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<p>MISHAWAKA, Ind. (AP) — Authorities say a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed during an attempted home invasion in northern Indiana.</p>
<p>The St. Joseph County prosecutor’s office says officers responding to reports of gunfire late Tuesday found the teenager at an apartment complex in Mishawka (mish-ah-WAH’-kuh) suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.</p>
<p>Authorities on Wednesday identified the boy as Tyshawn Taylor and said he was pronounced dead at the scene in the city just east of South Bend.</p>
<p>Police said they were investigating the circumstances of the shooting, but didn’t say whether the teen lived at the apartment or was trying to break into it.</p>
<p>Investigators searched the third-floor apartment. An autopsy was scheduled for Thursday.</p>
<p>MISHAWAKA, Ind. (AP) — Authorities say a 13-year-old boy was shot and killed during an attempted home invasion in northern Indiana.</p>
<p>The St. Joseph County prosecutor’s office says officers responding to reports of gunfire late Tuesday found the teenager at an apartment complex in Mishawka (mish-ah-WAH’-kuh) suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.</p>
<p>Authorities on Wednesday identified the boy as Tyshawn Taylor and said he was pronounced dead at the scene in the city just east of South Bend.</p>
<p>Police said they were investigating the circumstances of the shooting, but didn’t say whether the teen lived at the apartment or was trying to break into it.</p>
<p>Investigators searched the third-floor apartment. An autopsy was scheduled for Thursday.</p> | Indiana boy, 13, fatally shot during attempted home invasion | false | https://apnews.com/962a5f2a38024d05bc2649dbf3771e28 | 2017-12-27 | 2 |
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<p>National Instruments (NASDAQ: NATI) prides itself on serving the engineering and scientific community, helping professionals in those fields solve some of the biggest problems. NI's technology solutions help scientists and engineers be more productive, helping to allow clients to innovate more quickly.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Coming into Thursday's fourth-quarter financial report, National Instruments investors were looking to see continued modest growth in revenue creating a bigger boost to its bottom line, but what NI delivered was better-than-expected adjusted profits despite a top-line decline. Let's look more closely at how National Instruments did and what it sees in its future.</p>
<p>Image source: National Instruments.</p>
<p>National Instruments' fourth-quarter results were mixed in investors' eyes. Revenue fell 2%, to $328.5 million, which was much weaker than the 2% growth that most of those following the stock were expecting to see. However, net income rose 5%, to $33.8 million, and after accounting for extraordinary items, adjusted earnings of $0.34 per share were better than the consensus forecast among investors for $0.31 per share.</p>
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<p>Looking more closely at NI's results, several factors weighed on the company's overall results. The strong dollar played a key role in holding back National Instruments' sales growth, as the report indicated a 2 percentage point decline in order growth because of foreign currency issues. In addition, NI relies heavily on a single customer for a large portion of its business, and orders from that customer plunged by 78%, to just $2 million during the quarter.</p>
<p>However, NI also had some positives to report. Excluding its largest customer, total order growth was up 2%, with particular strength among its larger customers. Orders for more than $100,000 or more were up 8% compared to last year's period, while mid-sized orders of $20,000 and $100,000 were up 4%. Only small orders under $20,000 showed declines, falling 2% from the year-ago period.</p>
<p>As we've seen in past quarters, National Instruments showed some differences in performance between its two main segments. Product sales fell 2%, although a 5% drop in cost of sales for that segment did a lot to offset the impact on gross segment profit. By contrast, software maintenance revenue was up 1% from the year-ago period, and a rise in cost of sales there only partially ate into gross profit gains.</p>
<p>From a geographical perspective, NI got its best performance close to home. Revenue in the Americas was up 2%, outpacing 1% growth in the Asia-Pacific region. The company's business in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa sank 7%, but currency impacts were responsible for all of the deterioration in the region's top-line results.</p>
<p>New CEO Alex Davern was laser-focused on the future. "As I start in my new role as CEO," Davern said, "I am committed to our vision and to strengthening our relationships with our customers." Interim CFO John Roiko noted that, "while we were disappointed that we missed the midpoint of our revenue guidance in Q4, we did deliver 3% core revenue growth, maintained our strong gross margins, and kept our non-GAAP operating expenses and EPS flat year over year."</p>
<p>NI has high hopes for the coming year. In Davern's words, "Looking to 2017, my top priorities will be growing revenue, leveraging our investments in our platform and people, and improving our operating margins."</p>
<p>For the most part, National Instruments' guidance for the first quarter of 2017 was consistent with what investors were looking to see. The company said that it anticipates sales for the first quarter of between $285 million and $315 million, producing adjusted earnings of $0.11 to $0.25 per share. Both figures are close to the consensus estimates among investors.</p>
<p>NI stock was volatile in response to the news, moving on both sides of unchanged in after-market trading following the announcement. In order to reassure shareholders, National Instruments will need to do a better job of making the most of opportunities with its largest customer and cultivating new relationships with other potential and existing clients. If the new CEO and his team can succeed in that mission, then NI's fundamental growth could improve going forward.</p>
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<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=e9313c14-1528-4a8a-8988-6868db414c35&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 January 4, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends National Instruments. 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> | National Instruments Reports Sluggish Sales on Forex Pressure | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/26/national-instruments-reports-sluggish-sales-on-forex-pressure.html | 2017-01-26 | 0 |
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<p>From what I have read in the last few days, Peter Jennings was a real saint. He tried to help others, and he even challenged Bush on the war, it is said, even if in indirect ways. Well, I am glad Peter Jennings tried to help others, and sometimes worked in soup kitchens and so forth. That speaks well of him.</p>
<p>But hold on for a minute. I work installing air conditioners in Ambulances. If I did my job as poorly as Jennings, I wouldn’t last one day. It was Jennings job, supposedly, to report the news truthfully, and be objective. That is what a “Journalist” is supposed to do in a “free” society. Did Jennings?</p>
<p>When I install air conditioning systems, I am expected to do it right and tell the truth if I discover a problem, even if it is the company’s fault, or my fault, so the problem can be dealt with in a professional manner and resolved. For instance, if the company ordered the wrong parts, or told the customer a system could be installed in a manner it cannot be, I need to say so, whether they really want to hear it or not. If I leave something loose, or do something improperly, they need to know the situation, and how long it may take to either correct or re-install the system.</p>
<p>As a parent, I need to take responsibility if my actions somehow jeopardizes my children or family, or anyone else.</p>
<p>Even Ralph Nader has come out with an article praising Jennings. I like Nader, and admire his tenacity. But his praise of Jennings should have also included the facts about Jennings job performance.</p>
<p>In “Shock and Awe” Jennings assured the public we were using “precision” bombs, such as guided missiles and other “high tech” means to keep civilian casualties “low.”</p>
<p>On December 20, 1989, CBS anchor Dan Rather referred to the Panamanian leader as a “swamp rat,” and “at the top of the list of the world’s drug thieves and scums.” Peter Jennings called Noriega “one of the more odious creatures with whom the United States has had a relationship.” The documentary “The Panama Deception,” did an outstanding job of showing media complicity with the Government agenda. Jennings referred to the people that Noriega supposedly was using to intimidate his opponents as “goons,” repeating verbatim the first Bush Administration’s propaganda. Jennings also repeated the Gov. line on the number of Panamanians killed. Jennings did little if anything to inform the public that Noriega’s “drug dealings” were allot smaller than those of other countries. Peter Jennings claimed that the US broke with Noriega after the “question of drugs came up,” when in fact his drug running days were mostly a few years before that, with the full knowledge of the US Government. (And very likely with the blessing of the Reagan administration.) Even rudimentary “investigative journalism” would have uncovered that fact. The likelihood is Jennings knew it full well, but simply reported a lie, just like all the other examples. It would take a blind leap of faith to believe otherwise.</p>
<p>Far from Jenning’s “reporting” on those wars being abnormalities, the news left out of Jennings “World News” told the story much more than his “journalism.”</p>
<p>What is I left out details in air conditioning as important as what Jennings left out in his Network programming? What if I left something loose that resulted in the Ambulance crashing? As to my family, or someone else’s, what if I drove drunk and killed people due to my irresponsible negligence?</p>
<p>When news anchors are complicit in actions that cause death, or when their negligence is an insult to freedoms of all kinds, including press freedom, they should be held accountable and pay the price. In the case of Jennings, the price should be clear: He was a willing whore of the Corporate Press and that should be his legacy.</p>
<p>If an ordinary citizen does good deeds on occasion, but does a lousy job, they are held accountable, as they should be. Their good deeds notwithstanding. Jennings should not be held in high regard for a low standard. Had his reporting been better, and he actually stood on principle, along with other reporters and journalists, we might have a society where there were no homeless shelters.</p>
<p>RICK WILHELM can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | St. Peter Jennings | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/08/10/st-peter-jennings/ | 2005-08-10 | 4 |
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<p>4:00 p.m.</p>
<p>The Dow Jones industrial average scored another record high close, led by gains in Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase.</p>
<p>Banks again led the market higher Monday, as did technology and consumer-focused stocks.</p>
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<p>Small-company stocks rose sharply and continued to outpace the rest of the market, as they have for the past several weeks</p>
<p>Energy companies rose as the price of oil reached its highest level since July 2015. Southwestern Energy jumped 5 percent.</p>
<p>The Dow gained 45 points, or 0.2 percent, to 19,216.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index climbed 12 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,204. The Nasdaq composite increased 53 points, or 1 percent, to 5,308.</p>
<p>The Russell 2000 index, which tracks small and mid-sized companies, jumped 1.8 percent.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11:45 a.m.</p>
<p>U.S. stocks are climbing again, led by gains in banks, sending the Dow Jones industrial average to another record high.</p>
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<p>Technology companies, which have weakened since the presidential election, recovered some of their recent losses Monday.</p>
<p>European stocks were mostly higher, but Italy’s market fell slightly after Italian voters rejected constitutional changes, leading the country’s premier to say he would resign.</p>
<p>The Dow was up 86 points, or 0.5 percent, to 19,257.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index climbed 15 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,206. The Nasdaq composite increased 53 points, or 1 percent, to 5,308.</p>
<p>Small-company stocks on again outpaced the rest of the market. The Russell 2000 index rose 1.4 percent.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>9:35 a.m.</p>
<p>Stocks are opening higher on Wall Street, setting another all-time high for the Dow Jones industrial average.</p>
<p>Banks rose more than the rest of the market in early trading Monday. Goldman Sachs was the biggest gainer among the 30 stocks in the Dow.</p>
<p>Banks were benefiting from an increase in long-term interest rates in the bond market, while bond-substitute stocks like utilities and real estate companies were lagging.</p>
<p>Bond prices fell, sending yields higher. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.43 percent.</p>
<p>The Dow was up 79 points, or 0.4 percent, to 19,249.</p>
<p>The Standard &amp; Poor’s 500 index climbed 8 points, or 0.4 percent, to 2,200. The Nasdaq composite increased 19 points, or 0.4 percent, to 5,271.</p> | Markets Right Now: Dow notches another record high close | false | https://abqjournal.com/902320/markets-right-now-dow-at-another-high-in-midday-us-trading.html | 2016-12-05 | 2 |
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<p>With so much competition in today's marketplace, it can often be a challenge to turn first-time customers into repeat customers.</p>
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<p>Gabriel Bristol, president and CEO of Intelicare Direct, a customer service solutions company, said that providing good customer service isn't always enough to keep consumers coming back. To create loyal customers, businesses need to be prepared to make their customers feel special and wanted, he said.</p>
<p>Bristol offered five tips to help small businesses improve customer loyalty:</p>
<p>Originally published on <a href="http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6180-customer-service-crisis-tips.html" type="external">Business News Daily. Opens a New Window.</a></p> | 5 Ways to Boost Customer Loyalty | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/07/22/5-ways-to-boost-customer-loyalty.html | 2016-04-07 | 0 |
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<p>A week ago, Charlie Hebdo was a niche publication little known outside France, with a circulation of 60,000. On Wednesday the satirical newspaper's first issue since last week's deadly attack on its staff went on sale with an initial print run of 3 million copies and front-page coverage around the world.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Readers in France mobbed newsstands to buy a copy and European newspapers reprinted Charlie Hebdo's cartoons as a gesture of solidarity. But the decision to depict the Prophet Muhammad on the cover, holding a sign saying "Je suis Charlie" (I am Charlie), angered many Muslims, who called it a renewed insult to their religion.</p>
<p>MUSLIM ANGER</p>
<p>Many Muslims believe their faith forbids depictions of the prophet, and reacted with dismay — and occasionally anger — to the latest cover image. Some felt their expressions of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo after last week's attack had been rebuffed, while others feared the cartoon would trigger yet more violence.</p>
<p>"You're putting the lives of others at risk when you're taunting bloodthirsty and mad terrorists," said Hamad Alfarhan, a 29-year old Kuwaiti doctor.</p>
<p>"I hope this doesn't trigger more attacks. The world is already mourning the losses of many lives under the name of religion."</p>
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<p>Abbas Shumann, deputy to the Grand Sheik of Cairo's influential Al-Azhar mosque, said the new image was "a blatant challenge to the feelings of Muslims who had sympathized with this newspaper."</p>
<p>But he told The Associated Press that Muslims should ignore the cover and respond by "showing tolerance, forgiveness and shedding light on the story of the prophet." An angry reaction, he said, "will not solve the problem but will instead add to the tension and the offense to Islam."</p>
<p>In Lebanon, the Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah said the depiction was "a provocation of the feelings of more than 1.5 billion Muslims in the world ... and directly contributes to supporting terrorism, fanaticism and extremists."</p>
<p>In Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood said it would stage a protest after Friday prayers in Amman in response to the paper's Muhammad cartoon. Spokesman Murad Adaileh said the brotherhood strongly condemned both the killings and the "offensive" against the prophet.</p>
<p>That was a widely expressed sentiment. Ghassan Nhouli, a grocer in the Lebanese port city of Sidon, said the magazine and the killers "are both wrong."</p>
<p>"It is not permitted to kill and also it is not permitted to humiliate a billion Muslims," he said.</p>
<p>The Iranian government has strongly condemned the killings, but Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said that in a world of widely differing cultures, "sanctities need to be respected."</p>
<p>"I think we would have a much safer, much more prudent world if we were to engage in serious dialogue, serious debate about our differences and then what we will find out that what binds us together is far greater than what divides us," he said.</p>
<p>Egyptian cartoonist Makhlouf appealed for peace with his own spin on the Charlie Hebdo cover, replacing Muhammad with an ordinary Middle Eastern man carrying a placard reading "I am an artist" in French.</p>
<p>"I am for art and against killing," he added in Arabic. "May God forgive everyone." The image was widely circulated on social media.</p>
<p>TURKISH TENSION</p>
<p>Turkey was rare among Muslim-majority nations to have publications running Charlie Hebdo images. But the decision has raised tensions in the officially secular country.</p>
<p>A Turkish ordered a ban on access to websites showing Charlie Hebdo's Muhammad cover, and police stopped trucks leaving the printing plant of newspaper Cumhuriyet after it said it would reprint some of the cartoons Wednesday. The vehicles were allowed to distribute the paper once officials had determined that the image of the Prophet Muhammad was not shown.</p>
<p>The paper printed a four-page selection of cartoons and articles — including caricatures of Pope Francis and French President Francois Hollande — but left out cartoons likely to offend Muslims. However, two Cumhuriyet columnists used small, black-and-white images of the new Charlie Hebdo cover as their column headers.</p>
<p>A small group of pro-Islamic students staged a protest outside the paper's office in Ankara, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported, and police intensified security outside Cumhuriyet's headquarter and printing center.</p>
<p>NO LUCK IN NEW YORK</p>
<p>The latest edition of Charlie Hebdo may well have been the hottest unavailable item in New York, as phones at magazine and newspaper vendors rang off the hook with thousands of inquiries.</p>
<p>"This is all I'm doing today!" said Ami Patel, owner of the Around the World magazine and book store near Times Square — one of the city's biggest purveyors of foreign publications.</p>
<p>"There's a phone call every minute, plus walk-ins," said Patel, who could barely finish a sentence before another call came in.</p>
<p>It was a similar story at other magazine sellers; even the New York-based cultural division of the French Embassy said it had not yet received any copies.</p>
<p>EAGER EUROPEANS</p>
<p>Across Europe, there was high demand for scarce copies of the latest edition, and several newspapers ran extracts from Charlie Hebdo.</p>
<p>Austria's Der Standard and Spain's El Pais published two pages of the cartoons, though the Spanish paper did not include any images of the prophet.</p>
<p>A small Italian newspaper, Il Fatto Quotidiano (The Daily Fact), published Charlie Hebdo as a 16-page supplement, in French with Italian translations of the captions.</p>
<p>"Why are we doing it?" editor Antonio Padellaro wrote in a front-page column. "Because last Friday, when we called the surviving top editor of Charlie Hebdo, we heard him say, 'Thanks, you're the only Italian newspaper who asked us.'"</p>
<p>Physical copies of the paper were hard to find, though newsagents in several countries said they hoped to have some in stock by the end of the week.</p>
<p>In Sweden, the 320-strong Pressbyran chain of newsagents said it would sell the issue, but only online, not in stores. Spokesman Fredrik Klein said the decision was "as a security measure and out of concern for our staff."</p>
<p>In Belgium, where Charlie Hebdo was due to go on sale Thursday, prosecutors said they were investigating a letter sent to four newsstands threatening "consequences" if they sold the newspaper. Prosecutor's office spokesman Laurens Dumont said the threat was being taken "very seriously."</p>
<p>There was brisk bidding for copies of Charlie Hebdo on Internet auction sites. On the Irish version of eBay, emailed electronic copies were selling at prices starting around 6.50 euros ($8), while hard copies attracted bids over 200 euros ($240). On British eBay, bidding on one copy went above 95,000 ($145,000), though it was unclear whether the bids were genuine or an attempt to make mischief.</p>
<p>Michael Collingwood of Sgel, Charlie Hebdo's Spanish distributor, said he normally received 40 copies but had been promised 1,000 this time by the paper's French distributor. He figured he could sell eight times that number.</p>
<p>"I don't know why they only printed 3 million," he said. "Everyone wants it."</p>
<p>Associated Press writers around the world contributed to this report.</p> | New Charlie Hebdo Reaches Global Audience | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2015/01/14/new-charlie-hebdo-reaches-global-audience.html | 2016-03-06 | 0 |
<p>"Underwear Bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab&lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UmarFarouk.jpg"&gt;Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;</p>
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<p>On Wednesday, almost two years after failing to blow up a passenger plane headed for Detroit with a faulty bomb placed in his underpants, Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/us/umar-farouk-abdulmutallab-pleads-guilty-in-plane-bomb-attempt.html" type="external">quietly pleaded guilty</a> to his crimes in federal court. The plea will likely land him in prison for&#160;the rest of his life.</p>
<p>“Contrary to what some have claimed,” Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday, “today’s plea removes any doubt that our courts are one of the most effective tools we have to fight terrorism and keep the American people safe.” But if a bipartisan group of senators have their way, the courts may never be used this way again.</p>
<p>At issue is a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that could be called the “Abdulmutallab rule.”&#160;When Abdulmutallab was first apprehended and interrogated by federal agents, Republicans expressed outrage that he wasn’t shunted into indefinite military detention, suggesting that the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights after he stopped cooperating showed leniency or weakness rather than respect for the law. The provision mandates the military detention of terrorism suspects believed to be members of Al Qaeda-affiliated groups, even if they’re apprehended on American soil. This turns the presumption of innocence on its head, since it essentially concludes someone is a terrorist without so much as a trial. &#160;</p>
<p>The bill also authorizes the indefinite military detention of American citizens and permanent residents if they are suspected of links to Al Qaeda, something so controversial that even the Bush administration balked at it, slipping Jose Padilla back into the criminal justice system after years of military detention in order to avoid a confrontation with the Supreme Court. Congress is preparing to overturn a precedent that was followed almost without exception by the Bush administration: Domestic terrorism arrests are the province of law enforcement, not the military. The provision passed out of the Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee with only a single dissenting vote, from Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.).</p>
<p>“It’s a ‘bipartisan compromise’ that would effect a sweeping change in the way the US government handles domestic counterterrorism investigations,” says Ben Wittes, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who supports the use of both military commissions and federal courts to try suspected terrorists. Wittes says that the provision as written could potentially disrupt FBI investigations in progress by forcing the bureau to get a waiver from the defense secretary saying it’s okay to hold the suspect outside of military detention.</p>
<p>The first draft of the bill may have won support from both parties in Congress, but opposition to the detention provisions is somewhat bipartisan too, another manifestation of how much continuity between the two administrations there’s actually been. The Obama administration has threatened a veto, and several former Bush administration officials have warned against limiting the options for dealing with terrorism suspects. “If a key objective is ensuring that accurate intelligence is quickly obtained, then the executive branch needs some latitude and flexibility to account for the specific context and exigencies of each terrorism case,” says Bush-era Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs Matthew Waxman. “These provisions curtail that necessary flexibility.”</p>
<p>Waxman’s successor at the Bush-era DOD, Charles Stimson,&#160; <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/12/weve-learned-about-terror-trials-from-underwear-bomber/" type="external">wrote</a> that Abdulmutallab’s guilty plea proved that “the president—any president—must have all lawful tools available to him during wartime. He must have the flexibility to use the most appropriate tool at any given time. In this case, the defendant was tried in the right venue, with a just result.”</p>
<p>Last week,&#160;Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) held up the defense authorization, citing White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s concern that the detention provisions would “inject legal and operational uncertainty into what is already enormously complicated work.” The Senate is trying to hash out a compromise, but the legislation also has to pass the Republican-dominated House. It seems possible, even likely, that the “Abdulmutallab rule” could survive, and along with it, the part of the bill authorizing the indefinite military detention of American terrorism suspects. Responding to Reid, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) defended the provisions on the floor of the Senate, saying that the rule only applies in a “very narrow set of circumstances,” such as “the December 2009 attempt to bomb a civilian airliner over Detroit.”</p>
<p>But Chris Anders, senior legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, points out that the bill assumes a capacity the US military doesn’t have. “There are no regular military police in Michigan, there’s no JAG, there’s no brig, there is no military capacity in the state of Michigan to hold a suspected terrorist for life,” he says. “But there is an FBI office, several United States attorneys, US Marshals; there’s a whole law enforcement apparatus trained in interrogating, detaining, and trying terrorist suspects in Michigan and throughout the United States,” Anders says. “The military’s capacity for detention of terrorist suspects outside of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo is pretty much nonexistent.”</p>
<p>Then there’s indefinite detention of US citizens and permanent residents. Although military detention for citizens isn’t mandatory, it is permitted. Both Bush and Obama dodged cases headed for the Supreme Court fearing that the justices might rule domestic military detention for US citizens and legal permanent residents unconstitutional. But relying on the courts to settle the issue could take years.</p>
<p>“I’m sure it will be challenged,” says Daphne Eviatar, a senior associate at Human Rights First. “But the courts have generally been reluctant to overturn US policies related to national security, and it takes years for a court to touch something like this.”</p>
<p>Wittes, who unlike Anders and Eviatar supports the use of military detention and prosecution for terrorist suspects, nonetheless believes Congress is making a mistake by micromanaging the process this way.</p>
<p>“You want the options on, not off, the table…that’s a lesson the governing left had to learn, and it’s one the nongoverning right seems to have forgotten,” Wittes says. “No Republican, not even Michele Bachmann, is going to get elected president and discover the universe of domestic terrorism cases they want to treat under the criminal justice system is zero.”</p>
<p /> | The Abdulmutallab Rule | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/abdulmutallab-rule-military-detention-terrorist-suspects/ | 2011-10-14 | 4 |
<p>Two political figures dominated the final months of the 2008 presidential campaign. One was the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. The other had been unknown to all but 670,000 Americans only a few minutes before she was first introduced by the Republican nominee, John McCain, at a rally in Ohio on the Friday before the Republican National Convention, only 66 days before the November election.</p>
<p>By the close of that first weekend, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska had become a national sensation. Two days after that, she delivered her debut address at the Republican National Convention as the party's vice-presidential nominee–a dazzling stemwinder, it was all but universally acknowledged. McCain's dramatic and unexpected bet appeared to have paid off in spades.</p>
<p>But by November 4, the day of the election, Sarah Palin had been transformed into one of the most divisive figures in recent American history. There was almost no middle ground between those who had come to adore her and those who believed she represented just about every dark and dangerous element of contemporary American politics. In choosing Palin, McCain had hoped to shake up the race; but the fault lines exposed by the Palin earthquake were not the ones he had thought they might be. He had wanted to run against the Washington status quo as a reformer with an independent streak. He believed he was picking a fellow reformist politician with a history of taking on the leadership of her own party, and that Palin would prove acceptable to the Republican base because of her social conservatism. Instead, Palin became an instant cultural and political magnet, attracting some and repelling others and dragging a helpless McCain into a culture war for which he had little stomach. Indeed, the overheated response to Palin's presence on the national stage, from both friend and foe, was oddly disconnected from Palin's actual actions, statements, and record. It was a turn of events no one could have anticipated, and one that has much to teach us about American political life in our day.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/the-meaning-of-sarah-palin-14674?page=all" type="external">Click here to continue reading this article from Commentary</a>.</p> | The Meaning of Sarah Palin | false | https://eppc.org/publications/the-meaning-of-sarah-palin/ | 1 |
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<p>ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland authorities say 18 people, including two correctional officers, have been indicted in a prison corruption case.</p>
<p>State prosecutor Emmet Davitt announced Thursday that six inmates and 10 outside facilitators also have been indicted.</p>
<p>The charges include conspiracy to distribute controlled dangerous substances, conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery and the smuggling of contraband such as narcotics and cell phones.</p>
<p>The year-long investigation into corruption at the Jessup Correctional Facility was the result of a joint probe by the state prosecutor’s office, a special investigative unit in the state corrections department and the Maryland State Police.</p>
<p>Authorities have been investigating prison corruption for years in Maryland. In November, 26 people were indicted in a separate case, including a correctional officer who served as a high-ranking gang member.</p>
<p>ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland authorities say 18 people, including two correctional officers, have been indicted in a prison corruption case.</p>
<p>State prosecutor Emmet Davitt announced Thursday that six inmates and 10 outside facilitators also have been indicted.</p>
<p>The charges include conspiracy to distribute controlled dangerous substances, conspiracy to commit bribery, bribery and the smuggling of contraband such as narcotics and cell phones.</p>
<p>The year-long investigation into corruption at the Jessup Correctional Facility was the result of a joint probe by the state prosecutor’s office, a special investigative unit in the state corrections department and the Maryland State Police.</p>
<p>Authorities have been investigating prison corruption for years in Maryland. In November, 26 people were indicted in a separate case, including a correctional officer who served as a high-ranking gang member.</p> | 18 indicted in Maryland prison corruption case | false | https://apnews.com/5fe09f40ea8748b0970dd4be07dcba4d | 2018-01-11 | 2 |
<p>JAFFA, Israel — Benjamin Netanyahu's address to Congress has already been&#160; <a href="https://twitter.com/AnshelPfeffer/status/572791220415541248" type="external">dubbed</a>&#160;the best election ad ever. At nearly an hour long it's certainly one of the longest ones, and considering the damage it may have done to Israel's standing in the US it's probably the most expensive one ever made.</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/iran/150304/heres-how-benjamin-netanyahus-speech-congress-playing-" type="external">Israelis are more concerned about the economy than Iran</a></p>
<p>But the Israel election season, now in its last two weeks, has been throwing up videos that can give any speech a run for its money — and make any PR adviser run for their lives.&#160;</p>
<p>Although there are dozens of parties running, only 11 are expected to pass the electoral threshold and enter parliament. And of those 11, only one can form a coalition government.&#160;Although Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and his main contenders, the Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, are polling neck in neck, Netanyahu is likely to remain prime minister, as he counts many more natural allies among the parties than his rival. In fact, as the&#160;March 17&#160;elections draw near, there are rumors that he might invite Herzog into the coalition, along with his more usual right-wing allies. This would give him a moderate gloss and badly damage his opponent's credentials in any future election.&#160;</p>
<p>Here's your guide to this election cycle's ridiculous campaign ads:</p>
<p>Netnayahu's former ambassador to the US, Michael Oren is running with a centrist party against&#160;the prime minister, and in that capacity he's busily criticizing his old boss. Although he's from upstate New York and a dead ringer for a villain on Power Rangers, Oren is going for Frank Underwood, with a particularly paint-stripping attempt at a Southern accent. Welcome to the new season of House of Caaaaaaa (just wait for it...):</p>
<p>Israel's leftmost Zionist party, Meretz, has a problem: although it's championing progressive policies, it's seen as aloof and elitist, a natural home for Israel's Ashkenazi (European-Jewish) elites. Thinly veiled insults in the direction of Mizrahi (Arab-Jewish) culture in previous campaigns didn't help. In these elections, Meretz decided to kick off their campaign with an ad shot as a generic Mizrahi wedding. The result looks like something from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2235108/" type="external">Dear White People</a>:</p>
<p>Netanyahu's main challenger, Isaac Herzog, also has a problem: an impressive absence of charisma, compounded by an insufferable voice. Here's how he sounded while trying to challenge Netanyahu to a televised debate. The general line: "are you afraid of me, Bibi? I just wanna talk!"</p>
<p>When new campaign managers came on board, they decided to tackle the issue head on. In the next video, Herzog listed his achievements as military officer, lawyer and minister — but his voice was overdubbed with a deeper one, suspiciously resembling Netanyahu. The final line after a litany of accomplishments was — "and the only reason why some of you aren't sure whether to vote for me, is my voice."</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Herzog has taken the task of sounding more like Netanyahu a bit too seriously. In this clip, officers who served with him in the signal intelligence unit 8200 tell us how the pro-peace candidate has been "watching arabs in many situations," "knows Arab mentality," and knows "when to make the call to kill these people," complete with an "adrenaline rush that can last you for days."</p>
<p>Finally, it wouldn't be an election season without some performance art from Israel's fledgling Green Party. Machine guns, goats shouting names of Israeli politicians, some random cancer stats, and Keyboard Cat singing about how "we the animals are going to vote":</p>
<p>The most obnoxious video, however, came on the margins of the election season. It features a hook-nosed Jew gobbling up golden coins to spread unpatriotic lies across the media, and eventually hanging himself — you know, just like Judas. This classically anti-Semitic ad was made by Israeli settlers, and to them the Jew is the Israeli left:</p>
<p>The incumbent, meantime, has cast himself as a friendly babysitter — excuse me, Bib-sitter — eager to watch over all our children. Some might say that the hundreds of children killed in Israel's attack on Gaza just this summer and the dozens of young Israeli soldiers who died on Netanyahu's watch don't really qualify him for the job, but what the heck:</p>
<p>If you're in need of some detox after these campaign ads, then look no further than Noy Alooshe's remix of Netanyahu's speech to Congress.</p> | Israel's campaign season has been ridiculous — here are the election ads to prove it | false | https://pri.org/stories/2015-03-04/israels-campaign-season-has-been-ridiculous-here-are-election-ads-prove-it | 2015-03-04 | 3 |
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — In coming days, <a href="" type="internal">Facebook users will see</a> fewer posts from publishers, businesses and celebs they follow. Instead, Facebook wants people to see more stuff from friends, family and other people they are likely to have “meaningful” conversations with — something the company laments has been lost in the sea of videos, news stories (real and fake), and viral quizzes on which “Big Bang Theory” character you are.</p>
<p>Here are some frequently asked questions about what users and businesses might expect from the changes.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>WHY IS FACEBOOK DOING THIS?</p>
<p>CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been doing a bit of soul-searching about the negative effects his company may be having on society and its users’ psyches. He’s come a long way since November 2016, when he dismissed the notion that fake news on Facebook could have influenced the U.S. presidential election as a “ <a href="" type="internal">pretty crazy idea</a> .”</p>
<p>Now it’s his <a href="" type="internal">personal goal for 2018</a> to fix the site and weed out hate, abuse, meddling by malicious nation states, while also making it more “meaningful” and less depressing for users.</p>
<p>While he acknowledges that Facebook may never be completely free of malign influences, Zuckerberg says that the company currently makes “too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing the misuse of our tools.”</p>
<p>The company also faces pressure from regulators in the U.S. and abroad, and a growing backlash from academics, lawmakers and even early executives and investors about the ways in which social media may be leaving us depressed, isolated, bombarded by online trolls and addicted to our phones.</p>
<p>Facebook would much rather make changes on its own than have its hand forced by regulators — or to see disillusioned users move on to other, newer platforms.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>HOW WILL IT AFFECT THE COMPANY’S BUSINESS?</p>
<p>Facebook’s stock price dropped almost 6 percent on Friday morning before regaining some ground. That suggests investors take Facebook seriously when it says the move will likely make users spend less time on its service. Less time, of course, means fewer advertising eyeballs at any given time.</p>
<p>This is a huge shift for Facebook, which until recently has been laser-focused on keeping users glued to the service by offering a bevy of notifications and “engaging” but low-value material.</p>
<p>Facebook has been doing very well financially. Its stock hit an all-time high earlier this month, and the company’s market value is more than $522 billion. Its quarterly results routinely surpass Wall Street’s expectations.</p>
<p>So arguably the company can afford to shift its focus a bit away from quarterly profit gains and metrics like “user engagement” that get advertisers salivating. Zuckerberg already signaled this would happen late last year, when he said the company’s planned investments in preventing abuse would hurt profitability.</p>
<p>While the changes could hurt Facebook’s business in the short term, happier users could make for better profits over the long term. At least, that’s what the company hopes.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>IS THIS THE END FOR BRANDS AND PUBLISHERS ON FACEBOOK?</p>
<p>Many news organizations, bloggers and businesses have grown reliant on Facebook to spread information — articles, videos, infomercials — to their followers without paying for ads. The changes could jeopardize that route to their audiences, though some speculate it could be a ploy to force these companies to buy more Facebook ads.</p>
<p>“It’s obvious that the days of getting exposure as a business on Facebook are coming to an end,” said Michael Stelzner, the CEO of social media marketing company Social Media Examiner. While Facebook has made plenty of changes to its news feed algorithm in the past, he said, this time might be different.</p>
<p>That’s because Facebook is being “far more explicit” in its wording about what sorts of posts will diminish. “It has never been this black and white,” Stelzner said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WON’T THIS JUST REINFORCE THE “FILTER BUBBLES” THAT TRAP USERS AMONG THE LIKE-MINDED?</p>
<p>Do you enjoy arguing with people you disagree with? Maybe, maybe not. But Facebook’s goal is to make people happier using the site — not to expose them to opposing views. So yes, this is possible.</p>
<p>That said, company says this is how people make friends and interact with each other offline. We gravitate toward people like us. And Facebook says its own research shows that users are exposed to more divergent views on its platform than they would be otherwise. Of course, this is difficult to verify independently, since the company doesn’t often show that data to outsiders.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>ARE PEOPLE REALLY GOING TO SPEND LESS TIME ON FACEBOOK?</p>
<p>Admitting that its changes will likely reduce the time people spend on Facebook less was a big deal for the company. Video, especially, has been a big focus for the social media giant — and videos have been especially good at keeping users around. This latest move, however, will de-emphasize videos too.</p>
<p>While it’s too early to tell what users will do, there’s little reason not to trust Facebook on this particular question.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WILL THE CHANGES MAKE PEOPLE HAPPIER OR SADDER?</p>
<p>The jury is still out on how seeing mostly exuberant posts from friends and family affects people over time.</p>
<p>Facebook obviously believes most of its users enjoy keeping up with what’s happening in their social circles, even if the material being shared mostly revolves around parties, vacations and other fun times while omitting life’s inevitable challenges and tedium. Sharing these moments together, Facebook reasons, deepens the connections between people, even if they can’t always be together offline.</p>
<p>But some research and anecdotal evidence suggests that Facebook can make people feel isolated, inadequate or alienated as they experience a phenomenon known as “fear of missing out,” or FOMO. Teenagers are particularly prone to “Facebook depression” as they try to measure up to and fit in with their peers, <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2011/03/28/peds.2011-0054.full.pdf" type="external">according to the American Academy of Pediatrics</a> .</p>
<p>But other researchers believe how people react to Facebook depends on their personality. If you’re prone to anxiety, insecurity or already unhappy with your life, then seeing other people having fun could deepen your feelings of missing out or being left out. If you’re confident and content with your life, then seeing a friend or family member with a smile on their face could make you happy too.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691617713052" type="external">recent article</a> in Perspectives on Psychological Science concluded that already lonely people who use Facebook and other social media as a substitute for real-life relationships tend to end up feeling more isolated. But when Facebook is used to deepen friendships that have already been struck and to forge new relationships, the social network helps people feel less alone.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP technology writer Michael Liedtke contributed from San Ramon, California.</p>
<p>NEW YORK (AP) — In coming days, <a href="" type="internal">Facebook users will see</a> fewer posts from publishers, businesses and celebs they follow. Instead, Facebook wants people to see more stuff from friends, family and other people they are likely to have “meaningful” conversations with — something the company laments has been lost in the sea of videos, news stories (real and fake), and viral quizzes on which “Big Bang Theory” character you are.</p>
<p>Here are some frequently asked questions about what users and businesses might expect from the changes.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>WHY IS FACEBOOK DOING THIS?</p>
<p>CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been doing a bit of soul-searching about the negative effects his company may be having on society and its users’ psyches. He’s come a long way since November 2016, when he dismissed the notion that fake news on Facebook could have influenced the U.S. presidential election as a “ <a href="" type="internal">pretty crazy idea</a> .”</p>
<p>Now it’s his <a href="" type="internal">personal goal for 2018</a> to fix the site and weed out hate, abuse, meddling by malicious nation states, while also making it more “meaningful” and less depressing for users.</p>
<p>While he acknowledges that Facebook may never be completely free of malign influences, Zuckerberg says that the company currently makes “too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing the misuse of our tools.”</p>
<p>The company also faces pressure from regulators in the U.S. and abroad, and a growing backlash from academics, lawmakers and even early executives and investors about the ways in which social media may be leaving us depressed, isolated, bombarded by online trolls and addicted to our phones.</p>
<p>Facebook would much rather make changes on its own than have its hand forced by regulators — or to see disillusioned users move on to other, newer platforms.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>HOW WILL IT AFFECT THE COMPANY’S BUSINESS?</p>
<p>Facebook’s stock price dropped almost 6 percent on Friday morning before regaining some ground. That suggests investors take Facebook seriously when it says the move will likely make users spend less time on its service. Less time, of course, means fewer advertising eyeballs at any given time.</p>
<p>This is a huge shift for Facebook, which until recently has been laser-focused on keeping users glued to the service by offering a bevy of notifications and “engaging” but low-value material.</p>
<p>Facebook has been doing very well financially. Its stock hit an all-time high earlier this month, and the company’s market value is more than $522 billion. Its quarterly results routinely surpass Wall Street’s expectations.</p>
<p>So arguably the company can afford to shift its focus a bit away from quarterly profit gains and metrics like “user engagement” that get advertisers salivating. Zuckerberg already signaled this would happen late last year, when he said the company’s planned investments in preventing abuse would hurt profitability.</p>
<p>While the changes could hurt Facebook’s business in the short term, happier users could make for better profits over the long term. At least, that’s what the company hopes.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>IS THIS THE END FOR BRANDS AND PUBLISHERS ON FACEBOOK?</p>
<p>Many news organizations, bloggers and businesses have grown reliant on Facebook to spread information — articles, videos, infomercials — to their followers without paying for ads. The changes could jeopardize that route to their audiences, though some speculate it could be a ploy to force these companies to buy more Facebook ads.</p>
<p>“It’s obvious that the days of getting exposure as a business on Facebook are coming to an end,” said Michael Stelzner, the CEO of social media marketing company Social Media Examiner. While Facebook has made plenty of changes to its news feed algorithm in the past, he said, this time might be different.</p>
<p>That’s because Facebook is being “far more explicit” in its wording about what sorts of posts will diminish. “It has never been this black and white,” Stelzner said.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WON’T THIS JUST REINFORCE THE “FILTER BUBBLES” THAT TRAP USERS AMONG THE LIKE-MINDED?</p>
<p>Do you enjoy arguing with people you disagree with? Maybe, maybe not. But Facebook’s goal is to make people happier using the site — not to expose them to opposing views. So yes, this is possible.</p>
<p>That said, company says this is how people make friends and interact with each other offline. We gravitate toward people like us. And Facebook says its own research shows that users are exposed to more divergent views on its platform than they would be otherwise. Of course, this is difficult to verify independently, since the company doesn’t often show that data to outsiders.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>ARE PEOPLE REALLY GOING TO SPEND LESS TIME ON FACEBOOK?</p>
<p>Admitting that its changes will likely reduce the time people spend on Facebook less was a big deal for the company. Video, especially, has been a big focus for the social media giant — and videos have been especially good at keeping users around. This latest move, however, will de-emphasize videos too.</p>
<p>While it’s too early to tell what users will do, there’s little reason not to trust Facebook on this particular question.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>WILL THE CHANGES MAKE PEOPLE HAPPIER OR SADDER?</p>
<p>The jury is still out on how seeing mostly exuberant posts from friends and family affects people over time.</p>
<p>Facebook obviously believes most of its users enjoy keeping up with what’s happening in their social circles, even if the material being shared mostly revolves around parties, vacations and other fun times while omitting life’s inevitable challenges and tedium. Sharing these moments together, Facebook reasons, deepens the connections between people, even if they can’t always be together offline.</p>
<p>But some research and anecdotal evidence suggests that Facebook can make people feel isolated, inadequate or alienated as they experience a phenomenon known as “fear of missing out,” or FOMO. Teenagers are particularly prone to “Facebook depression” as they try to measure up to and fit in with their peers, <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2011/03/28/peds.2011-0054.full.pdf" type="external">according to the American Academy of Pediatrics</a> .</p>
<p>But other researchers believe how people react to Facebook depends on their personality. If you’re prone to anxiety, insecurity or already unhappy with your life, then seeing other people having fun could deepen your feelings of missing out or being left out. If you’re confident and content with your life, then seeing a friend or family member with a smile on their face could make you happy too.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691617713052" type="external">recent article</a> in Perspectives on Psychological Science concluded that already lonely people who use Facebook and other social media as a substitute for real-life relationships tend to end up feeling more isolated. But when Facebook is used to deepen friendships that have already been struck and to forge new relationships, the social network helps people feel less alone.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP technology writer Michael Liedtke contributed from San Ramon, California.</p> | Q&A: What Facebook’s shift could mean to users, businesses | false | https://apnews.com/588b04191cd344b0b4d4bc771577b9c9 | 2018-01-12 | 2 |
<p>&lt;a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-100557649/stock-vector-rep-loser.html?src=csl_recent_image-2"&gt;sferdon&lt;/a&gt;/Shutterstock; &lt;a href="http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Fox_News_Channel"&gt;bardiscute&lt;/a&gt;/Wikia</p>
<p />
<p>With President Obama’s victory over Mitt Romney, many pundits are already engaging in clichéd talk of “soul-searching” for the GOP. What they mean by this phrase differs depending on who says it: Pundits on the left as well as moderate, reform-oriented Republicans are claiming the party needs to move back to a pragmatist set of policies; tea partiers and others on the right, talk radio, and Fox News are claiming that Mitt Romney, like John McCain before him, was simply too moderate to win, and that only a true, principled conservative can lead the charge to victory.</p>
<p>But what Republicans really need to learn from Romney’s defeat is not that their candidate was too weak or too moderate. They need to learn that their candidate was forced to adopt far more extreme policies than he previously held due to a primary process that enslaves pragmatism and electability to a rigid ideology. And at the heart of this rigid ideology is a conservative movement that’s become the creature of the right-wing media.</p>
<p>Fox News is often described as little more than a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the reverse is the case, with the Republican Party serving as unwitting puppets of the self-serving right-wing controversy machine. Fox News and the talk radio shock jocks across the country win whether or not conservatives are in power; these purveyors of political entertainment thrive under a Democratic president, perhaps even more so than under their preferred candidates. There’s big money in controversy, and controversy is what the Glenn Becks of the world do best.</p>
<p>At some point, Republicans will need to wake up to the current state of affairs and realize they’re being held hostage to a powerful, self-sustaining entertainment industry and that the interests of the party and the interests of Fox News are not one and the same.</p>
<p>Indeed, the spinoffs of this conservative movement/media behemoth can be seen far and wide as <a href="" type="internal">bloggers like Dean Chambers take up the mantle of “true conservatism” and begin telling Republicans only what they want to hear</a>—even if that means twisting the polling data beyond anything remotely recognizable as the truth.</p>
<p>Even the tea party was largely the result of a concerted effort on the part of conservative media to foment dissatisfaction and resentment. Sure, this may have helped sweep the House to the right in 2010, but more importantly it drove traffic to conservative websites and eyeballs to Fox News. And while Romney may have lost the election last night, Fox is guaranteed a strong viewership through Obama’s second term.</p>
<p>This is what conservative writer <a href="http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-radio-wrecks-the-right/" type="external">John Derbyshire described as far back as 2009 as “Happy Meal conservatism,”</a> a lowbrow and ultimately harmful approach to rallying the conservative troops. “Reason has been overwhelmed by propaganda,” Derbyshire wrote at the time, “ideas by slogans.” Happy Meal conservatism, he argued, is one of the major contributors to this state of affairs.</p>
<p>It does so by routinely descending into the ad hominem—Feminazis instead of feminism—and catering to reflex rather than thought. Where once conservatism had been about individualism, talk radio now rallies the mob. “Revolt against the masses?” asked Jeffrey Hart. “Limbaugh is the masses.”</p>
<p>Derbyshire trafficked in <a href="http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/04/beyond-derbyshire/" type="external">paranoid, lowbrow, and deeply racist tactics</a> of his own, but his point remains intact nonetheless. And while Derbyshire may have ultimately ignored his own advice, there are others on the right who need to begin the process of distancing themselves from the right-wing media machine that’s taken over their movement.</p>
<p>Republicans need to wake up to their damaged brand, and then they need to follow the money. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to see how the shock jocks play their audiences. You don’t have to listen to many Glenn Beck tirades about going back to the gold standard and their accompanying advertisements about trading in your gold jewelry for cash to see how cynical this act has become. But gold schemes are small potatoes compared to the much larger con being played on the Republican Party.</p>
<p>The problem is one of revolving doors. Failure for Republican politicians doesn’t always have to end in tears. Play to the cameras well enough, and you might just land yourself a job at Fox News—that is, if you’re not already lined up with a cozy consulting job at a lobbying firm (something politicians across the spectrum are guilty of too often than we’d care to admit.)</p>
<p>And so Happy Meal conservatism becomes as cyclical as it is cynical. It may bite the hands that feed it, but it shares enough of the wealth to keep up appearances.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, conservatives continue to grow more and more dependent on a steady diet of this fast-food political fare, further deepening the <a href="http://trueslant.com/juliansanchez/2009/12/16/the-politics-of-ressentiment/" type="external">“politics of ressentiment</a>,” as libertarian writer Julian Sanchez describes it. Far from being a coherent political philosophy, Sanchez argues that modern conservatism is a “farce currently performing under that marquee [that’s] an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag.”</p>
<p>But why does this play so well on the right? Even admitting that all human beings have a penchant for the controversial and that all good narrative is driven by conflict—contrived or otherwise—why has Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the right-wing bloviators become so enormously powerful?</p>
<p>Sanchez argues that it’s a status grievance first and foremost. Conservatives feel under attack and have “internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy.”</p>
<p>In other words, conservatives have begun to see the writing on the wall as demographics shift and they begin to lose ground in the culture wars. Fox News is banking on this, capitalizing on the unspoken fears this may provoke, and giving those fears voice. They didn’t invent fire, they just learned how to stoke it and make sure that it generates far more heat than light.</p>
<p>But as Sanchez points out, this is a doomed project:</p>
<p>Even if conservatives retook power, they wouldn’t be able to provide a political solution to a psychological problem, assuming they’re not willing to go the Pol Pot route. At the same time, it signals a resignation to impotence on the cultural front where the real conflict lies. It effectively says: We ceded to the bogeyman cultural elites the power of stereotypical definition, so becoming the stereotype more fully and grotesquely is our only means of empowerment.</p>
<p>What Republicans need to realize in the wake of their defeat is that it’s not a means to empowerment, it’s only a means to one end: making conservative media buckets full of money, come rain or shine.</p>
<p /> | The Republican Party Needs to Ditch Fox News If It Wants to Win | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/11/why-republican-party-needs-ditch-happy-meal-conservatism-if-they-want-win/ | 2012-11-07 | 4 |
<p>MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Vermont school children are being invited to submit entries to the annual Green Up Vermont contest that will mark this year's Green Up Day when volunteers pick up trash across the state.</p>
<p>Any student in kindergarten through grade 12 may submit one entry for poster design and writing.</p>
<p>One entry will be selected as the official poster for Green Up Day, which will be held this year on May 5. Poster entries must be submitted by Jan. 31.</p>
<p>Writing entries of no more than 200 words must be about why Green Up Day is important. Writing entries must be received by March 1.</p>
<p>Details are available on the <a href="http://www.greenupvermont.org/" type="external">Green Up Day</a> website.</p>
<p>The winner of each contest will receive $250.</p>
<p>MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Vermont school children are being invited to submit entries to the annual Green Up Vermont contest that will mark this year's Green Up Day when volunteers pick up trash across the state.</p>
<p>Any student in kindergarten through grade 12 may submit one entry for poster design and writing.</p>
<p>One entry will be selected as the official poster for Green Up Day, which will be held this year on May 5. Poster entries must be submitted by Jan. 31.</p>
<p>Writing entries of no more than 200 words must be about why Green Up Day is important. Writing entries must be received by March 1.</p>
<p>Details are available on the <a href="http://www.greenupvermont.org/" type="external">Green Up Day</a> website.</p>
<p>The winner of each contest will receive $250.</p> | Vermont school children invited to submit Green Up ideas | false | https://apnews.com/512d325ed2944d57b1bf44f140bdcc2e | 2018-01-07 | 2 |
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<p>PHOENIX - Authorities say a man has been arrested in connection with the killing of a Phoenix musician on Christmas Day.</p>
<p>Phoenix police say 26-year-old Alexander James Chavez is accused of fatally stabbing Isaac Rivera.</p>
<p>The Arizona Republic reports that the 41-year-old Rivera was the front man of the punk rock band Section8 for more than 20 years.</p>
<p>Police say Chavez didn't make any statements to detectives after his arrest Wednesday night and was booked into a Maricopa County jail on suspicion of second-degree murder.</p>
<p>Police say Rivera was fatally stabbed after he rode a bicycle from his home to a convenience store and allegedly got into an altercation with Chavez.</p>
<p>They say Rivera was dropped off at a Phoenix hospital, where he died.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Man arrested in killing of Phoenix musician on Christmas Day | false | https://abqjournal.com/702420/man-arrested-in-killing-of-phoenix-musician-on-christmas-day.html | 2 |
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<p>U.S. safety regulators are investigating whether an electrical problem can knock out the air bags on some older Hyundai Sonatas.</p>
<p>The probe announced Friday covers about 394,000 midsize cars from the 2006 through 2008 model years.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has received 83 complaints about the problem. The agency says a sensor inside the seat belt buckle might fail. This can cause the air bags to malfunction or not inflate if there's a crash.</p>
<p>The problem also can affect the mechanism that tightens the seat belts before a crash. The problem can happen in either the driver or passenger buckles. In most cases the air bag warning light came on.</p>
<p>Investigations can lead to recalls but none has been issued so far in this case.</p> | US safety agency probes Hyundai Sonatas; electrical problem can cause air bag failure | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/07/25/us-safety-agency-probes-hyundai-sonatas-electrical-problem-can-cause-air-bag.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
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<p>SANTA TERESA, N.M. (AP) — Border patrol agents say they have arrested two convicted felons trying to illegally enter New Mexico.</p>
<p>Authorities say that on Tuesday, agents assigned to the Santa Teresa Border Patrol Station caught three people trying to cross the border illegally near Sunland Park. They say one of the three was found through a fingerprint check to be 66-year-old Valdemar Rodriguez Chaidez of Mexico, who has been convicted of child rape.</p>
<p>The next day, agents from the Deming station arrested 31-year-old Luis Carlos Castro Gomez, of Mexico, who has an extensive criminal record that includes a 1999 murder conviction in Illinois..</p>
<p>Both men had been deported.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | NM border agents nab criminals | false | https://abqjournal.com/225944/nm-border-agents-nab-criminals.html | 2013-07-26 | 2 |
<p><a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire</a> says…</p>
<p>Any attack on Iran just got a whole lot harder.</p>
<p>Watch a video of this report here:</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Iran has announced that it has <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/342483-s-300-deployed-iran/" type="external">deployed Russian-supplied S-300 air defence systems</a> at one of its military bases.</p>
<p>The long-range S-300 system was placed at Iran’s Khatam al-Anbia Air Defence Base.</p>
<p>Russia and Iran signed a contract to&#160;supply the&#160;S-300 systems in 2007, but were forced to&#160;cancel the order after Iran was falsely accused by several nations of covertly&#160;developing nuclear weapons.</p>
<p>The single most important aspect of this development is the fact that both the US and Israel are known to be concerned that the Russian weapons will&#160;prevent a surprise airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities.</p>
<p>It is understood that the delay in the shipment has actually been of benefit to Iran, as now Russia has shipped a more advanced version of the S-300 than was originally scheduled due to technological advancements during the delay period.</p>
<p>The <a href="" type="internal">Iran Deal</a>, also <a href="" type="internal">hated by neocons</a> internationally, has facilitated the completion&#160;of the deal.</p>
<p>With neocons in both Israel and the US <a href="" type="internal">wanting to attack Iran</a>, this significant development just made that goal a whole lot harder to achieve successfully.</p>
<p>GET THE FULL STORY ON THE IRAN DEAL: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire Iran Files</a></p> | Bad Luck, Neocons: Russian S-300 Missile Systems Now Deployed in Iran | true | http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/05/11/bad-luck-neocons-russian-s-300-missile-systems-now-deployed-in-iran/ | 2016-05-11 | 4 |
<p>Photo by Kristoffer Trolle | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>Nazareth</p>
<p>When Israel passed a new counter-terrorism law last year, Ayman Odeh, a leader of the country’s large minority of Palestinian citizens, described its draconian measures as colonialism’s “last gasp”. He said: “I see … the panic of the French at the end of the occupation of Algeria.”</p>
<p>The panic and cruelty plumbed new depths last week, when Israeli officials launched a $2.3 million lawsuit against the family of Fadi Qanbar, who crashed a truck into soldiers in Jerusalem in January, killing four. He was shot dead at the scene.</p>
<p>The suit demands that his widow, Tahani, reimburse the state for the compensation it awarded the soldiers’ families. If she cannot raise the astronomic sum, the debt will pass to her four children, the oldest of whom is currently only seven.</p>
<p>Israel is reported to be preparing many similar cases.</p>
<p>Like other families of Palestinians who commit attacks, the Qanbars are homeless, after Israel sealed their East Jerusalem home with cement. Twelve relatives were also stripped of their residency papers as a prelude to expelling them to the West Bank.</p>
<p>None has done anything wrong – their crime is simply to be related to someone Israel defines as a “terrorist”.</p>
<p>This trend is intensifying. Israel has demanded that the Palestinian Authority stop paying a small monthly stipend to families like the Qanbars, whose breadwinner was killed or jailed. Conviction rates among Palestinians in Israel’s military legal system stand at more than 99 per cent, and hundreds of prisoners are incarcerated without charge.</p>
<p>Israeli legislation is set to seize $280 million – a sum equivalent to the total stipends – from taxes Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, potentially bankrupting it.</p>
<p>On Wednesday Israel loyalists will introduce in the US Senate a bill to similarly deny the PA aid unless it stops “funding terror”. Issa Karaka, a Palestinian official, said it would be impossible for the PA to comply: “Almost every other household … is the family of a prisoner or martyr.”</p>
<p>Israel has taken collective punishment – a serious violation of international law – to new extremes, stretching the notion to realms once imaginable only in a dystopian fable like George Orwell’s 1984.</p>
<p>Israel argues that a potential attacker can only be dissuaded by knowing his loved ones will suffer harsh retribution. Or put another way, Israel is prepared to use any means to crush the motivation of Palestinians to resist its brutal, five-decade occupation.</p>
<p>All evidence, however, indicates that when people reach breaking-point, and are willing to die in the fight against their oppressors, they give little thought to the consequences for their families. That was the conclusion of an investigation by the Israeli army more than a decade ago.</p>
<p>In truth, Israel knows its policy is futile. It is not deterring attacks, but instead engaging in complex displacement activity. Ever-more sadistic forms of revenge shore up a collective and historic sense of Jewish victimhood while deflecting Israelis’ attention from the reality that their country is a brutal colonial settler state.</p>
<p>If that verdict seems harsh, consider a newly published study into the effects on operators of using drones to carry out extrajudicial executions, in which civilians are often killed as “collateral damage”.</p>
<p>A US survey found pilots who remotely fly drones soon develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress from inflicting so much death and destruction. The Israeli army replicated the study after its pilots operated drones over Gaza during Israel’s 2014 attack – the ultimate act of collective punishment. Some 500 Palestinian children were killed as the tiny enclave was bombarded for nearly two months.</p>
<p>Doctors were surprised, however, that the pilots showed no signs of depression or anxiety. The researchers speculate that Israeli pilots may feel more justified in their actions, because they are closer to Gaza than US pilots are to Afghanistan, Iraq or Yemen. They are more confident that they are the ones under threat, even as they rain down death unseen on Palestinians.</p>
<p>The determination to maintain this exclusive self-image as the victim leads to outrageous double standards.</p>
<p>Last week the Israeli supreme court backed the refusal by officials to seal up the homes of three Jews who kidnapped Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old from Jerusalem, in 2014 and burnt him alive.</p>
<p>In May the Israeli government revealed that it had denied compensation to six-year-old Ahmed Dawabsheh, the badly scarred, sole survivor of an arson attack by Jewish extremists that killed his entire family two years ago.</p>
<p>Human rights group B’Tselem recently warned that Israel has given itself immunity from paying compensation to all Palestinians under occupation killed or disabled by the Israeli army – even in cases of criminal wrongdoing.</p>
<p>This endless heaping of insult upon injury for Palestinians is possible only because the west has indulged Israel’s wallowing in victimhood so long. It is time to prick this bubble of self-delusion and remind Israel that it, not the Palestinians, is the oppressor. A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.</p> | Israel’s Ever-More Sadistic Reprisals Help Shore up a Sense of Victimhood | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/07/13/israels-ever-more-sadistic-reprisals-help-shore-up-a-sense-of-victimhood/ | 2017-07-13 | 4 |
<p>U.S. Ready for A Counter Attack If Russia Attempts To Hack The U.S. Presidential Election</p>
<p><a href="https://youtu.be/39TfxJKuabQ" type="external">youtu.be/39TfxJKuabQ</a></p>
<p />
<p>As the U.S., presidential election is around the corner, relations between Russia and the United States are intensifying. Reports from a reviewed</p>
<p>top-secret document and a senior intelligence official reveal that the United States military hackers have successfully infiltrated Russia's telecommunications networks, command systems, and the electric grid all these efforts are aimed at exposing Russia to secret American cyber weapons, making it vulnerable to attack if the United States thinks it's necessary.</p>
<p>Several statements and reports issued by U.S. officials have revealed that China, Russia, and other nations have explored</p>
<p>and launched malware on crucial infrastructure systems of the United States</p>
<p>this has been a preparation for the battleground that's already intensifying.</p>
<p>The potential damage that can be caused by</p>
<p>cyber-attacks should never be underestimated, this could cause black outs, power surges, and internet failure across the nations involved.</p>
<p>However, as much as the United States plays victim, the nation has in several occasions unleashed</p>
<p>cyber-attacks to its adversaries.</p>
<p>According to statements made by senior intelligence officials in the U.S. and documents that were reviewed by NBC,</p>
<p>it's evident that Russia has been the latest victim of such vicious attacks by the U.S.</p>
<p>The United States government officials have insinuated that the Russian government has intentions of disrupting the upcoming presidential election.</p>
<p>The U.S. officials claim that the Russians have the technical and Cyber capabilities to unleash attacks that might adversely affect the election.</p>
<p>However, the United States intelligence officials state that they don't expect Russia to unleash attacks on critical infrastructure systems in the U.S this would be an act of war which could have dire consequences.</p>
<p>The intelligence officials claim that there is a likelihood of cyber-mischief from Russia; this might range from the release of inappropriate documents to spreading of in accurate information.</p>
<p>Three U.S. servicemen were killed in Jordan on Friday when they came under fire while entering a military base, the Pentagon said.</p>
<p>The service members were on a training mission, and the incident occurred as they drove their vehicles into the facility, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement.</p>
<p>"We are working closely with the government of Jordan to determine exactly what happened," he added.</p>
<p>The Jordanian news agency Petra initially described the incident as an</p>
<p>"exchange of gunfire"</p>
<p>at the King Feisal airbase in Al Jafr, southern Jordan.</p>
<p>Jordan is a key U.S. ally in the Middle East and has been a close partner in efforts to combat the rise of the Islamic State in the region.</p>
<p>The Pentagon has not disclosed how many U.S. troops are in Jordan but a small number are involved in support and training missions connected to the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.</p> | Inside Russia's Election Cyber Threat | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/379-Inside-Russia-s-Election-Cyber-Threat | 2016-11-05 | 0 |
<p>Jan. 5 (UPI) — An Australian snake catcher shared a photo of the unexpected intruder a resident found in bed with them in the middle of the night — a large python.</p>
<p>Stuart McKenzie of The Snake Catcher 24/7 – Sunshine Coast posted a photo <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ReptileCatcher/posts/1518257824917251" type="external">to Facebook</a> showing a large python curled up next to a pillow in the middle of an Eumundi-area resident’s bed.</p>
<p>McKenzie said the resident discovered the snake in her bed when she woke up around 3 a.m.</p>
<p>He said the snake was previously known by the resident, as it had been living in her roof for some time.</p>
<p>“Snakes don’t want to hurt us, sometimes they just want to snuggle,” McKenzie wrote.</p> | Resident wakes up to find invading python in her bed | false | https://newsline.com/resident-wakes-up-to-find-invading-python-in-her-bed/ | 2018-01-06 | 1 |
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<p />
<p>The other six nations in the Group of Seven agreed to stick with their commitment to implement the 2015 Paris deal that aims to slow down global warming.</p>
<p>The final G-7 statement, issued after two days of talks in the seaside town of Taormina, said the U.S. “is in the process of reviewing its policies on climate change and on the Paris agreement and thus is not in a position to join the consensus on these topics.”</p>
<p>Trump tweeted he would decide on Paris next week. The announcement on the final day of the U.S. president’s first international trip comes after he declined to commit to staying in the sweeping climate deal, resisting intense international pressure from his peers at the summit.</p>
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<p>Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who chaired the meeting, said the other six “won’t change our position on climate change one millimeter. The U.S. hasn’t decided yet. I hope they decide in the right way.”</p>
<p>Gentiloni said climate was “not a minor point” and that he hoped the United States would decide “soon and well” because the Paris accords “need the contribution of the United States.”</p>
<p>French President Emmanuel Macron also chimed in on the climate issue, praising Trump’s “capacity to listen.” Macron said he told Trump it is “indispensable for the reputation of the United States and the interest of the Americans themselves that the United States remain committed” to the Paris climate agreement.</p>
<p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel was more downbeat, calling the G-7 climate talks “very difficult, if not to say, very unsatisfactory.”</p>
<p>Trump held no news conferences during his nine-day overseas trip, allowing him to avoid questions about investigations into his campaign’s ties with Russian officials. His top economic and national security advisers refused to answer questions during a press briefing Saturday.</p>
<p>The G-7 leaders had better luck finding agreement on the other problematic topic at the summit, trade.</p>
<p>They restored a vow to fight protectionism — the use of import taxes and skewed regulations that favor domestic producers over their foreign competitors. The no-protectionism pledge had been a part of previous G-7 statements but was omitted after a meeting of the group’s finance ministers’ earlier this month in Bari, Italy. This time the G-7 leaders reiterated a “commitment to keep our markets open and to fight protectionism.”</p>
<p>The Trump administration has argued that trade must be balanced and fair as well as free. His Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, has said the United States reserves the right to be protectionist if trade arrangements are unfair to U.S. companies and workers.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Trump’s position appeared to be addressed by new language that said the member countries would be “standing firm against all unfair trade practices.”</p>
<p>Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the G-7 also agreed to step up pressure on North Korea, including sanctions. He told reporters it was the first time that the G-7 had recognized the North Korean threat as a priority issue.</p>
<p>“The threat has entered a new stage (as North Korea tests missiles and nuclear weapons) … there is a danger it can spread like a contagious disease,” Abe said.</p>
<p>The leaders also agreed on two other topics: closer cooperation against terrorism in the wake of the concert bombing in Manchester that killed 22 people, and on the possibility of putting more sanctions against Russia over its conflict with Ukraine if Russian behavior requires that.</p>
<p>Alden Meyer, the director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Washington, said the discord over climate change was unusual for G-7 meetings.</p>
<p>“There have been differences, to be sure, in some past summits, but not a sharp open split like this,” he said.</p>
<p>Meyer said many U.S. states, cities, and companies are moving forward on climate action while the Trump administration is “waffling” on the Paris Agreement.</p>
<p>“President Trump should join these leaders in protecting Americans from the mounting impacts of climate change and reaping the economic benefits of the clean energy revolution, rather than trying to shore up the flagging fortunes of the polluting coal and oil industries,” Meyer said.</p>
<p>The G-7 is an informal gathering that meets every year under a rotating chairmanship. Its decisions are not binding as an international treaty would be, simply representing the leaders’ political commitment to carry through on their collective decisions. The member countries are: Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, the United States and the UK. The European Union also attends.</p> | Trump makes G-7 deal on trade, takes rain check on climate | false | https://abqjournal.com/1009694/trump-makes-g-7-deal-on-trade-takes-rain-check-on-climate.html | 2017-05-27 | 2 |
<p>NEW YORK — President Donald Trump has picked a fierce critic of the Obama-era “net neutrality” rules to be chief regulator of the nation’s airwaves and internet connections.</p>
<p>In a statement Monday, Ajit Pai said he was grateful to the president for choosing him as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Several reports last week had said he was the pick.</p>
<p>Pai had been one of the two Republican commissioners on a five-member panel that regulates the country’s communications infrastructure, including TV, phone and internet service.</p>
<p>There are currently just three members on the panel. The Republicans’ new majority at the FCC, along with their control of Congress and the White House, is expected to help them roll back policies applauded by consumer advocates that upset many phone and cable industry groups, including net neutrality rules that bar internet service providers from favoring some websites and apps over others.</p>
<p>Pai, an active Twitter user, posted Monday that “there is so much we can do together to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans and to promote innovation and investment.”</p>
<p>AN INDUSTRY-FRIENDLY FCC</p>
<p>Pai has long maintained that the FCC under former Chairman Thomas Wheeler had overstepped its bounds, suggesting that he would steer the agency in a direction more favorable to big phone and cable companies. In a December speech, he expressed confidence that the 2015 net neutrality rules would be undone and said the FCC needed to take a “weed whacker” to what he considered unnecessary regulations that hold back investment and innovation.</p>
<p>Consumer advocates have been concerned that a deregulation-minded FCC could potentially allow more huge mergers, overturn new protections for internet users and lead to higher costs for media and technology companies that rely on the internet to reach consumers.</p>
<p>Pai opposed online privacy regulations that force broadband providers to ask consumers for permission before using their data, saying they are more onerous than the requirements for internet companies like Google and Facebook.</p>
<p>He voted against approving Charter Communication’s $67 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable and a smaller company, Bright House — not because he opposed the merger, but because he thought some of the conditions required by the FCC, like barring data caps on home internet service, amounted to government meddling in business.</p>
<p>The cable industry’s trade group, the NCTA, supported Pai in a statement Monday that said he has a “common-sense philosophy that consumers are best served by a robust marketplace that encourages investment, innovation and competition.” Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group, said Pai had a “history of attacking consumer protections” and urged him to keep the FCC’s recent initiatives intact.</p>
<p>The Internet Association, a trade group that represents tech and video companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix, had said last week that while Pai doesn’t always side with the internet industry, “he is both thoughtful and willing to listen.”</p>
<p>TO COME: PAI VS. THE ZERO RATING, MORE MERGERS?</p>
<p>Pai also criticized an FCC report on “zero rating” earlier this month, characterizing it as a meaningless document that won’t influence the FCC under Trump. The report, issued in the last days of the Obama administration, took issue with the way companies like AT&amp;T and Verizon exempted their own video services from wireless data caps, effectively making them cheaper to stream on phones and tablets than rival services such as Netflix.</p>
<p>Future big media and telecom mergers may get a friendlier review under a Pai-led FCC. Pai voted to approve AT&amp;T’s 2015 acquisition of DirecTV. And while he told The Wall Street Journal in December 2013 that the Obama administration was likely to oppose Comcast’s failed effort to acquire Time Warner Cable — he was right — he added that a Republican administration would be more likely to approve it.</p>
<p>The FCC currently has a 2-1 Republican majority and two empty seats, which will be filled by one Republican and one Democrat.</p>
<p>Pai, an Indian-American from Kansas, has been an FCC commissioner since 2012. During his roughly 15 years in government, he’s been a Senate staffer and worked at the FCC and the Justice Department. He was also a lawyer for Verizon and an attorney at the law firm Jenner &amp; Block.</p> | Trumps chooses ‘net neutrality’ opponent for FCC post | false | https://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/trumps-chooses-net-neutrality-opponent-for-fcc-post/ | 2017-01-23 | 1 |
<p>Here's how much hope and expectation has been built into the stock market: Big companies are healthy and making fatter profits than Wall Street expected, yet it's barely enough to keep the market from falling.</p>
<p>Consider Home Depot, which gave an earnings report on Tuesday that was seemingly fantastic. The retailer made more in profit from May through July than any other quarter in its history, and its 14 percent rise in earnings per share was stronger than analysts expected. Home Depot at the same time raised its profit forecast for this year and reported higher revenue than Wall Street forecast, all of which should be kibble for investors ravenously looking for growth. Even still, Home Depot's stock slid 2.7 percent after the report.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>That reaction hasn't been too far off the norm recently, as companies have lined up to report how much they earned during the spring. Companies in the Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index are on pace to report one of their strongest quarters in years. Earnings per share were likely up more than 10 percent from a year earlier, better than the 7 percent that analysts had penciled in when the quarter ended, according to FactSet. Despite those gains, S&amp;P 500 index funds are nearly exactly where they were before the heart of earnings reporting season began in mid-July.</p>
<p>"Equity markets have greeted positive earnings reports largely with indifference," strategists at BlackRock wrote in a recent report. "Investor sentiment shows more signs of fatigue than euphoria, even as stock markets have repeatedly reached new heights this year."</p>
<p>Usually, when a company reports better earnings than analysts expected, it sends the stock higher, at least for a day. Since 2006, such companies have typically done 1.14 percentage points better than the S&amp;P 500 the day following its release, according to Goldman Sachs. But through mid-August of this reporting season, the performance edge has been virtually nil at 0.03 percentage points. That's the lowest level in at least a decade.</p>
<p>When a company has reported better-than-expected earnings but fallen short of forecasts for revenue, its stock has tended to do worse than the rest of the S&amp;P 500, according to BlackRock. And when a company has missed on both measures? Much worse.</p>
<p>At first blush, such a reaction may be surprising. Stock prices can move up and down for many reasons in the short term: whatever the president is tweeting about, what central banks in far-flung corners of the world are doing or the latest change some hedge fund has made to its trading algorithm. But over the long term, stock prices tend to track closely with corporate profits. When companies are making more money, investors are willing to pay more for each of their shares.</p>
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<p>This time may be different because stock prices had already climbed so much in anticipation of higher profits ahead. Even when profits were falling early last year, the S&amp;P 500 index was still holding steady or rising.</p>
<p>One of the main ways analysts use to measure whether stocks are expensive is to compare their price to corporate profits. The S&amp;P 500 is now trading at 20.7 times how much its companies have earned over the last 12 months, according to FactSet. That's more expensive than its median price-earnings ratio of 15.6 over the last decade.</p>
<p>Now that strong profit growth has returned, it may be mere validation for the gains S&amp;P 500 index funds have already made. And if corporate profits continue to rise faster than stock prices, they'll look less expensive.</p>
<p>With the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, many analysts expect the market's price-earnings ratio to creep lower from its lofty heights. At the least, many are telling investors to expect the stock market to rise no faster than corporate earnings.</p>
<p>The good news is that Wall Street is expecting profit growth to continue in the second half of this year, though maybe at a slower rate.</p>
<p>Some of the biggest profit gains this year have been coming from companies that do lots of business overseas. That's because, despite Washington's push for America-first policies, companies are seeing some of the strongest growth in markets like Europe, Asia and elsewhere.</p>
<p>In part, it's because those market are finally accelerating out of the doldrums they've been stuck in for years. The sinking value of the dollar is also helping, because it makes each euro or Mexican peso of sales worth more in dollars than before.</p>
<p>When Ecolab, a company that gets nearly half its revenue from abroad, reported its quarterly results on Aug. 1, it told analysts that global economies in general look "OK to good" and that it's anticipating a very solid 2017. The company, which provides water, hygiene and other services, reported both earnings and revenue that topped analysts' expectations for the quarter. Its stock fell 0.2 percent that day.</p> | Better than expected, barely good enough: Profits and stocks | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/08/17/better-than-expected-barely-good-enough-profits-and-stocks.html | 2017-08-17 | 0 |
<p>It was a cold and misty day when the clouds unleashed their massive tears of disbelief as three diplomats were killed in the Chilean embassy in Costa Rica. Only a day earlier, a priest was slain by an irate youth in the country’s cathedral. Now, in the middle of the northern desert, an army tank crushed into a school bus. Unusual events indeed, but even more unusual is the fact that General Augusto Pinochet is being investigated, both in the United States and Chile, for holding millionaire secret bank accounts.</p>
<p>Only two months ago the country’s Court of Appeal stripped Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution opening the way for a new trial on human rights violations during his regime. He is being investigated in relation to the infamous “Operation Condor”, an intelligence network organized in the 70s to persecute, arrest, torture and murder political opponents in Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.</p>
<p>Thus, the earth seems to be moving under the ageing dictator’s feet, but do not be deceived, for in spite of being responsible for horrendous crimes in Chile and other Latin American countries, Pinochet has never spent a single day in prison and it is highly unlikely that he ever will. His lawyers have pleaded insanity to avoid prosecution, the courts have accepted this argument and the Government is pleased that the General is not going to prison, because his freedom and impunity from prosecution were part of the negotiations between the Armed Forces and the civilian opposition over a decade ago.</p>
<p>Here in Chile, everyone knows that Pinochet is neither insane nor senile, not only because he frequently goes shopping to luxurious Malls or travels to the coast on holidays, but because the majority of Chileans are aware that his release from house detention in England on so called “humanitarian grounds”, was nothing but a political negotiation. It was precisely while he was in London that the New York based Riggs Bank transferred millions of dollars from his bank accounts to avoid detection by investigating judges. The question arises then: How did a person mentally unfit to stand trial manage six bank accounts and set up two offshore corporations in the Bahamas? Were the Ashburton Company and Althorp Investment Firm used for money laundering? Where did all this money come from? How could a General with a salary of less than 15 thousand dollars a year manage to save eight million dollars?</p>
<p>In September of 1975, two years after coming to power in a bloody coup d’etat, General Pinochet categorically stated: “This is a honourable government, that’s why we have the support of the Chilean people. When the time to go comes I will go to the Notary’s Office and I will take away the envelope where my possessions are listed. Nothing else. May be I’ll leave with less of what I had when I took over”. 29 years later and 8 million dollars richer, it is clear that General Pinochet did not fulfil his promises. In any case, this is not the first time that Pinochet, his family or the military are involved in obscure financial dealings. Right after the coup, the military organized a massive campaign to collect money for what they called the “National Reconstruction Fund”. Conspicuous army officers, right wing politicians and businessmen declared they had donated their gold wedding rings to contribute to this Fund. Many a Chilean believed in this and donated their rings too. No one knows what happened to all this gold and money.</p>
<p>Back in 1990, Pinochet’s oldest son, Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, was responsible for a major fraud involving State funds. He made over 2 million dollars profit by selling the bankrupt Valmoval Company to the army that knowingly paid well over the market price for the company. The Chilean parliament set up a special committee to investigate the fraud, but the army mobilized its troops and Pinochet threatened the first civilian government after 17 years of dictatorship with another coup if the investigation did not cease. Needless to say the case was shelved and the committee promptly dissolved. In 1995 the State Defence Council tried to reopen the case, but the government ordered the Council to drop the charges arguing “Reasons of State”. Right now, Pinochet’s son is under custody on a new fraud charge. It remains to be seen whether he will be sent to prison or not. What it is clear is that Pinochet is not the only one that became rich during his regime, on the contrary, the profound structural changes carried out by the military created a market economy where the poor became poorer and the rich richer. By the time the military left power in 1990, five million Chileans lived under the poverty line, over 40% of the population. On the other hand, a handful of economic groups became powerful economic and political actors. The head of the Angelini group, whose fortune was based on the Fishing, Energy and Forestry industries, became the country’s first multimillionaire, with a personal fortune of over 3 thousand million dollars.</p>
<p>General Pinochet is a vulgar thief that continues to lie to the Chilean people arguing that the money found in his secret bank accounts comes from donations. But, no matter how corrupt he might be, this is not his worst crime. He is responsible for the illegal detention, torture, rape, murder and disappearance of thousands of Chileans. This is his worst crime and for this he must be tried and sent to prison.</p>
<p>TITO TRICOT is a sociologist and director of the Center For Intercultural Studies- ILWEN Chile.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | A Murderer and a Thief on the Loose | true | https://counterpunch.org/2004/08/09/a-murderer-and-a-thief-on-the-loose/ | 2004-08-09 | 4 |
<p>You know, it’s amazing what a little education can do. Many times, we dismiss Republicans as stupid, and because&#160; <a href="http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html" type="external">conservatism is linked to low I.Q.</a> (thanks, science!), it’s sometimes easy to forget that some of our fellow Americans on the Right can be saved. Fortunately, one Republican saw the light after <a href="" type="internal">donations poured in from liberals</a>, not his fellow conservatives, <a href="" type="internal">so that his rapidly-disappearing eyesight could be saved.</a></p>
<p>Luis Lang has always taken&#160;pride in his “bootstraps,” in his ability to pay his own medical bills when things were going well. However, after a series of mini-strokes and the discovery of his looming blindness (as well as a price tag of $9,000 for those medical needs), Lang quickly burned through his savings and found himself in a terrible place financially.</p>
<p>He considered turning to Obamacare, but had missed the open enrollment period for 2015 because of his choice to rely only on himself. While self-sufficiency is an honorable thing, Lang quickly discovered that one’s health is not something with which to gamble. He put out a <a href="http://www.gofundme.com/s78e9w" type="external">call for assistance on GoFundMe</a>, where his plea for help in raising $30,000 for necessary operations has brought in nearly the full amount Lang needs.</p>
<p>Help came from a surprising place: the&#160;“other side.” Liberals left messages of support and messages intending to educate their conservative brother about the Affordable Care Act as they <a href="" type="internal">opened their hearts and wallets</a> in an attempt to rescue Lang from his situation — And. Lang. Learned. Something.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, the <a href="http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/health-care/health-care-challenge-blog/article20696283.html" type="external">Charlotte Observer</a> reported that Lang turned to the Affordable Care Act after discovering that, sometimes, bootstraps are not enough:</p>
<p>“Lang, a Republican, says he knew the act required him to get coverage, but he chose not to do so. But he thought help would be available in an emergency. He and his wife blame President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats for passing a complex and flawed bill.</p>
<p>“‘[My husband] should be at the front of the line, because he doesn’t work and because he has medical issues,’ Mary Lang said last week. ‘We call it the Not Fair Health Care Act.’</p>
<p>“Anyone who’s remotely familiar with insurance knows there’s no system that lets people skip payments while they’re healthy and cash in when they get sick. Public systems tax everyone. Private ones rely on the premiums of the well to cover the costs of those who are ailing.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>“I would like to rip up my voters registration on tv,” he said. “I have reach out to msnbc and abc in new york and waiting for them to call me back.”</p>
<p>Lang told <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2015/05/19/3660701/luis-lang-obamacare/" type="external">ThinkProgress</a>&#160;that he might be “the most hated Republican in the country right now.” He says that the flood of media attention has helped him learn more about health care policy, and he simply doesn’t identify with the Republican Party anymore.</p>
<p>“Now that I’m looking at what each party represents, my wife and I are both saying — hey, we’re not Republicans!” Lang said, adding that he wants to rip up his voter registration on national television to show everyone he is serious about switching sides. Lang insists that he has never had any problems with the Affordable Care Act, just that he has some problems with the way it has been implemented.</p>
<p>TP’s <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/?person=tculp-ressler" type="external">Tara Culp-Ressler</a>&#160;writes that:</p>
<p>“Although the Charlotte Observer article positioned Lang against the ACA, he insists he has never been completely opposed to the law. He does, however, have some issues with the way it’s been implemented.</p>
<p>“Like many Americans, Lang struggled to navigate the website last year and was frustrated by long wait times and technological glitches. He told ThinkProgress he thinks the law is too confusing as it’s currently written — and pointed out that it’s too difficult for him to predict his annual income as a self-employed contractor, which is what prevented him from signing up for a plan during previous enrollment periods. He was too nervous about underestimating his income during the enrollment process and being required to pay back his insurance subsidy during tax season.</p>
<p>“But Lang’s main complaint is the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion should be optional, which has given Republican lawmakers the opportunity to refuse to implement the policy on the state level. That’s led to a coverage gap preventing millions of Americans from accessing affordable insurance whatsoever. Because Lang’s income has recently dried up, now that his deteriorating vision prevents him from working, he now falls into that gap.”</p>
<p>“I put the blame on everyone — Republican and Democrat. But I do mainly blame Republicans for their pigheadedness,” Lang said. “They’re blocking policies that could help everyone. I’m in the situation I’m in because they chose not to expand Medicaid for political reasons. And I know I’m not the only one.”</p>
<p>Lang told TP that he has read nearly every comment on his GoFundMe, and he says that those who were critical of him for waiting until he got sick to consider insurance are correct in that this is not how insurance is supposed to function. He says that he and his wife have been discussing coverage now that they are getting older.</p>
<p>“I know we didn’t do it the right way,” Lang said. He hopes to find a way to deal with his fluctuating income so he can sign up during the next open enrollment, but believes (probably correctly) that the United States should adopt a universal health care system that makes coverage available to everyone regardless of income level. After all, he says, commenters on his fundraising page are correct that health care is a human right.</p>
<p>“In fact, I have some eyesight jokes for you,” he told ThinkProgress.</p>
<p>“This whole thing has helped me see more clearly. Like they say, hindsight is 20/20.”</p> | Lifelong Republican Renounces GOP After Liberals Raise Money To Save His Eyesight | true | http://addictinginfo.org/2015/05/20/lifelong-republican-renounces-gop-after-liberals-raise-money-to-save-his-eyesight/ | 2015-05-20 | 4 |
<p />
<p>Pick Your Poison, the new flavors of liberal kool-aid 2016 are out via Bernie and Hillary. Political Cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2016.</p>
<p>More A.F.Branco Cartoons at <a href="http://netrightdaily.com/category/cartoons/branco-toons/" type="external">Net Right Daily</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://patriotdepot.com/comically-incorrect-a-collection-of-politically-incorrect-comics-volume-1/" type="external">A.F.Branco Coffee Table Book</a> &lt;—- Order Here!</p>
<p><a href="http://paypal.me/AntonioBranco" type="external">Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated</a>&#160;– &#160;$1.00 – $5.00 – $10 – $100 – &#160;it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. –&#160;THANK YOU!</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Pick Your Poison | true | http://comicallyincorrect.com/2016/06/07/pick-your-poison/ | 2016-06-07 | 0 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/tag/hugh-hefner/" type="external">Hugh Hefner</a>, the media titan who created Playboy magazine, <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/people-news/hugh-hefner-dead-dies-playboy-founder-1202575088/" type="external">died on Wednesday</a> at the age of 91, and celebrities quickly took to social media to share their reactions to the news.</p>
<p>Hefner’s son, Cooper, released a statement after Playboy announced his death.</p>
<p>“My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom,” he said. “He defined a lifestyle and ethos that lie at the heart of the Playboy brand, one of the most recognizable and enduring in history.He will be greatly missed by many, including his wife Crystal, my sister Christie and my brothers David and Marston, and all of us at Playboy Enterprises.”</p>
<p>In addition to releasing a statement to media outlets, Playboy wrote on Twitter, “American Icon and Playboy Founder, Hugh M. Hefner passed away today. He was 91. #RIPHef.”</p>
<p>Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. lauded his social advocacy, writing, “ <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/news/hugh-hefner-dead-dies-playboy-founder-1202575088/" type="external">Hugh Hefner</a> was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement. We shall never forget him. May he Rest In Peace.”</p>
<p>Models and actresses who appeared in Playboy, like Jenny McCarthy, also expressed their appreciation for Hefner. “RIP #Hef Thank you for being a revolutionary and changing so many people’s lives, especially mine,” she wrote. “I hope I made you proud.”</p>
<p>Others, like Nancy Sinatra, remembered their own encounters with Hefner, writing, “One of the nicest men I’ve ever known. Godspeed, Hugh Hefner.”</p>
<p>See more reactions below.</p>
<p>RIP to the legendary Hugh Hefner! I’m so honored to have been a part of the Playboy team! You will be greatly missed! Love you Hef! Xoxo</p>
<p>— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) <a href="https://twitter.com/KimKardashian/status/913261037373100034?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">September 28, 2017</a></p>
<p>I had a number of great conversations and with Hugh Hefner. Was such an interesting man. True legend. What an end of an era!</p>
<p>— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) <a href="https://twitter.com/RobLowe/status/913247892688715777?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">September 28, 2017</a></p>
<p>As per his wishes, Hugh Hefner’s body will be left in a fort in the woods for other kids to find &amp; pass around.</p>
<p>— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) <a href="https://twitter.com/pattonoswalt/status/913247038900379649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">September 28, 2017</a></p>
<p>I met Hugh Hefner at the Playboy mansion. He was very nice to my mom. Don’t ask. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RIPHef?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">#RIPHef</a></p>
<p>— Kat Dennings (@OfficialKat) <a href="https://twitter.com/OfficialKat/status/913249808667746304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">September 28, 2017</a></p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/hughhefner?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">@hughhefner</a> ..when I did playboy he spoke words to me that affected my direction. he was a man the room would stop for when he entered <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/rip?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">#rip</a></p>
<p>— Aubrey O’Day (@AubreyODay) <a href="https://twitter.com/AubreyODay/status/913246824063832064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" type="external">September 28, 2017</a></p> | Hollywood Remembers ‘Legend,’ ‘Revolutionary’ Hugh Hefner | false | https://newsline.com/hollywood-remembers-legend-revolutionary-hugh-hefner/ | 2017-09-28 | 1 |
<p>MOSCOW (AP) - A top Russian diplomat is warning the United States not to meddle in Iran's affairs as the country is rattled by protests and says Washington wants to use the unrest to undermine the Iran nuclear agreement.</p>
<p>Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made the comments Thursday to state news agency Tass.</p>
<p>"We warn the U.S. against attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said.</p>
<p>Ryabkov also said Washington "is tempted to use the moment to raise new issues with regard to the JCPOA," the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that limits Iran's nuclear program, including restricting uranium enrichment for 10 years.</p>
<p>Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday the U.S. wants an agreement lasting longer.</p>
<p>MOSCOW (AP) - A top Russian diplomat is warning the United States not to meddle in Iran's affairs as the country is rattled by protests and says Washington wants to use the unrest to undermine the Iran nuclear agreement.</p>
<p>Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov made the comments Thursday to state news agency Tass.</p>
<p>"We warn the U.S. against attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said.</p>
<p>Ryabkov also said Washington "is tempted to use the moment to raise new issues with regard to the JCPOA," the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that limits Iran's nuclear program, including restricting uranium enrichment for 10 years.</p>
<p>Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday the U.S. wants an agreement lasting longer.</p> | Russia warns US not to meddle in Iran during protests | false | https://apnews.com/amp/7f0e27ad02144f00ae852d7f8148e152 | 2018-01-04 | 2 |
<p />
<p>Within the military, the White House, and the halls of Congress, General David H. Petraeus has become a near-mythic figure, which is perhaps fitting for a man who has been handed the superhuman task of bringing order to the seemingly intractable chaos in Iraq. Regarded as a straight shooter by Republicans and Democrats alike, and well respected among current and former military officials, his name has been invoked alongside those of legendary military leaders (among them Dwight Eisenhower) and tales of his keen intellect, competitive flair, and grit abound. According to one piece of Petraeus lore, several days after taking an M-16 round to the chest during a training mishap in 1991, he rose from his bed, dropped to the floor, and proceeded to do 50 pushups.</p>
<p>Colonel William Darley, the editor of the army-run journal Military Review, served under Petraeus while he was the commanding officer at Fort Leavenworth, home to the elite Army Command and General Staff College, where, among other things, Petraeus oversaw the drafting of the military’s oft-touted Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Darley describes him as “a genuine soldier-scholar-diplomat” and a “lead by example” type of officer, adding that he is also “the most competitive person I have ever known—ever.” He will not just beat you, Darley says, but “make a point of it.”</p>
<p>“This guy is a major intellect with vision and discipline and drive—and he can do more one-armed push-ups than anyone I know,” says Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, a member of the writing team that produced the Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Nagl met Petraeus twenty years ago while interning at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, where Petraeus served as a speechwriter to then-NATO military commander General John Galvin. He recalls going running with Petraeus last year at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where, he says, the general left men 20 years his junior “trailing in his wake and, literally, gasping for breath.</p>
<p>“He’s been shot in the chest, he has a shattered hip, and he ran me into the ground,” Nagl says.</p>
<p>Just as legendary as his competitive streak and fanaticism for physical fitness is Petraeus’ ambition. A three-decade career in the military has seen him graduate at the top of his class at West Point, earn a Ph.D. from Princeton, and, most recently, receive his fourth star as a general. But in the eyes of some of his critics (who call him “King David”), his ambition reads as grandstanding and self-promotion. This image was no doubt reinforced in July 2004 when Petraeus, then in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, appeared on the cover of an issue of Newsweek that bore the headline, “Can This Man Save Iraq?”</p>
<p>Petraeus’ leadership qualities, combined with his role as the Bush administration’s last hope for saving face on Iraq, has set off speculation that the general could run for office some day—possibly the presidency, in 2012. “This man is a walking mass of ambition,” says a former senior intelligence official. “I’m sure he’s thinking about Dwight Eisenhower every day. I know people who know him and they all think that’s true.”</p>
<p />
<p>The Petraeus-for-President scenario is out there, confirms Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and author of the popular beltway blog, the Washington Note. “A lot of people around him are beginning to think it’s the natural way.” Petraeus, he adds, could find himself on a “Wes Clark-like track, but on the Republican side.”</p>
<p>Then again, cautions the former intelligence official, “Unless you’re Dwight Eisenhower, George Marshall, or Douglas MacArthur, the chance that anyone is going to take you seriously, it’s not very high. Look at Wes Clark. He’s a bright fellow, but people just don’t give a shit about him enough to make that a possibility. But if you came back from Iraq and there was a reasonable outcome, then a guy as attractive and well spoken as Petraeus would become a possibility.”</p>
<p>A military official and longtime friend of Petraeus says he has “extraordinary political instincts,” noting that he has put them to the test in Iraq in his negotiations with tribal leaders and the country’s fractious political parties. “He would absolutely shoot me for saying this, but the nation would be very well served” if he ran for office, the official says.</p>
<p>So, if the general does harbor political ambitions, would that reflect on the progress report he is to deliver to Congress this week? One former military official who served in Iraq suggests that his reputation might be better served by providing a “rational assessment,” even if that puts him at odds with the White House. “If he were to defy the president bent on distorting the truth, he would be honored many times over.” On the other hand, the official adds, “If ambition starts to overrule duty, then we have a problem.”</p>
<p>Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress who served as an assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration, worries that Petraeus could try too hard to accentuate the positive in Iraq. He has called Petraeus “the most political general since General [Douglas] MacArthur,” who was considered a possible Republican contender in the 1952 election that ultimately went to Eisenhower. In particular, Korb points to a Washington Post op-ed Petraeus wrote a few weeks before the 2004 election, delivering an upbeat assessment of the progress made in training Iraq’s security forces. “That’s not something Eisenhower would do; MacArthur would do that,” Korb says. “With MacArthur he was basically trying to influence the policy.” Which means, Korb says, that Petraeus’ Iraq assessment should be taken “with a grain of salt given his previous track record.”</p>
<p>Last week, nearly three years after Petraeus reported signs of “tangible progress” in his Washington Post op-ed, while acknowledging “tough times” ahead, an independent congressional commission headed by retired General James Jones, the former commandant of the Marine Corps, said that it will be at least another year before the Iraqi army can take the lead in providing security for the country. In far worse shape is the Iraqi police force, which the report said is “incapable of providing security at a level sufficient to protect Iraqi neighborhoods.”</p>
<p>Lawrence Wilkerson, the retired army colonel who served as Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department, calls Petraeus a “good officer” but questions his work training Iraq’s security forces. “When he was associated with the training to get as many Iraqis stood up in the security arena, he was fascinated by numbers,” Wilkerson says. “I had people working in Iraq, both civilian and military, who emailed me on a daily basis telling me that Petraeus was more interested in numbers than he was quality and that the forces that were being ‘trained’ weren’t really viable. That’s pretty much come to pass.”</p>
<p>Wilkerson continues, “He’s part of this whole process the Bush administration has created, which is a bunch of military leaders who are either scared to death or so fascinated with their own power and ambition that they’re not willing to tell the emperor he’s got no clothes on.” Nevertheless, Wilkerson remains cautiously optimistic that Petraeus, together with Ambassador Ryan Crocker, will “provide a fair assessment of what’s going on over there, with all the warts.”</p>
<p>In terms of what Petraeus will say when he appears before Congress on Monday, “he has kept his thoughts very close to his chest,” a person close to the general says. Reports that have trickled out over the past couple weeks indicate that he is likely to recommend maintaining an enhanced troop presence in Iraq into next year, in line with the Bush administration’s stay-the-course stance. In a letter to troops on Friday, previewing what he planned to tell Congress, Petraeus was optimistic, while conceding that progress has not been “uniform.” Describing the situation in Iraq as “exceedingly complex,” he told the troops that “we are, in short, a long way from the goal line, but we do have the ball and we are driving down the field.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the faint rumblings about an eventual Petraeus candidacy grew a bit louder in advance of his appearance on the Hill. On Thursday, the New York Sun ran an editorial suggesting a scenario in which the general rebukes congressional Democrats for “undermining” his mission and threatens to resign to take his “case to the voters in a run for the presidency on a campaign to finish the work of winning the war.”</p>
<p>Most other observers see that as far-fetched. “I’m quite convinced that he’s 100 percent concentrated on conducting the war,” says Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, who met with Petraeus last spring as part of a team sent to Iraq to assess the effectiveness of the surge. “I don’t think that I’ve seen any evidence that some desire for high political office is somehow polluting or distorting his judgment about Iraq.”</p>
<p>For his part, Petraeus is clearly aware of the speculation—and doing nothing to either fan or discourage it. “I’ve heard him laugh every time anyone brings up the political aspects,” says Colonel Steve Boylan, Petraeus’ spokesman. Downplaying the Eisenhower comparisons, he likens Petraeus instead to General George Marshall, the army chief of staff during World War II, who refused to vote in order to remain above politics (just as Petraeus has done since joining the senior leadership, Boylan notes). “I’ve heard him state on the record and in various venues that he has no political leanings and that he plans on being a soldier for the foreseeable future,” Boylan says. “What happens five, 10, 15 years from now, who knows?”</p>
<p /> | Like Ike: Petraeus for President? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/ike-petraeus-president/ | 2007-09-10 | 4 |
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<p>We extend our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the three crew members, including two Rio Ranchoans, who perished in Thursday’s helicopter crash near Tucumcari.</p>
<p>The crew — pilot David Cavigneaux, and flight nurse and paramedic Rebecca Serkey, both of Rio Rancho, and James Butler of Albuquerque, base manager and flight nurse — were aboard the Tristate Careflight helicopter that crashed en route to Trigg Memorial Hospital.</p>
<p>We didn’t have the privilege to know any of the three, but they certainly seemed to be the kind of people we would have liked to have met. Friday night’s tribute on the helipad at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe, attended by over 200 mourners, was a testimony to the respect they had earned from their peers and the community.</p>
<p>A helicopter bound for a medical emergency is a commonplace sight and it’s easy to overlook the dedication of the crew that is aboard.</p>
<p>Emergency responders – whether they’re firefighters, police officers, EMTs or members of a medical flight crew — work to protect and save the lives of others with the knowledge that their jobs can sometimes put their own lives on the line. Thursday’s tragedy showed how real those perils can be.</p>
<p>These public servants truly deserve the community’s admiration.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Our view: Tragedy claims three professionals devoted to serving others | false | https://abqjournal.com/434029/tragedy-claims-three-professionals-devoted-to-serving-others.html | 2 |
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<p>From SJ Mercury:</p>
<p>Though California’s high-speed train faces an intensifying backlash over its $99 billion price tag, political leaders from Washington to Sacramento justify the cost by touting another huge number: 1 million jobs the rail line is supposed to create.</p>
<p>But like so many of the promises made to voters who approved the bullet train, those job estimates appear too good to be true.</p>
<p>A review by this newspaper found the railroad would create only 20,000 to 60,000 jobs during an average year and employ only a few thousand people permanently if it’s built.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/california-high-speed-rail/ci_19596026?source=rss" type="external">(Read Full Article)</a></p>
<p>Photo courtesy of Jon Curnow, flickr</p> | Most California high-speed rail jobs too good to be true | false | http://capoliticalreview.com/trending/most-california-high-speed-rail-jobs-too-good-to-be-true/ | 2011-12-22 | 1 |
<p>Nazareth.</p>
<p>With the 18-year-long Middle East peace process finally pronounced dead, is the Palestinian Authority finished too?</p>
<p>That is the question being asked by Palestinians in the wake of a week of damaging revelations that Palestinian negotiators secretly made major concessions to Israel in talks on Jerusalem, refugees and borders.</p>
<p>The PA — the Palestinians’ government-in-the-making, led by Mahmoud Abbas — was already in crisis before the disclosure of official Palestinian documents by Al Jazeera television last week.</p>
<p>Now, said George Giacaman, the head of the Ramallah-based research centre Muwatin, which advocates greater Palestinian democracy, the PA’s “back is to the wall”.</p>
<p>The question of the PA’s survival, and the future direction of Palestinian politics, has gained added urgency as the wider Middle East is rocked by unrest, from Tunisia to Yemen.</p>
<p>Mahdi Abdul Hadi, the director of the Jerusalem think-tank Passia, said the Palestinians were “at a crossroads”. Although the streets had remained largely quiet until now, he said it was only a matter of time before Palestinians started to make clear their revulsion at their leadership.</p>
<p>“It is now much clearer to Palestinians that they are living in a prison and that the PA leaders are there only to negotiate the terms of our imprisonment,” he said.</p>
<p>He, like many other Palestinian analysts, declared the negotiations for a two-state solution over.</p>
<p>That sentiment appears to be shared by a majority of Palestinians. A survey in December, before the leak of 1,600 official documents, by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research showed that 71 per cent of Palestinians believed they would not have a state within five years. The percentage is likely to have risen sharply.</p>
<p>In a sign of the mounting panic in Ramallah, Palestinian leaders frantically launched a rearguard action last week. Initially, they claimed the documents were fabricated, and suggested that Al Jazeera was siding with Mr Abbas’s political rivals, the Islamic party Hamas, to bring down the PA.</p>
<p>But several officials have confirmed the papers’ authenticity, and the PA has redirected its main attention to discovering who was behind the leak.</p>
<p>Mr Abdul Hadi said Palestinians would increasingly draw the conclusion that their intended future was living in “one binational state under an apartheid regime” administered by Israel.</p>
<p>“At the moment Abbas has his followers out on the streets but the Palestinian people are awakening to the reality of their situation,” he said.</p>
<p>Samir Awad, a politics professor at Birzeit University, near Ramallah, agreed that Israel was imposing a de facto one-state solution. “The fight for national independence is over and, if it is to survive, the PA must quickly reinvent its role. Palestinians are now in for the long haul: a struggle for their civil and political rights in a single state,” he said.</p>
<p>Asad Ghanem, a politics professor at Haifa University in Israel and an expert on Palestinian politics, warned, however, that, as the PA faltered, Israel and the US would intensify their efforts to strengthen the authority’s security forces and its repressive role.</p>
<p>With politics stifled inside the occupied territories, said Mr Ghanem, it was crucial that outside Palestinian leaders step in to redefine the Palestinian national movement, including Palestinians such as himself who live inside Israel and groups in the diaspora.</p>
<p>Mr Giacaman said the PA had long ago outlived its official purpose.</p>
<p>It was created by the Oslo accords as a temporary administration in the transition to Palestinian statehood, proposed as a five-year period during which Israel was supposed to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza in stages.</p>
<p>Since the Camp David negotiations ended in deadlock in 2000, the PA has clung to power, with limited control over less than 40 per cent of the West Bank as Israel has continued to build settlements in the area under its rule.</p>
<p>Mr Abbas has threatened on several occasions to dissolve the PA, most recently in December, when he warned: “I cannot accept to remain the president of an authority that doesn’t exist.”</p>
<p>But Mr Giacaman said such threats were hollow, designed to put pressure on Israel to return to negotiations out of fear that it would otherwise have to take on the heavy financial burden of direct military reoccupation.</p>
<p>The PA, however, was in much deeper trouble after the leaking of the documents, Mr Giacaman said. “Without a peace process, it needs to justify its continuing existence.”</p>
<p>The most likely immediate focus, he said, was intensifying international action through the United Nations, by pushing for a resolution at the Security Council against the settlements.</p>
<p>He also thought the PA would consider changing its position and actively championing the Goldstone Report, the findings of a UN commission that suggest Israel committed war crimes during its attack on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009.</p>
<p>One of the leaked papers revealed that Mr Abbas had agreed under US pressure to shelve the report rather than take it to the UN General Assembly.</p>
<p>“The problem for the PA is that it needs to generate diplomatic crises to get the international community to intervene. But this will put it in confrontation with Israel and the United States. Israel can always threaten to cut the $60 million taxes it transfers every month to the PA,” Mr Giacaman said.</p>
<p>The PA’s threat to unilaterally declare statehood and then seek recognition at the UN, he added, would not change the reality on the ground. “Even if most countries recognise the state, it will still be a state under occupation,” Mr Giacaman said.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the diplomatic vacuum was likely to be filled by Israel. It could promote a plan similar to the one being advanced by Avigdor Lieberman, the far-right foreign minister, to recognise a Palestinian state in temporary borders. Or it could continue its separation policies, withdrawing from more of the West Bank and encouraging the Palestinians to take over what was left behind.</p>
<p>Mr Awad said the collapse of the PA held out many dangers for the Palestinians. One was the possibility of a convulsive civil war between the Fatah party of Mr Abbas and Hamas. Another, he said, was the “Aghanistanisation” of the occupied territories, as tribal warlords took limited control of the territorial enclaves Israel was not interested in.</p>
<p>JONATHAN COOK is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “ <a href="" type="internal">Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East”</a> (Pluto Press) and “ <a href="" type="internal">Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair</a>” (Zed Books). His website is <a href="http://www.jkcook.net" type="external">www.jkcook.net</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Can the Palestinian Authority Survive? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/01/31/can-the-palestinian-authority-survive/ | 2011-01-31 | 4 |
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<p>A massive 926-pound Shortfin mako shark was reeled in by a group of men on a chartered fishing expedition late on Friday night off the coast of New Jersey. The huge shark was 12-foot-long, it was so heavy that it would have shattered the record for largest shark caught in state history, had it not been for how the fishermen on the Jenny Lee reeled it in.</p>
<p />
<p>However, the New Jersey's Record Fish Program indicated that a fish must be reeled in by a single person in order to qualify for ranking. However, the fishermen on the boat took turns. That implies that the record for largest shark caught in New Jersey continues to be a 880-pound tiger shark reeled in off Cape May in 1988.</p>
<p />
<p>Captain Dave Bender told Asbury Park Press that to be a record only one fisherman can handle the rod. He however insisted that the catch was a great one, though, adding that you can't lose sight of that.</p>
<p />
<p>Bender and his first mate Kevin Gerrity took a group of six men from New Jersey out on their fishing boat on Friday for an overnight trip.</p>
<p />
<p>The fishermen included Frank Miccio and his sons Mark, Matt and William, as well as friends Matthew Lockett and Nick Rondinella. Bender took his boat out to a fishing ground called Hudson Canyon, about 100 miles off the coast, where they started trolling for tuna.</p>
<p />
<p>They managed to catch a 35-pound yellowfin before changing their equipment up to hunt for swordfish and sharks, using a bait of skipjack tuna and squid. Gerrity revealed that the fishing was slow and that they were hoping for a little 200-pound mako or swordfish during the night.</p>
<p />
<p>At around 11pm, the group managed to get a bite, at first Gerrity thought they had hooked a very big swordfish. Bender revealed that when he first saw the shark, he thought that they had hooked a great white shark. Although it didn't look real, it was the biggest fish he'd ever seen. The shark's head was the size of a garbage can.</p>
<p />
<p>In a short while, they realized that they had hooked something much, much bigger. The shark, which is the fastest in the world and can reach speeds of up to 40 mph immediately started swimming away, emptying about 500 yards off the line of the reel, jumping out of the water and snapping the top of the fiberglass rod.</p>
<p />
<p>The fishermen battled back, taking turns for an hour to help reel the sea monster in so that they could shoot it dead. Gerrity said that they would have thrown the shark back if it was 400 or 500 pounds, but they decided to reel it in because he thought they might be able to set a new record.</p>
<p />
<p>The first time they shot at it, the shark sped away. The second time, they were able to injure it, and the third time proved fatal. Mark Miccio told <a href="http://NJ.com" type="external">NJ.com</a> that the fish was so big that it kept almost pulling whoever was reeling it in overboard.</p>
<p />
<p>After killing the shark, it took another two hours to pull the shark aboard. The group then returned to the boat's dock in Brielle, where they showed off the shark at Hoffman's Marina.</p>
<p />
<p>Gerrity cleaned and butchered the shark, sending the group home with the whole fish, the jaws, the tail, everything. The shortfin mako sharks are a migratory species of shark that inhabit offshore areas of temperate and tropical waters.</p>
<p />
<p>Their meat and fins are highly valued. They grow to be 10-feet-long and weigh between 130 to 300 pounds, but there have been many notable exceptions showing that they can grow much larger.</p>
<p />
<p>The records show that the largest mako shark caught on record is a 1,323-pounder that was reeled in by Jason Johnston in Huntington Beach, California in 2013.</p>
<p />
<p>Source:</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4729240/926-pound-mako-shark-caught-coast-New-Jersey.html" type="external">dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4729240/926-pound-mako-shark-caught-coast-New-Jersey.html</a></p> | Record-Breaking 926-Pound Shark Caught off Jersey Coast | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/5631-Record-Breaking-926-Pound-Shark-Caught-off-Jersey-Coast | 2017-07-25 | 0 |
<p>&lt;img class="alignleft wp-image-120414" alt="cruz" src="http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cruz.jpg" width="263" height="168" srcset="http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cruz.jpg 486w, http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cruz-300x193.jpg 300w, http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/cruz-225x145.jpg 225w" sizes="(max-width: 263px) 100vw, 263px" /&gt; FBI Director James Comey was back before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday and had few answers to offer&#160;a passionate U.S. Sen.&#160;Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about the ongoing IRS investigation.</p>
<p>Cruz began his line of questioning with a focus on what he called the “persistent stonewalling from the administration on this matter.”</p>
<p>“It has been 372 days, just over a year, since President Obama and Attorney General Holder both publicly stated that they were outraged at the&#160;IRS‘ improper targeting of conservative groups and individuals,” he said.&#160;“And yet, despite the passage of time, very little has happened.”</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Ben Carson educates NBC’s David Gregory on slavery, Obamacare and neo-Marxists</a></p>
<p>But he seemed to encounter even more stonewalling from the FBI director, who repeatedly said he could not talk about certain matters because of the pending investigation.</p>
<p>At one point, Cruz had a spirited exchange with&#160;the chairman of the committee, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-V.T.</p>
<p>Cruz was in the process of berating Comey for yet another non-answer when Leahy stepped in, almost as if it were his sole responsibility to protect the new director, to say he had answered the question “appropriately.”</p>
<p>The interjection resulted in Cruz firing back at the chairman.</p>
<p>“I would note for the record that when I introduced an amendment before this committee to make it a criminal offense to willfully target American citizens based on their political views, the chairman and every Democratic member of this committee voted against it,” Cruz replied. “I understand that there’s not an interest among some members of this body in learning what happened.”</p>
<p /> | Ted Cruz grills FBI director, shuts up rude Democrat chairman in spirited hearing | true | http://bizpacreview.com/2014/05/21/ted-cruz-grills-fbi-director-shuts-up-rude-democrat-chairman-in-spirited-hearing-120379 | 2014-05-21 | 0 |
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<p>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said he’ll propose legislation that would ban U.S. immigrants from receiving any welfare benefits for five years.</p>
<p>“I believe the time has come for new immigration rules which say that those seeking admission into our country must be able to support themselves financially and should not use welfare for a period of at least five years,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday. “And we’ll be putting in legislation to that effect very shortly.”</p>
<p>Trump campaigned on promises of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and signed an executive order shortly after taking office in January that has led to increases in deportations across the country, according to immigrant advocates. However, he has also targeted refugees and other legal immigrants, proposing to reduce the number who enter the country and establish new standards that would weed out people without high skills or much education.</p>
<p>“We want to get our people off of welfare and back to work,” Trump said. “We also want to preserve our safety net for struggling Americans who truly need help. We want to help them. But others don’t treat us fairly.”</p>
<p>He did not detail his proposal to ban immigrants from receiving immigration benefits, which he has not previously disclosed. The legislation would presumably go further than the 1996 welfare overhaul passed under former President Bill Clinton, which banned many kinds of legal immigrants from receiving most federal welfare benefits for five years or more after entry into the U.S., including health programs, cash assistance and subsidies for home energy costs.</p>
<p>That law exempted certain immigrants, including refugees, people from Cuba and Haiti, and green-card holders, according to the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Trump says immigrants shouldn’t receive welfare for five years | false | https://abqjournal.com/1021704/trump-says-immigrants-shouldnt-receive-welfare-for-five-years.html | 2 |
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<p>The demise of the dollar and the collapse of the economy could impact us in a big way during 2017, or in the near future.</p>
<p>For better or worse, the age of Trump could soon become synonymous with financial crisis on a scale that has never before been seen.</p>
<p>The system is looking for a scapegoat, for someone to blame, as a massive debt bubble - across several industries - threatens to burst, and a host of other systemic financial problems threaten to collapse down upon us.</p>
<p>via the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1ZFJ5LM1qY" type="external">Silver Doctors</a>:</p>
<p>Jeff Berwick from Dollar Vigilante joins Silver Doctors with a word of warning. A Trump presidency will bring with it an economic crisis and collapse of the U.S. dollar, Berwick says.</p>
<p>Is there a way to prevent collapse? Berwick is concerned we are past the point of no return. Regardless of who runs the U.S., an economic crisis is coming, he says. Stay tuned to hear Berwick's perspective on how gold, silver, and bitcoin may perform in the coming crisis.</p>
<p>Trump to Collapse the Dollar?: Jeff Berwick</p>
<p />
<p>As SGT Report notes, the heavy-handed controls on cash are part of this game, and a very strong indicator that the powers that be are clamping down, and won't be satisfied until there is total control over individuals who will be forced onto the digital, cashless grid that will bring surveillance, fees and limits into every transaction.</p>
<p>via <a href="http://sgtreport.com/" type="external">SGT Report</a>:</p>
<p>It's becoming increasingly clear that the move to ban cash is going global. What started with Modi in India is now moving to Australia and Spain, and if people don't revolt en masse and soon, the passivity of these populations with embolden the Federal Reserve and bankers to ban cash in the United States. And while the tyranny against cash only grows, the global bond bubble is beginning to pop - with many experts predicting total systemic collapse in 2017, and possibly as soon as January.</p>
<p>Banning Cash &amp; THE GREAT CRASH OF 2017</p>
<p />
<p>As <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/trump-about-to-preside-over-new-global-financial-crisis-not-his-fault-merely-his-misfortune_12052016" type="external">SHTF has noted before</a>, there is reason to believe that the bankers have chosen Trump as a vehicle of their own destruction.</p>
<p>Time will tell if this is the dark direction these overlords intend for America to go in.</p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/trump-to-collapse-the-dollar-in-2017-analyst-sees-economic-crisis-coming_12292016#" type="external">SHTFplan.com</a></p>
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<p /> | Dollar to Collapse in 2017? 'We Are Past the Point of No Return' | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2016/12/30/dollar-to-collapse-in-2017-we-are-past-the-point-of-no-return/ | 2016-12-30 | 0 |
<p>CVS Health Corp.'s planned acquisition of Aetna Inc. will face tough antitrust scrutiny, but the limited overlap between the companies' businesses should help bolster their case for the deal, experts said.</p>
<p>The $69 billion acquisition would involve CVS's drugstores, some including retail clinics, and its massive pharmacy-benefit-management business. Aetna is the third-biggest U.S. health insurer, selling plans to employers as well as offering Medicare and Medicaid coverage, among other types. The two companies have some areas of direct competition, particularly in the sale of drug plans to Medicare beneficiaries.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Antitrust suits against "vertical" deals, struck between firms that are more complementary than direct competitors, are rare, said Tim Greaney, a professor at University of California Hastings College of the Law. Such challenges "are hard cases to win."</p>
<p>Still, "there are so many aspects of the health-care system that would be affected," said Mr. Greaney. "It will get a really close look."</p>
<p>CVS and Aetna said they were confident that their deal would pass antitrust muster. "We see this transaction as being complementary in terms of the value that can be created for consumers and payers," said CVS Chief Executive Officer Larry J. Merlo.</p>
<p>Aetna Chief Executive Mark T. Bertolini said: "We've done our homework on antitrust issues."</p>
<p>The Justice Department recently sued to challenge the high-profile deal that would combine AT&amp;T Inc. and Time Warner Inc., which was seen as a vertical combination. The government argued in its suit that uniting AT&amp;T's video-distribution strength with Time Warner's popular cable channels would give one company too much control of the media landscape, which it said would lead to higher prices and dampen innovation. The companies have said their deal passes antitrust muster and that the challenge breaks from decades of precedent.</p>
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<p>The Justice Department's new antitrust chief also has said he doesn't favor approving mergers based on corporate commitments to refrain from particular conduct, an antitrust remedy that has been common in vertical deals. In the case of AT&amp;T, he told the company it would have to sell off assets instead.</p>
<p>Mr. Bertolini said the companies had examined the AT&amp;T challenge and believed that combination "has very different issues from what we're talking about." He also said the companies would do what was needed to secure antitrust approval.</p>
<p>Mr. Greaney and other experts said it isn't yet clear if the Justice Department, which typically does federal antitrust reviews of managed-care mergers, would handle the CVS-Aetna combination. The Federal Trade Commission generally oversees antitrust issues involving the pharmacy business.</p>
<p>The CVS deal's structure is a contrast to Aetna's last attempted combination, a $34 billion takeover of Humana Inc. that foundered earlier this year after a successful antitrust challenge by the Justice Department. In that case, the two insurers were direct rivals, and a federal judge agreed with antitrust enforcers' contention that merging them would reduce competition in a key line of business, Medicare insurance plans.</p>
<p>Another ambitious deal to merge two big insurers -- the $48 billion proposed acquisition of Cigna Corp. by Anthem Inc. -- also went down earlier this year after losing a similar antitrust challenge by the Justice Department. In that case, the main focus was on the risk of reduced competition for serving large employers that insure their workers.</p>
<p>"I don't think the acquisition will encounter any of the troubles Anthem-Cigna or Aetna-Humana did," said Barak Richman, a Duke University law professor. Though both CVS and Aetna are large players, it is far from clear that either one could create a "stranglehold or bottleneck that squeezes out other entrants" in any of their businesses, he said. The deal "would not make for an easy legal challenge."</p>
<p>Aetna already uses CVS to handle its pharmacy benefits, meaning that the acquisition won't directly increase CVS's volume and market clout as a PBM. Indeed, CVS's separate deal to contract with No. 2 health insurer Anthem, which is launching its own PBM, will be a far bigger boost to CVS's pharmacy-benefits market share, assuming Anthem moves forward with the arrangement when CVS owns a competitor.</p>
<p>One area where CVS and Aetna do compete directly is in Medicare drug plans. CVS is the biggest provider of these so-called Part D plans, with about 5.5 million members, according to figures compiled by analysts at Wells Fargo. Aetna ranks fifth, with around 2.1 million enrollees. Antitrust enforcers "will look at anything and everything where there's overlap," said Martin Gaynor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.</p>
<p>But analysts said that even if the Justice Department requires divestitures related to the Part D business, that isn't likely to be a major impediment to the deal, since stand-alone Medicare drug plans aren't generally a major source of profits.</p>
<p>--Sharon Terlep contributed to this article.</p>
<p>Write to Anna Wilde Mathews at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>December 03, 2017 18:42 ET (23:42 GMT)</p> | Will CVS Health Deal to Buy Aetna Hold Up to Antitrust Scrutiny? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/12/03/will-cvs-health-deal-to-buy-aetna-hold-up-to-antitrust-scrutiny.html | 2017-12-03 | 0 |
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<p>Reed Hastings, the CEO and founder of Netflix(NASDAQ: NFLX), the global leader in online streaming, was recently a keynote speaker at the 2017 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In an interview with BBC personality Francine Stock, he shared lessons from the company's push into the global market, technological innovations, and a wide range of other topics. Here are a few his most noteworthy comments.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Hastings believes that eventually everyone will convert to binge viewing. He thinks that bingeing is how stories should be consumed and notes that Netflix didn't invent binge viewing:</p>
<p>Consumers everywhere love binge viewing! Image source: Netflix.</p>
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<p>Netflix thinks that consumers are more concerned about the quality of the content and less about the size of the screen they use to consume it. The company wants to provide content that is great on all screens:</p>
<p>The issue of piracy is a global problem for content producers, and that isn't going away. Netflix is no different, so what is the streaming giant doing to combat the problem? Hastings was somewhat circumspect:</p>
<p>Netflix is in the business of high-quality content, and quality wins out no matter where you show it or what language it might be filmed in. To that end, the company is developing shows across the globe that will do well in multiple markets:</p>
<p>Great content has appeal across the globe. Image source: Netflix.</p>
<p>Changes in the way content is consumed are having a domino effect that is cascading around the globe. The concept of binge viewing, which was born of making entire seasons available at once, is leading to more and better content.</p>
<p>During the interview, there were several recurring themes. Hastings indicated that compelling content was the constant and the great equalizer for the service. Quality shows from Brazil performed really well across a multitude of geographies, just as well as great U.S. content did. Hastings also touched repeatedly on the rise of innovation as a tool. Netflix continues to address challenges, both old and new, and my money continues to be on this industry leader.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than NetflixWhen 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=b7a49538-40f0-4bef-bfe7-875cc414712a&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">10 best stocks Opens a New Window.</a> for investors to buy right now... and Netflix wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=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=b7a49538-40f0-4bef-bfe7-875cc414712a&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of February 6, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/dvena/info.aspx" type="external">Danny Vena Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Netflix. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | How Netflix Inc. Navigates the World | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/19/how-netflix-inc-navigates-world.html | 2017-03-19 | 0 |
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<p>TUCSON, Ariz. — A report by an Arizona think tank found that most charter schools in the state abused public funding by engaging in business transactions that involved their owners, board members or their families.</p>
<p>The Grand Canyon Institute report indicated that 77 percent of all Arizona charter schools engaged in some form of related-party transactions, and that the state’s regulatory system failed to ensure that tax dollars given to the schools are primarily used for the education of students, The Arizona Daily Star reported ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2fi8DI6" type="external">http://bit.ly/2fi8DI6</a> ) on Monday.</p>
<p>The report is based on a three-year forensic audit of the charter schools’ finances, and it focused primarily on related-party transactions. The report defined these transactions as the schools spending tax dollars on non-competitive bids with companies that are owned by the charter operators, board members or their immediate relatives.</p>
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<p>While the practices are illegal for public schools, they are legal for charter schools because they are not subject to competitive-bid laws.</p>
<p>If a charter holder is using tax dollars to do business with a family member, Arizona Charter School Association President Eileen Sigmund said it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re scamming taxpayers. She said offenders will be caught by the state charter school board.</p>
<p>One of the reasons charters are outperforming district schools is because they don’t have the bureaucratic waste due to government red tape around procurement practices, Sigmund added.</p>
<p>State Sen. Kate Brophy McGee, a Republican from Phoenix, said charter schools should be held to the same standards as public schools because both deal with public money.</p>
<p>“We’ve given district schools more and more regulation, while not requiring the same of these very nimble charters, and we wonder why the public schools aren’t as successful,” McGee said.</p>
<p>The think tank is asking that charter schools be held to the same procurement standards as public schools, and that related-party transactions be clearly disclosed.</p>
<p>Arizona has 547 charter schools with about 180,000 students enrolled during the past school year.</p>
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<p>Information from: Arizona Daily Star, <a href="http://www.tucson.com" type="external">http://www.tucson.com</a></p> | Report: Arizona charter schools widely abuse public funding | false | https://abqjournal.com/1065947/report-arizona-charter-schools-widely-abuse-public-funding.html | 2017-09-19 | 2 |
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<p>Well, this is disturbing. As we all know, the Pentagon has a rather <a href="http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/china_tops_iraq.htm" type="external">alarmist view</a> of China. But where does this view come from? Careful analysis? Maybe not. Gregory Kulacki <a href="http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj06kulacki" type="external">reports</a> in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists that the United States’ appraisal of China’s intentions and military capabilities is often based on dubious sources—an essay from tabloid newspaper in one case, the writings of an amateur weapons enthusiast in another—that are then wrongly attributed to the Chinese government and deemed cause for concern.</p>
<p>In 2001, for instance, a U.S. commission warned that China was preparing for, quote, a “space Pearl Harbor” and probing for weaknesses in our high-tech infrastructure that could be exploited in a possible war over Taiwan. But much of this assessment was based on an essay written in China by a junior military officer freelancing for an “outlook” magazine, who wrote a piece on U.S. vulnerabilities that exclusively cited U.S. sources, including various Pentagon reports. In no way did the essay reflect China’s official intentions, much less its ability to probe for weaknesses. It was just misinterpreted by whatever analyst read it. As Kulacki says, it’s “a game of telephone gone horribly wrong.”</p>
<p>Now China might in fact be planning some colossal space war against the United States. Or planning to dominate all of Asia. Or whatever nightmare scenario we’re supposed to worry about. It’s possible. But there’s no reason to take the U.S. intelligence community’s word on this as final—not least because, according to Kulacki, most of people gathering intelligence on China don’t even speak Chinese very well, and so are quite prone to misunderstandings and mistranslations.</p>
<p>Even worse, though, is that a needlessly hawkish view on China can create a dangerous feedback loop. Chinese analysts read U.S. government reports, and in turn write their own analyses for Chinese military journals, which are in turn read by U.S. analysts, and so on. A bit of excess alarmism in those initial reports can be amplified over time, as both sides get increasingly alarmist, and hawkishness can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Already we have a military-industrial complex that has <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2141966/" type="external">every incentive to hype</a> the Chinese threat in order to justify expensive new weapons systems; we hardly need Chicken Little intelligence based on shoddy translation on top of that.</p>
<p /> | Hyping the China Threat | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2006/06/hyping-china-threat/ | 2006-06-16 | 4 |
<p>They followed their food. They came from Northeast Asia: men, women and children wrapped in fur and hides lashed with sinew, walking between glaciers, across ice floes, over moraines and through wide river valleys where the megafauna of the fast receding Ice Age still roamed. Or they paddled through the kelp forests of the western ocean, staying close to shore and surrounded by their prey – dolphin, seals, otters and perhaps even schools of saber-toothed salmon coming of age.</p>
<p>They settled across every bio-region of the land: enduring and sometimes thriving, in peace or at war with each other, but always living lightly on the land. They multiplied but did not overpopulate.</p>
<p>Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, perhaps fifteen millennia after these first peoples had arrived, the Europeans showed up with, as Jared Diamond puts it, guns, germs and steel. After eons of co-habiting with animals, which Europeans had domesticated to more easily harvest their flesh, take their milk, tan their hides and render their bones, the new arrivals came carrying zoonoses, pathogens swapped between the species; and their very arrival was dependent on the great technical and knowledge revolutions that they had achieved after the stagnation of post-Roman Europe. The native populations were helpless before these biological and technological assaults.</p>
<p>The Unites States is thus a country born of Imperialism. North America beckoned as a land that might be consumed, its peoples killed (deliberately or by biological hazard), the survivors enslaved and its resources ravaged. Europeans, having so thoroughly partitioned their own lands to the advantage of the few (the aristocracy and other landed classes) and to the detriment of the many (the peasants), saw an opportunity to begin again – to escape a time-worn feudalism and more equitably exploit the riches of North America.</p>
<p>This time, carried on the ideological wings of late eighteenth century liberalism, land would be available to all and its government arranged for the benefit of its many owners. What could be fairer than that? But Jeffersonian Democracy carried within it the demon-seed of agrarian capitalism, developed in the Old World and now, in the New, primed to burst into an un-fettered expansion. Teamed with mercantilism, which was energized by the triangular trade anchored in Old World centers of production and which pivoted to North America for raw agricultural materials and to Africa for the slave-labor to farm them, capitalism became the dominant ideology of the United States.</p>
<p>The competition inherent in capitalism plays out as a deep rift between winners and losers – the rich and the poor – as predatory accumulation leads to an organization of society that marshals labor against capital, whites against minorities, urban areas against rural, elite education versus popular and politics against social life – as power, all the while, accrues to the wealthy. The ability of the rich to shape the rules of the game has promoted these characteristics as they manifested first in mercantilism and agrarian capitalism, then nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial capitalism and now neoliberalism.</p>
<p>The great heat-sink of late-stage capitalisms is the so-called middle class – essentially a creation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and an essential partner to mechanized production. Once those dark satanic mills really got humming it was necessary to find consumers.&#160; Thorsten Veblen understood that conspicuous consumption was essentially a display behavior practiced by this new interstitial class (encouraged by the dark arts of marketing), which slotted between blue-collar workers and capital. Together they established a compelling new tri-partite division of labor, consumption and capital.</p>
<p>Marx’s notion that bourgeois ideology (whose charms extend across the ‘lower’ classes) blinded citizens to the exploitation to which they were subjected, was prophetic: &#160;it foreshadowed the entirely passive acceptance of an inherently oligarchic government by the majoritarian middle classes. Our government has enshrined the ideology of capitalism and its concomitant, the rule of the few over the many, from its conception – it is no aberration that George Washington was reputed to be the richest man in America. Our democracy, a shell game played every two years, remains in the duplicitous hands of the country’s wealthiest citizens.</p>
<p>Our current Sun King, radiant beneath his gilded halo, is but a petty pretender: but his election speaks to the American fealty paid to wealth as he acts, in his buffoonish way, as the supreme symbol of the neoliberal oligarchy. While he makes gestures towards curbing this latest iteration of capitalism, spouting nationalist, protectionist, high-tariff rhetoric, current evidence suggests that the stock market remains hugely confident that he understands, like Coolidge (and every president since Grant), that the business of America is business – and that that business is now irrevocably global.</p>
<p>Imperialism ‘adds value’ to the production process by sourcing materials or labor (and often both) at a competitive advantage in territories beyond the market base of its end products. This exogenous capitalist enterprise has been complicit, since at least the seventeenth century, in the metastasis of capitalism throughout the globe. Time was when this activity involved the actual conquest of foreign lands. Now capitalism – enshrined as neoliberalism in this age of globalized production and international trade – is supercharged by the wage disparities between the global North and South.&#160; This hemispheric division largely reflects the divide between the old Imperialist nations and their former colonies and serves as the playground for the neoliberal game of global labor arbitrage.</p>
<p>While industrial production is increasingly based in the global South, this does little to enrich those lands, instead, it has reinforced the accumulation of wealth in the North and led to the immiseration of the urbanizing labor force in the South. At the same time, as John Smith points out in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1583675779/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Imperialism &amp; the Globalization of Production</a>&#160;(University of Sheffield, 2010) profit making is more and more centered on ‘Financialization’ whereby the profits of production are diverted into financial speculation and private equity mergers and acquisitions. Meanwhile, the hard currency earned by the producing countries (most notably China) is loaned back to the United States so that it can continue to purchase the consumer products which find their way, via laden container ships, to the shelves of Best Buy, Walmart, Bed Bath and Beyond and the like. Smith suggests that we are witnessing “a perverse ‘Marshall Plan’ in which some of the poorest countries in the world finance the overconsumption of the richest”.&#160; The EU, NAFTA and the TPP were all structured, in part, to increase access to centers of cheap ‘offshore’ labor by Western Europe, the U.S. and Japan.</p>
<p>The race to the bottom in terms of global competitiveness inevitably impacts the remaining centers of production in the global North where wages are pushed lower to ensure their continuing viability. It has not gone unnoticed that the industrial heartlands of this country contributed mightily to the Republican victory in the recent presidential election. Voters were gambling that the new president would more effectively control the primary manifestations of global labor arbitrage &#160;– migration and outsourcing – by reaching back to the ultranationalist and right wing ideologies of the 1930’s. Fat chance, but we should nevertheless prepare ourselves for neoliberalism with a fascist face.</p>
<p>It is tempting to assume that darkness has only recently befallen this country: congruent, perhaps, with what we might call our own, low-wattage, Orange Revolution. But the chthonic – the shadow of the underworld – has been endemic since the European Imperial powers colonized what is now the United States. The unrelenting psychic gloom is only occasionally pierced by sunny periods – moments that have often been attributed to the rule of Presidents and Congress but as Howard Zinn shows in his <a href="" type="internal">The Peoples History of the United States</a>, 1980, can be more reasonably attributed to the push-back of the governed.</p>
<p>At the height of its twenty-first century financial and military power, the United States remains deeply shadowed by its prevailing ideology which, by its very nature, entirely discounts individual and societal well-being. At this moment of presidential effulgence – its brazen light illuminating the tawdry manifestations of extreme wealth – we the people are experiencing an existential darkness at noon.</p> | Darkness at Noon | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/03/31/darkness-at-noon-2/ | 2017-03-31 | 4 |
<p>WASHINGTON — Barack Obama doesn’t think anyone should cut his two daughters any slack when they apply to college — not because of their race, at least. In the unlikely event that the Obama family goes broke, then maybe.</p>
<p>In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Obama waded into the central issue of the affirmative action debate: race vs. class. Perhaps typically, Obama’s remarks were more Socratic than declarative. He didn’t really answer the question, he rephrased it. Maybe the way he posed it, though, will lead to a discussion that’s long overdue.</p>
<p>George Stephanopoulos asked Obama if his daughters should be able to benefit from affirmative action when the time comes for them to go to college. The girls “should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged,” Obama said.</p>
<p>Stephanopoulos was driving at the question of whether race-based affirmative action programs are still needed. Another way to frame the issue is whether race or class is the more important factor in our society. Are minorities raised in middle-class or wealthy homes still held back by racism? Or should we now focus on socioeconomic status as the principal barrier keeping people from reaching their potential?</p>
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<p>Obama’s answer, basically, was yes. To both questions.</p>
<p>Obama has repeatedly gone on record as a supporter of affirmative action. But “if we have done what needs to be done to ensure that kids who are qualified to go to college can afford it,” he said in the ABC interview, then “affirmative action becomes a diminishing tool for us to achieve racial equality in this society.”</p>
<p>He seemed to side with those who think class predominates when he said, “I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed.”</p>
<p>It’s hard to disagree with that proposition, especially as economic inequality worsens in this country. Harvard University (where Obama went to law school) has taken the lead in guaranteeing that money will not be an obstacle to qualified low-income students.</p>
<p>But Obama seemed to agree with those who point to the lingering effects of racism when he noted that “there are a lot of African-American kids who are still struggling, that even those who are in the middle class may be first-generation as opposed to fifth- or sixth-generation college attendees, and that we all have an interest in bringing as many people together to help build this country.”</p>
<p>That observation points to circumstances that have to be taken into account. Diversity, in my view, is very much in the national interest. But diversity is a process, not a destination. We have to keep working at it. And since a college degree has become the great divider between those who make it in this society and those who don’t, affirmative action in college admissions is one of the most powerful tools we have to increase diversity.</p>
<p>The formal separate-but-equal framework is long gone, but de facto separation and inequality persist. Minority students are disproportionately disadvantaged by having to attend substandard primary and secondary schools. Their parents, disproportionately, may not have attended college, and thus may not be familiar with all the things parents have to do to make their children competitive when it comes time to apply for college admission. And while racism is not the institutional and legal straitjacket it was 50 years ago, it persists in subtler yet still pernicious forms.</p>
<p>Yes, class is important. But race is, too, and while I hope we eventually get to the point where race is irrelevant, we still have a long way to go.</p>
<p>As for Obama’s assessment of his daughters’ privileged status, that’s just a statement of the obvious. With such Type A, high-wattage parents, those girls probably will have the grades and test scores to get into any college. And if they don’t, they will benefit from a different affirmative action program — one that for many generations has ushered the academically undistinguished scions of prominent families into the nation’s most selective colleges and universities.</p>
<p>Let’s not pretend that college admissions has ever been a level playing field. Obama graduated from Columbia; his wife Michelle from Princeton. This means that at those two Ivy League schools, their daughters will be “legacy” applicants, just like George W. Bush at Yale and legions of Kennedys at Harvard. Given the Obamas’ power and fame, admissions officers at the schools they attended — and probably at other elite schools, too — are going to find a way to let the Obama girls in.</p>
<p>Eugene Robinson’s e-mail address is eugenerobinson(at symbol)washpost.com.</p>
<p>© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | Obama Cools on Affirmative Action | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/obama-cools-on-affirmative-action/ | 2007-05-15 | 4 |
<p>In an animated, campaign-style rally, Sen. Bernie Sanders unwrapped his plan to remake the nation's convoluted health care system into federally run health insurance Wednesday — a costly proposal embraced by liberal activists hoping to steer the Democratic Party in upcoming elections.</p>
<p>The Vermont independent's plan would hand government a dominant role in insuring Americans, a crucial step, he said, in guaranteeing health care for all. Census Bureau data this week showed the proportion of people lacking policies falling to 8.8 percent last year under "Obamacare," the lowest level ever recorded, but he called it an "international disgrace" that not all Americans have coverage.</p>
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<p>Though Sanders' plan is going nowhere in the current GOP-controlled Congress, he drew a big crowd to a packed and electrified Senate hearing room.</p>
<p>Hours earlier, Republican senators unveiled their own last-ditch, long-shot plan to scuttle President Barack Obama's 2010 statute and practically begged the White House to help.</p>
<p>"Pick up the phone" and ask governors to support the repeal effort, said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., aiming his remarks at President Donald Trump. "Tell them this matters to you, that you weren't kidding about repealing and replacing Obamacare, that you actually meant it."</p>
<p>Shortly afterward, Trump issued a statement saying "I sincerely hope" the effort by Graham and three other GOP senators will succeed.</p>
<p>The waning desire of GOP lawmakers to revive their failed effort to scrap Obama's law contrasted with growing, though wary, Democratic support for Sanders' bill. It has attracted 16 co-sponsors, one-third of all Senate Democrats, though most are from safely Democratic states.</p>
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<p>"Today we begin the long and difficult struggle to end the international disgrace of the United States, our great nation, being the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all," Sanders declared.</p>
<p>Though his bill has no chance in the current Congress, the issue is enthusiastically backed by large segments of a Democratic Party hoping to capture House control in the 2018 elections. Sanders caucuses with Democrats and unexpectedly gave Hillary Clinton a tough run for the party's presidential nomination last year.</p>
<p>The room where Sanders spoke held more than 200 people, including members of unions and progressive groups. Many waved posters and chanted "Medicare for all," the name he has given his 96-page bill, which would gradually expand the health insurance program for the elderly to cover all Americans.</p>
<p>Nine other senators attended and most also spoke, including at least four potential 2020 presidential aspirants who almost seemed to be auditioning. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., called the health care battle "a fight for our nation to live up to our ideals."</p>
<p>Cries for universal coverage and government-provided, single-payer health care have simmered among Democrats for decades.</p>
<p>The notion was submerged as Obama enacted his overhaul, which boosted federal spending and set coverage requirements but left much of the existing private system in place. About 156 million people get policies at work, about half of all those insured, with most of the rest getting coverage through Medicare or Medicaid or by buying individual plans.</p>
<p>But support among Democrats for Sanders' bill and similar measures by other Democrats, plus polling showing growing public backing, suggests the push for a single-payer system will be a major theme inside the party.</p>
<p>"We will defend it at every turn," Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., another possible presidential hopeful, told the crowd about Obama's law. "But we will go further." Potential candidates Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California also attended the event.</p>
<p>Sanders provided no details about the price tag of his measure or how it would be financed. Aides have said it would likely rely largely on income-adjusted premiums people would pay the government, ranging from zero for the poorest Americans to high levies on the rich and corporations.</p>
<p>People would no longer owe monthly premiums and other out-of-pocket costs like copayments, and companies would not have to offer coverage to workers. Sanders says most people and employers would save money.</p>
<p>The version he introduced during his 2016 presidential run was supposed to cost an enormous $1.4 trillion annually.</p>
<p>His plan would surpass Obama's law in covering a long list of services, including dental, vision, hospital, doctors and mental health costs. Copayments would be allowed for prescription drugs.</p>
<p>Many Democrats from politically competitive states have shied away from Sanders' plan, aware that Republicans are ready to cast it as a huge tax hike and government-run health care.</p>
<p>"The president as well as the majority of the country knows that the single-payer system that the Democrats are proposing is a horrible idea," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. "I can't think of anything worse than having government being more involved in your health care instead of less involved."</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Graham and three other GOP senators released details of their proposal to erase many of the subsidies and coverage requirements of Obama's law and instead give block grants to states to help individuals pay for coverage.</p>
<p>"If you believe repealing and replacing Obamacare is a good idea, this is your best and only chance to make it happen because everything else has failed," Graham said.</p>
<p>Republicans lost the votes of three of their 52 senators in July on legislation aimed at Obamacare repeal. A special budget procedure that's allowed them to approve the legislation with just 51 votes, instead of the usual 60, expires Sept. 30.</p>
<p>With Democrats all opposed, that gives Republicans barely two weeks to succeed.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP reporter Kevin Freking contributed to this report.</p> | Sanders would make government health care role even bigger | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/09/13/sanders-bill-expands-medicare-for-all-lacks-details-on-cost.html | 2017-09-13 | 0 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Albuquerque Public Schools said no weapon was found on campus Tony Hillerman Middle School and they have lifted a shelter-in-place order that was placed earlier Wednesday morning.</p>
<p>The school was placed under a shelter-in-place after a rumor surfaced that there was a weapon on campus.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | No weapon found, shelter-in-place lifted at Hillerman Middle School | false | https://abqjournal.com/359428/rumor-of-weapon-prompts-shelter-in-place-at-hillerman-middle-school.html | 2014-02-26 | 2 |
<p>LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. (AP) — Brandon Waddell and Jason Sborz combined on a four-hitter and Virginia scored twice in the bottom of the eighth inning for a 3-1 victory over San Diego State on Saturday night in the Lake Elsinore Regional.</p>
<p>Virginia (36-22) advanced to the championship round of the regional. San Diego State (41-22) will face Southern Cal in an elimination game Sunday.</p>
<p>Sborz (4-2) earned the victory with 1 2/3 innings of hitless relief. Waddell allowed four hits, all singles, and one unearned run in 7 1/3 innings.</p>
<p>Ernie Clement, the No. 9 hitter, snapped a 1-1 tie with a run-scoring single. Clement drove in just 15 runs in the regular season, but has three in two regional games. Virginia scored another run on an error.</p>
<p>Joe McCarthy hit his first homer of the season to tie it at 1 in the bottom of the fifth.</p>
<p>LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. (AP) — Brandon Waddell and Jason Sborz combined on a four-hitter and Virginia scored twice in the bottom of the eighth inning for a 3-1 victory over San Diego State on Saturday night in the Lake Elsinore Regional.</p>
<p>Virginia (36-22) advanced to the championship round of the regional. San Diego State (41-22) will face Southern Cal in an elimination game Sunday.</p>
<p>Sborz (4-2) earned the victory with 1 2/3 innings of hitless relief. Waddell allowed four hits, all singles, and one unearned run in 7 1/3 innings.</p>
<p>Ernie Clement, the No. 9 hitter, snapped a 1-1 tie with a run-scoring single. Clement drove in just 15 runs in the regular season, but has three in two regional games. Virginia scored another run on an error.</p>
<p>Joe McCarthy hit his first homer of the season to tie it at 1 in the bottom of the fifth.</p> | Virginia stymies San Diego State 3-1 in NCAA tourney | false | https://apnews.com/amp/52dfc3f63b4e41109e090c1494251757 | 2015-05-31 | 2 |
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<p>What's better -- renting or buying? There's no universally correct answer to this question, but one option may be a much better choice for you. For my family, homeownership was a no-brainer. Here are five of the top reasons we decided to buy our home, and how to determine whether or not you may be ready to buy yours.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether renting or buying is cheaper -- it actually varies from market to market, and depends on several factors -- there are some locations where it's next to impossible to rent a house.</p>
<p>We knew where we wanted to live. Our neighborhood is located in a great school district, has a pool, is right next to a major lake, and is close to our family and friends. And it has a sense of community that seems to be getting rarer and rarer.</p>
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<p>The problem is that out of the 100-or-so houses in our neighborhood, all but a couple are owner-occupied. There is virtually no rental market where we wanted to be, and that made our decision to buy a much easier one.</p>
<p>My wife and I love the idea of making our home "ours." When you rent, it can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to customize your home and make improvements. Many landlords won't even let you paint the walls.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if you own your home, the sky is the limit when it comes to customization. Want to build a fence so your dog can run around? Go for it. Is your dishwasher outdated, leaky, or ineffective? If you own, you don't have to wait for your landlord to replace it, and you can pick the new one yourself.</p>
<p>In order for home ownership to make sense, you'll probably need to stay put for at least a few years. While you don't pay any real estate commissions when you buy a home, you'll probably pay around 6% when you sell.</p>
<p>So, if you pay $250,000 for a house, you'll need to sell it for almost $266,000 just to break even. Since real estate prices have historically risen by about 3.5% per year, you should be able to break even after about two years. However, since the housing market is somewhat unpredictable, plan on staying put at least 3-5 years. Otherwise, you're probably better off renting.</p>
<p>I'm not planning on moving anytime soon. We chose our home with the specific thought that it would be a great place for our children to grow up, so we're not worried about the cost of selling.</p>
<p>When my parents bought my childhood home in 1982, their mortgage had an interest rate of 18%. They didn't have bad credit or anything like that -- rates approaching 20% were common in the early 1980s.</p>
<p>We've all heard how low mortgage rates are, but this really puts it into perspective. Today's 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rates are about 3.5%, and they are unlikely to get much lower. This means that you can finance a $200,000 home with 20% down for a monthly principal and interest payment of $718. At 18% interest, that payment would more than triple to $2,411.</p>
<p>Now, I don't think 18% mortgage rates are going to make a comeback anytime soon, but I don't think 3.5% rates will stick around forever either. So even though we don't need all of the space in our house just yet, we're a growing family and decided to lock in a cheap rate and buy our forever house.</p>
<p>Even if buying a home costs as much or more each month than renting, there are other financial considerations to take into account. Obviously, owning your home allows you to build equity over time -- if you get a $200,000 30-year mortgage at 4% interest, your monthly principal and interest payment will be about $955.</p>
<p>However, keep in mind that $288 of your first mortgage payment will go toward paying down the principal -- effectively putting money back in your pocket. Furthermore, because of the way loan amortization works, the amount of principal being paid off each month will increase over time.</p>
<p>In addition, there are numerous tax benefits to owning your home. If you itemize deductions, you can write off your mortgage interest and property taxes each year, as well as any mortgage insurance you pay if your income is under a certain limit. <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/25/9-tax-deductions-and-credits-homeowners-dont-want.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Here are some details Opens a New Window.</a> about these and other homeownership tax breaks.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that even if it's more expensive to buy, it could still make good financial sense over the long run.</p>
<p>Admittedly, there are some good reasons for renting. I already mentioned that if you don't plan on staying in the same place for more than a few years, you're probably better off waiting to buy until your situation becomes more permanent. Or if you don't want to worry about the uncertain expense of home maintenance, renting can be the better option.</p>
<p>The point is that some people are better off renting, while others can benefit greatly from homeownership. I just happen to be in the latter group.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/07/10/5-reasons-why-i-own-my-home.aspx" type="external">5 Reasons Why I Own My Home Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p>Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 5 Reasons Why I Own My Home | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/07/10/5-reasons-why-own-my-home.html | 2016-07-10 | 0 |
<p>Photo by Ron Cogswell | <a href="" type="internal">CC BY 2.0</a></p>
<p>As the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s violent death (on April 4, 1968) grows closer, you can expect to hear more and more in&#160; U.S. corporate media about the real and alleged details of his immediate physical assassination (or perhaps execution).&#160; You will not be told about King’s subsequent and ongoing moral, intellectual, and ideological assassination.</p>
<p>I am referring to the conventional, neo-McCarthyite, and whitewashed narrative of King that is purveyed across the nation every year, especially during and around the national holiday that bears his name.&#160; This domesticated, bourgeois airbrushing portrays King as a mild liberal reformist who wanted little more than a few basic civil rights adjustments in a supposedly good and decent American System – a loyal supplicant who was grateful to the nation’s leaders for finally making noble alterations. This year was no exception.</p>
<p>The official commemorations never say anything about the Dr. King who studied Marx sympathetically at a young age and who said in his last years that “if we are to achieve real equality, the United States will have to adopt a modified form of socialism.”&#160; They delete the King who wrote that “the real issue to be faced” beyond “superficial” matters was the need for a radical social revolution.</p>
<p>It deletes the <a href="" type="internal">King who went on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in late 1967</a> to reflect on how little the Black freedom struggle had attained beyond some fractional changes in the South. He deplored “the arresting of the limited forward progress” Blacks and their allies had attained “by [a] white resistance [that] revealed the latent racism that was [still] deeply rooted in U.S. society.”</p>
<p>“As elation and expectations died,” King explained on the CBC, “Negroes became more sharply aware that the goal of freedom was still distant and our immediate plight was substantially still an agony of deprivation. In the past decade, little has been done for Northern ghettoes. Al the legislation was to remedy Southern conditions – and even these were only partially improved.”&#160; Worse than merely limited, King felt, the gains won by Black Americans during what he considered just the “first phase” of their freedom struggle (1955-1965) were dangerous in that they “brought whites a sense of completion” – a preposterous impression that the so-called “Negro problem” had been solved and that there was therefore no more basis or justification for further black activism. “When Negroes assertively moved on to ascend to the second rung of the ladder,” King noted, “a firm resistance from the white community developed…In some quarters it was a courteous rejection, in others it was a singing white backlash. In all quarters unmistakably, it was outright resistance.”</p>
<p>Explaining to his CBC listeners the remarkable wave of race riots that washed across U.S. cities in the summers of 1966 and 1967, King made no apologies for Black violence. He blamed “the white power structure…still seeking to keep the walls of segregation and inequality intact” for the disturbances. He found the leading cause of the riots in the reactionary posture of “the white society, unprepared and unwilling to accept&#160;radical structural change,” which” produc[ed] chaos” by telling Blacks (whose expectations for substantive change had been aroused) “that they must expect to remain permanently unequal and permanently poor.”</p>
<p>King also blamed the riots in part on Washington’s imperialist and mass-murderous war on Vietnam. Along with the misery it inflicted on Indochina, King said, the United States’ savage military aggression against Southeast Asia stole resources from Lyndon Johnson’s briefly declared and barely fought “War on Poverty.” It sent poor Blacks to the front killing lines to a disproportionate degree. It advanced the notion that violence was a reasonable response and even a solution to social and political problems.</p>
<p>Black Americans and others sensed what King called “the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same school. We watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit,” King said on the CBC, adding that he “could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.”</p>
<p>Racial hypocrisy aside, King said that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense [here he might better have said “military empire”] than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”</p>
<p>Did the rioters disrespect the law, as their liberal and conservative critics alike charged? Yes, King said, but added that the rioters’ transgressions were “derivative crimes…born of the greater crimes of the…policy-makers of the white society,” who “created discrimination…created slums [and] perpetuate unemployment, ignorance, and poverty… [T]he white man,” King elaborated, “does not abide by law in the ghetto. Day in and day out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provision of public services. The slums are a handiwork of a vicious system of the white society.”</p>
<p>Did the rioters engage in violence? Yes, King said, but noted that their aggression was “to a startling degree…focused against property rather than against people.” He observed that “property represents the white power structure, which [the rioters] were [quite understandably] attacking and trying to destroy.” Against those who held property “sacred,” King argued that “Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround with rights and respect, it has no personal being.”</p>
<p>What to do? King advanced radical changes that went against the grain of the nation’s corporate state, reflecting his agreement with New Left militants that “only by structural change can current evils be eliminated, because the roots are in the system rather in man or faulty operations.”&#160; King advocated an emergency national program providing either decent-paying jobs for all or a guaranteed national income “at levels that sustain life in decent circumstances.” He also called for the “demolition of slums and rebuilding by the population that lives in them.”</p>
<p>His proposals, he said, aimed for more than racial justice alone. Seeking to abolish poverty for all, including poor whites, he felt that “the Negro revolt” was properly challenging each of what he called “the interrelated triple evils” of racism, economic injustice/poverty (capitalism) and war (militarism and imperialism). The Black struggle had thankfully “evolve[ed] into more than a quest for [racial] desegregation and equality,” King said.&#160; It had become “a challenge to a system that has created miracles of production and technology” but had failed to “create justice.”</p>
<p>“If humanism is locked outside the [capitalist] system,”&#160;King said on CBC five months before his assassination (or execution), “Negroes will have revealed its inner core of despotism&#160;and a far greater struggle for liberation will unfold. The United States is substantially challenged to demonstrate that it can abolish not only the evils of racism but the scourge of poverty and the horrors of war….”</p>
<p>There should be no doubt that King meant capitalism when he referred to “the system” and its “inner core of despotism.” This is clear from the best scholarship on King, including David Garrow’s epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, <a href="" type="internal">Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council</a> (HarperCollins, 1986)</p>
<p>No careful listener to King’s CBC talks could have missed the radicalism of his vision and tactics. “The dispossessed of this nation – the poor, both White and Negro – live in a cruelly unjust society,” King said. “They must organize a revolution against that injustice,” he added.</p>
<p>Such a revolution would require “more than a statement to the larger society,” more than “street marches” King proclaimed. “There must,” he added, “be a force that interrupts [that society’s] functioning at some key point.” That force would use “mass civil disobedience” to “transmute the deep rage of the ghetto into a constructive and creative force” by “dislocate[ing] the functioning of a society.”</p>
<p>“The storm is rising against the privileged minority of the earth,” King added for good measure. “The storm will not abate until [there is a] just distribution of the fruits of the earth…” The “massive, active, nonviolent resistance to the evils of the modern system” that King advocated was “international in scope,” reflecting the fact that “the poor countries are poor primarily because [rich Western nations] have exploited them through political or economic colonialism. Americans in particular must help their nation repent of her modern economic imperialism.”</p>
<p>King was a democratic socialist mass-disobedience-advocating and anti-imperialist world revolution advocate.&#160; The guardians of national memory don’t want you to know about that when they purvey the official, doctrinally imposed memory of King as an at most liberal and milquetoast reformer. (In a similar vein, our ideological overlords don’t want us to know that Albert Einstein [Time magazine’s&#160; “Person of the 20th Century”] wrote <a href="" type="internal">a brilliant essay making the case for socialism</a> in the first issue of venerable U.S.-Marxist magazine Monthly Review&#160; – or that Helen Keller was a fan of the Russian Revolution.)</p>
<p>The threat posed to the official bourgeois memory by King’s CBC lectures – and by much more that King said and wrote in the last three years of his life – is not just that they show an officially iconic gradualist reformer to have been a democratic socialist opponent of the profits system and its empire. It is also about how clearly King analyzed the incomplete and unfinished nature of the nation’s progress against racial and class injustice, around which all forward developments pretty much ceased in the 1970s, thanks to a white backlash that was already well underway in the early and mid-1960s (before the rise of the Black Panthers, who liberal historians like to blame for the nation’s rightward racial drift under Nixon and Reagan) and to a top-down corporate war on working-class Americans that started under Jimmy Carter and then went ballistic under Ronald Reagan.</p>
<p>The “spiritual doom” imposed by U.S. militarism has lived on, with Washington having directly and indirectly killed untold millions of Central Americans, South Americans, Africans, Muslims, Arabs, and Asians in many different ways over the years since Vietnam. Accounting for roughly 40 percent of the world’s military expenditure, the U.S. maintains Cold War-level “defense” (empire) budgets to sustain an historically unmatched global empire (with&#160; <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/the-united-states-probably-has-more-foreign-military-bases-than-any-other-people-nation-or-empire-in-history/" type="external">at least 800 military bases spread across more than 80 foreign countries</a> and “troops or other military personnel in about&#160;160 foreign countries and territories”) &#160;even as a near-record 45 million U.S.-Americans <a href="" type="internal">remain stuck</a> under the federal government’s notoriously inadequate poverty level. A very disproportionate number of the nation’s poor are Black and Latino/a.</p>
<p>It is obvious that the racist and white-supremacist real estate baron Donald J. Trump spoke disingenuously in tongue when he mouthed nice words about Dr. King last Monday. &#160;But what about his predecessor, Barack Obama, the nation’s first technically Black president? It was cruelly ironic that Obama kept a bust of King in the Oval Office to watch over his regular betrayal of the martyred peace and justice leader’s ideals. Consistent with Dr. Adolph Reed Jr.’s early (1996) <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sid-l/eyzQunj-35A" type="external">dead-on description</a> of the future President as “a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable credentials and vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics,” Obama consistently backed top corporate and financial interests (whose representatives filled and dominated his administrations, campaigns, and campaign coffers) over and against those who would undertake serious programs to end poverty, redistribute wealth (the savage re-concentration of which since Dr. King’s time has produced a New Gilded Age in the U.S.), grant free and universal health care, constrain capital, and save livable ecology as it approached a number of critical tipping points on the accelerating path to irreversible catastrophe. Thus is that one of Obama’s supporters ( <a href="" type="internal">Ezra Klein</a>) was moved in late 2012 to complain that a president “whose platform consists of Romney’s health care bill, Newt Gingrich’s environmental policies, John McCain’s deficit-financed payroll tax cuts, George W. Bush’s bailouts of filing banks and corporations, and a mixture of the Bush and Clinton tax rate” was still being denounced as a “leftist.”</p>
<p>Obama opposed calls for any special programs or serious federal attention to the nation’s savage racial inequalities, so vast now that the median of white households was 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households near the end of his presidency. He did this while the fact of his ascendency to the White House deeply reinforced white America’s sense that racism was over as a barrier to black advancement and generated its own significant white backlash that only worsened the situation of less privileged black Americans.</p>
<p>Obama made it crystal clear in ways that no white president could that what Dr. King in 1963 called America’s unpaid “promissory note” and “bad check” to Black America would remain un-cashed. This was all too sadly consistent with Obama’s preposterous 2007 campaign claim (at a commemoration of the King-led 1965 Selma Voting Rights March) to believe that Blacks had already come <a href="http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/pale-reflection-barack-obama-mlk-and-meaning-black-revolution" type="external">“90 percent”</a> of the way to equality in the U.S.</p>
<p>Completing the “triple evils” hat trick, Obama – the self-appointed chief-executioner atop the Special Forces Global War on (of) Terror Kill List – embraced and expanded upon the vast criminal and worldwide spying and killing operation he inherited from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and George W. Bush. He tamped down Bush’s failed ground wars only to ramp up and inflate the role of unaccountable special force and drone attacks in the spirit of his dashing and reckless imperial role model John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Obama’s drone program, Noam Chomsky noted in <a href="" type="internal">early 2015</a>, was “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times.” It “target[ed] people suspected of perhaps intending to harm us some day, and any unfortunates who happen to be nearby,” Chomsky wrote.</p>
<p>In waging his deadly and disastrous, nation-wrecking and regionally destabilizing air war on Libya, Obama (unlike Bush prior to the invasion of Iraq) did not even bother with the pretense of seeking Congressional approval. &#160;&#160;“It should be a scandal,” Stansfield Smith <a href="" type="internal">wrote on CounterPunch one year ago</a>, “that left-liberals paint Trump as a special threat, a war mongerer – [but] not Obama who is the first president to be at war every day of his eight years, who is waging seven wars at present, who dropped three bombs an hour, 24 hours a day,&#160;in 2016.” As <a href="" type="internal">Alan Nairn told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman in early 2010</a>, Obama kept the nation’s giant imperial machinery “set on kill.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Obama far surpassed the Cheney-Bush regime when it came to repressing antiwar dissenters, not to mention those who opposed the rule of the 1 percent – smashed by a coordinated federal campaign in the fall of 2011. “As all kinds of journalists have continuously pointed out,” <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/dorsey/glenn-greenwald-tears-into-ruth-marcus-over-edward-snowden" type="external">Glenn Greenwald noted</a> in early 2014, “the Obama administration is more aggressive and more vindictive when it comes to punishing whistleblowers than any administration in American history, including the Nixon administration.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, and to make matters far worse, Obama helped keep the planet set on burn.&#160; As Stansfield Smith noted two days before the horrid Trump’s inauguration:</p>
<p>Obama, who says he recognizes the threat to humanity posed by climate change, still invested at least $34 billion to promote fossil fuel projects in other countries. That is three times as much as George W Bush spent in his two terms, almost twice that of Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush and Bill Clinton put together…Obama financed 70 foreign fossil fuel projects. When completed they will release 164 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year – about the same output as the 95 currently operating coal-fired power plants in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. He financed two natural gas plants on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, as well as two of the largest coalmines on the planet… Moreover, under Obama, the U.S.&#160; has reversed the steady drop in U.S. oil production which had continued unchecked since 1971. The U.S. was pumping just 5.1 million barrels per day when Obama took office. By April 2016 it was up to 8.9 million barrels per day. A 74% increase.</p>
<p>As Obama proudly said in 2012, in the film This Changes Everything:</p>
<p>‘Over the last three years I’ve directed my administration to open up millions of acres for gas and oil exploration across 23 different states. We’re opening up more than 75% of our potential oil resources offshore. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We’ve added enough oil and gas pipelines to encircle the earth and then some. So, we are drilling all over the place, right now.’</p>
<p>“Drill, baby, drill!”</p>
<p>Perhaps the dismal neoliberal Obama presidency – a key midwife to the Trump atrocity – was at least an object lesson on how real progressive and democratic change is about something bigger than a change in the party or color of the people in nominal power. That is certainly something King (who would be 88 today) would have understood very well had he been able to witness the endless mendacity of the nation’s first half-white president first-hand.</p>
<p>“The black revolution,” King wrote in <a href="https://forthearticles.omeka.net/items/show/37" type="external">a posthumously published 1969 essay</a> titled “A Testament of Hope” (embracing a very different, authentically progressive sort of hope than that purveyed by Brand Obama in 2008) “is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes. It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws – racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism. It is exposing evils that are rooted deeply in the whole structure of our society. It reveals systemic rather than superficial flaws and suggests that radical reconstruction society of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”</p>
<p>Those words ring as true as ever today, with heightened urgency as it becomes undeniable that the profits system is <a href="https://www.truthdig.com/articles/climate-denial-will-kill-us/" type="external">driving humanity over an environmental cliff.</a>&#160;They are words we never hear during official King Day commemorations.</p>
<p>King, it is worth recalling, was recruited by antiwar progressives to run for the U.S. presidency in 1967. He politely declined, claiming that he’d have little chance of winning and that he preferred to serve as a force of moral conscience for all the nation’s political parties.</p>
<p>The deeper truth, clear from his late-life writing and speeches, is that he had no interest in climbing into the power elite: his passion was directed toward a “revolution” of “the dispossessed” and a mass grassroots movement for the redistribution of wealth and power – a “radical reconstruction of society itself” – from the bottom up. Dr. King was interested in what the late radical U.S. historian <a href="" type="internal">Howard Zinn considered</a> the more urgent politics of “who’s sitting in the streets,” very different from what Zinn saw as the comparatively superficial politics of “who’s sitting in the White House.”</p>
<p>King’s officially deleted radical record and Zinn’s clever and sage dichotomy are worth bearing in mind in coming months and years as we watch the nation’s “left” liberals try to call forth and herald a new Obama (Oprah perhaps?) in 2020. &#160;That is certainly one of the last things we need.</p>
<p>Help Paul Street keep writing <a href="https://www.paulstreet.org/subscribe/" type="external">here</a>.</p> | Dr. King’s Long Assassination | true | https://counterpunch.org/2018/01/19/dr-kings-long-assassination/ | 2018-01-19 | 4 |
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Wisconsin Lottery's "Daily Pick 4" game were:</p>
<p>0-7-9-7</p>
<p>(zero, seven, nine, seven)</p>
<p>¶ Maximum prize: $500</p>
<p>MADISON, Wis. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Wednesday evening's drawing of the Wisconsin Lottery's "Daily Pick 4" game were:</p>
<p>0-7-9-7</p>
<p>(zero, seven, nine, seven)</p>
<p>¶ Maximum prize: $500</p> | Winning numbers drawn in 'Daily Pick 4' game | false | https://apnews.com/amp/74925d8206e041ef8059d429fb7c71c7 | 2018-01-11 | 2 |
<p>Former Texas Rep. Ron Paul was seen but not heard when his son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, formally announced his presidential campaign on Tuesday. But the elder Paul hasn’t been shy about expressing his opinions on various – and controversial – topics.</p>
<p>In the past year, Ron Paul has written that a violent revolution should be considered to protect individual liberties, said the secession movement should encourage supporters of freedom, and asserted that the U.S. government is “likely hiding [the] truth” about the Malaysian flight believed to have been shot down by pro-Russian separatists over Ukraine.</p>
<p>Several likely 2016 candidates have familial relationships that will inevitably pop up as issues during the campaign. Jeb Bush has two former presidents in his immediate family, and Hillary Clinton is married to one. Paul's GOP rival Ted Cruz's father was never elected to office but has become a min-celebrity within the GOP for his fiery rhetoric.</p>
<p>But unlike pastor Rafael Cruz or President George H.W. Bush, libertarian icon Ron Paul is producing a weekly column along with frequent media and public appearances that present a potential problem for his son’s presidential run.</p>
<p>“I have a great deal of respect for my dad, my dad is probably one of the most honest, genuine characters in American political history,” Paul <a href="http://www.politico.com/multimedia/video/2015/04/rand-paul-mike-allens-full-interview.html" type="external">told Politico</a> after his announcement. “We don’t agree on everything, but not everyone agrees with their dad on everything.”</p>
<p>But that relationship has shaped much of Rand Paul’s political identity. He has embraced many of the small government ideals that his father espoused during his three presidential runs and decades in Congress, and Rand served as a strategist on his father’s campaigns. But Ron Paul’s continued opining about the issues of the day means he will be remain an arm’s length away from his son for most of the campaign.</p>
<p>Here are some recent Ron Paul comments that may surface during Rand Paul’s campaign.</p>
<p>Secession: Ron Paul <a href="http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2014/september/28/scottish-referendum-gives-reasons-to-be-hopeful.aspx" type="external">wrote last year</a>: “The growth of support for secession should cheer all supporters of freedom, as devolving power to smaller units of government is one of the best ways to guarantee peace, property, liberty.”</p>
<p>And in a conference in February, <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/ron-paul-good-news-that-secession-is-happening#.frMXkRlap" type="external">Buzzfeed reported</a> Paul said secession is “gonna happen. It’s happening.” He has said states seceding from the U.S. and local governments seceding from states will happen “de facto” when conditions break down after, he predicts, the economy collapses.</p>
<p>Revolution: <a href="http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2015/january/08/inner-city-turmoil-and-other-crises-my-predictions-for-2015/" type="external">In a column filled with his predictions for 2015</a>, Ron Paul says Thomas Jefferson “believed the people must warn the rulers that taking up arms against the government is legitimate if the government fails to protect the people’s liberty.”</p>
<p>“This should be a consideration,” he wrote, before adding that violence alone will achieve nothing. “All positive revolutions must be philosophic in nature,” he added.</p>
<p>Russia: Ron Paul called U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Ukraine <a href="http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2014/august/10/us-sanctions-on-russia-may-sink-the-dollar/" type="external">“a grave mistake,”</a> and warned it could harm the economy at home. “I don’t think we have any business there,” he said in one of his frequent appearances on the <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/rand-paul-ron-paul-2016-elections-116702.html#.VSRP4_nF-bM" type="external">Russian-run RT television in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>“I am not pro-Putin, and I’m not pro-Russia. But I’m pro-facts,” Ron Paul <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=38&amp;v=G93SlyJIQSg" type="external">said earlier this year</a>. He also said the Ukrainian unrest was a coup orchestrated by NATO and the European Union, and not an uprising of Ukrainian citizens standing up to Russia’s influence in their country.</p>
<p>Rand Paul, however, wrote <a href="http://time.com/17648/sen-rand-paul-u-s-must-take-strong-action-against-putins-aggression/" type="external">a forceful op/ed in Time calling</a> for the U.S. to take strong action that would isolate Putin.</p>
<p>These 10 letters to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden prove he did the right thing: <a href="http://t.co/Uil7bJTwCb" type="external">http://t.co/Uil7bJTwCb</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/truth?src=hash" type="external">#truth</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/freedom?src=hash" type="external">#freedom</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/follow?src=hash" type="external">#follow</a></p>
<p>Ron Paul raised eyebrows last summer when he partially blamed the U.S. for the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which the Obama administration believes was shot down by pro-Russian separatists. Ron Paul wrote that western media was only reporting “government propaganda” about the crash that killed 298 people.</p>
<p>“They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Without US-sponsored 'regime change,' it is unlikely that hundreds would have been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash have happened,” <a href="http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2014/july/20/what-the-media-won-t-report-about-malaysian-airlines-flight-mh17/" type="external">Paul wrote</a> in his weekly column called “Texas Straight Talk.”</p>
<p>In August <a href="http://www.voicesofliberty.com/audio/government-likely-hiding-truth-in-malaysia-airlines-flight-17-crash/" type="external">he wrote</a>: “Questions do remain regarding the serious international incident. Too bad we can’t count on our government to just tell us the truth and show us the evidence. I’m convinced that it knows a lot more than it’s telling us.”</p>
<p>The Economy: In his 2015 predictions <a href="http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2015/january/08/inner-city-turmoil-and-other-crises-my-predictions-for-2015/" type="external">column</a>, Paul wrote, “Sanity will not return to U.S. leaders until our financial system collapses — an event for which they are feverishly working.” He predicts an economic crisis greater than the 2008 collapse is fast approaching.</p>
<p>“The poor will get poorer and the rich richer until the spirit of revolution in the people calls a halt to the systematic destruction of freedom in America,” he wrote.</p>
<p>Republican control of the Senate = expanded neocon wars in Syria and Iraq. Boots on the ground are coming!</p>
<p>Paris attacks: “Does anyone wonder why, after 14 years of drone strikes killing more than 800 al-Qaeda militants, it seems there are still so many of them?” <a href="http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2015/february/01/the-failed-yemen-model/" type="external">Paul wrote in February</a>.</p>
<p>One month earlier 16 people were killed during an attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery store in Paris. Al Qaeda took responsibility for the attacks.</p>
<p>“What if it is interventionist and militarist western foreign policy that is motivating people to shoot up magazines and seek to bring terrorism back to the countries they see as aggressors?” Paul wrote.</p>
<p>ISIS: Ron Paul called it a “glimmer of hope” when President Obama said the U.S. did not yet have a strategy to deal with ISIS in Syria.</p>
<p>“A new U.S. military incursion will not end ISIS; it will provide them with the recruiting tool they most crave, while draining the US treasury. Just what Osama bin Laden wanted!” he wrote in August of last year.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2015/march/15/iran-fighting-isis-is-it-really-a-problem/" type="external">In March</a> he wrote: “If we really want to defeat ISIS, the last thing we should be doing is bombing and sending troops back to Iraq and into Syria.”</p> | Ron Paul’s Words Loom as Son Rand Begins Campaign | false | http://nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/ron-paul-s-words-loom-son-rand-begins-campaign-n338106 | 2015-04-08 | 3 |
<p>You don't have to travel far from Moscow to see the contrast between rich and poor. This town is 60 miles away from Moscow but feels like a world away and this man says they have yet to see more money from Russia's improved economy. Only 170 people live here and most of them are old. There's a small village store but not much else. It's absolutely treacherous walking on the ice here. This place has plenty of history. This woman and her husband have a better pension now thanks to Putin but food is so expensive they depend on their animals and their garden for food. She says the village is dying. She has no gas for heating, despite Russia being the world's biggest exporter of natural gas. They don't have any of it here. Instead everyone has an old metal stove to keep them warm. Medvedev's biggest challenge is to hook up thousands of small towns like this one into the national grid. This library is the only public place in the building and one corner has been turned into a voting station. Everyone I spoke to said they would vote for Medvedev. the question is can Russia's next president deliver and if the views of people here, if he doesn't, harden.</p> | Economic woes for rural Russians | false | https://pri.org/stories/2008-02-28/economic-woes-rural-russians | 2008-02-28 | 3 |
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<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
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<p>Warren Buffett has spent billions building out his utility business on the thesis that it'll spit out cash for decades to come. But utilities may not be as safe as they were when he started buying them, and they could require some major strategic shifts.</p>
<p>Jonathan Weisgal, Vice President of Government Relations at Berkshire Hathaway , recently admitted, "Our monopoly days are coming to an end. We are in a competitive market and we have to recognize that as a utility." That's a stirring admission and a change from a century of stability and growth for utilities. And with so much of Berkshire Hathaway's business tied up in utilities, this is a big deal for investors.</p>
<p>When Warren Buffett started acquiring utility assets in the late 1990s, it seemed like a perfect business for him. Regulated returns, slow and steady growth, and lots of cash flow are really attractive to Buffett. He can also benefit from having very low borrowing costs in the Berkshire family. In his <a href="http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2008ltr.pdf" type="external">annual letter to shareholders in 2009 he said Opens a New Window.</a>:</p>
<p>I'm sure regulators still see Berkshire Hathaway as a purchaser of choice, but today the customer is the one gaining power. MGM Resorts and Wynn Resorts have both said they'll pay tens of millions of dollars to leave Buffett utility NV Energy, and customers big and small are looking at rooftop solar and energy storage as ways to reduce utility bills, both saving money and lowering their environmental footprints. And those are challenges Buffett may not have envisioned just a few years ago.</p>
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<p>Since the electric grid was developed, it was based around centralized power generators and a distribution grid that pushed energy to customers. The power was held by the utility, which is why it's so highly regulated in the first place.</p>
<p>But in the last few years, customers have been given choices to reduce their dependence on the grid or leave it altogether. I mentioned MGM's and Wynn's moves in Nevada, but Walmart, Apple, and Macy's are just a few of the corporate customers who are installing their own rooftop solar and/or building power plants offsite to supply their own electricity. Heck, Apple just <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/18/apple-energy-is-this-apples-next-billion-dollar-bu.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">launched an energy company Opens a New Window.</a>to sell electricity to outside customers.</p>
<p>On the residential side, around a million customers have gone solar with installers like SolarCity and Vivint Solar making it possible to create your own power with no money down. They're selling customers on the idea that creating their own energy is better than buying from the utility -- and from a retail standpoint, that's the most choice customers have ever had in energy.</p>
<p>Utility customers are the ones driving change at utilities, whether it's a drive to lower costs or to produce their own energy. And that's a challenge for Berkshire Hathaway Energy.</p>
<p>Even if the regulated utility business Buffett has amassed comes under pressure, he still has a massive presence in renewable energy to fall back on. He's spent at least $15 billion on wind and solar assets and has said he's ready to spend $15 billion more. And these are projects with long-term contracts to sell energy, primarily to utilities Buffett doesn't own.</p>
<p>But this also shows the strange relationship Buffett has with renewable energy sources in general. He's a big fan when he's the owner, but when his customers decide it's in their best interest to own renewable energy assets, his companies do everything they can to undermine them ( <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/01/02/why-solarcity-is-leaving-one-of-the-countrys-sunni.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">see the net metering ruling that killed Nevada's rooftop solar industry Opens a New Window.</a>).</p>
<p>Warren Buffett has spent billions amassing a large regulated utility business that was supposed to generate solid returns for decades to come. But the business may not be as safe as it used to be with one of Warren Buffett's own executives even admitting that monopoly status may not be around for utilities much longer. That could mean Berkshire Hathaway's energy returns won't be what investors had hoped for either.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/06/25/warren-buffetts-monopoly-days-may-be-coming-to-an.aspx" type="external">Warren Buffett's Monopoly Days May Be Coming to an End Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFFlushDraw/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Travis Hoium Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Apple, Berkshire Hathaway (B Shares), and Wynn Resorts. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple, Berkshire Hathaway (B Shares), and SolarCity. The Motley Fool owns shares of Wynn Resorts and has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on Apple. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Warren Buffett's Monopoly Days May Be Coming to an End | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/06/25/warren-buffett-monopoly-days-may-be-coming-to-end.html | 2016-06-25 | 0 |
<p>In&#160; <a href="http://nymag.com/print/?/news/media/new-york-times-2011-8/" type="external">an article published on July 24th</a>&#160;on New York magazine’s website, writer Seth Mnookin&#160;says that The&#160;New York Times&#160;is no longer on the verge of extinction, thanks to recent efforts of&#160;longtime publisher and Chairman Arthur Ochs “Pinch” Sulzberger, Jr., claiming that the “digital subscription plan—the famous ‘paywall’—was working better than anyone had dared to hope.”</p>
<p>Mnookin focused on the latest quarterly earnings report from the paper to back up his assertion that the worst is over for the Times, despite what critics thought would sink the paper. Unfortunately for Sulzberger, the&#160; <a href="http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&amp;q=NYSE:NYT" type="external">markets</a>&#160;are not nearly as convinced as New York magazine is of the success of the Times’ new business model. Although the Times’ parent company, The New York Times Company, has seen the value of its stock rise slightly in the past few days as its losses were lower than Wall Street projected, the company’s stock has still lost 13% of its value over the past six months. For comparison, the S&amp;P 500 index has gained 4% over that interval.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.newsandtech.com/dateline/article_5769377a-b6e5-11e0-a12b-001cc4c002e0.html" type="external">According to the website, News&amp;Tech</a>, The New York Times Co. said it lost more than $119 million in the second quarter of 2011, largely because of a write-down of $161 million, reflecting the declining value of its Regional Media Group, which runs its regional papers. It said that excluding the write-down, the Times posted a profit of $82.9 million on revenues of $576 million.</p>
<p>Mnookin also mentioned the early repayment of a $250 million loan that the Times received from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu in 2009 as another sign of improving health.&#160;But as Times CFO Jim Folio noted on a recent earnings conference call, this was largely due to the fact that the company raised an additional $225 million last year through the sale of bonds, combined with the net proceeds of $117 million from the recent sale of a portion of their ownership in the Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox. The repayment of the loan will cost the company $279 million in total and will reduce the cash on hand to approximately $240 million, or about $160 million less than they had at the end of last year.</p>
<p>While prepaying the loan will save the Times a significant amount of money over the next three years it was done at the risk of lowering the paper’s cash cushion at a time when advertising revenue is still declining. Add to that the unfunded pension liability of $270 million and you have a company that is still struggling.</p>
<p>If Mnookin is correct that Sulzberger has saved the paper from extinction and put it back on the right path, then why didn’t Sulzberger lobby for the return of a dividend since the company reported profits of $234 million last year? Even a small payout by the company would back up their public pronouncements of the company’s return to health and instill confidence on Wall Street that management actually has a strategy in place to keep the newspaper operating for the foreseeable future.</p>
<p>The one bright spot for the Times appears to be their digital subscription model. According to the Times they now have 224,000 digital subscribers plus another 57,000 on the Kindle and Nook (their stated goal was 300,000 subscribers in the first year). While that seems like a success since the paper started charging for online access only in March, it isn’t clear how much revenue these basic digital subscribers are generating, thanks to a dizzying array of subscription choices offered by the Times. And since overall revenue numbers have barely budged it is apparent that the revenues are negligible at this time.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sulzberger managed to bungle another paper of record, after overseeing the purchase of The&#160;Boston Globe&#160;in 1993 for $1.1 billion. The Globe is now worth a&#160; <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/29/boston-globe-could-be-bou_n_855595.html" type="external">fraction of that</a>&#160;and has seen losses in recent years of as much as <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-new-york-times-to-try-to-dump-boston-globe-2009-6" type="external">$85 million in a single year.</a> To make matters worse, the&#160; <a href="http://articles.boston.com/2011-05-19/business/29560977_1_new-york-times-globe-executives-new-england-media-group" type="external">company cannot even decide</a>&#160;if the Globe is for sale.</p>
<p>Mnookin&#160;also touched on troubles News Corporation is experiencing, perhaps to favorably contrast the Times’ state of affairs. Mnookin even delights in arguing that the&#160; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/magazine/05hacking-t.html" type="external">Times was “critical”</a>&#160;in breaking open the scandal. But although News Corp has seen its stock price fall since the phone hacking scandal gained traction this month, their Wall Street Journal is the highest-circulation daily newspaper in the United States. In the latest numbers&#160; <a href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/wall-street-journal-still-first-in-daily-circulation/" type="external">released</a>&#160;by the Audit Bureau of Circulations in May, the Journal more than doubled the Times’ average daily circulation.</p>
<p>New York magazine might prefer the Ochs-Sulzberger monarchy and might think The Wall Street Journal, no longer owned by the Bancroft family, “has gone to seed,” but consumers do not think so. It is not likely that the UK-based phone hacking scandal will cause the Journal’s circulation to fall significantly, and News Corp’s share price&#160; <a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:NWS" type="external">has already stabilized</a> after losing value during the height of the scandal.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Despite Glowing Profile of NY Times Publisher, Paper Still has Problems | true | http://aim.org/aim-column/despite-glowing-profile-of-ny-times-publisher-paper-still-has-problems/ | 2011-07-26 | 0 |
<p>On Monday, GOP frontrunner and real estate tycoon Donald Trump finally revealed his much-anticipated list of foreign policy advisors. At the same meeting with The Washington Post Editorial Board, Trump also disclosed one of the most moronic policy proposals ever devised by a US presidential candidate, suggesting the world’s only superpower draw resources out of NATO, the military alliance formed as a bulwark against Russian aggression.</p>
<p>Suffice to say, his opponents smelled stupidity and swooped like vultures on a decaying carcass.</p>
<p>. <a href="https://twitter.com/tedcruz" type="external">@TedCruz</a> on Trump's suggestion that the U.S. pull back from NATO: "Now there’s a technical term for that — it’s called nuts.”</p>
<p>Even Democrats joined in to attack the buffoonish idea.</p>
<p>Clinton says is Trump gets his way on NATO, "it will be like Christmas in the Kremlin.” <a href="https://t.co/NJTcJahkBA" type="external">https://t.co/NJTcJahkBA</a></p>
<p>Trump’s remarks about NATO not only made him look weak, but incompetent. Judging from the Manhattan socialite’s newly assembled foreign policy team, amateur-hour is just beginning.</p>
<p>Here are 5 things you need to know about Trump’s foreign policy team:</p>
<p>1. They’re mostly nobodies with little relevant experience.</p>
<p>After months of eager waiting, we got a list full of relative nobodies. The men Trump chose to spearhead his foreign policy team aren’t on the radar of any reputable national security expert or foreign policy think tank. “Several of those Trump cited during a visit to The Washington Post’s editorial board are complete unknowns,” <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-foreign-policy-advisers-221058" type="external">notes</a> Politico. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-advisers.html?_r=1&amp;mtrref=undefined" type="external">adds</a>, “When <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/us/elections/donald-trump-on-the-issues.html?inline=nyt-per" type="external">Donald J. Trump</a> finally began to reveal the names of his foreign policy advisers during a swing through Washington this week, the Republican foreign policy establishment looked at them and had a pretty universal reaction: Who?”</p>
<p>Here’s a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-advisers.html?_r=1&amp;mtrref=undefined" type="external">list</a> of the five advisors who have hopped on the Trump Train so far:</p>
<p>If you haven’t heard of these guys, you’re not alone. Other than Walid Phares, most of the advisors listed have little relevant experience in matters of national security.</p>
<p>2. Walid Phares is the only recognizable face on the team.</p>
<p>Phares, a Lebanese Christian specializing in terrorism, can often be found on Fox News offering analysis on Islamic extremism. As former senior fellow at conservative foreign policy think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Phares advised the Romney campaign in 2012.</p>
<p>However, Phares’ credentials have come under fire lately, especially since propagating some controversial conspiracy theories about Muslims. According to <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-foreign-policy-advisers-221058" type="external">Politico</a>, “In 2012, Phares <a href="https://marielenastuart2012.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/sharia-law-in-america-marielena-stuart-speaks-to-dr-walid-phares/" type="external">claimed</a> that ‘there are advisers and experts for this administration ... engaging with and partnering with the Muslim Brotherhood’ in order to influence American foreign policy."</p>
<p>Nevertheless, Phares has been frequently asked to provide expert analysis on global terrorist threats. In the past, he has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walid_Phares" type="external">testified</a> before the US departments of Justice, Defense and Homeland Security, as well as the United States Congress, the European Parliament, and the United Nations Security Council.</p>
<p>3. Most of the advisors on the team are deliberately maintaining low profiles.</p>
<p>“But in many cases, even Google offered little but <a href="https://www.cubic.com/News/Press-Releases/ID/216/Joseph-K-Kellogg-Jr-Joins-Cubic-As-SVP-Ground-Combat-Programs" type="external">outdated biographies</a> of Mr. Trump’s new cast of experts, and on Tuesday, most of them proved elusive when sought for interviews,” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-advisers.html?_r=1&amp;mtrref=undefined" type="external">reports</a> The Times. Aside from Phares, the other men have yet to actively engage with the public, much less respond to press scrutiny.</p>
<p>The Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/23/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-advisers.html?_r=1&amp;mtrref=undefined" type="external">catalogues</a> the elusive advisors:</p>
<p>There was no record of employment for Mr. Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who helped run the coalition provisional authority in Iraq from 2003 to 2004. He most recently worked for a defense contractor that had no information on his whereabouts.</p>
<p>Mr. Papadopoulos, a London-based energy analyst who lists <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gpapadopoulos7" type="external">his participation</a> in the 2012 Model United Nations on his résumé, was traveling, and his employer said he was unreachable.</p>
<p>And others could say little about how they were helping Mr. Trump. None have spoken to their new boss.</p>
<p>Mr. Page, a managing partner at Global Energy Capital, who will be advising Mr. Trump on energy policy and Russia, said that he had just been sending policy memos to the Trump campaign and that the details of his role remained unclear. Mr. Page did not comment when asked if he supported Mr. Trump’s views on torture or the moratorium on Muslim immigration.</p>
<p>4. Two of Trump’s advisors played active roles in the Iraq War effort. Trump’s opposition to the Iraq War has been the central talking point of his foreign policy platform thus far.</p>
<p>For months now, Donald Trump has vilified the Bush administration for going to war in Iraq. At one point, he even accused former President George W. Bush of lying to the American public. Now, 40% -- two of five -- of Trump’s foreign policy advisory board members are known to have played an active role in advancing the war effort in Iraq.</p>
<p>“Retired Army Lt. Gen. Joseph 'Keith' Kellogg served as chief operating officer of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, Iraq, from November 2003 through March 2004,” <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-foreign-policy-advisers-221058" type="external">notes</a> Politico. “The authority was the de facto government installed by the U.S. after its March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and its performance is often judged as a failure.”</p>
<p>Additionally, Joseph E. Schmitz served for three and three-and-a-half years as the Bush Defense Department’s inspector general under the Bush Administration. According to <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-joseph-e-schmitz-foreign-policy-pentagon-dod-germany-wrong-doing-439239" type="external">Newsweek</a>, he was “accused of blocking investigations of Bush administration officials tied to Iraq and Afghanistan war contracts" and subsequently <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-joseph-e-schmitz-foreign-policy-pentagon-dod-germany-wrong-doing-439239" type="external">forced out of the Pentagon</a>.</p>
<p>5. One of the advisors called Trump’s bluff on torture.</p>
<p>Throughout the campaign, Trump has repeatedly outlined his plans to reinstate torture. The real estate mogul has even implied that waterboarding is child’s play compared to what he’s willing to do to terrorist suspects. Time and time again, Trump has <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/03/23/471543396/trump-taps-former-romney-campaign-foreign-policy-adviser-for-team?utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=politics&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_term=nprnews" type="external">touted</a> the fact that he supports forms of torture “a hell of a lot worse” than waterboarding.</p>
<p>But this is all meaningless rhetoric, according to newly appointed Trump advisor Walid Phares. Trump’s bluster is "a reaction to a very complex and difficult and challenging situation," Phares <a href="http://www.npr.org/2016/03/23/471543396/trump-taps-former-romney-campaign-foreign-policy-adviser-for-team?utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=politics&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_term=nprnews" type="external">told</a> NPR. Trump is calling for torture "because we are in a political season," but as president "he's going to be tasking experts to answer that question, and I'm not sure that the experts are going to recommend any form of torture."</p>
<p>Listen to Phares’ interview with NPR’s Morning Edition below:</p> | 5 Things You Need To Know About Trump’s Foreign Policy Team | true | https://dailywire.com/news/4359/5-things-you-need-know-about-trumps-foreign-policy-joshua-yasmeh | 2016-03-24 | 0 |
<p>“Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others,” <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/heroes?page=4" type="external">said</a> Edward Abbey.</p>
<p>Ambassador Chris Stevens was a hero by any definition of the word. Hillary Clinton is not. Stevens served his country honorably and worked to fight the forces of chaos, terrorism, and evil in Libya. Hillary climbed the ladders of political power, blamed the ambassador for his own death, and plunged Libya into full-blown anarchy.</p>
<p>Democrats have a much different conception of what it means to be a hero. The Hill <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/heroes?page=4" type="external">reports</a>, “Hillary Clinton was greeted like a returning war hero at a Democratic National Committee (DNC) forum the morning after a long day of Republican interrogation at a hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.”</p>
<p>In front of a mob of shameless liberal worshippers on Friday morning, Clinton graced the stage of the DNC Women’s Leadership forum and instantly entranced her audience. “As some of you may know, I had a pretty long day yesterday.” With that, the crowd exploded into an unstoppable applause, cheering their empress on. These Democrats would erupt in pure ecstasy if she coughed.</p>
<p>“As some of you may know, I had a pretty long day yesterday.”</p>
<p>A smug Hillary Clinton</p>
<p>Some audience members stayed on their feet for Hillary’s entire appearance, as if her mere presence demanded ritualistic religious devotion. “I wanted to rise above partisanship and reach for statesmanship, and that is what I tried to do,” <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/257869-clinton-gets-heros-welcome-at-dem-forum" type="external">shrieked</a> Clinton. Again, the crowd went wild.</p>
<p>Heroic Hillary grimaced with a look of arrogant self-satisfaction, knowing that her flock would follow their priestess to the ends of the earth. When she fell ill, they would fast. When she stumbled, they would pray.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, the public saw Hillary Clinton shamefully lying to Congress and suppressing an investigation surrounding the death of a U.S. ambassador. Democrats saw their savior heroically walking toward the cross and absolving them of all their sins.</p> | Hillary Lies, Democrats Give Her ‘Hero’s Welcome’ | true | https://dailywire.com/news/646/hillary-lies-democrats-give-her-heros-welcome-michael-qazvini | 2015-10-23 | 0 |
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<p>For months, he’s been at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. His doctors have recommended removing him from life support.</p>
<p>His parents are deeply opposed. They have repeatedly petitioned the courts to allow them to take Charlie for experimental treatment in the United States.</p>
<p>The courts have denied the parents’ petition. They concluded that the proposed treatment has no chance of saving the child and would do nothing but inflict upon him further suffering. They did, however, allow the American specialist to come to London to examine Charlie. He is giving his findings to the court. A final ruling is expected Tuesday.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The Telegraph of London reports that Charlie’s doctors remain unconvinced by the American researcher. Indeed, the weight of the evidence appears to support the doctors and the courts.</p>
<p>What to do? There is only one real question. What’s best for Charlie? But because he can’t speak for himself, we resort to a second question: Who is to speak for him?</p>
<p>The most heartrending situation occurs when these two questions yield opposing answers. Charlie’s is such a case.</p>
<p>Let me explain.</p>
<p>In my view, two truths must guide any decision: (1) The parents must be sovereign, but (2) the parents are sometimes wrong.</p>
<p>I believe that in this case the parents are wrong, and the doctors and judges are right. Charlie’s suffering is literally unimaginable and we are simply prolonging it. This is a life of no light, no sound, no motion, only moments of physical suffering to punctuate the darkness. His doctors understandably believe that allowing a natural death is the most merciful thing they can do for Charlie.</p>
<p>As for miracle cures, I share the court’s skepticism. They always arise in such cases and invariably prove to be cruel deceptions.</p>
<p>And yet. Despite all these considerations, I would nevertheless let the parents take their boy where they wish.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The sovereignty of loved ones must be the overriding principle that guides all such decisions.</p>
<p>What is best for the child? The best guide is a loving parent. A parent’s motive is the most pure.</p>
<p>This rule is not invariable, of course. Which is why the state seizes control when parents are demonstrably injurious, even if unintentionally so, as in the case of those who, for some religious imperative, would deny their child treatment for a curable disease.</p>
<p>But there’s a reason, despite these exceptions, all societies grant parents sovereignty over their children until they reach maturity. Parents are simply more likely than anyone else to act in the best interest of the child.</p>
<p>Not always, of course. Loved ones don’t always act for the purest of motives. Heirs, for example, may not be the best guide as to when to pull the plug on an elderly relative with a modest fortune.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, as a general rule, we trust in the impartiality of the courts – and the loving imperative of the parent.</p>
<p>And if they clash? What then? If it were me, I would detach the tubes and cradle the child until death. But it’s not me. It’s not the NHS. And it’s not the European Court of Human Rights.</p>
<p>It’s a father and a mother, and their desperate love for a child. They must prevail. Let them go.</p>
<p>This column was trimmed for print. Email to [email protected].</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Parents battle unnecessary odds in sad dilemma | false | https://abqjournal.com/1036589/parents-battle-unnecessary-odds-in-sad-dilemma.html | 2 |
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<p>On the surface, the June 23 Brexit and the June 26 Spanish elections don’t look comparable. After a nasty campaign filled with racism and Islamophobia, the British—or rather, the English and the Welsh—took a leap into darkness and voted to leave the European Union (EU). Spanish voters, on the other hand, rejected change and backed a rightwing party that embodies the policies of the Brussels-based trade organization.</p>
<p>But deep down the fault lines in both countries converge.</p>
<p>For the first time since Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan rolled out a variety of free market capitalism and globalization that captured much of the world in the 1980s, that model is under siege. The economic strategy of regressive taxes, widespread privatization and deregulation has generated enormous wealth for the few, but growing impoverishment for the many. The top 1 percent now owns more than 50 percent of the world’s wealth.</p>
<p>The British election may have focused on immigration and the fear of “the other”—Turks, Syrians, Greeks, Poles, etc—but this xenophobia stems from the anger and despair of people who have been marginalized or left behind by the globalization of the labor force that has systematically hollowed out small communities and destroyed decent paying jobs and benefits.</p>
<p>“Great Britain’s citizens haven’t been losing control of their fate to the EU,” wrote <a href="" type="internal">Richard Eskow</a> of the Campaign for America’s Future, “They’ve have been losing it because their own country’s leaders—as well as those of most Western democracies—are increasingly in thrall to corporate and financial interests.”</p>
<p>While most of the mainstream media reported the Spanish election as a “victory” for acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) and defeat for the left, it was more a reshuffle than a major turn to the right, and, if Rajoy manages to cobble together a government, it is likely to be fragile and short lived.</p>
<p>It was a dark night for pollsters in both countries. British polls predicted a narrow defeat for the Brexit, and Spanish polls projected a major breakthrough for Spain’s left, in particular Unidos Podemos (UP), a new alliance between Podemos and the Communist/Green party, Izquierda Unida.</p>
<p>Instead, the Brexit passed easily and the UP lost 1 million votes from the last election, ending up with the same number of seats they had in the old parliament. In contrast, the Popular Party added 14 seats, although it fell well short of a majority.</p>
<p>A major reason for the Spanish outcome was the Brexit, which roiled markets all over the world, but had a particularly <a href="" type="internal">dramatic effect</a> on Spain. The Ibex share index plunged more than 12 percent and blue-chip stocks took a pounding, losing about $70 billion dollars. It was, according to Spain’s largest business newspaper, “The worst session ever.” Rajoy—as well as the Socialist Party (SP)—flooded the media with scare talk about stability, and it partly worked.</p>
<p>The Popular Party poached eight of its 14 new seats from the center-right Ciudadanos Party and probably convinced some UP voters to shift to the mainstream SP.</p>
<p>But Rajoy’s <a href="" type="internal">claim</a> that “We won the election. We demand the right to govern” is a reach. The PP has 137 seats, and it needs 176 seats to reach a majority in the 350-seat parliament. The Prime Minister says he plans to join with Ciudadanos, but because the latter lost seats in the election such an alliance would put the PP seven votes short. An offer for a “grand alliance” with the SP doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. “We are not going to support Rajoy’s investiture or abstain,” said Socialist Party spokesman <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36643344" type="external">Antonio Hernando</a>. An abstention would allow the PP to form a government.</p>
<p>Which doesn’t mean Rajoy can’t form a government. There are some independent deputies from the Basque country and the Canary Islands who might put Rajoy over the top, but it would be the first coalition government in Spain and a fragile one at that.</p>
<p>Part of that fragility is a scandal over an <a href="" type="internal">email</a> between Rajoy and Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the European Commission, that was leaked to the media. The Commission is part of the “troika” with the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank that largely decides economic policy in the EU.</p>
<p>During the election Rajoy promised to cut taxes and moderate the troika-imposed austerity measures that have driven Spain’s national unemployment rate to 22 percent, and a catastrophic 45 percent among young people. But in a confidential email to Juncker, the Prime Minister pledged that, “In the second half of 2016, once there is a new government, we will be ready to take further measures to meet deficit goals.”</p>
<p>In short, Rajoy lied to the voters. If the PP had won an absolute majority that might not be a problem, but a coalition government is another matter. Would Ciudadanos and the independents be willing to associate themselves with such deceit and take the risk that the electorate would not punish them, given that such a government is not likely to last four years?</p>
<p>Unidos Podemos supporters were deeply disappointed in the outcome, although the UP took the bulk of the youth vote and <a href="" type="internal">triumphed</a> in Catalonia, Spain’s wealthiest province, and the Basque country. What impact UP’s poor showing will have on divisions within the alliance is not clear, but predictions of the organization’s demise are premature. “We represent the future,” party leader Pablo Iglesia said after the vote.</p>
<p>There is a possible path to power for the left, although it leads through the Socialist Party. The SP dropped from 90 seats to 85 for its worst showing in history, but if it joins with the UP it would control 156 seats. If such a coalition includes the Catalans that would bring it to 173 seats, and the alliance could probably pick up some independents to make a majority. This is exactly what the left, agreeing to shelve their differences for the time being, did in Portugal after the last election.</p>
<p>The problem is that the SP refuses to break bread with the Catalans because separatists dominate the province’s delegation and the Socialist Party opposes letting Catalonia hold a referendum on independence. Podemos also opposes Catalan separatism, but it supports the right of the Catalans to vote on the issue.</p>
<p>Rajoy may construct a government, but it will be one that supports the dead-end austerity policies that have encumbered most of the EU’s members with low or flat growth rates, high unemployment and widening economic inequality. Support for the EU is at an <a href="" type="internal">all time low</a>, even in the organization’s core members, France and Germany.</p>
<p>The crisis generated by the free market model is hardly restricted to Europe. Much of Donald Trump’s support comes from the same disaffected cohort that drove the Brexit, and, while “The Donald” is down in the polls, so were the Brexit and the Spanish Popular Party.</p>
<p>The next few years will be filled with opportunity, as well as danger. Anti-austerity forces in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Ireland are organizing and beginning to coordinate resistance to the “troika”. But so, too, are parties on the right: France’s National Front, Hungary’s Jobbik, Greece’s Golden Dawn, Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party, Austria’s Freedom Party, Denmark’s People’s Party and Sweden’s Democratic Party.</p>
<p>Instead of reconsidering the policies that have spread so much misery through the continent, European elites were quick to blame “stupid” and “racist” voters for the Brexit. “We are witnessing the implosion of the postwar cultural and economic order that has dominated the Euro-American zone for more than six decades,” writes Andrew O’Helir of <a href="" type="internal">Salon.</a> “Closing our eyes and hoping that it will go away is not likely to be successful.”</p>
<p>A majority of Britain said “enough,” and while the Spanish right scared voters into backing away from a major course change, those voters will soon discover that what is in store for them is yet more austerity.</p>
<p>“We need to end austerity to end this disaffection and this existential crisis of the European project,” said a <a href="" type="internal">UP statement</a> following the election. “We need to democratize decision making, guarantee social rights and respect human rights.”</p>
<p>The European Union is now officially a house divided. It is not clear how long it can endure.”</p>
<p><a href="http://store.counterpunch.org/" type="external" /></p> | The Brexit & Spain: Europe on the Edge? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/07/08/the-brexit-spain-europe-on-the-edge/ | 2016-07-08 | 4 |
<p>How many books make a significant difference in matters that concern everyone who lives on earth? You can probably count the titles on one hand. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, husband and wife, have certainly written such a book. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is the most important book that I have read since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, published in 1962. I am not alone in saying that this is the most significant book that I have ever reviewed.</p>
<p>Because it is necessary to summarize many of the unsettling examples in Kristof and WuDunn’s ground-breaking work, I’m going to quote profusely from the book itself. Then, I’ll explain why this information has been so frequently ignored. Finally, I will identify a number of the constructive suggestions the writers provide for changing a playing field that has always been deeply tilted against women.</p>
<p>Quoted below are a number of disturbing passages, a fraction of the incredible facts the book reveals:</p>
<p>About China: “If a boy gets sick, the parents may send him to the hospital at once. But if a girl gets sick, the parents may say to themselves, ‘Well, let’s see how she is tomorrow.’ The result is that as many infant girls die unnecessarily every week in China as protesters died in the one incident of Tiananmen [Square].”</p>
<p>“The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. More girls are killed in this routine ‘gendercide’ in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century.”</p>
<p>“Some security experts [have] noted that the countries that nurture terrorists are disprorportionally those where women are marginalized. The reason there are so many Muslim terrorists, they argued, has little to do with the Koran but a great deal to do with the lack of robust female participation in the economy and society of many Islamic countries.”</p>
<p>“Half of the women in Sierra Leone endured sexual violence or the threat of it during the upheavals in that country, and a United Nations report claims that 90 percent of girls and women over the age of three were sexually abused in parts of Liberia during civil was there.”</p>
<p>“The equivalent of five jumbo jets’ worth of women die in labor each day, but the issue is almost never covered.”</p>
<p>“Another study found that each $1 million spent on condoms saved $466 million in AIDS-related costs.”</p>
<p>“[The] sex slave trade in the twenty-first century…is bigger than the transatlantic slave trade was in the nineteenth.”</p>
<p>These are all mind-blowing figures, coalescing around the on-going treatment of females around the world today, especially in developing countries. Honor killings, abortions of female fetuses (in favor of males), rape, sexual trafficking, genital mutilation, denial of contraceptives—these examples of inequality between men and women can be explained almost entirely by gender inequality. Many cultures place a higher value on boys than on girls, frequently refuse to educate girls at all, and deny them medical help. When girls are little older than babies (although these atrocities can happen to infants also), rape and sexual trafficking follow, often involving girls barely in their teens.</p>
<p>The authors themselves (both writers for the New York Times) confess to having ignored gender issues early in their careers. Foreign policy issues dictated their attention to other matters that at the time seemed more urgent. Together, they covered the Tiananmen Square massacre and won a Pulitzer for their work. The following year, they stumbled across a human rights study that noted that “thirty-nine thousand baby girls die annually in China” because of gender inequality in health care. Repeatedly, they note that statistics from disparate countries are rarely compiled to document a worldwide pattern of all-too-common atrocities against girls and women.</p>
<p>Ironically, the title of this book comes from statement made by Chairman Mao: “Women hold up half the sky.” China is used as the primary example of a country that has made major progress in “improving the status of women…. Over the past one hundred years, it has become—at least in the cities—one of the best places to grow up female. Urban Chinese men typically involve themselves more in household tasks like cooking and child care than most American men do.”</p>
<p>The discussion of China continues with the note that Sheryl WuDunn’s maternal grandmother grew up with her feet bound—a practice all but abolished in China today. If China was able to eliminate that terrible barrier for women progressing, certainly other cultures can also alter debilitating cultural practices. The authors provide a quick historical summary of how the British—especially William Wilberforce–changed world opinions about slavery during the nineteenth century in order to provide another example of social change. There’s even a challenge to cultural relativism: “If we believe firmly in certain values, such as the equality of all human beings regardless of color and gender, then we should not be afraid to stand up for them; it would be feckless to defer to slavery, torture, foot-binding, honor killings, or genital cutting just because we believe in respecting other faiths or cultures.”</p>
<p>Another passage provides a more urgent appeal: “Emancipation of women offers another dimension in which to tackle geopolitical challenges such as terrorism. In the aftermath of 9/ll, the United States tried to address terrorism concerns in Pakistan by transferring $10 billion in helicopters, guns, and military and economic support; in that period, the United States became steadily more unpopular in Pakistan, the Musharraf government less stable and extremists more popular. Imagine if we had used the money instead to promote education and microfinance in rural Pakistan, through Pakistani organizations. The result would likely have been greater popularity for the United States and greater involvement of women in society.”</p>
<p>The book provides dozens of mini-narratives of women (and occasionally men) —often in the countries themselves under discussion but also in the West—getting involved in global issues. Sometimes, it is as simple as high school students in the United States linking with women in need overseas, fundraising, and helping individual women with education, microfinance, and health. A number of these grass-roots organizations have subsequently developed a global reach. The mini-studies included throughout the book are inspiring but—and this is probably most important—also practical.</p>
<p>Kristof and WuDunn want to activate many more people. There’s a lengthy appendix at the end of the volume, listing organizations through which people can volunteer their time, send money, or help disseminate information about the basic needs of women around the world. Half the Sky is very much a how-to book: the writers have identified the glaring inequities between the lives of males and females in the developing world and their unbelievable economic and personal consequences. Then they have identified dozens of practical solutions (whether governments reappropriating money to other kinds of projects or individuals sending modest monthly checks to help girls in an African country to keep them going to school.) Everyone can do something to help. Will that happen? It’s somewhat doubtful, because too many Americans are interested only in themselves. They don’t want a penny of their taxes to be spent on someone else.</p>
<p>Half the Sky is a ground-breaking, eye-opening book, stunning in every sense. If it doesn’t change the way we see the magnitude of problems directly attributable to gender inequity and if it does not alter our responses to the appalling circumstances of most girls and women in the developing nations of the world, then we are simply endorsers of a no longer acceptable status quo. Kristof and WuDunn compel us to understand that the social, economic, and political consequences of gender discrimination are the issues of the twenty-first century. But they may be preaching to the choir.</p>
<p>Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide Knopf, 294 pp., $27.95</p>
<p>CHARLES R. LARSON, CounterPunch’s Fiction Critic, is Professor of Literature at American University, in Washington, D.C.</p> | From Oppression to Opportunity | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/09/25/from-oppression-to-opportunity/ | 2009-09-25 | 4 |
<p>On Thursday afternoon, appearing on MSNBC, Eli Stokols of The Wall Street Journal committed an egregious but hilarious faux pas as he criticized President Trump for calling for the death penalty for Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, the terrorist who murdered eight people on Tuesday in New York City.</p>
<p>Stokols stated, “The unifying thread is the sort of broader politics of Donald Trump, the ethnocentric nationalism. He did not react this way when a white person shot dozens of people in Las Vegas. He did not come and say, ‘Well, we have to do an immediate policy change, we need to give this guy the death penalty …’”</p>
<p>Stokols’ unwittingly hilarious remark resembled ThinkProgress editor Elham Khatami’s tweet on Wednesday, when, after noting that Trump had said he wanted to send Saipov to Gitmo, she tweeted, “He said no such thing about the Vegas shooter, who killed 58 people.”</p>
<p>As Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro pointed out on Wednesday, referring to the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, in a remark that could equally apply to Stokols’ comment:</p>
<p>Stokols responded on Twitter to his faux pas:</p>
<p>Video below:</p> | WATCH: This Reporter Ripped Trump For Not Calling For Death Penalty For Vegas Shooter. There's One Huge Problem. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/23108/watch-reporter-ripped-trump-not-calling-death-hank-berrien | 2017-11-02 | 0 |
<p>Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock, whose candidacy lost traction after he said pregnancy resulting from rape was “something God intended to happen,” has lost his bid for the U.S. Senate to Democrat Joe Donnelly.</p>
<p>The Huffington Post:</p>
<p>Mourdock, Indiana’s state treasurer, was initially favored to win, and Republicans saw him as one of their best hopes in their bid to retake the Senate. But the race tightened in late October, when he said in a debate with Donnelly that he does not support a woman’s right to an abortion in the case of rape.</p>
<p>…Mitt Romney immediately distanced himself from Mourdock’s comments, but he did not withdraw his endorsement or ask for an ad he made for Mourdock to be pulled off the air.</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/06/richard-mourdock-election-results_n_2049600.html" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>Donnelly’s victory flips the Indiana seat to the Democrats, as the tea party-backed Mourdock defeated incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar in the Republican primary.</p> | Rape Comment Sinks Indiana GOP Senate Candidate Richard Mourdock | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/rape-comment-sinks-indiana-gop-senate-candidate-richard-mourdock/ | 2012-11-07 | 4 |
<p>Ten hotel-casinos on the Las Vegas strip announced this week they're joining Sin City's largest hotel-casino operator by ending free parking or valet.</p>
<p>Wynn Resorts announced Wednesday it would begin charging for valet services, a day after Caesars Entertainment Corp. said it would begin phasing out free parking at eight of its nine properties starting next month.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Caesars Entertainment, citing guest reports of scarce parking, said it will start charging for valet services at the Linq and Harrah's next month. Self-parking at those properties will no longer be free once new parking equipment is installed. The company said it will begin charging for parking in 2017 at Caesars, The Cromwell, Paris, Planet Hollywood, Bally's and the Flamingo.</p>
<p>The company said parking will remain complimentary for local residents who show their identification and for all guests at the off-strip Rio All-Suite Hotel &amp; Casino, which a larger parking area.</p>
<p>Wynn Resorts spokesman Michael Weaver said in a statement Wednesday that it will begin charging guests for valet services at the Wynn Las Vegas and Encore starting in mid-December, but drivers will continue to be allowed to park their own cars free of charge.</p>
<p>The move follows a similar paid parking policy rolled out by MGM Resorts International earlier this year that upended a long-held entitlement on the Strip. MGM said it plans to use the money to make upgrades to its parking structures and build a 3,000-space parking garage that will open next year on the Excalibur property.</p>
<p>MGM is offering Nevadans a break through Dec. 29 with free-self parking for up to 24 hours. To get the benefit, drivers will have to scan their driver's license at the gate.</p> | Caesars to phase out free parking at 8 Las Vegas resorts | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/30/caesars-to-phase-out-free-parking-at-8-las-vegas-resorts.html | 2016-12-01 | 0 |
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<p>The requirement that drinks be prepared behind a barrier, which are often glass walls or back rooms, has long been a sore spot for the hospitality industry in the heavily Mormon state.</p>
<p>The barriers are nicknamed Zion Curtains, a reference to the influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which plays an influential role in state liquor policy and teaches its members to avoid alcohol.</p>
<p>Proponents say the barriers discourage underage drinking by hiding the “glamour” of bartending from children. Critics say they make for strange setups in restaurants, requiring staff to walk covert drinks out to customers, who then drink them in full view of other patrons — including kids.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A law signed by the governor this week allows restaurants to take down the barriers starting July 1 if they keep those under 21 from sitting close to bars. It also requires all restaurants to make no more than 30 percent of their sales from alcohol and ensure that customers ordering drinks also order food.</p>
<p>Both requirements only apply to some Utah establishments now.</p>
<p>Here’s a look at how some restaurants will adapt:</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>TAKE DOWN THE CURTAIN</p>
<p>At Current Fish &amp; Oyster, a swanky downtown Salt Lake City restaurant, a frosted glass wall covering a long, glossy bar will come down at midnight July 1, said Joel LaSalle, one of the restaurant’s owners.</p>
<p>“Not only is it ugly and covers up a beautiful bar, but it’s costing us thousands of dollars in sales each month,” LaSalle said.</p>
<p>Without the glass panels, customers could have a more pleasant experience at the bar, drinking and chatting with the bartender — who under the current setup, mixes cocktails in a glass cubicle, LaSalle said. Under the new law, LaSalle can take down the glass panels if he doesn’t seat children within 10 feet of his bar.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>BUILD A WALL OR KEEP A CURTAIN</p>
<p>At Salt Lake City’s upscale Greek eatery Manoli’s, several of the barstools at the counter leave customers staring at a colorful glass wall during their meal. Manoli Katsanevas, the chef and owner, said he’d like to take the wall down and instead reconfigure his relatively small dining room.</p>
<p>He doesn’t have room to set up a 10-foot buffer zone like Current Fish &amp; Oyster does, but another option under the new law lets him swap a Zion Curtain for a 5-foot, child-free zone that’s fenced off by a low wall.</p>
<p>But Katsanevas said he doesn’t know yet if state officials will measure the 5-foot zone from the area where drinks are prepared or if they will measure from the entire length of the bar. If it’s the latter, he’ll have to keep up his Zion Curtain.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>RESTAURANTS BECOME BARS</p>
<p>East Liberty Tap House, a neighborhood pub that focuses on craft beers and classic bar food, has a certain type of Utah liquor license that doesn’t require a Zion Curtain and allows them to make 40 percent of their sales from alcohol.</p>
<p>Owner Scott Evans said the Tap House can’t meet the new law’s requirement that alcohol sales don’t exceed 30 percent of their business, so the restaurant will have to instead be treated like a bar. That means the restaurant will no longer be able to let minors in and will have to start electronically scanning identification at the door for anyone who looks younger than 35.</p>
<p>“We’ll lose all the family business,” Evans said.</p> | New law to end hidden bartending for some Utah restaurants | false | https://abqjournal.com/979600/new-law-to-end-hidden-bartending-for-some-utah-restaurants.html | 2017-03-30 | 2 |
<p>It’s not often that one comes across a novel where the location is an archaeological dig. Sabina Al Khemir’s novel The Blue Manuscript is that rare novel.&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Blue Manuscript</a> opens in a café in Cairo as members of the archaeological team meet each other in the flesh and discuss their project&#160; for the first time.&#160; The narrator Zohra muses on her new position as a translator for a team of archaeologists who hope to find a rare Islamic manuscript.&#160; She wonders at her new companions and their perception of the Arab world they find themselves in and she wonders at her role on the team.&#160; The reader is introduced to this world of outsiders come to investigate and classify a land and people most of them know primarily through their studies.</p>
<p>Besides Zohra, there are the archaeologists Donatella and the German known familiarly as Glasses.&#160; There is the Professor, whose wife controls his life as much as his need to classify the civilizations he unearths.&#160; There is the Japanese photographer Kodama San, whose lens captures much more than the artifacts he records and there is Mark, the man who arranged the dig with wealthy collectors in the United Kingdom.&#160; Rayyes Ahmed is the local contact.&#160; Part hustler and part negotiator, he lusts after a local woman whose husband went to South Africa to work years ago and never returned.&#160; The most innocent of the lead characters are Mahmoud the boy and Monia, an Egyptian archaeologist who gives her heart to a man called Spaghetti.&#160; Then there is the storyteller’s son.&#160; He is a blind man who sees the future and the past.&#160; Nobody listens to him so he spends most of his time talking to a tree tied up with ribbons that represent individual wishes.&#160; His stories are more than metaphor for the ill fated mission of foreigners.&#160; His audience, the tree, is destroyed by the locals when gold is found.&#160; The wishes are apparently no longer needed.</p>
<p>Like the physical setting of the story–a village that swelters in the Nile heat–the prose in this story is languid but not listless.&#160; Emotions of desire and jealousy stir under the dishdashes, abayas, scarves and hijabs of the locals and the Western dress of the archaeologists.&#160; Like so much in the world, the emotions are usually not acted upon yet they color the interactions and decisions of those who hold them and those with whom they are concerned.</p>
<p>History is many things, but most of all it is a story.&#160; It is a story told by many different voices.&#160; The visitor, the vanquished and those on neither side.&#160; It is multi-layered and it is multidimensional.&#160; It is linear and it is as nebulous as those pictures of galactic clouds one sees through a high powered telescope situated in a mountaintop observatory.&#160; It is tragedy and and it is mirth.&#160; It is dead and it is living.&#160; It is real and it is contrived.&#160; We live the way we do because of it and we make others ‘future by the history we create now.&#160; But, most of all, it is a story.&#160; In the world we live in, the story most of us know is the one told by the victors.&#160; The occupiers and colonizers.&#160; The owners, not the tenants.</p>
<p>The Blue Manuscript captures these many essences of history.&#160; Al Khemir’s metaphor of the archaeological dig presents history as both dead and layered.&#160; Each timespan unearthed by the diggers represents a historical period that is static to the scientists.&#160; To the people in the village, meanwhile, it represents another verification of the beliefs they currently hold.&#160; The final chapters reveal the literal creation of a history that becomes accepted as truth despite its false origins.&#160; This creation of history becomes fact because the victors say it is and because the vanquished decide that it is better to let it be so.</p>
<p>History has many layers. As The Blue Manuscript makes clear, they are all created by someone.&#160; Some of those creations become fact and the others are left on the side of the road of time.&#160; Perhaps those stories left behind will be discovered in the future and replace the narrative currently being told.&#160; Perhaps not.&#160; <a href="" type="internal">The Blue Manuscript</a> also expresses the opinion that the tellers with the most power and money are often able to make their own truth and, more importantly, make it the accepted truth.</p>
<p>RON JACOBS is author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859841678/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground</a>, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, <a href="http://www.easycarts.net/ecarts/CounterPunch/CP_Books.html" type="external">Serpents in the Garden</a>. His first novel, <a href="" type="internal">Short Order Frame Up,</a> is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | The Manufacturing of History | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/12/12/the-manufacturing-of-history/ | 2008-12-12 | 4 |
<p>The Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in Austin, Texas. ( <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/the_photographer/6376424075/" type="external">Paul Narvaez / CC 2.0</a>)</p>
<p>Update, May 30, 2017: Alamo Drafthouse sent Truthdig the following statement regarding the online controversy sparked by the women-only screenings: “Obviously, Alamo Drafthouse recognizes ‘Wonder Woman’ is a film for all audiences, but our special women-only screenings may have created confusion—we want everybody to see this film.”</p>
<p>Earlier: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a popular Texas movie theater chain, incurred the wrath of online commenters as word spread that it had scheduled a women-only screening of the upcoming film “Wonder Woman.” The chain’s management, undeterred, responded to the criticism by adding even more women-only showings.</p>
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<p>Alamo Drafthouse <a href="https://drafthouse.com/austin/show/women-only-screening-wonder-woman" type="external">announced the initial showing</a> on its website:</p>
<p>The most iconic superheroine in comic book history finally has her own movie, and what better way to celebrate than with an all-female screening?</p>
<p>Apologies, gentlemen, but we’re embracing our girl power and saying “No Guys Allowed” for one special night at the Alamo Ritz. And when we say “People Who Identify As Women Only,” we mean it. Everyone working at this screening — venue staff, projectionist, and culinary team — will be female.</p>
<p>So lasso your geeky girlfriends together and grab your tickets to this celebration of one of the most enduring and inspiring characters ever created.</p>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2017/05/26/its-sexist-men-flip-out-over-women-only-wonder-woman-screenings/?utm_term=.2c37d744b4ac" type="external">Washington Post reports</a>, the announcement, after going viral <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AlamoAustin/posts/1329447453777473" type="external">on Facebook</a>, garnered some intense criticism:</p>
<p>The screening drew praise from some men, but it also provoked an outpouring of anger from others who flooded the theater’s Facebook page to label the event “sexist”</p>
<p>“Very tacky Alamo,” Facebook user Allan Dale wrote. “I’m all for equality and having a screening specifically stating it is not inclusive to everyone, is against equality. I’m not saying Alamo did this intentionally, but it is still just wrong.”</p>
<p>“It’s sexist and bigoted,” Evan Johnson commented, receiving nearly 40 reactions, more than half of which appeared to be laughing at Johnson’s comment.</p>
<p>But the online hate didn’t seem to bother the Alamo Drafthouse management. The Post continues:</p>
<p>The flagship Austin location — one of 26 around the nation — embraced the backlash to its women-only screening, noting that the criticism online has been met with a positive response in real life.</p>
<p>“We are very excited to present select, women-only WONDER WOMAN screenings at Alamo Drafthouse,” Morgan Hendrix, Alamo Drafthouse creative manager said in a statement emailed to The Washington Post. “That providing an experience where women truly reign supreme has incurred the wrath of trolls only serves to deepen our belief that we’re doing something right.”</p>
<p>“As a result, we will be expanding this program across the country and inviting women everywhere to join us as we celebrate this iconic superheroine in our theaters,” the statement added, referring to plans to hold women-only screenings in other states.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the chain’s Facebook page continues to give cheeky replies to complaints posted there.</p>
<p>“Have you ever hosted a men’s only showing of any film?” one Facebook user asked.</p>
<p>“We’ve never done showings where you had to be a man to get in,” Alamo Drafthouse responded, “but we [did] show the Entourage movie a few years ago.”</p>
<p>—Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Emma Niles</a></p> | Texas Movie Theater Chain Shrugs Off Criticism for Women-Only Screenings of 'Wonder Woman' | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/texas-movie-theater-chain-shrugs-off-criticism-for-women-only-screenings-of-wonder-woman/ | 2017-05-28 | 4 |
<p>US Army Spc. Leo Leroy gets a kiss from Regina Leroy and a bow-wow welcome from dogs Yoshi and Bruiser at a homecoming ceremony on Fort Hood, Texas, Nov. 28, 2009. Leroy, assigned to E Forward Support Company, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, returned after a year in Qayarrah in northern Iraq. ( <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/4166349808/" type="external">US Army photo</a> by Spc. Sharla Lewis.)</p> | We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 9, 2009 | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/were-still-war-photo-day-december-9-2009/ | 2009-12-09 | 4 |
<p>.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... ..........</p>
<p />
<p>Bernadette Bell, public relations officer for the New Mexico Department of Transportation’s District Three, says “we do have existing signs for ‘SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT’ on all the truck climbing lanes on I-40 EB. This is a regulatory sign” giving notice of traffic laws or restrictions.</p>
<p>Bell adds that if truck traffic is impeding traffic, as Pat says, this statute applies:</p>
<p>66-7-305. Minimum speed regulation.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A. A person shall not drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or to be in compliance with law.</p>
<p>And while the state transportation commission or local authorities can set a minimum speed, NMDOT pointed out in last week’s column that there is no minimum speed on that stretch of I-40.</p>
<p>WHY DO TRUCKS HAVE TO STOP AT RARELY USED TRACKS? Elias Renteria called to say he drives a fuel tanker from Moriarty on N.M. 41 to 285, and the railroad tracks for the old tourist train that used to run to Lamy are signed so school buses and Hazmat vehicles have to stop.</p>
<p>Even though he says no train has run for years.</p>
<p>Elias asks what it would take to declare those now-unused tracks “exempt” from forcing the unnecessary stop – because it is on an incline and a curve, and he says stopping is especially dangerous for high-profile vehicles.</p>
<p>Rosanne Rodriguez is NMDOT’s District Five quality manager and public information officer. She explains “the rail line to Lamy is still considered an active line. A request was recently brought to the NMDOT to make this crossing exempt. After review and consideration, NMDOT determined that the rail line is utilized infrequently, but the risk of a vehicle-train collision was greater than the concern of possible rear-end collisions with stopped vehicles. In the interest of overall safety for the traveling public, signage was recently installed warning traffic of the rail crossing and the possibility of vehicles being stopped.”</p>
<p>DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SANTA FE? Katheryn called to say drivers on eastbound Paseo del Norte better, because there is no sign guiding them onto northbound Interstate 25.</p>
<p>She points out there is a big sign guiding eastbound Paseo drivers at the freeway south to Las Cruces, but not one guiding them north to the capital.</p>
<p>Bell says “we haven’t left out northbound I-25 signage. On eastbound Paseo approaching the PDN interchange the right-of-way is limited there. There is a sign attached to a pole that gives direction to I-25 northbound, the cardinal direction. There isn’t enough room on the sign to also state the city location, but the cardinal direction is there.”</p>
<p>Assistant editorial page editor D’Val Westphal tackles commuter issues for the Metro area on Mondays. Reach her at 823-3858; <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>; or P.O. Drawer J, Albuquerque, N.M. 87103.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p /> | Semis should move to right on inclines | false | https://abqjournal.com/863817/semis-should-move-to-right-on-inclines.html | 2 |
|
<p />
<p>Edward Hammond, of the University of California’s Sunshine Project, <a href="http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.html" type="external">obtained</a> through a FOIA request Pentagon documents that indicated the military had, in 1994, investigated building a “gay bomb.” The bomb would release a strong aphrodisiac that would cause the enemy army to become “irresistibly attracted to one another.” You gotta give the military points for consistency: They clearly believe, World War II notwithstanding, that homosexuals in the ranks make the military ineffective. The proposal also indicates that conservatives are willing to act on their belief, notwithstanding the dismal success rates of the ex-gay movement, that sexual orientation is not at all innate. But the $7.5-million proposal’s creepiness rating is extremely high. Not to mention the implication that being gay or lesbian is the biggest insult an army can bestow on its enemy—that it essentially equals destroying them—is deeply offensive to gays and lesbians, particularly those who’ve <a href="http://www.hrc.org/Template.cfm?Section=Military2" type="external">served</a> with honor and distinction.</p>
<p /> | Department of Weird Weapons: The Gay Bomb | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2007/06/department-weird-weapons-gay-bomb/ | 2007-06-12 | 4 |
<p>Germany should pay the remaining 600 million euros of a disputed development loan for Airbus's A350 passenger plane now the aircraft maker has allocated work to German employees, an Airbus executive said.</p>
<p>The German government had demanded that Airbus guarantee a certain amount of the work on the lightweight A350 plane would be done in Germany as a condition for paying out the remaining part of the loan.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Chief Operating Officer Guenter Butschek told newspaper Tagesspiegel Airbus had now assigned 4,000 of the A350 jobs to Germany, 250 percent more than targeted, while the German share of development was significantly above the one-third promised.</p>
<p>"We have therefore far exceeded our promises and believe there is now no reason to withhold the remaining payment," he said in an interview published on Saturday.</p>
<p>"The ball is now in the government's court," he was quoted as saying.</p>
<p>A government spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment on Saturday.</p>
<p>Butschek told the paper the A350 project was moving forward without the loan and that the first plane was on track to be delivered in the second half of 2014. The A350 is designed to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and the larger Boeing 777.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Georg Merziger and Gernot Heller; Writing by Victoria Bryan; Editing by Catherine Evans)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | Airbus executive says time for Germany to pay A350 loan in full | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2013/10/26/airbus-executive-says-time-for-germany-to-pay-a350-loan-in-full.html | 2016-03-02 | 0 |
<p>Rescuers are losing hope that they will find many more survivors amidst the rubble and destruction left behind by this weekend's earthquake in Turkey.</p>
<p>The latest information from the Turkish emergency administration indicate more than 430 people are dead. The death toll is expected to continue rising as the rescue operation turns toward a recovery phase.&#160;</p>
<p>And yet, as officials continue to search, a few survivors are being found. A 14-day-old infant was pulled from the rubble on Monday.</p>
<p>Story continues beneath raw video of infant being rescued.</p>
<p />
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Survivors are being forced to sleep outside in near-freezing temperatures as aftershocks rattle the area and endanger already damaged buildings. Survivors have been pitching in however they can to help rescue workers clear rubble from around trapped survivors.</p>
<p>Aid organizations have setup temporary camps with tents and kitchens in order to provide for the survivors.</p>
<p />
<p>Sunday's earthquake has a magnitude of 7.2. Aftershocks have ranged all the way up to 6.0</p> | VIDEO: Rescue workers continue to pull survivors from rubble of Turkey earthquake | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-10-25/video-rescue-workers-continue-pull-survivors-rubble-turkey-earthquake | 2011-10-25 | 3 |
<p />
<p>Volkswagen is ready to consider a new trucks partnership, for example with FAW [SASACJ.UL] in addition to Sinotruck &lt;3808.HK&gt;, as a way to push its expansion in China, trucks chief Andreas Renschler told Manager Magazin.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>"We are thinking about how we can better establish ourselves in China," Renschler told the magazine, adding that FAW is a strong player there.</p>
<p>Asked about VW's existing alliance with Sinotruck, in which VW's MAN division holds a 25.1 percent stake, Renschler said: "This partnership has existed for what seems like forever, with few ups and lots of downs."</p>
<p>(Reporting by Edward Taylor, editing by David Evans)</p> | VW Trucks open to exploring new alliance in China: Manager Magazin | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/03/01/vw-trucks-open-to-exploring-new-alliance-in-china-manager-magazin.html | 2017-03-16 | 0 |
<p>TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — In primary and secondary schools of this Central American capital, "hallway" is not just another word for corridor but slang for a gantlet of gangsters who hit up instructors for money on the way to the classroom.</p>
<p>Teachers who don't pay, don't teach.</p>
<p>Gang prevention police distribute US-funded pamphlets on manners and anger management in about two thirds of the 130 public schools of Tegucigalpa. Gang members, meanwhile, circulate catalogues of their girls offering sexual services for sale.</p>
<p>It can't exactly be said that street gangs are recruiting in Honduran schools because gangs in Honduras don't need to recruit. In a country of limited opportunities, more schoolchildren want to join the violent Mara Salvatrucha, 18th Street and other newly formed gangs than the illegal bands can absorb.</p>
<p>What can be said is that, just as they control most of the neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa, street gangs rule over most public schools in the capital. Gangsters are students and students are gangsters, as are some of their parents. The gangs lay claim to buildings with graffiti, and monitor the movements of police who are trying to monitor them. When the government sends in the military to retake a neighborhood and its schools, the ruling gang may lay low for a time, but they can't stay quiet for long or competitors will move in, setting off a wave of violence.</p>
<p>"The schools are a base of organization for the gangs, and the point through which all children in the neighborhood pass," said Lt. Col. Santos Nolasco, spokesman for the joint military and police force in charge of security in the country of 8.2 million people.</p>
<p>Gangs rely on kids to do much of their illegal grunt work, knowing that even if they get caught, they won't face long jail sentences. More than a third of the estimated 5,000 gang members with criminal charges them against in 2010 were under 15 years old, according to the only study that examines age in gangs. This year, police say they have detained more than 400 minors for gang activity, including some as young as 12.</p>
<p>Poorly educated students may have to repeat a grade several times before passing exams, and police say some gangsters intentionally repeat years just to hold onto illegal operations in a school — their means of making a living. As a result, kids between the ages of 11 and 17 may be in the same class.</p>
<p>While most gang violence takes place outside of school, there have been rapes and kidnappings inside, and extortion is rampant. In addition to setting up the occasional gantlet, where a teacher has to cough up pocket money on the spot, gangs demand that educators pay 1,000 lempiras or about $50 a month, more than 10 percent of their salary.</p>
<p>"The extortion takes place through the school director, " said Liliana Ruiz, the Ministry of Education's director for Tegucigalpa. "They make an appointment with the director at the mall and he has to arrive with the money. In Honduras, the extortion has to be paid."</p>
<p>In many schools, the power of the gangs is omnipresent and once a gang takes control of a school, Ruiz said, the teacher has no choice but to get along with the gangsters, or ask to be moved. If a gang grabs a child from a classroom, most teachers know to keep quiet, even if the student is never heard from again.</p>
<p>"The fear is indescribable ... because these children are capable of anything," Ruiz said. "It is a climate of shocking desperation."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Yojana Corrales, a police officer with the capital's gang prevention unit, stops to speak with neighbors outside of El Sitio school for grades one through nine in northern Tegucigalpa, and immediately draws the attention of gangsters. One pulls up on a motorcycle, another on a bicycle, both carrying two-way radios, and they eavesdrop on her conversation.</p>
<p>"They're just checking up on what we're doing," Corrales explained.</p>
<p>With 15 years on gang details, Corrales is used to the scrutiny.</p>
<p>"We'll go into a school to hand out manuals and the gang will come in, take one and start reviewing it in front of us. They control what is said to the children," she said.</p>
<p>The front of the Jose Ramon Montoya Institute in eastern Tegucigalpa is painted with MS-13 graffiti, tags of the Mara Salvatrucha. Until recently, dozens of gangsters controlled the second floor of this primary and secondary school, using it as a base to sell drugs and organize girls into prostitution.</p>
<p>"They begin with a photo in the halls of the school. Afterward, they take her to a mall to buy her clothes. They give her a cellphone and pay for beauty treatments. If the girls want to get out of this, they're indebted for services rendered and receive threats," said Corrales.</p>
<p>The attraction for the girls, however, is that a 14-year-old can earn $500 a month in prostitution — more than a police officer's salary, Corrales says.</p>
<p>Last year, three students became pregnant after they were raped on the second floor of Montoya, according to a teacher. At the start of the new school year, officials called for protection, but when police tried to take back the school, gangsters threw furniture at them from the second floor. Police then took a softer approach — stationing officers at every door to keep a close eye on students. The gangsters retreated.</p>
<p>For the time being, authorities are back in control of Montoya, including the newly repainted second floor.</p>
<p>"We painted the walls inside the school three weeks ago. They'll come put their tags on them again, and we will paint them again," said teacher Marcio Pastrana. It is a routine he knows well after 35 years at the school.</p>
<p>"There are more good kids than bad," Pastrana reflected. "We do everything humanly possible, but the problem isn't in school, it's in society."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Only about a third of Honduran school children live with two parents, according to administrators. Many of their parents have headed north to look for work in the United States, while others have been killed or simply left the household. Many students don't have enough to eat, or work for several hours before and after school to help support their families. They are surrounded by violence in a country with the world's highest homicide rate.</p>
<p>A majority of Honduran children see a limited future for themselves: work as a laborer, a taxi driver or perhaps as a bus conductor, collecting coins from passengers and earning far less than they might by selling drugs or wielding a gun for the gangs.</p>
<p>Many children leave Honduras out of fear or in search of opportunity in the United States, often long before they finish school. The school districts do not have global dropout numbers, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it apprehended 18,244 unaccompanied Honduran children in fiscal year 2014, up dramatically from the previous year, after rumors circulated that they were being allowed to stay in the country.</p>
<p>School administrators say that teachers generally are more afraid of the gangs than the remaining students are, because so many children admire gangsters. In their eyes, the children of gang members are made, and in some neighborhoods, the offspring of two gang members, known as the "pure ones," are royalty. The gangs look for new members who have something to offer them: beauty, bravery or perhaps an empty house.</p>
<p>"An 11-year-old mentions at school that his grandmother has died and he can get the keys to the house that is empty," said Corrales. "The gang grabs the house and begins to use it, and that child doesn't get out of the gang."</p>
<p>Teachers, administrators and police acknowledge that the government's efforts to protect schools with military police and gang prevention programs are not yielding measurable results.</p>
<p>After the leader of a drug gang at the Republic of Panama School in the Buenos Aires neighborhood was killed in September, 20 gangsters were detained and their mates warned of reprisals. Thirty military police were deployed to provide protection, said Lt. Col. Nolasco. The result of the arrests, said a group of 11- to 14-year-olds, speaking on condition of anonymity, was more danger as another gang tried to muscle in.</p>
<p>"The situation is more complicated now," said a student.</p>
<p>Corrales, the gang prevention officer, arrived at the La Hera school in the northern neighborhood by the same name, on a recent afternoon to distribute her prevention handbooks and meet with the kids. Before she even got out of her pick-up truck, however, a group of children climbed into the back and put their hands behind their heads, mimicking detained gang members.</p>
<p>"This is the image of the gang leader," Corrales said. "The detainee is a somebody in the barrio, and those kids want to be a somebody."</p>
<p>TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — In primary and secondary schools of this Central American capital, "hallway" is not just another word for corridor but slang for a gantlet of gangsters who hit up instructors for money on the way to the classroom.</p>
<p>Teachers who don't pay, don't teach.</p>
<p>Gang prevention police distribute US-funded pamphlets on manners and anger management in about two thirds of the 130 public schools of Tegucigalpa. Gang members, meanwhile, circulate catalogues of their girls offering sexual services for sale.</p>
<p>It can't exactly be said that street gangs are recruiting in Honduran schools because gangs in Honduras don't need to recruit. In a country of limited opportunities, more schoolchildren want to join the violent Mara Salvatrucha, 18th Street and other newly formed gangs than the illegal bands can absorb.</p>
<p>What can be said is that, just as they control most of the neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa, street gangs rule over most public schools in the capital. Gangsters are students and students are gangsters, as are some of their parents. The gangs lay claim to buildings with graffiti, and monitor the movements of police who are trying to monitor them. When the government sends in the military to retake a neighborhood and its schools, the ruling gang may lay low for a time, but they can't stay quiet for long or competitors will move in, setting off a wave of violence.</p>
<p>"The schools are a base of organization for the gangs, and the point through which all children in the neighborhood pass," said Lt. Col. Santos Nolasco, spokesman for the joint military and police force in charge of security in the country of 8.2 million people.</p>
<p>Gangs rely on kids to do much of their illegal grunt work, knowing that even if they get caught, they won't face long jail sentences. More than a third of the estimated 5,000 gang members with criminal charges them against in 2010 were under 15 years old, according to the only study that examines age in gangs. This year, police say they have detained more than 400 minors for gang activity, including some as young as 12.</p>
<p>Poorly educated students may have to repeat a grade several times before passing exams, and police say some gangsters intentionally repeat years just to hold onto illegal operations in a school — their means of making a living. As a result, kids between the ages of 11 and 17 may be in the same class.</p>
<p>While most gang violence takes place outside of school, there have been rapes and kidnappings inside, and extortion is rampant. In addition to setting up the occasional gantlet, where a teacher has to cough up pocket money on the spot, gangs demand that educators pay 1,000 lempiras or about $50 a month, more than 10 percent of their salary.</p>
<p>"The extortion takes place through the school director, " said Liliana Ruiz, the Ministry of Education's director for Tegucigalpa. "They make an appointment with the director at the mall and he has to arrive with the money. In Honduras, the extortion has to be paid."</p>
<p>In many schools, the power of the gangs is omnipresent and once a gang takes control of a school, Ruiz said, the teacher has no choice but to get along with the gangsters, or ask to be moved. If a gang grabs a child from a classroom, most teachers know to keep quiet, even if the student is never heard from again.</p>
<p>"The fear is indescribable ... because these children are capable of anything," Ruiz said. "It is a climate of shocking desperation."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Yojana Corrales, a police officer with the capital's gang prevention unit, stops to speak with neighbors outside of El Sitio school for grades one through nine in northern Tegucigalpa, and immediately draws the attention of gangsters. One pulls up on a motorcycle, another on a bicycle, both carrying two-way radios, and they eavesdrop on her conversation.</p>
<p>"They're just checking up on what we're doing," Corrales explained.</p>
<p>With 15 years on gang details, Corrales is used to the scrutiny.</p>
<p>"We'll go into a school to hand out manuals and the gang will come in, take one and start reviewing it in front of us. They control what is said to the children," she said.</p>
<p>The front of the Jose Ramon Montoya Institute in eastern Tegucigalpa is painted with MS-13 graffiti, tags of the Mara Salvatrucha. Until recently, dozens of gangsters controlled the second floor of this primary and secondary school, using it as a base to sell drugs and organize girls into prostitution.</p>
<p>"They begin with a photo in the halls of the school. Afterward, they take her to a mall to buy her clothes. They give her a cellphone and pay for beauty treatments. If the girls want to get out of this, they're indebted for services rendered and receive threats," said Corrales.</p>
<p>The attraction for the girls, however, is that a 14-year-old can earn $500 a month in prostitution — more than a police officer's salary, Corrales says.</p>
<p>Last year, three students became pregnant after they were raped on the second floor of Montoya, according to a teacher. At the start of the new school year, officials called for protection, but when police tried to take back the school, gangsters threw furniture at them from the second floor. Police then took a softer approach — stationing officers at every door to keep a close eye on students. The gangsters retreated.</p>
<p>For the time being, authorities are back in control of Montoya, including the newly repainted second floor.</p>
<p>"We painted the walls inside the school three weeks ago. They'll come put their tags on them again, and we will paint them again," said teacher Marcio Pastrana. It is a routine he knows well after 35 years at the school.</p>
<p>"There are more good kids than bad," Pastrana reflected. "We do everything humanly possible, but the problem isn't in school, it's in society."</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Only about a third of Honduran school children live with two parents, according to administrators. Many of their parents have headed north to look for work in the United States, while others have been killed or simply left the household. Many students don't have enough to eat, or work for several hours before and after school to help support their families. They are surrounded by violence in a country with the world's highest homicide rate.</p>
<p>A majority of Honduran children see a limited future for themselves: work as a laborer, a taxi driver or perhaps as a bus conductor, collecting coins from passengers and earning far less than they might by selling drugs or wielding a gun for the gangs.</p>
<p>Many children leave Honduras out of fear or in search of opportunity in the United States, often long before they finish school. The school districts do not have global dropout numbers, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection says it apprehended 18,244 unaccompanied Honduran children in fiscal year 2014, up dramatically from the previous year, after rumors circulated that they were being allowed to stay in the country.</p>
<p>School administrators say that teachers generally are more afraid of the gangs than the remaining students are, because so many children admire gangsters. In their eyes, the children of gang members are made, and in some neighborhoods, the offspring of two gang members, known as the "pure ones," are royalty. The gangs look for new members who have something to offer them: beauty, bravery or perhaps an empty house.</p>
<p>"An 11-year-old mentions at school that his grandmother has died and he can get the keys to the house that is empty," said Corrales. "The gang grabs the house and begins to use it, and that child doesn't get out of the gang."</p>
<p>Teachers, administrators and police acknowledge that the government's efforts to protect schools with military police and gang prevention programs are not yielding measurable results.</p>
<p>After the leader of a drug gang at the Republic of Panama School in the Buenos Aires neighborhood was killed in September, 20 gangsters were detained and their mates warned of reprisals. Thirty military police were deployed to provide protection, said Lt. Col. Nolasco. The result of the arrests, said a group of 11- to 14-year-olds, speaking on condition of anonymity, was more danger as another gang tried to muscle in.</p>
<p>"The situation is more complicated now," said a student.</p>
<p>Corrales, the gang prevention officer, arrived at the La Hera school in the northern neighborhood by the same name, on a recent afternoon to distribute her prevention handbooks and meet with the kids. Before she even got out of her pick-up truck, however, a group of children climbed into the back and put their hands behind their heads, mimicking detained gang members.</p>
<p>"This is the image of the gang leader," Corrales said. "The detainee is a somebody in the barrio, and those kids want to be a somebody."</p> | In Honduran schools, gangs are in control | false | https://apnews.com/amp/f87ead82756b49739652601db71c6c43 | 2014-12-08 | 2 |
<p>In his National Prayer Breakfast speech last week, President Barack Obama said:</p>
<p>“And lest we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. … So this is not unique to one group or one religion.”</p>
<p>It is important to analyze these words — because the president of the United States spoke them in a major forum, and because what he said is said by all those who defend Islam against any criticism.</p>
<p />
<p>Referring to Islamic violence, the president accuses anyone who implies that such religious violence “is unique to some other place” — meaning outside the Christian West — as getting on a “high horse.”</p>
<p>Is this true? Of course, not. In our time, major religious violence is in fact “unique to some other place,” namely the Islamic world. What other religious group is engaged in mass murder, systematic rape, slavery, beheading innocents, bombing public events, shooting up school children, wiping out whole religious communities and other such atrocities?</p>
<p>The answer is, of course, no other religious group. Therefore massive violence in the name of one’s religion today is indeed “unique to some other place.” To state this is not to “get on a high horse.” It is to tell the most important truth about the world in our time.</p>
<p>Would the president have used the “high horse” argument 30 years ago regarding Western condemnation of South African apartheid?</p>
<p>Of course not. Because contempt for Western evils is noble, while contempt for non-Western, especially Islamic, evils is “to get on a high horse.”</p>
<p>The president then defends his statement that religious violence is not “unique to some other place” by providing Christian examples: first the Crusades and the Inquisition and then slavery and Jim Crow.</p>
<p>Before addressing the specific examples, a word about the timing. The Crusades took place a thousand years ago and the Inquisition five hundred years ago. Is it not telling that — even if the examples are valid (which they aren’t) — the president had to go back 500 and 1,000 years to find his primary Christian examples?</p>
<p>Doesn’t going back so far in the past render the argument a bit absurd? Imagine if the president had said, “When the Jews conquered Canaan in 1,000 B.C., they committed terrible deeds in the name of Judaism.” Anyone hearing that argument would have thought that the president had lost his mind. Yet he and almost everyone else who wishes to defend Islam raise the Crusades and the Inquisition. The president also mentioned slavery and Jim Crow, but it’s the Crusades and the Inquisition that are almost always used to equate Muslim and Christian evildoing.</p>
<p>Furthermore, it is difficult to see why comparing Muslim behavior today to Christian behavior a thousand or five hundred years ago provides a defense of Islam. On the contrary, isn’t the allegation that Islamic evil at the present time is morally equivalent to Christian evil a thousand years ago a damning indictment of the present state of much of Islam?</p>
<p>And as regards the substance of the charge, this widespread use of the Crusades and the Inquisition is ignorant of the realities of both. The Crusades were Christian wars to retake territories in the Holy Land that Muslims had forcefully taken from Christians. Unless the question of “who started it?” is morally irrelevant, and therefore all wars are immoral, the Crusaders’ war on Muslims in the Holy Land is a poor example of evil in the name of Christ.</p>
<p>Now, as it happens, there was terrible evil in the name of Christ during the Crusades — the wholesale massacre of Jews in Germany by various Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land. For the record, however, in no instance did the Church order these killings and in almost every case Jews sought and received aid and support from local bishops.</p>
<p>In any event, other than Jews, few people know of these massacres. Almost everyone who cites the Crusades as an example of Christian evil is referring to the Crusaders’ wars against Muslims.</p>
<p>As for the Inquisition, suffice it to say that it is now acknowledged among scholars that in its worst years — 1480 to 1530 — the Inquisition killed an average of 40 people a year. Each was unspeakably tragic and evil, but the Inquisition was benign compared to Boko Haram, al-Qaida, Islamic State, the Taliban, Hamas and the other Islamic terror organizations.</p>
<p>We live in an age of moral idiocy. Moral equivalence is the left’s way of resisting fighting evil. It did it during the Cold War when the U.S. and the Soviet Union were morally equated, and it is doing it now when it morally equates all religions and societies. Take, for example, this imbecilic equation by writer Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic, defending the president’s comments on Islam and Christianity by invoking slavery: “Americans have done, on their own soil, in the name of their own God, something similar to what ISIS is doing now.”</p>
<p>There is a major moral crisis in one religion on earth today — Islam. To say so is not to get on a high horse. It is to identify violent Islam as the greatest evil in the world since Nazism and Communism.</p>
<p>Dennis Prager’s latest book, “Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph,” was published by HarperCollins.</p>
<p /> | President compares Islam to Christianity | true | http://humanevents.com/2015/02/10/president-compares-islam-to-christianity/?utm_source%3Dhefbp%26utm_medium%3Dfbpage%26utm_campaign%3Dheupdate | 2015-02-10 | 0 |
<p>WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's lawmakers have approved a controversial electoral law that critics say will give the ruling party influence over the voting procedure and will allow more room for vote rigging.</p>
<p>The lower house voted late Wednesday to approve the legislation that will govern elections, beginning with local elections this fall. It was proposed by the ruling conservative Law and Justice party and is seen as favoring it. The party took power after winning elections in 2015 and immediately set about changing much of Poland's laws, including those governing the justice system.</p>
<p>The changes in the judiciary have drawn strong criticism from European Union leaders who say they threaten Poland's rule of law, and have opened a procedure that could strip the nation of its EU voting rights.</p>
<p>The new electoral law is expected to add to Poland's conflict with its EU partners.</p>
<p>Under the law, parliament is to appoint most members of the chief electoral commission, previously chosen by top courts. The term of the current members would expire prematurely in 2019. The interior minister would be empowered to propose candidates for election commissioners as well as the head of the bureau overseeing elections.</p>
<p>Additional markings and notes will also be allowed on the ballot sheet, a change that critics say will allow for vote-rigging.</p>
<p>The bill still needs the approval of President Andrzej Duda, who hails from the ruling party and is expected to sign it into law.</p>
<p>WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's lawmakers have approved a controversial electoral law that critics say will give the ruling party influence over the voting procedure and will allow more room for vote rigging.</p>
<p>The lower house voted late Wednesday to approve the legislation that will govern elections, beginning with local elections this fall. It was proposed by the ruling conservative Law and Justice party and is seen as favoring it. The party took power after winning elections in 2015 and immediately set about changing much of Poland's laws, including those governing the justice system.</p>
<p>The changes in the judiciary have drawn strong criticism from European Union leaders who say they threaten Poland's rule of law, and have opened a procedure that could strip the nation of its EU voting rights.</p>
<p>The new electoral law is expected to add to Poland's conflict with its EU partners.</p>
<p>Under the law, parliament is to appoint most members of the chief electoral commission, previously chosen by top courts. The term of the current members would expire prematurely in 2019. The interior minister would be empowered to propose candidates for election commissioners as well as the head of the bureau overseeing elections.</p>
<p>Additional markings and notes will also be allowed on the ballot sheet, a change that critics say will allow for vote-rigging.</p>
<p>The bill still needs the approval of President Andrzej Duda, who hails from the ruling party and is expected to sign it into law.</p> | Poland's lawmakers approve controversial electoral law | false | https://apnews.com/amp/fb981c039d0d433ba5922bc5c57ebc29 | 2018-01-11 | 2 |
<p>The professional networking service LinkedIn is suggesting the arrest of a Russian hacker suspected of cyberattacks in the United States was tied to a 2012 breach of member information.</p>
<p>Czech police arrested the Russian hacker on Oct. 5 at a Prague hotel. Police said Wednesday an international warrant for the man, who was not named, was issued by Interpol and said officers cooperated with the FBI on the case.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>In a statement hours later, LinkedIn said that following the breach, it has remained actively involved in the FBI's case. The statement said the company was "thankful for the hard work and dedication of the FBI in its efforts to locate and capture the parties believed to be responsible for this criminal activity."</p>
<p>A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.</p> | LinkedIn suggests hacker arrest tied to 2012 breach | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2016/10/19/linkedin-suggests-hacker-arrest-tied-to-2012-breach.html | 2016-10-19 | 0 |
<p>U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Friday that North Korea’s continuing missile tests threaten the entire world and stressed the United States was working closely with regional allies Japan and South Korea on the problem.</p>
<p>“In East Asia, an increasingly aggressive and isolated regime in North Korea threatens democracies in South Korea, Japan, and more importantly, and more recently, has expanded those threats to the United States, endangering the entire world,” Tillerson said to a gathering of the Community of Democracies.</p>
<p>“We first look to our regional allies South Korea and Japan. By working with them and other democratic partners, we continue to build consensus at the United Nations Security Council to create a united international front that upholds our values and strives to make us safer.”</p> | Tillerson: NKorea's Aggression Endangers 'Entire World' | false | https://newsline.com/tillerson-nkoreas-aggression-endangers-entire-world/ | 2017-09-15 | 1 |
<p>Job fair / AP</p>
<p>BY: <a href="" type="internal">Ali Meyer</a> January 6, 2017 10:03 am</p>
<p>The number of Americans not participating in the labor force hit a record 95,102,000 in December 2016, according to the latest <a href="https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm" type="external">numbers</a> released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</p>
<p>Last month, the number exceeded 95 million for the first time, with 95,084,000 Americans not participating.</p>
<p>The bureau counts those not in the labor force as people who do not have a job and did not actively seek one in the past four weeks.</p>
<p>The labor force participation rate, which is the percentage of the population that has a job or actively looked for one in the past month, increased from 62.6 percent in November to 62.7 percent in December.</p>
<p>The unemployment rate for all Americans increased from 4.6 percent in November to 4.7 percent in December. This measure does not account for those individuals who have dropped out of the labor force and simply measures the percentage of those who did not have a job but actively sought one over the month.</p>
<p>The "real" unemployment rate, otherwise known as the U-6 measure, was 9.2 <a href="https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab15.htm" type="external">percent</a> in December.</p>
<p>Democrats such as Sen. Bernie&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Sanders</a> (I., Vt.) and Federal Reserve chair Janet&#160; <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/yellen-unemployment-rate-less-rosy-when-you-count-part-time-discouraged" type="external">Yellen</a> have said this measure accounts for discouraged workers and those working part time instead of full time for economic reasons and is more representative of the labor market.</p>
<p>There were 5,598,000 <a href="https://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab8.htm" type="external">Americans</a> working part-time in December who would rather have a full-time job but cited economic reasons for not having such employment.</p>
<p>According to&#160; <a href="http://www.bls.gov/cps/lfcharacteristics.htm" type="external">the bureau</a>, involuntary part-time workers are "persons who indicated that they would like to work full time but were working part time (1 to 34 hours) because of an economic reason, such as their hours were cut back or they were unable to find full-time jobs."</p>
<p>The National Federation of Independent Businesses evaluates trends data and conducts surveys of small-business owners and members to see how businesses are operating in the economy. They <a href="http://www.nfib.com/foundations/research-foundation/monthly-reports/jobs-report/" type="external">found</a> that 16 percent of small firms say they plan to create new jobs and there was a slight gain of 0.01 average workers per firm.</p>
<p>"With promises of lower taxes and less regulation, small business owners are becoming more enthusiastic about investing in their business," said NFIB Chief Economist William Dunkelberg. "The labor market is tightening, however, which makes it more difficult for employers to find qualified workers. Until the employment participation rate increases with more people trying to reenter the workforce, that will be a short-term challenge for small businesses."</p>
<p>"After years of ball-and-chain regulations, high taxes, and spiraling health insurance costs, small business owners are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel," said NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan. "President-elect Trump has staked out policies that small business owners favor, and he has backed them up with impressive cabinet nominations."</p> | Record 95,102,000 Americans Not Participating in Labor Force | true | http://freebeacon.com/issues/record-95102000-americans-not-participating-labor-force/ | 2017-01-06 | 0 |
<p>NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya today became the first state to quit&#160;the&#160;International Criminal Court, in a move to show support for the&#160;country's political leaders, who are due to be tried for crimes&#160;against humanity, and that marks a blow against international justice.</p>
<p>In an emergency session Thursday, Kenya’s parliament voted to withdraw&#160;from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC.</p>
<p>The court’s prosecutors charged President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy&#160;President William Ruto with masterminding the ethnic-based violence&#160;that killed more than 1,100 people and forced some 600,000 to flee&#160;their homes following the 2007 presidential election.</p>
<p>Ruto’s trial on three charges, including murder, begins next week.&#160;Kenyatta faces five charges — including murder and rape — in a trial&#160;that will begin in November.</p>
<p>Kenyatta and Ruto’s Jubilee Coalition dominates both the National&#160;Assembly and the Senate, where members slammed the court as a&#160;politically motivated and “neocolonial” institution.&#160;</p>
<p>Kenyatta is only the second sitting leader to be charged by the&#160;criminal court. Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir was the first. In May, the African Union branded the court "racist" for prosecuting mainly African leaders.&#160;</p>
<p>“This is the latest attempt to undermine international justice and&#160;discredit the process,” said Gladwell Otieno, executive director of&#160;the Africa Centre for Open Government (AfriCOG), a Nairobi-based civil&#160;society organization.</p>
<p>“Over the years, time and again, at the national and regional levels&#160;and at the [United Nations] Security Council, we’ve seen attempts to&#160;undermine the court and undercut support for it,” Otieno said.</p>
<p>Kenyatta and Ruto insist they will cooperate with the ICC. The court&#160;only got involved in Kenya after lawmakers repeatedly failed to set up&#160;a local tribunal, and after Kenya’s police and judiciary failed to&#160;even begin investigations of their own.</p>
<p>After the disputed 2007 election, angry supporters of opposition candidate Raila Odinga turned on those — usually identified by tribe — they believed had voted for incumbent President Mwai Kibaki. Kibaki supporters attacked members of Odinga's tribe in retaliation, and marauding gangs burned, hacked and raped their opponents in weeks of violence.&#160;</p>
<p>At the time, Kenyatta was Kibaki's right-hand man and Ruto Odinga's loyal ally.&#160;</p>
<p>They joined forces this year in a power-sharing deal that saw them win elections in March.</p>
<p>Maina Kiai, a prominent Kenyan human rights activist, executive director of the organization InformAction and a UN special rapporteur, said the influence of Kenyatta and Ruto over parliament is clear.</p>
<p>Around 100 lawmakers said they will travel to the ICC at The Hague for the opening of the trials, and have lined up at the Dutch Embassy&#160;in Nairobi to apply for visas.</p>
<p>“They are in total control of the politicians in their party who would&#160;not act without the support and acquiescence of these two guys,” Kiai&#160;said of the president and his deputy. “It would be naïve to think [the&#160;parliamentarians] are doing it on their own.”</p>
<p>But while the vote played well with Kenya’s ruling party and its&#160;supporters, it will not halt the trial and may only hurt Kenya’s&#160;international standing, rights advocates warn.</p>
<p>William Pace of the Coalition for the ICC, a global network of civil&#160;society organizations, says Kenya’s exit from the treaty will have no&#160;legal impact on current cases, including Kenya’s.</p>
<p>ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, a lawyer from Gambia, said the&#160;Kenyan case would continue despite the vote.</p>
<p>“Kenya gains no legal advantage by withdrawing from the ICC,” Pace&#160;said. “The Rome Statute makes quite clear that obligations related to&#160;existing investigations continue even in the event of a withdrawal.”</p>
<p>But If Kenyatta and Ruto fail to appear, the court could issue arrest&#160;warrants or ban the leaders from traveling.</p>
<p>“It’s extremely damaging for Kenya’s reputation to be seen to be&#160;seriously supporting moves that may end up in us becoming a pariah&#160;state,” Otieno said.</p>
<p>“The message all along has been that this is about the President and Deputy President not the victims,” she said. “The message is that the victims don’t matter.”</p> | Kenya becomes first country to withdraw from International Criminal Court | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-09-05/kenya-becomes-first-country-withdraw-international-criminal-court | 2013-09-05 | 3 |
<p>Eagle cams, which allow viewers to live-stream the births of the majestic birds, are once again all the rage as hatching season begins.&#160;</p>
<p>As of Monday, the Eagle cam in Decorah, Iowa&#160;had over 4 million views and over 52,000 current views, <a href="http://www.longislandpress.com/2012/03/27/decorah-eagle-cam-beak-breaks-through-first-egg-video/" type="external">Long Island Press reported.</a></p>
<p>Last year, Decorah's Eagle Cam was the most popular feed on Ustream in 2011, with thousands tuning in to watch the little eaglets hatch, <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/eagle-cam-first-egg-watch/" type="external">according to Wired</a>.&#160;</p>
<p>Wired has been keeping a close watch on the Decorah camera, and reported on Monday that one of the eaglets was hatching.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.alcoa.com/locations/usa_davenport/en/info_page/eaglecam.asp" type="external">The Alcoa Eagle Cam</a> in Davenport, Iowa welcomed three new eaglets on Monday, <a href="http://articles.kwch.com/2012-03-26/eaglets_31242361" type="external">KWCH of Iowa reported</a>. The Alcoa web camera showed the new birds' mom and dad Justice and Freedom feeding and caring for their young, according to KWCH.&#160;</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/ireland/100611/eagle-conservation" type="external">Eagles in Ireland face extinction - again</a></p>
<p>Eagles in Iowa typically lay eggs in late February or early March, which hatch in late March or early April. The eaglets grow quickly and are ready to fly by late May or early June.</p>
<p>The first Decorah egg was laid on February 17 and was expected to hatch on March 23 or 24. The other two eggs are likely to hatch in the upcoming two weeks, <a href="http://www.collegenews.com/article/eagle_cam_voyeurs_witness_the_birth_of_national_emblem" type="external">according to College News</a>. Each eaglet take between 12 to 48 hours to hatch, so avid Eagle Cam enthusiasts have plenty of time to soak up the wonder of watching baby eagles be born.&#160;</p>
<p>Iowa isn't the only state to adopt the Eagle cam trend: there is also a popular live stream out of Richmond, Virginia (whose two eaglets have yet to hatch), and cities all over the US have set up cameras near nesting sites in order to chronicle eagle chick births, College News reported.&#160;</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://www.ustream.tv/everywhere" type="external">Live video from your Android device on Ustream</a></p> | 'Eagle cams' across the US live-stream eaglet births (VIDEO) | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-03-27/eagle-cams-across-us-live-stream-eaglet-births-video | 2012-03-27 | 3 |
<p>Shares of some top credit card companies are mixed at 10 a.m.:</p>
<p>American Express Co. fell $.56 or .6 percent, to $95.28.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Capital One Financial Corp. fell $.99 or 1.2 percent, to $83.96.</p>
<p>Discover Financial Services fell $.36 or .6 percent, to $62.89.</p>
<p>Mastercard fell $.22 or .3 percent, to $76.41.</p>
<p>Visa Inc. rose $.41 or .2 percent, to $216.92.</p> | Credit Card companies shares mixed at 10 a.m. | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/03/31/credit-card-companies-shares-mixed-at-10-am.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>A company’s intangible assets help provide a strong competitive advantage over other businesses, and one exchange traded fund strategy has honed in on this attribute to help investors get a leg up on the market. “Although not always easy to quantify, intangible assets are one of the primary sources of strong competitive advantages for businesses… <a href="https://www.etftrends.com/smart-beta-channel/translating-intangible-assets-into-an-outperforming-etf-strategy/" type="external">Click to read more at ETFtrends.com. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Translating Intangible Assets into an Outperforming ETF Strategy | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/07/11/translating-intangible-assets-into-outperforming-etf-strategy.html | 2017-07-11 | 0 |
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<p>Many twitter users have been scratching their heads as they try to figure out what really happened in Sweden. Hilarious jokes about getting lost in an Ikea have been posted alongside photos of Swedish pop group ABBA accompanied by comments about the Fish candy. President Donald Trump has ignited a social media firestorm after he alleged that something nefarious had recently taken place in Sweden.</p>
<p>Speaking at the campaign rally in Melbourne, Florida, Trump pointed out at what's happening in Sweden, adding that no one would believe it. Trump continued saying that Sweden took in large numbers and as a result the country is having problems like they never thought possible. However, Trump did not specifically say that there was a terror attack, thus leaving his audience to speculate, he however pointed out at the attacks that have occurred in Paris and Nice, France.</p>
<p>To set everything into perspective, Trump tweeted on Sunday afternoon clarifying that he's intent was to infer to a story that was broadcasted on @FoxNews concerning immigrants &amp; Sweden. It's without a doubt that the President's statements prompted several hashtags trends on Twitter such as #PrayForSweden, #LastNightInSweden, #swedenincident, in the speech which blasted fake news. Trump's statements came several weeks after senior adviser Kellyanne Conway cited a nonexistent Bowling Green massacre in several news interviews.</p>
<p>In retaliation, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt tweeted saying "Sweden? Terror Attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound,"</p>
<p>The Sweden Twitter account also tweeted a thread after Trump's initial statements saying that nothing has happened in Sweden, adding that there has not been any terrorist attacks at all. The same account retweeted again saying that if anyone had missed it, nothing had happened in Sweden and that there's no terrorattack or anything of the sort.</p>
<p />
<p>In an interview on Friday night's Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox News segment interviewed Ami Horowitz on a documentary he is making about Sweden. Horowitz is a filmmaker and media personality, he claimed that there's an absolute surge in gun violence and rape in Sweden after they began the open-door policy.</p>
<p>The 2016 Swedish Crime Survey pointed out that the crime rates have remained steady, with some fluctuations over the past decade and a small spike in 2013 before a down trend was observed. Horowitz also blasted Sweden saying that the country often tries to cover up these crimes.</p>
<p>Amidst the jokes on Twitter, users defended Trump by citing the 2012 U.N. report which points out that Sweden has had the highest rate of police-recorded rape offences in Europe.</p>
<p>SOURCE: <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-sweden-twitter-235196" type="external">politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-sweden-twitter-235196</a></p> | Trump's Sweden Comments Ignite Social Media Firestorm | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/1405-Trump-s-Sweden-Comments-Ignite-Social-Media-Firestorm | 2017-02-19 | 0 |
<p>On Tuesday, February 7th, President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education billionaire Betsy DeVos was approved by the Senate. &#160;Despite intense protest and defection of two Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, Vice President Pence, as President of the Senate, cast the tie-breaking vote. &#160;This is the first time in American History a vice president had to vote to confirm a presidential cabinet pick. &#160;This unprecedented event demonstrates the unpopularity of Devos and displays Trump’s antipathy for public education.</p>
<p>Betsy Devos, a wealthy Republican fund-raiser and philanthropist is a major supporter of school vouchers, private schools, charter schools, homeschooling, and “digital learning”, but has absolutely no experience with public education. Holding the highest education position where she will be responsible for running a 4,400-employee organization with a $68 billion budget will be her first job in the field. Devos never attended public school, did not send her kids to public school, never worked in education and does not have any academic background in education. &#160;She will now be in charge of nearly 100,000 public school across the country and over 50 million children.</p>
<p>During my 12 years as a teacher, I have experienced first hand the failed initiatives that have attempted to “reform” education. &#160;These include No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top and Common Core. Though well intentioned, these strategies have frustrated, demoralized and driven away many teachers. Nevertheless, the biggest threat to the sustainability of public education is the privately-run charter schools that Ms. Devos has spent her fortune supporting. &#160;</p>
<p>Charter schools began in 1990 in Minnesota and were originally conceived as teacher-run schools. Charters operated outside the reach of the administrative bureaucracy and school boards and served students that traditional schools weren’t able to properly educate such as dropouts and students with low motivation.</p>
<p>But within a few years, many early supporters grew concerned that charter schools were opening the door to corporations taking over and administering public funds to make a profit. &#160;Running schools “like a business” is supposed to create more efficiency. However, this takes money away from public schools, destabilizes them, and creates more income for management. &#160;For example, two charter schools in New York State – Success Academy run by Eva Moskowitz and The Harlem Children’s Zone run by Geoffrey Canada – have annual incomes of almost $500,000.</p>
<p>Now that DeVos the Secretary of Education, she will attempt to do what she did in Michigan across the country. &#160;About 80% of Michigan’s charter schools are run by for-profit companies. &#160;Detroit especially displays the devastating effects the business model has had on public education. The city’s schools, where 83% of students are black and 74% live in poverty, have been in steady decline since charter schools started operating. &#160;Test scores in math and reading have remained among the worst in the nation. This is because charters are highly selective, admitting mostly higher-performing students and discriminate against special needs children and those who exhibit “behavioral” problems.</p>
<p>Charters are siphoning money away from schools that are already overburdened and underfunded. A recent study from <a href="https://www.educ.msu.edu/epc/" type="external">the Michigan State University’s Education Policy Center</a> found that under the state’s school choice and finance laws, it was hard for districts to keep traditional public schools afloat when charters reached 20% or more of enrollment. While per-student public funding follows kids to charters, traditional public schools still have fixed costs to cover, like building maintenance and faculty salaries.</p>
<p>Betsy DeVos and the billionaires she represents view public education as a profit-making venture instead of a fundamental democratic right. Unless DeVos can be stopped, her policies will do to public education what “market reform” has done for housing, healthcare, and the economy: produce lavish profits for a few and unequal access for many. &#160;Those who support for-profit charter schools are distracting the public from the real issues facing our children. America has a shameful child poverty rate (over 20%), communities suffer from underfunded schools, and our society has a broken criminal justice system that sends too many young people to jail instead of college. There’s no question that America’s schools need to be fixed, but more importantly, we need to fix our democracy.</p>
<p>Paul Donnelly teaches&#160;US History and Government at Poughkeepsie High School in New York.</p> | Betsy DeVos and the War on Public Education | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/02/22/betsy-devos-and-the-war-on-public-education/ | 2017-02-22 | 4 |
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<p>Vermont Senator <a href="http://www.uvm.edu/~dceweb/aiken/libbio.html" type="external">George Aiken</a> once offered LBJ a succinct Vietnam exit strategy along the lines of “declare victory and get out.” And of course, it’s been quoted by <a href="http://www.williamgreider.com/article.php?article_id=24" type="external">a</a> <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0912-07.htm" type="external">ton</a> <a href="http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/03/how_to_get_out_.html" type="external">of</a> <a href="http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_08_07_dish_archive.html#112390861511027538" type="external">folks</a>. But failing that unilateral approach, Robert Dreyfuss has a <a href="http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&amp;name=ViewWeb&amp;articleId=10139" type="external">piece</a> on what international Iraq peace talks might look like. He argues that talking our way out might be the best way to avoid a civil war-like disintegration of Iraq. The most important question: what resistance forces actually get invited? (Apparently the Russians have some thoughts about that guest list.)</p>
<p>But first, says Dreyfuss, the U.S. would first have to publicly concede that it won’t win the war militarily, issue widespread amnesty for Baathist-era crimes, and draw back to bases in Iraq only to venture out for protective purposes. I won’t disagree that that would be what it would take to get any sort of negotiations going—and those steps seem to mostly be an honest reckoning about the facts on the ground. Of course I don’t have much faith in the administration facing up like that. But Dreyfuss has the broad outlines of a plan that occupation opponents can work with; and it’s far more sensible than the stay the course/ blame Bush/and hope for the best <a href="http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_08_14_atrios_archive.html#112412357543709128" type="external">non-thinking</a> that Senator Biden flacked this weekend on Meet The Press, or the cut-n-run <a href="http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=53071" type="external">strawman</a>.</p>
<p /> | How to Get Out | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/08/how-get-out/ | 2005-08-15 | 4 |
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<p>Investors have had a rough time withSunoco LP(NYSE: SUN)stock in recent years. It peaked in 2014 before promptly face-planting in each of the next two years, including a 32% loss in 2016. A falling share price wasn't entirely unwarranted.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The growth-oriented master limited partnership has experienced a massive transformation under its new parent companies,Energy Transfer PartnersandEnergy Transfer Equity, which own 46% and 2%, respectively. While a flurry of merger and acquisition activity boosted its retail segment, it also led to a deteriorating balance sheet. Throw in depressed gasoline and diesel prices and, well, you arrive at a stock that has fallen short of creating shareholder value outside of its impressive 12% dividend yield.</p>
<p>The good news is that oil prices are on the mend, and growing retail sales continue to generate strong cash flow. In fact, there are a handful of reasons Sunoco LP stock could rise in 2017 and beyond.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Sunoco LP reports operations in two segments: wholesale and retail. The former includes 6,900 dealers, distributors, and commercial customers that combine for a majority of the company's total annual fuel volumes sold. That amounted to 5.1 billion gallons, representing two-thirds of total gallons sold, on a pro forma basis in 2015.</p>
<p>The latter includes 1,345 locations that sold $2.2 billion in merchandise and 2.5 billion gallons of fuel on a pro forma basis in 2015. Although retail may not be the first thing most people consider when they see the familiar Sunoco logo, it's an incredibly important part of the company's future growth. In fact, it always has been -- with 27 consecutive years of same-store merchandise sales growth.</p>
<p>There are several reasons the retail segment could lead to an increasing stock price. First, retail helps to diversify revenue streams at Sunoco LP, which has played an important role in keeping the company cash flow-positive in the current commodities down cycle.</p>
<p>Second, merchandise and fuel sales at retail locations are inherently high-margin. Each gallon of fuel sold at a retail location contributed $0.235 in gross profit in the first nine months of 2016, compared with just $0.10 for each gallon sold through a wholesaler. Together, merchandise and fuel sales from retail locations were responsible for 69% of total pro forma gross profit in 2015.</p>
<p>Image source: Sunoco investor presentation.</p>
<p>Third, Sunoco LP has a strong retail growth strategy in place. Organic growth sources include new store layouts that boast a larger footprint and generate 200% to 300% more cash flow than smaller legacy stores, 452 (and growing) Laredo Taco Company locations that attract higher traffic, and an exclusive partnership with Dunkin' Donuts in Hawaii.</p>
<p>Simply put, retail locations punch well above their weight class for investors -- and continued investments will lead to even stronger future cash flow.</p>
<p>The recent acquisition spree led to swelling debt levels and a decrease in liquidity. While management is attempting to fight back with organic growth in the long term, it also has a short-term weapon to deploy: selling off real estate assets. Sunoco LP recently announced its intention to sell more than 100 locations, including company-owned fuel distribution locations, undeveloped plots of land, and other "excess" real estate.</p>
<p>The diverse portfolio of real estate holdings spans 15 states and will be sold through a sealed-bid process. Interested parties can buy one property, multiple properties, or the entire slate of locations. Sunoco LP has not estimated the value of the properties or disclosed how it will allocate the proceeds from any potential sales. The most likely outcome is to use the extra cash to pay down debt, specifically current liability items, which increased 28% from March to September of last year.</p>
<p>Investors will know for sure shortly after the March 7 and April 4 deadlines for bids, but selling unnecessaryassets to strengthen the core business can't go wrong.</p>
<p>A focus on paying down debt doesn't stop with a one-off real estate auction. Management recently amended the company's $1.5 billion revolving credit facility and $2 billion term loan agreement. The new agreement affords the company increased financial flexibility in the short term, with an understanding that debt levels must be reduced to specific levels starting in 2018 and ending in 2019. Here are the specified maximum leverage ratios and the dates by which Sunoco LP must achieve them:</p>
<p>Data source: Sunoco LP.</p>
<p>To be fair, reducing the maximum leverage ratio could be done without reducing debt levels, but a quick look at the company's balance sheet shows that focusing on debt reduction will be the healthiest way to achieve each incremental step-down. Total debt increased from $2.4 billion in September 2015 to $4.5 billion in September 2016 -- an increase of 82% in just one year!</p>
<p>This is a win-win for the company and investors. Less debt means lower interest expenses, which means improved profitability and (likely) increased distribution payouts. That's especially true considering that Sunoco LP paid $132 million in interest in the first nine months of 2016, which ate up $2.67 per share. That's nearly equal to the annual distribution of $3.32 per share.</p>
<p>After being relisted on the NYSE in 2014, Sunoco LP has undergone a significant transformation that has added retail and wholesale growth opportunities alike. The quick injection of assets was accompanied by a steady increase in debt and, unfortunately, coincided with a collapse in oil prices. The important takeaway is that management has a solid plan in place to execute on the next phase of the transformation: extracting maximum value from recently acquired assets and lowering debt levels over time. That will increase the company's credit rating, improve profitability, allow for increased distribution payouts, and provide several reasons for Sunoco LP stock to rise.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Sunoco 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=dd3477be-1455-4aaf-bb1f-6b00d2cf34b8&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 Sunoco wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of January 4, 2017</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. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Reasons Sunoco LP Stock Could Rise | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/08/18/3-reasons-sunoco-lp-stock-could-rise.html | 2017-02-03 | 0 |
<p />
<p>The world's seventh-largest container shipping company, Hanjin Shipping, filed for bankruptcy in September. <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/18/how-will-bankruptcy-of-shipping-giant-hanjin-hit-r.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">This much you know Opens a New Window.</a>. What you maynotknow is that the big problem afflicting Hanjin affects notjustHanjin -- but U.S.-listed container shipping companiesCostamare(NYSE: CMRE),Danaos(NYSE: DAC), andSeaspan(NYSE: SSW), foreign operators such as Nippon Yusen and Maersk -- indeed, every container shipping company on the globe.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The container shipping industry could use a few tugs to pull it out of a funk. Image source: Getty Images.</p>
<p>This problem, in a word, is "oversupply", and the low prices container shipping companies must charge as a result of it. Simply put, there's currently too much container ship supply, competing for too little demand for containers to ship. According to <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/shipping-executive-sees-grim-year-for-worlds-biggest-shipping-firms-1477935060" type="external">The Wall Street Journal Opens a New Window.</a>, container shipping companies need to be able to charge at least $1,400 per month that a container is in transit to break even on the cost of shipping it.</p>
<p>But in fact, rates for this service currently average "less than $700 a container a month." That's barely enough to cover the cost of the fuel needed to run the container ships, much less the cost of building, maintaining, and manning the ships themselves. But since these ships have been built already, and must be paid for, operators are forced to run them simply for the cash flow.</p>
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<p>Result: The top 20 container ship operators are expected to report combined losses up to $10 billion this year.</p>
<p>The situation is not without hope. As American economist Herbert Stein once wrote, "if something cannot go on forever, it will stop."</p>
<p>Obviously, if container shipping companies as a group continue to lose $10 billion a year, then eventually, the weaker ones will go out of business. The supply of container shipping services will then decrease, oversupply will vanish, and the companies that do not go bankrupt will again be able to charge rates that permit them to earn a profit -- for themselves and for their shareholders.</p>
<p>In fact, the Journal reports that this process is already under way -- but it will not wrap up in a day. Bankrupt companies such as Hanjin will sell off part or all of their fleets to other operators, slowing the rate at which container ships vanish from the seas, and delaying the recovery. But over time, the process will play out. It's a logical necessity. Our task as investors is to try to figure out which companies will survive to see the end of the process and invest in them.</p>
<p>So who will survive the inevitable shakeout in the container shipping industry? That's probably going to be a function of the companies' current debt levels, and the cash they can generate to service that debt. Unsurprisingly in a capital intensive business like container shipping, each of the three U.S.-listed container shipping stocks named above has some debt -- $1.5 billion at Costamare, $2.6 billion for Danaos, and $3.1 billion for Seaspan.</p>
<p>As for the cash needed to pay down that debt, Danaos is in the best shape, with $278 million in trailing free cash flow and a history of generating cash profits since 2013. Costamare is likewise FCF-positive, and has been so since 2014. Seaspan, however, hasn't generated positive free cash flow since 2013, and was running a $165 million annual FCF deficit at last report according to data from <a href="https://www.capitaliq.com/" type="external">S&amp;P Global Market Intelligence Opens a New Window.</a>. It's also the only one of the three firms to report negative GAAP earnings for the past 12 months.</p>
<p>With an enterprise value-to-free cash flow ratio of approximately7.9, a 6.4% dividend yield, and a 5% projected growth rate, Costamare appears to have a good chance of weathering the storm in container shipping, and producing good profits for investors on the other side. Danaos is more expensive with an EV/FCF ratio of 10.2, and it pays no dividend.</p>
<p>But it's Seaspan that worries me most. Analysts give Seaspan stock the advantage on growth rates (projecting 14% annualized profits growth over the next five years), while investors love Seaspan's beefy 14.7% dividend yield. Still, the company's expensive enterprise value -- $3.6 billion -- combined with its lack of free cash flow, make it the least likely value candidate of the bunch.</p>
<p>In full knowledge that I'm going against the consensus here, torpedo to my head, I have to say that Seaspan looks the most likely ship to sink. Costamare seems the best prospect to make it back to port. And Danaos? Meh. With no dividend and no published growth rate expectations to rely on, I just doubt it's worth the risk.</p>
<p>A secret billion-dollar stock opportunity The world's biggest tech company forgot to show you something, but a few Wall Street analysts and the Fool didn't miss a beat: There's a small company that's powering their brand-new gadgets and the coming revolution in technology. And we think its stock price has nearly unlimited room to run for early in-the-know investors! To be one of them, <a href="http://www.fool.com/mms/mark/ecap-foolcom-apple-wearable?aid=6965&amp;source=irbeditxt0000017&amp;ftm_cam=rb-wearable-d&amp;ftm_pit=2691&amp;ftm_veh=article_pitch&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">just click here Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Fool contributor <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFDitty/info.aspx" type="external">Rich Smith Opens a New Window.</a>does not own shares of, nor is he short, any company named above. You can find him on <a href="http://caps.fool.com/" type="external">Motley Fool CAPS Opens a New Window.</a>, publicly pontificating under the handle <a href="http://caps.fool.com/ViewPlayer.aspx?t=01002844399633209838" type="external">TMFDitty Opens a New Window.</a>, where he's currently ranked No. 333 out of more than 75,000 rated members.</p>
<p>Rich's reservations notwithstanding, The Motley Fool recommends Seaspan. 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> | Best of the Worst: Can We Find a Container Shipping Company to Invest In? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/11/08/best-worst-can-find-container-shipping-company-to-invest-in.html | 2016-11-08 | 0 |
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<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lamar Odom is breaking his silence with his first post on Twitter since the NBA star was arrested and charged with driving under the influence last month.</p>
<p>Odom tweeted “Seeing the snakes” on Tuesday night in his first post since his Aug. 30 arrest.</p>
<p>He followed with an extended tweet from his verified account that referenced his estranged father.</p>
<p>“Won’t continue 2 speak on this but I have got 2 let this out real quick. I have let this man and many others get away with a lot of (expletive). He wasn’t there 2 raise me. He was absent ALL of my life due to his own demons. My mother and grandmother raised me. Queens raised me,” Odom tweeted.</p>
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<p>He went on to credit the family of his wife Khloe Kardashian for being “the ONLY ones that have been here consistently 4 me during this dark time. Only person 2 blame is myself. Say what you want about me but leave the ones who have done nothing but protect and love me out of this! This goes out to everyone!”</p>
<p>Odom has been mostly silent on Twitter for nearly three months, although on July 12 he tweeted in part, “Wifey is real,” a reference to Kardashian.</p>
<p>Odom, who played for the Los Angeles Clippers last season, is a free agent and has yet to sign with a team. NBA training camps open next week.</p> | NBA’s Lamar Odom breaks silence via Twitter | false | https://abqjournal.com/268798/nbas-lamar-odom-breaks-silence-via-twitter.html | 2013-09-25 | 2 |
<p>Two studies suggest living longer may come with a number of troublesome symptoms and a high risk of disability that increase caregiving needs in the twilight years of life.</p>
<p>In the first study, reported online in JAMA Internal Medicine, the prevalence of disability increased from 14 percent among people who died at ages of 50 to 69 to 50 percent of those who died at ages 90 or older. Women had a 50 percent greater risk of disability in the last two years of life than did men.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p>Charles Bankheard at MedPage Today:</p>
<p />
<p>A second study reported in the journal showed that the frequency of symptoms that restricted activity increased as the time to death decreased, reaching 57.2% in the last month before death.</p>
<p>The proportion of adults older than 85 is expected to reach 19.4 million in 2050, more than triple the rate in 2008. Although many people in their 80s and 90s continue to live independently, the likelihood of disability increases with advancing age.</p>
<p>Despite the well-recognized demographic changes, relatively little is known about the likelihood of disability during the last months of life, the authors noted in their introduction. Even less is known about variations by age, sex, and socioeconomic status.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/TheGuptaGuide/Geriatrics/40319?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2013-07-09&amp;utm_content=&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=DailyHeadlines&amp;utm_source=WC&amp;eun=g124025d0r&amp;userid=124025&amp;[email protected]&amp;mu_id=5122889" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Would You Pay the Price of a Longer Life? | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/would-you-pay-the-price-of-a-longer-life/ | 2013-07-20 | 4 |
<p><a href="/images/2012/07/IMG_1514.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Photo by Juan Cole, LaMarsa, Tunisia, May 2012</p>
<p>(Note that if you are viewing with an internet browser, you can enlarge the photo by pressing Control and the plus sign.)</p>
<p>In May, the upscale neighborhood of LaMarsa in the northeast of Tunis commemorated the hundredth anniversary of its founding. A street was blocked off, with contemporary Tunisian rock music playing and street artists chalking the street, and local artists displaying their works. Many exulted in Free Tunisia (La Tunisie libre or al-Tunis al-hurrah) I thought these three pieces made an interesting triptych!</p>
<p>About a month later, a small group of hard line Salafi fundamentalists <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/salafi-islamists-police-clash-tunis-witnesses-022334919.html" type="external">disrupted an art exhibit in LaMarsa that they deemed religiously offensive.</a> For more on this incident and the art involved, see <a href="" type="external">this report by Cornell's Middle East Collection Blog</a>. I think it was mainly a stunt; it is not as though Salafis are numerous in Tunisia or as if anyone in La Marsa cares what they think. Some 58% of seats in parliament went to secular or centrist parties and individuals in October, 2011, and if the Salafis go on this way they may well push the country, as with Libya, toward the secular nationalists.</p> | Street Art in Honor of 100 Years of LaMarsa, Tunisia (Photo) | true | http://juancole.com/2012/07/street-art-in-honor-of-100-years-of-lamarsa-tunisia-photo.html | 2012-07-18 | 4 |
<p>In his first major comment on race and race relations in our nation since his “A More Perfect Union Speech” on March 18, 2008, President Barack Obama called for frank discussion about race last week. In both a speech to the <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/National+Urban+League" type="external">National Urban League</a> and on the ABC daytime talk show “The View,” the president talked about race relations in the context of the political controversy over last month’s firing of longtime Agriculture Department employee <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Shirley+Sherrod%20" type="external">Shirley Sherrod</a>.</p>
<p>Obama agreed with those who have been calling for some sort of national conversation on race beyond CNN’s “Black in America” and “Latino in America.” He invited us to “look inward” and find the space to have “mature” dialogues about “the divides that still exist.” For Obama, these honest conversations should be based on our personal experiences and occur “around kitchen tables and water coolers and church basements.” However, many are left wondering whether Obama’s remarks represent a racial dialogue initiative or a post-racial accomplishment.</p>
<p>Here’s a question we might consider: Does Obama want us to talk about race while he effectively sidesteps the conversation himself?</p>
<p>Obama appeared to begin his part of the conversation with a statement and a story that deserve attention. The statement, aired on “The View,” was an answer to questions about Obama’s own experience as an African-American of multiracial ancestry. As the president put it, “We are sort of a mongrel people.” Elaborating on his use of what can be considered an offensive term, he said, “I mean we’re [African-Americans] all kinds of mixed up. That’s actually true of white people as well, but we just know more about it.”</p>
<p />
<p>Some might argue that statements like this one are clever attempts to use multiracial identity to sanitize the country’s history of chattel slavery and racist discrimination. After all, Obama made no mention of how black and white people got “all kinds of mixed up” in the first place. It follows that if we hear Obama from this perspective, then we may be hearing a call to transcend race without getting beyond racial inequalities. On the other hand, there are those who assert that Obama makes use of his multiracial identity to do precisely the opposite: to acknowledge racial division as well as its problems and awkwardness. If we hear Obama from this perspective, then we can identify with the call for a more equitable future without “bogus” racial controversies and can recognize the giant strides made since the slavery and segregation eras.</p>
<p>The second of Obama’s noteworthy remarks is a story that closed his speech to the National Urban League. The story is about a letter “from Na’Dreya Lattimore, 10 years old — about the same age as [his daughter] Sasha.” In the letter Na’Dreya wrote “about how her school had closed, so she had enrolled in another. Then she … bumped up against other barriers to what she felt was her potential. So Na’Dreya was explaining … how we need to improve our education system. She closed by saying this … ‘You need to look at us differently. We are not black, we’re not white, biracial, Hispanic, Asian, or any other nationality.’ No, she wrote — ‘We are the future.’ Na’Dreya, you are right.”</p>
<p>By agreeing with Na’Dreya it seems that Obama is inviting us to consider perspectives of the next generation, which sees the possibility for liberation from the burden of older racial narratives. By focusing on the ways in which individuals and societies can create positive change through open dialogue, Obama presents us with an occasion to reconsider what W.E.B. Du Bois called “the problem of the color line.” But therein lies the paradox. By agreeing with Na’Dreya, Obama ignores a racially differentiated nation. And, as a result, important questions raised by this letter go unanswered. Why did Na’Dreya’s school close? What were the “other barriers” that hindered the girl’s potential?</p>
<p>Few can embody and embrace these changing concepts of race talk like President Obama. His multiracial identification allows him to relate and communicate with multiple audiences, suggesting that it can be a tool to question the construction of the color line. However, because multiracial identification capitalizes on the absence of reliable evidence of difference among racial groups, it begs the question of whether we can actually say anything about race now that differs substantially from what we have been able to say about it historically. In light of this, it may be most appropriate to understand our present moment as our president suggests: as one of racial dialogue initiation and not as a post-racial monologue or epilogue.</p> | Obama on the Color Line | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/obama-on-the-color-line/ | 2010-08-07 | 4 |
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<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Edward Cebada, 21, was sentenced Friday in the 2nd Judicial District Court to 7 1/2 years in prison for the sexual abuse of a minor, the state Attorney General’s Office Prosecutions Division said in a news release.</p>
<p>Cebada pleaded guilty in March to two counts of sexual penetration of a minor and one count of child solicitation by electronic communication device, the release said.</p>
<p>After his release from prison, Cebada will be on parole for five to 20 years and will be required to register as a sex offender for life, according to the AG’s Office.</p>
<p>There also is a pending case against Cebada in Sandoval County, which could add another 4 1/2 years to his prison sentence if he is convicted, the release said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | N.M. man sentenced for child sex abuse | false | https://abqjournal.com/224682/n-m-man-sentenced-for-child-sex-abuse.html | 2013-07-23 | 2 |
<p>When a New York City radio station suggested using Bruce Springsteen lyrics to pair with live-tweeting Wednesday night's presidential debate, it seemed as if the internet was born to run with it.</p>
<p>Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton's final face-off produced a number of "Boss"-inspired tweets featuring lyrics playing off of what the candidates were saying.</p>
<p>WNYC radio host Brian Lehrer asked Twitter users to take up his challenge with the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/brucethedebate?src=hash" type="external">#BrucetheDebate</a> — a request that was even acknowledged by Springsteen's <a href="https://twitter.com/springsteen" type="external">official Twitter account</a>.</p>
<p>Here are some of the more rousing song lyrics matching the mood of the debate:</p>
<p>From "It's a Shame":</p>
<p>From "Atlantic City":</p>
<p>From "Devils &amp; Dust":</p>
<p>From "Rocky Ground":</p>
<p>From "Tunnel of Love":</p>
<p /> | #BrucetheDebate: Springsteen Lyrics Used to Highlight Trump-Clinton Debate | false | http://nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/brucethedebate-springsteen-lyrics-used-highlight-trump-clinton-debate-n670076 | 2016-10-20 | 3 |
<p>WASHINGTON D.C.&#160; - Marqueece Harris-Dawson, a longtime community leader in South Los Angeles, asked a financially struggling mother what she thought about the suggestion that, unless she pays federal taxes, she doesn't have "skin in the game."</p>
<p>The mother looked Harris-Dawson squarely in the eyes and told him that her son is serving in Iraq. "Don't tell me that I don't have skin in the game," she said.</p>
<p>Harris-Dawson, president and CEO of Community Coalition, related this encounter while moderating a July 26 discussion by Washington D.C.?s leading tax policy analysts and researchers of a <a href="" type="internal">new report</a> "Skin in the Game: The Federal Tax System, Tax Reform, and Poor Families."</p>
<p>The report and panel discussion couldn't be more timely as lawmakers are debating whether Bush-era tax cuts should be extended or allowed to expire - and who will benefit. Marguerite Casey Foundation, which provides grants to organizations in some of the poorest states in the country, published "Skin in the Game" to make sure low-income families are not forgotten in the debate, which so far has focused solely on businesses and the wealthy.</p>
<p>The report, researched and written by Michael Evans of K&amp;L Gates, emphasizes that progressive federal tax reform is necessary for families to work, save, and make economic progress. It also points out that low income families do pay taxes including payroll taxes, and they pay a proportionately higher rate of state and local assessments, such as sales tax.</p>
<p>"It is clear from this report that every family has skin in the game," said Luz Vega-Marquis, president and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation. "We need to level the playing field to give families the opportunity to work, to rise out of poverty and to thrive. Propping up government shortfalls on the backs of poor working families is a losing game plan."</p>
<p>Panelists for the discussion of "Skin in the Game" were William Beach of the Heritage Foundation; William Gale with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center; Chuck Marr with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute. Their audience included congressional staff, representatives from the U.S. Department of Treasury, key financial committees, the Congressional Black Caucus and others.</p>
<p>Conservative panelists said boosting businesses and encouraging economic growth and economic opportunity will do more in the long run to raise families out of poverty.</p>
<p>"The best anti-poverty program would be a rapidly growing economy," said William Beach, director for data analysis at the Heritage Foundation. "If people pay taxes, they feel the cost of government more acutely, we want people to be in the tax system and be involved financially in their government."</p>
<p>Alan Viard, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said dating back to the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s, federal policies have been firm that no one in poverty would pay federal income tax. "Now we are way beyond that," he said, "Programs can't grow forever. Spending cuts and tax increases will have to be made if we want to maintain programs."</p>
<p>Progressive panelists lamented even needing to talk about taxing the nation's poorest families.</p>
<p>William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center noted that there is no indication that people who don't pay federal income tax have a lower sense of civic responsibility.</p>
<p>"There is no evidence that they will support bigger government," he said.</p>
<p>Panelist Chuck Marr, director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, urged continuing the Earned Income Tax Credit, calling it a "tremendous success in keeping families afloat and encouraging people to work."</p>
<p>He said eight million more people would be plunged into poverty if they were required to pay federal income tax.</p>
<p>Marr also underscored an essential point in the report, urging lawmakers to give careful consideration to how tax reform can improve the condition of poor families, or at the very least "do no harm."</p>
<p>More panel discussions on <a href="http://caseygrants.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Skin_in_the_game41.pdf" type="external">"Skin in the Game"</a> are being scheduled for the fall in New Mexico and Florida.&#160;</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Contact author</a></p>
<p>&#160;&#160; <a href="" type="internal">cliff</a>, <a href="" type="internal">EITC</a>, <a href="" type="internal">federal</a>, <a href="" type="internal">fiscal</a>, <a href="" type="internal">income</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Luz Vega-Marquis</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Marguerite Casey</a>, <a href="" type="internal">Poverty</a>, <a href="" type="internal">skin in the game</a>, <a href="" type="internal">tax</a>, <a href="" type="internal">tax reform</a>, <a href="" type="internal">William Beach</a>, <a href="" type="internal">William Gale</a></p> | Yes, Poor Families Do Have 'Skin in the Game' | true | http://equalvoiceforfamilies.org/yes-poor-families-do-have-skin-in-the-game/ | 4 |
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<p>The following is EPPC Fellow Mary Rice Hasson’s contribution to <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420420/same-sex-marriage-obergefell-supreme-court" type="external">National Review Online’s symposium</a> on the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.</p>
<p>What’s next after Obergefell? Religious liberty is on shaky ground. Tax exemptions of religious institutions will be attacked if their policies (employee benefits, married-student housing, etc.) do not recognize same-sex “married” couples. And while the Court (magnanimously) observed that the First Amendment still protects the right of religions to “teach” and “advocate” for their beliefs, this language appears to shrink religious freedom to the same space already occupied by free-speech claims. Further, though Justice Roberts noted wryly that there’s no “’Nobility and Dignity’ Clause in the Constitution,” the current Court’s sympathy for “stories” of gay and lesbian hurt means we can expect other aggrieved individuals also to tug at the Court’s heartstrings. Polyamorists want their “dignity” too.</p>
<p>And what’s next for us? Justice Roberts acknowledged that the traditional view of marriage,&#160;now rejected by the Court,&#160;was based on the “nature of things.” Here is where our work lies, for this ruling upends the truth about “the nature of things.” Our children — in schools, media, and government actions — will be inundated with lies about the new “nature of things,” that same-sex marriage is, well, just the same. It’s up to us to speak the truth.</p>
<p>— Mary Rice Hasson is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and editor of Promise and Challenge: Catholic Women Reflect on Feminism, Complementarity, and the Church.</p> | The Supreme Court Has Legalized Same-Sex Marriage: Now What? | false | https://eppc.org/publications/the-supreme-court-has-legalized-same-sex-marriage-now-what/ | 1 |
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<p>Q: What percentage of Sonia Sotomayor’s opinions have been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court?</p>
<p>A: Of the majority opinions that Judge Sonia Sotomayor has authored since becoming an appellate judge in 1998, three of them have been overturned by the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>FULL ANSWER:</p>
<p>Our search for appellate opinions by Sotomayor on the LexisNexis database returned 232 cases. That’s a reversal rate of 1.3 percent.</p>
<p>But only five of her decisions <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/26/sotomayor.resume/index.html" type="external">have been reviewed</a> by the justices. Using five as a denominator, the rate comes out to 60 percent.</p>
<p>We have contacted Rush Limbaugh to ask how he came up with the figure he used recently when he <a href="http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_052609/content/01125106.guest.html" type="external">said</a>, "She has been overturned 80 percent by the Supreme Court." We’ll update this item if we receive a response. (See our May 29 update at the end for how Limbaugh may have calculated his 80 percent figure, and why we judge it to be mistaken.) In the week before President Barack Obama announced that he would nominate Sotomayor, the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network ran an Internet ad saying she had a "100 percent reversal rate," which is false. (We asked that group for back-up material, which a spokesman agreed to give us but which we never received; since Obama’s announcement, the group has taken the ad down.)</p>
<p>In any case, 60 percent of the cases the Supreme Court has reviewed is not a particularly high number. In any given term, the Supreme Court normally reverses a higher percentage of the cases it hears. During its 2006-2007 term, for instance, the Court <a href="http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&amp;context=georgetown/cpr" type="external">reversed or vacated</a> (which, for our purposes here, mean the same thing) 68 percent of the cases before it. The rate was 73.6 percent the previous term.</p>
<p>In two of the three Sotomayor reversals, at least some of the more liberal justices dissented, agreeing with her holding.</p>
<p>The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of June on the much-discussed Ricci v. DeStefano case in which Sotomayor took part. It’s not publicly known whether she wrote the unsigned, one-paragraph order in the reverse discrimination case involving firefighters in New Haven, Conn., to which all three of the judges hearing the case agreed. (That order later became an <a href="http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f61456c2-5165-4fa3-a03f-257b1df418fe/5/doc/06-4996-cv_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f61456c2-5165-4fa3-a03f-257b1df418fe/5/hilite/" type="external">official opinion with the same wording</a> at the behest of other 2nd Circuit judges.) The decision, upholding the ruling of the lower-court judge who first heard the case, said the city was justified in not certifying the results of an exam required for firefighters to be promoted after no African Americans scored highly enough to be considered.</p>
<p>(Note: We haven’t analyzed cases in which Sotomayor merely voted with the majority, only those in which she is on record as having written the majority opinion. She also may have written some unsigned opinions or orders, such as the one in the Ricci case above, but we have no way of knowing if that’s true or if so, how many she may have written.)</p>
<p>–Viveca Novak</p>
<p>Update, May 29: We wrote above that we didn’t know how Rush Limbaugh had calculated that Sotomayor “has been overturned 80 percent by the Supreme Court.” Since we posted, however, an alert reader has pointed us to something else Limbaugh said in the same May 26 show:</p>
<p>Rush Limbaugh: The Supreme Court has reversed Judge Sotomayor in four instances where it granted certiorari to review an opinion she authored. "In three of these reversals, the Court held that Judge Sotomayor erred in her statutory interpretation," meaning she goofed up on the law. She was overturned four times when she wrote the opinion, the lead opinion, and in three of the four cases the Supreme Court held that she erred in her statutory interpretation. The cases are Knight v. C.I.R., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner &amp; Smith, Inc. v. Dabit, New York Times, Inc. v. Tasini, and Correctional Servs. Corp. v. Malesko. The cases are 2008, 2006, 2001, and 2001. So there you have it.</p>
<p>Four out of five – as we noted above, Sotomayor has had five appellate decisions reviewed by the Supreme Court – is 80 percent. But Limbaugh is wrong on his cases, and thus wrong in his calculation. First, in Knight v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Sotomayor’s decision wasn’t “overturned” at all. In fact, <a href="http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-1286.pdf" type="external">it was upheld unanimously</a>, though the justices faulted her reasoning.</p>
<p>Second, New York Times v. Tasini was one of Sotomayor’s 442 rulings as a district court judge. Limbaugh is correct that the Supreme Court <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-201.ZS.html" type="external">upheld</a> the appellate court ruling that had reversed her decision.</p>
<p>But we have not dived into her lower court jurisprudence, as opposed to her appellate majority opinions, nor have we seen a reliable analysis of it done by anyone else. We don’t know how many of her decisions in district court were appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, or what their disposition was. And third, Limbaugh didn’t include Entergy v. Riverkeeper, which was a clear reversal by the justices. Eliminating the cases Limbaugh shouldn’t have included and adding back in the one he should have brings us back to 60 percent.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/b8b33a43-ade1-4202-879f-e0954c2d391e/5/doc/04-6692-ag_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/b8b33a43-ade1-4202-879f-e0954c2d391e/5/hilite/" type="external">Riverkeeper, Inc. v. EPA</a>, Nos. 04-6692-ag(L) et al. 2d Cir., 25 Jan 2007.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f0b648bf-8c12-4fd4-98c9-326acae21158/3/doc/03-7499_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f0b648bf-8c12-4fd4-98c9-326acae21158/3/hilite/" type="external">Dabit v. Merrill Lynch</a>, Nos. 03-7499 and 03-7458. 2d Cir., 11 Jan 2005.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f61456c2-5165-4fa3-a03f-257b1df418fe/5/doc/06-4996-cv_opn.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/f61456c2-5165-4fa3-a03f-257b1df418fe/5/hilite/" type="external">Ricci v. DeStefano</a>, No. 06-4996-cv. 2d Cir., 9 June 2008.</p>
<p><a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=2nd&amp;navby=case&amp;no=997995" type="external">Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp.</a>, No. 99-7995. 2d Cir., 6 Oct 2000.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-860.ZS.html" type="external">Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko</a>, No. 00-860. Supreme Ct. of the US, 27 Nov 2001.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-588.pdf" type="external">Entergy Corp. v. Riverkeeper, Inc</a>. Nos. 07-588, 07-589 and 07-597. Supreme Ct. of the US,&#160; 1 Apr 2009..</p>
<p><a href="http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1371.pdf" type="external">Merrill Lynch v. Dabit</a>, No. 04-1371. Supreme Ct. of the US, 21 Mar 2006.</p> | Sotomayor Overturned? | false | https://factcheck.org/2009/05/sotomayor-overturned/ | 2009-05-28 | 2 |
<p />
<p>“Opposition is true friendship.” William Blake&#160;</p>
<p>Conflict occurs frequently in human affairs because it has an important function. It is not unlike pain calling attention to physical impairments that require fixing.</p>
<p>Conflict directs our attention to places where civic arrangements have become untenable and holds our attention until we restore order. It alerts us to obstructions and demands that we remove them. In other words, conflict serves adaptation.</p>
<p>In our common social life, conflicts emerge as political issues. For example, health care demands our attention because the once synergistic relationship between quality and cost has deteriorated. Once upon a time, state-of-the-art health care was affordable. That meant access and autonomy worked seamlessly together in a private relationship between patient and doctor. Now we find innovative, expansive health care colliding with affordable health care. &#160;How do we re-balance the field?</p>
<p>The two sides of a conflict are opposites that attract. Between them, the two sides define the size of the problem. Between them, they spur mental juggling to sort options and ultimately select remedial action.</p>
<p>In health care, we observe that liberals focus on guaranteed access while conservatives focus on individual autonomy and choice. Between them, they define the problem since most of us want both—guaranteed access and individual autonomy and choice. Poles apart? Yes. Are both poles necessary for a complete, satisfactory solution? Yes.</p>
<p>So when we say that liberals and conservatives are “poles apart,” we actually mean they are partners. They are complements. They need each other.</p>
<p>When we typically use the term “poles apart,” we imply something quite different. We seem to envision two North Poles repelling each other.</p>
<p>But let us suppose that we are inadvertently on to something, that the two parties really are “poles apart.” Suppose the North Pole, then, is “personal liberty” and the South Pole is “social compact.” The North Pole says, “To thine own self be true.” The South Pole says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Wisdom resides in both places.</p>
<p>Granted, identifying these two poles with our political parties is something of a stretch. The purity of Democrats and Republicans is mostly hypothetical. &#160;But can we not see a crude attempt to stand for an eternal verity? When the Republicans, for example, rail against government control, are they not attempting to follow the lead of personal liberty? When the Democrats, for example, rail against bankrupting families and excluding patients with pre-existing conditions, are they not attempting to follow the lead of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you?”</p>
<p>We need our polarizing leaders to recognize that they are articulating the North and South Poles of any given issue. “Poles apart” makes them partners, not rivals.&#160;</p>
<p>The more competitive they are, the more dysfunction they perpetuate. If liberals argue that they will not cut any health care benefits, they mean they are willing to ignore cost. Ultimately, costs will spiral out of control and the benefits won’t materialize anyway. Rather than facing the problem and making reasonable trade-offs, they are proposing a “false choice” which says we do not have to make adjustments, which really just makes the dysfunction deeper. If conservatives think we should maintain only private insurance, they ignore problems of bankrupting families over medical costs, turning people away for pre-existing conditions, and so on. By focusing on one-side only, they make the dysfunction worse.</p>
<p>Conflict should be calling us to cooperate. We all own the same “polar balance” issue. How can the interests of one pole (e.g., autonomy and choice) line up with the interest of the other side (e.g., access)? If politicians are not looking for the solution that effectively aligns the two poles, they are not doing their job. If we do not support them in finding the alignment, then we are not doing ours.</p>
<p>We all need to understand that it takes two poles to keep earth intact. It takes two poles to create one sound policy. It is okay to show how big earth needs to be. It is not okay to think earth can survive as a north or south pole cluster detached from its partner.</p>
<p>It takes two sides to make a coin. We need to recognize that heads (liberty) and tails (e pluribus unum) refer to the same coin.</p>
<p>Our public policy life seems better told as a tale of two “goods,” two things we all need, two things we cannot live well without: independence and togetherness, uniqueness and sameness.</p>
<p>Our goal is to find balance and flow between the two boundaries, neglecting neither. Let’s ask our politicians to use both principles at the same time.</p>
<p>Are we “poles apart?” Exactly! And that should be our salvation.</p>
<p>Nancy Lippincott</p>
<p>Nancy Lippincott and her husband, Jonathan Lippincott, teach a course called “The High Cost of Bipartisanship” at the University of Cincinnati’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, which led to his drafting this piece.</p> | Opposites Attract: Rethinking Partisanship | false | https://nolabels.org/blog/opposites-attract-rethinking-partisanship/ | 2012-06-26 | 2 |
<p>WisdomTree has launched a new global equity exchange traded fund that specifically excludes exposure to Mexican markets, which has suffered in the wake of Donald Trump’s election day win as an increasingly protectionist stance dampened Mexico’s export-heavy economic outlook. On Friday, WisdomTree rolled out the WisdomTree Global ex-Mexico Equity Fund (NYSEArca: XMX). XMX comes with… <a href="http://www.etftrends.com/2017/02/a-timely-global-equity-etf-play-sans-mexico-exposure/" type="external">Click to read more at ETFtrends.com. Opens a New Window.</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | A Timely Global Equity ETF Play Sans Mexico Exposure | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/02/10/timely-global-equity-etf-play-sans-mexico-exposure.html | 2017-02-10 | 0 |
<p>New York Daily NewsBy Paul ColfordDuring the long buildup to war in Iraq, a few online services have taken their first confident steps toward becoming live, 24/7 Internet news networks.</p>
<p>"This is an infant that can stand up and become a full-fledged human being, or fall flat on its face," <a href="http://www.ABCNews.com" type="external">ABCNews.com</a> senior vice president Bernard Gershon said of his company's venture.</p>
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<p />
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<p /> | Web Services Get Ready for Battle | false | https://poynter.org/news/web-services-get-ready-battle | 2003-03-18 | 2 |
<p>What you will find in my new book Mohammed's Koran might well shock you, because this book turns upside down the lie that "Islam is a religion of peace."&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Anyone who just turns to the Koran contained in my book will see within minutes why it is that devout followers of Mohammed engage in terrorist violence and beheadings.</p>
<p>Live in the UK? Get Mohammed's Koran in paperback through Amazon.co.uk by <a href="https://tinyurl.com/MohammedsKoran" type="external">clicking HERE</a>. Let's get it to #1!</p>
<p>Live in the US, Canada or elsewhere? You can pre-order the Kindle version Mohammed's Koran <a href="http://amzn.to/2eUnmZ4" type="external">HERE through Amazon</a>. It comes out on July 31.</p>
<p>(PS: Don't have a Kindle?&#160;No problem: You can read the Kindle version of Mohammed's Koran on your tablet, desktop computer, laptop and cell phone. Just download the FREE Amazon Kindle app at the same time you order your book.)</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Get Tommy Robinson's NEW book 'Mohammed's Koran' - before it's banned | true | https://therebel.media/get_tommy_robinson_s_new_book_mohammed_s_koran_before_it_s_banned | 2017-07-31 | 0 |
<p>All 31 utilities stocks in the S&amp;P 500 are rallied Friday as falling Treasury yields fueled by a very disappointing December jobs report boost the allure of dividend-paying stocks. &#160;Utility companies are also big borrowers, so lower interest rates should improve profitability (call it a two-fer).</p>
<p>S&amp;P 500 Utilities Stocks Surge</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Utility Stocks Rally After Dec. Job Gains Miss Views | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/01/10/utility-stocks-rally-after-dec-job-gains-miss-views.html | 2016-03-06 | 0 |
<p>A <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll-mood-idUSKBN1332NC?il=0" type="external">Reuters/Ipsos national Election Day poll</a> taken after voters had cast their ballots found some revealing reasons as to why Donald Trump scored a historic victory on Tuesday night, and why he tapped into many voters’ deepest feelings.</p>
<p>Echoing a theme that Trump hammered home time and again throughout his presidential campaign, 76% of voters agreed that "the mainstream media is more interested in making money than telling the truth."</p>
<p>In a stinging rebuke to the ineptitude and moral lassitude of the Obama Administration legacy., 57% of voters felt that "more and more, I don't identify with what America has become."</p>
<p>As per the consistent refrain from Trump that he wanted to attack the establishment in the federal government, 68% of voters believed that "traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me."</p>
<p>The worry that voters felt about the future, and their desire for a change of direction, was evidenced by this: 54% of voters felt "it is increasingly hard for someone like me to get ahead in America."</p>
<p>75% voters agreed that "America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful," a sentiment Trump tapped into by slamming Wall Street.</p>
<p>In a stinging rebuke to the ineptitude and moral lassitude of the Obama Administration legacy., 57% of voters felt that "more and more, I don't identify with what America has become.</p>
<p>Over 10,000 voters in 50 states were surveyed by the poll. More results will be forthcoming.</p> | Poll: Three Quarters Of Americans Said Media Didn’t Care About The Truth | true | https://dailywire.com/news/10635/poll-three-quarters-americans-said-media-didnt-hank-berrien | 2016-11-09 | 0 |
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<p>One city managed to avoid the situation — Bismarck, North Dakota, the center of government in the oil-rich state and home to 67,000 people. Others, including Des Moines, Iowa, didn’t, despite protests that led to arrests.</p>
<p>At issue is whether a breach in the $3.8 billion project, being built by Dallas-based parent company Energy Transfer Partners, will affect drinking water, given that it crosses more than 200 water bodies, including the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers. While utility officials in Iowa acknowledge it’s likely there’ll be an issue in the future, they’re confident a leak won’t affect the quality of the water.</p>
<p>“I think it’s important to note that it isn’t a matter of if there’ll be eventually some kind of leak or rupture of the pipeline it’s a matter of when and so we certainly want to be vigilant and have measures in place,” Des Moines Water Works CEO Bill Stowe said.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Energy Transfer Partners counters that the 1,170-mile pipeline will be safe, with devices placed throughout to track pressure, temperature, density and flow that’ll be monitored around the clock by people who can remotely shut off oil flow. Such emergency valves are on either side of the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, ETP spokeswoman Vicki Granado said.</p>
<p>Pipe was laid early this month under the Des Moines River, and the route also crosses the Raccoon or its tributaries at three locations upstream from Des Moines, a city of more than 200,000 residents.</p>
<p>Stowe, whose utility has a half-million customers, said there is a plan to deal with an oil leak, and he works with the U.S. Department of Transportation to ensure regular inspections and appropriate flow-stopping measures. He’s more concerned about more commonplace water threats: spills from tanker trucks carrying anhydrous ammonia or petroleum products, as well as farm wastewater spills, sewage leaks and other contaminants.</p>
<p>The Dakota Access pipeline also crosses underneath the Mississippi River, which is a source of water for about 4,000 people in the southeast corner of Iowa and close to a water-treatment plant for the city of Keokuk. The utility’s officials voiced concerns to the Iowa Utilities Board, telling them that a preferred a route would be south of the city’s intake, but the route wasn’t changed. A leak could reach the intake within an hour.</p>
<p>Up in North Dakota, an early plan had the Dakota Access pipeline crossing the Missouri River 10 miles north of Bismarck, but the government rejected it in September 2014 because of the potential drinking water supply threat, the number of water and wetland crossings and proximity to homes, documents show.</p>
<p>Instead, it was run near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, which depends on water from Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir. The tribe took ETP to court over the water threat as well as threats to cultural artifacts, and an encampment protest on federal land swelled to thousands at one point.</p>
<p>On Dec. 4, the Army decided to keep ETP from drilling under the river and look at alternate routes — preventing the completion of the pipeline for now.</p>
<p>Protesters also tried to stop the pipeline from crossing the Des Moines River, confronting workers. But they weren’t successful.</p>
<p>Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director for the Iowa-based environmental group Science and Environmental Health Network, noted the frustration she felt while watching the drilling and pipe installation. She has filed legal challenges and criticized the regulatory process for pipeline permitting, saying the layers of bureaucracy makes it difficult for citizens to be heard in any significant way.</p>
<p>“The problem is a very little bit of oil can make a very big mess,” she said. “We don’t want to drink any oil.”</p> | Not just Standing Rock: Water sources along pipeline at risk | false | https://abqjournal.com/909727/not-just-standing-rock-water-sources-along-pipeline-at-risk.html | 2016-12-15 | 2 |
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