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<p>We have to give Trump credit for one thing. He’s a great showman and knows just what to say to capture the attention of his audience. Unfortunately, he also has a selfish habit of using that talent to make everything about him. For example, during his address regarding Hurricane Harvey, he bragged about the size of the crowds in attendance.</p>
<p>‘What a crowd, what a turnout,” Trump said from atop this firetruck, addressing hurricane victims.’</p>
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<p>This hurricane was the first real test of Trump’s ability to serve as a comfort to a hurt nation and this line proves he’s off to a poor start. Obsessing about the crowd sizes at campaign rallies is one thing, but bragging about them during an event that is supposed to provide comfort and support to those devastated by a natural disaster is another. In response to this, many people took to Twitter to voice their frustrations.</p>
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<p>Featured image via <a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/837575404" type="external">Getty Images.</a></p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Trump Attempted To Brag About Crowd Size During Hurricane Visit; Karma Happens Instantly | true | http://bipartisanreport.com/2017/08/29/trump-attempted-to-brag-about-crowd-size-during-hurricane-visit-karma-happens-instantly/ | 2017-08-29 | 4 |
<p>Republicans Steve King and Chuck Grassley responded to a report from the Associated Press that a deal was made between President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.</p>
<p>Wednesday night the AP tweeted:</p>
<p>BREAKING: Schumer, Pelosi announce deal with Trump to protect young immigrants; will include border security, but no wall.</p>
<p>— The Associated Press (@AP) <a href="https://twitter.com/AP/status/908147079758925825" type="external">September 14, 2017</a></p>
<p>Rep. King, R-Iowa, responded that if such a deal were made, Trump’s base would be “destroyed.”</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump" type="external">@RealDonaldTrump</a> If AP is correct, Trump base is blown up, destroyed, irreparable, and disillusioned beyond repair. No promise is credible. <a href="https://t.co/uJjxk6uX5g" type="external">https://t.co/uJjxk6uX5g</a></p>
<p>— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveKingIA/status/908160999756312576" type="external">September 14, 2017</a></p>
<p>Grassley called on Trump to have his staff brief Grassley on the deal:</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump" type="external">@realDonaldTrump</a> Morn news says u made deal w Schumer on DACA/hv ur staff brief me/ I know u undercut JudiCimm effort 4 biparty agreement</p>
<p>— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) <a href="https://twitter.com/ChuckGrassley/status/908272229821149184" type="external">September 14, 2017</a></p>
<p>Trump himself responded to the report, tweeting that <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/Politics/trump-daca-deal-immigrant/2017/09/14/id/813495/" type="external">“no deal was made.”</a></p> | King, Grassley React to Alleged DACA Deal With Democrats | false | https://newsline.com/king-grassley-react-to-alleged-daca-deal-with-democrats/ | 2017-09-14 | 1 |
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Colts held a meeting this week to ensure the team was headed in the same direction.</p>
<p>Players only. No coaches.</p>
<p>“It was a chance for a player, if he wanted to leave, it was a chance to leave and not be crucified,” said receiver Reggie Wayne, who called the meeting along with other veterans. “It was a chance for us as a team to really figure out if everybody was on the same page going forward and what we need to do.”</p>
<p>Indianapolis is locked into the No. 4 seed in the playoffs set to being next week. The Colts have no chance of moving up or down in the seeding process unless the Bengals and Steelers would happen to tie this week.</p>
<p>Right now, though, the Colts (10-5) are looking for a win over the Titans (2-13) on Sunday. They want to gain some momentum heading into the postseason.</p>
<p>Depending on the outcome of Sunday’s game between Pittsburg and Cincinnati, Indy is expected to face the loser of that game in the Wild Card round.</p>
<p>Coach Chuck Pagano said he hasn’t looked ahead to Indy’s potential playoff opponents, and has spent his time only on preparing for Tennessee.</p>
<p>Still, Pagano said, he has people on the Colts staff who do “advance work” and have things in place for the team to begin preparing for the first playoff game with the opponent is announced.</p>
<p>“All that stuff, all the information, all the film, it’s already broken down in the computers,” he said. “Everything’s laid out, so once we’re done with the regular season, we can jump right on it.”</p>
<p>The Colts are coming off a 42-7 loss at Dallas last week in one of the team’s worst performances of the season. Wayne described the loss a wake-up call and a slap in the face, which is why Pagano has emphasized the importance of Indy finishing on a positive note.</p>
<p>“We need to go try to win,” Pagano said. “We need to get this taste out of our mouth and we need to go into the playoffs feeling good about ourselves.”</p>
<p>The Colts had little trouble with the Titans in a 41-17 win back on Sept. 28 and Tennessee has only won once since. A win this week would mean the Colts finish 6-0 against AFC South division opponents for the second straight year.</p>
<p>Wayne brushed aside the notion that the regular-season finale against the Titans was a meaningless game for the Colts. Sure, a win wouldn’t be much momentum for Indy to take into the postseason, he acknowledged, but every little bit helps.</p>
<p>“I don’t that you could say coming off a one-game winning streak is considered to be hot,” Wayne said. “But, in my opinion, the hot team going in is the team that does well. One way to get hot is to start with one game.”</p>
<p>Staying focused isn’t all that difficult to do, according to offensive tackle Anthony Castonzo, even with the playoff’s set to start next week.</p>
<p>“It’s our job so at the end of the day it’s our job to get the job done on every play, regardless of who we’re playing, regardless of where in the season it is,” he said. “It’s pride before everything else. You want to win every rep regardless of whether it, ‘matters’ or not.”</p>
<p>Notes: Pagano said tight end Dwayne Allen (knee), offensive tackle Gosder Cherilus (groin), and linebacker Bjoern Werner are out this week against Tennessee. . Receiver T.Y. Hilton (hamstring) saw limited practice time this week after missing last week’s game at Dallas, but Pagano said Hilton is questionable for Sunday’s game along with linebacker Jerrell Freeman (hamstring) and offensive tackle Joe Reitz (ankle).</p>
<p>INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Colts held a meeting this week to ensure the team was headed in the same direction.</p>
<p>Players only. No coaches.</p>
<p>“It was a chance for a player, if he wanted to leave, it was a chance to leave and not be crucified,” said receiver Reggie Wayne, who called the meeting along with other veterans. “It was a chance for us as a team to really figure out if everybody was on the same page going forward and what we need to do.”</p>
<p>Indianapolis is locked into the No. 4 seed in the playoffs set to being next week. The Colts have no chance of moving up or down in the seeding process unless the Bengals and Steelers would happen to tie this week.</p>
<p>Right now, though, the Colts (10-5) are looking for a win over the Titans (2-13) on Sunday. They want to gain some momentum heading into the postseason.</p>
<p>Depending on the outcome of Sunday’s game between Pittsburg and Cincinnati, Indy is expected to face the loser of that game in the Wild Card round.</p>
<p>Coach Chuck Pagano said he hasn’t looked ahead to Indy’s potential playoff opponents, and has spent his time only on preparing for Tennessee.</p>
<p>Still, Pagano said, he has people on the Colts staff who do “advance work” and have things in place for the team to begin preparing for the first playoff game with the opponent is announced.</p>
<p>“All that stuff, all the information, all the film, it’s already broken down in the computers,” he said. “Everything’s laid out, so once we’re done with the regular season, we can jump right on it.”</p>
<p>The Colts are coming off a 42-7 loss at Dallas last week in one of the team’s worst performances of the season. Wayne described the loss a wake-up call and a slap in the face, which is why Pagano has emphasized the importance of Indy finishing on a positive note.</p>
<p>“We need to go try to win,” Pagano said. “We need to get this taste out of our mouth and we need to go into the playoffs feeling good about ourselves.”</p>
<p>The Colts had little trouble with the Titans in a 41-17 win back on Sept. 28 and Tennessee has only won once since. A win this week would mean the Colts finish 6-0 against AFC South division opponents for the second straight year.</p>
<p>Wayne brushed aside the notion that the regular-season finale against the Titans was a meaningless game for the Colts. Sure, a win wouldn’t be much momentum for Indy to take into the postseason, he acknowledged, but every little bit helps.</p>
<p>“I don’t that you could say coming off a one-game winning streak is considered to be hot,” Wayne said. “But, in my opinion, the hot team going in is the team that does well. One way to get hot is to start with one game.”</p>
<p>Staying focused isn’t all that difficult to do, according to offensive tackle Anthony Castonzo, even with the playoff’s set to start next week.</p>
<p>“It’s our job so at the end of the day it’s our job to get the job done on every play, regardless of who we’re playing, regardless of where in the season it is,” he said. “It’s pride before everything else. You want to win every rep regardless of whether it, ‘matters’ or not.”</p>
<p>Notes: Pagano said tight end Dwayne Allen (knee), offensive tackle Gosder Cherilus (groin), and linebacker Bjoern Werner are out this week against Tennessee. . Receiver T.Y. Hilton (hamstring) saw limited practice time this week after missing last week’s game at Dallas, but Pagano said Hilton is questionable for Sunday’s game along with linebacker Jerrell Freeman (hamstring) and offensive tackle Joe Reitz (ankle).</p> | Colts hold players meeting after ugly loss to Cowboys | false | https://apnews.com/0b05b72e8c4e4dbc8c5f19dc92fb136a | 2014-12-26 | 2 |
<p><a href="http://pienews.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/insider.jpg" type="external" />There is often a tip. Before many big mergers and acquisitions, word leaks out to select investors who seek to covertly trade on the information. Stocks and options move in unusual ways that aren't immediately clear. Then news of the deals crosses the ticker, surprising everyone except for those [?]</p>
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<p><a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/101764568" type="external">Click here to view original web page at www.cnbc.com</a></p>
<p /> | Study asserts startling numbers of insider trading on Wall Street | true | http://politicalillusionsexposed.com/study-asserts-startling-numbers-of-insider-trading-rogues/ | 0 |
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<p>Discovery Communications Inc. said Monday it has reached agreement to buy Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $14.6 billion, including $2.7 billion of debt. Discovery will pay $90 a share, or 34% over Scripps' unaffected share price as of July 18. The deal is expected to close by early 2018. The combined company will produce about 8,000 hours of original programming annually and be home to about 300,00 hours of library content. It will have almost 20% share of ad-supported pay-TV audiences in the U.S. Discovery is the owner of Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet, among others, while Scripps is owner of HGTV, Food Network, Travel Channel among others. The deal is expected to generate about $350 million in synergies. Scripps shares rose 1.2% premarket, while Discovery was not yet trading. Scripps shares have gained 22% in 2017, while the S&amp;P 500 has gained 10%.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 MarketWatch, Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p> | Discovery To Buy Scripps In Deal Valued At $14.6 Billion, Including Debt | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/07/31/discovery-to-buy-scripps-in-deal-valued-at-146-billion-including-debt.html | 2017-07-31 | 0 |
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<p>The allegations against Shirley arose in 2009 at a time of bitter contention between the Tribal Council and the two-term president. Shirley was in the midst of an effort to downsize the council from 88 members to 24 when the council heard reports that it said revealed serious improprieties and violations within the executive branch.</p>
<p>The council used the reports, which were not publicly released, to call for an investigation of Shirley and placed him on administrative leave. Prosecutors conducting that investigation announced this week that they found no evidence of misconduct by Shirley.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>A tribal judge also signed off on a request by prosecutors to dismiss claims that Shirley breached his fiduciary duty in connection with tribal discretionary funds.</p>
<p>Shirley told The Associated Press that he fully cooperated with the investigation, and he cited Scripture in saying "the truth will set you free."</p>
<p>Navajo courts ultimately ruled that the council acted outside its authority in placing Shirley on leave, and he was reinstated on the eve of the election in which Navajos voted to significantly downsize the Tribal Council. The investigation into his dealings with a satellite Internet company and a manufacturing business was expanded to include the Tribal Council's use of a discretionary fund and the management of it.</p>
<p>Prosecutors have alleged that current and former tribal lawmakers diverted tribal money intended for Navajos in need to their own families.</p>
<p>Some of the defendants, including President Ben Shelly and Vice President Rex Lee Jim, settled their cases. About 20 others have been charged criminally in the investigation, while roughly the same number have been cleared of wrongdoing.</p>
<p>Shirley's exoneration comes during an election year for the Tribal Council and the presidency. Shirley would not say if he plans to seek the top leadership post.</p>
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<p /> | Probe exonerates former Navajo leader | false | https://abqjournal.com/350003/probe-exonerates-former-navajo-leader.html | 2 |
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<p>The Standard &amp; Poor's 500 index closed above 2,000 for the first time Tuesday, after stocks got a lift from some encouraging economic reports, including a surge in consumer confidence.</p>
<p>The index, which was launched in 1957, has risen 8.2 percent this year and has gone without a correction, which is defined on Wall Street as a drop of 10 percent or more, for close to three years. These are some of the recent milestones for the S&amp;P 500.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>— Feb. 2, 1998 - The index closes above 1,000 for the first time, driven by optimism that financial markets are stabilizing as a financial crisis in Asia passes.</p>
<p>— Oct. 9, 2007 - The S&amp;P 500 closes at an all-time high of 1,565.15. Traders and investors speculate that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to help a U.S. economy threatened by signs of an emerging credit crisis. The October record stands for five and a half years as the stock market loses more than half of its value in the financial crisis and Great Recession that follow. The index bottoms out at 676.53 in March 2009.</p>
<p>— March 28, 2013 - The index closes at 1,569.19, eclipsing its record close from 2007. Investors are encouraged by rising company earnings and feel more confident that the U.S. economic recovery can endure, despite a series of crises in the U.S. and overseas.</p> | A look at S&P 500 milestones as the index closes above 2,000 for the first time | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/08/26/look-at-sp-500-milestones-as-index-closes-above-2000-for-first-time.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>The embalmed corpse of the father of Russian communism has been on display for curious tourists in a marble tomb in Moscow’s Red Square since shortly after his death in 1924. But Lenin may be given his final resting place in the coming months during Vladimir Putin’s third term as president.</p>
<p>No Russian leader has yet dared to bury Lenin.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a></p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p />
<p>This week, Russia’s new culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, re-ignited the controversy when he told the radio station Ekho Moskvy that Lenin should be buried.</p>
<p>“A body should be interred in the earth,” Medinsky said, who added that he was in favour of making it a state occasion. “I would observe all the appropriate ceremonies. As [Lenin] was a senior public figure the funeral should happen with all fitting state rituals, distinctions and a military salute in a suitable place.”</p>
<p>With this observation, Medinsky was drawing a comparison with the treatment of Stalin, whose embalmed corpse was spirited away from its place beside Lenin one night in 1961 on the orders of Nikita Khrushchev and buried by the Kremlin’s walls.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/13/lenin-corpse-may-be-interred" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Russian Culture Minister: Put Lenin Underground | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/russian-culture-minister-put-lenin-underground/ | 2012-06-14 | 4 |
<p>Story from PRI's The World. Listen to audio above for full report.</p>
<p>One commodity that seems recession proof is art, and fine art has held its value. Some auction houses such as Sotheby's are even setting records for art sales this year. So a famous painting remains a good investment and it's also a good target for thieves.</p>
<p>Anthony Amore is co-author of a new book called, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Rembrandts-Untold-Stories-Notorious/dp/0230108539" type="external">"Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Story of Notorious Art Heists</a>." He is also head of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.</p>
<p>In 1990, 13 masterpieces were stolen from the Gardner Museum -- three were Rembrandts.</p>
<p>"Two were large paintings, one was an etching, a self-portrait," Amore told The World's Lisa Mullins. "One of the two paintings that were stolen was 'Storm in the Sea Galilee' which is unique amongst Rembrandts works because it's his only known seascape."</p>
<p>In his book, Amore highlights 81 thefts of Rembrandts in the past 100 years. The Dutch artist is the second most stolen artist in history, behind Picasso. But then, Picasso did produce more work.</p>
<p>According to Amore, the value of Rembrandts, combined with ease of access -- every major city's museum has Rembrandts -- creates a "perfect storm" for a thief.</p>
<p>One particular piece, called the "takeaway Rembrandt", has been stolen four times.</p>
<p>"It's an amazing story" Amore says. "The portrait of Jacob de Gheyn by Rembrandt. Jacob de Gheyn wound up at the Dulwich picture gallery. From 1966 until around the mid-80s, the painting was stolen four times in different manners and for different reasons, and it's a great little illustration of how art theft happens and why." <a href="http://www.theworld.org/2011/08/stealing-rembrandts-why-the-dutch-master-is-so-popular-with-thieves/" type="external">Read the rest of this story</a> on The World website.</p>
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<p>PRI's "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston.&#160; <a href="the-world.html" type="external">More about The World.</a></p> | Why Rembrandts are highly popular with thieves | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-08-16/why-rembrandts-are-highly-popular-thieves | 2011-08-16 | 3 |
<p>300K views overnight. Boing Boing <a href="https://boingboing.net/2016/09/28/the-hillary-shimmy-song-by-jo.html" type="external">recaps</a>:</p>
<p>From our prolific internet songwriter friend Jonathan “Song a Day Man” Mann, a wonderfully catchy little ditty for this shitshow of an election season. The Hillary Shimmy Song. Jonathan Mann writes a song every single day, and he has been doing that for the last 7+ years.</p>
<p>You might recall that Jonathan Mann <a href="" type="internal">wrote a song</a> when beloved JMG commenter Beeblemeyer passed away in 2013.</p>
<p /> | VIRAL VIDEO: The Hillary Shimmy Song | true | http://joemygod.com/2016/09/29/viral-video-the-hillary-shimmy-song/ | 2016-09-29 | 4 |
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<p>Timothy Griffin stands next to the new logo for St. Martins HopeWorks, formerly St. Martins Hospitality Center on Wednesday. Griffin, who earlier this year was homeless, now has an apartment and employment thanks to St. Martins. (Rick Nathanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Copyright © 2017 Albuquerque Journal</p>
<p>Hope certainly works for Timothy Griffin.</p>
<p>The 44-year-old Florida man embarked on a cross-country journey in his car last year accompanied by his former “best friend, alcohol.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>His bender had taken him to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. It was January when he checked into a motel near Interstate 40 and Coors NW. That very first night, his car was stolen from the motel parking lot.</p>
<p>The theft only fueled his already serious commitment “to do harm to myself.”</p>
<p>Somehow, he managed to wind up in the psychiatric ward at a local hospital, where he dried out a bit and was told about the array of services provided at St. Martin’s Hospitality Center. Determined to get his life back on track, he said, “I must have taken advantage of every service they offered.”</p>
<p>St. Martin’s fed him, arranged for him to get a bed at the overnight winter shelter and then at the Albuquerque Opportunity Center, operated by Heading Home, one of St. Martin’s many community partners. St. Martin’s later gave Griffin vouchers to stay in motels while he worked at Hope Cafe, operated by St. Martin’s as a way to generate revenue and train people in a six-month internship.</p>
<p>Today, Griffin is training to be a supervisor at Flying Star Cafe and has his own apartment, subsidized through a St. Martin’s program.</p>
<p>“St. Martin’s is an amazing group of people, and if they weren’t around I’d probably still be homeless, and certainly would still be drinking,” he said.</p>
<p>“They never gave up on me, so I never gave up on them; and because they were hopeful, I remained hopeful.”</p>
<p>That concept of hope is central to the rebranding of 32-year-old St. Martin’s Hospitality Center as St. Martin’s HopeWorks, which was announced during a Wednesday news conference.</p>
<p>“Hope is a powerful word,” said the organization’s executive director Greg Morris. “We’re serving a population that has largely lost all hope. Part of our job is to re-instill hope in each human soul we come in contact with. What the indomitable human spirit can do with just a little bit of hope is just incredible and we see these success stories on display in our community every day.”</p>
<p>Morris said he particularly likes the pairing of the word “hope” with “works.”</p>
<p>“‘Works’ is an action word, and if there’s something we know how to do at St. Martin’s it’s action that makes a tangible difference in the lives of the people who we serve.”</p>
<p>Morris also said the stylized blue door in the new HopeWorks logo represents a portal, or a gateway to the array of services that can help people “regain self sufficiency.”</p> | Rebranding of St. Martin’s focuses on hope | false | https://abqjournal.com/1066562/st-martins-rebrands-itself-as-hopeworks.html | 2017-09-20 | 2 |
<p>When it comes to expressing plain truths, few are as gifted as American rednecks. During recent travels in the Appalachian communities of West Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky I’ve collected scores of their comments on our national condition and especially President Barack Obama.</p>
<p>In America, all successful politicians are first and foremost successfully marketed brands. In fact, the Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s 2008 marketer of the year. George W. Bush’s brand may have “collapsed,” as they say on Madison Avenue, but things don’t change much. Rednecks instinctively know this:</p>
<p>“It don’t matter who gets to warm his butt in the White House chair,” says a West Virginia trucker. “The top dogs eat high on the hog and the little dogs eat the tails and ears. That’s what them bailouts is all about, and that’s the way it is no matter who’s president. So you might as well vote for the guy who looks like the most fun because you gonna be watching his ass on television for the next eight years.”</p>
<p>Yup. Rednecks do have a way of getting right down to the bone of the matter. For example, the news shows us Obama in an auto plant. We see Obama talking to the troops in Iraq. Obama ladling out grubs in a soup kitchen. That’s the stuff of urban liberal wet dreams. But a fellow over in the mountains of Mineral County West Virginia, a guy named Pinch who sells fence posts, poles and firewood out of his back yard, puts it like this:</p>
<p>“Nothing against Obama, mind you, but the last time I looked, the car plants was dead meat. Obama has never even come close to serving in the military, except for serving up that batch of hash in Baghdad. And there he was with his wife in a soup kitchen for god sake! Things has got so bad that we’ve got soup kitchens all over this country now. So, two millionaires in their armored limo drop by a soup kitchen, and this is supposed to make me feel good about my country?”</p>
<p>To be sure, the Obama brand is a feel good brand. Like those Hallmark talking digital greeting cards we geezers send one another that say “You’re still sexy baby!” Or “How’s it hanging stud?” we know of course, the only things hanging are our beer bellies and the fat on our upper arms. But it makes us feel good anyway. For about ten seconds.</p>
<p>What makes us feel good in the long term is getting back to the true meaning of being an American – buying stuff and racking up debt. Still, who’d have ever thought we’d see the president of the United States on television telling us, “There’s never been a better time to refinance our homes”, or buy a car?, which is exactly what he did last month.</p>
<p>Hawking home refis seems a bit unpresidential, to some of us. But then too, this is America, where, by orders of President Bush, we struck back hard at the 911 terrorists by going shopping. In any case, a local mortgage lender here in Winchester, Virginia is running ads with pictures of Obama and quoting him on the virtue of debt. That lender is one cast iron Obama hating Republican. So maybe Obama is truly a uniter after all.</p>
<p>As to America’s working class debt serfdom, some of us were resigned to that a long time ago. My former neighbor, Fat Larry (whose real name is Myron, and is thus happy enough to be called Fat Larry) says: “Hey, look, I don’t care if Obama is putting us in debt. I was already in hock for the rest of my life before they started hollering about a ‘debt crisis'”. Nor is he opposed to accepting a handout: “Obama can let a smidgen of them trillions land in my poke anytime. Right now I got no problems fifty thousand bucks wouldn’t fix.”</p>
<p>Not to worry Larry! According to our media, the cavalry is on the way to our rescue. Arrival time is estimated to be in two years. That’s when employment is supposed to start coming back, after another year or so of continued job losses.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Obama is humping the pump in an effort to re-inflate an economy that looks more every day like a balloon with a 55 caliber bullet hole in it. He’s even tried to get some of the escaped air back into the balloon by making corporations return a few billion dollars of the trillions in bailout money that disappeared the minute it crossed their paws. “Seems to me,” says Fat Larry, “he should’a give the money back to me. It was mine to start with.”</p>
<p>Personally, I really cannot bitch too much about Obama’s giveaways. At the end of this month he’s sending me a $250 check — stimulus money being handed out to us retirees — which is about the only good thing I have encountered so far about getting old.</p>
<p>Indeed, it’s cause for celebration. So I’m gonna call ole Larry and we’re going out to get so damned stimulated we can’t walk home.</p>
<p>Postscript: Aw hell! The front page of today’s newspaper tells me the $250 stimulus payment is only a loan from the government, and that I will have to pay it back next April. In this new America, we are all issued debt, whether we ask for it or not (sigh).</p>
<p>JOE BAGEANT is author of the book, <a href="" type="internal">Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War</a>. (Random House Crown), about working class America. He is also a contributor to <a href="http://redstaterebels.org/" type="external">Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland</a> (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on ColdType and JOE BAGEANT’s website, <a href="http://www.joebageant.com" type="external">joebageant.com</a>.</p>
<p>This column originally appeared on the web site of the Australian Broadcasting Company</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Plain Truths From Appalachia | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/05/28/plain-truths-from-appalachia/ | 2009-05-28 | 4 |
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<p>It's remarkable how little the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021707325.html" type="external">demonstrations in Wisconsin</a> have to do with the budget battle that initially sparked it. The protesters today aren't talking about program cuts, but reinvigorating a sense of economic citizenship in an age when workers and democratic government are both under siege. Amid the chants and the picket signs is a new sense of where working-class families will draw the line when it comes to protecting certain public goods: education, labor rights, job security, and a solid social safety net.</p>
<p>Meanwhile in Washington, the same core values face a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/11/AR2011021105838.html" type="external">nationwide war of attrition</a> against the public sector, labor protections, and education. From Wisconsin to the Hill, activists can trace a throughline between "belt tightening" in the state house and attacking big government in Congress. The issue is not so much deficits as it is the question of keeping the state from cannibalizing its public responsibilities.</p>
<p>Drawing the ideological battle lines, House Republicans have rolled out list of potential cuts for the remainder of the year that read like an epitaph for an asphyxiated government. The House plan <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41609293/ns/politics/" type="external">isn't designed for political viability</a>, given the power balance in the Senate; it's a statement of principles.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&amp;id=3405" type="external">The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes</a> that the proposed cuts for fiscal year 2011 have the nation's children firmly in the GOP's crosshairs.</p>
<p>Head Start, a critical program for low-income children who need an extra boost for their educational futures, would lose 15 percent from current funding levels. This is equivalent to roughly 157,000 children, in addition to 61,000 Head Start and Early Start slots that will evaporate once stimulus funding dries up. Kids would also lose hundreds of millions of dollars for special education, math and science programs, and literacy support for families. And for those seeking to pursue a higher education, Republicans <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&amp;id=3405" type="external">provide some enticing options</a>: dropping out, taking on more debt, or just staying poor:</p>
<p>n 2014 the total maximum award for a Pell Grant recipient would be... $1,525 below today’s maximum Pell Grant award of $5,550. The cut below the currently projected maximum award would grow to $2,090 (or 34 percent) in 2017.</p>
<p>These cuts would discourage many prospective low- and moderate-income students from starting college and make it much harder for those who do to continue their studies and graduate.</p>
<p>Then there are more cuts to prevent older adults from obtaining vocational training and employment services under the Workforce Investment Act. Apparently conservatives prefer to limit opportunities for chronically under- and unemployed Americans to try to enhance their skills and move onto a productive career, because then in a few months they can relish the act of cutting off their unemployment benefits.The proposed cuts would not only limit Americans' ability to move up in the workforce but curtail their physical mobility as well. A <a href="http://www.epi.org/analysis_and_opinion/entry/paul_ryans_budget_unnecessary_pain_with_no_long-term_gain/" type="external">$3.6 billion reduction in transportation spending</a> could stifle new infrastructure development, <a href="http://t4america.org/equitycaucus/principles/" type="external">disproportionately impact the poor and people of color</a>, and indirectly roll back <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2010-11-03-republican-victories-not-good-news-for-transportation-advocates" type="external">attempts to create more energy-efficient cities</a>.</p>
<p>But why stop there? Other potential cuts would make it harder for working Americans even to stay put in their homes. How about <a href="http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&amp;id=3405" type="external">stripping funds for public housing resources</a>, community development projects, and subsidies for poor people to <a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/house/144173-dems-white-house-energy-cuts-would-literally-freeze-people" type="external">heat their homes</a> (the White House also wants to slice into home heating assistance).</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nwlc.org/resource/house-republican-spending-cuts-devastating-women-families-and-economy" type="external">The National Women's Law Center highlights</a> the cuts that would be most devastating to women and families. For instance, House Republicans propose destroying <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/media/inthenews/2011/02/16/index.html" type="external">family planning funding under Title X</a>. This would be a blow to crucial birth control services for low-income men and women and devastate programs for preventing teen pregnancy, “creating yet another barrier for young women in need of tools and resources to help them make healthy, responsible decisions about their health and lives.”</p>
<p>See a pattern here? Systematically erasing provisions aimed at keeping families together, helping households pull through hard times, and enabling the next generation of Americans to realize their educational aspirations. The House Republicans are setting a template for similarly draconian measures in the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/12/AR2011021204532.html" type="external">2012 budget debate</a>, as well as <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20110218/NEWS07/110218002/Other-states-confront-budget-crises" type="external">state legislatures around the country</a>, which face even worse fiscal constraints.</p>
<p>So the budget process is turning out to be not really about cutting spending. It's about disinvesting from hope. <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/116381289.html" type="external">Workers in Wisconsin</a> saw more than taxpayer dollars at stake as legislators tried to gut their schools, government agencies and union rights. And that's where they decided to draw the line.</p> | From Wisconsin to Washington, Budget Cuts Draw Battle Lines Against Public | true | http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6978/wisconsin_to_washington_budget_cuts_draw_battle_lines_against_public/ | 2011-02-18 | 4 |
<p>SAN DIEGO (AP) — Alex Rodriguez isn't yet at the weight the New York Yankees want him to be at when he reports to spring training in two months.</p>
<p>Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said Matthew Krause, the team's strength and conditioning coordinator, visited A-Rod on Wednesday in Miami.</p>
<p>"Like all our players, you have a report weight we're hopeful that they hit," Cashman said. "He's approaching that. He's not at that spring-training weight that we desire just yet. But there was progress, and he continues to tweak — Matt continues to tweak his conditioning program."</p>
<p>Rodriguez is coming off a season-long suspension for violations of baseball's drug agreement and labor contract. The third baseman turns 40 in July.</p>
<p>"Alex texted me yesterday," Cashman said. "I said all things good with you, and he said, 'Yup.'"</p>
<p>Krause was hired by the Yankees a year ago, and Cashman said he's starting to build a relationship with the three-time AL MVP.</p>
<p>"He assessed him maybe a month ago, maybe a little bit longer, and he assessed him now," Cashman said. "He's working hard. Obviously, he's continuing to get ready for spring training. He's moving in the right direction."</p>
<p>Cashman also said the Yankees checked in on Jimmy Rollins with Philadelphia and Dee Gordon with the Los Angeles Dodgers but didn't find a match. He called the acquisition of Didi Gregorius from Arizona "better for us in the long term regardless."</p>
<p>"We have an under-control shortstop," he said. "It probably worked out for everybody."</p>
<p>SAN DIEGO (AP) — Alex Rodriguez isn't yet at the weight the New York Yankees want him to be at when he reports to spring training in two months.</p>
<p>Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said Matthew Krause, the team's strength and conditioning coordinator, visited A-Rod on Wednesday in Miami.</p>
<p>"Like all our players, you have a report weight we're hopeful that they hit," Cashman said. "He's approaching that. He's not at that spring-training weight that we desire just yet. But there was progress, and he continues to tweak — Matt continues to tweak his conditioning program."</p>
<p>Rodriguez is coming off a season-long suspension for violations of baseball's drug agreement and labor contract. The third baseman turns 40 in July.</p>
<p>"Alex texted me yesterday," Cashman said. "I said all things good with you, and he said, 'Yup.'"</p>
<p>Krause was hired by the Yankees a year ago, and Cashman said he's starting to build a relationship with the three-time AL MVP.</p>
<p>"He assessed him maybe a month ago, maybe a little bit longer, and he assessed him now," Cashman said. "He's working hard. Obviously, he's continuing to get ready for spring training. He's moving in the right direction."</p>
<p>Cashman also said the Yankees checked in on Jimmy Rollins with Philadelphia and Dee Gordon with the Los Angeles Dodgers but didn't find a match. He called the acquisition of Didi Gregorius from Arizona "better for us in the long term regardless."</p>
<p>"We have an under-control shortstop," he said. "It probably worked out for everybody."</p> | Yanks say A-Rod not at spring training weight | false | https://apnews.com/amp/369fa45b3a1943098bda6cde23ae3847 | 2014-12-11 | 2 |
Chicago Housing Authority Places Families In Crime-Plagued Neighborhoods CHA's Transformation Reshaped A City Public Housing Families Flee to Suburbs Daley's CHA Plan Jolted Region CHA’s Section 8 Contractors May Get Booted The CHA’s Waiting Game Comfortable Apartment, But ‘Neighborhood Is Trouble’ Cashing In On The CHA | false | https://bettergov.org/team/mick-dumke | 2016-09-10 | 2 |
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<p>Billionaire investor Carl Icahn discusses the markets and his open letter urging Apple CEO Tim Cook to accelerate share repurchases.</p>
<p>Billionaire investor Carl Icahn sent a letter to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook encouraging the company to accelerate its share repurchase program through a tender offer, putting the $133 billion in cash to use. Icahn said he believes the tech giant is undervalued in the market, and a tender offer would have a positive impact on per-share profits for shareholders. “To preemptively diffuse any cynical criticism that you may encounter with respect to our request, which might claim we are requesting a tender offer with the intention of tendering our own shares, we hereby commit not to tender any of our shares if the company consummates any form of a tender offer at any price," the investing titan said in his note. Traditional share buyback programs allow the company to repurchase its shares on the open market. In this case, Icahn is urging the firm to launch a tender offer, which would mean Apple would agree to buyback a certain number of shares at a certain price. In his letter, Icahn didn’t elaborate on a suggested buyback price. Icahn is one of Apple’s biggest stakeholders, owning about 53 million shares in the company. In the letter, Icahn made clear the intent was not to criticize Apple, but to encourage the company to again “make an investment in itself.” The billionaire investor has in the past encouraged Apple, and others, to accelerate its share repurchases and raise its dividend. Back in April, after Icahn sent a similar letter to the company, Apple upped its buyback to $90 billion from $60 billion in 2013.</p>
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<p>“We thank you for being receptive to us and other large shareholders, all of whom are investment professionals offering advice concerning an investment decision, as the decision to repurchase shares is in effect the company making an investment in itself. And given the size of our investment and our proven track record with respect to public equity investing, we hope you will be receptive once again,” Icahn wrote.</p>
<p>Icahn went on to explain, according to his analysis, Apple should trade around $203 per share, instead of the $100 range it’s currently trading in. He said the disparity equates to an undervaluation of the company.</p>
<p>In response to Ichan's letter, Apple said it appreciates feedback from shareholders, but won't make a decision based solely on one stakeholder's view.</p>
<p>"Since 2013 we’ve been aggressively executing the largest capital return program in corporate history. As we’ve said before, we will review the program annually and take into account the input from all of our shareholders," a spokesperson told FOX Business.</p>
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<p>Shares of the tech giant were 1% higher in recent trade following the issuance of the letter.</p> | Icahn Urges Apple to Increase Buyback Again | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2014/10/09/ichan-asks-apple-to-increase-buyback-again.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
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<p>Bosque’s Sunny Gensler (2) and Taos High’s Emma Patterson (21) battle for the ball during their first round game of the State Girls High School Soccer Championships on Thursday November 7, 2013. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>Santa Fe’s historic run ended, Taos needed some stoppage-time heroics to advance and St. Michael’s earned the matchup it has been waiting for since the beginning of the season as the quarterfinal round of the girls State Soccer Championships concluded Thursday at the Albuquerque Public Schools Soccer Complex.</p>
<p>The semifinals are set for today.</p>
<p>CLASS A-3A</p>
<p>Taos High’s Zoie Hensley (7) celebrates her goal against Bosque during their first round game of the State Girls High School Soccer Championships on Thursday November 7, 2013. (Dean Hanson/Albuquerque Journal)</p>
<p>No. 4 TAOS 1, No. 5 BOSQUE 0: For Zoie Hensley, the road to today’s Class A-3A semifinals began long before her sharply struck kick from a seemingly impossible angle found its way to the back of the net to seal the win over the Bobcats.</p>
<p>That’s because Hensley, who had back surgery during the offseason, wasn’t even sure if she would ever walk again – let alone play soccer.</p>
<p>“Soccer is my whole life,” Hensley said. “When I had my surgery, the first thing that I wanted to do when I woke up was walk. So I walked 12 hours after my surgery – two whole days before I was supposed to. That just shows how much soccer means.</p>
<p>“… So it’s really, really emotional just being out here. But that just makes me play harder.”</p>
<p>Hensley’s game-winning goal came just moments into stoppage time. The Tigers senior began the attack from along the right sideline. Hensley, with a pair of defenders trailing, fired a shot from 18 yards out that sailed just inside the far corner post for the first and only goal of the contest.</p>
<p>“She was making a nice run and saw the angle,” said Taos coach Michael Hensley, who is also Zoie’s father. “I was also standing at the perfect angle where I could see what she saw. And as soon as it left her foot, I knew.”</p>
<p>While Taos enters today’s matchup against a heavily favored Hope Christian team, Michael Hensley, who led Taos to the title game in 2011, isn’t concerned – he’s already experienced bigger upsets. His Tigers were the first public school to play for an A-3A girls title, and besides: “There was even a point in August when I didn’t even want Zoie to play soccer again – my memory of her trying to relearn how to walk again was just so hard,” he said. “So for a while there, every time she stepped on the field, I’d cringe. But now, she’s back to her normal self. … So everything that happens from here on out is just a bonus.”</p>
<p>No. 2 ST. MICHAEL’S 5, No. 7 SANTA FE PREP 1: Five goals, five different scorers, just as Robyn Serge prescribed.</p>
<p>Serge, the former Bosque coach in her first-year leading the Lady Horsemen, has created a multifaceted team that has won 12-straight games against A-3A opponents, dating to a 2-0 loss to Sandia Prep. Now, coincidentally, the Lady Horsemen have the opportunity to avenge that 2-0 loss to the Sundevils in today’s semifinals.</p>
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<p>“We finally get another chance to play them,” she said. “We lost to them in the third game of the season. … We’ve improved a lot since then and I’m sure they have too. They’re a very strong, physical team and it can go either way. Hopefully these girls aren’t nervous and get excitement after today’s win. It’s going to be a good match.”</p>
<p>Adriana Camarena gave St. Mike’s the early lead, scoring in the fourth minute, before the Lady Horsemen delivered an onslaught that effectively sealed the win.</p>
<p>“Our goal was to score first to build our intensity and get the momentum on our side,” Camarena said. “I think it worked.”</p>
<p>Beginning in the 26th minute, the Lady Horsemen scored three goals in the span of six minutes. Nique Enloe, Cristiana Gaboldon and Catie Ish scored to give St. Mike’s a 4-0 lead. SFP’s Brigid Quinn scored for the Blue Griffins just before the half. Monse Camarena concluded the scoring, recording her goal in the 61st minute.</p>
<p>4A</p>
<p>No. 1 ALBUQUERQUE ACADEMY 3, No. 12 SANTA FE 0: The bad news was that the Demonettes’ historic run in the state tournament ended with a three-goal loss in the 4A quarterfinals to the top-ranked team in the state. But the way Santa Fe coach Keith Richards sees it, the good news is also that his 12th-seeded Santa Fe squad fell 3-0 to the top-ranked team in the state.</p>
<p>“We held them to one goal in the first half, which isn’t bad. We were just outgunned by them at every position as far as speed and athleticism was concerned,” he said. “They play soccer year- round and it shows. But we stayed in the game – 3-0 is nothing to be embarrassed about.”</p>
<p>This state tourney appearance was the Demonettes’ first in more than a decade. Santa Fe advanced to the quarters after a 3-0 win at No. 5 Los Lunas in the first round.</p>
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<p /> | Girls prep soccer: 4th-seeded Taos gets past Bosque in quarterfinals | false | https://abqjournal.com/297054/4thseeded-taos-gets-past-bosque-in-quarterfinals.html | 2013-11-08 | 2 |
<p>Last Friday night, a good friend of mine and I were discussing the efficacy of violent property damage as a viable form of civil protest. The discussion began with the trial of Sarah Jane Olsen in Los Angeles and the work of the Symbionese Liberation Army during the 1970s and concluded with an outline for what my friend called “new activism.”</p>
<p>I would not be surprised to learn that in recent history the term “new activism” has been repeatedly used to describe a myriad of programs. More to the point, whenever the term new is used to describe something, I become suspicious only because an idea is rarely without progenitors, although the practice of the concept might be unprecedented. My use of the term “new activism” is the only way into an argument that I believe must be made for the American left to rethink previous, at times nostalgically remembered, protest methods. The importance of dissent, protest and political activism becomes increasingly urgent as the U.S. war on global terrorism begins to bore American audiences.</p>
<p>As an aside, I find few attitudes more malignant than individuals who insist on saying they are sick and tired of hearing about the war. The right to critical mediocrity is, however, a contemporary American pastime _ so to those people, I say agitate instead for new baseball stadiums. I can only imagine the issue’s urgency.</p>
<p>One of the major concerns I have currently is a recognizable nostalgia for previous protest movements among American leftists. I am certainly not advocating forgetting of anything learned in the past, but I firmly believe in adjusting tactics to the present.</p>
<p>In the winter of 1995, I heard Bobby Seale speak at the University about his work in founding the Black Panther Party. Seale was asked if he thought the use of guns was an appropriate form of protest for contemporary African-American activists. He said no. The best weapon to use, Seale suggested, was the video camera to record police brutality. What many, mostly white Americans, forget is it was not guns that made the Panthers inherently dangerous for the FBI. What made the Black Panther Party dangerous for the law enforcement officials was the color of their skin and their unfettered knowledge of the law.</p>
<p>The tools of protest, as Seale suggests, need to change with the times. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in his Sept. 27 New York Times opinions piece, “A New kind of War,” “Even the vocabulary of this war will be different.” Consequently, protest movements in America need to use different language tactics.</p>
<p>The conservative right, emboldened by the Bush administration, relies on predictable methods of protests to patronize: marches, rallies, self-righteous college newspaper columnists, etc. Public displays of discontent are extremely important. I am not suggesting large rallies are ineffectual; rather, the messages need to appear in other locations.</p>
<p>The Bush administration continues to say the war on terrorism will take years _ at least that suggests time exists for planning. The American left needs to start infiltrating television stations, editorial boards, city councils and school boards. Radical steps such as running for political office must begin as soon as possible. If the money can be found to start a satellite TV station for the American left, then use the technology.</p>
<p>Concerned college students need to intern with organizations that support their politics. The same students also need to intern in Washington, D.C., for the House or the Senate, for the White House–anywhere that places a person in the middle of the decision-making system. By learning the intricacies of the system, an opportunity exists to throw a monkey wrench into politics from the inside.</p>
<p>I suggest the term peace activist be changed to critical thinker (everyone must agree to keep that a secret from the right). Teach-ins must become anti-propaganda learning opportunities. The use of loud vocal chants must be reconfigured into a deafening silence. The politics and power of focused, concentrated groups acting in silence will draw more attention than the loudest screams. Chanting in unison does not mean the right has failed to silence dissenting voices. Most importantly, new activists must be ready to disobey by any and all means necessary.</p>
<p>The argument here is not about breaking the law, but simply not following the preordained directions. Acts of disobedience need to be site specific and tailored to a given situation so the right has trouble planning a counterspin. Disobeying the rules of popular opinion does not suggest breaking the law, although the time may come for that contingency. Flowers or bullets make the choices too limited, but sometimes push comes to shove. The Bush administration has made it clear a war is being fought for good against evil. Under that formulation, acting badly seems open to interpretation, so disobey at will.</p>
<p>I will conclude by recounting a recent event that made me think about activism. On Friday, Nov. 2, an altercation took place between two groups in New York City at the location of the decimated World Trade Center towers. One of the groups wanted to give their respects to the dead; the other was trying to keep the area secure. A fight erupted between the groups and arrests were made.</p>
<p>The two groups were comprised of members from the New York City Police Department and the fire department of New York. The firefighters marched into lower Manhattan to protest a decision by Rudy Giuliani’s administration to reduce the number of fire department personnel assisting in body recovery at the site of the former twin towers. The altercation did not last long, but an event causing a fight between police and firefighters is important to note. This event signals what I believe is a change in the numbing unity surrounding Sept. 11.</p>
<p>In years to come, I believe the physical violence between the police and firefighters will be discussed as an early indicator, an underreported situation signaling a change in American sensibilities about the need for new kinds of activism before they became fashionable. CP</p>
<p>John Troyer writes a weekly column for the <a href="http://www.mndaily.com/" type="external">Daily Minnesotan</a>, the student newspaper at the University of Minnesota. He can be emailed at: <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a></p> | A New Kind of Activism | true | https://counterpunch.org/2001/11/09/a-new-kind-of-activism/ | 2001-11-09 | 4 |
<p>McMaster University in Hamilton is banning smoking. You won't be allowed to smoke outside - not even in your car, with your windows rolled up - on university property.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Vaping</a> is banned, too, and <a href="" type="internal">vaping</a> isn't even really smoking.</p>
<p>With&#160; <a href="" type="internal">vaping</a>, there's no second-hand smoke, no tar or many of the other carcinogens found in cigarettes.</p>
<p>In fact, it's become the number one way for smokers to quit.&#160;Imagine banning that, in the name of <a href="" type="internal">"health."</a></p>
<p>But this ban isn't really about health then, is it?</p>
<p>As many people die in North America from obesity as from smoking. So why not ban fast food or beer?</p>
<p>Since when is a university in loco parentis of a 21-year-old young man or woman? Or a fifty-year-old professor? Or janitor?</p>
<p>I mention janitors, because there is a demographic wrinkle here: McMaster's president makes just under $400,000 a year. Guys like that don't smoke cigarettes; they drink fine wines, or scotches. They eat exquisite desserts.</p>
<p>On the other hand, blue collar people are more likely to <a href="" type="internal">smoke cigarettes</a>. So are minorities.</p>
<p>And remember: These days, a lot of students are foreign students. And most Chinese men smoke...</p>
<p>I don't think McMaster has thought out the unintended consequences of this ban. But I have.</p>
<p>WATCH while I tick off just a few of these...</p>
<p>I think people who smoke should quit. But I think quitting is hard. Punishing them, while patting yourself on the back, isn't liberal.</p>
<p>And it's certainly not part of a liberal education.</p>
<p>NEXT: The&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Campus Freedom Index</a> is out, and to talk about where Canadian universities stand right now, I'm joined by John Carpay, President, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms&#160;</p>
<p>THEN:&#160;Ryan Mauro, Security Analyst for The Clarion Project, joins me to talk about Trump's plans to fight radical Islamic terrorism.</p>
<p>The President is good about calling the enemy by name, but what practical steps can and should be taken to finally destroy this threat?</p>
<p>FINALLY: Your messages to me about <a href="" type="internal">Trump's UN speech</a> and more!</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | University smoking and vaping ban isn't about health: It's about class - and control | true | https://therebel.media/ezra_levant_september_20_2017 | 2017-09-20 | 0 |
<p>The strangest element of the current Presidential campaign in France is not the elevated support for the National Front’s Marine Le Pen but the candidacy of Emmanuel Macron.</p>
<p>Macron, aged 39, has never been elected as a political figure and has never faced accountability to an electorate. Diana Johnstone, at <a href="" type="internal">CounterPunch</a>, has summarized his career trajectory as powered by patronage.</p>
<p>Macron has been a driving force behind the neo-liberal agenda of the Hollande Presidency – in Hollande’s team during his candidacy (while employed at Rothschild et cie), then as deputy secretary-general of the Elysée responsible for economic policy (2012-14), and then as Economy Minister (August 2014 – August 2016). Hollande’s Presidency has now been discredited, with no small thanks to Macron.</p>
<p>Yet here is Macron claiming to be the only man to cut through the political fog and lead France out of its economic doldrums. He has contributed mightily to emasculating the Parti Socialiste yet is offering himself as the man to fill the vacuum. Macron will deliver an undiluted version of what made Hollande unelectable for a second term.</p>
<p>Macron was running for the Presidency while still functioning as the Economy Minister, creating his movement En Marche in early April 2016. On 14 April, in London with a delegation to offer support for the British government in opposing a pro-Brexit vote, Macron slipped away to drum up backers and finance for his nascent Presidential ambitions. Prime Minister Manuel Valls was not amused.</p>
<p>Chauncey Gardiner for President</p>
<p>In Macron there is a touch of Chauncey Gardiner, Jerzy Kosinki’s ‘hero’ in <a href="" type="internal">Being There</a>. Albeit with a twist. Chance, the mindless illiterate gardener, has nothing inside. Yet he is fabricated as a visionary by patronage and the media. Said Chance, to growing acclaim:</p>
<p>“In a garden, growth has its season. There are spring and summer, but there are also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well.”</p>
<p>Macron’s vacuity is on the outside. Here’s Macron, drumming up support on the warrior maiden Jeanne d’Arc’s hallowed territory of Orléans in May 2016. How does one fashion the charisma essential for political success:</p>
<p>“Politics is mystical. … It’s a mixture of intuition and intelligence. I have always taken into account the vertical, transcendental dimension, but at the same time it must be anchored in complete immanence, in materiality. I don’t believe in spiritual transcendence.”</p>
<p>Here’s Macron at a meeting of potential supporters, 11 July 2016:</p>
<p>“This movement, nothing is able to stop it. This movement, because it is the movement of hope, will carry us to 2017 and to victory. In this battle, we will take risks. And I will take them with you.”</p>
<p>Here’s Macron’s early April plea to French expatriates, seeking their vote:</p>
<p>“Today I want to present my program: progressive, European, transcending the old cleavages and sterile oppositions. A program which liberates work and innovation, all in protecting individuals. A program of hope, yet exacting and responsible.”</p>
<p>What? Macron achieved a large following almost overnight, without a program until February 2017. As sociologists François Denord and Paul Lagneau-Ymonet note in the March 2017 issue of <a href="" type="internal">Le Monde Diplomatique</a> (in English):</p>
<p>“… [he is] a man who stands above political parties, combining good intentions, technical expertise and the latest methods for governing the country. If you have such a man, you don’t need a programme.”</p>
<p>Macron claims to be ‘neither left nor right’. He early cultivated the far-right figure Philippe de Villiers (a Jeanne d’Arc zealot), at the time noting ‘Honesty requires me to tell you that I am not a Socialist’. Macron has simultaneously called French colonialism ‘a crime against humanity’, praised the European Parliament’s passage of the destructive EU-Canada Free Trade Agreement (CETA), emphasized the centrality of France as a multicultural society, opined that the West should go in hard against the Syrian regime, and claimed that Hollande’s passage of ‘marriage for all’ legislation was a humiliation for a good many French people.</p>
<p>Macron is playing catch-all (attrape-tout), garnering the votes from across the spectrum. Mr Clean, Mr Sheen. The legal affairs diarist Régis <a href="" type="internal">de Castelnau</a> appropriately labels him a televangelist.</p>
<p>Like Kosinki’s character, Macron is almost wholly a creature of patronage and of the media.</p>
<p>Here’s Denord and Lagneau-Ymonet on the patronage:</p>
<p>“Macron’s style was to secure a position in a powerful institution with the help of an influential mentor, stay there as long as it took to build connections, then move on to a more prestigious post. He spent less than three years each at the finance inspectorate, Rothschild and the Elysée secretariat. When launching his En Marche! (Forward!) movement in April 2016 at the age of 39, he mobilised contacts he had made at each stage.”</p>
<p>And a representative vignette on the role of patrons of the media. In October 2016, Claude Perdriel, proprietor of the weekly business magazine Challenges, enthused: “I find in him something of [Pierre] Mendès France”. Claims Perdriel, Macron is a cultivated man. ”He knows all the philosophers, from the Greeks to our days … That provides a good foundation for doing what is necessary [in politics].”</p>
<p>All aboard the Macron express</p>
<p>The bulk of the French mainstream media has jumped on board, including public media. It finds no fault in Macron, yet finds nothing but faults in Macron’s opponents (Jean-Luc Mélenchon) or merely ignores their existence (François Asselineau). The major flagships of the private media are now owned by very wealthy men, men of business. Cui bono? Throw in some of the provincial media as well. The magazines have Macron as a man of fine features and with his wife a couple of glamour. After the deeply flawed Nicolas Sarkozy and the sub-normal François Hollande, here’s the man to ‘Make France Great Again’.</p>
<p>De Castelnau notes that it is curious that the media and the Parquet national financier (the judicial body concerned with public financial fraud) are selective in their pursuits. François Fillon, the ‘centre-right’ Les Républicains candidate, is being hounded for his generosity with public funds to family members. Ditto Marine Le Pen for understating her wealth, with half her National Front colleagues being indicted for ripping off the public purse.</p>
<p>The opacity of Macron’s personal patrimony and of his campaign’s financial backing has not received comparable attention. A diligent blogger, Olivier Berruyer (trained as an actuary!), has <a href="" type="internal">doggedly interrogated</a> the almost hard-up figures that Macron has submitted to the electoral authority. Where are the millions, mostly earned when employed at Rothschild? Lacking any real estate holdings (in his wife’s name), Macron comes in 10th of the eleven Presidential candidates in <a href="https://www.les-crises.fr/le-patrimoine-des-candidats-a-la-presidentielle/" type="external">declared wealth</a>, beating only the down-at-heel Philippe Poutou, the perennial worker candidate from the radical party NPA.</p>
<p>The matter of Macron’s liability for the impôt de solidarité sur la fortune (ISF, solidarity tax on wealth) is representative. Macron made no declaration when launching his candidacy (modesty of the family real estate), denying liability, but the fisc belatedly decided that he was. Yet in April 2016, in the insurance industry’s publication Risques, he expressed opposition to the ISF in principle. He noted, “If one has a preference for risk over unearned income, as in my case, one should prefer a tax on inheritance to taxes like the ISF”. Yet again, Macron as government Minister was repudiating government policy off the cuff.</p>
<p>The French establishment self-consciously acknowledges <a href="http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/elections/entre-fillon-et-macron-le-coeur-des-patrons-balance_1874529.html" type="external">two candidates</a> – François Fillon and Emmanuel Macron. There are business elites and luminaries in both camps. In Fillon’s camp is the highly influential Henri de Castries, ex-CEO of AXA. Behind Macron are some weighty players like the billionaires Bernard Arnault and Yannick Bolloré, as well as the man with all the connections Alain Minc. Denord and Lagneau-Ymonet join the dots for the Fillon supporters in the February issue of Le Monde Diplomatique and for the Macron supporters in LMD’s March issue.</p>
<p>Seminal is both formal and unofficial support for Macron of a swag of Parti Socialiste deputies and heavies, to the detriment of their own Party candidate Benoît Hamon. Foremost is Richard Ferrand, Secretary General of En Marche!, who is nevertheless a PS Deputy. Ferrand is an endorsed PS candidate for the legislative elections in June.</p>
<p>Pundits have speculated that the PS right is taking the opportunity to refashion its organization, conveniently jettisoning the PS leftwing in the old hulk that the right has scuttled, and jumping ship to Macron. The so-called centre-right has rebranded itself as Les Républicains. The PS right-wing deserters could readily refashion themselves as Au Marché! With Macron at the Elysée the ex-pseudo-socialists will be right at home under the banner En Marche au Marché!</p>
<p>Fillon’s independent line on Europe and foreign policy makes him suspect to Atlanticists. But Fillon’s and Macron’s domestic programme are in essence indistinguishable – slash and burn, albeit Macron is the more purist of the two. What the PS and Macron have achieved, replicating the capitulation of Labor and Social Democrat parties everywhere, is to make it near impossible via the ballot box to resist the reactionary agenda of Capital. The right of the PS had their man in 2012 in Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but he became otherwise engaged. Macron is the DSK hand-me-down.</p>
<p>In March, the Belgian paper Le Soir labelled Macron as ‘the last bulwark against the shipwreck’. The title captured the attitude across political party heavies that one should vote for Macron, even if opportunistically, to avoid handing the Presidency to ‘populists and extremists’.</p>
<p>However, one <a href="" type="internal">blogger</a> on Mediapart has reasonably surmised that if Macron is elected in May, rather than vanquishing lepenism (as in 2002 when everybody ganged up to vote in the shop-worn Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen), Macron’s hardline program will enhance the prospects of a Marine Le Pen victory in 2022.</p>
<p>Others have opined that, rather than claiming to save democracy by supporting the first spiv that comes along, it would be far more sensible to struggle against the system that has made the National Front so popular. Ah, but the elites don’t want to change the system, and they can’t afford to acknowledge the causal chain by which Marine Le Pan has capitalized on their neglect and their bastardry.</p>
<p>The mob fiercely pro-Macron are the ‘Europeanists’. Macron’s beef with the European Union is that it’s not Europeanized enough. He wants a centralized fiscal apparatus to complement centralized monetary policy.</p>
<p>He has gone to Berlin to kowtow, confessing that France is a backslider, promising to discipline France into the necessary ‘structural reforms’. The German Social Democrats love him for this. As in 1914 when they voted war credits, the Social Democrats care more about the German Imperium than about social democracy.</p>
<p>Thus Macron has been given the blessing of Angela Merkel, the European monarch, to subject France further to the hegemony of Brussels and Berlin. France will be placed under guardianship – a kind of grander version of the pathetic state of Greece. Charming.</p>
<p>The interior Macron</p>
<p>Interiorly, there is nothing inside Chauncey Gardiner. By contrast, everyone knows what the interior Emmanuel Macron stands for. Except that only the dissident media join the dots.</p>
<p>Macron appears to be simply a functionary for business and its representatives, big business in particular.</p>
<p>In January 2012, when Hollande, on the campaign trail, claimed that his ‘adversary is the world of finance’, Macron went to London to reassure the financial community that it would be business as usual.</p>
<p>In early March 2017, Macron gave a <a href="" type="internal">speech</a> claiming that prudential rules governing the finance sector were too constraining. The rules are restricting delivery of credit to the real economy, he says. The rules (globally determined, mind you) need to be taken out of the hands of the regulators and given to the European finance ministers at Ecofin to determine at their discretion. This over-the-top opinion, straight from the finance lobby creed, was bizarrely delivered to a small business peak body group. Mediapart’s <a href="" type="internal">Martine Orange</a> highlights that French businesses are not facing a credit dearth but a paucity of demand in a stagnant European economy.</p>
<p>The would-be President for structural reform</p>
<p>Macron has no time for the public sector, even though it has been the springboard for his career.</p>
<p>In October 2014, only two months into his role as Economy Minister, Macron proposed that the state assertively move to privatize the energy and transport networks, to help repair the budget deficit, to open the networks to competition as a matter of principle and to free up capital for its most productive use. The audience comprised a bevy of infrastructure investors.</p>
<p>This at a time when the Cour des comptes (the French equivalent of the GAO) and the competition authority have been highlighting the disaster produced from the privatization of the autoroutes (starting under the right in 2006). The developer Vinci gained €2.6 billion in profits in 2016 from its autoroute leases, over 60% of its global profits. Three-quarters of developer Eiffage’s 2016 profits of €1.58 billion were from autoroute leases. Monopoly networks are a license to print money, and the consumer pays for the privatized monopoly profits necessarily extracted in higher charges.</p>
<p>Macron himself oversaw further concessions to the autoroute companies in April 2015. When an ecologist protestor attempted to obtain relevant document via administrative appeal, Macron refused to produce the documents in claiming they were commercial-in-confidence. In July 2016, just before he left office, legislation modifying public procurement procedures (supposedly to support small business) apparently found Macron inserting clauses that favored the already engorged developer giants of the BTP (bâtiments et travaux publics) sector.</p>
<p>In December 2014, Macron half-privatized the Toulouse-Blagnac airport, sold to a Chinese consortium located in a tax haven. Macron claimed that the various state authorities had retained control, but he had secretly conceded control to the purchasers. It was demanded of the Chinese consortium that the owners implement an ‘industrial logic’ for the airport’s management (Airbus is just down the road). The owners ignored the conditions and have treated the airport as a cash cow, including the distribution of significant reserves as dividends. Regional airports at Nice and Lyon were majority privatized in July 2016.</p>
<p>In September 2015 Macron talked at the club ‘ <a href="http://www.entempsreel.com/" type="external">En temps réel</a>’. He found it unacceptable that bureaucrats in his Finance Ministry should enjoy job security. This from a man accepted into the Inspection des finances, to which he could return at any time, that houses the most privileged public servants in the entire bureaucracy.</p>
<p>Macron went straight off to the OECD to add weight to the OECD’s external pressure on France to implement the Loi Macron package.</p>
<p>In early March 2017, Macron belatedly laid out his agenda in some detail. He claimed the necessity to reduce public expenditure by €60 billion over five years. Measures to achieve this draconian excision include the axing of 50,000 civil service posts, a ceiling on health spending (a sector already in crisis) and a reduction in local government spending. Mediapart’s <a href="" type="internal">Martine Orange</a> (in English) highlights that Macron’s agenda is a crude and transparent cut and paste from the European Commission’s stability programs of the last several years.</p>
<p>Macron appears to have never seen a regulation of working conditions that he likes. The Loi Travail, dedicated to loosening conditions for employer benefit, had been subject to multiple drafts under multiple authors. It was finally <a href="" type="internal">imposed</a> by the government on a dissenting Assembly and Senate over the period March to August 2016, via the draconian section 49.3 of the French Constitution (introduced originally to inhibit governing impasses regularly arising during the Fourth Republic). Macron managed to have included, his reluctant senior Cabinet colleagues conceding, measures to ease employer rights to sackings and to lower sacked employee payouts.</p>
<p>Other European countries have been deregulating working conditions (more accurately, re-regulating in employer interests) for some time. But the top banana has been the German ‘Hartz’ reforms introduced by Social Democrat Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in 2002. Macron brought Peter Hartz to the aforementioned En temps reel club in January 2014 (while an Elysée staffer) to explain what happened in Germany, with a view to how they could be replicated in France.</p>
<p>In Chance’s vision, autumn and winter are inevitable but they give away again to spring and summer. Macron’s autumn and winter heralds the organic inevitability of ‘structural reforms’, but which leads inexorably to the spring and summer of a re-invigorated French economy.</p>
<p>Guru reports on the French economic malaise</p>
<p>To understand Macron’s mentality, one must resurrect the 2008 <a href="" type="internal">Attali Report</a> (Rapport de la Commission pour la libération de la croissance française). It was sponsored by the then young Sarkozy presidency. Macron was brought into the Attali Commission by his patrons, and its brief provided Macron with his first exposure to the broad character of public policy, compared to the narrow perspective of his responsibilities as an inspector of finances.</p>
<p>The report is a dog’s breakfast. There are some useful summary figures on the French economic malaise. Some key sectors are highlighted for their weaknesses – for example, the educational and university systems for inequality of access and gaps in skills produced, the financial sector for the gaps in its funding.</p>
<p>As for recommendations for ‘the liberation of French growth’, it is a joke – a contradictory mishmash. There is a gee-whiz emphasis on a comprehensive implantation of a ‘knowledge economy’ infrastructure for a rapid siliconvalleyization of France, with a hunger for risk that will raise France to where it belongs – amongst the prime movers of a rapidly evolving globalized economy. But the essence of the report is the ‘get the overbearing, old model, French state out of life, and stop molly-coddling businesses’. Competition is seen as the cure-all mantra. Enforce comprehensive flexibility and mobility on the labour force, albeit compensating it for its troubles in time of ‘transition’. The report wants a state apparatus that is visionary and comprehensively interventionist and yet comprehensively dismantling itself at the same time.</p>
<p>There are crocodile tears and genuflexion to the relative sufferings of underprivileged segments and the need to alleviate their problems, all of which will be magically transformed under a newly achievable rapid economic growth and strategic orientation of priorities to those segments.</p>
<p>The report was written in 2007, imagining an endless large-scale global growth trajectory. No cracks in the contemporary edifice were observed. So much for expertise. There are glib takes on purported deregulatory success stories elsewhere, highlighting that the report’s authors have only a fragmentary understanding of what makes national economies viable and sustainable. In particular, they don’t understand the complex underpinnings of Germany (by which France’s failings are perennially compared) as an industrial and economic powerhouse.</p>
<p>There is only passing mention of the unevenness of French management capacity, and its addiction to extravagant dividend distributions and self-remuneration. The treatment of the failures of the dominant French financial institutions to serve the public interest is superficial. There is no mention of the dysfunctionality of the European Union and of the euro, of the inhibitions dictated by Brussels to well-focused industry policies. There is no mention of the widespread tax evasion by corporations and wealthy individuals that robs the French exchequer of considerable resources to finance its social responsibilities.</p>
<p>Fundamentally, the report is naïve on how capitalism itself works and on the venality of elites, French and otherwise. Jacques Attali has been a longtime insider in the French establishment. The Attali Commission itself was stuffed with members of the establishment and their scribes. Auto-critique is missing from the ledger. More, the notion that the multitudes to be strategically cast on the rough seas of total flexibility might be compensated for their pain is laughable. As for the mythical calm shores on the other side …</p>
<p>The executive summary of the report ends with a bizarre ultimatum:</p>
<p>All these decisions [316 of them] form a coherent ensemble and must be implemented speedily. It is not a matter here of recommendations available for consideration, nor of a catalogue which can be selectively appropriated for electoral purposes. To take effect as soon as possible, all these decisions must be approved and prepared in detail from January to April 2008. They must subsequently be implemented between April 2008 and June 2009.</p>
<p>The authors demand that implementation should proceed quick smart (tambour battant), whoever is in office. The arrogance and absurdity of it all.</p>
<p>Sarkozy, credited with not being the most intelligent cab off the rank, astutely confronted that this report was from the other side of hell and it was readily crucified on the cross of political expediency. Taxi drivers were an early conduit. Taxi drivers remain a conduit regarding their hostility to Macron’s attachment to Uberization.</p>
<p>Attali is the titular author (amongst other books) of the weighty Karl Marx ou l’esprit du monde, published in 2005. It is a work sympathetic to its subject and well informed on the context in which Marx lived and wrote, and of the evolving economic system. It is difficult to understand how the author of Karl Marx could also be the figurehead of the garbled, essentially neoliberal Attali Report. There must be more than one Jacques Attali.</p>
<p>What did Macron learn from his participation in the Attali Commission? From his initiatives as Economy Minister and his public pronouncements, he has cherry-picked his priorities. The dismantling component is favored to the neglect of the rest. The rest is dispensable padding. Supply-side economics has to be swallowed neat – by others of course.</p>
<p>Thus Macron resurrected the Attali Report from its internment as inspiration for his omnibus Loi Macron and subsequent Loi Travail. As Mediapart’s Laurent Mauduit <a href="" type="internal">notes</a>, the Loi Macron – content, language and jumbled formulation – has been cut and pasted from the Attali Report. Macron began work on his Loi Macron soon after he assumed office in August 2014, forcing it into consideration in the Assembly in January 2015.</p>
<p>The draft measures had <a href="" type="internal">Gerard Filoche</a>, PS Deputy, PS senior official and former workplace inspector, spitting chips. Filoche noted that legislation in June 2013 had already dramatically liberalized employer retrenchment options. But compensating procedures for employee rights had been put in place and some administrative tribunals were ensuring employers adhered to them. The ambition of relevant sections of the Loi Macron were to obliterate these compensatory mechanisms, giving employers absolute discretion over retrenchments. Hence the subsequent public resistance to the implementation of Macron’s agenda.</p>
<p>The incoming Hollande administration wanted its own report, and it gave the job to Louis Gallois, a man with a stellar career in industrial management. The Gallois <a href="" type="internal">Report</a> (Pacte pour la competitivité de l’industrie française) was presented in November 2012. Again a mixed bag, again contradictory. There are numerous recommendations to facilitate industrial restructuring and renaissance. However proposition No.4 recommended ‘a competitiveness shock’, granting businesses a €30 billion concession from social security reductions (2/3 business, 1/3 employee), to be partly offset by a raising of other non-business taxes.</p>
<p>Proposition No.4 was the only one readily taken up by the government. The proposition appears surprisingly out of character given Gallois’ exceptional professional history, a man deeply familiar with the ins and outs of maintaining viable highly technical industrial sectors. It appears that Gallois was partly a figurehead for the input from business interests.</p>
<p>Thus was readily set in place, beginning 2013, the Crédit d’impôt pour la compétitivité et l’emploi (CICE, ‘tax credit for competitiveness and employment’). The rationale was that labor costs in France were too high (especially by comparison with those in Germany), and that this adverse cost differential was responsible for France’s long term decline in export earnings and for its ongoing deindustrialization. These concessions would give businesses the latitude to invest and to innovate – to ‘compete’. The report stipulated that these concessions were not to be utilized to finance dividend payments or salary hikes.</p>
<p>A year later, January 2014, the government announced the Pacte de responsabilité, involving further social security contribution concessions in supplementing those granted under CICE. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault claims that he was kept out of the loop. The policy was devised by Hollande with Macron and some employers. A major party to the initiative was Pierre Gattaz, ravenous President of the key employer organization MEDEF, for whom no concessions have ever been enough. The budgetary cost of CICE/Pacte .has reached €40 billion per year.</p>
<p>Here is Macron again being selective, ignoring the complex industrial restructuring propositions that accompanied the ‘competitiveness shock’ proposition.</p>
<p>Qualifications for the top job?</p>
<p>The representative politician is a flesh-and-blood individual. Emmanuel Macron appears to be of another species – simply a dogma wrapped in an ego.</p>
<p>Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a National Front Deputy (and niece of NP Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen) has <a href="" type="internal">claimed</a> that: “For Macron, France should be seen like a startup business. For him, our country is not a nation, it’s a space”. MMLP is a hardliner in a Party accused of having only bile where its brains ought to be, but she has a point.</p>
<p>Macron attended Sciences-Po and the École nationale d’administration, up there with the cream, but he does not appear well-educated. There was the gaffe that had him thinking that French Guiana, a hangover colony now in rebellion, is an island. In any case, Latin America is on another planet and geography is not everyone’s strong suit. Sarkozy himself didn’t understand that the Libya that he destroyed was strategically located between France and the rest of Africa.</p>
<p>Macron, like his co-members at the Attali Commission, prefers not to acquire a better understanding of how national economies work (or not), how capitalism itself works. He appears to have digested little history. He shows no understanding that reform of the European Union is of a higher priority than reform of France – but then he has a lot of fellow travelers in this blindness, with detractors labeled as crackpots.</p>
<p>Bizarrely, in May 2016 Attali publicly put down his protégé as a <a href="https://www.challenges.fr/challenges-soir/pour-jacques-attali-macron-n-incarne-que-le-vide_24719" type="external">hollow man</a>. There is no honour among thieves. How many Jacques Attalis are there?</p>
<p>Telling of a zealot, Macron has declined to learn from the adverse outcomes of the implementation of his ideological principles to date.</p>
<p>The CICE/Pacte concessions have been going for four years. All reports indicate minor increases in investment and minor gains, at best, in employment attributable to the scheme. The radical journal <a href="http://www.fakirpresse.info/cice-la-vraie-france-des-assistes" type="external">Fakir</a>, late 2016, highlights how many jobs could have been created directly in deprived sectors like health services with the tens of billions thrown indiscriminately at businesses.</p>
<p>Fakir notes that the hypermarket chains Carrefour, Casino and the family-owned Auchan, major beneficiaries of CICE largesse, have dramatically increased dividends and management/director remunerations and reduced employment – contrary to the principles of the scheme. La Poste, with the state rail network SNCF the greatest CICE beneficiaries, has the pre-eminent reputation of workforce rationalization and brutal treatment of remaining staff, inducing despair and suicides amongst employees on an ongoing basis. Finance sector firms are also CICE recipients, and one finance sector union has pressed for the government to withdraw that sector from concessions due to abuse of the scheme and its ongoing maltreatment of its workforce.</p>
<p>The expensive non-functioning scheme has been retained without amendment. The government was hoping for 500,000 extra employed. MEDEF’s Gattaz claimed that, with sufficient concessions, his mob would deliver one million extra employed. It hasn’t happened. No word has been heard from Macron, in or out of office, regarding this transparent waste of scarce public resources, save to put the blame on Gattaz for letting the team down.</p>
<p>Another instance of cognitive dissonance is the policy out of the Loi Macron that introduced buses on inter-urban routes. Macron has regularly touted his ‘Macron cars’ as a great success. Five million passengers had been conveyed in the eighteen months from its introduction in August 2015. But Macron has declined to look under bonnet.</p>
<p>The project is simply <a href="" type="internal">not viable</a>. There are no profits in it and little prospects of that scenario changing. Some firms have gone bust. There are only three companies in the game – Flixbus, a German company generating income from a near monopoly on home turf, and Ouibus (SNCF) and Isilines (Transdev), both state-owned. The employment generated has been trivial, and the working conditions (lacking profit), within a sub-contracting hierarchy, are intolerable. Then there’s the adverse ecological footprint. This is yet another instance of the ‘benefits’ of untrammeled competition, driven in the first instance by madcap ideologues in their Brussels ivory tower.</p>
<p>The inter-urban bus service has undoubtedly facilitated travel by low income people who have at present little alternative. But the rational solution is to consider transport as an integrated whole, and to develop a transport pricing policy (inevitably subsidized at points) that caters to the full spectrum of the population both geographically and across classes.</p>
<p>The transparent anomalies in the Macron apparatus</p>
<p>On his campaign trail, Emmanuel Macron has flagged a new broom – a moralization of public life and its petty and not so petty corruptions, an end to nepotism, etc. Yet his candidacy finances and his patrimony remain opaque. And his career trajectory post-education is the product of nepotism par excellence.</p>
<p>As Denord and Lagneau-Ymonet note:</p>
<p>“Macron presents himself as without a past or attachments, but embodies, personally and through his entourage, the collective heritage of the civil service, consultants and the financial sector — the core of the system sanctioned by his membership of the elite social club Le Siècle.”</p>
<p>How is it that a significant percentage of the French establishment are behind a candidate that is formally promising to drain the French swamp? It doesn’t add up.</p>
<p>Macron comes with the baggage of having his agenda as Economy Minister imposed by section 49.3. Contrary to the idolization of some of his supporters, Macron is not a democrat. Never having been a politician, Macron appears to have no instinct or sympathy for public opinion. The powers of the Presidency under the Vth Republic make Macron a dangerous candidate.</p>
<p>Five years of Macron in the Elysée will see public services demolished and inequalities dramatically enhanced. Nobody on a salary or in receipt of a pension in their right mind could consider voting for this courtier for Power.</p> | Macron of France: Chauncey Gardiner for President! | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/04/21/macron-of-france-chauncey-gardiner-for-president/ | 2017-04-21 | 4 |
<p>Lee Harris’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Its-Enemies-Stage-History/dp/0743257499/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1409650818&amp;sr=8-5&amp;keywords=lee+harris" type="external">Civilization and its Enemies: The Next Stage of History</a> first came out in 2004. 2004 seems like a long time ago. And in a sense it is: ten years. But Harris’s book has only grown more topical every day.</p>
<p>That’s unfortunate, because it’s not a book that offers a lot of comfort. But his writing is insightful, so thoughtful and yet compressed that it’s one of those books where the reader would do well to pause every paragraph or so in order to contemplate and digest what has just been said.</p>
<p>Here’s an excerpt. In the passage that follows, Harris has previously defined his use of the word “ruthlessness” as meaning “dreadfulness, frightfulness, horror, horribleness, terror, terribleness, atrociousness, atrocity”:</p>
<p>…[T]he more the spirit of commerce triumphs, the closer mankind comes to dispensing with war, the nearer we approach the end of history, the greater are the rewards to those who decide to return to the path of war, and the easier it will be for them to conquer. There is nothing that can be done to change this fact; it is built into the structure of the world…</p>
<p>People who have been trained in the practice of civility, and who find it second nature, will be reluctant to challenge the conduct of another on the ground that he is lacking civility The ruthless party therefore knows that he will be able to push very far before a break point is openly acknowledged Because once the break point is acknowledged, all bets are off and you no longer can be sure of the next step.</p>
<p />
<p>Before the break point, the civil party thinks that the ruthless party can be accommodated to civilized standards by means of patience and forbearance, much in the same way that we might try to domesticate a feral animal. We are convinced we will bring him around. We attribute his ruthlessness to some defect in is psychology. Perhaps he has an inferiority complex and is acting out with us. (Who knows, he may have had a wicked stepfather somewhere in his childhood.) We may blame ruthlessness on someone’s religion or culture or economic status. We never dream of identifying it for what it is—a strategy that works.</p>
<p>Every society, every culture, every civilization has produced exponents of ruthlessness; none has a monopoly on it. None will ever find a way of eliminating those who are prepared to resort to ruthlessness, as long as it continues to work, and it will continue to work so long as men civilize themselves, and to work all the more effectively whenever a civilization has succeeded so well in its civilizing task that it believes itself within sight of the end of history, because at no time is ruthlessness more effective. It works in some cases because its victims are easy to cow, in some cases because they genuinely can’t fathom ruthlessness, and in some cases because their idealism refuses to countenance such an illiberal truth.</p>
<p>Harris’ point is not just about Islamic terrorism, although that was the impetus for his book and it fits it quite well.</p>
<p>He is saying that in a world of civilized, peace-loving, westernized nations who have put aside their own ruthlessness or at least come to disapprove of it and be reluctant to use it, the ruthless group which is willing to stop at nothing will wield an inordinate amount of power, and that the rest of the world will be very slow to meet it with enough ruthlessness to stop it.</p>
<p>The paradox is that, if we want to preserve a so-called civilized world, we must be prepared to be bloody-minded at times, and to remember the laws of the <a href="http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm" type="external">copybook headings</a>:</p>
<p>And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!</p>
<p>It originally seemed that 9/11 might have been such a breaking point.</p>
<p>The rise of ISIS and its eagerness to use (and revel in) extreme brutality could be another.</p>
<p>But there is a possibility that the western world has now become so “civilized” and so resistant to thinking ill of other cultures that even ISIS is not enough to get us to defend ourselves and the civilization and civility we profess to prize.</p>
<p>[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at <a href="http://neoneocon.com/" type="external">neo-neocon</a>.]</p> | Will civilization decide to fight the enemies of civilization? | true | http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/09/will-civilization-decide-to-fight-the-enemies-of-civilization/ | 2014-09-02 | 0 |
<p>Jan 23 (Reuters) - UK’s FRC:</p>
<p>* FINANCIAL REPORTING COUNCIL (FRC) HAS FINED AND REPRIMANDED AUDIT FIRM ARRANDCO AUDIT LTD</p>
<p>* ALSO FINED AUDIT ENGAGEMENT PARTNER JEREMY FILLEY, FOLLOWING AN INVESTIGATION OPENED IN AUGUST 2015</p>
<p>* ‍BOTH PARTIES ADMITTED MISCONDUCT IN RELATION TO AUDIT OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS OF QUINDELL PORTFOLIO PLC AND QUINDELL LTD FOR FY ENDED 31 JANUARY 2011​</p>
<p>* ‍TENON TO RECEIVE A REPRIMAND AND A FINE OF £1 MILLION AS PER TERMS OF SETTLEMENT HAVE BEEN APPROVED BY A LEGAL MEMBER OF INDEPENDENT TRIBUNAL PANEL​ Further company coverage:</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision not to answer questions from British lawmakers about a scandal over the firm’s data is “astonishing”, the parliamentary committee chief who invited him to attend said on Tuesday.</p> FILE PHOTO: Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the annual Facebook F8 developers conference in San Jose, California, U.S., April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo
<p>“Given the extraordinary evidence that we’ve heard so far today... it is absolutely astonishing that Mark Zuckerberg is not prepared to submit himself to questioning,” Damian Collins said. Collins, Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee was speaking during a hearing with a whistleblower from political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, the firm which got hold of data of millions of Facebook users.</p>
<p>Collins added: “These are questions of a fundamental importance and concern to Facebook users, as well as to our inquiry as well. We would certainly urge him to think again if he has any care for people that use his company’s services.”</p>
<p>Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>LONDON (Reuters) - Stock markets jumped on Tuesday as reports that the United States and China were negotiating to avert a trade war whetted investors’ appetite for riskier assets.</p>
<p>Japan's Nikkei share index <a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">.N225</a> rose 2.7 percent for its best day in almost three months while a 1.4 percent gain by Europe's Stoxx 600 put it on track for its best daily performance in seven weeks.</p>
<p>The reports of behind-the-scenes talks between Washington and Beijing spurred optimism that U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist shift is more about gaining leverage in trade talks than isolating the world’s biggest economy with tariff barriers that would stifle global growth.</p>
<p>This helped offset news that the United States and many of its allies were expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats in retaliation for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain.</p>
<p>U.S. stocks .SP500 are still 7 percent below their January peaks and some investors are not rushing to recalculate risks around Trump’s America First trade agenda.</p>
<p>“He can flip-flop quite a lot,” said Lukas Daalder, chief investment officer at Robeco in Rotterdam. “The big problem is, how long will it take before new tweets and headlines that will change the sentiment again?”</p>
<p>Daalder said he was underweight emerging market equities and the Nikkei and overweight other developed markets “based on the expectation that there will be more trade uncertainty”.</p>
<p>White House officials are asking China to cut tariffs on imported cars, allow foreign majority ownership of financial services firms and buy more U.S.-made semiconductors, said a person familiar with the discussions.</p>
<p>Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged on Monday to maintain trade negotiations and ease access to American businesses.</p> FILE PHOTO - A woman walks past an electronic board showing the graphs of the recent movements of Japan's Nikkei average outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, October 23, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato EURO REVERSES EARLY GAINS
<p>The surge in stocks dragged on the Treasury market, which faces a record $294 billion of new supply this week. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes US10YT=RR inched up to 2.848 percent, but remained short of last week’s top at 2.90 percent.</p>
<p>In currency markets the early reaction was to offload both the yen and the dollar, helping the euro to an early gain.</p>
<a href="/finance/markets/index?symbol=.N225" type="external">Nikkei Inc</a> 21317.32 .N225 Nikkei Index +551.22 (+2.65%) .N225
<p>But the single currency later went into reverse after data showed lending to euro zone companies slowed last month, and European Central Bank Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen said underlying euro zone inflation may remain lower than expected even if growth is robust.</p>
<p>The dollar, measured against a basket of currencies, .DXY used the euro’s weakness to rally 0.4 percent to 89.424, bouncing off a five-week low hit on Monday.</p>
<p>The improved mood on trade earlier pushed China’s yuan to a two-1/2 year high and gave a fillip to industrial commodities, with copper and iron ore bouncing.</p>
<p>In oil markets, Brent crude LCOc1 added 31 cents to $70.43 a barrel.</p>
<p>Daalder said there had been no clear flight to quality since February’s burst of equity market volatility, with scarce volatility in currencies and little movement in 10-year U.S. Treasury yields.</p>
<p>“It seems to be that the U.S. has lost some of its shine as the safe market to which people turn when things get rough,” said Daalder. “It’s partly the uncertainty in the U.S. itself which is playing a role.”</p>
<p>Additional reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Editing by Catherine Evans</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Akzo Nobel will sell its chemicals business in a 10.1 billion euro ($12.6 billion) deal to buyers led by Carlyle Group, the maker of Dulux paints said on Tuesday, making good on a promise made as it fought off a takeover last year.</p> FILE PHOTO: General view of the outside of AkzoNobel's new paint factory in Ashington, Britain September 12, 2017. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo
<p>The sale of the Specialty Chemicals operation to Carlyle and Singapore’s GIC [GIC.UL] sovereign wealth fund for a slightly better than expected price will allow Akzo to focus on its main paints and coatings business.</p>
<p>It delivers one of the biggest commitments made by Akzo Nobel in its defense against a 26 billion euro ($32 billion) takeover offer from U.S. rival PPG Industries last year.</p>
<p>It may also help to repair strained relationships with shareholders unhappy with the rejection of the bid.</p>
<p>Akzo Nobel CEO Thierry Vanlancker, who took charge last July after the bid battle, expects 7.5 billion euros in net proceeds from the sale. The 10.1 billion euro valuation includes debt.</p>
<p>The division being sold produces an array of chemicals used in plastic packaging, tissue paper, cleaning materials, pharmaceuticals, food products, salts and adhesives.</p>
<p>The 7.5 billion euro total will be returned to shareholders, Vanlancker told Reuters, with the company deciding on the distribution through dividends or share buybacks in the coming months.</p>
<p>The deal leaves Akzo as “one of the top 3 largest paints and coatings companies in the world,” Vanlancker said.</p>
<p>He said Akzo must now deliver on a goal to achieve a 15 percent margin on sales by 2020, after that measure fell to 9.4 percent last year.</p>
<p>That goal will mainly be delivered through cost savings and efficiency measures, Vanlancker said, as overall sales growth in the paints and coatings market is expected to remain modest.</p>
<p>“We will be looking at size (acquisition) opportunities as they come along”, Vanlancker said. “But size is really not top of mind, it’s performance of the business.”</p>
<p>The remaining Akzo business will have 35,700 employees, while Speciality Chemicals employs around 10,000.</p> DEFENSE PLAN
<p>Akzo will try to strengthen its position in promising markets such as powder coatings, which showed 10 percent global growth last year, the CEO said. Akzo also expects its sales of decorative paints in China and Europe to increase.</p>
<p>Shares rose 2.9 percent to 77.28 euros by 1300 GMT. That is still well short of the figure of around 95 euros in the cash and share offer from PPG last year.</p>
<p>Analyst Wim Hoste of KBC said the sale price for Specialty Chemicals represented a multiple of 9.8 times core earnings, “which is a bit higher ... than we were banking on.”</p>
<p>Bankers advising potential buyers had said they expected the business to fetch an enterprise value of 8-9 times the unit’s expected earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).</p>
<p>Carlyle had been vying for the asset with U.S. private equity firm Apollo and its consortium partner, Dutch fund PGGM, as well as Dutch investor Hal Investments, and Advent International partnered with Bain Capital Private Equity, people familiar with the matter had told Reuters.</p>
<p>Akzo first announced plans to sell the business last April, when PPG was in full pursuit. Many shareholders were dismayed as Akzo’s boards appeared uninterested in talks with PPG and when they ultimately rejected the U.S. company’s best offer.</p>
<p>With support from Dutch politicians, Akzo argued a takeover was not in the interest of other stakeholders, including employees.</p>
<p>Shareholders sued unsuccessfully to have chairman Antony Burgmans removed. Akzo’s CEO and chief financial officer both resigned last year on health grounds. Burgmans is due to retire after next month’s annual meeting, with former Maersk CEO Nils Andersen nominated to take his place.</p>
<p>Vanlancker said Akzo had extracted promises from Carlyle to keep the chemicals company’s head offices in the Netherlands, though it made no commitment to retain all of the business’s 2,500 employees in the Netherlands.</p>
<p>The deal is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to be concluded before the end of the year, Akzo said.</p>
<p>Lazard, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC advised Akzo Nobel on the sale. ($1 = 0.8023 euros)</p>
<p>Reporting by Toby Sterling and Bart Meijer; Editing by Jason Neely and Keith Weir</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation left the Chinese capital on Tuesday following a dramatic whirlwind visit that some reports said included the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un.</p>
<p>The conservative South Korea Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing an unnamed senior intelligence official, said the delegation had included Kim and that he had since left to return to North Korea.</p>
<p>South Korea’s left-leaning press Hankyoreh also reported Kim had traveled to Beijing for meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday afternoon before leaving for a “third location” on Tuesday. It did not cite specific sources.</p>
<p>The Hankyoreh did not specify where the “third location” was but said it could be in China.</p>
<p>Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said Kim was on the train that left Beijing, citing two anonymous sources.</p>
<p>South Korea said it was closely watching events in Beijing, where a foreign ministry spokeswoman deflected a question on whether Kim, his sister or some other senior North Korean was visiting. South Korea’s spy agency declined to confirm the report.</p>
<p>“At present I have no understanding of the situation you mention. If there is news we will release it,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular daily briefing.</p>
<p>Diplomatic sources in Beijing said a senior North Korean official was in town, but did not know exactly who.</p>
<p>Bloomberg, citing three unidentified sources, reported late on Monday that Kim was in Beijing in what would be his first known trip outside North Korea since taking power in 2011.</p>
<p>The unconfirmed visit came ahead of planned summit meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>“The presidential Blue House is watching things in Beijing very closely, while keeping all possibilities open,” said the senior official in Seoul, who spoke on condition of anonymity.</p>
<p>Improving ties between North Korea, which is pursuing nuclear and missile programs in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions, and China would be a positive sign before the planned summits, he said.</p>
<p>A Reuters reporter saw a convoy leave Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guest House, where senior foreign leaders often stay, and drive north on Tuesday morning. It was unclear where the convoy was headed.</p>
<p>Later, a Reuters journalist saw what was believed to be the delegation’s train pulling out of a Beijing station. The group was reported to have arrived in China on Sunday after crossing from North Korea in the border city of Dandong.</p>
<p>A senior U.S. official who follows North Korea closely said the available evidence suggested that Kim had traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, but stressed that has not been confirmed.</p>
<p>Underscoring the mystery, one senior Beijing-based diplomatic source told Reuters simply: “We just don’t know.”</p>
<p>One source with ties to China’s leadership said it was possible Kim’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, was in town. She visited South Korea for the Winter Olympics last month, paving the way for a summit between the two Koreas.</p>
<p>South Korean news agency Newsis reported that Kim Yo Jong and the North’s ceremonial leader, Kim Yong Nam, were visiting Beijing, citing an unidentified North Korea-related source in Beijing.</p> A train believed to be carrying a senior North Korean delegation leaves the Beijing Railway Station in Beijing, China March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee
<p>The pair visited South Korean President Moon Jae-in at his office in Seoul during the Winter Olympics in February.</p>
<p>The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was unlikely Kim Jong Un would have sent his sister on such an important mission, unlike her ceremonial visit to South Korea for the Olympics.</p>
<p>On the contrary, the official said, a summit with Xi would underscore Kim’s standing as a world leader.</p> “LOT OF LEVERAGE”
<p>Xi and Kim Jong Un had reasons to meet in advance of Kim’s meetings with Moon and possibly Trump, the U.S. official said.</p>
<p>“Xi has met Trump, and in many respects learned how to deal with him better than some people here do,” the official said.</p> Slideshow (10 Images)
<p>“At the same time, despite the recent tensions, he needs to know what Kim has in mind for dealing with the South and the U.S., and he still has a lot of leverage with the North.”</p>
<p>Japanese media reported on Monday that a high-ranking Pyongyang official appeared to have arrived by train in Beijing.</p>
<p>The Blue House official said South Korea had been aware of “related movements” in North Korea, such as the train, for a few days but he could not confirm whether Kim or another high-ranking North Korean official was visiting China.</p>
<p>Beijing is the main ally of secretive and isolated North Korea, as well as its biggest trading partner.</p>
<p>China has not confirmed any visit by a North Korean but has not totally censored speculation.</p>
<p>There were posts on Chinese social media talking about the possibility Kim Jong Un was in China, some citing family members in Dandong. The rail journey between Dandong and Beijing covers more than 1,100 km (680 miles). It takes at least 14 hours by ordinary service, according to Chinese railway timetables.</p> Related Coverage
<a href="/article/us-northkorea-missiles-china-security/beijing-shrouded-in-security-speculation-over-mystery-north-korean-guest-idUSKBN1H31A1" type="external">Beijing shrouded in security, speculation over mystery North Korean guest</a>
<p>The North Korean leader is due to hold separate summits with South Korea in late April and the United States in May.</p>
<p>“The fact that the summits are being held has been beyond our expectations. Right now, the situation surrounding the Korean peninsula is moving very quickly and it would be inadvisable to think with prejudice,” the Blue House official said.</p>
<p>Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, met then-president Jiang Zemin in China in 2000 before a summit between the two Koreas in June that year.</p>
<p>Kim Jong Il was considered at the time to have made the visit to reaffirm close ties with China.</p>
<p>“North Korea likely wants to confirm its relationship with China and believes it has some leverage with which it can ask for things from China,” said Yoo Ho-yeol, Professor of North Korean studies at Seoul’s Korea University.</p>
<p>“If North Korea speaks with the United States on its own, it might feel it is at a disadvantage but, if it has China as an ally, Pyongyang may think it will be able to protect its interests and profits during the summits.”</p>
<p>Reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING and Christine Kim in SEOUL; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang in SEOUL and John Walcott in WASHINGTON; Editing by Paul Tait and Nick Macfie</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | BRIEF-UK's FRC Fines, Reprimands Audit Firm Arrandco Audit Ltd Zuckerberg's snub of UK parliament 'astonishing' says lawmaker Risk assets jump on reports of U.S.-China trade talks Akzo Nobel reshapes business with 10 billion euro sale Train believed carrying top North Korean delegation leaves Beijing | false | https://reuters.com/article/brief-uks-frc-fines-reprimands-audit-fir/brief-uks-frc-fines-reprimands-audit-firm-arrandco-audit-ltd-idUSFWN1PI0E2 | 2018-01-23 | 2 |
<p />
<p>It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jared Lee Loughner appears to be a psychologically unhinged, <a href="" type="internal">nihilistic individual</a> with no coherent ideology, whose political views are irrelevant if they can even be articulated. But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers—mostly from the left—from denouncing a climate of extremism and calling for a more civil, less partisan atmosphere.</p>
<p>Democrats are now ramping up calls to place restrictions on inflammatory speech. Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.) plans to <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/dem-congressman-introduce-bill-banning-bullseye-crosshair-symbols/" type="external">introduce a bill</a> that would curb the use of threatening imagery against legislators and judges, according to the National Journal. Similarly, Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.)—the third-ranking Democrat in the House— <a href="http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2011/jan/10/clyburn-words-can-be-danger/" type="external">has called for the return</a> of the Fairness Doctrine, a defunct regulation that requires broadcasters to devote airtime to opposing political views. “Free speech is as free speech does,” Clyburn told a local paper. “You cannot yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.”</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Rep. Chellie Pingeree (D-Maine) has even called for Republicans to change the name of their health-care repeal bill, currently entitled “the Repeal the Job Killing Health Care Law Act.” Pingree explains in the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chellie-pingree/for-gabbys-sake-republica_b_806487.html" type="external">Huffington Post</a>:</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong—I’m not suggesting that the name of that one piece of legislation somehow led to the horror of this weekend—but is it really necessary to put the word “killing” in the title of a major piece of legislation? I don’t think that word is in there by accident — my Republican friends know as well as anyone the power of words to send a message. But in this environment and at this moment in our nation’s history, it’s not the message we should be sending.</p>
<p>In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, national lawmakers will probably tamp down the tone in Washington: House Republicans have already postponed their vote this week on their health care repeal bill, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, and lawmakers have called for unity out of respect for the victims. Barring any new evidence that directly links Loughner to any political activism or activities, Democrats will have a tough time pinning the blame on extreme rhetoric. The right has certainly racheted up inflammatory, increasingly militaristic attacks on their opponents, which has stoked Democratic fears about violent retaliation over the last year. But by calling for a free-speech crackdown, Dems may simply be accused of playing politics with a national tragedy.</p>
<p>Read our exclusive interview with a friend who describes <a href="" type="internal">Loughner’s family, bizarre dream journal, and his obsession with Rep. Giffords</a>. Full coverage of the shooting and its aftermath is <a href="" type="internal">here</a>.</p>
<p /> | Post-Shooting, Dems Try to Clamp Down on Political Speech | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/post-shooting-dems-try-clamp-down-political-speech/ | 2011-01-10 | 4 |
<p>Q. Do you find in your surveys that the kind of family that people say they were raised in (happily married parents, unhappily married, divorced, single parent, etc.) correlates with their current views of marriage?</p>
<p>Yes and no. When we did a big <a href="http://pewsocialtrends.org/2010/11/18/the-decline-of-marriage-and-rise-of-new-families" type="external">survey last year on attitudes about marriage and family life</a>, we asked respondents to tell us their parents’ marital status during most of the time they were growing up; 77% said their parents were married, 13% said divorced, 2% separated, 2% widowed and 5% never married. When we cross that family history with responses to questions about marriage, we see a mixed pattern. For example, our survey found that 39% of all respondents agree that marriage is becoming obsolete — including virtually identical shares of respondents whose parents were married (38%) and respondents whose parents were not married for whatever reason (39%). But on other questions, there’s a gap in attitudes between those groups. For example, among respondents whose parents were married while they were growing up, 76% say they are very satisfied with their family life; among respondents whose parents were not married for whatever reason, just 70% say the same. Not surprisingly, there’s a much bigger gap when we asked married respondents if their relationship with their spouse is closer or less close than the relationship their parents had. Among those whose parents were not married, 69% say their spousal relationship is closer, 24% say about the same and just 5% say less close. Among those whose parents were married, just 46% say closer, 48% say about the same and 5% say less close.</p>
<p>Paul Taylor, Director, Pew Research Center Social &amp; Demographic Trends project</p> | Are views of marriage affected by the type of family people grew up in? | false | http://pewresearch.org/2011/04/12/are-views-of-marriage-affected-by-the-type-of-family-people-grew-up-in/ | 2011-04-12 | 2 |
<p />
<p>RUSH: I checked the email here during the break. I got some, “Why aren’t you talking about <a href="" type="internal">Rosenstein on Fox News Sunday yesterday</a>" Why aren’t you talking about Rosenstein"” My friends, I know about Rosenstein on Fox News Sunday. We’ve already talked about that! This is what I mean about being on the cutting edge of societal evolution. We’ve already talked about Mueller’s charge from Rosenstein. We’ve already talked about the wide berth that Mueller has. We’ve already talked about how there were no limits.</p>
<p>Rosenstein — the deputy AG who appointed Mueller as the special counsel — was on <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/08/06/rosenstein-christie-temper-reports-mueller-grand-jury-in-russia-probe.html" type="external">Fox News Sunday yesterday</a>. It was an amazing interview. Because one of the things I took away from it is that Rosenstein, at least publicly, wanted to get nowhere near the possibility of putting journalists in jail if they don’t identify people that are committing felonies by leaking information to them. There is no shield law. The federal government can put journalists in jail if they don’t reveal their sources when it comes to things like national security.</p>
<p>Judith Miller of the New York Times was in jail for three weeks for refusing to give up the source. Rosenstein made it plain, “Oh, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to punish journalists for doing their jobs,” which told me that branch of the Justice Department doesn’t want to antagonize the media at all. This was in reaction to the announcement by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to really go after these leaks and leakers and find out who they are.</p>
<p>Chris Wallace asked some really tough and good questions here. “Well, what about the journalists that help this happen? What about the publishing of this information? You have the leakers, yeah. But if they didn’t have access to the media then they would have anything,” pointing out it’s a two-way street. Rosenstein made it clear as day that the Justice Department under Trump right now doesn’t have any interest in pursuing the journalist half of the illegal leaks being published conundrum or dilemma.</p>
<p>Now, the other aspect of this, the thing that we have discussed in great detail, is Mueller’s appointment and how it violates several Department of Justice regulations. The big one being that there has to be an underlying crime to investigate, and there isn’t one. There was not a specific crime that Mueller was charged with looking at and looking into. So he has pretty much no boundaries. He can go anywhere he wants — and in fact, it appears with the impaneling of this grand jury, that he’s doing that.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Now, the discussion has evolved. It’s something else we’ve talked about, and that is what happens when Mueller finds something that’s not related to Russia? Rosenstein made it plain yesterday that he did give boundaries to Mueller and that this is about Russia, Russia, Russia. And that if Mueller finds crimes elsewhere that he’s a gotta come back to the DOJ and ask ’em. But, folks, I have tell you: The letter from Rosenstein to Mueller doesn’t say that. That’s what all the hubbub here is about.</p>
<p>You’ve heard the conversations about, “Did Mueller cross Trump’s red line?” Trump was asked if he would have a problem with Mueller going beyond the Russia aspect here (collusion, obstruction, what have you). Trump said, “Hell, yeah. This not a fishing expedition into my business life and into my family. If he goes there, yeah, that constitutes a red line.” Well, impaneling the grand jury may, in fact, have crossed the red line.</p>
<p>So people are now wondering if Trump will actually make a move on firing Mueller or whether Rosenstein’s gonna try to rein him in. I think that kind of misses the point of what’s really going on here, and it’s understandable that people would miss it because it’s hard not to get caught up in the daily ebb and flow of what we call “the news.” It isn’t news anymore. There really isn’t any news. There is an agenda that powerful people have, and that’s what passes for news. Let me… In explaining what I think is going on, let me ask you a question.</p>
<p>In any significant organization where power is a central element, do you understand what I mean when I ask, “Are you aware that in any such organization there are always two or three people that you don’t know”? They’re not public, and they wield all the power in that particular organization. Not the people you see. Not the denoted leaders. But there’s always powerful people behind the scenes actually making things happen. I think that’s true of the swamp, of the Washington establishment.</p>
<p>I don’t know who they are. Don’t misunderstand. But I don’t think the swamp, for example, is led by Ryan and McConnell or even Schumer and Pelosi. I don’t think those are the true powerbrokers. I don’t know who they are. “What I do “know”… I put that in quotes ’cause I don’t know this incontrovertibly, but I think it instinctively, that there are people in the swamp who are lifers who are there no matter which party is in the White House, who are there no matter which party controls Congress. I don’t know what they do.</p>
<p>They may be lawyers. They may be business executives. They may have their wealth that connects them to the highest regions of power everywhere. Their wealth and their careers give them inside contacts at the CIA, at the FBI, and everywhere. We just don’t know who these people are. Now, there are people that do know who they are; I just don’t. And these people, I think, are hell-bent on getting Donald Trump out of town, for a variety of reasons, beyond those that I have previously specified.</p>
<p>I think the list of reasons they want him gone are that they genuinely think he’s insane, that they think he’s unstable, and that poses its own set of problems. And then the usual problems of, “He’s an outsider; we’re insiders. We can’t allow some doofus like this and the things that he has said publicly and the reputation… We can’t allow some guy like this to come in here and take over and take control. Much less accomplish things! We cannot allow a guy like this to show us up.</p>
<p>“We have manufactured a little swamp here where the public has come to accept a snail’s pace. The public has come to accept a creeping expanse in the scope, size, and power of government. The country has come to, not — in some cases — accept it, but demand it! People on the left, the climate change people are demanding bigger and bigger government and more authoritarian government. So the people I’m talking about running this show and their predecessors have invested a lot of time and a lot of money in making sure that this slow creep away from democracy, away from public opinion as expressed in elections, being the direction the country goes.</p>
<p>These are the people that don’t want to have to pay fealty to that. They make it look like they do. They talk the game, make it look like elections matter. But at the end of the day, what happens in that town is what they want to happen no matter what happens at the ballot box. In these people’s minds, it doesn’t matter which party’s running the White House. These are the people I’m talking about, people way above this.</p>
<p>That doesn’t matter. Their power is entrenched no matter who wins, and they don’t really care in the big picture. They care personally, maybe individually, could be Republicans and Democrats. But overall, in the big picture, that’s irrelevant to them. The swamp staying what it is, growing slowly, creepingly, and the public accepting it — warrantless wiretaps, searches, you name it.</p>
<p>The surveillance. Everything is predicated on a slow creep with the public pretty much accepting it. Trump has upset all of that! He has just thrown all of that up, and it’s up for grabs now. And if Trump succeeds and continues to succeed — and maybe does so over two terms — then the possibility in these people’s minds exists that this whole game could be exposed, and they don’t want it to get that far.</p>
<p>By “game,” I mean, the way Washington really runs. And in that sense, the way the world really runs. Now, Obama, for example, was loved and adored by these people. Obama was probably a puppet, not that he had to be, but he was probably advancing these people’s agenda left and right. Their agenda is not just liberal; it’s not anti-conservative; it’s just personal power, globalist power over the world. Power using the wealth and power of the United States to guide the world in their view. But they must remain invisible at all times.</p>
<p>Trump blows all this up in ways we have previously discussed. So there was a piece by my buddy Andy McCarthy — what are you smiling at in there? Oh. Snerdley has a caller making him laugh. Of course, I would think that he’s laughing at me, but then I hadn’t said anything funny, so I said, “What’s going on in there?” Don’t worry. I haven’t lost my place. Andy McCarthy has this piece, I think it was on Friday, about what the Mueller investigation is really all about. And helped me compress this opinion and argument that I just advanced to you.</p>
<p>And very briefly, <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450183/robert-mueller-grand-jury-report-law-crime-military-justice-conduct-unbecoming-impeachment" type="external">McCarthy’s theory is that what Mueller is actually doing is the first stage of the impeachment of Donald Trump</a>, that this is not a criminal investigation and never has been. It’s been counterintel, which another reason, why do we have a special counsel? There’s no crime. Keep in mind the swamp. If I’m wrong about this group of people, this cabal that nobody knows. If I’m wrong about that, the swamp is still the swamp and everything about it is still true.</p>
<p>They don’t want an outsider succeeding. They don’t want an outsider winning. This simply cannot be. Trump simply cannot last. Trump just can’t stand. This whole thing is just palpably frightening to them and has them angered to boot. And they want to get rid of Trump, they have to get rid of Trump. And this special counsel investigation, in addition to being able to charge people with crimes at the end of the investigation, they also can write a report.</p>
<p>The McCarthy theory is that they’re collecting so much information on Trump and his family over so many years, his business practices dating back to the casino days in New Jersey, owning the New Jersey Generals, to Trump Tower, you name it. They may not even find any crimes. They’re just gonna find stuff that’s gonna destroy Trump’s reputation and his image. And they’re happily doing this because they can then prepare a report on everything they’ve seen and turn it over to the House of Representatives as the first step in a process that would end in impeachment.</p>
<p>And I think that is a very right-on perception of what’s going on here. I think Mueller has a vast responsibility that nobody’d ever admit to, nobody would ever own up to.</p>
<p>BREAK TRANSCRIPT</p>
<p>RUSH: Absolutely. That’s the whole point. These people that I’m talking about, whether they exist or not, we know the Washington establishment exists, and we know that it has its power base. We know that there are people that lead it, that define it, who run it. We just don’t know — I guess names. The point is, they’re even willing to invalidate an election. They are willing to say that an election doesn’t matter if it goes against their wishes, that an election is unacceptable.</p>
<p>They are totally willing to do this. That is, in fact, what they are doing in this attempt to get rid of Trump. There isn’t a crime. There isn’t any high crime or misdemeanor. There’s nothing yet other than they don’t like the guy and they don’t like his personality and they don’t like the way he talks and they don’t like the way he tweets and they don’t like the way he does his hair, and they don’t like the way he goes about talking about people. They gotta get rid of him.</p>
<p>He is a threat to all that they hold dear, their sophistication, their cosmopolitanism, their refinement, whatever it is, plus the real thing, their policies, their dyed-in-the-wool things they have been devoted to all their lives, which largely enrich themselves and their friends. And so if they have to invalidate an election, whatever, whatever it takes. And that’s what we’re in the middle of here. And the media, its party establishment, and their allies with this cabal, that’s how they advance. Everybody sucks up to bosses, or many people do.</p> | The Swamp Will Do Whatever It Takes to Remove Trump | true | https://rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2017/08/07/the-swamp-will-do-whatever-it-takes-to-remove-trump/ | 2017-08-07 | 0 |
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<p>Momentum appears to have ground to a halt in U.S. labor markets as a payroll tax hike and widespread government spending cutbacks have taken their toll on hiring.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Predictions for the April jobs report out Friday reveal a pessimistic forecast of 145,000 jobs added last month. That’s up from 88,000 in March but not nearly enough to make a dent in the stubbornly high unemployment rate. Economists predict the rate will remain at 7.6%.</p>
<p>Analysts have blamed a 2% increase in the payroll tax in January, which will slash the average American paycheck by about $800 this year, as well as the across-the-board cuts in government spending known as sequestration, for scaling back consumer demand and consequently the need for hiring.</p>
<p>Much of U.S. monetary policy has been tied to labor markets. The Federal Reserve has said it won’t consider raising historically low interest rates or scaling back on its massive bond purchases until the unemployment rate drops to 6.5%.</p>
<p>“Because of government spending cuts and higher tax rates, the Fed has a higher hurdle to clear in lowering unemployment and promoting economic growth,” said Paul Edelstein, an analyst at IHS Global Insight.</p>
<p>Both low interest rates and the bond purchase programs, known as quantitative easing, are intended to spur economic activity by promoting lending, especially via low mortgage rates.</p>
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<p>On Wednesday, citing high unemployment and fiscal policy out of Washington, D.C., that is “restraining economic growth,” the Fed said it was willing to expand those programs if the economy doesn’t show more strength in the coming months.</p>
<p>Those policies, until recently, had elicited fears of runaway inflation. Low interest rates which make it easier to borrow can push prices higher. But with job creation faltering, and wages and benefits practically stagnant, demand for goods has slowed and inflation has in fact been falling.</p>
<p>The Fed believes an inflation rate of 2% means wages and demand for goods are rising at a comfortable rate. If that rate is falling too quickly, as some believe is happening right now, it means wages and demand are weak, and that’s bad for economic growth.</p>
<p>The labor markets got some unexpected good news on Thursday when a government report revealed that the number of Americans filing claims for jobless benefits had fallen to its lowest level since just before the start of the financial crisis of 2008-2009.</p>
<p>Analysts said the data mean employers aren’t laying off as many workers as in recent years, a positive sign for workers.</p>
<p>One piece of data that will be closely watched Friday is the number of Americans who have dropped out of the workforce in April after giving up looking for work. That number has contributed significantly to the slow reduction in the unemployment rate despite lackluster job gains in recent months.</p>
<p>When people stop looking for work altogether the U.S. government no longer counts them as members of the workforce and they aren’t included in surveys that measure the unemployment rate. That often allows the unemployment rate to fall even though very few jobs were created in the prior month.</p>
<p>Indeed, in the wake of a tough recession like the one from which the U.S. just emerged jobs are often created at a high rate, drawing millions back into the workforce. That can push the unemployment rate higher for awhile before it starts to fall.</p>
<p>That hasn’t been the case during this recovery. In March the U.S. labor force shrank by nearly 500,000 people.</p>
<p>Another important contributor to the shrinking workforce, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, is older Americans -- members of the Baby Boomer generation -- retiring in massive numbers.</p>
<p>The percentage of Americans either working or looking for work in March fell to its lowest point since 1979. The worker participation rate is now at 63.6%, down from 66% when the recession began four years ago. That, according to the WSJ, represents close to seven million workers who are no longer part of the workforce.</p> | Momentum Slowing in Labor Markets | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2013/05/02/momentum-slowing-in-labor-markets.html | 2016-03-02 | 0 |
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey corrections officials, challenged by a civil rights group, announced Monday that a best-selling book on mass incarceration and racial discrimination that had been banned at two state prisons would now be available to inmates at all state correctional facilities.</p>
<p>The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had sent a letter Monday asking why at least two prisons had banned <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/" type="external">“The New Jim Crow”</a> by Michelle Alexander.</p>
<p>The group called the ban “ironic, misguided, and harmful.” It said the ban amounted to unconstitutional censorship of speech on issues of public concern, which is entitled to special protection under the First Amendment.</p>
<p>Corrections officials noted there was no departmentwide ban on the book. They said the book already was being used as a teaching tool in a state program that requires inmates to enroll in college-level courses while incarcerated.</p>
<p>Prisons and jails are allowed to ban reading materials based on certain concerns, such as security, but the ACLU contends officials can’t claim that justification applies in this case. They also note that Texas — which the group says has a 10,000-title list of banned reading materials — not only allows the book but included it on a list of publications the state has affirmatively approved.</p>
<p>“Michelle Alexander’s book chronicles how people of color are not just locked in, but locked out of civic life, and New Jersey has exiled them even further by banning this text specifically for them,” said Amol Sinha, executive director of New Jersey’s ACLU chapter. “The ratios and percentages of mass incarceration play out in terms of human lives. Keeping a book that examines a national tragedy out of the hands of the people mired within it adds insult to injury.”</p>
<p>TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey corrections officials, challenged by a civil rights group, announced Monday that a best-selling book on mass incarceration and racial discrimination that had been banned at two state prisons would now be available to inmates at all state correctional facilities.</p>
<p>The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union had sent a letter Monday asking why at least two prisons had banned <a href="http://newjimcrow.com/" type="external">“The New Jim Crow”</a> by Michelle Alexander.</p>
<p>The group called the ban “ironic, misguided, and harmful.” It said the ban amounted to unconstitutional censorship of speech on issues of public concern, which is entitled to special protection under the First Amendment.</p>
<p>Corrections officials noted there was no departmentwide ban on the book. They said the book already was being used as a teaching tool in a state program that requires inmates to enroll in college-level courses while incarcerated.</p>
<p>Prisons and jails are allowed to ban reading materials based on certain concerns, such as security, but the ACLU contends officials can’t claim that justification applies in this case. They also note that Texas — which the group says has a 10,000-title list of banned reading materials — not only allows the book but included it on a list of publications the state has affirmatively approved.</p>
<p>“Michelle Alexander’s book chronicles how people of color are not just locked in, but locked out of civic life, and New Jersey has exiled them even further by banning this text specifically for them,” said Amol Sinha, executive director of New Jersey’s ACLU chapter. “The ratios and percentages of mass incarceration play out in terms of human lives. Keeping a book that examines a national tragedy out of the hands of the people mired within it adds insult to injury.”</p> | Mass incarceration book ban lifted at New Jersey prisons | false | https://apnews.com/3c7f720d74ee4a98a62c981826fa52fb | 2018-01-08 | 2 |
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<p>Despite similar challenges, we have long had strikingly different approaches to the regulation of horse racing versus casino gaming. It may be time to unify our approach.</p>
<p>The differences stem partially from history. Casino gaming in the United States was born in a den of iniquity. The modern industry was begun by mobsters in the desert in Las Vegas, Nev. When Nevada and then other governments began to legitimize and tax casino gaming, they came to it with great suspicion and began to regulate it rigorously.</p>
<p>Virtually everyone involved in casino gaming at any level, from the cocktail waiter to the major casinos owners, needs a license of some sort and is carefully scrutinized for his or her “suitability.” Moreover, we have rigid gaming regulations that require recorded video surveillance of all gaming areas, resulting in thousands of cameras recording data in every casino.</p>
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<p>These regulations often prevent employees in “count rooms” from even having pockets in their uniforms. Players do not need licenses, but we watch them closely for evidence of cheating and they may be banned from a casino in the famous “black book.”</p>
<p>The main purpose of all of this regulation is to ensure that honest people are not tempted to crime by having access to so much cash and to ensure that opportunistic criminals cannot make the casino a tool for money laundering or other corruption. This regulatory scrutiny works; it is rare that significant corruption in casino gaming occurs for very long.</p>
<p>Horse racing has a different history. Horse racing has been legal in some states for 200 years, and it comes from a far different cultural milieu. Horse racing once had a socially valuable purpose in improving the breeding of the primary mode of western transportation. Long after horses ceased being a principal means of transportation, wealthy sportsmen and hobbyists remained interested.</p>
<p>Horse racing never had the taint that casino gaming had. As a result, we have never applied such careful regulatory standards to horse racing or the people involved.</p>
<p>These cultural expectations may no longer be accurate. It simply may no longer be true that all of the people currently involved in horse racing are horse lovers in pursuit of a wholesome passion.</p>
<p>Pressure on this notion began to build with “racinos,” as horse tracks with slot machines are widely known. Initially, racinos were developed to cross-subsidize the horse-racing industry by directing slot machine revenues toward racing purses. More recently, however, some racetracks have become stalking horses for disguised casinos. These days, the public seems more interested in slot machines than racing wagers, and some track owners are driven more by revenues than a wholesome passion for horses.</p>
<p>More pressure on our ideal of wholesome horse racing has increased recently with the revelations that many owners are risking their horses’ lives by pushing them to injury or drugging them to improve performance. The ideal is further tested by the revelation that Mexican drug cartels are allegedly using horse racing to launder money.</p>
<p>It would be a wholesale shift in philosophy to apply the same rigorous scrutiny to gambling ventures in the racing context that we already apply in the casino context. We should not do so without careful thought because it would be very expensive for the horse racing industry, and these increased costs would inevitably put some racetracks and owners out of business.</p>
<p>But recent revelations are deeply troubling, and we should be asking the same question of horse tracks that we ask of casinos. If we cannot trust that the action at tracks is legitimate, why should we allow it to be legal?</p> | Horse Racing Earns Increased Scrutiny | false | https://abqjournal.com/113366/horse-racing-earns-increased-scrutiny.html | 2012-06-18 | 2 |
<p>President Trump announced his plans to do nothing to improve Obamacare while blaming Democrats. One of his top supporters doesn’t think much of that idea.</p>
<p>On Monday night, Trump fantasized that his Democratic opponents in Congress would come crawling to him on their hands and knees after the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) imploded, adding that “we are in very good shape!”</p>
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<p>However, Maine Governor Paul LePage, one of the earliest Republican elected officials to endorse Trump during his 2016 campaign, said Trump’s decision to sit on his thumbs was lacking in compassion, and challenged the president to not give up on reforming healthcare. Gov. LePage <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/28/politics/kfile-paul-lepage-obamacare-fail/index.html" type="external">called out Trump for his inaction</a>, saying it would only cause more harm.</p>
<p>“Oh yeah, yeah, so let’s keep hurting the American people,” Gov. LePage <a href="http://www.wvomfm.com/play_window.php?audioType=Episode&amp;audioId=7439647" type="external">said sarcastically</a> on WVOM-FM in Maine. “That’s about as sensible as ‘go jump off a bridge.’ That makes no sense. You’re telling people, ‘Let it fail so American people get hurt more, and when they get hurt more, maybe we’ll do something.'”</p>
<p>Trumpcare was soundly defeated last week when House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the bill just minutes before it was set to be voted on. Whip counts at the time of the vote showed that Trump and Ryan were likely to fall short of the 216 votes needed to send the healthcare overhaul to the U.S. Senate. LePage <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/28/politics/kfile-paul-lepage-obamacare-fail/index.html" type="external">had no kind words</a> for members of the extremely conservative House Freedom Caucus, and blamed them for the Republicans’ failure to follow through on repealing Obamacare — their chief campaign promise of 2016.</p>
<p>“[T]o have the Freedom Caucus sit on the sidelines and let the Democrats win. Shame on them. I honestly hope every single one gets defeated next year. No difference between a Democrat and a Republican if you hide in the closet.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Tom Cahill is a senior editor for the Resistance Report based in the Pacific Northwest. He specializes in coverage of political, economic, and environmental news. You can contact him via email at [email protected], or follow him on Facebook <a href="http://facebook.com/tomcahillRR" type="external">by clicking here</a>.</p> | One of Trump’s biggest supporters just threw him under the bus | true | http://resistancereport.com/politics/trump-biggest-supporters-bus/ | 2017-03-28 | 4 |
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<p>St. Pius senior forward Tatiana Limon has been named to the 2016 National Soccer Coaches Association of America High School All-American team.</p>
<p>Limon, who will graduate as St. Pius’ all-team leading goal scorer and point earner, had 32 goals this season for the Sartans and helped them into the Class 5A state championship game.</p>
<p>Limon and Cibola junior forward Lexi Baca, the Class 6A player of the year for two straight seasons and instrumental in the Cougars winning state in 2015 and 2016, both were selected to the NSCAA All-West Region Team.</p>
<p>•&#160;Over the weekend, Albuquerque Academy senior forward Charles Touche, arugably the state’s best player, competed in the sixth annual All-American Game in Raleigh, N.C. Only 40 players were selected to participate in the game. Touche had two assists.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Prep soccer: St. Pius’ Limon an All-American | false | https://abqjournal.com/902798/prep-soccer-st-pius-limon-an-all-american.html | 2 |
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<p>On Tuesday the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that prohibitions against same-sex marriage were unconstitutional. The ruling was acclaimed by gay-rights activists throughout the country, but it was also met with guarded optimism&#160;by Democrats and Republicans alike, both of whom see the issue as a potential political winner in 2004.</p>
<p>The decison is thought automatically to favor Republicans by giving the president’s conservative base a wedge issue to get worked up about. But it’s plausible &#160;to think that the Democrats could benefit. President Bush, to win in 2004, needs to attract moderate “swing” voters, the kind of people who warm to the message of “compassionate conservatism” but are turned off by extreme moralism.</p>
<p>The challenge for Republicans is to ensure that their arguments against gay marriage don’t come wrapped in blanket condemnations of homosexuality, as it tends to in the rhetoric of the Christian&#160;Right. Recent polls show that most Americans oppose gay marriage — an October Pew <a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;u=/nyt/20031119/ts_nyt/decisionongaymarriagecreatesathornyissuefor2004race" type="external">poll</a> found 59 percent in opposition — but others indicate that acceptance of homosexuality is on the rise. A May Gallup poll found that&#160; <a href="http://www.planetout.com/pno/news/article.html?date=2003/05/15/2" type="external">acceptance</a>&#160;of gay relationships has reached 60 percent, up from last year’s 52 percent. When asked whether they supported same-sex civil unions, 49 percent of respondents answered affirmatively.</p>
<p>Democrats, too,&#160;are treading carefully&#160;on the issue. Most of the party’s presidential candidates say they’re opposed to same-sex marriages, but some &#160;support civil unions for gays. The calculus behind this hedging is simple enough: Democrats have to be pro-gay enough to hold on the the core Democratic primary voters, but not so pro-gay as to be out&#160;in front&#160;of mainstream public opinion.</p>
<p>The Massachusetts decision gave the state legislature 180 days to adapt marriage laws to reflect the new ruling. The ruling emphasizes the “enormous private and social advantages” a marriage brings that a civil union does not. According to Slate‘s Josh Levin, the state legislature is left with <a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2091383/" type="external">three basic options</a>: allowing gay couples to legally wed; replacing civil marriage with an equal opportunity civil unions, or doing nothing for the next 180 days which would allow the Supreme Court to them begin issuing marriage licenses.</p>
<p>The 180 days gives those opposed to same-sex marriage plenty of time to mount a counteroffensive. In fact, conservative Christians and Republican groups already have plans underway. House majority leader, Tom DeLay, responded to the announcement with a plan to punish the liberal “runaway judiciary via a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.</p>
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<p>“When you have a runaway judiciary, as we obviously have, that has no consideration for the Constitution of the United States, then we have available to us through that Constitution (a way) to fix the judiciary.”</p>
<p>Massachusetts governor, Republican Mitt Romney, announced he would push for an amendment to the state constitution to block the court’s decision, although such an amendment won’t make it to the voters until 2006. Tim Grieve writes in Salon that the <a href="http://www.cc.org/" type="external">Christian Coalition</a> is working closely with Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado, who has already introduced a <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/19/marriage/index.html" type="external">constitutional amendment banning anti-gay-marriage</a> of the kind hinted at by DeLay. A similar bill is being crafted for the Senate by the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the support of the Traditional Values Coalition. The conservatives are on the move, with no time to be wasted on this issue. As the National Review puts it, the court is sanctifying the <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_comment/editors200311191355.asp" type="external">erosion of marriage</a>. As one Republican senate aide told the Christian Science Monitor, the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1119/p01s02-usju.html" type="external">timing couldn’t be better</a>.</p>
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<p>“The fact that this is the headline in the news is something you can’t pay enough for if you’re Bush…It raises the profile of a controversial social issue that Republicans believe will work to their advantage, particularly against a certain former governor of Vermont. This is turf the Republicans feel comfortable playing on.”</p>
<p>The legal battle continues to rage in the courts, but it’s somewhat unclear how the candidates will handle such a tricky issue. Between his meetings in London, President Bush issued a <a href="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;u=/afp/20031119/ts_alt_afp/us_gay_031119173724" type="external">statement</a> reiterating his well known view that marriage should remain between a male and a female. “I will work with congressional leaders and others to do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage,” Bush said. Noticeably absent from the president’s remarks was an endorsement for the GOP initiative to amend the constitution. What’s not clear in all this is how Bush will go in his crusade to keep marriage strictly heterosexual. Will he join the hardcore anti-gay ranks of his party? Or take a more tepid tone? If the latter, he risks alienating conservative voters, as his father did in 1992, to his cost.</p>
<p>But some argue that the issue is not lost to Democrats. As Robert B. Reich writes in the American Prospect the issue should be framed less as one about marriage and more as a matter of <a href="http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/11/reich-r.html" type="external">equal rights</a> and a sensible separation between church and state.</p>
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<p>“Democrats should call all this for what it is — a clear and present danger to religious liberty in America. For more than three hundred years, the liberal tradition has sought to free people from the tyranny of religious doctrines that would otherwise be imposed on them. Today’s evangelical right detests that tradition and seeks nothing short of a state-sponsored religion. But maintaining the separation of church and state is a necessary precondition of liberty.</p>
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<p>Gay marriage doesn’t have to be a wedge issue for the evangelicals — not if Democrats can put it where it belongs, as another front in the religious wars. The question of whether gay couples should be treated the same as married people need not and should not involve the religious meaning of “marriage.” That’s up to particular faiths and congregations to decide. The issue here is whether gays should have the same legal rights as heterosexuals — survivor’s benefits under Social Security, alimony, the distribution of assets when relationships end in divorce and other legal privileges now conferred only on heterosexual couples.”</p>
<p /> | Queer Eye on ’04 | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2003/11/queer-eye-04/ | 2003-11-20 | 4 |
<p>I’ve been educated in the finest Universities in preparation for this breakdown. Literate, patient, diligent. Fit for the cubicle. I will work hard for the Company. I will write winning copy. I won’t get up to pee, on company time, unless I really have to go. I won’t smoke. I’ll sit staid before my monitor. Grim determination. Won’t fidget. Write winning copy.</p>
<p>Advertisements, marketing, executive speeches and proposals. Inter-office memos. Company newsletters and PR.</p>
<p>I will rise with the sun. Better yet, I’ll beat it. I will shower, shave and lower myself like a diver into my suit. I will travel by bus and by train to the tall building that contains my station. I will leave my cubicle, from time to time, to attend meetings. I will participate in the meetings like a team-player, an eager worker, who wishes to communicate his ideas to others, to share ideas with others, to interact and cooperate with others in their communal effort to get things done.</p>
<p>What is to be done? We must create messages. Mission statements. Slogans. We must convey Executive concepts in clear, friendly, and when appropriate, witty language.</p>
<p>Lunch. I’m not hungry. I want beer. But I will not drink beer. Might slow me down. Perhaps a roll or a bagel and a bottle of seltzer.</p>
<p>I am no longer young. No cigarettes in the stairwell. That’s for kids. The go-getting, tireless young with their palm pilots and twelve hour days. Must I work twelve hour days? No. I will not work twelve hour days. I will work eight hours, like my predecessors. Still, with the commute, my day will amount to twelve hours. Eight hours in the cubicle, four hours on trains and buses.</p>
<p>But I will have my own station. A place to call home five (or more) days a week. How will I decorate this cubicle? With photographs of loved ones to remind me of…my reason for living? I love my wife. Perhaps, if we work hard, we will be able to afford children. I will place photographs of The Wife and Kids in the cubicle to remind me that the day will end, that I will be going home to loved ones.</p>
<p>I will work hard in my cubicle to help the Company earn value. But sitting all day, I might injure my back. Perhaps I will score a small amount of percocet from time to time. I will go home and do yoga. I will ride the stationary bike. I will meditate. If there is time left, I will try to write, though it will be difficult to pen my own ideas after typing the thoughts of the Company all day in my cubicle.</p>
<p>At last I will crawl into bed and read. But there won’t be much time for reading, for I must fall asleep early so that I may rise early to begin the journey to my station. Also, if we do have children, when they are very young they will wake me in the night. As they develop, I must spend quality time with them so they don’t feel neglected and grow up to be degenerates and cause me no end of grief in my declining years. Then again, these are my declining years, these years in the cubicle. How many have I left?</p>
<p>Maybe, after a time, if I write winning copy, the Company will move me to an office. My own office! In my office I will pace back and forth as I think hard for the Company. I must be creative and productive. After all, the Company allowed me my own office. They raised my salary. The health and well-being of my loved ones, the very roof over our heads, depends on the success of the Company, depends on my success within the Company.</p>
<p>But I will grow older, older, and the workers will grow younger and more vigorous. I will grow tired of pacing. I will lay down to rest on the nice couch in my office and snooze to Fugues and Cello Suites.</p>
<p>And then the vultures will descend. As they carry me away, I will remember life before the cubicle, a dream. I will remember memory itself, and desire. I will remember wanting. Nevertheless, I won’t miss seeing when the vultures tear away my eyes. I won’t miss knowing as they shuck my cranium like an oyster.</p>
<p>ADAM ENGEL reads you. Reads you. Copy. Copy. Over and out. Copy to <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Copy, Escher, Bach (You Copy?) | true | https://counterpunch.org/2002/12/23/copy-escher-bach-you-copy/ | 2002-12-23 | 4 |
<p>KAZO, Uganda — In this remote village near Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains, the landscape of the African savannah stretches out over rolling hills with tawny grass, green clusters of bushes, and short trees. Occasionally, white smoke rises from a field where a farmer is burning brush.</p>
<p>This is malaria country.</p>
<p>More than half of the children under 5 in Kazo have the malaria parasite present in their blood, according to a survey by the aid group Doctors Without Borders. Fifty-nine percent of the Kazo health center’s outpatient visits by children, and fully two-thirds of the visits by the rest of its outpatients, were spurred by the omnipresent mosquito-borne disease. Across the country, anywhere from 19,000 to more than 70,000 children under 5 die of malaria each year, depending on whose statistics are used.</p>
<p>It is here in the rural villages, far from the sprawling capital of Kampala, that the majority of Ugandans live. And it is here that treating malaria is a frontline battle for the country’s health care community to save young lives. But Uganda’s significant progress in reducing child mortality and malaria may be threatened by a growing disparity between health centers funded by Uganda’s corruption-wracked government and those operated by nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.</p>
<p>Kazo health center is a study in the contrasts between Uganda’s overstretched government system and the relative prosperity of the NGOs. Outside the crowded public children’s ward, mothers wait for hours for their children to get medical attention. Directly next door, a special ward has been set up for a study comparing various medication regimes for pediatric malaria. Funded by the University of Antwerp, the study pays for the medicines of children who qualify for participation — medicines that often run out on the public side of the clinic.</p>
<p>Rehema Katusime knows this contrast as well as anyone. She was breastfeeding her 1-year-old daughter, Amina, in a bed in the university’s study ward. Three days earlier, on a Tuesday, Katusime had brought Amina to the clinic because she was vomiting, feverish, and had an unusual dark yellow color to her urine. Amina tested positive for malaria and qualified for the study, which provided her with the antimalarial drug Coartem. By Friday afternoon, Amina’s temperature had receded and she was keeping down her food. Katusime expressed her happiness at Amina’s recovery.</p>
<p>But six months earlier, when her 4-year-old son, Mudasiru, got malaria, Katusime had a very different experience. She brought Mudasiru in on a Friday, already so ill that he was suffering convulsions. Sitting in her bed, Katusime pantomimed her son’s symptoms, twitching her arms up and down spasmodically.</p>
<p>“I thought he was going to die,” she said.</p>
<p />
<p />
<p>Focus on Malaria from <a href="http://vimeo.com/groundtruth" type="external">Ground Truth</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com" type="external">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>When Mudasiru arrived, the government-funded ward was out of Coartem, and the study ward was not accepting patients. The doctor could only refer the boy to a private clinic, where Katusime and her husband, peasant farmers who grow sweet potatoes and cassava, would have to pay for his medicine. To cover the $200 cost of her son’s treatment, Katusime would have to borrow money from a collective in her village. She had to bring the gravely ill Mudasiru back to her home for the weekend while she raised the necessary money and waited for the private clinic to reopen.</p>
<p>It was not until Monday that she brought Mudasiru to the private clinic, which provided him with medicine before it was too late. Although the boy has recovered, severe malaria cases can often do lasting damage to a child’s cognitive and neurological development. Katusime now lives in fear that one of her children will contract malaria again, and that she will be unable to pay for the treatment.</p>
<p>The director of the Kazo health center, Dr. Franco Zirabamuzaale, said he receives regular shipments of Coartem from the government but consistently runs out of stock in the periods between shipments. During that time, he is forced to refer malaria patients to private clinics.</p>
<p>“You refer and some go back to the village and die there,” said his deputy, senior clinical officer Fausta Nakausi. “You see mothers crying.”</p>
<p>When the health center is out of stock, parents become increasingly desperate for their children to qualify for the University of Antwerp’s study. Rebecca Kabugo, the study’s head nurse, said that parents know that the study screens for new patients on Mondays, and that they sometimes line up outside the clinic on Sunday nights to try to get their children screened the following morning.</p>
<p>When the University of Antwerp completes its study and leaves, the village will be left with the government health center and the nearby private clinics.</p>
<p>“I really don’t like imagining what will happen,” Kabugo said.</p>
<p>A CLIMATE OF CORRUPTION</p>
<p>The problems in Uganda’s health care system and the shortages of the antimalarial drug grow out of the country’s corruption-wracked government. The list of corruption scandals in malaria and child health programs alone is formidable.</p>
<p>In 2005, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria suspended more than $200 million in health grants to Uganda due to concerns about misappropriation. In 2007, former health minister Jim Muhwezi and two of his deputies were arrested for theft of child health funds but were acquitted nearly five years later when the case against them was dropped. Last year, three more health officials were arrested for allegedly misusing a $51 million Global Fund grant for malaria. An anticorruption task force has brought more than 83 cases alleging misappropriation of drugs.</p>
<p>In fact, the two most senior health officials to whom government workers referred me for this story — Dr. Myers Lugemwa of the Malaria Control Programme and Ministry of Health Permanent Secretary Asuman Lukwago —have both been charged with embezzlement.</p>
<p>The stream of Ugandan officials facing similar charges of corruption and graft has prompted most European countries to withdraw their support to Uganda’s government for the 2013-14 fiscal year. The cutbacks of more than $280 million represent roughly 90 percent of direct foreign aid to Uganda, with foreign aid constituting about a quarter of Uganda’s budget the previous year. The health sector is particularly reliant of foreign contributions, and while the numbers are difficult to pinpoint, most officials said international aid accounts for the majority of health spending.</p>
<p>This is far from the first time that aid has been suspended, but the swiftness and thoroughness of the withdrawal suggest a possible shift in the politics of foreign aid. Some European donors are now directing donations away from the government and toward NGOs and other third parties. The NGO approach to aid is one that the United States has practiced in corruption-prone countries such as Uganda, even as European nations often advocated direct budget support to allow greater local ownership.</p>
<p>“What’s new and important is the kind of action that was taken,” said Terra Lawson-Remer, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on development aid. “This might indicate the beginning of a shift toward having less budget support and more support for NGOs.”</p>
<p>It is a shift that Ugandan officials are trying desperately to avoid. Uganda has repaid the stolen money to foreign donors, jailed the embezzlement scheme’s architects, and is urging international contributors to help put in place a system of controls that will reassure them.</p>
<p>So who are the officials who have been accused of corruption inside this struggle to save young lives?</p>
<p>Behind the laboratory where his research team is breeding mosquitoes, Dr. Myers Lugemwa, the deputy director of Uganda’s Malaria Control Programme, has stepped out into the afternoon sun and is vehemently defending his good name.</p>
<p>A middle-aged man with oval-shaped glasses and a perpetually serious expression, Lugemwa has an air of intense conviction that he brings to whatever he does. He brims with information on topics from mosquito behavior to insecticidal sprays, and he insists that given the proper resources he could stamp out malaria in Uganda entirely. When I called him earlier in the afternoon and asked about the corruption charges against him, he urged me to meet him immediately to see the work he was doing for his country and put any such notion to rest. His expression now darkens when he recalls his recent trial.</p>
<p>“I really don’t like to be reminded, because I was in prison there,” Lugemwa said, pointing toward a building not too far away. “It makes me feel like crying.”</p>
<p>In 2010, following a nine-month investigation by an anticorruption unit, Lugemwa and two other leaders of the Malaria Control Programme were charged with illegally selling government malaria drugs to benefit themselves and their families. They were briefly held in jail before facing trial before Uganda’s Anti-Corruption Court. All three were acquitted on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence against them. Impunity for high-ranking officials is pervasive in Uganda, but according to Lugemwa and news reports, there were parts of the government’s case that did not add up. For example, Lugemwa and his colleagues were accused of misappropriating more doses of drugs than the donor in question had provided.</p>
<p>Lugemwa has since returned to his post.</p>
<p>It is hard to miss the personal resonance of Lugemwa’s appeal for donors to return. In addition to fighting his past, he is helping to manage a national malaria program whose insecticide-treated bed nets, antimalarial drugs, and local outreach programs are largely funded by foreign aid. Lugemwa acknowledges that corruption is a problem in Uganda, but he is adamant that he is innocent of the accusations that landed him in court. When I asked him why he thought the government had accused him, he said that the prosecutors were incompetent, and that he was a “sacrificial lamb.”</p>
<p>“What happens in the Bible is what happens on Earth,” Lugemwa said. “They accuse an innocent man and let the thief go.”</p>
<p>Lugemwa said that to maintain progress in the fight against malaria, donors should sit down at the table with Uganda’s government. Uganda has made strong progress in reducing malaria and child mortality in the last decade, with malaria positivity rates for children under 5 dropping by 30 percent and mortality rates dropping by 37 percent.</p>
<p>Pressed further on what might have prompted the charges, Lugemwa said: “I will tell you one thing. Malaria is a political disease.”</p>
<p>BEHIND THE EMBASSY WALLS</p>
<p>To fully understand the politics of malaria aid, it is necessary to take a short journey outside downtown Kampala, the site of Lugemwa’s laboratory and Uganda’s central government. Kampala is a sprawling city of about 2 million people, with roads to its major landmarks radiating outward like spokes of a wheel from the old British colonial headquarters. Where the British once ruled, there now stands an enormous, gorgeously constructed mosque, built as a gift from the late Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi.</p>
<p>The quickest method of transportation in Kampala is hopping on the back of ubiquitous motorcycle taxis called boda-bodas. Driven by young men with surprising aggression and precision, the bodas bob and weave through Kampala’s gridlock like water flowing through sand. So I embarked on a boda journey from downtown Kampala to the suburb of Nsambya, where the United States Embassy stands in a massive walled compound and a labyrinth of security checks.</p>
<p>The precautions are understandable: At the time US embassies in North Africa and the Middle East had been shut down because of terrorist chatter. But between the massive walls and onionlike layers of security, one suspects that if the post-Benghazi US State Department guarded its aid money the way it guarded its premises, very few aid dollars would be lost.</p>
<p>One of the men in charge of protecting that aid money is Zdenek Suda, USAID’s supervisory program officer and its acting mission director at the time of my visit. With a salt-and-pepper moustache and blunt manner of speech, Suda said that the problem in Uganda is not the design of its programs but endemic corruption in President Yoweri Musevini’s regime. Working with third parties brings overhead costs of up to 30 or 40 percent, which Suda said was a price USAID paid to avoid the risks of handing money directly to the government.</p>
<p>“There have been a series of major scandals involving the outright theft of tens of millions of dollars,” Suda said. “Very high level, and it’s usually only some lower level schmuck who goes to jail.”</p>
<p>Suda said that last year’s revelations of theft in the office of the prime minister marked a change in the attitudes of European donors. Previously, Suda said, Europeans had promoted a policy of direct budget support that they felt better reflected the spirit of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. The declaration was a 2005 agreement among more than 100 developed and developing countries, including the United States, that emphasized national control of development plans.</p>
<p>“Not only do they feel like they got ripped off, they feel like they were embarrassed,” Suda said of European donors in Uganda. “These are the same, the usual suspects — the Irish and the Scandinavians — who were beating the drum about the need to get with the Paris Declaration principles, and country ownership, and let the government take the lead, and it kind of blew up in their face.”</p>
<p>Irish Aid confirmed that it will contribute only to third-party recipients until significant reforms are enacted. The British agency UK AID said that it had also withdrawn direct budget support and would soon be announcing alternative plans for spending the money. The Norwegians were the most forgiving, saying they were satisfied by Uganda’s repayment of the lost money and prosecution of the guilty parties, and that they would resume funding the government.</p>
<p>The sweeping cuts to development aid raise the threat of painful cutbacks in Uganda’s health sector. I asked Karen Klimowski, the director of USAID Uganda’s health, HIV, and education programs, if she was worried that other donors’ shifting to USAID’s NGO-based model would put basic services in danger. Klimowski said that the withdrawn money would be redirected to NGOs and ultimately benefit the same people. She said that although as much as 80 percent of health spending in Uganda comes from foreign contributors, closer coordination between donors, NGOs, and the Ugandan government could ensure that any gaps were filled. Ultimately, she said, it was the responsibility of the Ugandan government to increase its own health spending to make up the difference.</p>
<p>But I was still having trouble with the math. How could the Ugandan government scale up its official health budget if direct support from donors was being cut back? I pressed Klimowski about whether the US model was sustainable.</p>
<p>Eventually, she described a role for NGOs that is far more long-term than the United States has officially acknowledged.</p>
<p>“We’ve now become realistic,” Klimowski said. “Maybe in the olden days we would have said, yes, everything needs to transfer to the government. Realistically, that’s not going to happen in these developing countries, right? You have so much need across all of their areas, right? So it’s become more realistic in what can transition and what can’t transition. What do we as donors say? This is our long term investment, and this is what we support.”</p>
<p>In the government’s Malaria Control Programme, Lugemwa appears to accept that there will be a greater role for NGOs. Working together to coordinate services and find arrangements that everyone can agree on is “the way forward” from Uganda’s foreign aid impasse, he said.</p>
<p>Despite the withdrawal of aid, Lugemwa is optimistic that Uganda’s progress on malaria and child mortality can continue. He lays out an ambitious agenda for beating back malaria with the same evangelical zeal that he defends his reputation. He returned to the government that falsely accused him, he said, to demonstrate his innocence and because his country needed his expertise.</p>
<p>“I quote my words when I was acquitted,” Lugemwa said. “I pity my country because it cannot tell its friend from its enemy.”</p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/global-pulse/uganda-malaria-parasite-government-corruption-foreign-aid" type="external">On the trail of two very different parasites in Uganda</a></p>
<p>More from GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/global-pulse/experimental-malaria-treatment-uses-nitric-oxide-gas-uganda" type="external">Can inhaling a gas save children from malaria?</a></p> | Uganda's deadly breeding ground for malaria: Mosquitoes and corruption | false | https://pri.org/stories/2013-09-05/ugandas-deadly-breeding-ground-malaria-mosquitoes-and-corruption | 2013-09-05 | 3 |
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal" />On Sunday, CNN let the cat out of the bag, announcing that the very first question in Sunday’s debate will be about the tape of lewd comments made by GOP nominee Donald Trump 11 years ago — and the question will go to Democrat Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>According to <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/09/media/anderson-cooper-martha-raddatz-town-hall-debate-questions/index.html" type="external">CNN</a>:</p>
<p>Moderators Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC have adjusted their plan for the debate in light of the Trump tape, sources told CNNMoney.</p>
<p>While everything is subject to change until air time, an ABC source said — perhaps confirming the obvious — that Trump and Clinton will both be prompted to address the matter.</p>
<p>A coin toss by the Commission on Presidential Debates determined that Clinton will speak first.</p>
<p>While the debates are hosted by the commission, not the television networks, Raddatz and Cooper have been in debate prep with producers from their respective networks.</p>
<p>The gender dynamics — a man and a woman moderating together while another man and woman face off in a town hall format — will be unmissable.</p>
<p>Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s top advisors, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump will “probably” apologize for the tape again when he is on stage Sunday night.</p>
<p>No doubt, moderators will ignore Hillary’s history regarding her husband’s lewd actions…</p>
<p>CNN added:</p>
<p>One of the goals, according to two sources, is to involve the town hall participants as much as possible. “This is the peoples’ debate,” one of the sources said.</p>
<p>The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the debate prep process is tightly controlled and limited to a small circle of people.</p>
<p>Cooper and Raddatz have declined interview requests in the run-up to the debate. NBC’s Lester Holt adopted the same no-interviews approach before he moderated the first presidential debate of the season on September 26.</p>
<p>Right…</p>
<p>Will anyone ask Hillary anything about her decades-long career of lying and scheming her way to the top or her many lies?&#160; I doubt it.</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p>If you haven’t checked out and liked our&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">Facebook</a>&#160;page, please go&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">here</a>&#160;and do so.</p>
<p>And if you’re as concerned about Facebook censorship as we are, go&#160; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Banned-Facebook-Enables-Militant-Islamic/dp/1944212221/" type="external">here</a>&#160;and order this new book:</p> | CNN: Fix is in — First question to Hillary will be about Trump tape | true | http://conservativefiringline.com/cnn-fix-first-question-hillary-will-trump-tape/ | 2016-10-09 | 0 |
<p />
<p>The litany of calls, texts and data usage detailed on a cell phone bill is enough to make anyone’s head spin, but here’s the kicker: most of us are paying, on average, an extra 17.18% on each bill.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>According to the Tax Foundation, local, state and federal governments, along with other public entities like school districts and 911 systems add on taxes and surcharges to wireless bills that can add on average an additional 17.18% to the bill.</p>
<p>Experts say cell phone bills are often presented in a way that makes it difficult for consumers to sort out what they are being charged, and they often gloss over the added fees. But for cash-strapped consumers, these surcharges can really add up: an $80 cell phone bills jumps to $93.74.</p>
<p>Scott Drenkard, an economist at the Tax Foundation, says the added taxes from different levels of government highlights a jurisdiction problem with too many taxing authorities.</p>
<p>“It’s a lot easier to raise specific taxes than it is to raise broad-based taxes. When they try to raise the income tax, people rightfully come out and participate in public debate. But raising taxes on something like cigarettes, that is much easier because there are less stakeholders. Same logic applies to cell phone bills, &#160;&#160;&#160;it’s only one product and only one lobbying group to fight.”</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>&#160;(Combined Federal-State-Local Rate)</p>
<p>Nebraska: 24.49% Washington: 24.44% New York: 23.67% Florida: 22.41% Illinois: 21.76%</p>
<p>Source: Tax Foundation</p>
<p>Local charges make up an average 11.36% of the added taxes, and 26 states have average state and local wireless taxes and fees above 10%. Add in federal taxes, and some subscribers are paying more than 20% in taxes. Mobile subscribers in Nebraska face the highest federal-state-local average tax rate of 24.5%, and customers in Washington, New York, Florida, Illinois, Rhode Island and Missouri face taxes higher than 20%.</p>
<p>The Wireless Tax Fairness Act has been introduced in Congress again this year to help combat rising taxes and would impose a five-year freeze of new state and local taxes on cell phones and other wireless services. The bill was passed out of the House of Representatives last year, but stalled in the Senate.</p>
<p>“The industry is good bill collectors, I understand why states like the relationship with us, but we shouldn’t bear this unique taxing burden,” says Jot Carpenter, vice president,&#160;government affairs at telecom industry association CTIA. “All we want is the same basic level sales tax to apply to our product like it does to virtually every other product."</p>
<p>He points to the monopoly American Bell Telephone Company (Ma Bell) once had over the telecom industry as a reason so many taxing authorities look to “hide taxes without the political backlash.”</p>
<p>“Back then it was a monopoly, it didn’t matter how many taxes the government added, consumers had nowhere to go, and if they did get mad, they got mad at the company.” He adds that in the early days of wireless, there was a perception that connection was a luxury that only rich people could afford.</p>
<p>“Now 35% of the population is wireless only, and in some states, it’s north of 40%. It’s a pervasive consumer good and if we make it artificially more expensive to connect to the modern economy you are raising costs for every business in America.”</p>
<p>To help the Wireless Tax Fairness Act gain momentum, Carpenter says the CTIA, which is a major supporter of the legislation, is working to get a majority of bipartisan Representatives to co-sign and pass the bill.</p>
<p>Even consumers living in states without a sales tax still get pinched on their cell phone bills. Alaskans might avoid sales taxes, but they pay a 17.9% tax rate on their wireless bills.</p>
<p>While consumers might not be able to do much to avoid paying surcharges on their cell phone services, there are ways they can trim back other areas of their bill to help mitigate the blow:</p>
<p>Only Get What You Need <a href="http://helpsavemydollars.com/" type="external">Scott Gamm Opens a New Window.</a>, author of More Money Please…, says consumers tend to be complacent with their cell phone bills, and that’s a mistake.</p>
<p>He suggests users actively review each billing statement for their usage to make sure they aren’t overpaying for a plan they don’t use in its entirety. He says there are many online sites, including Billshrink, that allow customers to enter in how many minutes they use, data necessary and what they want from a phone and it will find the best deals and carriers at the cheapest price.</p>
<p>Negotiate: Gamm urges customers to call their carriers and voice any billing issues or concerns.</p>
<p>“Tell them you aren’t happy with what you are being charged and ask for deals. It can make sense to cancel -- you will have to pay a fee -- but if you can find another carrier, the savings to switching to a new plan over six months might more than cover the cancellation fee.”</p>
<p>Text Smart: “When you calculate the cost per text, it is the most expensive form of communication,” says Gamm. Which is why he suggests all users review how often they text and whether getting an unlimited plan makes financial sense. “In my experience, this tends to be the best way to go for most people.”</p> | What's that 17% Tax on Your Cell Phone Bill? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/07/11/what-that-17-tax-on-your-cell-phone-bill.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Each time there is a short-term shortage of oil or the price begins to rise, there is talk of running out of affordable oil, an idea captured by the concept of Peak Oil. Peak Oil is the theoretical point when the maximum rate of oil production is reached and after that time enters into a terminal decline. There is a lot of debate surrounding the Peak Oil theory, with some observers predicting rapid decline in oil production with serious implications for our entire economy and society.</p>
<p>No name is more closely associated with the concept of Peak Oil than geologist Marion King Hubbert.&#160; Hubbert was a research geologist for Shell Oil Company and later the US Geological Service.&#160; Hubbert is credited with developing a quantitative technique (Logistic Growth Curve) now commonly referred to as the Hubbert Curve, which he suggested could be used to predict the remaining oil supplies (or any other finite resource like gas, copper, etc.) and the time of eventual depletion.</p>
<p>In the 1956 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Texas,&#160; Hubbert&#160; presented a paper titled Nuclear Energy and Fossil Fuels where he suggested that overall petroleum production would peak in the United States between the late 1960s and the early 1970s. Since US oil production did indeed appear to peak in 1970, many Peak Oil advocates acclaim Hubbert as a prophet. However, an apparent peak in production does not necessarily represent a peak in oil availability, especially in a global market—something that Peak Oil advocates tend to overlook. In fact, a “peak” may just be one of many “spikes”.</p>
<p>Another point of confusion in the debate over the ultimate availability of oil and gas supplies is the question of “unconventional” fossil fuel sources like tar sands, oil shales, heavy oils, and shale oil. Hubbert did not include these other energy types in his estimates and many of the proponents of Peak Oil today tend to ignore these hydro-carbon sources.&#160; However, since there is vastly more oil (and gas) found in these “unconventional” sources compared to “conventional” crude oil and traditional gas sources, the exclusion of them from any policy debate over oil’s demise leads to serious misrepresentation of our ultimate fossil fuel availability.</p>
<p>As Hubbert wrote in his paper, “if we knew the quantity (of some resource) initially present, we could draw a family of possible production curves, all of which would exhibit the common property of beginning and ending at zero, and encompassing an area equal to or less than the initial quantity.” In theory, Hubbert’s basic concept is sound. As a way of thinking about and approaching the issue of declining finite resources, Hubbert was a pioneer.&#160; But that does not mean his predictions were accurate.</p>
<p>The problem for anyone trying to predict future resource availability is discerning the initial starting amount of a resource such as oil when one cannot readily see or gauge accurately the resource.&#160; This lack of transparency presents huge opportunities for error, in particular, erring on the side of under estimation of the total resource.&#160; And time has consistently shown that under estimation of total resource is the most common error, and as we shall see this is exactly the error that Hubbert made with regards to his estimates of our remaining oil and gas reserves.&#160; Hubbert can be forgiven because new technology can make previously unavailable resources accessible, even less expensive to exploit. In fact, he even anticipated this to a degree in his paper, another point that Hubbert’s admirers today tend to overlook.</p>
<p>FORECASTING PROBLEMS</p>
<p>Few that credit Hubbert with a successful prediction have apparently actually read his paper. A reading of his presentation demonstrates that Hubbert grossly underestimated total oil supplies, and thus his predicted high point of the bell curve deviates significantly from reality. Indeed, there is good evidence we haven’t even reached the top of the bell curve, much less past it in 1970. He did not anticipate things like the discovery of oil in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay or shale oil like the North Dakota Bakken Formation,&#160; among many other oil discovery that have significantly changed total oil supplies.</p>
<p>And because US oil production did peak in 1970, the same time period which Hubbert suggested oil reserves would reach their half-way point and start an inevitable decline, few bothered to ask whether the observed decline in US production might have any other explanation other than declining geological petroleum stocks as Peak Oil advocates suggest.</p>
<p>Predicting future oil and gas supplies is fraught with dangers. Many factors influence oil extraction other than geological limits. A rapid shift to renewable energy, a decline in global economies, new technological innovation, energy conservation, a high oil price that dampens consumer demand, political instability and wars all significantly affects energy production, thus when and how “peak” is achieved. Many believe a more realistic model rather than a bell curve is a rapid run up in production to a spike or series of spikes followed by a long drawn out plateau and production decline with ultimately more oil production occurring after the apparent peak, but less rapidly than prior to the “peak” which of course wouldn’t really be a peak in the traditional sense of the word.</p>
<p>HUBBERT’S ERROR</p>
<p>The first problem with Hubbert’s prediction is that his estimates of total oil and gas reserves are far too low. If the starting amount of reserves are low, than the top of the bell curve is reached much sooner than if there are greater amounts of oil–assuming that a bell curve actually represents what is&#160; occurring–which many people dispute. Some suggest Hubbert just drew the curve to fit his assumptions.</p>
<p>In his paper, Hubbert estimated that the “ultimate potential reserve of 150 billion barrels of crude oil for both the land and offshore areas of the United States.”&#160; Hubbert’s estimate was based on the crude oil “initially present which are producible by methods now in use.”&#160; Using the 150 billion barrel estimate he predicted US Peak Oil occurring in 1965. But to be cautious, he also used a slightly higher figure of 200 billion barrels which produced a peak in oil production around 1970—the figure that Hubbert advocates like to use to demonstrate that Hubbert was prophetic in his predictions.&#160; However, by 2006 the Department of Energy estimated that domestic oil resources still in the ground (in-place) total 1,124 billion barrels.&#160; Of this large in-place resource, <a href="" type="external">400 billon barrels</a> is estimated to be technically recoverable with current technology.</p>
<p>This estimate was produced before horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing or fracking techniques were widely adopted which most authorities believe will yield considerably more oil than was thought to be recoverable in 2006.</p>
<p>Going back to Hubbert’s paper we find that he predicted that by 1970 the US should have consumed half or about 100 million barrels of oil of the original endowment of 150-200 billion barrels of recoverable oil. And by his own chart on page 32 of his paper if we use the assumption of 200 billion barrels as the total potential oil reserves of the US we should be completely out of oil by now. According to his curve and graph, by year 2000 we should have had only around 27 billion or so barrels of oil left in the US and fallen to zero sometime in the mid-2000s.</p>
<p>Yet the US government estimates as of 2007 that our remaining technically recoverable reserves are 198 billion barrels, and this excludes oil that may be found in area that are off limits to drilling (i.e. like most of the <a href="http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec4_3.pdf" type="external">Continental Shelf)</a>.</p>
<p>And there are another 400 billion barrels that some suggest could be recovered with new methods (which itself is a subset of total in place oil which future technology may <a href="http://www.fossil.energy.gov/education/energylessons/oil/MS_Oil_Studyguide_draft1.pdf" type="external">make available</a> at an affordable price).</p>
<p>Obviously if Hubbert were correct, and we had reached Peak Oil in 1970 (point where we had consumed half of our oil) and we started out with only 200 billion, we could not have nearly 200-400 billion still left to extract—and total resources are likely even higher than this figure.</p>
<p>It’s also important to keep in mind that “technologically recoverable” resources are not the “total” amount of oil thought to exist in the US, so the total in-place reserves are much, much larger. It does not take a lot of imagination to predict that many of these oil resources will eventually be unlocked with new technological innovation thus added to the total “proven reserves.”</p>
<p>Another example of his under-estimation of oil is US off-shore oil. In his 1956 paper, Hubbert suggests we had 15 billion total barrels, but the US government now estimates there is closer to 90 billion barrels of oil left off-shore–and we have already extracted quite a bit. (I’m not sure if that figure is just for off -shore currently open to exploration or all off shore–since oil exploration is banned on 83% of the US coastline. If this figure refers only to those areas currently available to drill–then the number may be quite a bit higher if all off shore areas were opened to oil extraction).</p>
<p>Hubbert was even farther off in his estimate for global oil reserves, which is not surprising since in 1956 very few parts of the world had been adequately studied.&#160; In his 1956 paper Hubbert&#160; wrote that there was “about 1250 billion barrels for the ultimate potential reserves of crude oil of the whole world.” In his paper he estimated that the entire Middle East including Egypt had no more than 375 billion barrels of oil. Yet by 2010, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimated that just the “proven reserves” in Saudi Arabia alone totaled 262.6 billion barrels.&#160; Similarly in his paper Hubbert uses an estimate of 80 billion barrels for all of South America, yet Venezuela h <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.htm" type="external">as 296 billion barrels of proven reserves</a>.</p>
<p>By 2000, the point when Hubbert estimated that we would reach global Peak Oil we would have only around 625 billion barrels of oil left. Just the 558 billion barrels of proven reserves known to exist in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela alone (and a lot more in-place resources) is nearly equal the total global oil supplies that Hubbert estimated would remain in global reserves.&#160; Obviously once again Hubbert’s global estimates were way too low.</p>
<p>The world has already burned through more than a trillion barrels of oil, clearly demonstrating how far off his prediction of oil supplies were. The estimated “ <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2178rank.html" type="external">proven reserves</a>” left globally are today more than 1.3 trillion for the top 17 oil producing countries alone.</p>
<p>PROVEN RESERVES Vs. TOTAL RESOURCES</p>
<p>Part of the confusion in the Peak Oil debate is that people, agencies and organizations use different definitions and accounting methods that are often not explicitly acknowledged. For instance, most Peak Oil advocates rely upon “proven reserve” numbers to argue we have limited oil supplies remaining. However, it is important to note the term “proven reserves” has a very precise meaning that only includes oil that has a 90% certainty that the oil can be extracted using current technology at current price. It does not represent total oil that may over time be produced. The total estimated amount of oil in an oil reservoir, including both producible and non-producible oil, is called various terms including oil in place. Due to technological, political and other limitations, only a small percentage of the total “in place” oil can be extracted at the present time.&#160; However, proven reserves are the bare minimum amount of oil that reasonably can be expected to be extracted over time.</p>
<p>One of the wild cards in predicting oil reserves is the recovery factor. Recovery factors vary greatly among oil fields. Most oil fields to this point have only given up a fraction of their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery" type="external">potential oil holdings</a>—between 20-40%. &#160; &#160; By 2009 the average Texas oil field had only about a <a href="http://www.beg.utexas.edu/UTopia/images/pagesizemaps/oilgas.pdf" type="external">third of its oil extracted</a>, leaving two-thirds still in the ground. &#160; &#160; Using Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques, many of them not even available when Hubbert wrote his paper, recovery can often be boosted to 40-60%. In essence if EOR were applied to many of the larger US oil fields, we could effectively double the oil extracted, hence “proven reserves.”</p>
<p>Even Hubbert recognized that we may eventually extract more oil from existing fields, though he still underestimated the effect of new discoveries and new technology. &#160; Hubbert wrote ”… only about a third of the oil underground is being recovered. The reserve figures cited are for oil capable of being extracted by present techniques. However, secondary recovery techniques are gradually being improved so that ultimately a somewhat larger but still unknown fraction of the oil underground should be extracted than is now the case. Because of the slowness of the secondary recovery process, however, it appears unlikely that any improvement that can be made within the next 10 or 15 years can have any significant effect upon the date of culmination. Amore probable effect of improved recovery will be to reduce the rate of decline after culmination…..”</p>
<p>While no one realistically believes it’s possible to get every last drop of oil from an oil reservoir, new technologies are often able to get significantly more oil from existing fields than was possible in the past. The important fact is that the recovery factor often changes over time due to changes in technology and economics. Since the bulk of global oil still remains in the ground, and any shift upward in price and improvement in technology suddenly makes it profitable to exploit reserves that were previously not included in the “proven reserves” estimate. Thus proven reserve estimates are a minimum, not the maximum amount of oil available.</p>
<p>To demonstrate how technology and price can affect “proven reserves” estimates, just a few years ago Canada’s “proven reserves” of oil were only 5 billion barrels. Today, due to higher prices and improved technology that makes tar sands production economically feasible; Canada now has “proven” reserves of 175 billion barrels of oil. Nothing changed other than the price of oil and the technology used to extract it. Oil companies knew there was a lot of oil in the tar sands, but it took a change in technology and price to move it into the “proven reserves” category.&#160; Even more telling is that the total minimum estimate of in place oil for the tar sands exceeds 1.3 trillion barrels of oil. Keep in mind that 1.3 trillion barrels is more oil than Hubbert thought existed in the entire world when he presented his 1956 paper.</p>
<p>People knew all along there were tremendous amounts of oil locked in Alberta’s tar sands.&#160; But it took a change in price, along with some technological innovation to make it profitable for extraction. So proven reserves are not a static figure based on geology, rather it reflects economics and technology. Unfortunately too many writing about the presumed Peak of oil in the United States appear to ignore the distinction, and regularly use the “proven reserves” figure as if it were the ultimate geological limit on oil and/or gas supplies.</p>
<p>Although the major point of his paper was the potential depletion of traditional oil and gas reservoirs, he did mention “unconventional oil.” Unconventional oil reserves are oil or hydrocarbons found in geological formations other than a traditional oil reservoir. Examples of unconventional oil include&#160; Alberta’s tar sands, oil shales of the Green River Basin of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, the heavy oils of Venezuela,&#160; and other non-traditional hydrocarbons. There are far more of hydro-carbons in these formations than traditional oil reservoirs—a fact that many Peak Oil advocates frequently ignore. Or if they acknowledge their existence, they dismiss them as uneconomical or technologically impossible to exploit and therefore will never make a significant contribution to global energy supplies.</p>
<p>Hubbert failed to appreciate the potential contribution of these unconventional sources of synthetic oil. For instance, he put the total for US oil shales at around a trillion barrels of oil equivalent. Recently the USGS estimated that the Green River drainage area of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah may contain as much as &#160; 4.2 trillion barrels of in place oil equivalent in oil shale deposits. To put this into context, the US currently consumes around 24 billion barrels of oil in 2010, so even if a fraction of these <a href="http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=36&amp;t=6" type="external">oil shales</a> are exploited it will significantly increase available energy to the US.</p>
<p>With unconventional oils like tar sands, oil shales, heavy oils, etc. included, it seems we have huge amounts of potential energy–even acknowledging that much of that oil may not be extracted until some future date due to cost and/or lack of technology.</p>
<p>NATURAL GAS ESTIMATES</p>
<p>As he did with his estimates of oil, Hubbert also appears to have underestimated natural gas supplies as well. He put total natural gas supplies to be around 850 trillion cubic feet (TCF) and maximum US production would be 14 TCF annually.&#160; The Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that shale gas reserve alone total&#160; <a href="" type="internal">750 TCF</a> and shale gas is only one source of natural gas.Total natural gas reserves are increasing. Estimates vary about total gas reserves, but they run between <a href="http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/resources.asp" type="external">1400 to 2000 TFC</a>.&#160;&#160;I see no reason to doubt these estimates.</p>
<p>If correct, then his estimate of natural gas was also a vast underestimate.&#160; This <a href="http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/resources.asp" type="external">link</a> shows that gas supplies are increasing well into the future. &#160; And new estimates for gas hydrates (methane locked in frozen ice) suggests there may be twice as much energy locked in these resources than all the coal, oil, and traditional natural gas supplies combined.&#160; One estimate suggests there may be a 3000 plus year supply of natural gas in gas hydrates. Whatever the ultimate number may be, the important point is that we are not in any danger of running out of fossil fuels in the near future.</p>
<p>OTHER EXPLANATIONS FOR US PEAK OIL PRODUCTION</p>
<p>Was it just coincidence and luck that Hubbert picked 1970 as one of the possible peaks in US oil production even though his starting numbers were way too low?</p>
<p>This raises the question whether declining US production since 1970 is due to depletion of oil fields as asserted by Peak Oil advocates or whether economics explains it better. (This is not to deny that at some point we will see declining production due to real limits–the question of importance however is when that will occur).</p>
<p>Another explanation requires looking beyond the US. Keep in mind that oil is a commodity. Just because we may see a decline in production of some commodity does not mean we are running out of that substance or resource. The Northeast US was once the major producer of timber in the US. Today if you buy lumber in New England, there’s a good chance it was cut and shipped from the Pacific Northwest, not because there are no trees to cut in New England. Rather due to climate, vegetation, and infrastructure factors, it’s less expensive to cut trees in Oregon or British Columbia than to log New England forests.&#160; It would be wrong to conclude that because New England imports most of its lumber that there are not enough trees left to provide wood locally.</p>
<p>Similarly attributing declining US oil production to geological depletion ignores the effect of global oil production. Immediately after WWii the US was easily the global leader in oil production. This dominance of global oil markets by US production and companies continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Then in the late 1960s and early 1970s oil production in other parts of the world began to increase substantially. In particular, Middle East oil production improved dramatically due to foreign investment and technology. For a variety of factors, once the oil infrastructure (pipelines, tanker ports, oil fields,) was built in these places, it became less expensive to import oil from Saudi Arabia, for example, than to build a new oil field in Wyoming or Texas.&#160; Indeed in some cases producing oil wells in the US were capped and retired even though they were perfectly capable of producing more oil. Not only was oil production increasing in Saudi Arabia, but all over the world at this time including Venezuela, Mexico, and the Soviet Union. All of these new fields were producing lower cost oil than one could get from most US oil fields at the time. So could it be that US producers just decided it was a better business plan to invest in and/or buy oil from other oil producing countries? Did this low cost oil cause oil companies to import oil rather than invest in US oil production?</p>
<p>Worse for US producers, except for a few manufactured shortages like the 1973 oil crisis created by OPEC in response to US support for Israel or the War in Iraq, the abundance of relatively inexpensive oil kept <a href="http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm" type="external">oil prices depressed</a> throughout the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and into the early 2000s, discouraging new investment in US oil production.</p>
<p>It takes up to a decade or more to bring a new oil field on line, especially if the field is not located near other infrastructure.&#160; For instance, Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay Oil field was discovered in 1968 and it wasn’t until 1978 before the first oil was sent to market.&#160; Oil companies will only invest in major new production if they are certain that the prices are stable and will remain at a specific break-even point into the future. This lag time between changes in price or technology and significant production is why the oil industry cannot rapidly respond to short term price increases or politically created shortages.</p>
<p>Peak Oil advocates continuously point to the rise in oil prices during the latter part of the 2000s and suggest that an apparent lack of significant new oil production is due to depletion.&#160; However, there is a time lag before higher prices result in a noteworthy increase in oil production.&#160; Given the huge investments needed to bring on line new oil production, companies have to first wait for quite a number of years after an oil price hike before they start any new development to make sure that higher prices are going to stabilize, not rise and then fall suddenly as happened in 2008 when oil reached $145 a barrel then crashed to $30 a barrel. Such volatility does not lead to greater oil production.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, higher oil prices in the past few years have started to spur new development in the US and around the globe. The US, for instance, has reduced its import of foreign oil from 60% to 45% due to higher production at home as well as greater efficiency spurred by higher fuel prices.&#160; These trends point to continued reduction in imports. However, because of the long delay between start up and full production, there is no quick relief.&#160; This is one reason why “Drill, Baby, Drill” is a foolish response to any oil price increase.</p>
<p>From the oil producer’s perspective, there is no advantage in increasing spare production capacity. All this will do is flood the market (global market) with cheap energy. What company wants to reduce its profits by over production?&#160; So far global oil production has largely been able to meet all demand, except for short term shortages as a result of political change, wars, and/or price speculation.&#160; But none of these reflect a true geological short-fall or serious effect of depletion.</p>
<p>Despite Hubbert’s prediction that we would be just about out of oil by now, the US oil production (and gas) have both gone up in recent years. This is in response to higher prices and new technologies. But according to Hubbert this could not be occurring because we are long past our Peak and indeed, very near our bottom line for oil.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that a finite resource such as oil will continue to decline, and demand will likely grow at least into the foreseeable future, both of which should lead to higher fuel costs. But whether this leads to a long term chronic shortages that cause major economic disruption or even the collapse of civilization as some predict is subject to more uncertainty than perhaps some like to admit.&#160; For one thing there is far more oil on the planet than most people recognize, and new technologies combined with rising price for fuels is spurring development of new oil supplies.&#160; Rising prices also spurs shifts to other energy sources, as well as greater efficiency and conservation of energy.</p>
<p>Rather than running out of oil and/or gas any time soon, I think the bigger danger is that we have more than enough oil and other fossil fuel energy resources to sustain us for quite a few decades if not centuries. Any efficiency and/or conservation of energy, combined with some replacement of fossil fuel energy with renewables than these finite resources, will extend hydrocarbon resources quite a few additional decades.</p>
<p>The real problem for the planet and human society is not the imminent danger of running out of hydrocarbon fuels, but that an abundance of these energy sources will permit population and economic growth that will gradually diminish the planet’s biodiversity, degrade ecosystems, and disrupt global climate and other systems.</p>
<p>George Wuerthner is an ecologist. He is currently working on a book about energy.</p> | The Myth of Peak Oil | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/03/29/the-myth-of-peak-oil/ | 2012-03-29 | 4 |
<p>In yet another significant and sudden White House resignation, President Donald Trump's Deputy Assistant Sebastian Gorka has informed the president that he is out. His resignation letter, excerpts of which were published by The Federalist's <a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/25/breaking-sebastian-gorka-resigns-from-trump-administration/" type="external">Mollie Hemingway</a> Friday night, is what we've come to expect from Gorka: blunt, raw and committed to the vision of the Trump campaign. In fact, it is because of that commitment that Gorka says he feels compelled to resign.</p>
<p>"Given recent events, it is clear to me that forces that do not support the MAGA promise are — for now — ascendant within the White House," he wrote, Hemingway reports. "As a result, the best and most effective way I can support you, Mr. President, is from outside the People’s House."</p>
<p>“Regrettably, outside of yourself, the individuals who most embodied and represented the policies that will 'Make America Great Again,' have been internally countered, systematically removed, or undermined in recent months," he wrote.</p>
<p>The final straw for Gorka was Trump's Afghanistan speech, which he said "made patently obvious" that those like himself and the president still committed to MAGA were no longer controlling the administration:</p>
<p>The fact that those who drafted and approved the speech removed any mention of Radical Islam or radical Islamic terrorism proves that a crucial element of your presidential campaign has been lost. ... Just as worrying, when discussing our future actions in the region, the speech listed operational objectives without ever defining the strategic victory conditions we are fighting for. This omission should seriously disturb any national security professional, and any American who is unsatisfied with the last 16 years of disastrous policy decisions which have led to thousands of Americans killed and trillions of taxpayer dollars spent in ways that have not brought security or victory.</p>
<p>Gorka ends his resignation letter by reaffirming his support for the MAGA vision for America, which he casts in opposition to the "political and media elites":</p>
<p>Your presidency will prove to be one of the most significant events in modern American politics. November the 8th was the result of decades during which the political and media elites felt that they knew better than the people who elect them into office. They do not, and the MAGA platform allowed their voices to be heard. Millions of people believe in, and have chosen, you and your vision of Making America Great Again. They will help eventually rebalance this temporary reality.</p>
<p>Gorka's departure comes one week after Steve Bannon was either forced out or resigned, depending on the source. Gorka was a contributor to Breitbart News, which Bannon controlled, and holds many of the same stances on foreign policy as the "populist hero" Bannon.</p>
<p>Hemingway cites a "source close to the White House" that made clear that Gorka's resignation "was more or less going to be a done deal when Bannon submitted his resignation," not because of the absence of a "protector," but because of the sense that he could not get the MAGA agenda accomplished without him. That source told Hemingway that after Bannon departed, "anti-Bannon factions began erecting bureaucratic road blocks" to Gorka's agenda.</p>
<p><a href="http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/25/breaking-sebastian-gorka-resigns-from-trump-administration/" type="external">Read Hemingway's full article here</a>.</p>
<p>In case you missed it, Gorka was recently a guest on The Daily Wire's "Andrew Klavan Show." Interview starts around the 11-minute mark:</p> | Sebastian Gorka Resigns From White House. His Resignation Letter Is BLUNT. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/20254/sebastian-gorka-resigns-white-house-his-james-barrett | 2017-08-25 | 0 |
<p>Two men found guilty of the 1993 racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in south-east London have been jailed for life.</p>
<p>Gary Dobson will serve a minimum of 15 years and two months, and David Norris 14 years and three months.</p>
<p>The pair were sentenced at the Old Bailey under guidelines in place at the time of the attack and as juveniles because both had been under 18.</p>
<p>The judge, Justice Treacy, described the crime as a "murder which scarred the conscience of the nation."</p>
<p>Dobson, 36, and Norris, 35, were the first people convicted over the fatal attack on Lawrence by a group of white youths near a bus stop in Eltham on April 22, 1993.</p>
<p>Speaking outside court, Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen said the minimum terms imposed "may be quite low" but she recognized "the judge's hands were tied" and thanked him for his sentencing remarks which acknowledged the stress the family had suffered for 18 years.</p>
<p>Laura Lynch reports from London.</p> | Two Sentenced in UK Racial Murder Case | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-01-04/two-sentenced-uk-racial-murder-case | 2012-01-04 | 3 |
<p>After online preorders opened, shipping estimates quickly rose to five-to-six weeks</p>
<p>This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (October 28, 2017).</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Apple Inc. opened advanced sales for the iPhone X and early orders pushed estimated shipment dates into December, at least twice the waits for new models a year ago and an early indication that demand is outpacing supply for a product Apple has had difficulties manufacturing.</p>
<p>After online preorders began in 50-plus countries at 3 a.m. ET on Friday, delivery estimates in the U.S., China, and Japan quickly rose to five-to-six weeks. The iPhone X officially goes on sale on Nov. 3, when some phones will be available in retail stores.</p>
<p>Brian White, an analyst with Drexel Hamilton, said the shipment delays show the iPhone X is "not a dud" but added "we can't look at that and say, 'Demand's off the charts,' because we know there's very limited capacity."</p>
<p>The shipment projections are being scrutinized because they offer the first insight into consumer appetite for one of Apple's most anticipated product launches. Investors have sent Apple shares up about 35% over the past year and pushed the company's market value above $800 billion, largely on a bet that new iPhones will deliver record sales.</p>
<p>Apple's ability to deliver largely rests on the iPhone X. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus -- which hit the market Sept. 22 and feature the same basic design as preceding models -- posted the weakest sales of any of the company's new smartphones in recent years. The iPhone X offers an edge-to-edge display and facial-recognition system that led Apple to call it the smartphone of the future.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>For the iPhone X to succeed, Apple must prove consumers will pay $999 or more -- the highest starting price ever for a major smartphone. The company also must overcome production issues that delayed iPhone X manufacturing at least a month over the summer. Production was later slowed by an imbalance in supply of key components for its facial-recognition camera.</p>
<p>"The biggest risk for Apple is the supply chain," said Raj Aggarwal, co-founder of Localytics, a mobile engagement firm. "Are they going to be able to fill preorders for the iPhone X? If they can, they're in good shape. If they can't, they're going to miss some numbers this year."</p>
<p>Some customers also experienced early glitches in the ordering process Friday. In the U.S., some consumers weren't able to log onto Apple's store to place orders for roughly 10 minutes after the advertised start time. Some customers world-wide later received reservation or confirmation numbers but no follow-up emails regarding their orders.</p>
<p>Analysts expect Apple to provide more clarity on both supply and demand for the iPhone X when it announces earnings Nov. 2. More preorders of the iPhone X than the iPhone 8, which starts at $699, would be encouraging for investors, especially after reports of weak iPhone 8 sales.</p>
<p>The iPhone X launch comes as Apple aims to shore up its position as the world's second-largest smartphone maker behind Samsung Electronics Co. Competition from lower-priced smartphones in China helped reduce its share of the global smartphone market to 14.5% last year from 16.1% in 2015, according to market research by Strategy Analytics.</p>
<p>Despite that, analysts are projecting strong iPhone sales this year because consumer loyalty is high and many consumers own older iPhones due for an upgrade. About 95% of iPhone owners who plan to buy a new device say they will buy another iPhone, according to UBS, much higher than the 53% of Samsung customers who say they plan to buy another device from the South Korean phone maker.</p>
<p>It is unclear if iPhone loyalists who plan to upgrade will choose an iPhone X, iPhone 8 or an older device. Some 40% of consumers who plan to purchase a new device in the next six months said they wanted to see the iPhone X at a store before deciding what model to buy, according to a survey by Creative Strategies, a tech research firm.</p>
<p>"A good portion of buyers don't have their mind made up," said Ben Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies.</p>
<p>--Yoko Kubota and Takashi Mochizuki contributed to this article.</p>
<p>Write to Tripp Mickle at [email protected]</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p>
<p>October 28, 2017 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)</p> | Wait Time for iPhone X Got Longer -- WSJ | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2017/10/28/wait-time-for-iphone-x-got-longer-wsj.html | 2017-10-28 | 0 |
<p>JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A train collision on the outskirts of South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg, left more than 200 people injured, emergency responders said Tuesday morning. It was the second train crash in the area within a week.</p>
<p>At least 226 people were taken to hospitals “but most with minor injuries,” said Nana Radebe, spokeswoman for the city’s emergency management service.</p>
<p>No one died in the crash at the Geldenhuis commuter train station, emergency response group ER24 said in a statement.</p>
<p>One Metrorail train rear-ended another train that had failed as a result of a technical problem, South Africa’s railway safety regulator said in a statement. The regulator blamed human error for sending the second train to the same platform, as the usual signaling system on that section of track had cable problems.</p>
<p>Of those hurt, 159 people had minor injuries and 67 had moderate ones, the statement said.</p>
<p>A passenger train crash last week south of Johannesburg killed at least 18 people and injured about 260. Authorities said the train carrying people home after the holidays slammed into a truck that was trying to cross the tracks in time.</p>
<p>The transport minister has ordered an inquiry into why five of the train coaches caught fire after the derailment, the railway safety regulator said Tuesday.</p>
<p>JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A train collision on the outskirts of South Africa’s commercial hub, Johannesburg, left more than 200 people injured, emergency responders said Tuesday morning. It was the second train crash in the area within a week.</p>
<p>At least 226 people were taken to hospitals “but most with minor injuries,” said Nana Radebe, spokeswoman for the city’s emergency management service.</p>
<p>No one died in the crash at the Geldenhuis commuter train station, emergency response group ER24 said in a statement.</p>
<p>One Metrorail train rear-ended another train that had failed as a result of a technical problem, South Africa’s railway safety regulator said in a statement. The regulator blamed human error for sending the second train to the same platform, as the usual signaling system on that section of track had cable problems.</p>
<p>Of those hurt, 159 people had minor injuries and 67 had moderate ones, the statement said.</p>
<p>A passenger train crash last week south of Johannesburg killed at least 18 people and injured about 260. Authorities said the train carrying people home after the holidays slammed into a truck that was trying to cross the tracks in time.</p>
<p>The transport minister has ordered an inquiry into why five of the train coaches caught fire after the derailment, the railway safety regulator said Tuesday.</p> | 200 injured in commuter train crash outside Johannesburg | false | https://apnews.com/b93d7cbfcde9417183b6fa35f0f632a9 | 2018-01-09 | 2 |
<p>The GOP-controlled House has voted to slash the budget for the Internal Revenue Service's tax enforcement division by $1.2 billion, a 25 percent cut that would mean fewer audits of taxpayers and make it more likely that people who cheat on their taxes will get away with it.</p>
<p>The House approved the cuts by voice vote after little debate Monday night as it took up a $21 billion spending bill that sets the IRS budget.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The cuts reflect GOP outrage over the agency's scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status and frustration over the agency's failure to produce thousands of emails by Lois Lerner, the official formerly in charge of the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status.</p>
<p>"The use of a government agency to harass, target, intimidate and threaten lawful, honest citizens was the worst form of authoritarianism," said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., author of an amendment to cut the IRS tax enforcement budget by $353 million. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., followed up with an amendment to cut $788 million more.</p>
<p>The Democratic floor leader on the funding bill, Rep. Jose Serrano of New York, opposed the amendments but opted against demanding a roll call vote.</p>
<p>"The answer is not to cut the IRS to bare bones, because our next problem is that the deficit will continue to grow because we won't be able to do the proper collecting of tax dollars in this country," Serrano said.</p>
<p>Budget cuts already are hurting the agency's ability to police tax returns, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has said.</p>
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<p>Taxpayers' chances of getting audited are lower than they have been in years. And this year, the IRS will have fewer agents auditing returns than at any time since at least the 1980s.</p>
<p>One's chances of getting audited vary greatly, based on income. The more you make, the more likely you are to get a letter from the IRS.</p>
<p>Only 0.9 percent of people making less than $200,000 were audited last year, according to IRS statistics. That's the lowest rate since the IRS began publishing the statistic in 2006.</p>
<p>By contrast, 10.9 percent of people making $1 million or more were audited. That's the lowest rate since 2010.</p>
<p>The White House had already issued a veto threat on the legislation, saying it shortchanges the IRS, impedes implementation of the new health care law and undercuts the new regulations on Wall Street that passed in 2010.</p>
<p>House debate on the IRS and Treasury Department funding bill was to resume Tuesday. A companion Senate measure has stalled in the Appropriations Committee, hung up in part over a looming amendment by GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky aimed at blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing new regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. McConnell appears likely to prevail in the committee, which is stocked with pro-energy Democrats who are up for re-election.</p>
<p>A fight over those EPA rules extended to the House Appropriations Committee, which approved by a mostly party-line vote a separate measure funding the Interior Department and the EPA on Tuesday. A Democratic bid to preserve the EPA rules failed by a 29-18 vote. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., labeled the measure "an ideological dumping ground of short-sighted environmental policies."</p>
<p>Democrats protested language in the measure that would block the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from enforcing new rules that sharply limit sales of products made with ivory, even if it was legally imported before the 1990 ban for African elephants or the 1975 ban on ivory from Asian elephants. The rules are aimed at cracking down on the flourishing trade in illegal ivory but a wide array of people, including owners of musical instruments, antiques and guns made with ivory, are up in arms because they are in many instances no longer able to trade in such items, stripping them of their value.</p>
<p>Democrats prepared an amendment to protect the new rules, citing ivory's role in financing terrorist organizations but withdrew it after Republicans promised to work to balance the needs of legal ivory users with the desire to fight illegal trade in it.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.</p> | GOP-led House votes to slash IRS tax enforcement budget by $1.2 billion, a 25 percent cut | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/07/15/gop-led-house-votes-to-slash-irs-tax-enforcement-budget-by-12-billion-25.html | 2016-03-09 | 0 |
<p>In its many years of putting together albums to raise money for AIDS relief, the Red Hot organization has created some of the most memorable compilations of recent times. Their first effort, 1989’s <a href="http://www.redhot.org/projects/blue.html" type="external">Red Hot &amp; Blue</a>, featuring contemporary artists covering Cole Porter, connected pop music past and present in a way that seems like standard practice now, but was eye-opening then. Later, 1993’s <a href="http://www.redhot.org/projects/noalt.html" type="external">No Alternative</a> captured the exuberance and creative diversity of a moment, just before Kurt Cobain committed suicide, when it felt like some grungy kids with guitars might change the world. Since then, Red Hot CDs have celebrated samba, country, dance, and bossa nova (and raised a load of cash in the fight against AIDS), but their latest compilation may go down in history as capturing another moment. <a href="http://www.darkwasthenight.com/" type="external">Dark Was the Night</a>&#160; features just about every indie band idolized by the Pitchfork generation: Arcade Fire, The National, Feist, Conor Oberst, Yo La Tengo, Cat Power, Blonde Redhead, Bon Iver and Sharon Jones all contributed exclusive tracks to the compilation, along with over 20 others, and it’s quite a collection. Thankfully, Red Hot has kept up with the times and made it easy to get a free internet taste. You can listen to a different song every day at their <a href="http://www.myspace.com/DarkWasTheNight" type="external">MySpace page</a>, or you can go to <a href="http://www.darkwasthenight.com/" type="external">their web site</a> and make your own little blog widget with any three tracks. Check out mine after the jump.</p>
<p>Dark Was the Night is out Tuesday, February 17.</p>
<p /> | New “Red Hot” Comp Gets Indie | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/new-red-hot-comp-gets-indie/ | 2009-02-13 | 4 |
<p />
<p>That was the message Governor Kathleen Blanco gave Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina first hit. The storm had changed from a Category 5 to a Category 4, was moving very quickly north, and had shifted eastward before landing, creating horrendous damage in Mississippi. Until the levees were breached, Louisiana’s citizens thought they had been spared a major tragedy yet again.</p>
<p>But if Louisiana was “blessed,” the only logical conclusion we can draw is that Mississippi was cursed. It made me cringe every time I heard someone use this language, and it angered me to hear the governor use it. Only yesterday, a radio reporter told the people of Jefferson Parish: “You ought to be thanking God that the levees were breached on the Orleans Parish side.”</p>
<p>The language of religion is a powerful one, especially in Louisiana, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4521721.stm" type="external">Mississippi</a>, and Alabama, where Southern Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, and conservative non-denominational Christian churches are plentiful. In south Louisiana, there is also a very big Catholic population, which includes Governor Blanco.</p>
<p>A few days ago, Blanco, while touring a section of storm-ravaged south Louisiana, told residents that they would never be able to get through the hurricane crisis “without faith.” The faith to which she was referring wasn’t faith in the government or faith in the strength of community, but religious faith. Though they may fly under the radar, many churchless and non-religious people live in Louisiana, and they were essentially being told by their leader that they had no hope for recovery.</p>
<p>Certainly, in a time of crisis, religious people are going to talk about religion, and I, for one, have no objection to their doing so. I have no objection to the governor’s doing so, either, as long as her comments do not cause division among constituents or imply that people in other states somehow wound up on the wrong side of God’s favor.(Such thinking isn’t even rational within the religious paradigm–why would God spare what is probably the most corrupt state in the nation?)</p>
<p>The problem goes beyond careless statements made by public officials. One of the New Orleans television stations had a psychotherapist on to talk about stress reactions to the hurricane. After she said all of the standard things about dealing with a disaster, she launched into a speech about there “being a reason” for the devastation caused by Katrina. She was careful to be inclusive, and said she was addressing Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists–everyone. It was important, she said, to remember that these things happen “for a reason.”</p>
<p>As a licensed psychotherapist, I was stunned by her remarks. I am as metaphysically ignorant as the next human, and do not wish to speculate about the possibility of mystical processes affecting natural phenomena. That is not the issue for me. My concern is that–in a culture in which people are constantly told that they are being punished for their sins–the last thing they need to hear is that there is a Big Reason for their having lost their homes, their jobs, and their loved ones. And bad theology aside, it is a remarkably stupid thing to say to people who have just suffered significant loss and disruption.</p>
<p>It is bad enough that the religious nuts want to <a href="http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/08/083105nola.htm" type="external">blame some of our citizens</a> for causing the hurricane to destroy New Orleans (though that theory does offer some <a href="http://dedspace.blogspot.com/2005/09/thinking-like-falwell-and-robertson.html" type="external">other possibilities</a>). Public officials and members of the clergy and other helping professions would be wise to stop and examine their religious rhetoric before broadcasting it to already victimized people.</p>
<p /> | “We are blessed” | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2005/09/we-are-blessed/ | 2005-09-14 | 4 |
<p>Is it possible that the regressive right has, given its electoral unraveling of late, decided to swap the whole politics thing for vaudeville?</p>
<p>‘Cause if it hasn’t, I’m really having a hell of a hard time explaining what’s going on with these guys.</p>
<p>I mean, I’ve seen circus acts that were less hilarious.&#160; So I’m assuming that the right has simply decided to become a sort of public service provider in this most depressing at times.&#160; Presumably, they got together and concluded that if they couldn’t win elections, at least they could make themselves useful by treating the public to a hearty laugh.&#160; Or six.</p>
<p>What else can you make of last week’s tea party hysteria, for example?&#160; I suppose you could find a less spontaneous, less authentic expression of public sentiment if you looked really hard – perhaps by going to the latest Hannah Montana movie, for example – but I don’t think it would be very easy.&#160; Fox (Hardly Any) News literally ran about a hundred segments on the tea parties in advance of the magical date, a promotional tsunami masquerading as news reporting that would’ve made any Soviet minister of propaganda blush.</p>
<p>I suppose you could also find political elements more incoherent and less grounded in reality if you tried really hard – perhaps by attending services at some new age mega-church, for example – but that would also be pretty difficult.&#160; If the low rent, low IQ, low on laundry detergent (non) masses attending these events looked familiar, it was because we saw them on the campaign trail last year, angrily spouting utter fabrications and fulminating their vaguely anti-government screeds at Sarah Palin rallies.&#160; What they lack in quality dental care or concern about the health effects of obesity, they fully make up for in sheer gullibility and lumpen selfishness masquerading as vulgar capitalism.</p>
<p>My favorite bit from the coverage of the tea parties was the inadvertent reality intrusion episode, where some smart-ass got up at one of the rallies, got the crowd all excited about taxes and deficits, and then asked them to applaud Barack Obama for cutting their taxes.&#160; That little bit of cognitive dissonance produced a long, pregnant, troubled pause, and you could almost hear the rusty gears in their brains jamming into one another, screeching like a subway train, and ultimately shattering from sheer lack of prior use, as the attendees decided to stick with their advance programming after all, booing the mention of the shifty Negro in the White House despite the fact that he is cutting their taxes, just like they claim to want him to.</p>
<p>On the other hand, perhaps the most amazing sight of all was the Republican governor of Texas, successor to George W.&#160; Bush, and would-be successor again in Washington, not so vaguely hinting at the possibility that Texas might secede from the union, and falsely claiming that the state had a special legal right to do so.&#160; Golly, I thought we had settled that matter a century and a half ago, but then I’m one of those odd people who always thought Lincoln got it wrong.&#160; He should have let the backward, racist, theist, regressive South go its own way.</p>
<p>Of course, only if deceit happens to be a moral problem need one worry about the hypocrisy of all these red states bitching about taxes and the oppressive federal government while simultaneously receiving far more dollars from Washington than they kick in.&#160; But if they do check out, I only hope that Obama doesn’t make the same mistake Lincoln did.&#160; Imagine the last several decades without names like Bush, DeLay, Gingrich, McConnell, Armey, Lott and other fine specimens of Southern hospitality running the country into the ground.&#160; Let them have their little experiment in trying to form a more perfect union within their breakaway Confederacy.&#160; Maybe they’ll put Bobby Jindal in charge.&#160; You want to have a good laugh?&#160; Come back a generation later and see what it looks like.&#160; My guess is something like a crystal meth theme park, with nice colored folk to clean up after the revival meetings.&#160; “LeeLand”, perhaps?</p>
<p>You know who else showed up at tea parties, besides Rick Perry, the sesesh governor of Texas?&#160; That’s right!&#160; Joe the Plumber!&#160; And, just to make sure that no political sophistication of any sort whatsoever inadvertently crept into the crowd, Ted Nugent came as well.&#160; With head-liners like this, it’s hard to figure how these guys aren’t winning elections, eh?&#160; On the other hand, I can name at least one guy more clownish and more scary who was president of the United States and leader of the Free World for eight years running.&#160; And just recently too.&#160; Ironically, the explanation for the odd fact that the exact same stuff that seemed so great to Americans in 2002 seemed so awful in 2008 was of course George W. Bush himself.&#160; Yep, politics is truly weird sometimes, but it’s on the right were the weird absolutely turn professional.</p>
<p>All of this is emblematic, of course, of a political movement in utter free fall, and completely lacking any sense whatsoever of what to do about it.&#160; This week it was tea parties.&#160; Before that, he was Obama bowing to the Saudi king.&#160; Before that, it was the president giving the Queen of England an iPod.&#160; Or was it the fact that he uses Teleprompters when he speaks?&#160; Or was it the connection to Rod Blagojevich that was sure to be exposed any minute now?</p>
<p>Seriously, though.&#160; Where’s the outrage?&#160; Is there a surer mark of the end of Western civilization than that the American public is indifferent about the fact that its president – like every modern president – uses a Teleprompter when he gives speeches?&#160; Remember the burning anger on the right, when Ronald Reagan would use his ubiquitous 3 x 5 note cards at every meeting or event, even for small talk about the weather, and sometimes absentmindedly using the wrong set of cards for the wrong gathering of people?&#160; Talk about your Armageddon!&#160; It’s weird, though.&#160; I guess I need to lay off the drugs for a while, because I don’t remember any conservative umbrage about any of that.&#160; You’d almost think they were being ridiculously hypocritical in attacking Obama for using a Teleprompter, given what Reagan did…</p>
<p>And how about that business with the Saudi king?&#160; Doesn’t that represent Obama selling out America?&#160; Or apologizing for something United States did?&#160; He probably didn’t even have a flag pin in his lapel when he bowed to the king.&#160; He probably didn’t even thank Jesus for his falafel, before breaking bread with the monarch.&#160; Not George Bush, though.&#160; He would never do that.&#160; His family would never have close relations with the House of Saud, that’s for sure.&#160; He would never be photographed, say, holding hands with the old man, ‘cause that would disrespectful to America.&#160; And kinda gay, too.&#160; And, for sure, Bush would never inform Prince Bandar, lifetime buddy and Saudi ambassador to the US at the time, that the United States was invading Iraq, before he informed his own Secretary of State.&#160; And you know why?&#160; Because the right wing in America would be outraged if that ever happened.&#160; You can take that one to the bank.</p>
<p>Except, of course, that we don’t really have much in the way of banks anymore, after the right wing’s deregulatory religion got through with them.&#160; Which I guess explains why all those things did happen, and the same people who are now foaming at the mouth over Obama’s simple gesture of courtesy were completely silent during the Bush years.</p>
<p>These antics only prove how deeply sunk into it regressivism now is.&#160; I assure you, if the right had a better way to attack Democrats and the Obama administration then this pathetic garbage, you’d be seeing it.&#160; These guys aren’t exactly famous for playing to lose.&#160; What we’re seeing, instead, is a political movement that is utterly bankrupt, literally and figuratively, and is desperately searching for any sort of remotely plausible line of attack, but only managing to make itself look absurd in the process, at least outside of Appalachia.</p>
<p>Today’s conservatives remind me of nothing so much as an elderly lab chicken, used in countless undergrad psychology experiments, but now abandoned in its dotage.&#160; Over and over again, it keeps pecking the red bar, even though the last time a food pellet actually appeared was in 2004.&#160; Peck!&#160; Let’s play the race card!&#160; Peck!&#160; Let’s play the taxes card!&#160; Peck!&#160; Let’s play the deficits card!&#160; Peck!&#160; Let’s play the gay card!&#160; Peck!&#160; Let’s play the foreign bogeyman card!&#160; Peck!&#160; Peck!&#160; Peck!</p>
<p>Shit!&#160; No food pellets!&#160; The red bar is in tatters, the chicken’s beak is worn down to a nub, but still it pecks, and still no food pellets.</p>
<p>The frustration and anger you see among regressive politicians and their cheerleaders comes from fifty years of operant conditioning all of a sudden gone massively awry.&#160; It’s like they fell into some parallel universe or something. &#160;Every step forward leaves them two steps backward.&#160; Up is down, down is up.&#160; White is black, and black is now president.&#160; What the hell is going on?</p>
<p>Poor regressives.&#160; For half a century they got an entire country full of people to suspend disbelief, and nod their heads in all the right places whenever they were poked with the appropriate stimulus.&#160; For half a century, they continued to win elections by fooling people into voting against their own interests.&#160; For half a century, they could turn lead into gold.&#160; But the alchemy no longer works.&#160; Suddenly, precipitously, none of the responses appear anymore when all the old stimuli are trotted out.&#160; And it all disappeared so fast.&#160; In 2003 they could sell any kind of bullshit imaginable.&#160; Three years later, they were handing over control of both houses of Congress to the evil, socialist Democrats.</p>
<p>The great news is that, as bad as it now is, these are still the golden days of the regressive movement.&#160; It’s gonna get a lot worse from here.&#160; As they continue their antics, they only look more and more foolish, while President Obama looks more and more statesmanlike, less and less like his predecessor, and better and better in the polls.</p>
<p>The logical move for the Republican Party would be to abandon the insanity of the last three decades and returned to the days of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, when people like Ronald Reagan were rightly (very rightly) considered to be the lunatic fringe.&#160; But this is impossible today.&#160; Indeed, the GOP will be lucky if it is able to even stay where it is ideologically, as opposed to being pulled even further to the hysterical right.</p>
<p>Arlen Specter will provide the archetypical case for the Republican conundrum as he runs for reelection to his Pennsylvania US Senate seat this year and next.&#160; As an established, long-standing moderate figure from a swing state, normally someone like Specter should have no problem as an incumbent retaining his seat.&#160; In fact, the opposite is now the case.&#160; Specter is being challenged from his right in the primary election, and there is no indication that the Republican establishment will come to his aid, while every indication suggests that he’s in deep trouble.&#160; One recent poll had him fourteen points down among Republican voters behind his primary challenger.&#160; Specter will have to tack to the hard right to have a prayer of obtaining the nomination.&#160; But even if that make-over can possibly succeed, he will then be stuck in the general election trying to defend the monster he became during the primary in order to placate his party’s voters, in a state that is trending the other direction.</p>
<p>Watch and see if the few remaining moderate Republicans don’t learn from this experience, and abandon the party.&#160; This will leave the GOP in excellent position to succeed everywhere that Jefferson Davis remains a hero, and pretty much nowhere else.&#160; Even the governor of Utah, arguably the reddest of red states, has come out in support of gay marriage.</p>
<p>If Republicans want to form themselves into a permanent minority at the national level, I suppose that’s just fine with me.&#160; But even that isn’t terribly sustainable.&#160; Situations like these tend toward becoming self-reinforcing cycles, in this case far more virtuous than vicious.&#160; Over time, a party that cannot compete at the national level will not attract voters or candidates even within its stronghold.&#160; And a party that cannot bring home the bacon because it has been relegated to a permanent minority status in Congress will also drive away voters.&#160; A party that is unable to change its stripes because of the viciousness and narrow-mindedness of its base is also a party unable to change its electoral fortunes.</p>
<p>When you see the supporters of the GOP saying, as they often do, that they would rather stick to principle than win elections, they’re not kidding.&#160; And when you see them describe the likes of George W. Bush as insufficiently conservative, they’re not kidding either.</p>
<p>Rather, they’re on a suicide mission.</p>
<p>All I can say is:&#160; “Hey, works for me!”</p>
<p>DAVID MICHAEL GREEN is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.&#160; He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles ( <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.</p> | Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/04/24/of-tea-parties-and-teleprompters/ | 2009-04-24 | 4 |
<p>The Independent</p>
<p>So, the Palestinians will end their occupation of Israel. No more will Palestinian tanks smash their way into Haifa and Tel Aviv. No more will Palestinian F-18s bomb Israeli population centers. No more will Palestinian Apache helicopters carry out “targeted killings” — i.e., murders — of Israeli military leaders.</p>
<p>The Palestinians have promised to end all “acts of violence” against Israelis while Israel has promised to end all “military activity” against Palestinians. So that’s it, then. Peace in our time.</p>
<p>A Martian — even a well-educated Martian — would have gathered that this was the message, supposing he dropped in on the fantasy world of Sharm el-Sheikh this week. Palestinians had been committing “violence,” the Israelis carrying out “innocent” operations. Palestinian “violence” or “terror and violence” — the latter a more popular phrase since it carried the stigma of 9/11 — was now at an end.</p>
<p>Mahmoud Abbas, who told a close Lebanese friend this year that he wore a suit and tie so that he would look “different” from Yasser Arafat — went along with all this. Just which people were occupying the homes of which other people remained a mystery.</p>
<p>Silver-haired and wisdom-burdened, Abbas looked the part. We had to forget that it was this same Abbas who wrote the Oslo Accords, who in 1,000 pages failed to use — even once — the word occupation and who talked not of Israeli “withdrawal” from Palestinian territory but of “redeployment.”</p>
<p>At no point at Sharm el-Sheikh did anyone mention occupation. Like sex, occupation had to be censored out of the historical narrative. As usual — as in Oslo — the real issues were put back to a later date. Refugees, the “right of return,” East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital: Let’s deal with them later.</p>
<p>Never before have we been in such need of the caustic voice of the late Edward Said. Settlements — Jewish colonies for Jews, and Jews only, on Arab land — were not, of course, discussed. Nor was East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>Nor was the “right of return” of 1948 refugees. These are the “unrealistic dreams” that were referred to by the Israelis.</p>
<p>All this will be discussed “later” — as they were supposed to be in Abbas’ hopeless Oslo agreement. As long as you can postpone the real causes of war, that’s OK. “An end to violence,” that has cost 4,000 deaths — it was all said, minus the all-important equation that two-thirds of these were Palestinian lives. Peace, peace, peace. It was like terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It was the sort of stuff you could buy off a supermarket shelf. If only.</p>
<p>At the end of the day the issues were these. Will the Israelis close down their massive settlements in the West Bank, including those that surround Jerusalem? No mention of this. Will they end the expansion of Jewish settlements — for Jews, and Jews only, across the Palestinian West Bank? No mention of this. Will they allow the Palestinians to have a capital in Arab East Jerusalem? No mention of this. Will the Palestinians truly end their intifada — including their murderous suicide bombings — as a result of these non-existent promises?</p>
<p>Like the Iraqi elections, which were also held under foreign occupation, the Israeli-Palestinian talks were historic because they were “historic.”</p>
<p>U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice “warned” Palestinians they must “control violence” but there was, as usual, no request to “control” the violence of the Israeli army.</p>
<p>Because the sine qua non of the equation was that the Palestinians were guilty. That the Palestinians were the “violent” party — hence the admonition that the Palestinians must end “violence” while the Israelis would merely end “operations.” The Palestinians, it seems, are generically violent. The Israelis generically law-abiding; the latter carry out “operations.” Mahmoud Abbas went along with this nonsense.</p>
<p>It was all too clear in the reporting. What was on offer, said CNN, was “an end to all violence” — as if occupation and illegal colonization was not a form of violence. The Associated Press talked gutlessly about “towns that, for now, continue to be under Israeli security control” — in other words, under Israeli occupation, although they would not tell their readers this.</p>
<p>So Mahmoud Abbas is going to be the Hamid Karzai of Palestine, his tie the equivalent of Karzai’s green gown, “our” new man in Palestine, the “tsunami” that has washed away the contamination of Arafat, whose grave Rice managed to avoid. But the tank-traps remain: East Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and the “right of return” of 1948 Palestinians to the homes they lost.</p>
<p>If we are going to clap our hands like the Sharm El-Sheikh “peacemakers,” we’d better realize that unless we are going to resolve these great issues of injustice now, this new act of “peacemaking” will prove to be as bloody as Oslo. Ask Mahmoud Abbas. He was the author of that first fatal agreement.</p> | No Middle East Peace Without Justice | true | https://counterpunch.org/2005/02/12/no-middle-east-peace-without-justice/ | 2005-02-12 | 4 |
<p>On Wednesday, May 7, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema held a closed hearing to determine whether suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui will be allowed to interview an alleged Al Qaeda member, who is currently being held by the U.S. government, to help build his defense. (Previously, in March, Judge Brinkema had allowed Moussaoui access to another detained alleged Al Qaeda member.)</p>
<p>The government has suggested that, rather than allowing Moussaoui access to such prisoners, it should instead be allowed to provide a written summary of the prisoner’s statements to Moussaoui. It has argued that because Moussaoui is also an Al Qaeda member, national security may be jeopardized if he is allowed to communicate directly with other members of the terrorist group.</p>
<p>However, Moussaoui’s “standby” attorneys have suggested that such written statements are far from sufficient: “There is no precedent for denying a defendant facing the death penalty access to such witnesses.” As their comments suggest, especially in a death penalty case, there are very strong reasons to allow the defendant access to all possible means of defense. Certainly, this country has executed enough innocent people in the past to be wary of cutting off a defendant’s right to defend himself.</p>
<p>Who is correct–the government, or Moussaoui and his standby attorneys? Before answering the question, it’s helpful to look at the ground rules that govern defendants’ ability to call witnesses in a federal criminal trial.</p>
<p>Why Defendants Often Don’t Call Their Own Witnesses In the First Place</p>
<p>First, it’s important to remember that many defendants usually don’t put on their own case at all. Rather, their lawyers cross examine the government’s witnesses, and argue in their opening summation that the government has not met its burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.</p>
<p>Why don’t defendants put on their own case? Sometimes public defenders’ lack of resources are to blame: The defendant’s overburdened attorney doesn’t have the time to conduct a full investigation. But the real reason is usually related to the Fifth Amendment.</p>
<p>Defendants with prior criminal records often invoke their Fifth Amendment right not to testify. Once they’ve made that choice, putting on other witnesses on their behalf has a severe cost for them. It will inevitably raise this question in the jury’s mind: “So why doesn’t the defendant himself just tell us what happened?”</p>
<p>Although jurors know the defendant has a right not to take the stand, they also often wonder why he doesn’t. Putting on an elaborate defense only make the defendant’s own silence more conspicuous.</p>
<p>Putting on such a defense also means the attorney can no longer implicitly suggest the defendant might have taken the Fifth on principle, by suggesting the burden is on the government, not the defendant. The idea is that the defendant isn’t speaking because he doesn’t have to; the government is the one that has to convince the jury. But putting on a defense case without the defendant’s own testimony suggests, instead, that the defendant prefers to have others make his case for him, because he fears trying to tell his own story.</p>
<p>That, then, is the situation in the typical case in which the defendant takes the Fifth.</p>
<p>But what about the cases where the defendant and his attorneys do decide to put on their own defense? Here is where obstacles can arise.</p>
<p>If a Defendant Does Try to Put on A Defense, He May Run Into Trouble</p>
<p>First, witnesses who fear they may incriminate themselves with their testimony may refuse to speak to the defendant or his attorneys. Even if they are subpoenaed to give a deposition, they may take the Fifth. If they do, a defendant has little recourse.</p>
<p>That’s because it is the prosecutor, not the defendant, who has the power to offer witnesses immunity and compel them to speak–meaning that the prosecution, in effect, has access to more testimony than does the defense. In a very rare circumstance, a defendant might convince a judge that his Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial requires the judge’s granting immunity to the witness, and compelling him or her to speak, but this is unlikely.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, if the defendant is poor, he will face additional obstacles. If he can’t pay witness fees, he can get the judge to subpoena witnesses anyway, but only if their testimony is found by the judge to be necessary “for an adequate defense.” Moreover, even if a subpoena for a deposition or trial appearance is issued, witnesses can always move to quash it.</p>
<p>That brings us to Moussaoui, who appears to be in an unusual situation for a defendant. His verbosity so far seems to make it very likely that he will take the stand in his own defense, and it seems the witnesses whom he has wanted to speak to, probably actually want to speak with him–rather than taking the Fifth or moving to quash the subpoena. Instead, it is the government that is the major obstacle to his getting access to witnesses.</p>
<p>The Problem with the Written Statement Option</p>
<p>The government’s national security concern, in this case, might be a plausible one. Its fear may be that Moussaoui would be a message-carrier among Al Qaeda prisoners–perhaps filling them on what the government does, and does not, know about Al Qaeda. There is every reason to think the angry Moussaoui would do this if he could–whether he is guilty, or simply furious at being wrongly accused.</p>
<p>Moreover, if Moussaoui went so far as to aid in terrorism, there would be little the government could do to penalize him further. It apparently expects to win the death penalty in this case. And if he is indeed guilty, then Moussaoui, too, may expect this too, and thus see no reason not to wreak havoc before he is executed. (This “nothing to lose” phenomenon is yet another problem with the death penalty.)</p>
<p>These concerns lead to the question of whether there might be a solution that balances the government’s national security worries against Moussaoui’s fair trial rights. The government’s “written statement” option seems a weak one, but it’s hard to propose another, because the balance is very difficult to strike.</p>
<p>Written statements are a poor alternative to actual interviews. In-person interviews encourage witness candor. They also allow subtle follow-ups and allow the questioner to tailor questions based on the answers he’s gotten so far. And crucially, they allow the defendant and his attorneys to assess how useful the witness would be if actually called to the stand at trial.</p>
<p>Without the opportunity to observe demeanor and assess credibility, the defense’s position is weakened. Before calling a witness, it’s best to know not only what he will say, but how he will say it. Under ordinary circumstances, no attorney worth his or her salt would accept a written statement in exchange for an in-person interview. A trial is a human drama, not a paper battle.</p>
<p>The Problem Is Particularly Acute Since Moussaoui Is Representing Himself</p>
<p>Another alternative–having defense attorneys, not Moussaoui, do the interview, and restricting what they can convey to him based on security rules–is excluded here. The case is an unusual one, because Moussaoui is representing himself–with access to judge-appointed “standby counsel.” Thus, the option of allowing Moussaoui’s lawyers–but not Moussaoui himself–access to potential witnesses who might disclose sensitive information is not as feasible as it otherwise would be. In a sense, he is his own lawyer.</p>
<p>Of course, giving attorneys access to information that they cannot communicate to their clients is hardly an ideal solution anyway. But it’s also not unheard of. For example, if an attorney, through no fault of his own, sees something he shouldn’t–say, inadvertently produced information from the other side–he might have an ethical duty to keep it to himself. Typically, though, a criminal defendant ought to be allowed to see all the evidence that his attorney can.</p>
<p>An Ex Parte Proceeding May Be the Best Solution</p>
<p>Another option might be to have the interview presided over by the judge, with prosecutors excluded (the legal term for such a one-sided proceeding is “ex parte”). It seems unlikely that even Moussaoui would plot in front of Judge Brinkema.</p>
<p>This solution would not be completely unusual: Judges typically have experience in conducting ex parte proceedings, at least in civil cases where it is possible, for instance, to get an ex parte temporary restraining issue under some circumstances. They are also very used to overseeing, and controlling, witness testimony to make sure that it hews to external constraints, such as the rules of evidence–often, for instance, shutting down hearsay before it can be voiced.</p>
<p>This option would seem to be fair to both sides. Prosecutors could fill the judge in beforehand on their national security fears, so she could shut proceedings down if Moussaoui was attempting to misuse them. Meanwhile, Moussaoui would be able to have the benefit of an in-person interview of the Al Qaeda prisoner, and could also keep his defense strategy secret from the prosecution until trial begins, as he’s entitled to do.</p>
<p>I’m sure Judge Brinkema’s resolution of the dispute over access to the Al Qaeda witness will depend at least in part on the evidence on the magnitude and plausibility of the national security threat, and rightly so. But whatever approach she takes, my hope is that she offers Moussaoui greater due process, and a fairer trial, than the government’s “written statement” would allow. With not only the U.S., but the world watching, it’s important that Moussaoui’s right to a fair trial is preserved insofar as that is possible.</p>
<p>JULIE HILDEN practiced First Amendment law at the D.C. law firm of Williams &amp; Connolly from 1996-99. Currently a freelance writer, she published a memoir, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565121856/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Bad Daughter</a>, in 1998. Her forthcoming novel <a href="" type="internal">Three</a> will be published in the U.S. in August 2003 by Plume Books, in the U.K. by Bantam, and in French translation by Actes Sud. This column originally appeared on <a href="http://writ.news.findlaw.com/" type="external">Findlaw’s Writ</a>.</p>
<p>She can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>Julie’s <a href="http://www.juliehilden.com/" type="external">new website</a> is a lot of fun. Have a look.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Can Moussaoui Get a Fair Trial? | true | https://counterpunch.org/2003/05/14/can-moussaoui-get-a-fair-trial/ | 2003-05-14 | 4 |
<p>Investors have waited to see whether <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/04/13/are-trumps-infrastructure-spending-plans-crumbling.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=cd66ec2e-78a9-11e7-b694-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">anticipated increases in infrastructure spending Opens a New Window.</a> would lift stocks of companies in the construction industry. Yet MasTec (NYSE: MTZ) decided not to wait for Washington to act, and instead, it has strived to find ways to create its own growth opportunities.</p>
<p>Coming into Thursday's second-quarter financial report, MasTec investors had high hopes for solid gains in revenue and earnings. Yet even MasTec itself seemed surprised by just how well it did during the second quarter. Let's take a closer look at MasTec and what its latest results say about the company and its industry going forward.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>MasTec's second-quarter results were incredibly strong. Revenue soared by 53% to $1.89 billion, easily beating the company's own guidance for roughly $1.5 billion in sales for the period. Adjusted net income nearly tripled from year-ago levels to $86.7 million, and that resulted in adjusted earnings of $1.03 per share. That made the consensus forecast for $0.65 per share in earnings look embarrassingly small by comparison.</p>
<p>Taking a closer look at MasTec's results, just about all of the outperformance for the company came <a href="https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/05/oil-gas-fuels-mastec-incs-strong-q2-earnin.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=cd66ec2e-78a9-11e7-b694-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">once again from the oil and gas industry's more favorable conditions Opens a New Window.</a>. Revenue from the segment was up by $715 million, which was actually greater than the total gain in sales for the company as a whole. Profit from oil and gas was also strong, posting a nearly $100 million gain.</p>
<p>Other sectors mostly treaded water. The communications segment had flat revenue and saw adjusted pre-tax profit fall by more than 10%. The electrical transmission division managed to pick up a 1% rise in revenue, and it turned around a year-earlier loss with a modest pre-tax operating profit. However, the power generation and industrial segment suffered a nearly 50% drop in revenue, and segment profit eased lower slightly.</p>
<p>CEO Jose Mas was happy about how things went. "Our second quarter performance significantly exceeded our expectations primarily due to record levels of oil and gas project activity," Mas said, "with segment revenues at $1.1 billion, a 168% increase over last year's second quarter level."</p>
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<p>MasTec also thinks it will be able to sustain its recent strength. In Mas's words, "Our current performance, coupled with significant opportunities for future growth across all of our segments, position us well for continued long-term growth."</p>
<p>To move forward more aggressively in the energy sector, the company announced that it had made an acquisition of a specialty pipeline equipment leasing company. MasTec thinks that by doing so, it should be able to cut its overall equipment costs and gain a competitive advantage over its peers. At the same time, MasTec also acquired a provider of infrastructure in the areas of civil engineering, water, sewer, and draining systems, and entering that market should give the company what Mas termed "an exciting platform to benefit from increased demand trends in this market."</p>
<p>MasTec once again raised its full-year guidance in response to favorable conditions. The company now believes that it will see sales for 2017 come in at $6 billion, $300 million higher than its previous guidance estimate. Adjusted earnings of $2.73 per share would be 44% higher than 2016 figures and adds $0.28 per share to MasTec's earlier guidance. For the third quarter, MasTec expects revenue of $1.65 billion and adjusted earnings of $0.73, and both numbers are just a bit higher than the current consensus among those following the company's stock.</p>
<p>MasTec shareholders were happy with the news, and the stock jumped more than 7% in after-hours trading following the announcement. If the energy market can keep making progress from its recent downturn, then MasTec could be in an even better position to benefit and keep its upward momentum going throughout 2017 and beyond.</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of August 1, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=cd66ec2e-78a9-11e7-b694-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends MasTec. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;uuid=cd66ec2e-78a9-11e7-b694-0050569d4be0&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Soaring Sales Lift MasTec to New Records | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/08/04/soaring-sales-lift-mastec-to-new-records.html | 2017-08-04 | 0 |
<p>Human rights investigators are adding yet another alleged war crime to existing accusations of Israel’s war-time exuberance, as Amnesty International officials believe Israel’s military forces engaged in “wanton destruction” of civilian homes during the bloody assault on Gaza.</p>
<p>The BBC:</p>
<p>Amnesty International has told the BBC News website the methods used raised concerns about war crimes.</p>
<p>Israel’s military said buildings were destroyed because of military “operational needs”.</p>
<p />
<p>The Israeli Defense Forces said they operated in accordance with international law during the conflict.</p>
<p>However, the use of mines to destroy homes contradicted this claim, the head of the Amnesty International fact-finding mission to southern Israel and Gaza, Donatella Rovera, has argued.</p>
<p><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7926413.stm" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Israel's 'Wanton Destruction' | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/israels-wanton-destruction/ | 2009-03-06 | 4 |
<p>Pakistani officials have responded to the call, coming from India as well as the U.S., to take serious action against militant groups operating in their country. Pakistani forces launched widespread raids late Sunday and arrested Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, believed to be a ringleader behind the recent Mumbai attacks.</p>
<p>Times Online:</p>
<p>Pakistani security forces have raided a training camp used by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the militant group blamed for last month's attack on Mumbai, and arrested at least 12 of the group's activists, government officials said today.</p>
<p>One Pakistani official told The Times that among those arrested was Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, LeT's operations chief, whom Indian officials have accused of masterminding the Mumbai attack.</p>
<p />
<p>The raid last night near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, was Pakistan's first attempt to respond to mounting pressure from India and the United States to take action against LeT after the Mumbai strike</p>
<p><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5305642.ece" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Crackdown in Pakistan | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/crackdown-in-pakistan/ | 2008-12-09 | 4 |
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<p>Reps. Blake Farenthold, a Republican, and Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, said Wednesday that the number of Cubans who have entered Texas in the past few months is up 60 percent.</p>
<p>"With President Obama restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, the immigration preferential treatment given to Cubans who enter the United States no longer makes sense," Farenthold said in a statement.</p>
<p>The congressmen introduced the Correcting Unfair Benefits for Aliens act a day after President Barack Obama wrapped up a historic visit to the communist Caribbean nation.</p>
<p>It comes as Cubans trek to California and Texas by the thousands, fearing such legislation will soon become law and repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.</p>
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<p>Under that law, Cubans able to reach U.S. soil have gained residence while those intercepted at sea have been turned back.</p>
<p>Cuellar called the "wet foot/dry foot" treatment granted to Cuban migrants under the 1966 law a relics "of a bygone era and a cold war that has long since passed."</p>
<p>Americans should not "lose sight of the thousands of people from regions like Central America who are fleeing serious threats from drug violence and face a disadvantage when compared with Cubans," his statement continued.</p> | 2 Texas congressmen seek repeal of favored Cuban migration | false | https://abqjournal.com/745078/2-texas-congressmen-seek-repeal-of-favored-cuban-migration.html | 2 |
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<p>UPDATE: Seventy-six people died in Norway's twin attacks—eight when a blast ripped through Oslo’s government headquarters, and 68 at a mass shooting at a nearby youth camp. Dozens more were hospitalized. Norway's prime minister said, "Not since the Second World War has the country experienced such an atrocity.”</p>
<p>As rain poured down from a gray sky Friday afternoon, the heart of Oslo was struck by a <a href="" type="internal">powerful explosion</a> outside the prime minister’s office, and on an island outside the city, a man dressed as a police officer began shooting at teenagers. The twin attacks left a total of 87 dead.</p>
<p>“First came the blast, then our glass roof exploded,” said newspaper columnist Anders Giaver, whose office is just across from a plaza ringed by the prime minister’s office, the Ministry of Oil and Energy, the Ministry of Trade, and the Ministry of Education. “We ran down the stairs and smelled smoke. We knew immediately that this was a terror attack.”</p>
<p>Outside, Giaver met shocked and wounded citizens. “Unbelievable” was the word many used to describe the tragedy. A terror attack is something that happens elsewhere, not in Norway.</p>
<p>“Norway lost its innocence today,” a grim-faced Ola Borten Moe, the minister of oil and energy, told The Daily Beast. Several of his staff were wounded in the blast, which killed at least seven and wounded 15. “This will change Norway forever. This is something we have read about from other countries. But the most important thing now is to keep our tempers in check. We don’t yet know who or why.”</p>
<p>The feeling of shock intensified Friday as a gunman disguised as a policeman opened fire on teenagers who were attending a political summer camp run by the ruling Labor Party at Utøya, an island on one of the lakes surrounding Oslo. The teenagers fled, with some running away and others diving into the water in an effort to escape. At least nine were killed, and the 32-year-old shooter, who police said was <a href="" type="internal">linked to the Oslo bombing</a>, was arrested. <a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_NORWAY_EXPLOSION?SITE=AP&amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT" type="external">An unexploded bomb</a> was later found on the island.</p>
<p>The blond Norwegian suspect had told guards that he was on the island to carry out a “routine check” on security after the terror attack in Oslo. He was ferried by boat to the island by the camp’s own staffers. Just after reaching the crowd of teenagers, he began shooting.</p>
<p>“July 22 will go down in history as the day when political violence brought death to our streets and to our youth,” Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre told The Daily Beast in a phone interview. He spent Thursday with the Labor Party youth at Utøya, having what he described as “lively discussions about the Middle East, soccer, music—all the ingredients of a political summer camp.” On Saturday the prime minister, who was not in his office at the time of the Oslo bombing, was scheduled to attend.</p>
<p>“Tonight we are mourning the loss of innocent citizens who have been targeted by terror,” said Gahr Støre, who, between security meetings Friday, took calls from survivors and parents of victims of the Utøya camp attack. “As we do that, we also make every effort to bring those responsible to justice. Norway must live up to its standard of the rule of law. But for the moment, we have no theories about who is behind it. Having theories means you limit the scope of the investigation.”</p>
<p>Right before midnight, the Oslo police raided the flat of Anders Behring Breivik in the upper class district of Oslo, where the 32-year old had been living with his mother. The man arrested in connection with the shootings at Uttøya and the explosions in Oslo is a devote rightwing extremist, known to have posted several attacks on Islam, immigration and the creation of a multicultural society in Norway on the web.</p>
<p>In 2009 Breivik registered the company Geofram, to deal with vegetables. Through this company he got access to large quantities of fertilizers, which is suspected have been used in the explosives.</p>
<p>Breivik was registered with a Glock pistol, a rifle and a hunting gun in the weapon register. In his car several other weapons were found, including machine pistols, after the arrest. Six days ago he posted <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/AndersBBreivik/status/92651821369266176" type="external">his one and only message on Twitter</a>, a version of a quote by John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests."</p>
<p>Start and finish your day with the top stories from The Daily Beast.</p>
<p>A speedy, smart summary of all the news you need to know (and nothing you don't).</p>
<p>Norway is a member of NATO and has troops stationed in the Faryab province of Afghanistan. It has taken part in the West’s bombing raids on Tripoli and in 2006 <a href="" type="internal">was mentioned by Ayman al-Zawahiri as a possible target</a>. Norwegian newspapers’ reprinting of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad angered Muslim groups, and protests against Norway were staged in several countries.</p>
<p>Oslo is one of the most open capitals in the world. Before Friday, a person could walk straight into the reception area of the building where the prime minister had his office on the top floor. Now that reception area lies in ruins. Oslo is a city where the police patrol is unarmed, where people can take a stroll in the king’s garden around the clock. The city has been struck in the heart—and it may be forever changed.</p> | Oslo Bombing, Utoya Attack: Shock After the Blast and Shooting in Norway | true | https://thedailybeast.com/oslo-bombing-utoya-attack-shock-after-the-blast-and-shooting-in-norway | 2018-10-07 | 4 |
<p />
<p><a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=76362" type="external" />El Hierro and of El Hierro and plume of volcanic material, 2 Nov 2011. Credit: NASA image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using ALI data from the EO-1 Team.An underwater volcanic eruption in the Las Calmas (“The Calm”) sea off El Hierro in the Canary Islands continues unabated since last month. The volcano is believed to be spewing up to 330 feet (100 meters) below the surface—yet its 2,200°F (1,200°C) cauldron is heating the surface by as much as 18°F (10°C). The plume visible in this <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=76362" type="external">satellite image</a> stretches tens of miles from the eruption site and is formed from the blasting and churning of seafloor sediment, volcanic rock, and minerals. The eruption has been accompanied by more than 10,000 earthquakes and tremors—including a <a href="http://earthquake-report.com/2011/09/25/el-hierro-canary-islands-spain-volcanic-risk-alert-increased-to-yellow/" type="external">4.6 temblor today</a>. Meanwhile <a href="http://earthquake-report.com/2011/09/25/el-hierro-canary-islands-spain-volcanic-risk-alert-increased-to-yellow/" type="external">Earthquake Reports writes</a> that Spanish scientists announced an eruption is also possible on Lanzarote Island at the far northeastern end of the Canary Island archipelago, and that “an eruption on the coast itself cannot be excluded.” Meanwhile “The Calm” sea is writhing through what may well be the labor pains of a new island.</p>
<p /> | Image-of-the-Week: Island Birth | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/image-week-new-land/ | 2011-11-11 | 4 |
<p>WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said Wednesday she will oppose <a href="" type="internal">President-elect Donald Trump’s designee to head the Department of Education</a> because of a lack of experience.</p>
<p>Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos “has no background in public education.”</p>
<p>“In fact, her only experience for this job is her decades of fighting to divert money away from public education to support charter schools and vouchers for private, religious schools,” Cortez Masto said in statement.</p>
<p>DeVos testified earlier this week before the Senate committee on health and education.</p>
<p>“While Republicans are hoping to ram through her confirmation with as little public scrutiny as possible, yesterday’s hearing made abundantly clear to me that Betsy DeVos is not equipped to lead the Department of Education,” Cortez Masto said.</p>
<p>Contact Gary Martin at [email protected] or 202-662-7390. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/garymartindc" type="external">@garymartindc</a> on Twitter.</p> | Cortez Masto will oppose Trump’s pick for Education secretary | false | http://reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/cortez-masto-will-oppose-trumps-pick-for-education-secretary/ | 2017-01-18 | 1 |
<p>Bill Cosby’s defense attorney in his sex assault trial that ended with a deadlocked jury wants off the case before a retrial that’s scheduled to begin in November.</p>
<p>Lead defense lawyer Brian McMonagle of Philadelphia filed documents Tuesday seeking to withdraw as Cosby’s counsel. He says Cosby is taking steps to secure new lawyers.</p>
<p>Montgomery County Judge Steven O’Neill will consider the request at a pre-trial conference Aug. 22.</p>
<p>Cosby is being retried on charges he drugged and molested Andrea Constand more than a decade ago.</p>
<p>Prosecutors found themselves back at square one June 17 after a judge declared a mistrial. The jury failed to reach a verdict in more than 52 hours of deliberations.</p>
<p>The 80-year-old comedian has said his encounter with the former Temple University worker was consensual.</p> | Cosby's Defense Attorney Wants Off the Case Before Retrial | false | https://newsline.com/cosbys-defense-attorney-wants-off-the-case-before-retrial/ | 2017-08-02 | 1 |
<p>ZURICH (Reuters) - One of the top lawyers in the booming cryptocurrency industry says the legal structure he helped set up to raise funds for new virtual currencies is “old, inflexible and stupid” and may no longer be fit for purpose.</p> Luka Mueller of MME Legal law firm gestures during a panel discussion with Stephen Palley (R) of Anderson Kill, LLP law firm at the Blockchain Summit - Crypto Valley in Zug, Switzerland November 22, 2017. Picture taken November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
<p>The Swiss lawyer’s comments come as regulators around the world increase their scrutiny of initial coin offerings (ICOs), the digital fundraisers that precede a currency’s launch.</p>
<p>There is also growing scrutiny from investors. The Zug-based Tezos Foundation is facing U.S. class-action lawsuits from those who say they were misled and defrauded in its ICO.</p>
<p>Luka Mueller’s MME law firm helped set up foundations in Switzerland for Tezos and some of the world’s biggest ICOs, including those of Bancor and Ethereum. Many foundations applied for non-profit tax status. The money raised in the ICO is treated as a donation that may not be returned.</p>
<p>Regulators in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere are looking at whether an ICO should have similar investor protection to an initial public offering (IPO) for a company.</p>
<p>Mueller told Reuters cryptocurrency groups involving U.S. participants or gaining backing from investors should set up companies instead of the Swiss foundations he helped popularize.</p>
<p>“If you structure your token sale in a way that it would look like an initial public offering, then even if you launch a (blockchain) protocol, the foundation is maybe not suitable,” he said.</p>
<p>“If...the background is more an investor environment rather than a technical environment, yes, do all the registrations. If you want to sell it, if you want to be active and actively promoting it in the US, apply U.S. law.”</p>
<p>He said a foundation could still work for ICOs if a project is of interest mainly to technical experts rather than investors.</p> “CRYPTO VALLEY”
<p>Bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency, exploded in value since it was launched in 2009. Its price increased from less than a cent in early 2010 to a record shy of $20,000 in December 2017.</p>
<p>The coins use encryption and a blockchain transaction database enabling fast and anonymous transfer of funds without centralized payment systems.</p>
<p>ICOs skyrocketed in 2017, reaching nearly $3 billion through September. Switzerland attracted around a quarter of the world’s ICOs with nearly $650 million raised there in the first nine months of 2017, according to data compiled by cryptocurrency research firm Smith + Crown.</p>
<p>Blockchain groups have set up foundations in the Swiss “Crypto Valley,” but the model has also loosely been exported elsewhere including to the Seychelles, Mauritius and Singapore.</p>
<p>Tezos aims to be a blockchain that’s more reliable than the ones behind bitcoin and ether. Its foundation raised $232 million last July.</p>
<p>It is now facing at least half a dozen class-action lawsuits in the United States. The plaintiffs are seeking a refund as well as damages.</p>
<p>They made non-refundable donations and expected to receive tokens called Tezzies when the network launched. But a former board member said the project is in a state of paralysis because of the lawsuits and a dispute between the developers and the foundation’s president. The network has not yet launched.</p>
<p>Tezos Foundation officials have declined to comment on the lawsuits. An attorney for the founders, Kathleen and Arthur Breitman, said of the first lawsuit that is was without merit and that the couple would aggressively defend themselves.</p>
<p>Under MME’s guidelines, tokens become property with an enforceable right once the blockchain launches and the token receives a spot on the first block. Before the launch contributors have no such rights.</p>
<p>Mueller said the foundation structure his team helped bring to cryptocurrency groups was initially conceived as a means to ensure funds were used for a set purpose and to protect developers from any liability over the project’s success.</p>
<p>“It’s a concept of a donation, from which it is clear you donate,” Mueller said. “You donate into a structure and you donate to a team and to their idea.”</p>
<p>By MME’s definition, the developers behind the tokens are not liable for the projects and there is no counterparty to sue.</p> BURNT FINGERS
<p>Other experts on Swiss foundation law say it would be nearly impossible for contributors to see money refunded from the foundation.</p>
<p>Alexandre Swoboda, an economist who sat on the Swiss National Bank’s council from 1997 to 2009 said: “ICOs are basically about financing yourself by giving these people these new coins, and holding those new coins doesn’t give you a claim on anything except to be part of the club that holds those coins.”</p>
<p>But regulators are looking into this.</p>
<p>Investors in the United States may have been encouraged to file lawsuits after the U.S. regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), in July stated that some of the coins, also called tokens, may be considered securities subject to federal rules and regulation.</p>
<p>This has opened the door for courts to follow suit in enforcing the interpretation of ICOs as security sales.</p>
<p>Mueller conceded that while a foundation was a useful model for launching a new blockchain project that expected to see interest exclusively from a small technically-geared community, other projects would “need to have an operational company, like a GmbH or an AG, and not a foundation.”</p>
<p>“The Swiss foundation actually is a very old, inflexible, stupid model,” he said. “The foundation is not designed for operations.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, he said the vast majority of cryptocurrency fundraiser participants&#160;understood the terms and were therefore accountable for the risky decision to contribute.</p>
<p>“You as a user must be absolutely clear — and if you don’t understand it keep your fingers away — that if you have an ether or a bitcoin, and it does not work, you have nobody to claim against,” he said.</p>
<p>Editing by Anna Willard</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>(Reuters) - At least seven companies said on Thursday they were dropping advertisements from Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show after the conservative pundit mocked a teenage survivor of the Florida school massacre on Twitter and he responded with a call for a boycott.</p>
<p>Parkland student David Hogg, 17, tweeted a list of a dozen companies that advertise on “The Ingraham Angle” and urged his supporters to demand that they cancel their ads.</p>
<p>Hogg is a survivor of the Feb. 14 mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Parkland suburb of Fort Lauderdale. He and other classmates have become the faces of a new youth-led movement calling for tighter restrictions on firearms.</p>
<p>Hogg took aim at Ingraham’s advertisers after she taunted him on Twitter on Wednesday, accusing him of whining about being rejected by four colleges to which he had applied.</p>
<p>On Thursday, Ingraham tweeted an apology “in the spirit of Holy Week,” saying she was sorry for any hurt or upset she had caused Hogg or any of the “brave victims” of Parkland.</p>
<p>“For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David ... immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how ‘poised’ he was given the tragedy,” Ingraham tweeted.</p>
<p>But her apology did not stop companies from departing.</p>
<p>Nutrish, the pet food line created by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, travel website TripAdvisor Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TRIP.O" type="external">TRIP.O</a>), online home furnishings seller Wayfair Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=W.N" type="external">W.N</a>), the world’s largest packaged food company, Nestle SA ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=NESN.S" type="external">NESN.S</a>), online streaming service Hulu, travel website Expedia Group Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=EXPE.O" type="external">EXPE.O</a>) and online personal shopping service Stitch Fix ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=SFIX.O" type="external">SFIX.O</a>) all said they were canceling their advertisements.</p>
<p>Wayfair said in a statement it supports dialogue and debate, but “the decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values.”</p>
<p>Replying to Hogg’s boycott call, Nutrish tweeted: “We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham’s program.”</p> A combination of file photos show media personality Laura Ingraham in Washington October 14, 2017 and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg, at a rally in Washington March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert, Jonathan Ernst/Files
<p>Responding to public pressure, Nestle wrote on Twitter that it had “no plans to buy ads on the show in future.”</p>
<p>Hulu said on Twitter: “We’d like to confirm that we are no longer advertising on Laura Ingraham’s show and are monitoring all of our ad placements carefully.”</p>
<p>CNBC cited a TripAdvisor spokesman as saying the company does not condone “inappropriate comments” by Ingraham that “cross the line of decency.”</p>
<p>TripAdvisor representatives did not immediately reply to a request for comment.</p>
<a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=TRIP.O" type="external">TripAdvisor Inc</a> 40.89 TRIP.O Nasdaq +0.28 (+0.69%) TRIP.O W.N NESN.S EXPE.O SFIX.O
<p>Expedia, which was not on Hogg’s list or another list of sponsors that Hogg retweeted, “no longer advertises on this show,” Expedia spokeswoman Maureen Thon said in an email.</p>
<p>Hogg wrote on Twitter that an apology just to mollify advertisers was insufficient. He said he would accept it only if Ingraham denounced the way Fox News treated him and his friends.</p>
<p>“It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children,” Hogg tweeted.</p>
<p>Ingraham’s show runs on Fox News, part of Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox Inc ( <a href="/finance/stocks/overview?symbol=FOXA.O" type="external">FOXA.O</a>).</p>
<p>Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Additional reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York, Andrew Hay; Editing by David Gregorio, Matthew Lewis and Diane Craft</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators probing whether Donald Trump’s presidential campaign colluded with Russia have been questioning witnesses about events at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to two sources familiar with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiries.</p>
<p>Mueller’s team has been asking about a convention-related event attended by both Russia’s U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to support Trump and now his attorney general, said one source, who requested anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.</p>
<p>Another issue Mueller’s team has been asking about is how and why Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine, said another source who also requested anonymity.</p>
<p>Mueller’s interest in what happened at the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2016, is an indication that Trump campaign contacts and actions related to Russia remain central to the special counsel’s investigation.</p>
<p>Trump, who was nominated as the Republican Party candidate for the November 2016 election during the convention, has denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign. Moscow has denied U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that it interfered in the campaign to try to tilt the election in Trump’s favor.</p>
<p>Investigators have asked detailed questions about conversations that Sessions, then a Trump campaign adviser, had at a convention event attended by then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, said the first source, who was questioned by Mueller about the event.</p>
<p>The same source said Mueller’s team also has been asking whether Sessions had private discussions with Kislyak on the sidelines of a campaign speech Trump gave at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel in April 2016.</p>
<p>Sessions’ spokespersons have denied repeatedly that he had any private discussions with Kislyak at the Mayflower. Sessions told lawmakers last year he could not recall any conversations with Russian officials at the hotel but could not rule out that a “brief interaction” with Kislyak may have occurred there.</p>
<p>Spokespersons for Mueller and Sessions declined to comment on Mueller’s interest in Sessions’ activities at the convention and other convention-related events.</p> Delegates celebrate at the conclusion of the final day of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. July 21, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein UKRAINE LANGUAGE
<p>The special counsel’s investigators have also interviewed attendees of the committee meetings that drafted the Republican Party platform in Cleveland.</p>
<p>At one committee meeting, according to people in attendance, Diana Denman, a member of the platform committee’s national security subcommittee, proposed language calling for the United States to supply “lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine’s armed forces and greater coordination with NATO on defense planning.”</p>
<p>But the final platform language deleted the reference to “lethal defensive weapons,” a change that made the platform less hostile to Russia, whose troops had invaded the Crimean peninsula and eastern Ukraine.</p>
<p>After the convention, Denman told Reuters in 2016, J.D. Gordon, a Trump foreign policy adviser, told her he was going to speak to Trump about the language on Ukraine, and that Trump’s campaign team played a direct role in softening the platform language.</p> FILE PHOTO: Special Counsel Robert Mueller (R) departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
<p>The Trump campaign has denied playing any role in the weakening of the party’s position regarding Ukraine. Gordon has called Denman’s version of events “inaccurate.”</p>
<p>Stephen Yates, co-chair of the platform committee’s national security subcommittee, said he has “heard nothing about other members of the subcommittee being called in for questioning, and I have had no interaction with anyone working on the investigation.”</p>
<p>Sessions recused himself last year from the federal probe into Russian election meddling after it emerged that he had failed to say during his Senate confirmation hearing to be attorney general that he had met with Russia’s ambassador in 2016.</p>
<p>(This version of the story corrects paragraph 8 to show Sessions did not rule out a “brief interaction” with Kislyak instead of he admitted to speaking briefly to Kislyak)</p>
<p>Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Frances Kerry</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a>
<p>SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A Facebook Inc executive said in an internal memo in 2016 that the social media company needed to pursue adding users above all else, BuzzFeed News reported on Thursday, prompting disavowals from the executive and Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.</p> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, California April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam
<p>The memo from Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, had not been previously reported as Facebook faces inquiries over how it handles personal information and the tactics the social media company has used to grow to 2.1 billion users.</p>
<p>Zuckerberg stood by Bosworth, who goes by the nickname “Boz,” while distancing himself from the memo’s contents. Bosworth confirmed the memo’s authenticity but in a statement he disavowed its message, saying its goal had been to encourage debate.</p>
<p>Facebook users, advertisers and investors have been in an uproar for months over a series of scandals, most recently privacy practices that allowed political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to obtain personal information on 50 million Facebook members. Zuckerberg is expected to testify at a hearing with U.S. lawmakers as soon as April.</p>
<p>“Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We’ve never believed the ends justify the means,” Zuckerberg said in a statement.</p>
<p>Bosworth wrote in the June 2016 memo that some “questionable” practices were all right if the result was connecting people.</p>
<p>“That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends,” he wrote in the memo, which BuzzFeed published on its website.</p> Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, California April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam
<p>He also urged fellow employees not to let potential negatives slow them down.</p>
<p>“Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people,” he wrote.</p>
<p>Bosworth said Thursday that he did not agree with the post today “and I didn’t agree with it even when I wrote it.</p>
<p>“Having a debate around hard topics like these is a critical part of our process and to do that effectively we have to be able to consider even bad ideas, if only to eliminate them,” Bosworth’s statement said.</p>
<p>Reporting by David Ingram; editing by Grant McCool</p> Our Standards:
<a href="" type="internal">The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.</a> | Top Swiss cryptocurrency lawyer questions 'stupid' ICO structure Ads pulled from Ingraham show after she mocked Parkland survivor Mueller probing Russia contacts at Republican convention: sources Zuckerberg disavows memo saying all user growth is good | false | https://reuters.com/article/us-swiss-crypto/top-swiss-cryptocurrency-lawyer-questions-stupid-ico-structure-idUSKBN1FB1TC | 2018-01-22 | 2 |
<p>Young John McCain’s friends called him McNasty. He was swift to anger and had a sharp tongue. There was little room for anyone who displeased him. That predisposition has mellowed but not vanished. McCain is known for his off-colour jokes and asides. One legendary “joke” captures both his heartlessness and his bigotry. “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?” he asks. “Because her father is Janet Reno.”</p>
<p>A child of the armed forces (his grandfather and father were both admirals in the navy), McCain was a navy pilot during the Vietnam conflict. Shot down, he was an iconic prisoner of war. Upon his release, McCain was the toast of those old men who egged the youth on to die in their name. A photo opportunity with Richard Nixon set McCain’s political career on the roll. He won an election in the frontier state of Arizona, home to Barry Goldwater, who, until recently, defined the edges of right-wing Republican thought. All this despite McCain’s McNasty reputation.</p>
<p>McCain’s genius is that he knew he was a creature of the press and that his survival in politics relied upon keeping the press in line. Rather than starve the ravenous media, McCain fed them, developed close relationships with them, and brought them onto his side. When he says things that are inappropriate, most of them do not want to run these statements because it would deny them access to this ebullient personality, the popular guy who gathers those less popular around him.</p>
<p>It is this closeness to those sent to report on him that allows McCain to get away with the facade that he is an “independent”. The press anointed him a “maverick”, a term he liked and likes to use. McCain is both an independent and a maverick in his style, in his stance toward the media. But his positions are anything but independent or maverick. In most ways, McCain is close to that right-wing edge of his party that was sharpened by his former comrade-in-arms, Goldwater.</p>
<p>About the economy of the United States, which teeters on the brink, McCain honestly said: “The issue of economics is something I’ve never really understood as well as I should.” Such candidness is of course refreshing. But no one who has access to his press conferences asked him whether this should disqualify him from leadership at a time when perhaps some kind of understanding of global forces is necessary.</p>
<p>Recognising his shallowness, McCain hastened to add: “As long as Alan Greenspan is around, I would certainly use him for advice and counsel.”</p>
<p>Greenspan is another remarkable politician. As the steward of the Federal Reserve Bank, he donned the mask of the Oracle, and his every utterance, even glance, was greeted with much speculation. There was nothing democratic about how Greenspan made monetary policy; he was secretive on principle because he felt that monetary policy should not be a province for oversight or deliberation. The Greenspan legacy led to at least two tattered booms: the dot-com economy and now the housing market.</p>
<p>But the shrapnel from these explosions missed Greenspan. He continues to stand above it all, even claiming in his new book to be highly critical of President George W. Bush, who did not benefit from any criticism of his tax cuts when Greenspan held the keys to the currency. Only now, when the cuts have become unpopular, Greenspan speaks out. Such opportunism does not earn him a rebuke; instead, he won plaudits for his sagacity. McCain and Greenspan have this teflon quality in common. McCain’s reliance on Greenspan goes back several decades. In the early1980s, Ronald Reagan’s administration opened the floodgates to deregulation of all aspects of U.S. life, including, most importantly, credit markets. Small savings and loans banks began to lend money without care. A significant number of them imploded. The government had to come in and bail them out (the total bailout cost $160 billion). The most spectacular collapse was of the Lincoln Savings &amp; Loan, run by Charles Keating.</p>
<p>When Keating’s bank was in trouble, he turned to Greenspan, then a private citizen, for help. Greenspan wrote to the Federal Home Loan (FHL) Bank of San Francisco after he conducted a study of Lincoln. In the letter (dated February 13, 1985), Greenspan assured the FHL Bank that Lincoln was in good shape and deserved access to more capital.</p>
<p>Keating, he wrote, “restored the association to a vibrant and healthy state, with a strong net worth position, largely through the expert selection of sound and profitable direct investments”. The FHL Bank took Greenspan at his word. So, apparently, did John McCain. He took campaign contributions from Keating and lobbied on his behalf in the U.S. Senate.</p>
<p>When Lincoln collapsed (costing U.S. taxpayers $3 billion in 1989), McCain said he only supported Keating because of Greenspan. Yet, his trust for Greenspan did not diminish. Greenspan went on to run the Federal Reserve Bank. McCain remained in the Senate.</p>
<p>The Keating story was huge. Even the generally tolerant media could not cover up this scandal since McCain was one of the “Keating Five” (five U.S. Senators who had taken money from Keating and worked on Lincoln’s behalf). The episode stung McCain. He vowed to become a foe of campaign contributions and to remove corruption from politics. McCain held hearings and sponsored a Bill (with liberal Senator Russell Feingold).</p>
<p>Keating’s McCain was transformed into Feingold’s McCain. On the issue of campaign contributions and lobbying, McCain seemed more liberal than the Democrats.</p>
<p>Yet even this was a mirage. The best test of the shallowness is in McCain’s current campaign workers. Many of the leaders of his campaign are professional lobbyists who represent the most aggressive companies to work the halls of Washington, D.C. Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, runs a large firm that manages the interests of most of the large multinational corporations.</p>
<p>McCain’s finance managers are both from the Loeffler Group, the firm that lobbied Congress to give a major military contract to Airbus instead of Boeing. This infuriated the populist Right and the union Left, both of whom felt that a U.S. firm (Boeing) should have got the deal rather than a European firm (Airbus).</p>
<p>Even this scandal had no legs. Neither of McCain’s Loeffler Group advisers resigned, nor did McCain have to really defend himself at a time of job loss in the U.S. No corporate sector with a substantial size is absent from McCain’s campaign. His campaign bus is a corporate Trojan horse.</p>
<p>The most well-known person in the McCain campaign is Charles Black, a seasoned Republican operative who has been in or around Republican administrations since the 1970s. Whereas most of the other McCain people work on the economic side of lobbying, Black has a long political client list.</p>
<p>It is the wish list of anti-communist leaders who won favour from Washington, D.C. At the top of the list are Mobuto Sese Seko (Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Jonas Savimbi (Angola) and Ferdinand Marcos (the Philippines). Black continued to cultivate links with these sorts of figures in Asia and Africa.</p>
<p>A recent client was Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group set up and funded by Congress in the 1990s. Black was Chalabi’s lobbyist in Washington, D.C. Black remains proud of that work: “The INC became not only well known, but I think the message got out there strongly.” The work, of course, included lobbying Congress to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime and to install Chalabi’s INC in Baghdad.</p>
<p>Black’s work succeeded partly. In October 2003, PRWeek, the trade magazine of public relations experts, honoured Black’s firm for running a “solid, disciplined campaign” to sell the Iraq war. Winning the award with Black was public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, whose principle, Mark Penn, ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign until he had to resign for his work on the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Bill.</p>
<p>Most of this information on McCain is hidden in plain sight. Perhaps these themes will become an issue in the general election. But it is unlikely. This is largely because McCain dazzles the reporters who cover his side of the campaign, and they form his first constituency. Nothing McNasty does is abhorrent, only “straight-talk”.</p>
<p>VIJAY PRASHAD is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT His new book is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565847857/counterpunchmaga" type="external">The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World,</a> New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>This article was originally published by <a href="http://www.frontline.in/" type="external">Frontline</a>, India’s national magazine.</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | McCain’s Mask | true | https://counterpunch.org/2008/04/23/mccain-s-mask/ | 2008-04-23 | 4 |
<p>FAR HILLS, N.J. (AP) — Se Ri Pak has withdrawn from the U.S. Women’s Open next month at Lancaster Country Club.</p>
<p>Pak was the first South Korean to the Women’s Open and she inspired an entire nation. She won in 1998 at Blackwolf Run in Wisconsin in a playoff, and went on to a Hall of Fame career.</p>
<p>The USGA did not say why the 37-year-old Pak withdrew.</p>
<p>She was replaced by Georgia Hall of England, who was the first alternate from the sectional qualifier in England.</p>
<p>The Women’s Open is July 9-12.</p>
<p>FAR HILLS, N.J. (AP) — Se Ri Pak has withdrawn from the U.S. Women’s Open next month at Lancaster Country Club.</p>
<p>Pak was the first South Korean to the Women’s Open and she inspired an entire nation. She won in 1998 at Blackwolf Run in Wisconsin in a playoff, and went on to a Hall of Fame career.</p>
<p>The USGA did not say why the 37-year-old Pak withdrew.</p>
<p>She was replaced by Georgia Hall of England, who was the first alternate from the sectional qualifier in England.</p>
<p>The Women’s Open is July 9-12.</p> | Se Ri Pak withdraws from US Women’s Open | false | https://apnews.com/173f610e2ee948f18dcf3941ca42f611 | 2015-06-23 | 2 |
<p>We see a lot of stories about what’s wrong with Facebook. One day they’re <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/15/report-facebook-s-teens-are-leaving-by-the-millions.html#url=/articles/2014/01/15/report-facebook-s-teens-are-leaving-by-the-millions.html" type="external">losing</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/15/report-facebook-s-teens-are-leaving-by-the-millions.html#url=/articles/2014/01/15/report-facebook-s-teens-are-leaving-by-the-millions.html" type="external">millions of teen users</a>. The next, the entire thing <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/27/will-facebook-lose-80-of-users-within-3-years.aspx" type="external">will</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p><a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/01/27/will-facebook-lose-80-of-users-within-3-years.aspx" type="external">be eradicated like a disease</a> in five years. And those are just two in the past week or so. Despite the seemingly-growing chorus of naysayers, I see Facebook as more than just a social media site. It’s a personalized global marketplace. It’s a center for e-commerce. It’s Amazon, Ebay, LinkedIn, Paypal, Angie’s List, and a lot more all rolled into one.</p>
<p>People are doing business with friends, or with people they meet through their friends, and Facebook has a built-in security system: Y-O-U. Case in point: a friend of mine bought Super Bowl tickets from another friend of mine and he did it through Facebook. My friend, who is a Broncos fan, contacted me through Facebook Messenger. He asked me if I knew anyone who was selling tickets. I said yes, as a matter of fact, someone else I am friends with is a Giants season ticket holder and he’s selling his tickets. These two guys have never met, but I vouched for both of them. The buyer was even shrewd and patient enough to wait to contact the seller again until the second week, when ticket prices had dropped. Capitalism playing out on Facebook, through Facebook.</p>
<p />
<p>They settled on a price. ($2700 for the pair.) Payment was sent via Paypal. Tickets were overnighted via FedEx and in hand the next day. A flight was booked, and a Super Bowl experience was born. All thanks to Facebook. I had a similar experience back in July 2008, when Billy Joel was performing his historic <a href="http://www.billyjoel.com/billy-joel-last-play-at-shea" type="external">Last</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.billyjoel.com/billy-joel-last-play-at-shea" type="external">Play at Shea</a> concert. I posted a status update asking if anyone knew someone who had tickets. A friend answered, put me in touch with his sister, and the next night my wife and I were sitting in the upper deck listening to the Piano Man.</p>
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<p>It even serves as a LinkedIn, for colleagues to stay in touch and share resumes and job openings. Or an Angie’s List… ever see someone ask their friends if they know a good plumber/roofer/handyman?</p>
<p>Listen, I’m no economist. I just report on what I see. And I see people using Facebook as more than just a hangout. It’s a marketplace for goods and services. It’s a source for news too. Facebook may not be profiting directly from it, but there is value in this phenomenon. And maybe Facebook finds a way to tap into this value eventually. Perhaps it already has with their targeted ads.</p>
<p>I’m also not a stock picker, and I don't own the stock myself, put I can see that Facebook shares are up 14.37% year-to-date, 29.76% in the past three months, and 64% since summer.</p>
<p>Capitalism is alive and well on Facebook, and Team Varney is glad to be a part of it.</p> | Facebook: Where Capitalism Lives | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2014/02/03/facebook-where-capitalism-lives.html | 2016-03-04 | 0 |
<p>Few adjectives in the English language arrive on our doorsteps with as little freight as “simple.” Simple is good. Simple is welcome. Simple almost always makes us exhale with relief (assembling that Ikea desk is simple, really). Even the one negative connotation, that of simple-mindedness, produces a stock response of sympathy. After all, Lenny didn’t mean to kill those mice or strangle that poor girl. He was just ... simple. So who can argue against a simpler tax code? I can. I hereby wave the flag of complexity, and I do so proudly.</p>
<p><a href="/content/newsweek/2011/10/16/herman-cain-s-unlikely-republican-rise.html" type="external">Herman Cain</a> has given us <a href="/content/dailybeast/articles/2011/10/12/michael-tomasky-herman-cain-s-9-9-9-plan-revolutionary-for-the-rich.html" type="external">9-9-9</a>. This week sometime, Rick Perry is going to announce the details of his <a href="/content/dailybeast/cheats/2011/10/19/perry-to-propose-flat-tax.html" type="external">plan for a flat tax</a>. He keeps nattering on about simplicity. He wants to “scrap the 3 million words of the tax code,” he snarls, to great harrumphs of approval.</p>
<p>The details of Perry’s plan are predictable, with a couple of twists. His <a href="/content/dailybeast/cheats/2011/10/25/rick-perry-unveils-flat-tax-plan.html" type="external">flat rate is 20 percent</a>, but he says a taxpayer can decide to pay under the current rates or the flat rate, whichever works out better. That’s his little sop to the working poor, who pay less than 20 percent now. But even with that tiny asterisk, this plan, like all flat-tax plans, is a gussied-up way of stealing money from the working and middle classes and handing it to the rich. Why is all too straightforward. Have a look at <a href="http://taxes.about.com/od/Federal-Income-Taxes/qt/Tax-Rates-For-The-2011-Tax-Year.htm" type="external">this list</a> of current marginal tax rates. You’ll see that rates change at various levels, which everyone knows, but what everyone forgets is that even if you make more, within any given income range, you pay that rate. If you make $100,000, you are in the 28 percent bracket, but you’re not paying 28 cents on every dollar you earned, which is what most media shorthand would lead you to believe. You’re paying in accordance with the rate scale in the above link, each chunk of salary taxed at the appropriate marginal rate.</p>
<p>This means that what a person actually pays can be hard to figure, but <a href="http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm" type="external">this calculator</a> gets us most of the way there. A $50,000 earner (married, filing separately, as all these examples will be) pays 17.25 percent. A $100,000 earner pays 22 percent. A $250,000 earner pays 29 percent. A $500,000 earner pays 32 percent. And a $1 million earner pays 33.5 percent. Remember—I told you I was celebrating complexity!—these dollar figures are taxable income, i.e., after deductions.</p>
<p>So let’s say there were a 20 percent tax on income. A married-filing-separately taxpayer who makes around $74,000 right now pays 20 percent. So under Perry’s plan, people above that figure would be getting a tax cut. And obviously, the farther away from $74,000 you go, the larger, in real and percentage terms, your cut. And I hope the obverse has already occurred to you: yes, the lower earners would be in for sizable tax increases under the 20 percent plan. For example, a $25,000 earner would go from paying 13.3 percent to 20 percent, which is about a 35 percent increase, while our $1 million earner gets around a 46 percent decrease. And Kim Kardashian, forget about it. She’d pay a fraction of her current rates.</p>
<p>Of course, the low-income person would probably just continue to pay at the current rates. That insulates Perry from the charge of raising taxes on the poor. But it also deprives the Treasury of even more income. And on the topic of simplicity: doesn’t Perry’s either/or scenario mean that every middle-class person is going to have to sit down and figure out what she’d pay under the current rates and what she’d pay under the flat tax, meaning she has to do her taxes twice? Simple!</p>
<p>But the overriding fact is that this is blatant highway robbery. As you can see from the above paragraphs, the tax code is hard to explain. And it’s hard to explain why progressivity is good policy, but it is. Even if you reject the moral argument that Kardashian should give more back to society than a waitress, there is the very practical argument that a progressive income-tax code makes up for other, more regressive forms of taxation—the payroll tax and sales taxes, notably. The waitress pays payroll taxes on her entire income, while a $1 million earner pays it on just one tenth of his (roughly), and of course the waitress spends far more of her income on sales taxes. The income tax helps even these things out, as has long been understood.</p>
<p>This is precisely where “simplicity” comes in so handy for supply-siders and others who want to steal from the middle class. Simple has to be good. A tax return the size of a postcard! Imagine! How awesome life would be.</p>
<p>Not. We need complexity in the tax code. Conservatives want you to believe that the tax code is complex because liberals and bureaucrats love nothing more than sitting around all day making rules. “Let’s see,” the liberals and bureaucrats say to one another in this dystopic vision, “what can we do today to make a future Steve Jobs waste a lot of time on red tape instead of tinkering around in his garage like he should be?”</p>
<p>That ain’t how it works. The tax code is complex for three reasons. First, it’s complex because of the power of certain lobbies—and here I would agree with some conservative health-care economists that, for example, we’d be better off with no health-care deduction, and no employer-sponsored health care, period. Second, it’s complex because millions of Americans have over the decades dreamed up endlessly inventive ways of cheating on their taxes, and the government has to try to catch them. And third, and mostly, it’s complex because society is complex. If we were starting a country of a few hundred thousand people from scratch, with minimal income disparities and other equities that America doesn’t have (national health care), a flat tax might be OK. But in the real context of the United States, it is an obscene transfer of wealth. Rick Perry may be such a bubblehead that he doesn’t understand all this, but you can be sure that the people who sold him on the flat tax understand it.</p>
<p>And whether Perry revives his candidacy or not, the real issue here is that a flat tax or something like it is getting ever so closer to becoming GOP dogma. Some years ago, it was just the messianic loons: Steve Forbes. Now the flat tax is mainstreaming within the GOP. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/us/politics/mitt-romney-changes-his-tone-on-flat-tax-plans.html" type="external">Mitt Romney</a>, who used to hate it, has recently opened up to the idea. It’s getting ... respectable.</p>
<p>Simplicity is for simpletons: a handy slogan for the ruling class that wants more of your money. Don’t be that simple.</p> | Michael Tomasky: Rick Perry the Mayor of Simpleton Over His Tax Plan | true | https://thedailybeast.com/michael-tomasky-rick-perry-the-mayor-of-simpleton-over-his-tax-plan | 2018-10-03 | 4 |
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<p>Dealing with changing consumer appetites is no easy task, and global food giant Nestle (NASDAQOTH: NSRGY) has more exposure than most companies to shifts in the way its customers think about its food products. Recently, Nestle has had to deal with tough economic conditions in many of its markets along with rising demand for high-quality food offerings, and that has held back some of its growth.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Coming into Thursday's release of its first-quarter sales figures, Nestle investors fully understood that the company would continue to face demand-driven headwinds, but they still wanted to see Nestle take action to bolster its future prospects. Despite modest sales gains, Nestle seems optimistic about potentially improving conditions in the food industry, and that could drive sales higher in the months and years to come. Let's look more closely at Nestle to see how it performed and what lies ahead for the food giant.</p>
<p>Image source: Nestle.</p>
<p>Nestle's first-quarter sales results weren't particularly exciting, and they clearly showed the difficult conditions the food company faces. Sales climbed just 0.4% to 21 billion Swiss francs, with that pace of growth slowing even from last year's tepid growth rate of just under 1%. Yet that figure was actually slightly better than many investors had expected to see from Nestle.</p>
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<p>A closer look at the report shows plenty of offsetting factors affecting Nestle's numbers. Organic growth was stronger at 2.3%, with 1.3 percentage points of the gain coming from what the company calls real internal growth and the remaining percentage point reflecting increases in pricing. However, Nestle divested more assets than it acquired during the past year, and that put 1.5 percentage points of downward pressure on sales. Foreign exchange impacts also cost Nestle on its top line.</p>
<p>Geographically, Nestle once again saw the same divergences in its core business. The Americas zone saw the best performance, with sales gains of 2.6% benefiting substantially from favorable foreign exchange exposure. Fundamentally, the Americas business saw real internal growth fall 1.4%, with pricing gains of 1.8% offsetting that decline to produce minimum organic growth. In the Asia, Oceania, and sub-Saharan Africa segment, sales growth of 1% came despite substantial foreign exchange headwinds, and organic growth of 4.5% led the company with the majority of the rise coming from real internal growth. In Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, Nestle's results include organic growth of 1.7% but a nearly six percentage point drop due to divestitures, and poor foreign exchange comparisons contributed to a net drop of nearly 7% in sales for the region.</p>
<p>The other parts of Nestle's overall business had mixed performance. The water segment saw sales climb 1.1% due largely to organic growth, while the nutrition segment had a 0.2% rise in revenue. The other businesses category saw strong sales gains of nearly 8%, riding strength in skin health and health science.</p>
<p>CEO Mark Schneider blamed some of Nestle's issues on the calendar. "The leap-year comparison and other seasonal effects made the start of this year particularly challenging," Schneider said, but "we were encouraged by the growth in Asia and the resilience of consumer spending in Europe." Still, softness in the Americas was troubling for the food giant.</p>
<p>Yet Nestle also took pains to emphasize that it still sees itself as being on track for its long-term goals. The food giant confirmed that it expects 2017 organic growth of between 2% and 4%, and it is still seeking to squeeze more profits by spending money on restructuring efforts now. Because of those expenses, Nestle expects operating profit margin to be flat in 2017 compared to 2016 levels, but the efforts should produce growth in underlying earnings per share and should help make Nestle's capital structure more efficient.</p>
<p>Nestle shareholders didn't react strongly to the news, and the stock was up just a fraction of a percent in trading on the Swiss Exchange in Zurich following the announcement. In order to get investors excited about Nestle, the company will have to start seeing more dramatic growth, and that will be difficult until consumers make it clearer what they truly want in terms of product lines going forward.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than NestleWhen investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=f511c912-5f96-47dc-9010-437b1be1a086&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 Nestle wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=f511c912-5f96-47dc-9010-437b1be1a086&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Click here Opens a New Window.</a> to learn about these picks!</p>
<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of April 3, 2017</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGalagan/info.aspx" type="external">Dan Caplinger Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Nestle. 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> | Nestle Keeps Up Its Sales Momentum | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/20/nestle-keeps-up-its-sales-momentum.html | 2017-04-20 | 0 |
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<p>Obama's trip to the Everglades on Wednesday, timed to coincide with Earth Day, marks an attempt to connect the dots between theoretical arguments about carbon emissions and real-life implications. With his climate change agenda under attack in Washington and courthouses across the U.S., Obama has sought this week to force Americans to envision a world in which cherished natural wonders fall victim to pollution.</p>
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<p>Obama, dressed down in a blue shirt and sunglasses, toured the Anhinga Trail in Everglades National Park, where a series of wooden walkways took him through dense shrubbery and over wetlands. A park ranger explained the history of the area to the president as alligators slithered in nearby shallows and small flocks of large birds ducked in and out of the deep-green waters.</p>
<p>In Florida, rising sea levels have allowed salt water to seep inland, threatening drinking water for Floridians and the extraordinary native species and plants that call the Everglades home. Christy Goldfuss of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality said without stepped-up action, Joshua Tree National Park could soon be treeless and Glacier National Park devoid of glaciers.</p>
<p>"Regardless of the political debate, there are decisions being made in communities in Florida and across this country to make changes to the way they live as a result of climate change," Goldfuss said.</p>
<p>Those political overtones were impossible to avoid.</p>
<p>Gov. Rick Scott has attracted national attention over his resistance to acknowledging man-made causes of climate change head-on. "I'm not a scientist," the Republican famously claimed when asked about predictions that show Florida to be one of the states most threatened by rising seas and stronger storms.</p>
<p>On Tuesday he accused Obama of cutting millions in his budget for repair of an aging dike around Florida's largest freshwater lake.</p>
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<p /> | Obama promotes climate agenda | false | https://abqjournal.com/573681/obama-promotes-climate-agenda.html | 2 |
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<p>A significant Internet “denial of service” attack Thursday directed at popular Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter may have been carried out or instigated by the Russian government in an attempt to silence a dissident blogger in Georgia. At least so says the blogger.</p>
<p>The Guardian:</p>
<p>The Georgian blogger known as Cyxymu, who was yesterday the victim of a cyber assault that affected hundreds of millions of web users around the world, has blamed the attack on the Kremlin.</p>
<p>Speaking to the Guardian from an office in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, he said he believed the denial-of-service strike that hit LiveJournal, Facebook and Twitter stemmed from an attempt to silence his criticism over Russia’s conduct in the war over the disputed South Ossetia region, which began a year ago today.</p>
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<p>“Maybe it was carried out by ordinary hackers but I’m certain the order came from the Russian government,” said the blogger, whose monicker is a latinised version of the Russian spelling of Sukhumi, the capital of Georgia’s other breakaway republic, Abkhazia.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/07/georgian-blogger-accuses-russia" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Squeezed-Out Blogger Blames the Kremlin | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/squeezed-out-blogger-blames-the-kremlin/ | 2009-08-07 | 4 |
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<p>The Congressional standoff over a 2014 budget that threatens to shut down the government will be the first thing on investors’ minds next week. The September jobs report will be the second.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Congress will try to reach an agreement over the weekend to pass legislation that would keep the government funded past Tuesday’s Oct. 1 deadline which marks the start of fiscal year 2014. Stock markets have been off all week as investors mull the potential consequences of a badly divided government and a potential shutdown of government services next week.</p>
<p>On Friday the Senate easily passed a bill that temporarily funds the government and avoids a shutdown of some agencies and services that’s been threatened if Congress can’t reach an agreement.</p>
<p>The Senate bill removed language also included in an earlier House of Representatives bill that would have stripped funding for the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature health-care reform legislation.</p>
<p>Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) earlier in the week led a highly-publicized fight to defund ObamaCare, a battle that threatened to paralyze Congress and shut down the government next week.</p>
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<p>But with the ObamaCare battle over in the Senate and a budget bill now headed back to the House, it remained unclear whether Republican House members would also agree to fund the health care law and approve a temporary 2014 budget.</p>
<p>A government shutdown could impede the fragile economic recovery by causing thousands of layoffs and shutting down offices and services that support the broader economy.</p>
<p>The September jobs report is out Friday and the numbers once again will play a significant role in determining whether the Federal Reserve will continue its easy money policies for another month.</p>
<p>Mediocre August numbers -- 169,000 new jobs as the unemployment ticked slightly lower to 7.3% -- contributed to the Fed’s surprising decision to delay scaling back its $85 billion a month bond purchase program.</p>
<p>The Fed had widely telegraphed that they would taper that program in September but then backed away from that projection as lackluster economic data rolled in over the summer.</p>
<p>Tapering could come in October but it would probably take a shockingly positive jobs report Friday to spur the Fed into action.</p>
<p>Other economic reports due next week include U.S. auto sales, construction spending and the ISM manufacturing index on Tuesday; ADP’s employment report Wednesday; and the ISM non-manufacturing index on Thursday.</p> | Week Ahead: Possible Govt Shutdown, Sept. Jobs Report | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2013/09/27/week-ahead-possible-gvt-shutdown-sept-jobs-report.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>The Army's new chief of staff, Gen. George Casey (of Iraq fame), has said he can't guarantee that deployments won't grow beyond the current 15 months. Casey was asked about the <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070429/ap_on_re_us/army_chief_iraq;_ylt=Ai3Xcqubso32sk5tQyrseoas0NUE" type="external">extensions</a> by a frustrated Army wife who said her husband's deployments have more than doubled in length over the years.</p>
<p>The general has said he wants to expedite an expansion of the Army to address the problem: "We live in a difficult period for the Army because the demand for our forces exceeds the supply."</p>
<p>AP via Yahoo:</p>
<p>A woman in the group asked Casey if her husband's deployments would stop getting longer. She said they used to last for six months in the 1990s but then started lasting nine months and 12 months. Two weeks ago, she heard the Army's announcement that deployments would be extended as long as 15 months.</p>
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<p>"Do you honestly foresee this spiral, in effect, stopping?" she asked.</p>
<p>Casey said the Army wants to keep deployments to 15 months, but "I cannot look at you in the eye and guarantee that it would not go beyond."</p>
<p><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070429/ap_on_re_us/army_chief_iraq;_ylt=Ai3Xcqubso32sk5tQyrseoas0NUE" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Army Chief Won't Rule Out Longer Deployments | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/army-chief-wont-rule-out-longer-deployments/ | 2007-04-29 | 4 |
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<p>Iraqi officials have expressed concerns that the operation to retake Mosul from Islamic State militants may have to wait as they claim they do not have enough weapons or training. (Bram Janssen/The Associated Press)</p>
<p>WASHINGTON – With the military operation to retake Iraq’s second-largest city from Islamic State militants just a few months away, questions persist about whether the struggling Iraqi military will be ready for the fight.</p>
<p>Iraqi officials continue to insist they haven’t got the advanced weapons they need for the operation in the northern city of Mosul and some question whether they will be ready for a spring offensive.</p>
<p>Hakim al-Zamili, head of the security and defense committee in the Iraqi parliament, told The Associated Press Friday that “any operation would be fruitless” unless the brigades are properly prepared and have the weapons they need. “I think if these weapons are not made available soon, the military assault might wait beyond spring,” he said. “The Americans might have their own calculations and estimations, but we as Iraqis have our own opinion. We are fighting and moving on the ground, so we have better vision and April might be too soon.”</p>
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<p>A U.S. Central Command official provided some details of the battle plan Thursday, saying the coordinated military mission to retake Mosul will likely begin in April or May and will involve up to 25,000 Iraqi troops. They have cautioned, however, that, if the Iraqis aren’t ready, the timing could be delayed.</p>
<p>The core of the fighting force will be five of Iraq’s most accomplished brigades, which will go through additional U.S. training before the operation.</p>
<p>But al-Zamili said that, while several of Iraq’s units have gone through training recently, “these well-trained brigades cannot get involved in battles without being equipped with advanced and effective weapons that would enable them to penetrate enemy lines.”</p>
<p>His comment reflects a common complaint from the Iraqi government, both in recent months and throughout much of the Iraq war. The U.S., however, has sent tens of thousands of weapons, ammunition, body armor and other equipment to the country.</p>
<p>According to a senior defense official, the U.S. sent nearly 1,600 Hellfire missiles to Iraq last year and has already delivered 232 more. About 10,000 M-16 assault rifles are due to arrive in the next few weeks, along with 23,000 ammunition magazines. The U.S. also has delivered thousands of rockets, mortar rounds, tank rounds, .50-caliber rounds and 10,000 M-68 combat optical sights, a rifle scope commonly used by the U.S. military.</p>
<p>About 250 mine-resistant, armor-protected vehicles will be delivered in a few weeks, along with sophisticated radio systems for the MRAPs and more ammunition rounds, said the official.</p>
<p>The public discussion of the operation, including how many Iraqi brigades would be involved and how Kurdish Peshmerga military would be used, triggered questions about whether it provided key information to the enemy. The Pentagon doesn’t often disclose as much about an operation before it takes place, but in some cases it can be a strategic tactic intended to affect the enemy, trigger a reaction or even prompt some militants to flee before the assault begins.</p>
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<p /> | Iraq: Mosul op may be delayed | false | https://abqjournal.com/544917/iraq-mosul-op-may-be-delayed.html | 2 |
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<p>Flickr/&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/theresasthompson/2999130055/" target="_blank"&gt;Theresa Thompson&lt;/a&gt; (Creative Commons)</p>
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<p>By now pretty much everyone has read Russell Shorto’s New&#160;York&#160;Times Magazine <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html" type="external">cover story</a> on the Texas state board of education. The whole controversy is kind of fascinating, but one aspect of the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Texas textbook wars</a> that can’t be overstated is the skill with which conservative activists, in Texas and elsewhere, have exploited the democratic process—most notably by packing school boards—to advance their cultural agenda. Shorto digs up a pretty telling quote from Ralph&#160;Reed, formerly of the Christian&#160;Coalition: “I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members.”</p>
<p>That’s probably right. After all, if you have a thousand school-board members, there’s a pretty good chance that no one will even notice; it’s a stealth revolution. With that in mind, I think Sara Mead nails it at <a href="http://www.eduwonk.com/2010/02/i-will-avoid-putting-a-silly-headline-here-about-messing-with-texas.html" type="external">Eduwonk</a>:</p>
<p>Although it varies by state, Americans tend to elect a whole bunch of public officials, including a lot of officials in relatively obscure roles….that aren’t well understood by the public. Most voters, who have limited time and energy to devote to these issues, can’t possibly follow the performance and positions of all these officials. Having more of them be appointed by mayors, governors, and other public officials who are better known to voters may actually increase accountability.</p>
<p>I consider myself politically engaged, but the best way to sneak some major reform past me is to put it on the local ballot. When you leave it to the voters to assemble a panel of education experts, who, in turn, craft a state-wide curriculum, they often make weird choices—for instance, the leading conservative voice on the Texas board of education,&#160; <a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1001.blake.html" type="external">Don McLeroy</a>, is a dentist. Naturally.</p>
<p>In the meantime, expect more stories like this, fron the <a href="http://www.statesman.com/news/local/education-board-candidate-faces-claim-he-s-soft-233632.html?printArticle=y" type="external">Austin American-Statesman</a>, on the moderate school board candidate who’s now being smeared as soft on terror:</p>
<p>“Could Tim Tuggey, who has made tens of thousands of dollars by helping the Saudis to scrub their image, be trusted to stand up to the far left to make sure our history books do not undergo revisionism?” wrote Donna Garner, a conservative education commentator who then urged her readers to donate to [the incumbent Ken] Mercer.</p>
<p>Well, someone had to ask, I guess.</p>
<p /> | Should We Really Elect School Boards? | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/deep-heart-textbooks/ | 2010-02-17 | 4 |
<p>Shares of some top insurance companies are mixed at 10 a.m.:</p>
<p>ACE L rose $.46 or .4 percent, to $108.32.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Aflac Inc. fell $.07 or .1 percent, to $64.00.</p>
<p>American International Group fell $.05 or .1 percent, to $56.54.</p>
<p>MBIA fell $.06 or .6 percent, to $9.28.</p>
<p>MGIC Investments Corp. rose $.08 or .8 percent, to $10.65.</p>
<p>MetLife fell $.01 or percent, to $51.05.</p>
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<p>XL Group PLC rose $.52 or 1.4 percent, to $37.63.</p> | Insurance companies shares mixed at 10 a.m. | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2015/01/09/insurance-companies-shares-mixed-at-10-am.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Gerald R. Ford was deemed a klutz by the media. This is just one fun fact about Ford. For more information continue reading History Unspun’s President Profile Of The Day: Gerald R. Ford!</p>
<p>Astrological Sign: Cancer</p>
<p>Term of Presidency: 1974-1977</p>
<p>Party: Republican</p>
<p>Age Upon Taking Office: 61</p>
<p>Vice President: Nelson Rockefeller</p>
<p>Ran Against: N/A</p>
<p>Height: 6’</p>
<p>Nickname: “Jerry”</p>
<p>Sound Bite: “I am a Ford, not a Lincoln.”</p>
<p>Fun Facts:</p>
<p>1. Gerald R. Ford was a klutz, and every klutzy thing he did ended up in the news. For example, one evening while walking his dog, Ford locked himself out of the White House.</p>
<p>2. Before becoming President of the United States Gerald R. Ford had a modeling career. He appeared in the magazine Look, and on the cover of Cosmopolitan. He remains the only President of the United States to have worked as a model.</p> | President Profile Of The Day: Gerald R. Ford | false | https://ivn.us/2012/08/05/president-profile-of-the-day-gerald-r-ford/ | 2012-08-05 | 2 |
<p>Don Mike Mendoza of La Ti Do. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>La Ti Do brings two holiday shows to Bistro Bistro (1727 Connecticut Ave., N.W.) with “I Hate the Holidays” on Monday, Dec. 12 and “I Love the Holidays” on Monday, Dec. 19.</p>
<p>“I Hate the Holidays” will feature Ronald Brady Jr., Christine Callsen, Casey Garner and more as guest performers.“I Love the Holidays” will feature Joseph Benitez, Eymard Cabling, Kadira Coley, Meredith Richard and more as guest performers. Don Mike Mendoza and Anya Randall Nebel host both shows with Taylor Rambo as the accompanist. General admission tickets are $15 at the door, $7 for students and seniors with ID and $5 for non-performing La Ti Do alumni. Tickets are $10 with a receipt from Bistro Bistro for guests who spent $25 on dinner day of show.</p>
<p>Doors open at 7:55 p.m. For more details, visit <a href="http://facebook.com/latidodc" type="external">facebook.com/latidodc</a>.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Anya Randall Nebel</a> <a href="" type="internal">Bistro Bistro</a> <a href="" type="internal">Casey Garner</a> <a href="" type="internal">Christine Callsen</a> <a href="" type="internal">Don Mike Mendoza</a> <a href="" type="internal">Eymard Cabling</a> <a href="" type="internal">Joseph Benitez</a> <a href="" type="internal">Kadira Coley</a> <a href="" type="internal">La Ti Do</a> <a href="" type="internal">Meredith Richard</a> <a href="" type="internal">Ronald Brady Jr.</a> <a href="" type="internal">Taylor Rambo</a></p> | La Ti Do’s love-hate spin on holidays | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2016/12/07/la-ti-dos-love-hate-spin-holidays/ | 3 |
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<p>A $100 million charity fraud that a former Army intelligence officer and Harvard Law graduate almost pulled off underscores the criminal enrichment opportunities that weakened oversight bureaus offer clever thieves.</p>
<p>John Light at “Moyers &amp; Company” <a href="http://billmoyers.com/2013/11/27/what-a-weakened-underfunded-irs-means-for-fraudsters/" type="external">explained</a> retired officer John Donald Cody’s scheme:</p>
<p>John Donald Cody, a former intelligence officer, put his expertise to use cheating charitable Americans. Under the assumed identity of Bobby Thompson, Cody set up a nonprofit called the US Navy Veterans Association and contracted with telemarketing firms to raise around $100 million in charitable contributions — ostensibly, for needy veterans. The organization, he claimed, had 41 state chapters, 66,000 members and was headed by one Jack L. Nimitz. None of that was true. The organization consisted only of Cody. The charity’s claimed purpose was also false. Most of the money it raised went to the telemarketers and much of the rest went to Cody or to Republican lawmakers he supported. Very little went to veterans.</p>
<p>The New York Times <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/opinion/the-charity-swindle.html?_r=0" type="external">described</a> how inadequate government monitoring made Cody’s fraud possible:</p>
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<p>The I.R.S.’s Exempt Organizations Division, which is responsible for supervising the charitable sector, is chronically understaffed. It can’t do much more than process the routine and voluminous reporting of the more than 1.5 million American nonprofits, and keep up with the tens of thousands of applications filed each year to start new charities.</p>
<p>State and local authorities are in no better shape. Joel L. Fleishman, a professor of public policy at Duke, estimates that there are fewer than 100 full-time state charity regulators, far too few to exercise any real oversight.</p>
<p>In the Navy Veterans case, amazingly, the I.R.S. did undertake one of its rare field audits. And yet, despite the fact that the main office was a trailer, its state offices were empty lots or postal drops, and its board of directors and C.E.O. a total fiction, the I.R.S. in 2008 gave the association a “clean bill of health.” It wasn’t until the two reporters came sniffing — first curious about the political contributions and subsequently intrigued by Mr. Thompson’s obvious dissembling — that the real story began to emerge.</p>
<p>Furthermore, with approximately 59,000 charities in the United States with the word “veterans” in their names, only a few experts can say for sure which groups are what they claim to be.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p> | What an Underfunded IRS Means for Fraudsters | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/what-an-underfunded-irs-means-for-fraudsters/ | 2013-12-02 | 4 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal">a katz</a>&#160;|&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Shutterstock.com</a></p>
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<p>According to the <a href="" type="internal">Associated Press</a>, roughly 50 police officers and their supporters rallied to protest a Black Lives Matter (BLM) banner that has been hanging outside City Hall in the predominantly white and historically working class Boston suburb of Somerville for a year. The primarily Caucasian haters of the banner chanted “All lives matter!,” “Take it down!,” and “Cops lives matter!” It was part of the “Blue Lives Matter” movement.</p>
<p>According to the president of the Somerville Police Employees Association, the banner sends an “exclusionary message” and “implies that Somerville police officers are somehow responsible for racially motivated decision-making against minorities.”</p>
<p>A local white firefighter claimed that BLM had become “almost synonymous with killing cops.” He’s talking the line taken by the decrepit white supremacist Rudolph Guliani (a close Donald Trump ally and adviser) on FOX News.</p>
<p>But BLM is “almost synonymous with killing cops” only in the minds of people who can’t differentiate between a civil rights movement two lone gunmen. Yes, two mentally unhinged Black military veterans – one in Dallas and one in Baton Rouge – got pushed over the edge by recent videos of Black men being senselessly killed by white police officers. And yes, the ongoing epidemic of such shootings is what drove the rise of BLM. But, no, BLM activists have never advocated “killing cops.” They have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from such actions.</p>
<p>Who says that white and-or Asian and/Latino and/or Arab and/or Native American and/or indeed that all lives don’t matter when one says that Black lives do matter? Nobody.</p>
<p>When Black men in Memphis and other Southern cities in the 1960s marched as part of the Civil Rights Movement with signs saying “I am a Man,” did they thereby proclaim that white men weren’t men?&#160; Of course they didn’t.</p>
<p>When you raise your female child to understand that she is a worthy and valuable person, does that mean you teach her to believe that a male child isn’t? Of course it doesn’t.</p>
<p>When you argue for the rights of children and say, perhaps, that children matter, maybe even that children, do you thereby argue or even remotely suggest that adults don’t matter? No, of course you don’t.</p>
<p>If you are religious and patriotic and say “God Bless America,” does that mean that also and at the same time “God Damn all other nations?”</p>
<p>Of course “all lives matter.” Only a moral idiot would say otherwise. The problem is that, with perhaps the exception of the nation’s small remaining population of Native Americans, the lives of no racial or ethnic group seem to matter less to America’s soulless capitalist and imperial system than do those of Black Americans.&#160; &#160;The slogan “Black Lives Matter” emerged in response to the endemic police shooting of young Black adults, young Black men especially, who are gunned down by mostly white law enforcement officers with shocking regularity in the U.S. – once every 28 hours on average.</p>
<p>The statistics of racial disparity in poverty, disease, mortality, wealth, joblessness, incarceration, felony marking, education, execution, and more are stark. Nobody is more savagely concentrated in highly segregated high-poverty, no-job ghettoes, in under-funded and inferior schools, and in mass jails and prisons than are Black Americans. It’s not even close</p>
<p>Do lower and working class whites ever get shot down by the police?&#160; Do they ever get incarcerated and criminally marked?&#160; Of course they do, but the likelihood of Americans in other groups – especially whites – getting shot, imprisoned, executed, frisked, traffic-stopped, home-invaded, ripped off, beaten and harassed by police, and felony branded is much, much slighter than it is when it comes to Black people.</p>
<p>The main problem with the dominant white mindset isn’t denial of the disparities themselves (though there’s plenty of white ignorance and denial on that score) but denial of the ubiquitous societal racism that causes them. “They brought it on themselves” is the standard viewpoint of majority white Americans who tell me “Racism? What racism, dude? Hey, man, the President of the United States is Black!”</p>
<p>The problem is that, leaving aside the epic bigotry that even Obama’s race-downplaying and “color-blind” presidency has elicited, it’s not really about the skin tone of the president or for that matter about the color of the U.S. Attorney General or the color of a corporate CEO or a television news anchor or football coach. It’s about the relentlessly racialized day-to-day functioning of core social structures and institutions including the labor market, the workplace. the financial system, the real estate market, the educational system, the social welfare system, the electoral system, and the criminal justice system.&#160; And across these and other key societal spaces, study after study documents the persistence of an ongoing and often stark anti-Black racial bias, discrimination, and neglect.&#160; It all grinds on, Obama notwithstanding, atop a cold white refusal to acknowledge, much less pay reparations for the incalculable compound price to Black America of centuries of Black chattel Slavery and nearly a century of formal Jim Crow segregation and disenfranchisement in the South – this along with the de facto segregation in the 20th and 21st century urban North and racial-ethnic cleansing across the rural and small town North in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Google up the term “sundown towns”).</p>
<p>But so what if the current corporate-imperial president is half-Black? The next U.S. president – Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, and Gary Johnson – is going to be fully Caucasian. And the half-white Obama has had incredibly little to say about and against racism during his time in the “bully pulpit.” &#160;His “Black but not like Jesse” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” candidacy was predicated on calculated, post-racial distancing from any serious confrontation with American racism, deeply understood. He has in the White House continued his early and ugly habit of giving poor and working class Blacks (“cousin Pookie”) nasty neoliberal lectures on their own supposed personal and cultural responsibility for their presence at the bottom of the nation’s steep socioeconomic pyramids. He also lectures Blacks on their obligation to respect “law and order” in a nation that repeatedly exonerates police officers who murder young Black people with impunity. Truth be told, Obama has been a calamity for the struggle for Black equality on numerous levels, including the cloaking power his presence in the White House has provided for persistent societal racism.</p>
<p>A white “all lives matter” e-mailer asked me last spring if I had seen then recent news reports and data about rising white middle-aged working class mortality in the U.S. (increasing at a significantly higher rate than that of any other group in the nation.) Yes, I told him, I had seen and been quite astounded by the reports and findings. I told my e-mail correspondent that the disturbing research was indicative of how millions upon millions of white blue- and grey-collar men have been turned into “surplus Americans” – people shorn of “productive [employable] engagement with society” – by global capitalism (the same system that brought us chattel slavery).</p>
<p>But it’s important to keep some comparative perspective, I added. Middle-aged blacks still have a much higher mortality rate than whites: &#160;581 per 100,000, compared to 415 for whites.</p>
<p>When the research paper documenting the rising mortality of working class whites came out last year, Ronald Lee, a leading University of California demography researcher, spoke to the New York Times. “Seldom have I felt as affected by a paper,” Lee said. “It seems so sad.”&#160;&#160;The “it” that caused the academic’s melancholy was the increase in white death due largely to substance abuse and suicide, not the persistently higher Black mortality.&#160; White lives matter more in U.S. culture.</p>
<p>When the startling data on declining white working class life expectancy hit the headlines, there were no lectures from Obama or anyone else on white working and lower class folks’ personal and cultural responsibility for their increasingly deadly dire straits – this despite the fact that alcohol abuse and illegal drug use were shown to have played major roles in the rising white mortality.</p>
<p>It’s at this point that many whites I’ve interacted with on the race issue in the last two years like to play what they think is their ace in the hole. “If Blacks want to say that ‘Black Lives Matter,’ then why don’t they stop killing each other so much?” These whites talk about Black-on-Black crime and how more young Blacks get killed and shot by other young Blacks than by police officers.</p>
<p>But endemic intra-Back violence in the U.S. takes places within a white-Imposed context of racially concentrated poverty, joblessness and hyper-segregation that White America simply refuses (with too few oddball exceptions like this writer) to acknowledge. Does anyone seriously think that droves of gun- and drug-mad and militarism-backing white Americans wouldn’t be gunning each other down on an epic scale if they were the minority group piled up on top of itself in jobless, opportunity-free ghettoes, reservations, prisons, and jails, branded by the color of their skins and the ubiquitous lifelong stigma of criminal records? The resulting white-on-white slaughter that would occur on a regular basis in the great Caucasian ghettoes and reservations would make current Black-on-Black (and Native American-on- Native American and Latino-on-Latino) violence look mild by comparison. &#160;For what it’s worth, Europeans whites have been known to shoot and carve each other up on a pretty grand scale in history. If you don’t believe me just Google up “Thirty Years War,” “Seven Years War,” “Napoleonic Wars,” “World War One” and “World War Two.”</p>
<p>Do police officers have a public relations problem – a widespread sense among Americans that their lives and tribulations don’t matter? Hardly. Gallup regularly reports that police departments and police rank at the top – along with the military – of the list of American institutions and professions that U.S. citizens hold in high respect. Along with soldiers and small businessmen, cops are held in extremely high public regard, unlike, say, lawyers, Congresspersons, “community organizers,” and “civil rights activists.”</p>
<p>And just how dangerous is police work? In the wake of the retaliatory revenge shootings of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge, major politicians both Blue and Red can’t seem to say enough about how the heroically hazardous nature of police work. But cops don’t even make it on to the federal government’s list of the ten most fatality-plagued occupations in the nation. Those top ten are, in order of death risk: loggers, fishers, airline pilots, roofers, structural iron and steel workers, garbage and recycling workers, electric power installers and repairers, truck drivers, farmers/ranchers, and construction laborers. In 2014, the AFL-CIO reports, 4821 workers were killed on the job in the United States and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases. Police did not make up an especially significant part of this terrible toll. Do Logger Lives Matter?</p>
<p>Maybe we need a Workers Lives Matter Movement. Oh wait, we do, sort of, My bad. It’s called the labor movement and it has expanded most and reached its greatest power when it has recognized the legitimacy of the struggles for Black and other minority civil rights like those being fought today by Black Lives Matter. That’s something for the rank and file in the Somerville Police Employees Association to think about as the “wages of whiteness” they’ve embraced with a Blue tint continue to fade before the skyrocketing wealth of the privileged financial Few. The predominantly white corporate and financial elite loves to see the multicultural working class majority mired in racial and other forms of internal division. This is something the Somerville cops’ U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tried to tell people about at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last week:</p>
<p>“‘Divide and Conquer’ is an old story in America. Dr. Martin Luther King knew it. After his march from Selma to Montgomery, he spoke of how segregation was created to keep people divided. Instead of higher wages for workers, Dr. King described how poor whites in the South were fed Jim Crow, which told a poor white worker that, ‘No matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man.’ Racial hatred was part of keeping the powerful on top….When we turn on each other, bankers can run our economy for Wall Street, oil companies can fight off clean energy, and giant corporations can ship the last good jobs overseas…When we turn on each other, rich guys like Trump can push through more tax breaks for themselves and then we’ll never have enough money to support our schools, or rebuild our highways, or invest in our kids’ future…When we turn on each other, we can’t unite to fight back against a rigged system.”</p>
<p>It’s a good point, even if Warren is a leader in a Wall Street-captive party that will never seriously advance the organization of workers across racial lines to fight the rich. Building such organization is the job of rank and file working people, including even some police officers. White people falling prey to the authoritarian, divisive, and racism-denying sentiments at the dark heart of the “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” slogans is part of why the working class is so weak and battered in New Gilded Age America, where – as Bernie Sanders noted yet again at the DNC – the top tenth of the U.S. One Percent owns nearly as much wealth as the nation’s bottom ninety percent.</p>
<p>In Somerville, a banner hangs over the police department honoring the slain officers of Dallas and Baton Rouge.</p> | Black, White, and Blue: Working Class Self-Defeat in Somerville | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/08/01/black-white-and-blue-working-class-self-defeat-in-somerville/ | 2016-08-01 | 4 |
<p>Tough-talking Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has warned the EU and other states he could order their diplomats to leave “in 24 hours” for calling on his country to be barred from the UN over its bloody drug war. The EU denies making such a statement.</p>
<p>“You think that we are a bunch of morons here,” the president <a href="https://pcoo.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/20171012-Speech_of_President_Rodrigo_Roa_Duterte_during_the_Relaunching_of_the_Malaca%C3%B1ang_Press_Briefing_Room-1.pdf" type="external">said</a>&#160;during a televised speech in a newly inaugurated press briefing room in Manila.</p>
<p>“We can have the diplomatic channels cut tomorrow. You leave my country in 24 hours, all of you.”</p>
<p>You must have taken the Philippines for granted, saying that we could be excluded…. Is it your decision, you really think that you can do it? Do you think Russia and China would allow it?”</p>
<p>Duterte’s words were in response to a seven-member delegation of politicians from the international Progressive Alliance and the Party of European Socialists which condemned the drug war during a visit over October 8-9. The delegation included members from Sweden, Germany, Italy, Australia and the US.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/403581-duterte-drug-war-police-scandal/" type="external" /></p>
<p>The EU has denied being connected with the visit or that the seven-member delegation represents EU policy.</p>
<p>“The European Union was not part of the organization or planning of that visit – neither the Delegation of the European Union in the Philippines nor the European Union institutions in Brussels,” the EU office in Manila said in a statement.</p>
<p>“The statements made by the Progressive Alliance during its visit to the Philippines were made solely on behalf of the Progressive Alliance and do not represent the position of the European Union.”</p>
<p>The Progressive Alliance warned that the Philippines risks losing an exclusive trade deal with the EU if it did not stop extra-judicial killings, but did not call for country to be expelled from any international bodies. However, in an interview on Saturday Human Rights Watch (HRW) Geneva director John Fisher did say that Manila may lose its position on the UN Human Rights Council if the alleged abuses in the country continue.</p>
<p>“Membership comes with responsibilities,” Fisher <a href="https://www.rappler.com/nation/184711-philippines-kicked-out-united-nations-human-rights-council-if-drug-war-killings-continue-hrw" type="external">told</a> Rappler. “But so many states underlining the fact that the Philippines is in violation of its membership obligations is a signal that it is one of the options available to the international community if the government persists in violating the right to life.”</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/news/403584-duterte-human-rights-chief-pedophile/" type="external" /></p>
<p>A spokesman for the president later accused the Progressive Alliance of misrepresenting itself as an&#160;“EU mission”.</p>
<p>Duterte has frequently ripped into the EU and other foreign governments for criticizing his anti-drugs campaign. In March, he&#160;labelled the bloc&#160;&#160;“sons-of-bitches” for advocating an “idiotic” approach focused on rehab.</p>
<p>In several countries of the EU as well as Switzerland and Canada, heroin addicts can freely inject clean doses of narcotics under medical supervision in specialized clinics.</p>
<p>The idea is to prevent overdoses and help them beat their addiction by moving them away from the criminal black market, as well as to stop the spread of drug-related crime and infectious diseases such as HIV.</p>
<p>Since taking office in June last year, President Duterte has made tackling the drug problem in the Philippines his number-one priority.</p>
<p>The campaign has come under heavy criticism from human rights bodies as thousands of people have been shot dead in drug-related killings, though it’s unclear how many of these have been during legitimate police operations and how many have come at the hands of drug gangs and vigilantes.</p> | Foreign diplomats critical of war on drugs can be expelled in 24hrs, Duterte warns | false | https://newsline.com/foreign-diplomats-critical-of-war-on-drugs-can-be-expelled-in-24hrs-duterte-warns/ | 2017-10-12 | 1 |
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<p>Last week, the pilot union for Hawaiian Holdings (NASDAQ: HA) announced that it had opened a "Strike Operations Center" to serve as its headquarters in the event of a strike.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Hawaiian Airlines pilots are threatening to strike. Image source: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hawaiian_Airlines_A330.jpg" type="external">Wikimedia Commons Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Across the U.S. airline industry, there are plenty more airline pilots hoping to strike in order to get a larger share of the industry's record profits. However, investors and the flying public should recognize that the collective bargaining rules governing the airline industry make strikes extremely rare and difficult to pull off.</p>
<p>Pilots at Hawaiian Airlines claim that they earn 35%-45% less than their peers at other carriers. What's more, the pilot union has stated that Hawaiian Airlines' management is demanding onerous concessions in return for any pay raises.</p>
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<p>The company and the pilot union have been in contract negotiations for 18 months, during which time the pilots have become increasingly restless. In May, 99% of Hawaiian's pilots voted to authorize the union to call a strike. This was followed by the opening of the strike operations center last week. The union has also asked the National Mediation Board (NMB) to declare an impasse in negotiations.</p>
<p>The situation at Hawaiian Airlines is far from unique. Last year, Southwest Airlines' (NYSE: LUV) pilot union formed a "strike preparedness committee" after three years of contract talks had not produced an agreement. (Southwest finally reached a tentative agreement with the union last month, though.)</p>
<p>Unlike most unionized industries in the U.S., airlines are governed by the Railway Labor Act. Under the RLA, union contracts eventually become amendable but never expire. To be allowed to strike, airline employees must first get the NMB (which oversees airline labor negotiations) to declare an impasse, then observe a 30 day cooling-off period.</p>
<p>The NMB hardly ever grants airline unions the right to call a strike. It is equally difficult for management to impose a lockout. Given the economic disruption caused by airline strikes, the NMB is extremely reluctant to abandon mediated negotiations.</p>
<p>That's why Southwest Airlines and its pilot union were still at the bargaining table last month, nearly four years after the previous contract became amendable. In most industries, the potential for a strike would have forced a quicker resolution of that dispute.</p>
<p>Southwest Airlines pilots were never permitted to strike during their long-running contract dispute. Image source: The Motley Fool.</p>
<p>Indeed, the last time that the NMB authorized a pilot strike was more than six years ago, when pilots at Spirit Airlines (NASDAQ: SAVE) walked off the job for several days. That came after more than three years of fruitless negotiations.</p>
<p>At the time, Spirit Airlines was a small airline, with annual revenue of less than $800 million. Hawaiian Airlines is roughly three times that size and has a large market share or outright monopoly on many of its routes. Thus, a pilot strike there would cause more disruption than the 2010 Spirit Airlines strike, making the NMB less likely to declare an impasse.</p>
<p>Given the legal restrictions governing strikes in the airline industry, rhetoric takes on an outsized role in union contract negotiations. That means it is important to take public statements and actions by either side with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>For instance, Southwest Airlines pilots picketed in Dallas (home to the company's headquarters) in late August to protest "negligible progress" in contract talks. Less than a week later, the union and company reached their tentative agreement, which suggests that the two sides weren't so far apart after all.</p>
<p>The upshot is that a pilot strike at Hawaiian Airlines is a lot further away than the union would have you think. It would likely take several more years of stalled negotiations for the NMB to declare an impasse. Pilot strikes are even less likely at larger airlines. For better or worse, airline management teams and labor unions will need to work out their disagreements at the bargaining table.</p>
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<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFGemHunter/info.aspx" type="external">Adam Levine-Weinberg Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Hawaiian Holdings and Spirit Airlines and is short October 2016 $50 calls on Hawaiian Holdings and long December 2016 $30 calls on Spirit Airlines. The Motley Fool recommends Spirit Airlines. 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> | Will Pilot Strikes Cripple U.S. Airlines? | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/09/21/will-pilot-strikes-cripple-us-airlines.html | 2016-09-21 | 0 |
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<p>Control the moron population! Please spay and neuter your Liberals. Every&#160; <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/" type="external">mass casualty shooting</a> over the past 30+ years was carried out by a registered Democrat, not a conservative or an NRA member. It seems liberals don’t have the mental capacity to be trusted with a firearm unsupervised, which lends credence to the statement that liberalism is indeed a mental illness.</p>
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<p>Let’s take a brief step back in time to when then-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Janet Napolitano issued a warning that so-called, “ <a href="https://fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf" type="external">r</a> <a href="https://fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf" type="external">ight-wing extremists were the greatest threat to national security</a>.” It labeled veterans and conservative Christians as “right-wing extremists.” Funny how false the liberal narrative was, both then and now. Let’s take a look at how ludicrous these accusations really are. The modus operandi of left-wingers is based on the Communist Manisfesto and Marxism. “ <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obfuscate" type="external">Obfuscate and deflect</a>” are their primary tools to discredit their opposition.</p>
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<p>Speaking of morons, consider California Senator Dianne Feinstein. She fails to tell anyone of her background or that of Nancy Pelosi, related to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown" type="external">Jonestown, Guyana massacre</a>. In addition to former California Senator Barbara Boxer, they <a href="http://blogs.christianpost.com/thinkingoutloud/background-checks-on-pelosi-and-feinstein-15603/" type="external">were members of the Jonestown, Guyana cult</a>, the “People’s Temple.”</p>
<p>Feinstein stated that “ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjdyNB_czuk" type="external">gun control is for other people</a>.” She and other liberal “elitists” think gun possession is only for a privileged class of people, namely them.</p>
<p>Jared Loughner, <a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/suspect-was-known-disruptive-behavior-liked-read-and-worried-about-literacy" type="external">the killer of&#160;Arizona’s chief federal judge</a>, who wounded three-term Arizona Congresswoman&#160;Gabrielle Giffords, was initially portrayed as a Tea Party member by the lamestream liberal media, but proven later to be a registered Democrat. The liberal lamestream media never did offer a retraction. “Obfuscate and deflect” in operation.</p>
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<p>According to Senator Dianne Feinstein, her looking at millions of pictures of guns makes her an authority on guns. If that’s the case, every teenage boy in America is a leading expert on gynecology.</p>
<p>So what’s the solution for gun violence in America? This is an easy question to answer, since about <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/jail-survey-7-in-10-felons-register-as-democrats/article/2541412" type="external">70 percent</a> of the prison population in America have at one time or another been registered as Democrats, depending on the state. We need a law to prohibit gun ownership or possession by anyone who has ever registered as a Democrat.</p>
<p>Related:</p>
<p>If you haven’t checked out and liked our&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">Facebook</a>&#160;page, please go&#160; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ConservativeFiringLine?fref=ts" type="external">here</a>&#160;and do so.</p>
<p>And if you’re as concerned about online censorship as we are, go&#160; <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Banned-Facebook-Enables-Militant-Islamic/dp/1944212221/" type="external">here</a>&#160;and order this book (Remember, half of what we earn will be <a href="" type="internal">donated to Hurricane Harvey relief</a>):</p> | Control The Moron Population: Spay and Neuter Your Liberals | true | http://conservativefiringline.com/control-the-moron-population-spay-neuter-your-liberals/ | 2017-10-04 | 0 |
<p>Self-confessed California hippie Jamie Anderson kept calm in the frenzy of a dramatic women's snowboarding slopestyle final to clinch the first Olympic gold medal in the event on Sunday.</p>
<p>Going third last in what had been a low-scoring contest on an intimidating course at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park, the 23-year-old laid down a superb solid run to score 95.25 and blow away the competition.</p>
<p>Anderson's victory gave the United States a sweep of the first two gold medals in snowboarding slopestyle after Sage Kotsenburg won the men's event on Saturday.</p>
<p>"It feels amazing, goodness," Anderson told reporters.</p>
<p>"To be here and represent my country, and just everything that has to do with the Olympics is such an honor and I'm so grateful right now."</p> | Slopestyle Star Jamie Anderson Brings U.S. Gold | false | http://nbcnews.com/storyline/sochi-olympics/slopestyle-star-jamie-anderson-brings-u-s-gold-n25851 | 2014-02-09 | 3 |
<p>By Francesco Guarascio</p>
<p>TALLINN (Reuters) – Nearly one third of European Union states backed a plan to tax digital multinationals on their turnover, France said on Friday, as the EU weighs a range of other measures to increase the tax bill of companies like Google (NASDAQ:) and Amazon (NASDAQ:).</p>
<p>The moves are part of a growing campaign in the EU to claim tax revenues that online giants are accused of skirting by routing most of their profits to low tax rate states, like Ireland and Luxembourg.</p>
<p>“The digital economy should be taxed as the rest of the economy,” the EU commissioner for taxation, Pierre Moscovici, told reporters upon his arrival on Friday to a meeting of euro zone and EU finance ministers in Tallinn, the Estonian capital.</p>
<p>A report published on Thursday by influential EU lawmaker Paul Tang estimated that Google, which has its EU tax residence in Ireland, paid taxes not higher than 0.8 percent of its EU revenues between 2013 and 2015.</p>
<p>Facebook (NASDAQ:), also based in Ireland, had a ratio as little as 0.1 percent in the same period, while Luxembourg-based Amazon paid almost nothing as it reported nearly no profits.</p>
<p>Facebook and Google were not immediately available to comment on the proposals when contacted by Reuters.</p>
<p>COMPETING PLANS</p>
<p>Most of the 28 EU states agree in principle with more effective taxation of digital companies, but differences remain on how to move forward.</p>
<p>A plan proposed by France to tax large digital corporations on their turnover, rather than on their profits, is gaining supporters, although still needs technical work.</p>
<p>France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told a news conference on Friday that a total of nine countries “formally joined the initiative”. In addition to France, they are Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Slovenia and Latvia.</p>
<p>A tax on turnover would raise revenues also from companies, like Amazon, that do not report profits, and would be likely applied quickly, a European official said.</p>
<p>However, it would need to be made compliant with EU internal market rules. States could also apply it unilaterally, but that would expose them to a higher chance of legal challenges, the official said.</p>
<p>Opposition from smaller states would need to be overcome, as countries like Ireland and Luxembourg may lose tax revenues from the new framework.</p>
<p>Tax reforms in the EU need unanimity among EU states, a factor that has blocked many overhauls in the past.</p>
<p>Estonia, who holds the EU rotating presidency, is pushing for a more structural approach. It wants the EU to agree that a company could be taxed when it is “virtually” present in a country, through a digital platform for instance.</p>
<p>At the moment, businesses are taxed only in countries where they have a concrete presence, such as a plant.</p>
<p>This change could be introduced in a review of EU rules on the tax base that are under discussion in the Parliament and among EU states. Tang plans to submit an amendment going in that direction.</p>
<p>The European Commission, the EU’s executive, said it will present in the coming days a document listing several options for moving forward.</p>
<p>A Commission official said the document could propose five or six possible measures, including the French and the Estonian plans. He warned against risks of diverging taxation in EU states and insisted a compromise on a common set of rules should be the objective.</p>
<p>The document will be ready for a summit of EU leaders dedicated to digital issues that will be held in Tallinn on Sept. 29, Moscovici said.</p> | EU plans to raise tax bill of online giants gather momentum | false | https://newsline.com/eu-plans-to-raise-tax-bill-of-online-giants-gather-momentum/ | 2017-09-15 | 1 |
<p>On February 12, 2015, President Obama made a selfie-stick video for BuzzFeed. You may remember it – or perhaps not – because if there’s one thing Barack Obama delivered during his eight years in office it was plenty of celebrations of himself.&#160; The country was treated to Obama slow jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon, sharing his Final Four brackets, fantasizing about what superhero powers he’d most like to have, and on and on. His fascination with himself was inexhaustible. Except the selfie day was different – because it was just hours after the president learned that another one of ISIS’s American hostages had been killed.</p>
<p>President Obama had been criticized (even by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/22/us/politics/a-terrorist-horror-then-golf-incongruity-fuels-obama-critics.html?_r=0" type="external">New York Times</a>) for enjoying himself on the golf course after ISIS beheaded American James Foley in 2014 (he was photographed with that broad grin).&#160; And yet, his coldness persisted.</p>
<p>Kayla Mueller was a 25-year-old idealist from Arizona. A committed Christian, she felt drawn to aid to those most in need. In 2013, among the most desperate people on Earth were the people of Aleppo, Syria. Mueller traveled there from Turkey to volunteer for Doctors Without Borders. She was kidnapped by ISIS outside a hospital. What followed was the worst nightmare imaginable. For 18 months, she was held in confinement, often solitary. We’ve learned, from the accounts of other hostages who were subsequently released, that she was incredibly brave. When one of her captors told others that she had converted to Islam, she contradicted him. ISIS terrorists denied her sleep and medical care. They shaved her head, repeatedly raped her, and pulled out her fingernails.</p>
<p>Her frantic parents attempted everything they could to secure her release, only to be threatened by the Obama administration with criminal liability for aiding terrorists if they paid ransom. (There was an attempted military rescue, but it failed.)</p>
<p>There is a good argument for not negotiating with terrorists, obviously. But the Obama administration was inconsistent. The principle seems to have escaped them when they exchanged five terrorists held at Guantanamo for deserter Bowe Bergdahl (to say nothing of the Iran deal). But even granting that not paying ransom for kidnapped Americans is the right policy, it doesn’t explain the weird emotional detachment Obama consistently displayed.</p>
<p>On February 10, 2015, the Muellers learned that Kayla had been killed — and that was the week that Obama clowned around at the White House for BuzzFeed’s amusement. To jaunty music, the president filmed himself practicing speeches, sticking his tongue out in the mirror, dunking cookies in milk, and snapping selfies. It was all about him.</p>
<p>Why mention this now, when he’s got one foot out the door? Well, his elevation to the presidency, and the fact that his narcissism received relatively little mockery (on the contrary, many in the press were its enablers) seems to be the malady of our time.</p>
<p>Obama’s extreme self-regard proved to be a severe weakness. If he had shown just a little less arrogance, he might have welcomed some Republican cooperation on health-care reform, for example, which would in turn have cemented the health-care law as a bipartisan initiative. In that case, it would not now be on the chopping block.</p>
<p>Donald Trump is Obama’s rival in the narcissism sweepstakes. Many of Trump’s early decisions — most of his appointments — have been reassuring. But that ol’ devil vanity keeps tripping him up. He might want to consider how badly the trait served his predecessor.</p>
<p>Regarding Putin, Trump’s nearly unyielding praise for the strongman may arise from his misinterpretation of an anodyne remark Putin offered in 2015. He called Trump “colorful” and “talented.” Trump passed this through the translator in his head and converted it to “Putin called me a genius.”</p>
<p>He didn’t. But so what? Even if Putin had called him a genius, Putin remains Putin, i.e., a ruthless, bitterly anti-American international menace and killer. Is whether one praises Trump the only yardstick of people’s worth? If Putin criticizes him tomorrow, will Trump suddenly decide that Putin is a loser whose nation is failing? Is that really the level at which Trump wants to operate now?</p>
<p>This is deadly serious business. The realm of reality-show one-upmanship has no place in international affairs. In some ways, particularly his choices for Education and Defense, and perhaps most of all in reaching out to Governor Nikki Haley (who opposed him), Trump has shown signs of shedding some of his old skin for his new status. The example of Barack Obama, who arrived in office on a cloud of good will and squandered it due in part to delusions of grandeur, should be cautionary.</p>
<p>— Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Copyright © 2017&#160;Creators.com</p> | Goodbye to One Selfie President, Hello to Another? | false | https://eppc.org/publications/goodbye-to-one-selfie-president-hello-to-another/ | 1 |
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<p>The details over Duran's alleged illegal use of campaign donations date back to 2010, just as Duran was running on a platform to "restore trust and confidence" to the state. Duran joins an unfortunate list of both Democrats and Republicans in New Mexico who have been charged with abusing the office they were entrusted by New Mexico's voters to serve. Sadly, here we are again, making national news for corruption, just six years from the terrible time in our state where a pay-to-play culture sent Senate Majority Leader Manny Aragon and Treasurers Robert Vigil and Michael Montoya to prison.</p>
<p>This cycle of corruption has to stop. Currently, New Mexico is one of only eight states that does not have an ethics commission. Ethics commissions are a common-sense, bipartisan tool to curb abuses in government. Establishing a bipartisan ethics commission would put in place a specific body that is charged with enforcement that sets clear rules for all to abide by, something our state desperately needs. Establishing an ethics commission would also send a signal to the country that our state is working hard to end corrupt behavior.</p>
<p>As a businessman involved in economic development in New Mexico, I am concerned that the reality of corruption has wide-reaching affects on all New Mexicans, and goes far beyond unethical behavior by elected officials. Study after study has shown that corruption hinders economic growth, and news like this further affirms surveys like Dincer and Johnston that rank New Mexico the fifth-most corrupt state in the country. A recent Forbes study wrote that "When corruption is low and government acts ethically, there is a perception, hence a reality, that it is safe to do business there. If you compare the most and least corrupt nations, you'll find the least corrupt nations, in general, have larger economies." New Mexico's ranking as the fifth-most corrupt state in the country sends a message to businesses that in New Mexico, fair competition isn't how to get ahead, but rather back-door deals and pay-to-play influence.</p>
<p>One only has to look at job growth in our state for more evidence that our corruption image problem has a serious impact. The job growth in our neighboring states, which, except for Arizona, all have ethics commissions, is leaving New Mexico in the dust. So far in 2015, Colorado has seen 42,400 jobs created, Oklahoma has seen 10,300 jobs created, and Texas has seen more than 236,200 jobs. New Mexico, on the other hand, has created a paltry 7,300 jobs so far in 2015. These numbers build to the body of evidence showing that, along with nations, states with the least corruption have larger economies.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>It's time our state leaders take real action to bring clarity and accountability to New Mexico. Let's start with an ethics commission.</p>
<p>Michael Stanford is former CEO of First Community Bank, a member of the Executive Committee of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce and a former board member of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Creating clarity and accountability in New Mexico | false | https://abqjournal.com/647208/creating-clarity-and-accountability-in-new-mexico.html | 2 |
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<p>&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/traftery/5257329564/sizes/m/in/photostream/"&gt;Tom Raftery&lt;/a&gt;/Flickr</p>
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<p>I’ve been looking to buy a car for more than a year now, an adventure I’ve <a href="" type="internal">chronicled here before</a>. I still don’t have one, largely because it’s really hard to find something that meets both my high miles-per-gallon and low cost standards. But thanks to a new rule that the Obama administration finalized on Tuesday, an ideal car for me might be available … in 2025.</p>
<p>The EPA and the Department of Transportation announced that they had finalized rules that will require new cars and light trucks to hit a fleet-wide average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The administration estimates that the increase will eliminate the need for 12 billion barrels of oil and save drivers $1.7 trillion in gas costs.</p>
<p>Enviros cheered the final rule, even though just a few months ago they were begging the administration to raise the number to <a href="" type="internal">60 miles per gallon</a>. How high to set the target has been a long-standing <a href="" type="internal">debate</a> between automakers, enviros, and the Obama administration.</p>
<p>The new rules are pretty tough, particularly when you look at what’s on the market right now. The <a href="http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/best-worst.shtml" type="external">best hybrids currently available</a>&#160;are only getting in the 40s when it comes to miles-per-gallon. There are electric cars that get 99 miles-per-gallon-equivalent right now, but those are still pretty rare and expensive, not to mention hard to figure out where to charge them. Meanwhile, there are a lot of cars that are waaaaay down at the bottom when it comes to fuel economy, getting <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/16/cars-worst-fuel-economy-lifestyle-vehicles-worst-fuel-economy.html" type="external">14 miles-to-the-gallon</a>. The new rules are significant because they will bring the numbers up on the top end, but on the bottom end as well.</p>
<p>These latest rules follow the previous requirement that automakers reach 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016. That target was the first increase in fuel efficiency since 1990, so it was <a href="" type="internal">long overdue</a>. It just might help us <a href="http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/obama-fuel-efficiency-47052002" type="external">catch up with our foreign colleagues</a>, as the European Union already averages 43.3 miles per gallon and Japan averages 42.6.</p>
<p /> | US Cars Creeping Toward Decent MPG Standard | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/08/us-cars-creeping-toward-decent-mpg-standard/ | 2012-08-28 | 4 |
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<p>"The Republican Party needs to stop talking to itself."--The RNC's post-2012 election report.</p>
<p>Governor Scott Walker (R-WI) <a href="http://www.tpnn.com/2015/02/22/governor-scott-walker-blames-media/" type="external">fumes</a> about " <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/23/politics/walker-twitter-giuliani-comments-response/" type="external">gotcha</a>" questions from " <a href="http://jimromenesko.com/2015/02/23/scott-walker-give-me-money-to-show-how-much-you-hate-the-press/" type="external">clueless</a>" political reporters and <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/this-time-gov-scott-walkers-political-qualities-lead-him-to-trouble-b99449730z1-293536691.html" type="external">vows</a>not to be distracted by them on the campaign trail. Fox News host Bill O'Reilly blames the media for the swirling controversies surrounding his "combat" reporting, and even <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/bill-oreilly-threatens-ny-times-reporter-202990.html" type="external">levels</a> an on-the-record "threat" against a New York Times reporter for daring to cover the story. And now the Republican Party announces <a href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/LA37495.htm" type="external">it's teaming up with</a> partisan, conservative media partners to help host primary debates in an effort to make the forums more appealing for candidates.</p>
<p>The first three Republican debates will air on CNN and will be co-presented by the Salem Media Group, a major player in right-wing talk radio. (Its CEO is also politically active in <a href="http://projects.latimes.com/prop8/donation/27165/" type="external">conservative causes</a>.) Salem talker Hugh Hewitt has been invited to be among those asking candidates questions at the first debate. Afterwards, Republican participants will "be invited to join Hewitt to talk candidly about the event," <a href="http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/LA37495.htm" type="external">according</a> to a press release. A Salem talk radio host will be included in each of the three debates.</p>
<p>In shifting some of the debate control away from independent journalists, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is following through on his promise last year to make the debates more GOP-friendly and to <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/rnc-chair-i-want-debate-moderators-invested" type="external">tap</a> media participants "who are actually interested in the Republican Party."</p>
<p>It's true that there's nothing <a href="http://prospect.org/waldman/why-its-good-thing-gop-debates-will-be-moderated-conservatives" type="external">inherently wrong</a> with having a talk radio partisan like Hewitt in the mix on the night of a debate. Different perspectives should always be welcome. But the inclusion of unabashed Republican cheerleaders for this year's forums appears to be driven out of fear and distrust of the news media, not out of a GOP desire for inclusion. Indeed, the move has an undeniable whiff of paranoia about it.</p> | With New Debate Strategy, GOP Slips Further Into The Right-Wing Media Bubble | true | http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/02/25/with-new-debate-strategy-gop-slips-further-into/202661 | 2015-02-25 | 4 |
<p>After nearly a decade of engineering work on the project, the Panama Canal’s expansion&#160; <a href="" type="internal">opened for business</a>&#160;on June&#160;26.</p>
<p>At the center of that business, a DeSmog investigation has demonstrated, is a fast-track export lane for gas obtained via <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future/" type="external">hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”)</a>in the United States. The expanded Canal in both depth and width equates to a shortened voyage to Asia and also means the vast majority of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers — <a href="" type="internal">9-percent before versus 88-percent now</a> —&#160;can now fit through&#160;it.</p>
<p>Emails and documents obtained under open records law show that LNG exports have, for the past several years, served as a centerpiece for promotion of the Canal’s expansion by the U.S. Gulf of Mexico-based Port of Lake&#160;Charles.</p>
<p>And the oil and gas industry, while awaiting the Canal expansion project’s completion, lobbied for and achieved passage of a federal bill that expanded the water depth of a key Gulf-based port set to feed the fracked gas export&#160;boom.</p>
<p>Control of the Panama Canal by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/How-Wall-Street-Created-Nation/dp/1568582668" type="external">U.S. big business and Wall Street</a> has, for over a century, served as a focal point of U.S.foreign policy in the&#160;Americas.</p>
<p>While no longer in de facto control of the isthmus as it was during the days of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_Zone" type="external">Panama Canal Zone</a>, Jill Biden’s <a href="" type="internal">presence</a>&#160;as part of an <a href="" type="internal">official Presidential Delegation</a> at the expanded Canal’s opening ceremony symbolized the importance of the waterway and de jure role of the U.S. government in pushing for its expansion over the past several years. So too did the <a href="http://www.southcom.mil/newsroom/Pages/SOUTHCOM-Commander-Attends-Panama-Canal-Expansion-Ceremony.aspx" type="external">attendance</a> of the U.S. military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).</p>
<p>And in turn, the&#160; <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:XNgbFpkM3n4J:www.tradewindsnews.com/weekly/765625/canal-gears-up-for-historical-opening+&amp;cd=1&amp;hl=en&amp;ct=clnk&amp;gl=us" type="external">reported participation</a>of&#160;LNG exports giant Cheniere Energy&#160;at the kick-off serves as a portrayal of the importance of the Canal’s expansion to the oil and gas industry. The Panama Canal Authority <a href="" type="internal">estimates</a>&#160;that 20 million tons of LNG may pass through on an annual&#160;basis.</p>
<p>“The volume projected by the Panama Canal Authority represents about 8 percent of global LNG trade and is equivalent to nearly 300 ships a year,” <a href="" type="internal">Bloomberg explained</a>.</p>
<p>In a <a href="" type="internal">press release</a> announcing the Canal expansion’s opening, LNG shipments receive a prominent&#160;mention.</p>
<p>“We are thrilled that we currently have 170 reservations for Neopanamax ships, commitments of two new liner services to the Expanded Canal, and a reservation for the first LNG vessel, which will transit in late July,” Jorge&#160;Quijano, CEO of the Panama Canal Authority, stated in the release. “Our customers care that their supply chain is reliable and that they have a diversity of shipping options. And the Canal has always been reliable; today, we offer the world new shipping options and trade&#160;routes.”</p>
<p>It has taken a rigorous lobbying and influence peddling effort by the oil and gas industry to make the looming first LNGshipment through the Canal a&#160;reality.</p>
<p>Lake Charles LNG MOUs</p>
<p>In January 2015,&#160;Port of Lake Charles officials signed a <a href="" type="internal">memorandum of understanding (MOU)</a> with Panama Canal Authority&#160;officials.</p>
<p>The MOU explicitly mentions the role the Canal could play in opening up the global spigot for LNG exports and a fast-lane to Asia.&#160;A sign of the importance of the Canal’s expansion to Asia, the Japan Bank for International Corporation signed a loan agreement with the Panama Canal Authority in December 2008 for <a href="" type="internal">$800 million</a>. Japan, in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, has shifted its energy portfolio in the direction of increased <a href="http://oilprice.com/Energy/Gas-Prices/LNG-Dependent-Japan-Tries-To-Gain-Leverage-Over-Pricing.html" type="external">reliance</a> on natural gas and LNG&#160;imports.</p>
<p />
<p>Image Credit: Port of Lake&#160;Charles</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>Officials involved with the effort signed the MOU at the Louisiana-based Port of Lake Charles in an <a href="" type="internal">event</a> that featured invitations sent out to&#160;executives of the seven Lake Charles-based LNG companies. In the aftermath of signing the&#160;MOU,&#160;Quijano held a meeting with the LNG company representatives present at the&#160;ceremony.</p>
<p>The Port of Lake Charles houses the approved Sempra LNG facility and the proposed Trunkline LNG and MagnoliaLNG&#160;facilities.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Matt Young</a>&#160;— then the public relations director for the O’Carroll Group public relations firm and current public information officer for the City of Lake Charles&#160;— <a href="" type="internal">wrote the talking points</a> for the MOU ceremony for Port of Lake Charles officials. At the time and <a href="" type="internal">as of April</a>, O’Carroll oversaw the <a href="" type="internal">public relations and marketing work</a> for the Magnolia LNG.</p>
<p />
<p>Image Credit: Port of Lake&#160;Charles</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p />
<p>The Port of Lake Charles houses the approved Sempra LNG facility and the proposed Trunkline LNG and MagnoliaLNG&#160;facilities.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Matt Young</a>&#160;— then the public relations director for the O’Carroll Group public relations firm and current public information officer for the City of Lake Charles&#160;— <a href="" type="internal">wrote the talking points</a> for the MOU ceremony for Port of Lake Charles officials. At the time and <a href="" type="internal">as of April</a>, O’Carroll oversaw the <a href="" type="internal">public relations and marketing work</a> for the Magnolia LNG.</p>
<p>Industry Lobbies to Re-engineer&#160;Sabine</p>
<p>Beyond the MOU with Lake Charles, the oil and gas industry also used its lobbying prowess to win&#160;federal tax dollars that would go toward deepening and re-engineering ports and key coastal waterways in service to industrial interests such asLNG exports. They did so via the&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014</a> (H.R.&#160;3080).</p>
<p>Those lobbying for H.R. 3080 included the likes of LNG trader <a href="" type="internal">Koch Industries</a>, LNG industry giant <a href="" type="internal">BG Group</a> (now <a href="http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Shell-Announces-Successful-Completion-Of-BG-Merger.html" type="external">owned</a> by Shell), <a href="" type="internal">Sempra Energy</a>&#160;(owner of the Lake Charles-based Sempra LNG facility), <a href="" type="internal">Independent Petroleum Association of America</a> (IPAA),&#160; <a href="" type="internal">American Petroleum Institute</a> (API),&#160; <a href="" type="internal">BP America</a>&#160;and <a href="" type="internal">ExxonMobil</a>.</p>
<p>BP, Bloomberg has reported, is set to send the <a href="" type="internal">first LNG tanker</a> through the Panama Canal in&#160;July.</p>
<p>The bill “includes the deepening of the Sabine-Neches Waterway to 48 feet from its current 40 feet. The entire bill is for 34 projects across the country with a price tag of $12 billion,” explained the <a href="http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Senate-approves-Sabine-Neches-project-5498995.php" type="external">Beaumont Enterprise</a>. “The Sabine-Neches project, listed first in the bill, would be funded at $748 million and is 75 percent of the project&#160;cost.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.navigationdistrict.org/about/district-map/" type="external">Sabine-Neches</a> connects to&#160; <a href="" type="internal">Cheniere’s Sabine Pass LNG facility</a>,&#160;ExxonMobil’s proposed <a href="http://goldenpassterminal.com/index.cfm/page/7" type="external">Golden Pass LNG facility</a> and <a href="http://www.sempralng.com/whats-lng/" type="external">Sempra’s LNG facility</a>.&#160; <a href="http://www.navigationdistrict.org/about/the-waterway/" type="external">According to the Sabine-Neches Navigation District website</a>, the Waterway is “projected to become the largest LNG exporter in the United&#160;States.”</p>
<p>In a <a href="" type="internal">PowerPoint presentation</a> from August 2012, the Sabine-Neches Navigation District boasted that it could soon become “Texas’ first Panama Canal ready&#160;Port.”</p>
<p />
<p>Image Credit: <a href="" type="internal">Sabine-Neches Navigation District</a></p>
<p />
<p>A May 2014 article published by Bloomberg overtly links the bill’s passage with&#160;the expansion of both the Panama Canal and the Sabine-Neches&#160;Waterway.</p>
<p>“House and Senate negotiators reached agreement on a bill that would authorise deepening several US ports ahead of the expansion of the Panama Canal and the bigger ships that will use it,” <a href="" type="internal">reads the article</a>. “The Port Arthur area is home to the southern end of the Keystone XL pipeline. Deepening the port will reduce shipping costs for oil and natural gas processed there by Exxon Mobil, Total and Cheniere&#160;Energy.”</p>
<p>BG Group, which lobbied for the port expansion legislation, said in its <a href="" type="internal">quarter four 2010 investor call</a> that the opening of the Panama Canal means more trade and business opportunities for the&#160;company.</p>
<p>“Stolen&#160;Property”</p>
<p>In a&#160;July 2015 article published in&#160;Platts, a Panama Canal Authority official stated that he expects relatively little LNG export-centric traffic in the Canal through about 2020, as Gulf of Mexico-based terminals await approval by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).</p>
<p>“The first two years of operations [after the 2016 expansion] we expect few transits per year because only one export terminal from the Gulf of Mexico will be operational,” the Canal official told Platts. “As more terminals come online, traffic ofLNG carriers should pick up after 2016…until reaching around three transits per day after&#160;2020.”</p>
<p>Oscar Bazán, the Panama Canal’s executive vice president for planning and development, recently told The Wall Street Journal that by 2020, LNG tankers could be the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-panama-canal-expands-1466378348" type="external">main cargo sailing through the Canal</a>.</p>
<p>Like the story of the Panama Canal’s expansion and the myriad LNG tankers which soon may pass through it, the Canal’s origins tie back to lobbying and the realization of corporate and Wall Street interests. This was noted in a 1903 editorial penned by The New York&#160;Times.</p>
<p>“In order rightly to understand what we are doing we must acknowledge to ourselves that this territory through which we are to build the canal is stolen property, that our partners in the theft are a group of canal promoters and speculators and lobbyists,” opined The Times, proceeding to write that&#160;whether&#160;the U.S. goes through with the deal or not “the world will get a true measure of the American&#160;conscience.”</p>
<p>Given the life-cycle <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/global-warming-terrifying-new-chemistry/" type="external">greenhouse gas impacts of fracking</a> and <a href="" type="internal">shipping LNG across the planet</a> for climate change in today’s context, it could reasonably be argued that what the U.S. and industry are doing this time around is&#160;unconscionable.</p> | Fracked Gas LNG Exports Were Centerpiece In Promotion of Panama Canal Expansion, Documents Reveal | true | https://counterpunch.org/2016/07/01/fracked-gas-lng-exports-were-centerpiece-in-promotion-of-panama-canal-expansion-documents-reveal/ | 2016-07-01 | 4 |
<p>Everywhere one looks today there’s crisis.&#160; Economic collapse, war, environmental degradation, health, poverty, mis-education and corruption, all at the same time, with common roots and fruits.&#160; What’s a poor boy/girl-man/woman to do in such insane and chaotic times?&#160; Study history.&#160; Learn more about the present, ourselves and others.&#160; Channel anger, creativity, love and whatever else we’ve got into action. &#160;Take advantage of the extremely rare opportunity, at such tipping points, to make history by telling our own stories, and create our future.</p>
<p>This essay connects three points of relatively modern history – including the present intense moment.&#160; In today’s American Idol, bail-out-the-toilet-bowl nation, let’s revisit a few previous experiences of politics and activism, and start laying a foundation for organizing and struggle thru the present emergency.</p>
<p>Winter 1941</p>
<p>President Franklin Delano Roosevelt needs no introduction.&#160; His January 6, 1941 “Four Freedoms” State of the Union Speech was a classic rhetorical call for democratic resistance to tyranny and terror, pretty much a 20th century Gettysburg Address.</p>
<p>The Great Depression that’s been so in vogue lately was still hanging on, after nearly a decade of major policy reforms trying to get Americans back to work.&#160; But new challenges threatened from Europe and Asia, especially since the September 1939 Nazi invasion of Poland 16 months before, and the resulting Hitler/Stalin non-aggression pact.&#160; Some people today justifiably fear both long-term climate catastrophe, and a potential authoritarian reaction against the imminent collapse of The American Way of Life.&#160; Like us, in 1941 our so-called “greatest generation” would soon learn that even massive economic breakdown might not be the very worst thing that could happen.</p>
<p>The greatest President of The American Century began his constitutionally required State of the Union message to Congress that year by referring to simultaneous challenges of foreign and domestic policy emergencies:&#160; The “democratic way of life” was mortally threatened by “the new order of tyranny.” &#160;Therefore he said “this Annual Message to the Congress is unique in our history.”&#160; &#160;Explicitly basing our national policies on the “rights and dignity of all,” and “the justice of morality,” FDR made the following major points:</p>
<p>“The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are:”</p>
<p>Equality of opportunity for youth and others Jobs for those who can work Security for those who need it The ending of special privilege for the few The preservation of civil liberties for all The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living</p>
<p>[and he gave some specific examples of things calling for immediate improvement:]</p>
<p>Bring more citizens under the coverage of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance</p>
<p>Widen the opportunities for adequate medical care</p>
<p>Plan a better system by which persons deserving or needing gainful employment may obtain it</p>
<p>“No person should try, or be allowed, to get rich out of this [crash national war preparations] program; and the principle of tax payments in accordance with ability to pay should be constantly before our eyes to guide our legislation.”</p>
<p>“We look forward to a world founded on four essential human freedoms:”</p>
<p>Freedom of speech and expression Freedom of every person to worship God in their own way; Freedom from want, which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants; and Freedom from fear, a world-wide reduction of armaments to the point where no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor.</p>
<p>Much like the above (pretty amazingly still current!) thoughts, the President’s conclusion drew on historical ideas and emotions we need today: “Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual peaceful revolution … Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.”</p>
<p>Hold that thought.&#160; Please (turn off the damn TV and) hold on to ALL those thoughts tight.&#160; I want to introduce you to another perspective.&#160; Amazing how this works, ain’t it?</p>
<p>Summer 1969</p>
<p>28 years later, dancing on Mr. Roosevelt’s shoulders in the midst of Woodstock Nation, meet Gary Snyder.&#160; The model for the fictional protagonist “Japhy Ryder” from Jack Kerouac’s second-most famous novel <a href="" type="internal">Dharma Bums</a>, young timber jack, Buddhist seeker, nature poet, more recently author of immensely valuable essays in <a href="" type="internal">The Practice of the Wild.</a>&#160; In the summer of 1969, with a small gaggle of countercultural collaborators, he wrote a poetic political essay called “Four Changes.”</p>
<p>A very different, obscenely unjust American war was chemically burning Asia.&#160; The civil rights revolution, riots in city streets, and a new youth generation’s visions of freedom had crested in the past decade (like the New Deal&#160; before FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech).&#160; The tumultuous year of 1968 lay just behind in the mind’s rear view mirror, smoking a lot like the tumultuous year of 2008 reeks today.&#160; Che Guevara had been dead for about a year and a half – roughly the time period between the beginning of WWII in Europe and FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech.&#160; “Four Changes” concluded with a section captioned “TRANSFORMATION,” closely paraphrased <a href="#_ftn1" type="external" /> here:</p>
<p>We have it within our deepest powers not only to change our “selves” but to change our culture.&#160; If humans are to remain on earth we must transform the five-millenia-long urbanizing civilization tradition into a new ecologically-sensitive harmony-oriented wild-minded scientific-spiritual culture.&#160; “Wildness is the state of complete awareness.&#160; That’s why we need it.”</p>
<p>Nothing short of total transformation will do much good.&#160; A basic cultural outlook and social organization that inhibits power and property-seeking while encouraging exploration and challenge in things like music, meditation, mathematics, mountaineering, magic, and all other ways of authentic being-in-the-world. &#160;Women totally free and equal.&#160; A new kind of family – responsible, but more festive and relaxed – is implicit.</p>
<p>Since it doesn’t seem practical or even desirable to think that direct bloody force will achieve much, it would be best to consider this a continuing “revolution of consciousness” which will be won not by guns but by seizing the key images, myths, archetypes, eschatologies, <a href="#_ftn2" type="external" /> and ecstasies so that life won’t seem worth living unless one’s on the transforming energy’s side.&#160; We must take over “science and technology” and release its real possibilities and powers in the service of this planet – which, after all produced us and it.</p>
<p>[More concretely: no transformation without our feet on the ground.&#160; Stewardship means, for most of us, find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there – the tiresome but tangible work of school boards, county supervisors, local foresters – local politics.&#160; Even while holding in mind the largest scale of potential change.&#160; Get a sense of workable territory, learn about it, and start acting point by point.&#160; On all levels from national to local the need to move toward steady state economy-equilibrium, dynamic balance, inner-growth stressed – must be taught.&#160; Maturity/diversity climax/ creativity.]</p>
<p>We are the first human beings in history to have so much of human culture and previous experience available to our study, and to be free enough of the weight of traditional cultures to seek out a larger identity; the first members of a civilized society since the Neolithic to wish to look clearly into the eyes of the wild and see our self-hood, our family, there.&#160; We have these advantages to set off the obvious disadvantages of being as screwed up as we are – which gives us a fair chance to penetrate some of the riddles of ourselves and the universe, and to go beyond the idea of “humanity’s survival” or “survival of the biosphere” and to draw our strength from the realization that at the heart of things is some kind of serene and ecstatic process which is beyond qualities and beyond birth-and-death.</p>
<p>Whoa!&#160; In 28 years of revolutionary (and counter-revolutionary Cold War) social change, leading American male thinkers have gone from defending the nation state against foreign enemies, to inner-directed ecstatic personal liberation, and total ecological transformation of industrial civilization – absolutely essential for survival today, through comprehensive, relentless and non-violent social action as a way of life!&#160; NO WONDER we had that mind-numbing, money-grubbing, torture-loving backlash in the ‘70s and after!&#160; Too damn many people taking democracy entirely too seriously…</p>
<p>As Gil-Scott Heron put it: “Godammit! First one wants freedom, then the whole world wants freedom.”&#160; All that neoliberal claptrap about “greed is good” and letting “The Market” (holy, holy Market – we are not worthy!) decide everything, until we landed in this pile of crap behind our very own war criminal tyrants George W. Bush and his smirking henchman Cheney… But I digress.</p>
<p>Winter 2009</p>
<p>Professor Henry Giroux of McMaster University in Canada is an educational and cultural expert, and a semi-frequent contributor to the Counterpunch.org web site, which I personally have to visit at least several times a week to avoid [even more] severe psychological/emotional damage from living in the 21st century.&#160; His erudite February 6 essay, entitled “ <a href="" type="internal">Educating Obama</a>,” <a href="#_ftn3" type="external" /> surveys the present consequences of the last three decades’ neoliberalism.&#160; He explores some of the intellectual contours of a new hope that is taking shape.&#160; He shows, among many other things, how timely and critical the past insights of both FDR and Gary Snyder are to our present crises of survival and freedom.</p>
<p>Professor Giroux’s essay struggles courageously against many progressives’ perfectly understandable negative reactions to the tax cheat/bankster-dominated beginning of Obama-time:</p>
<p>either a deep sense of despair in light of &#160;his increasing political shift to the center, or a doom-and-gloom cynicism in the face of economic crisis.</p>
<p>Giroux doesn’t stop there:</p>
<p>At stake is the need for a new politics of resistance and hope, one that mounts a collective challenge to a ruthless market fundamentalism that for the last thirty years has spearheaded the accumulation of capital and wealth at all costs, the commodification of young people, and the usurpation of democratic modes of sovereignty.&#160; In the depths of massive human suffering, a financial Katrina,&#160; millions of displaced lives, a weakened social state and a failing democracy made all the more ominous by the dumbing down of public discourse and the emptying out of critical public spheres, democracy is about neither the sovereignty of the market nor a form of state governance based largely on fear, manipulation, and deceit.</p>
<p>It’s about, among many other things, defending ourselves against tyranny, following our deepest dreams and highest visions, and liberating ourselves from internal and external oppressions, even while getting the required economic, political and human work done right.&#160; Like fascism, global warming and the draft, these are important and necessary things we really can’t escape, even if we want to.</p>
<p>Professor Giroux continues:</p>
<p>Democracy is not simply about people wanting to improve their lives; it is more importantly about their willingness to struggle to protect their right to self-determination and self-government in the interest of the common good.&#160; The militarized corporate state and the sovereign market reduce democracy to either an overcrowded prison or a shopping mall, both of which are vulnerable to totalitarianism. The fundamental institutional and educational conditions of social, political, and personal rights have been under attack for the last thirty years, and now face a moment of crisis as severe as the current economic crisis. &#160;&#160;Corporate culture reigns unchallenged as the most powerful force in the country, while democracy becomes dangerously empty.&#160; We need more than bailouts; we need a politics that reinvents the concept of the social, while providing a language of critique and hope forged not in isolation but in collective struggle that takes social responsibility, commitment, and justice seriously.</p>
<p>Looking back at FDR’s inspiring words and Gary Snyder’s visionary ideas synthesizing east with west and inner with outer realities, we can see with Professor Giroux that The Good Society and The Good Life are all about reinventing “the democratic way of life” in our world and time, making it real and relevant in our lives, and applying it to the pursuit of sustainability as the basis for happiness.&#160; The “hope” of the Obama era lies in our struggle, and his and our growth, toward real democracy,&#160; FDR’s “rights and dignity of all,” “the justice of morality,” and the supremacy of human rights everywhere.&#160; Living in a democratic society means changing our “selves” and our culture, and in this mess nothing short of total transformation will do the trick.&#160; In short, we have to love and fight and create and work and organize and dance, so that life won’t seem worth living unless one’s on the transforming energy’s side, on our side.&#160; Our very lives depend on it. Again, according to Professor Giroux:</p>
<p>We live at a time when social bonds are crumbling and institutions that provide collective help are disappearing.&#160; Reclaiming these social bonds and the protections of the social state, in part, means developing a new mode of politics and education in which a critically educated public is as central to this struggle as the future of the democratic society it once symbolized. At the heart of this struggle for both young people and adults is the pressing problem of organizing and energizing a vibrant cultural politics to counter the conditions of political apathy, distrust, and social disengagement so pervasive under the politics of neoliberalism. For this we need a new vocabulary, social movements and modes of collective resistance that are democratic in nature and global in reach.&#160; This is a moment in which education becomes the foundation not simply for collective change but also for a rewriting of the social contract, an expansion of the meaning of social responsibility, and a renewed struggle to take democracy back from the dark times that have inched us so close to an unimaginable authoritarianism.</p>
<p>Militarism, racism, empire, peak oil, climate catastrophe and authoritarian responses to &#160;the crises of our time will kill us.&#160; Dead.&#160; We can either fight back, following the light from the past, when people fought other destructive forces and injustices for a future worth living in, or we can wish to go back to “normal,” roll over and give it up to corporate rule.&#160; Because we’ve gotten used to not thinking or seeing, and comfortable doing things the same way things have been done to get us into this fix.</p>
<p>Positive attitude and vision, or passive acceptance of a world gone crazy and terribly wrong.&#160; We have to find other ways to live in this world, for human rights, for balance with nature, for survival.&#160; Learn from both the good and the bad things in our past.&#160; Our choice.&#160; Our future.</p>
<p>TOM STEPHENS is a lawyer in Detroit. He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref1" type="external" /> Minus Snyder’s then-prevalent use of sexist pronouns, reminding us that this was before feminism took hold.</p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref2" type="external" /> “eschatology:” the body of religious doctrines concerning the human soul in its relation to death, judgment, heaven, and hell. [Mid-19thc coined from the Greek eskhatos “last” + -LOGY] (ENCARTA WORLD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 1999)</p>
<p><a href="#_ftnref3" type="external" /> “Educating Obama: A Task to Make Democracy Matter,” at: <a href="" type="internal">https://www.counterpunch.org/giroux02062009.html</a>&#160; Like Gary Snyder’s “Four Changes,” it is closely paraphrased here.</p> | Four Freedoms, Four Changes | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/02/13/four-freedoms-four-changes/ | 2009-02-13 | 4 |
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;</p>
<p>Need to know: Ban Ki-moon warned Israel days ago that the world wouldn't accept <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/121130/israel-3000-new-settler-homes-jerusalem-west-bank-e1" type="external">new settlement building</a>, and he was right.</p>
<p>The United Nations, US, Russia, UK, France and Germany have all condemned Israel's decision to build <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/121130/israel-3000-new-settler-homes-jerusalem-west-bank-e1" type="external">3,000 new settler homes</a> in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which was announced within hours of the UN voting to recognize Palestine as <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/121129/un-recognizes-non-member-state-palesti" type="external">a non-member state</a>. Today London and Paris <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20579248" type="external">summoned Israel's ambassadors</a> to protest, with Britain promising a "strong reaction" if the plans aren't scrapped.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, says Israel will carry on building everywhere it's in its "strategic interests" to do so. He might want to rethink whatever that strategy is: Ban Ki-moon warns that going ahead with the new homes will deal "an almost fatal blow" to any remaining hopes of peace.</p>
<p>Want to know: Allies say the darndest things, don't they? It's bad enough when your pals threaten to violate international law and build new settlements; imagine if they said they'd flout UN Security Council orders and launch a long-range rocket.</p>
<p>That's the uncomfortable situation in which North Korea's few friends find themselves, after <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/121201/north-korea-launch-long-range-rocket-december" type="external">Pyongyang announced</a> this weekend that it would be testing its latest rocket sometime between Dec. 10 and 22. OK, so <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/120412/north-korea-rocket-launch-us-japan-south-korea-reactions" type="external">the last one</a>barely got off the ground, but it's still a deliberately provocative move.</p>
<p><a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/uk-korea-north-launch-russia-idUKBRE8B206C20121203" type="external">China and Russia</a>, two of the rare countries still talking to North Korea, today urged it to reconsider. "We hope all sides can be calm and restrained and not take any moves to worsen the problem," said Beijing. Because that's how these things usually go.</p>
<p>Dull but important: The UN's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/dec/03/telecoms-unitednations" type="external">World Conference on International Telecommunications</a> opens today in Dubai - and the stage is set for a showdown over who should control the internet.</p>
<p>For the next 11 days, thousands of delegates from 193 countries will attempt to thrash out a new draft of the treaty that governs international telecoms regulation. It was last revised way back in 1988 - i.e., pre-world wide web - and is long overdue an update to reflect today's very different (virtual) reality.</p>
<p>The US and EU, backed by internet giants including Google and Microsoft, have accused certain countries - (cough) Russia, (cough cough) China - of seeking to push through clauses that will allow governments greater control of the net. But the UN's telecommunications agency says the status quo favors rich nations and corporations, and it simply wants to create a level online playing field.</p>
<p>The conference continues until Dec. 14.</p>
<p>Just because: Guns make the world go round. From <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/mexico/121128/us-weapons-mexico-gang-violence-smuggling" type="external">Mexico's drug violence</a> to conflicts in the <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/121128/small-arms-middle-east-conflict-weapons" type="external">Middle East</a> and <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/121128/china-africa-guns-weapons-arns-smuggling" type="external">Africa</a>, the global trade in small arms is helping fuel violence around the world.</p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/series/depth-series-the-global-race-bear-arms" type="external">a new series</a>, GlobalPost looks at the sources and effects of the booming weapons business. At the center of it all is <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/121127/america-guns-export-import-regulation-small-arms" type="external">the United States</a>. America's seemingly insatiable appetite for guns is spurring production in <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/121024/europe-arms-sales-weapons-trade" type="external">Europe</a>, where the financial crisis is magically easing governments' guilty conscience over selling dangerous weapons; and in <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/russia/121023/russia-kalashnikov-small-arms-market" type="external">Russia</a>, where the US is one of the few remaining markets for once lucrative Russian guns.</p>
<p>But the US is also the world's top exporter of weapons - sometimes to <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/121128/small-arms-middle-east-conflict-weapons" type="external">some very shady customers</a>. And where the US won't sell, <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/121128/china-africa-guns-weapons-arns-smuggling" type="external">China</a> will. One estimate says the world's legal small arms trade alone is worth as much as $8.5 billion per year. But <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business/global-economy/121106/small-arms-survey-keith-krause" type="external">the true cost of proliferation</a> could be far, far higher.</p>
<p>Strange but true: Pickpocket primary school: nope, it's not Fagin's latest venture, but a real (and, we trust, non-thieving) place in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province.</p>
<p>Bambinkuzu, as the school is called in Zulu, is one of <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/south-african-schools-inappropriate-names-face-change" type="external">several local institutions ordered to change their name</a> by authorities who deem the monikers "inappropriate" or "uninspiring." Others soon to be hastily repainting their signs include Mgwazeni ("stab him") High School, Tilongo ("prison") Primary School, and Mathangetshitshi ("thighs of a virgin") High School.</p>
<p>"Uninspiring"? Doesn't sound like it. A little too inspiring? Perhaps.</p> | Chatter: Pressure mounts on Israel over settlement plans | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-12-03/chatter-pressure-mounts-israel-over-settlement-plans | 2012-12-03 | 3 |
<p />
<p>Last Tuesday, a new U.S. General, David McKiernan, took command of Afghanistan’s NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) <a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/ISL332530.htm" type="external">saying</a>, “Insurgents, foreign fighters, criminals and others who stand in the way… will be dealt with.” McKiernan will command around 50,000 troops, up from 36,000 a year ago, in his attempts to quell the increase in violence and stabilize a <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0529/p99s01-duts.html" type="external">weakening</a> Karzai government.</p>
<p>Much of this increased violence is occurring in the ISAF’s U.S.-led Regional Command East—RC(E). If you aren’t familiar with the layout of the ISAF, you might take a read of NYU professor <a href="http://icga.blogspot.com/2008/05/rubin-insurgent-attacks-still-up-in.html" type="external">Barnett Rubin</a>. As Rubin explains, the ISAF consists of five different <a href="http://www.nato.int/isaf/structure/regional_command/index.html" type="external">Regional Commands</a>: East (led by the U.S.), West (Italy), South (Canada), North (Germany), and Capital (Italy). Bordering Pakistan, RC(E) is about the size of South Carolina and contains 14 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and 25% of the country’s population.</p>
<p>You can view a map <a href="http://www.nato.int/isaf/docu/epub/maps/graphics/afghanistan_prt3.pdf" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>In gauging U.S. success in the East, Rubin points to this chart comparing the number of weekly violent incidents in the RC(E) to a year ago.</p>
<p><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_bXtQNTuY3LE/SD2qbDGV91I/AAAAAAAAAO8/SMf3_W7YAz4/s1600-h/RCE+wk+20.jpg" type="external" /></p>
<p>Sadly, years later, Afghanistan is still <a href="/news/dailymojo/2004/08/08_522.html" type="external">nothing to brag about</a>.</p>
<p /> | Afghanistan: Still Nothing To Brag About | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/06/afghanistan-still-nothing-brag-about/ | 2008-06-09 | 4 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/dish-network/" type="external">Dish Network</a> said the devastating hurricane that ripped through Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in September led to its net loss of 129,000 TV subscribers third quarter of 2017.</p>
<p>Excluding the losses Puerto Rico and the USVI, Dish actually posted a small net gain of 16,000 pay-TV subs in the U.S., according to the company. In addition, its overall churn rate improved in Q3 — standing at 1.57% compared with 2.11% in Q3 2016.</p>
<p>Dish combines together both satellite and&#160;Sling TV&#160;over-the-top customers in reporting subscribers, forcing investors to guess at how much its core satellite biz is shrinking.</p>
<p>After Hurricane Maria swept through Puerto Rico and USVI, Dish said it “proactively paused” service for customers in those areas, representing a net loss of 145,000 TV subscribers for Q3. The company ended the period with 13.203 million pay-TV subs, a 3.2% decline (down 440,000) over the prior 12 months.</p>
<p>Overall, Dish slightly missed Wall Street’s earnings expectations for Q3. The company posted revenue of $3.58 billion, up 0.5% year over year, and net income of $297 million (down from $318 million in the year-ago quarter). Dish’s earnings per share of 57 cents missed analyst forecasts of 59 cents.</p>
<p>Dish said that it expects to incur expenses in connection with the reactivation of returning customers in Puerto Rico and USVI, and will therefore record any returning customers in those areas as gross new pay-TV subscriber activations for the period in which they return.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding Dish’s exposure to Hurricane Maria, cord-cutting and lower-cost over-the-top services continue taking their toll on traditional pay-TV players.&#160; <a href="http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/comcast-nbcuniversal-q3-earnings-1202599711/" type="external">Comcast</a>,&#160; <a href="http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/att-directv-q3-2017-record-pay-tv-loss-1202598165/" type="external">AT&amp;T</a>&#160;(which owns DirecTV) and&#160; <a href="http://variety.com/2017/biz/news/charter-q3-2017-pay-tv-losses-password-sharing-1202600044/" type="external">Charter Communications</a>&#160;each reported accelerating losses of video subscribers in Q3 — with AT&amp;T shedding a record 385,000 DirecTV satellite and U-verse TV customers in the period.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Dish’s dishNET broadband service declined during Q3. As of September 30, 2017, it had 459,000 broadband subs in the U.S., down 22.6% year over year.</p>
<p>Pictured above:&#160;Homes in Catano, Puerto Rico, on Sept. 28, one week after Hurricane Maria hit the island.</p> | Dish Blames Q3 Pay-TV Subscriber Loss on Hurricane Maria | false | https://newsline.com/dish-blames-q3-pay-tv-subscriber-loss-on-hurricane-maria/ | 2017-11-09 | 1 |
<p>New York TimesLorne Manly reports a nearly two-and-a-half-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, held before a standing-room-only crowd, included testimony in favor of a shield law for the news media from nine elected representatives, lawyers and journalists, including Time's Matthew Cooper. (Related <a href="http://nytimes.com/2005/07/21/opinion/21thu2.html" type="external">NYT editorial</a>.) &gt; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-oe-nelson21jul21.story" type="external">Nelson: Leaks from secret sources crucial to informing the public (LAT)</a></p> | Panel gives mostly positive reception to shield law proposal | false | https://poynter.org/news/panel-gives-mostly-positive-reception-shield-law-proposal | 2005-07-21 | 2 |
<p>TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The Latest on a casino shuttle boat that caught fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast (all times local):</p>
<p>11:45 p.m.</p>
<p>A female passenger on a casino shuttle boat that was consumed by a huge fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast has died.</p>
<p>The Tampa Bay Times <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/Mother-of-two-42-identified-as-casualty-after-Port-Richey-boat-fire_164523869" type="external">reports</a> that the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner’s Office identified the woman 42-year-old Carrie Dempsey of Lutz.</p>
<p>The mom of two was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m. Sunday while being treated at Bayonet Point Regional Medical Center.</p>
<p>Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise spokeswoman Beth Fifer said Monday that the company “was deeply saddened” by the death of a 42-year-old woman who was a passenger on the boat when it caught fire off Port Richey on Sunday.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze’s offshore casino. It is located offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land.</p>
<p>Florida authorities say a casino venture’s shuttle boat caught fire and all 50 passengers safely made it to the nearby shore after a rescue operation in the Tampa Bay area. (Jan. 14)</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>10 a.m.</p>
<p>The casino company said its shuttle boat that caught fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast never had any previous problems.</p>
<p>Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise spokeswoman Beth Fifer said Monday that the company “was deeply saddened” by the death of a 42-year-old woman who was a passenger on the boat when it caught fire off Port Richey on Sunday. She said there had never been any issues with the boat, which was destroyed by the fast-moving fire.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday the passenger died late Sunday, hours after the 4 p.m. fire. He said she had arrived at the hospital less than an hour earlier after becoming ill.</p>
<p>Officials originally had said no injuries were life threatening. Fifteen passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze’s offshore casino. It is located offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land.</p>
<p>Florida authorities say a casino venture’s shuttle boat caught fire and all 50 passengers safely made it to the nearby shore after a rescue operation in the Tampa Bay area. (Jan. 14)</p>
<p>The Coast Guard is investigating the fire.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>9:15 a.m.</p>
<p>Authorities say the woman who died after a casino shuttle boat caught fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast was 42 years old.</p>
<p>Pasco County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Kevin Doll did not release the victim’s name. A cause of death is being determined.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday the passenger died late Sunday, hours after the 4 p.m. fire. He said she had arrived at the hospital less than an hour earlier after becoming ill.</p>
<p>Officials originally had said no injuries were life threatening. Fifteen passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company said it might have a statement later Monday.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>8:30 a.m.</p>
<p>The Coast Guard says it is investigating a casino shuttle boat fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast that led to the death of a female passenger.</p>
<p>Petty Officer 1st Class Michael De Nyse said Monday that investigators will determine a cause for Sunday night’s fire and will examine the history of the boat and the company, Tropical Breeze Casino.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday that the passenger died late Sunday, hours after the 4 p.m. fire. He said she had arrived at the hospital less than an hour earlier after becoming ill. Her name has not been released and a cause of death has not been determined. Officials originally had said no injuries were life threatening. Fifteen passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company said it might have a statement later Monday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8 a.m.</p>
<p>A female passenger on a casino shuttle boat that was consumed by a huge fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast has died.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday that the woman died late Sunday, hours after the fire. He said she had arrived less than an hour earlier after becoming ill. Her name has not been released and a cause of death has not been determined.</p>
<p>Officials had originally said none of the 15 injuries were life threatening. Passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries. Conover said eight other people treated at Bayonet Point have been released.</p>
<p>Fire officials and witnesses say people leaped into chilly waters and reached shore in Port Richey in the greater Tampa Bay area after the fire Sunday afternoon.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company didn’t immediately respond to messages left seeking comment.</p>
<p>A cause wasn’t immediately clear.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11 p.m.</p>
<p>Authorities say dozens of passengers and crew are safe after a casino shuttle boat was consumed by a huge fire while making a regular run to a casino ship off the Florida Gulf Coast.</p>
<p>Fire officials and witnesses say people leaped into chilly waters and reached shore in Port Richey in the greater Tampa Bay area after the fire Sunday afternoon.</p>
<p>Authorities say 15 people with chest pain, smoke inhalation and other minor injuries were taken to the hospital to be checked.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carried people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company didn’t immediately respond to messages left seeking comment.</p>
<p>A cause wasn’t immediately clear.</p>
<p>TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The Latest on a casino shuttle boat that caught fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast (all times local):</p>
<p>11:45 p.m.</p>
<p>A female passenger on a casino shuttle boat that was consumed by a huge fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast has died.</p>
<p>The Tampa Bay Times <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/Mother-of-two-42-identified-as-casualty-after-Port-Richey-boat-fire_164523869" type="external">reports</a> that the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner’s Office identified the woman 42-year-old Carrie Dempsey of Lutz.</p>
<p>The mom of two was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m. Sunday while being treated at Bayonet Point Regional Medical Center.</p>
<p>Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise spokeswoman Beth Fifer said Monday that the company “was deeply saddened” by the death of a 42-year-old woman who was a passenger on the boat when it caught fire off Port Richey on Sunday.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze’s offshore casino. It is located offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land.</p>
<p>Florida authorities say a casino venture’s shuttle boat caught fire and all 50 passengers safely made it to the nearby shore after a rescue operation in the Tampa Bay area. (Jan. 14)</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>10 a.m.</p>
<p>The casino company said its shuttle boat that caught fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast never had any previous problems.</p>
<p>Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise spokeswoman Beth Fifer said Monday that the company “was deeply saddened” by the death of a 42-year-old woman who was a passenger on the boat when it caught fire off Port Richey on Sunday. She said there had never been any issues with the boat, which was destroyed by the fast-moving fire.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday the passenger died late Sunday, hours after the 4 p.m. fire. He said she had arrived at the hospital less than an hour earlier after becoming ill.</p>
<p>Officials originally had said no injuries were life threatening. Fifteen passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze’s offshore casino. It is located offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land.</p>
<p>Florida authorities say a casino venture’s shuttle boat caught fire and all 50 passengers safely made it to the nearby shore after a rescue operation in the Tampa Bay area. (Jan. 14)</p>
<p>The Coast Guard is investigating the fire.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>9:15 a.m.</p>
<p>Authorities say the woman who died after a casino shuttle boat caught fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast was 42 years old.</p>
<p>Pasco County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Kevin Doll did not release the victim’s name. A cause of death is being determined.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday the passenger died late Sunday, hours after the 4 p.m. fire. He said she had arrived at the hospital less than an hour earlier after becoming ill.</p>
<p>Officials originally had said no injuries were life threatening. Fifteen passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company said it might have a statement later Monday.</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>8:30 a.m.</p>
<p>The Coast Guard says it is investigating a casino shuttle boat fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast that led to the death of a female passenger.</p>
<p>Petty Officer 1st Class Michael De Nyse said Monday that investigators will determine a cause for Sunday night’s fire and will examine the history of the boat and the company, Tropical Breeze Casino.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday that the passenger died late Sunday, hours after the 4 p.m. fire. He said she had arrived at the hospital less than an hour earlier after becoming ill. Her name has not been released and a cause of death has not been determined. Officials originally had said no injuries were life threatening. Fifteen passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company said it might have a statement later Monday.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>8 a.m.</p>
<p>A female passenger on a casino shuttle boat that was consumed by a huge fire off Florida’s Gulf Coast has died.</p>
<p>Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point spokesman Kurt Conover said Monday that the woman died late Sunday, hours after the fire. He said she had arrived less than an hour earlier after becoming ill. Her name has not been released and a cause of death has not been determined.</p>
<p>Officials had originally said none of the 15 injuries were life threatening. Passengers had experienced chest pain, smoke inhalation and other injuries. Conover said eight other people treated at Bayonet Point have been released.</p>
<p>Fire officials and witnesses say people leaped into chilly waters and reached shore in Port Richey in the greater Tampa Bay area after the fire Sunday afternoon.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carries people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company didn’t immediately respond to messages left seeking comment.</p>
<p>A cause wasn’t immediately clear.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>11 p.m.</p>
<p>Authorities say dozens of passengers and crew are safe after a casino shuttle boat was consumed by a huge fire while making a regular run to a casino ship off the Florida Gulf Coast.</p>
<p>Fire officials and witnesses say people leaped into chilly waters and reached shore in Port Richey in the greater Tampa Bay area after the fire Sunday afternoon.</p>
<p>Authorities say 15 people with chest pain, smoke inhalation and other minor injuries were taken to the hospital to be checked.</p>
<p>The shuttle boat routinely carried people back and forth from the Tropical Breeze Casino Cruise, which is offshore because it can’t legally operate close to land, according to authorities. The company didn’t immediately respond to messages left seeking comment.</p>
<p>A cause wasn’t immediately clear.</p> | The Latest: Passenger who died after boat fire identified | false | https://apnews.com/eb1a0ad9d96a46a2ba21e80786277f63 | 2018-01-16 | 2 |
<p />
<p>NEW YORK/NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) - Boeing Co faces its first union vote on Wednesday at its aircraft factory in South Carolina, a high-profile test for organized labor in the nation's most strongly anti-union state.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The world's largest planemaker is running a hardball campaign against the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), which is trying to organize about 3,000 workers at one of two plants where Boeing makes 787 Dreamliners. The other, in Washington state, has long been unionized by the IAM.</p>
<p>"It would be a major, major win for the machinists if they got this," said Arthur Schwartz, an independent consultant who worked in labor relations at General Motors Co for two decades and does not represent either side.</p>
<p>Opposition is strong in South Carolina, which is one of 28 states that does not require workers to join a union, and has the lowest proportion of union workers, at 1.6 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. New York is the highest with 23.6 percent.</p>
<p>The IAM canceled a voted at the Boeing plant in April 2015 after it claimed there was "political interference" from state officials and "misinformation" spread among workers. Former Governor Nikki Haley, who is now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was among those who voiced strong opposition to the union in 2015.</p>
<p>Boeing told Reuters in an emailed statement that in the current campaign it has hired the same lawyer who helped it defend against the IAM previously.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>Videos and posts on Boeing's web and social media sites portray the IAM as a "divisive" force that fights with management, makes promises it cannot keep and leads workers into strikes.</p>
<p>In one video on Boeing's site a production manager at Boeing South Carolina describes the tension and lost income from striking twice while he worked as a union machinist in Renton, Washington.</p>
<p>"There was times where I wondered where I was going to be able to feed my kid," said the manager, Daniel Mihalic, over ominous music. "Please vote 'no' on February 15."</p>
<p>Boeing invested $750 million to build the South Carolina factory after a costly machinists strike in 2008 that shut down production in Washington. It spent $1 billion more to expand aircraft engine casing and interiors production. Its employment in the state peaked at 8,400 in 2014 and has since fallen by 10 percent.</p>
<p>The company said factory officials were unavailable for comment because "their time is committed to ensuring our teammates understand the voting process, the realities of union representation and the advantages of a nonunion environment."</p>
<p>Boeing's videos are being aired on local TV stations - including during the Super Bowl - and also shown in break rooms at the plant, mechanic Elliott Slater, 57, who supports the union, said in an interview.</p>
<p>When the IAM filed for a vote with the National Labor Relations Board last month, Slater and others said, a display of diapers and clothing appeared in a break room. "The goods on display would cost your family $800," a sign said. "You have better things to do with your money than pay union dues."</p>
<p>Slater said workers want higher wages and more certainty about their shifts, which change often. The IAM said hourly workers in South Carolina earn about 36 percent less than their counterparts in Washington.</p>
<p>"We're tired of the back-and-forth, the constant inundation of the anti-union rhetoric," Slater said. "We're just ready to vote."</p>
<p>STANDARD PLAY BOOK</p>
<p>Boeing's campaign follows the usual "union avoidance" play book used by many manufacturers, labor experts said.</p>
<p>That contrasts with the relationship Detroit automakers and the United Auto Workers union have forged. After years of struggle, the companies decided bad union relations were unproductive, former labor negotiators for Ford Motor Co and GM said.</p>
<p>"Ford was the last to get organized of the Big Three, but we were the first to understand that we had a business partner in the UAW and we were going to work with them. We're not going to fight them," said Marty Mulloy, who served for nine years as Ford's vice president of labor affairs, retiring in 2013.</p>
<p>Ford found negative campaigns did not work, he said, and would not use one today.</p>
<p>"My experience has been working collaboratively with unions yields better results," Mulloy said. Going negative "just takes the animosity to another level. You take it from, 'I disagree with you on principle,' to 'I'm going to hire some people to try to discredit you and your institution.'"</p>
<p>Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751, which represents more than 35,000 union workers at Boeing in Washington state, said members are sending videos and posting words of support on Boeing's South Carolina Facebook page. But they have not paid much attention to Boeing's counter campaign, having seen such tactics before.</p>
<p>"Personally, I hate seeing this in any anti-union campaign," he said. "I like people having a free choice on what they want to do, being able to ask questions and not seeing intimidation."</p>
<p>(Reporting by Alwyn Scott and Harriet McLeod; editing by Diane Craft)</p> | Boeing, machinists face off over union at South Carolina plant | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/02/13/boeing-machinists-face-off-over-union-at-south-carolina-plant.html | 2017-02-13 | 0 |
<p><a href="http://wp.me/p3bwni-64J" type="external">21st Century Wire</a>&#160;says…</p>
<p>Wake up! No, seriously wake up – Barack Obama is about to give his ‘momentous’ NSA speech.</p>
<p>It not yet clear what the intended purpose of the speech is, but in typical Soetoro fashion, we expect him to talk a lot, but say very little.</p>
<p>Here is how the White House PR spin cycle works: knowing that very little people will actually be watching the “historic” speech on TGI Friday, White House Mandarins have gone all out to pre-release what the President ‘intends to say’ – including all the right sound bites and pro-constitutional rhetoric. When you listen to the actual speech it will be much more vague than the pre-speech PR bomb. Remember, with Obama – it’s all about what he intends to do, not about what will actually get done. So if you’re expecting anything earth-shattering, do not hold your breath.&#160;Says the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-speech-obama-to-call-for-restructuring-of-nsas-surveillance-program/2014/01/17/e9d5a8ba-7f6e-11e3-95c6-0a7aa80874bc_story.html" type="external">Washington Post</a>:</p>
<p>“President Obama will call Friday for significant changes to the way the National Security Agency collects and accesses telephone metadata of U.S. citizens, moving to transition away from government control of the information and requiring the government to obtain a court order to access it, a White House official said.”</p>
<p>Sounds good, right? But wait, hold on…</p>
<p>“But he also will say that the United States should be able to “preserve those capabilities while addressing the privacy and civil liberties concerns” raised by recent disclosures in the media about the government control of the metadata, the official said.</p>
<p>Obama has asked Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and intelligence officials to deliver a plan to transition away from government control of the information before the program is due to be reauthorized by a secret court March 28th”.</p>
<p>Soetoro: “I checked with Holder, he says it’s ‘legal’ if we do it off shore, or with Schmidt. Have to run, I’m about to tee off on the back nine”.</p>
<p>Again, we’re forced to call ‘bullshit’ here.</p>
<p>Yes, they will still be collecting your data – most likely, arrangements have already been made with large corporate contractors already involved in the NSA data hoovering operation – to hold their data off-site from government servers, or off-shore held with British GCHQ centre in Menwith Hill, or at Pine Gap in Australia at &#160;– but access will still be granted as and when.</p>
<p>Of course, we’d LOVE to be wrong about this one.&#160;</p>
<p>Stay tuned for our post-speech critique of Barry’s Big NSA Adventure…</p>
<p>READ MORE NSA NEWS AT: <a href="" type="internal">21st Century Wire NSA File</a></p> | PR Super-Spin: Obama Supposed to Deliver ‘Historic’ NSA Speech | true | http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/01/17/pr-super-spin-obama-supposed-to-deliver-his-historic-nsa-speech/ | 2014-01-17 | 4 |
<p><a href="http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/3-large-earthquakes-and-a-major-volcanic-eruption-in-mexico-spark-fears-that-the-big-one-could-hit-california-soon/ring-of-fire-wikipedia-2#main" type="external" />The portion of “the Ring of Fire” that runs along the west coast of North America is starting to shake like a leaf. As most of you already know, the outer perimeter of the Pacific Ocean is known for high levels of seismic activity, and the experts tell us that more than 80 percent of all earthquakes and more than 70 percent of all volcanic eruptions take place within the Ring of Fire. The North American section of the Ring of Fire has been relatively quiet for an extended period of time, but now all of the shaking down in Mexico is causing a tremendous amount of concern. In fact, some now fear that all of the shaking down there may be a harbinger of things to come for California.</p>
<p>Within the last 30 days, there have been three major earthquakes in Mexico. This latest one was a magnitude 6.2 earthquake, and it was accompanied&#160; <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4914156/Third-earthquake-Mexico-month-results-5-dead.html" type="external">by an eruption of Mt. Popocatepetl</a>…</p>
<p>A magnitude 6.2 earthquake that shook Mexico on Saturday was blamed for five deaths, spreading fear among a population reeling from multiple natural disasters and interrupting the search for survivors from a bigger tremor earlier this week.</p>
<p>South of Mexico City, the Popocatepetl volcano sent a column of ash into the sky, capping a period of seismic activity including two powerful tremors this month that have killed more than 400 people and caused damages of up to $8 billion.</p>
<p>Mexico’s capital was shattered by Tuesday’s magnitude 7.1 quake that flattened dozens of buildings and killed at least 307 people.</p>
<p>Of course the magnitude 8.1 earthquake that hit Mexico back on September 7th was the largest earthquake that we have seen down there in ages.</p>
<p>The earthquakes are getting most of the attention from the media, and without a doubt they have caused extensive damage, but Mt. Popocatepetl may be of even greater concern. It has&#160; <a href="http://strangesounds.org/2017/09/popocatepetl-volcano-explodes-three-times-on-sept-23-video-pictures.html" type="external">“registered 181 low-intensity exhalations”</a>&#160;in recent days, and on Saturday it erupted explosively three times.</p>
<p>A catastrophic eruption of Mt. Popocatepetl would be a nightmare beyond anything that we have witnessed in the modern history of Mexico. The volcano sits only about 50 miles away from Mexico City, and there are close to 25 million people living in the Mexico City metropolitan area. In recent years, smoke and ash from minor eruptions of Mt. Popocatepetl have reached the city, but most people living there have absolutely no idea how immensely powerful the volcano truly is.</p>
<p>Popocatepetl is an ancient Aztec word that can be translated as “smoking mountain”, and centuries ago enormous mud flows from the mountain&#160; <a href="http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/one-of-the-most-dangerous-volcanoes-in-north-america-is-roaring-to-life" type="external">buried entire Aztec cities</a>…</p>
<p>Historians tell us that Popocatepetl had a dramatic impact on the ancient Aztecs. Giant mud flows produced by massive eruptions covered entire Aztec cities. In fact, some of these mud flows were so large that they buried&#160;entire pyramids&#160;in super-heated mud.</p>
<p>But we haven’t witnessed anything like that in any of our lifetimes, so it is hard to even imagine devastation of that magnitude.</p>
<p>In addition to Mexico City’s mammoth population, there are millions of others that live in the surrounding region. Overall, there are about 25 million people that live in the immediate vicinity of Popocatepetl. Thankfully, we haven’t seen a major eruption of the volcano in modern times, but at some point that will change.</p>
<p>As seismic activity rattles Mexico, many living on the California coast are beginning to take notice.</p>
<p>In fact, it is being reported that there was&#160; <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/646913/california-earthquake-ring-of-fire-mexico-tremor-warning-san-jose" type="external">a run on emergency supplies</a>&#160;after a magnitude 3.3 earthquake struck near San Jose…</p>
<p>Last week residents of&#160; <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/645295/san-jose-earthquake-california-earthquakes-san-andreas-fault-line" type="external">San Jose were reportedly stocking up on emergency supplies</a>&#160;over fears the area will be hit by a massive earthquake.</p>
<p>The city was shaken by a number of tremors including a strong 3.3 magnitude quake that was felt throughout the region.</p>
<p>San Jose is situated precariously close to the San Andreas fault line, an 800-mile fissure that runs almost the length of California.</p>
<p>Scientists agree that large swathes of southern California – including Los Angeles and San Diego – are long overdue a “Big One” earthquake of magnitude 7 or more.</p>
<p>And just last Friday, it was reported that a magnitude 5.7 earthquake&#160; <a href="http://abc7news.com/weather/preliminary-magnitude-57-earthquake-strikes-off-northern-california-coast/2444032/" type="external">“struck off the northern coast of California”</a>…</p>
<p>A preliminary-magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California on Friday afternoon, but there was no threat of a tsunami, officials said.</p>
<p>The quake’s epicenter was 133.6 miles west-southwest of Eureka, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its depth was measured at 3.6 miles.</p>
<p>Scientists assure us that someday the west coast will be hit by a major tsunami. It literally is just a matter of time. In fact,&#160; <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-triple-junction-quakes-20140312,0,2124861.story#axzz2w2ufVst1" type="external">the Los Angeles Times</a>reported on one study that discovered that a magnitude 9.0 earthquake along the Cascadia fault could potentially produce a tsunami which would “wash away coastal towns”…</p>
<p>If a 9.0 earthquake were to strike along California’s sparsely populated North Coast, it would have a catastrophic ripple effect.</p>
<p>A&#160;giant tsunami&#160;created by the quake would&#160;wash away coastal towns, destroy U.S. 101 and cause $70 billion in damage over a large swath of the Pacific coast. More than 100 bridges would be lost, power lines toppled and coastal towns isolated. Residents would have as few as 15 minutes notice to flee to higher ground, and as many as 10,000 would perish.</p>
<p>Scientists last year published this grim scenario for a massive rupture along the Cascadia fault system, which runs 700 miles off shore from Northern California to Vancouver Island.</p>
<p>And don’t forget about the volcanoes on the west coast either. Mt. Rainier is known as&#160; <a href="http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/the-most-dangerous-mountain-in-the-united-states-what-would-happen-if-mt-rainier-erupted" type="external">“the most dangerous mountain in America”</a>&#160;for a reason, and in my apocalyptic novel entitled&#160; <a href="http://amzn.to/2wQ3JVj" type="external">The Beginning Of The End</a>&#160;I show why this is the case. Someday Mt. Rainier will erupt again, and you don’t want to be around what that happens.</p>
<p>As recent weeks have clearly demonstrated, our planet is become increasingly unstable.</p>
<p>For the moment, much of the American population is still extremely complacent, but I have a feeling that won’t last for too much longer. A great shaking is coming, and most people in this country will be completely blindsided by it.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.michaelsnyderforcongress.com/" type="external">Michael Snyder</a>&#160;is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his&#160; <a href="https://www.michaelsnyderforcongress.com/contribute.html" type="external">official website</a>. His new book entitled&#160; <a href="http://amzn.to/2t5bx4A" type="external">“Living A Life That Really Matters”</a>&#160;is available in paperback and for the Kindle on&#160; <a href="http://amzn.to/2t5bx4A" type="external">Amazon.com</a>.</p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/3-large-earthquakes-and-a-major-volcanic-eruption-in-mexico-spark-fears-that-the-big-one-could-hit-california-soon" type="external">End of the American Dream</a></p>
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<p /> | 3 Large Earthquakes And A Major Volcanic Eruption In Mexico Spark Fears That The Big One Could Hit California Soon | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2017/09/25/3-large-earthquakes-and-a-major-volcanic-eruption-in-mexico-spark-fears-that-the-big-one-could-hit-california-soon-2/ | 2017-09-25 | 0 |
<p>Cities are getting big revenue boosts from U.S. states, leading some municipal budgets to recover from the 2007-09 recession, Pew Charitable Trusts found in an analysis of financial reports for the 30 most-populated cities released on Monday.</p>
<p>A time lag in assessing property taxes, the largest revenue source for cities, caused the recession to hit local budgets later than state and federal ones and prolonged the economic pain. Through 2011 cities continued to cut services, tap reserves, shrink pension contributions and raise taxes, Pew found.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Still by fiscal 2011, which for most cities ended on June 30, 2012, the revenues of nine cities reached their pre-recession peaks. Two were in Texas: San Antonio and Dallas. Revenues for Washington, D.C., Atlanta, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Chicago also had recovered.</p>
<p>Portland, Oregon had the highest level, with revenues near 110 percent of the pre-recession peak, Pew found.</p>
<p>"In each, aid from other governments was the first- or second-largest contributor of growth as city revenue recovered," Pew found. "This group of cities typically got larger increases in intergovernmental aid and received infusions from states and the federal government later...than did the other 21 cities."</p>
<p>Revenues were approaching pre-recession levels in five other cities by 2011, the last fiscal year full data was available: Baltimore, Cincinnati, Denver, New York, Philadelphia.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Lisa Lambert; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | U.S. City Revenues Make Comeback With States' Help: Pew | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2013/11/11/us-city-revenues-make-comeback-with-states-help-pew.html | 2016-03-02 | 0 |
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<p>HOPATCONG, N.J. (AP) — Prosecutors have dropped most charges against two New Jersey brothers stemming from an incident in which one of them wore a bunny costume and repeatedly blew an air horn inside a police station.</p>
<p>The New Jersey Herald reports ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2i9spps" type="external">http://bit.ly/2i9spps</a> ) the Sussex County Prosecutor's Office will not pursue charges of harassment, obstruction, and resisting arrest against Kevin Hemmerich because of insufficient evidence. Similar charges were also dismissed against Jason Hemmerich.</p>
<p>Prosecutors are still charging Kevin Hemmerich with disorderly conduct.</p>
<p>On Nov. 17, Kevin Hemmerich, accompanied by his brother, entered the Hopatcong Police Department lobby to turn himself in for an outstanding warrant. Kevin Hemmerich was dressed in a bunny costume and repeatedly blew the air horn.</p>
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<p>A police officer slapped Kevin Hemmerich after asking him why he was blowing the horn. The officer was charged with assault.</p>
<p>Information from: The New Jersey Herald (Newton, N.J.), <a href="http://www.njherald.com" type="external">http://www.njherald.com</a></p>
<p><a href="#21131514-1c26-44b9-b164-c9cd7284c324" type="external">© 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.</a> Learn more about our <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/privacy" type="external">Privacy Policy</a> and <a href="http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/terms" type="external">Terms of Use</a>.</p> | Most charges dropped vs. man in bunny suit, air horn case | false | https://abqjournal.com/902925/police-officer-charged-with-slapping-man-dressed-as-bunny.html | 2016-12-06 | 2 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" />Sounds about right for this mayor.</p>
<p>Chicago’s disgraced police department is facing a federal civil rights investigation after cops were caught appearing to ‘delete’ footage of teen Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by a white police officer.</p>
<p>Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether the department’s practices violate federal and constitutional law.</p>
<p>This week Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ousted the city’s police chief after a public outcry over the handling of the case, but now footage has emerged on social media in which a Chicago police officer accuses Emanuel of colluding in a cover-up.&#160;</p>
<p>The 15-second clip, filmed at a rally, was posted originally on Instagram by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/-nOK8ir5nC/?taken-by=xaneetta" type="external">@xaneetta</a> then shared on Twitter by an account belonging to radio host <a href="https://twitter.com/YesiOnAir/status/671808328809504770" type="external">Yesenia Alvarez</a>.</p>
<p>It shows an officer state that Emanuel ‘paid the family to shut them up.’</p>
<p>Emanuel announced at a news conference on Tuesday morning that he had dismissed Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who only days ago insisted to reporters that the mayor had his ‘back.’</p>
<p>Protesters had been calling for McCarthy’s dismissal for days. He has been at the helm of the Chicago PD since May 2011.</p>
<p>Laquan McDonald’s family spoke out in praise of Emanuel’s decision, but said they were shocked by the news that there had been a $5 million settlement with the city after Laquan’s death – they said it was negotiated by his great uncle.</p>
<p>‘No one in my family would settle for this. And if it was the case of this happening, I don’t know about it, and I was his caregiver,’ uncle Shyrell Johnson told <a href="http://www.fox32chicago.com/news/local/55111620-story" type="external">FOX 32 Chicago.&#160;&#160;</a></p>
<p>At the weekend never-before-seen screengrabs emerged from inside a Chicago Burger King showing what appears to be police officers at a computer terminal on the night of October 20, 2014, when McDonald was gunned down.</p>
<p>On Tuesday, Madigan said&#160;the death of McDonald, raises serious questions about the use of lawful and excessive force.</p>
<p>She says trust in the police department is ‘broken’.</p>
<p>In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Madigan noted four other high-profile cases in Chicago, including the death of Ronald Johnson, 25,who was shot by police last year.</p>
<p>‘The shocking death of Laquan McDonald is the latest tragedy in our city that highlights serious questions about the use of unlawful and excessive force by Chicago police officers and the lack of accountability for such abuse,’ Madigan said.</p>
<p>Read more: <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3342145/Disgraced-Chicago-police-department-faces-federal-civil-rights-investigation-cops-caught-deleting-Laquan-McDonald-shooting-footage-one-officer-accuses-Mayor-Rahm-Emmanuel-colluding-cover-up.html#ixzz3tB375rTg" type="external">Daily&#160;Mail</a></p> | MAYOR EMANUEL ‘COLLUDED’ WITH POLICE: In the Deleting of Laquan Shooting Footage | true | http://girlsjustwannahaveguns.com/mayor-emanuel-colluded-with-police-in-the-deleting-of-laquan-shooting-footage/ | 0 |
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<p>By Rory Carroll</p>
<p>(Reuters) – American Mikaela Shiffrin beat rival Petra Vlhova of Slovakia to claim the World Cup title in the women’s slalom for the second year in a row at the Killington Cup in Vermont on Sunday.</p>
<p>Shiffrin built a commanding 0.89 of a second lead with an aggressive first run and avoided mistakes in her solid second trip down the icy course in windy conditions.</p>
<p>She finished with a combined time for the two runs of 1 minute 40.91 seconds, 1.64 seconds better than Vlhova.</p>
<p>“I just tried to stay as balanced as I could,” Shiffrin said of her second run.</p>
<p>“I wanted to really attack the second run but I also knew I had to be smart in some sections and it worked out quite well.</p>
<p>“It wasn’t easy but when I ski balanced, it makes it easier than when I don’t.”</p>
<p>The win marks the 22-year-old Shiffrin’s first World Cup crown of the year and her 26th career title in slalom.</p>
<p>Shiffrin will look to be the first skier to win back-to-back gold medals in slalom when she competes at the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea in February.</p>
<p>Sunday’s win was payback for Shiffrin, who has lost to fellow 22-year-old Vlhova in the last two World Cup slalom competitions.</p>
<p>The speedy Vlhova has emerged as the American’s chief rival in the sport.</p>
<p>Austrian Bernadette Schild finished a distant third, 2.67 second back of Shiffrin.</p>
<p>The Colorado-born Shiffrin, who spent her formative years in New Hampshire and Vermont, credited the vocal support of the record crowd of 18,000 for her win.</p>
<p>“Today I felt they really carried me to the finish,” she said. “The fans on the East Coast are the best crowd that I race in front of.”</p>
<p />
<p>Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.</p> | Alpine Skiing: Shiffrin tops Vlhova to win World Cup slalom title in Killington | false | https://newsline.com/alpine-skiing-shiffrin-tops-vlhova-to-win-world-cup-slalom-title-in-killington/ | 2017-11-26 | 1 |
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<p>Southwest Cheese President George Chappell said the expansion would "without a doubt" make the plant the largest one in the world.</p>
<p>"There are some other cheese plants that come close (to being the largest)," Chappell told commissioners, "and depending on the date I use caution when I say we're the largest, but in the future with this expansion, I won't need caution."</p>
<p>The expansion, Chappell said, would add around three million pounds of milk to their current production and bring 50 additional jobs.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The total cost of the 110,000 square foot expansion is around $140 million, he added. Chappell said it would take around two years to complete after groundbreaking and hopes it will be finished by the end of April 2018.</p>
<p>Included in the expansion, Chappell told commissioners, is the expansion of their whey plant.</p>
<p>"We see a growing need for protein for the average consumer," he said, noting that in the past it's typically been nutritionists and body builders that use their protein. "More people are recognizing they need to increase their protein intake. Seeing the demand in protein bars, they will be key suppliers for nutrition bars."</p>
<p>Commissioner Sandra Taylor-Sawyer asked Chappell how much water the plant uses.</p>
<p>Chappell said since the plant began operations in 2005, they have reduced their water usage by half.</p>
<p>"When Southwest Cheese came here, that was a concern," Chappell said. "People are surprised to know how little we use. One of these circle pivots (350 thousand gallons) is how much we use to supply right now."</p>
<p>When the plant opened its doors, he said they were using 650 thousand gallons of water. With the new expansion, Chappell said he expects the water usage will stay the same.</p>
<p>Some of the water they do use, he said, comes from the milk they produce.</p>
<p>"When we take water from the milk, we basically take it to consumable water levels using reverse osmosis," Chappell explained. "The water is so clean, it was leaching the minerals out of our copper piping because there was zero of anything in it. We had to add some minerals back to the water."</p>
<p>Commissioners approved the resolution unanimously.</p>
<p>"It's an exciting day," CIDC Executive Director Chase Gentry said. "One thing that's impressive to me is Southwest Cheese is under contract with the city for 275 jobs. They currently have 380 jobs and have performed way above what was contracted. It's a good thing for the community, and we're excited about what's happening out there."</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Commissioners approve bond resolution for Southwest Cheese | false | https://abqjournal.com/693213/commissioners-approve-bond-resolution-for-southwest-cheese.html | 2 |
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<p>CINCINNATI (OH)The Cleveland Plain Dealer03/23/03</p>
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<p>John Nolan Associated Press</p>
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<p>Cincinnati- A yearlong investigation into clergy in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati has resulted in a Roman Catholic priest and a former colleague being charged with sexual crimes involving boys.</p>
<p>The archdiocese said it re gretted the charges and is cooperating with the inves tigation, which prosecutors said is continu ing. The Rev. Kenneth Schoettmer, who is on leave, was charged with gross sexual imposition, sexual battery and rape, Hamilton County Prosecutor Michael Allen said.</p>
<p>Schoettmer, who is accused of using force to sexually abuse a 17-year-old boy he was counseling in 1999, could be sentenced to 15 years in prison if convicted of all charges.</p>
<p>The former Rev. George Cooley was charged with eight felony counts of gross sexual imposition, each punishable by three to 10 years in prison. Allen said Cooley abused a boy from age 8 to 12, starting in 1984, when Cooley was a priest at Guardian Angels Parish in Cincinnati.</p> | 2 charged in probe of abuse by priests | false | https://poynter.org/news/2-charged-probe-abuse-priests | 2003-03-24 | 2 |
<p>The Mars One foundation, a Dutch based non-profit group that plans to send humans on a one-way trip to Mars, has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/17/tech/mars-one-final-100/" type="external">narrowed down 200,000 applications to 100</a>. Americans make up 39 of the shortlisted candidates from 35 countries. These candidates will go on into further testing later this year where they can expect team-building exercises and tests in isolation.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mars-one.com/" type="external">Mars One</a>&#160;says they hope to launch to the Red Planet every two years from 2024, with the aim of starting a colony there and make the process a reality TV show.&#160;Eventually, 24 space bound candidates from the 100 will be selected to make up six crews of four&#160;to be launched. Mars One is&#160;considering 50 men and 50 women for the first four spots on its anticipated Red Planet mission.The&#160;winners get a one-way ticket to Mars and are expected to start colonizing it. The space start up will film the entire selection process, training and the colonization for earthling viewers.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/mars-chooses-100-applicants-reality-tv-show-mars-article-1.2118081" type="external">American candidates</a> include middle-aged engineers, Ph.D. candidates in their 30s and several contenders in their 20s. The ages of all the candidates range from 19 to 60. The United states&#160;has the most amateur astronauts in the running.</p>
<p>Felgentreff is an entrepreneur and vice president of a start-up organization outside San Francisco, and <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/02/17/ticket-mars-red-plant-mars-one/23543053/" type="external">potential Mars colonizer</a>.&#160;“I’ve always had a curiosity for all things science, especially when it comes to space exploration,”&#160;he says.&#160;Felgentreff is married and would be leaving his wife behind for the quest,&#160;“It’s a one-way ticket to anywhere. I would probably die on Earth if I stayed here too.”&#160;He said his wife shares his curiosity of combining, “humans with an element of risk and using technology to overcome those risks.”</p>
<p>“The large cut in candidates is an important step towards finding out who has the right stuff to go to Mars,” said Bas Lansdorp, Co-founder &amp; CEO of Mars One. “These aspiring martians provide the world with a glimpse into who the modern day explorers will be.”</p>
<p /> | 39 americans chosen for Mars One colony shortlist | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/02/22/39-americans-chosen-for-mars-one-colony-shortlist/ | 2015-02-22 | 3 |
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<p>(Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Patty Kehoe&#160; resigned as president of Molina Healthcare of New Mexico this week, and has been replaced on an interim basis by Daniel Sorrells, a former Molina president and current employee.</p>
<p>Kehoe, who had been president since 2013, could not be reached for comment Thursday.</p>
<p>A statement from the California-based company said Sorrells appointment would “ensure the continuity of day-to-day operations.” Sorrells had been head of Molina’s Oklahoma operation.</p>
<p>Kehoe was previously a vice president of health-care services at Molina and had spent 20 years as a nurse.</p>
<p>Molina,&#160; provides insurance through New Mexico’s health exchange and to Medicaid and Medicare patients. It offers Medicaid plans in 11 other states.</p>
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<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Kehoe resigns as head of Molina NM | false | https://abqjournal.com/987326/kehoe-resigns-as-head-of-molina-nm.html | 2 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal" />An 11-year-old Ciudad Juarez boy suffering from a massive tumor is scheduled to have a series of surgeries in Albuquerque to remove the growth on his shoulder.</p>
<p>Kristean Alcocer of the First Baptist Church of Rio Rancho says the boy will have his first operation later this month at the University of New Mexico Hospital.</p>
<p>Alcocer says the church has raised money for the last two years for the boy, who is now living in Rio Rancho.</p>
<p>In July 2012, U.S. Homeland Security Investigations assisted in picking up the boy and his parents from a neighborhood in Ciudad Juarez — one of the deadliest cities in the world due to drug cartels.</p>
<p>Federal agents helped the family seek care for the boy after First Baptist Church members saw him during a missionary visit.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Juarez boy to have tumor surgery in New Mexico | false | https://abqjournal.com/490892/juarez-boy-to-have-tumor-surgery-in-new-mexico.html | 2 |
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<p>Editorial for April 6, 2006</p>
<p>By Jim White Editor</p>
<p>Have you noticed in your reading of the Gospels that Jesus is not the least bit bashful? In the first few verses of Matthew 18, the disciples came to Jesus asking, “Who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Implicit in their question was another: “Which of us is greatest?”</p>
<p>Jesus called a little child to him and told his followers, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” What a blow to their egos! To a group whose discussion had been not whether they would enter, but who would be greatest, Jesus countered by saying without changing, none of them would even make it. They needed to release their egos and embrace the humility of a child. In short, they needed to change.</p>
<p>Change. It is often considered a bad word, but Jesus used it without hesitation. It implies the awareness of a current insufficiency followed by an intentional adjustment. That's not all bad. I have a close friend whose mother is seriously ill in an intensive care unit. He has been praying for a change. When workers anticipate a salary figure for the coming year, they hope for a change-a positive one. When I step on the scale, I hope for a change-a negative one. Change can be good!</p>
<p>Still, when most churches think of change, they feel anxious. More than in most other dimensions of their life, “church” represents for people safety and security. When things get stirred up at church, their sense of well-being is at stake. No wonder people like things to be left as they are.</p>
<p>But Jesus' word continues to echo throughout the centuries. “Change.” Not simply for the sake of change; not to adapt to this year's fashions; not “out with the old, in with the new!” Jesus intended for the disciples to take spiritual inventory and make some intentional choices about the men they would be.</p>
<p>Likewise, by logical extension, Jesus challenges the church to do the same. If most churches are honest, their spiritual inventory will reveal areas where radical change is necessary. Take evangelism, for example. Six months have passed since the clock began ticking on SBC President Bobby Welch's challenge to baptize 1 million people during the 2005-2006 church year. What would a spiritual inventory reveal about evangelism in our churches?</p>
<p>Or take the matter of designing worship to take into account those we are trying to reach. The truth is some of our churches need to be turned upside down and inside out. Their focus has become so introspective that many have lost sight of the mission field around them.</p>
<p>I have long held that deacons hold the keys to church vitality. They are in unique positions, as leaders in their congregations, to be obstructionists or to champion changes that need to be made. Don't get me wrong. Pastoral leadership is essential, too. But experience tells me that deacons are so influential in most Baptist churches that they can bless the pastor's leadership or they can withhold their approval and not much happens.</p>
<p>Deacons and other church leaders have a wonderful opportunity to focus on spiritual priorities on May 5-6 when church leaders from across the Commonwealth assemble at Eagle Eyrie for a time of training and inspiration. Entitled “Turning your Church Inside Out” the conference will provide a time for deacons, pastors and other church leaders to enjoy the beauty of the mountains, get to know their counterparts in other churches and refocus on the spiritual needs of their churches. A call to the Virginia Baptist Mission Board at 1 (800) 255-2428 will provide information about registration.</p>
<p>In the meantime, a hallmark of a growing Christian is the ability to be honest about his own spiritual needs. Because individual spiritual growth is so critical for pastors, many of them have groups they meet with to challenge and encourage them to keep growing and changing. An accountability group is a good idea for every spiritual leader.</p>
<p>Without change, there can be no growth, of course. Growth inevitably leaves behind what has been and emerges into something new. The irony is that change will come one way or the other: as growth or as decay. We will grow in Christ as spiritual beings and as congregations in Chirstlikeness, or we will recede spiritually into carnal mindedness and inflated egos. We can intentionally change as the Spirit urges or we will be changed by worldly forces around us.</p>
<p>The disciples may have been offended by Jesus' remark that if they didn't change they wouldn't have to worry about who was greatest in heaven because they wouldn't be there. Was he overstating their situation to get their attention? Probably. But, I'm sure Peter and the others got the point. When self is the focus, the kingdom can't be.</p> | EDITORIAL: We shall all change or be changed | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/editorialweshallallchangeorbechanged/ | 3 |
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