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<p>Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the economy <a href="" type="internal">added 171,000 jobs</a> last month, beating analysts’ expectations. The private sector <a href="" type="internal">added 184,000 jobs</a> (offset by some public sector losses), making this the 32nd consecutive month that the private sector has grown.</p>
<p>Overall, even accounting for the horrific month for jobs that was January 2009, the private sector has added 759,000 jobs overall under Obama. At this same point in the George W. Bush administration — October 2004 — the private sector had lost more than 1 million jobs. This chart shows the difference:</p>
<p>During the entirety of the Bush administration, the private sector ended up losing nearly 650,000 jobs.</p>
<p>The only reason that the unemployment rate did not spike during Bush’s first term is that the public sector so derided by conservatives was rapidly adding jobs. If the public sector had added jobs at the historical pace under Obama, rather than <a href="" type="internal">hemorrhaging hundreds of thousands of jobs</a>, the unemployment rate <a href="" type="internal">would be under 7 percent today</a>.</p>
<p>Data compiled by <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/about/staff/farrell-jane/bio/" type="external">Jane Farrell</a>.</p> | In First 45 Months In Office, Obama Created 750,000 Private Sector Jobs, Bush Lost More Than One Million | true | http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/11/02/1130361/obama-bush-private-sector-jobs/ | 2012-11-02 | 4 |
<p>New Hampshire’s secretary of state says he won’t step down from President Donald Trump’s commission on election fraud despite calls from the state’s congressional delegation to do so.</p>
<p>All four members of the delegation say fellow Democrat Bill Gardner should step down because the panel’s vice chairman is using irrelevant data to rehash false claims.</p>
<p>Republican Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach on Thursday said data about how many people failed to get New Hampshire driver’s licenses after using out-of-state licenses for voter registration is proof of fraud that likely led to Sen. Maggie Hassan’s victory over Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte in November.</p>
<p>Gardner told The Associated Press on Friday that he doesn’t condone Kobach’s claims, but will remain on the commission because it’s important to figure out why Americans are losing trust in the election process.</p> | Democrat to Stay on Trump Voter Panel Despite Calls to Leave | false | https://newsline.com/democrat-to-stay-on-trump-voter-panel-despite-calls-to-leave/ | 2017-09-08 | 1 |
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<p>Once, after I had written about gun control, a guy called to differ and said that had the Jews of Germany been armed, the Holocaust never would have happened.</p>
<p>That assertion, so ahistorical as to be almost laughable, stopped me in my tracks because it went to the black heart of the gun control debate: It’s not about guns. It’s about the government.</p>
<p>It’s about the government in two respects.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The first is the conviction that guns are needed to protect Americans from their own government. This fear – maybe paranoia is the better word – is embedded in the National Rifle Association’s message and in the statements of its officials. As The Washington Post recently reminded us, shortly before the 1995 bombing of a government office building in Oklahoma City (168 dead), Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, proclaimed that a recently enacted assault weapons ban gave “jackbooted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure and kill us.” He said nothing about pets and daughters.</p>
<p>The second way the gun control debate is about government relates to crime – the belief that the government is either unwilling or unable to protect us. That this belief seems to have solidified at precisely a time when crime has diminished is both mysterious and frightening. Like almost everything else in America, it has to do with race and ethnicity and the vertiginous feeling that the country is no longer one big extended family but a collection of tribes.</p>
<p>Taken together, what we have is the cratering of liberalism, which is deeply associated with government – its growth, its utility.</p>
<p>All across the nation in recent days, political leaders have declared their intention to rein in guns, but all they have done actually is signal defeat. They have proposed this or that marginal program – something about magazines, something about bullets, something about background checks, something about assault rifles and maybe, just to be truly silly, something about mental health, as if the crazed shooter can be easily Rorschached.</p>
<p>All this and nothing about the core problem, which is handguns.</p>
<p>They have remained out of bounds although they account for the vast majority of the 100,000 or so annual shootings – an astounding 1 million gun deaths since 1968.</p>
<p>The liberal agenda once included confiscating handguns and abolishing the right to own one – never mind the right to carry one at all times.</p>
<p>In his book “Living with Guns,” Craig Whitney excavates the fact that in 1969 a presidential commission called for the confiscation of almost all handguns – and the prosecution of those who would not comply. The commission was headed by Milton S. Eisenhower, the brother of the former president and no one’s idea of a left-wing radical. (He was the former president of Johns Hopkins University.)</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Much has changed since then. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a respected anti-gun group, used to be called Handgun Control. The name shows how far things have come.</p>
<p>The goal of handgun control, not to mention elimination, is now out of the question. The Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision certainly put it out of reach, but even before that a Milton Eisenhower-type call to seize all the guns would have been met with derision. The once sturdy and sensible liberal goal had become an embarrassment.</p>
<p>The gun argument has drifted so far to the right that the question now is whether employers can forbid their employees from bringing a gun to work.</p>
<p>The NRA’s remedy for the (still) rare school shooting is to arm teachers and security guards so that any hallway could become a latter day O.K. Corral – no Wyatt Earp or Doc Holliday, just a paunchy retired guy with the keen eye of Mr. Magoo.</p>
<p>For liberals, the debacle has been complete.</p>
<p>A conservative response to liberal remedies proved overwhelming. With the Supreme Court’s permission, America armed itself – the 24 million handguns cited in the 1969 Eisenhower report is now much greater, a danger posing as a deterrent, and the Second Amendment is more strictly interpreted than even the First. (You can’t yell fire in a theater, but you can bring a gun into it.)</p>
<p>The guy who thought armed Jews could have prevented the Holocaust is the fringe no longer. Now, it’s the rest of us.</p>
<p>E-mail: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.</p> | Debate Is Not About Guns, but Government | false | https://abqjournal.com/160271/debate-is-not-about-guns-but-government.html | 2013-01-15 | 2 |
<p>As Syrian army tanks mass around Homs and its artillery pounds Sunni districts of the city, Syria is slipping into the first stages of a sectarian civil war. This conflict could be as bloody as anything seen in Iraq between 2006 and 2007 or as long as the civil war in Lebanon (1975-90). The two words that best describe the current process in Syria are “Lebanization” and “militarization”; neither bodes well for Syria’s people.</p>
<p>In Homs, death squads from the Sunni and Alawi, the Shia sect that dominates Syria’s ruling elite, are starting to seek out victims from each other’s communities. Sunni say they are being massacred by shellfire; Alawi demand that their Sunni neighbours be bombarded even more heavily. Syria was never a homogenous country and is becoming less so by the day.</p>
<p>But that alone will not bring down the government of President Bashar al-Assad, so anti-government forces are concluding that the only way to do this is by militarizing the resistance. In practice, this is unlikely to do more than increase sectarian blood-letting. Untrained militias and Syrian army deserters cannot stop armored columns. Most probably insurgent leaders know this and their real intention is to do enough militarily to provide political cover for creeping international intervention on their side. This might be sold as a NATO -protected safe haven for insurgents and refugees in north-west Syria, but in fact would be a declaration of war.</p>
<p>Short of a serious split in the Syrian army, the opposition forces’ best chance of success is to lure outside powers into such a venture. They want a repeat performance of what happened in Libya. The rag-tag militiamen who finally captured Tripoli would have been beaten in a few days without close air support from NATO . But Syria is not Libya, its powerful armed forces have not yet disintegrated, and, most importantly, it is not isolated internationally to anything like the same degree as Gaddafi was.</p>
<p>Of course, international leaders know this. Their foreign and intelligence services will have told them how different the two countries are. Yet the example of Libya may have misled them into writing off Assad prematurely. Months ago, the Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, was saying Syria’s regime would go within weeks. King Abdullah II of Jordan said that, if he was Assad, he would step down, but later sounded as if he regretted his outspokenness. By December, the US State Department was saying that Assad was “a dead man walking”.</p>
<p>But it hasn’t happened. By any realistic calculation, Assad might well last into 2014. Glib references to his isolation are exaggerated. The vote on February 4 in the UN Security Council condemning him and asking him to turn over power to his deputy was vetoed by Russia and China. Moscow feels that it was swindled last year when the Security Council vote on protecting the civilians of Benghazi turned into permission for NATO &#160;to wage all-out war to overthrow Gaddafi.</p>
<p>What makes the crisis in Syria so intractable is that three crises are wrapped into one. At one level, it is a popular uprising against a brutal, corrupt police state that started in March when security forces tortured children painting anti-regime slogans on a wall in Deraa in the south. The state disastrously misjudged its moment and an atrocity, intended to intimidate would-be protesters into silence, instead provoked them to revolt. Hatred of a despotic regime and fury at repeated massacres still impels great numbers of Syrians to go into the streets to demonstrate despite the dangers.</p>
<p>There is no doubting their courage, but the struggle in which they are taking part has two other dimensions: it is part of the escalating conflict between Sunni and Shia and the 33-year-old battle between Iran and its enemies. The sectarianism of the Syrian opposition is persistently played down by the international media, but power in Syria is distributed along sectarian lines, just as it was in the recent past in Iraq, Lebanon and Ireland. Even supposing an anti-sectarian opposition, democracy in Syria means a loss of power for the Alawites and their allies and a gain for the Sunni.</p>
<p>Given that Sunni make up three-quarters of Syria’s 24 million population, their enfranchisement might appear to be no bad thing. Unfortunately, many of the government’s most committed opponents evidently have more fundamental changes in mind than a fairer distribution of power between communities. Core areas of the insurgency, where the Sunni are in the overwhelming majority, increasingly see Alawites, Shia and Christians as heretics to be eliminated.</p>
<p>Television reporting and much print journalism is skewed towards portraying an evil government oppressing a heroic people. Evidence that other forces may be at work is ignored. An example of this came on Friday when two suicide bombers struck security compounds in Aleppo, killing 28 people and wounding 235 others. The obvious explanation was that Sunni suicide bombers, mostly operating through al-Qa’ida in Mesopotamia, who have been attacking Shia-dominated security forces in Iraq, are now doing the same in Syria. But, fearing their moderate image might be tarnished, spokesmen for the opposition swiftly said that the suicide bombings were a cunning attempt by the Syrian security forces to discredit the opposition by blowing themselves up. The BBC, Al Jazeera and most newspapers happily gave uncritical coverage to opposition denials of responsibility or said it was an open question as to who was behind the bombings.</p>
<p>As in Libya last year, the rebels invariably get a positive press. The increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict is understated. Syria is rushing headlong into a conflict that will tear the country’s communities apart.</p>
<p>PATRICK COCKBURN is the author of “ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1416551476/counterpunchmaga" type="external">Muqtada: Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq</a>.&#160;</p>
<p /> | Syria: Slipping into Civil War | true | https://counterpunch.org/2012/02/13/syria-slipping-into-civil-war/ | 2012-02-13 | 4 |
<p>A recent statement by the chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. David Petraeus, that Israel may decide to attack Iranian nuclear sites has been followed by indications of a debate within the Barack Obama administration on whether Israel’s repeated threats to carry out such a strike should be used to gain leverage in future negotiations with Tehran.</p>
<p>In the latest twist, Vice President Joseph Biden, who has been put in charge of the administration’s non-proliferation agenda, appeared to reject the idea. “I don’t believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu would [launch a strike],” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer Tuesday. “I think he would be ill-advised to do that.”</p>
<p>His remarks suggested that any proposal to exploit the threat of an Israeli attack as part of a “good cop, bad cop” tactic with Iran would run into stiff opposition within the administration, since it would rest on the credibility that the threat was real and that the U.S. would not actively oppose its being carried out.</p>
<p>Petraeus invoked the possibility of an Israeli attack in prepared testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last Wednesday. “The Israeli government may ultimately see itself as so threatened by the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon that it would take pre-emptive military action to derail or delay it,” he asserted. In contrast to past statements by U.S. officials on the issue, he added nothing to indicate that Washington would oppose such an attack or was concerned about its consequences.</p>
<p>Moreover, a CENTCOM spokesman later told IPS that Petraeus’ testimony had been reviewed in advance by the Office of the Secretary of Defence (OSD), suggesting that brandishing of the Israeli threat had the approval of Pentagon chief Robert Gates.</p>
<p>But the Pentagon now appears to be backing away from the Petraeus statement. In an email message to IPS, Lt. Col. Mark Wright, an OSD press officer declined to confirm or deny that Petraeus’s statement had been reviewed by his office. Wright insisted that it “would be inappropriate to characterise the General’s view on this from the Pentagon” and referred the question back to CENTCOM.</p>
<p>Gates himself had appeared to go along with Petraeus’ approach in an interview published in the Financial Times Apr. 1, in which he implied strongly that Israel would indeed attack Iran if it crossed an Israeli “red line.” Asked whether Israel would attack Iran, Gates said, “I guess I would say I would be surprised…if [Israel] did act this year.”</p>
<p>“I think we have more time than that,” he said, referring to the moment when progress on Iran’s nuclear-enrichment programme might provoke an Israeli attack. “How much more time I don’t know. It is a year, two years, three years. It is somewhere in that window.”</p>
<p>Within 24 hours, however, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Adm. Michael Mullen, like Biden several days later, reiterated his own publicly stated reservations about any such Israeli action in a meeting with the Wall Street Journal’s neo-conservative editorial board Apr. 2.</p>
<p>While conceding that the Israeli leadership “is not going to tolerate” a nuclear Iran and that its military could inflict serious damage on Iran’s nuclear programme, Mullen also warned that such an attack would pose “exceptionally high risks” to U.S. interests in the region, according to a record of the interview quoted to IPS by Mullen’s office. In an editorial about the meeting published Monday, the Journal stressed that Mullen understood that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions were “a matter of ‘life or death’ for the Jewish state” and downplayed the threat to the U.S.</p>
<p>Mullen, in fact, has consistently spoken out against an Israeli strike since early July 2008, when, after returning from consultations with his Israeli counterpart, he publicly warned against an Israeli attack which, he said, in addition to further destabilising the region, would be “extremely stressful on us….”</p>
<p>The issue of how to handle the Israeli threat to attack Iran has been made more urgent by the installation of a far-right government led by Likud Party chief Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been particularly hawkish on Tehran and deeply sceptical that Obama’s diplomatic engagement with Iran will yield acceptable results before Israel’s “red lines” are crossed. Israeli officials have called on the U.S. to strictly limit the amount of time it will devote to its diplomatic effort before resorting to punitive measures, a demand echoed by key U.S. lawmakers – Democrats, as well as Republicans – who are considered close to the so-called ‘Israel Lobby’ here.</p>
<p>Some administration officials had embraced the brandishing of the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran as a means of exerting pressure on Iran even before they joined the Obama administration.</p>
<p>Dennis Ross, who is now “Special Adviser” on Iran to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had endorsed an early draft of a report published last month by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) – a think tank that often reflects the Israeli government’s views – which included the statement, “If the international community appears unable to stop Iran’s nuclear progress, Israel may decide to act unilaterally.”</p>
<p>Both Gary Samore, the new White House co-ordinator on weapons of mass destruction, and Ashton Carter, now under secretary of defence for acquisition, technology and logistics, expressed support for a diplomatic strategy of exploiting the Israeli military threat to Iran at a forum at Harvard University’s Kennedy School last September.</p>
<p>Referring to negotiating with Iran on the nuclear issue, Samore said, “My view is that, unless it’s backed up by a very strong bashing alternative, it probably won’t be successful.”</p>
<p>Samore called the threat of such an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites “a good diplomatic instrument” for the United States. Carter, who is also a non- proliferation specialist, referred to making the Iranians “wonder whether the Israelis are going to do something” as “not an unreasonable game to play.”</p>
<p>But Samore also acknowledged that such a strategy could be dangerous. “[W]e have to be careful when we use that instrument,” he said, “that the Israelis don’t see that as a green light to go ahead and strike… before we’re ready to have that actually happen.”</p>
<p>Still, he argued that any new administration would not want to “act in a way that precludes the threat, because we’re using the threat as a political instrument.”</p>
<p>That danger is particularly acute with Netanyahu’s accession to power, because he represents Israeli political and military circles that hold most firmly to the idea that Iran’s enrichment program poses an “existential threat” to Israel, a view reportedly also shared by his defence minister, Labour Party leader Ehud Barak.</p>
<p>According to the New York Times’ David Sanger, President George W. Bush last year rejected a request from then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for over- flight rights and other support needed to attack Iran.</p>
<p>Mullen was then sent to Israel to personally convey Washington’s opposition to such an attack. It was on his return that he made that opposition public. In the end, Olmert apparently decided against taking any action without a green light from Washington. But, much as Samore anticipated, the new government is widely regarded as more likely to act unilaterally.</p>
<p>Bush reportedly feared that such a strike would further destabilise Iraq and expose U.S. troops there to retaliation, according to his top Middle East adviser, Elliott Abrams, who has recently argued that the those dangers have since been significantly mitigated. In the one cautionary quotation that the Journal chose to include in its editorial about Mullen’s views on a possible Israeli attack on Iran, the JCS chief noted that Tehran’s ability to retaliate in Iraq “has not maxed out at all.”</p>
<p>Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist with Inter-Press Service specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “ <a href="" type="internal">Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam</a>“, was published in 2006.</p>
<p>Jim Lobe is a reporter for <a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46441" type="external">Inter-Press Service</a>.</p> | Israel’s Threat to Strike Iran | true | https://counterpunch.org/2009/04/09/israel-s-threat-to-strike-iran/ | 2009-04-09 | 4 |
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<p>ASPEN, Colo. — The Aspen School District has removed all seat belts from some of its buses due to safety concerns.</p>
<p>The Aspen Times reports ( <a href="http://bit.ly/2ioc0vF" type="external">http://bit.ly/2ioc0vF</a> ) that District Transportation Director Gary Vavra says since lap belts, which were equipped in the district’s larger buses, are more damaging in an accident than none at all, the district moved to remove the belts entirely.</p>
<p>The district owns 22 large buses with lap belts as opposed to three-point shoulder seat belts. Vavra says replacing the belts with three-point belts would cost the district $330,000 and that such a change isn’t feasible at this time.</p>
<p>The district also owns seven 14-passenger minibuses, which are equipped with three-point shoulder seat belts. Those seat belts will remain.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Information from: The Aspen Times, <a href="http://www.aspentimes.com/" type="external">http://www.aspentimes.com/</a></p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Aspen schools remove seat belts from buses due to safety | false | https://abqjournal.com/926397/aspen-schools-remove-seat-belts-from-buses-due-to-safety.html | 2 |
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<p>Today <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mittromney/posts/10150981967501121" type="external">on Facebook</a>, Mitt Romney claims that the Obama campaign is trying to “undermine” the ability of members of the military to vote in Ohio:</p>
<p>President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage. The brave men and women of our military make tremendous sacrifices to protect and defend our freedoms, and we should do everything we can to protect their fundamental right to vote. I stand with the fifteen military groups that are defending the rights of military voters, and if I’m entrusted to be the commander-in-chief, I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.</p>
<p>This certainly sounds outrageous, but it is not true. Since 2005, Ohio has had in person early-voting in the three days prior to the election. This year, however, the Republican legislature in Ohio eliminated early voting during this period, except for members of the military. The Obama lawsuit is attempting to restore voting rights for all Ohioans, not restrict them for the military or any other group. From <a href="http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/ObamaforAmericavHustedcomplaint.pdf" type="external">the Obama lawsuit</a>, filed in federal court:</p>
<p>Plaintiffs bring this lawsuit to restore in-person early voting for all Ohioans during the three days prior to Election Day — a right exercised by an estimated 93,000 Ohioans in the last presidential election. Ohio election law, as currently enacted by the State of Ohio and administered by Defendant Ohio Secretary of State, arbitrarily eliminates early voting during the three days prior to Election Day for most Ohio voters, a right previously available to all Ohio voters.</p>
<p>The Obama campaign’s request for a <a href="http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/MotionforPreliminaryInjunction_001.pdf" type="external">preliminary injunction</a> does not seek to restrict military voting. Rather, it simply is asking that the full early voting period be open to all citizens, as it was under the law before this year.</p>
<p>Even Fox News acknowledges the purpose of the suit, noting “ <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/04/obama-campaign-sues-ohio-over-early-voting-law-for-military/#ixzz22bqw859E" type="external">the lawsuit does not restrict the ability of military personnel to cast their ballots early</a>.”</p>
<p>The Romney campaign is <a href="http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/08/obama-camp-romneys-ohio-voting-claim-shameful-131098.html" type="external">totally unable</a> to back up their candidate’s claim:</p>
<p>Romney’s spokesman, Ryan Williams, in an interview Saturday could point to no place in Obama’s lawsuit that seeks to restrict the rights of military voters…</p>
<p>Romney’s legal counsel, Katie Biber, said creating two separate classes of Ohio voters does not violate the 14th Amendment, though she also did not offer evidence that Obama’s lawsuit would make it tougher for members of the military to vote…</p> | Romney Smears Obama, Falsely Claims He Filed Lawsuit To Restrict Military Voting In Ohio | true | http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2012/08/04/640491/romney-smears-obama-falsely-claims-he-filed-lawsuit-to-restrict-military-voting-in-ohio/ | 2012-08-04 | 4 |
<p />
<p>How does Stand Your Ground work and who helped put it all over the map? Read the inside story: <a href="" type="internal">How the NRA and Its Allies Helped Spread a Radical Gun Law Nationwide</a>.</p>
<p>Update, 6/11/12: <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/06/11/study-says-stand-your-ground-laws-increase-homicides/?mod=e2tw" type="external">A new study from Texas A&amp;M&#160;University</a> shows that SYG&#160;laws result in no crime deterence—while adding 500 to 700 homicides per year nationally across the 25 states with the laws.</p>
<p>Map production: Tasneem Raja, Jaeah Lee and Ben Breedlove; Research: Hannah Levintova and Adam Weinstein</p> | See How Quickly “Stand Your Ground” Spread Nationwide | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/stand-your-ground-map/ | 2012-06-07 | 4 |
<p>FOX Business: Capitalism Lives Here</p>
<p>U.S. stock-index futures slipped into negative territory after data showed the American trade deficit narrowed to a slightly higher level than expected.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 8:39 a.m. ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures fell 17 points, or 0.1%, to 16428, S&amp;P 500 futures slumped 2.3 points, or 0.11%, to 1874 and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 3.8 points, or 0.12%, to 3587.</p>
<p>After a somewhat choppy day, Tuesday was off to a quiet start. The Dow and S&amp;P 500 are both within roughly three tenths of one percent of their all-time closing highs as they recover from a turbulent April.</p>
<p>The pace of mergers and acquisitions in the health-care space continues heating up. Merck (NYSE:MRK) said it will sell its consumer care unit to German Bayer for $14.2 billion. This comes as Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) is pursuing a $106 billion buyout of AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) and Valeant (NYSE:VRX) is attempting to buy botox-maker Allergan (NYSE:AGN).</p>
<p>Elsewhere in corporate news, insurance giant American International Group (NYSE:AIG) saw its shares slump after posting a 27% drop in first-quarter profits.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>On the economic front, traders will get a look at U.S. international trade at 8:30 a.m. ET. The trade deficit is forecast to have narrowed to $40.3 billion in March from $42.3 billion the month prior. While the data are a lagging indictor, they figure directly into broader economic calculations.</p>
<p>U.S. crude oil futures rose by a penny, or 0.01%, to $99.49 a barrel. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline advanced 0.2% to $2.916 a gallon. Gold slipped $1.20, or 0.1%, to $1,308 a troy ounce.</p> | Futures Dip After Trade Data Slightly Disappoint | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/05/06/stock-futures-flat-ahead-trade-data.html | 2016-03-06 | 0 |
<p><a href="http://variety.com/t/spotify/" type="external">Spotify</a> is expected to follow in the footsteps of Deezer, Google Play and Apple Music with a launch in South Africa in the next few months, according to a local report citing a recent recruiting ad from Spotify for a senior editor/music programmer in South Africa.</p>
<p>If confirmed, Spotify’s launch in South Africa would be well-timed, since the region has seen its music streaming revenue grow massively within the last year. South African streaming revenue skyrocketed from $1.87 million in 2015 to $8.15 million in 2016 – a 334.2% year-on-year growth, according to a report compiled by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and cited by online publication Music in Africa.</p>
<p>The move into South Africa would also allow Spotify to eventually penetrate vibrant music markets in other parts of Africa, notably in Nigeria and Kenya, Music in Africa said.</p>
<p>The Spotify ad says the company is looking for a senior editor/programmer to join its shows and editorial team, with responsibility for daily programming for South Africa as well as curating a large number of varied playlists.</p>
<p>Created in Sweden in 2008, Spotify boasts over 140 million active users across 61 markets and features more than 30 million songs.</p> | Spotify Expected to Launch in South Africa Within Months (Report) | false | https://newsline.com/spotify-expected-to-launch-in-south-africa-within-months-report/ | 2017-09-12 | 1 |
<p>It’s now five months into the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, and although American Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed during his visit to Baghdad this weekend that it’s still <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070616/wl_afp/iraqusmilitarygates_070616122420" type="external">too early</a> to tell if the surge is working, one U.S. military higher-up, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8PQ52V80&amp;show_article=1" type="external">admitted</a> that only 40 percent of Iraq’s capital city is consistently safe.</p>
<p>AP via Breitbart.com:</p>
<p>Odierno said there was a long way to go in retaking the city from Shiite Muslim militias, Sunni Arab insurgents and al-Qaida terrorists. He said only about “40 percent is really very safe on a routine basis” — with about 30 percent lacking control and a further 30 percent suffering “a high level of violence.”</p>
<p>The U.S. ground forces commander discussed the new offensive and the security situation in an interview with two reporters as he visited an American outpost near the main market in the capital’s southern Dora district, a major Sunni Arab stronghold.</p>
<p />
<p>“There’s about 30 percent of the city that needs work, like here in Dora and the surrounding areas,” Odierno said. “Those are the areas that we consider to be the hot spots, which usually have a Sunni-Shiite fault line, and also areas where al-Qaida has decided to make a stand.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8PQ52V80&amp;show_article=1" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>More links:</p>
<p>Follow this <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F8579832-0B2F-496B-8E14-2351B5ED23EC.htm" type="external">link</a> to read Al Jazeera’s report about Gates’ critique of the Iraqi government’s lack of progress in quelling sectarian violence.</p>
<p>Click <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/16/AR2007061600139.html?referrer=emailarticle" type="external">here</a> for a report about Iraqis’ flagging faith in Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s leadership.</p>
<p>Read this Washington Post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/15/AR2007061502602.html?referrer=emailarticle" type="external">article</a> about private contractors’ “parallel war” in Iraq.</p> | No End in Sight | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/no-end-in-sight-3/ | 2007-06-17 | 4 |
<p>The land under the nation’s capital and the Chesapeake Bay is sinking rapidly and could drop as much as six inches by 2100, according to a report in the <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/washington-dc-sinking-fast-threat-looms-of-sea-level-rise-study/articleshow/48263426.cms" type="external">Economic Times</a>.</p>
<p>Researchers from the University of Vermont are issuing a warning based on geologic drilling data on the coastal plain of Maryland.&#160; The sinking of the land area, combined with rising sea levels due to melting ice and climate warming, will result in many historical areas and monuments being submerged in water.</p>
<p>Tide gauges show the Chesapeake levels have been rising for more than six decades and twice as fast as the overall word average.&#160; The levels are also rising at a faster pace than the surrounding areas.</p>
<p>It has long been thought the land around Washington had been settling for centuries, after being pushed up by a prehistoric ice sheet to the north of the region.</p>
<p>This new study provides an estimate of the pace of the settling, and confirms the theory.&#160; The data also confirms the drop is not primarily due to ground water retrieval or other human interference.</p>
<p>Scientists say a giant ice sheet, probably a mile high and reaching as far south as Long Island, applied so much weight upon the Earth the land south of the sheet was pushed up, creating a condition know as “forebulge collapse”.</p>
<p>About 20,000 years ago, the ice sheet began melting, removing the pressure, and the forebulge began to recede.&#160; It has been dropping ever since.</p>
<p>The land will continue to drop for many years to come, and rising sea levels due to melting polar ice will accelerate the increase in water levels around the area.</p>
<p>Lead researcher Ben DeJong stated that now is the time to take some actions to reduce the rising levels.&#160; He also commented six inches is a lot of water and it would really matter in this part of the world.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p /> | Nation’s capital sinking into the sea | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/07/29/nations-capital-sinking-into-the-sea/ | 2015-07-29 | 3 |
<p>Photo by Kate Sheppard.</p>
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<p>Will Cape Wind finally get the green light after nine years of delays? It now looks like Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will make the ultimate decision on what could be the country’s first offshore wind farm.</p>
<p>Salazar hosted meetings between the parties involved in a <a href="" type="internal">hotly contested</a> dispute over whether to build the 24-square-mile, 130-turbine wind farm in the Nantucket Sound. Earlier this month the National Park Service determined that the sound <a href="" type="internal">could be considered for listing</a> in the National Register of Historic Places in response to a request from local Native American tribes. But the tribes were just the wind farm’s newest opponents: a campaign <a href="" type="internal">backed by dirty energy interests</a> has been trying to thwart the project for nearly a decade.</p>
<p>Salazar brought together the Cape Wind developer, the tribes, state and national historic preservation officers, environmental groups, local governments, and other key parties together in Washington on Wednesday. Salazar said the agency has decided to extend the public comment period on the project until Feb. 12. The involved parties have until Feb. 28 to reach a resolution on how to progress. Changes to the project—like reducing the total number of wind turbines or changing their color or their arrangement—have been listed as possible measures to address opponents’ concerns. So far, opponents have held firm that they do not want the turbines in the sound.</p>
<p>If the parties can’t reach an agreement, Salazar and the Department of Interior will make a final determination on the project, taking into consideration both the need for renewable energy development and the responsibility to protect historic locations. That decision will be reached in April, Salazar told reporters following the meetings. “We will bring this process to conclusion,” said Salazar. “I think 9 years after an application was filed with the United States government … to have it face a future of uncertainty is bad for everybody.”</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Cape Wind president Jim Gordon called the discussion “very constructive” and said he was “convinced” that Salazar would ultimately approve the project.</p>
<p>Salazar acknowledged that declaring the sound off-limits to development “could have far-reaching effects” on subsequent efforts to build offshore wind farms. But he did not think that this decision will determine the entire future of offshore wind development, as Cape Wind’s advocates have warned. “From what I have seen across the country, there is already tremendous investment going on with respect to wind energy,” he said. “I don’t think Cape Wind one way or another will be determinative of the future of wind energy or the investment in wind energy jobs here in the United States.”</p>
<p>Yet advocates of the project believe that Cape Wind could prove criticial to kickstarting the US wind industry. “We passionately believe that this is the right project in the right place at the right time,” said Gordon.</p>
<p /> | Salazar to Make Final Call on Cape Wind | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/salazar-make-final-call-cape-wind/ | 2010-01-13 | 4 |
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — A $5 billion Chinese chemical manufacturer backed by Morgan Stanley is disputing an Associated Press report that cited discrepancies between financial records and what the firm told investors.</p>
<p>The response to AP’s reporting last week came from Tianhe (pronounced TYEN-huh) Chemicals Group Ltd. late Sunday. It said local government offices have agreed to change official records showing its predecessor was state-owned, one of the disclosures in the AP investigation. The issue is significant because shareholders may wonder whether Tianhe has a clean chain of ownership for its business.</p>
<p>Tianhe acknowledged that its own business registration filings — which AP cited — were out of date and urged shareholders to rely only on information that it distributes. It said it will announce new customer contracts soon.</p>
<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — A $5 billion Chinese chemical manufacturer backed by Morgan Stanley is disputing an Associated Press report that cited discrepancies between financial records and what the firm told investors.</p>
<p>The response to AP’s reporting last week came from Tianhe (pronounced TYEN-huh) Chemicals Group Ltd. late Sunday. It said local government offices have agreed to change official records showing its predecessor was state-owned, one of the disclosures in the AP investigation. The issue is significant because shareholders may wonder whether Tianhe has a clean chain of ownership for its business.</p>
<p>Tianhe acknowledged that its own business registration filings — which AP cited — were out of date and urged shareholders to rely only on information that it distributes. It said it will announce new customer contracts soon.</p> | Morgan Stanley-backed firm denies state-owned past | false | https://apnews.com/94d436f98e3e49d9b766d9db337c8627 | 2014-11-17 | 2 |
<p>U.S. Senator Rand Paul has been confirmed as a speaker at the upcoming Republican National Convention, along with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, and&#160;Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. The RNC Chairman Priebus released these names today, following Monday’s <a href="http://www.gopconvention2012.com/2012/08/rnc-chairman-reince-priebus-announces-first-wave-of-republican-convention-headliners/" type="external">first wave</a> of speakers.</p>
<p>“I am thrilled to announce Governor Bush, Governor Fallin, Senator Paul and Senator Santorum will address our convention,” said Priebus. “As our party unites around Governor Romney, these four great leaders will lend their voices in support of his vision to get America back on track.”</p>
<p>Rand Paul will likely be speaking as a primetime speaker at the event in order to appeal to the young libertarian attendees. CNN <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/07/santorum-bush-paul-to-speak-at-gop-convention/?hpt=hp_t1" type="external">elaborates</a>,</p>
<p>The Kentucky senator is well regarded by tea party activists and will likely inherit his father’s political machine that is comprised of an eclectic group of anti-government, young, libertarian minded activists. Sen. Paul is said to be looking at running for president in 2016 if Romney loses in November. It is unclear if Rep. Paul will also speak at the convention.</p>
<p>But what about former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul? Jesse Benton, Ron Paul’s presidential campaign manager stated:&#160;“I can tell you that both Ron and Rand will have an important role in the convention and their supporters and ideals will be well represented.” He continued to explain that Ron Paul’s camp will be <a href="http://rt.com/usa/news/gop-ron-paul-republican-517/" type="external">challenging</a> the Republican Party of Louisiana for awarding delegates to Romney in blatant violation of the rules. It’s still unclear what role he will have in the convention, but Ron Paul will be holding a <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/ron-paul-to-hold-free-rally-at-usf-sun-dome-before-rnc/1237888" type="external">rally</a> in the days leading up to the Convention.</p>
<p>“We’re going to have a good speaker lineup, we’re going to have music, we’re going to have Dr. Paul, we’re going to have our delegates, and we’re going to set a great tone for our delegates to go get involved in the convention,” Paul campaign chairman Jesse Benton said in June.</p>
<p>What role do you foresee Congressman Ron Paul playing in the Republican National Convention?</p> | Rand Paul Confirmed Speaker at RNC Convention | false | https://ivn.us/2012/08/07/ron-paul-and-son-rand-paul/ | 2012-08-07 | 2 |
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<p>He was a gentle and kind soul whose 90 years were filled with hard work, an honest lifestyle, and his favorite activity, traveling across America visiting 49 states.</p>
<p>He will be remembered for the twinkle in his eye, always being there in time of need for his children and grandchildren, and the patriarch of a close knit Christian family.</p>
<p>Paul L. Fontaine.</p>
<p>He had a warm smile, a quick wit and became a friend to all who came into contact with him.</p>
<p>Paul was born in Lowell, Mass., on Sept. 1, 1923. He graduated from Ware High School at 16 and then joined the Civilian Conservation Corps until he turned 18.</p>
<p>He joined the U.S. Army serving in World War II from 1943-1946. Paul was a member of the 1007 Engineer Battalion working in India building bridges and highways to Burma and China.</p>
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<p>He was an employee of the United States Postal Service, retiring after a 30-year career. Paul and Eleanor resided in Massachusetts and Florida, and became residents of New Mexico in 1974 when he retired from the postal service.</p>
<p>Paul leaves behind Eleanor, his dedicated and loving wife of 67 years, and all of his five children: Bruce and his wife Gail of Rio Rancho; Mark and his wife Dianna of Tallahassee, Fla.; June of Edgewood; Keith and his wife Georgia of Albuquerque; and Mary Joy and her husband David of Rio Rancho. Paul has 13 grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren.</p>
<p>Paul received professional loving attention in his final days from Presbyterian Hospice and Comfort Keepers. The family will be forever grateful for their loving concern and care.</p>
<p>Paul’s arrangements are being handled by the Cremation Society of New Mexico and his family and friends will be holding a Celebration of Life in the near future.</p> | OBITUARY: Paul L. Fontaine | false | https://abqjournal.com/421923/paul-l-fontaine.html | 2 |
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<p>A doctor in Des Moines, Iowa, and a nurse in a clinic in another city demonstrate a telemedicine program through which doctors can remotely prescribe the abortion-inducing drug RU-486. Charlie Neibergall/AP</p>
<p>In order to be prescribed abortion-inducing medication, pregnant women are usually required to have an in-person appointment with a doctor who administers the drugs. In rural places, that can be difficult: Many women must drive for hours to the nearest abortion clinic. One promising solution to this problem is telemedicine, where a doctor meets with the patient via video conference at an office close to the patient’s home. <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/AOG.0000000000002212" type="external">A new study</a> found that these virtual abortion-pill procedures are just as safe as the in-person versions.</p>
<p>This conclusion comes after seven years of examining a telemedicine program in Iowa Planned Parenthood clinics. University of California-San Francisco researchers analyzed 8,765 medical abortions that were performed by telemedicine and 10,405 that were done in an in-person visit. Overall, 0.18 percent of the telemedicine patients experienced a complication compared with 0.32 percent of in-person patients.</p>
<p>The UCSF researchers also found that the program increased access to early abortion for Iowa women, meaning there were fewer abortions at later gestational terms.&#160;A <a href="https://www.ansirh.org/research/telemedicine-improve-access-abortion-care" type="external">prior study from the same group</a> showed that women who used telemedicine for their abortion procedure were more likely to recommend that method to a friend and generally had a very high rate of satisfaction. The program persisted, despite a hostile political climate: In 2015, when the telemedicine program was specifically targeted in Iowa’s Republican-led state legislature, a measure that required physicians to administer the drugs in person was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/20/us/iowa-court-ruling-says-doctors-can-prescribe-abortion-drugs-by-video.html?_r=0" type="external">struck down</a> by the Iowa Supreme Court.</p>
<p>18 states currently ban using telemedicine for abortion, citing safety concerns. Yet complications in abortion procedures—in-person or virtual—are extremely rare. A <a href="https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2014/12/121781/major-complication-rate-after-abortion-extremely-low-study-shows" type="external">2014 study by the same UCSF researchers</a>&#160;concluded that they occur at about the same rate as complications from a standard colonoscopy. Dr. Daniel Grossman,&#160;lead author of the study, noted that the risk of death is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270271" type="external">14 times highe</a>r and the risk of needing a blood transfusion is 10 times higher for women who choose to carry a pregnancy to term. “The reality is that pregnancy is dangerous,” Grossman said. “I think it’s very important to put these risks in context.”</p>
<p>Grossman said the fact that in-person abortions had a slightly higher complication rate than telemedicine abortions was not “statistically significant” for the sample size but “there definitely seems to be a trend.”&#160;</p>
<p>“It’s something to examine moving forward,” he said. “Maybe the in-person patients are getting some unnecessary medical intervention, maybe a blood transfusion when they don’t really need it…as a precaution.”</p> | The Case for Remote Abortions | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2017/09/the-case-for-remote-abortions/ | 2017-09-07 | 4 |
<p>By Hyunjoo Jin</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Warren Buffett</a></p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The outlook from POSCO, which kicks off the earnings reporting season for major Asian steelmakers such as Baosteel &lt;600019.SS&gt; and Nippon Steel &lt;5401.T&gt;, bodes ill for the sector.</p>
<p>Although prices of raw materials such as iron ore and coking coal are softening, weakness in developed economies and tight credit conditions in <a href="" type="internal">China</a> are expected to weigh on steel prices.</p>
<p>"Unless the global economy gets better and sparks demand, POSCO's steel business will stagger for at least two to three years, pressured by low-end Chinese products, global oversupply and its domestic rival <a href="" type="internal">Hyundai</a> Steel growing fast," said Kim Se-hoon, a fund manager at Assetplus Investment Management, which owns POSCO shares.</p>
<p>The company, which trails <a href="" type="internal">ArcelorMittal</a> and Baosteel &lt;600019.SS&gt;, said on Friday its July-September operating profit was 1.09 trillion won ($951.8 million), compared with an average 1.15 trillion won forecast from analysts, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.</p>
<p>The profit was up from 1.03 trillion won a year ago, thanks to higher sales volume and prices, but down from 1.5 trillion won in the previous quarter because of higher raw material costs, POSCO said.</p>
<p>OVERSUPPLY</p>
<p>POSCO said it expected global steel prices to remain weak because of an oversupply, while demand growth is seen slowing because of sluggish economies in advanced countries and China tightening.</p>
<p>"At home market, Korea turned into a net steel exporter because volume growth outpaced steel consumption growth...Demand decline is expected to continue in the second half because of sluggishness in major industries," POSCO said in a statement.</p>
<p>The weak won is also set to increase costs of imported raw materials for South Korean steelmakers in the fourth quarter.</p>
<p>The won, one of the region's most vulnerable currencies to global turmoil, lost more than 9 percent against the dollar in the third quarter and is widely expected to remain under pressure over the coming months as global economic jitters dampen investor appetite for riskier assets.</p>
<p>POSCO said it had slashed its 2011 investment plan to 6 trillion won from the previous 7.3 trillion won. It also raised its cost-cutting target to 1.4 trillion won for this year, from the previous 1 trillion won.</p>
<p>"We expect the business environment to remain uncertain in the fourth quarter," POSCO said in a statement.</p>
<p>Shares of POSCO, in which Buffett's <a href="" type="internal">Berkshire Hathaway</a> owns an around 5 percent stake, have fallen 26 percent this year, compared with a 10 percent drop in the broader market &lt;.KS11&gt;.</p>
<p>POSCO shares ended up 0.3 percent in a broader market &lt;.KS11&gt; that was up 1.8 percent on Friday.</p>
<p>($1 = 1145.200 Korean Won)</p>
<p>(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and Muralikumar Anantharaman)</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | POSCO sees tough 4th quarter after Q3 meets view | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2011/10/21/posco-sees-tough-4th-quarter-after-q3-meets-view.html | 2016-01-29 | 0 |
<p>Facebook's European regulator said it hoped to reach a deal in the coming months with the U.S. company to allow it to use data gleaned from the WhatsApp messaging service it acquired in 2014.</p>
<p>The European Union's 28 data protection authorities last year requested that WhatsApp stop sharing users' data with Facebook due to questions over the validity of users' consent.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon, the lead EU regulator on privacy issues for Facebook because the company's European headquarters are in Dublin, on Tuesday said she hopes for a final resolution by the summer.</p>
<p>"I think we are in agreement with the parties - WhatsApp and Facebook - that the quality of the information provided to users could have been clearer, could have been more transparent and could have been expressed in simpler terms," she told Reuters in an interview. "We are working towards a solution on that."</p>
<p>(Reporting by Conor Humphries, editing by Louise Heavens)</p> | Facebook's EU Regulator Close to Deal on Sharing of WhatsApp Data | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/04/11/facebooks-eu-regulator-close-to-deal-on-sharing-whatsapp-data.html | 2017-04-11 | 0 |
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<p>Tune in all this week for our User's Guide to Obamacare special coverage starting 6pmET. What can you expect when the Obamacare insurance exchanges open this week? No doubt, a lot of confusion.&#160;Understand that the entire system is a work-in-progress that may or may not be ready for primetime when the starting gates open Tuesday.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Here's what you need to know:</p>
<p>-- Exchanges will be different state to state. If you have an elderly relative living in a different part of the country, you'll have to get your arms around the offerings in their state, and it could be far different from the one where you live. Different insurers are participating in each market. While Washington's Health and Human Services Department says the average number of plans per state is 53, averages mislead. The number of plans available ranges from just six to 169. What's more, don't expect to see the big brand name insurers you've come to know in these new marketplaces. They are more likely to be dominated by smaller, lesser known rivals.</p>
<p>--Costs will vary, too. While the White House says the average premium consumers will pay is $328 a month or $3936 a year, that is unlikely what you’ll pay. Variation in prices is big and depends on where you live, how old you are and whether you receive subsidies from the government. In Albuquerque, NM, for example, a 27-year-old non-smoking man would pay $126 a month for a bronze plan, but in Little Rock, Ark., the cost for the same type policy would be $190 a month. If you are already in the individual market, you may be better off staying put. According to Tom Miller of the American Enterprise Institute, average annual premiums in the individual market at $2,580 a year, are currently far less expensive than the $3,936 average cited by the administration on the exchanges.</p>
<p>--The law requires some similarities. Exchange health plans are required to offer what the government calls "essential health benefits." That includes an extensive list of services from emergency room services to care for pregnant women, new mothers and infants. Outpatient and rehab services, counseling, and therapy are also on the list, as are preventative care and prescription drugs. Insurers will package these offerings at five different prices, depending on how much you’re willing to pay in premiums. The most expensive will be called platinum coverage which will pay 90 percent of costs and carry the highest monthly premium. Gold coverage will pay 80 percent of your costs and will cost more than silver coverage which pays 70 percent of costs. Bronze has the lowest monthly premiums but only pays 60 percent of costs. You'll also see policies for a bare-bones "catastrophic" coverage. These policies are designed for young people and those who can't afford the policies I just described. Coverage will be cheaper and include three annual primary care visits and preventative services, but deductibles will be high. To qualify, you have to be under 30 years of age or get a "hardship exemption."</p>
<p>--Watch out for glitches and errors. Up to the last minute, exchange operators were struggling with software which sometimes failed to price the insurance correctly. Some exchanges were pricing policies incorrectly, others were calculating subsidies wrong. In other words, it is likely to be tough going in the initial weeks and possibly months as the government attempts a near impossible technological feat of linking the major bureaucracies of Medicare, Medicaid and CHIPS with state exchanges.</p>
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<p>If you want to find the exchange in your state, check out <a href="http://www.healthcare.gov" type="external">www.healthcare.gov. Opens a New Window.</a></p> | Understanding Obamacare | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2013/10/01/understanding-obamacare.html | 2016-03-06 | 0 |
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<p>"The hottest days of the year are upcoming," Kerry Jones, meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Albuquerque office, said Monday. "It is going to be a blazing hot weekend, I'm afraid."</p>
<p>Jones said it might get up to 99 degrees Wednesday in the Albuquerque valley and on the West Mesa, and could hit 100 at the Sunport this weekend. The average high in the Albuquerque area this time of year is 92 degrees.</p>
<p>That expectation of higher temperatures might come as a rude awakening after a wetter-than-average and cooler-than-normal spring, but we are fast approaching what is traditionally the hottest time of the year in Albuquerque. Jones said the highest frequency of 100-plus degree temperatures occurs from June 28 to July 2.</p>
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<p>"Since, 1939, 100-plus temperatures have been observed 48 times during that five-day period," Jones said. "The temperature reached at least 100 degrees the most often on June 28th," at 13 times.</p>
<p>Since 1939, there have been 231 days when the temperature has reached at least 100 degrees. That's an average of three times a year.</p>
<p>"We had two 100-degree days last summer and two the previous summer," Jones said.</p>
<p>He said the earliest date Albuquerque got to at least 100 degrees was June 5, 2010, when 100 degrees was recorded. The latest date was Sept. 5, 1979, when 100 degrees was also the official temperature.</p>
<p>Jones said that the greatest number of consecutive 100-degree days in Albuquerque was nine, June 22-30, 1980, and that the highest temperature ever recorded here was 107 degrees on June 26, 1974.</p>
<p>There is a chance of isolated thunderstorms in the Albuquerque area today and scattered thunderstorms tonight. But most of the anticipated precipitation this week will be in the upper elevations and in other parts of the state, Jones said. There is the possibility of isolated severe storms in east-central and northeastern New Mexico on Wednesday evening.</p>
<p>According to the weather service, there is the chance for thunderstorms in the mountains and to the east on Thursday, and storms drifting to the east and southeast on Friday.</p>
<p>But for Albuquerque and most of the state, hot and dry is the call for the week.</p>
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<p /> | New Mexico gets ready for some hot weather | false | https://abqjournal.com/599387/new-mexico-gets-ready-for-some-hot-weather.html | 2 |
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<p />
<p>Image source: Tableau.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>There's no way to sugarcoat it: Tableau Software (NYSE: DATA) had a horrible 2016. Shares lost over half of their value, with most of that decline occurring <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/10/why-tableau-software-inc-fell-431-in-february.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">in February Opens a New Window.</a> when the data-visualization specialist reported disappointing earnings alongside weak guidance. A handful of <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/02/05/why-big-data-stocks-got-utterly-crushed-today.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">big-data stocks got crushed Opens a New Window.</a> that day, as investors feared Tableau's woes were not isolated to the company itself, but instead potentially spelled trouble for the sector.</p>
<p><a href="http://ycharts.com/companies/DATA" type="external">DATA</a> data by <a href="http://ycharts.com" type="external">YCharts Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Tableau investors are no stranger to volatility. Zooming out a bit, shares have been on a bona fide roller coaster ever since the 2013 IPO. Unfortunately, the company may also have a rough 2017 ahead of it.</p>
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<p>Wunderlich Securities analyst Bill Choi has just downgraded his rating on Tableau shares (via <a href="http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2017/01/05/tableau-cloud-competition-rising-says-wunderlich/" type="external">Tech Trader Daily Opens a New Window.</a>) from buy to hold. The analyst's price target is also getting cut from $58 to $50. The main reason for the pessimism is an expectation that competition from much larger rivals Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is going to intensify further this year. While Tableau still offers strong visualization and analytics, the broader shift away from on-premise deployments toward cloud-based services poses a potential threat, since most of Tableau's revenue is generated through on-premise deployments.</p>
<p>If Tableau's biggest differentiator is visualization and analytics, it shouldn't take much time for Amazon and Microsoft to cut into its business in short order. Meanwhile, the e-commerce and software giants both have far greater scale and a wider breadth of other offerings that translate into lower costs and deeper relationships. Choi notes that AWS QuickSight (which he accidentally refers to as QuickShift) costs just $9 to $18 per month per user (standard versus enterprise users); Amazon <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/10/09/why-tableau-software-shares-sank-4-yesterday.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">launched QuickSight in October 2015 Opens a New Window.</a>. Microsoft's Power BI undercuts even more aggressively at $0 to $10 per month per user (Power BI versus Power BI Pro).</p>
<p>In contrast, Tableau Online costs nearly $42 per month per user. While Tableau Online is a higher-end offering with more features to justify the premium, QuickSight and Power BI are only going to expand their own feature sets from here. At a minimum, it seems that Tableau will need to discount in order to score the bigger enterprise contracts, which will hurt pricing power and margins. There are some signs that Tableau is already doing so, but management isn't too concerned overall.</p>
<p>Responding to an analyst question over competitive pressure as it relates to discounting on the last conference call, co-founder and Chairman Christian Chabot said:</p>
<p>Chabot did acknowledge that Tableau has needed "more discounting flexibility." The company's success naturally attracts competitors, but Chabot thinks that the market is growing so fast that there will be room for several players to be successful.</p>
<p>Still, with competitive pressures from gigantic rivals mounting, Tableau will have an uphill battle this year if it wants to satisfy investors.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Tableau Software When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of January 4, 2017</p>
<p>Teresa Kersten is an employee of LinkedIn and is a member of The Motley Fool's Board of Directors. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFNewCow/info.aspx" type="external">Evan Niu, CFA Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon.com. 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> | Tableau Software, Inc. May Have a Tough 2017 Ahead | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/05/tableau-software-inc-may-have-tough-2017-ahead.html | 2017-01-05 | 0 |
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<p><a href="http://goo.gl/TkAPPK" type="external">Shutterstock</a></p>
<p>You cannot talk for very long to a conservative these days without hearing the words “constitutional” and “constitutionalist.”</p>
<p>Formulations such as “I am a constitutional conservative” or “I am a constitutionalist” are tea party habits, but they are not confined to its ranks. Many kinds of conservatives contend that everything they believe is thoroughly consistent with the views and intentions of our 18th-century Founders.</p>
<p />
<p>Wielding pocket-sized copies of the Constitution, they like to cite it to settle political disputes. Writing in the YG Network’s recently issued conservative manifesto, “Room to Grow,” Ramesh Ponnuru argues that there is a new and salutary “popular interest in constitutionalism.”</p>
<p>“Instead of treating the Constitution as the property of lawyers and judges,” he notes, “it proposes that legislators, and even citizen-activists, have an independent duty to evaluate the constitutionality of legislation.”</p>
<p>One plausible progressive response is to see Ponnuru’s exercise as doomed from the start. The framers could not possibly have foreseen what the world would look like in 2014. In any event, they got some important things wrong, most glaringly their document’s acceptance of slavery.</p>
<p>Moreover, because the Constitution was written primarily as a foundation for government, it can answer only so many questions. David Strauss of the University of Chicago Law School authored a book called “The Living Constitution” to make plain that there is a lot more to this concept than its detractors suggest. He notes that “a great part of the framers’ genius lay exactly in their ability to leave provisions general when they should be left general, so as not to undermine the document’s ability to serve as common ground.”</p>
<p>The problem with “originalists,” Strauss says, is that they “take general provisions and make them specific,” even when they’re not. One might add that the originalists’ versions of specificity often seem to overlap with their political preferences.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, progressives should take Ponnuru’s proposal seriously and think constitutionally themselves. In doing so, they would challenge conservative claims about what the Constitution really demands.</p>
<p>In the May issue of the Boston University Law Review, Joseph R. Fishkin and William E. Forbath of the University of Texas Law School show that at key turning points in our history (the Jacksonian era, the Populist and Progressive moments, and the New Deal), opponents of rising inequality made strong arguments “that we cannot keep our constitutional democracy — our republican form of government — without constitutional restraints against oligarchy and a political economy that maintains a broad middle class, accessible to everyone.”</p>
<p>Their article is called “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution,” though Forbath told me that he and Fishkin may give the book they’re writing on the topic the more upbeat title “The Constitution of Opportunity.” Their view is that by empowering the wealthy in our political system, Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United directly contradict the Constitution’s central commitment to shared self-rule.</p>
<p>“Extreme concentrations of economic and political power undermine equal opportunity and equal citizenship,” they write. “In this way, oligarchy is incompatible with, and a threat to, the American constitutional scheme.”</p>
<p>While their overarching vision contrasts sharply with Ponnuru’s, they make a similar critique of what they call an excessively “court-centered” approach to constitutionalism. “Constitutional politics during the 19th and early 20th centuries” was very different and the subject of democratic deliberation. In earlier eras, they say, the Constitution was seen as not simply permitting but actually requiring “affirmative legislation … to ensure a wide distribution of opportunity” and to address “the problem of oligarchy in a modern capitalist society.”</p>
<p>The authors remind us of Franklin Roosevelt’s warning that “the inevitable consequence” of placing “economic and financial control in the hands of the few” would be “the destruction of the base of our form of government.” And writing during the Gilded Age, a time like ours in many ways, the journalist James F. Hudson argued that “imbedded” in the Constitution is “the principle” mandating “the widest distribution among the people, not only of political power, but of the advantages of wealth, education and social influence.”</p>
<p>The idea of a Constitution of Opportunity is both refreshing and relevant. For too long, progressives have allowed conservatives to monopolize claims of fealty to our unifying national document. In fact, those who would battle rising economic inequalities to create a robust middle class should insist that it’s they who are most loyal to the Constitution’s core purpose. Broadly shared well-being is essential to the framers’ promise that “We the people” will be the stewards of our government.</p>
<p>E.J. Dionne’s e-mail address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com.</p>
<p>© 2014, Washington Post Writers Group</p> | Our Progressive Constitution | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/our-progressive-constitution/ | 2014-07-08 | 4 |
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<p>I caught a free show in San Francisco’s Union Square on my lunch break this afternoon—a country singer, with a voice rivaling Patti Loveless and Lucinda Williams. But this girl ain’t your standard Nashville crooner: <a href="http://www.mikomarks.com" type="external">Miko Marks</a> is a Michigan native, current Oakland resident, and the first black country singer that I personally have ever seen.</p>
<p>Though country, like rock n’ roll, <a href="http://www.ibma.org/about.bluegrass/history/" type="external">has its roots in black music</a>, these days the twangy genres are not exactly renowned for their ethnic diversity. But Marks is a rising star, and she’s not the only one: Turns out that while the rest of us were drooling over Amy Winehouse, black women have been taking the country world by storm. Other notable names are <a href="http://www.myspace.com/rissipalmer" type="external">Rissi Palmer</a>, <a href="http://www.sunnydaye.com/" type="external">Sunny Daye</a>, and <a href="http://www.vickivann.com/" type="external">Vicki Vann</a>. While all three women draw on a variety of musical influences, there’s no question that the sound is country.</p>
<p>The country music establishment has started to take notice, as have the chroniclers of black popular culture: Ebony magazine recently profiled Marks as part of a feature entitled, “What Does Black Sound Like?” and <a href="http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2008/05/16/what-does-black-sound-like/" type="external">more</a> than <a href="http://blogs.bet.com/betj/underdog/?p=28" type="external">one</a> blog has applauded the women’s foray into an almost-totally white musical sphere.</p>
<p>Those looking to delve deeper into the world of black pickers and strummers should check out the artists of the <a href="http://www.blackbanjo.com/" type="external">Black Banjo Gathering</a>, as well as the <a href="http://www.myspace.com/carolinachocolatedrops" type="external">Carolina Chocolate Drops</a> and the inimitable <a href="http://www.charleypride.com" type="external">Charley Pride</a>. But I know they’re not the only ones. Readers, who am I missing? What other black country or bluegrass artists should we know about? While you’re thinking, you can check out songs by Marks, Rissi Palmer, and Charley Pride here:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.imeem.com/people/OxnCudJ/playlist/slOGJiIH/what_color_is_that_twang_music_playlist/" type="external">What Color Is That Twang?</a></p>
<p /> | Country Music: Not Just for White People Anymore | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/country-music-not-just-white-people-anymore/ | 2008-07-23 | 4 |
<p>I am having trouble believing this, partly because it has been almost completely ignored in the U.S. press (with the exception below). But that which I do not wish to believe appears to be true: days after the destruction of Iraq’s Museum of Antiquities, the Nationali Library in Baghdad was burned to the ground, as U.S. troops against refused to intervene. Many reporters do not know, do not wish to distract from feel-good patriotic stories, or assumed the National Library is the same as the Museum of Antiquities.</p>
<p>We surely live in a time of barbarism. Let me share a few thoughts on the destruction of Iraqi heritage that occurred in the past few days. The <a href="" type="internal">best account so far is by John Burns</a>, who was also one of the first journalists to break through cliches and denials in Bosnia back in 1992.</p>
<p>Here is a quote from the article:</p>
<p>“But even as some Iraqis sought to heal the city’s wounds, others, fired by anger and revenge, broke through to the little that was left of untouched government buildings after four days of continuous looting. Among other buildings afire or still smoldering in eastern Baghdad today were the city hall, the Agriculture Ministry and o so thoroughly burned that heat still radiated 50 paces from its front doors o the National Library. Not far from the National Museum of Iraq, which was looted on Thursday and Friday with the loss of almost all of its store of 170,000 artifacts, the library was considered another of the repositories of an Iraqi civilization dating back at least 7,000 years. By tonight, virtually nothing was left of the library and its tens of thousands of old manuscripts and books, and of archives like Iraqi newspapers tracing the country’s turbulent history from the era of Ottoman rule through to Mr. Hussein. Reading rooms and the stacks where the collections were stored were reduced to smoking vistas of blackened rubble. Across the street, a lone American tank roared out of the monumental gates of the Defense Ministry, untouched by the looters presumably because they knew that the ministry, at least, would be under close guard by American troops.”</p>
<p>Burns focuses on Baghdad. Throughout Iraq archives, libraries, and records are being destroyed. The Bush administration is guilty, at the very least, of criminal neglect of the responsibility, under the Geneva conventions, for the country it has occupied. Bush, Secretary of Defense Cheney, and General Tommy Franks have all claimed that they did not have the ability to intervene. Evidence suggests they knew what would happen, or should have known, and had the ability to stop it. The Bush administration made no effort to avoid another form of “collateral damage,” one that they could have avoided, at least in part, and one they surely knew would happen unless they took measures to prevent it. Here are some of the incriminating factors:</p>
<p>1) The looting in Basra the previous week gave the Bush administration clear warning of what would happen in Baghdad, if it didn’t act. The looting in Basra targeted the universities and other cultural institutions, as well as archive and records collection, and gave the Bush clear warning not only of looting, but of the targeting of key institutions of culture.</p>
<p>2) According to McGuire Gibson of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, both State and Defense received a list of the 150 most culturally significant sites and monuments in Iraq. Heading the list, the Baghdad Museum. They expressed their intentions to protect them.</p>
<p>3) The Bush administration was quite capable of protecting what it thought important. Every one of Iraq’s oil wells (over 1000) has been secured, as well as oil refineries and the Oil Ministry, Defense Ministry, and Interior Ministry. These graphic illustrations of the values and priorites of this administration will speak far more eloquently than the the PR campaigns they launch to win peoples hearts and minds. One thousand oil wells and not one library or museum.</p>
<p>4) For weeks the administration has been praising itself for its great organization and logistics. In fact, by all accounts, an enormous amount of equipment and personnel have been moved around the world, stationed and restationed. The U.S. government has a massive and highly effective logistical operation. There is no reason some effort could not have been made to protect Iraq’s greatest treasure, its cultural heritage. The administration promised it would try to preserve the oil, for Iraqis it said. It did preserve the oil, and allowed something truly irreplaceable to be destroyed.</p>
<p>5) Bush refused to even mention the looting in his Saturday radio address hailing his triumph, and has refused to even acknowledge that it exists.</p>
<p>6) Rumsfeld openly ridiculed concern over the looting. In response to a reporter’s question, he said (I believe this was on Friday), that the whole problem was exaggerated, that “untidiness” happens, that there was nothing he could do about it, and that “free people have a right to commit crimes.” Yes, these were his words. Then he stated that he saw the same vase being looted over and over and over again. Indeed, the media in the U.S. showed the looting of the kitsch of Saddam’s cronies, making the issue into a justified humiliation of a kleptocracy. The U.S. television pundits then began parading Rumsfeld’s “vase” remark and belittling anyone who thought the U.S. administration should take the problem seriously.</p>
<p>7) General Tommy Franks, even today, again, claimed that the problem was exaggerated. He was far more concerned with the fact that the exploits of his army were not being given due credit than with the growing crisis. It is not clear if the National Library was on fire yet as he was speaking. Military spokesmen and officers in the field have continually expressed contempt for “police work” or, as one called it, “babysitting,” thinking themselves above such activity. Though some officers were clearly doing their best and though it would be unfair to blame some stressed out soldier in a war for this catastrophe, there is a general flaw in the way the military disdains civil security, as if somehow it was not an inevitable concomitant of military conflict and, especially, of occupation.</p>
<p>8) In defending the administration’s lack of action to stop the looting, Rumsfeld cited a litany of past looting sprees, from Panama to LA. The fact that such looting has occurred does not mean it was some kind of “act of god” that could not be dealt with; the precedents make his reponsibility all the greater because they gave him greater warning.</p>
<p>9) To my knowledge no MP’s or specially designated police and no Iraqi dissidents or exiles were brought in to help establish basic order. No effort was made to use the same means to secure the Museum and Library that was used to secure oil facilities. It is not that the administration attempted to do anything and failed. It never tried.</p>
<p>10) Even after the National Museum was destroyed, the Bush administration and the military under General Franks apparently made no effort to protect the National Library.</p>
<p>In sum:</p>
<p>The U.S. owes Iraq reparations for the destruction of Iraqi heritage, and those reparations should not come from Iraqi oil but from U.S. funds. No amount of money can replace what is lost, but that, tragically, is the situation with other reparations obligations.</p>
<p>The Bush administration has violated the Geneva conventions.</p>
<p>For many, Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell, Franks, Rice, and other members of the Security Council will go down in Iraqi history along with Saddam and Hulegu as barbarians that oversaw the destruction of Iraq. But it is Nero that is the best parallel for this administration. It is not clear whether Nero set the fire in Rome or not, but what is clear is that, according to the accounts we have, he didn’t think it a problem worth taking him away from his fiddle.</p>
<p>(As a gesture to let off steam, in sorrow over the destruction and in anger at the negligence that helped make it possible, I hereby christen George W. Bush the Nero of Baghdad).</p>
<p>MICHAEL SELLS is Emily Judson Baugh and John Marshall Gest Professor of Comparative Religions at Haverford College He can be reached at: <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a></p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Nero in Baghdad | true | https://counterpunch.org/2003/04/15/nero-in-baghdad/ | 2003-04-15 | 4 |
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<p>MOSUL, Iraq — The three women tensed as their taxi approached the checkpoint manned by Islamic State group fighters. Everyone in Mosul dreaded checkpoints; you could never predict what these gunmen might do in their fanatic drive to crush the slightest hint of “sin.” One of them peered at the girl in the back seat, Ferah.</p>
<p>The 14-year-old wore the required veil over her face, but she had forgotten to lower the flap that also hid her eyes. A fighter barked at her to close it. But Ferah was not wearing her gloves, which were also required. If she fixed her veil, they would see her bare hands, and things would only get worse.</p>
<p>She shrank in her seat, trying to disappear.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The gunmen exploded, screaming that they would take Ferah, her mom and her sister to the Hisba, the feared religious police who punished violators of IS’s orders. They pulled the driver out and questioned him. How do you know these women?</p>
<p>Ferah felt the gunmen looming outside her window — frightening, huge and muscular, with beards down to their chests. Her mother went pale. A simple drive to a friend’s house was spiraling into disaster.</p>
<p>And just as suddenly, it was over. Somehow, the driver talked the gunmen down.</p>
<p>Once safe at their friend’s house, Ferah broke down. She wasn’t just trembling, her entire body spasmed.</p>
<p>This was the new, nightmare world that the Iraqi teen had to live in.</p>
<p>Ferah had never even heard of the Islamic State before the militants took over. As the summer of 2014 began, her world had seemed wide open. She’d finished her first year at a new private school, the best in the city, which she’d loved. She’d made new friends. Her classes were in English, her favorite subject. She dreamed of one day becoming an interior designer.</p>
<p>But in June, IS militants overran Mosul. The city fell in a night of chaos.</p>
<p>Around midnight, the streets around Ferah’s home lit up with headlights. Neighbors with suitcases piled into cars, soldiers threw bags into trucks, screeching away as artillery and gunfire echoed. Across the city, a panicked exodus erupted. Ferah’s two eldest sisters, who were married and lived nearby, called to say they were fleeing to the nearby Kurdish zone. Her best friend from school messaged that her family was leaving to Turkey.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Ferah’s family stayed.</p>
<p>The next morning, she woke up to a world ruled by the militants, sneeringly referred to by their Arabic acronym, Daesh.</p>
<p>As days turned to weeks and weeks to months, Ferah no longer wanted to go outside. It was too dangerous. She retreated into her bedroom, away from the horrors, from the stories of men being shot in public squares or women being stoned to death.</p>
<p>Her refuge would be in words. She put a candle into an old crystal, and by its faint glow, took out her IPad and wrote on her Facebook page. Just a few lines each day about a feeling or thought that had come to her, a fear or a hope.</p>
<p>She had no idea how long she would have to live like this, or whether she and her family would survive at all.</p>
<p>“What is the problem?” she asked in one of her imagined dialogues.</p>
<p>“The future is gone. It came crashing down.”</p>
<p>“How can I understand your feelings?”</p>
<p>“Be among Daesh. … Try being a dreamer while sitting among Daesh.”</p>
<p>____</p>
<p>THE PLAGUE</p>
<p>Every day, there were more of the madmen. They were everywhere, with their long beards, their robes stopping above the ankle. They never smiled and seemed angry all the time.</p>
<p>When school started, it was under IS control too. Ferah’s private school remained shut, so she went to a public one. She was certain some girls in her class were Daesh. Their faces hidden under veils, they hardly talked to others and when they did it was to harshly judge.</p>
<p>Ferah was afraid of them. She stopped going to school.</p>
<p>The son of her family’s next-door neighbor emerged as an IS member. “How can you let him join them?” Ferah’s mom asked his mother, who just shrugged. Soon the woman’s husband too wore the militants’ clothes. The whole family was Daesh. These were people Ferah’s family had known for years; they visited each other’s houses. Ferah’s bedroom looked out on their home.</p>
<p>It was like a plague, spreading and transforming people.</p>
<p>One by one, Ferah’s remaining friends said goodbye, packing up for Turkey or the Kurdish areas.</p>
<p>Relatives and family friends who stayed behind dropped by her house regularly and talked about the news. Ferah heard about the laws handed down. Daesh banned smoking. During Ramadan, they arrested people suspected of not fasting. Rule-breakers were flogged in public squares.</p>
<p>The atrocities began. Hundreds of Shiite prisoners in Mosul’s main prison were killed. Policemen and soldiers were shot to death in the streets for all to see.</p>
<p>Ferah’s father, a university professor, used an Arabic saying to explain that Daesh was exploiting religion: “Speaking righteousness while committing evil,” he said. He and his wife had raised their four daughters to value education and faith. They were a religious Sunni Muslim family, and often prayed together. Ferah, her sisters and their mother wore headscarves, like almost all Muslim women in Mosul.</p>
<p>This was nothing like the Islam they knew.</p>
<p>Patrols by the Hisba religious police proliferated, enforcing ever-increasing regulations. Women were ordered to wear the niqab: the black robes, gloves and veil that hide any hint of their shapes and keep them sequestered from men’s gaze even in public.</p>
<p>Ferah hated wearing the niqab. She hated Daesh.</p>
<p>And she hated her life.</p>
<p>On the morning of Oct. 16, 2014, she had breakfast as usual, helped her mother with housework, showered, did her noon prayers.</p>
<p>Then she went into her room, locked the door and cried.</p>
<p>Her friends were gone. Her two eldest sisters were gone. One was pregnant when she fled, and now Ferah had a newborn niece she’d only seen in photos. She was isolated and lonely, afraid of going outside.</p>
<p>Dinnertime came and she didn’t emerge. Her parents became worried.</p>
<p>“You can get through this, Ferah,” they told her through the door.</p>
<p>“I need to be alone,” she sobbed back.</p>
<p>She wrote her thoughts in English on pieces of paper. Why is nothing going how I hoped? Why is this happening? She liked to write her deepest thoughts, ones she didn’t want anyone to know, in English, not Arabic. She would then cut up the papers, just like she wished she could cut up her reality, and store the pieces in a box in her wardrobe.</p>
<p>But late in the night after hours sitting on her bed, she tried something different. She wrote in Arabic.</p>
<p>“Suddenly life robs you of what you love, as if it’s punishing you for a crime that hasn’t been committed yet,” she wrote. “I’m afraid to care about the scattered remains of my soul, only to then lose it. Sometimes I’m afraid of happiness!”</p>
<p>She posted it on her Facebook page and felt, curiously, better– “like a light at the end of a mysterious path.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE TEENS</p>
<p>Ferah had never thought of herself as a writer. But she started a separate Facebook page and posted every few days. Soon she had hundreds of followers, then several thousand.</p>
<p>She created a new world in her bedroom. She cut butterflies out of blue and red and green paper and hung them around her mirror. Butterflies are shining, optimistic. She draped strings of white fairy lights from the ceiling. She taped English letters on the wall: “Be yourself.”</p>
<p>And she lit her candle, to set the mood.</p>
<p>In her writing, she faced her greatest fear: Her life might never begin. Daesh might be here forever.</p>
<p>“When you close your eyes, you’ll feel how horrible it is to have your hands chained and be unable to picture your future. You’ll curl up on the ground crying.”</p>
<p>She knew she was emotional. She might cry for hours or burst from her room shouting, “What am I doing here? Everyone abandoned me.” Ferah’s sister just shrugged off the stress or slept. But the slightest provocation set Ferah off.</p>
<p>Her mom worried. She found excuses to drift into Ferah’s bedroom and check on her.</p>
<p>It was not easy to raise a teenager in a city run by fanatics. One wrong word could get you killed.</p>
<p>In the summer of 2015, news spread that a man was arrested after he pinpointed the house of Ferah’s Daesh neighbors to the U.S.-led coalition. Ferah’s family and others nearby decided to leave for a few days, convinced an airstrike was coming.</p>
<p>As they left, they saw the wife from the Daesh family, also fleeing.</p>
<p>Ferah flew into a rage. “Why are you leaving? Don’t you want martyrdom?” she screamed. “Go back in your house and let them strike it. You’ll go right to Paradise!”</p>
<p>Terrified, Ferah’s mother pulled her daughter away.</p>
<p>The neighbor’s house was never hit. The militants shot the alleged informant in the head in a public square, and the neighbor’s husband proudly showed the video, boasting, “This is the one who tried to target us.”</p>
<p>Soon after, on July 19, 2015, Ferah’s 15th birthday rolled around. Her mother tried to organize a party, but Ferah put a stop to that. She didn’t want to blow out candles and act like it was a happy birthday.</p>
<p>What was happy about it?</p>
<p>It wasn’t just the fear. The boredom was crippling.</p>
<p>Month after month, Ferah and her sister rattled around the house, trying to fill the agonizingly slow hours.</p>
<p>Night brought the closest thing to freedom: the internet. During the day, the provider put limits on usage that made it hard to even watch a video. But after midnight, the megabytes were unlimited.</p>
<p>Across Mosul, society rolled up behind closed doors, living nocturnal, virtual lives, and sleeping late into the long day. Even Ferah’s father was trapped. He had no job to go to because IS closed the universities. Also, his beard simply wouldn’t grow. So going outside risked harassment by the Hisba, which demanded men wear beards in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad. He spent his days largely in his study, writing a book.</p>
<p>Ferah read. She downloaded Arabic translations of self-help books. “Succeed for Yourself: Unlock Your Potential for Success and Happiness”, “You Will See It When You Believe It,” “The Power of Intention.”</p>
<p>She liked “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” so much she read it twice. Habit #1: “Be proactive.” That meant saying, “I am the force. I am the captain of my life. I can choose my attitude.”</p>
<p>She turned to books on adolescence because she wanted to understand the developmental stage she was living through. She learned these were her formative years when her personality becomes defined.</p>
<p>Ferah realized: I can’t go on like this. If I am depressed and terrified, that way of thinking will stay with me forever.</p>
<p>It was no use complaining, she told herself. She must use this time to achieve something that would stay with her. She would be a dreamer among Daesh, she would be the captain of her life.</p>
<p>This would be her project.</p>
<p>Her Facebook journal grew. Her followers, more than 6,000 now, praised her writing, strengthening her.</p>
<p>One evening she noticed a new follow from an Iraqi girl. Ferah messaged asking why she’d friended her. “Because I looked at your profile and saw you were a good person,” the girl said.</p>
<p>This was Rania. She was from Mosul too, but her family had fled to Dahuk, in Kurdish territory. Ferah and Rania started chatting often, superficial things at first, then a friendship bloomed.</p>
<p>Still, all these steps seemed too small to keep out the reality of Daesh. “I know after all this time I was living in my dream world,” Ferah wrote. “A single word can turn all the pain back toward me.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>THE SCENT OF PARADISE</p>
<p>Nowhere in Mosul was there an escape from Daesh’s terror.</p>
<p>Once, Ferah drove with her parents to make one of their occasional checks on the house of Ferah’s eldest sister. They didn’t dare stop the car, they just rolled by slowly. The house had been confiscated, and now pro-IS families lived there. Ferah watched them in their short robes and beards and veils going in and out as if the house was their own.</p>
<p>The streets were a danger.</p>
<p>The Hisba’s prowling, obsessed eyes caught “errors” by women that the women themselves didn’t realize. Outside Ferah’s uncle’s house, they dragged away a passing girl. Her robes had swished open, and they spotted something red underneath, a forbidden dash of color in what was supposed to be an all-black garb.</p>
<p>Ferah’s own rooftop was a danger.</p>
<p>The roof was a place to catch a breeze on sweltering summer nights. But her family’s house was exposed, clearly visible from three directions. Who knew what they might accuse you of doing if they saw you there?</p>
<p>In a nearby neighborhood, a young girl, around 12, had gone up on her roof. By coincidence, a boy next door was on his roof at the same time. They were seen. Suspicions were raised.</p>
<p>Daesh arrested them and killed them both. The girl was stoned to death on the street in front of her house, the punishment for adultery. Everyone in the neighborhood talked about it. They said when the stoning was over and the girl’s body was taken away, there lingered the warm smell of musk, one of the aromas of Paradise, a sure sign that she was innocent and God had taken her in.</p>
<p>Definitely never go on the roof.</p>
<p>The only safe place was inside four walls.</p>
<p>“Isn’t there a right to the freedom to dream, the freedom to have the best years of my life?” Ferah wrote. “I’d just like to know when I will really live.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>HER LITTLE WORKS</p>
<p>Inside her room, Ferah went deeper in a world becoming ever more elaborate.</p>
<p>From Instagram and Tumblr, she printed photos of faces or fashion she liked and taped them above her bed. “Everything you imagine is real,” read one poster. Another showed a girl wearing fairy wings. “What if I fall?” the picture asked — and then replied, “Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?”</p>
<p>Her paper cut-outs multiplied, not just butterflies but flowers, hearts, a nest of baby birds. She called them “her little works.”</p>
<p>The light of her candle encouraged her. “Speak to me often,” it said. “I am here to muse and ponder with you.”</p>
<p>At night, she explored online. She discovered a whole microculture of interior design enthusiasts on YouTube. Her favorite: Anything IKEA. She practiced her English watching cartoons. She watched “White House Down” with Channing Tatum over and over until she understood almost all the dialogue.</p>
<p>Most wonderful was her friendship with Rania.</p>
<p>They had similar tastes. Rania sent a picture of herself, and her dress was just like something Ferah would wear. They decorated rooms together online, trading pictures of furniture.</p>
<p>Ferah had never seen Rania in person, yet their friendship grew deeper than any she’d had as a child. Maybe because it was born out of difficulty. At her worst moments, Ferah would hear the chime of a message from Rania, and she knew she just had to open it and she would laugh.</p>
<p>“I’m sad that one sky looks over both of us, yet we don’t meet, that digital photos bring us together and yet we don’t meet,” Ferah wrote. Yet she thanked God: Breaking through the distance “is absolutely the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced.”</p>
<p>At least within the world she created in her room she could find comfort and wander far online with her friends, her writings and her readers.</p>
<p>Then that too was gone.</p>
<p>On her 16th birthday, July 19, 2016, Daesh shut the internet down.</p>
<p>IS was sealing off Mosul’s population. It feared spies guiding American airstrikes as Iraqi forces further south started their long march toward the city, aiming to take back Daesh’s greatest stronghold.</p>
<p>Ferah was alone.</p>
<p>She began to sew, taking lessons from a family friend. She loved it. She worked at the machine sometimes until 3 a.m. and eventually made nearly 20 outfits, giving some away as gifts.</p>
<p>And she wrote — for herself now not her followers. She composed long ruminations, challenging herself and facing her doubts.</p>
<p>As months passed, she found that her little works — her crafts, her clothes, her writings — were her secret successes. They had given her confidence to stand on her own.</p>
<p>“No one can stop you when trust in what’s inside you, when survival is in your heart even as your body is drowning, when light is inside you even as darkness is around you,” she wrote. “I’ll … force my reality to submit to my desires and reach my goals. Even when difficulties grow, I will not break. Go on, war, get worse.”</p>
<p>There was just one person outside she yearned for. For Rania’s birthday, she wrote her a message.</p>
<p>“I’m building an eternal place for you within me,” she told her. “Whenever I think I’ll declare my surrender, you pass by and I become certain that, with you there, I can never surrender … Thank you for your heart, my friend, my flower, my galaxy, my butterfly. I love you very, very much.”</p>
<p>On the top floor of her house, she could get a faint signal on her SIM card. She stood in just the right place, held her phone up and, hitting send, prayed her message, byte by byte, would make its way to the friend she had never met.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>ASHES</p>
<p>In January 2017, Daesh burst into Ferah’s world.</p>
<p>Iraqi forces battled their way into eastern Mosul in tough urban warfare. The militants took over homes, dug in to fight and bloody the advancing forces, then fell back to the next neighborhood. The city shook with gunfire, car bombs and airstrikes.</p>
<p>One evening, there came a banging at the front gate. They didn’t answer; they were inside praying. So the Daesh gunmen shot through the gate.</p>
<p>“Everyone out, the gunmen ordered. They wanted the house; the roof would give their snipers good views. Ferah was outraged seeing these boys with guns, no older than 17 and clearly from villages outside Mosul, shouting at her father, a respectable man in his 50s. Even in this critical moment before battle, they berated him for not growing his beard.</p>
<p>Ferah’s family took refuge with a neighbor. Huddling in a single room, they could hear the fighters next door, clunking up and down stairs. They waited hours for the storm of battle to descend.</p>
<p>Just before dawn, it struck. The rocket fire burst, the guns hammered. The “wzzzzzzzzzzz!” that always preceded an airstrike grew closer and closer.</p>
<p>Then a giant blast. The room went black. Part of the ceiling collapsed. They struggled to breathe, and the neighbor’s young children screamed in the darkness. Ferah and her sister screamed too.. Ferah’s father was silent, stunned.</p>
<p>As suddenly as the storm came, it moved on. Daesh retreated, and troops from the Iraqi 8th Army were fanning out in the streets around Ferah’s home. After nearly three years, their neighborhood was out of the fanatics’ control and in government hands.</p>
<p>Ferah, her parents and sister emerged from their refuge, unsure of what was happening.</p>
<p>“The family of the burning house is coming out. Don’t shoot them,” an army officer said into his walkie-talkie.</p>
<p>Ferah stood in front of her home. Flames gushed from its windows in shapes she could hardly bear to look at. The flames were in her room.</p>
<p>The Daesh fighters had set off explosives in the kitchen before fleeing.</p>
<p>When the fire died down, the family went in. Ferah’s room had melted. The walls were black, the paint peeled back in painful, obscene shreds. The ceiling had fallen onto her bed.</p>
<p>Her little works were ash — the butterflies, the lights, the paper hearts and birds, the clothes, even the box in her wardrobe filled with cut-up papers bearing her deepest thoughts in English.</p>
<p>“I saw my dreams … as they turned to nothing,” she wrote. “My trust in tomorrow slipped away … My heart has burned up.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>EPILOGUE</p>
<p>But it was not the end.</p>
<p>After the fire, her family stayed with Ferah’s eldest sister in Irbil. From there, her father oversaw the rebuilding of their home. Ferah took a high school refresher course and passed. When classes finally resumed, she would be only a grade behind.</p>
<p>They visited Ferah’s sister, in Dahuk, and met her daughter, now nearly 3.</p>
<p>One morning, Ferah dropped by a school in Dahuk and found a group of schoolgirls gathered in the halls before class. She looked for one in particular.</p>
<p>Rania didn’t realize it was her until Ferah stood right in front of her.</p>
<p>“For real? You came?” Rania cried.</p>
<p>“This is the Ferah you’ve been talking to all these years!” the other girls laughed.</p>
<p>The two girls held each other for 10 long minutes. Rania showed Ferah her phone: She’d kept screenshots of their best chats. Among them was Ferah’s birthday message that had found its way to her.</p>
<p>Back home in Mosul now, Ferah’s room is repainted, but it’s not the sanctuary it once was. Her mother hauled out of storage an old bedroom set from her childhood that Ferah hates. She misses her butterflies, but she won’t put any up until she buys new furniture, hopefully from IKEA.</p>
<p>Nothing is normal. But she has her freedom. She is still a dreamer, but not among Daesh.</p>
<p>Sometimes, she looks back at one of her favorite texts. A love song to herself. She wrote it amid her hopelessness, praising the good she discovered in herself.</p>
<p>“Good morning to everyone who feels the beauty within — no matter who it angers,” she reads to herself. “Glory to the fading light of endings and the burst of new beginnings. Everything else won’t last long.”</p>
<p>__</p>
<p>Ferah and her family spoke to The Associated Press on condition that their full names not be used and that some identifying details not be mentioned out of fear for their safety in Mosul. Keath reported from Cairo.</p> | Smothered by the Islamic State, an Iraqi teen dares to dream | false | https://abqjournal.com/1101624/ferahs-world-a-teens-quest-to-survive-the-islamic-state.html | 2017-12-04 | 2 |
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<p>Source: Annaly.com/</p>
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<p>Annaly Capital Management had its fourth-quarter conference call last Thursday. The company dug into everything from the global economy and interest rates to the company's shifting investment strategy. Here's what executives want you to know.</p>
<p>1. The Federal Reserve will keep rates low The U.S. economy received an encouraging sign this past December when the Federal Reserve saw enough strength in the economy to begin raising short-term interest rates. The plan is to continue increasing rates in 2016 -- but mortgage REIT executives aren't buying it.</p>
<p>Annaly's CIO, David Finkelstein, said that"overseas economic developments have led to erosion in commodity prices [...] and widespread deterioration in equity and credit markets across the globe."The combination is leading Annaly's executives to believe that the Federal Reserve will abandon its mission to raise rates in the near term. This seems to be the majority opinion among mREITs, as similar statements came from American Capital Agency , CYS Investments , and several others.</p>
<p>This could be good news for Annaly and its peers. These companies borrow based on short-term interest rates, and the Fed's initial increase in rates did modestly raise Annaly's cost of funds. If Annaly is correct, and the Fed decides to keep rates low, it should keep the company's borrowing costs down.</p>
<p>2. Annaly will continue to be conservativeThe threat of rising rates has forced Annaly to play defense, but if executives believe rates will stay low, it could create an opportunity to get more aggressive. Finkelstein quickly squashed that notion by saying, "We're very cautious with respect to rates." He added that rates could still increase, and Annaly will continue "playing it down the middle."</p>
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<p>Annaly's lower debt-to-equity ratio, or leverage, is a good example of this approach. Here's why: The vast majority of the company's securities lose market value when prevailing rates rise and appreciate in value when interest rates fall. The use of leverage, or funding a greater percentage of assets with debt, magnifies this dynamic. Annaly's decision to use less leverage is a sign the company is willing to sacrifice potential gains to better insulate itself from rising interest rates.</p>
<p>The difference in leverage between Annaly and its peers looks small, but if Annaly levered its $12 billion in total equity by 6.8 -- which is the same as American Capital Agency at the end of 2015 -- rather than where it stands today at just 6, Annaly would add $9.6 billion of debt. That would add a substantial amount of risk, and based on the current environment, where interest rates are expected to stay low, but will enviably rise, I think investors should appreciate Annaly's more defensive mind-set. However, not everything Annaly is doing is conservative.</p>
<p>3. Annaly will continue adding credit assetsOne of the reasons Annaly is able to use less leverage is the company's continuing shift toward credit-sensitive investments. The goal of leverage is to ratchet up the return on investments, but things like commercial debt and equity as well as various residential credit investments already carry a higher yield. The trade-off is that the "credit" aspect of these investment means they're exposed to the risk of default.</p>
<p>This is a change of pace for Annaly. Like American Capital Agency and CYS Investments, Annaly has historically focused exclusively on agency residential mortgage-backed securities, or agency MBSes. These are pools of housing debt packed into fixed-income securities and stamped with a guarantee against default by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The safety of these assets is a major reason for Annaly's durability over time. However, in an effort to find new opportunity, Annaly has made the move into credit.</p>
<p>Annaly grew its credit portfolio to 23% of equity during the fourth quarter -- or $3 billion worth of capital -- compared with 11% at the end of 2014. Annaly's CEO, Kevin Keyes, said that agency MBSes will remain the company's core focus but that the company expects to continue to add credit investments in 2016.</p>
<p>Big pictureThe current state and direction of interest rates will always be important to Annaly's business, but the more interesting story to follow will be the transition from a company that invests in securities to one that can create assets. Annaly has $12 billion in total equity, which makes it 50% larger the next biggest mREIT, American Capital Agency. That scale has allowed Annaly to quickly establish a platform for making commercial loans. In fact, on its own, Annaly's commercial business would be the 10th largest mREIT. Ultimately, there is potentially more risk here, but it's turning Annaly into a business that's more difficult to replicate and, I think, a more compelling long-term investment.</p>
<p>The article <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/03/08/3-things-annaly-capital-management-inc-wants-you-t.aspx" type="external">3 Things Annaly Capital Management Inc. Wants You to Know Opens a New Window.</a> originally appeared on Fool.com.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/PeoplesInvestor/info.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">Dave Koppenheffer Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services <a href="http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/index.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">free for 30 days Opens a New Window.</a>. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that <a href="http://wiki.fool.com/Motley?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">considering a diverse range of insights Opens a New Window.</a> makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?source=eptfxblnk0000004" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright 1995 - 2016 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/help/index.htm?display=about02" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | 3 Things Annaly Capital Management Inc. Wants You to Know | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/08/3-things-annaly-capital-management-inc-wants-to-know.html | 2016-03-28 | 0 |
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<p><a href="" type="internal">General Motors</a> (NYSE: GM) said Tuesday it will start construction next week on a new $200 million stamping facility in Arlington, Texas, that should create around 180 jobs.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The plant will make parts for GM's next generation of full-size sports utility vehicles, including <a href="" type="internal">Chevrolet</a> Tahoes, Suburbans, <a href="" type="internal">GMC</a> Yukons and <a href="" type="internal">Cadillac</a> Escalades, the company said in a press release.</p>
<p>The facility will be housed at GM's Arlington Truck Assembly Plant. GM has been making cars at the Arlington site for more than 50 years.</p>
<p>GM's stock was down 24 cents, or 0.99%, at $23.99 in midday trading. The stock is well below its initial public offering price of $33 set in November 2010, just over a year removed from bankruptcy and a $50 billion government bailout.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p> | GM Will Build $200M Plant in Texas | true | http://foxbusiness.com/features/2012/01/31/gm-will-build-200m-plant-in-texas.html | 2016-01-26 | 0 |
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<p>NORWICH (CT)Norwich BulletinBy CLAIRE CANTUNorwich Bulletin&#160;</p>
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<p>NORWICH -- When someone is abused by a member of the clergy, "there's a lot of pain with that and anger," said Jacqueline Keller, communications director at the Diocese of Norwich.</p>
<p>"You really need someone who is trained to help. The purpose is to help people, not to hurt them anymore," Keller said.</p>
<p>Victims of sexual abuse by clergy have a new source of experienced help at the in Norwich.</p>
<p>Sherry Antoch has been named new interim assistance coordinator by Bishop Michael R. Cote. This position is in accordance with the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" adopted in June 2002 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.</p>
<p>Antoch will provide information about counseling services, spiritual assistance, support groups, and social service agencies to people who claim to have been sexually abused by clergy or other church staff.</p>
<p>While some survivors may have been going to counseling for years, they may "need to talk to somebody in the church because of how they're feeling about the church," said Keller.</p> | Norwich diocese names coordinator for abuse reports | false | https://poynter.org/news/norwich-diocese-names-coordinator-abuse-reports | 2003-11-07 | 2 |
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<p>Talks to avoid a fiscal crisis appeared to stall on Wednesday as President Barack Obama accused Republicans of digging in their heels due to a personal grudge against him, while a top Republican called the president "irrational."</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>As the clock ticks toward a year-end deadline, Obama and House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, are trying to reach a deal to avert harsh tax hikes and spending cuts that could trigger a recession.</p>
<p>Obama said he was puzzled over what was holding up the talks and told Republicans to stop worrying about scoring "a point against the president" or forcing him into concessions "just for the heck of it."</p>
<p>"It is very hard for them to say yes to me," he told a news conference in the White House. "At some point, you know, they've got to take me out of it."</p>
<p>The rise in tensions threatens to unravel significant progress made over the last week in the so-called fiscal cliff talks.</p>
<p>Boehner and Obama have each offered substantial concessions that have made a deal look within reach. Obama has agreed to cuts in benefits for seniors, while Boehner has conceded to Obama's demand that taxes rise for the richest Americans.</p>
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<p>However, the climate of goodwill has evaporated since Republicans announced plans on Tuesday to put an alternative tax plan to a vote in the House this week that would largely disregard the progress made so far in negotiations.</p>
<p>Obama threatened to veto the Republican measure, known as "Plan B," if Congress approved it.</p>
<p>Boehner's office slammed Obama for opposing their plan, which would raise taxes on households making more than $1 million a year and is a concession from longstanding Republican opposition to increasing any tax rates.</p>
<p>"The White House's opposition to a backup plan ... is growing more bizarre and irrational by the day," Boehner said through his spokesman, Brendan Buck.</p>
<p>Boehner expressed confidence the House would pass the legislation, known as "Plan B," on Thursday. He urged Obama to "get serious" about a balanced deficit reduction plan.</p>
<p>Global investors are on edge over the talks, and U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday following Boehner's comments.</p>
<p>An acrimonious presidential campaign that culminated in Obama's re-election on November 6 has added to the bad blood in Washington between Obama and congressional Republicans.</p>
<p>The two sides also clashed bitterly last year over the government's limit on borrowing - known as the debt ceiling - an episode that nearly led the nation to default on its debt.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Obama said the fiscal cliff must not get bogged down with negotiations over the debt ceiling, an issue that must be dealt with again early next year.</p>
<p>LITMUS TEST</p>
<p>Voting on Plan B will be a litmus test for Republicans on Boehner's concession to raise tax rates. In a sign conservatives are coming around to Boehner's position, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist gave his blessing to the bill.</p>
<p>Obama and Boehner appear to have bridged their biggest ideological difference but remain hung up on the mix of tax hikes and spending cuts meant to narrow the budget gap.</p>
<p>"What separates us is probably a few hundred billion dollars," Obama said.</p>
<p>The White House wants taxes to rise on incomes above $400,000 a year, a concession from Obama's opening proposal for a $250,000 income threshold.</p>
<p>If a deal is not reached soon, some $600 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts are set to begin next month.</p>
<p>Senior administration officials described negotiations as at a standstill and Obama warned he would ask everyone involved in the talks, "what it is that's holding it up?"</p>
<p>Still, the top Republican in the Senate said resolution could come by the end of the week.</p>
<p>"There's still enough time for us to finish all of our work before this weekend, if we're all willing to stay late and work hard," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.</p>
<p>Any deal by Obama and the Republican leadership would need the support of their parties' rank and file.</p>
<p>Many Democrats dislike the president's offer to reduce benefits to seniors, although some political allies of Obama have given signs they feel they could swallow this concession.</p>
<p>"I don't like these particular changes," said Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen, a member of the House leadership from Maryland. But he added: "What people are seeing is the president willing to compromise in order to get things done."</p> | Talk Gets Personal as Budget Deal Stalls | true | http://foxbusiness.com/politics/2012/12/19/talk-gets-personal-budget-talks-stall.html | 2016-03-03 | 0 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p><a href="http://www.activistpost.com/2015/02/paradise-stolen-this-video-is-not.html" type="external">Part 1</a> of this series was a warning to children about a world that was stolen from them. It offered a stark condemnation to adults who continue to ignore the reality of the wicked ways in which government has used their money, both donated and extorted.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.activistpost.com/2015/02/paradise-stolen-myth-of-efficiency.html" type="external">Part 2</a> suggested that the innate practicality of small, sustainable communities is a solution to the massive mismanagement by a government dedicated solely to a megacorporate/banker/war economy. Our modern economic system is actually not one built upon efficiency, as it is often believed to be; it is a system of massive inefficiency and predation, which has directly resulted in the bankrupt and war-ravaged world we see around us.</p>
<p>Part 3, posted below, makes the controversial argument that overpopulation is a myth, once again <a href="" type="internal">designed to steal our natural rights</a> and turn our lives over to a system of centralized management. It is a system which very well could do much more harm than good.</p>
<p><a type="external" href="" />The proposed mandates of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/BEHIND-THE-GREEN-MASK-Agenda-ebook/dp/B006OCWHCW?tag=permacultucom-20&amp;linkCode=w13&amp;linkID=&amp;ref_=assoc_res_sw_cr_dka_cra_t0_result_1&amp;ref-refURL=http%3A%2F%2Factivistpost.net%2Fbanners%2Famazon.htm" type="external">Agenda 21</a> are indeed designed to convince people to welcome the idea of living in <a href="" type="internal">stack-and-pack cities</a> micromanaged by a central authority with full control of all resources, lest we tear each other to pieces over resource wars.</p>
<p>However, is this herding an artificial construct that violates natural law? Does it actually lead to more violence and isolation rather than prevent it? And do the actual <a href="" type="internal">population numbers</a> and space of planet earth suggest a different potential reality?</p>
<p>Stefan Verstappen challenges you to interrupt your regularly scheduled programming…</p>
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<p>Visit <a href="http://chinastrategies.com/" type="external">ChinaStrategies.com</a></p>
<p>Get Stefan’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Urban-Survival-Defense/dp/0986951501?tag=permacultucom-20&amp;linkCode=w13&amp;linkID=FGBNVPA47LBE2NTM&amp;ref_=assoc_res_sw_result_1" type="external">The Art of Urban Survival</a></p>
<p>Also see James Corbett’s excellent argument on the myth of overpopulation <a href="https://www.corbettreport.com/the-last-word-on-overpopulation/" type="external">here</a>.</p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="http://www.activistpost.com/2015/03/paradise-stolen-myth-of-overpopulation.html" type="external">Activist Post</a>.</p>
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<p /> | Paradise Stolen – The Myth of Overpopulation | true | http://dcclothesline.com/2015/03/22/paradise-stolen-the-myth-of-overpopulation/ | 2015-03-22 | 0 |
<p>Marilyn Vann always knew her background and where her family came from. She knew she was a Cherokee Freedman, a descendant of former slaves, and that she deserved to have full tribal citizenship, just like other native Cherokees.</p>
<p>That's why she was surprised to get a rejection letter when she tried to enroll more than a decade ago. After all, her father was an original enrollee on the Dawes Roll, a historical US government record of tribal members. That meant, she said, she was eligible for citizenship into the tribe.</p>
<p>After a legal battle in 2005, she finally secured that status. And in hopes of&#160;getting citizenship for her fellow Cherokee Freedmen, Vann went back to court and started an advocacy organization, Descendants of Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes Association. But in&#160;2007, Cherokee Nation voters approved a constitutional change that made it harder for the Cherokee Freedmen to gain standing in the tribe.&#160;</p>
<p>On Wednesday, that all changed. A US District Court ruled in favor of the Cherokee Freedmen. The judge reaffirmed their rights, citing the 1866 treaty the Cherokee Nation and the US government signed after the Civil War.</p>
<p>Senior US District Judge Thomas Hogan&#160;said in his ruling&#160;that the paramount question was whether the treaty gave the Cherokee Freedmen "all the rights of native Cherokees."</p>
<p>Here's what the judge stated in the case,&#160;Cherokee Nation v. Nash:&#160;</p>
<p>"The Cherokee Nation can continue to define itself as it sees fit but must do so equally and evenhandedly with respect to native Cherokees and the descendants of Cherokee freedmen. By interposition of Article 9 of the 1866 Treaty, neither has rights either superior or, importantly, inferior to the other. Their fates under the Cherokee Nation Constitution rise and fall equally and in tandem. In accordance with Article 9 of the 1866 Treaty, the Cherokee Freedmen have a present right to citizenship in the Cherokee Nation that is coextensive with the rights of native Cherokees."</p>
<p>Cherokee Nation&#160;Attorney General Todd Hembree responded in a written statement: "The Cherokee Nation respects the rule of law, and yesterday we began accepting and processing citizenship applications from Freedmen descendants. I do not intend to file an appeal."</p>
<p>Hembree also said, "While the US&#160;District Court ruled against the Cherokee Nation, I do not see it as a defeat. As the attorney general, I see this as an opportunity to resolve the Freedmen citizenship issue and allow the Cherokee Nation to move beyond this dispute."&#160;</p>
<p>The Cherokee Freedmen's lead counsel, Jon Velie of Norman, Oklahoma, also put out a statement: “This is a wonderful victory for the Freedmen who regained their identities as equal citizens in their nation. It is a victory against racial oppression and division. It is a win for Native Americans as the federal courts have enforced both treaty rights of citizenship while maintaining tribes and elected officials' rights to determine citizenship and self-determination.”</p>
<p>Rodslen Brown, a Cherokee Freedman, stands in front of baskets she wove.&#160;</p>
<p>Allison Herrera/PRI&#160;</p>
<p>Plaintiffs in the case are overjoyed. Vann said that she hopes for healing and a way forward for all Cherokees and that the fighting over this issue will stop. "I am filled with joy that my people, the Freedmen, will continue to be citizens, as our ancestors have, in the Cherokee Nation. I look forward to the healing within our proud and amazing people."</p>
<p>Rodslen Brown, another Cherokee Freedmen descendant, posted the Cherokee Nation citizenship requirements on her Facebook page, with the headline: "Praise God."</p>
<p>There's plenty&#160;of excitement and anticipation for what this means for the Cherokee Freedmen's future. Some estimates say that there are 28,000 Freedmen waiting to get their tribal citizenship.</p>
<p>The ruling in Cherokee Nation v. Nash&#160;also has implications for other members of the five tribes that were relocated to Oklahoma, most notably the Seminole Freedmen.</p>
<p>"The most important thing right now to me is just the right to vote and that feeling of belonging,"&#160;Vann said.</p>
<p>Click&#160; <a href="http://www.cherokeephoenix.org/Article/index/1670" type="external">here</a>&#160;for a timeline of the case by Cherokee Phoenix reporter Will Chavez, who's covered the case since 2003. He also wrote, " <a href="http://www.cherokeephoenix.org/Article/index/10461" type="external">Cherokee Nation Continue Fight</a>," and check out " <a href="http://thislandpress.com/2013/05/16/from-one-fire/" type="external">From One Fire"</a> by Marcos Barbery at This Land Press.</p> | Cherokee Freedmen overjoyed by federal court ruling granting tribal citizenship | false | https://pri.org/stories/2017-08-31/cherokee-freedmen-overjoyed-federal-court-ruling-granting-tribal-citizenship | 2017-08-31 | 3 |
<p>Shares of some top insurance companies are down at 1 p.m.:</p>
<p>ACE L fell $2.39 or 2.1 percent, to $109.98.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Aflac Inc. fell $.59 or .9 percent, to $63.89.</p>
<p>American International Group fell $.68 or 1.2 percent, to $57.48.</p>
<p>MBIA fell $.19 or 1.9 percent, to $9.58.</p>
<p>MGIC Investments Corp. fell $.21 or 2.1 percent, to $9.90.</p>
<p>MetLife fell $.50 or 1.0 percent, to $50.50.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>XL Group PLC fell $.52 or 1.4 percent, to $37.29.</p> | Insurance companies shares down at 1 p.m. | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/07/21/insurance-companies-shares-down-at-1-pm.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>After sending an e-mail on March 16 telling members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps to come “locked, loaded and ready” to Arizona’s border with Mexico, group President Carmen Mercer discovered that some from the radical anti-immigration group’s ranks were inclined to take her call to arms quite literally. Late last week, the news <a href="http://azstarnet.com/news/local/border/article_3b5411bd-ffe6-5d3c-98c8-951ec0fc40c4.html" type="external">broke</a> that Mercer and the MCDC’s board had decided to dissolve the national organization, but local chapters may still remain active.</p>
<p>Talking Points Memo:</p>
<p>On March 16, Minuteman president Carmen Mercer sent out an email to members, urging them to come to the border “locked, loaded and ready,” reports the Arizona Daily Star. She added: “You are strongly encouraged to exercise your rights and duty as an American citizen to carry a long arm and if challenged use it to defend the United States of America.” Mercer also suggested changing the group’s rules to allow members to track illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, rather than just reporting them to the Border Patrol.</p>
<p>Mercer told the Daily Star that the email had been prompted by anger at the federal government over health-care reform, and over the Department of Homeland Security’s claims that the border was secure.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/minuteman_leader_when_i_said_to_come_to_the_border.php?ref=fpb" type="external">Read more</a></p> | National Minuteman Group Disbanding After Its Leader's Angry E-Mail | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/national-minuteman-group-disbanding-after-its-leaders-angry-e-mail/ | 2010-03-30 | 4 |
<p>Connecticut employers added 4,600 jobs last month, marking a new employment recovery high-point of nearly 1.7 million jobs, according to a state Department of Labor report released Thursday.</p>
<p>The department's monthly report said the number of nonfarm jobs increased by 25,700 positions since November 2013 to give Connecticut a new high mark. The state unemployment rate increased by one-tenth of a percentage point in November to 6.5 percent, but was still a full percentage point lower than the November unemployment rate of 7.5 percent a year ago.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The figures showed that five industry "super-sectors" gained jobs last month, led by professional, scientific and technical services.</p>
<p>"This report is another positive sign that we are making progress in our effort to create good paying jobs with good benefits for residents," said Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.&#160;"Labor force participation is up.&#160;We are seeing growth in nearly every sector of the economy."</p>
<p>Sen. Len Fasano, R-North Haven, the incoming Senate minority leader, said he's happy to see the state has gained jobs but Connecticut continues to lag behind the rest of the nation.</p>
<p>"Back in May, 2014, the national economy finally recovered all 9 million jobs lost during the Recession. But a rising tide does not lift all boats," Fasano said. "Connecticut has yet to recover all jobs lost in our state and over 122,000 people remain unemployed."</p>
<p>The Democratic governor said he hopes to work with the General Assembly during the upcoming legislative session to create more jobs. The session opens Jan. 1.</p> | Connecticut employers added 4,600 jobs in November; unemployment rate increases slightly | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/12/18/connecticut-employers-added-4600-jobs-in-november-unemployment-rate-increases.html | 2016-03-05 | 0 |
<p>Welcome to womanhood, ladies! A group of <a href="" type="internal">transgender</a> women sunbathing topless at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware over Memorial Day weekend drew the finger-wag of a lifeguard when they refused to cover their "surgically enhanced <a href="" type="internal">breasts</a>." Police were called over these tatas! The police chief says these women were not committing a crime, however, because the gals have boy parts down there and therefore cannot be charged with indecent exposure. Now some wackadoodle politician at Rehoboth Beach is considering a specific law to address such a problem. Really, let's address the real problem here: were these gals wearing sunscreen or risking nipple melanoma? [ <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-us-odd-topless-transgender-women,0,3864591.story" type="external">Los Angeles Times</a>]</p> | Topless Transgender Women Told To Cover Up At Beach, Spared Arrest By Their Boy Parts | true | http://thefrisky.com/post/246-topless-transgender-women-told-to-cover-up-at-beach/ | 2018-10-03 | 4 |
<p>DERBY, Vt. (AP) — Members of a Vermont school board have agreed to postpone school improvement projects to pay for a new fire alarm system.</p>
<p>The Record <a href="http://www.caledonianrecord.com/news/local/paying-for-new-fire-alarm-system-amid-cuts/article_4115955f-6801-5afe-a86f-248d6719f863.html" type="external">reports</a> the decision reached Wednesday helps prevent the North Country Union Junior High School board from going over budget next year.</p>
<p>The board is working on a draft budget of $4.73 million, which is 2.37 percent less than their current budget of $4.83 million. The fire alarm system became one of the unexpected expenses in the budget after a state fire marshal determined it is not up to code.</p>
<p>The cost to replace the system is estimated at $85,000.</p>
<p>Board member Richard Cartee says the safety of students comes first, and the system needs to be replaced.</p>
<p>The board is expected to finalize the budget Jan. 16.</p>
<p>DERBY, Vt. (AP) — Members of a Vermont school board have agreed to postpone school improvement projects to pay for a new fire alarm system.</p>
<p>The Record <a href="http://www.caledonianrecord.com/news/local/paying-for-new-fire-alarm-system-amid-cuts/article_4115955f-6801-5afe-a86f-248d6719f863.html" type="external">reports</a> the decision reached Wednesday helps prevent the North Country Union Junior High School board from going over budget next year.</p>
<p>The board is working on a draft budget of $4.73 million, which is 2.37 percent less than their current budget of $4.83 million. The fire alarm system became one of the unexpected expenses in the budget after a state fire marshal determined it is not up to code.</p>
<p>The cost to replace the system is estimated at $85,000.</p>
<p>Board member Richard Cartee says the safety of students comes first, and the system needs to be replaced.</p>
<p>The board is expected to finalize the budget Jan. 16.</p> | School board approves fire alarm system replacement | false | https://apnews.com/amp/a9d5326f041a4a26bf4c3652fba32403 | 2017-12-29 | 2 |
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<p>The 10 newest high school graduates of the Gordon Bernell Charter School celebrate by tossing their caps into the air Thursday morning at the Metropolitan Detention Center. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Detention Center)</p>
<p>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - It was, after all, a commencement ceremony. With Sir Edward Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance" filling the air, 10 smiling graduates strode proudly into the room, their black caps and gowns stating the obvious.</p>
<p>Family members also beamed with pride, and several teachers seemed to be near tears.</p>
<p>But this high school graduation was different. The Gordon Bernell Charter School graduates, all men, are also inmates at the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center.</p>
<p>As if to underscore the point, their orange jumpsuits and flip-flops screamed out from below the hems of their gowns, a reminder that while the diplomas they earned might eventually serve to open some doors, others would remain locked, some perhaps for a very long time.</p>
<p>Principal Dan Busse, noting that "our students are obviously a unique set of individuals," had nothing but words of encouragement: "Gentlemen, this is your day. - Today you are high school graduates. - You did something good. - This means something."</p>
<p>The latest crop of graduates brought the number of Gordon Bernell alumni to well over 300 in eight years. Ceremonies are held twice annually. Six other graduates will pick up diplomas at Gordon Bernell's sister campus on Roma Avenue. Some of the six have been released; others are imprisoned.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>"We never met before you walked into my classroom here in MDC," Denise Young, a teacher of the men, said in a graduation address. "I don't know who you were on the street, what name you went by, what you did for money, where you lived or with whom you lived, what your drug of choice was, why you are here, how many times you've been here or if you've ever spent time in prison."</p>
<p>"None of this matters," Young told the men. "When you walk into my social studies class, I get the honor of seeing you for the first time - clean, sober and clearheaded, possibly for the first time in years, and I get the best of you - the curious, interesting, kind, funny, warm, decent and respectful human being you are under the blanket of terrible experiences, bad choices, negative influences and the dulling effect of drugs and alcohol. - I love watching you connect with learning and opening your mind, especially when you have no idea you're doing it, and I want you to know and really believe that every day you have the opportunity to be the person I see, the person you make me believe you are."</p>
<p>And so, with those supportive words and others like them, Jesus Linam, Matthew Lucero, Richard Pickens, Shaun Ryals, Jay-Cee Smith, Michael Solis, Isaiah Vasquez, Justin Virginis, Richard Wiggins and Enrique Yanez walked on Graduation Day. They know that life can be tough, but, with a diploma finally in hand, it may have just become a little easier.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Graduates at MDC celebrate their commencement | false | https://abqjournal.com/594588/graduates-at-mdc-celebrate-their-commencement.html | 2 |
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<p>Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are one of the first bitcoin billionaires.</p>
<p>If the Winklevoss last name sounds familiar, they are the brothers who sued Mark Zuckerberg after they claimed he stole their idea for Facebook.</p>
<p>The Winklevoss twins won $65 million from the Facebook lawsuit, and invested $11 million of their payout into Bitcoin in 2013, amassing one of the largest portfolios of Bitcoin in the world.</p>
<p>According to Fortune magazine, when the Winklevosses first invested, the cryptocurrency was trading at $120 per coin, a far jump from the more than $11,000 it has reached today. That's an increase of over 9,000 percent.</p>
<p>Earlier this year, they attempted to create an ETF for Bitcoin, but fell short after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rejected the application, citing the possibility of fraud.</p> | The Winklevoss twins have become two of the first Bitcoin billionaires | false | https://circa.com/story/2017/12/04/nation/the-winklevoss-twins-have-become-one-of-the-first-bitcoin-billionaires | 2017-12-04 | 1 |
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<p>DEMING, N.M. (AP) — Authorities in southwestern New Mexico say a 50-year-old Texas man is dead after falling approximately 75 feet from a mountain in Rockhound State Park southeast of Deming.</p>
<p><a href="http://bit.ly/1ndYGWK" type="external">The Deming Headlight reports</a> relatives of Scott Allen Coleman of Houston had reported him missing Monday night after he went for a walk that afternoon and never returned.</p>
<p>A Deming Police Department report says family friends located Coleman in the park and that Luna County sheriff’s deputies then found Coleman was badly injured after falling.</p>
<p>Responders were carrying Coleman down the mountain when he stopped breathing and could not be revived.</p>
<p>Coleman was in Deming to attend a brother’s funeral.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Texas man dies in fall at New Mexico state park | false | https://abqjournal.com/426763/texas-man-dies-in-fall-at-new-mexico-state-park.html | 2 |
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<p>HOUSTON — The remains of a Texas soldier missing in action in northern Italy since 1944 and 1945 have been identified as a Waco man whose 92nd Infantry Division was the only African-American Army division to fight in Europe.</p>
<p>Army officials say Defense Department scientists using dental and anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence have identified 20-year-old Pfc. Lonnie B.C. Eichelberger. A funeral for Eichelberger is set for Wednesday in Houston.</p>
<p>He was declared missing after a battle near Strettoia, Italy. Remains recovered near there after the war in Europe ended in 1945 could not be identified and eventually were buried at the American cemetery in Florence, Italy. The remains were disinterred in 2016 and ultimately identified as Eichelberger’s.</p>
<p>The Army says nearly 73,000 service members from World War II are unaccountable.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Remains of missing World War II soldier ID’d as Waco man | false | https://abqjournal.com/1115325/remains-of-missing-world-war-ii-soldier-idd-as-waco-man.html | 2 |
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<p>FILE - In this July 1, 2015, file photo, protesters hold their hands in the shape of a mountain to symbolize protecting Mauna Kea during a news conference in Honolulu. The protesters gathered for a news conference on their efforts to block the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea. Seven people protesting a giant telescope atop Mauna Kea have been arrested for defying an emergency rule created to prevent camping on the mountain that is held sacred by Native Hawaiians. The arrests early Friday, July 31, 2015, are the first enforcement efforts since the land board approved the rule July 10. (AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher, File)</p>
<p>HONOLULU - Thousands of astronomers from around the world are meeting in Honolulu at a time when telescope construction is a sensitive issue in the state.</p>
<p>Protests are happening at telescopes atop two mountains held sacred by many Native Hawaiians, and some participants were arrested Friday.</p>
<p>The International Astronomical Union's general assembly starts Monday, and organizers and police are bracing for demonstrations.</p>
<p>The protests gained momentum last year when workers on the Big Island tried to start constructing one of the world's largest telescopes. Protests also have spread to a telescope being built on Maui as people demonstrate over issues such as development and religious rights.</p>
<p>Hawaii News Now reports at least 20 people were arrested Friday while trying to block a convoy delivering parts for the Maui project.</p>
<p>Seven others were arrested for allegedly defying a rule created to stop people from camping on the Big Island.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p> | Astronomers gather in Hawaii amid telescope tensions | false | https://abqjournal.com/621346/astronomers-gather-in-hawaii-amid-telescope-tensions.html | 2 |
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<p>It was apparent from the beginning of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails that she would never face justice for her actions because the Department of Justice (DOJ) would not prosecute her due to the corrupt nature of the agency. A look at the political donations of DOJ employees reveals just how entrenched the bias for Clinton at the department truly is.</p>
<p><a href="http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/302817-government-workers-shun-trump-give-big-money-to-clinton-campaign" type="external">The Hill</a> poured through Federal Election Committee data to determine the amount of donations from federal government employees to presidential candidates. Federal workers donated a total of $2 million to the presidential candidates, and $1.9 million of it went to Clinton. But the most notable part was the amount of donations that DOJ employees gave to Clinton: (emphasis bolded)</p>
<p>Employees of the Department of Justice, which investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State, gave Clinton 97 percent of their donations. Trump received $8,756 from DOJ employees compared with $286,797 for Clinton.</p>
<p>In other words, almost every employee who donated politically at the DOJ wanted to see Clinton as president of the United States. Charges would have destroyed the chances of their candidate of choice. Politics is now above the law at the DOJ.</p>
<p>While people have rightly criticized FBI director James Comey for refusing to recommend indictment charges against Clinton, evidence suggests that the DOJ sabotaged the FBI's efforts to build a case against Clinton. J. Christian Adams, who used to work in the DOJ, picked up on something Comey said when he was being grilled by Congress: (via the <a href="http://therightscoop.com/former-doj-official-j-christian-adams-tells-us-the-big-takeaway-from-comey-hearing/" type="external">Right Scoop</a>)</p>
<p>Big takeaway from <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Comey?src=hash" type="external">#Comey</a> hearing: decision was made by <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DOJ?src=hash" type="external">#DOJ</a>, not FBI. DOJ "tradition" and DOJ guidance in interpreting applicable law.</p>
<p>DOJ 101: FBI take decision architecture from DOJ lawyers, including on enforce-ability of gross negligence standard for <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hillary?src=hash" type="external">#Hillary</a>. Not <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Comey?src=hash" type="external">#Comey</a></p>
<p>Everyone needs to stop worrying about <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Comey?src=hash" type="external">#Comey</a>, and start asking why <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DOJ?src=hash" type="external">#DOJ</a> lawyers believe they can't enforce a gross neg standard.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Hillary?src=hash" type="external">#Hillary</a> escaping is NOT about <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FBI?src=hash" type="external">#FBI</a> bias based on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ComeyHearing?src=hash" type="external">#ComeyHearing</a>, it's about <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DOJ?src=hash" type="external">#DOJ</a> bias.</p>
<p>Stop wasting time on <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Comey?src=hash" type="external">#Comey</a>. Ask instead why <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DOJ?src=hash" type="external">#DOJ</a> expressed "grave concerns" about using law. Or DOJ belief gross neg law is useless.</p>
<p>Adams appeared on the Mark Levin Show and explained that in FBI investigations, there is a "give-and-take" between the FBI and DOJ, where "the FBI agents realize how high the hurdle is for them to make a case," which appears to have been an insurmountably high hurdle given the DOJ's bias in favor of Clinton.</p>
<p>"Those guys [in the DOJ] could be rolling their eyes, they could be pushing back, saying, 'Well that's not good enough evidence,'" Adams told radio host Mark Levin, per the <a href="http://therightscoop.com/j-christian-adams-explains-to-mark-levin-how-doj-sabotaged-clinton-email-case-not-fbi/" type="external">Right Scoop</a>. "There is a constant give-and-take. Comey said he's talking to [Attorney General Loretta] Lynch about it. Those are the moments when the antagonism manifests, when the DOJ shows that they don't like the case. And when he says in the hearing today that they had 'grave concerns' about using the statute, that tells me it was DOJ that sabotaged this, not the FBI."</p>
<p>The FEC data uncovered by The Hill indicates that Adams is correct: they never intended to prosecute Clinton.</p> | Think The DOJ Was Corrupt With Hillary? Here's The Proof. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/10231/think-doj-was-corrupt-hillary-heres-proof-aaron-bandler | 2016-10-26 | 0 |
<p>In this premiere episode of our weekly radio show, former bin Laden hunter Michael Scheuer tells us why we’re losing, renowned physicist Frank N. von Hippel tells us to fear the bomb and Juan Cole says Arab protesters are looking for a New Deal.</p>
<p>Click to listen to the show, or continue reading the full transcript below.</p>
<p>{g_podcast_box}</p>
<p>Peter Scheer</p>
<p />
<p>: This is Truthdig Radio, a new weekly show featuring the best in news, criticism and commentary from Truthdig.com and KPFK. I’m Peter Scheer, Truthdig managing editor. Today we’ll be hearing from two Middle East experts, former bin Laden hunter Michael Scheuer of the CIA and informed commentator Juan Cole. We’ll also check in with renowned physicist Frank von Hippel about the threat of nuclear power and weapons. Along for the ride are Truthdig editors Robert Scheer, Kasia Anderson, Josh Scheer and myself. Here we go.</p>
<p>This is Truthdig radio; I’m Peter Scheer. I’m joined by Joshua Scheer and Robert Scheer, and Michael Scheuer, the adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Peace and Security Studies. He was a former intelligence officer at the CIA, where he served as the chief of the Bin Laden Issues Station, and as a special adviser to the chief of the Bin Laden Unit. His new book is “Osama Bin Laden.”</p>
<p>Michael, you’ve argued in the past that bin Laden has been caricatured by this country, to the detriment of our national security. Can you explain that?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Well, I think I can. You know, you’re always lucky if you’re fighting an idiot or a madman, because they make mistakes. And yet 15 years, 16 years after bin Laden declared war, he’s still at…he’s still on the loose, and according to our own intelligence chiefs, poses an increasing threat both at home and abroad. You know, what can you do to measure a man’s effectiveness? I think you look at his words and deeds. And from my study of him, there’s a pretty close mesh. For example, he said early on, “We can’t possibly beat the Americans by ourselves. What we need to do is incite other Muslims to join the war and to take a nontraditional approach toward dealing with the Americans. First, to try to take advantage of international economic conditions to drive the United States toward bankruptcy; second, to spread out the military and intelligence forces so they have little reserves and no flexibility; and third, to create political dissent inside the United States, and to strip away our allies one at a time.” And so, if we’re looking at…using their own metrics, he’s been a pretty successful man. And to argue that somehow he is just another gangster or thug, and not very bright at that, I think is a mistake that harms only us.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Osama Bin Laden actually said at one point that people should read your book if they wanted to understand why we’re losing the war on terror. Can you put that into context with the war in Afghanistan, which is now our longest war?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Yeah. I think he was simply saying that “we have told you…”—we, Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants—“…what this war is about, and yet you don’t listen. This war is about what you do in the Muslim world, not how you live as Americans in the United States. Whether it’s elections or democracy or liberty or gender equality or beer after work, we don’t care about that. This war is about what you do in the Muslim world. And in terms of Afghanistan—Afghanistan is a place where he wanted to lure us to, because he thought that the Taliban and al-Qaida and their allies could bleed us slowly to death, and that we would not have the will to win. And from 1997 until 2001, each of the attacks al-Qaida staged against us was meant to prompt our deployment to Afghanistan in ways that were greater and more costly than simply shooting cruise missiles. And of course after 9/11 we went there, and unfortunately we stayed instead of just going there to kind of beat them up and get out.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: You know…hi, this is Robert Scheer…and I really liked reading your book. It’s very clear, the “Bin Laden” one. And you point at, though, in terms of the contemporary issues…here we have a situation in the Mideast where ostensibly we’re primarily concerned with fighting terror, terrorism, and we’re fighting bin Laden, but we get caught in these ethnic and religious differing currents. And, you know, 15 of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, for instance, but we have a close alliance with Saudi Arabia. And at one point, I think it was on NPR, you mentioned that even bigger and more powerful than the Israel lobby is the Saudi lobby. And we’re at kind of an odd moment now where we’ve focused on Iran, and we’re very worried about the Shiites in Bahrain, for instance, and we will probably support the Saudis in extending their influence, and we’ve made Iran the main issue. And according to your own writings, Iran is not the main issue.</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: No, I think Iran instills the definition, if you will, of a “contained enemy” that we used during the Cold War. They’re surrounded by a Sunni population that would rather kill them many times over before they got around to us or the Israelis or the Brits. They’re now…over the last 15 years they have become surrounded by American military bases, and the U.S. Navy could cut off their access to the high seas almost instantly. And third, their economy is driven by energy production, which has peaked. And so if that’s not the definition of a contained state, I’m not sure what it would be. But the problem for us, of course, is Saddam was a fully contained entity in Iraq, and we still went into a foolish war with him.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: Yeah, but the point I was getting at is that, you know, this sort of Shiite-Sunni thing, which is now basic to the debate. We see the influence of Iran in Lebanon; we see it expanding in Iraq because we got rid of Saddam Hussein, who was their military opponent. And just taking it to, actually, the issues of this week—one is Gen. Petraeus saying we’re winning in Afghanistan, we need to have a long-term presence; you’ve argued that that’s a sucker-punch that we’re responding to. And the other is the turmoil, some of which is very exciting, in the Mideast, again is being cast in this terrorism/anti-terrorism, bin Laden/anti-bin Laden. So we’re going to now rally around Saudi Arabia, when in fact it represents some of the worst tendencies in the Mideast, and was the place that we’re at least funding, and certainly a number of the recruits for bin Laden came from.</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Yeah. Well, we have to support the Saudis because the Saudis are our masters. Now, you know, in the relationship, we are the slaves; they are the masters. They supply the swing country production in terms of oil; they buy a great deal of our debt; and we’re on the hook to defend them. They buy enormous amounts of weaponry, but they can’t defend themselves. And I think you put your finger on it: Bahrain…all the rest of what’s going on in the Middle East is basically noise. If the Saudis and the Bahrainis and the Ahmadis start shooting at Shias—and apparently they have done that to some extent today—if that becomes a prolonged war, we could very well get sucked into that war, along with the Iranians. And so I think your point about Bahrain being a flashpoint is exactly right. I think it’s the most dangerous spot in the Middle East at the moment. And in terms of the Saudis, the Saudis probably are the single most dangerous state to the United States in the world. You know, Iran or…China is a threat and Russia is a threat, but we recognize them; we watch them; we know they’re a threat. But the Saudis, the king comes to the White House and they hold hands with the president while all the while he’s paying for a brand of Islam to be taught in the United States that is extremely anti-Western, anti-Jewish, anti-Christian. And it is a reflection of how dependent we are on the Saudis that we really don’t do anything to defend ourselves.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: You know, I want to pursue this a bit, because you’ve criticized the 9/11 Commission Report as very limited. And there’s a box in that report, I think it’s…I forget what page it’s on, which says that they were not allowed to interview the key witnesses, the people that are…you know, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the others. They were dependent upon other interrogation, and they couldn’t even interview the interrogators. And I wonder, do we know enough about the relation of bin Laden to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to these people, how the whole thing was done? And are we still pursuing ghosts here, or are we on the right track?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: No, I think we pretty well know how the operation worked that attacked us on 9/11. I think the people who…the 9/11 truthers are just…are very skeptical. It’s their right to be skeptical, but it’s obvious that the attack was done by al-Qaida. What the 9/11 Commission blurred, and what I resigned from the agency over, was the refusal to talk to the American people about the responsibility of some of the senior people in government for 9/11. But more importantly, the 9/11 Commission talked about U.S. foreign policy and basically said, “Well, the Muslims are too dumb, really, to understand how good our foreign policy is for them. So we have to really do a better job at communicating our good intentions.” And I think both of those things were a real detriment to the United States, and need to be corrected somehow.</p>
<p>Josh Scheer: So if we…I’m sorry, Michael, this is Josh…and if we continue on this current path, what is the endgame?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Well, the endgame is an endless sort of war. I argued in 2002, when I published my first book, that our goal should be to make sure that the coming generation of young Muslim males have less reason to focus on the United States, and that the only way to do that was to deny them the motivation of our foreign policy, which also provides a certain glue of unity in a very diverse and fractious organization. We have not done that. And so we have now another generation that has come to adulthood in people like Awlaki, in people like the young Libyan Abu Yahya, who are now a second generation of al-Qaida, and we now need to worry about the third. As long as our foreign policy remains constant in the Middle East—our support for the Saudis, our support for the Israelis, our presence on the Arab Peninsula, a number of other things—we will do nothing to dent the motivation of our enemies. And so we can kill them with drones, we can extradite them with rendition, we can kill them on the battlefield; but really, all that will be is a body count, not a measure of progress. And our enemy will grow faster than we can possibly cope with it.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: I want to ask about this question of foreign policy. We run a columnist, William Pfaff, on our website, who <a href="" type="internal">recently wrote</a> that American foreign policy appears now to be made by people who have no concept of foreign countries or their history or how they operate. And there’s no shortage of people like you, who present a very rational critique of that policy, and yet we seem to go down this road all the time where, you know, in the case of Afghanistan we’re presented with very, very limited options, all of which involve ground war of some kind. How do we get out of this morass of stodgy thinking in foreign policy?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: [Laughs] You know, I would suggest: Never again vote for anyone from the Ivy League. [Laughter] We’ve had now four consecutive presidents who came out of Harvard or Yale or Columbia, and they don’t see the world as it is. They see the world they want to be. Mrs. Clinton, wandering the world at the moment to champion feminism…which clearly we want to do in the United States, but it will cause wars in many other places in the world. I don’t know how we get around it. I think at base, our problem in foreign policy has much to do with our problems in education. That we don’t teach things that are unpalatable; we don’t talk about religion to our children, or the power of religion to our children, so they don’t understand that; and we are, at the elite level…Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Bush, they put me in mind of Marxist-Leninists, who believed that communism would inevitably triumph. And our leadership in both parties tends to believe that secular democracy will ultimately triumph, and that anyone who opposes it is simply medieval or just a plain anarchist of some kind. And that’s a mistake, and that will lead to war.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: But how can they believe that, if they’re backing these regimes in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, that…</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Well, that’s a good question, isn’t it? That’s exactly right. One of the points that is a very good one is, how can you be preaching democracy in Bahrain when you’re supporting the Saudi government who’s in Bahrain shooting down Bahrainis? But we seem to be able to cope with that kind of contradiction and move ahead as if it didn’t matter. It must take a very much smarter person than myself to be able to accommodate those two thoughts and think you’re succeeding. Josh Scheer: Well, I think you’re both right. I mean, you’re right that they’re stodgy thinkers, and then Peter’s right because…Saudi Arabia has a lot of oil, and you were talking about the debt and all that. I mean, obviously we support Saudi Arabia for that reason, right? They are our masters; you said that.</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: There’s nothing worth a dead Marine on the Arab Peninsula except for oil. We need oil; it’s a national interest at the moment because we’ve done virtually nothing since the first embargo 40 years ago.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: But isn’t there another…you hear the same sort of logic that keeps us stuck in Afghanistan, you hear presented in Saudi Arabia a lot, which is that the alternative to this monarchy is some sort of religious extremist in charge of this oil. And terrorists and, you know, whatever else comes with it. Is that reasonable? Is that rational?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Well, I think it’s clear that whatever succeeds the Saudis would be more genuinely religious. The Saudis are about the furthest thing from religion in terms of their own personal behavior. But I don’t think it necessarily follows that an Islamic government would be more oppressive than the Saudi police state. For example, Iran, for all its failures and brutalities, is a much more representative government than any of the people that we call our allies; certainly more than Mubarak was. So I don’t think A follows B in this case. An Islamic government in Saudi Arabia under bin Laden would be much more genuine to the people who live there than the Al Saud family, and probably would be less oppressive. And I always think that it’s easier to deal in this world with nation-states than it is with these non-state actors, or transnational groups, whatever you want to call them, who don’t have a return address. Once someone gets in power, he has to govern the country; he has to run the economy; he has something to lose. And you know where he lives. So, you know, I’m not…I guess I’m old enough to remember when America wasn’t afraid of everything. And so I’m one that believes that it’s not necessarily the end of the world if an Islamic government takes over somewhere.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: Let me ask you, though—this is Bob—what are the obstacles to having a rational policy? I mean, Peter made a point, you know, there are a number of people who talk sense and back it up, and as I say, your books are very clear; they’re well documented; they’re logical; they’re soundly rooted in historical experience. And so why don’t intelligent people respond? First of all, what are the issues that are inflaming the Muslim world, and are they issues that can be dealt with in a way that’s consistent with American national interests? I mean, what is the position one should have on Israel or on Saudi Arabia or the other irritants?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Well, clearly, these are issues…the issues that are at play are also inextricably bound up with domestic politics. And I have tried never to believe that any…anyone was not as smart as I am. So I have to assume that despite what they say, President Obama, Bush, Clinton and the first Bush know that whatever you think of our relationship with the Israelis, for example, if you’re pro or con, it really doesn’t matter. But it’s a factual statement to say that our relationship with Israel causes us to be attacked by Islamic fighters in many areas of the world. But we can’t have that discussion here. If we have that discussion in the political campaign, the politician involved will never win. He’ll be flooded with anti-Semitism charges; his opponent will be receiving money from all over the place from pro-Israeli people. So they avoid that. They can’t really argue that we’re going to send your sons and daughters to war to defend the Saudi police state, for example; that would be another non-vote-getter. So until we kind of find a way to find a statesman, rather than just this ongoing string of Ivy League politicians, I really don’t know anything but calamity that might begin a debate or some change in U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Well, Michael, before we let you go, I just have to ask out of my own curiosity: where is Osama bin Laden? And also, is he even still relevant?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Oh, I think he’s very relevant, sir. He is probably in the northern part of Afghanistan and Pakistan; there’s no border there. Up in Afghanistan it would be the provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, across the border in Bajaur in Pakistan. It’s the place he wanted to go in ’97, when he was going to move away from Jalalabad. But before he could move north he was invited to the capital of the Taliban in Kandahar and didn’t think he could say no. It’s also the area where the Saudis and the Kuwaitis have spent 35 years proselytizing. So it’s an area that’s very…oh, how would you say?…religiously congenial to bin Laden. The same kinds of religious attitudes among the population as he holds. So I think that’s probably the area where he is at the moment but, you know, my idea and two bucks will get you a coffee. [Laughter]</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: And how influential is he still?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: I think he’s extraordinarily influential. As a symbol, there is no one who compares with this almost Robin Hood-like figure. A man set to inherit part of a $40 billion fortune who instead chose to abandon that and fight with the mujahedeen against the Afghans, be wounded in battle four times, and not only be the only Arab entity to consistently stand up to the Americans, but to attack them and hurt them and live to tell about it. And so I think it’s very important that he be eliminated. Some people argue that then he would be a martyr, but I’ve always preferred a dead martyr to a living, breathing smart guy who is planning to attack you.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: You know, let me just ask you one last question—this is Robert again—in your book, you have a…you say you didn’t come to praise bin Laden, you came to bury him. But you also have a list, I think there were 10 adjectives that you used to describe him, that are all very flattering. And you know, in a sense, how does he fit into, say…you say the Saudis have a strong religious presence there in Pakistan and Afghanistan. What is the dispute between bin Laden and the rulers, and particularly in Saudi Arabia? Is it about corruption, is it about true believer? And tied to that, why do the Saudis have as much influence in this country as you suggest in your writing? I mean, oil—they’ve got to sell the oil to someone; you can get oil elsewhere. And I just wonder, you know, we hear a lot about the Israel lobby; we don’t hear much about the Saudi lobby. How does it really work?</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Well, the Saudi lobby is extraordinarily powerful, but much more quiet than the Israeli lobby. They work through retired U.S. government officers—ambassadors, senior intelligence officers, former congressman and senators, to influence the Congress and influence public opinion. I think you’ll recall that in the weeks after 9/11, The Wall Street Journal published four or five pieces by former U.S. ambassadors to Saudi Arabia that praised the Saudis, said that “don’t mistake the 9/11 hijackers as the true reflection of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are our good and noble friends.” And so it works in that manner. It works because not only do they sell us oil, which they have to sell us, as you said, or have to sell someone, but they buy extraordinary amounts of weaponry from the United States. We’re in the midst now of a $60 billion purchase from U.S. arms makers. And, you know, it’s really kind of a sleight-of-hand affair, because the Saudis buy the guns; the price of oil goes up a little bit; the money they make from the increase pays for the guns.</p>
<p>So at the end of the day, mom and pop American pay at the pump not only for gasoline, but for Saudi arms purchases. So when you wrap all of those things together—and, frankly, the failure of American politicians to do anything on energy policy—when you wrap all of those things up, I don’t think it’s any wonder that the Saudis have so much influence in our country. In terms of bin Laden’s strife with the Saudis, it has primarily to do with the un-Islamic, what he regards as the un-Islamic behavior of the Saudi government: putting into place some laws that are made by man rather than by God, by inviting the United States and Western countries to put military troops in the Peninsula in 1990 and ’91 and then keeping them there; the tendency of the Saudis to support what bin Laden and other Islamists view as U.S. policies rather than Islamic policies. So the real rub for bin Laden with the Saudis comes down to them not being, in his eyes, genuine Muslims.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Well, we’re going to have to leave it there, on that note…</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: Before we leave, Peter, can I just…</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: This is what happens when you’re on a show with your father. [Laughter]</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: OK, I’m sorry, but in the book you…in the book you, I think, make an important point, which is you challenge the basic narrative that they hate us for our democracy, they hate us for who we are. And you’re suggesting that is not the core; that they could live with us. So this whole notion of a radical Islam that is our inevitable enemy, you do challenge. Maybe that would be a good way to conclude this.</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Yeah. You know, one thing I tried to do in the book is I went through my entire archive of bin Laden’s statements, interviews, essays, sermons, which amounted to about 850 pages. And never once does he say in that that this is a war about culture. That this is us trying to destroy you because you’re degenerate or because you’re debauched or because you have elections or primaries in Iowa. And yet that is what we hear from president after president in both parties. And as much as I hate to say it, it’s just a flat lie. Bin Laden and his generation went to school watching the Ayatollah Khomeini, for about a decade, try to ignite a jihad against the Americans because of X-rated movies, women in the workplace, beer, and other sorts of degenerate activities. No one blew themselves up for that. Even when they blew up our Marines in Beirut, they [didn’t do] it under the Ayatollah’s rhetoric; they did it because we were on their turf. Bin Laden knows better than anyone that very few Muslims are willing to blow themselves up because my daughter goes to university. But there seems to be an endless number who are willing to blow themselves up or die fighting us because we’re occupying a Muslim country. So if you don’t get that basic point right, your policy is built on sort of a foundation of sand. If you don’t know the motivation of the enemy, you really aren’t going to have a very good chance to stop him.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Thank you so much, Michael Scheuer…</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: Thank you, sir. You’re very kind to have me.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: He is the author, most recently, of “Osama Bin Laden” and a veteran of the CIA, where he was the chief of the Bin Laden Issues Station and a special adviser to the chief of the Bin Laden Unit. I hope you’ll come back and join us again soon.</p>
<p>Michael Scheuer: It’d be my pleasure. Thank you, sir. Peter Scheer: This is Peter Scheer with Robert Scheer, and we are joined by Frank von Hippel, a theoretical physicist and a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University. He is an expert on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation with decades and decades of experience, and we’re really honored to have him. Thanks for being here.</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: My pleasure.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: So, we have a major crisis in Japan, obviously, that has the whole world in a state of concern about nuclear energy, nuclear technology in general. The EU energy commissioner says it may be the worst nuclear disaster ever, which is really saying something. They’re going to review all of their, I don’t know, something like 140 plants. And the Japanese emperor came out recently, said he’s deeply worried; 13,000 people already dead and missing as a result of the tsunami, but even larger concerns, perhaps, about the radiation leaking out of the reactors in Japan. How scared should we be?</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: Whatever happens, it will not be on the scale of, in terms of deaths, of what was caused by the tsunami and the earthquake. But psychologically, there seems to be something special about radiation, and so I think there is a tremendous amount of fear. We could have a Chernobyl-scale release; I don’t think we’ve had one so far, and I think most of what has been released has been blown out to sea, fortunately, by the prevailing winds. But it’s a very serious, very serious … and I think it was very prudent for them to evacuate out to 12 miles and suggest additional precautions beyond that.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: What are the lessons of this for the reliance on nuclear power? The president has said we’re very committed, we’re going to spend a lot of money, yet the Europeans are saying maybe they’ll pause and pull back.</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: Yeah.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: And so why don’t we get your take on it?</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: The main dangers are, in the region, long-term land contamination. There’s a thousand square miles of land which has been contaminated and considered uninhabitable as a result of the Chernobyl accident 25 years later… due to a 30-year half-life isotope called Caesium-137. The other major danger, which is … and the first danger I was talking about was … could be contributed to mostly by the spent-fuel pools, which are now becoming the focus of concern. These are pools where the fuel which has been previously discharged from the reactors is stored and, as the water evaporates, it’s suffering damage and starting to release radioactivity. The other concern is a shorter-life isotope called Iodine-131, which from Chernobyl caused detectable increases of thyroid cancers as much as 500 miles downwind. There, fortunately, there’s a protection; if people take non-radioactive iodine before they’re exposed, they can saturate their thyroids and the radioactive iodine will bypass the thyroids. But I don’t think yet that there’s really … that’s being distributed to people beyond the 12-mile zone. So that’s sort of a summary on the potential consequences. If you’d like to talk about the future of nuclear power, I could.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: I think so, yes.</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: There’s been much talk about nuclear renaissance. Of course, to the extent it exists, it’ll be severely set back by this event. But in fact, what we’ve seen so far is most of the nuclear power plants being built, certainly the ones that have started within the last few years, are being built in China. There, there really has been something happening, and I think the future of nuclear power, to the extent there is a future, looks as if it was going to be China-driven. There was a lot of concern expressed in China, especially by the chief nuclear regulators, that they were going too fast, they didn’t have enough trained people, quality-control problems. And I think now, after this accident, that will be listened to and they will slow down somewhat.</p>
<p>The situation globally is, at the moment, nuclear power provides about 14 percent of electricity globally. The electricity demand of the world has been, in recent years, growing much faster than nuclear capacity, so that percentage has been going down. The hopes of the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] Nuclear Energy Agency and the IEA [International Energy Agency] were that, for their high scenario, was that nuclear could in fact catch up and grow, and sort of preserve its share, and might even slightly increase its share of global electricity. So nuclear power, even in the proponents’ view, you know, wouldn’t be the solution to global warming, because electricity is of course only a portion of our energy use, and we’re talking about 15 percent of our electricity use. So there was very little happening in the United States or Europe as far as building new nuclear power plants. They’ve turned out to be very costly in the U.S., and not competitive, and the same in Europe. And, also in the U.S. and Europe, the electricity demand hasn’t been going up like it has been going up in China and East Asia more … well, South Korea, for example.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Although the president has been a big proponent of nuclear energy, and has received lots of money, we should say, from Exelon Corp., a nuclear energy outfit from Chicago. Are you concerned about future building here even now?</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: It’s really been quite bizarre. You know, the Republicans are even more in favor of nuclear power than the president and, I think, the Democrats generally. And I think they’ve really held hostage the energy program, the Obama administration’s energy program … loan guarantees, which is for building nuclear power plants in the United States. Even that, though, hasn’t been sufficient, really, to overcome the very high costs that the constructors are charging for building new plants.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: If I could take you back a ways, you’re a specialist in arms control, and I recall being at a conference in Moscow in, I guess it was the mid-’80s; it was around the time of Chernobyl. And even though there’s a world of difference, by design, of a nuclear power plant and a nuclear weapon—one is designed to kill—I remember people like Roald Sagdeev and Yevgeni Velikov and other Soviet scientists using Chernobyl as an example of the danger of nuclear war. And should this be a reminder of what nuclear weapons can do and the amount of damage they can cause?</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: That’s right. I mean, people have said that Chernobyl was one of the things that destabilized the Soviet Union. You know, the loss of confidence in the central government as a result of that. But on a scale of nuclear war, Chernobyl is a tiny event. The estimates of the number of people killed by Chernobyl is about 10,000 extra people dying from cancer over the rest of their lifetimes. That’s a major event. But we’re talking, in a nuclear war, hundreds of millions of people being killed. But somehow there’s something special about radiation: the invisibility, the fear factor, that somehow makes it especially traumatic. You know, the coal plants are killing thousands of people a year just as invisibly as the Chernobyl accident did once. So my main concern about nuclear power is actually the fact that the barrier between the spread of nuclear power and the spread of nuclear weapons is not being maintained effectively.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: But you could … I could understand why, you know, even though the threat of nuclear weapons is much greater than the threat of nuclear power—when we’ve actually had these thousands of deaths in our lifetimes from nuclear-power disasters, and there have been other disasters that have scared us, while we’ve had relative calm with nuclear weapons since they were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the great build-up. I mean, I can understand why that’s in everyone’s consciousness, a greater concern about nuclear energy. And now with, also, you know, the threat of terrorists grabbing this nuclear fuel, this spent fuel, or this irradiated byproduct of nuclear power. There seem to be very real threats.</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: That’s right. I’m very concerned, in fact, that the danger of nuclear war has receded so much in people’s consciousness.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: You’re an expert in nonproliferation. What are the stockpiles like? What is the threat of nuclear war at this time?</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: Well, the U.S. and Russia still have most of the nuclear weapons—about 10,000 each, going down toward 5,000 each. But we’re talking about weapons which, on average, have maybe 10 times, 20 times the power of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. So a huge, huge destructive power. And even more concerning to me is the fact that the U.S. and Russia still, even though the Cold War’s over more than 20 years now, have about 1,000 each ready to launch within 15 minutes at each other. It’s just crazy. And I think that reflects the fact that the anti-nuclear weapon movement demobilized so quickly at the end of the Cold War. You know, they thought that it was all over, that somehow the nuclear weapons had gone away, the threat had gone away. And then that coupled with the inertia of the nuclear, what I call the doomsday machine, you know, it’s a crazy logic that supports keeping these weapons on alert even though the danger of unauthorized or accidental or hacked launch is overwhelmingly huger than either the U.S. or Russia attacking each other deliberately.</p>
<p>Robert Scheer: Well, I’d like to conclude on that, because to my mind there’s something valid about being alarmed about the Chernobyls and what’s happening in Japan. And it’s a reminder of … that nukes are different. And you’re absolutely right, there’s no comparison between a peaceful power plant and a weapon, but we have grown indifferent to the damage that can occur, and the fear. And I just wondered, now when you have a country like Pakistan having weapons, when others might be getting it, the human error—everybody keeps saying there was human error, or human error was in Chernobyl—well, human error in the handling of nuclear weapons, in the proliferation issue, and the possibility of an attack even on a peaceful power plant. I mean, does this alarm you?</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: Oh, yes. Very much. My concerns with regard to nuclear power plants in the United States are sort of more dominated by the possibility of terrorism. One paradoxical thing about this is that when I talk about nuclear disarmament, and is it feasible, or would it make the world safer, conventional war … you know, World War II kind of wars again, I say it wouldn’t. Because, in fact, countries can still keep each other hostage by virtue of the fact that we’ve built nuclear power plants near our cities, and another country with a non-nuclear weapon could unleash multiple Chernobyls if they wanted to.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: On that uplifting note, I think we have to end, but thank you very much for joining us.</p>
<p>Frank von Hippel: OK, my pleasure. Thank you.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: He is Frank von Hippel, a theoretical physicist and a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University. Peter Scheer: This is Truthdig. I’m Peter Scheer, here with Kasia Anderson and …</p>
<p>Kasia Anderson: Hello.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: … somewhere lurking in the background, Josh Scheer. And we’re joined by Juan Cole. He is a Middle East scholar who is fluent in Arabic, Urdu and Farsi. His Informed Comment blog is read by all informed people, and his Truthdig column appears every other Tuesday. Juan, thanks for being with us.</p>
<p>Juan Cole: It’s my pleasure.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: I want to ask you about your column this week, which is called <a href="" type="internal">“People Power vs. Washington.”</a> And you refute the claim advanced by some neoconservatives in light of the Arab uprisings that President [George W.] Bush’s foreign policy somehow worked after all, and the invasion of Iraq unleashed this torrent of Democratic feeling as it was meant to, or as they claimed it was meant to, at a certain point. Can you just summarize that view for us?</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Well, sure. The problem with that claim is that it’s all magical thinking. It’s not … there’s no causal link or evidence put forward, and indeed, you know, the whole discourse of the Bush administration was kind of one long episode of magical thinking. So let me just do a thought experiment: If opening up Iraq, overthrowing Saddam Hussein, starting parliamentary elections in Iraq were to have an impact on the region, what would that look like? Well, wouldn’t it come in the aftermath of the events? Wouldn’t it come in 2004, 2005, 2006? Whereas if we look at the region in that period, ah! Most people were afraid of Iraq, were afraid of what was happening there, with regard to sectarian fighting and foreign occupation. So finally, in 2011, we get some movement in Tunisia and Egypt, masses in the streets demanding democracy. Well, if Iraq were important to them as a model, wouldn’t they say so? Wouldn’t there be columns, wouldn’t there be tweets that said “Oh,” you know, “they accomplished this in Baghdad; we can do it here.” But there were none. None. Nobody instanced Iraq as a model. In fact, where I saw Iraq mentioned in the Twitter feed for Tunisia or Egypt was people saying “Be careful, guys. We don’t want to have happen here what happened in Iraq.”</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: And in fact, as you point out in your column, there’s some uprising, there’s some protest in Iraq now that’s going largely unreported.</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Well, that’s another thing, that if Iraq were this big success story and the shining beacon on the hill that’s inspiring other people, then why is it subject to the same kinds of mass demonstrations, criticisms of secret police, authoritarian governments, corrupt elections—as are going on in the other countries? That is to say, even the Iraqis, or a very large number of Iraqis, don’t seem to see what they’ve got as a success story.</p>
<p>Kasia Anderson: Hi, Juan. I just wondered if you could tell us a little bit about … if there’s any evidence that the right wing is drawing from to substantiate this claim that Iraq is somehow, you know, an inspiration for other countries in the Middle East. Are they citing any particular sources, or are they just kind of gesturing at what’s happening as evidence?</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Yeah, they’re just gesturing. They don’t … they never have had any evidence about the Middle East. I mean, almost everything anybody among the neoconservatives has said about the Middle East is wrong and often just fantastic. I mean, unconnected to reality in a way that makes an informed person laugh.</p>
<p>Josh Scheer: Hey Juan, this is Josh. I was wondering what the U.S. role should be now with what’s going on in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Well, you know, the U.S. has intervened quite a lot in that region, and often to bad effect. So, as everybody knows, the U.S. overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953, ever since has been harping on “why don’t those Iranians have democracy.” In the Middle East, people are very touchy about foreign intervention. They’ve had a lot of it. The American public doesn’t get taught in high school about the history of colonialism, so we don’t tend to know that the French were in Algeria from 1830 to 1962, or that the French took Tunisia in 1881, or that the British took Egypt in 1882. So we’re not aware of the way in which white Christian people have been in those countries making the laws, telling people what to do; and nobody wants them back. So I think the U.S. should avoid being heavy-handed. It should give what help it can to progressive forces, but I’d hate to see it take these movements as a pretext for imperial intervention.</p>
<p>Josh Scheer: Could there be some way of protecting the people who are getting killed, or … you know, with the protesters and things like that, or would that be too much intervention?</p>
<p>Juan Cole: I don’t know how you would do that. That is to say, the kinds of deaths we’re seeing among the protesters in, say, Yemen or Bahrain, which are among the worst episodes, you know … you would have a couple of people killed yesterday, you would have a few wounded; sometimes a lot of people wounded. But when the United States occupied Iraq—when it had 150,000 troops in the country, and they were doing regular military patrols—there were still a lot of people being killed. So what makes us think that, if the U.S. could occupy Iraq and still not be able to prevent … and in some instances there were 3,000 civilians dying a month under U.S. rule in Iraq. If we can’t … if U.S. troops can’t stop that when they’re in occupation, then how would they stop it from the outside? And I think this impulse to intervene is noble in some ways, because of course some of what the protesters want is very much in accordance with our values. But the practicalities, the diplomatic practicalities of it and the military practicalities of it, are something that people should give a lot of attention to before they go rushing in.</p>
<p>Kasia Anderson: Since you are fluent in these regional languages, are you seeing stories on blogs or on papers online and things like that, that are not really, obviously … probably not getting across the ocean to English-language papers and outlets? What do you see going on online, if anything?</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Well, there’s a lot of missed stories here. I think the really central role in Egypt of labor unions, both blue-collar and white-collar, are entering Tunisia as well, to these protests. That among the big demands being made was that the government allow people to form unions at will, allow them to engage in collective bargaining. That element, which was so central in Tunisia and Egypt, got very little reporting in the American press; and certainly on mass media, I don’t think it was even mentioned. And it doesn’t fit with the emphases of American corporate news, which has stopped covering most labor actions in the United States. So that’s a missed story. And all the talk about Egypt or Tunisia was, you know, the danger of Muslim fundamentalism and so forth, whereas the fundamentalists had very little to do with those revolts. They were very much labor revolts, youth revolts; the emphases were what we would think of as secular.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: You write in your column, “Their ideals are far closer to FDR’s New Deal than to W.’s white tie society.” I thought that was an interesting point about the collective bargaining. …</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Yeah. Well, you know, when Bush went into Iraq they tried to abolish the public sector in Iraq, which was like 80 percent of the economy. And they did a lot of damage, as Rajiv Chandrasekaran showed in his book, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” Whereas, you know, if you ask Egyptians in polling “what’s the government good for,” 80 percent of them say it’s to take care of people. So where these guys’ heads are at is completely different from the Bush administration. And my reference to the “white tie society” was that scene in Michael Moore’s movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” in which Bush is addressing a soiree of billionaires and they’re in white tie, which we don’t see so much on television, and he’s saying that those are his constituents. So that’s not what’s going on in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Speaking of things that we’re not seeing, you talk in your piece about developments in Algeria, Oman, Morocco, and the protests in Iraq that we’ve heard less about. You know, can you just touch on some of those, since we’ve heard so much about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya?</p>
<p>Juan Cole: All right. Well, of course, thousands of people in the street is dramatic footage, and you can understand why television would favor it. But a lot of things are going on in the region that would be difficult to capture with a camera, but which are nevertheless very important. So there’s a lot of side effects of these protests, changes that are being made by governments that are pre-emptive in hopes of forestalling a big movement against them. They’re changing the face of the region. So in Morocco, you have had, since independence in 1956, its independence from France, you’ve had a fairly strong, if not absolute, monarchy. There have in recent years been parliamentary elections; you’ve got a parliament, but it’s curbed by the … power. And darned if the king hasn’t just announced that he’s going to allow the prime minister to be elected from parliament, which is how it usually happens in parliamentary regimes, rather than be appointed by himself. And he’s going to devolve some real powers on the prime minister away from himself.</p>
<p>So it’s not as though the king is becoming a figurehead; I think he’ll still be an important political player, but he’s taking firm strides towards becoming a constitutional monarch. And if this idea catches hold, if it’s a success in Morocco, if it spreads to, say, Jordan, and other Arab publics in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are making similar demands, this is very important as a model. In Algeria, since the civil war began after the abrogated elections in 1991, there’s been a state of emergency. So these … such as they are, that are mentioned in the constitution, have been set aside. So the president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, had put to the parliament a measure to abolish the state of emergency, and on Sunday that passed. So these are very important steps towards and opening up of civil rights and more democratic governments in the region. Josh Scheer: Juan, this is Josh again. What was … with our relationship to oil, what do you think the U.S. wants? Would they rather have the Saudis?</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Is our country’s response to these uprising movements, I would say, how much is it directly proportional to how much oil these countries have, in terms of the, you know, human rights issues and our backing these regimes?</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Yeah, well, I should say, first of all, that I’m not a Washington insider; I don’t know what’s driving the decisions of the National Security Council or what they’re telling President Obama. So I can’t … I can only kind of read the tea leaves, sort of look at what U.S. policy has been. I think in the non-oil states, which are Tunisia and Egypt, and of course Morocco as well, the U.S. stance has been relatively favorable to the protest movement, although not heavily favorable, and has tended to play catch-up. So when Ben Ali was chased out of the country, all of a sudden the Obama administration was denouncing tyranny in Tunisia. After Mubarak fell was when Obama gave his speech on Egypt. And I regret that. I think Obama’s speech on Egypt could have been an historic speech if he’d only given it about a week earlier. As it was, it did look like playing catch-up.</p>
<p>So at least the U.S. hasn’t, in any significant way, stood in the way of these movements in places like Tunisia and Egypt. I think behind the scenes, from what we can tell from leaks and so forth, Obama called up Mubarak and said “see here, old man, it’s time to go.” They say it was a very, very difficult conversation. And so he presumably was also telling the officer corps the same thing, which in the end was what mattered. So I think Obama handled Egypt all right; I wish he’d been a little bit more out front. But in the oil states, in Bahrain, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Iraq, to some extent … is the status quo power. He likes things the way they are. And although we’ve made noises about the need for the king to compromise … with the Shiite majority, we haven’t really forestalled the Saudis invading to prop up the king. And either we’re very weak and unable to forestall that development, or our heart isn’t really very much into it, because we’ve got our eye on the price of petroleum per barrel.</p>
<p>Kasia Anderson: Well, speaking as a Washington insider … and I know you just said you weren’t one, but as someone from, you know, watching these things from your position, the timing of the neoconservatives’ bid for revisionist history with regard to Iraq strikes me as kind of conspicuous, given that Republicans are just starting to roll out their potential candidates for the White House in 2012. How much of this do you see as a recuperative strategy for the former Bushies, and how much might potentially be an eye towards Campaign 2012?</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Sure. Well, the neoconservatives are in the wilderness even with regard to even a lot of the Republican faithful. I think the tea party doesn’t much care for them. And a lot of the mainstream Republicans had turned on Bush by the end of his term largely because of neoconservative policies. So the neoconservatives see an opening with regard to Col. Gaddafi’s ability to put down this rebellion in Libya, and they’re blaming Obama for not stopping that, as if it would be easy to stop. And I think that they are putting down a marker that they should be part of any new Republican administration that might come in in 2012. But note that Haley Barbour just came out for a complete withdrawal from Iraq and against a long-term stay in Afghanistan. And I think you can start to see some isolationism in the Republican Party that will make it very difficult for a neoconservative agenda to have much of a voice there, depending on who becomes the front-runner.</p>
<p>Josh Scheer: I want to jump on Kasia’s point, because maybe it’s also about the fact that Iraq was such an abject failure, and obviously the way they wanted to shape the Middle East was such an abject failure, that this was like “Oh my God, lookit, we actually did something right with this.” Do you think that would be …</p>
<p>Juan Cole: Yeah, sure. Well of course, you know, history is always a fight about how to interpret what happened in the past for the purposes of the present. The neoconservatives are attempting to recuperate from one of the great foreign policy disasters and mistakes we’ve seen in American history. So of course they’re very eager to put a different face on things. But I don’t see evidence of the American public buying it. I think they made up their minds about Iraq having been a big mistake beginning in 2006, and they haven’t wavered in this regard. And I think most Americans are pretty happy at the prospect of getting out of Iraq altogether. I don’t think they’re eager to get involved in another land war, although there is some sentiment for protecting the rebels in Libya. So I think that kind of muscular Wilsonianism, as some people have referred to neoconservatism, is on the ropes; the U.S. public doesn’t have a lot of resources to squander abroad, we’ve got a lot of unemployed. And, you know, they were painting the schoolhouses in Iraq, and I think we’ve got a lot of schoolhouses in America that would do with a coat.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: Well, we’re going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for speaking with us, Juan Cole. He is the author of the Informed Comment blog, which has become simply a must-read in this last decade of excitement and less exciting things in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Kasia Anderson: Adventuring foreign policy … [laughter] on the part of the U.S.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: So, thanks so much for being with us, Juan.</p>
<p>Juan Cole: It’s my great pleasure. Thanks for having me on.</p>
<p>Peter Scheer: That’s it for this week’s episode of Truthdig Radio. Check us out in a week, on air, or anytime online at Truthdig.com. Special thanks to our board op Ji, engineer Stan Mizraje, Mark Maxwell, Spencer Downing,and Alan Minsky. For Robert Scheer, Kasia Anderson, Josh Scheer, and myself, thanks for listening.</p> | Truthdig Radio: Osama bin Laden and Nuclear Meltdown | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/truthdig-radio-osama-bin-laden-and-nuclear-meltdown/ | 2011-03-17 | 4 |
<p>Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) is running for&#160;governor of Colorado. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)</p>
<p>The most senior out member of the U.S. House on Sunday announced&#160;his intent&#160;to run for&#160;governor of Colorado. If successful, he’d be the first openly gay person elected governor in the United States.</p>
<p>Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who’s served in Congress since the start of the Obama administration in 2009, said in an email to supporters he’d formally declare his bid Monday to become governor and to succeed retiring Gov. John Hickenlooper.</p>
<p>“I’m running to be your next governor because I want to turn bold ideas into real results for your family,” Polis wrote. “Colorado can lead the way into the future and, together, we can build an economy that works for everybody — not just those at the top.”</p>
<p>Included in the email blast is video featuring Polis as well as supporters — the owner of Jones’ Scones, a graduate of the New America School founded by Polis, a teacher and a former state senator.</p>
<p>“My life has been about taking big ideas and turning them into results,” Polis said. “I’m running for governor to preserve what makes Colorado special. We’re working to make sure our state works for everyone, not just a few.</p>
<p />
<p>Among the goals cited by Polis are making Colorado “completely energy independent” and ensuring the state entirely runs on renewable energy by 2040 with green energy jobs that he says can’t be outsourced overseas. Polis also pledges free full-day preschool and kindergarten for Colorado and “an inclusive economy where workers make more, not just CEOs.”</p>
<p>As a member of Congress, Polis took the lead on legislation seeking to enhance LGBT rights, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Student Non-Discrimination Act. Polis is a co-chair of the LGBT Equality Caucus and a co-sponsor of the Equality Act.</p>
<p>If Polis were to succeed in his bid to become Colorado governor, he’d be the first openly gay person elected governor in the United States and the only sitting openly gay governor.</p>
<p>However, the more general milestone of an openly LGBT person winning election as governor has been achieved. Last year, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, who’s bisexual, won election after being appointed to the position in 2015 following the resignation of her predecessor.</p>
<p>Another governor came out as gay after having been elected and serving in office. In 2004, New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, came out as gay prior to resigning amid scandal involving an affair with a male aide.</p>
<p>Polis might have some competition for the distinction of becoming&#160;the first openly gay person elected governor. In Maryland, gay State Sen. Richard Madaleno (D-Montgomery County) has declared his candidacy to unseat Gov. Larry Hogan (R). In Connecticut, State Comptroller Kevin Lembo, who’s gay, has opened an exploratory committee to run for governor, but hasn’t made an official declaration.</p>
<p>Polis is running in a crowded field for the Democratic nomination. Other Democrats vying for the nomination are former State Sen. Michael Johnston, Denver businessperson Noel Ginsburg, U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), former Colorado treasurer Cary Kennedy and businessperson Moses Humes. The primary will take place on June 28 next year.</p>
<p>On the Republican side, declared candidates are Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, Larimer County Commissioner Lew Gaiter, former State Rep. Victor Mitchell, businessperson Doug Robinson and retired banker JoAnne Silva.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Colorado</a> <a href="" type="internal">election 2018</a> <a href="" type="internal">Jared Polis</a></p> | Jared Polis announces bid to become Colorado governor | false | http://washingtonblade.com/2017/06/11/jared-polis-announces-bid-become-colorado-governor/ | 3 |
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<p>The Southern Poverty Law Center has padded its already well-stocked coffers with at least $2.5 million in donations from celebrities and corporations following the white-nationalist melee in <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a>, Virginia.</p>
<p>George and Amal Clooney have donated $1 million to “combat hate groups,” while Apple CEO Tim Cook announced gifts of $1 million to the SPLC and $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League in response to the deadly Aug. 12 <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a> clash.</p>
<p>“We are proud to support the Southern Poverty Law Center in its efforts to prevent violent extremism in the United States,” said the Clooneys in a Monday statement. “What happened in <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a>, and what is happening in communities across our country, demands our collective engagement to stand up to hate.”</p>
<p>At the same time, others worry that <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a> has obscured legitimate concerns about the SPLC, which has been accused of juicing its fundraising by exaggerating the Ku Klux Klan threat.</p>
<p>“These celebrity donations are virtue-signaling. SPLC does not need the money,” said Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson in an email. “Its 2016 annual report shows over $300 million in endowment, with program spending (legal and educational) one-tenth that amount and more than covered by normal annual fundraising.”</p>
<p>Indeed, the $2.5 million comes as fairly small change for the SPLC, which reported revenue of $54 million in 2015 and spent 22 percent of its budget on fundraising, versus 64 percent on programs and services, according to Charity Navigator.</p>
<p>Top-ranked charities ideally spend at least 75 percent of their budgets on programs and services, as per CharityWatch, which last year downgraded the SPLC from a “C+” to an “F” for holding more than three years’ available assets in reserve.</p>
<p>“Unfortunately, these virtue-signaling donations reinforce SPLC’s bad habit of sensationalizing and politicizing ‘hate’ to generate even more money for its already bloated coffers,” said Mr. Jacobson, who runs the right-leaning Legal Insurrection blog.</p>
<p>The criticism has also come from the left. The Nation’s Alexander Cockburn referred in 2009 to SPLC’s Morris Dees as the “archsalesman of hatemongering, while Ken Silverstein of Harper’s said in 2010 that the organization “shuts down debate, stifles free speech, and most of all, raises a pile of money, very little of which is used on behalf of poor.”</p>
<p>In the wake of <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a>, however, the SPLC and ADL, which has a focus on fighting anti-Semitism, have clearly become the go-to charities for prominent donors.</p>
<p>JPMorgan Chase said in a Monday memo that it would split a $1 million gift between the SPLC and ADL “to further their work in tracking, exposing and fighting hate groups and other extremist organizations.”</p>
<p>Apple has also launched a fundraising tool to allow donors to give to the SPLC through their digital iTunes accounts.</p>
<p>In accepting the Cloooney donation, SPLC president Richard Cohen warned that President Trump had reanimated the “radical right.”</p>
<p>“Like George and Amal Clooney, we were shocked by the size, ugliness, and ferocity of the white supremacist gathering in <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a>,” Mr. Cohen said in a Monday statement. “It was a reflection of just how much Trump’s incendiary campaign and presidency has energized the radical right. We are deeply grateful to the Clooney Foundation for standing with us at this critical moment in our country’s fight against hate.”</p>
<p>The SPLC has also faced blowback for its liberal advocacy, starting with its “hate map,” which lumps mainstream conservative organizations with neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.</p>
<p>Both ABC and NBC repeated the “hate group” label in July in reference to the Alliance Defending Freedom, while CNN recentlyposted the SPLC “hate map” under the headline, “Here are all the active hate groups where you live.”</p>
<p>Among those on the map is the Liberty Counsel, led by Mat Staver, who denounced the <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a> white-supremacist violence and accused the SPLC of “exploiting a serious situation to push a self-centered political agenda.”</p>
<p>“This false labeling is defamatory and dangerous,” he said in a Monday statement.</p>
<p>Founded in 1971 to promote civil rights, the SPLC describes itself as the “premier U.S. nonprofit organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists.”</p>
<p>One woman was killed and 19 injured after an alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer drove into a crowd in <a href="/topics/charlottesville/" type="external">Charlottesville</a>.</p>
<p>Copyright © 2018 The Washington Times, LLC. <a href="http://license.icopyright.net/3.7280?icx_id=/news/2017/aug/23/wealthy-southern-poverty-law-rakes-hollywood-silic/" type="external">Click here for reprint permission</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Wealthy Southern Poverty Law rakes in Hollywood, Silicon Valley cash after Charlottesville | true | http://washingtontimes.com/news/2017/aug/23/wealthy-southern-poverty-law-rakes-hollywood-silic/?preview | 2017-08-23 | 0 |
<p />
<p>Box, which provides file storage and collaboration services in the cloud, said it expected sales to grow by 30% over the next year, despite stiff competition from rivals Microsoft Corp. and Dropbox Inc.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>The company's results for its most recent quarter ended January showed the Redwood City, Calif., firm continuing its high-growth, free-spending ways as it builds its presence in a fast-growing market.</p>
<p>Shares were up more than 13% in after-hours trading on the news that&#160;Box&#160;beat expectations for quarterly revenue and losses. However, the stock has been trading 46% below the price when the company went public in January 2015.</p>
<p>Box's revenue for the quarter tallied $85 million, up 36% year over year. The company lost $0.41 per share during the quarter. For the year, revenue was $302 million. "Passing the $300 million milestone is pretty significant," said Aaron Levie, the company's chief executive. "You now have a base foundation of revenue."</p>
<p>Box&#160;reported a loss of $0.26 per share excluding charges. Analysts had expected a loss of $0.29 on $82 million in revenue, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters, and they expect&#160;Box&#160;to continue losing money throughout the year.</p>
<p>Revenue from existing customers is an important measure because&#160;Box&#160;customers typically increase their spending on the service over time. That figure is growing, on average, by about 17% annually as&#160;Box&#160;develops new ways to use its file-sharing and storage services, Mr. Levie said.</p>
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<p>Box&#160;in the past year has forged partnerships with companies such as International Business Machines Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. to increase the range of uses for its services. Customers are "really moving beyond thinking of us as a file-sharing tool and really beginning to think about us as a platform," Mr. Levie said.</p>
<p>Box&#160;is in a dead-heat race to dominate the market for cloud storage and collaboration for businesses, according to industry research firm International Data Group. In 2014, the last full year for which IDC data is available,&#160;Box&#160;and Microsoft each held 21% of the $892 million market. Dropbox was in the lead by a small margin with 23%. The market grew by 76% between 2013 and 2014, according to IDC.</p>
<p>Box&#160;rapidly has added other offerings that help workers collaborate and companies manage digital assets.</p>
<p>(END) Dow Jones Newswires</p> | Box Shares Rise On Strong Results | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/09/box-shares-rise-on-strong-results.html | 2016-09-01 | 0 |
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<p>Could be. And unless Duran offers it up - and quickly - she needs to resign.</p>
<p>Duran has said through her attorney that "we ask the public to not jump to conclusions and we look forward to addressing the allegations in court." Considering she is charged with 64 violations of misappropriation and misreporting of campaign contributions - including writing her husband a "reimbursement" check from the campaign, depositing it into their joint checking account and then withdrawing thousands of dollars the same day at Sandia Casino - there's a lot to address.</p>
<p>And, considering the length of time it takes for a case to wind through the courts, there's really no way she can effectively run an agency with 52 employees and $2.4 million in annual payroll entrusted with "oversee(ing) the entire election process - lobbyist activity, the reporting of campaign finances by candidates for public office and political action committees, the required filing of financial disclosures by candidates and state officials, plus the filing of a general code of conduct for the employees under their supervision" while under this cloud.</p>
<p>Quite simply, Duran, the state's first Republican secretary of state in 80 years, needs to credibly detail why the allegations of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering made by Democratic Attorney General Hector Balderas are just "a politically motivated case" and "a selective prosecution of a political adversary." And she should waste no time explaining to the New Mexicans who elected her and fund her agency why casinos appear to be her banking location of choice.</p>
<p>Or she should step down and focus on her very serious legal troubles.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Balderas' criminal complaint contains many unsettling specifics, including campaign checks deposited into her personal checking account, a campaign check written for "equipment and work" that the recipient says he never supplied and never received, and casino withdrawals of $147,641 in 2013 and $282,807 in 2014 when the secretary of state job, according to the state's Sunshine Portal, pays $85,000 a year.</p>
<p>On Monday, House Democratic leaders announced they are taking the first steps to impeaching Duran should she decide to stay in office. Considering the two troubled administrations that preceded her, Duran should be a secretary of state who puts New Mexico and New Mexicans first. And that means either adequately explaining her actions or resigning.</p>
<p>This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.</p>
<p /> | Editorial: Barring a really amazing explanation, SOS has to go | false | https://abqjournal.com/637263/barring-a-really-amazing-explanation-sos-has-to-go.html | 2 |
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<p>Mechanical issues are the official reason that New Mexico Airlines gave to the Federal Aviation Administration for grounding all flights, but Chief Executive Officer of New Mexico Airlines, Greg Kahlstorf, said that there were additional concerns at the Carlsbad airport.</p>
<p>According to an email he sent to several transportation officials Friday morning, flights at the Carlsbad airport were stopped because of “spontaneous helicopter operations in very close proximity to (but not at) the Carlsbad airport.”</p>
<p>The reasons for grounding the flights in other cities, Kahlstorf said were “as routine as changing a tire on a car.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>However, the Federal Aviation Administration said it found no safety concerns with the helicopter in an airspace analysis completed a few months ago.</p>
<p>Kahlstorf said his insurance underwriters told him that the company could not continue flying to and from the Carlsbad Airport when the safety concern of the helicopter flights existed.</p>
<p>“It’s a liability free-for-all,” Kahlstorf said.</p>
<p>Kahlstorf said he could not resume flights to and from Carlsbad until he received assurance from the Federal Aviation Administration that the situation was safe.</p>
<p>City Administrator Steve McCutcheon, however, said the airport passed the certification through the Federal Aviation Administration just this past summer.</p>
<p>“As far as we know, our last inspection is good and we are in compliance with all FAA guidelines,” McCutcheon said.</p>
<p>McCutcheon said that the city closely monitors the certification, and that the city has not officially been notified of any safety hazards at the airport by the FAA. He also noted that helicopters are permitted in any industrial zone in the city of Carlsbad.</p>
<p>The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the Carlsbad airport has no control tower because of the small amount of air traffic that goes through it.</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>All pilots in the Carlsbad area have to broadcast their positions on the same frequency, which according to the Federal Aviation Administration’s statement, is published on all aviation charts.</p>
<p>Kahlstorf said that neither he nor anyone from his company was notified of the safety analysis done by the Federal Aviation Administration that found no safety concerns with the helicopter.</p>
<p>New Mexico Airlines started flights to Carlsbad July 2007, and was providing round trip services once a day.</p>
<p>The airline is the city’s Essential Air Service program carrier, meaning it receives subsidized payments through the U.S. Department of Transportation to maintain a regular schedule of flights into the city, according to the department website.</p>
<p>The airline was re-awarded the contract in May of last year despite opposition from city leaders who cited unpressurized airplanes and no eastern hub connection.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Transportation did not respond to requests for information regarding possible repercussions of violating the EAS contract.</p>
<p>Katie England can be reached at 575-628-5516.</p>
<p>——</p>
<p>©2014 the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.)</p>
<p>Visit the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.) at <a href="http://www.currentargus.com" type="external">www.currentargus.com</a></p>
<p>Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC</p>
<p>———-</p>
<p>Topics: t000141113,t000030739,t000002537,t000002707,t000030742,t000029726,t000180730,t000002953,t000047707,t000138201,t000047682,t000047680,g000065558,g000225333,g000362661,g000066164,g000065612</p> | Airline grounds flights to Carlsbad due to helicopter activity | false | https://abqjournal.com/512782/airline-grounds-flights-to-carlsbad-due-to-helicopter-activity.html | 2014-12-15 | 2 |
<p>(You know Kirkuk well, what does the city look like?) it's aside a river that was once flowing but has been dry for many years so you've got several bridges going across a dry riverbed. It's a city that never really recovered from so many of Saddam Hussein's sanctions. And the city has been mired in controversy between ethnic groups since Saddam's collapse. (And underneath the city of Kirkuk are huge reserves of oil. Is that why these ethnic tensions even exist?) Well when I talk with people who live there, they never talk about oil, they just talk about this being their ethnic homeland. But the reason all the neighboring countries consider it important is because of the oil. (What is the current composition of the city?) That's a controversial question, but since the 1970s it's been thought that the city is Turkeman, remnants of the Ottoman Empire, but the countryside around is predominantly Kurdish with a lot of Arab tribes as well. Saddam Hussein moved in a lot of Arab Shiites during his time in power. (So how actually runs Kirkuk?) The U.S. Army is here, the Iraqi Army which is predominantly Kurdish is here, there are Kurdish parties here as well and they have control over the north of Kirkuk. (Will we hear more about Kirkuk in the coming months?) One U.S. commander described Kirkuk as a timebomb that keeps on ticking and it's been considered a flashpoint for a long time. So far it hasn't ripped open the way many people feared it would, but people are more worried about that happening after a U.S. drawdown.</p> | Violence in Kirkuk | false | https://pri.org/stories/2008-12-11/violence-kirkuk | 2008-12-11 | 3 |
<p>FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Two things, among many, have been consistent for the Patriots the past decade: Tom Brady at quarterback and New England in the AFC championship game.</p>
<p>Brady will try to lead his team to its seventh straight conference title game Saturday when it hosts the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round.</p>
<p>It has <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/belichick-absolutely-intends-return-patriots-coach" type="external">been a challenging week off the field for the Patriots</a> following reports of turmoil involving Brady, coach Bill Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft. But Brady says he’s never doubted his team’s ability to compartmentalize potential distractions.</p>
<p>“I think we have a job to do and we know what our job is and that’s to go out and play football at a high level and play well,” he said. “Nothing really should get in the way of that.”</p>
<p>Tennessee hasn’t been to a conference championship game since the 2002 season, but has been invigorated coming off its first playoff win in 14 years.</p>
<p>The Titans enter as 13-point underdog, but <a href="https://youtu.be/mDmXyowTLZU" type="external">linebacker Derrick Morgan said it’s a role they happily embrace</a> .</p>
<p>“Nobody respects us. Nobody really expects a lot from us. That’s fine,” he said. “We haven’t been a very successful team in the last 10 years. So it’s easy for people to overlook us. So we’ve got to take care of business and start winning games like this to get the respect that we desire.”</p>
<p>To get it, they’ll have to stop a quarterback that has been nearly unbeatable in this round of the postseason.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/brady-bullish-focus-titans-after-drama-filled-week" type="external">Brady is 11-2 in 13 divisional-round games since 2002</a> , passing for 3,700 yards and 28 touchdowns.</p>
<p>He also has a 6-1 career record against the Titans with 13 touchdowns and just one interception.</p>
<p><a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/titans-confident-marcus-mariota-doing-bit-everything" type="external">Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota</a> was mostly unflappable in leading his team back from an <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/titans-rally-21-3-hole-beat-chiefs-22-21-playoffs" type="external">18-point halftime deficit to beat Kansas City</a> — the largest comeback on road in Super Bowl era.</p>
<p>But since 2001, quarterbacks making their first or second career playoff start are 0-7 against New England.</p>
<p>“When it comes down to it, it’s all about us,” Mariota said. “I think that’s kind of been the mindset through this entire season. Ups and downs come and go, you just want to try and make the most of this opportunity.”</p>
<p>Some things to watch on Saturday:</p>
<p>MOVING ON UP: It will be Bill Belichick’s 37th career playoff game as a head coach, breaking a tie with Tom Landry and Don Shula for the most in NFL history.</p>
<p>HEISMAN BROTHERS: Mariota, the 2014 Heisman winner, and Derrick Henry, the 2015 Heisman winner, combined to turn in the best rushing performance in franchise history in the wild-card round. Henry ran for a career-high 156 yards, and Mariota added 46 yards. Henry will be starting his third straight game with DeMarco Murray already out (right knee).</p>
<p>PRESSURE: The Titans ranked fifth in the league with 43 sacks during the season and added four more against the Chiefs last week. Three-time Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jurrell Casey had six from his interior spot, while Morgan led the Titans with 7 ½ sacks. Linebackers Brian Orakpo (seven) and Wesley Woodyard (five) give the Titans a variety of options to attack Brady, not counting backup linebacker Erik Walden (four).</p>
<p>EXPERIENCE GAP: New England has 41 players with postseason experience, most of 2017 playoff teams. Fourteen Patriots players have played at least 10 playoff games. That’s more such players than 11 other playoff teams combined (13). Before the start of this postseason, the Titans had 18 players who had appeared in a playoff game.</p>
<p>BELICHICK and LEBEAU: There aren’t too many current NFL coaches that have been around the game longer than <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/dick-lebeau-vs-bill-belichick-meet-rare-playoff-battle" type="external">Belichick and Titans defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau</a> .</p>
<p>LeBeau has an NFL-record 45 consecutive seasons as a coach, with Belichick at 43. Yet, with Belichick as head coach, he and LeBeau have faced off in the playoffs only once: the 2004 AFC championship game that New England won in Pittsburgh 41-27.</p>
<p>The respect between the two is mutual.</p>
<p>“Not very many coaches have the record coach Belichick’s gotten. In fact he’s probably closing in on the best ever,” LeBeau said.</p>
<p>Said Belichick: “Coach LeBeau is as good as there is, as good a defensive coach as there is.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP Football Writer Teresa Walker in Nashville contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/khightower" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/khightower" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/khightower</a></p>
<p>FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Two things, among many, have been consistent for the Patriots the past decade: Tom Brady at quarterback and New England in the AFC championship game.</p>
<p>Brady will try to lead his team to its seventh straight conference title game Saturday when it hosts the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round.</p>
<p>It has <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/belichick-absolutely-intends-return-patriots-coach" type="external">been a challenging week off the field for the Patriots</a> following reports of turmoil involving Brady, coach Bill Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft. But Brady says he’s never doubted his team’s ability to compartmentalize potential distractions.</p>
<p>“I think we have a job to do and we know what our job is and that’s to go out and play football at a high level and play well,” he said. “Nothing really should get in the way of that.”</p>
<p>Tennessee hasn’t been to a conference championship game since the 2002 season, but has been invigorated coming off its first playoff win in 14 years.</p>
<p>The Titans enter as 13-point underdog, but <a href="https://youtu.be/mDmXyowTLZU" type="external">linebacker Derrick Morgan said it’s a role they happily embrace</a> .</p>
<p>“Nobody respects us. Nobody really expects a lot from us. That’s fine,” he said. “We haven’t been a very successful team in the last 10 years. So it’s easy for people to overlook us. So we’ve got to take care of business and start winning games like this to get the respect that we desire.”</p>
<p>To get it, they’ll have to stop a quarterback that has been nearly unbeatable in this round of the postseason.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/brady-bullish-focus-titans-after-drama-filled-week" type="external">Brady is 11-2 in 13 divisional-round games since 2002</a> , passing for 3,700 yards and 28 touchdowns.</p>
<p>He also has a 6-1 career record against the Titans with 13 touchdowns and just one interception.</p>
<p><a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/titans-confident-marcus-mariota-doing-bit-everything" type="external">Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota</a> was mostly unflappable in leading his team back from an <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/titans-rally-21-3-hole-beat-chiefs-22-21-playoffs" type="external">18-point halftime deficit to beat Kansas City</a> — the largest comeback on road in Super Bowl era.</p>
<p>But since 2001, quarterbacks making their first or second career playoff start are 0-7 against New England.</p>
<p>“When it comes down to it, it’s all about us,” Mariota said. “I think that’s kind of been the mindset through this entire season. Ups and downs come and go, you just want to try and make the most of this opportunity.”</p>
<p>Some things to watch on Saturday:</p>
<p>MOVING ON UP: It will be Bill Belichick’s 37th career playoff game as a head coach, breaking a tie with Tom Landry and Don Shula for the most in NFL history.</p>
<p>HEISMAN BROTHERS: Mariota, the 2014 Heisman winner, and Derrick Henry, the 2015 Heisman winner, combined to turn in the best rushing performance in franchise history in the wild-card round. Henry ran for a career-high 156 yards, and Mariota added 46 yards. Henry will be starting his third straight game with DeMarco Murray already out (right knee).</p>
<p>PRESSURE: The Titans ranked fifth in the league with 43 sacks during the season and added four more against the Chiefs last week. Three-time Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jurrell Casey had six from his interior spot, while Morgan led the Titans with 7 ½ sacks. Linebackers Brian Orakpo (seven) and Wesley Woodyard (five) give the Titans a variety of options to attack Brady, not counting backup linebacker Erik Walden (four).</p>
<p>EXPERIENCE GAP: New England has 41 players with postseason experience, most of 2017 playoff teams. Fourteen Patriots players have played at least 10 playoff games. That’s more such players than 11 other playoff teams combined (13). Before the start of this postseason, the Titans had 18 players who had appeared in a playoff game.</p>
<p>BELICHICK and LEBEAU: There aren’t too many current NFL coaches that have been around the game longer than <a href="https://pro32.ap.org/article/dick-lebeau-vs-bill-belichick-meet-rare-playoff-battle" type="external">Belichick and Titans defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau</a> .</p>
<p>LeBeau has an NFL-record 45 consecutive seasons as a coach, with Belichick at 43. Yet, with Belichick as head coach, he and LeBeau have faced off in the playoffs only once: the 2004 AFC championship game that New England won in Pittsburgh 41-27.</p>
<p>The respect between the two is mutual.</p>
<p>“Not very many coaches have the record coach Belichick’s gotten. In fact he’s probably closing in on the best ever,” LeBeau said.</p>
<p>Said Belichick: “Coach LeBeau is as good as there is, as good a defensive coach as there is.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>AP Football Writer Teresa Walker in Nashville contributed to this report.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>For more NFL coverage: <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.pro32.ap.org" type="external">http://www.pro32.ap.org</a> and <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL</a></p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/khightower" type="external" /> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/khightower" type="external">http://www.twitter.com/khightower</a></p> | Patriots chase 7th straight AFC title berth against Titans | false | https://apnews.com/c2ac062f8c9140d0a72fe4c840c5ccb9 | 2018-01-12 | 2 |
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<p>A small concrete room at the end of a corridor, not much wider than a single bed and with no windows, it is where prisoners used to be put in solitary confinement. If you step inside and close the door, which clangs with a dreadful foreboding, you will be enveloped in blackness and silence. Even if you know you can step out any time you like, panic sets in quickly.</p>
<p>That’s at the old prison, closed now and used only as a movie set and tourist attraction.</p>
<p>Nearby, in the prison that replaced it, Deputy Corrections Secretary Joe Booker said they don’t call it “solitary confinement” anymore; they call it “segregation.” And he says the experience today is a far cry from “the hole.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>The cells where prisoners are now placed in isolation are slightly larger, maybe 6 feet by 8 feet, and they contain a bed, a desk, a toilet and two windows, one facing into the prison and one facing outdoors. Most interaction with the world outside the cell happens through the food slot, a hinged opening in the door big enough to slide a food tray through.</p>
<p>Inmates are placed in segregation for a variety of reasons – sometimes to protect them from predators, but more often as punishment for a rule infraction or violent behavior.</p>
<p>Booker said some inmates in segregation are allowed to take belongings, including a TV, into the cell, while others have their belongings restricted as punishment. Every inmate is pulled out every seven days for a mental health assessment. The cells exist at nearly every New Mexico prison.</p>
<p>A cell at the Penitentiary of New Mexico in Santa Fe, where prisoners are held in “segregation” or “solitary confinement” for 23 hours a day. (Courtesy of NM Department of Corrections)</p>
<p>Nationwide, about one in every 10 prisoners lives in a solitary cell, spending 23 hours each day inside the cell and one hour outside it, either showering or exercising.</p>
<p>It’s a staple of prison management that is not without controversy; defense lawyers and prisoners’ rights groups call it inhumane.</p>
<p>Matthew Coyte, an Albuquerque lawyer who has sued on behalf of inmates kept in solitary confinement in county jails and the state prisons, doesn’t make the distinction between “solitary confinement” and “segregation” that corrections officials do.</p>
<p>Whatever it’s called, he argues, it is “the restriction of the person in a concrete cell of upwards of 23 hours a day, which means there is no meaningful interaction with other people.”</p>
<p>The result, Coyte says: “It causes you, if you’re stuck in a cell for a period of time, to gradually go insane.”</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Booker, who spent his 30-year career in some of the toughest prisons in the nation before coming to New Mexico a year and a half ago, said he couldn’t say whether isolation causes inmates to go crazy. But, he says, “It can’t be something that’s good.”</p>
<p>New Mexico officials have the goal of cutting their segregation statistics from near 10 percent of inmates to 5 percent. Why? Because they have found that it doesn’t really work.</p>
<p>It’s an interesting intersection of the corrections world and the defense bar that has both sides agreeing that segregation should be scaled back. If they can work together to make one of the worst punishments prisons can mete out a rare exception rather than a rule, it could only be a good thing for New Mexico.</p>
<p>In the Middle Ages, Catholic monks who misbehaved were placed in solitary cells with the belief that isolation and silence would lead to repentance. That’s where the word “penitentiary” comes from, and the practice was introduced in the earliest days of the U.S. prison system in the 1770s.</p>
<p>The use of solitary confinement has come in and out of vogue since, but the theory has always been the same: If misbehaving inmates are isolated, they’ll be easier to control and they will be chastened by the experience and will behave better.</p>
<p>Booker said the theory is flawed because isolation keeps inmates from the programs that help them reform. Although Booker and Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel speak of changing the hearts of their prisoners, their bottom line is public safety.</p>
<p>Booker said the prisons need to isolate violent inmates but not every rule-breaker.</p>
<p>“Ninety-six percent of inmates come out. They’re going to the streets,” Booker says.”If we take every incident and put them in segregation, then we’re not helping the problem. It becomes a negative. We can lock them up, but if we don’t give them some hope and give them some skills to make that transition to the community, then we’re not really helping keep the public safe.”</p>
<p>The best approach, he said, is to use segregation sparingly and keep most rule-breakers in the general population, while withdrawing other privileges to punish them. Reducing the use of segregation might also help reduce the state prison system’s unenviable 46 percent recidivism rate, Booker said.</p>
<p>Coyte’s argument against solitary is more to the point of human rights.</p>
<p>“Historically, we have used this technique to torture people,” Coyte says. “In the Korean War, they did it. In Vietnam, they did it. In Nazi Germany, they did it. We do it because we know it works. We know it’s harmful and it’s hurtful.</p>
<p>“I concede that I can lose the battle here, because people don’t really care,” Coyte told me. “Because if people really cared, we wouldn’t be doing this.”</p>
<p>Even if we think prison should be a place where lawbreakers suffer for their misdeeds, why should we care?</p>
<p>From a bottom-line perspective, because solitary is expensive.</p>
<p>From a practical perspective, because, as Booker points out, nearly everyone gets out of prison. They come back to our towns and neighborhoods, and if they come back less socialized, their mental illness worse and their anger deepened, then we’ve only made one of our problems worse.</p>
<p>UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or <a href="" type="internal">[email protected]</a>. Go to <a href="" type="internal">abqjournal.com/letters/new</a> to submit a letter to the editor.</p>
<p />
<p /> | Closing the door on solitary confinement | false | https://abqjournal.com/331429/prisons-scale-back-use-of-whats-now-called-segregation.html | 2 |
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<p>Early in the administration of Paul Vallas, the Chicago schools chief and former New York City Schools Chancellor Anthony Alvarado had a two-hour meeting that “did not go very well,” according to John Ayers of Leadership for Quality Education, who set up the meeting.</p>
<p>A fast talker best known as the architect of the nationally lauded District 2 in New York City, Alvarado didn’t seem to impress Vallas’ education team with his ideas about school improvement and professional development, according to Ayers. Vallas himself appeared uninterested, taking a number of cell phone calls during the meeting.</p>
<p>Some in the room fervently hoped the two would hit it off and forge a new kind of urban school leadership, pairing a savvy political leader with a savvy, proven educational leader. It was not to be. Vallas stuck with the more traditional approach of looking outside for ideas but promoting from within.</p>
<p>Given the likelihood that Chicago will continue to have a non-traditional superintendent, some leaders in the reform community would like to try again on pairing that individual with a nationally prominent educator. “It’s going to take a very skilled educational strategist to figure out what’s next,” says Ayers.</p>
<p>This educator, advocates argue, would share the back-breaking responsibilities of running a massive school system and ensuring that the next wave of initiatives is educationally sound.</p>
<p>That is what is happening in San Diego, where Alvarado ended up taking the newly created job of chancellor of instruction. So far, the pairing has drawn mixed reviews, and experts caution against rushing into such a model. Even so, San Diego’s experience illustrates how this innovative leadership strategy can work, as well as what its weaknesses may be.</p>
<p />
<p>Located just across the border from Tijuana, Mexico, San Diego is a fast-growing, diverse school district where, since roughly 1996, the business community has played a prominent role in electing school board members and picking superintendents.</p>
<p>In 1998, it picked a strong-willed former U.S. attorney named Alan Bersin to take over the schools. Like Vallas three years before, Bersin came into the top job with a reputation for being a results-oriented, no-nonsense type, with strong political backing—for his work on immigration and border issues—and with adoring coverage from the mainstream press.</p>
<p>Almost immediately, Bersin reorganized the central office of the 143,000-student district to create an institute for learning; he then hired Alvarado to lead it. “It’s very critical that this person be not even No. 2, but clearly No. 1 when it comes to instruction,” Bersin says of the chancellor’s role.</p>
<p>As chancellor for instruction, Alvarado designs educational programs and policies and has control over a vast swath of the district’s manpower and resources. His handicraft so far includes programs to provide full-day kindergarten and extended school days and years for low-performing students, and he has tried to bring order out of a hodge podge of reading programs. To meet the state’s stringent promotion and graduation requirements, he overhauled programs to improve low-performing schools and to help students pass exit exams. He took over principal retention issues and fired 13 at the end of his first year. And he instituted his trademark emphasis on systemic professional development. For example, he let go 600 paraprofessionals, whom he judged were not adding much value, and used the savings for professional development for teachers.</p>
<p>Alvarado’s strength, according to his admirers, is his clear vision of what needs to be done to improve student learning and his deep knowledge about how big districts work. “Most school systems are characterized by a truckload of programs and fractionalized approaches” when it comes to helping low-performing schools and training teachers, says Alvarado. “The systems are massively incoherent, unfocused, and resources are used to accomplish a myriad number of instructional objectives. As a result, none of them is accomplished.”</p>
<p>For his part, Bersin does the community outreach, meeting with teachers, administrators and community organizations, appearing on television during school visits, and participating in school board meetings. He has taken the lead in selling the public on the need for massive changes, in pushing through a bond issue and in managing political relationships. In the educational arena, he generally limits himself to quizzing Alvarado about his proposals in what Alvarado describes as a “rigorous” process of internal debate.</p>
<p>Who does what?</p>
<p>Even critics of the new arrangement say the two have gotten the district moving. “We’ve gone from the doldrums to the rapids,” says J.M. Tarvin, president of the administrators association.</p>
<p>According to Bersin, the arrangement between him and Alvarado has turned out to be less complicated than some had imagined it would be. “No one has any doubt about who’s in charge of what,” he says.</p>
<p>While Bersin and Alvarado may be clear about who does what, others aren’t. It’s evident that Alvarado designs the reforms and Bersin markets them. But who does what to make them work? That’s what critics ask. For example, is it Alvarado or Bersin who is responsible for finding money to pay for the new programs and justifying the reallocation? And if Bersin doesn’t handle education issues that come up at meetings he attends but Alvarado doesn’t, who conveys the concerns to Alvarado, Tarvin asks.</p>
<p>The district’s organizational chart doesn’t provide an answer. The 2000-2001 version identifies the offices that are under Alvarado and those that are under Bersin, but gives no indication of how the two kingdoms interact. There isn’t an arrow or dotted line to be found, leaving many to turn to Bersin’s chief of staff for help getting things done or figuring out the system.</p>
<p>The result of this confusion is that plans sometimes are poorly designed, according to critics. “Tony comes up with ideas without consideration of the cost, human or financially,” says teachers union president Marc Knapp, who originally liked Alvarado and encouraged him to come to San Diego. “These plans are simply unrealistic in regards to space, schedules and logistics.”</p>
<p>The main problem—and a lightning rod for just about anyone with a complaint—is that Alvarado has been a hidden partner. The chancellor rarely attends school board meetings. For the first year, he didn’t even live in San Diego but rather commuted from New York three days a week.</p>
<p>When Alvarado proposed taking 80 percent of local schools’ Title I funds to pay for a new remediation program, he sent one of his deputies and Bersin to explain the changes to the district Title I advisory committee, according to Theresa Creber, chair of the 140-member group of parents and teachers. The committee is now suing the district in an effort to halt the plan.</p>
<p>When Alvarado designed special literacy classes to help low-performing high school students meet state accountability requirements, he did it without speaking to the heads of the teachers and administrators organizations.</p>
<p>Administrator Tarvin says that he has “never” spoken to Alvarado. Knapp of the teachers union says, “It’s easier to find Sasquatch than Alvarado.” Some around town have taken to calling Alvarado the “stealth” chancellor.</p>
<p>Despite the rough start and raw feelings, San Diego’s duo finally may be settling in. Test scores are on the rise. A ferocious $750,000 campaign to remove an anti-Bersin school board member was defeated, forcing the business community to deal with the reality of its narrow margin. And, as part of extending Alvarado’s contract for four years, the board required that he attend board meetings more often. “You can’t be hermetically sealed and be effective,” Alvarado acknowledges.</p>
<p>San Diego is not the only district to think big about the educator partner for its non-educator CEO. In Seattle, Supt. Joseph Olchefske, a former investment banker and the district’s second non-traditional CEO, recently conducted a national search to fill the chief academic officer position, which previously was held by the current San Francisco superintendent, Arlene Ackerman.</p>
<p>Philadelphia, whose new superintendent, Philip Goldsmith, is a prominent banker, revamped its governance structure to give more responsibility to the top education officer position. And New York City Chancellor Harold Levy, a former business executive, recently tried to woo Alvarado back from sunny California.</p>
<p>As envisioned by Ayers and others who favor this approach, bringing in a strong educator to handle instructional matters is a good way to get the most out of a non-traditional superintendent’s managerial and political skills. The model, sometimes called CEO/CAO (for chief academic officer), is especially favored by business-oriented groups, largely because of its resemblance to corporate leadership structures.</p>
<p>Even some traditional education groups have acknowledged the benefits, noting that it preserves a strong role for educational leadership. The American Association of School Administrators, which represents superintendents from medium and small-sized districts, has explored the advantages of splitting the superintendent’s job in two. The organization finds that dividing the job may be more realistic, given the daunting workload, and also that giving a non-traditional CEO a strong educational partner can add heft and legitimacy to large-scale reforms.</p>
<p>However, even as the CEO/CAO approach is spreading, some districts, including Minneapolis and Milwaukee, have returned to the traditional, educator superintendent. Though a non-educator continues to head the Seattle district, the board there recently decided against creating a “co-superintendency” for fear that it would dilute accountability. The District of Columbia, whose effort to pair a retired U.S. Army general with a strong educational leader didn’t pan out, is now run by a traditional educator, too.</p>
<p>Success of the CEO/CAO arrangement depends as much on the skills and personalities of the people involved as it does on the organization chart, all parties agree.</p>
<p>“In the San Diego case you’ve got a relentless, very smart, very determined superintendent teamed with an instructional leader of unusual skill,” says Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools. “The lesson there is not to do a CEO and CAO structure. The lesson there is to get yourself good people.”</p>
<p>Several others note that Bersin and Alvarado have personalities that allow them to form strong professional and personal relationships with each other. It takes a CEO with a lot of self-confidence to bring in a partner with as much, if not more, credibility on educational issues and to invest that person with sufficient power. Imposing such an arrangement on reluctant partners could prove disastrous.</p>
<p>Richard Elmore, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, cautions that while a top-notch team can do wonders, working out the kinks of this new arrangement can be a distraction from what is most important: developing a high-quality, systemic plan to improve student achievement and gathering the political will to make difficult changes.</p>
<p>“It matters a whole lot less which leadership model you use than it does whether you have a systemic improvement strategy,” says Elmore. “The nightmare possibility is that we wake up six months from now and a dozen large districts have adopted the CEO/CAO model but none is prepared to do the other things that are necessary to make it work.”</p> | How San Diego pair divvy up duties | false | http://chicagoreporter.com/how-san-diego-pair-divvy-duties/ | 2005-07-27 | 3 |
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<p>DALLAS (AP) — Southwest Airlines is getting a small break at the fuel pump, and that’s helping it to slightly beat Wall Street expectations for profit.</p>
<p>The company saved 16 cents a gallon on fuel in the second quarter, which added up to $88 million. That made a difference in a quarter during which revenue barely grew.</p>
<p>CEO Gary Kelly said today that demand is still suffering from automatic federal spending cuts that have reduced government travel and from higher taxes, but he said third-quarter trends “are encouraging.”</p>
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<p>The company’s revenue per mile — a closely watched figure in the industry — has been about 3 percent higher this month than in July 2012, and bookings for August and September “also look solid,” he said.</p>
<p>Southwest officials declined to comment today on the investigation into an accident this week at New York’s LaGuardia Airport.</p>
<p>The National Transportation Safety Board is trying to determine why the nose gear of a Southwest Boeing 737 collapsed upon landing Monday night, causing the plane to skid off the runway with its nose on the ground. Several passengers and flight attendants were treated for injuries.</p>
<p>After the financial report was released, Southwest shares fell 37 cents, or 2.7 percent, to $13.39 in morning trading. Through Wednesday, the shares were up 34 percent for the year, nearly the same as the rise in the Arca index of airline stocks.</p>
<p>The stocks have rallied as investors grow more confident about sustained profits in an industry that lost billions last decade. Mergers have reduced competition, the airlines have curtailed flights to push up fares, and they’ve added revenue from a flock of fees for various services.</p>
<p>Southwest Airlines Co., which owns AirTran Airways, said that second-quarter net income was $224 million, or 31 cents per share, down 2 percent from $228 million, or 30 cents per share, a year ago.</p>
<p>Southwest said that stripping away special items — mostly changes in the value of fuel-hedging bets — it would have earned 38 cents per share in the latest quarter. That’s a penny better than analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting.</p>
<p>Revenue increased less than 1 percent to $4.64 billion. Southwest said that was a second-quarter record, but it fell short of analysts’ forecasts of $4.66 billion.</p>
<p>Traffic increased about 3 percent, and the average one-way fare rose less than a buck — to $151.23. The rate of fare increases has slowed from 2011, when airlines raised prices quickly to offset higher fuel costs.</p>
<p>Southwest and AirTran added flights in the quarter, so the average plane was 81.6 percent full, down slightly from 81.9 percent a year earlier. But capacity in June hit a record 85 percent as the summer vacation season hit full stride.</p>
<p>Lower oil prices early in the April-to-June quarter helped Southwest save 6 percent on fuel, its biggest expense, and the company cut maintenance spending by 3 percent, or $10 million. But labor, the second-biggest expense, rose 6 percent, or $76 million.</p>
<p>Kelly said the company was on schedule to repaint AirTran planes in Southwest colors and combine the two carriers by the end of next year. Southwest will complete the update of its reservations system next year, allowing it to handle international flights, he said.</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Southwest Airlines 2Q profit drops 2 pct. | false | https://abqjournal.com/225470/southwest-airlines-2q-profit-drops-2-pct.html | 2013-07-25 | 2 |
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<p />
<p>A former Central New Mexico Community College president and a retired Air Force officer, flight instructor and professor are running for an open seat on the community college’s board.</p>
<p>Michael Glennon, 68, has worked at CNM for nearly 26 years, and served as its president from 1998 to 2007. He is currently retired.</p>
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<p>Harold Murphree, 66, served as an officer in the Air Force from 1974 to 2002, and currently volunteers as a warm-water pool exercise instructor.</p>
<p>They’re running for the District 7 seat to be vacated by sitting board member and current chair Michael DeWitte. That district includes some of the East Mountains and the Joseph M. Montoya Campus. Both candidates acknowledged the school’s budget would be a challenge.</p>
<p>The state appropriation for CNM was cut from $56 million to roughly $53.2 million or about a five percent cut, according to CNM spokesman Brad Moore. The school’s current budget is $226.9 million. In fall 2016, CNM served 24,781 students across several campuses in the Albuquerque metro area.</p>
<p>Glennon said he has a background in higher education finance and administration. In addition to serving as the school’s president, he was its vice president for administration and previously served on the New Mexico Commission of Higher Education, which used to be the New Mexico Higher Education Department.</p>
<p>Glennon earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in business administration from the University of New Mexico. He said balancing the budget will be the biggest issue and that program cuts are possible.</p>
<p>“There are going to be real difficult decisions,” Glennon said.</p>
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<p>Glennon said this race is his first run for political office and it was prompted by his desire to be a “small part of (CNM’s) continuing success.”</p>
<p>Murphree served both as a pilot and an instructor in the Air Force. He has earned two degrees in political science, a bachelor’s from U.S. Air Force Academy and a master’s from the University of Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>He said the school should be sure to offer courses at multiple campuses as to not slow a student’s academic progress.</p>
<p>And he said he wanted to support the School of Adult and General Education, a remedial program, for students who aren’t quite ready for school. Failing to offer remedial classes is a disservice, he said.</p>
<p>“One summer or a few weeks of the SAGE program reaps big benefits. They’re not failures,” Murphree said.</p>
<p>On the school’s budget concerns, Murphree said he wasn’t in favor of raising tuition or taxes and suggested instead tapping into the Land Grant Permanent Fund temporarily.</p>
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<p>Candidate Bios</p>
<p>Michael J. Glennon</p>
<p>District: 7</p>
<p>Age: 68</p>
<p>Education: Master of Business Administration, University of New Mexico, 1974; Bachelor of Business Administration, UNM, 1971.</p>
<p>Occupation: Retired; Central New Mexico Community College, president, 1998-2007; CNM (then TVI), vice president for administration, 1989-1998; New Mexico Commission on Higher Education, deputy director for finance, 1983–1989; UNM, assistant budget director and assistant comptroller, 1974-1983.</p>
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<p>Family: Karen A. Glennon, wife; two children.</p>
<p>Political/government experience: This is my first run for political office. I was one of several staff members representing the Commission on Higher Education before the Legislature, the governor, the news media and others. I was a lobbyist (registered once that was required) representing CNM while vice president for administration and president.</p>
<p>Major professional accomplishment: My major and proudest professional accomplishment was serving as president of Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute/Central New Mexico Community College for 10 years.</p>
<p>Major personal accomplishment: A successful career and a healthy, happy family.</p>
<p>Harold Murphree</p>
<p>District: 7</p>
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<p>Place of residence: Sandia Park</p>
<p>Age: 66</p>
<p>Education: Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 1975; Bachelor of Science, U.S. Air Force Academy, 1974.</p>
<p>Occupation: Retired; volunteer warm-water pool exercise instructor for arthritis patients, 2010-present; career officer, U.S. Air Force, 1974-2002.</p>
<p>Family: JoAnn K. Murphree, wife; no children.</p>
<p>Political/government experience: Unsuccessful candidate for state Senate District 19 in 2016; campaign volunteer for the 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014 elections.</p>
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<p>Major professional accomplishment: Instructor of the Year for 1986 in the U.S. Air Force Academy Department of Political Science.</p>
<p>Major personal accomplishment: Being a caregiver for my wife, who is disabled.</p>
<p>CNM District 7 Candidate Questionnaire</p>
<p>1. Why do you want to be a member of the governing board?</p>
<p>Glennon: I have a professional and personal attachment to CNM. I want to return to being a small part of its continuing success.</p>
<p>Murphree: I want to expand my involvement in public education. My teaching experience at the university level and current experience as the facilitator of a scholarship at East Mountain High School give me fresh perspective.</p>
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<p>2. What is CNM’s role in the state of New Mexico?</p>
<p>Glennon: CNM‘s role is to help students succeed in whatever educational or workforce-training endeavor they might be seeking. Fulfilling that role, CNM prepares trained students to meet the needs of employers of the CNM district and the state, thus providing employers access to well-trained and educated employees.</p>
<p>Murphree: CNM is crucial for the workforce transition and community contribution of New Mexico residents. In addition, a workforce trained and educated here in New Mexico can attract business and entrepreneurs to our state.</p>
<p>3. How would you address diminishing state funding for higher education institutions?</p>
<p>Glennon: I do not know what has been done to address the decline in general fund appropriations or what might still be done should that decline continue. My role would be to help the administration find solutions that minimize disruption to students, faculty, staff and programs.</p>
<p>Murphree: Raising tuition is not fruitful. We must encourage higher education for those who cannot otherwise afford it, resulting in an educated citizenry eager to work. Let’s tap the land grant to achieve this.</p>
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<p>4. Have you or your business, if you are a business owner, ever been the subject of any state or federal tax liens?</p>
<p>Glennon: No</p>
<p>Murphree: No</p>
<p>5. Have you ever been involved in a personal or business bankruptcy proceeding?</p>
<p>Glennon: No</p>
<p>Murphree: No</p>
<p>6. Have you ever been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of drunken driving, any misdemeanor or any felony in New Mexico or any other state?</p>
<p>Glennon: No</p>
<p>Murphree: No</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | Two vying for CNM District 7 seat | false | https://abqjournal.com/941669/headline-here-162.html | 2 |
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<p>Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Everett Collection</p>
<p>Most of us have our guard up when it comes to direct-to-consumer drug advertising. We know the butterflies, sunsets and puppies in the TV ads are designed to distract us from terms like "blood clot," "heart attack," "stroke," "seizure," "life-threatening allergic reaction" and "death." We are aware that more than half the ads tell us why we don't&#160;actually&#160;want to ask our doctor about the new wonder drug.</p>
<p>Unbranded advertising, however, is much more insidious. Instead of selling a drug, it sells the disease driving the drug sales and sometimes doesn't mention the drug at all.</p>
<p>Unbranded advertising often appears to be from the CDC and can even run free as a public service announcement thanks to its apparently altruistic message. The hallmark of unbranded advertising is it calls the disease it's hawking (whether depression, bipolar disorder or restless legs) "under-diagnosed,” and “underreported” and cites "barriers" and "stigmas to treatment" which of course means sales. Sometimes it calls the disease a "silent killer" to scare people who think they're fine. (Before drug advertising it was the opposite: the medical establishment said you were probably fine despite how you felt.)</p>
<p>Do You Have Undiagnosed Hypothyroidism?</p>
<p>From Joan Lunden and Mike Piazza selling Claritin, to Dorothy Hamill and Bruce Jenner selling Vioxx, celebrity drug advertising is often phenomenally successful. No wonder the drug company AbbVie has selected actress Sofia Vergara to lead its hypothyroidism campaign.</p>
<p><a href="//www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sofia-vergara-encourages-individuals-with-hypothyroidism-to-follow-the-script-203417101.html" type="external">"Emmy-nominated actress Sofia Vergara</a> is helping to raise awareness about the importance of diagnosing and treating hypothyroidism," read a press release last spring, "a thyroid condition that affects millions of Americans." Her campaign, called "Follow the Script," funded by AbbVie, "aims to educate individuals with hypothyroidism about the importance of being consistent with the treatment their doctor prescribes, and provides a 'script' to ensure they consistently receive the medication prescribed by their doctor when they visit the pharmacy." Ka-ching.</p>
<p>While hypothyroidism certainly exists (as do other kinds of thyroid disorders) Vergara's campaign capitalizes on the gray areas in its diagnosis and the well-documented human tendency to self-diagnosis, by planting fear and doubt. For example, the AbbVie press release says, "Thyroid conditions affect an estimated 30 million individuals in the U.S." and "one in every eight women will develop a thyroid condition in her lifetime." Yet Harvard Health Publications at Harvard Medical School places the figure at <a href="//www.health.harvard.edu/special_health_reports/Thyroid_Disease" type="external">12 million.</a></p>
<p>Commensurate with unbranded advertising—aka "disease mongering"—Vergara's “Follow the Script” campaign website <a href="//i" type="external">features</a> "interactive polls, symptom and treatment information," "stories and videos from other individuals with hypothyroidism," and a chance for visitors to "share their own experiences." In classic unbranded pill marketing, the site also provides "helpful 'scripts' for speaking with your doctor and pharmacist" — so patients don't go all the way to the doctor and fail to ring the cash register.</p>
<p>AbbVie was formed in early 2013 when Abbott, located near Chicago, split into two companies, with AbbVie to concentrate on the blockbuster Humira, which made it $2 billion in <a href="//www.dailyfinance.com/2013/10/23/analyzing-abbvie-ahead-of-its-third-quarter-earnin/" type="external">one quarter</a> of 2013. But Synthroid, the thyroid supplement drug behind Vergara's campaign, enjoyed almost 25 percent growth last year and accounted for $153 million during the same quarter. Synthroid is the nation's leading thyroid supplement drug despite going off patent decade ago, because it is <a href="//thyroid.about.com/od/isthatso/f/synthroid.htm" type="external">widely perceived</a> as more stable than competitor and generic versions of the drug.</p>
<p>Lest no potential customers miss the fact that hypothyroidism is an under-diagnosed, underreported major health problem with barriers and stigmas to treatment,a &#160;"National&#160;Academy of Hypothyroidism"&#160;&#160;has been set up.</p>
<p>The first thing visitors to the site will see is a slide of an overweight woman on a scale with the brazen headline "Is Your Thyroid Making You Fat?" Visitors will also learn that hypothyroidism could be causing their stress, depression and chronic pain just as lack of hormones or antidepressants caused them problems 10 years ago. There is even a perk for sufferers of hypothyroidism. The Academy tells them how to apply for <a href="//nahypothyroidism.org/applying-for-disability-benefits-with-hypothyroidism/" type="external">disability benefits</a> for their hypothyroidism. Just trying to help!</p>
<p>Do You Have Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder?</p>
<p>"You can't see me because of radio... and I can't see you because I'm totally blind."</p>
<p>So begins a high-saturation radio campaign that launched late last year to boost "awareness" of an obscure circadian rhythm disorder called Non-24 Hour Sleep Wake Disorder in typical unbranded drug marketing fashion. How obscure is Non-24? There are only 146 citations for the disorder in the entire U.S. National Library of Medicine. By comparison, there are 8,463 citations for the plague.</p>
<p>The narrator says his blindness doesn't "hold me back" but he often "struggles to keep up" because he is not "sleeping through the night." He then says, "Sound familiar? You're not alone!" The ads are from the Washington, DC-based drug company Vanda whose drug candidate for people who are blind and have Non-24, Hetlioz, received an FDA Advisory Committee <a href="//www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fda-advisory-committee-recommends-approval-of-hetlioz-for-the-treatment-of-non-24-hour-disorder-non-24-in-the-totally-blind-232005201.html" type="external">recommendation</a> for approval in January which means the FDA will likely approve it. Hetlioz is said to be chemically related to the sleeping pill <a href="//www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/Drugs/PeripheralandCentralNervousSystemDrugsAdvisoryCommittee/UCM374385.pdf" type="external">marketed as Rozerem</a> (Ramelteon).</p>
<p>Developing "orphan drugs" that treat such a small part of the population (like the blind) they are not commercially viable is laudable. But orphan drugs are not usually accompanied by multi-million-dollar ad campaigns and <a href="//www.non-24.com/" type="external">slick websites</a>. (Nor are important messages for the blind usually on the Web.) Is there something disingenuous going on? Under "Could You Have Non-24?" on the site, it says "The key symptoms of Non-24 are the inability to sleep or stay asleep and a powerful urge to sleep during the day" with no mention of blindness. A longer list on the site mentions waking up "groggy," being "less productive than usual at work or at school," relationships that "are strained," "sluggishness and forgetfulness," mood that is "affected" and frustration "because no one seems to understand what you're going through," and also doesn't mention blindness.</p>
<p>You don't have to be a cynic to wonder if the new disease — and the drug that will treat it if approved — is actually being marketed to the hundreds of millions of adults with sleep problems. When I called the phone number and asked the "health educator" if I could have Non-24 even though I am not blind, I was told "you don't have to be blind to have Non-24" though it is more common in blind people. When I asked if there was a pill I could take if I had symptoms, my educator said he was unable to answer that because, "I am not a doctor," and promised to send me more information.</p>
<p>Getting a pill approved by the FDA so it can be legally sold and then widening its apparent uses through ad campaigns is called off-label marketing and it is strictly illegal. Since the lab tests and clinical trials that would establish safety for a new condition haven't been done, patients are guinea pigs. Almost all recent major settlements with drug companies revolve around off-label marketing of drugs including <a href="//www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbobelian/2013/11/12/jjs-2-2-billion-settlement-wont-stop-big-pharmas-addiction-to-off-label-sales/" type="external">Johnson &amp; Johnson's Risperdal</a>, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Abilify, <a href="//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_off-label_promotion_pharmaceutical_settlements" type="external">Eli Lilly's Zyprexa,</a> GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil, Pfizer's Neurontin, Bextra, Geodon and Lyrica, AstraZeneca's Seroquel, Ortho-McNeil-Janssen's Topamax, Forest Laboratories' Celexa and Lexapro and <a href="//online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444592404578032654024291668" type="external">Abbott's Depakote.</a></p>
<p>"15,000 elderly people in nursing homes [are] dying each year from the off-label use of antipsychotic medications," <a href="//www.sptimes.com/2007/11/18/news_pf/Worldandnation/Dementia_relief__with.shtml" type="external">testified FDA</a> drug reviewer David Graham, during congressional hearings, adding that Pharma is "laughing all the way to the bank."</p>
<p>Selling the "disease" of Non-24 is reminiscent of the campaign to sell Shift Work Sleep Disorder two years ago. "Do you work a nontraditional work schedule?" asked the ads for Cephalon's <a href="//www.nuvigil.com/hcp/" type="external">stimulant Nuvigil</a>. "Do you struggle to stay awake?" You may be suffering from Shift Work Sleep Disorder! Soon there was a unbranded website called the Wake-Up Squad to sell the disease without ever mentioning the drug. The Wake-Up Squad is "on a mission to lead the fight against Shift Work Disorder," it announced, offering facts and myths about the disease and a big red headline asking, "Are You At Risk?"</p>
<p>Both the hypothyroidism and Non-24 unbranded ad campaigns are so general, they apply to almost everyone. They bring us closer to what comedian Chris Rock predicted drug advertising would become, in a TV special: "Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning? You may be suffering from ...."</p>
<p /> | How Big Pharma Brainwashes Americans Into Believing They're Sick | true | http://alternet.org/personal-health/under-radar-how-unbranded-drug-advertising-harms-consumers | 2014-01-29 | 4 |
<p>DALLAS (AP) — Shake Milton had 14 points, two steal and two blocks and Jarrey Foster scored 12 points and grabbed eight rebounds to help SMU beat South Florida 79-39 on Sunday night for its 33rd consecutive home win.</p>
<p>Jahmal McMurray added 12 points and Jimmy Whitt had 11 points, on 5-of-6 shooting, and nine rebounds for SMU (12-3, 2-0 American Athletic Conference).</p>
<p>Despite the fact that USF (7-7, 0-2) missed 10 of its first 11 shots, including seven in a row to open the game, it was tied at 11-all with six minutes left in the first half. McMurray had five points and Foster scored four during a 13-2 run that made it 24-13 before the Mustangs went into the break with a 12-point lead. The Bulls made just 6 of 25 from the field — tying their season low for field goals in a half — and scored just 16 points before the break, their lowest scoring half of the season.</p>
<p>SMU made its first eight second-half shots, while USF missed its first 11, during a 26-1 run that gave the Mustangs a 54-17 lead with 12 minutes to go.</p>
<p>It was USF's lowest scoring output since an 83-40 loss at Connecticut on Feb. 12, 2014.</p>
<p>DALLAS (AP) — Shake Milton had 14 points, two steal and two blocks and Jarrey Foster scored 12 points and grabbed eight rebounds to help SMU beat South Florida 79-39 on Sunday night for its 33rd consecutive home win.</p>
<p>Jahmal McMurray added 12 points and Jimmy Whitt had 11 points, on 5-of-6 shooting, and nine rebounds for SMU (12-3, 2-0 American Athletic Conference).</p>
<p>Despite the fact that USF (7-7, 0-2) missed 10 of its first 11 shots, including seven in a row to open the game, it was tied at 11-all with six minutes left in the first half. McMurray had five points and Foster scored four during a 13-2 run that made it 24-13 before the Mustangs went into the break with a 12-point lead. The Bulls made just 6 of 25 from the field — tying their season low for field goals in a half — and scored just 16 points before the break, their lowest scoring half of the season.</p>
<p>SMU made its first eight second-half shots, while USF missed its first 11, during a 26-1 run that gave the Mustangs a 54-17 lead with 12 minutes to go.</p>
<p>It was USF's lowest scoring output since an 83-40 loss at Connecticut on Feb. 12, 2014.</p> | Milton scores 14, SMU smothers South Florida, 79-39 | false | https://apnews.com/amp/d4fcf3664aba4d4b8ec499675948dca3 | 2018-01-01 | 2 |
<p>Race is in the news again. First it was the Jena Six, then Nobel laureate James D. Watson’s assertion, that black are less intelligent than whites, and finally, a series of articles two weeks ago in Slate arguing that there was scientific evidence to back Watson’s claim.</p>
<p>The reaction to these recent developments was predictable. There have been a number of heated debates on the internet concerning not only race and intelligence, but also the appropriateness of studying race and intelligence. Two crucial points have yet to be made, however. The first concerns the contentious association of intelligence with IQ score and the second is the equally contentious assumption that we have anything like a clear scientific conception or race.</p>
<p>Let’s take the first one first. What is intelligence anyway? We have no better grasp of this than we have of the relation of the mind to the brain. Sure, some people can solve certain sorts of puzzles faster than other people, but everyone knows people who are great at Scrabble, or crosswords, or chess, or who can fix almost any mechanical or electrical gadget, but who seem unable to wrap their minds around even the most rudimentary of social or political theories. Then there are the people with great memories who are able to retain all the elements of even the most arcane theories and who can undertake an explanation of them if pressed, but whose inability to express them in novel terms betrays that they have not really grasped them after all. Other people­I’ve known quite a few of this type­have keenly analytical minds.</p>
<p>They can break individual claims, or even entire theories, down into their conceptual components, yet they appear to lack any sort of synthetic intelligence in that they are unable to see the myriad implications of these analyses. Still other people are great at grasping the big picture, so to speak, but have difficulty hanging onto the details.</p>
<p>Some people plod slowly and methodically toward whatever insights they achieve and others receive them almost effortlessly, through flashes of inspiration. But the insights of the former group are sometimes more profound than those of the latter group. Then there are people who are mostly mistaken in their beliefs, sometimes quite obviously so, but correct in some one belief the implications of which are so staggering that we tend to forget they are otherwise unreliable.</p>
<p>I’m inclined to put Watson in this last group. Perhaps that’s not fair. After all, I know of only one point on which he is obviously mistaken. That mistake is so glaring, however, that it leads me to think he is probably more like an idiot savant than a genuinely intelligent human being. I.Q. scores represent something. It just isn’t all that clear what. To suggest that they represent intelligence in any significant sense is thus to betray that one has less than the ideally desirable quantity of this quality himself.</p>
<p>Sure the mind, and therefore intelligence, is intimately connected with the brain. Read Oliver Sacks if you want to see just how intimate that connection is. Sacks is one of my favorite authors not simply because the substance of his writings is so fascinating, but also because he is himself so clearly intelligent. Not only does he not go leaping to conclusions on issues that lie outside his area of professional expertise (though I have to say I’d be more interested to hear Sacks’ social and political views than Watson’s), he doesn’t go leaping to conclusions about the implications of what he has observed in his own work in neurology. He’d be one of the first people, I think, to defend the claim that we do not yet have a clear enough idea of what intelligence is to be reliably able to quantify it. We don’t even understand it well enough yet to be able to say confidently that it is quantifiable. At this point, all we can say is that it appears so intimately connected with the brain that it can, in some sense, be associated with, or represented by, we-know-not-yet-what neurological activities or tendencies.</p>
<p>OK, so far, so little. But what is a black brain and what is a white brain? Most blacks in the U.S., as opposed to blacks in Africa, have a great deal of white blood, or whatever you want to call it. If whites really were more intelligent than blacks, that would mean African-Americans would be that much more intelligent than Africans. (I’m sure my friend, the Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, would be interested to hear that one.) There may well be people who believe this. I am not aware of any empirical evidence, however, that supports such a conclusion. My own experience does not support it. I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and attended predominantly black schools from fourth grade to college.</p>
<p>Since that time I have also met more than a few Africans. I couldn’t detect any difference in intelligence. I’m unaware of even anecdotal evidence that would support the conclusion that there was such a difference. Do you see what I’m saying? We’re not looking at a slippery slope here, but at a meteoric descent down into a pile of deep doo-doo.</p>
<p>From what I’ve read, there is no clear scientific definition of race. “Race” is just a name we give to a collection of physical characteristics such as eye and hair color and degree of pigmentation of the skin. There is no race gene.</p>
<p>There are just genes that encode for these individual characteristics. So how many, and what sort, of characteristics does one have to have to be either black or white. It is some kind of ineffable sum isn’t it? Blacks sometimes have very pale skin, some whites actually have darker skin than some blacks. Blacks even occasionally have blue eyes, or straight hair, just as whites often have brown eyes or kinky hair. In the past, we just arbitrarily determined what made a person black, and, by implication, white. Since, presumably, we have gotten beyond the point where we would say that even one drop of black blood makes a person black, the only reasonable definition of race (even given its circularity) would, therefore, appear to be one based on the statistical representation of the various races in one’s family tree. That would mean people with predominantly white, or perhaps I should say “white-ish” ancestry would be considered white. Have you ever seen a photo of Charles Chestnut or Anatole Broyard?</p>
<p>Not only are these guys clearly white, according to this definition, there are a whole lot of other people walking around this country who call themselves “black” because of the social environment into which they were born, but who ought properly to consider themselves white.</p>
<p>Since when have scientific studies been undertaken on ineffable, or arbitrarily determined, classes of thing? It’s like trying to determine whether people with purportedly good taste are more intelligent than people with supposedly bad taste, or whether people who live in Chicago are more intelligent than people who live in L.A.</p>
<p>You might undertake such a thing as a sociological study with some arbitrarily agreed upon criteria for what would constitute good and bad taste, or for how far out into the suburbs you want to go before you decide you have left Chicago, as well with some equally arbitrarily agreed upon criteria for what constitutes intelligence. You cannot undertake such a thing though as a scientific study (no matter how convinced you may be in the genetic superiority of people who live in Chicago), and to think that you could betrays that you have a very weak grasp of what constitutes natural science. Given that race, at least from the standpoint of natural science, is nothing more than a collection of certain physical characteristics, the view that white people are more intelligent than black people is not uncomfortably close to view of the Nazis that blue-eyed blonds were inherently superior to everyone else­it is essentially the same thing.</p>
<p>As I said earlier, I spent a huge portion of my life in the almost exclusive company of black people. I’ve been around black people and I’ve been around white people and I haven’t found any general differences in terms of intelligence. My experience has led me to believe that most of what often passes for intelligence is actually intellectual self confidence, confidence in one’s own reasoning powers, confidence in the value of one’s insights. Teachers, of which I am one, will tell you that you can just see some people’s brains seize up when they are confronted with tasks that later prove not to have been beyond them. This fear, however, that certain tasks are beyond one, is a substantial obstacle to completing them. One stumbles again and again, fearing that his “guess” is just that, a guess, rather than understanding. One fails to pursue an insight for fear that it is not genuine, or from fear that it is so obvious that others have come to it long ago. I don’t mean to suggest that there are not innate differences in intelligence among human beings. I’m sure there are, but I agree with what I believe Noam Chomsky said somewhere about how these differences, measured relative to the difference in intelligence between human beings and their closes relatives the apes, are simply vanishingly small.</p>
<p>I construe my job as an educator not to impart knowledge, but to nurture intellectual confidence. (Of course this could be partly a defensive mechanism because I am a philosopher, which means I don’t have any knowledge to impart.) I try to teach critical thinking skills, of course, but even more important to me is somehow to get my students to believe in their own intellectual potential because even these skills, I believe, can, at least to a certain extent, be acquired naturally by people who are confident in their ability to acquire them. I say, teach people to believe in themselves and then see what they are able to do with that faith. But be very careful when you start judging the results because if anything of value has emerged from the recent debates on race and intelligence, it is that many of us are much closer to the edge of idiocy than any of us would like to admit.</p>
<p>What we have here are noted intellectuals who have failed to grasp even the most basic facts about what constitutes natural scientific research and failed to understand that to parade this ignorance in the way they have before a public still marked by social and economic inequities that cut along racial lines is offensive in the extreme. The whole thing has been very humbling. It has shown, I believe, that racism is still very firmly entrenched in the American psyche.</p>
<p>M.G. Piety teaches philosophy at Drexel University. She can be reached at: [email protected]</p>
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<p>&#160;</p> | Racism and the American Psyche | true | https://counterpunch.org/2007/12/07/racism-and-the-american-psyche/ | 2007-12-07 | 4 |
<p>Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is recommending that six of 27 national monuments under review by the Trump administration be reduced in size, with changes to several others proposed.</p>
<p>A leaked memo from Zinke to President Donald Trump recommends that two Utah monuments —&#160;Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante — be reduced, along with Nevada’s Gold Butte and Oregon’s Cascade-Siskiyou.</p>
<p>Two marine monuments in the Pacific Ocean also would be reduced under Zinke’s memo, which has not been officially released. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the memo, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>Trump ordered the review earlier this year after complaining about improper “land grabs” by former presidents, including Barack Obama.</p>
<p>National monument designations add protections for lands revered for their natural beauty and historical significance with the goal of preserving them for future generations. The restrictions aren’t as stringent as for national parks, but some policies include limits on mining, timber cutting and recreational activities such as riding off-road vehicles.</p>
<p>The monuments under review were designated by four presidents over the last two decades. Several are about the size of the state of Delaware, including Mojave Trails in California, Grand-Staircase Escalante in Utah and Bears Ears, which is on sacred tribal land.</p>
<p>No other president has tried to eliminate a monument, but some have trimmed and redrawn boundaries 18 times, according to the National Park Service.</p>
<p>Zinke told The Associated Press last month that unspecified boundary adjustments for some monuments designated over the past four decades will be included in the recommendations submitted to Trump. None of the sites would revert to new ownership, he said, while public access for uses such as hunting, fishing or grazing would be maintained or restored.</p>
<p>He also spoke of protecting tribal interests and historical land grants, pointing to monuments in New Mexico, where Hispanic ranchers have opposed two monuments proclaimed by Obama.</p>
<p>Zinke declined to say whether portions of the monuments would be opened up to oil and gas drilling, mining, logging and other industries for which Trump has advocated. It was not clear from the memo how much energy development would be allowed on the sites recommended for changes, although the memo cites increased public access as a key goal.</p>
<p>A spokeswoman for Zinke referred questions Sunday night to the White House, which did not offer immediate comment.</p>
<p>If Trump adopts the recommendations, it would quiet some of the worst fears of his opponents, who warned that vast public lands and marine areas could be lost to states or private interests.</p>
<p>But significant reductions in the size of the monuments, especially those created by Obama, would mark the latest in a string of actions where Trump has sought to erode his Democratic predecessor’s legacy.</p>
<p>The recommendations cap an unprecedented four-month review based on Trump’s claim that the century-old Antiquities Act had been misused by past presidents to create oversized monuments that hinder energy development, grazing and other uses.</p>
<p>The review raised alarm among conservationists who said protections could be lost for areas that are home to ancient cliff dwellings, towering sequoia trees, deep canyons and ocean habitats. They’ve vowed to file lawsuits if Trump attempts any changes that would reduce the size of monuments or rescind their designations.</p>
<p>Zinke had previously announced that no changes would be made at six national monuments — in Montana, Colorado, Idaho, California, Arizona and Washington. He also said that Bears Ears monument in Utah should be downsized.</p>
<p>In addition to shrinking six monuments, Zinke recommends changes at several other sites, including two national monuments in New Mexico: Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Rio Grande del Norte.</p>
<p>He also recommended changes to Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine.</p>
<p>Jamie Williams, president of the Wilderness Society, said the recommendations apparently made by Zinke “represent an unprecedented assault on our parks and public lands” by the Trump administration.</p>
<p>“This callous proposal will needlessly punish local, predominantly rural communities that depend on parks and public lands for outdoor recreation, sustainable jobs and economic growth,” Williams said in a statement.</p>
<p>“We believe the Trump administration has no legal authority to alter or erase protections for national treasures. If President Trump acts in support of these recommendations, The Wilderness Society will move swiftly to challenge those actions in court,” Williams said.</p> | Interior Secretary Recommends Shrinking 6 National Monuments | false | https://newsline.com/interior-secretary-recommends-shrinking-6-national-monuments/ | 2017-09-18 | 1 |
<p>The <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Boston-Red-Sox/" type="external">Boston Red Sox</a> activated center fielder <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/Jackie-Bradley/" type="external">Jackie Bradley</a> Jr. from the 10-day disabled list ahead of Saturday afternoon’s game against the <a href="https://www.upi.com/topic/New-York-Yankees/" type="external">New York Yankees</a>.</p>
<p>Bradley, 27, was placed on the 10-day disabled list on Aug. 23 with a sprained left thumb suffered while sliding awkwardly into home plate to avoid a tag. He was expected to be in Saturday’s lineup at Yankee Stadium.</p>
<p>In 107 games for the Red Sox this season, Bradley is batting .262 with 14 home runs, 54 RBIs and 50 runs scored, while posting a .992 fielding percentage with four assists in 106 starts in center field.</p>
<p>In seven games prior to suffering the thumb injury, Bradley went 8-for-20 (.400) with nine RBIs, hitting a solo home run in his most recent game on Aug. 22 at Cleveland. Bradley has appeared in 501 major league games since being selected by Boston in the 2011 draft, hitting .243 with 54 home runs, 224 RBIs and 250 runs scored.</p>
<p>The Red Sox also recalled infielder Tzu-Wei Lin from Triple-A Pawtucket.</p>
<p>Lin, 23, is batting .280 (14-for-50) with two triples and a .379 on-base percentage in 19 major league games this season, making six starts each at third base and shortstop and two at second base.</p>
<p>A native of Taiwan, Lin had never played above the Double-A level prior to being selected to the major league roster on June 24. He is hitting .266 in 82 minor league games this season, his first 48 with Double-A Portland and his final 34 for Pawtucket. He was signed by Boston as an international free agent in 2012.</p> | Boston Red Sox activate Jackie Bradley from DL | false | https://newsline.com/boston-red-sox-activate-jackie-bradley-from-dl/ | 2017-09-02 | 1 |
<p>Following negative reaction towards his <a href="" type="internal">seemingly gleeful invitation</a> of what he described as decline of White America as he characterized it on his weekly show last Sunday, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria again used his TV platform to make a thinly-veiled call for suppression of free speech and expression online - via government regulation and/or social media companies.</p>
<p>He read <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bile-venom-and-lies-how-i-was-trolled-on-the-internet/2016/01/14/62207a2c-baf8-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html" type="external">his column</a>, word for word, on camera.</p>
<p>Prefacing his monologue with Thomas Jefferson’s famous call for an informed society to preserve its freedoms, Zakaria warned of the dangers posed by an anarchic internet in which masterminds like himself were not anointed to filter information deemed accurate.</p>
<p>“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people,” wrote Jefferson.</p>
<p>The quality of this necessary education, according to Zakaria, is threatened by the decentralization of media via technological developments.</p>
<p>“We now live in an age in which that education takes place mostly through new platforms, social networks - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram - are the main mechanisms by which people receive and share facts, ideas, and opinions,” observed Zakaria.</p>
<p>“But what if these new technologies encourage misinformation, rumors, and lies?” worried Zakaria.</p>
<p>Priming his audience for a not-so-subtle call for tightening controls over free speech and expression online, Zakaria expressed his frustration with the fragmentation of the media landscape.</p>
<p>With rise of new media outlets via the internet reducing his political influence relative to his elite left-wing journalistic counterparts of a previous era - such as Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather - Zakaria <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/01/02/1517441113.full.pdf" type="external">referred to a study</a> suggesting that new online media mediums serve to facilitate self-imposed political cocoonery.</p>
<p>In other words, right-wingers and conservatives aren’t being forced to consume his content as they would have been in the pre-internet media age characterized by a much more limited variety of information compared to today. The increased variety of sources of news, opinion, and analysis is something to feared and controlled, not embraced.</p>
<p>This paternalistic attitude towards free people is Zakaria’s modus operandi.</p>
<p>Zakaria then partially quoted the following excerpts from the study.</p>
<p>“Users tend to aggregate in communities of interest, which causes reinforcement and fosters confirmation bias, segregation, and polarization. This comes at the expense of the quality of the information and leads to proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia,” wrote the study’s authors.</p>
<p>“Many mechanisms cause false information to gain acceptance, which in turn generate false beliefs that, once adopted by an individual, are highly resistant to correction,” concludes the study’s authors.</p>
<p>No mention was made of the proliferation of biased narratives, unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, paranoia, or false information and beliefs cultivated by left-wing media outlets like CNN in coordination with politicians, state bureaucracies, and academia.</p>
<p>The study was brought to Zakaria’s attention by <a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-08/how-facebook-makes-us-dumber" type="external">Cass Sunstein</a>, a former campaign adviser of President Barack Obama, Democrat loyalist, professor of law at Harvard University, and “expert” on the issue of misinformation being spread online.</p>
<p>This phenomenon, Zakaria and Sunstein assert, leads to “radicalization” and “extremism.”</p>
<p>“I love social media,” said Zakaria, “but somehow we have to help create better mechanisms in it to distinguish between fact and falsehood. No matter how passionate people are, no matter how cleverly they can blog or tweet or troll, no matter how viral things get, lies are still lies.”</p>
<p>Perhaps President Barack Obama will propose a Czar of Information, styled after the Ministry of Truth, with Zakaria on a short list of possible appointees.</p>
<p>Follow Robert Kraychik on <a href="https://twitter.com/kr3ch3k" type="external">Twitter</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/01/15/plagiarist-fareed-zakaria-demands-social-media-mechanisms-to-protect-him-from-trolls/" type="external">H/T</a> John Nolte at Breitbart</p> | Zakaria: Internet Is Too Free, 'Radicalization', Misinformation, And Lies Spread Too Easily | true | https://dailywire.com/news/2666/zakaria-internet-too-free-radicalization-robert-kraychik | 2016-01-17 | 0 |
<p>BLUEFIELD — Lighthouse on the Hill: The Bluefield College Story is now available for sale to the public.</p>
<p>The book, the school's first published history since 1972, was originally unveiled to alumni, faculty, staff and students during the college's Homecoming festivities on campus.</p>
<p>As part of the celebration of the release of Lighthouse on the Hill, the school offered a book signing and sale, featuring author David Armbrister, a 1954 Bluefield College alumnus and retired senior professor of history. Armbrister signed dozens of books during the event, including the first book to Librarian Werner Lind and President David Olive to be housed in BC's Easley Library.</p>
<p>Now, the Bluefield College Story is available for sale to the public at-large through the BC Bookstore at a price of $30.</p>
<p>The creation of a new published history for Bluefield College was a multi-year project that involved Armbrister in months of researching, interviewing, surveying, writing, editing and rewriting.</p>
<p>“It is a fascinating 140-page story of the people, the passion and the events that make Bluefield College,” said BC's Chris Shoemaker, director of public relations, “from its founding in 1922 to current day 2008.” The book also includes more than 200 photos, “that also tell the Bluefield College story,” Shoemaker said. According to other readers, it is a tremendous resource for local residents to learn more about the mutually beneficial relationship between Bluefield College and the community.</p>
<p>“Through this book, local residents will realize not only the importance of Bluefield College to this area, but also the importance of area people to the college,” said BC alumnus Clarence Mayberry. “Not many people are aware of the contributions local citizens and community leaders, past and present, have made to Bluefield College.”</p>
<p>Mayberry added that the new history book sheds light on how the college has “survived” more than 85 years, while still continuing to “produce outstanding leaders” for the community.</p>
<p>For more information about Lighthouse on the Hill: The Bluefield College Story, call the BC Office of Public Relations at 276-326-4212. To order a copy of the publication, call 276-326-4260.</p> | Bluefield College unveils new published history of the school | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/bluefieldcollegeunveilsnewpublishedhistoryoftheschool/ | 3 |
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<p>FOX Business: Capitalism Lives Here</p>
<p>After an intense retreat in the last session, Wall Street pushed higher Tuesday as traders remained focused on the economy.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Today's Markets</p>
<p>As of 2:58 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 71.5 points, or 0.46%, to 15444, the S&amp;P 500 rose 13.5 points, or 0.78%, to 1755 and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 39.7 points, or 0.99%, to 4036.</p>
<p>The S&amp;P 500 tumbled 2.3% Monday in its heaviest selloff since June 2013. The move extended the broad-market index's year-to-date drop to 5.8%. Adding to the fearful sentiment, Japan's Nikkei 225, already in a correction, plunged 4.2% overnight as emerging-market fears swirled across global markets.</p>
<p>"Stocks are offside, but holding up relatively well considering the massive selloff in Japan overnight as fears over emerging-market exposure echoed around the world," said David Madden, a market analyst at IG in London, in an email. "Traders are treading lightly, not wanting to get stung if there is a sudden exodus from equities into cash or bonds."</p>
<p>Traders are paying particularly close attention to economic data after a key manufacturing report and monthly auto sales missed views. Economists at Goldman Sachs told clients late Monday they believe the effect of bad weather across the country might be larger-than-expected in January, weighing on the world's biggest economy.</p>
<p>Advertisement</p>
<p>The Commerce Department said orders for manufactured goods fell 1.5% in December from the month prior, slightly better than the 1.7% fall economists were expecting. Excluding the transportation component, orders rose 0.2%.</p>
<p>Analysts across the board said they would be paying close attention to the January jobs report, due out on Friday. The December data came in far shy of estimates, and there are concerns bad weather and the end of emergency jobless benefits could put additional pressure on the figures.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, U.S. crude oil futures climbed 12 cents, or 0.12%, to $96.55 a barrel. Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline fell 0.17% to $2.602 a gallon. Gold fell $5.40, or 0.43%, to $1,555 a troy ounce.</p> | Wall Street Bounces Back After Rout | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2014/02/04/wall-street-bounces-back-after-rout.html | 2016-03-06 | 0 |
<p />
<p>I stopped watching BET a long time ago (seriously, when I gave them up for good AJ &amp; Free were still hosting 106 &amp; Park). After hearing about <a href="http://lovebscott.com/news/open-letter-what-really-happened-to-me-at-the-bet-awards/" type="external">B. Scott’s experience</a> as the selected host of the BET Awards pre-show, I was validated, again. According to Scott:</p>
<p>“BET reached out to me to be the Style Stage Correspondent for the&#160;2013 BET Awards 106 and Park Pre-Show…</p>
<p>The powers that be for this show wanted ‘B. Scott’…but not really.&#160;From the beginning, I wanted to make this work. I even tried to secure Chris Brown’s stylist to help me in putting together an appropriate ensemble. Unfortunately BET couldn’t afford him and instead sent over their&#160;own stylists&#160;to work with me.</p>
<p>After a few weeks of sending over mood boards and going over approved looks, we decided on a few options. All of which were generally more masculine than what I would wear if I were able to decide on my own. Blazers, long sleeved dress shirts, black pants, loafers.</p>
<p>We didn’t know at the time that Los Angeles would be in the middle of a record heat wave, and the options we selected just weren’t weather appropriate. The day before the show I spoke with BET’s style team and we agreed that it was okay to have a more weather appropriate ensemble option.</p>
<p>Not only was it agreed upon among the stylists, I met with a producer of the show the night before and showed her the ensemble. She said it was acceptable and requested I send over a picture so that she could forward it to whomever she needed to. The picture of the complete outfit was sent over and everything was fine.&#160;At all points during this process, everything I was going to wear or considering wearing was both discussed and approved…</p>
<p>…After rushing to make it to the red carpet in time, I was escorted by several members of production down to the stage. Everybody I spoke with commented on how fabulous I looked. There was never any indication that there was an issue. There was no pushback. I was simply there to do my job.</p>
<p>After interviewing AJ Calloway for my first segment I was literally yanked backstage and told that my look from head to toe ‘wasn’t acceptable.’</p>
<p>They asked me to pull my hair back, they asked me to change my attire.”</p>
<p>B. Scott is a beautiful, openly gay man, blogger, and vlogger who is infamous for his feminine look and sense of style. He is known around the internet for his bold personality and pop culture commentary. He was obviously a great choice for the show. I’m sure love muffins (fans of B. Scott) everywhere were rejoicing at his casting. But it almost didn’t happen. not only did they ask Scott to change his attire:</p>
<p>“I was returned to my trailer and forced to change into one of the other outfits while other producers waited outside. I changed quickly and returned to set, only to be told that I had been replaced by Adrienne Bailon and wouldn’t be going on at all.</p>
<p>I was hurt.&#160;I am hurt.“</p>
<p>So not only was B. Scott censored, he was almost fired. Luckily:</p>
<p>“…there were some internal phone calls made and as a result I was added back to the show.”</p>
<p>Although it sort of worked out for B. Scott – if being forced to change your appearance based on gender standards counts – the whole ordeal has folks wondering why they would book B. Scott only to water him down. BET is obviously holding on to those politics of respectability, which not only police women of color and their sexuality, but also the gender performance and sexuality of men.</p>
<p>In the case of BET who is attempting to appeal to a more diverse group, the message is clear: we welcome you, but stay in line. Unfortunately, this love muffin is not surprised and is not here for it.</p>
<p>Image via facebook.</p> | BET shades blogger B. Scott’s gender presentation | true | http://feministing.com/2013/07/02/bet-shades-blogger-b-scotts-gender-presentation/ | 4 |
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<p>Across two evenings this week, we’ve been offered America’s future in a couple of visions. Neither of them offered the prime vitamin of bearable politics, the promise of good cheer and a better life at the end of a shortish tunnel.</p>
<p>Version one came in the Republican presidential candidates’ debate at the Reagan Library in California on Wednesday evening. This was Texan governor Rick Perry’s first joust with the other contenders. As is customary, feather-puff punches and leaden sarcasms were inflated by the press into Swiftian repartee.</p>
<p>There were some disappointments. I’d been hoping for fire and brimstone from Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party’s Passionaria. Her performance was pallid, her vibrant persona dulled down. Even her natural hair resembled a wig.</p>
<p>Hardly had I raised a cheer for her denunciation of the Libyan adventure – delivered with a clarity apparently beyond the powers of America’s left leaders– before she was doing some Cheney-esque tub-humping about the Iranian threat and groveling to the Israel lobby.</p>
<p>Ron Paul, who attracts passionate and well-deserved adherents for the clarity of his denunciations of Empire, came over as principled but a bit daffy, in the mode of a nutty professor, like a character in one of Thomas Love Peacock’s splendid satires. His fans swiftly claimed he was aced out of the debate, which I don’t think is true. He just didn’t use the openings he was given to best advantage.</p>
<p>He hates every manifestation of government. I don’t think he cares much for immigrants from south of the border either. I didn’t hear a cry of outrage from him when most of his fellow debaters were calling for a heavier federal presence – “boots on the ground”, drones, a continuous fence – along the US-Mexican border. And he seems to favor the Keystone XL pipeline, even though – as my coeditor Jeffrey St. Clair points out to me, it will require one of the largest and most aggressive eminent domain actions since the construction of the Interstate highways. Opposition to eminent domain is bedrock for any libertarian.</p>
<p>The most rational sounding Republican was Utah’s former governor and Obama’s ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman Jr, probably because he’s languishing in the low single digits and has nothing to lose by occasionally extending a friendly hand towards the world of reason, excepting his predictable servility to the AGW lobby. He called for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan and refused to make absolutist pledges about no new taxes. He doesn’t stand a prayer.</p>
<p>Former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney had the task of trying to cut Governor Perry of Texas down to size. They bickered back and forth, but without any decisive knockdowns.</p>
<p>Perry had some simple assignments – mainly to show that he could speak in coherent sentences and hold his own without hauling out his laser gun. (Perry says he packs heat even in jogging rig because he’s frightened of snakes. I guess if you grow up in a semi-dried up water course in north-west Texas you can get that way.)&#160; Simply as something of a Reagan look-alike, in decent physical shape and with a strong voice, he did okay. He and his advisors are sticking to the game plan which is presently aimed at capturing the right-wing core votes in the early caucuses and primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Two Perry plusses: he really hates Karl Rove and Kinky Friedman likes him.</p>
<p>Perry’s headliners were an accusation that Social Security is a vast Ponzi scheme, that Obama is most likely a brazen liar, and, amid wild cheers in the Reagan library auditorium, that he hasn’t lost a wink of sleep after signing execution warrants for convicted murderers – 234&#160; at time of writing, more than any other governor in US history.</p>
<p>It seems hard to imagine that an onslaught on Social Security won’t cost him among the vital elderly independents, assuming he gets the Republican nomination and goes head-to-head with Obama just under a year from now.</p>
<p>But then, having followed Reagan through his early primary battles back in 1979 and early 1980, I remember all the demented campaign statements of the Californian, his reiterated belief that ‘Apocalypse’ would come in our lifetimes, his amazing fictions, like liberating Auschwitz, his&#160; folksy imbecilities. If Reagan could win in 1980 and 1984, Perry certainly has a fighting chance in 2012. Many a politician, Bobby Kennedy for example , learned that it could be fatal to underestimate the Gipper in debate.</p>
<p>No Republican offered a Plan, except the African-American Herman Cain. They all contented themselves with brickbats for government and a call for the release of supposedly pent-up market forces hog-tied by government red tape and onerous taxation.</p>
<p>America’s problems are huge: 14 million Americans officially looking for jobs—about four job seekers for every job vacancy; 8.8 million part-time workers since the recession began; roughly 2.6 million people too discouraged even to look for a job: total – about 25 million people needing work or more work and an economy that is creating no new jobs.</p>
<p>This brings us to Thursday night, and Obama’s address to Congress. He flourished a $447 billion plan involving tax cuts, public works, extensions of unemployment relief, credits to business hiring people who’d been out of work for more than six months.</p>
<p>It’ll do something. Economists raced to their calculators and said that the proposal might add about a million jobs.</p>
<p>But as the economists Randall Wrey and Stephanie Kelton point out, “Business will not hire more workers until it has more sales. Consumers will not spend more until they’ve got more jobs.</p>
<p>“A private-sector recovery requires 300,000 new jobs every month. But the private sector doesn’t need 300,000 new workers per month to meet prospective sales. The new jobs can only come from the federal government — the only economic entity that can afford to hire. Obama’s 1 million infrastructure jobs is a nice down-payment, but it is only three month’s worth.”</p>
<p>They call for a real New Deal program like Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. The program would offer a job to any American who was ready and willing to work at the federal minimum wage, plus legislated benefits. No time limits. No means testing. No minimum education or skill requirements.</p>
<p>There’s a problem, aside from the fact that Obama has displayed zero appetite for big liberal ideas, crucially at the very start of his term when he was at the apex of public goodwill. He has to get any plan, let alone a really bold new plan past Republicans in Congress who, with his eager co-operation, &#160;ate him for breakfast in the showdown over raising the debt ceiling and who will sabotage even his present modest proposals.</p>
<p>“Stop the political circus,” he cried to Congress last night. Why should the Republicans listen to him after he himself stopped the circus at the start of August by mumbling, “You win.”</p>
<p>You can find America’s future in blueprints minted in business-funded think tanks 30 to 40 years ago at the dawn of the neo-liberal age: destruction of organized labor; attrition of the social safety net; attrition of government regulation; a war on the poor, fought without mercy at every level. Last year the New York police stopped and questioned 601,055 people, predominantly blacks and Hispanics, and the numbers were up 13 per cent for the first six months of this year.</p>
<p>Texas, near the bottom in so many social indicators, is the model: Rick Perry is its latest salesman. But whoever the Republican candidate may be, they face in Obama an opponent who agrees with at least half of what they say. In 40 years I’ve not seen a gloomier political landscape.</p>
<p>Our Latest Newsletter</p>
<p>This is one you really won’t want to miss.&#160; As we head into Campaign 2012 we’re launching a series on the real Obama record. This issue kicks off with Mike Whitney on Obama and the Economic Crisis; Andy Worthington on the Guantánamo betrayal. <a href="http://www.easycartsecure.com/CounterPunch/Annual_Subscriptions.html" type="external">Subscribe</a> now to be sure to have the real story of Obama’s presidency, chapter by chapter. ALSO in this issue, Paul Imison on the future of Mexico’s left.</p>
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<p>Alexander Cockburn can be reached at <a href="mailto:[email protected]" type="external">[email protected]</a>.</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p> | The Waste Land | true | https://counterpunch.org/2011/09/09/the-waste-land/ | 2011-09-09 | 4 |
<p>Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) Curtis Compton/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/ZumaPress.com</p>
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<p>In the run-up to last May’s primary to replace retiring Sen. Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Republicans flirted with a large field of candidates that included Reps. Paul Broun (who once called evolution a lie “from the pit of hell”) and Phil Gingrey (who once defended Todd Akin). But when the dust settled, it was <a href="" type="internal">former Dollar General CEO</a> David Perdue and 11-term congressman Jack Kingston who went on to a top-two runoff—a decision framed at the time as a victory for the Chamber of Commerce Republican establishment over the tea party fringe. On Tuesday, after trailing in every poll, Perdue won a narrow victory to claim the GOP nomination. He will take on Democrat Michelle Nunn (the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn) in November.</p>
<p>But the real story may be the lack of influence wielded by Kingston’s biggest supporter, the US Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber backed Kingston to the tune of <a href="http://blogs.rollcall.com/moneyline/chamber-of-commerce-buys-636k-in-ads-supporting-jack-kingston/?dcz=" type="external">$2.3 million</a> in TV ads during the primary, only to see him use its most precious issues as mallets with which to bludgeon Perdue. Take the Common Core State Standards, a set of national math and language-arts benchmarks for public schools that have become a bogeyman for conservatives. The Chamber supports Common Core and recently poured $1.38 million into a PR campaign to promote it. But that didn’t stop Kingston from characterizing Common Core as an abomination and <a href="http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/05/08/david-perdues-common-core-stance-attacked-in-jack-kingston-mailer/" type="external">attacking</a> Perdue—who himself has been highly critical of the standards—for supporting “the Obamacare of education.” In the final days of the race, Perdue fought back, running ads depicting Kingston as soft on immigration because of his support from the Chamber, which backs comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. “Kingston’s pro-amnesty vote is bought and paid for,” one ad <a href="http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2014/07/18/david-perdue-takes-u-s-chamber-attack-to-tv-with-amnesty-spot/" type="external">warned</a>. Kingston, in turn, had <a href="http://sat%20on%20a%20board%20promoting%20amnesty%20for%20illegal%20immigrants" type="external">falsely</a> accused Perdue of supporting amnesty during the runoff.</p>
<p>Kingston will likely land on his feet—11-term congressmen beloved by the Chamber of Commerce tend to do pretty well in Washington!—but his days in Congress are now numbered. At least we’ll always have this video of him explaining why evolution is a myth—because Jack Kingston is not descended from an ape.</p>
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<p /> | In Georgia, Perdue Win Ends One of the GOP’s Craziest Senate Primaries | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2014/07/jack-kingston-david-perdue-georgia-senate/ | 2014-07-23 | 4 |
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<p>When the Weinstein spectacle broke, one of the first actresses to be asked about it was Ms Uma Thurman, the leggy blonde who was the earlier muse of Mr Quentin Tarantino.</p>
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<p>Ms Thurman worked with the Weinstein company for no less than seven films, including star-studded movies like Pulp Fiction and the two Kill bill ones.</p>
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<p>At the time, Ms Thurman was asked by Access Hollywood how she felt about Mr Harvey Weinstein being accused by so many of her colleagues. Ms Thurman, clearly holding back emotions, then stated: "I don't have a tidy soundbite for you, because I have learned, I am not a child. And I have learned that when I've spoken in anger, I usually regret the way I express myself," she said.</p>
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<p>"So, I've been waiting to feel less angry, and when I'm ready, I'll say what I have to say."</p>
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<p>Two weeks later, she posted a Thanksgiving message to all her fans with a picture of herself as "The Bride" character of Kill Bill on her Instagram account, and included into her heartfelt thank you was a special line for Harvey Weinstein as well, stating: "I said I was angry recently, and I have a few reasons, #metoo, in case you couldn't tell by the look on my face. I feel it's important to take your time, be fair, be exact, so? Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!"</p>
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<p>Before finishing off with the menacing: "Except you Harvey, and all your wicked conspirators - I'm glad it's going slowly - you don't deserve a bullet".</p>
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<p>Aauwch. That one went straight to the heart.</p>
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<p>Ms Thurman must indeed be clearly angry with Mr Weinstein over what went on during the filming and production of those movies. Given that she finished off the post with "stay tuned", we can only expect she will tell her full version of those stories soon.</p>
<p />
<p>Source:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.telegraaf.nl/entertainment/1333203/uma-thurman-woest-op-harvey-weinstein" type="external">telegraaf.nl/entertainment/1333203/uma-thurman-woest-op-harvey-weinstein</a></p> | Uma To Weinstein: 'I'm Glad It's Going Slowly - You Don't Deserve A Bullet' | true | http://thegoldwater.com/news/12575-Uma-To-Weinstein-I-m-Glad-It-s-Going-Slowly-You-Don-t-Deserve-A-Bullet | 2017-11-24 | 0 |
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<p>Dear Virginia: Some high-efficiency water heaters are designed to vent horizontally through a wall. Your home inspector may have thought this was one of those models, or he may just be inexperienced and not very qualified as an inspector.</p>
<p>If the installation was done as part of the remodel, under the authority of the general contractor, then he should take responsibility for what was done under his watch. At the very least, he should disclose who did the installation. If the installer was an unlicensed “craftsman,” the contractor could be doubly responsible.</p>
<p>The contractor, the home inspector, and the sellers all have a share in the liability. You should get a bid from a licensed plumber so you’ll know how much money is needed to correct the problem. Hopefully, someone will accept that responsibility.</p>
<p>Dear Barry: Our tree has some limbs that extended beyond the back fence, into the neighbor’s yard. The neighbor trimmed some of these branches, which is entirely reasonable. But instead of disposing of the trimmings in a neighborly way, he threw them over the fence into our yard, leaving them for me to pick up and throw away. Was it legal for him to do this? John</p>
<p>ADVERTISEMENT</p>
<p>Dear John: Whether it was legal for your neighbor to throw the tree prunings into your yard is a question for a legal expert. What is more certain is that your neighbor is not concerned about good relations and may have anger management issues. As annoying as his actions are, the best advice is to let it go and be glad he’s not a member of your family. An interesting response would be to send him a “thank you” card.</p>
<p>Dear Barry: What do you think of orange oil as a “green” option for eradicating termites? How does it compare with fumigation? Victor</p>
<p>Dear Victor: Orange oil is one of several methods for killing termites with local treatment instead of fumigation. It can be highly effective where applied. However, the problem with local treatment is that termites continue to live in areas of the building where their presence was not discovered and no treatment was applied. The best and most reliable way to kill them all is by tenting the entire building and using fumicide.</p>
<p>Distributed by Action Coast Publishing. To write to Barry Stone, please visit him on the Web at <a href="http://www.housedetective.com" type="external">www.housedetective.com</a>.</p> | Bad water heater slips past inspector | false | https://abqjournal.com/165624/bad-water-heater-slips-past-inspector.html | 2013-02-03 | 2 |
<p>Guam residents say that if given the choice they would rather face the wrath of "crazy" Kim Jong-un than the power of a typhoon, as they count down toward&#160;a threatened North Korean missile attack.</p>
<p>As Pyongyang's deadline drew closer, the archbishop of the predominately Catholic US territory urged priests to pray for peace at Sunday Mass and prepared for a peace rally in the capital Hagatna.</p>
<p>But on the streets the outward appearance remained calm, with the main concern being the approach of the typhoon season.</p>
<p>"To be honest, I'm more worried about the projectiles from the typhoons when we get strong winds than whatever projectiles Kim Jong-un says he will launch on Guam," Janice Furukawa, a 58-year-old mother, said as she prepared her typhoon emergency kit at her home in the western village of Piti.</p>
<p>North Korea, angered by US President Donald Trump's threat of "fire and fury,"&#160;has promised to have plans ready in a matter of days to launch an "enveloping fire" of missiles at Guam, which houses two large US military bases and is home to more than 6,000 US military personnel.&#160;</p>
<p>Trump has vowed to protect the western Pacific island and&#160;in a call to Guam Governor Eddie Calvo on Saturday "reassured" him that "United States forces stand ready to ensure the safety and security of the people of Guam, along with the rest of America."</p>
<p>Roman Catholic Archbishop Michael Byrnes asked priests in a statement to “offer prayers for peace between our nations, just resolution of differences.”</p>
<p>Rolando Zepeda, 57, a teacher at Saint Anthony’s School, said he was not making any emergency plans ahead of a North Korean attack.</p>
<p>"But I am always quick to shutter up whenever we get typhoon advisories or tsunami warnings," he said.</p>
<p>"Kim Jung-un is as crazy as typhoons but I am more scared of typhoons because they are real threats."</p>
<p />
<p>Houses in Nimitz Hill near Naval Station Marianas, Guam, were crumpled by&#160;Typhoon Paka in 1997.</p>
<p>Reuters</p>
<p>North Korea previously threatened to attack Guam back in 2013, leading Calvo to play down the latest potential crisis and instead remind the 162,000 residents they should prepare for the inevitable typhoon.</p>
<p>"You know typhoons can strike anytime ... so that means, families are making family emergency plans and kits together," he said.</p>
<p>"With that, everybody should conduct their lives like business as usual. It's the weekend. Go out, have a good time."</p>
<p>If North Korea does launch a missile strike there is a public warning system in place and a 14-minute window to react, Homeland Security said.</p>
<p>On Friday it posted guidelines on its website about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack.</p>
<p>“Expect to stay inside for at least 24 hours unless otherwise told by authorities,” the advisory warned. “If caught outside, do not look at the flash or fireball -- It can blind you. Take cover behind anything that might offer protection. Lie flat on the ground and cover your head.”</p>
<p>Resident Furukawa, who lived through Typhoon Paka which left 5,000 homeless and more than 30 percent of public buildings seriously damaged in 1997, said people in Guam were resilient.</p>
<p>"We always survive. It's the recovery period that is hard. But survival is part of our culture," she said.</p>
<p>Guam's modern building code demands houses and buildings be able to withstand winds of up to 160 miles per hour.</p>
<p>"Based on what we have in this community, we have been able to withstand a category 5 hurricane," Calvo said, adding that school buildings were designated as public shelters and could cope with major disasters.</p>
<p>"A category 2 or 3 typhoon would cause major damage in many communities around the world but not in Guam," he said.</p> | Guam residents are more afraid of typhoons than they are of Kim Jong-un | false | https://pri.org/stories/2017-08-12/guam-residents-are-more-afraid-typhoons-kim-jong-un | 2017-08-12 | 3 |
<p>No history of the twentieth century in the United States is complete without a discussion of the works and deeds of W. E. B. DuBois. Indeed, DuBois’ organizing of and writing about the African-American population in the United States remains both crucial and relevant. Of course, any human of this importance has had numerous biographies written about him. The most recent, written by Bill Mullen, is titled W.E.B. DuBois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line. Because he views DuBois’ life through a revolutionary left prism, Mullen’s text is different from most other biographies of DuBois. Mullen chronicles Dubois’ transition from what might be termed a liberal political viewpoint to a left-communist one through his writings and actions. Despite my statement that no history of the twentieth century is complete without mention (if not serious discussion) of DuBois and his influence, Mullen points out that that this is exactly what happened in the period following World War Two. W.E.B. DuBois was wiped from US history in the media, scholarly conversation and studies. Mullen attributes this erasure to DuBois’ increasing interest in communism and its analysis of world events during an intensely anti-communist time. <a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>Given the political intent of the author, this biography is somewhat lacking in personal details of DuBois’ life. His marriages are briefly mentioned, as are his children (one of whom died at a young age, leaving a tragic mark on DuBois and the child’s mother. However, W.E.B. DuBois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line makes up for that lack of personal biography with its discussions of DuBois’ political development and the forces at play in that development. Like many other intellectuals and workers alive in the early twentieth century, DuBois watched the revolutionary upsurge in Europe and Russia with great interest. Not only did he lend his support to the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917, DuBois also studied the relationship between the wave of revolutionary activity, its Marxist underpinnings and its relationship to the fate of African and other non-white peoples around the world, especially those living in colonized lands. Indeed, his study of this relationship became crucial to later understandings of imperialism and race; they are arguably part of the foundation of Malcolm X’s politics and those of the Black Panther Party, among others.</p>
<p>At the same time, DuBois had serious issues with certain worker and socialist organizations, especially in the United States. In large part, this was due to the racism found in these groups. It was a racism endemic to the United States that was manipulated by the ruling powers in a manner quite obvious to Black Americans but somehow not obvious to their white-skinned brethren. This actuality kept DuBois from pursuing alliances with trade unions; he considered them to be racist organizations, which is historically not far from the truth. For an African-American leftist, the pervasive racism of the United States was and is a constant challenge. DuBois straddled a line between communism and Pan-Africanism most of his intellectual life. It was this struggle that inspired a fair amount his writing and work.</p>
<p>The worldwide communist movement split into two main factions after the rise to power of Josef Stalin. Simply stated, the resulting split between those who supported Stalin and those who supported Leon Trotsky has never been resolved. Indeed, the immediate effects are still being studied and discussed; and Left political strategies are made according to where one situates themselves in the debate. (If there is one fault in the text, it is that the author interjects his positions favoring Trotskyism, which are clearly part of the fallout from the dispute, without explaining the doctrinal reason for those opinions). DuBois placed himself in the group siding with the Communist International and Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union. Like others who agreed with Stalin, DuBois found himself explaining certain actions that he probably was not too comfortable explaining. However, the wave of anti-Communist hysteria fomented by the US right wing and fanned by the liberal elites in the United States left him little room to maneuver. He was accused of Soviet and communist sympathies and was made to pay for those sympathies. Unlike several others accused of such sympathies (whether true or not), DuBois did not waver under the challenges to his belief in Black liberation and social justice. His US passport was revoked. When he got it back, he traveled to the newly independent nation of Ghana. Eventually, he was asked to help the government and left the United States for good. He died on August 27, 1963, the day before the massive March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC.</p>
<p>DuBois was first and foremost an anti-racist warrior. His anti-racist understanding is why he was also antiwar, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist. His life’s constant was challenging the status quo of racism and war; this introduced him to numerous philosophies and people, some of which became his guiding principles. Bill Mullen provides a comprehensive timeline and discussion of DuBois’ intellectual and activist journey in this slender text. It is an accessible and valuable work, especially for those interested in the politics of DuBois’ intellectual and activist legacy.</p> | Revolution and the Color Line | true | https://counterpunch.org/2017/02/10/revolution-and-the-color-line/ | 2017-02-10 | 4 |
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<p>In 1988, Congress tried to close one of the darker chapters in U.S. history by passing the Civil Liberties Act. The CLA entitles veterans of the World War II internment camp program — under which the government relocated and imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans for the duration of the war — to $20,000 in reparations and a letter of apology from the president. The law also gave camp veterans 10 years to apply for redress.</p>
<p>But the CLA failed to address a little-known fact: The U.S. secretly pressured 13 Latin American countries, including Peru and Panama, to deport 2,264 of their citizens of Japanese descent to the U.S. camps. When these Japanese Latin Americans tried to collect under the CLA, the U.S. told them they were ineligible because they had been in the U.S. during the war as “illegal aliens.”</p>
<p>In 1996, five Japanese Latin American camp veterans filed a class-action lawsuit, and last June, the U.S. agreed to a preliminary settlement under which Japanese Latin Americans would receive $5,000 and a letter of apology. “The issue in the case was whether the Japanese Latin Americans were included in the statute,” says Deputy Associate Attorney General Richard Jerome. “We took the position that they were not.”</p>
<p>Not all Japanese Latin Americans are happy with the deal. Many camp veterans say that in addition to offering less in compensation, the U.S. has stacked the deck against them when it comes to collecting their due.</p>
<p>While the Department of Justice opened a full-time CLA office on the West Coast, distributed information booklets in Japanese communities, and held more than 200 workshops nationwide to publicize the CLA to Japanese Americans, it has done comparatively little to contact their Latin American counterparts.</p>
<p>“The [U.S.] government refused to do anything more than the absolute minimum,” says Paul Mills, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the class-action suit. “They certainly didn’t go looking for class members, or make their vast information-gathering resources available to us in order to find them on our own.”</p>
<p>The notification efforts were particularly crucial because, while the U.S. argued that the CLA didn’t apply to Japanese Latin Americans, it said the law’s August 10, 1998, deadline did, giving Latin American camp veterans just two months to make a claim. And people who missed the deadline not only missed their chance at payment — they lost their right to protest. In order to appeal the settlement, Japanese Latin Americans must file for redress, and then, in a separate form, opt out. Already, one of the five plaintiffs has done that, filing a lawsuit against the U.S. for breach of trust and initiating another asking for $10 million.</p>
<p>But in the end, all this may be moot. After the settlement becomes final at a November hearing, the U.S. intends to pay Japanese Latin Americans out of the CLA trust fund established in 1988. Since not all Japanese American applications have been processed, the $5.5 million left in the fund may not cover all eligible Japanese Latin Americans. The settlement specifies that Japanese Americans are entitled to redress first.</p>
<p /> | The War Away From Home | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/1998/11/war-away-home/ | 2018-11-01 | 4 |
<p>The Sulabh International Toilet Museum is located in a quiet courtyard in a neighborhood far from the heart of India’s capital city, New Delhi. It may seem like an unusual place for what may be the world’s only toilet museum. After all, millions of Indians still lack access to toilets and basic sanitary facilities.</p>
<p>But if you can find your way to the museum, you’ll meet a man eager to make your trip worth it.</p>
<p>“Madam you’re welcome to the Museum of Toilets!” says Azaz Qamar, the museum’s assistant curator.</p>
<p>The museum is small, with just one long room inside a low-slung concrete building. But it is filled with exhibits that have, not surprisingly a touch of bathroom humor.</p>
<p>Qamar shows me a Japanese toy that teaches children about toilet training.</p>
<p>“They made a piggy bank, so coin will be deposited in the bank,” he explains. Once the coin is deposited, the toy makes flushing sound. That way, “children will never forget to flush,” Qamar says.</p>
<p>Across the room there is a full-size replica from the court of the French King, Louis XIII. Qamar tells me that it was both the King’s throne and his toilet. He lifts the base of the seat, revealing the commode underneath.</p>
<p>“He never hesitated to relieve himself while giving audience,” he says. “Actually he was just trying to manage his time. So instead of laughing we should appreciate it.”</p>
<p>Then there is an exhibit on the oldest example anywhere of large-scale urban sanitation. There are a series of pictures showing the remains of the Indus Valley civilization, which existed in the Indian subcontinent some 4,500 years ago. The pictures are from archaeological sites northwest of New Delhi in parts of what are now India and Pakistan.</p>
<p>This ancient civilization had brick-commodes in every home. And the commodes were connected to a network of drains so sophisticated that they could rival those in many modern Indian cities. But that technology now exists only in history books and places like this museum.</p>
<p>“Still in India, more than 600,000 people go outside for defecation,” says Bindeshwar Pathak, the man who started Sulabh International, the organization that runs the museum.</p>
<p>That means nearly half of India’s population does not have access to modern toilet facilities. And changing that is the not-so-subtle mission behind this museum. It’s part of Sulabh’s decades-long effort to improve access to sanitation in the country.</p>
<p>Pathak says India’s sanitation problems stem in part from religion. He says ancient Hindu texts instructed people not to defecate near their homes.</p>
<p>“Now from 5,000 years, Indians have been told not to have the toilet inside the house,” he says. “And now we say, please have the toilet inside the house. So there’s a gap of culture.”</p>
<p>But culture isn’t the only culprit. Millions of Indians simply can’t afford toilets. And those who can often can’t connect them to sewers, because most Indian cities don’t have them.</p>
<p>Even in many households with toilets, human waste is therefore cleaned manually and dumped into open drains and garbage dumps. That means big problems for the environment and public health, from polluted waterways to widespread diseases like tuberculosis.</p>
<p>It also comes with a big social cost. For instance, the people who do the work of cleaning human waste from homes are ostracized.</p>
<p>Nitu Goyar, a young mother from the western state of Rajasthan, says that until a few years ago, she cleaned other people’s toilets for a living.</p>
<p>“When I moved in with my in-laws after marriage, they told me their family had done this work for generations,” Goyar says. “I was told I had no choice but to do it as well.”</p>
<p>She says she sometimes had to walk for miles carrying a bucket of human waste on her head. And when it rained during the monsoons the stuff would often drip down on her. The thunder and monsoon downpour that blew through during my visit to the museum was a stark reminder of that kind of hardship.</p>
<p>Sulabh International was started 40 years ago mainly to help people like Goyar. Founder Bindeshwar Pathak figured that more and better toilets and sanitation systems would help liberate millions of untouchables. It would also help solve pollution and water supply problems at the same time.</p>
<p>Today, along with the historical curiosities inside the toilet museum the courtyard outside displays working examples of modern technologies.</p>
<p>There is a brightly painted public toilet complex hooked up to a small waste-water treatment system, and a biogas generator, which turns human waste into energy and fertilizer.</p>
<p>There are also some of Sulabh’s own inventions.</p>
<p>Resident environmental scientist Ram Chandra Jha shows off one of the designs just outside the museum’s door. “These are the models of toilets invented by Sulabh international,” he says.</p>
<p>It looks much like a standard Indian squatting toilet. But the pan below slopes downward. Jha says that it helps conserve water.</p>
<p>“Due to the slope, gravity works here,” he says. “So when we pour water in this, very little water is required, just two litres of water is sufficient for flushing here.” That is compared to the 12 liters used by most toilets.</p>
<p>But the real ingenuity of the design is in what happens below. The waste goes into two semi-porous pits, where the liquid and gases can escape. The remaining solid waste decomposes in just a year and a half, says Jha.</p>
<p>“And after decomposition, there is no smell in that and that is pathogen free almost. And because that contains, nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, so that’s a good manure also.”</p>
<p>Jha says Sulabh has installed more than a million of these toilets across India, including thousands of public toilets, which were once hard to find in this country.</p>
<p>Sulabh also runs two education and training centers where former toilet cleaners, like Nitu Goyar are learning new skills needed for other, less degrading work. India still has a long way to go to solve its massive sanitation problems.</p>
<p>But Bindeshwar Pathak says Sulabh’s work, and this toilet museum have helped start a national sanitation movement, and helped ease the old taboo against even talking about toilets.</p>
<p>“Now they talk about Sulabh toilets while having food,” says Pathak. “Maybe sometime jokingly also, they say, okay I went to Sulabh.”</p> | An Indian Toilet Museum's Public Health Mission | false | https://pri.org/stories/2011-06-01/indian-toilet-museums-public-health-mission | 2011-06-01 | 3 |
<p>KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) - Garrison Mathews scored a school-record 43 points with a career-high 13 rebounds and Lipscomb beat Kennesaw State 86-71 on Saturday night to open Atlantic Sun Conference play.</p>
<p>Matthews made 12 of 20 from the floor, including 4 of 9 3-pointers, and 15 of 17 free throws in breaking the 39-point school single-game record he set last season at Jacksonville. Mathews' 43 were the most points scored in an ASUN conference game since Feb. 20, 2012.</p>
<p>Eli Pepper scored 16 points and grabbed 12 rebounds for the Bisons (11-5), who made 12 3-pointers and 18 free throws.</p>
<p>Pepper scored Lipscomb's first 10 points, Aaron Korn's 3 put the Bisons up for good, 21-20, and Lipscomb led 51-35 at halftime behind Mathews' 21 points.</p>
<p>The Owls closed to 58-46 on Nick Masterson's layup early in the second half, but Mathews scored nine straight points for a 14-point lead, then four points in a 7-3 run for a 76-63 lead with 6:19 to play, and the Owls got no closer than 12 the rest of the way.</p>
<p>Masterson scored 17 points and Jordan Jones and James Scott added 15 apiece for Kennesaw State (4-12).</p>
<p>KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) - Garrison Mathews scored a school-record 43 points with a career-high 13 rebounds and Lipscomb beat Kennesaw State 86-71 on Saturday night to open Atlantic Sun Conference play.</p>
<p>Matthews made 12 of 20 from the floor, including 4 of 9 3-pointers, and 15 of 17 free throws in breaking the 39-point school single-game record he set last season at Jacksonville. Mathews' 43 were the most points scored in an ASUN conference game since Feb. 20, 2012.</p>
<p>Eli Pepper scored 16 points and grabbed 12 rebounds for the Bisons (11-5), who made 12 3-pointers and 18 free throws.</p>
<p>Pepper scored Lipscomb's first 10 points, Aaron Korn's 3 put the Bisons up for good, 21-20, and Lipscomb led 51-35 at halftime behind Mathews' 21 points.</p>
<p>The Owls closed to 58-46 on Nick Masterson's layup early in the second half, but Mathews scored nine straight points for a 14-point lead, then four points in a 7-3 run for a 76-63 lead with 6:19 to play, and the Owls got no closer than 12 the rest of the way.</p>
<p>Masterson scored 17 points and Jordan Jones and James Scott added 15 apiece for Kennesaw State (4-12).</p> | Mathews scores record 43 points in 86-71 Lipscomb win | false | https://apnews.com/amp/12914d5d55394f8a85e3e4593d260c51 | 2018-01-07 | 2 |
<p>NASCAR owners are taking a firm stance against the ‘Take a knee’ anthem protests which escalated across the NFL in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s tweets on the issue on Sunday.</p>
<p>The gesture was started by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick last season as a demonstration against police brutality. Trump reignited the controversy on Friday when he said that anyone taking part in the demonstration should be fired.</p>
<p>While his comments caused a backlash among football players and team owners alike, the ‘Take a knee’ movement gained no traction in NASCAR where several owners said they would not condone drivers or staff taking part in the protests.</p>
<p>Read more</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/404417-nfl-anthem-protests-trump/" type="external" /></p>
<p>Richard Petty who co-owns Richard Petty Motorsports told the AP that anyone who refuses to stand for the national anthem should be forced to leave the country.</p>
<p>“Anybody that don’t stand up for the anthem oughta be out of the country. Period. What got ’em where they’re at? The United States,” Petty <a href="https://www.cbssports.com/general/news/nascar-legend-richard-petty-blasts-national-anthem-protests-in-the-nfl/" type="external">said</a>.</p>
<p>Those sentiments were echoed by another owner, Richard Childress, who said any protests from his team members would “get you a ride on a Greyhound bus.”</p>
<p>“Anybody that works for me should respect the country we live in. So many people gave their lives for it. This is America,” Childress said <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/don-t-stand-anthem-richard-185828691.html" type="external">according</a> to Yahoo sports.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/sport/404077-jayz-turns-down-superbowl-halftime-show/" type="external">READ MORE: Rapper Jay Z rumored to have rebuffed Super Bowl halftime show request in solidarity stand</a></p>
<p>Owner Andy Murstein also condemned the protesters but took a more conciliatory stance. When asked what he would do with an employee who takes a knee, Murstein <a href="http://www.espn.com/racing/nascar/story/_/id/20805201/no-national-anthem-protests-made-prior-nascar-race" type="external">told ESPN</a>: “I would sit down with them and say it’s the wrong thing to do that and many people, including myself, view it as an affront to our great country.”</p>
<p>“If there is disenchantment towards the president or a few bad law enforcement officers, don’t have it cross over to all that is still good and right about our country.”</p>
<p>Kaepernick’s stance was never far from the headlines during the summer off season. Having parted ways from the 49ers, he was not offered a role by any other NFL franchise – with many believing his ‘Take a knee’ protest made him an undesirable recruit for teams.</p>
<p>Trump, however, had no sympathy for him or anyone else engaging in the protest.</p>
<p>“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’” he said at a rally for Republican Senator Luther Strange in Alabama.</p>
<p>“You know, some owner is going to do that. He’s going to say, ‘That guy that disrespects our flag, he’s fired.’ And that owner, they don’t know it [but] they’ll be the most popular person in this country.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rt.com/usa/404290-trump-nfl-kaepernick-protest/" type="external">READ MORE: ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field’: Trump takes aim at NFL anthem protesters (VIDEOS)</a></p>
<p>Those comments sparked rebuttals from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and numerous team owners, including the owner of the New England Patriots Robert Kraft, who Trump has referred to as <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/600993273994412033" type="external">a ‘friend’</a>.</p>
<p>The protests reached unprecedented levels when Sunday’s slate of games rolled around. Dozens of players kneeled during the US anthem while several teams elected to stay in their locker rooms during the anthem to avoid the controversy.</p>
<p>As the NFL anthem protests unfolded, Trump responded by tweeting that fans “should never condone” the players involved.</p>
<p />
<p>Sports fans should never condone players that do not stand proud for their National Anthem or their Country. NFL should change policy!</p>
<p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/912080538755846144" type="external">September 24, 2017</a></p>
<p />
<p>The protest also received support in Major League Baseball where Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell became the first player in the league to take part in the demonstration.</p>
<p>The National Basketball Association is currently on its off-season but several of the league’s stars, including LeBron James, have strongly expressed support for the protests.</p> | ‘Stand for anthem or get out of town’: NASCAR stands firm against #TakeAKnee | false | https://newsline.com/stand-for-anthem-or-get-out-of-town-nascar-stands-firm-against-takeaknee/ | 2017-09-25 | 1 |
<p>Not handy around the house? Walmart is testing a service that lets shoppers hire someone to assemble a bookcase or hang a TV.</p>
<p>The test, which started recently in Atlanta only, is a partnership with on-demand online services platform Handy. Shoppers who buy furniture or a TV at the stores participating in the limited pilot program can also pay for Handy's services and book a professional to help.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Retailers are increasingly looking for ways to make shopping more convenient so customers will want to buy more. Ikea recently announced it would buy Handy rival TaskRabbit, which sends people to assemble its products. And online furniture seller Wayfair already offers Handy's services for its shoppers.</p>
<p>Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. says the test is in a small number of Atlanta stores.</p> | Walmart tests deal with Handy: Buy TV, someone will install | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/11/15/walmart-tests-deal-with-handy-buy-tv-someone-will-install.html | 2017-11-15 | 0 |
<p>Burger King launched the largest revamp of its menu Monday since its creation in the 1950s.</p>
<p>The new menu is a part of a multifaceted brand overhaul that will include 10 new menu items, new celebrity advertisements and renovations to many of its restaurants.</p>
<p>According <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-burger-king-20120402,0,3027386.story?track=rss" type="external">to the Los Angeles Times</a>, the Miami-based chain will now offer garden salads, wraps, fruit smoothies and frappes - echoing recent menu changes made by its largest competitor, McDonald's.</p>
<p>The menu changes reflect a trend toward low-calorie, low-fat and more natural items at fast-food chains, as part of an effort to take avantage of the growing healthy food market.</p>
<p>Read more on GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/health/120331/fast-food-makes-you-depressed-according-spanish-study" type="external">Fast food makes you depressed, according to Spanish study</a></p>
<p>"Consumers wanted more choices," said Steve Wiborg, president of Burger King's North America operations, according <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/burger-kings-food-adventure-ends-with-smoothies-snack-wraps-salads-that-are-like-mcdonalds/2012/04/01/gIQAK89xoS_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop" type="external">to the Washington Post</a>. "Not just healthy choices, but choices they could get at the competition."</p>
<p>As a part of the plan to revamp the chain, Burger King also said that it would modernize thousands its aging outlets, redesign uniforms and serve burgers in cardboard boxes instead of paper wrapping.</p>
<p>Another image bolstering tactic was to hire a number of celebrities, including David Beckham, Mary J. Blige, Salma Hayek, Jay Leno, Steven Tyler and Sofia Vergara, to feature in a new advertising campaign.</p>
<p>Burger King has been trailing behind its competitors in recent years with lackluster sales figures.</p>
<p>Burger King fell to third place in US sales among major hamburger chains,&#160;behind its rival Wendy's, according to the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>Read more on GlobalPost:&#160; <a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/business-tech/120319/wendys-edges-out-burger-king-number-two-sales-spot" type="external">Wendy's edges out Burger King for number two sales spot</a></p>
<p>Critics say that the strategy of copying its rivals might not work.</p>
<p>"You can have football teams, and just because they're both running the same offense it doesn't mean it will work the same," said Eddie Yoon, a principal at The Cambridge Group, a consulting firm, according <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5in3sqZbXhPsLKovi_S3bVBkMOq6w?docId=0d1ce06d4aab4a4db711236bab016575" type="external">to the Associated Press</a>.</p> | Burger King unveils new menu to compete with competitors | false | https://pri.org/stories/2012-04-02/burger-king-unveils-new-menu-compete-competitors | 2012-04-02 | 3 |
<p />
<p>Dollar Tree Inc , the biggest U.S. dollar-store chain, reported a 5 percent rise in quarterly net sales on Wednesday, as more customers visited its stores and also spent more on average.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Net income rose to $321.8 million, or $1.36 per share, in the fourth quarter ended Jan. 28, from $229 million, or 97 cents per share, a year earlier.</p>
<p>Net sales increased to $5.64 billion from $5.37 billion.</p>
<p>(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sai Sachin Ravikumar)</p> | Dollar Tree's sales rise 5 percent | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/03/01/dollar-tree-sales-rise-5-percent.html | 2017-03-16 | 0 |
<p>After a frenetic final sequence where NFL intrigue reached a fever pitch, team owners voted to approve the relocation of the St. Louis Rams to Los Angeles, with an option extended to San Diego’s disgruntled Chargers&#160;franchise.</p>
<p>“The Rams’ home will ultimately be on the site of the old Hollywood Park racetrack in Inglewood in what will be the league’s biggest stadium by square feet, a low-slung, glass-roofed football palace with a projected opening in 2019 and a price tag that could approach $3 billion,” <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-nfl-la-chargers-rams-20160113-story.html" type="external">according</a> to the Los Angeles Times.</p>
<p>The&#160;Chargers effectively have&#160;months&#160;to decide their fate&#160;— enjoying “a yearlong option to join the Rams, followed by the Raiders if the San Diego franchise declines,” <a href="http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/14558668/st-louis-rams-relocate-los-angeles" type="external">according</a> to ESPN. But the Rams’ journey to Inglewood will begin immediately but take&#160;years to complete. “NFL owners in Houston voted 30-2 to ratify the&#160;Rams’ relocation application for an immediate move to L.A., where the team will eventually begin play at owner Stan Kroenke’s proposed stadium site in Inglewood in 2019,” NFL.com <a href="http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000621645/article/rams-to-relocate-to-la-chargers-first-option-to-join" type="external">reported</a>, calling the move “a seismic decision that returns the highest level of professional football to the country’s second-largest media market after a 21-year absence.”</p>
<p>“Per NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport, the&#160;Chargers&#160;will have up until the conclusion of owners meetings (March 20-23) to decide if they’re playing in L.A. or San Diego in 2016. The window creates the possibility — however slight — that the&#160;Chargers&#160;could remain in San Diego. The city is hosting a June vote for $350 million in public funding toward a new facility to replace Qualcomm Stadium. It is possible that the&#160;Chargers&#160;put off a final decision until that vote takes place.”</p>
<p>The deal left the Oakland Raiders, L.A.’s third suitor, the odd team out. They had gambled big on a joint-stadium deal in Carson with the Chargers, hoping to ace out the Rams by granting&#160;the league’s wish to neatly usher in two, but not three, teams. “Oakland is still in debt from a renovation 20 years ago, when the Raiders moved back from Los Angeles,” ESPN noted. “City officials have said they won’t seek help from taxpayers with a new stadium, and they asked the NFL for more time to develop a project in response to the Raiders’ relocation plan. The NFL acquiesced.”</p>
<p>Oakland’s fans have retained the strongest loyalty and the greatest capacity for forgiveness among the three cities in peril of losing their franchises. But the fallout from the L.A. deal was far from over, as Oakland’s dismal financial situation with regard to the Raiders raised the sudden prospect that the storied East Bay team could pick up stakes for Texas. The team had previously considered a switch to San Antonio.&#160;“In 2014, the&#160;Raiders met with San Antonio officials about a potential move,” as Business Insider <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/raiders-could-playing-texas-soon-040346098.html" type="external">reported</a>. “While many shrugged that off at the time, there is now a feeling that such a move is possible.&#160;According to Jason Cole of Bleacher Report, the Raiders have already secured land in the Austin/San Antonio area for a potential stadium. With the Alamodome already in place, this strongly suggests that the Raiders could be playing in Texas as soon as next season.”</p>
<p>In Los Angeles itself, reaction to the upheaval has&#160;been moderate, if not muted. Despite the league’s fierce interest in shifting at least one team to the city, Angelenos and Californians more broadly have not agitated for a new franchise, and expectations for the Rams have already been set high by city locals. “So understand first that you’re here because you want to be here and because you think you can make money here, not because anybody was dying to see you again. Consider yourself lucky to be back on our turf,”&#160;Bill Plaschke <a href="http://www.latimes.com/sports/nfl/la-sp-nfl-la-plaschke-20160113-column.html" type="external">wrote</a> at the Times. “You must win. You must entertain. You must do both with the sort of decency and integrity that makes us feel comfortable enduring long lines of traffic, long lines at bathrooms, and mosh pits in parking lots for a chance to watch you play.”</p> | L.A. gets Rams, maybe Chargers | false | https://calwatchdog.com/2016/01/13/la-gets-rams-maybe-chargers/ | 2018-01-20 | 3 |
<p>Two months after defending Roger Ailes from allegations of sexual harassment, <a href="" type="internal">Greta Van Susteren is out at Fox News</a>.</p>
<p>The leading cable-news network abruptly announced Tuesday morning that the 14-year veteran of the channel was gone. Fox News’s official statement gave no explanation for her exit, while heaping praise from executives and noting that Brit Hume would return to the anchor chair to take over On the Record, her nightly primetime show.</p>
<p>Sources close to the situation <a href="http://www.politico.com/media/story/2016/09/greta-van-susteren-abruptly-leaves-fox-news-004744" type="external">told Politico</a> that the 62-year-old ex-lawyer left over a “financial disagreement” while attempting to renegotiate her contract following Ailes’s ouster from the network. Van Susteren was reportedly one of Fox’s hosts with a clause allowing her to walk should the network’s mastermind leave. Van Susteren’s colleague Howard Kurtz reported that <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/06/van-susteren-leaving-fox-news-hume-tapped-as-temporary-replacement.html" type="external">she opted to invoke that departure clause</a> when the renegotiations went south.</p>
<p>New York magazine’s Gabriel Sherman—whose reporting played a key role in exposing Ailes’s alleged serial sexual harassment—disputed that narrative, however, reporting that sources close to Van Susteren said she left because “ <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/fox-settles-with-carlson-then-van-susteren-quits.html" type="external">she is troubled by the culture</a>” Ailes left behind.</p>
<p>Such alleged revulsion at Ailes’s penchant for preying upon ambitious women, and the reported means by which his executives and flacks shielded him from consequences, might come as a surprise. Van Susteren was one of the first Fox Newsers to publicly defend Ailes.</p>
<p>In an <a href="" type="internal">exclusive interview with The Daily Beast</a>, shortly after Gretchen Carlson <a href="" type="internal">filed her bombshell lawsuit</a> alleging repeated harassment from Ailes, the On the Record anchor said, “I’ve never seen it or heard it or suspected it.” She suggested Carlson falsely accused Ailes of harassment because of money.</p>
<p>“I imagine she’s quite unhappy that her contract wasn’t renewed,” she said.</p>
<p>“This doesn't have any ring of truth to me,” <a href="http://www.people.com/article/greta-van-susteren-defends-roger-ailes-agianst-sexual-harassment-allegations" type="external">she told People</a>. “I would have heard it. People don't keep things silent.”</p>
<p>But perhaps after a steady stream of new allegations came to light, including accusations that Ailes “ <a href="" type="internal">psychologically tortured</a>” longtime Fox booker Laurie Luhn with multiple decades of harassment, Van Susteren had a change of heart and saw the culture for what it is.</p>
<p>Without commenting on the supposed financial disputes or the sexual-harassment culture, Van Susteren <a href="https://www.facebook.com/greta/photos/a.162242790457256.36266.158671177481084/1423804617634394/?type=3&amp;theater" type="external">wrote on her public Facebook page</a> that her departure was completely voluntary: “On Thursday night, I made my decision and informed Fox News of my decision that I was leaving Fox News Channel per my contract.”</p>
<p>She added: “I took advantage of the clause in my contract which allows me to leave now.” Why? “Fox has not felt like home to me for a few years.”</p>
<p>Three years ago, it was reported that Van Susteren <a href="http://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-greta-van-susteren-allegedly-initiated-meetings-with-cnn-looking-to-rejoin-network/" type="external">had initiated meetings with CNN chief Jeff Zucker</a> about returning to her first cable-news home. Those talks obviously fell through, and sources at the network tell The Daily Beast that interest in bringing her back now would be near-zero.</p> | Why Did Greta Van Susteren Leave Fox News? | true | https://thedailybeast.com/why-did-greta-van-susteren-leave-fox-news | 2018-10-06 | 4 |
<p>e proposed 2013 Baptist General Association of Virginia budget I have once again become painfully aware of the budget woes we face as an association.&amp;nbsp; The years I served on the budget committee, and then as first vice president and president of the General Association provided me with insight as to how the budget process works. In reviewing the proposed 2013 Baptist General Association of Virginia budget I have once again become painfully aware of the budget woes we face as an association.&amp;nbsp; The years I served on the budget committee, and then as first vice president and president of the General Association provided me with insight as to how the budget process works.</p> | Opinion Test 2 | false | https://baptistnews.com/article/opiniontest2/ | 3 |
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<p>QUINTON, Okla. (AP) — The Latest on a fiery explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig (all times local):</p>
<p>4 p.m.</p>
<p>An initial report into a deadly natural gas rig explosion in Oklahoma indicates there was an uncontrolled release of gas that caught fire and that a worker at the scene tried unsuccessfully to shut down the well.</p>
<p>The incident report into the explosion and fire that killed five workers was released on Tuesday by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates oil and gas operations in the state.</p>
<p>The blast happened Monday morning at a drilling site near Quinton, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Tulsa. The explosion sent plumes of black smoke into the air and left a derrick crumpled on the ground.</p>
<p>Once the drilling site was stabilized on Tuesday, authorities recovered the remains of all five workers.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>3 p.m.</p>
<p>Officials say they have recovered the remains of five workers missing since an explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig.</p>
<p>Pittsburg County Sheriff Chris Morris said Tuesday personnel from the state medical examiner's office began searching for the workers about noon once the drilling site had been stabilized.</p>
<p>Morris says the bodies are being transported to Oklahoma City for identification.</p>
<p>The blast happened Monday morning at a drilling site near Quinton, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Tulsa. The explosion sent plumes of black smoke into the air and left a derrick crumpled on the ground.</p>
<p>Morris says the five employees who were killed were in an area of the drilling rig known as the "dog house" where the rig hands worked.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:25 a.m.</p>
<p>Officials say the five employees who have been missing since an explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig are presumed dead.</p>
<p>Pittsburg County Sheriff Chris Morris said Tuesday that the search for the workers has turned to a recovery mission after the Monday morning blast in eastern Oklahoma.</p>
<p>Three of the workers were employed by Houston-based Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. Company president and CEO Andy Hendricks pledged a full investigation into the explosion.</p>
<p>Emergency management officials said Monday night that the fire was extinguished. Authorities say 16 people who were on the site at the time of the blast escaped without major injuries. One person was airlifted to a hospital for treatment.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>7:20 a.m.</p>
<p>The search is resuming for five people who are unaccounted for after a fiery explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig.</p>
<p>The blast happened Monday morning at a drilling site near Quinton, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Tulsa. The explosion sent plumes of black smoke into the air and left a derrick crumpled on the ground. For much of the day Monday, emergency officials were unable to get near the rig because the fire was still burning.</p>
<p>Emergency management officials said Monday night that the fire was extinguished. Authorities say 16 people who were on the site at the time of the blast escaped without major injuries. One person was airlifted to a hospital, and five others remain missing.</p>
<p>The cause of the blast is not yet known.</p>
<p>QUINTON, Okla. (AP) — The Latest on a fiery explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig (all times local):</p>
<p>4 p.m.</p>
<p>An initial report into a deadly natural gas rig explosion in Oklahoma indicates there was an uncontrolled release of gas that caught fire and that a worker at the scene tried unsuccessfully to shut down the well.</p>
<p>The incident report into the explosion and fire that killed five workers was released on Tuesday by the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates oil and gas operations in the state.</p>
<p>The blast happened Monday morning at a drilling site near Quinton, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Tulsa. The explosion sent plumes of black smoke into the air and left a derrick crumpled on the ground.</p>
<p>Once the drilling site was stabilized on Tuesday, authorities recovered the remains of all five workers.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>3 p.m.</p>
<p>Officials say they have recovered the remains of five workers missing since an explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig.</p>
<p>Pittsburg County Sheriff Chris Morris said Tuesday personnel from the state medical examiner's office began searching for the workers about noon once the drilling site had been stabilized.</p>
<p>Morris says the bodies are being transported to Oklahoma City for identification.</p>
<p>The blast happened Monday morning at a drilling site near Quinton, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Tulsa. The explosion sent plumes of black smoke into the air and left a derrick crumpled on the ground.</p>
<p>Morris says the five employees who were killed were in an area of the drilling rig known as the "dog house" where the rig hands worked.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>10:25 a.m.</p>
<p>Officials say the five employees who have been missing since an explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig are presumed dead.</p>
<p>Pittsburg County Sheriff Chris Morris said Tuesday that the search for the workers has turned to a recovery mission after the Monday morning blast in eastern Oklahoma.</p>
<p>Three of the workers were employed by Houston-based Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. Company president and CEO Andy Hendricks pledged a full investigation into the explosion.</p>
<p>Emergency management officials said Monday night that the fire was extinguished. Authorities say 16 people who were on the site at the time of the blast escaped without major injuries. One person was airlifted to a hospital for treatment.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>7:20 a.m.</p>
<p>The search is resuming for five people who are unaccounted for after a fiery explosion at an Oklahoma gas drilling rig.</p>
<p>The blast happened Monday morning at a drilling site near Quinton, about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southeast of Tulsa. The explosion sent plumes of black smoke into the air and left a derrick crumpled on the ground. For much of the day Monday, emergency officials were unable to get near the rig because the fire was still burning.</p>
<p>Emergency management officials said Monday night that the fire was extinguished. Authorities say 16 people who were on the site at the time of the blast escaped without major injuries. One person was airlifted to a hospital, and five others remain missing.</p>
<p>The cause of the blast is not yet known.</p> | The Latest: Report: Uncontrolled gas release led to rig fire | false | https://apnews.com/amp/fc87a5939bdd4e34b9106a6bed1f657d | 2018-01-23 | 2 |
<p />
<p>Hachette Books</p>
<p>To see long excerpts from “Shrill” at Google Books, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=C5KDCgAAQBAJ&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;dq=SHRILL:+Notes+from+a+Loud+Woman&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjV5bLxjK3NAhUSc1IKHZN1Ae0QuwUIKjAA#v=onepage&amp;q=SHRILL%3A%20Notes%20from%20a%20Loud%20Woman&amp;f=false" type="external">click here</a>.</p>
<p>“Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman” A book by Lindy West</p>
<p />
<p>Lindy West’s new book, “Shrill,” will be pilloried in certain corners for carrying an agenda. The guys who call themselves men’s rights activists, for instance, won’t be giving it good reviews. West, who has written cultural criticism for GQ, Jezebel, the Guardian and other outlets, is a feminist and a fativist (if you’re not familiar with that term, it’s exactly what it sounds like). But beware: Such labels have a way of making the bearer seem narrow and her tone, yes, shrill. West is anything but. She has written a compelling book on behalf of human decency.</p>
<p>In recent years, West has memorably taken on fat-shaming, rape jokes and men who harass women under the guise of internet free speech. The lovely thing is that she’s funny about it. In her book — part memoir, part cultural critique — the Seattle-based writer explains that comedy was her first love. As a kid, her favorite shows were “Saturday Night Live,” “Mr. Show,” “Fawlty Towers” and assorted late-night comedy programs. The sensibility of these shows and years of writing for online outlets like Jezebel appears in West’s irreverence and comedic timing. She writes like you’d imagine she talks, with all caps and emphatic vowel sounds. Reading her is a full-on sensory experience. The loud blonde is in charge, and the rest of us will go as fast as she likes.</p>
<p>West, who is in her 30s, says that for much of her life she was shy, partly by temperament and partly perhaps to make herself seem less big in a culture that prizes delicacy. She writes about how being fat has made her both terribly visible and invisible — she is hard to miss and yet no one really sees her. She is at once despised and unworthy of eye contact.</p>
<p>Strangers hand her brochures for dietary cleanses. Men want to date her but not be seen with her in public. Despite her best efforts over the years, West has found dieting impossible: To shrink to a culturally approved size would require a degree of constant deprivation that “essentially precluded any semblance of joyous, fulfilling human life.” She’s built big, and for years she exercised the only culturally approved option, which was to hate her body.</p>
<p>But disgust at fat bodies, West argues, is not innate. She writes of overcoming her own feelings with a self-crafted aversion therapy that involves looking at naked fat women online. (Really.) She writes of realizing, in her 20s, that her signature weakness — her body — was, in fact, “an opportunity. It was political. It moved the world just by existing.”</p>
<p>Working at the Stranger, an alternative Seattle newspaper, a few years back, she publicly took on a higher-up whose writings on the obesity crisis were, she thought, intended to shame people like her. The resulting piece — “Hello, I Am Fat,” posted alongside a photograph of West — utilized what would become her signature rhetorical jujitsu. With her self-deprecating humor and logistical skill, West turns her vulnerabilities into strengths. She is sharp and funny and likable, which makes her cool, which makes her not how people imagine mouthy feminists to be, even in this Amy Schumer age.</p>
<p>In more recent years, West has dissected the gender war that ensues when male comedians make rape jokes, and analyzed the function of the jokes themselves. In her book, she neatly encapsulates the counterargument to those who say that she’s trying to censor comics (she isn’t), or that comics should be able to say whatever they like (certainly they can) without repercussion (no dice). She explains the comedic principle of never punching down, and how making light of sexual violence typically fails the important test of being funny. And she recounts how her writing on the topic led her to debate comic Jim Norton on a cable TV show, which led to swarms of men threatening her with rape and worse in an online attack campaign — which led to another of West’s epiphanies.</p>
<p>“They’d handed me a gift, I realized. A suffocating deluge of violent misogyny was how American comedy fans reacted to a woman suggesting that comedy might have a misogyny problem.”</p>
<p>West had someone film her reading the worst messages she’d received, and posted it online, prompting a turnaround on Twitter. Cultural jujitsu, again.</p>
<p>Still, the losses that accompany being a woman online are significant, and serve to drive home the courage of West and many others — feminists, critics, sportswriters, gamers. The drumbeat of rape and mutilation threats have shut many a good woman down, which is precisely their point. West writes about the inadequacy of our prevailing wisdoms — that such threats don’t count because they’re made online, that they should simply be ignored, that they’re the price of existing on the internet.</p>
<p>She also writes of other pleasures she has lost: of being unable to watch stand-up comedy anymore because it has been the site of so much hostility, of having to stop listening to an earlier era of “The Howard Stern Show” because the price of all that sharp humor was the debasement of so many of Stern’s female guests.</p>
<p>“In a certain light,” West observes crisply, “feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you.”</p>
<p>“Shrill” movingly recounts other chapters in West’s life, including an abortion she had at 27, her marriage and the death of her father. But it’s her ability to flip cultural assumptions that fill this reader, at least, with awe.</p>
<p />
<p><a href="" type="internal">Purchase in the Truthdig Bazaar</a></p>
<p>One of the more stunning moments in this book is West’s account of her confrontation with a cyberbully. In 2013, she was harassed online by a man pretending to be her dead father. She made her hurt public, writing about it in a piece on how women are (mis)treated on the internet.</p>
<p>The perpetrator e-mailed her and apologized. West followed up by interviewing the guy for “This American Life.” That radio piece played like vindication for any citizen of the online world who has ever been anonymously harassed, and demonstrated if that anyone can reach an internet troll, it’s Lindy West. She was sad and angry, but also deeply compassionate, using her humanity as a wedge to elicit his. “You can’t claim to be okay with women and then go online and insult them — seek them out to harm them emotionally,” the man told her, acknowledging his past closet misogyny. “I don’t know what else to say except that I’m sorry,” he added later.</p>
<p>The whole exchange would have been impossible if West hadn’t been willing to engage on the front lines of cultural debate, to absorb the blows and keep coming. That segment, like “Shrill,” showcases her optimism about humans, about our ability to talk things through and be better to one another.</p>
<p>Thank goodness she still believes in us.</p>
<p>Libby Copeland is a former Washington Post staff writer.</p>
<p>©2016, Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group</p> | Shrill | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/shrill/ | 2016-06-17 | 4 |
<p>Investing.com – Taiwan stocks were lower after the close on Wednesday, as losses in the , and sectors led shares lower.</p>
<p>At the close in Taiwan, the lost 0.54%.</p>
<p>The best performers of the session on the were Abocom Systems Inc (TW:), which rose 9.90% or 3.00 points to trade at 33.30 at the close. Meanwhile, VIA Technologies Inc (TW:) added 9.85% or 1.00 points to end at 11.15 and Logah Technology Corp (TW:) was up 9.84% or 1.50 points to 16.75 in late trade.</p>
<p>The worst performers of the session were Genius Electronic Optical Co Ltd (TW:), which fell 8.34% or 35.50 points to trade at 390.00 at the close. Grand Pacific Petrochemical Corp (TW:) declined 7.32% or 1.90 points to end at 24.05 and Calin Technology Co Ltd (TW:) was down 6.31% or 2.95 points to 43.80.</p>
<p>Falling stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the Taiwan Stock Exchange by 547 to 237 and 89 ended unchanged.</p>
<p>Shares in Abocom Systems Inc (TW:) rose to 5-year highs; up 9.90% or 3.00 to 33.30. Shares in Logah Technology Corp (TW:) rose to 52-week highs; rising 9.84% or 1.50 to 16.75.</p>
<p>Crude oil for November delivery was up 0.80% or 0.40 to $50.30 a barrel. Elsewhere in commodities trading, Brent oil for delivery in November rose 0.44% or 0.24 to hit $55.38 a barrel, while the December Gold Futures contract rose 0.47% or 6.11 to trade at $1316.71 a troy ounce.</p>
<p>USD/TWD was down 0.02% to 30.123, while TWD/CNY fell 0.18% to 0.2181.</p>
<p>The US Dollar Index Futures was down 0.09% at 91.54.</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> | Taiwan stocks lower at close of trade; Taiwan Weighted down 0.54% | false | https://newsline.com/taiwan-stocks-lower-at-close-of-trade-taiwan-weighted-down-0-54/ | 2017-09-20 | 1 |
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<p>LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas’ plan to resume capital punishment after nearly 12 years seemed on its way to being blocked by rulings related to the lethal drugs it wants to use, but in the end arguments over the inmates’ mental health led to them being spared.</p>
<p>As state officials prepare to carry out a double execution Thursday ahead of a drug expiration deadline and despite the setback the U.S. Supreme Court delivered late Monday, lawyers for those condemned men look to be taking a different approach: claiming the prisoners are actually innocent.</p>
<p>One of the inmates set to die, Stacey Johnson, says advanced DNA techniques could show that he didn’t kill Carol Heath, a 25-year-old mother of two, in 1993 at her DeQueen apartment. Meanwhile, Ledell Lee argued unsuccessfully Tuesday in a Little Rock courtroom that he be given a chance to test blood and hair evidence that could prove he didn’t beat 26-year-old Debra Reese to death during a 1993 robbery in Jacksonville. An appeal is possible.</p>
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<p>Lawyers are known to make multiple arguments to save their clients’ lives in the final hours. The state and its lawyers say the inmates are seeking any legal approach they can find in their efforts to avoid death.</p>
<p>“It is understandable that the inmates are taking every step possible to avoid the sentence of the jury; however, it is the court’s responsibility to administer justice and bring conclusion to litigation,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday in an emailed statement. “It is that process that we are seeing played out day by day, and we expect it to continue.</p>
<p>“My job as governor is to work with the attorney general to make sure that justice is accomplished and the law of Arkansas is carried out, and that’s what we’re working every day to accomplish,” he said.</p>
<p>The Republican governor had set an aggressive schedule of eight executions by the end of April, when the state’s supply midazolam, a key lethal injection drug, expires. If the state had moved ahead with its 11-day execution plan, it would have been the most inmates put to death by any state in such a short period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.</p>
<p>Don Davis and Bruce Ward were supposed to be the first two executed. They won stays from the Arkansas Supreme Court on Monday after lawyers argued their mental health issues were similar enough to those raised in an Alabama case going before the U.S. Supreme Court next week.</p>
<p>The execution of a third inmate, Jason McGehee, had been set for April 27, but a federal judge put it on hold earlier this month, saying McGehee was entitled to a 30-day comment period after the Arkansas Parole Board told the governor that the inmate’s clemency request had merit.</p>
<p>That leaves five men set for execution in an eight-day period starting Thursday. It’s the quickest timetable in Arkansas since 1926, though state officials say waiting more than two decades to put some of the killers to death could hardly be characterized as swift.</p>
<p>“The families have waited far too long to see justice, and I will continue to make that a priority,” Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said late Monday.</p>
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<p>Lawyers for the inmates set to be executed Thursday are relying primarily on claims the men are innocent. Johnson’s attorney, Jeff Rosenzweig, wants a court to order new DNA testing on hair found in the victim’s apartment and on clothing that prosecutors found at a rest stop and linked to Johnson.</p>
<p>“That’s something we had sought from the state and federal courts and had been denied, and we’re making another run at it and showing that there are new techniques that came into effect literally this year that can provide results that can bear on the case,” Rosenzweig said.</p>
<p>Rosenzweig also represents two other inmates scheduled to die this month — Jack Jones and Kenneth Williams. He said neither man would raise innocence claims. They instead will rely again on whether the sedative midazolam could present a risk of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution.</p>
<p>In addition to Lee’s innocence claim, his lawyers want to know whether their client has an intellectual disability that wasn’t properly investigated during his trials.</p>
<p>“Mr. Lee has never had the opportunity to have his case truly investigated, despite serious questions about guilt, and his intellectual disability,” Lee’s attorney, Cassandra Stubbs, said.</p>
<p>Separate from the inmates’ legal challenges, a handful of drug companies are saying they don’t want their products used in the executions. Two pharmaceutical companies filed a court brief last week asking a federal judge to block Arkansas from using their drugs, but the judge did not rule on that issue.</p>
<p>The medical supplier McKesson Corp. refiled its lawsuit Tuesday before a judge in Pulaski County. McKesson seeks an order that would force prison officials to return the company’s supply of vecuronium bromide, one of three drugs used in the state’s lethal injection protocol.</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Follow Sean Murphy at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy" type="external">www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy</a> and Kelly P. Kissel at <a href="http://www.twitter.com/kisselAP" type="external">www.twitter.com/kisselAP</a> .</p> | Arkansas inmates try variety of arguments to avoid death | false | https://abqjournal.com/989367/arkansas-vows-to-keep-pushing-for-executions-despite-setback.html | 2017-04-18 | 2 |
<p>JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel and China have signed a $300 million trade agreement meant to boost the export of Israeli environmental-friendly energy and agricultural technologies to China, Israel’s Finance Ministry said on Monday.</p>
<p>Foreign Minister Moshe Kahlon was in Beijing to sign the “clean-tech” deal which builds on past agreements, the ministry said in a statement.</p>
<p>The new deal, it said, “allows the two sides to expand bilateral economic activity into other environmental-friendly technologies, including advanced agriculture technologies and smart and green energy technologies, which the Chinese government wants to implement using Israeli experience and expertise.”</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> | Israel and China sign $300 million 'clean-tech' trade agreement | false | https://newsline.com/israel-and-china-sign-300-million-039clean-tech039-trade-agreement/ | 2017-09-11 | 1 |
<p>For the Halloween episode of <a href="https://www.fool.com/podcasts/answers/?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b48e2aec-c2db-11e7-a29c-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Motley Fool Answers Opens a New Window.</a>, Alison Southwick and Robert Brokamp engage in a spirited discussion of the horrors some folks have visited upon their families' finances from the afterlife by making big mistakes in estate planning.</p>
<p>In this segment, they discuss a nonfamous fellow, DuPont&#160;employee William Kennedy, who -- as sometimes happens -- divorced his wife. At the time, the ex agreed to waive her rights to his retirement plan assets. When he died though, guess where the money went.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>A full transcript follows the video.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than&#160;Wal-MartWhen investing geniuses David and Tom&#160;Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they&#160;have run for over a decade, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
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<p>*Stock Advisor returns as of November 6, 2017The author(s) may have a position in any stocks mentioned.</p>
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<p>This video was recorded on Oct. 31, 2017.</p>
<p>Alison Southwick: Just when you thought she was out of your life for good, it's Zombie Wife.</p>
<p>Robert Brokamp: This is the case of William Kennedy. Not part of the famous Kennedy family. This Kennedy worked for DuPont and participated in the company's retirement plan. In 1994 he and his wife, whose name was Liv, got divorced and in the agreement she waived any rights to his retirement plan.</p>
<p>Seven years later, William passes away. The money, however, was sent from the retirement plan to the wife. Why? Because William did not update the beneficiary form on his retirement plan. When you signed up for your 401(k) at work, you filled out the beneficiary form, but you also have that on IRAs. You have it on life insurance policies. There are all types of different assets and accounts in which you've filled out the beneficiary form.</p>
<p>He didn't update it, so the daughter who should have [or at least she thought] should have inherited the money took it to court. Went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2009. They decided for Liv, the ex-wife. She's the one who gets the $400,000.</p>
<p>Southwick: Oh, that's not bad! That's not too shabby.</p>
<p>Brokamp: No, not too bad. The lesson here is to review and update your beneficiary forms and include copies with all your other important papers.</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFAlison/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b48e2aec-c2db-11e7-a29c-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Alison Southwick Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. <a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFBro/info.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b48e2aec-c2db-11e7-a29c-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">Robert Brokamp, CFP Opens a New Window.</a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a <a href="http://www.fool.com/Legal/fool-disclosure-policy.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;referring_guid=b48e2aec-c2db-11e7-a29c-0050569d32b9&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">disclosure policy Opens a New Window.</a>.</p> | Haunting Estate Planning Errors: The Case of the Zombie Documents | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/11/07/haunting-estate-planning-errors-case-zombie-documents.html | 2017-11-07 | 0 |
<p>The Obama administration has announced plans on Sunday to host a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism next month in the wake of terrorist shootings in France.</p>
<p>The event, which will take place on Feb. 18, will highlight both domestic and international efforts to stop violent extremists from radicalizing individuals and recruiting supporters to commit acts of violence in both the United States and abroad, according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest as quoted by <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/11/obama-france-summit-on-countering-violent-extremism-feb-18/21590077/" type="external">USA Today</a>.</p>
<p>Officials from both the United States and several other countries are expected to participate in the summit, which came about after the recent deadly shooting at the headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Earnest said the attack made anti-extremist efforts “even more imperative.”</p>
<p>The summit was announced at the same time as a massive counter-terrorism rally was held in Paris. The event drew leaders from around the world, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder.</p>
<p>The administration will seek a strategy of dealing with extremism at a local level, particularly by utilizing educators, health professionals, religious leaders, and local law enforcement. There have already been pilot programs in Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Los Angeles, according to Earnest.</p>
<p>Officials from other nations will also weigh in to discuss their own projects, again focused on the theme of community engagement.</p>
<p>The White House will provide a list of participants, as well as an agenda, at some point in the near future.</p>
<p>It has been a week of horror in France, with 17 people killed by three terror suspects over three days. The first 12 were shot in dramatic fashion at Charlie Hebdo headquarters in downtown Paris, sparking a massive manhunt. The next day, a French policewoman was shot to death, and on the final day, four hostages were killed at a Jewish grocery before police gunned down the suspected terrorists.</p>
<p /> | Obama announces plans for anti-terrorism summit | false | http://natmonitor.com/2015/01/12/obama-announces-plans-for-anti-terrorism-summit/ | 2015-01-12 | 3 |
<p>This morning, a Reuters article published at <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/id/47958164" type="external">CNBC</a> asked: “Is <a href="" type="internal">Mitt Romney</a> the new darling of Silicon Valley?” Succinctly answered: not quite, but he’s certainly making inroads.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">President Barack Obama</a> still holds a massive lead over Romney in Silicon Valley donations, though he’s also certainly lost some ground with technology sector donors over his 2008 showing. The Reuters article notes that in 2008, Obama– young, tech-savvy, addicted to his Blackberry– was an icon and darling of the tech world. By this time in that last election cycle, <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/" type="external">he had raised $1.6 million</a> from employees of 15 top tech companies. This cycle, that total has dropped to $1.44 million from the same 15 companies.</p>
<p>Romney still trails far behind Obama in the technology sector, with a comparatively modest haul of $340,000 from the same 15 tech companies. Still, that’s a marked improvement over Sen. John McCain’s $240,000 at this point in 2008. Romney also has some important Silicon Valley figures behind his campaign. Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, who supported Obama in 2008, is supporting Romney this cycle. Tech giant and Republican, Meg Whitman, famous for her stellar performance as CEO of eBay and presently working as CEO of Hewlett-Packard after a failed 2010 bid for Governor of California, is also backing Mitt Romney and is a co-chair of the Romney 2012 campaign.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Obama– though still clearly Silicon Valley’s darling in the 2012 presidential contest– is getting a cooler reception than he had in 2008. Since then, some in the tech industry have come to view Obama as broadly hostile to business for introducing market uncertainty and increasing costs for businesses with Democratic reforms to the financial and health insurance industries. Before he died, Apple founder Steve Jobs told Obama that he would not win a second term without being more friendly to business. He also reportedly told the president that the jobs Apple had outsourced to Asia would never be coming back to the US.</p>
<p>Is there a place then, for Silicon Valley donors who are cooling to Obama, but clearly reluctant to support Mitt Romney? Put in the perspective of the broader two-party system, is there a place in our political landscape for tech industry types who support what they would call more fiscally conservative, business-friendly, free market public policy like Republicans (claim to), yet are socially more progressive and in line with Democratic rhetoric? Not in the two-party system. Not among <a href="" type="internal">Democrats</a> who differ with them on economic issues, nor among <a href="" type="internal">Republicans</a> who are heavily animated by social conservative issues.</p>
<p>The answer, then, is for technology sector workers who have this problem of “political homelessness” to declare their independence from the two party system, by either championing their principles as critical voices and mavericks within the major party of their choice and refusing to be dogged by party groupthink; by finding a third party that represents their beliefs and principles best; or by becoming unaffiliated from any political party and voting as an independent. Because of <a href="" type="internal">open primary</a> reforms happening across the country, especially in <a href="" type="internal">California</a>, where so much of the technology sector resides, these options have never been easier, more practical, and more powerful.</p> | Mitt Romney Making Inroads to Silicon Valley Donors, Though Still Trailing Obama | false | https://ivn.us/2012/06/26/mitt-romney-making-inroads-silicon-valley-donors-though-still-trailing-obama/ | 2012-06-26 | 2 |
<p>Worried that the impending merger of American Airlines and US Airways would kill domestic competition, the Justice Department is suing on antitrust grounds.</p>
<p>“This transaction would result in consumers paying the price — in higher air fares, higher fees and fewer choices,” Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.</p>
<p>European regulators approved the deal, but officials in the U.S. are troubled by the prospect of only three major domestic airlines. They dispute the claim that neither company can succeed independently, pointing to US Airways’ profits and American’s big-ticket purchases.</p>
<p>BBC:</p>
<p />
<p>The department also cited American Airlines’ purchase two years ago of 460 new planes, said to be the largest such order in industry history.</p>
<p>If the merger continues, there will be only three major US airlines, which the justice department alleges “increasingly prefer tacit coordination over full-throated competition”.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23687680" type="external">Read more</a></p>
<p>In the last dozen years, the airline industry has had to contend with recession, the 9/11 flight ban, rising fuel costs and bad plane design. At the same time, consumers have been paying more and more for less, with previously complimentary services — like seats that can fit an adult human — now costing a premium.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Peter Z. Scheer</a></p> | Justice Dept. Seeks to Block Airline Merger, Says 'American People Deserve Better' | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/justice-dept-seeks-to-block-airline-merger-says-american-people-deserve-better/ | 2013-08-14 | 4 |
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<p>“It’s a lot better than having a lockout,” Wall said.</p>
<p>Such was the sentiment around much of the NBA on Wednesday night, when it was announced that the sides reached an agreement in principle on a new labor deal. All that remains before at least six more years of guaranteed NBA labor peace are ratification votes by owners and players, which are likely to be no more than formalities.</p>
<p>Basic details include increases in values of rookie-scale contracts and exceptions, with a 45 percent increase in minimum salaries across the board in the first year of the new agreement. The rookie deals will be proportionate to the salary cap, either rising or falling as that does. The average salary is expected to hit $8.5 million next season and rise to $10 million by 2020-21.</p>
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<p>There’s never been more money in basketball, and neither side wanted that disrupted. So on Wednesday, one day before the deadline for either side to opt out of the current deal, negotiations were wrapped up and the sort of strife that caused some seasons to be shortened in the past was avoided without drama or fanfare.</p>
<p>It was announced simply, in a short statement. And then 10 games went on as scheduled, just as they will now for years to come.</p>
<p>“The game is going great for both the owners and players,” Chicago Bulls guard Dwyane Wade said. “We talked about having a real partnership in the last labor negotiations. These are definitely signs that things are going in the right direction.”</p>
<p>Three people briefed on the terms said the proposed deal is for seven seasons, with an opt-out possible after six. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because neither side released specific details.</p>
<p>If the deal is ratified, the season will start a week earlier, preseason games would be capped at six and one of the most dreaded elements of the schedule — the four-games-in-five-days stretches — may be eliminated. The deadline for opting out is now Jan. 13, with the NBA saying that’s “in order to give both sides enough time to review the terms of the agreement and vote to ratify.”</p>
<p>“I think all players wanted to shorten the preseason,” Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry said.</p>
<p>Most players who were in games on Wednesday didn’t find out until afterward about the announcement from the NBA and National Basketball Players Association. Many were not surprised that an arrangement was reached, although some said they expected the sides might have to extend the opt-out deadline to continue working toward a deal.</p>
<p>That’s not necessary now.</p>
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<p>The last major hurdle was a group licensing agreement. Among the four major U.S. pro sports leagues, the NBA was the only one that controlled its players’ marketing rights for sponsorships and media. Upon approval of this deal, that control will now shift to the players.</p>
<p>“Great for the league,” Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers said. “You kind of felt it was going that way. Everyone is doing well. The league is doing well. That is just absolutely wonderful news.”</p>
<p>Even while the news was widely perceived as good, the deal isn’t done.</p>
<p>There’s been no vote, nothing’s been signed, and that left some not wanting to celebrate quite yet. San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich declined to comment on the proposed deal, and Spurs guard Danny Green kept his reaction on the cautious side.</p>
<p>“We’re all hoping for the best,” Green said, “and I think a good outcome is coming.”</p>
<p>Both sides expressed optimism throughout this process, pointing to the league’s skyrocketing revenue and salaries — thanks to a massive new television deal — and rising TV ratings. The last lockout lasted 161 days and shortened the 2011-12 season.</p>
<p>“It’s good,” Oklahoma City Thunder star Russell Westbrook said. “Better than last time.”</p>
<p>___</p>
<p>Krawczynski reported from Minneapolis. AP Sports Writers Dan Gelston in Philadelphia, Howard Fendrich in Washington, Kristie Rieken in Houston and Kareem Copeland in Salt Lake City, and Associated Press Writers Terrance Harris in Orlando and Raul Dominguez in San Antonio contributed.</p> | Game on: NBA players pleased about proposed labor deal | false | https://abqjournal.com/909336/game-on-nba-players-pleased-about-proposed-labor-deal.html | 2016-12-15 | 2 |
<p>&gt; <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/322733p-275897c.html" type="external">Ebony is looking to lend its brand name to T-shirts, other things (NYDN)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0506260242jun26,1,1588921.story" type="external">In war, no single news org has been as bloodied as Al-Arabiya (ChiTrib)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.newsday.com/business/local/newyork/ny-news4319158jun25,0,1843277.story" type="external">Judge says NYDN can proceed with conciliation game drawing (Newsday)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.nypost.com/business/48962.htm" type="external">Mansueto reaches definitive deal to buy Fast Company, Inc. mags (NYP)</a> &gt; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/27/business/media/27carr.html" type="external">Florio: I okayed, but didn't write "way over-the-top" book proposal (NYT)</a></p> | Additional items for June 27, 2005 | false | https://poynter.org/news/additional-items-june-27-2005 | 2005-06-27 | 2 |
<p>Photo by Peter Z. Scheer</p>
<p>Two Los Angeles natives are fighting the city’s outrageous parking tickets and associated fines on the grounds that they violate due process and are “grossly disproportionate to the failure to put a dollar or two in the meter.”</p>
<p>The actual tickets in question are $63, but they double in price if not paid in a couple of weeks and there are late fees and other penalties besides.</p>
<p>According to the claim, as quoted by <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2014/02/26/are-las-insane-parking-tickets-unconstitutional-federal-lawsuit-says-yes" type="external">LA Weekly</a>, “Imposition of these penalties is particularly onerous as to and is proportionately affects low income or even average income workers in the Los Angeles area.” In other words, it’s a regressive tax that screws poor people.</p>
<p />
<p>California is a state notorious for squeezing the little guy, in part because Prop. 13 made it difficult to raise funds in the traditional manner: taxes. That means car registration fees are unusually high, as are parking tickets.</p>
<p>Los Angeles was once a sprawling metropolis with easy parking, but the city has grown denser over the years. That’s probably good for sustainability (people should not commute 80 miles to work), but it also means less parking and more prey for the meter maid.</p>
<p>Next item on L.A.’s list of ticket outrages: the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2013/dec/18/opinion/la-ed-jaywalking-20131218" type="external">$250 jaywalking ticket</a> you get for crossing a street when the red hand is flashing.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Peter Z. Scheer</a></p> | Is It Constitutional to Charge $175 for a Parking Ticket? | true | https://truthdig.com/articles/is-it-constitutional-to-charge-175-for-a-parking-ticket/ | 2014-02-27 | 4 |
<p>On an annual basis, abortion mill Planned Parenthood receives <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-hunter/planned-parenthood-we-got-5284-million-taxpayer-funds-one-year" type="external">over half a billion dollars</a> from American taxpayers. As some Republicans push for the defunding of the scandal-ridden <a href="" type="internal">lucrative nonprofit</a> in proposed health care bills, the Left has sought to fearmonger over the proposal and fashion supporters of the effort as far-right, anti-woman extremists.</p>
<p>"But the reality is that many women who have gone to the abortion industry for care – like myself – are some of the most vocal proponents of defunding the abortion provider," says Ally Bowlin, <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/had-abortion-want-planned-parenthood-defunded/" type="external">writing</a> at Live Action News.</p>
<p>Bowlin explains how she succumbed to the lies of the pro-abortion movement and regretfully had an abortion. At a follow-up appointment at a Planned Parenthood facility, Bowlin says she was treated "like a number," void of any real "care" the company <a href="https://s3-media4.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/YVeZjFUFCUqccsxnv9semg/o.jpg" type="external">so often touts</a>.</p>
<p>"Unfortunately, I succumbed to society’s lies and the devaluing of women in the abortion industry at 21 years old," says Bowlin. "My post-abortion follow-up appointment at Planned Parenthood was no more than 15 minutes, not counting the 30 minutes past my appointment time in the waiting room and then another 15 to even see the doctor. Planned Parenthood treated me like a number toward their quota."</p>
<p>Bowlin says she was quickly passed off after informing a Planned Parenthood clinician that her abortion had taken and she was no longer pregnant; she received no education on contraception (though she says she was on birth control pills at the time she became pregnant), was not informed of any physical side effects from the abortion, or given any counseling options to deal with the emotional trauma:</p>
<p>Planned Parenthood provided no education about contraception failing, even though I – along with a shocking percentage of women obtaining abortions – was on birth control when I got pregnant. ... Nor did Planned Parenthood provide any education about the effects the abortion could have on me (it turns out there were many, and they were severe). There were no counseling options.</p>
<p>The post-abortive mother now works at a pro-life nonprofit called <a href="" type="internal">Human Coalition</a> where she can "use my past and my voice to be a voice for the children lost to get the Planned Parenthood monster defunded."</p>
<p>"If Planned Parenthood is all about 'empowering women,' caring for women in need, or educating and training women, then why was I pushed out the door before I could even ask any questions?" she asks. "And I am not an outlier, a singular example of Planned Parenthood misogyny and profiteering. Former Planned Parenthood managers have confirmed that my experience of sub-par care and being ushered through the business quickly is Planned Parenthood’s business model."</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwoAyRs48pk" type="external">Other</a> <a href="https://www.liveaction.org/news/woman-coerced-into-abortion-had-a-horrible-experience-at-planned-parenthood/" type="external">women</a> who have been victimized by Planned Parenthood have publicly come forward to ring the alarm on the company's business practices, "and countless other women carry their heartbreak silently because they have not been empowered to speak out for themselves and their children," says Bowlin.</p>
<p>And for women who have tragically died from complications of abortions performed at Planned Parenthood, such as 24-year-old Cree Erwin, their families have <a href="" type="internal">bravely come forward</a> to lift the veil on the corrupt corporation.</p>
<p>"If we knew how many women and families carried the overwhelming grief of abortion in silence, the number would be paralyzing. It has become my mission to change that – to rally the voices of women whom the abortion industry has tried to silence – and end the barbaric, anti-woman practice of abortion in America once and for all," concludes Bowlin.</p> | Former Planned Parenthood Client: Defund Them. Now. | true | https://dailywire.com/news/18906/woman-who-had-abortion-planned-parenthood-defund-amanda-prestigiacomo | 2017-07-24 | 0 |
<p />
<p>This cartoon requires Macromedia’s Flash Player. If you don’t see the cartoon above, <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="external">download the player here</a>.</p>
<p>Mark Fiore is an editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a <a href="http://www.markfiore.com" type="external">web site</a> featuring his work.</p>
<p /> | Sort-of-ocracy | true | https://motherjones.com/politics/2004/06/sort-ocracy/ | 2004-06-30 | 4 |
<p />
<p>With just a few weeks to go in 2016, it's clear that Home Depot (NYSE: HD) will likely notch one of the best performances in the entire retailing industry. Sales are on pace to rise 6% to $93 billion as earnings spike 16% to $6.33 per share, or more than double its profit haul from just three years ago.</p>
<p>Continue Reading Below</p>
<p>Not only has the home improvement giant beat most national retailers on these metrics, but it also trounced industry rival Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) as it continues to soak up valuable market share. Here are the key moves executives made that helped produce such a strong year for Home Depot's business.</p>
<p>Several factors contributed to its market-thumping growth pace, including product initiatives that set Home Depot apart from rivals through putting <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/31/5-fun-products-that-home-depot-thinks-will-keep-cu.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">exclusive tools and gadgets Opens a New Window.</a> on the shelves. The company's biggest win, though, was with the professional subset of customers. These contractors and business owners tend to spend much more cash during a given visit, and their increasing demand fully offset a slowdown in overall customer traffic growth.</p>
<p>Image source: Getty Images.</p>
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<p>In the third quarter, for example, transactions valued at over $900 soared higher by 11%, accelerating from the prior quarter's 8% jump. As a result, Home Depot was able to improve its comparable-store sales growth pace to 6% from 5% even in the context of weak customer traffic. Lowe's, in contrast, <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/11/17/2-ways-home-depot-inc-just-trounced-rival-lowes.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">expanded sales by just 3% in its U.S. stores Opens a New Window.</a>.</p>
<p>Home Depot believes this customer group will continue to power outsized sales gains in the coming year, which is why it is targeting them with improved product offerings, faster order delivery, and a private-label credit card that carries perks like extended payment options.</p>
<p>Every national retailer agrees that a thriving e-commerce channel is critical to healthy overall sales growth. And most of these businesses are backing up their claims with hefty investments. Target, for one, has dedicated years of effort into trying to become a leader in the digital space. The company plans to lean heavily on its website and shopping apps to give it a boost this holiday shopping season, too.</p>
<p>But Home Depot is seeing better results out of its <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/09/22/why-home-depot-inc-needed-a-new-16-million-square.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">e-commerce investments Opens a New Window.</a>. Online sales spiked by 17% last quarter to reach just under 6% of total sales. Target's comparable metric is mired below 4%.</p>
<p>Image source: Home Depot investor presentation.</p>
<p>With nearly half of its online orders picked up at stores, Home Depot can be confident that its physical warehouse base is still relevant to its customer base. However, it isn't just sitting on its prior successes. The retailer is currently rolling out buy-online-ship-from-store functionality, to complete the main pillars of its interconnected retailing offerings.</p>
<p>Home Depot just upgraded its stock buyback spending plans to $7 billion from the $5 billion it had originally targeted for 2016. Already this year the company has retired $4.6 billion of its shares, reducing its outstanding share count by nearly 4%.</p>
<p>This spending has helped supercharge earnings growth while delivering a larger portion of profits to shareholders. Per-share earnings grew by 19% last quarter, for example, outpacing the 14% increase in overall profits.</p>
<p>The key trade off for the business is increased debt, since that's a key source of the buyback funds. Management has demonstrated impressive results with its use of debt, though. The company's return on invested capital (ROIC) has jumped 3 percentage points to 29% -- making the retailer <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/27/1-number-that-shows-home-depot-is-an-unusually-str.aspx?&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_source=foxbusiness" type="external">one of the leading stocks in the market Opens a New Window.</a> on that key metric.</p>
<p>Home Depot's long-term plan calls for ROIC to touch 35% in 2018 at around the same time that profit margin hits 15% and annual sales climb past $100 billion. This year's results suggest that, if anything, those targets might be reached sooner than executives originally thought.</p>
<p>10 stocks we like better than Home Depot When investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner have a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, the newsletter they have run for over a decade, Motley Fool Stock Advisor, has tripled the market.*</p>
<p>David and Tom just revealed what they believe are the <a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=125c9a36-74e7-4beb-a015-5bab305cee7e&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 Home Depot wasn't one of them! That's right -- they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.</p>
<p><a href="http://infotron.fool.com/infotrack/click?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fool.com%2Fmms%2Fmark%2Fe-foolcom-sa-bbn-dyn%3Faid%3D8867%26source%3Disaeditxt0010449%26ftm_cam%3Dsa-bbn-evergreen%26ftm_pit%3D6312%26ftm_veh%3Dbbn_article_pitch&amp;impression=125c9a36-74e7-4beb-a015-5bab305cee7e&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 Nov. 7, 2016</p>
<p><a href="http://my.fool.com/profile/TMFSigma/info.aspx" type="external">Demitrios Kalogeropoulos Opens a New Window.</a> owns shares of Home Depot. The Motley Fool recommends Home Depot. 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> | Home Depot Inc.'s Best Moves in 2016 | true | http://foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/12/06/home-depot-inc-best-moves-in-2016.html | 2016-12-06 | 0 |
<p>Why did President Obama order the death of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year-old American son of radical American imam Anwar al-Awlaki? Investigative reporter and VICE correspondent Greg Palast thinks he knows.</p>
<p>U.S. forces killed the younger Awlaki with a drone in Yemen in October 2011 two weeks after his father was killed hundreds of miles away. American officials erroneously claimed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, born in Denver, Colo., was a 21-year-old militant. They were forced to abandon that story when the Awlaki family presented his birth certificate.</p>
<p>On his <a href="http://www.facebook.com/abdulrahman.alawlaki?sk=wall" type="external">Facebook profile</a>, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki listed his second name as “Ibn Al-Shaykh,” which translates to “Son of the Sheikh.” He also wrote that he loved swimming, rap and hip-hop.</p>
<p>— Posted by <a href="" type="internal">Alexander Reed Kelly</a>.</p>
<p />
<p>Greg Palast at VICE:</p>
<p>I am convinced the hit on al-Awlaki’s son was meant to teach a lesson; If you want to be a martyr, we’ll make your son and your mum and daughter martyrs, too.</p>
<p>Such terror-for-terror can be, I’ll admit, quite effective. During the Ronald Reagan years, that gutless faux-cowboy President sent weapons to Ayatollah Khomeini in return for the release of hostages taken by Hezbollah. The Russians got their hostages home another way. The USSR didn’t accept an arms-for-hostage deal. Rather, the KGB systematically assassinated the hostage-takers’ cousins, mothers and brothers one by one – until Hezbollah released all the Russian hostages.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-drone-ranger-obamas-dirty-wars" type="external">Read more</a></p> | Thinking About Terrorism? Think Twice | true | http://truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/thinking_about_terrorism_think_twice_20130615/ | 2013-06-15 | 4 |
<p>A woman was taken into custody after hurling what she said was a shoe at Hillary Clinton during a Las Vegas speech — and the former secretary of state was quick with a witty comeback.</p>
<p>The bizarre incident happened just moments after Clinton took the stage Thursday at an Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries meeting at the Mandalay Bay Hotel &amp; Casino.</p>
<p>The former first lady, 66, ducked, but did not appear to be struck by the flying object. She quickly joked about the incident.</p>
<p><a href="" type="internal">Clinton</a> quipped: "Is that somebody throwing something at me? Is that part of Cirque du Soleil?"</p>
<p>She added: "My goodness, I didn't know that solid waste management was so controversial. Thank goodness she didn't play softball like I did."</p>
<p>Ilene Rosen, a witness and the wife of a conventioneer, told the Associated Press the unidentified object-thrower walked down the aisle and got roughly six rows from the front of the seating area when she threw the object.</p>
<p>The woman then turned around, threw her hands in the air and walked toward the back of the room before ushers surrounded her, Rosen told the wire service.</p>
<p>Security officers escorted the woman out of the room. She said she threw a shoe but didn't identify herself to reporters or explain why she did it.</p> | Woman Throws Shoe at Hillary Clinton in Las Vegas | false | http://nbcnews.com/news/us-news/woman-throws-shoe-hillary-clinton-las-vegas-n77371 | 2014-04-11 | 3 |
<p><a href="" type="internal" /></p>
<p>With Congressional District 36 candidate Michael Chamness being denied an injunction to suspend electoral rules in the upcoming special election, he was dealt yet another blow when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied him a writ of mandamus in a case meant to challenge California’s new top two open primary measure.</p>
<p>At the same time, as the Manhattan Beach Patch <a href="http://manhattanbeach.patch.com/articles/federal-judge-denies-candidates-request-to-suspend-election-rules-2" type="external">reported</a>, the Ninth Circuit Court did urge the lower court to rule quickly on the request from Chamness. This comes as the higher court was considering blocking the top two open primary law that prevented Mr. Chamness from running with his desired political label. On April 1, the legal team of Mr. Chamness filed an emergency appeal with the Ninth District Court in San Francisco.&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; “Unless he secures immediate, injunctive relief by tomorrow (April 1, 2011), Appellant Michael Chamness’ fundamental right to run for office will be irreparably harmed…Unless this Court intercedes, Coffee Party candidate Michael Chamness, whose name will appear on the ballot in the election, will be unlawfully banned from using the ballot label of “Independent,” and will instead be forced to use the ballot label of “No Party Preference”. In stark contrast, major party candidates in that election-including Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who is defending&#160;the election law at issue- will be allowed to list their party’s name on the ballot” the plaintiff’s attorney wrote in the March 31 emergency filing.</p>
<p>The emergency filing named the Defendants: California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Los Angeles County Regristrar-Recorder Dean Logan, and former legislator and staunch open primary supporter Abel Maldonado.</p>
<p>Per Mr. Chamness’ legal defense summary of the case, it was basically stated that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was reluctant to stop the machinery of the election without having the case fully briefed. Therefore, the request for an expedited hearing and injunction pending appeal were denied by this court. They also recognized the reality that Mr. Chamness will in all likelihood have to classify himself under the “No Party Preference” label for the May 17, 2011 special congressional election in the state of California against Secretary of State Bowen. With this being the case, regular proceedings to challenge the top two open primary will begin with papers being filed no later than April 27, 2011.</p>
<p>An interesting factor to take into account when following this case <a href="http://www.ballot-access.org/2011/03/30/u-s-district-court-refuses-to-any-relief-to-michael-chamness/" type="external">comes</a> from Ballot Access News, whose point will in all likelihood come up when the case is reviewed later this month:</p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; “No precedent supports the idea that “independent” can be banned for candidates who seek that label. The 6th circuit, and the Supreme Courts of Massachusetts and Minnesota, have all ruled in the past that ‘independent’ cannot be banned from the ballot.”</p>
<p>In Mr. Chamness’ pursuit of an injunction in District Court, before being considered by the Ninth Circuit, Judge Wright <a href="https://gautamdutta.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/court-order-denying-motion-for-preliminary-injunction-3-30-11.pdf" type="external">ruled</a> that there wasn’t sufficient evidence that the candidate was injured by the state of California not allowing his Coffee Party preference (or “independent”) to be next to his name on the ballot. Also included in Judge Wright’s assessment of the case is the fact that Mr. Chamness did not establish a likelihood of success on the merits of the case. &#160;</p> | Top two open primary overcomes latest legal challenge | false | https://ivn.us/2011/04/08/top-two-open-primary-overcomes-latest-legal-challenge/ | 2011-04-08 | 2 |
<p>On Friday, <a href="" type="internal">left-leaning</a> actress Sophia Bush penned a nasty “open letter” to a fan after he had the audacity to speak and even look at her on an airplane. The horror!</p>
<p>The Chicago P.D. star scolded the fan, whom she refers to as the “Random Dude on a plane,” for not picking up on her “visual cues” that apparently suggested that she wasn’t interested in speaking to his lowly self. She also classified the unnamed oblivious man’s actions as “harassment,” though she only accused him of speaking to her, seemingly about her show, and then “looking” at her after she moved her seat.</p>
<p>Bush posted screenshots of the letter to Twitter, with a classy middle-finger emoji captioning the tweet:</p>
<p><a href="https://t.co/ydOuaSWsPN" type="external">pic.twitter.com/ydOuaSWsPN</a></p>
<p>"When you make a woman so visibly uncomfortable, that after you’ve ignored all visual cues to please leave her alone (one word answers, she pulls out a book, puts on a hat, she actually asks you to not speak to her with the tone and words you’re choosing to use) that she finally GETS UP and MOVES SEATS, leave her alone," she wrote.</p>
<p>"Do not continue trying to make conversation," she continued. "Stop turning around and looking at her. Stop leaning out of your seat and towards her body when she has to grab something out of the overhead bin above her original seat, and sadly also above you, mid-flight."</p>
<p>Apparently, the man then talked to her about watching her TV show Chicago P.D. But his fandom, per Bush, doesn’t mean this peasant is "entitled" to speak to her, or in her words, make her “uncomfortable."</p>
<p>"And in my case, stop believing that you are entitled to make me uncomfortable because you 'watch my TV show' so I owe you some magical debt," wrote the actress.</p>
<p>She makes her money, “bro,” not you!</p>
<p>"I make it, you watch it. After that, the 'exchange' is done. You do not get to harass me, or any woman, because you think you pay our bills. You don’t bro, I DO," she wrote.</p>
<p>The dramatic account that Bush gives seems insanely far from “harassment” and more like an oblivious and excited fan trying to talk to her—especially due to his apparent reference to her show.</p>
<p>Also, by Bush labeling this encounter as “harassment," she only helps to water-down real acts of the same.</p>
<p>But the worst part of the act of martyrdom by poor Bush here is the feminist response of sympathies and #GirlPower. Left-wing <a href="http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a3604619/sophia-bush-open-letter-plane-harasser/" type="external">Cosmopolitan Magazine</a>, for instance, thought Bush slayed, or whatever.</p>
<p>Maybe Bush should have explicitly iterated all these thoughts to the fan who apparently bothered her so much at the time, instead of posting it to Twitter to get attention afterward.</p>
<p>Just a thought. I know women are too weak for that.</p> | Left-Wing Actress Sophia Bush Pens Nasty 'Open Letter' To Fan Who Dared Speaking To Her On A Plane | true | https://dailywire.com/news/9257/left-wing-actress-sofia-bush-pens-nasty-open-amanda-prestigiacomo | 2016-09-19 | 0 |
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<p>According to financial statements filed by Valencia Counseling Services Inc. with the state Attorney General’s Office, agency director Sam Vigil received a $100,000 lump sum when he officially retired last year and will get payments of $50,000 annually for 17 years.</p>
<p>Vigil, who still works at the nonprofit, at a reduced salary, said the “deferred compensation” package has been a great help to his retirement.</p>
<p>Medicaid payments to Valencia Counseling Services were suspended in late June because of still-secret audits of the nonprofit and 14 other providers.</p>
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<p>Vigil said the auditors never mentioned his retirement package.</p>
<p>“Nothing like that was ever brought up,” he said.</p>
<p>Valencia Counseling is an ongoing operation, despite the cutoff of Medicaid funds that accounted for more than 80 percent of its operations. It runs a DWI school, a food program for rural poor children and a low-income housing program that are not funded by Medicaid.</p>
<p>Vigil’s deferred compensation package was made up of several pieces and required him to stay at the agency from 2002 through June 2011.</p>
<p>The board first purchased a life insurance policy, with an annual premium of $50,000, that had a cash surrender value.</p>
<p>The board decided in 2009 to cash that in at its value at the time – $360,000. It then approved an additional $244,277 to purchase an annuity to fund the retirement.</p>
<p>Financial statements filed by the agency refer to the arrangement as “golden handcuffs.”</p>
<p>Vigil said the board made the decision in 2002 to fund the program and then later to upgrade it.</p>
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<p>“The board makes those decisions,” he said.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to say how much Vigil was receiving in total compensation before his retirement. He was covered under an arrangement in which Valencia Counseling Services Inc. paid another company, Rio Grande Management, $15,000 a month for management services. Rio Grande, in turn, is a subsidiary of for-profit Providence Services of Tucson.</p>
<p>Valencia Counseling served more than 2,000 clients in four counties until the state Human Services Department began replacing management of 12 of the 15 nonprofit agencies that were audited in connection with Medicaid money.</p>
<p>Several other organizations cut off from Medicaid payments for behavioral health clients also are continuing to operate non-Medicaid services, such as Hogares Inc. in Albuquerque.</p>
<p>While golden handcuff retirement packages are the kind of issue that have garnered headlines, they are not the reason for the suspension of Medicaid behavioral health payments to the 15 nonprofit agencies around New Mexico.</p>
<p>The HSD audits had two basic parts. One part looked at Medicaid billings and the other – called enterprise audits – at the business practices of the behavioral health agencies providing services.</p>
<p>Other than general statements that the Medicaid billing audit showed “credible” evidence of fraud, state officials have been restrained in their comments about the billing practices.</p>
<p>The headline material in New Mexico has been based on enterprise audits that examined the business practices of the nonprofit agencies providing counseling and services for behavioral health and mental health clients.</p>
<p>Human Services Department spokesman Matt Kennicott said the suspension of Medicaid payments was based on the audits of the nonprofit agencies’ billing practices.</p>
<p>“The enterprise audits of the agency business practices indicated other issues that raised questions,” Kennicott said.</p>
<p>Much of the information contained in the enterprise audits comes from public records.</p>
<p>In July, eight nonprofit agencies sought a temporary restraining order in federal court based on a lack of due process in the decision to suspend Medicaid payments. The nonprofits contended their good names were sullied by the department’s decision.</p>
<p>Chief U.S. District Judge M. Christina Armijo found that they had not shown that they would succeed on the merits of the case.</p>
<p>Armijo noted that the nonprofits were caught in a situation of having to argue against audits that they have not seen.</p>
<p>The still-secret audits were referred to the Medicaid Fraud Division of the Attorney General’s Office, which had been involved in the oversight of how the audit was conducted.</p>
<p>News organizations and the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government have filed legal actions to gain access to the audits under the state’s Inspection of Public Records Act.</p>
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<p /> | ‘Golden handcuffs’ for exec | false | https://abqjournal.com/267628/golden-handcuffs-for-exec.html | 2013-09-23 | 2 |
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