005, and intoxication led to drug addiction. After Silvers took a drunken plunge from a second-story window and shattered her pelvis, a doctor prescribed the painkiller Percocet, which contains the opioid oxycodone.</p>
<p>"My body grew so dependent on it," Silvers recalls. "I had to have as much of it as I thought I could."</p>
<p>She tried other drugs, often in a fruitless quest to replicate "that first high." Several times a week, her daughters would find her passed out.</p>
<p>Emily, the oldest, remembers a mother who often seemed drowsy, sometimes drooling. "I didn't want to see her like that," she says, "and to see my sisters, how they were sad."</p>
<p>On school days, Silvers would often rouse herself from bed to find that Emily, then about 11, had woken the younger girls, organized breakfast, and gotten everyone on the bus to school. Laundry chores often fell to Emily, too. "I just wanted to be a kid," says the daughter, who is 16 now and whose mother allowed her to be interviewed.</p>
<p>Silvers would promise to stop using, break that promise, then lie and tell her daughters that doctors had instructed her to keep taking medication. Eventually, Silvers wrecked her car and split with the children's father. She went to live with a relative who kept her supplied with painkillers — leaving her daughters with their paternal grandmother, who called child welfare officials when Silvers failed to return.</p>
<p>In November 2013, the girls were removed from Silvers' custody and at first taken in by a cousin, then placed by the state in different homes. Allie wound up having to move around 14 times, and saw her mother only about once a month. Emily and Kelsey, who also were separated, visited with Silvers maybe once a week.</p>
<p>"Every night," Emily remembers, "I'd cry."</p>
<p>Months into the separation, Silvers was told by child welfare officials that Allie was in a hospital after an altercation with another girl at her group home. Then came a greater shock: The state threatened to terminate her parental rights. Silvers entered the Appalachian Judicial Circuit's treatment program that very day — March 17, 2014.</p>
<p>The goal of the two-year program is simple to summarize but not easy to achieve: to stop substance abuse by parents at risk of losing permanent custody of their kids.</p>
<p>"We call it a voluntary program, but if the state has your children, it's not completely voluntary," says Judge Jan Wheeler, who oversees the effort. "The incentive is to get back your children."</p>
<p>There are now roughly 450 such programs across the U.S., up from about 330 in 2012, according to Phil Breitenbucher of Children and Family Futures, a research and consultancy organization. But he said those programs reach less than 20 percent of the population that needs them.</p>
<p>In the Georgia program, participants sign a contract binding them to 32 commitments. Early on, there's a 7 p.m. curfew. Random drug tests occur five or six times a week. Meetings of Narcotics Anonymous or similar groups are mandatory. Court appearances come every two weeks.</p>
<p>Participants must get a job and attend classes on topics like relapse prevention and "moral recognition therapy."</p>
<p>Failing to meet requirements brings sanctions, up to possible expulsion. Along with its 93 graduates over the years, the Appalachian circuit program has had 98 cases where participants quit or were expelled.</p>
<p>"It kind of breaks your heart," says Jennifer Farmer, who heads the child welfare agency's Ellijay office, recalling one couple who were abusing methamphetamine while living with their children in a tent in the woods. After repeatedly violating program rules, they were expelled and lost parental rights for the two youngest kids.</p>
<p>Kristen Gaddis works for the judicial district, guiding troubled participants after herself graduating from the program in 2014. An addiction to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax led her husband to report her to authorities. She had wrecked her car three times in a single year, including once when her son, then 4, was with her. They were both unhurt but, Gaddis says, "Every time I took my kids in the car and I was high, they were in danger. It's hard for a mother to own something like that."</p>
<p>There was a lot that was hard for Silvers to own. "I had made so many broken promises, told so many lies," she says.</p>
<p>She didn't miss any of her visitations, though, and after a year she regained custody of her daughters while remaining in the program. It took longer for them to begin trusting her again.</p>
<p>"They stayed on me," Silvers says. "'Mom, you're not going to the meeting tonight?' Or, 'Mom, you better make sure you're home by curfew.' It was them encouraging me along the way."</p>
<p>There were setbacks. Silvers reunited with the girls' father, but they feuded and she had him arrested. When he got out of jail, he kicked them all out of his house. They moved into a shelter, but it and Silvers' job were in one county and the girls' school in another. Unable to handle those logistics, she missed work and lost her job.</p>
<p>Some friends suggested Silvers try kratom to feel better. The herb, which can activate opioid receptors in the brain, is legal but forbidden along with other substances under the drug court rules. When a lab test discovered it, Silvers confessed and was allowed to stay in the program while taking an extra "relapse" class for six weeks.</p>
<p>She got an apartment with help from a state program and found work nearer the girls' school, but as she neared the final phase of the program, Silvers relapsed again with kratom. The trigger, she says, was discovering that Allison had been mistreated in her last foster home.</p>
<p>Silvers penned a remorseful letter to Judge Wheeler — "I was angry with myself and felt guilty this happened to Allie," she wrote — but the court ordered a third year in the program with more classes and 15 weekends in jail.</p>
<p>While behind bars, Silvers realized she'd come too far to quit. She went to a doctor for treatment of depression, and she and the girls did therapy together. Allie also had individual sessions.</p>
<p>And this past spring, when graduation time came, Silvers took the stage. She thanked her daughters and friends for their love and support. She talked of pride in regaining her self-esteem and of hope that the darkness was past.</p>
<p>"This is the first day of the rest of my life," Silvers told the crowd.</p>
<p>Though nervous, Emily said some words, too. "I wanted to speak for my mom because she deserves it," says the teen. "She's a mom now. I love waking up and she's always, like, 'Get up! Go to school!' I don't want to get up, but I love hearing her voice."</p>
<p>Seven months after the graduation, the family is prospering. Silvers was recently promoted to branch manager at a credit union. She met someone new and is engaged. All three daughters are earning good grades in school.</p>
<p>"Every day is not perfect, but we are grateful for how far that we've all come," Silvers says. "We're just doing the best we can when problems arise — hitting it head on and dealing with it instead of avoiding it."</p>
<p>Emily says she never gave way to despair.</p>
<p>"Even though those were the toughest days of my life, I always knew there was hope," she said by email. "I knew my mom could do it because she had always been a strong person."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press reporter Alex Sanz contributed to this report from Ellijay and Jasper, Georgia.</p>
<p>ELLIJAY, Georgia (AP) — The First Baptist Church auditorium was filling with an expectant crowd, friends and family who had been through so much. Kim Silvers' three young daughters were there, all dressed up and eager for the graduation, hoping to mark the end of years of heartache visited on them all by their mother's addiction.</p>
<p>They had begged her to stop using opioids and heard her promise to do so, only to break that vow over and over. They'd cried when she abandoned them, and again when they were split apart and sent to three different foster homes. Then their mother signed on for a rigorous court-run treatment program — her best, last chance to avoid the permanent loss of her children.</p>
<p>On this Tuesday evening, the program's culmination was at hand. The would-be graduates just had one final duty: providing another batch of urine samples to be drug-tested. "We hold them accountable to the end," case manager Jackie Bramlett said.</p>
<p>Across the United States, the opioid epidemic has caused tragedies too numerous to count. One bitter way to quantify the scourge is the documented spike in the number of children removed from the custody of addicted parents. One of the most dramatic increases has been in Georgia, where the foster care population soared from about 7,600 in September 2013 to more than 13,700 as of August. Parental substance abuse of all kinds, the state says, now accounts for about 40 percent of foster care entries.</p>
<p>In response, family drug courts like the program Silvers entered have been spreading nationwide. There are hundreds of them across the U.S., though they still only reach a small fraction of parents with addiction.</p>
<p>Looking back, Silvers says drugs had so taken over her life that she'd likely be dead without this type of help — the constant monitoring and testing, mandatory classes in parenting, curfews and court appearances, jail time for infractions. There were times when she desperately wanted to quit the program.</p>
<p>"I never thought I would have 30 days clean, you know?" the 34-year-old mother confides. "And once I had 30 days, and six months, it wasn't an option. ... I knew I had to do this for my girls. I knew there was a better purpose for my life."</p>
<p>Substance abuse cast a shadow on Silvers' life from her girlhood in this mountainous area of north Georgia; both her parents were alcoholics. By the time she turned 22, Silvers and a boyfriend were parents to three little girls: Emily, Kelsey and Allison. She started drinking heavily herself after Allie, her youngest, was born in 2005, and intoxication led to drug addiction. After Silvers took a drunken plunge from a second-story window and shattered her pelvis, a doctor prescribed the painkiller Percocet, which contains the opioid oxycodone.</p>
<p>"My body grew so dependent on it," Silvers recalls. "I had to have as much of it as I thought I could."</p>
<p>She tried other drugs, often in a fruitless quest to replicate "that first high." Several times a week, her daughters would find her passed out.</p>
<p>Emily, the oldest, remembers a mother who often seemed drowsy, sometimes drooling. "I didn't want to see her like that," she says, "and to see my sisters, how they were sad."</p>
<p>On school days, Silvers would often rouse herself from bed to find that Emily, then about 11, had woken the younger girls, organized breakfast, and gotten everyone on the bus to school. Laundry chores often fell to Emily, too. "I just wanted to be a kid," says the daughter, who is 16 now and whose mother allowed her to be interviewed.</p>
<p>Silvers would promise to stop using, break that promise, then lie and tell her daughters that doctors had instructed her to keep taking medication. Eventually, Silvers wrecked her car and split with the children's father. She went to live with a relative who kept her supplied with painkillers — leaving her daughters with their paternal grandmother, who called child welfare officials when Silvers failed to return.</p>
<p>In November 2013, the girls were removed from Silvers' custody and at first taken in by a cousin, then placed by the state in different homes. Allie wound up having to move around 14 times, and saw her mother only about once a month. Emily and Kelsey, who also were separated, visited with Silvers maybe once a week.</p>
<p>"Every night," Emily remembers, "I'd cry."</p>
<p>Months into the separation, Silvers was told by child welfare officials that Allie was in a hospital after an altercation with another girl at her group home. Then came a greater shock: The state threatened to terminate her parental rights. Silvers entered the Appalachian Judicial Circuit's treatment program that very day — March 17, 2014.</p>
<p>The goal of the two-year program is simple to summarize but not easy to achieve: to stop substance abuse by parents at risk of losing permanent custody of their kids.</p>
<p>"We call it a voluntary program, but if the state has your children, it's not completely voluntary," says Judge Jan Wheeler, who oversees the effort. "The incentive is to get back your children."</p>
<p>There are now roughly 450 such programs across the U.S., up from about 330 in 2012, according to Phil Breitenbucher of Children and Family Futures, a research and consultancy organization. But he said those programs reach less than 20 percent of the population that needs them.</p>
<p>In the Georgia program, participants sign a contract binding them to 32 commitments. Early on, there's a 7 p.m. curfew. Random drug tests occur five or six times a week. Meetings of Narcotics Anonymous or similar groups are mandatory. Court appearances come every two weeks.</p>
<p>Participants must get a job and attend classes on topics like relapse prevention and "moral recognition therapy."</p>
<p>Failing to meet requirements brings sanctions, up to possible expulsion. Along with its 93 graduates over the years, the Appalachian circuit program has had 98 cases where participants quit or were expelled.</p>
<p>"It kind of breaks your heart," says Jennifer Farmer, who heads the child welfare agency's Ellijay office, recalling one couple who were abusing methamphetamine while living with their children in a tent in the woods. After repeatedly violating program rules, they were expelled and lost parental rights for the two youngest kids.</p>
<p>Kristen Gaddis works for the judicial district, guiding troubled participants after herself graduating from the program in 2014. An addiction to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax led her husband to report her to authorities. She had wrecked her car three times in a single year, including once when her son, then 4, was with her. They were both unhurt but, Gaddis says, "Every time I took my kids in the car and I was high, they were in danger. It's hard for a mother to own something like that."</p>
<p>There was a lot that was hard for Silvers to own. "I had made so many broken promises, told so many lies," she says.</p>
<p>She didn't miss any of her visitations, though, and after a year she regained custody of her daughters while remaining in the program. It took longer for them to begin trusting her again.</p>
<p>"They stayed on me," Silvers says. "'Mom, you're not going to the meeting tonight?' Or, 'Mom, you better make sure you're home by curfew.' It was them encouraging me along the way."</p>
<p>There were setbacks. Silvers reunited with the girls' father, but they feuded and she had him arrested. When he got out of jail, he kicked them all out of his house. They moved into a shelter, but it and Silvers' job were in one county and the girls' school in another. Unable to handle those logistics, she missed work and lost her job.</p>
<p>Some friends suggested Silvers try kratom to feel better. The herb, which can activate opioid receptors in the brain, is legal but forbidden along with other substances under the drug court rules. When a lab test discovered it, Silvers confessed and was allowed to stay in the program while taking an extra "relapse" class for six weeks.</p>
<p>She got an apartment with help from a state program and found work nearer the girls' school, but as she neared the final phase of the program, Silvers relapsed again with kratom. The trigger, she says, was discovering that Allison had been mistreated in her last foster home.</p>
<p>Silvers penned a remorseful letter to Judge Wheeler — "I was angry with myself and felt guilty this happened to Allie," she wrote — but the court ordered a third year in the program with more classes and 15 weekends in jail.</p>
<p>While behind bars, Silvers realized she'd come too far to quit. She went to a doctor for treatment of depression, and she and the girls did therapy together. Allie also had individual sessions.</p>
<p>And this past spring, when graduation time came, Silvers took the stage. She thanked her daughters and friends for their love and support. She talked of pride in regaining her self-esteem and of hope that the darkness was past.</p>
<p>"This is the first day of the rest of my life," Silvers told the crowd.</p>
<p>Though nervous, Emily said some words, too. "I wanted to speak for my mom because she deserves it," says the teen. "She's a mom now. I love waking up and she's always, like, 'Get up! Go to school!' I don't want to get up, but I love hearing her voice."</p>
<p>Seven months after the graduation, the family is prospering. Silvers was recently promoted to branch manager at a credit union. She met someone new and is engaged. All three daughters are earning good grades in school.</p>
<p>"Every day is not perfect, but we are grateful for how far that we've all come," Silvers says. "We're just doing the best we can when problems arise — hitting it head on and dealing with it instead of avoiding it."</p>
<p>Emily says she never gave way to despair.</p>
<p>"Even though those were the toughest days of my life, I always knew there was hope," she said by email. "I knew my mom could do it because she had always been a strong person."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press reporter Alex Sanz contributed to this report from Ellijay and Jasper, Georgia.</p>
|
A Georgia mother battles opioids to win back her kids
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/83c033c0e3724c43804c8c56706ef852
|
2017-12-12
| 2least
|
A Georgia mother battles opioids to win back her kids
<p>ELLIJAY, Georgia (AP) — The First Baptist Church auditorium was filling with an expectant crowd, friends and family who had been through so much. Kim Silvers' three young daughters were there, all dressed up and eager for the graduation, hoping to mark the end of years of heartache visited on them all by their mother's addiction.</p>
<p>They had begged her to stop using opioids and heard her promise to do so, only to break that vow over and over. They'd cried when she abandoned them, and again when they were split apart and sent to three different foster homes. Then their mother signed on for a rigorous court-run treatment program — her best, last chance to avoid the permanent loss of her children.</p>
<p>On this Tuesday evening, the program's culmination was at hand. The would-be graduates just had one final duty: providing another batch of urine samples to be drug-tested. "We hold them accountable to the end," case manager Jackie Bramlett said.</p>
<p>Across the United States, the opioid epidemic has caused tragedies too numerous to count. One bitter way to quantify the scourge is the documented spike in the number of children removed from the custody of addicted parents. One of the most dramatic increases has been in Georgia, where the foster care population soared from about 7,600 in September 2013 to more than 13,700 as of August. Parental substance abuse of all kinds, the state says, now accounts for about 40 percent of foster care entries.</p>
<p>In response, family drug courts like the program Silvers entered have been spreading nationwide. There are hundreds of them across the U.S., though they still only reach a small fraction of parents with addiction.</p>
<p>Looking back, Silvers says drugs had so taken over her life that she'd likely be dead without this type of help — the constant monitoring and testing, mandatory classes in parenting, curfews and court appearances, jail time for infractions. There were times when she desperately wanted to quit the program.</p>
<p>"I never thought I would have 30 days clean, you know?" the 34-year-old mother confides. "And once I had 30 days, and six months, it wasn't an option. ... I knew I had to do this for my girls. I knew there was a better purpose for my life."</p>
<p>Substance abuse cast a shadow on Silvers' life from her girlhood in this mountainous area of north Georgia; both her parents were alcoholics. By the time she turned 22, Silvers and a boyfriend were parents to three little girls: Emily, Kelsey and Allison. She started drinking heavily herself after Allie, her youngest, was born in 2005, and intoxication led to drug addiction. After Silvers took a drunken plunge from a second-story window and shattered her pelvis, a doctor prescribed the painkiller Percocet, which contains the opioid oxycodone.</p>
<p>"My body grew so dependent on it," Silvers recalls. "I had to have as much of it as I thought I could."</p>
<p>She tried other drugs, often in a fruitless quest to replicate "that first high." Several times a week, her daughters would find her passed out.</p>
<p>Emily, the oldest, remembers a mother who often seemed drowsy, sometimes drooling. "I didn't want to see her like that," she says, "and to see my sisters, how they were sad."</p>
<p>On school days, Silvers would often rouse herself from bed to find that Emily, then about 11, had woken the younger girls, organized breakfast, and gotten everyone on the bus to school. Laundry chores often fell to Emily, too. "I just wanted to be a kid," says the daughter, who is 16 now and whose mother allowed her to be interviewed.</p>
<p>Silvers would promise to stop using, break that promise, then lie and tell her daughters that doctors had instructed her to keep taking medication. Eventually, Silvers wrecked her car and split with the children's father. She went to live with a relative who kept her supplied with painkillers — leaving her daughters with their paternal grandmother, who called child welfare officials when Silvers failed to return.</p>
<p>In November 2013, the girls were removed from Silvers' custody and at first taken in by a cousin, then placed by the state in different homes. Allie wound up having to move around 14 times, and saw her mother only about once a month. Emily and Kelsey, who also were separated, visited with Silvers maybe once a week.</p>
<p>"Every night," Emily remembers, "I'd cry."</p>
<p>Months into the separation, Silvers was told by child welfare officials that Allie was in a hospital after an altercation with another girl at her group home. Then came a greater shock: The state threatened to terminate her parental rights. Silvers entered the Appalachian Judicial Circuit's treatment program that very day — March 17, 2014.</p>
<p>The goal of the two-year program is simple to summarize but not easy to achieve: to stop substance abuse by parents at risk of losing permanent custody of their kids.</p>
<p>"We call it a voluntary program, but if the state has your children, it's not completely voluntary," says Judge Jan Wheeler, who oversees the effort. "The incentive is to get back your children."</p>
<p>There are now roughly 450 such programs across the U.S., up from about 330 in 2012, according to Phil Breitenbucher of Children and Family Futures, a research and consultancy organization. But he said those programs reach less than 20 percent of the population that needs them.</p>
<p>In the Georgia program, participants sign a contract binding them to 32 commitments. Early on, there's a 7 p.m. curfew. Random drug tests occur five or six times a week. Meetings of Narcotics Anonymous or similar groups are mandatory. Court appearances come every two weeks.</p>
<p>Participants must get a job and attend classes on topics like relapse prevention and "moral recognition therapy."</p>
<p>Failing to meet requirements brings sanctions, up to possible expulsion. Along with its 93 graduates over the years, the Appalachian circuit program has had 98 cases where participants quit or were expelled.</p>
<p>"It kind of breaks your heart," says Jennifer Farmer, who heads the child welfare agency's Ellijay office, recalling one couple who were abusing methamphetamine while living with their children in a tent in the woods. After repeatedly violating program rules, they were expelled and lost parental rights for the two youngest kids.</p>
<p>Kristen Gaddis works for the judicial district, guiding troubled participants after herself graduating from the program in 2014. An addiction to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax led her husband to report her to authorities. She had wrecked her car three times in a single year, including once when her son, then 4, was with her. They were both unhurt but, Gaddis says, "Every time I took my kids in the car and I was high, they were in danger. It's hard for a mother to own something like that."</p>
<p>There was a lot that was hard for Silvers to own. "I had made so many broken promises, told so many lies," she says.</p>
<p>She didn't miss any of her visitations, though, and after a year she regained custody of her daughters while remaining in the program. It took longer for them to begin trusting her again.</p>
<p>"They stayed on me," Silvers says. "'Mom, you're not going to the meeting tonight?' Or, 'Mom, you better make sure you're home by curfew.' It was them encouraging me along the way."</p>
<p>There were setbacks. Silvers reunited with the girls' father, but they feuded and she had him arrested. When he got out of jail, he kicked them all out of his house. They moved into a shelter, but it and Silvers' job were in one county and the girls' school in another. Unable to handle those logistics, she missed work and lost her job.</p>
<p>Some friends suggested Silvers try kratom to feel better. The herb, which can activate opioid receptors in the brain, is legal but forbidden along with other substances under the drug court rules. When a lab test discovered it, Silvers confessed and was allowed to stay in the program while taking an extra "relapse" class for six weeks.</p>
<p>She got an apartment with help from a state program and found work nearer the girls' school, but as she neared the final phase of the program, Silvers relapsed again with kratom. The trigger, she says, was discovering that Allison had been mistreated in her last foster home.</p>
<p>Silvers penned a remorseful letter to Judge Wheeler — "I was angry with myself and felt guilty this happened to Allie," she wrote — but the court ordered a third year in the program with more classes and 15 weekends in jail.</p>
<p>While behind bars, Silvers realized she'd come too far to quit. She went to a doctor for treatment of depression, and she and the girls did therapy together. Allie also had individual sessions.</p>
<p>And this past spring, when graduation time came, Silvers took the stage. She thanked her daughters and friends for their love and support. She talked of pride in regaining her self-esteem and of hope that the darkness was past.</p>
<p>"This is the first day of the rest of my life," Silvers told the crowd.</p>
<p>Though nervous, Emily said some words, too. "I wanted to speak for my mom because she deserves it," says the teen. "She's a mom now. I love waking up and she's always, like, 'Get up! Go to school!' I don't want to get up, but I love hearing her voice."</p>
<p>Seven months after the graduation, the family is prospering. Silvers was recently promoted to branch manager at a credit union. She met someone new and is engaged. All three daughters are earning good grades in school.</p>
<p>"Every day is not perfect, but we are grateful for how far that we've all come," Silvers says. "We're just doing the best we can when problems arise — hitting it head on and dealing with it instead of avoiding it."</p>
<p>Emily says she never gave way to despair.</p>
<p>"Even though those were the toughest days of my life, I always knew there was hope," she said by email. "I knew my mom could do it because she had always been a strong person."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press reporter Alex Sanz contributed to this report from Ellijay and Jasper, Georgia.</p>
<p>ELLIJAY, Georgia (AP) — The First Baptist Church auditorium was filling with an expectant crowd, friends and family who had been through so much. Kim Silvers' three young daughters were there, all dressed up and eager for the graduation, hoping to mark the end of years of heartache visited on them all by their mother's addiction.</p>
<p>They had begged her to stop using opioids and heard her promise to do so, only to break that vow over and over. They'd cried when she abandoned them, and again when they were split apart and sent to three different foster homes. Then their mother signed on for a rigorous court-run treatment program — her best, last chance to avoid the permanent loss of her children.</p>
<p>On this Tuesday evening, the program's culmination was at hand. The would-be graduates just had one final duty: providing another batch of urine samples to be drug-tested. "We hold them accountable to the end," case manager Jackie Bramlett said.</p>
<p>Across the United States, the opioid epidemic has caused tragedies too numerous to count. One bitter way to quantify the scourge is the documented spike in the number of children removed from the custody of addicted parents. One of the most dramatic increases has been in Georgia, where the foster care population soared from about 7,600 in September 2013 to more than 13,700 as of August. Parental substance abuse of all kinds, the state says, now accounts for about 40 percent of foster care entries.</p>
<p>In response, family drug courts like the program Silvers entered have been spreading nationwide. There are hundreds of them across the U.S., though they still only reach a small fraction of parents with addiction.</p>
<p>Looking back, Silvers says drugs had so taken over her life that she'd likely be dead without this type of help — the constant monitoring and testing, mandatory classes in parenting, curfews and court appearances, jail time for infractions. There were times when she desperately wanted to quit the program.</p>
<p>"I never thought I would have 30 days clean, you know?" the 34-year-old mother confides. "And once I had 30 days, and six months, it wasn't an option. ... I knew I had to do this for my girls. I knew there was a better purpose for my life."</p>
<p>Substance abuse cast a shadow on Silvers' life from her girlhood in this mountainous area of north Georgia; both her parents were alcoholics. By the time she turned 22, Silvers and a boyfriend were parents to three little girls: Emily, Kelsey and Allison. She started drinking heavily herself after Allie, her youngest, was born in 2005, and intoxication led to drug addiction. After Silvers took a drunken plunge from a second-story window and shattered her pelvis, a doctor prescribed the painkiller Percocet, which contains the opioid oxycodone.</p>
<p>"My body grew so dependent on it," Silvers recalls. "I had to have as much of it as I thought I could."</p>
<p>She tried other drugs, often in a fruitless quest to replicate "that first high." Several times a week, her daughters would find her passed out.</p>
<p>Emily, the oldest, remembers a mother who often seemed drowsy, sometimes drooling. "I didn't want to see her like that," she says, "and to see my sisters, how they were sad."</p>
<p>On school days, Silvers would often rouse herself from bed to find that Emily, then about 11, had woken the younger girls, organized breakfast, and gotten everyone on the bus to school. Laundry chores often fell to Emily, too. "I just wanted to be a kid," says the daughter, who is 16 now and whose mother allowed her to be interviewed.</p>
<p>Silvers would promise to stop using, break that promise, then lie and tell her daughters that doctors had instructed her to keep taking medication. Eventually, Silvers wrecked her car and split with the children's father. She went to live with a relative who kept her supplied with painkillers — leaving her daughters with their paternal grandmother, who called child welfare officials when Silvers failed to return.</p>
<p>In November 2013, the girls were removed from Silvers' custody and at first taken in by a cousin, then placed by the state in different homes. Allie wound up having to move around 14 times, and saw her mother only about once a month. Emily and Kelsey, who also were separated, visited with Silvers maybe once a week.</p>
<p>"Every night," Emily remembers, "I'd cry."</p>
<p>Months into the separation, Silvers was told by child welfare officials that Allie was in a hospital after an altercation with another girl at her group home. Then came a greater shock: The state threatened to terminate her parental rights. Silvers entered the Appalachian Judicial Circuit's treatment program that very day — March 17, 2014.</p>
<p>The goal of the two-year program is simple to summarize but not easy to achieve: to stop substance abuse by parents at risk of losing permanent custody of their kids.</p>
<p>"We call it a voluntary program, but if the state has your children, it's not completely voluntary," says Judge Jan Wheeler, who oversees the effort. "The incentive is to get back your children."</p>
<p>There are now roughly 450 such programs across the U.S., up from about 330 in 2012, according to Phil Breitenbucher of Children and Family Futures, a research and consultancy organization. But he said those programs reach less than 20 percent of the population that needs them.</p>
<p>In the Georgia program, participants sign a contract binding them to 32 commitments. Early on, there's a 7 p.m. curfew. Random drug tests occur five or six times a week. Meetings of Narcotics Anonymous or similar groups are mandatory. Court appearances come every two weeks.</p>
<p>Participants must get a job and attend classes on topics like relapse prevention and "moral recognition therapy."</p>
<p>Failing to meet requirements brings sanctions, up to possible expulsion. Along with its 93 graduates over the years, the Appalachian circuit program has had 98 cases where participants quit or were expelled.</p>
<p>"It kind of breaks your heart," says Jennifer Farmer, who heads the child welfare agency's Ellijay office, recalling one couple who were abusing methamphetamine while living with their children in a tent in the woods. After repeatedly violating program rules, they were expelled and lost parental rights for the two youngest kids.</p>
<p>Kristen Gaddis works for the judicial district, guiding troubled participants after herself graduating from the program in 2014. An addiction to the anti-anxiety drug Xanax led her husband to report her to authorities. She had wrecked her car three times in a single year, including once when her son, then 4, was with her. They were both unhurt but, Gaddis says, "Every time I took my kids in the car and I was high, they were in danger. It's hard for a mother to own something like that."</p>
<p>There was a lot that was hard for Silvers to own. "I had made so many broken promises, told so many lies," she says.</p>
<p>She didn't miss any of her visitations, though, and after a year she regained custody of her daughters while remaining in the program. It took longer for them to begin trusting her again.</p>
<p>"They stayed on me," Silvers says. "'Mom, you're not going to the meeting tonight?' Or, 'Mom, you better make sure you're home by curfew.' It was them encouraging me along the way."</p>
<p>There were setbacks. Silvers reunited with the girls' father, but they feuded and she had him arrested. When he got out of jail, he kicked them all out of his house. They moved into a shelter, but it and Silvers' job were in one county and the girls' school in another. Unable to handle those logistics, she missed work and lost her job.</p>
<p>Some friends suggested Silvers try kratom to feel better. The herb, which can activate opioid receptors in the brain, is legal but forbidden along with other substances under the drug court rules. When a lab test discovered it, Silvers confessed and was allowed to stay in the program while taking an extra "relapse" class for six weeks.</p>
<p>She got an apartment with help from a state program and found work nearer the girls' school, but as she neared the final phase of the program, Silvers relapsed again with kratom. The trigger, she says, was discovering that Allison had been mistreated in her last foster home.</p>
<p>Silvers penned a remorseful letter to Judge Wheeler — "I was angry with myself and felt guilty this happened to Allie," she wrote — but the court ordered a third year in the program with more classes and 15 weekends in jail.</p>
<p>While behind bars, Silvers realized she'd come too far to quit. She went to a doctor for treatment of depression, and she and the girls did therapy together. Allie also had individual sessions.</p>
<p>And this past spring, when graduation time came, Silvers took the stage. She thanked her daughters and friends for their love and support. She talked of pride in regaining her self-esteem and of hope that the darkness was past.</p>
<p>"This is the first day of the rest of my life," Silvers told the crowd.</p>
<p>Though nervous, Emily said some words, too. "I wanted to speak for my mom because she deserves it," says the teen. "She's a mom now. I love waking up and she's always, like, 'Get up! Go to school!' I don't want to get up, but I love hearing her voice."</p>
<p>Seven months after the graduation, the family is prospering. Silvers was recently promoted to branch manager at a credit union. She met someone new and is engaged. All three daughters are earning good grades in school.</p>
<p>"Every day is not perfect, but we are grateful for how far that we've all come," Silvers says. "We're just doing the best we can when problems arise — hitting it head on and dealing with it instead of avoiding it."</p>
<p>Emily says she never gave way to despair.</p>
<p>"Even though those were the toughest days of my life, I always knew there was hope," she said by email. "I knew my mom could do it because she had always been a strong person."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press reporter Alex Sanz contributed to this report from Ellijay and Jasper, Georgia.</p>
| 7,362 |
<p>Condoleezza Rice may join Dick Cheney as a witness in "Scooter" Libby's <a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&amp;storyID=2007-01-16T224517Z_01_N12329837_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CRIME-LIBBY.xml&amp;pageNumber=0&amp;imageid=&amp;cap=&amp;sz=&amp;WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2" type="external">perjury trial</a>. The secretary of state's name appeared on a list of potential witnesses that included Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Colin Powell and members of the Washington media elite.</p>
<p>Reuters:</p>
<p>WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could join Vice President Dick Cheney as a potential witness in the perjury trial of Cheney's former top aide, as jury selection began on Tuesday in the case which has cast a spotlight on how the White House justified war in Iraq.</p>
<p>The names of Cheney, Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, appeared on a long list of government officials and news reporters who may be called as witnesses or whose names may come up in the trial of Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.</p>
<p />
<p>Libby is charged with lying to investigators during a probe to determine who leaked the classified identity of a CIA operative whose husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly criticized the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p><a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&amp;storyID=2007-01-16T224517Z_01_N12329837_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CRIME-LIBBY.xml&amp;pageNumber=0&amp;imageid=&amp;cap=&amp;sz=&amp;WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2" type="external">Read more</a></p>
|
Condoleezza Rice Might Testify at Libby Trial
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/condoleezza-rice-might-testify-at-libby-trial/
|
2007-01-17
| 4left
|
Condoleezza Rice Might Testify at Libby Trial
<p>Condoleezza Rice may join Dick Cheney as a witness in "Scooter" Libby's <a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&amp;storyID=2007-01-16T224517Z_01_N12329837_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CRIME-LIBBY.xml&amp;pageNumber=0&amp;imageid=&amp;cap=&amp;sz=&amp;WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2" type="external">perjury trial</a>. The secretary of state's name appeared on a list of potential witnesses that included Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Colin Powell and members of the Washington media elite.</p>
<p>Reuters:</p>
<p>WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could join Vice President Dick Cheney as a potential witness in the perjury trial of Cheney's former top aide, as jury selection began on Tuesday in the case which has cast a spotlight on how the White House justified war in Iraq.</p>
<p>The names of Cheney, Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, appeared on a long list of government officials and news reporters who may be called as witnesses or whose names may come up in the trial of Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.</p>
<p />
<p>Libby is charged with lying to investigators during a probe to determine who leaked the classified identity of a CIA operative whose husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, publicly criticized the Bush administration's use of intelligence in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p><a href="http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&amp;storyID=2007-01-16T224517Z_01_N12329837_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-CRIME-LIBBY.xml&amp;pageNumber=0&amp;imageid=&amp;cap=&amp;sz=&amp;WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2" type="external">Read more</a></p>
| 7,363 |
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Tyler Seguin's short-handed goal was more than just his first in the NHL.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Dallas forward said it was the first one of his life, which makes sense because Seguin said this season is the first time in his career he's part of the penalty-kill unit.</p>
<p>Seguin's short-handed tally was his team-leading 20th, Alexander Radulov had a goal and two assists and the Stars beat the New Jersey Devils 4-3 on Thursday night.</p>
<p>"I love being on the PK," Seguin said. "I've felt that extra responsibility since training camp and since we first talked when (Ken Hitchcock) first got named coach here. He said I was going to get that opportunity. Happy I got one."</p>
<p>Brett Ritchie had the tiebreaking goal on a power play after a second straight penalty against Sami Vatanen, and the Devils matched their season high with a fourth straight loss. The skid follows a season-best five-game winning streak that started with a win at home over the Stars.</p>
<p>Taylor Hall had a goal and two assists for the Devils, but his diving attempt was stopped in the final seconds of 6-on-5 against Ben Bishop. The Dallas goalie stopped 39 of a season-high 42 shots faced for his fifth win in a season-high ninth straight start.</p>
<p>Radulov's <a href="https://twitter.com/DallasStars/status/949114756400664576" type="external">15th goal got Dallas even</a> early in the second period when Devils captain Andy Greene's blind, backhand pass from behind his own net went right to the Russian forward.</p>
<p>"I was trying to make a play there," Greene said. "I thought I saw we had a guy in front there. Obviously we didn't and they made us pay. It was kind of the theme of the night. It's too hard in this league to win by doing that."</p>
<p>Seguin had a breakaway with Miles Wood chasing him and decided to send the puck backward to Jamie Benn. After Benn's shot went across the crease to Seguin, <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/seguin-buries-shorthanded-goal/t-277752844/c-56406703" type="external">his shot caromed in off Wood's skate</a> as the defenseman tried to close his feet with goalie Cory Schneider out of position.</p>
<p>"Great pass," Seguin said, smiling when it was suggested Benn was clearly trying to score. "We talked about it on the ice and said that was a pass."</p>
<p>The Devils scored in the final minute of each of the first two periods, starting with <a href="https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/949103720360566784" type="external">Brian Boyle on a power play</a> with 14 seconds left in the first.</p>
<p>New Jersey pulled to 3-2 with 28 seconds left in the second when Bishop stopped Hall's shot but <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/halls-fortuitous-goal/t-277752844/c-56407303" type="external">had the puck go over him</a> when the rebound caromed off defenseman Greg Pateryn.</p>
<p>Martin Hanzal assisted on Mattias Janmark's goal after missing three games with a lower-body injury. Hanzal has missed 15 games with various injuries.</p>
<p>New Jersey had another power-play goal when Kyle Palmieri sent a shot from the boards through the legs of Bishop late in the third period. Hall got credit for his team-leading 26th assist.</p>
<p>Ritchie redirected a shot from John Klingberg and the puck bounced over Schneider, who stopped 29 shots.</p>
<p>Vatanen touched the puck as he was coming out of the penalty box for cross-checking, and the interference call put the Stars right back on the power play midway through the second period. It was Vatanen's third straight penalty for the Devils.</p>
<p>"We have the game in control and we come out and play a totally different game in the second period," New Jersey coach John Hynes said. "The worst way you can lose is when you beat yourself."</p>
<p>NOTES: Three Dallas-area natives have played in the past two games against the Stars. Seth Jones, son of former Dallas Mavericks player Popeye Jones, had an assist in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win. Plano natives Blake Coleman and Stefan Noesen are forwards for the Devils. ... Stars D Marc Methot had two shots and three hits in 16 minutes after missing 26 games following arthroscopic knee surgery. ... There were nine penalties two nights after Dallas and Columbus combined for just one in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win that ended the Stars' four-game home winning streak.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Devils: At the New York Islanders on Sunday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>Stars: Home against the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</a></p>
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Tyler Seguin's short-handed goal was more than just his first in the NHL.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Dallas forward said it was the first one of his life, which makes sense because Seguin said this season is the first time in his career he's part of the penalty-kill unit.</p>
<p>Seguin's short-handed tally was his team-leading 20th, Alexander Radulov had a goal and two assists and the Stars beat the New Jersey Devils 4-3 on Thursday night.</p>
<p>"I love being on the PK," Seguin said. "I've felt that extra responsibility since training camp and since we first talked when (Ken Hitchcock) first got named coach here. He said I was going to get that opportunity. Happy I got one."</p>
<p>Brett Ritchie had the tiebreaking goal on a power play after a second straight penalty against Sami Vatanen, and the Devils matched their season high with a fourth straight loss. The skid follows a season-best five-game winning streak that started with a win at home over the Stars.</p>
<p>Taylor Hall had a goal and two assists for the Devils, but his diving attempt was stopped in the final seconds of 6-on-5 against Ben Bishop. The Dallas goalie stopped 39 of a season-high 42 shots faced for his fifth win in a season-high ninth straight start.</p>
<p>Radulov's <a href="https://twitter.com/DallasStars/status/949114756400664576" type="external">15th goal got Dallas even</a> early in the second period when Devils captain Andy Greene's blind, backhand pass from behind his own net went right to the Russian forward.</p>
<p>"I was trying to make a play there," Greene said. "I thought I saw we had a guy in front there. Obviously we didn't and they made us pay. It was kind of the theme of the night. It's too hard in this league to win by doing that."</p>
<p>Seguin had a breakaway with Miles Wood chasing him and decided to send the puck backward to Jamie Benn. After Benn's shot went across the crease to Seguin, <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/seguin-buries-shorthanded-goal/t-277752844/c-56406703" type="external">his shot caromed in off Wood's skate</a> as the defenseman tried to close his feet with goalie Cory Schneider out of position.</p>
<p>"Great pass," Seguin said, smiling when it was suggested Benn was clearly trying to score. "We talked about it on the ice and said that was a pass."</p>
<p>The Devils scored in the final minute of each of the first two periods, starting with <a href="https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/949103720360566784" type="external">Brian Boyle on a power play</a> with 14 seconds left in the first.</p>
<p>New Jersey pulled to 3-2 with 28 seconds left in the second when Bishop stopped Hall's shot but <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/halls-fortuitous-goal/t-277752844/c-56407303" type="external">had the puck go over him</a> when the rebound caromed off defenseman Greg Pateryn.</p>
<p>Martin Hanzal assisted on Mattias Janmark's goal after missing three games with a lower-body injury. Hanzal has missed 15 games with various injuries.</p>
<p>New Jersey had another power-play goal when Kyle Palmieri sent a shot from the boards through the legs of Bishop late in the third period. Hall got credit for his team-leading 26th assist.</p>
<p>Ritchie redirected a shot from John Klingberg and the puck bounced over Schneider, who stopped 29 shots.</p>
<p>Vatanen touched the puck as he was coming out of the penalty box for cross-checking, and the interference call put the Stars right back on the power play midway through the second period. It was Vatanen's third straight penalty for the Devils.</p>
<p>"We have the game in control and we come out and play a totally different game in the second period," New Jersey coach John Hynes said. "The worst way you can lose is when you beat yourself."</p>
<p>NOTES: Three Dallas-area natives have played in the past two games against the Stars. Seth Jones, son of former Dallas Mavericks player Popeye Jones, had an assist in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win. Plano natives Blake Coleman and Stefan Noesen are forwards for the Devils. ... Stars D Marc Methot had two shots and three hits in 16 minutes after missing 26 games following arthroscopic knee surgery. ... There were nine penalties two nights after Dallas and Columbus combined for just one in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win that ended the Stars' four-game home winning streak.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Devils: At the New York Islanders on Sunday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>Stars: Home against the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</a></p>
|
Seguin, Stars send Devils to 4th straight loss with 4-3 win
| false |
https://apnews.com/amp/064d263f421841258276a6d16ad26f23
|
2018-01-05
| 2least
|
Seguin, Stars send Devils to 4th straight loss with 4-3 win
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Tyler Seguin's short-handed goal was more than just his first in the NHL.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Dallas forward said it was the first one of his life, which makes sense because Seguin said this season is the first time in his career he's part of the penalty-kill unit.</p>
<p>Seguin's short-handed tally was his team-leading 20th, Alexander Radulov had a goal and two assists and the Stars beat the New Jersey Devils 4-3 on Thursday night.</p>
<p>"I love being on the PK," Seguin said. "I've felt that extra responsibility since training camp and since we first talked when (Ken Hitchcock) first got named coach here. He said I was going to get that opportunity. Happy I got one."</p>
<p>Brett Ritchie had the tiebreaking goal on a power play after a second straight penalty against Sami Vatanen, and the Devils matched their season high with a fourth straight loss. The skid follows a season-best five-game winning streak that started with a win at home over the Stars.</p>
<p>Taylor Hall had a goal and two assists for the Devils, but his diving attempt was stopped in the final seconds of 6-on-5 against Ben Bishop. The Dallas goalie stopped 39 of a season-high 42 shots faced for his fifth win in a season-high ninth straight start.</p>
<p>Radulov's <a href="https://twitter.com/DallasStars/status/949114756400664576" type="external">15th goal got Dallas even</a> early in the second period when Devils captain Andy Greene's blind, backhand pass from behind his own net went right to the Russian forward.</p>
<p>"I was trying to make a play there," Greene said. "I thought I saw we had a guy in front there. Obviously we didn't and they made us pay. It was kind of the theme of the night. It's too hard in this league to win by doing that."</p>
<p>Seguin had a breakaway with Miles Wood chasing him and decided to send the puck backward to Jamie Benn. After Benn's shot went across the crease to Seguin, <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/seguin-buries-shorthanded-goal/t-277752844/c-56406703" type="external">his shot caromed in off Wood's skate</a> as the defenseman tried to close his feet with goalie Cory Schneider out of position.</p>
<p>"Great pass," Seguin said, smiling when it was suggested Benn was clearly trying to score. "We talked about it on the ice and said that was a pass."</p>
<p>The Devils scored in the final minute of each of the first two periods, starting with <a href="https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/949103720360566784" type="external">Brian Boyle on a power play</a> with 14 seconds left in the first.</p>
<p>New Jersey pulled to 3-2 with 28 seconds left in the second when Bishop stopped Hall's shot but <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/halls-fortuitous-goal/t-277752844/c-56407303" type="external">had the puck go over him</a> when the rebound caromed off defenseman Greg Pateryn.</p>
<p>Martin Hanzal assisted on Mattias Janmark's goal after missing three games with a lower-body injury. Hanzal has missed 15 games with various injuries.</p>
<p>New Jersey had another power-play goal when Kyle Palmieri sent a shot from the boards through the legs of Bishop late in the third period. Hall got credit for his team-leading 26th assist.</p>
<p>Ritchie redirected a shot from John Klingberg and the puck bounced over Schneider, who stopped 29 shots.</p>
<p>Vatanen touched the puck as he was coming out of the penalty box for cross-checking, and the interference call put the Stars right back on the power play midway through the second period. It was Vatanen's third straight penalty for the Devils.</p>
<p>"We have the game in control and we come out and play a totally different game in the second period," New Jersey coach John Hynes said. "The worst way you can lose is when you beat yourself."</p>
<p>NOTES: Three Dallas-area natives have played in the past two games against the Stars. Seth Jones, son of former Dallas Mavericks player Popeye Jones, had an assist in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win. Plano natives Blake Coleman and Stefan Noesen are forwards for the Devils. ... Stars D Marc Methot had two shots and three hits in 16 minutes after missing 26 games following arthroscopic knee surgery. ... There were nine penalties two nights after Dallas and Columbus combined for just one in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win that ended the Stars' four-game home winning streak.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Devils: At the New York Islanders on Sunday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>Stars: Home against the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</a></p>
<p>DALLAS (AP) - Tyler Seguin's short-handed goal was more than just his first in the NHL.</p>
<p>The high-scoring Dallas forward said it was the first one of his life, which makes sense because Seguin said this season is the first time in his career he's part of the penalty-kill unit.</p>
<p>Seguin's short-handed tally was his team-leading 20th, Alexander Radulov had a goal and two assists and the Stars beat the New Jersey Devils 4-3 on Thursday night.</p>
<p>"I love being on the PK," Seguin said. "I've felt that extra responsibility since training camp and since we first talked when (Ken Hitchcock) first got named coach here. He said I was going to get that opportunity. Happy I got one."</p>
<p>Brett Ritchie had the tiebreaking goal on a power play after a second straight penalty against Sami Vatanen, and the Devils matched their season high with a fourth straight loss. The skid follows a season-best five-game winning streak that started with a win at home over the Stars.</p>
<p>Taylor Hall had a goal and two assists for the Devils, but his diving attempt was stopped in the final seconds of 6-on-5 against Ben Bishop. The Dallas goalie stopped 39 of a season-high 42 shots faced for his fifth win in a season-high ninth straight start.</p>
<p>Radulov's <a href="https://twitter.com/DallasStars/status/949114756400664576" type="external">15th goal got Dallas even</a> early in the second period when Devils captain Andy Greene's blind, backhand pass from behind his own net went right to the Russian forward.</p>
<p>"I was trying to make a play there," Greene said. "I thought I saw we had a guy in front there. Obviously we didn't and they made us pay. It was kind of the theme of the night. It's too hard in this league to win by doing that."</p>
<p>Seguin had a breakaway with Miles Wood chasing him and decided to send the puck backward to Jamie Benn. After Benn's shot went across the crease to Seguin, <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/seguin-buries-shorthanded-goal/t-277752844/c-56406703" type="external">his shot caromed in off Wood's skate</a> as the defenseman tried to close his feet with goalie Cory Schneider out of position.</p>
<p>"Great pass," Seguin said, smiling when it was suggested Benn was clearly trying to score. "We talked about it on the ice and said that was a pass."</p>
<p>The Devils scored in the final minute of each of the first two periods, starting with <a href="https://twitter.com/NJDevils/status/949103720360566784" type="external">Brian Boyle on a power play</a> with 14 seconds left in the first.</p>
<p>New Jersey pulled to 3-2 with 28 seconds left in the second when Bishop stopped Hall's shot but <a href="https://www.nhl.com/video/halls-fortuitous-goal/t-277752844/c-56407303" type="external">had the puck go over him</a> when the rebound caromed off defenseman Greg Pateryn.</p>
<p>Martin Hanzal assisted on Mattias Janmark's goal after missing three games with a lower-body injury. Hanzal has missed 15 games with various injuries.</p>
<p>New Jersey had another power-play goal when Kyle Palmieri sent a shot from the boards through the legs of Bishop late in the third period. Hall got credit for his team-leading 26th assist.</p>
<p>Ritchie redirected a shot from John Klingberg and the puck bounced over Schneider, who stopped 29 shots.</p>
<p>Vatanen touched the puck as he was coming out of the penalty box for cross-checking, and the interference call put the Stars right back on the power play midway through the second period. It was Vatanen's third straight penalty for the Devils.</p>
<p>"We have the game in control and we come out and play a totally different game in the second period," New Jersey coach John Hynes said. "The worst way you can lose is when you beat yourself."</p>
<p>NOTES: Three Dallas-area natives have played in the past two games against the Stars. Seth Jones, son of former Dallas Mavericks player Popeye Jones, had an assist in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win. Plano natives Blake Coleman and Stefan Noesen are forwards for the Devils. ... Stars D Marc Methot had two shots and three hits in 16 minutes after missing 26 games following arthroscopic knee surgery. ... There were nine penalties two nights after Dallas and Columbus combined for just one in the Blue Jackets' 2-1 win that ended the Stars' four-game home winning streak.</p>
<p>UP NEXT</p>
<p>Devils: At the New York Islanders on Sunday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>Stars: Home against the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday afternoon before a weeklong break.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>More AP hockey: <a href="" type="internal">https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey</a></p>
| 7,364 |
<p>Victoria* was a teenager when a car struck and almost killed her. A major surgery requiring plastic mesh sewn into her belly saved her life. Soon after, her skin erupted in painful rashes that refused to heal.</p>
<p>She consulted specialists all over the country, but they couldn’t help her. They told her they didn’t know the cause of her rashes, but there was no evidence for rashes related to implants. At one point they even told her she was delusional, despite her diffuse ulcerating lesions. After a decade of searching, Victoria found a physician who’d seen patients with unusual symptoms under similar circumstances. After he removed the plastic implant, her skin cleared up completely.</p>
<p>As Victoria spoke, my heart broke as it does every time I hear stories of patient neglect. The week before, a young man named Jack* told a similar story: an accident, then an illness followed by years of debilitating symptoms that forced him to travel the country consulting specialists looking for an answer that never came—until he found a doctor who listened and she began to work with him to find a way to heal.</p>
<p>These stories will come as no surprise to anyone with a chronic illness. All too often, we conventional physicians dismiss patients with unusual complaints or simply ply them with medicines. Of course, the medical community can’t develop a new “evidence base” if we ignore our patients. It’s an insane medical Catch-22, and patients are getting fed up. Now, instead of turning to the once trusted physician, many Americans are spending billions on <a href="http://nccam.nih.gov/news/2009/073009.htm" type="external">alternative and complementary medicine</a>.</p>
<p>Is the medicine we practice simply no good, or are the doctors to blame? The answer might be both.</p>
<p>It’s widely accepted that conventional medicine frequently fails to help people with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/pre-diabetes_b_1237014.html" type="external">chronic ailments</a>. It’s set up to fail, as most clinics function as dehumanizing assembly lines better suited for manufacturing cars than treating people. While health care consultants insist on finding ways to enhance “efficiency,” efficiency and assembly lines only make sense if we know everything there is to know about how the body functions—but we don’t.</p>
<p>It’s a well-known fact that many patients don’t fit our heuristics. Instead, they have weird, unrecognizable constellations of symptoms—and most doctors don’t have the time to deal with it. If we do anything for them at all, we might scan or scope them, send them for referrals, and then finally send them away with a printout explaining fibromyalgia or irritable bowel syndrome or other similar diagnoses. Doctors are then on to the next patient, and between patients they are distracted by a towering mountain of non-clinical tasks. Doctors aren’t dumb. They know this is a rotten deal and they are demoralized, running faster and faster with no hope of catching up.</p>
<p>Now <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/science/list.html" type="external">The New York Times</a> best-selling book Doctored, The Disillusionment of the American Physician, by Sandeep Jauhar, MD, explores this dismal state of affairs. The book is a memoir that highlights the problem of physician burnout in the midst of our by now decades-long health care crisis. In a recent <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-ailing-medical-system-a-doctors-perspective-1409325361?utm_source=nuemd&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=-&amp;utm_content=2014-09-vo8&amp;utm_campaign=top-5#livefyre-comment" type="external">Wall Street Journal feature</a>, Jauhar neatly details how we got here—how corporate and government intrusions turned a once intellectually stimulating profession into a mind-numbing enterprise. One physician who commented on Jauhar’s article even likened it to slavery. In another recent <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.medscape.com_viewarticle_830152-5F7&amp;d=AAMFaQ&amp;c=r30hyXAdWe8oret4PlAIyA&amp;r=cmcLbLlhV3FXvcVrwHoiStggOW-0C4dIjKL7Izg7R40&amp;m=ugS4oLtBu_enFi-0PXZ8lJtP0Ot1PH7c75cCfYcLzTk&amp;s=2kr_XvbYA7HIBDofUrY61YWV5qOsxh7fRj8q_Oxyt_Q&amp;e=" type="external">Medscape article</a>, one physician described himself as a “beaten dog.”</p>
<p>If doctoring these days is akin to <a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2006/11/universal-health-care-step-towards.html" type="external">a kind of humiliated servitude</a>—and many physicians in their private moments <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/233cb4/how_being_a_doctor_became_the_most_miserable/" type="external">claim that it is</a>—then it’s axiomatic that we need less centralized control and more freedom in order to be more responsive to patients. But Dr. Jauhar, who is a cardiologist and director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, seemed to be calling for more centralized control and something he calls “bundled payments” to control costs, akin to the ill-conceived Accountable Care Organizations that many people justifiably believe <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324880504578296902005944398" type="external">are doomed to fail</a>.</p>
<p>Many doctors were disappointed—including me. Jauhar is clearly an intelligent doctor and writer who has garnered the attention of important decision-makers. He was putting a spotlight on a problem that needs addressing badly, and yet he seemed to be summoning up the same tired solution we’ve already been trying for 30 years. I concluded that Jauhar had to be another out-of-touch East Coast academic physician.</p>
<p>But I was wrong. When we spoke, I found Dr. Jauhar to be a deeply thoughtful physician whose experiences were remarkably similar to mine, even though we practice on opposite sides of the country. “The last thing I intended was to call for more bureaucratic entanglements or more regulations,” Jauhar said. “I am also a practicing physician and I deal with this stuff all the time.”</p>
<p>During the course of our conversation, Jauhar spoke about doctors burdened with unnecessary paperwork and how it takes away from patient care. In one amusing coincidence, we had both recently been tasked to write a letter attesting to a patient’s need for oxygen. For both of us, it took several iterations—requiring rewrites and multiple faxes— to get the wording precisely right for the oxygen to be delivered. The medical equipment companies, under increased scrutiny of the Affordable Care Act, insist on elaborate documentation to protect themselves in the case of an insurance or Medicare audit.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>I point out this trivial example exactly because it is trivial—and it was common to both of us, although Jauhar is a specialist and I am a primary care physician. This is a reckless misuse of physician time and energy. A country that is serious about health reform would not take a limited, valued resource and waste it on nonsense like this. It shouldn’t be a surprise then, when a patient presents with unusual symptoms, the overburdened physician is simply not listening. He may be worried if the fax went through or that a desperate patient can’t get an oxygen tank, and he may give the patient in front of him the usual thoughtless response: “That’s not in the evidence base.”</p>
<p>Physicians are overwhelmed because we are in the middle of a collision of powerful unrestrained forces. In the last 30 years, there’s never been the political will to take on pharmaceutical pricing, exploitative insurance contracting with physicians, tort reform, administration and CEO salaries, payments to home health companies, cost shifting to ERs, the overpricing of imaging services, or patient demands for unnecessary care (a major driver of spending).</p>
<p>Instead of dealing with any of these politically sensitive items, every single one of them has become part of the physician’s to-do list. Overpriced drugs? Make the doctor call in for a “prior authorization.” Concerned about fraud? Make the physician fax over a carefully worded note—three times if necessary. Worried about lack of supervision of physical therapists? Make the doctor sign an illegible six-page treatment plan that he has no expertise in or ability to evaluate. Worried about hospital re-admissions? Dock the physician’s pay. Worried that with all of this stress your doctor may not always be so nice? Arm the patient with a patient-satisfaction scorecard.</p>
<p>To be sure, patients should have some guarantee that when they see a doctor, they will get a basic level of acceptable care—and certainly the instinct to control costs is an honorable one. But does anyone think this litany of tasks is an appropriate use of physician time? If you do, please tell that to the seriously ill woman I met recently who can’t get in to see her doctor until next May.</p>
<p>So, how can we right this ship, given the politically powerful, well-financed parties who are profiting from the way things are now? “If I am to call for anything, it would be a greater emphasis on professionalism. It would be great if doctors could do it themselves, but it’s very hard to incentivize professionalism,” Dr. Jauhar said. “We need to return to a professional core where we put the patients first.”</p>
<p>I think he’s right. But the patient is not “put first” when it comes to corporate medicine. There are too many patients like Jack and Victoria scrounging around for years until they find a doctor who will listen. Indeed, turning all doctors into employees is quite a dangerous proposition. Doctors will be too busy to do anything but mindlessly write whatever prescriptions they tell us to write—while assuring us that it is “evidence based.” And corporations will squeeze the patient visit more—now they are even promoting the absurd notion of the “ <a href="http://www.innovations.ahrq.gov/content.aspx?id=1890" type="external">group visit</a>” to increase physician “productivity.”</p>
<p>Physicians will regain our professionalism when we stop participating in this circus. For most primary care physicians, that will mean turning to direct pay or concierge medicine—because all this interference with the doctor-patient relationship has ended up putting the patient last.</p>
<p>*Names have been changed.</p>
|
Why Your Doctor Doesn’t Listen to You
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/why-your-doctor-doesnt-listen-to-you
|
2018-10-03
| 4left
|
Why Your Doctor Doesn’t Listen to You
<p>Victoria* was a teenager when a car struck and almost killed her. A major surgery requiring plastic mesh sewn into her belly saved her life. Soon after, her skin erupted in painful rashes that refused to heal.</p>
<p>She consulted specialists all over the country, but they couldn’t help her. They told her they didn’t know the cause of her rashes, but there was no evidence for rashes related to implants. At one point they even told her she was delusional, despite her diffuse ulcerating lesions. After a decade of searching, Victoria found a physician who’d seen patients with unusual symptoms under similar circumstances. After he removed the plastic implant, her skin cleared up completely.</p>
<p>As Victoria spoke, my heart broke as it does every time I hear stories of patient neglect. The week before, a young man named Jack* told a similar story: an accident, then an illness followed by years of debilitating symptoms that forced him to travel the country consulting specialists looking for an answer that never came—until he found a doctor who listened and she began to work with him to find a way to heal.</p>
<p>These stories will come as no surprise to anyone with a chronic illness. All too often, we conventional physicians dismiss patients with unusual complaints or simply ply them with medicines. Of course, the medical community can’t develop a new “evidence base” if we ignore our patients. It’s an insane medical Catch-22, and patients are getting fed up. Now, instead of turning to the once trusted physician, many Americans are spending billions on <a href="http://nccam.nih.gov/news/2009/073009.htm" type="external">alternative and complementary medicine</a>.</p>
<p>Is the medicine we practice simply no good, or are the doctors to blame? The answer might be both.</p>
<p>It’s widely accepted that conventional medicine frequently fails to help people with <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/pre-diabetes_b_1237014.html" type="external">chronic ailments</a>. It’s set up to fail, as most clinics function as dehumanizing assembly lines better suited for manufacturing cars than treating people. While health care consultants insist on finding ways to enhance “efficiency,” efficiency and assembly lines only make sense if we know everything there is to know about how the body functions—but we don’t.</p>
<p>It’s a well-known fact that many patients don’t fit our heuristics. Instead, they have weird, unrecognizable constellations of symptoms—and most doctors don’t have the time to deal with it. If we do anything for them at all, we might scan or scope them, send them for referrals, and then finally send them away with a printout explaining fibromyalgia or irritable bowel syndrome or other similar diagnoses. Doctors are then on to the next patient, and between patients they are distracted by a towering mountain of non-clinical tasks. Doctors aren’t dumb. They know this is a rotten deal and they are demoralized, running faster and faster with no hope of catching up.</p>
<p>Now <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/science/list.html" type="external">The New York Times</a> best-selling book Doctored, The Disillusionment of the American Physician, by Sandeep Jauhar, MD, explores this dismal state of affairs. The book is a memoir that highlights the problem of physician burnout in the midst of our by now decades-long health care crisis. In a recent <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-ailing-medical-system-a-doctors-perspective-1409325361?utm_source=nuemd&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=-&amp;utm_content=2014-09-vo8&amp;utm_campaign=top-5#livefyre-comment" type="external">Wall Street Journal feature</a>, Jauhar neatly details how we got here—how corporate and government intrusions turned a once intellectually stimulating profession into a mind-numbing enterprise. One physician who commented on Jauhar’s article even likened it to slavery. In another recent <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.medscape.com_viewarticle_830152-5F7&amp;d=AAMFaQ&amp;c=r30hyXAdWe8oret4PlAIyA&amp;r=cmcLbLlhV3FXvcVrwHoiStggOW-0C4dIjKL7Izg7R40&amp;m=ugS4oLtBu_enFi-0PXZ8lJtP0Ot1PH7c75cCfYcLzTk&amp;s=2kr_XvbYA7HIBDofUrY61YWV5qOsxh7fRj8q_Oxyt_Q&amp;e=" type="external">Medscape article</a>, one physician described himself as a “beaten dog.”</p>
<p>If doctoring these days is akin to <a href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2006/11/universal-health-care-step-towards.html" type="external">a kind of humiliated servitude</a>—and many physicians in their private moments <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/233cb4/how_being_a_doctor_became_the_most_miserable/" type="external">claim that it is</a>—then it’s axiomatic that we need less centralized control and more freedom in order to be more responsive to patients. But Dr. Jauhar, who is a cardiologist and director of the Heart Failure Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, seemed to be calling for more centralized control and something he calls “bundled payments” to control costs, akin to the ill-conceived Accountable Care Organizations that many people justifiably believe <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324880504578296902005944398" type="external">are doomed to fail</a>.</p>
<p>Many doctors were disappointed—including me. Jauhar is clearly an intelligent doctor and writer who has garnered the attention of important decision-makers. He was putting a spotlight on a problem that needs addressing badly, and yet he seemed to be summoning up the same tired solution we’ve already been trying for 30 years. I concluded that Jauhar had to be another out-of-touch East Coast academic physician.</p>
<p>But I was wrong. When we spoke, I found Dr. Jauhar to be a deeply thoughtful physician whose experiences were remarkably similar to mine, even though we practice on opposite sides of the country. “The last thing I intended was to call for more bureaucratic entanglements or more regulations,” Jauhar said. “I am also a practicing physician and I deal with this stuff all the time.”</p>
<p>During the course of our conversation, Jauhar spoke about doctors burdened with unnecessary paperwork and how it takes away from patient care. In one amusing coincidence, we had both recently been tasked to write a letter attesting to a patient’s need for oxygen. For both of us, it took several iterations—requiring rewrites and multiple faxes— to get the wording precisely right for the oxygen to be delivered. The medical equipment companies, under increased scrutiny of the Affordable Care Act, insist on elaborate documentation to protect themselves in the case of an insurance or Medicare audit.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>I point out this trivial example exactly because it is trivial—and it was common to both of us, although Jauhar is a specialist and I am a primary care physician. This is a reckless misuse of physician time and energy. A country that is serious about health reform would not take a limited, valued resource and waste it on nonsense like this. It shouldn’t be a surprise then, when a patient presents with unusual symptoms, the overburdened physician is simply not listening. He may be worried if the fax went through or that a desperate patient can’t get an oxygen tank, and he may give the patient in front of him the usual thoughtless response: “That’s not in the evidence base.”</p>
<p>Physicians are overwhelmed because we are in the middle of a collision of powerful unrestrained forces. In the last 30 years, there’s never been the political will to take on pharmaceutical pricing, exploitative insurance contracting with physicians, tort reform, administration and CEO salaries, payments to home health companies, cost shifting to ERs, the overpricing of imaging services, or patient demands for unnecessary care (a major driver of spending).</p>
<p>Instead of dealing with any of these politically sensitive items, every single one of them has become part of the physician’s to-do list. Overpriced drugs? Make the doctor call in for a “prior authorization.” Concerned about fraud? Make the physician fax over a carefully worded note—three times if necessary. Worried about lack of supervision of physical therapists? Make the doctor sign an illegible six-page treatment plan that he has no expertise in or ability to evaluate. Worried about hospital re-admissions? Dock the physician’s pay. Worried that with all of this stress your doctor may not always be so nice? Arm the patient with a patient-satisfaction scorecard.</p>
<p>To be sure, patients should have some guarantee that when they see a doctor, they will get a basic level of acceptable care—and certainly the instinct to control costs is an honorable one. But does anyone think this litany of tasks is an appropriate use of physician time? If you do, please tell that to the seriously ill woman I met recently who can’t get in to see her doctor until next May.</p>
<p>So, how can we right this ship, given the politically powerful, well-financed parties who are profiting from the way things are now? “If I am to call for anything, it would be a greater emphasis on professionalism. It would be great if doctors could do it themselves, but it’s very hard to incentivize professionalism,” Dr. Jauhar said. “We need to return to a professional core where we put the patients first.”</p>
<p>I think he’s right. But the patient is not “put first” when it comes to corporate medicine. There are too many patients like Jack and Victoria scrounging around for years until they find a doctor who will listen. Indeed, turning all doctors into employees is quite a dangerous proposition. Doctors will be too busy to do anything but mindlessly write whatever prescriptions they tell us to write—while assuring us that it is “evidence based.” And corporations will squeeze the patient visit more—now they are even promoting the absurd notion of the “ <a href="http://www.innovations.ahrq.gov/content.aspx?id=1890" type="external">group visit</a>” to increase physician “productivity.”</p>
<p>Physicians will regain our professionalism when we stop participating in this circus. For most primary care physicians, that will mean turning to direct pay or concierge medicine—because all this interference with the doctor-patient relationship has ended up putting the patient last.</p>
<p>*Names have been changed.</p>
| 7,365 |
<p>When Admiral William J “Fox” Fallon was chosen to replace General John Abizaid as chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM) in March 2007, many analysts didn’t shy from reaching a seemingly clear-cut conclusion: the Bush administration was preparing for war with Iran and had selected the most suitable man for this job. Almost exactly a year later, as Fallon abruptly resigned over a controversial interview with Esquire magazine, we are left with a less certain analysis.</p>
<p>Fallon was the first man from the navy to head CENTCOM. With the US army fighting two difficult and lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and considering the highly exaggerated Iranian threat, a war with Iran was apparently inevitable, albeit one that had to be conducted differently. Echoing the year-old speculation, Arnaud de Borchgrave of UPI wrote on 14 March 2007 that an attack against Iran “would fall on the US Navy’s battle carrier groups and its cruise missiles and Air Force B-2 bombers based in Diego Garcia”.</p>
<p>Fallon is a man of immense experience, having served equally high-profiled positions in the past (he was commander of US Pacific Command from February 2005 to March 2007). The Bush administration probably saw him further as a conformist, in contrast to his predecessor Abizaid who promoted a diplomatic rather than military approach and who went as far as suggesting that the US might have to learn to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>Fallon’s recent resignation may have seemed abrupt to many, but it was a well-orchestrated move. His interview in Esquire depicted him as highly critical of the Bush administration’s policy on Iran; the magazine described him as the only thing standing between the administration and their newest war plan. Further, his resignation and “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s handling of [it] is the greatest and most public break in the Bush team’s handling of preparations for war against Iran that we are ever likely to see,” wrote respected commentators and former CIA analysts Bill and Kathy Christison on 12 March. “Gates has in fact publicly associated himself with the resignation by saying it was the right thing for Fallon to do, and Gates said he had accepted the resignation without telling Bush first.”</p>
<p>Fallon’s resignation represents a bittersweet moment. On the one hand it’s an indication of the continued fading enthusiasm for the militant culture espoused by the neo-conservatives. On the other, it’s an ominous sign of the Bush administration’s probable intentions during the last year of the president’s term. Sixty-three-year-old Admiral Fallon would not have embarked on such a momentous decision after decades of service were it not for the fact that he knew a war was looming, and — having considered the historic implications for such a war — chose not to pull the trigger.</p>
<p>Unlike the political atmosphere in the US prior to the Iraq war — shaped by fear, manipulation and demonisation — the US political environment is now much more accustomed to war opposition, which is largely encouraged and validated by the fact that leading army brass are themselves speaking out with increasing resolve. Indeed pressure and resistance are mounting on all sides; those rooting for another war are meeting stiff resistance by those who can foresee its disastrous repercussions.</p>
<p>The push and pull in the coming months will probably determine the timing and level of US military adventure against Iran, or even whether such an adventure will be able to actualise (one cannot discount the possibility that as a token for Israel, the US might provide a middle way solution by intervening in Lebanon, alongside Israel, to destroy Hizbullah. Many options are on the table, and another Bush-infused crisis is still very much possible).</p>
<p>In an atmosphere of hyped militancy, Fallon’s resignation might be viewed as a positive sign, showing that the cards are not all stacked in favour of the war party. Nonetheless, it is premature to indulge in optimism. Prior signs have indicated a serious rift among those who once believed that war is the answer to every conflict. Yet that didn’t necessary hamper the war cheerleaders’ efforts.</p>
<p>Last December, the National Intelligence Estimate — an assessment composed by all American intelligence agencies — concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, and that any such programme remained frozen. Meanwhile the “bomb-first-ask-questions-later” crowd suggested that such an assessment is pure nonsense. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain has since then sung the tune of “bomb Iran”, — literally — and Israel’s friends continue to speak of an “existential” threat Israel faces due to Iran’s “weapons” — never mind that Israel is itself a formidable nuclear power.</p>
<p>According to Borchgrave, “McCain’s close friend Senator Joe Lieberman… invoking clandestine Iranian explosives smuggled into Iraq, has called for retaliatory military action against Tehran. He and many others warn that Israel faces an existential crisis. One Iranian nuclear-tipped missile on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv could destroy Israel, they argue.”</p>
<p>In fact, Lieberman, and other Israel supporters need no justification for war, neither against Iran nor any of Israel’s foes in the Middle East. They have promoted conflicts on behalf of that country for many years and will likely continue doing so, until enough Americans push hard enough to restack their government’s priorities.</p>
<p>An attack on Iran doesn’t seem as certain as the war against Iraq always did. Public pressure, combined with courageous stances taken by high officials, could create the tidal wave needed to reverse seemingly determined war efforts. Americans can either allow those who continue to speak of “existential threats” and wars of a hundred years to determine and undermine the future of their country, and subsequently world security, or they can reclaim America, tend to its needy and ailing economy, and make up for the many sins committed in their name and in the name of freedom and democracy.</p>
<p>RAMZY BAROUD teaches mass communication at Curtin University of Technology and is the author of <a href="" type="internal">The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle</a>. He is also the editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com. He can be contacted at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2008/03/22/the-coming-uncertain-war-on-iran/
|
2008-03-22
| 4left
|
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
<p>When Admiral William J “Fox” Fallon was chosen to replace General John Abizaid as chief of US Central Command (CENTCOM) in March 2007, many analysts didn’t shy from reaching a seemingly clear-cut conclusion: the Bush administration was preparing for war with Iran and had selected the most suitable man for this job. Almost exactly a year later, as Fallon abruptly resigned over a controversial interview with Esquire magazine, we are left with a less certain analysis.</p>
<p>Fallon was the first man from the navy to head CENTCOM. With the US army fighting two difficult and lengthy wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and considering the highly exaggerated Iranian threat, a war with Iran was apparently inevitable, albeit one that had to be conducted differently. Echoing the year-old speculation, Arnaud de Borchgrave of UPI wrote on 14 March 2007 that an attack against Iran “would fall on the US Navy’s battle carrier groups and its cruise missiles and Air Force B-2 bombers based in Diego Garcia”.</p>
<p>Fallon is a man of immense experience, having served equally high-profiled positions in the past (he was commander of US Pacific Command from February 2005 to March 2007). The Bush administration probably saw him further as a conformist, in contrast to his predecessor Abizaid who promoted a diplomatic rather than military approach and who went as far as suggesting that the US might have to learn to live with an Iranian nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>Fallon’s recent resignation may have seemed abrupt to many, but it was a well-orchestrated move. His interview in Esquire depicted him as highly critical of the Bush administration’s policy on Iran; the magazine described him as the only thing standing between the administration and their newest war plan. Further, his resignation and “Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’s handling of [it] is the greatest and most public break in the Bush team’s handling of preparations for war against Iran that we are ever likely to see,” wrote respected commentators and former CIA analysts Bill and Kathy Christison on 12 March. “Gates has in fact publicly associated himself with the resignation by saying it was the right thing for Fallon to do, and Gates said he had accepted the resignation without telling Bush first.”</p>
<p>Fallon’s resignation represents a bittersweet moment. On the one hand it’s an indication of the continued fading enthusiasm for the militant culture espoused by the neo-conservatives. On the other, it’s an ominous sign of the Bush administration’s probable intentions during the last year of the president’s term. Sixty-three-year-old Admiral Fallon would not have embarked on such a momentous decision after decades of service were it not for the fact that he knew a war was looming, and — having considered the historic implications for such a war — chose not to pull the trigger.</p>
<p>Unlike the political atmosphere in the US prior to the Iraq war — shaped by fear, manipulation and demonisation — the US political environment is now much more accustomed to war opposition, which is largely encouraged and validated by the fact that leading army brass are themselves speaking out with increasing resolve. Indeed pressure and resistance are mounting on all sides; those rooting for another war are meeting stiff resistance by those who can foresee its disastrous repercussions.</p>
<p>The push and pull in the coming months will probably determine the timing and level of US military adventure against Iran, or even whether such an adventure will be able to actualise (one cannot discount the possibility that as a token for Israel, the US might provide a middle way solution by intervening in Lebanon, alongside Israel, to destroy Hizbullah. Many options are on the table, and another Bush-infused crisis is still very much possible).</p>
<p>In an atmosphere of hyped militancy, Fallon’s resignation might be viewed as a positive sign, showing that the cards are not all stacked in favour of the war party. Nonetheless, it is premature to indulge in optimism. Prior signs have indicated a serious rift among those who once believed that war is the answer to every conflict. Yet that didn’t necessary hamper the war cheerleaders’ efforts.</p>
<p>Last December, the National Intelligence Estimate — an assessment composed by all American intelligence agencies — concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, and that any such programme remained frozen. Meanwhile the “bomb-first-ask-questions-later” crowd suggested that such an assessment is pure nonsense. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain has since then sung the tune of “bomb Iran”, — literally — and Israel’s friends continue to speak of an “existential” threat Israel faces due to Iran’s “weapons” — never mind that Israel is itself a formidable nuclear power.</p>
<p>According to Borchgrave, “McCain’s close friend Senator Joe Lieberman… invoking clandestine Iranian explosives smuggled into Iraq, has called for retaliatory military action against Tehran. He and many others warn that Israel faces an existential crisis. One Iranian nuclear-tipped missile on Jerusalem or Tel Aviv could destroy Israel, they argue.”</p>
<p>In fact, Lieberman, and other Israel supporters need no justification for war, neither against Iran nor any of Israel’s foes in the Middle East. They have promoted conflicts on behalf of that country for many years and will likely continue doing so, until enough Americans push hard enough to restack their government’s priorities.</p>
<p>An attack on Iran doesn’t seem as certain as the war against Iraq always did. Public pressure, combined with courageous stances taken by high officials, could create the tidal wave needed to reverse seemingly determined war efforts. Americans can either allow those who continue to speak of “existential threats” and wars of a hundred years to determine and undermine the future of their country, and subsequently world security, or they can reclaim America, tend to its needy and ailing economy, and make up for the many sins committed in their name and in the name of freedom and democracy.</p>
<p>RAMZY BAROUD teaches mass communication at Curtin University of Technology and is the author of <a href="" type="internal">The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle</a>. He is also the editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com. He can be contacted at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,366 |
<p />
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>For Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) investors, the summer of 2015 represents the good old days. Way back then, the stock hit an all-time high near $240 per share -- a remarkable rise, considering the stock entered 2012 at roughly $30 per share. But since then the company has lost its mojo -- at least, that's what the stock price chart would lead you to believe:</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/ILMN" type="external">ILMN</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that Illumina has continued to grow at double-digit clips quarter after quarter. The problem, it seems, is that investors are overly concerned with growth in instrument sales. For instance, when management forecast in October that fourth-quarter 2016 sales will be flat compared to the year-ago period because instrument sales will come in lower than originally expected, Mr. Market sent shares sharply lower.</p>
<p>That may seem like the right metric to focus on for a company that claims it's leading a DNA-sequencing revolution, but instrument sales are only its second-most important source of revenue today, and they will likely soon fall to third. So when investors ask whether or not Illumina can regain its mojo, I think the answer is "yes" -- you just have to know where to look for the answer.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>While the company sells plenty of sequencers and other lab machines each quarter, over half of its revenue -- and much of its growth -- is derived from selling the reagents, microarrays, and flow cells that are necessary to operate that installed base of instruments. For the first nine months of 2016, consumables revenue increased 22% year over year. Instrument revenue dropped 20%, and services revenue -- which could soon provide more revenue than instrument sales -- increased 16%. Total year-over-year sales increased 10%.</p>
<p>Here's a breakdown of reported revenue in recent full-year periods, with year-to-date totals for 2016 and each segment's contribution to total sales:</p>
<p>*Numbers for first nine months of 2016. Source: SEC filings.</p>
<p>The table above shows the growing importance of consumables and services revenue to Illumina's overall growth in recent years, as well as the gains it made in instrument sales. The major concern among investors seems to stem from the rapid decline in contributions from instrument sales to total revenue thus far in 2016. Investors are worried that growth in consumables will be dragged down by slowing growth in the installed base of machines from which the company can extract recurring revenue.</p>
<p>That logic makes sense -- except when investors consider the types of instruments being sold and the amount of consumables revenue that can be generated from each.</p>
<p>Sequencing technology and the market for it has changed since 2007, when instrument sales comprised 37% of total revenue, and even since 2012, when instrument sales comprised 27% of total revenue. The emergence of, and necessity for, next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies has fundamentally changed the game. Researchers covet NGS because it provides more and better data per run and allows higher throughput than previous sequencing methods. Those improvements come at the cost of higher consumables requirements.</p>
<p>In fact, some estimates peg consumables at two-thirds of the overall value of the NGS market. It shouldn't be that difficult to believe; consider the HiSeq X Ten, the company's $10 million sequencing system that could lower sequencing costs for a full human genome to $1,000. That remarkable figure includes $797 of consumables per genome.</p>
<p>In other words, an installed based composed of more NGS machines and newer instruments is more valuable to Illumina, even if it comes at the "cost" of slower instrument sales than was historically the case.</p>
<p>It's easy to see why investors would be alarmed by a warning that fourth-quarter 2016 revenue won't grow from the prior year's levels, especially for a stock trading at 60 times trailing earnings. But the recent concerns over slowing instrument sales seem nearsighted. The opportunities for near- and long-term growth in NGS markets should allow the company to continue growing consumables and services revenue even if instrument sales slow. That doesn't even include the budding opportunities in clinical diagnostics and consumer markets being eyed by management. Given the trends occurring in plain sight, albeit within the research communities that leverage the company's products, I think it's safe to bet that Illumina shares will rise again.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Illumina When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=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=2444de63-e670-4098-af5f-fc2277497cc5&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 Illumina 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=2444de63-e670-4098-af5f-fc2277497cc5&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 November 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBlacknGold/info.aspx" type="external">Maxx Chatsko Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxxChatsko" type="external">Follow him on Twitter Opens a New Window.</a>to keep up with developments in engineered biology and materials science.</p>
<p>The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Illumina. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
|
Can Illumina Regain Its Mojo?
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/03/can-illumina-regain-its-mojo.html
|
2016-12-03
| 0right
|
Can Illumina Regain Its Mojo?
<p />
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>For Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) investors, the summer of 2015 represents the good old days. Way back then, the stock hit an all-time high near $240 per share -- a remarkable rise, considering the stock entered 2012 at roughly $30 per share. But since then the company has lost its mojo -- at least, that's what the stock price chart would lead you to believe:</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/ILMN" type="external">ILMN</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that Illumina has continued to grow at double-digit clips quarter after quarter. The problem, it seems, is that investors are overly concerned with growth in instrument sales. For instance, when management forecast in October that fourth-quarter 2016 sales will be flat compared to the year-ago period because instrument sales will come in lower than originally expected, Mr. Market sent shares sharply lower.</p>
<p>That may seem like the right metric to focus on for a company that claims it's leading a DNA-sequencing revolution, but instrument sales are only its second-most important source of revenue today, and they will likely soon fall to third. So when investors ask whether or not Illumina can regain its mojo, I think the answer is "yes" -- you just have to know where to look for the answer.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>While the company sells plenty of sequencers and other lab machines each quarter, over half of its revenue -- and much of its growth -- is derived from selling the reagents, microarrays, and flow cells that are necessary to operate that installed base of instruments. For the first nine months of 2016, consumables revenue increased 22% year over year. Instrument revenue dropped 20%, and services revenue -- which could soon provide more revenue than instrument sales -- increased 16%. Total year-over-year sales increased 10%.</p>
<p>Here's a breakdown of reported revenue in recent full-year periods, with year-to-date totals for 2016 and each segment's contribution to total sales:</p>
<p>*Numbers for first nine months of 2016. Source: SEC filings.</p>
<p>The table above shows the growing importance of consumables and services revenue to Illumina's overall growth in recent years, as well as the gains it made in instrument sales. The major concern among investors seems to stem from the rapid decline in contributions from instrument sales to total revenue thus far in 2016. Investors are worried that growth in consumables will be dragged down by slowing growth in the installed base of machines from which the company can extract recurring revenue.</p>
<p>That logic makes sense -- except when investors consider the types of instruments being sold and the amount of consumables revenue that can be generated from each.</p>
<p>Sequencing technology and the market for it has changed since 2007, when instrument sales comprised 37% of total revenue, and even since 2012, when instrument sales comprised 27% of total revenue. The emergence of, and necessity for, next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies has fundamentally changed the game. Researchers covet NGS because it provides more and better data per run and allows higher throughput than previous sequencing methods. Those improvements come at the cost of higher consumables requirements.</p>
<p>In fact, some estimates peg consumables at two-thirds of the overall value of the NGS market. It shouldn't be that difficult to believe; consider the HiSeq X Ten, the company's $10 million sequencing system that could lower sequencing costs for a full human genome to $1,000. That remarkable figure includes $797 of consumables per genome.</p>
<p>In other words, an installed based composed of more NGS machines and newer instruments is more valuable to Illumina, even if it comes at the "cost" of slower instrument sales than was historically the case.</p>
<p>It's easy to see why investors would be alarmed by a warning that fourth-quarter 2016 revenue won't grow from the prior year's levels, especially for a stock trading at 60 times trailing earnings. But the recent concerns over slowing instrument sales seem nearsighted. The opportunities for near- and long-term growth in NGS markets should allow the company to continue growing consumables and services revenue even if instrument sales slow. That doesn't even include the budding opportunities in clinical diagnostics and consumer markets being eyed by management. Given the trends occurring in plain sight, albeit within the research communities that leverage the company's products, I think it's safe to bet that Illumina shares will rise again.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Illumina When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=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=2444de63-e670-4098-af5f-fc2277497cc5&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 Illumina 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=2444de63-e670-4098-af5f-fc2277497cc5&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 November 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBlacknGold/info.aspx" type="external">Maxx Chatsko Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. <a href="https://twitter.com/MaxxChatsko" type="external">Follow him on Twitter Opens a New Window.</a>to keep up with developments in engineered biology and materials science.</p>
<p>The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Illumina. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=isiedilnk018048&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://www.fool.com/knowledge-center/motley.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
| 7,367 |
<p>FBI Director James Comey just dropped a bombshell while testifying before the House Intelligence Committee.</p>
<p>While being questioned by committee members, Comey acknowledged that while the Federal Bureau of Investigations typically doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations until the investigation has concluded, “In unusual circumstances, [commenting on certain investigations] might be appropriate.” He then said that his agency was indeed looking into President Trump’s ties to Russia during his presidential campaign, and that those connections would be “if possible, prosecuted.”</p>
<p>“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to disclose that the FBI is investigating the Russian government’s interference in the US elections,” <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-comey-idUSKBN16R1OV?il=0" type="external">Comey said</a> during the hearing. “Because it is an open, ongoing investigation and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining.”</p>
<p>He added that the FBI is “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”</p>
<p>Up until Monday’s hearing, Comey had only been talking to members of Congress in classified, closed-door briefings. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters last week after a classified briefing with Comey that she believed Trump’s eventual resignation <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-will-resign-soon-dianne-feinstein-senator-senate-judiciary-committee-a7639341.html" type="external">was inevitable</a>.</p>
<p>Prior to the hearing, President Trump took to Twitter to defend himself against the allegations that Russia worked with his campaign during the election, and dismissed the investigation as “fake news.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Watch live feed of the hearing below, courtesy of PBS NewsHour:</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Kevin Wallace is a journalist with five years’ experience in print and digital media, and covers politics, media, and culture for the Resistance Report. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.</p>
|
Comey just confirmed the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia
| true |
http://resistancereport.com/politics/comey-fbi-russia-trump/
|
2017-03-20
| 4left
|
Comey just confirmed the FBI is investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia
<p>FBI Director James Comey just dropped a bombshell while testifying before the House Intelligence Committee.</p>
<p>While being questioned by committee members, Comey acknowledged that while the Federal Bureau of Investigations typically doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations until the investigation has concluded, “In unusual circumstances, [commenting on certain investigations] might be appropriate.” He then said that his agency was indeed looking into President Trump’s ties to Russia during his presidential campaign, and that those connections would be “if possible, prosecuted.”</p>
<p>“I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to disclose that the FBI is investigating the Russian government’s interference in the US elections,” <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-comey-idUSKBN16R1OV?il=0" type="external">Comey said</a> during the hearing. “Because it is an open, ongoing investigation and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining.”</p>
<p>He added that the FBI is “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”</p>
<p>Up until Monday’s hearing, Comey had only been talking to members of Congress in classified, closed-door briefings. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters last week after a classified briefing with Comey that she believed Trump’s eventual resignation <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-will-resign-soon-dianne-feinstein-senator-senate-judiciary-committee-a7639341.html" type="external">was inevitable</a>.</p>
<p>Prior to the hearing, President Trump took to Twitter to defend himself against the allegations that Russia worked with his campaign during the election, and dismissed the investigation as “fake news.”</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>Watch live feed of the hearing below, courtesy of PBS NewsHour:</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Kevin Wallace is a journalist with five years’ experience in print and digital media, and covers politics, media, and culture for the Resistance Report. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.</p>
| 7,368 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. - The void left in the Luna Building by the departure of the Marble Brewery tap room will be filled by New Mexico Hard Cider.</p>
<p>The company, owned and operated by Craig Moya and Heather Tassel, announced its move with a news release Thursday, saying the opening is expected in September in time to celebrate Fiestas.</p>
<p>The space will be renovated to make room for group tables, with a lounge area added in back and the patio space expanded. A rotating series of New Mexico-made beers will be on tap; a long list of locally produced wines as well as its own cider also will be available.</p>
<p>The Luna Building is at 505 Cerrillos Road and the new version of the tap room, not yet named, will be in Unit A.</p>
<p>New Mexico Hard Cider began operations in Santa Fe last December. You can track updates on Facebook or at www.nmcider.com.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
NM Hard Cider to take over Marble tap room in Luna Building
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/624156/nm-hard-cider-to-take-over-marble-tap-room-in-luna-building.html
| 2least
|
NM Hard Cider to take over Marble tap room in Luna Building
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>SANTA FE, N.M. - The void left in the Luna Building by the departure of the Marble Brewery tap room will be filled by New Mexico Hard Cider.</p>
<p>The company, owned and operated by Craig Moya and Heather Tassel, announced its move with a news release Thursday, saying the opening is expected in September in time to celebrate Fiestas.</p>
<p>The space will be renovated to make room for group tables, with a lounge area added in back and the patio space expanded. A rotating series of New Mexico-made beers will be on tap; a long list of locally produced wines as well as its own cider also will be available.</p>
<p>The Luna Building is at 505 Cerrillos Road and the new version of the tap room, not yet named, will be in Unit A.</p>
<p>New Mexico Hard Cider began operations in Santa Fe last December. You can track updates on Facebook or at www.nmcider.com.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,369 |
|
<p>Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) has just scored a significant endorsement in Iowa.</p>
<p>Bob Vander Plaats, president of the <a href="http://www.thefamilyleader.com/" type="external">Family Leader</a>, is a coveted Iowa endorsement, and has decided to endorse Cruz. He told <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/12/10/why-bob-vander-plaats-chose-ted-cruz-over-donald-trump-marco-rubio-ben-carson/77087998/" type="external">The Des Moines Register,</a> "At the end of the day, we truly believe that Ted Cruz is the most consistent and principled conservative who has the ability to not only win Iowa but I believe to win the (Republican) nomination."</p>
<p>"I think what's appealing about Ted Cruz is he still gives that 'outside' appearance," Vander Plaats said. "He has not been embraced by the Washington establishment community, on either side of the aisle. So he's still viewed as that outside candidate who really knows how this thing works and what needs to be changed."</p>
<p>Vander Plaats explained he did not support real estate mogul Donald Trump because he did not attend the Family Leader's Presidential Family Forum. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) did not get Vander Plaats's support because "the one issue he decided he was going to lead in Washington, D.C., with (Democratic New York U.S. Sen. Chuck) Schumer and (Republican Arizona U.S. Sen.) John McCain and the 'gang of eight' gave and gives everybody a little bit of cause for pause. And with immigration being such a big issue today, I think that's going to be a hurdle that's going to be very steep for Marco Rubio to clear."</p>
<p>The Des Moines Register called Vander Plaats's endorsement of Cruz a "triumph" for the senator. Radio host Steve Deace, a key figure in Iowa politics who has also <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/news/iowa-radio-host-steve-deace-endorses-cruz/" type="external">endorsed</a> Cruz, <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/11/what-about-bob-the-critical-iowa-endorsement" type="external">called</a> Vander Plaats "the most wanted endorsement of 2016" because in the last two Iowa caucuses, Vander Plaats's endorsed candidates, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008 and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in 2012, won. The Des Moines Register said that Vander is "a master of capturing media attention."</p>
<p>"He has not been embraced by the Washington establishment community, on either side of the aisle. So he's still viewed as that outside candidate who really knows how this thing works and what needs to be changed."</p>
<p>Bob Vander Plaats on Ted Cruz</p>
<p>Cruz is currently second in the <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/" type="external">RealClearPolitics polling averages</a> in Iowa and recently came first in a poll in Iowa. Vander Plaats's endorsement may just be what Cruz needs to secure a victory in Iowa.</p>
|
Cruz Wins Key Iowa Endorsement
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/1759/cruz-wins-key-iowa-endorsement-aaron-bandler
|
2015-12-10
| 0right
|
Cruz Wins Key Iowa Endorsement
<p>Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) has just scored a significant endorsement in Iowa.</p>
<p>Bob Vander Plaats, president of the <a href="http://www.thefamilyleader.com/" type="external">Family Leader</a>, is a coveted Iowa endorsement, and has decided to endorse Cruz. He told <a href="http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2015/12/10/why-bob-vander-plaats-chose-ted-cruz-over-donald-trump-marco-rubio-ben-carson/77087998/" type="external">The Des Moines Register,</a> "At the end of the day, we truly believe that Ted Cruz is the most consistent and principled conservative who has the ability to not only win Iowa but I believe to win the (Republican) nomination."</p>
<p>"I think what's appealing about Ted Cruz is he still gives that 'outside' appearance," Vander Plaats said. "He has not been embraced by the Washington establishment community, on either side of the aisle. So he's still viewed as that outside candidate who really knows how this thing works and what needs to be changed."</p>
<p>Vander Plaats explained he did not support real estate mogul Donald Trump because he did not attend the Family Leader's Presidential Family Forum. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) did not get Vander Plaats's support because "the one issue he decided he was going to lead in Washington, D.C., with (Democratic New York U.S. Sen. Chuck) Schumer and (Republican Arizona U.S. Sen.) John McCain and the 'gang of eight' gave and gives everybody a little bit of cause for pause. And with immigration being such a big issue today, I think that's going to be a hurdle that's going to be very steep for Marco Rubio to clear."</p>
<p>The Des Moines Register called Vander Plaats's endorsement of Cruz a "triumph" for the senator. Radio host Steve Deace, a key figure in Iowa politics who has also <a href="https://www.tedcruz.org/news/iowa-radio-host-steve-deace-endorses-cruz/" type="external">endorsed</a> Cruz, <a href="https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2015/11/what-about-bob-the-critical-iowa-endorsement" type="external">called</a> Vander Plaats "the most wanted endorsement of 2016" because in the last two Iowa caucuses, Vander Plaats's endorsed candidates, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008 and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in 2012, won. The Des Moines Register said that Vander is "a master of capturing media attention."</p>
<p>"He has not been embraced by the Washington establishment community, on either side of the aisle. So he's still viewed as that outside candidate who really knows how this thing works and what needs to be changed."</p>
<p>Bob Vander Plaats on Ted Cruz</p>
<p>Cruz is currently second in the <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/" type="external">RealClearPolitics polling averages</a> in Iowa and recently came first in a poll in Iowa. Vander Plaats's endorsement may just be what Cruz needs to secure a victory in Iowa.</p>
| 7,370 |
<p>A Circle K employee in Albuquerque, New Mexico, defended herself with a firearm on Monday. As a result of her actions, she has been suspended for two weeks.</p>
<p>Jennifer Wertz was scheduled to work until 10 p.m. on Monday. The idea of walking to her car at the end of her late-night shift made her feel unsafe, so she armed herself, according to <a href="http://www.koat.com/article/clerk-suspended-for-2-weeks-after-shooting-accused-armed-robber/12350791" type="external">KOAT</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, “Wertz put her gun in her pocket after she heard that another nearby convenience store was just robbed. She said she was not behind the counter when a man barged in with a gun.”</p>
<p>After the armed robber, now identified as Ferron Mendez, entered the store, he allegedly pointed his gun at Wertz. She pulled her gun and opened fire, hitting him in the torso. Mendez is currently in the hospital awaiting charges.</p>
<p>Circle K orders their employees “not to chase or provoke” armed robbers, and to simply “stand there and give them what they want,” according to Wertz. This didn't sit well with the clerk, who told KOAT: “I'm sick and tired of being a sitting duck. He pointed the gun at my face ...”</p>
<p>Wertz maintains that she was in compliance with New Mexico gun laws because her firearm was not concealed, but “visible from her hip.” She added that there had been a spate of robberies prior to the incident, and that Circle K had “done nothing to protect me, so I felt the need to protect myself.”</p>
<p>Both KOAT and <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/09/22/gas-station-clerk-suspended-for-shooting-armed-robber/" type="external">New York Daily News</a> attempted to contact Circle K management, but were unsuccessful.</p>
|
Convenience Store Clerk Fires Gun At Armed Robber, Gets Suspended For Two Weeks
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/21435/convenience-store-clerk-fires-gun-armed-robber-frank-camp
|
2017-09-23
| 0right
|
Convenience Store Clerk Fires Gun At Armed Robber, Gets Suspended For Two Weeks
<p>A Circle K employee in Albuquerque, New Mexico, defended herself with a firearm on Monday. As a result of her actions, she has been suspended for two weeks.</p>
<p>Jennifer Wertz was scheduled to work until 10 p.m. on Monday. The idea of walking to her car at the end of her late-night shift made her feel unsafe, so she armed herself, according to <a href="http://www.koat.com/article/clerk-suspended-for-2-weeks-after-shooting-accused-armed-robber/12350791" type="external">KOAT</a>.</p>
<p>Additionally, “Wertz put her gun in her pocket after she heard that another nearby convenience store was just robbed. She said she was not behind the counter when a man barged in with a gun.”</p>
<p>After the armed robber, now identified as Ferron Mendez, entered the store, he allegedly pointed his gun at Wertz. She pulled her gun and opened fire, hitting him in the torso. Mendez is currently in the hospital awaiting charges.</p>
<p>Circle K orders their employees “not to chase or provoke” armed robbers, and to simply “stand there and give them what they want,” according to Wertz. This didn't sit well with the clerk, who told KOAT: “I'm sick and tired of being a sitting duck. He pointed the gun at my face ...”</p>
<p>Wertz maintains that she was in compliance with New Mexico gun laws because her firearm was not concealed, but “visible from her hip.” She added that there had been a spate of robberies prior to the incident, and that Circle K had “done nothing to protect me, so I felt the need to protect myself.”</p>
<p>Both KOAT and <a href="https://nypost.com/2017/09/22/gas-station-clerk-suspended-for-shooting-armed-robber/" type="external">New York Daily News</a> attempted to contact Circle K management, but were unsuccessful.</p>
| 7,371 |
<p>The four-door Mini Cooper Countryman was the only one of 12 cars to earn a top rating of "good" in new frontal crash tests.</p>
<p>The Nissan Leaf, Nissan Juke, Fiat 500L and Mazda5 wagon fared the worst in tests performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The frontal test, introduced in 2012, replicates what happens when 25 percent of a car's front end strikes a rigid object at 40 miles per hour.</p>
<p>The Chevrolet Volt, Ford C-Max, Mitsubishi Lancer, Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ all got the second-highest rating of "acceptable." The Hyundai Veloster and Scion xB got "moderate" ratings.</p>
<p>The Volt was the only car in the group to earn the institute's "Top Safety Pick Plus" rating, because it has an optional front crash-prevention system.</p>
|
Small cars fare poorly in new frontal crash tests, Mini Cooper Countryman gets top rating
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/07/30/small-cars-fare-poorly-in-new-frontal-crash-tests-mini-cooper-countryman-gets.html
|
2016-03-05
| 0right
|
Small cars fare poorly in new frontal crash tests, Mini Cooper Countryman gets top rating
<p>The four-door Mini Cooper Countryman was the only one of 12 cars to earn a top rating of "good" in new frontal crash tests.</p>
<p>The Nissan Leaf, Nissan Juke, Fiat 500L and Mazda5 wagon fared the worst in tests performed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The frontal test, introduced in 2012, replicates what happens when 25 percent of a car's front end strikes a rigid object at 40 miles per hour.</p>
<p>The Chevrolet Volt, Ford C-Max, Mitsubishi Lancer, Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ all got the second-highest rating of "acceptable." The Hyundai Veloster and Scion xB got "moderate" ratings.</p>
<p>The Volt was the only car in the group to earn the institute's "Top Safety Pick Plus" rating, because it has an optional front crash-prevention system.</p>
| 7,372 |
<p>A North Carolina judge says Charlotte will maintain control of one of the nation's busiest airports instead of a commission pushed by state Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>Judge Robert Ervin on Monday blocked the commission from taking over Charlotte Douglas International Airport while both sides wait for a decision by the Federal Aviation Administration on the issue.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The city praised the ruling as a victory in its contentious fight with Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>The judge last year issued a preliminary injunction blocking the state from stripping control of the airport from the city until the FAA weighed in on the issue. The FAA has said it would stay out of the legal fight.</p>
<p>Charlotte Mayor Dan Clodfelter says the city hopes the ruling will end the legal dispute.</p>
|
North Carolina judge blocks commission pushed by lawmakers from taking over Charlotte airport
| true |
http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/10/13/north-carolina-judge-blocks-commission-pushed-by-lawmakers-from-taking-over.html
|
2016-03-09
| 0right
|
North Carolina judge blocks commission pushed by lawmakers from taking over Charlotte airport
<p>A North Carolina judge says Charlotte will maintain control of one of the nation's busiest airports instead of a commission pushed by state Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>Judge Robert Ervin on Monday blocked the commission from taking over Charlotte Douglas International Airport while both sides wait for a decision by the Federal Aviation Administration on the issue.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The city praised the ruling as a victory in its contentious fight with Republican lawmakers.</p>
<p>The judge last year issued a preliminary injunction blocking the state from stripping control of the airport from the city until the FAA weighed in on the issue. The FAA has said it would stay out of the legal fight.</p>
<p>Charlotte Mayor Dan Clodfelter says the city hopes the ruling will end the legal dispute.</p>
| 7,373 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>An excavator removes debris from the site of a building explosion, Thursday in New York. Rescuers worked amid gusty winds, low temperatures and billowing smoke. (Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press)</p>
<p>NEW YORK - The bodies of all eight people reported missing after a gas explosion destroyed two buildings have been recovered, the fire commissioner said Friday, but workers are treating the scene as a rescue operation in case there are survivors in the rubble.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Salvatore Cassano said no one else is known to be unaccounted for, but workers will continue to scour the debris from the flattened apartment buildings for victims. More than 60 people were injured in Wednesday morning's explosion, and more than 100 others were displaced.</p>
<p>Cassano said about 70 percent of the debris had been cleared at the Upper Manhattan blast site. But he said the pace was expected to quicken after firefighters removed a hazardous rear wall.</p>
<p>He predicted detectives and fire marshals would gain access to the buildings' basements by midday today to begin the investigation into what caused the explosion.</p>
<p>"Right now we are in the process of removing the final amount of debris," Cassano said. "We should be moving much more quickly now."</p>
<p>The rescue effort continued as federal investigators said gas was detected in underground tests of the site in the hours after the explosion, lending support to the hypothesis a gas leak may have been the cause.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>National Transportation Safety Board team member Robert Sumwalt said utility Consolidated Edison dug 50 holes 18 to 24 inches deep around the blast site and measured gas levels in those cavities soon after the explosion. Gas concentration was up to 20 percent in at least five spots, and normal levels in the city's soil should be zero, he said.</p>
<p>"Somehow or another, natural gas did work its way into the ground," he said, adding that pressure testing of nearby pipes was beginning to look for any potential leaks.</p>
<p>The NTSB, which investigates pipeline accidents, will conduct an inquiry after police and fire officials locate what might have sparked the blast.</p>
<p>Mayor Bill de Blasio, who toured a Red Cross shelter where residents of the destroyed buildings are staying, said Friday that the city would find temporary or long-term housing for about 50 displaced families, totaling more than 100 people.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeless Services has about 50 apartments available for families in private buildings where nonprofits are involved in the management, he said, adding that officials are arranging for more apartments that would be available for up to three months.</p>
<p />
|
8 bodies recovered in NYC explosion; search continues
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/368971/8-bodies-recovered-in-nyc-explosion-search-continues.html
| 2least
|
8 bodies recovered in NYC explosion; search continues
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>An excavator removes debris from the site of a building explosion, Thursday in New York. Rescuers worked amid gusty winds, low temperatures and billowing smoke. (Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press)</p>
<p>NEW YORK - The bodies of all eight people reported missing after a gas explosion destroyed two buildings have been recovered, the fire commissioner said Friday, but workers are treating the scene as a rescue operation in case there are survivors in the rubble.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Salvatore Cassano said no one else is known to be unaccounted for, but workers will continue to scour the debris from the flattened apartment buildings for victims. More than 60 people were injured in Wednesday morning's explosion, and more than 100 others were displaced.</p>
<p>Cassano said about 70 percent of the debris had been cleared at the Upper Manhattan blast site. But he said the pace was expected to quicken after firefighters removed a hazardous rear wall.</p>
<p>He predicted detectives and fire marshals would gain access to the buildings' basements by midday today to begin the investigation into what caused the explosion.</p>
<p>"Right now we are in the process of removing the final amount of debris," Cassano said. "We should be moving much more quickly now."</p>
<p>The rescue effort continued as federal investigators said gas was detected in underground tests of the site in the hours after the explosion, lending support to the hypothesis a gas leak may have been the cause.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>National Transportation Safety Board team member Robert Sumwalt said utility Consolidated Edison dug 50 holes 18 to 24 inches deep around the blast site and measured gas levels in those cavities soon after the explosion. Gas concentration was up to 20 percent in at least five spots, and normal levels in the city's soil should be zero, he said.</p>
<p>"Somehow or another, natural gas did work its way into the ground," he said, adding that pressure testing of nearby pipes was beginning to look for any potential leaks.</p>
<p>The NTSB, which investigates pipeline accidents, will conduct an inquiry after police and fire officials locate what might have sparked the blast.</p>
<p>Mayor Bill de Blasio, who toured a Red Cross shelter where residents of the destroyed buildings are staying, said Friday that the city would find temporary or long-term housing for about 50 displaced families, totaling more than 100 people.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeless Services has about 50 apartments available for families in private buildings where nonprofits are involved in the management, he said, adding that officials are arranging for more apartments that would be available for up to three months.</p>
<p />
| 7,374 |
|
<p>Many had hoped that the “adults” in the White House would check the influence of Donald Trump’s “yes men” and steady a chaotic president. Instead of them making Trump better, he’s actually making them worse.</p>
<p>In the past week or so, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Vice President Mike Pence, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have all publicly backed up some Trump claim, only to have him later <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/16/trump-just-threw-his-top-advisers-under-the-bus-again/?utm_term=.f2f81ad71c38" type="external">cut their legs out from under them</a>.</p>
<p>The most unfortunate example may be McMaster, who, on Tuesday night, went in front of cameras and <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/15/mcmaster_the_story_that_came_out_tonight_as_reported_is_false.html" type="external">insisted that the premise of a story in The Washington Post alleging Trump gave classified information to Russia was false</a>. The next morning, Trump seemed to <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-defends-giving-russians-classified-information-in-new-tweets-i-have-the-absolute-right-to-do-it/" type="external">contradict that statement on Twitter</a>. We can quibble over details and semantics, but the bottom line was that it didn’t look good.</p>
<p>During a Tuesday press conference, McMaster did little to quell concern, ending the presser by telling us: “The president wasn’t even aware of where this [classified] information came from.”</p>
<p>McMaster has a sterling reputation, and one hopes that this won’t besmirch that or negate the many good things he has done.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, one byproduct of Trump’s candidacy and presidency has been his ability to compromise people who once seemed incorruptible. This destruction of heroes only reinforces the erosion of public trust that already plagues America.</p>
<p>Another example: On Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley averred that Trump “can fire anyone he wants,” because he’s the “CEO of the country.” At first, I was going to cut her some slack on the CEO comment, but she reiterated her point several times.</p>
<p>This statement is both untrue and telling. Yes, the American president has substantial power, but he’s not the CEO, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-problem-with-trump-as-ceo-of-america-government-is-not-a-business/2016/05/05/146cc1a0-12f5-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html" type="external">a country is not a company</a>.</p>
<p>The president and his aides are not the only ones enabling Trump’s behavior—or perpetuating the erroneous assumption that he is our “boss.” We the people bear much of that responsibility. We usually get what we want—or, at the very least, what we deserve.</p>
<p>According to a recent poll, nearly <a href="https://www.prri.org/spotlight/fbi-james-comey-trump-authoritarian-leader-willing-break-rules/" type="external">half of Americans surveyed</a> “say things have gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is willing to break some rules if that is what it takes to set things right, while 50 percent disagree.” This trend is consistent with other polls we have seen. A shocking survey done last year showed that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trumps-good-political-timing/2016/08/15/21a0e264-6301-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html?utm_term=.124881b83508" type="external">younger Americans are increasingly OK with authoritarianism</a>.</p>
<p>Not everyone who wants a strongman who is willing to bend the rules supports Donald Trump (although, according to the survey, working-class whites are more attracted to authoritarianism than are college graduates). Some people probably want a strongman of their own—to take on Trump. To fight fire with fire. The ends may justify the means, but we all have different means. Wherever you stand ideologically, you’re probably more willing to break a few eggs to make an omelet.</p>
<p>That’s doesn’t let Donald Trump off the hook. Trump sees himself as a special snowflake. In his mind, the rules don’t apply to him. But what complicates matters is that his team seems to be reinforcing his worst instincts—whether that is bolstering his authoritarian tendencies, tempting him with fake news, or sacrificing their own credibility to defend the indefensible.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>To be sure, some of the rules literally do not apply to him. The famous line from the David Frost interviews with Richard Nixon is, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” That line has haunted me lately. First, when we were reminded that firing an FBI director, regardless of the circumstances, is perfectly permissible. A few days later, we were reminded that the president could give classified information away to the Russians, because, after all, he can simply declassify it. The saying is that this was “lawful, but awful.”</p>
<p>So where does that leave us? I don’t want to sound hysterical; I think there has been too much handwringing over this in the media. But at some point, this becomes untenable. The truth is that it’s unrealistic to expect Trump’s supporters to turn on a dime, and since the notion that Trump is going to mature or “pivot” now seems absurdly quixotic, our last line of defense is the so-called adults who hold positions of power both in—and out—of his administration. Because they are failing to speak truth to power, we risk sliding into soft despotism.</p>
|
Our Slide Toward Soft Despotism Has Begun
| true |
https://thedailybeast.com/our-slide-toward-soft-despotism-has-begun
|
2018-10-03
| 4left
|
Our Slide Toward Soft Despotism Has Begun
<p>Many had hoped that the “adults” in the White House would check the influence of Donald Trump’s “yes men” and steady a chaotic president. Instead of them making Trump better, he’s actually making them worse.</p>
<p>In the past week or so, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Vice President Mike Pence, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Deputy National Security Adviser Dina Powell, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster have all publicly backed up some Trump claim, only to have him later <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/05/16/trump-just-threw-his-top-advisers-under-the-bus-again/?utm_term=.f2f81ad71c38" type="external">cut their legs out from under them</a>.</p>
<p>The most unfortunate example may be McMaster, who, on Tuesday night, went in front of cameras and <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/15/mcmaster_the_story_that_came_out_tonight_as_reported_is_false.html" type="external">insisted that the premise of a story in The Washington Post alleging Trump gave classified information to Russia was false</a>. The next morning, Trump seemed to <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-defends-giving-russians-classified-information-in-new-tweets-i-have-the-absolute-right-to-do-it/" type="external">contradict that statement on Twitter</a>. We can quibble over details and semantics, but the bottom line was that it didn’t look good.</p>
<p>During a Tuesday press conference, McMaster did little to quell concern, ending the presser by telling us: “The president wasn’t even aware of where this [classified] information came from.”</p>
<p>McMaster has a sterling reputation, and one hopes that this won’t besmirch that or negate the many good things he has done.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, one byproduct of Trump’s candidacy and presidency has been his ability to compromise people who once seemed incorruptible. This destruction of heroes only reinforces the erosion of public trust that already plagues America.</p>
<p>Another example: On Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley averred that Trump “can fire anyone he wants,” because he’s the “CEO of the country.” At first, I was going to cut her some slack on the CEO comment, but she reiterated her point several times.</p>
<p>This statement is both untrue and telling. Yes, the American president has substantial power, but he’s not the CEO, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-problem-with-trump-as-ceo-of-america-government-is-not-a-business/2016/05/05/146cc1a0-12f5-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html" type="external">a country is not a company</a>.</p>
<p>The president and his aides are not the only ones enabling Trump’s behavior—or perpetuating the erroneous assumption that he is our “boss.” We the people bear much of that responsibility. We usually get what we want—or, at the very least, what we deserve.</p>
<p>According to a recent poll, nearly <a href="https://www.prri.org/spotlight/fbi-james-comey-trump-authoritarian-leader-willing-break-rules/" type="external">half of Americans surveyed</a> “say things have gotten so far off track that we need a leader who is willing to break some rules if that is what it takes to set things right, while 50 percent disagree.” This trend is consistent with other polls we have seen. A shocking survey done last year showed that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trumps-good-political-timing/2016/08/15/21a0e264-6301-11e6-96c0-37533479f3f5_story.html?utm_term=.124881b83508" type="external">younger Americans are increasingly OK with authoritarianism</a>.</p>
<p>Not everyone who wants a strongman who is willing to bend the rules supports Donald Trump (although, according to the survey, working-class whites are more attracted to authoritarianism than are college graduates). Some people probably want a strongman of their own—to take on Trump. To fight fire with fire. The ends may justify the means, but we all have different means. Wherever you stand ideologically, you’re probably more willing to break a few eggs to make an omelet.</p>
<p>That’s doesn’t let Donald Trump off the hook. Trump sees himself as a special snowflake. In his mind, the rules don’t apply to him. But what complicates matters is that his team seems to be reinforcing his worst instincts—whether that is bolstering his authoritarian tendencies, tempting him with fake news, or sacrificing their own credibility to defend the indefensible.</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>To be sure, some of the rules literally do not apply to him. The famous line from the David Frost interviews with Richard Nixon is, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” That line has haunted me lately. First, when we were reminded that firing an FBI director, regardless of the circumstances, is perfectly permissible. A few days later, we were reminded that the president could give classified information away to the Russians, because, after all, he can simply declassify it. The saying is that this was “lawful, but awful.”</p>
<p>So where does that leave us? I don’t want to sound hysterical; I think there has been too much handwringing over this in the media. But at some point, this becomes untenable. The truth is that it’s unrealistic to expect Trump’s supporters to turn on a dime, and since the notion that Trump is going to mature or “pivot” now seems absurdly quixotic, our last line of defense is the so-called adults who hold positions of power both in—and out—of his administration. Because they are failing to speak truth to power, we risk sliding into soft despotism.</p>
| 7,375 |
<p />
<p>A gay man is among the 14 people who were killed in a mass shooting at a social service center in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, 2015. (Photo by Prima Saahia; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p />
<p>The Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-bernardino-daniel-kaufman-boyfriend-20151203-story.html" type="external">reported</a> that Daniel Kaufman, 42, managed the coffee shop in one of the buildings at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. His boyfriend of nearly three years, Ryan Reyes, found out almost 24 hours after the shooting that Kaufman had died.</p>
<p>Authorities say that Syed Farook, an inspector with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday party that was taking place inside the social service center. Farook and Malik later died during a shootout with police.</p>
<p>Twenty-one people were injured during the shooting that took place roughly 60 miles east of Los Angeles.</p>
<p>The Associated Press on Thursday <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6d4ecfdc30894249bc417bfa998889da/latest-guns-used-california-shooting-bought-legally" type="external">cited</a> an official who said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting as a potential act of terrorism. The massacre is the largest mass shooting to take place in the U.S. since Adam Lanza killed 20 students and six staffers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Daniel Kaufman</a> <a href="" type="internal">gay</a> <a href="" type="internal">Inland Regional Center</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ryan Reyes</a> <a href="" type="internal">Syed Farook</a> <a href="" type="internal">Tashfeen Malik</a></p>
|
Gay man among victims of Calif. mass shooting
| false |
http://washingtonblade.com/2015/12/03/gay-man-among-victims-calif-mass-shooting/
| 3left-center
|
Gay man among victims of Calif. mass shooting
<p />
<p>A gay man is among the 14 people who were killed in a mass shooting at a social service center in San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, 2015. (Photo by Prima Saahia; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)</p>
<p />
<p>The Los Angeles Times <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-bernardino-daniel-kaufman-boyfriend-20151203-story.html" type="external">reported</a> that Daniel Kaufman, 42, managed the coffee shop in one of the buildings at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. His boyfriend of nearly three years, Ryan Reyes, found out almost 24 hours after the shooting that Kaufman had died.</p>
<p>Authorities say that Syed Farook, an inspector with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday party that was taking place inside the social service center. Farook and Malik later died during a shootout with police.</p>
<p>Twenty-one people were injured during the shooting that took place roughly 60 miles east of Los Angeles.</p>
<p>The Associated Press on Thursday <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6d4ecfdc30894249bc417bfa998889da/latest-guns-used-california-shooting-bought-legally" type="external">cited</a> an official who said the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the shooting as a potential act of terrorism. The massacre is the largest mass shooting to take place in the U.S. since Adam Lanza killed 20 students and six staffers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Daniel Kaufman</a> <a href="" type="internal">gay</a> <a href="" type="internal">Inland Regional Center</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ryan Reyes</a> <a href="" type="internal">Syed Farook</a> <a href="" type="internal">Tashfeen Malik</a></p>
| 7,376 |
|
<p>Los Angeles Times The Times-Picayune, NPR, and the New York Times "each methodically and compellingly reported that the very existence of south Louisiana's leading city was at risk and hundreds of thousands of lives imperiled by exactly the sequence of events that occurred this week," writes Tim Rutten. "Politics may have failed the people of New Orleans. Politicians certainly failed them. They may have failed themselves by not demanding better. But their newspaper and other important segments of the American press did not fail them."</p>
|
Rutten: News orgs warned of a disaster waiting to happen
| false |
https://poynter.org/news/rutten-news-orgs-warned-disaster-waiting-happen
|
2005-09-02
| 2least
|
Rutten: News orgs warned of a disaster waiting to happen
<p>Los Angeles Times The Times-Picayune, NPR, and the New York Times "each methodically and compellingly reported that the very existence of south Louisiana's leading city was at risk and hundreds of thousands of lives imperiled by exactly the sequence of events that occurred this week," writes Tim Rutten. "Politics may have failed the people of New Orleans. Politicians certainly failed them. They may have failed themselves by not demanding better. But their newspaper and other important segments of the American press did not fail them."</p>
| 7,377 |
<p>former CIA analyst</p>
<p>The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, chaired by former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean and better known as the 9/11 Commission, entertained news junkies across America with two full days of hearings last week. The ex-governor, chosen in part for his low visibility when a replacement had to be found for the controversial Henry Kissinger, did a creditable enough job as the entertainment MC. He and his mixed crew of good and not-so-good ex-officials, politicians, and perpetual staff aides spread before us not one but several partisan versions of how well or how badly the intelligence and foreign-policymaking arms of a Democratic and then a Republican administration performed over the past decade.</p>
<p>For students of politics and the internal workings of governments and bureaucracies, the exercise undoubtedly provided a few useful historical insights. The commission’s final report, when issued in the summer of 2004, may even contain helpful recommendations for reorganizing governmental intelligence and foreign-policymaking mechanisms — helpful, that is, to the leaders of the world’s only nation-state that presently seeks military domination over the entire globe.</p>
<p>To the remaining citizens of the U.S. and the world, however, it was at best one more Roman circus distracting us from what should be our main goal: PERSUADING WASHINGTON TO SCRAP ITS FOREIGN AND MILITARY POLICIES THAT FOSTER U.S. GLOBAL DOMINATION AND AN AGGRESSIVE ISRAELI-U.S. PARTNERSHIP IN DOMINATING THE MIDDLE EAST. These are the dangerous policies that both Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations, with only minor differences of emphasis, have pressed on an unwilling world. Earlier administrations had similar goals, but serious policy steps toward fulfilling those goals became much more feasible — or at least seemed to U.S. leaders to be more feasible — after the disappearance of the Soviet Union. These policy steps also fitted nicely with the needs of the principal financial backers of both major U.S. political parties for more aggressive U.S. policies that would encourage a continuation and expansion of their own profits.</p>
<p>The website of the 9/11 Commission states that it is “an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W. Bush in late 2002,” and that it is “chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The Commission is also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.”</p>
<p>The final sentence just quoted would allow the Commission, if it wished, to recommend changes in U.S. policies that generate ever more hatred against America and thereby perpetuate terrorism. On the other hand, the Commission may narrowly interpret the phrase “designed to guard against future attacks” to mean it should recommend only organizational and tactical actions intended to intensify and make more effective U.S. implementation of the so-called “war on terror,” and also reduce the chances of future terrorist surprises embarrassing to the U.S.</p>
<p>The latter course is the one the 9/11 Commission will almost certainly take, since neither of our major political parties wants significant changes in U.S. foreign and military policies. With John Kerry as the presumptive Democratic candidate, the only policy changes that he is likely to favor in these fields will be in matters of tone, such as listening more courteously to allies, and less obvious displays of trigger-happiness. He might, in addition, slow down the outrageously expensive and wasteful anti-ballistic missile program, but he would not stop it. His bread too is buttered by the same financiers that underwrite Bush.</p>
<p>The members of the 9/11 Commission, both Republicans and Democrats, are in the same club. Nothing in the hearings of March 23-24 suggests that any member will cut the leash that ties him or her to the military-industrial establishment. Note also that the charter of the Commission limits its role to “the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,” so it will definitely pass no judgments on, for instance, the later establishment of a Pentagon intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, entirely outside the intelligence community with the specific purpose of providing distortions and lies to encourage the American people to support the invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>The highlight of the hearings, of course, was the testimony of former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and the simultaneous publication of Clarke’s book, both of which demonstrated fairly conclusively that the Bush administration had not, in its first eight months, given a very high priority to developing a coherent counterterrorism policy. Clarke provoked an orgy of activity from the wounded Bushies designed to discredit him, but he produced no smoking gun to prove real negligence on Bush’s part beyond a generalized unwillingness to copy any Clinton policy on any subject. The affair has mildly damaged Bush’s image as a decisive leader, but the injury is nowhere near fatal to his reelection campaign. Furthermore, Clarke himself espouses such one-sided and utterly uncompromising views against terrorism that he is unlikely to provide much support in coming months to those of us who want to change U.S. foreign policies.</p>
<p>So Clarke is also a distraction and part of the Roman circus. It is doubtful that he will draw more than a few votes away from Bush next November, unless his revelations, which by themselves are not of crashing importance, induce someone else to come forward with a real smoking gun. For example, if anyone produced truly strong evidence that the FBI report of an al-Qaida member learning to fly but not to take off or land an airliner had in fact been provided to the White House before September 11, that would change many peoples’ calculations about where responsibility for the 9/11 fiasco lies. Another recent story, appearing on Salon.com, is also worth watching. A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called “very credible” by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the 9/11 Commission that the FBI had detailed information prior to September 11 that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted. Again, if anyone provides evidence that such a report was passed to the White House before 9/11, this too could change a lot of political calculations in Washington. At the moment, the evidence is simply not there to conclude that either of these reports will seriously damage the Bush administration.</p>
<p>The March 23-24 hearings, however, do provide a few dangerous harbingers for the future that may be of secondary importance in the short run but become more important as time passes.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Further Expansions of Intelligence and Covert Actions Planned</p>
<p>That the world is likely to be subjected to a further upsurge of U.S. intelligence activities and covert actions will not be news to many of us, but it still is noteworthy. This trend has been developing for the last four years or so. The testimony and the written submission of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet show most clearly the continuities of the two administrations, since Tenet served both under Clinton and under Bush. Under both, terrorism (as defined by the U.S.) and military actions initiated by the U.S. have resulted in a major expansion of U.S. intelligence services, particularly in the areas of personnel and career opportunities in both the analytical and the covert action and collection components of the CIA. More is to come.</p>
<p>If you accept as valid the views that terrorism against the U.S. and its allies is entirely the fault of those whom the U.S. labels enemies, and that military actions initiated by the U.S. are entirely defensive and therefore valid, then you will see nothing wrong with the massive expansion of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies (or for that matter the expansion of our overt military services). But if you are skeptical of these views, then you should also understand that most people of the world will regard this surging growth of U.S. intelligence activities as immoral and as representing a truly absurd and crazy excess in the American political system that should be opposed by every thoughtful person.</p>
<p>Most Americans do not realize the extremely negative effect that a global expansion of CIA activities, particularly covert actions, has on other peoples. It seems almost impossible for the U.S. to avoid bragging about strengthening its intelligence capabilities while at the same time coyly claiming that it cannot reveal the details for reasons of security. It is just one more form of arrogance that the U.S. displays, and it simply intensifies global hatred of the U.S. The covertness of what the CIA does makes the blowback worse. The use of covert action by the U.S. should be reduced, not expanded. Any instances of it that are uncovered become a cause of more terrorism. The U.S. literally encourages this. Governments around the world can easily obtain and study every unclassified briefing that Tenet gives, and newspapers, TV, and radio in other nations revel in spreading and embellishing stories about what the CIA says it is doing.</p>
<p>The unclassified oral briefing that Tenet gave on March 24 was a summary of a lengthy written statement given to every Commission member. The entire statement was immediately available on the CIA website. It is a blueprint for vastly increased covert activities. The global dominators running Washington these days probably think it is a great idea to show the rest of the world how easy it is for the U.S. to increase its covert capabilities against other nations and sub-national groups, and how futile it is for others to try to stand up to the U.S. But the other side of it is the hatred this produces — always more hatred.</p>
<p>In the written statement, Tenet starts out by poor-mouthing his way through the “peace dividend” years after the Soviet Union fell apart. The document states that “during the 1990s our intelligence community funding declined in real terms, reducing our buying power by tens of billions of dollars over the decade. We lost nearly one in four of our positions. . . . By the mid-1990s recruitment of new CIA analysts and case officers had come to a virtual halt. NSA was hiring no new technologists during the greatest information technology change in our lifetimes. . . . With the al-Qaida threat growing more ominous and with our resources devoted to countering it clearly inadequate, we began taking money and people away from other critical areas to improve our efforts against terrorism. Despite the resource reductions, . . . we managed to triple intelligence-wide funding for counterterrorism from fiscal year 1990 to 1999.” After the earlier statements, this tripling of the money for counterterrorism is a real eye-opener, meant to suggest that Tenet is a genius of a manager for doing so much with so few resources.</p>
<p>The paper points out that FY 1999 was the first year during the decade of the nineties in which the intelligence community received a “significant infusion of new money,” and that other supplemental infusions followed in subsequent years. Tenet then writes, “In CIA alone, I count the equivalent of 700 officers working counterterrorism in August 2001 at both headquarters and in the field.” He adds, however, “Nonetheless, it will take many more years to recover the capabilities we lost during the resource decline of the 1990s.” Later in the paper, he talks about the need for better integration between the intelligence community in Washington and state and local officials. For this purpose, he says, “Large, sustained budget infusions will be required separate from our other resource needs.”</p>
<p>From this shopping list, readers throughout the world can see that the U.S. intelligence community assumes it soon will have a great deal more money to spend than it has now. Will these same readers be cowed by all this, or will their antagonisms against the U.S. behemoth simply grow stronger? As intelligence and covert actions become increasingly important as an identifiable, separate, and growing arm of U.S. global policies, should not questions be raised by Americans about the ignoble image of the U.S. this trend presents to the world? Do we lack so much confidence in our own overt policies — our alleged support for democracy, for example — that we have to rely increasingly on covert actions? To repeat the obvious, these questions will become more rather than less important unless we change our foreign and military policies in major ways. Starting right now.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Assassinations</p>
<p>The Israeli military has been assassinating Palestinians accused of terrorism, or of organizing and directing terrorism, for some years. The U.S. government has approved these assassinations, or at most has issued exceedingly mild criticisms on some occasions. But when it comes to proposals for assassinations that might be committed by the CIA, the differing views in the government that have come to light so far in the 9/11 hearings are remarkable. The reason for the differences goes back at least to 1976, when President Gerald Ford issued an executive order decreeing that “no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” That period immediately after the Vietnam War saw an upsurge of harsh criticism of the CIA for its covert actions from the 1950s through the early 1970s. This writer knows of no evidence that Ford’s executive order has ever been formally rescinded.</p>
<p>But times change, of course, and by the late 1990s the Clinton administration was quite openly calling for the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, although not publicly using the word assassination. The Bush administration has continued these calls and has freely talked about wanting bin Laden “dead or alive.” The unclassified version of the 9/11 Commission’s staff report, however, contains considerable evidence of conflict. The excerpts below are drastically abbreviated. <a href="" type="internal">The entire document makes fascinating reading and can be found on the internet.</a></p>
<p>“Many CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, have criticized policy-makers for not giving the CIA [the proper] authorities to conduct effective operations against bin Laden. . . .</p>
<p>“[With respect to] President Clinton, NSC staff and CIA officials differ starkly here. Senior NSC staff members told us they believe the president’s intent was clear: He wanted bin Laden dead. . . .</p>
<p>“As former National Security Adviser Berger explained, if we wanted to kill bin Laden with cruise missiles, why would we not want to kill him with covert action? . . .</p>
<p>“[But] every CIA official interviewed on this topic by the Commission, from DCI Tenet to the official who actually briefed the agents in the field, told us they had heard a different message.</p>
<p>“What the United States would let the military do is quite different, Tenet said, from the rules that govern covert action by the CIA. CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try to capture bin Laden. . . .</p>
<p>“They believed that the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation. Quote, We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him, end of quote, a former chief of the bin Laden station said. [Elsewhere, the document reveals that the CIA’s Directorate of Operations established what was dubbed a “station” in Washington to handle the pursuit of bin Laden. CIA “stations” are usually established in foreign capitals to deal with operations in those countries.]</p>
<p>“. . . To further cloud the picture, two senior CIA officers told us they would have been morally and practically opposed to getting CIA into what might look like an assassination. One of them, a former counterterrorism center chief, said that he would have refused an order to directly kill bin Laden.</p>
<p>“Where [both sides] agree is that no one at CIA, including Tenet and Pavitt, ever complained to the White House that the authorities were restrictive or unclear. Berger told us, quote: If there was ever any confusion, it was never conveyed to me or the president by the DCI or anybody else, end of quote . . .</p>
<p>“But absent a more dependable government strategy, CIA senior management [did not push for more specific instructions] . . . through both the late Clinton and early Bush administrations.”</p>
<p>What seems to be happening here is that in the years before September 11, neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration was willing to put in writing an explicit assassination order to the CIA, and CIA leaders, remembering that the Agency had been badly and deservedly burned in a similar situation almost thirty years earlier, dragged their heels and possibly avoided even trying to carry out an assassination that both administrations wanted. It is fairly clear that Tenet thought the U.S. military might have no such compunctions; he simply did not want to steer the CIA into such a morass on his watch. But it is also fairly clear that he did not choose openly to confront either administration on the issue — at least not before September 11. His position now, in the aftermath of September 11, may or may not be different. We simply have no information. The best guess is that he would prefer to avoid the issue as long as possible, and if the military under Donald Rumsfeld wants to solve the problem for him, copying the Israeli military, he probably would not mind.</p>
<p>Pressures are almost inevitably mounting within the Bush administration in support of more assassinations The peace movements of the U.S. and the world ought to be out there with all the strength they can muster, opposing assassinations everywhere. They are always extralegal and immoral, and the perpetrators are always the prosecution, defense, judge, and jury all rolled into one. Furthermore, as a practical matter, one assassination often encourages others, and any leader who supports an assassination had better watch his own rear. Needless to say, assassinations would be yet another kind of action seen as displaying the arrogance of Americans toward other peoples, and one more entry in the catalog of reasons for hating the United States.</p>
<p>BILL CHRISTISON joined the CIA in 1950 and worked on the analysis side of the Agency for over 28 years. In the 1970s he served as a National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser of the Director of Central Intelligence) for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. Before his retirement in 1979, he was Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
The Hearings Concentrate on Side Issues, But Provide Dangerous Harbingers for the Future
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2004/03/29/the-hearings-concentrate-on-side-issues-but-provide-dangerous-harbingers-for-the-future/
|
2004-03-29
| 4left
|
The Hearings Concentrate on Side Issues, But Provide Dangerous Harbingers for the Future
<p>former CIA analyst</p>
<p>The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, chaired by former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean and better known as the 9/11 Commission, entertained news junkies across America with two full days of hearings last week. The ex-governor, chosen in part for his low visibility when a replacement had to be found for the controversial Henry Kissinger, did a creditable enough job as the entertainment MC. He and his mixed crew of good and not-so-good ex-officials, politicians, and perpetual staff aides spread before us not one but several partisan versions of how well or how badly the intelligence and foreign-policymaking arms of a Democratic and then a Republican administration performed over the past decade.</p>
<p>For students of politics and the internal workings of governments and bureaucracies, the exercise undoubtedly provided a few useful historical insights. The commission’s final report, when issued in the summer of 2004, may even contain helpful recommendations for reorganizing governmental intelligence and foreign-policymaking mechanisms — helpful, that is, to the leaders of the world’s only nation-state that presently seeks military domination over the entire globe.</p>
<p>To the remaining citizens of the U.S. and the world, however, it was at best one more Roman circus distracting us from what should be our main goal: PERSUADING WASHINGTON TO SCRAP ITS FOREIGN AND MILITARY POLICIES THAT FOSTER U.S. GLOBAL DOMINATION AND AN AGGRESSIVE ISRAELI-U.S. PARTNERSHIP IN DOMINATING THE MIDDLE EAST. These are the dangerous policies that both Bill Clinton’s and George W. Bush’s administrations, with only minor differences of emphasis, have pressed on an unwilling world. Earlier administrations had similar goals, but serious policy steps toward fulfilling those goals became much more feasible — or at least seemed to U.S. leaders to be more feasible — after the disappearance of the Soviet Union. These policy steps also fitted nicely with the needs of the principal financial backers of both major U.S. political parties for more aggressive U.S. policies that would encourage a continuation and expansion of their own profits.</p>
<p>The website of the 9/11 Commission states that it is “an independent, bipartisan commission created by congressional legislation and the signature of President George W. Bush in late 2002,” and that it is “chartered to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. The Commission is also mandated to provide recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.”</p>
<p>The final sentence just quoted would allow the Commission, if it wished, to recommend changes in U.S. policies that generate ever more hatred against America and thereby perpetuate terrorism. On the other hand, the Commission may narrowly interpret the phrase “designed to guard against future attacks” to mean it should recommend only organizational and tactical actions intended to intensify and make more effective U.S. implementation of the so-called “war on terror,” and also reduce the chances of future terrorist surprises embarrassing to the U.S.</p>
<p>The latter course is the one the 9/11 Commission will almost certainly take, since neither of our major political parties wants significant changes in U.S. foreign and military policies. With John Kerry as the presumptive Democratic candidate, the only policy changes that he is likely to favor in these fields will be in matters of tone, such as listening more courteously to allies, and less obvious displays of trigger-happiness. He might, in addition, slow down the outrageously expensive and wasteful anti-ballistic missile program, but he would not stop it. His bread too is buttered by the same financiers that underwrite Bush.</p>
<p>The members of the 9/11 Commission, both Republicans and Democrats, are in the same club. Nothing in the hearings of March 23-24 suggests that any member will cut the leash that ties him or her to the military-industrial establishment. Note also that the charter of the Commission limits its role to “the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,” so it will definitely pass no judgments on, for instance, the later establishment of a Pentagon intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, entirely outside the intelligence community with the specific purpose of providing distortions and lies to encourage the American people to support the invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>The highlight of the hearings, of course, was the testimony of former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and the simultaneous publication of Clarke’s book, both of which demonstrated fairly conclusively that the Bush administration had not, in its first eight months, given a very high priority to developing a coherent counterterrorism policy. Clarke provoked an orgy of activity from the wounded Bushies designed to discredit him, but he produced no smoking gun to prove real negligence on Bush’s part beyond a generalized unwillingness to copy any Clinton policy on any subject. The affair has mildly damaged Bush’s image as a decisive leader, but the injury is nowhere near fatal to his reelection campaign. Furthermore, Clarke himself espouses such one-sided and utterly uncompromising views against terrorism that he is unlikely to provide much support in coming months to those of us who want to change U.S. foreign policies.</p>
<p>So Clarke is also a distraction and part of the Roman circus. It is doubtful that he will draw more than a few votes away from Bush next November, unless his revelations, which by themselves are not of crashing importance, induce someone else to come forward with a real smoking gun. For example, if anyone produced truly strong evidence that the FBI report of an al-Qaida member learning to fly but not to take off or land an airliner had in fact been provided to the White House before September 11, that would change many peoples’ calculations about where responsibility for the 9/11 fiasco lies. Another recent story, appearing on Salon.com, is also worth watching. A former FBI wiretap translator with top-secret security clearance, who has been called “very credible” by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the 9/11 Commission that the FBI had detailed information prior to September 11 that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted. Again, if anyone provides evidence that such a report was passed to the White House before 9/11, this too could change a lot of political calculations in Washington. At the moment, the evidence is simply not there to conclude that either of these reports will seriously damage the Bush administration.</p>
<p>The March 23-24 hearings, however, do provide a few dangerous harbingers for the future that may be of secondary importance in the short run but become more important as time passes.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Further Expansions of Intelligence and Covert Actions Planned</p>
<p>That the world is likely to be subjected to a further upsurge of U.S. intelligence activities and covert actions will not be news to many of us, but it still is noteworthy. This trend has been developing for the last four years or so. The testimony and the written submission of Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet show most clearly the continuities of the two administrations, since Tenet served both under Clinton and under Bush. Under both, terrorism (as defined by the U.S.) and military actions initiated by the U.S. have resulted in a major expansion of U.S. intelligence services, particularly in the areas of personnel and career opportunities in both the analytical and the covert action and collection components of the CIA. More is to come.</p>
<p>If you accept as valid the views that terrorism against the U.S. and its allies is entirely the fault of those whom the U.S. labels enemies, and that military actions initiated by the U.S. are entirely defensive and therefore valid, then you will see nothing wrong with the massive expansion of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies (or for that matter the expansion of our overt military services). But if you are skeptical of these views, then you should also understand that most people of the world will regard this surging growth of U.S. intelligence activities as immoral and as representing a truly absurd and crazy excess in the American political system that should be opposed by every thoughtful person.</p>
<p>Most Americans do not realize the extremely negative effect that a global expansion of CIA activities, particularly covert actions, has on other peoples. It seems almost impossible for the U.S. to avoid bragging about strengthening its intelligence capabilities while at the same time coyly claiming that it cannot reveal the details for reasons of security. It is just one more form of arrogance that the U.S. displays, and it simply intensifies global hatred of the U.S. The covertness of what the CIA does makes the blowback worse. The use of covert action by the U.S. should be reduced, not expanded. Any instances of it that are uncovered become a cause of more terrorism. The U.S. literally encourages this. Governments around the world can easily obtain and study every unclassified briefing that Tenet gives, and newspapers, TV, and radio in other nations revel in spreading and embellishing stories about what the CIA says it is doing.</p>
<p>The unclassified oral briefing that Tenet gave on March 24 was a summary of a lengthy written statement given to every Commission member. The entire statement was immediately available on the CIA website. It is a blueprint for vastly increased covert activities. The global dominators running Washington these days probably think it is a great idea to show the rest of the world how easy it is for the U.S. to increase its covert capabilities against other nations and sub-national groups, and how futile it is for others to try to stand up to the U.S. But the other side of it is the hatred this produces — always more hatred.</p>
<p>In the written statement, Tenet starts out by poor-mouthing his way through the “peace dividend” years after the Soviet Union fell apart. The document states that “during the 1990s our intelligence community funding declined in real terms, reducing our buying power by tens of billions of dollars over the decade. We lost nearly one in four of our positions. . . . By the mid-1990s recruitment of new CIA analysts and case officers had come to a virtual halt. NSA was hiring no new technologists during the greatest information technology change in our lifetimes. . . . With the al-Qaida threat growing more ominous and with our resources devoted to countering it clearly inadequate, we began taking money and people away from other critical areas to improve our efforts against terrorism. Despite the resource reductions, . . . we managed to triple intelligence-wide funding for counterterrorism from fiscal year 1990 to 1999.” After the earlier statements, this tripling of the money for counterterrorism is a real eye-opener, meant to suggest that Tenet is a genius of a manager for doing so much with so few resources.</p>
<p>The paper points out that FY 1999 was the first year during the decade of the nineties in which the intelligence community received a “significant infusion of new money,” and that other supplemental infusions followed in subsequent years. Tenet then writes, “In CIA alone, I count the equivalent of 700 officers working counterterrorism in August 2001 at both headquarters and in the field.” He adds, however, “Nonetheless, it will take many more years to recover the capabilities we lost during the resource decline of the 1990s.” Later in the paper, he talks about the need for better integration between the intelligence community in Washington and state and local officials. For this purpose, he says, “Large, sustained budget infusions will be required separate from our other resource needs.”</p>
<p>From this shopping list, readers throughout the world can see that the U.S. intelligence community assumes it soon will have a great deal more money to spend than it has now. Will these same readers be cowed by all this, or will their antagonisms against the U.S. behemoth simply grow stronger? As intelligence and covert actions become increasingly important as an identifiable, separate, and growing arm of U.S. global policies, should not questions be raised by Americans about the ignoble image of the U.S. this trend presents to the world? Do we lack so much confidence in our own overt policies — our alleged support for democracy, for example — that we have to rely increasingly on covert actions? To repeat the obvious, these questions will become more rather than less important unless we change our foreign and military policies in major ways. Starting right now.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Assassinations</p>
<p>The Israeli military has been assassinating Palestinians accused of terrorism, or of organizing and directing terrorism, for some years. The U.S. government has approved these assassinations, or at most has issued exceedingly mild criticisms on some occasions. But when it comes to proposals for assassinations that might be committed by the CIA, the differing views in the government that have come to light so far in the 9/11 hearings are remarkable. The reason for the differences goes back at least to 1976, when President Gerald Ford issued an executive order decreeing that “no person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.” That period immediately after the Vietnam War saw an upsurge of harsh criticism of the CIA for its covert actions from the 1950s through the early 1970s. This writer knows of no evidence that Ford’s executive order has ever been formally rescinded.</p>
<p>But times change, of course, and by the late 1990s the Clinton administration was quite openly calling for the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, although not publicly using the word assassination. The Bush administration has continued these calls and has freely talked about wanting bin Laden “dead or alive.” The unclassified version of the 9/11 Commission’s staff report, however, contains considerable evidence of conflict. The excerpts below are drastically abbreviated. <a href="" type="internal">The entire document makes fascinating reading and can be found on the internet.</a></p>
<p>“Many CIA officers, including Deputy Director for Operations Pavitt, have criticized policy-makers for not giving the CIA [the proper] authorities to conduct effective operations against bin Laden. . . .</p>
<p>“[With respect to] President Clinton, NSC staff and CIA officials differ starkly here. Senior NSC staff members told us they believe the president’s intent was clear: He wanted bin Laden dead. . . .</p>
<p>“As former National Security Adviser Berger explained, if we wanted to kill bin Laden with cruise missiles, why would we not want to kill him with covert action? . . .</p>
<p>“[But] every CIA official interviewed on this topic by the Commission, from DCI Tenet to the official who actually briefed the agents in the field, told us they had heard a different message.</p>
<p>“What the United States would let the military do is quite different, Tenet said, from the rules that govern covert action by the CIA. CIA senior managers, operators and lawyers uniformly said that they read the relevant authorities signed by President Clinton as instructing them to try to capture bin Laden. . . .</p>
<p>“They believed that the only acceptable context for killing bin Laden was a credible capture operation. Quote, We always talked about how much easier it would have been to kill him, end of quote, a former chief of the bin Laden station said. [Elsewhere, the document reveals that the CIA’s Directorate of Operations established what was dubbed a “station” in Washington to handle the pursuit of bin Laden. CIA “stations” are usually established in foreign capitals to deal with operations in those countries.]</p>
<p>“. . . To further cloud the picture, two senior CIA officers told us they would have been morally and practically opposed to getting CIA into what might look like an assassination. One of them, a former counterterrorism center chief, said that he would have refused an order to directly kill bin Laden.</p>
<p>“Where [both sides] agree is that no one at CIA, including Tenet and Pavitt, ever complained to the White House that the authorities were restrictive or unclear. Berger told us, quote: If there was ever any confusion, it was never conveyed to me or the president by the DCI or anybody else, end of quote . . .</p>
<p>“But absent a more dependable government strategy, CIA senior management [did not push for more specific instructions] . . . through both the late Clinton and early Bush administrations.”</p>
<p>What seems to be happening here is that in the years before September 11, neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration was willing to put in writing an explicit assassination order to the CIA, and CIA leaders, remembering that the Agency had been badly and deservedly burned in a similar situation almost thirty years earlier, dragged their heels and possibly avoided even trying to carry out an assassination that both administrations wanted. It is fairly clear that Tenet thought the U.S. military might have no such compunctions; he simply did not want to steer the CIA into such a morass on his watch. But it is also fairly clear that he did not choose openly to confront either administration on the issue — at least not before September 11. His position now, in the aftermath of September 11, may or may not be different. We simply have no information. The best guess is that he would prefer to avoid the issue as long as possible, and if the military under Donald Rumsfeld wants to solve the problem for him, copying the Israeli military, he probably would not mind.</p>
<p>Pressures are almost inevitably mounting within the Bush administration in support of more assassinations The peace movements of the U.S. and the world ought to be out there with all the strength they can muster, opposing assassinations everywhere. They are always extralegal and immoral, and the perpetrators are always the prosecution, defense, judge, and jury all rolled into one. Furthermore, as a practical matter, one assassination often encourages others, and any leader who supports an assassination had better watch his own rear. Needless to say, assassinations would be yet another kind of action seen as displaying the arrogance of Americans toward other peoples, and one more entry in the catalog of reasons for hating the United States.</p>
<p>BILL CHRISTISON joined the CIA in 1950 and worked on the analysis side of the Agency for over 28 years. In the 1970s he served as a National Intelligence Officer (principal adviser of the Director of Central Intelligence) for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. Before his retirement in 1979, he was Director of the CIA’s Office of Regional and Political Analysis, a 250-person unit. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,378 |
<p>Bolstered by crucial support from industry leaders and Republicans across the aisle, Sacramento’s most prominent privacy-rights proponent took another stab at restricting the state’s access to personal information.</p>
<p>State Sen.&#160;Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, repackaged some of his long-cherished plans for law enforcement reform in Senate Bill 178, the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or Cal-ECPA. In a press release, Leno’s office <a href="http://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-02-09-tech-industry-stands-sen-leno-modernize-digital-privacy-protections" type="external">described</a> SB178&#160;as a prudent piece of legislation with enough exceptions to ensure public safety and effective policing:</p>
<p>“Cal-ECPA protects all electronic communications, including personal messages, passwords and PIN numbers, GPS data, photos, medical and financial information, contacts and metadata. Exceptions to the warrant requirement are included in the legislation so that law enforcement officers can continue to effectively and efficiently protect public safety in the event of an emergency.”</p>
<p>Leno has tried and failed to enact similar legislation in the recent past.</p>
<p>His troubles emerged in&#160;the wake of a <a href="https://epic.org/privacy/devicesearch/People_v_Diaz.pdf" type="external">controversial&#160;California Supreme Court ruling in 2007</a>. The plaintiff, Gregory Diaz, was incriminated after an arrest when an officer with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department scrolled through the&#160;text messages on Diaz’s cellphone. The justices sided against Diaz, and&#160;the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear&#160;Diaz’ case.</p>
<p>So in 2011, Leno’s attempt to require warrants for cellphone searches fell prey to a veto from Gov. Jerry Brown — even though it passed the Assembly unanimously. As CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/11/tech/mobile/california-phone-search-veto/" type="external">reported</a>, Brown warned that “courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case-specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizures protections.”</p>
<p>Then in 2012, as the Sacramento Bee <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article9531686.html" type="external">reported</a>, state district attorneys and Brown sank&#160;a bill Leno&#160;introduced that&#160;would have required warrants for any search of location data. And in 2013, they did the same to a related <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB467" type="external">bill</a> that&#160;mandated a warrant for emails requested from Internet service providers.</p>
<p>But this time, political attitudes have shifted enough that Leno has reasoned he stands&#160;a better chance at success. He found a co-author for SB178 in State Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, known for introducing privacy-related bills that would have <a href="http://district38.cssrc.us/content/andersons-privacy-package-clears-assembly-policy-committees" type="external">shielded</a>&#160;Covered California data and <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/california/2014/04/29/bipartisan-california-bill-could-pull-plug-on-the-nsa/" type="external">prohibited</a> state cooperation with the NSA in unwarranted surveillance activities.</p>
<p>What’s more, Leno was able to marshal the support of Silicon Valley luminaries, whose endorsement was key to building credibility and challenging California’s district attorneys. His bill, KQED <a href="http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/02/08/tech-industry-backs-new-california-digital-privacy-law/" type="external">reported</a>, received the okay from titans like&#160;Google and Microsoft to social media heavyweights like Twitter and Facebook.</p>
<p>And it was backed by smaller startups like Dropbox, which offers&#160;secure online data storage.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-02-09-tech-industry-stands-sen-leno-modernize-digital-privacy-protections" type="external">statement</a>released by Mufaddal Ezzy, California manager of public policy and government relations for Google, SB178 was portrayed as a natural extension of current Fourth&#160;Amendment protections&#160;against searchs and seizures:</p>
<p>“Law enforcement needs a search warrant to enter your house or seize letters from your filing cabinet — the same sorts of protections should apply to electronic data stored with Internet companies.&#160;California’s electronic surveillance laws need to be brought in line with how people use the Internet today and provide them with the privacy they reasonably should expect.”</p>
<p>Most importantly of all, Leno finally has the U.S. Supreme Court in his corner. As Ars Technica <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/california-lawmaker-proposes-warrant-requirement-for-digital-data-access/" type="external">reported</a>, the court ruled unanimously in a&#160;2014 case, Riley v. California, that warrants must be required to search a cellphone.</p>
<p>Instead of posing an awkward challenge to the courts, as Brown feared years ago, Leno’s desired protections would instead officially square California law&#160;with the holding in Riley.</p>
<p>While SB178 makes its way through Sacramento, Californians interested in privacy issues will also keep an eye on Washington, D.C. There, Congress will consider the Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/congress-mulls-law-requiring-warrant-for-e-mail-data-yet-again/" type="external">introduced</a> by a bipartisan group of three lawmakers, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.</p>
|
Tech giants back privacy bill
| false |
https://calwatchdog.com/2015/02/11/tech-giants-back-privacy-bill/
|
2018-02-20
| 3left-center
|
Tech giants back privacy bill
<p>Bolstered by crucial support from industry leaders and Republicans across the aisle, Sacramento’s most prominent privacy-rights proponent took another stab at restricting the state’s access to personal information.</p>
<p>State Sen.&#160;Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, repackaged some of his long-cherished plans for law enforcement reform in Senate Bill 178, the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, or Cal-ECPA. In a press release, Leno’s office <a href="http://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-02-09-tech-industry-stands-sen-leno-modernize-digital-privacy-protections" type="external">described</a> SB178&#160;as a prudent piece of legislation with enough exceptions to ensure public safety and effective policing:</p>
<p>“Cal-ECPA protects all electronic communications, including personal messages, passwords and PIN numbers, GPS data, photos, medical and financial information, contacts and metadata. Exceptions to the warrant requirement are included in the legislation so that law enforcement officers can continue to effectively and efficiently protect public safety in the event of an emergency.”</p>
<p>Leno has tried and failed to enact similar legislation in the recent past.</p>
<p>His troubles emerged in&#160;the wake of a <a href="https://epic.org/privacy/devicesearch/People_v_Diaz.pdf" type="external">controversial&#160;California Supreme Court ruling in 2007</a>. The plaintiff, Gregory Diaz, was incriminated after an arrest when an officer with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department scrolled through the&#160;text messages on Diaz’s cellphone. The justices sided against Diaz, and&#160;the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear&#160;Diaz’ case.</p>
<p>So in 2011, Leno’s attempt to require warrants for cellphone searches fell prey to a veto from Gov. Jerry Brown — even though it passed the Assembly unanimously. As CNN <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/11/tech/mobile/california-phone-search-veto/" type="external">reported</a>, Brown warned that “courts are better suited to resolve the complex and case-specific issues relating to constitutional search-and-seizures protections.”</p>
<p>Then in 2012, as the Sacramento Bee <a href="http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article9531686.html" type="external">reported</a>, state district attorneys and Brown sank&#160;a bill Leno&#160;introduced that&#160;would have required warrants for any search of location data. And in 2013, they did the same to a related <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140SB467" type="external">bill</a> that&#160;mandated a warrant for emails requested from Internet service providers.</p>
<p>But this time, political attitudes have shifted enough that Leno has reasoned he stands&#160;a better chance at success. He found a co-author for SB178 in State Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, known for introducing privacy-related bills that would have <a href="http://district38.cssrc.us/content/andersons-privacy-package-clears-assembly-policy-committees" type="external">shielded</a>&#160;Covered California data and <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/california/2014/04/29/bipartisan-california-bill-could-pull-plug-on-the-nsa/" type="external">prohibited</a> state cooperation with the NSA in unwarranted surveillance activities.</p>
<p>What’s more, Leno was able to marshal the support of Silicon Valley luminaries, whose endorsement was key to building credibility and challenging California’s district attorneys. His bill, KQED <a href="http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/02/08/tech-industry-backs-new-california-digital-privacy-law/" type="external">reported</a>, received the okay from titans like&#160;Google and Microsoft to social media heavyweights like Twitter and Facebook.</p>
<p>And it was backed by smaller startups like Dropbox, which offers&#160;secure online data storage.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://sd11.senate.ca.gov/news/2015-02-09-tech-industry-stands-sen-leno-modernize-digital-privacy-protections" type="external">statement</a>released by Mufaddal Ezzy, California manager of public policy and government relations for Google, SB178 was portrayed as a natural extension of current Fourth&#160;Amendment protections&#160;against searchs and seizures:</p>
<p>“Law enforcement needs a search warrant to enter your house or seize letters from your filing cabinet — the same sorts of protections should apply to electronic data stored with Internet companies.&#160;California’s electronic surveillance laws need to be brought in line with how people use the Internet today and provide them with the privacy they reasonably should expect.”</p>
<p>Most importantly of all, Leno finally has the U.S. Supreme Court in his corner. As Ars Technica <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/california-lawmaker-proposes-warrant-requirement-for-digital-data-access/" type="external">reported</a>, the court ruled unanimously in a&#160;2014 case, Riley v. California, that warrants must be required to search a cellphone.</p>
<p>Instead of posing an awkward challenge to the courts, as Brown feared years ago, Leno’s desired protections would instead officially square California law&#160;with the holding in Riley.</p>
<p>While SB178 makes its way through Sacramento, Californians interested in privacy issues will also keep an eye on Washington, D.C. There, Congress will consider the Online Communications and Geolocation Protection Act, <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/congress-mulls-law-requiring-warrant-for-e-mail-data-yet-again/" type="external">introduced</a> by a bipartisan group of three lawmakers, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif.</p>
| 7,379 |
<p>IPG Mediabrands, the media-buying unit of <a href="http://variety.com/tag/advertising/" type="external">advertising</a>-and-marketing-services holding company <a href="http://variety.com/tag/interpublic-group/" type="external">Interpublic Group</a>, has struck a partnership with ad-tech firm Acxiom that will help advertisers place commercials with better precision with use of data about consumers.</p>
<p>IPG Mediabrands, which operates media-buying units like Universal McCann and Initiative, said the partnership represented its largest analytics alliance to date, and would be utilized in 14 different markets,&#160;including Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States. Arun Kumar, who in March 2017 was named IPG Mediabrands’ first global chief data &amp; marketing technology officer, will oversee the new alliance.</p>
<p>“In an ever-evolving media landscape, data continues to underpin our business solutions for clients,” said Philippe Krakowsky, chairman of IPG Mediabrands and chief strategy officer for <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/grammy-awards-mastercard-advertising-1201984302/" type="external">Interpublic Group</a>. “This global partnership will keep Initiative, UM, Reprise and all of Mediabrands on the leading-edge when it comes to data and analytics.”</p>
<p>The partnership spotlights a growing dependence on new kinds of consumer measurement and information as more people turn to digital media for entertainment and information. Because more video is being delivered to consumers via digital means, marketers have new opportunities to place ads in ways that align more specifically with particular groups of audience.</p>
|
IPG Mediabrands Enters Data Deal With Acxiom
| false |
https://newsline.com/ipg-mediabrands-enters-data-deal-with-acxiom/
|
2017-09-28
| 1right-center
|
IPG Mediabrands Enters Data Deal With Acxiom
<p>IPG Mediabrands, the media-buying unit of <a href="http://variety.com/tag/advertising/" type="external">advertising</a>-and-marketing-services holding company <a href="http://variety.com/tag/interpublic-group/" type="external">Interpublic Group</a>, has struck a partnership with ad-tech firm Acxiom that will help advertisers place commercials with better precision with use of data about consumers.</p>
<p>IPG Mediabrands, which operates media-buying units like Universal McCann and Initiative, said the partnership represented its largest analytics alliance to date, and would be utilized in 14 different markets,&#160;including Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, France, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, South Africa, United Kingdom and the United States. Arun Kumar, who in March 2017 was named IPG Mediabrands’ first global chief data &amp; marketing technology officer, will oversee the new alliance.</p>
<p>“In an ever-evolving media landscape, data continues to underpin our business solutions for clients,” said Philippe Krakowsky, chairman of IPG Mediabrands and chief strategy officer for <a href="http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/grammy-awards-mastercard-advertising-1201984302/" type="external">Interpublic Group</a>. “This global partnership will keep Initiative, UM, Reprise and all of Mediabrands on the leading-edge when it comes to data and analytics.”</p>
<p>The partnership spotlights a growing dependence on new kinds of consumer measurement and information as more people turn to digital media for entertainment and information. Because more video is being delivered to consumers via digital means, marketers have new opportunities to place ads in ways that align more specifically with particular groups of audience.</p>
| 7,380 |
<p>Drive north from Ithaca, New York up the west side of Lake Cayuga for seven or eight miles and you’ll come to Taughannock State Park, which encloses the spectacular falls of the same name, said to be the highest east of the Rockies, higher even than Niagara Falls. After passing by the entrance to the park, take the gorge road climbing steeply up the bluffs heading west and after you stop at the lookout above the falls and have a look at the cataract—iced and silent in winter, thunderous in spring, a trickle in the driest stretches of summer unrelieved by thunders storms — you’ll come to the town of Trumansburg.</p>
<p>Trumansburg has a wide and graceful main street of stately clapboard houses with porches, pillared churches and library, and finishes its protocols of decorum with an ensemble of terraced brick shops.&#160; But for the incipient sprawl to the south and the derelict supermarket and parking lot to the north, the town looks much like it did in the 19th century, and much like it did in the 1960s when the New York City native, Robert Moog, developed his epoch-making synthesizer, hailed by many to be the most important keyboard instrument invented in the 20th century. Moog had come Ithaca to do a Ph.D. in engineering physics at Cornell and after completing his degree settled&#160; his company in Trumansburg to develop his musical instruments.</p>
<p>The impact of the Moog synthesizer on the sound of the late 1960s and 1970s is hard to overestimate. Wendy Carlos (then still Walter Carlos) brought out Switched-On Bach in 1968 using Moog’s synthesizers. The LP went platinum and broke into the Billboard top ten. Carlos’ strutting, space-age reading of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 gave that piece a new day-glo grandeur, in whose vibrant reflection all subsequent performances either bask or wilt. Carlos’ version of that over-worked classic-hit Air on the G String demonstrated that underneath the sickly-sweet frosting of too-many wedding performances there was a freshly honed file. Aided and abetted by Moog, Bach made his jailbreak.</p>
<p>A year earlier the Doors had used a Moog for their Strange Days album, and in 1969 the instrument adorned the Beatles’ studio swansong, Abbey Road. Hollywood, too, came calling. In Carlos’s score for Stanley Kubrick’s &#160;1971 A Clockwork Orange the urgent electric energy of Moog’s sound even in, or perhaps especially in, slow moving musical textures captured the artful psychopathy of the film’s violence-loving anti-hero, Alex. The soundtrack exploited that strange something in the Moog’s sound, the siren-song way it rides the knife-edge between ambrosial sweetness and terror.</p>
<p>Of the many other pop and concert music applications of Moog’s creation, however, none equals that of David Borden, whose 12-part Continuing Story of Counterpoint is one of the great works of late 20th-century art music—an ambitious, yet welcoming masterpiece composed between 1976 and 1987, and one which offers its players and listeners perpetually new perspectives on what it means to play and to listen. Borden’s Continuing Story realizes the promise of music both to mark time’s progress and to cleave ecstatically to the moment. Moog gave Borden, then a neophyte on synthesizers, the keys to his Trumansburg studio in 1967. Two years later Moog received his first major patent and that same year Borden formed Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, the first all-synthesizer ensemble. The group gave its first concert in Barnes Hall on the Cornell University campus in May of 1969.</p>
<p>This past Sunday the Mallards returned to Barnes Hall to celebrate the group’s fortieth anniversary.&#160; It’s been a period of commemorations for Borden, who marked his 70th birthday this past Christmas Day. His once-black hair is now gray, but his witty and oracular stage presence is as engaging as ever. Barnes Hall was full even on a wet late-Winter-Early Spring night, the proceedings introduced by Trevor Pinch, who, along with Frank Trocco, has written an excellent book on Robert Moog and others, called Analog Days. <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/PINANA.html" type="external">http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/PINANA.html</a>. Pinch asked who among the audience had been at the first MMPMC &#160;concert forty years ago. Many hands, attached to witnesses of and contributors to Ithaca’s counter-culture and avant-gardist past, went up.</p>
<p>At this point I should probably acknowledge that I have been in the group for most the last decade. Now we use laptops and keyboards instead of the weighty and sometimes irascilbe analog synthesizers. David Borden brought along two of his classic Moogs and set them off to the side of the stage as tributes to the inventor and to the group’s past.</p>
<p>Borden talked about Bob Moog with real affection and charm, and used the last last synthesizer Moog conceived—a combination of both analog and digital synthesizer and a beautifully fashioned tool that put one in mind of the controls of a jet plane as conceived by Bang and Olufsen—designed shortly before his death from a brain tumor in 2005. Borden used it in dialogue with a vintage mini-Moog for his bluesy tribute to another friend, saxonphone and clarinet player, Jimmy Giuffre who died last year. Giuffre, too, was heard in sampled excerpts commented on by Borden at the last Moog, with keyboard savant Josh Oxford on the mini-Moog, and Borden’s electric-guitar virtuoso of a son Gabriel on an instrument he’d personally assembled from spare parts. Borden offered subsequent ancedotes about Jasper Johns and modern dance legend Viola Farber; Borden’s tribute to her, which featured live video footage of her choreography, closed the program.</p>
<p>Borden is categorized as a minimalist along with&#160; his colleagues Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Like any such designation, this one is as misleading as it is useful.&#160; The Counterpoints of Borden’s Continuing Story are composed in modules, units repeated from two to as many as eight or even sixteen times each.&#160; Repetition is a fundamental principle of construction in these pieces. Borden also draws frequently on arpeggiated lines familiar to us from the music of Philip Glass, and these recur in shifting patterns. Generally all of the three keyboard parts of Mother Mallard trio are moving, at least on the surface level, at the same brisk pace: several notes per second, with one or two of the players occasionally adopting a more spectatorly pace, allowing the music to sweep them along.</p>
<p>Though the compositions are notated with utter elegance and specificity, there is no governing time signature. Each of the three keyboard parts pursues its own metrical path through the modules, a typical piece having between thirty or forty of these in total. In each module a single harmonic aura tends to prevail: never has pure diatonicism been so alive. Encompassing consonance is the rule.</p>
<p>The notes race along with metronomic precision, but the lockstep surface does not draw the attention, or only does so intermittently. Instead the three keyboard parts seem to move in and&#160; out of phase according to the perceptions of the listener.&#160; One hears different things in the music with each performance: different rhythmic and melodic profiles emerge momentarily then merge with others or are suddenly eclipsed; a line sheers off into the distant background, only to reassert itself in a new guise moments later or after a lengthier interval. The more things stay the same, the more things change.</p>
<p>In some cases individual keyboards part may be carried over to a different Counterpoint entirely. Yet their contexts change. We might recognize the lineaments of the transferred part, but be astonished by the recasting, perhaps against type. The frenetically alternating open fifths that open Counterpoint 5 in the Player One part ultimately usher in the jubilant funkiness of Module 23, one of my all-time favorite musical passages, that makes me smile just thinking about it.&#160; In Counterpoint 7, Player One plays the identical part, but the new surroundings give it a slightly darker cast, a meditative quality that defies its high speed.</p>
<p>A string of modules may take up residence in a given key area, and then suddenly move house between heartbeats over the bar-line to the next module.&#160; If this is vivifying for the listener, it can be both bracing and utterly terrifying for the player. Indeed, if one player gets seduced by the rushing beauty, quirky eccentricities, or momentary glint of another part, and notices for the first time a suddenly different scansion, the trace of new and fascinating musical shape, the whisper of ghostly voice, or a the witty chiding of a musical memory coming from the music, one risks loosing the slip stream of the music.&#160; Finding your way back into its rush is one of the most difficult tasks in the history of chamber music.</p>
<p>This integrity of the individual parts and the permutations of perceptual combination that each module fosters, allows Borden to experiment with peeling off one keyboard, leaving new shapes to emerge from the two that remain.&#160; I joined Blaise Bryski, one of the widest ranging and expressive keyboard players there is, a master of the bravura and even more of cantabile style from Mozart to yesterday, for&#160; a two-piano rendition of Counterpoint 8, written in 1979. With the two concert grands nested into one another I heard many new things in this classic and always-compelling work, though I didn’t relax for a slit-second.&#160; There is nothing harder than making the synchronic precision of this music release its larger diachronic message.&#160; Even resisting the mesmeric beckonings of some of the modules one can begin to doubt one’s memory: “Is this the seventh or eighth time I’ve played this module.” In such moments one must revert to a deeper level of memory, and draw on the larger cycles that you have been unconsciously perceiving, even while attending frantically to each individual beat. In the event, Blaise and I did land on that last glinting sixteenth note—one of thousands in the piece—precisely together, and then suddenly gone like a drop of water on a duck’s back.</p>
<p>For Borden, then, counterpoint is the way the sonorities and rhythms of each part cooperate but retain their identity, contributing to the larger musical goals yet retaining their integrity. The paradox exploited by Borden’s genius for energizing a piece that in other hands might succumb to its own inertia is this: each Counterpoint is instantly recognizable yet always yields a different piece, a unique hearing.</p>
<p>In this sense the comparison to Bach and his counterpoint is an apt one, for in that music, too, both player and listener can always hear something new, the elegant course of a contrapuntal voice, the suddenly bold gesture of a countersubject somehow never noticed before. Counterpoint in Borden and Bach—and I hope neither blushes at the comparison—is a way of reveling in the nowness of life while recognizing the ever-changing beauty of the way it passes by.</p>
<p>Forty years on Mother Mallard is as new as the day she first ruffled her wings.</p>
<p>DAVID YEARSLEY teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of <a href="" type="internal">Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint</a>His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by <a href="http://www.musicaomnia.org/index2.htm" type="external">Musica Omnia</a>. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
|
Homage to Moog and Mallards
| true |
https://counterpunch.org/2009/04/03/homage-to-moog-and-mallards/
|
2009-04-03
| 4left
|
Homage to Moog and Mallards
<p>Drive north from Ithaca, New York up the west side of Lake Cayuga for seven or eight miles and you’ll come to Taughannock State Park, which encloses the spectacular falls of the same name, said to be the highest east of the Rockies, higher even than Niagara Falls. After passing by the entrance to the park, take the gorge road climbing steeply up the bluffs heading west and after you stop at the lookout above the falls and have a look at the cataract—iced and silent in winter, thunderous in spring, a trickle in the driest stretches of summer unrelieved by thunders storms — you’ll come to the town of Trumansburg.</p>
<p>Trumansburg has a wide and graceful main street of stately clapboard houses with porches, pillared churches and library, and finishes its protocols of decorum with an ensemble of terraced brick shops.&#160; But for the incipient sprawl to the south and the derelict supermarket and parking lot to the north, the town looks much like it did in the 19th century, and much like it did in the 1960s when the New York City native, Robert Moog, developed his epoch-making synthesizer, hailed by many to be the most important keyboard instrument invented in the 20th century. Moog had come Ithaca to do a Ph.D. in engineering physics at Cornell and after completing his degree settled&#160; his company in Trumansburg to develop his musical instruments.</p>
<p>The impact of the Moog synthesizer on the sound of the late 1960s and 1970s is hard to overestimate. Wendy Carlos (then still Walter Carlos) brought out Switched-On Bach in 1968 using Moog’s synthesizers. The LP went platinum and broke into the Billboard top ten. Carlos’ strutting, space-age reading of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 3 gave that piece a new day-glo grandeur, in whose vibrant reflection all subsequent performances either bask or wilt. Carlos’ version of that over-worked classic-hit Air on the G String demonstrated that underneath the sickly-sweet frosting of too-many wedding performances there was a freshly honed file. Aided and abetted by Moog, Bach made his jailbreak.</p>
<p>A year earlier the Doors had used a Moog for their Strange Days album, and in 1969 the instrument adorned the Beatles’ studio swansong, Abbey Road. Hollywood, too, came calling. In Carlos’s score for Stanley Kubrick’s &#160;1971 A Clockwork Orange the urgent electric energy of Moog’s sound even in, or perhaps especially in, slow moving musical textures captured the artful psychopathy of the film’s violence-loving anti-hero, Alex. The soundtrack exploited that strange something in the Moog’s sound, the siren-song way it rides the knife-edge between ambrosial sweetness and terror.</p>
<p>Of the many other pop and concert music applications of Moog’s creation, however, none equals that of David Borden, whose 12-part Continuing Story of Counterpoint is one of the great works of late 20th-century art music—an ambitious, yet welcoming masterpiece composed between 1976 and 1987, and one which offers its players and listeners perpetually new perspectives on what it means to play and to listen. Borden’s Continuing Story realizes the promise of music both to mark time’s progress and to cleave ecstatically to the moment. Moog gave Borden, then a neophyte on synthesizers, the keys to his Trumansburg studio in 1967. Two years later Moog received his first major patent and that same year Borden formed Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, the first all-synthesizer ensemble. The group gave its first concert in Barnes Hall on the Cornell University campus in May of 1969.</p>
<p>This past Sunday the Mallards returned to Barnes Hall to celebrate the group’s fortieth anniversary.&#160; It’s been a period of commemorations for Borden, who marked his 70th birthday this past Christmas Day. His once-black hair is now gray, but his witty and oracular stage presence is as engaging as ever. Barnes Hall was full even on a wet late-Winter-Early Spring night, the proceedings introduced by Trevor Pinch, who, along with Frank Trocco, has written an excellent book on Robert Moog and others, called Analog Days. <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/PINANA.html" type="external">http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/PINANA.html</a>. Pinch asked who among the audience had been at the first MMPMC &#160;concert forty years ago. Many hands, attached to witnesses of and contributors to Ithaca’s counter-culture and avant-gardist past, went up.</p>
<p>At this point I should probably acknowledge that I have been in the group for most the last decade. Now we use laptops and keyboards instead of the weighty and sometimes irascilbe analog synthesizers. David Borden brought along two of his classic Moogs and set them off to the side of the stage as tributes to the inventor and to the group’s past.</p>
<p>Borden talked about Bob Moog with real affection and charm, and used the last last synthesizer Moog conceived—a combination of both analog and digital synthesizer and a beautifully fashioned tool that put one in mind of the controls of a jet plane as conceived by Bang and Olufsen—designed shortly before his death from a brain tumor in 2005. Borden used it in dialogue with a vintage mini-Moog for his bluesy tribute to another friend, saxonphone and clarinet player, Jimmy Giuffre who died last year. Giuffre, too, was heard in sampled excerpts commented on by Borden at the last Moog, with keyboard savant Josh Oxford on the mini-Moog, and Borden’s electric-guitar virtuoso of a son Gabriel on an instrument he’d personally assembled from spare parts. Borden offered subsequent ancedotes about Jasper Johns and modern dance legend Viola Farber; Borden’s tribute to her, which featured live video footage of her choreography, closed the program.</p>
<p>Borden is categorized as a minimalist along with&#160; his colleagues Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Like any such designation, this one is as misleading as it is useful.&#160; The Counterpoints of Borden’s Continuing Story are composed in modules, units repeated from two to as many as eight or even sixteen times each.&#160; Repetition is a fundamental principle of construction in these pieces. Borden also draws frequently on arpeggiated lines familiar to us from the music of Philip Glass, and these recur in shifting patterns. Generally all of the three keyboard parts of Mother Mallard trio are moving, at least on the surface level, at the same brisk pace: several notes per second, with one or two of the players occasionally adopting a more spectatorly pace, allowing the music to sweep them along.</p>
<p>Though the compositions are notated with utter elegance and specificity, there is no governing time signature. Each of the three keyboard parts pursues its own metrical path through the modules, a typical piece having between thirty or forty of these in total. In each module a single harmonic aura tends to prevail: never has pure diatonicism been so alive. Encompassing consonance is the rule.</p>
<p>The notes race along with metronomic precision, but the lockstep surface does not draw the attention, or only does so intermittently. Instead the three keyboard parts seem to move in and&#160; out of phase according to the perceptions of the listener.&#160; One hears different things in the music with each performance: different rhythmic and melodic profiles emerge momentarily then merge with others or are suddenly eclipsed; a line sheers off into the distant background, only to reassert itself in a new guise moments later or after a lengthier interval. The more things stay the same, the more things change.</p>
<p>In some cases individual keyboards part may be carried over to a different Counterpoint entirely. Yet their contexts change. We might recognize the lineaments of the transferred part, but be astonished by the recasting, perhaps against type. The frenetically alternating open fifths that open Counterpoint 5 in the Player One part ultimately usher in the jubilant funkiness of Module 23, one of my all-time favorite musical passages, that makes me smile just thinking about it.&#160; In Counterpoint 7, Player One plays the identical part, but the new surroundings give it a slightly darker cast, a meditative quality that defies its high speed.</p>
<p>A string of modules may take up residence in a given key area, and then suddenly move house between heartbeats over the bar-line to the next module.&#160; If this is vivifying for the listener, it can be both bracing and utterly terrifying for the player. Indeed, if one player gets seduced by the rushing beauty, quirky eccentricities, or momentary glint of another part, and notices for the first time a suddenly different scansion, the trace of new and fascinating musical shape, the whisper of ghostly voice, or a the witty chiding of a musical memory coming from the music, one risks loosing the slip stream of the music.&#160; Finding your way back into its rush is one of the most difficult tasks in the history of chamber music.</p>
<p>This integrity of the individual parts and the permutations of perceptual combination that each module fosters, allows Borden to experiment with peeling off one keyboard, leaving new shapes to emerge from the two that remain.&#160; I joined Blaise Bryski, one of the widest ranging and expressive keyboard players there is, a master of the bravura and even more of cantabile style from Mozart to yesterday, for&#160; a two-piano rendition of Counterpoint 8, written in 1979. With the two concert grands nested into one another I heard many new things in this classic and always-compelling work, though I didn’t relax for a slit-second.&#160; There is nothing harder than making the synchronic precision of this music release its larger diachronic message.&#160; Even resisting the mesmeric beckonings of some of the modules one can begin to doubt one’s memory: “Is this the seventh or eighth time I’ve played this module.” In such moments one must revert to a deeper level of memory, and draw on the larger cycles that you have been unconsciously perceiving, even while attending frantically to each individual beat. In the event, Blaise and I did land on that last glinting sixteenth note—one of thousands in the piece—precisely together, and then suddenly gone like a drop of water on a duck’s back.</p>
<p>For Borden, then, counterpoint is the way the sonorities and rhythms of each part cooperate but retain their identity, contributing to the larger musical goals yet retaining their integrity. The paradox exploited by Borden’s genius for energizing a piece that in other hands might succumb to its own inertia is this: each Counterpoint is instantly recognizable yet always yields a different piece, a unique hearing.</p>
<p>In this sense the comparison to Bach and his counterpoint is an apt one, for in that music, too, both player and listener can always hear something new, the elegant course of a contrapuntal voice, the suddenly bold gesture of a countersubject somehow never noticed before. Counterpoint in Borden and Bach—and I hope neither blushes at the comparison—is a way of reveling in the nowness of life while recognizing the ever-changing beauty of the way it passes by.</p>
<p>Forty years on Mother Mallard is as new as the day she first ruffled her wings.</p>
<p>DAVID YEARSLEY teaches at Cornell University. A long-time contributor to the Anderson Valley Advertiser, he is author of <a href="" type="internal">Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint</a>His latest CD, “All Your Cares Beguile: Songs and Sonatas from Baroque London”, has just been released by <a href="http://www.musicaomnia.org/index2.htm" type="external">Musica Omnia</a>. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
| 7,381 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Joe Sais and His Band will bring their Las Vegas-style show to the South Broadway Cultural Center with music ranging from Spanish to country.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Back in the ’70s, Joe Sais was performing his music six days a week at hotels all over New Mexico. Then disco – with its DJs – came on strong in the 1980s.</p>
<p>“There weren’t many places for me to play,” recalled Sais, a Barelas native who was raised in the South Valley.</p>
<p>But Sais didn’t disappear from the music scene. He simply adjusted: Sais found day jobs so he could continue to do on weekends what he loves most – play music.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In the ’80s, he worked as an X-ray technician and for the last 20-plus years he’s been remodeling and selling homes.</p>
<p>Sais, a vocalist, will bring his Las Vegas-style show to the South Broadway Cultural Center on Saturday, July 19.</p>
<p>“It’s popular music,” he said, “from Spanish to country. It’s a tribute to great songs and great singers. Roy Orbison, Elvis, Frank Sinatra. … I’ve always liked variety. I’ve always liked the crooners. Bing Crosby was an influence.”</p>
<p>In Sais’ core band are: drummer Al Guadagnoli, keyboardist Carol Sanchez, saxophonist Phillip Brown, bass guitarist Hector Franco and guitarist Harold Garcia.</p>
<p>“Harold and I have played together since we were 13. We used to have Harold’s mom and dad drive us to gigs out of town,” the 63-year-old Sais recalled.</p>
<p>For the last year-and-a-half, Sais said, the band has usually been playing large corporate events. And, over the years, he’s played at the inaugural balls of Govs. Susana Martinez, Bruce King, Toney Anaya and Jerry Apodaca.</p>
<p>Sais still has a big fan base.</p>
<p>“People ask me, ‘Where are you playing? Where can we go hear you?'” he said.</p>
<p>So he did a show at the SBCC in the spring of 2013. It sold out.</p>
<p>“Now people are asking, ‘When will you do this again?’ I love to perform. I love interacting with the crowd. It’s not just about playing music,” Sais added.</p>
<p />
|
Joe Sais and His Band perform an encore Vegas-style performance at the SBCC
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/430897/albuquerque-variety-music.html
| 2least
|
Joe Sais and His Band perform an encore Vegas-style performance at the SBCC
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>Joe Sais and His Band will bring their Las Vegas-style show to the South Broadway Cultural Center with music ranging from Spanish to country.</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Back in the ’70s, Joe Sais was performing his music six days a week at hotels all over New Mexico. Then disco – with its DJs – came on strong in the 1980s.</p>
<p>“There weren’t many places for me to play,” recalled Sais, a Barelas native who was raised in the South Valley.</p>
<p>But Sais didn’t disappear from the music scene. He simply adjusted: Sais found day jobs so he could continue to do on weekends what he loves most – play music.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>In the ’80s, he worked as an X-ray technician and for the last 20-plus years he’s been remodeling and selling homes.</p>
<p>Sais, a vocalist, will bring his Las Vegas-style show to the South Broadway Cultural Center on Saturday, July 19.</p>
<p>“It’s popular music,” he said, “from Spanish to country. It’s a tribute to great songs and great singers. Roy Orbison, Elvis, Frank Sinatra. … I’ve always liked variety. I’ve always liked the crooners. Bing Crosby was an influence.”</p>
<p>In Sais’ core band are: drummer Al Guadagnoli, keyboardist Carol Sanchez, saxophonist Phillip Brown, bass guitarist Hector Franco and guitarist Harold Garcia.</p>
<p>“Harold and I have played together since we were 13. We used to have Harold’s mom and dad drive us to gigs out of town,” the 63-year-old Sais recalled.</p>
<p>For the last year-and-a-half, Sais said, the band has usually been playing large corporate events. And, over the years, he’s played at the inaugural balls of Govs. Susana Martinez, Bruce King, Toney Anaya and Jerry Apodaca.</p>
<p>Sais still has a big fan base.</p>
<p>“People ask me, ‘Where are you playing? Where can we go hear you?'” he said.</p>
<p>So he did a show at the SBCC in the spring of 2013. It sold out.</p>
<p>“Now people are asking, ‘When will you do this again?’ I love to perform. I love interacting with the crowd. It’s not just about playing music,” Sais added.</p>
<p />
| 7,382 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Bernalillo County will open its four pools and spray park Saturday at noon in time for the Memorial Day weekend. Veterans and seniors over 50 get in free. The pools are open seven days a week from noon until 5 p.m. and the spray park is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from noon to 6 p.m. on weekends. Swim lessons and pool rentals are available mornings and evenings. Contact the pools individually for more information. Visit the Bernalillo County swimming pools <a href="http://www.bernco.gov/swimming-pools-6664/" type="external">page</a>for more information.</p>
<p>Sites are: Rio Grande Indoor Pool 2312 Arenal Road S.W., 314-0169</p>
<p>Paradise Hills Pool 5901 Paradise Blvd. N.W., 898-0956</p>
<p>Alameda Spray Park 9800 4th Street N.W., 898-1355</p>
<p>Los Padillas Aquatic Center 2141 Los Padillas Road S.W., 873-1156</p>
<p>South Valley Pool 3912 Isleta Blvd. S.W., 873-6616</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Bernalillo County pools opening Saturday
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/201509/bernalillo-county-pools-opening-saturday.html
|
2013-05-21
| 2least
|
Bernalillo County pools opening Saturday
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Bernalillo County will open its four pools and spray park Saturday at noon in time for the Memorial Day weekend. Veterans and seniors over 50 get in free. The pools are open seven days a week from noon until 5 p.m. and the spray park is open Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from noon to 6 p.m. on weekends. Swim lessons and pool rentals are available mornings and evenings. Contact the pools individually for more information. Visit the Bernalillo County swimming pools <a href="http://www.bernco.gov/swimming-pools-6664/" type="external">page</a>for more information.</p>
<p>Sites are: Rio Grande Indoor Pool 2312 Arenal Road S.W., 314-0169</p>
<p>Paradise Hills Pool 5901 Paradise Blvd. N.W., 898-0956</p>
<p>Alameda Spray Park 9800 4th Street N.W., 898-1355</p>
<p>Los Padillas Aquatic Center 2141 Los Padillas Road S.W., 873-1156</p>
<p>South Valley Pool 3912 Isleta Blvd. S.W., 873-6616</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,383 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>AZTEC, N.M. (AP) — Authorities say the deaths of a couple whose bodies were found outside their Aztec home appear to be part of a murder-suicide.</p>
<p><a href="http://bit.ly/1uiBQ1C" type="external">The Daily Times reports</a> that the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office says 24-year-old Erika Brown and a second victim, a man in his 50s, were found Monday afternoon with gunshot wounds.</p>
<p>Lt. Det. Cory Tanner says a county employee who happened to be driving by the home spotted the bodies.</p>
<p>Tanner says residents reported hearing gunshots around that time and a gun was recovered from the scene.</p>
<p>Investigators are trying to determine a motive.</p>
<p>They are not identifying the male victim, pending notification of next of kin.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Shooting of Aztec couple likely a murder-suicide
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/441021/shooting-of-aztec-couple-likely-a-murder-suicide.html
| 2least
|
Shooting of Aztec couple likely a murder-suicide
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>AZTEC, N.M. (AP) — Authorities say the deaths of a couple whose bodies were found outside their Aztec home appear to be part of a murder-suicide.</p>
<p><a href="http://bit.ly/1uiBQ1C" type="external">The Daily Times reports</a> that the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office says 24-year-old Erika Brown and a second victim, a man in his 50s, were found Monday afternoon with gunshot wounds.</p>
<p>Lt. Det. Cory Tanner says a county employee who happened to be driving by the home spotted the bodies.</p>
<p>Tanner says residents reported hearing gunshots around that time and a gun was recovered from the scene.</p>
<p>Investigators are trying to determine a motive.</p>
<p>They are not identifying the male victim, pending notification of next of kin.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,384 |
|
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALAMOGORDO – An Otero County man has received life in prison for the murder of a Tularosa woman more than a year ago.</p>
<p>A state District Court judge on Friday imposed the maximum sentence on Paul Reynolds, who also received 4½ years for other charges.</p>
<p>Reynolds pleaded guilty earlier this year to first-degree felony murder in the January 2013 killing of 63-year-old Rita Gallegos.</p>
<p>The Alamogordo Daily News reported that Reynolds must serve 30 years before becoming eligible for parole.</p>
<p>Gallegos was found dead in her bedroom and her vehicle missing.</p>
<p>Shortly after that, the victim’s SUV was involved in a rollover, and authorities arrested 19-year-old Reynolds and two women.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the victim and her husband had taken Reynolds in on several occasions, including the day she was killed.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
Man sentenced to life for 2013 murder
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/451374/man-sentenced-to-life-for-2013-murder.html
| 2least
|
Man sentenced to life for 2013 murder
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALAMOGORDO – An Otero County man has received life in prison for the murder of a Tularosa woman more than a year ago.</p>
<p>A state District Court judge on Friday imposed the maximum sentence on Paul Reynolds, who also received 4½ years for other charges.</p>
<p>Reynolds pleaded guilty earlier this year to first-degree felony murder in the January 2013 killing of 63-year-old Rita Gallegos.</p>
<p>The Alamogordo Daily News reported that Reynolds must serve 30 years before becoming eligible for parole.</p>
<p>Gallegos was found dead in her bedroom and her vehicle missing.</p>
<p>Shortly after that, the victim’s SUV was involved in a rollover, and authorities arrested 19-year-old Reynolds and two women.</p>
<p>Prosecutors say the victim and her husband had taken Reynolds in on several occasions, including the day she was killed.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,385 |
|
<p>Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge Susan Roger will retain her seat because no challengers emerged for the spring municipal elections.</p>
<p>The City Clerk’s office this week certified the candidate list for the April 4 primary, which will have elections for two judge seats and three city council wards. Four candidates, including incumbents, are running for the Las Vegas City Council seats in both Wards 2 and 4. The Ward 6 race has no incumbent and drew 10 candidates.</p>
<p>General elections will be held June 13 for any races that do not have a candidate get a majority of the votes cast. If a general election is necessary, the top two vote-getters in the primary will advance.</p>
<p>Contact Jamie Munks at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a> or 702-383-0340. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@JamieMunksRJ" type="external">@JamieMunksRJ</a> on Twitter.</p>
|
Las Vegas judge wins seat months before election day
| false |
https://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/las-vegas/las-vegas-judge-wins-seat-months-before-election-day/
|
2017-02-09
| 1right-center
|
Las Vegas judge wins seat months before election day
<p>Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge Susan Roger will retain her seat because no challengers emerged for the spring municipal elections.</p>
<p>The City Clerk’s office this week certified the candidate list for the April 4 primary, which will have elections for two judge seats and three city council wards. Four candidates, including incumbents, are running for the Las Vegas City Council seats in both Wards 2 and 4. The Ward 6 race has no incumbent and drew 10 candidates.</p>
<p>General elections will be held June 13 for any races that do not have a candidate get a majority of the votes cast. If a general election is necessary, the top two vote-getters in the primary will advance.</p>
<p>Contact Jamie Munks at <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a> or 702-383-0340. Follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/@JamieMunksRJ" type="external">@JamieMunksRJ</a> on Twitter.</p>
| 7,386 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Separate crashes have occurred on northbound Interstate 25 south of Albuquerque — one just past Broadway that has been moved to the right shoulder, and a second at Rio Bravo that has been moved off to the left shoulder, KKOB’s traffic reporter Joe Gonzales said. Lanes are open but it’s slow going through both accident sites.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
|
2 accidents on NB I-25 south of ABQ
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/175042/accidents-on-nb-i-25-south-of-abq.html
|
2013-03-05
| 2least
|
2 accidents on NB I-25 south of ABQ
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Separate crashes have occurred on northbound Interstate 25 south of Albuquerque — one just past Broadway that has been moved to the right shoulder, and a second at Rio Bravo that has been moved off to the left shoulder, KKOB’s traffic reporter Joe Gonzales said. Lanes are open but it’s slow going through both accident sites.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
| 7,387 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Indianapolis Star reported that emails provided through a public records request show that Pence communicated with advisers through his personal AOL account on homeland security matters and security at the governor’s residence during his four years as governor.</p>
<p>The governor also faced email security issues. Pence’s AOL account was subjected to a phishing scheme last spring, before he was chosen by Donald Trump to join the GOP presidential ticket. Pence’s contacts were sent an email falsely claiming that the governor and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and needed money.</p>
<p>As Trump’s running mate, Pence frequently criticized rival Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, accusing her of purposely keeping her emails out of public reach and shielding her from scrutiny.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sarah Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, doubled down on that defense, stressed to reporters on Air Force One that state and federal laws are different and claiming that is efforts to turn over the messages to be archived are “why anybody even knows about the account.”</p>
<p>“He did everything to the letter of the law,” she said.</p>
<p>Pence spokesman Marc Lotter added that “the comparison is absurd” because Clinton had set up a private server in her home at the start of her tenure at the State Department and, unlike Clinton, Pence did not handle any classified material as Indiana’s governor.</p>
<p>The governor moved to a different AOL account with additional security measures, but has since stopped using the new personal account since he was sworn-in as vice president, said Lotter.</p>
<p>Lotter said Pence “maintained a state email account and a personal email account” like previous governors in the state. At the end of his term Pence directed outside counsel to review all of his communications to ensure that state-related emails were transferred and properly archived by the state, the spokesman said.</p>
<p>The newspaper reported that the office of Pence’s successor, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, released more than 30 pages from Pence’s AOL account, but declined to release an unspecified number of emails because they were considered confidential.</p>
<p>Public officials are not barred from using personal email accounts under Indiana law, but the law is interpreted to mean that any official business conducted on private email must be retained to comply with public record laws.</p>
<p>The state requires all records pertaining to state business to be retained and available for public information requests. Emails involving state email accounts are captured on the state’s servers, but any emails that Pence may have sent from his AOL account to another private account would need to be retained.</p>
<p>At the end of his term, Pence hired the Indianapolis law firm of Barnes &amp; Thornburg to conduct a review of all of his communications and that review is still ongoing, Lotter said. Any correspondence between Pence’s AOL account and any aides using a state email account would have been automatically archived, he said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Orlando, Fla. and Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.</p>
|
WH defends Pence’s use of private email while governor
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/961745/wh-defends-pences-use-of-private-email-while-governor.html
|
2017-03-03
| 2least
|
WH defends Pence’s use of private email while governor
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>The Indianapolis Star reported that emails provided through a public records request show that Pence communicated with advisers through his personal AOL account on homeland security matters and security at the governor’s residence during his four years as governor.</p>
<p>The governor also faced email security issues. Pence’s AOL account was subjected to a phishing scheme last spring, before he was chosen by Donald Trump to join the GOP presidential ticket. Pence’s contacts were sent an email falsely claiming that the governor and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and needed money.</p>
<p>As Trump’s running mate, Pence frequently criticized rival Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, accusing her of purposely keeping her emails out of public reach and shielding her from scrutiny.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Sarah Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, doubled down on that defense, stressed to reporters on Air Force One that state and federal laws are different and claiming that is efforts to turn over the messages to be archived are “why anybody even knows about the account.”</p>
<p>“He did everything to the letter of the law,” she said.</p>
<p>Pence spokesman Marc Lotter added that “the comparison is absurd” because Clinton had set up a private server in her home at the start of her tenure at the State Department and, unlike Clinton, Pence did not handle any classified material as Indiana’s governor.</p>
<p>The governor moved to a different AOL account with additional security measures, but has since stopped using the new personal account since he was sworn-in as vice president, said Lotter.</p>
<p>Lotter said Pence “maintained a state email account and a personal email account” like previous governors in the state. At the end of his term Pence directed outside counsel to review all of his communications to ensure that state-related emails were transferred and properly archived by the state, the spokesman said.</p>
<p>The newspaper reported that the office of Pence’s successor, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, released more than 30 pages from Pence’s AOL account, but declined to release an unspecified number of emails because they were considered confidential.</p>
<p>Public officials are not barred from using personal email accounts under Indiana law, but the law is interpreted to mean that any official business conducted on private email must be retained to comply with public record laws.</p>
<p>The state requires all records pertaining to state business to be retained and available for public information requests. Emails involving state email accounts are captured on the state’s servers, but any emails that Pence may have sent from his AOL account to another private account would need to be retained.</p>
<p>At the end of his term, Pence hired the Indianapolis law firm of Barnes &amp; Thornburg to conduct a review of all of his communications and that review is still ongoing, Lotter said. Any correspondence between Pence’s AOL account and any aides using a state email account would have been automatically archived, he said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Orlando, Fla. and Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.</p>
| 7,388 |
<p>By Tim Radford, Climate News NetworkThis article originally appeared at <a href="http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/01/geo-engineering-plan-gets-thumbs-down/" type="external">Climate News Network</a>.</p>
<p>LONDON — Some forms of geo-engineering — the high tech, quick-fix response to climate change — may prove an expensive way to counter a costly problem, according to new research.</p>
<p>Marine scientists in Germany have calculated the effectiveness of “fertilising” the oceans with minerals to change their chemistry and absorb more of the atmospheric carbon dioxide they receive and thus reduce the risk of further global warming.</p>
<p>The technique would work. But it would also involve the massive additional use of energy on a global scale and in the course of doing so release further quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And in the end, it could make only a small difference to overall emissions.</p>
<p />
<p>Almost since climate change was first identified as a looming challenge, scientists have been considered technological ways of countering the worst impacts. Their advice is that the most effective answer is to limit emissions in the first place.</p>
<p>But they have also proposed global “sunshades” created by the release of sulphate aerosols into the upper atmosphere; spraying fine mists of seawater high into the air to intensify the reflective surfaces of clouds; and seeding the oceans with minerals to alter their capacity to serve as a natural “sink” for the extra carbon dioxide.</p>
<p>Modest results</p>
<p>Around 70% of the planet is blue water: it is home to teeming algal life that harnesses sunlight to exploit carbon dioxide for growth. But this growth is limited by the availability of other nutrients – among them iron.</p>
<p>Peter Köhler and colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven considered the advantages of spreading finely crushed olivine rock – a common magnesium-iron silicate – in the seas.</p>
<p>They report in Environmental Research Letters that three billion tonnes of this marine manure spread every year could at best compensate for only about nine per cent of present-day discharges of carbon dioxide from factory chimneys, power plants, vehicle exhausts and agricultural systems.</p>
<p>The olivine would have to be crushed into tiny particles with a diameter measured at around a millionth of a metre, to sink very slowly and dissolve at levels where it could be most effective.</p>
<p>No simple answer</p>
<p>Rainwater dissolves carbon dioxide to become a weak carbonic acid, and the oceans have been gradually growing more acidic as greenhouse gas emissions rise. So the delivery of minerals would make the oceans more alkaline, and thus able to take up even more carbon dioxide. As a bonus, the same minerals would also encourage plant growth.</p>
<p>This geo-engineering solution is in a sense the extension of a natural one – rivers deliver fine particles of rock to the ocean in huge quantities every year – but the researchers warn that it would require a rock mining industry as big as the global coal mining industry.</p>
<p>Huge amounts of energy would also be needed to crush the rock to the finest dust, and an armada of 100 large ships would need to go in and out of ports 32 times a year each to ferry just one billion tonnes – one Gigatonne (Gt) – of olivine to the right stretches of sea. It would take 40 gigatonnes a year to balance the present-day emissions of carbon dioxide.</p>
<p>“Taking all our conclusions together – mainly the energy costs of the processing line and the projected potential impact on marine biology – we assess the approach as rather inefficient,” said Dr Köhler. “It is certainly not a simple solution against the global warming problem.”</p>
<p />
|
Plan to Salt the Oceans Gets Thumbs Down
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/plan-to-salt-the-oceans-gets-thumbs-down/
|
2013-01-22
| 4left
|
Plan to Salt the Oceans Gets Thumbs Down
<p>By Tim Radford, Climate News NetworkThis article originally appeared at <a href="http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/01/geo-engineering-plan-gets-thumbs-down/" type="external">Climate News Network</a>.</p>
<p>LONDON — Some forms of geo-engineering — the high tech, quick-fix response to climate change — may prove an expensive way to counter a costly problem, according to new research.</p>
<p>Marine scientists in Germany have calculated the effectiveness of “fertilising” the oceans with minerals to change their chemistry and absorb more of the atmospheric carbon dioxide they receive and thus reduce the risk of further global warming.</p>
<p>The technique would work. But it would also involve the massive additional use of energy on a global scale and in the course of doing so release further quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And in the end, it could make only a small difference to overall emissions.</p>
<p />
<p>Almost since climate change was first identified as a looming challenge, scientists have been considered technological ways of countering the worst impacts. Their advice is that the most effective answer is to limit emissions in the first place.</p>
<p>But they have also proposed global “sunshades” created by the release of sulphate aerosols into the upper atmosphere; spraying fine mists of seawater high into the air to intensify the reflective surfaces of clouds; and seeding the oceans with minerals to alter their capacity to serve as a natural “sink” for the extra carbon dioxide.</p>
<p>Modest results</p>
<p>Around 70% of the planet is blue water: it is home to teeming algal life that harnesses sunlight to exploit carbon dioxide for growth. But this growth is limited by the availability of other nutrients – among them iron.</p>
<p>Peter Köhler and colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven considered the advantages of spreading finely crushed olivine rock – a common magnesium-iron silicate – in the seas.</p>
<p>They report in Environmental Research Letters that three billion tonnes of this marine manure spread every year could at best compensate for only about nine per cent of present-day discharges of carbon dioxide from factory chimneys, power plants, vehicle exhausts and agricultural systems.</p>
<p>The olivine would have to be crushed into tiny particles with a diameter measured at around a millionth of a metre, to sink very slowly and dissolve at levels where it could be most effective.</p>
<p>No simple answer</p>
<p>Rainwater dissolves carbon dioxide to become a weak carbonic acid, and the oceans have been gradually growing more acidic as greenhouse gas emissions rise. So the delivery of minerals would make the oceans more alkaline, and thus able to take up even more carbon dioxide. As a bonus, the same minerals would also encourage plant growth.</p>
<p>This geo-engineering solution is in a sense the extension of a natural one – rivers deliver fine particles of rock to the ocean in huge quantities every year – but the researchers warn that it would require a rock mining industry as big as the global coal mining industry.</p>
<p>Huge amounts of energy would also be needed to crush the rock to the finest dust, and an armada of 100 large ships would need to go in and out of ports 32 times a year each to ferry just one billion tonnes – one Gigatonne (Gt) – of olivine to the right stretches of sea. It would take 40 gigatonnes a year to balance the present-day emissions of carbon dioxide.</p>
<p>“Taking all our conclusions together – mainly the energy costs of the processing line and the projected potential impact on marine biology – we assess the approach as rather inefficient,” said Dr Köhler. “It is certainly not a simple solution against the global warming problem.”</p>
<p />
| 7,389 |
<p>The <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/02/obama-speech-jeremiah-wright-new-orleans/3/" type="external">Daily Caller</a> has obtained and posted video (video below) of a 2007 speech by Barack Obama in Hampton, Virginia. Speaking to an audience of black ministers, and using a black dialect only marginally more authentic than Joe Biden’s, Obama claims that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism. As the Daily Caller says, “the effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.”</p>
<p>Obama’s factual claims about alleged shortchanging of Hurricane Katrina are false. Obama states:</p>
<p>Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt twenty months later, there’s a law, federal law — when you get reconstruction money from the federal government — called the Stafford Act. And basically it says, when you get federal money, you gotta give a ten percent match. The local government’s gotta come up with ten percent. Every ten dollars the federal government comes up with, local government’s gotta give a dollar.</p>
<p>Now here’s the thing, when 9-11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you gotta put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not gonna wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.’</p>
<p>What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense! Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!</p>
<p>But as the Daily Caller points out, by January 2007, six months before Obama’s Hampton speech, the federal government had sent at least $110 billion to areas damaged by Katrina. This was more than five times the money that the Bush administration pledged to New York City after 9/11.</p>
<p>Moreover, says the DC, the federal government did at times waive the Stafford Act during its New Orleans reconstruction efforts. On May 25, 2007, just weeks before Obama’s speech, the Bush administration sent an additional $6.9 billion to Katrina-affected areas with no strings attached.</p>
<p>So here’s what Barack “No Red America, No Blue America” Obama, the great racial unifier, did at Hampton. He charged the U.S. government with racism based on false claims about the response to Hurricane Katrina.</p>
<p>And Obama did not limit his accusation of racism to the federal government. For Obama, white racism is pervasive; it is, to use the central metaphor of the Hampton speech, a bullet that blacks carry in their body from the time of birth. This “bullet” of racism, says Obama, explains the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Having thus slandered the U.S. government and white America, Obama demanded the transfer of money to the inner cities:</p>
<p>We need additional federal public transportation dollars flowing to the highest need communities. We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs. We should be investing in minority-owned businesses, in our neighborhoods, so people don’t have to travel from miles away.</p>
<p>In addition, Obama insisted, we need a series of new federal programs, including one to teach punctuality to the poor:</p>
<p>We can’t expect them to have all the skills they need to work. They may need help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office. We have to help them get there.</p>
<p>Here at last, we find some evidence of the racism Obama claims pervades America — his own claim that blacks can’t be expected to show up for work on time without a special program from the federal government.</p>
<p>Barack Obama was already a candidate for president when he delivered the Hampton speech, so this isn’t ancient history. Rather, the speech is a sincere (though factually dishonest) statement of how he really sees America and what he believes must be done in response. In essence, America needs to redistribute wealth from whites to blacks in order to offset, as best it can, the nation’s basic racism.</p>
<p>As Stanley Kurtz has shown in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595230920/amazon0156-20/" type="external">Spreading The Wealth: How Obama is robbing the suburbs to pay for the cities</a>, the redistribution of wealth from middle class suburbs to the inner city constitutes the core of Obama’s domestic agenda for his second term. The sincere outrage Obama expressed in Hampton should leave little doubt that Obama will aggressively pursue that agenda through executive orders, regulations, and coercion if America makes the grave mistake of re-electing him.</p>
<p>Here in full was last night’s Fox News coverage of the film:</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Obama slandered America as racist using dishonest claims about the response to Hurricane Katrina
| true |
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/obama-slandered-american-as-racist-using-dishonest-claims-about-the-response-to-hurricane-katrina.php
|
2012-10-02
| 0right
|
Obama slandered America as racist using dishonest claims about the response to Hurricane Katrina
<p>The <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/02/obama-speech-jeremiah-wright-new-orleans/3/" type="external">Daily Caller</a> has obtained and posted video (video below) of a 2007 speech by Barack Obama in Hampton, Virginia. Speaking to an audience of black ministers, and using a black dialect only marginally more authentic than Joe Biden’s, Obama claims that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism. As the Daily Caller says, “the effect is closer to an Al Sharpton rally than a conventional campaign event.”</p>
<p>Obama’s factual claims about alleged shortchanging of Hurricane Katrina are false. Obama states:</p>
<p>Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt twenty months later, there’s a law, federal law — when you get reconstruction money from the federal government — called the Stafford Act. And basically it says, when you get federal money, you gotta give a ten percent match. The local government’s gotta come up with ten percent. Every ten dollars the federal government comes up with, local government’s gotta give a dollar.</p>
<p>Now here’s the thing, when 9-11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you gotta put in. Well, here’s ten dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not gonna wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.’</p>
<p>What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense! Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!</p>
<p>But as the Daily Caller points out, by January 2007, six months before Obama’s Hampton speech, the federal government had sent at least $110 billion to areas damaged by Katrina. This was more than five times the money that the Bush administration pledged to New York City after 9/11.</p>
<p>Moreover, says the DC, the federal government did at times waive the Stafford Act during its New Orleans reconstruction efforts. On May 25, 2007, just weeks before Obama’s speech, the Bush administration sent an additional $6.9 billion to Katrina-affected areas with no strings attached.</p>
<p>So here’s what Barack “No Red America, No Blue America” Obama, the great racial unifier, did at Hampton. He charged the U.S. government with racism based on false claims about the response to Hurricane Katrina.</p>
<p>And Obama did not limit his accusation of racism to the federal government. For Obama, white racism is pervasive; it is, to use the central metaphor of the Hampton speech, a bullet that blacks carry in their body from the time of birth. This “bullet” of racism, says Obama, explains the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.</p>
<p>Having thus slandered the U.S. government and white America, Obama demanded the transfer of money to the inner cities:</p>
<p>We need additional federal public transportation dollars flowing to the highest need communities. We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs. We should be investing in minority-owned businesses, in our neighborhoods, so people don’t have to travel from miles away.</p>
<p>In addition, Obama insisted, we need a series of new federal programs, including one to teach punctuality to the poor:</p>
<p>We can’t expect them to have all the skills they need to work. They may need help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office. We have to help them get there.</p>
<p>Here at last, we find some evidence of the racism Obama claims pervades America — his own claim that blacks can’t be expected to show up for work on time without a special program from the federal government.</p>
<p>Barack Obama was already a candidate for president when he delivered the Hampton speech, so this isn’t ancient history. Rather, the speech is a sincere (though factually dishonest) statement of how he really sees America and what he believes must be done in response. In essence, America needs to redistribute wealth from whites to blacks in order to offset, as best it can, the nation’s basic racism.</p>
<p>As Stanley Kurtz has shown in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595230920/amazon0156-20/" type="external">Spreading The Wealth: How Obama is robbing the suburbs to pay for the cities</a>, the redistribution of wealth from middle class suburbs to the inner city constitutes the core of Obama’s domestic agenda for his second term. The sincere outrage Obama expressed in Hampton should leave little doubt that Obama will aggressively pursue that agenda through executive orders, regulations, and coercion if America makes the grave mistake of re-electing him.</p>
<p>Here in full was last night’s Fox News coverage of the film:</p>
<p />
<p />
| 7,390 |
<p>The Southern Poverty Law Center, as Daily Wire's Aaron Bandler wrote in his <a href="" type="internal">article</a>, is "a leftist hack advocacy group which picks and chooses what standards to apply to its labels, consistently turning a blind eye to leftist and pro-Democrat groups and individuals while targeting, often unfairly, their enemies on the right."</p>
<p>Over the past few days, SPLC continued to protect hard-left and Islamist radicals in the name of the "progressive" cause by joining the <a href="" type="internal">chorus</a> of left-wing organizations and leftist commentators in rushing to the support of Linda Sarsour.</p>
<p>Sticking to its modus operandi, SPLC labels anyone who questions Sarsour's Islamist and regressive tendencies as "Islamophobes" while committing themselves to combating hate and bigotry. This begs the question of when SPLC will condemn some of Sarsour's own commentary.</p>
<p>Take the following tweets from Sarsour's account.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>What SPLC does not want to address is that Sharia law permits husbands beating their wives, <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-throws-gays-buildings-iraq" type="external">executing gay people</a>, and <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/understanding-islamism/womens-rights-under-sharia" type="external">other</a> despicable things that would never be tolerated in western civilization.</p>
<p>Instead of teaching the nation about Sharia law's regressive and illiberal tenets, SPLC will dedicate its resources to defending its proponents like Sarsour and <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/29/i-m-a-muslim-reformer-why-am-i-being-smeared-as-an-anti-muslim-extremist.html" type="external">blacklisting Muslim reformers</a> like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz.</p>
<p>Follow Elliott on <a href="https://twitter.com/ElliottRHams" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
|
The Southern Poverty Law Center Is A Joke, And This Proves It
| true |
https://dailywire.com/news/12761/southern-poverty-law-center-joke-and-proves-it-elliott-hamilton
|
2017-01-25
| 0right
|
The Southern Poverty Law Center Is A Joke, And This Proves It
<p>The Southern Poverty Law Center, as Daily Wire's Aaron Bandler wrote in his <a href="" type="internal">article</a>, is "a leftist hack advocacy group which picks and chooses what standards to apply to its labels, consistently turning a blind eye to leftist and pro-Democrat groups and individuals while targeting, often unfairly, their enemies on the right."</p>
<p>Over the past few days, SPLC continued to protect hard-left and Islamist radicals in the name of the "progressive" cause by joining the <a href="" type="internal">chorus</a> of left-wing organizations and leftist commentators in rushing to the support of Linda Sarsour.</p>
<p>Sticking to its modus operandi, SPLC labels anyone who questions Sarsour's Islamist and regressive tendencies as "Islamophobes" while committing themselves to combating hate and bigotry. This begs the question of when SPLC will condemn some of Sarsour's own commentary.</p>
<p>Take the following tweets from Sarsour's account.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p />
<p>What SPLC does not want to address is that Sharia law permits husbands beating their wives, <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-throws-gays-buildings-iraq" type="external">executing gay people</a>, and <a href="http://www.clarionproject.org/understanding-islamism/womens-rights-under-sharia" type="external">other</a> despicable things that would never be tolerated in western civilization.</p>
<p>Instead of teaching the nation about Sharia law's regressive and illiberal tenets, SPLC will dedicate its resources to defending its proponents like Sarsour and <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/29/i-m-a-muslim-reformer-why-am-i-being-smeared-as-an-anti-muslim-extremist.html" type="external">blacklisting Muslim reformers</a> like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz.</p>
<p>Follow Elliott on <a href="https://twitter.com/ElliottRHams" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
| 7,391 |
<p>The saga of more than 200 missing school girls is challenging dated stereotypes of Nigeria as a nation where Muslims control the northern states and have little in common with the Christians who dominate the south.&#160;</p>
<p>"Anybody that's painting a picture of this division, it's a false story," says Fatima Zanna Gana, the founder of the Purple Heart Foundation and one of the leaders of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. "There are Muslims and Christians mixed everywhere in Nigeria. And right now it's a turning point in our nation because we have all sorts of ethnic groups, we have Muslims and Christians that truly truly have the same mission — it's for these innocent children to come back to us. We're waiting for them, and for this to turn the face of our country in uniting us not dividing us." &#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Due in part to intense pressure from protestors, Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan agreed to accept assistance from the US, Britain and China to help in the search. A team of US specialists arrived on Thursday.&#160;</p>
<p>"My sister who lives in Maiduguri just sent me a very disturbing 'WhatsApp' message saying that&#160;they were told to expect American soldiers," Zanna Gana says. "She's really freaking out because —&#160;I'm sorry to say, no offense meant — but anywhere where there's a rescue mission going on we have a lot of innocents that go along with the mission. They're really, really scared."&#160;</p>
<p>Zanna Gana said she tried to reassure her sister that the foreign assistance was meant to quell the violence in Nigeria's northeast, not inflame it. She said few civilians in the region can find access to guns to protect themselves from Boko Haram because Nigeria's security forces confiscated local weapons years ago.</p>
<p>"The Army and the police collected every gun," she says. "They announced that anybody that had any ammunition anywhere should submit it to the police and if you are found with any kind of ammunition in your house that means you're automatically one of them. So every single person that I know in Borno State, they gave their ammunition away."&#160;</p>
<p>Zanna Gana was born in the Nigerian city of Kano and spent most of her life in the north. In recent years she's lost two cousins to the violence of Boko Haram. She says the militant insurgents prey upon the region's youth, press-ganging young boys into service.&#160;</p>
<p>"Some of them, they actually send messages to their parents telling them they want out, but they can't because [Boko Haram] are threatening their younger ones, they're threatening their old parents. So they have to stay and work for them," Zanna Gana says.</p>
<p>Boko Haram militants have killed thousands of Nigerians since 2009.</p>
|
How the abduction of more than 200 teenage girls is uniting Nigerian Christians and Muslims
| false |
https://pri.org/stories/2014-05-08/how-abduction-more-200-teenage-girls-uniting-nigerian-christians-and-muslims
|
2014-05-08
| 3left-center
|
How the abduction of more than 200 teenage girls is uniting Nigerian Christians and Muslims
<p>The saga of more than 200 missing school girls is challenging dated stereotypes of Nigeria as a nation where Muslims control the northern states and have little in common with the Christians who dominate the south.&#160;</p>
<p>"Anybody that's painting a picture of this division, it's a false story," says Fatima Zanna Gana, the founder of the Purple Heart Foundation and one of the leaders of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. "There are Muslims and Christians mixed everywhere in Nigeria. And right now it's a turning point in our nation because we have all sorts of ethnic groups, we have Muslims and Christians that truly truly have the same mission — it's for these innocent children to come back to us. We're waiting for them, and for this to turn the face of our country in uniting us not dividing us." &#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Due in part to intense pressure from protestors, Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan agreed to accept assistance from the US, Britain and China to help in the search. A team of US specialists arrived on Thursday.&#160;</p>
<p>"My sister who lives in Maiduguri just sent me a very disturbing 'WhatsApp' message saying that&#160;they were told to expect American soldiers," Zanna Gana says. "She's really freaking out because —&#160;I'm sorry to say, no offense meant — but anywhere where there's a rescue mission going on we have a lot of innocents that go along with the mission. They're really, really scared."&#160;</p>
<p>Zanna Gana said she tried to reassure her sister that the foreign assistance was meant to quell the violence in Nigeria's northeast, not inflame it. She said few civilians in the region can find access to guns to protect themselves from Boko Haram because Nigeria's security forces confiscated local weapons years ago.</p>
<p>"The Army and the police collected every gun," she says. "They announced that anybody that had any ammunition anywhere should submit it to the police and if you are found with any kind of ammunition in your house that means you're automatically one of them. So every single person that I know in Borno State, they gave their ammunition away."&#160;</p>
<p>Zanna Gana was born in the Nigerian city of Kano and spent most of her life in the north. In recent years she's lost two cousins to the violence of Boko Haram. She says the militant insurgents prey upon the region's youth, press-ganging young boys into service.&#160;</p>
<p>"Some of them, they actually send messages to their parents telling them they want out, but they can't because [Boko Haram] are threatening their younger ones, they're threatening their old parents. So they have to stay and work for them," Zanna Gana says.</p>
<p>Boko Haram militants have killed thousands of Nigerians since 2009.</p>
| 7,392 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>YOUNGBLOOD: "This is an issue that touches all New Mexicans"</p>
<p>Mexico House Republican who wants to force the issue with Senate Democrats.</p>
<p>Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, recently reintroduced a proposal similar to one that passed the GOP-controlled House last session but died after the Democratic-led Senate failed to take it up. She is urging voters to call state senators to get them to consider it.</p>
<p>"This is an issue that touches all New Mexicans," Youngblood said. "If you look at our adult literacy rates, you see a direct correlation with our poverty rates. This bill is intended to address that."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The legislation, backed by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, calls for retaining third-graders who are not reading proficiently and giving them intensive remediation so they can strengthen their literacy skills.</p>
<p>Democratic Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez has opposed the plan, saying keeping students from moving to the next grade should be based on teacher assessments, not test scores.</p>
<p>Opponents also say that holding back students damages them psychologically and that they can get help without that step.</p>
<p>Though the makeup of the Legislature will be virtually the same, Youngblood said she hopes Senate Democrats reconsider it this time around or at least bring it to the full Senate for a vote.</p>
<p>"We're going into an election year, so I hope New Mexicans put pressure on their senators to support this because it will make a difference," she said.</p>
<p>Sen. William Soules, D-Las Cruces, a retired educator, said he thinks the proposal will see the same fate as it did last year. He called it "bad education policy" in spite of popular support.</p>
<p>"There's no evidence that it will have any positive effect," Soules said. "It plays well in the political environment, but most people in the public aren't educational policy experts. In reality, it doesn't change the outcome of kids."</p>
<p>Soules said he expects teachers and school leaders to strongly oppose the bill.</p>
<p />
<p />
|
Lawmaker wants to hold back struggling students
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/695507/new-mexico-republican-eyes-2nd-bill-ending-social-promotion.html
|
2015-12-23
| 2least
|
Lawmaker wants to hold back struggling students
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>YOUNGBLOOD: "This is an issue that touches all New Mexicans"</p>
<p>Mexico House Republican who wants to force the issue with Senate Democrats.</p>
<p>Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, recently reintroduced a proposal similar to one that passed the GOP-controlled House last session but died after the Democratic-led Senate failed to take it up. She is urging voters to call state senators to get them to consider it.</p>
<p>"This is an issue that touches all New Mexicans," Youngblood said. "If you look at our adult literacy rates, you see a direct correlation with our poverty rates. This bill is intended to address that."</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The legislation, backed by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, calls for retaining third-graders who are not reading proficiently and giving them intensive remediation so they can strengthen their literacy skills.</p>
<p>Democratic Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez has opposed the plan, saying keeping students from moving to the next grade should be based on teacher assessments, not test scores.</p>
<p>Opponents also say that holding back students damages them psychologically and that they can get help without that step.</p>
<p>Though the makeup of the Legislature will be virtually the same, Youngblood said she hopes Senate Democrats reconsider it this time around or at least bring it to the full Senate for a vote.</p>
<p>"We're going into an election year, so I hope New Mexicans put pressure on their senators to support this because it will make a difference," she said.</p>
<p>Sen. William Soules, D-Las Cruces, a retired educator, said he thinks the proposal will see the same fate as it did last year. He called it "bad education policy" in spite of popular support.</p>
<p>"There's no evidence that it will have any positive effect," Soules said. "It plays well in the political environment, but most people in the public aren't educational policy experts. In reality, it doesn't change the outcome of kids."</p>
<p>Soules said he expects teachers and school leaders to strongly oppose the bill.</p>
<p />
<p />
| 7,393 |
<p>By Tim Radford, Climate News NetworkThis piece first appeared at <a href="http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/06/plant-growth-surges-as-co2-levels-rise/" type="external">Climate News Network</a>.</p>
<p>LONDON — Australian scientists have solved one piece of the climate puzzle. They have confirmed the long-debated fertilization effect.</p>
<p>Plants build their tissues by using photosynthesis to take carbon from the air around them. So more carbon dioxide should mean more vigorous plant growth – though until now this has been very difficult to prove.</p>
<p>Randall Donohue of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation in Canberra, Australia, and his colleagues developed a mathematical model to predict the extent of this carbon dioxide fertilization effect.</p>
<p />
<p>Between 1982 and 2010, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increased by 14%. So, their model suggested, foliage worldwide should have increased by between 5 and 10%.</p>
<p>Measuring uncertainties</p>
<p>It is one thing to predict an effect, quite another to prove it. Satellite observations can and successfully do measure seasonal changes in vegetation, the growth of deserts, the change from open prairie to savannah, the growth of new trees in the tundra and so on, but it’s very difficult to be sure that these changes have anything to do with carbon dioxide fertilization: changes in temperature and rainfall patterns would also have an impact.</p>
<p>Also, some regions – tropical rainforests, for example – are already completely covered by forest canopy: orbiting satellites are unlikely to measure much change there.</p>
<p>Donohue and his team, in a study appearing in Geophysical Research Letters, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, looked at those regions where leaf cover really would stand out, and where carbon dioxide fertilization would be the best explanation for new growth.</p>
<p>These were the warm, dry places: while the researchers focused on changes in arid regions in North America’s south-west, Australia’s Outback, the Middle East and parts of Africa, they also had to find a technique that allowed for natural seasonal and cyclic changes, alterations in land use and so on.</p>
<p>They calculated that in these conditions, plants would make more leaves if they had the water to do so. “A leaf can extract more carbon from the air during photosynthesis, or lose less water to the air during photosynthesis, or both, due to elevated CO2,” says Donohue. That is the CO2 fertilization effect.</p>
<p>Calculating greenness</p>
<p>The team averaged the greenness of each location over three year periods, and then grouped the greenness data from different locations according to known records of rainfall. They also looked at variations in foliage over a 20 year period. In the end, they teased out the carbon dioxide fertilization effect from all other influences and calculated that this could account for an 11% increase in global foliage since 1982.</p>
<p>This is what’s called negative feedback with at least some of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide being absorbed by extra plant growth. It could also be good news for biodiversity, and good news for food security: plants are the primary producers that feed all animals.</p>
<p>Trees are likely to invade grasslands in the drier regions, and their deep roots are better equipped to tap groundwater and at the same time stabilise the soils.</p>
<p>“Even if nothing else in the climate changes as global CO2 levels rise, we will still see significant environmental changes because of the CO2 fertilization effect,” says Dr Donohue.</p>
<p />
|
Plant Growth Surges as CO2 Levels Rise
| true |
https://truthdig.com/articles/plant-growth-surges-as-co2-levels-rise/
|
2013-06-04
| 4left
|
Plant Growth Surges as CO2 Levels Rise
<p>By Tim Radford, Climate News NetworkThis piece first appeared at <a href="http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2013/06/plant-growth-surges-as-co2-levels-rise/" type="external">Climate News Network</a>.</p>
<p>LONDON — Australian scientists have solved one piece of the climate puzzle. They have confirmed the long-debated fertilization effect.</p>
<p>Plants build their tissues by using photosynthesis to take carbon from the air around them. So more carbon dioxide should mean more vigorous plant growth – though until now this has been very difficult to prove.</p>
<p>Randall Donohue of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation in Canberra, Australia, and his colleagues developed a mathematical model to predict the extent of this carbon dioxide fertilization effect.</p>
<p />
<p>Between 1982 and 2010, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increased by 14%. So, their model suggested, foliage worldwide should have increased by between 5 and 10%.</p>
<p>Measuring uncertainties</p>
<p>It is one thing to predict an effect, quite another to prove it. Satellite observations can and successfully do measure seasonal changes in vegetation, the growth of deserts, the change from open prairie to savannah, the growth of new trees in the tundra and so on, but it’s very difficult to be sure that these changes have anything to do with carbon dioxide fertilization: changes in temperature and rainfall patterns would also have an impact.</p>
<p>Also, some regions – tropical rainforests, for example – are already completely covered by forest canopy: orbiting satellites are unlikely to measure much change there.</p>
<p>Donohue and his team, in a study appearing in Geophysical Research Letters, the journal of the American Geophysical Union, looked at those regions where leaf cover really would stand out, and where carbon dioxide fertilization would be the best explanation for new growth.</p>
<p>These were the warm, dry places: while the researchers focused on changes in arid regions in North America’s south-west, Australia’s Outback, the Middle East and parts of Africa, they also had to find a technique that allowed for natural seasonal and cyclic changes, alterations in land use and so on.</p>
<p>They calculated that in these conditions, plants would make more leaves if they had the water to do so. “A leaf can extract more carbon from the air during photosynthesis, or lose less water to the air during photosynthesis, or both, due to elevated CO2,” says Donohue. That is the CO2 fertilization effect.</p>
<p>Calculating greenness</p>
<p>The team averaged the greenness of each location over three year periods, and then grouped the greenness data from different locations according to known records of rainfall. They also looked at variations in foliage over a 20 year period. In the end, they teased out the carbon dioxide fertilization effect from all other influences and calculated that this could account for an 11% increase in global foliage since 1982.</p>
<p>This is what’s called negative feedback with at least some of the increasing levels of carbon dioxide being absorbed by extra plant growth. It could also be good news for biodiversity, and good news for food security: plants are the primary producers that feed all animals.</p>
<p>Trees are likely to invade grasslands in the drier regions, and their deep roots are better equipped to tap groundwater and at the same time stabilise the soils.</p>
<p>“Even if nothing else in the climate changes as global CO2 levels rise, we will still see significant environmental changes because of the CO2 fertilization effect,” says Dr Donohue.</p>
<p />
| 7,394 |
<p>Patrick Henningsen <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire</a>Oct 25, 2012</p>
<p>Yesterday, an apparently very brave MP named Tom Watson stepped up and said what every other member of Parliament in that chamber knows, but could not muster the courage to speak up about.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Watson</a> said, ““The leads were not followed up, but if the files still exist, I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the evidence, re-examine it, and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10.”</p>
<p>It’s not outlandish to say anymore that some in power are sworn to secrecy on the matter, while others are simply too afraid, or not confident enough to state it in public. It’s this very fear that almost guarantees categorical silence on the issue, even in the government.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> Clearly, Tom Watson MP (photo, above) is not acting as a political elite, but is he really acting as a man of the people? Time will tell.</p>
<p>But David Cameron’s response to the question was shaky to say the least.</p>
<p>What those in positions of power fear the most, is the thought of the nation’s Sun readers, black cab drivers and other hard-working plebs, realising they’ve been had, and then refusing to participate in an officially sanctioned system of lies and constant cover-ups.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>No matter how the current government&#160;and their opposition across the table – spin this, this child abuse and paedophile disease infects not only the whole of the BBC, but also every other public institution – from government, to education, to child services, the police and even members of the judiciary. Anyone who is involved, or knows about – is part of a shameful conspiracy.</p>
<p>It exists mainly in state and public institutions because in those bodies, crime and fraud can be concealed indefinitely, because it’s a cyclical culture where career survival depends on everyone looking after each other’s interests – for the greater good.</p>
<p>Many reports and cases over the years have been suppressed and shot down in order to protect the guilty, but the evidence on the aggregate is overwhelming and coming out by the day. To deny it doesn’t exist, is to be complicit in allowing it to continue.</p>
<p>If the BBC and Sir Jimmy Savile taught us one thing, it’s that the shame of covering up crimes can be far worse – than the revelations themselves. It becomes a conspiracy to willfully betray the public’s trust.</p>
<p>Just like Jimmy Savile, former Prime Minister Ed Heath’s escapades with young victims was known by many during, and after his reign at No. 10. Other names like Peter Righton and Sir Peter Morrison have recently been featured in reports involving paedophile images and actual sex with under aged boys. Just as the BBC are desperate to draw a line under the scandal with Savile, the government will attempt to throw Heath under the bus, so as to avoid any other inquiries into others who procured under aged boys and girls on the taxpayers time, and grossly betraying the public’s trust in the process.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> If anyone covered for Heath (pictured above, next to Sir Jimmy Savile OBE), then there can be no excuse, and they will be expected to step down.</p>
<p>Both Conservative, and Labour governments are most certainly involved in covering up for paedophiles – at best, looking the other way, and at the worst, abusing the power of their office to cover-up known crimes.</p>
<p>Tony Blair has already done such a cover-up – and got away with it. In a fair world, he should stand trial today. In the wake of <a href="http://www.tpuc.org/node/34" type="external">Operation Ore</a>, his government employed massive redactions and D-Notices to keep a lid on a long list of names in government who appeared during a joint US-UK transatlantic paedophile sweep investigation.</p>
<p>Blair issued a D-Notice, resulting in a gag order on the press from publishing any details of the investigation. Blair played the national security card, citing an impending war in Iraq as a reason for the D-Notice.</p>
<p>Criminals work best in secret. If names were known, but kept secret, then those names could be blackmailed to comply with policy. This is a more authentic application to the so-called “national security” excuse that Tony Blair gave at the time.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Blair and those who knew of this should have resigned on the spot – along with all his gatekeepers in the Cabinet, but that is something which one could only expect in a world where politicians serve with honour – and completely in the public interest.</p>
<p>We were told that the political elite at the time had more important things to worry about – like wars, defense contracts and preparing for their careers after politics.</p>
<p>Revelations of paedophile scandals in government are simply inconvenient, and deemed to subservient to ‘national security’ and of course, the ‘greater good’.</p>
<p>Today, David Cameron’s government will try to distance itself from the BBC, but anyone who works in the BBC – or in government, might tell you that Savile is only the tip of the iceberg. Their strategy is to let the BBC ‘investigate itself’, instead of pulling its license to broadcast and taking it off the air until a full and independent investigation is completed.</p>
<p>You can’t have a ‘public’ broadcaster who the public don’t trust.</p>
<p>The public should demand that the government take the bull by the horns and own the BBC scandal, because the BBC is funded with public money. But it won’t, and for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>The government will not close the BBC because the BBC is its main propaganda outlet.</p>
<p>The scale of the problem is massive, and thus the solution will also have to big massive. There are many in power, however, who are actively seeking to underplay the scale of the problem in British society, and thus will try to offer a similarly small and ineffectual solution to remedy it.</p>
<p>Some victimisers will have to be convicted, others will have to lose their jobs, and others may end up on the sex offenders register. Considering the sheer scale of the problem, maybe this situation should require a South Africa-style ‘truth and reconciliation commission’, one where the abusers will have to tell their stories and in some cases, face their victims in a public forum. That would be a frightening prospect for some, but how else can you cure a social disease of this magnitude?</p>
<p>If you understand how power to seized and held, you will discover how a phenomenon like paedophilia, child abuse, having to hide one’s sexuality at work, and politically blackmailing closet homosexuals to comply – can all be used as the glue to hold together a corrupt system.</p>
<p>It’s a control mechanism.</p>
<p>What what kind of system is it, that depends on such things? Is that the system we want?</p>
<p>The state seems to be very good at arresting its ‘plebs’, but not very good at arresting its own, celebrities included.</p>
<p>We can do something about it, or just sweep it under the rug, again. Our choice.</p>
<p>RELATED STORY: <a href="" type="internal">BEN FELLOWS FULL INTERVIEW ON ON BBC &amp; CHILD ABUSE</a></p>
|
No matter how Gov’t spins it, it’s a conspiracy to cover-up paedophilia and other crimes
| true |
http://21stcenturywire.com/2012/10/25/no-matter-how-the-government-spins-it-what-we-are-looking-at-now-is-a-conspiracy-to-cover-up-paedophile-and-other-crimes-in-plain-sight/?fb_source%3Dpubv1
|
2012-10-25
| 4left
|
No matter how Gov’t spins it, it’s a conspiracy to cover-up paedophilia and other crimes
<p>Patrick Henningsen <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire</a>Oct 25, 2012</p>
<p>Yesterday, an apparently very brave MP named Tom Watson stepped up and said what every other member of Parliament in that chamber knows, but could not muster the courage to speak up about.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Watson</a> said, ““The leads were not followed up, but if the files still exist, I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the evidence, re-examine it, and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10.”</p>
<p>It’s not outlandish to say anymore that some in power are sworn to secrecy on the matter, while others are simply too afraid, or not confident enough to state it in public. It’s this very fear that almost guarantees categorical silence on the issue, even in the government.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> Clearly, Tom Watson MP (photo, above) is not acting as a political elite, but is he really acting as a man of the people? Time will tell.</p>
<p>But David Cameron’s response to the question was shaky to say the least.</p>
<p>What those in positions of power fear the most, is the thought of the nation’s Sun readers, black cab drivers and other hard-working plebs, realising they’ve been had, and then refusing to participate in an officially sanctioned system of lies and constant cover-ups.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>No matter how the current government&#160;and their opposition across the table – spin this, this child abuse and paedophile disease infects not only the whole of the BBC, but also every other public institution – from government, to education, to child services, the police and even members of the judiciary. Anyone who is involved, or knows about – is part of a shameful conspiracy.</p>
<p>It exists mainly in state and public institutions because in those bodies, crime and fraud can be concealed indefinitely, because it’s a cyclical culture where career survival depends on everyone looking after each other’s interests – for the greater good.</p>
<p>Many reports and cases over the years have been suppressed and shot down in order to protect the guilty, but the evidence on the aggregate is overwhelming and coming out by the day. To deny it doesn’t exist, is to be complicit in allowing it to continue.</p>
<p>If the BBC and Sir Jimmy Savile taught us one thing, it’s that the shame of covering up crimes can be far worse – than the revelations themselves. It becomes a conspiracy to willfully betray the public’s trust.</p>
<p>Just like Jimmy Savile, former Prime Minister Ed Heath’s escapades with young victims was known by many during, and after his reign at No. 10. Other names like Peter Righton and Sir Peter Morrison have recently been featured in reports involving paedophile images and actual sex with under aged boys. Just as the BBC are desperate to draw a line under the scandal with Savile, the government will attempt to throw Heath under the bus, so as to avoid any other inquiries into others who procured under aged boys and girls on the taxpayers time, and grossly betraying the public’s trust in the process.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /> If anyone covered for Heath (pictured above, next to Sir Jimmy Savile OBE), then there can be no excuse, and they will be expected to step down.</p>
<p>Both Conservative, and Labour governments are most certainly involved in covering up for paedophiles – at best, looking the other way, and at the worst, abusing the power of their office to cover-up known crimes.</p>
<p>Tony Blair has already done such a cover-up – and got away with it. In a fair world, he should stand trial today. In the wake of <a href="http://www.tpuc.org/node/34" type="external">Operation Ore</a>, his government employed massive redactions and D-Notices to keep a lid on a long list of names in government who appeared during a joint US-UK transatlantic paedophile sweep investigation.</p>
<p>Blair issued a D-Notice, resulting in a gag order on the press from publishing any details of the investigation. Blair played the national security card, citing an impending war in Iraq as a reason for the D-Notice.</p>
<p>Criminals work best in secret. If names were known, but kept secret, then those names could be blackmailed to comply with policy. This is a more authentic application to the so-called “national security” excuse that Tony Blair gave at the time.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Blair and those who knew of this should have resigned on the spot – along with all his gatekeepers in the Cabinet, but that is something which one could only expect in a world where politicians serve with honour – and completely in the public interest.</p>
<p>We were told that the political elite at the time had more important things to worry about – like wars, defense contracts and preparing for their careers after politics.</p>
<p>Revelations of paedophile scandals in government are simply inconvenient, and deemed to subservient to ‘national security’ and of course, the ‘greater good’.</p>
<p>Today, David Cameron’s government will try to distance itself from the BBC, but anyone who works in the BBC – or in government, might tell you that Savile is only the tip of the iceberg. Their strategy is to let the BBC ‘investigate itself’, instead of pulling its license to broadcast and taking it off the air until a full and independent investigation is completed.</p>
<p>You can’t have a ‘public’ broadcaster who the public don’t trust.</p>
<p>The public should demand that the government take the bull by the horns and own the BBC scandal, because the BBC is funded with public money. But it won’t, and for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>The government will not close the BBC because the BBC is its main propaganda outlet.</p>
<p>The scale of the problem is massive, and thus the solution will also have to big massive. There are many in power, however, who are actively seeking to underplay the scale of the problem in British society, and thus will try to offer a similarly small and ineffectual solution to remedy it.</p>
<p>Some victimisers will have to be convicted, others will have to lose their jobs, and others may end up on the sex offenders register. Considering the sheer scale of the problem, maybe this situation should require a South Africa-style ‘truth and reconciliation commission’, one where the abusers will have to tell their stories and in some cases, face their victims in a public forum. That would be a frightening prospect for some, but how else can you cure a social disease of this magnitude?</p>
<p>If you understand how power to seized and held, you will discover how a phenomenon like paedophilia, child abuse, having to hide one’s sexuality at work, and politically blackmailing closet homosexuals to comply – can all be used as the glue to hold together a corrupt system.</p>
<p>It’s a control mechanism.</p>
<p>What what kind of system is it, that depends on such things? Is that the system we want?</p>
<p>The state seems to be very good at arresting its ‘plebs’, but not very good at arresting its own, celebrities included.</p>
<p>We can do something about it, or just sweep it under the rug, again. Our choice.</p>
<p>RELATED STORY: <a href="" type="internal">BEN FELLOWS FULL INTERVIEW ON ON BBC &amp; CHILD ABUSE</a></p>
| 7,395 |
<p>It comes as no surprise that French leaders want to do something to curb the country's terror problem, but a controversial new law has raised concerns that France may be sacrificing too many rights for security.</p>
<p>French President Emmanuel Macron recently signed into law a new bill which essentially formalizes many of the policies instituted by the country's nearly two-year long state of emergency. France first declared a state of emergency in November 2015 in response to the Paris terror attacks which left 130 dead. Since then, armed soldiers, home raids and the shutting down of religious centers have become more common in France, as its leaders continue to try to stop the ongoing violence. The new law formalizes some of these measures in French law, which supporters say will help security officials combat the problem going forward.</p>
<p>"There's been 60 plots since the beginning of January 2014," Robin Simcox, a Thatcher Fellow at the Heritage Foundation who specializes in European terrorism, told me in an interview. "That's higher than any other European country. Of course the response to that is not going to be status quo. They are going to have to take some measures that they ideally wouldn't like to take."</p>
<p>The bill was hotly debated in French parliament. A major point of contention is the lack of judicial oversight, according to Trevor Thrall, a fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in defense and foreign policy.</p>
<p>"The federal government will now be able to do this without judges pretty much anywhere they want," Thrall told me in an interview. "They are able to close mosques ... without any crimes having been committed on suspicion that they might be inciting terrorism. They are going to be able to put people under house arrest, under electronic surveillance, again, without a judge being involved."</p>
<p>Controversial as it may be, the decision to pass the legislation was not taken lightly. France has been disproportionately targeted by terrorist attacks since the rise of the Islamic State three years ago, and the French people appear to be aware of the problem. Approximately 57 percent supported the law, according to Le Figaro, though 62 percent of respondents did acknowledge that it will restrict rights.</p>
<p>But the effectiveness of the state of emergency is also up for debate. The French government has claimed to have stopped 32 terror attacks since the state of emergency began, according to <a href="https://www.thelocal.fr/20171031/what-exactly-happened-during-frances-state-of-emergency" type="external">The Local</a>, however, it is unclear if the emergency measures were responsible for stopping them. That said, the searches have allowed police to take 625 illegal weapons off the streets, including assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades.</p>
<p>Experts and analysts have proposed a myriad of reasons as to why France in particular is so often targeted by Islamist terrorists. Some blame an aggressive foreign policy, others claim the government did not previously take the spread of the ideology seriously enough. But both Simcox and Thrall noted integration has been a problem. France has had a tense history with immigrant populations, specifically Muslims from North Africa, going back to the Algerian war in the mid-20th century.</p>
<p>"Ultimately, I think that this is a question that is being asked all over Europe: how do we integrate citizens? How do we prevent the radicalization on the scale its currently happening?" said Simcox. "I have to be honest, I don't think anybody has a great answer for that at the moment."</p>
|
France's new terrorism law has some worried about unfair profiling, but others say it's necessary
| false |
https://circa.com/story/2017/11/02/world/frances-new-terrorism-law-has-some-worried-about-unfair-profiling-but-others-say-its-necessary
|
2017-11-02
| 1right-center
|
France's new terrorism law has some worried about unfair profiling, but others say it's necessary
<p>It comes as no surprise that French leaders want to do something to curb the country's terror problem, but a controversial new law has raised concerns that France may be sacrificing too many rights for security.</p>
<p>French President Emmanuel Macron recently signed into law a new bill which essentially formalizes many of the policies instituted by the country's nearly two-year long state of emergency. France first declared a state of emergency in November 2015 in response to the Paris terror attacks which left 130 dead. Since then, armed soldiers, home raids and the shutting down of religious centers have become more common in France, as its leaders continue to try to stop the ongoing violence. The new law formalizes some of these measures in French law, which supporters say will help security officials combat the problem going forward.</p>
<p>"There's been 60 plots since the beginning of January 2014," Robin Simcox, a Thatcher Fellow at the Heritage Foundation who specializes in European terrorism, told me in an interview. "That's higher than any other European country. Of course the response to that is not going to be status quo. They are going to have to take some measures that they ideally wouldn't like to take."</p>
<p>The bill was hotly debated in French parliament. A major point of contention is the lack of judicial oversight, according to Trevor Thrall, a fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in defense and foreign policy.</p>
<p>"The federal government will now be able to do this without judges pretty much anywhere they want," Thrall told me in an interview. "They are able to close mosques ... without any crimes having been committed on suspicion that they might be inciting terrorism. They are going to be able to put people under house arrest, under electronic surveillance, again, without a judge being involved."</p>
<p>Controversial as it may be, the decision to pass the legislation was not taken lightly. France has been disproportionately targeted by terrorist attacks since the rise of the Islamic State three years ago, and the French people appear to be aware of the problem. Approximately 57 percent supported the law, according to Le Figaro, though 62 percent of respondents did acknowledge that it will restrict rights.</p>
<p>But the effectiveness of the state of emergency is also up for debate. The French government has claimed to have stopped 32 terror attacks since the state of emergency began, according to <a href="https://www.thelocal.fr/20171031/what-exactly-happened-during-frances-state-of-emergency" type="external">The Local</a>, however, it is unclear if the emergency measures were responsible for stopping them. That said, the searches have allowed police to take 625 illegal weapons off the streets, including assault rifles and rocket propelled grenades.</p>
<p>Experts and analysts have proposed a myriad of reasons as to why France in particular is so often targeted by Islamist terrorists. Some blame an aggressive foreign policy, others claim the government did not previously take the spread of the ideology seriously enough. But both Simcox and Thrall noted integration has been a problem. France has had a tense history with immigrant populations, specifically Muslims from North Africa, going back to the Algerian war in the mid-20th century.</p>
<p>"Ultimately, I think that this is a question that is being asked all over Europe: how do we integrate citizens? How do we prevent the radicalization on the scale its currently happening?" said Simcox. "I have to be honest, I don't think anybody has a great answer for that at the moment."</p>
| 7,396 |
<p>BBB serving New Mexico &amp; Southwest Colorado was founded in 1941. For more than 100 years, Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brand and charities they can trust. In 2015, people turned to BBB more than 172 million times for BBB Business Profiles on more than 5.3 million businesses and Charity Reports on 11,000 charities, all available for free at bbb.org.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Better Business Bureau serving New Mexico &amp; Southwest Colorado is warning bargain hunters to watch for false or misleading deals when shopping liquidation sales.&#160;</p>
<p>Often, a business hires a liquidation company to run the sale who may bring in questionable merchandise of age and value and mix it with the retailer’s inventory.&#160;</p>
<p>There is seldom any return or exchange policy, after the sale service is non-existent, and payment terms are out of the question. Check with local businesses before buying. Often they can compete in price and offer after the sale service you expect.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;According to BBB, people are exposed to as many as 3,000-5,000 advertising messages daily through TV, radio, Internet, publications, billboards and other media sources. BBB offers the following tips when shopping a “going out of business” sale:</p>
<p>Start with Trust®.&#160;Check bbb.org before doing business with any company.</p>
<p>Shop around and compare prices. Just because a business is advertising that it is closing does not mean they are offering the lowest prices on merchandise.</p>
<p>Use a credit card. Credit cards include built-in consumer protections if the company does not deliver on promised goods and BBB recommends making purchases with a credit card instead of checks or cash.</p>
<p>Don’t count on customer service. Customer service is not a liquidator’s priority and consumers expecting the same level of customer service might be very disappointed. Since the company won’t be around in the future, consumers need to understand that all sales are final and that they don’t have many options if they aren’t satisfied with the purchase.</p>
<p>Know the status on warranties. Warranties are often maintained by a manufacturer or a third-party, which means that the warranty may still apply if the retailer goes out of business. Consumers should always confirm the status of the warranty before buying.</p>
<p>Use those gift cards ASAP. &#160;Businesses that have entered into the liquidation process will not be around for very long and BBB advises consumers who are holding gift cards spend them as soon as possible or risk getting stuck with a worthless piece of plastic.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
|
BBB Offers Tips on Going Out of Business Sales
| false |
https://abqjournal.com/916455/bbb-offers-tips-on-going-out-of-business-sales.html
| 2least
|
BBB Offers Tips on Going Out of Business Sales
<p>BBB serving New Mexico &amp; Southwest Colorado was founded in 1941. For more than 100 years, Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brand and charities they can trust. In 2015, people turned to BBB more than 172 million times for BBB Business Profiles on more than 5.3 million businesses and Charity Reports on 11,000 charities, all available for free at bbb.org.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Better Business Bureau serving New Mexico &amp; Southwest Colorado is warning bargain hunters to watch for false or misleading deals when shopping liquidation sales.&#160;</p>
<p>Often, a business hires a liquidation company to run the sale who may bring in questionable merchandise of age and value and mix it with the retailer’s inventory.&#160;</p>
<p>There is seldom any return or exchange policy, after the sale service is non-existent, and payment terms are out of the question. Check with local businesses before buying. Often they can compete in price and offer after the sale service you expect.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;According to BBB, people are exposed to as many as 3,000-5,000 advertising messages daily through TV, radio, Internet, publications, billboards and other media sources. BBB offers the following tips when shopping a “going out of business” sale:</p>
<p>Start with Trust®.&#160;Check bbb.org before doing business with any company.</p>
<p>Shop around and compare prices. Just because a business is advertising that it is closing does not mean they are offering the lowest prices on merchandise.</p>
<p>Use a credit card. Credit cards include built-in consumer protections if the company does not deliver on promised goods and BBB recommends making purchases with a credit card instead of checks or cash.</p>
<p>Don’t count on customer service. Customer service is not a liquidator’s priority and consumers expecting the same level of customer service might be very disappointed. Since the company won’t be around in the future, consumers need to understand that all sales are final and that they don’t have many options if they aren’t satisfied with the purchase.</p>
<p>Know the status on warranties. Warranties are often maintained by a manufacturer or a third-party, which means that the warranty may still apply if the retailer goes out of business. Consumers should always confirm the status of the warranty before buying.</p>
<p>Use those gift cards ASAP. &#160;Businesses that have entered into the liquidation process will not be around for very long and BBB advises consumers who are holding gift cards spend them as soon as possible or risk getting stuck with a worthless piece of plastic.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
| 7,397 |
|
<p />
<p>The <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/" type="external">San Jose Mercury News</a> recently launched yet another round of editorial <a href="http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2007/06/18/daily35.html?surround=lfn" type="external">cuts</a> — This makes three in just the last 18 months, a cut of nearly 17 percent that will leave the paper with 200 newsroom positions, down from a peak of 400 just seven years ago.</p>
<p>With the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/" type="external">San Francisco Chronicle’s</a> recent announcement of its own staff slicing, coupled with major regional media <a href="http://www.gradethenews.org/commentaries/Trounstine.htm" type="external">consolidation</a>, the Bay Area is starting to feel like the incredible shrinking news area.</p>
<p>But the Bay Area is not a case in isolation. Media consolidation is plaguing media outlets across the nation. In our March/April 2007 issue, Mother Jones found that <a href="/news/feature/2007/03/breaking_the_news.html" type="external">equity-chasing investors</a> and the FCC are key players in the incredibly expanding media mess. Wall Street, the Bush Administration and technology are all <a href="/arts/feature/2007/02/bush_news_wars.html" type="external">in the mix</a>, too.</p>
<p>—Gary Moskowitz</p>
<p />
|
The Incredible Shrinking News Media
| true |
https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/06/incredible-shrinking-news-media/
|
2007-06-25
| 4left
|
The Incredible Shrinking News Media
<p />
<p>The <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/" type="external">San Jose Mercury News</a> recently launched yet another round of editorial <a href="http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2007/06/18/daily35.html?surround=lfn" type="external">cuts</a> — This makes three in just the last 18 months, a cut of nearly 17 percent that will leave the paper with 200 newsroom positions, down from a peak of 400 just seven years ago.</p>
<p>With the <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/" type="external">San Francisco Chronicle’s</a> recent announcement of its own staff slicing, coupled with major regional media <a href="http://www.gradethenews.org/commentaries/Trounstine.htm" type="external">consolidation</a>, the Bay Area is starting to feel like the incredible shrinking news area.</p>
<p>But the Bay Area is not a case in isolation. Media consolidation is plaguing media outlets across the nation. In our March/April 2007 issue, Mother Jones found that <a href="/news/feature/2007/03/breaking_the_news.html" type="external">equity-chasing investors</a> and the FCC are key players in the incredibly expanding media mess. Wall Street, the Bush Administration and technology are all <a href="/arts/feature/2007/02/bush_news_wars.html" type="external">in the mix</a>, too.</p>
<p>—Gary Moskowitz</p>
<p />
| 7,398 |
<p>In her last column for Salon, Joan Walsh points out that Jeb Bush just channeled Mitt Romney at a <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/09/25/jeb_goes_full_mitt_romney_man_of_inherited_wealth_and_power_says_african_americans_want_free_stuff/" type="external">South Carolina campaign stop:</a></p>
<p>So far, so good. Then Bush totally blew it. Turning back to the issue of black voters, he said:</p>
<p>Think about it this way, Republicans get 4-7 percent of the African-American vote…If you double that, you win elections in Ohio, Virginia. And we should make that case, because our message is one of hope and aspiration. It isn’t one of division, “get in line, we’ll take care of you with free stuff.” Our message is uplifting, that says, “You can achieve earned success. We’re on your side.”</p>
<p>“We’re on your side,” black voters, though we’re not sure you’ve really achieved “earned success.” You’ve been relying a little too much on “free stuff” from Democrats, but we’re here to change that. The level of condescension and negative stereotyping in Bush’s statement is stunning, but not surprising.</p>
<p>After all, Mitt Romney said essentially the same thing – directly to the NAACP, in July of 2012. “Your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this: If they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.”</p>
<p>Mr. 47 percent didn’t learn from the outrage over his remarks, either. In an election post-mortem, Romney blamed his loss on President Obama giving “gifts” to blacks, women and students in the electorate.</p>
<p>Bush was supposed to be the candidate who renounced that approach to blacks and Latinos. But he’s looking more like Romney all the time, with tone-deaf comments that betray his life of privilege.</p>
<p>Jeb! <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/us/nationalspecial/barbara-bush-calls-evacuees-better-off.html" type="external">really is his momma's child,</a> don't you think?</p>
|
Jeb! Tells Black People: We Offer You Earned Success, Not Free Stuff
| true |
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/09/jeb-tells-black-people-we-offer-you-earned
|
2015-09-25
| 4left
|
Jeb! Tells Black People: We Offer You Earned Success, Not Free Stuff
<p>In her last column for Salon, Joan Walsh points out that Jeb Bush just channeled Mitt Romney at a <a href="http://www.salon.com/2015/09/25/jeb_goes_full_mitt_romney_man_of_inherited_wealth_and_power_says_african_americans_want_free_stuff/" type="external">South Carolina campaign stop:</a></p>
<p>So far, so good. Then Bush totally blew it. Turning back to the issue of black voters, he said:</p>
<p>Think about it this way, Republicans get 4-7 percent of the African-American vote…If you double that, you win elections in Ohio, Virginia. And we should make that case, because our message is one of hope and aspiration. It isn’t one of division, “get in line, we’ll take care of you with free stuff.” Our message is uplifting, that says, “You can achieve earned success. We’re on your side.”</p>
<p>“We’re on your side,” black voters, though we’re not sure you’ve really achieved “earned success.” You’ve been relying a little too much on “free stuff” from Democrats, but we’re here to change that. The level of condescension and negative stereotyping in Bush’s statement is stunning, but not surprising.</p>
<p>After all, Mitt Romney said essentially the same thing – directly to the NAACP, in July of 2012. “Your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this: If they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. But don’t forget nothing is really free.”</p>
<p>Mr. 47 percent didn’t learn from the outrage over his remarks, either. In an election post-mortem, Romney blamed his loss on President Obama giving “gifts” to blacks, women and students in the electorate.</p>
<p>Bush was supposed to be the candidate who renounced that approach to blacks and Latinos. But he’s looking more like Romney all the time, with tone-deaf comments that betray his life of privilege.</p>
<p>Jeb! <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/us/nationalspecial/barbara-bush-calls-evacuees-better-off.html" type="external">really is his momma's child,</a> don't you think?</p>
| 7,399 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.