As dealers have slid down the ratings spectrum in recent years, options the industry gave away for free when in better health have become painfully relevant, forcing banks to confront the latest in a long line of post-crisis pricing challenges – the replacement valuation adjustment (RVA). It may be a challenge too far.
“They’re horrible,” says the head of rates trading at one large European bank. “We have no idea how to price them or manage the risk associated with them. All I know is that if we get downgraded to a certain point and our counterparties choose to exercise the option, we are going to lose a lot of money.”
The question is how much. The options, known as downgrade triggers, allow a client to terminate a trade when a counterparty hits a certain rating level and also force that party to pay for a replacement – but banks have no way of knowing how much a new dealer might charge to enter into the trade. As a rule of thumb, one trader that has replaced other banks says a downgraded dealer might be gouged for up to 10% of a trade’s net present value.
This, of course, is the law of the jungle – and traders generally do not cry about that. What makes downgrade triggers different is the systemic risk they could present in markets where they are common, and where trading is concentrated in the hands of a small number of rtls – parts of the inflation swap market, for example. Dealers and clients alike worry the downgrade of a large player in this space, and subsequent mass termination of contracts, could overwhelm the market’s ability to replace the risk.
In this scenario, traders warn the 10% rule of thumb goes out of the window – losses could be many times larger than expected. Sweeping downgrades for dealers as a whole could have a similar effect – forcing affected banks to pay their stronger peers to take on trades at a time when nobody wants to trade at all.
As a result, dealers are doing two things they would normally walk over hot coals to avoid – some are turning away business, and others are calling on regulators for help.
“If regulators are serious about systemic risk, then they should seriously look at not allowing these triggers to exist,” says one head of interest rate structuring at a European bank in London. “Calculating an RVA number will be meaningless as any number computed will be too low and wrong. There is not a lot you can do about it, especially in one-way or closed markets. It is much better to just forbid portfolio rating triggers in derivatives contracts – especially in dynamic portfolios – as they are a blunt source of systemic risk.”
Tim Blake, head of fixed-income department portfolio management at Credit Suisse in New York, says the bank no longer writes new business containing downgrade triggers. “We made the decision that we wanted to stay away from that kind of business. The risks can be unacceptable,” he says. And Credit Suisse is not alone. One other, smaller European dealer says it has the same policy, while at least three other banks claim to have imposed strict limits on the number of swaps they will accept with downgrade triggers.
The second issue is that most dealers believe there is a strong correlation between the risk of a bank’s own downgrade and the downgrade of the rest of the Street. A counterparty may be less likely to exercise the trigger if dealer ratings are all slipping, but if it does so the bank will be paying for a replacement trade in stressed conditions, which is likely to significantly inflate the bid-offer spread.
On uncollateralised trades, dealers fear the replacement cost would be even bigger. The pool of willing counterparties for these swaps has shrunk since the crisis, because of the higher funding and capital charges involved, and this could be exacerbated in the event of widespread downgrades. For collateralised trades, modelling is harder still because each bank quoting will do so on the basis of its own credit support annex – the industry standard document governing bilateral collateral posting, which determines what discount rate should be used.
Finally, RVA should take into account the possibility that the new trade will also incorporate a downgrade trigger and that quoting banks may want to insulate themselves by charging an RVA premium, and that this premium needs to reflect the same fact, and so on, in a dizzying, never-ending cascade of downgrades and replacement charges, each of which would be determined by the same incalculable risks that are contained in the first.
The bottom line is that termination costs can be high, but there is no way of confidently putting a number on them – RVA resides in the land of informed guesses, ballpark figures and back-of-the-envelope calculations. It’s not the kind of thing a dealer is generally happy to quote to a client or explain to a risk manager.
“On a trade with a mark-to-market value of, say, $100 million, a general rule is that firms will take you for $5 million–10 million, just because they can. And we’ve seen this done. We have replaced people, it’s an opportunity to profit,” says one derivatives trader at a European bank.
It can be more painful than that, too. Peter Shapiro, managing director at independent swap adviser Swap Financial, which advises governments, government agencies and non-profit organisations, says he has advised on close-outs in which local US government entities were holding heavily out-of-the-money swaps and the banks were paying to step in as replacements often quoted at steep discounts.
All these issues are magnified in illiquid, concentrated markets – and a number of traders point to the long-dated, LDI-driven inflation swap market in the UK as a prime example. The market is dominated by five or six players, they say, and triggers are a common feature of these trades – so, if one of the bigger houses is downgraded, all hell could break loose.
“Rating triggers are, by their nature, wrong-way risk and are hard to quantify. But even more problematic is when these triggers are being used in a space where the underlying product flow is systemic. All banks will be same way round and a trigger will then catapult the bid-offer to unknown but most likely extreme levels – even more so when liquidity and capacity is also a constraint. Inflation and exotics markets are exposed to this kind of risk. We think this is a source of systemic risk. It is being used and pushed by pension funds and we are trying to dissuade the community from relying on these triggers,” says Guido Hebert, global head of rates structuring at HSBC in London.
The UK inflation swap market is intensely competitive, with bid-offer spreads typically between 2 and 4 basis points, traders say. But in stressed market conditions, the spreads can get as wide as 10bp, according to a trader at a large LDI manager. For a ￡10 billion inflation swap portfolio with an average maturity of 20 years and a ￡20 million sensitivity to a 1bp change in inflation – known as IE01 – this means paying the full bid-offer spread (5bp from mid-market) would result in a cost of ￡100 million.
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Monday, September 2, 2013
Mental Health Stigma
Four years ago this month I returned from Iraq, which was sort of my last big mission as a military psychologist before "becoming a civilian." As a psychologist I was interested in trauma and suicide long before my deployment, but there's something very different about listening to a Soldier tell the story of his buddy's death while he's still lying in a hospital bed having fragments of metal removed from his leg as compared to hearing the same story in your clinic in the U.S. two years after the fact. It was also in Iraq that I first stood over the body of someone who had died by suicide, feeling a mixture of helplessness, grief and anger; an experience that had, for me as a suicidologist, been merely an intellectualized concept. Four years ago, psychiatric disorders and suicide became personal to me.
Suicide is the fatal outcome of psychological injury. I should stress, however, that not all psychological injuries sustained by military personnel and veterans occur during deployments. For many of the service members and veterans I've worked with, the psychological injuries occurred during childhood at the hands of an abusive or demeaning parent; for others it was sustained within the context of a recent breakup or a financial crisis. Indeed, more than half of service members who die by suicide never deployed or saw combat. The good news is that we have very effective treatments for the full range of psychological injuries that lead to suicide. The bad news is that very few service members or veterans will receive them.
Clinic-based mental health services have been expanded dramatically for service members and veterans over the past decade across both the public and private sectors. Mental health treatment is arguably more accessible and affordable for service members and veterans now more than ever, due in large part to community mental health professionals and agencies offering free or significantly reduced-cost services. Although admirable, these efforts are not enough, and too many psychological injuries remain untreated.
One of the primary problems is that the expansion of mental health services has largely occurred in traditional, clinic-based settings that are unlikely to be accessed by most service members and veterans due to pervasive mental health stigma. Only a very small proportion of real time Location system who die by suicide (16%) visited a mental health care professional within the month preceding their deaths. Despite our decades-long battle with mental health stigma among service members and veterans, we have yet to see much success, primarily because we have failed to consider the issue of mental health treatment and stigma from within the context of the military culture. In the military, we value strength, mental toughness, elitism and self-sufficiency, but the culture of mental health is deficiency-oriented and values emotional vulnerability, which contradicts the core identity of many service members and veterans. We mental health professionals need to adopt a multicultural approach to working with service members and veterans, and to change how we deliver our services to better fit with military cultural norms, instead of asking service members and veterans to abandon their identities and conform to our standards.
From my perspective as a mental health professional, an even bigger tragedy is the realization that when service members and veterans do overcome mental health stigma and access care, they are still unlikely to receive the best treatments available. This is not a DOD or a VA problem; this is a problem of our mental health care system as a whole in the US, which continues to perpetuate the myth that all psychological treatments are equally effective, and that any treatment is better than no treatment. What we actually know, however, based on decades of research, is that trauma victims who receive prolonged exposure (PE) or cognitive processing therapy (CPT) for PTSD are three to four times more likely to experience full remission from PTSD. These better outcomes occur regardless of the trauma, whether rape, violent assault or combat. Early findings further suggest that PE and CPT reduce suicidal ideation among military personnel with PTSD. And just within the past month, preliminary data presented at the American Psychological Association's annual convention indicate that brief cognitive behavioral therapy (BCBT) for suicidal military personnel contributes to a 50% reduction in suicide attempts and significant reductions in PTSD symptoms as compared to traditional mental health care approaches. In short, some treatments work better than others, and are more effective at helping service members and veterans.
For many of us, the service members and veterans who are suffering from these psychological injuries are family members and friends. And some of them are dying from their injuries. Improved access to mental health care without improved quality of care will do little to prevent suicide among service members and veterans. As mental health professionals we must therefore commit ourselves individually and collectively to learning and using these better treatments that we know can help service members and veterans live lives that are worth living. It's okay for us to change.
But what I've learned along the way is that a joint honours student needs double the passion, patience and perseverance required to study a single honours degree.One of the first hurdles you have to overcome is logistics. Working with two academic departments can result in clashing deadlines, twice the staff to get to know and double the feedback sessions.
Rafe Hallett, director of induction in history at the University of Leeds, says: "The first six months of study can be a struggle, as the joint honours student adapts to the demands of two communities and two discourses of knowledge."They can sometimes feel stuck in limbo between two 'homes' and feel envious of the apparent simplicity of single honours students' timetables, contexts and communities."
Hayley Reid, a classics and English student from the University of Leeds, found dividing her time and attention between two schools was more trouble than it was worth: "It was one of the biggest mistakes I've made at university."Reid feels she doesn't properly belong to either of her departments: "I've chosen to focus more on the English side of things, but my parent school is classics. I feel like I'm floating in some sort of subject limbo where I'm neither an English student nor a classics student."
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Suicide is the fatal outcome of psychological injury. I should stress, however, that not all psychological injuries sustained by military personnel and veterans occur during deployments. For many of the service members and veterans I've worked with, the psychological injuries occurred during childhood at the hands of an abusive or demeaning parent; for others it was sustained within the context of a recent breakup or a financial crisis. Indeed, more than half of service members who die by suicide never deployed or saw combat. The good news is that we have very effective treatments for the full range of psychological injuries that lead to suicide. The bad news is that very few service members or veterans will receive them.
Clinic-based mental health services have been expanded dramatically for service members and veterans over the past decade across both the public and private sectors. Mental health treatment is arguably more accessible and affordable for service members and veterans now more than ever, due in large part to community mental health professionals and agencies offering free or significantly reduced-cost services. Although admirable, these efforts are not enough, and too many psychological injuries remain untreated.
One of the primary problems is that the expansion of mental health services has largely occurred in traditional, clinic-based settings that are unlikely to be accessed by most service members and veterans due to pervasive mental health stigma. Only a very small proportion of real time Location system who die by suicide (16%) visited a mental health care professional within the month preceding their deaths. Despite our decades-long battle with mental health stigma among service members and veterans, we have yet to see much success, primarily because we have failed to consider the issue of mental health treatment and stigma from within the context of the military culture. In the military, we value strength, mental toughness, elitism and self-sufficiency, but the culture of mental health is deficiency-oriented and values emotional vulnerability, which contradicts the core identity of many service members and veterans. We mental health professionals need to adopt a multicultural approach to working with service members and veterans, and to change how we deliver our services to better fit with military cultural norms, instead of asking service members and veterans to abandon their identities and conform to our standards.
From my perspective as a mental health professional, an even bigger tragedy is the realization that when service members and veterans do overcome mental health stigma and access care, they are still unlikely to receive the best treatments available. This is not a DOD or a VA problem; this is a problem of our mental health care system as a whole in the US, which continues to perpetuate the myth that all psychological treatments are equally effective, and that any treatment is better than no treatment. What we actually know, however, based on decades of research, is that trauma victims who receive prolonged exposure (PE) or cognitive processing therapy (CPT) for PTSD are three to four times more likely to experience full remission from PTSD. These better outcomes occur regardless of the trauma, whether rape, violent assault or combat. Early findings further suggest that PE and CPT reduce suicidal ideation among military personnel with PTSD. And just within the past month, preliminary data presented at the American Psychological Association's annual convention indicate that brief cognitive behavioral therapy (BCBT) for suicidal military personnel contributes to a 50% reduction in suicide attempts and significant reductions in PTSD symptoms as compared to traditional mental health care approaches. In short, some treatments work better than others, and are more effective at helping service members and veterans.
For many of us, the service members and veterans who are suffering from these psychological injuries are family members and friends. And some of them are dying from their injuries. Improved access to mental health care without improved quality of care will do little to prevent suicide among service members and veterans. As mental health professionals we must therefore commit ourselves individually and collectively to learning and using these better treatments that we know can help service members and veterans live lives that are worth living. It's okay for us to change.
But what I've learned along the way is that a joint honours student needs double the passion, patience and perseverance required to study a single honours degree.One of the first hurdles you have to overcome is logistics. Working with two academic departments can result in clashing deadlines, twice the staff to get to know and double the feedback sessions.
Rafe Hallett, director of induction in history at the University of Leeds, says: "The first six months of study can be a struggle, as the joint honours student adapts to the demands of two communities and two discourses of knowledge."They can sometimes feel stuck in limbo between two 'homes' and feel envious of the apparent simplicity of single honours students' timetables, contexts and communities."
Hayley Reid, a classics and English student from the University of Leeds, found dividing her time and attention between two schools was more trouble than it was worth: "It was one of the biggest mistakes I've made at university."Reid feels she doesn't properly belong to either of her departments: "I've chosen to focus more on the English side of things, but my parent school is classics. I feel like I'm floating in some sort of subject limbo where I'm neither an English student nor a classics student."
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Exploring Google Glass through eyes of early users
To get a sense of the advantages and drawbacks of the device, The Associated Press spoke to three Glass owners who have been using the device since late spring: Sarah Hill, a former TV broadcaster and current military veterans advocate; David Levy, a hiking enthusiast and small business owner; and Deborah Lee, a stay-at-home mom.
Glass is designed to work like a smartphone that's worn like a pair of glasses. Although it looks like a prop from a science fiction movie, the device is capturing imaginations beyond the realm of nerds.
The trio's favorite feature, by far, is the hands-free camera that shoots photos and video through voice commands. (Images can also be captured by pressing a small button along the top of the right frame of Glass.) They also liked being able to connect to the Internet simply by tapping on the right frame of Glass to turn it on and then swiping along the same side to scroll through a menu. That menu allows them to do such things as get directions on Google's map or find a piece of information through Google's search engine. The information is shown on a thumbnail-sized transparent screen attached just above the right eye to stay out of a user's field of vision.
Among the biggest shortcomings they cited was Glass' short battery life, especially if a lot of video is being taken. Although Google says Glass should last for an entire day on a single battery charge for the typical user, Hill said there were times when she ran out of power after 90 minutes to two hours during periods when she was recording a lot of video.
Glass' speaker, which relies on a bone conduction technology, also is inadequate, according to the testers the AP interviewed. They said the speaker, which transmits sound through the skull to allow for ambient noise, can be difficult to hear in any environment other than a quiet room.
"If you are out in the street or anywhere else where there is any noise, it's impossible to hear," Lee said. "That has been challenging because there is no way to adjust it. If you could adjust the real time Location system, I think it would solve a lot of problems."
Hill, 42, a resident of Columbia, Mo., became a Glass evangelist shortly after she picked up the device at Google's New York offices in late May. As the AP watched her get fitted with Glass though a video feed on Google's Hangout chat service, Hill quickly began to rave about her ability to take hands-free pictures and fetch information from the Web simply by asking the device to get it. "This is like having the Internet in your eye socket," Hill said. "But it's less intrusive than I thought it would be. I can totally see how this would still let you still be in the moment with the people around you."
The liberating aspects of Glass came into sharper focus for Hill as she took a cab to the airport for her flight back to Missouri. During the taxi ride, she began a video call on Google Hangout with people living in Austria, the United Kingdom and St. Louis. As the cab was preparing to drop her off at the curb, Hill was about to end the call so she could carry her baggage.
"That's when it hit me that, 'Holy cow, I don't have to cut the call off,'" Hill recalled. "I could continue talking because I didn't have to hold a phone. So I carried on a conversation through the airport and people were staring at me like, 'What is that thing on your face?'"
Hill became accustomed to the double takes and quizzical looks as she wore Glass to community gatherings, restaurants and shopping excursions. The encounters usually led to her offering others to try on Glass, and most were impressed with their glimpses at the technology, Hill said.
"When you have these glasses on, it's like it helps you see the future," Hill said. "It helps you see what's possible."Hill, a former news anchor and reporter for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo., believes Glass is destined to transform broadcast journalism by empowering reporters to capture compelling images at scenes without the need for cumbersome equipment. She likens it to having a satellite TV truck that only weighs 1.5 ounces. Glass also would make it easier for reporters to field questions from viewers through the Twitter app or through direct texts.
Hill has already used Glass to provide a tour of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., for veterans gathered in St. Louis by Veterans United, where Hill now works as the group's chief storyteller. The veterans were too old or ill to make the journey themselves, so Hill gave them a close-up look through a video feed transmitted through Glass in June.
Lee, a New York City resident, has been relying on Glass mostly to capture precious moments with her 9-month-old daughter, Maddie. Her favorite moment came when she photographed some of her daughter's first giggles a couple months ago. Lee, 34, told Glass to take the pictures as she as tickled and kissed her daughter's tummy.
"Obviously, you can't do that with a phone in your hand, so I am totally loving Glass," Lee said. "It has really been great."Glass also allowed Lee to set up live video sessions with her parents in Oregon so they could see Maddie eat her first solid food just as she saw it. She also took pictures of her raising Maddie airborne that wouldn't have been feasible with a camera requiring hands-on operation. "I am capturing all these tiny moments that are really exciting with a baby," Lee said.
Unlike Hill's experience in Missouri, hardly anyone in New York gives her a second look when she wears Glass in Central Park or around her neighborhood."I thought more people would stop me in the street or something like that, but that hasn't really happened," Lee said.
Levy, 39, rarely wears his Glass around his hometown of Boulder, Colo., because he doesn't want to stand out from the crowd. Just two days after Levy picked up the device in New York, he recalls seeing someone else wearing the device at the airport. "My initial reaction was, 'What a jerk,'" Levy said. "There was a little bit of ostentatiousness about it, as if he were flaunting it. I am a low-key guy who doesn't like a lot of attention. I have an iPhone that does a lot of things that I might otherwise make Glass do if I didn't want to make a spectacle of it."
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Glass is designed to work like a smartphone that's worn like a pair of glasses. Although it looks like a prop from a science fiction movie, the device is capturing imaginations beyond the realm of nerds.
The trio's favorite feature, by far, is the hands-free camera that shoots photos and video through voice commands. (Images can also be captured by pressing a small button along the top of the right frame of Glass.) They also liked being able to connect to the Internet simply by tapping on the right frame of Glass to turn it on and then swiping along the same side to scroll through a menu. That menu allows them to do such things as get directions on Google's map or find a piece of information through Google's search engine. The information is shown on a thumbnail-sized transparent screen attached just above the right eye to stay out of a user's field of vision.
Among the biggest shortcomings they cited was Glass' short battery life, especially if a lot of video is being taken. Although Google says Glass should last for an entire day on a single battery charge for the typical user, Hill said there were times when she ran out of power after 90 minutes to two hours during periods when she was recording a lot of video.
Glass' speaker, which relies on a bone conduction technology, also is inadequate, according to the testers the AP interviewed. They said the speaker, which transmits sound through the skull to allow for ambient noise, can be difficult to hear in any environment other than a quiet room.
"If you are out in the street or anywhere else where there is any noise, it's impossible to hear," Lee said. "That has been challenging because there is no way to adjust it. If you could adjust the real time Location system, I think it would solve a lot of problems."
Hill, 42, a resident of Columbia, Mo., became a Glass evangelist shortly after she picked up the device at Google's New York offices in late May. As the AP watched her get fitted with Glass though a video feed on Google's Hangout chat service, Hill quickly began to rave about her ability to take hands-free pictures and fetch information from the Web simply by asking the device to get it. "This is like having the Internet in your eye socket," Hill said. "But it's less intrusive than I thought it would be. I can totally see how this would still let you still be in the moment with the people around you."
The liberating aspects of Glass came into sharper focus for Hill as she took a cab to the airport for her flight back to Missouri. During the taxi ride, she began a video call on Google Hangout with people living in Austria, the United Kingdom and St. Louis. As the cab was preparing to drop her off at the curb, Hill was about to end the call so she could carry her baggage.
"That's when it hit me that, 'Holy cow, I don't have to cut the call off,'" Hill recalled. "I could continue talking because I didn't have to hold a phone. So I carried on a conversation through the airport and people were staring at me like, 'What is that thing on your face?'"
Hill became accustomed to the double takes and quizzical looks as she wore Glass to community gatherings, restaurants and shopping excursions. The encounters usually led to her offering others to try on Glass, and most were impressed with their glimpses at the technology, Hill said.
"When you have these glasses on, it's like it helps you see the future," Hill said. "It helps you see what's possible."Hill, a former news anchor and reporter for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Mo., believes Glass is destined to transform broadcast journalism by empowering reporters to capture compelling images at scenes without the need for cumbersome equipment. She likens it to having a satellite TV truck that only weighs 1.5 ounces. Glass also would make it easier for reporters to field questions from viewers through the Twitter app or through direct texts.
Hill has already used Glass to provide a tour of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., for veterans gathered in St. Louis by Veterans United, where Hill now works as the group's chief storyteller. The veterans were too old or ill to make the journey themselves, so Hill gave them a close-up look through a video feed transmitted through Glass in June.
Lee, a New York City resident, has been relying on Glass mostly to capture precious moments with her 9-month-old daughter, Maddie. Her favorite moment came when she photographed some of her daughter's first giggles a couple months ago. Lee, 34, told Glass to take the pictures as she as tickled and kissed her daughter's tummy.
"Obviously, you can't do that with a phone in your hand, so I am totally loving Glass," Lee said. "It has really been great."Glass also allowed Lee to set up live video sessions with her parents in Oregon so they could see Maddie eat her first solid food just as she saw it. She also took pictures of her raising Maddie airborne that wouldn't have been feasible with a camera requiring hands-on operation. "I am capturing all these tiny moments that are really exciting with a baby," Lee said.
Unlike Hill's experience in Missouri, hardly anyone in New York gives her a second look when she wears Glass in Central Park or around her neighborhood."I thought more people would stop me in the street or something like that, but that hasn't really happened," Lee said.
Levy, 39, rarely wears his Glass around his hometown of Boulder, Colo., because he doesn't want to stand out from the crowd. Just two days after Levy picked up the device in New York, he recalls seeing someone else wearing the device at the airport. "My initial reaction was, 'What a jerk,'" Levy said. "There was a little bit of ostentatiousness about it, as if he were flaunting it. I am a low-key guy who doesn't like a lot of attention. I have an iPhone that does a lot of things that I might otherwise make Glass do if I didn't want to make a spectacle of it."
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Is MLK dream reality?
When he boarded a Greyhound bus on his way to Princeton University, Glennon Threatt promised himself he'd never come back here. As a young black man, he saw no chance to fulfill his dreams in a city burdened by the ghosts of its segregated past.Helen Shores Lee left Birmingham years earlier, making the same pledge not to return. A daughter of a prominent civil rights lawyer, she wanted to escape a city tarnished by Jim Crow laws — the "white" and "colored" fountains, the segregated bus seating, the daily indignities she rebelled against as a child.
Both changed their minds. They returned from their self-imposed exile and built successful careers — he as an assistant federal public defender, she as a judge — in a Birmingham transformed by a revolution a half century ago.This week, as the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, there may be no better place than Birmingham to measure the progress that followed the civil rights leader's historic call for racial and economic equality.
This city, after all, is hallowed ground in civil rights history. It was here where children marching for equal rights were jailed, where protesters were attacked by snarling police dogs and battered by high-pressure fire hoses. And it was here where four little girls in their Sunday finest were killed when dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klan members ripped through their church in an unspeakable act of evil.
That was the Birmingham of the past. The city that King condemned for its "ugly record of Hands free access." The city where he wrote his impassioned "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," declaring the "moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." The city where the movement came together, found its voice and set the stage for landmark civil rights legislation.
The Birmingham of the present is a far different place. The airport is named after a fearless civil rights champion, the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. The city's website features a 'Fifty Years Forward' campaign, forthrightly displaying photos of shameful events in 1963. There are black judges and professors in places where segregation once reigned. And black mayors have occupied City Hall since 1979, in part because many white residents migrated to the suburbs, a familiar pattern in urban America.
So has King's dream of equality been realized here and has Birmingham moved beyond its troubled past?For many, the answer is yes, the city has changed in ways that once seemed unthinkable — and yet, there's also a sense Birmingham still has a long way to go.The legal and social barriers that barred black people from schools and jobs fell long ago, but economic disparity persists.
Blacks and whites work together and dine side by side in restaurants during the day, but usually don't mingle after 5 p.m.Racial slurs are rare, but suspicions and tensions remain."I don't think any of us would deny that there have been significant changes in Birmingham," Shores Lee says. King would be proud, she adds, but "he would say there's a lot more work to be done. I think he would tell us our task is not finished."
Amid the flowers and soothing fountain in Kelly Ingram Park, there are stark reminders of the ugly clashes. It was in this area, now known as the Civil Rights District, where the scenes of police brutality were captured in photos and TV footage that helped galvanize public opinion around the nation on behalf of demonstrators.
Today, the park has statues commemorating King and other leaders. There's a sculpture of a young protester, his arms stretched back, as a policeman grabs him with one hand and holds a lunging German shepherd in the other. (An Associated Press photographer had captured a similar image.) There are other sculptures of water cannons, more dogs, and a boy and a girl standing impassively with the words "I Ain't Afraid of your Jail" at the base.
To those who grew up here, these works are not just artistic renderings but reminders of the bravery of friends and neighbors."It's kind of like being in the movie 'The Sixth Sense' — everywhere you go you see ghosts," Threatt says of the statues. "It's probably like a person who served in World War II going back to Normandy. It's a place where something very, very real, very poignant happened to people that you knew."
Threatt was just 7 when King announced his vision of a colorblind society before hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the Washington Mall. Not long afterward, Threatt was one of three black gifted students enrolled in a white elementary school. He was spat on, beat up, called the N-word.
"I like him," he says. "I don't think he's a racist. He was a kid caught up in a social situation like I was. .... You've got to get over that in order to survive in the South. ... Otherwise you just wallow in self-pity and hatred and you don't move forward."
Threatt graduated from Princeton, then Howard University Law School, worked in Denver and Washington, D.C., but returned to Birmingham in 1997. Both he and the city had changed, he says, with Birmingham becoming more progressive. He joined an established law firm — something that would have been unimaginable 50 years earlier.
Threatt had been inspired, in part, to be a lawyer by Arthur Shores, a Sunday school teacher at his church and a pioneering civil rights attorney who fought to desegregate the University of Alabama. Shores' home was bombed twice in 1963, two weeks apart. His neighborhood was nicknamed "Dynamite Hill" for the series of bombings intended to intimidate blacks.
Shores' daughter, Helen, grew up resisting the segregation laws, once drinking from a "white" fountain — a defiant act that resulted in a whipping when she got home. At 12, she aimed a Colt .45 at some white men driving by her family's house, spewing racial obscenities. Her father, she says, slapped her arm, the bullet discharged into the air and he quickly grabbed the gun.
She left Birmingham for 13 years, returned in 1971, later switched careers and in 2003 became a judge, only to confront lingering remnants of racism.In her early years on the bench, she recalls, a few lawyers pointedly refused to stand as is custom when a judge enters a courtroom. And, she says, she occasionally sees lawyers who are disrespectful of their minority clients.
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Both changed their minds. They returned from their self-imposed exile and built successful careers — he as an assistant federal public defender, she as a judge — in a Birmingham transformed by a revolution a half century ago.This week, as the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, there may be no better place than Birmingham to measure the progress that followed the civil rights leader's historic call for racial and economic equality.
This city, after all, is hallowed ground in civil rights history. It was here where children marching for equal rights were jailed, where protesters were attacked by snarling police dogs and battered by high-pressure fire hoses. And it was here where four little girls in their Sunday finest were killed when dynamite planted by Ku Klux Klan members ripped through their church in an unspeakable act of evil.
That was the Birmingham of the past. The city that King condemned for its "ugly record of Hands free access." The city where he wrote his impassioned "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," declaring the "moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." The city where the movement came together, found its voice and set the stage for landmark civil rights legislation.
The Birmingham of the present is a far different place. The airport is named after a fearless civil rights champion, the late Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. The city's website features a 'Fifty Years Forward' campaign, forthrightly displaying photos of shameful events in 1963. There are black judges and professors in places where segregation once reigned. And black mayors have occupied City Hall since 1979, in part because many white residents migrated to the suburbs, a familiar pattern in urban America.
So has King's dream of equality been realized here and has Birmingham moved beyond its troubled past?For many, the answer is yes, the city has changed in ways that once seemed unthinkable — and yet, there's also a sense Birmingham still has a long way to go.The legal and social barriers that barred black people from schools and jobs fell long ago, but economic disparity persists.
Blacks and whites work together and dine side by side in restaurants during the day, but usually don't mingle after 5 p.m.Racial slurs are rare, but suspicions and tensions remain."I don't think any of us would deny that there have been significant changes in Birmingham," Shores Lee says. King would be proud, she adds, but "he would say there's a lot more work to be done. I think he would tell us our task is not finished."
Amid the flowers and soothing fountain in Kelly Ingram Park, there are stark reminders of the ugly clashes. It was in this area, now known as the Civil Rights District, where the scenes of police brutality were captured in photos and TV footage that helped galvanize public opinion around the nation on behalf of demonstrators.
Today, the park has statues commemorating King and other leaders. There's a sculpture of a young protester, his arms stretched back, as a policeman grabs him with one hand and holds a lunging German shepherd in the other. (An Associated Press photographer had captured a similar image.) There are other sculptures of water cannons, more dogs, and a boy and a girl standing impassively with the words "I Ain't Afraid of your Jail" at the base.
To those who grew up here, these works are not just artistic renderings but reminders of the bravery of friends and neighbors."It's kind of like being in the movie 'The Sixth Sense' — everywhere you go you see ghosts," Threatt says of the statues. "It's probably like a person who served in World War II going back to Normandy. It's a place where something very, very real, very poignant happened to people that you knew."
Threatt was just 7 when King announced his vision of a colorblind society before hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the Washington Mall. Not long afterward, Threatt was one of three black gifted students enrolled in a white elementary school. He was spat on, beat up, called the N-word.
"I like him," he says. "I don't think he's a racist. He was a kid caught up in a social situation like I was. .... You've got to get over that in order to survive in the South. ... Otherwise you just wallow in self-pity and hatred and you don't move forward."
Threatt graduated from Princeton, then Howard University Law School, worked in Denver and Washington, D.C., but returned to Birmingham in 1997. Both he and the city had changed, he says, with Birmingham becoming more progressive. He joined an established law firm — something that would have been unimaginable 50 years earlier.
Threatt had been inspired, in part, to be a lawyer by Arthur Shores, a Sunday school teacher at his church and a pioneering civil rights attorney who fought to desegregate the University of Alabama. Shores' home was bombed twice in 1963, two weeks apart. His neighborhood was nicknamed "Dynamite Hill" for the series of bombings intended to intimidate blacks.
Shores' daughter, Helen, grew up resisting the segregation laws, once drinking from a "white" fountain — a defiant act that resulted in a whipping when she got home. At 12, she aimed a Colt .45 at some white men driving by her family's house, spewing racial obscenities. Her father, she says, slapped her arm, the bullet discharged into the air and he quickly grabbed the gun.
She left Birmingham for 13 years, returned in 1971, later switched careers and in 2003 became a judge, only to confront lingering remnants of racism.In her early years on the bench, she recalls, a few lawyers pointedly refused to stand as is custom when a judge enters a courtroom. And, she says, she occasionally sees lawyers who are disrespectful of their minority clients.
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Monday, August 26, 2013
Navalny shakes up Moscow mayor campaign
A motley gaggle of hipsters, mothers with children and two babushkas with hair dyed bright red gather to listen to something they haven't heard in over a decade: a stump speech for Moscow mayor.Alexei Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger who has become the best known face of Russia's protest movement, is trying to take his following offline and into the street, waging a traditional campaign of hand-shaking and leaflet drives to win voters outside his base of the young and web-savvy.
Navalny has little hope of defeating incumbent Sergei Sobyanin _ but polls show his star is rising. And if he gets a big chunk of the real time Location system, the Kremlin will face pressure to show leniency over his five-year prison sentence, and the grassroots protest movement that fizzled out after Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency last year may gain new wind.
Sobyanin, meanwhile, is playing the regal incumbent: Throughout the campaign, the Kremlin-backed politician has been all but invisible, allowing the constant drone of jackhammers or whiff of fresh paint that are signs of a Moscow makeover to remind voters of who's in charge _ and who can pull the purse-strings.
Navalny is the one who has been soaking up attention, and generating buzz. On a recent August day, the opposition leader stood on stage in a sprawling Moscow park dotted with enormous space shuttles and other scraps of Soviet-era glory, and attempted to connect with an audience he rarely reaches through Twitter: the feared and revered babushka contingency."We know that (in Soviet times) our oil money was spent on enormous factories, industry, railroads, roads, science, health care, rockets," he boomed, riffing on a nostalgia felt by many older Russians, who saw their hopes dashed and savings depleted under post-Soviet political reforms.
"But can you name a single major business that's been built in this country in the past 10 years? I can't!"The old ladies sitting in the first row chuckled and shook their heads.On Sunday, police briefly detained Navalny after he left the stage of a campaign event, and released him a short time later. The detention was part of a series of public signals to Navalny, who was given a verbal warning about various alleged campaign violations by the Moscow electoral committee last week.
Polling data on the race is spotty and inconsistent, but the trends are clear: The number of Muscovites ready to vote for Navalny on Sept. 8 has breached 10 percent and may even be moving toward 20 percent. Meanwhile, Sobyanin's ratings _ while still above the 50 percent that would allow him to avoid a run-off _ are slipping by the week. There are four other party-backed candidates in the race, none projected to snag more than 5 percent.
Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the independent Levada polling center, said that Sobyanin's voter base was clearly no longer growing, and that there's now a small chance there will be a second round.Last month, Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison on embezzlement charges, but was released the day after his conviction in what many have described as an effort to legitimize the mayoral race and ensure that Sobyanin _ who was appointed as mayor and is seen as a possible successor to Putin _ is regarded as an elected politician with widespread support.
Such legitimacy is considered important because Putin's forces are at their weakest in his seat of power: Moscow. When Putin won back the presidency last year, after ruling for a term in the lesser role of prime minister, he won only 47 percent of the capital's rtls, compared to 64 percent nationwide. That may also be a reason why, although there's no doubt that Sobyanin is the Kremlin's man, he is running as an independent and has avoided public appearances with the president.
Masha Lipman at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow said that Navalny had already achieved something: cast doubt over the inevitability of Putin's power."One of his greatest achievements is ... adding an element of risk and uncertainty," she said. "Putin built a political system in this country that is risk averse, it's a political monopoly."
Rather than the issues _ immigration, traffic, high cost of living _ it's a contrast in political style that lies at the heart of the mayoral campaign. In the Levada Center poll, 48 percent of respondents said they would vote for a mayor with "experience," whereas 47 percent said that personal qualities, such as "openness and determination," were crucial.
Navalny, a sharp-tongued 37-year-old lawyer, has plenty of the latter. He has waged an intensive campaign with nearly $1.5 million in funds raised online, meeting with hundreds of voters every day and mobilizing enthusiastic young volunteers to help hand out leaflets in the street and on the metro.
His team has also unleashed a flurry of new online projects. From a GPS mapping system that shows how many supporters live in each apartment block to an application that helps users spread pro-Navalny information on Russia's biggest social networks, the campaign has been keen to lock down his natural base of young voters, many of whom often don't make it to the polls.
"Currently the polls are assuming that those who haven't yet figured out who to vote for will vote the same way as those who have," Leonid Volkov, Navalny's campaign manager, told The Associated Press. "The fight is for the 30 percent of voters who haven't decided yet."Andrei Tvertnev, an unemployed 25-year-old former soldier who was lingering in the crowd around Navalny, is one of those yet to make up his mind.
Tvertnev wasn't keen on Sobyanin, saying that the changes he's brought to the city "could have been done much faster." At the same time, he remained skeptical about Navalny."Do I vote for a bureaucrat who made some changes, or a different person who promises even more changes?" he asked. "I think I'll only make up my mind on the day of the elections."
Sobyanin, who made his name as the governor of the oil-rich Siberian province of Tyumen, makes up for his lack of charisma and enthusiasm with what talks in Russian politics: experience, access and the money that comes with it.Despite his almost invisible candidacy, Sobyanin is genuinely well-liked for the changes he's brought to Moscow. He has poured a yearly budget of approximately $54 billion into the city's parks and cultural institutions, although other promises to tackle traffic and parking have been lagging or limited in scope.
As if to shore up his reputation as a fixer-upper, the city, which usually hits a sleepy summer lull in August, has been converted into an enormous construction site _ with sidewalks torn up and facades repainted."There's little doubt that before elections, the government becomes very affectionate and thoughtful," Levada's Grazhdankin said about the city's makeover.
While Sobyanin, who was appointed to the mayor's office, is eager to prove himself as a legitimately elected politician, the tactics used against Navalny _ from accusations that he receives foreign funding abroad to refusals by media outlets to play his campaign ads _ show that he still sees Navalny as a threat.
Even if Navalny's eventual vote tally is relatively low, he may end up having an outsized impact on the Russian political scene."If he gets 10 to 12 percent, they can say, look at your opposition leader, he was only able to get this tiny fraction of the vote," said Lipman. "But those people who are investing their emotions, time and money into this campaign, that experience won't go away."
Oleg Bogomolov, a 42-year-old human resources manager who was at Navalny's headquarters to volunteer for the first time, said he didn't truly believe Navalny could win."But I think the more people who know about him, the greater his chances of being set free," he said. "If they put him behind bars again (after the election), there will be even more people in the streets."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Navalny has little hope of defeating incumbent Sergei Sobyanin _ but polls show his star is rising. And if he gets a big chunk of the real time Location system, the Kremlin will face pressure to show leniency over his five-year prison sentence, and the grassroots protest movement that fizzled out after Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency last year may gain new wind.
Sobyanin, meanwhile, is playing the regal incumbent: Throughout the campaign, the Kremlin-backed politician has been all but invisible, allowing the constant drone of jackhammers or whiff of fresh paint that are signs of a Moscow makeover to remind voters of who's in charge _ and who can pull the purse-strings.
Navalny is the one who has been soaking up attention, and generating buzz. On a recent August day, the opposition leader stood on stage in a sprawling Moscow park dotted with enormous space shuttles and other scraps of Soviet-era glory, and attempted to connect with an audience he rarely reaches through Twitter: the feared and revered babushka contingency."We know that (in Soviet times) our oil money was spent on enormous factories, industry, railroads, roads, science, health care, rockets," he boomed, riffing on a nostalgia felt by many older Russians, who saw their hopes dashed and savings depleted under post-Soviet political reforms.
"But can you name a single major business that's been built in this country in the past 10 years? I can't!"The old ladies sitting in the first row chuckled and shook their heads.On Sunday, police briefly detained Navalny after he left the stage of a campaign event, and released him a short time later. The detention was part of a series of public signals to Navalny, who was given a verbal warning about various alleged campaign violations by the Moscow electoral committee last week.
Polling data on the race is spotty and inconsistent, but the trends are clear: The number of Muscovites ready to vote for Navalny on Sept. 8 has breached 10 percent and may even be moving toward 20 percent. Meanwhile, Sobyanin's ratings _ while still above the 50 percent that would allow him to avoid a run-off _ are slipping by the week. There are four other party-backed candidates in the race, none projected to snag more than 5 percent.
Alexei Grazhdankin, deputy director of the independent Levada polling center, said that Sobyanin's voter base was clearly no longer growing, and that there's now a small chance there will be a second round.Last month, Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison on embezzlement charges, but was released the day after his conviction in what many have described as an effort to legitimize the mayoral race and ensure that Sobyanin _ who was appointed as mayor and is seen as a possible successor to Putin _ is regarded as an elected politician with widespread support.
Such legitimacy is considered important because Putin's forces are at their weakest in his seat of power: Moscow. When Putin won back the presidency last year, after ruling for a term in the lesser role of prime minister, he won only 47 percent of the capital's rtls, compared to 64 percent nationwide. That may also be a reason why, although there's no doubt that Sobyanin is the Kremlin's man, he is running as an independent and has avoided public appearances with the president.
Masha Lipman at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow said that Navalny had already achieved something: cast doubt over the inevitability of Putin's power."One of his greatest achievements is ... adding an element of risk and uncertainty," she said. "Putin built a political system in this country that is risk averse, it's a political monopoly."
Rather than the issues _ immigration, traffic, high cost of living _ it's a contrast in political style that lies at the heart of the mayoral campaign. In the Levada Center poll, 48 percent of respondents said they would vote for a mayor with "experience," whereas 47 percent said that personal qualities, such as "openness and determination," were crucial.
Navalny, a sharp-tongued 37-year-old lawyer, has plenty of the latter. He has waged an intensive campaign with nearly $1.5 million in funds raised online, meeting with hundreds of voters every day and mobilizing enthusiastic young volunteers to help hand out leaflets in the street and on the metro.
His team has also unleashed a flurry of new online projects. From a GPS mapping system that shows how many supporters live in each apartment block to an application that helps users spread pro-Navalny information on Russia's biggest social networks, the campaign has been keen to lock down his natural base of young voters, many of whom often don't make it to the polls.
"Currently the polls are assuming that those who haven't yet figured out who to vote for will vote the same way as those who have," Leonid Volkov, Navalny's campaign manager, told The Associated Press. "The fight is for the 30 percent of voters who haven't decided yet."Andrei Tvertnev, an unemployed 25-year-old former soldier who was lingering in the crowd around Navalny, is one of those yet to make up his mind.
Tvertnev wasn't keen on Sobyanin, saying that the changes he's brought to the city "could have been done much faster." At the same time, he remained skeptical about Navalny."Do I vote for a bureaucrat who made some changes, or a different person who promises even more changes?" he asked. "I think I'll only make up my mind on the day of the elections."
Sobyanin, who made his name as the governor of the oil-rich Siberian province of Tyumen, makes up for his lack of charisma and enthusiasm with what talks in Russian politics: experience, access and the money that comes with it.Despite his almost invisible candidacy, Sobyanin is genuinely well-liked for the changes he's brought to Moscow. He has poured a yearly budget of approximately $54 billion into the city's parks and cultural institutions, although other promises to tackle traffic and parking have been lagging or limited in scope.
As if to shore up his reputation as a fixer-upper, the city, which usually hits a sleepy summer lull in August, has been converted into an enormous construction site _ with sidewalks torn up and facades repainted."There's little doubt that before elections, the government becomes very affectionate and thoughtful," Levada's Grazhdankin said about the city's makeover.
While Sobyanin, who was appointed to the mayor's office, is eager to prove himself as a legitimately elected politician, the tactics used against Navalny _ from accusations that he receives foreign funding abroad to refusals by media outlets to play his campaign ads _ show that he still sees Navalny as a threat.
Even if Navalny's eventual vote tally is relatively low, he may end up having an outsized impact on the Russian political scene."If he gets 10 to 12 percent, they can say, look at your opposition leader, he was only able to get this tiny fraction of the vote," said Lipman. "But those people who are investing their emotions, time and money into this campaign, that experience won't go away."
Oleg Bogomolov, a 42-year-old human resources manager who was at Navalny's headquarters to volunteer for the first time, said he didn't truly believe Navalny could win."But I think the more people who know about him, the greater his chances of being set free," he said. "If they put him behind bars again (after the election), there will be even more people in the streets."
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
In Seminars Meant To Teach Investing Wisdom
A lawsuit filed Saturday by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman alleges that Donald Trump defrauded more than 5,000 people of $40 million, handed over for what was supposed to be the opportunity to learn Trump’s real estate investment magic at his for-profit training program, Trump University. The suit also names The Trump Entrepreneur Institute—previously known as Trump University LLC—and Michael Sexton, former president of the institution.
Beginning in 2005, Trump University offered a program that began with a free introductory 90-minute presentation promising to teach the secrets that helped build his real estate empire. This was, according to the suit, no more than a lengthy promotion for a three-day, $1,500 seminar. The three-day program, in turn, was used to plug “elite” courses that cost anywhere from $10,000 to $35,000.
Schneiderman takes particular aim at Trump U.’s ads, which featured the mogul’s picture and signature, and some of which appeared as personal letters. Marketing materials frequently referenced the “handpicked instructor” who would impart Trump’s wisdom, but the attorney general maintains that Trump was uninvolved in developing or teaching curriculum, and was not responsible for choosing instructors—by hand or otherwise.
The suit also claims the organization was warned by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) up to eight years ago to stop presenting itself as a university, though Trump representatives George Sorial and Michael Cohen say the organization had no formal communication with the NYSED until 2010. Trump University was issued a cease and indoor Tracking, after which its name was changed to The Trump Entrepreneur Institute. Sorial and Cohen say the program suspended live seminars several weeks later as a result of the developing conflict with Schneiderman’s office.
“Mr. Trump used his celebrity status and personally appeared in commercials making false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got,” said Schneiderman, in a statement. “No one, no matter how rich or popular they are, has a right to scam hard working New Yorkers. Anyone who does should expect to be held accountable.”
The suit claims that many students at Trump University—referred to in the complaint as “consumers”—were promised the opportunity to practice actual real estate transactions with access to private funds, personal appearances by Trump himself, and year-long access to “apprenticeship support.” Instead, according to the lawsuit, participants were provided with a list of funding sources culled from a newsstand publication, and many mentors did not respond to contact from students or provided no ongoing guidance at all.
Instead of the chance to shake hands with The Donald, a life-sized cutout of Trump was made available for photos with students, alleges the attorney general’s complaint.
Sorial and Cohen insist that Schneiderman’s actions are personally-motivated attacks against Trump, and claim that before the lawsuit was filed, the attorney general “repeatedly” rejected the offer of in-person meetings with Trump, while suggesting through a representative that the matter could be settled out of court.
“98% of Trump University students rated the program ‘excellent,’” claims the site, “while only 4% of New York State registered voters rated Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s performance as “excellent” and Schneiderman thinks he could be the next governor? He must be joking.”
Beyond the belligerent typeface, the site actually makes thousands of pages of handwritten survey responses, apparently from Trump University participants, available in PDF. Remarks in comment form are largely positive, and numerical responses tend to be the highest available scores or blank. Names of participants are redacted.
It is neither my business or concern as to how many sexual partners anyone has at any one time, and I genuinely could not care less how folk organise their relationships. But the co-opting and rebranding of polygamy, so that it loses its nasty association with the oppression of the most disadvantaged women, is as irresponsible as suggesting that because some women chose to enter high-end prostitution as a social experiment, all prostitution is radical and harmless.
Caroline Humphrey, a professor of collaborative anthropology at Cambridge University, has argued in favour of the legalisation of polygamy because, according to a number of women in polygamous marriages in Russia, "half a good man is better than none at all". While polyamory is not the same as traditional polygamy – which has been practised for centuries under a strict code of patriarchy in communities where women and children have few if any rights – the co-opting of the sanitised version will further normalise a practice that is anything but liberating for women in this Hands free access.
There is also the assumption that polyamory is an invention of a set of too-cool-for-school hipsters, who have recently discovered that exclusive couple-type relationships are so last season. However, it was radical feminists in the 1970s onwards that developed the notion of non-monogamy as a way to challenge patriarchal heterosexuality. The definition of polyamory as "ethical non-monogamy" currently doing the rounds sticks in my craw. Non-monogamy was deeply ethical. One could have as many sexual partners as desired but everything was honest and above board, with no one being deceived.
The type of non-monogamy radical feminists developed and practised involved no men. We were all lesbians starting off on a fairly equal playing field. Some of us involved with leftwing politics had previously been witness to or victims of men who had sexual access to as many women as they wanted, while women waited for her one partner to get round to paying her attention. In the meantime, women were pitted against each other while the men played a subtle game of divide and rule, and there were plenty of women to do the washing, childcare and provide emotional and sexual support for these oh-so alternative men.
The women were not necessarily any more sexually liberated than their married, monogamous sisters; in fact they would quite often complain of being treated far worse than a wife. It not only gave men permission to sleep around, but left women experiencing dreadful feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem and lack of confidence.
Elisabeth Sheff, a US-based sociologist who has studied polyamorous families since the mid-1990s, found that "despite the pronounced importance of gender equality to polyamorists", it is not unusual for men to be drawn to it because they believe that it will lead to sex with lots of women. The modern proponents of polyamory tend to ignore gender dynamics as if patriarchy and the sexual inequality that it produces has disappeared. Many also forget that its practice today, unlike polygamy, is the choice of overwhelmingly white, affluent, university educated and privileged folk, with too much time on their hands.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Beginning in 2005, Trump University offered a program that began with a free introductory 90-minute presentation promising to teach the secrets that helped build his real estate empire. This was, according to the suit, no more than a lengthy promotion for a three-day, $1,500 seminar. The three-day program, in turn, was used to plug “elite” courses that cost anywhere from $10,000 to $35,000.
Schneiderman takes particular aim at Trump U.’s ads, which featured the mogul’s picture and signature, and some of which appeared as personal letters. Marketing materials frequently referenced the “handpicked instructor” who would impart Trump’s wisdom, but the attorney general maintains that Trump was uninvolved in developing or teaching curriculum, and was not responsible for choosing instructors—by hand or otherwise.
The suit also claims the organization was warned by the New York State Education Department (NYSED) up to eight years ago to stop presenting itself as a university, though Trump representatives George Sorial and Michael Cohen say the organization had no formal communication with the NYSED until 2010. Trump University was issued a cease and indoor Tracking, after which its name was changed to The Trump Entrepreneur Institute. Sorial and Cohen say the program suspended live seminars several weeks later as a result of the developing conflict with Schneiderman’s office.
“Mr. Trump used his celebrity status and personally appeared in commercials making false promises to convince people to spend tens of thousands of dollars they couldn’t afford for lessons they never got,” said Schneiderman, in a statement. “No one, no matter how rich or popular they are, has a right to scam hard working New Yorkers. Anyone who does should expect to be held accountable.”
The suit claims that many students at Trump University—referred to in the complaint as “consumers”—were promised the opportunity to practice actual real estate transactions with access to private funds, personal appearances by Trump himself, and year-long access to “apprenticeship support.” Instead, according to the lawsuit, participants were provided with a list of funding sources culled from a newsstand publication, and many mentors did not respond to contact from students or provided no ongoing guidance at all.
Instead of the chance to shake hands with The Donald, a life-sized cutout of Trump was made available for photos with students, alleges the attorney general’s complaint.
Sorial and Cohen insist that Schneiderman’s actions are personally-motivated attacks against Trump, and claim that before the lawsuit was filed, the attorney general “repeatedly” rejected the offer of in-person meetings with Trump, while suggesting through a representative that the matter could be settled out of court.
“98% of Trump University students rated the program ‘excellent,’” claims the site, “while only 4% of New York State registered voters rated Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s performance as “excellent” and Schneiderman thinks he could be the next governor? He must be joking.”
Beyond the belligerent typeface, the site actually makes thousands of pages of handwritten survey responses, apparently from Trump University participants, available in PDF. Remarks in comment form are largely positive, and numerical responses tend to be the highest available scores or blank. Names of participants are redacted.
It is neither my business or concern as to how many sexual partners anyone has at any one time, and I genuinely could not care less how folk organise their relationships. But the co-opting and rebranding of polygamy, so that it loses its nasty association with the oppression of the most disadvantaged women, is as irresponsible as suggesting that because some women chose to enter high-end prostitution as a social experiment, all prostitution is radical and harmless.
Caroline Humphrey, a professor of collaborative anthropology at Cambridge University, has argued in favour of the legalisation of polygamy because, according to a number of women in polygamous marriages in Russia, "half a good man is better than none at all". While polyamory is not the same as traditional polygamy – which has been practised for centuries under a strict code of patriarchy in communities where women and children have few if any rights – the co-opting of the sanitised version will further normalise a practice that is anything but liberating for women in this Hands free access.
There is also the assumption that polyamory is an invention of a set of too-cool-for-school hipsters, who have recently discovered that exclusive couple-type relationships are so last season. However, it was radical feminists in the 1970s onwards that developed the notion of non-monogamy as a way to challenge patriarchal heterosexuality. The definition of polyamory as "ethical non-monogamy" currently doing the rounds sticks in my craw. Non-monogamy was deeply ethical. One could have as many sexual partners as desired but everything was honest and above board, with no one being deceived.
The type of non-monogamy radical feminists developed and practised involved no men. We were all lesbians starting off on a fairly equal playing field. Some of us involved with leftwing politics had previously been witness to or victims of men who had sexual access to as many women as they wanted, while women waited for her one partner to get round to paying her attention. In the meantime, women were pitted against each other while the men played a subtle game of divide and rule, and there were plenty of women to do the washing, childcare and provide emotional and sexual support for these oh-so alternative men.
The women were not necessarily any more sexually liberated than their married, monogamous sisters; in fact they would quite often complain of being treated far worse than a wife. It not only gave men permission to sleep around, but left women experiencing dreadful feelings of anxiety, low self-esteem and lack of confidence.
Elisabeth Sheff, a US-based sociologist who has studied polyamorous families since the mid-1990s, found that "despite the pronounced importance of gender equality to polyamorists", it is not unusual for men to be drawn to it because they believe that it will lead to sex with lots of women. The modern proponents of polyamory tend to ignore gender dynamics as if patriarchy and the sexual inequality that it produces has disappeared. Many also forget that its practice today, unlike polygamy, is the choice of overwhelmingly white, affluent, university educated and privileged folk, with too much time on their hands.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/!
Monday, August 19, 2013
A rushed and flawed welfare scheme?
The Indian welfare state is set for a reinvention, as subsidies of all kinds are in the process of being monetised into cash transfers. Aapka paisa, aapke haath (your money in your hands) is the pithy election campaign slogan that is meant to convince the people of the merit of cash transfers, but is the Indian state ready for the switch to cash?
We don't think so. India requires significant additional capability in identifying households and in linking households to bank accounts. Scaling up nationally without building this capability will likely result in failure, and the Indian government should instead look to emulate the successful bottom-up implementation approach of Brazil's FamÃlia with gradual scale up from the regional to the national level.
The merit of cash transfers lays in the potential greater efficiency of cash, as compared to in-kind subsidies, in expanding choice and enabling poor households to purchase goods and services that they need. Of course, this increase in economic welfare will only be realised if the cash transfer is equivalent in purchasing power to the subsidy. This is not always the case, as a cash transfer pilot for kerosene in the state of Rajasthan highlights: the cash transferred was insufficient for families to purchase their monthly requirement of kerosene, as the market price indoor Tracking. Therefore, any cash transfer scheme would require that the transfers be indexed to inflation in the local area, which is highly complex.
Transferring cash to households, while seemingly simple, requires significant implementation capabilities. The first step is to identify all potential beneficiary households, which remains incomplete and daunting in India.
India's highly-touted unique ID programme has issued an estimated 280m ID cards over the course of three years, meaning that 800m more cards need to be issued before April 2014, when the cash transfer is set to cover the entire country. Such a vast increase in the rate of issuing cards seems unlikely. Even if all households are able to obtain an ID card, there is no guarantee that the transfer can be targeted accurately to only poor households. Many non-poor households have finagled their way onto government rolls that track the poor, for example, leaving the poor behind.
The next step for the cash transfer to work is to link the national ID to a bank account. In India, this seemingly simple step is a huge challenge, as Indians currently have limited access to financial services. A recent World Bank study estimates bank account penetration across India at 35%, a rate that falls even lower for the poorest households. Moreover, many poor households do not have access to bank branches or ATMs.
Furthermore, in any cash transfer scheme, there will undoubtedly be cases of non-payment, late payment, or inadequate payment to beneficiaries. In these cases, it remains unclear, in the design of India's transfer, how citizens will be able to file grievances and how the government will redress these grievances. A similarly massive Indian social programme, MGNREGA, has seen state governments drag their feet on resolving complaints and fail to curb corruption due to the lack of a grievance redressal mechanism.
Given that India seems inadequately prepared for implementing a cash transfer scheme, does the government's current implementation strategy have mechanisms of learning and adaptation that address these inadequacies? We believe not.
First, the government's strategy involves large scale piloting of cash transfers for selected programmes in 51 districts by 2013, and then scaling up nationwide by 2014. The pilot is set to last only a few months, with no systematic evaluation, and will likely be carried out in districts that have relatively high ID card coverage and bank account penetration. Consequently, the results of the pilot may not be that informative and Hands free access, even if they are, will not be representative of how the programme will work across India.
Second, rushing into a massive cash transfer programme may complicate the government's ability to rectify problems on the fly, both politically and administratively. The Indian government can learn from an alternative implementation strategy adopted in Brazil for the famous cash transfer programme, Bolsa FamÃlia.
Bolsa FamÃlia grew out of a combination of other transfer programmes that had started at the municipal and state levels and had been operating for several years prior to the launch of Bolsa FamÃlia. These sub-national cash transfer programmes were then individually scaled up to the national level, and subsequently consolidated into Bolsa FamÃlia. Thus, cash transfers in Brazil started from the bottom and diffused upward and outward, which suggests that kinks in programme administration could be smoothed out at smaller scales and then scaled up. By contrast, India's top-down, rushed approach provides little space for weaknesses to be identified and rectified at the local level so that the most effective modalities of the programme can be scaled nationally.
The Indian government's ambitions of establishing a cash transfer system at the proposed size and scope has the potential to deliver significant welfare gains. However, policymakers should be wary of overambitious implementation targets: in the rush for implementation the government has ignored its current administrative constraints and gone for nationwide scale up which will likely result in failure.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
We don't think so. India requires significant additional capability in identifying households and in linking households to bank accounts. Scaling up nationally without building this capability will likely result in failure, and the Indian government should instead look to emulate the successful bottom-up implementation approach of Brazil's FamÃlia with gradual scale up from the regional to the national level.
The merit of cash transfers lays in the potential greater efficiency of cash, as compared to in-kind subsidies, in expanding choice and enabling poor households to purchase goods and services that they need. Of course, this increase in economic welfare will only be realised if the cash transfer is equivalent in purchasing power to the subsidy. This is not always the case, as a cash transfer pilot for kerosene in the state of Rajasthan highlights: the cash transferred was insufficient for families to purchase their monthly requirement of kerosene, as the market price indoor Tracking. Therefore, any cash transfer scheme would require that the transfers be indexed to inflation in the local area, which is highly complex.
Transferring cash to households, while seemingly simple, requires significant implementation capabilities. The first step is to identify all potential beneficiary households, which remains incomplete and daunting in India.
India's highly-touted unique ID programme has issued an estimated 280m ID cards over the course of three years, meaning that 800m more cards need to be issued before April 2014, when the cash transfer is set to cover the entire country. Such a vast increase in the rate of issuing cards seems unlikely. Even if all households are able to obtain an ID card, there is no guarantee that the transfer can be targeted accurately to only poor households. Many non-poor households have finagled their way onto government rolls that track the poor, for example, leaving the poor behind.
The next step for the cash transfer to work is to link the national ID to a bank account. In India, this seemingly simple step is a huge challenge, as Indians currently have limited access to financial services. A recent World Bank study estimates bank account penetration across India at 35%, a rate that falls even lower for the poorest households. Moreover, many poor households do not have access to bank branches or ATMs.
Furthermore, in any cash transfer scheme, there will undoubtedly be cases of non-payment, late payment, or inadequate payment to beneficiaries. In these cases, it remains unclear, in the design of India's transfer, how citizens will be able to file grievances and how the government will redress these grievances. A similarly massive Indian social programme, MGNREGA, has seen state governments drag their feet on resolving complaints and fail to curb corruption due to the lack of a grievance redressal mechanism.
Given that India seems inadequately prepared for implementing a cash transfer scheme, does the government's current implementation strategy have mechanisms of learning and adaptation that address these inadequacies? We believe not.
First, the government's strategy involves large scale piloting of cash transfers for selected programmes in 51 districts by 2013, and then scaling up nationwide by 2014. The pilot is set to last only a few months, with no systematic evaluation, and will likely be carried out in districts that have relatively high ID card coverage and bank account penetration. Consequently, the results of the pilot may not be that informative and Hands free access, even if they are, will not be representative of how the programme will work across India.
Second, rushing into a massive cash transfer programme may complicate the government's ability to rectify problems on the fly, both politically and administratively. The Indian government can learn from an alternative implementation strategy adopted in Brazil for the famous cash transfer programme, Bolsa FamÃlia.
Bolsa FamÃlia grew out of a combination of other transfer programmes that had started at the municipal and state levels and had been operating for several years prior to the launch of Bolsa FamÃlia. These sub-national cash transfer programmes were then individually scaled up to the national level, and subsequently consolidated into Bolsa FamÃlia. Thus, cash transfers in Brazil started from the bottom and diffused upward and outward, which suggests that kinks in programme administration could be smoothed out at smaller scales and then scaled up. By contrast, India's top-down, rushed approach provides little space for weaknesses to be identified and rectified at the local level so that the most effective modalities of the programme can be scaled nationally.
The Indian government's ambitions of establishing a cash transfer system at the proposed size and scope has the potential to deliver significant welfare gains. However, policymakers should be wary of overambitious implementation targets: in the rush for implementation the government has ignored its current administrative constraints and gone for nationwide scale up which will likely result in failure.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Obama declares a “right” to health insurance
Facing criticism and bad poll numbers over the 2010 healthcare law, known to most as “ObamaCare,” President Barack Obama extolled the perceived benefits of its provisions in his weekly address to the nation and proclaimed that Americans have a “right” to health insurance coverage.“Right now, we’re well on our way to fully implementing the Affordable Care Act. And in the next few months, we’ll reach a couple milestones with real meaning for millions of Americans,” said President Obama, in reference to the state health insurance exchanges that will open on October 1st.
The reality here is that the implementation of ObamaCare isn’t going all that smoothly. Many states are experiencing problems implementing the exchanges, the most recent of which is Oregon. The government is three months behind on data security testing, which opens up concerns about identity theft. The Obama Administration has also delayed two major provisions of the law, the employer mandate and consumer-cost caps.
That doesn’t leave much confidence that ObamaCare is being implemented when the administration has tacitly admitted that the law has very real, very concerning problems. And we have even mentioned the most serious adverse effect of the law yet, which is rising insurance premiums.
“If you’re one of the 85% of Americans who already have insurance, you’ve already got new benefits and protections under this law that you didn’t before,” President Obama told Americans. ”Free checkups, mammograms, and contraceptive care. Discounted prescription medicine on Medicare. The fact you can stay on your real time Location system’ plan until you turn 26. And much, much more.”As Milton Friedman once said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” These services aren’t “free” at all. The costs for these services will be borne through higher health insurance premiums.
“If you don’t have insurance, beginning on October 1st, private plans will actually compete for your business,” continued President Obama. “You can comparison shop in an online marketplace, just like you would for cell phone plans or plane tickets.”Actually, several insurers have left the exchanges, including California, Connecticut, and Georgia, which only diminishes competition, resulting in higher premiums for those who participate in the exchanges.
After taking some shots at conservative Republicans who are making a push in Congress to defund the law, President Obama finally declared that Americans have a “right” to health insurance.
“I’m going to keep doing everything in my power to make sure this law works as it’s supposed to,” added President Obama in closing. “Because in the United States of America, health insurance isn’t a privilege – it is your right. And we’re going to keep it that way.”Sigh. This is a familiar collectivist notion. Though usually reserved for countries with strictly government-run healthcare, it has been repackaged for ObamaCare, which is ostensibly a government takeover of the insurance industry through a more corporatist means.
No one has a right to any to goods or services provided by another, whether it’s an insurance company or any other business. Health insurance, a service provided by a company assuming the risk covering someone, is not a right.And even if one does accept President Obama’s notion that health insurance is a “right,” why does ObamaCare ravage consumer-driven health insurance plans, such as HSAs, that hold down healthcare costs? These plans are not only cheaper form of health insurance, they put crucial healthcare decisions in the hands of patients, giving them protect in the form of catastrophic coverage in instances of serious need.
Yes, Americans need greater access to affordable health insurance coverage, no one, including Republicans, disagrees with that. But ObamaCare doesn’t make health insurance more affordable. It increases the overall cost of healthcare through a mix regulation, Indoor Positioning System, and cost-controls. The result, as noted above, is already rising health insurance premiums for both group and individual insurance plans in almost every state because of this ill advise law.
Academic integrity has to be retained if football and basketball teams are to continue to represent institutions of higher learning. How exactly we define “academic integrity” is another debate, for another column. But an athlete accepting payment for signing his or her name is in no way compromising a university’s mission. Nor is it taking advantage of other student-athletes. This is an elementary economics lesson: value of a cheeseburger, a car, or an autograph is determined by the demand of a free market. If someone will fork over $100 for Johnny Manziel to sign his name, Johnny Football should be allowed to pocket that cash. The autograph will almost certainly be sold for triple that amount. Hop on eBay and scan the Manziel-signed items going for more than $1,000.
Two important details on this business opportunity for college athletes. First, it should be open to every athlete. If a backup tailback for the Memphis Tigers wants to make an autograph appearance at Wolfchase Galleria, he should be allowed to do so. How much can he charge? How many fans will get in line? Up to the free market, folks.
And secondly, when a student-athlete signs for pay, the college he represents should get a percentage. If Johnny Manziel performed his heroics for Sewanee or Rhodes College, he wouldn’t be able to charge what he can as The Man at Texas A & M. Yes, the name on the front of the jersey still counts for something in measuring star power . . . and the value of an autograph.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
The reality here is that the implementation of ObamaCare isn’t going all that smoothly. Many states are experiencing problems implementing the exchanges, the most recent of which is Oregon. The government is three months behind on data security testing, which opens up concerns about identity theft. The Obama Administration has also delayed two major provisions of the law, the employer mandate and consumer-cost caps.
That doesn’t leave much confidence that ObamaCare is being implemented when the administration has tacitly admitted that the law has very real, very concerning problems. And we have even mentioned the most serious adverse effect of the law yet, which is rising insurance premiums.
“If you’re one of the 85% of Americans who already have insurance, you’ve already got new benefits and protections under this law that you didn’t before,” President Obama told Americans. ”Free checkups, mammograms, and contraceptive care. Discounted prescription medicine on Medicare. The fact you can stay on your real time Location system’ plan until you turn 26. And much, much more.”As Milton Friedman once said, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” These services aren’t “free” at all. The costs for these services will be borne through higher health insurance premiums.
“If you don’t have insurance, beginning on October 1st, private plans will actually compete for your business,” continued President Obama. “You can comparison shop in an online marketplace, just like you would for cell phone plans or plane tickets.”Actually, several insurers have left the exchanges, including California, Connecticut, and Georgia, which only diminishes competition, resulting in higher premiums for those who participate in the exchanges.
After taking some shots at conservative Republicans who are making a push in Congress to defund the law, President Obama finally declared that Americans have a “right” to health insurance.
“I’m going to keep doing everything in my power to make sure this law works as it’s supposed to,” added President Obama in closing. “Because in the United States of America, health insurance isn’t a privilege – it is your right. And we’re going to keep it that way.”Sigh. This is a familiar collectivist notion. Though usually reserved for countries with strictly government-run healthcare, it has been repackaged for ObamaCare, which is ostensibly a government takeover of the insurance industry through a more corporatist means.
No one has a right to any to goods or services provided by another, whether it’s an insurance company or any other business. Health insurance, a service provided by a company assuming the risk covering someone, is not a right.And even if one does accept President Obama’s notion that health insurance is a “right,” why does ObamaCare ravage consumer-driven health insurance plans, such as HSAs, that hold down healthcare costs? These plans are not only cheaper form of health insurance, they put crucial healthcare decisions in the hands of patients, giving them protect in the form of catastrophic coverage in instances of serious need.
Yes, Americans need greater access to affordable health insurance coverage, no one, including Republicans, disagrees with that. But ObamaCare doesn’t make health insurance more affordable. It increases the overall cost of healthcare through a mix regulation, Indoor Positioning System, and cost-controls. The result, as noted above, is already rising health insurance premiums for both group and individual insurance plans in almost every state because of this ill advise law.
Academic integrity has to be retained if football and basketball teams are to continue to represent institutions of higher learning. How exactly we define “academic integrity” is another debate, for another column. But an athlete accepting payment for signing his or her name is in no way compromising a university’s mission. Nor is it taking advantage of other student-athletes. This is an elementary economics lesson: value of a cheeseburger, a car, or an autograph is determined by the demand of a free market. If someone will fork over $100 for Johnny Manziel to sign his name, Johnny Football should be allowed to pocket that cash. The autograph will almost certainly be sold for triple that amount. Hop on eBay and scan the Manziel-signed items going for more than $1,000.
Two important details on this business opportunity for college athletes. First, it should be open to every athlete. If a backup tailback for the Memphis Tigers wants to make an autograph appearance at Wolfchase Galleria, he should be allowed to do so. How much can he charge? How many fans will get in line? Up to the free market, folks.
And secondly, when a student-athlete signs for pay, the college he represents should get a percentage. If Johnny Manziel performed his heroics for Sewanee or Rhodes College, he wouldn’t be able to charge what he can as The Man at Texas A & M. Yes, the name on the front of the jersey still counts for something in measuring star power . . . and the value of an autograph.
Read the full products at www.ecived.com/en/!
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Immigration Minister and Shadow debate asylum policy
In July, Attorney General Eric Holder filed a lawsuit, arguing that the state should be required to undergo some form of preclearance with districting plans. A month before, the United States Supreme Court had struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, meaning that the Texas redistricting plan was no longer subject to federal preclearance requirements.
In his lawsuit, Holder called on a judge to review the districting proposal, and cited "evidence of intentional racial discrimination that was presented" in another lawsuit, Texas v. Holder in 2012. The 2012 ruling denied the state preclearance to enact a potential voter identification law, and Holder used the suit as a springboard for suggesting that similar federal approval would again be necessary.
In response to the most recent case, Abbott denied that redistricting practices were racially motivated, but revealed that political interests were very much at work.
"In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party's electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats," read a court brief filed by Abbott.
Abbott also qualified the tactics, noting that partisan districting decisions are still constitutional, despite "incidental effects on minority voters." The brief cites Hunt v. Cromartie, a South Carolina case in which it was decided that "[a] jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact."
Partisan gerrymandering, while legal, is an often frowned upon. Before John Paul Stevens' 2010 retirement, the then-Supreme Court justice criticized the Indoor Positioning System, asserting that it is "very, very harmful to the community at large."
Gentlemen, welcome to the program. We know that both your parties support offshore processing, Nauru and PNG as partners in that, mandatory detention, a regional solution involving our neighbours, particularly Indonesia, a humanitarian refugee intake, the use of Navy and Customs to respond to boats. Given all that common ground, what do each of you consider to be the single biggest point of difference in your policy approach - Tony Burke?
My focus is on implementation, and I think it's fair to say the greatest frustration that I've found have been the attempts from the Opposition to claim that the arrangements with Papua New Guinea will not be appropriately implemented. The entire policy and framework depends on the extent to which people will test our resolve because that determines how many people end up being affected by it. Now, we will have whatever capacity is required, but the more there is a discussion here implying that we won't implement it, the more people will put their lives at risk at the high seas.
Our focus has always been on deterrence, deterrence first. Now that obviously includes turning boats back where it's safe to do so, but it's a deterrence model that goes all the way up the chain and bringing all of that for implementation purposes under a single command and making sure that you have the ability to respond to issues as they arise because this is a daily struggle. The other key difference is form, indoor Tracking. Our form is we've got this done before. Our record shows that we have and the proven resolve and commitment and consistency. We've always believed in these policies. The Government has had every point in the compass on this debate.
No, we in fact brought an excision bill for the Australian mainland into the Parliament and the Labor Party opposed it. The only change we made was to bring children out of held detention. Now there were just over 50 people who were children in held detention at that time and we successfully did that. Now the big difference between us and the Government is - I have no doubt about the minister's earnest intention to get children out of held detention; his predecessor once removed held the same intention, but he failed miserably 'cause boats kept turning up with children on them. And so, no, we weren't winding it back. It was the Labor Party and Kevin Rudd who got rid of the border protection measures that worked under John Howard and 50,000 people have turned up since at a cost of $9 billion.
Factually inaccurate what he said about the final term of the Howard Government. I don't want to spend the whole night on the history, but I can't let Scott get away with claiming that children out of detention was the only thing that happened in that final term. The vast majority of people on temporary protection visas who were told they'd never be given permanent visas were given them. All but two of the people who were on Naura who'd been told they would never be settled in Australia were settled in Australia. To claim that those things never happened is just dishonest.
Well, effectively what you've got is you can - if you go back over, say, the last seven days or something like that to the first seven days of the policy, you find a significant tapering down. Now depending on how many days you go, you'll get a different percentage, between 40 per cent and 20 per cent. But it only tells part of the story because you've effectively got backfilling. People who would have got on boats had the policy not been in place, not getting on at all and refusing to get on, while people smugglers offering cut-price deals, desperately trying to backfill. They are steadily running out of the number of customers 'cause the product has been taken from them.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
In his lawsuit, Holder called on a judge to review the districting proposal, and cited "evidence of intentional racial discrimination that was presented" in another lawsuit, Texas v. Holder in 2012. The 2012 ruling denied the state preclearance to enact a potential voter identification law, and Holder used the suit as a springboard for suggesting that similar federal approval would again be necessary.
In response to the most recent case, Abbott denied that redistricting practices were racially motivated, but revealed that political interests were very much at work.
"In 2011, both houses of the Texas Legislature were controlled by large Republican majorities, and their redistricting decisions were designed to increase the Republican Party's electoral prospects at the expense of the Democrats," read a court brief filed by Abbott.
Abbott also qualified the tactics, noting that partisan districting decisions are still constitutional, despite "incidental effects on minority voters." The brief cites Hunt v. Cromartie, a South Carolina case in which it was decided that "[a] jurisdiction may engage in constitutional political gerrymandering, even if it so happens that the most loyal Democrats happen to be black Democrats and even if the State were conscious of that fact."
Partisan gerrymandering, while legal, is an often frowned upon. Before John Paul Stevens' 2010 retirement, the then-Supreme Court justice criticized the Indoor Positioning System, asserting that it is "very, very harmful to the community at large."
Gentlemen, welcome to the program. We know that both your parties support offshore processing, Nauru and PNG as partners in that, mandatory detention, a regional solution involving our neighbours, particularly Indonesia, a humanitarian refugee intake, the use of Navy and Customs to respond to boats. Given all that common ground, what do each of you consider to be the single biggest point of difference in your policy approach - Tony Burke?
My focus is on implementation, and I think it's fair to say the greatest frustration that I've found have been the attempts from the Opposition to claim that the arrangements with Papua New Guinea will not be appropriately implemented. The entire policy and framework depends on the extent to which people will test our resolve because that determines how many people end up being affected by it. Now, we will have whatever capacity is required, but the more there is a discussion here implying that we won't implement it, the more people will put their lives at risk at the high seas.
Our focus has always been on deterrence, deterrence first. Now that obviously includes turning boats back where it's safe to do so, but it's a deterrence model that goes all the way up the chain and bringing all of that for implementation purposes under a single command and making sure that you have the ability to respond to issues as they arise because this is a daily struggle. The other key difference is form, indoor Tracking. Our form is we've got this done before. Our record shows that we have and the proven resolve and commitment and consistency. We've always believed in these policies. The Government has had every point in the compass on this debate.
No, we in fact brought an excision bill for the Australian mainland into the Parliament and the Labor Party opposed it. The only change we made was to bring children out of held detention. Now there were just over 50 people who were children in held detention at that time and we successfully did that. Now the big difference between us and the Government is - I have no doubt about the minister's earnest intention to get children out of held detention; his predecessor once removed held the same intention, but he failed miserably 'cause boats kept turning up with children on them. And so, no, we weren't winding it back. It was the Labor Party and Kevin Rudd who got rid of the border protection measures that worked under John Howard and 50,000 people have turned up since at a cost of $9 billion.
Factually inaccurate what he said about the final term of the Howard Government. I don't want to spend the whole night on the history, but I can't let Scott get away with claiming that children out of detention was the only thing that happened in that final term. The vast majority of people on temporary protection visas who were told they'd never be given permanent visas were given them. All but two of the people who were on Naura who'd been told they would never be settled in Australia were settled in Australia. To claim that those things never happened is just dishonest.
Well, effectively what you've got is you can - if you go back over, say, the last seven days or something like that to the first seven days of the policy, you find a significant tapering down. Now depending on how many days you go, you'll get a different percentage, between 40 per cent and 20 per cent. But it only tells part of the story because you've effectively got backfilling. People who would have got on boats had the policy not been in place, not getting on at all and refusing to get on, while people smugglers offering cut-price deals, desperately trying to backfill. They are steadily running out of the number of customers 'cause the product has been taken from them.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Surprise fees on your hotel bill
If anyone is an educated hotel guest, it's Bjorn Hanson, dean of New York University's Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management.
But even Hanson got confused during a business trip a few years ago when a hotel bill included $18 in charges for real time Location system. One fee was for a bellman he didn't use and the other was for housekeeping service, even though he had already left a tip.
It took some discussion with the manager to get the fees dropped.
While travelers were complaining about airline fees - additional charges for putting luggage on planes, reserving seats and other services - the hotel business quietly experimented with fee after fee.
The result is that your bill at checkout can be confounding. Hotels are tacking on lots of extra charges in addition to sales tax and the tariffs from cities and states that apply only to the hospitality industry.
Common fees include resort usage, airport pickup, parking and gym visits along with charges for room service.
Some of the more surprising charges include a fee for moving items around in the minibar (not actually consuming any), a bellman (whether you use one or not), the room safe (even if you don't stash valuables in it), checking out early, checking in early and upgraded amenities (such as shampoo). And here's a new fee: parking in an open, unattended lot.
These charges are most common at higher-end hotels, resorts and properties in urban centers. The new parking fee at suburban hotels is still relatively rare. Most hotels in the middle of the price spectrum - the most popular segment in the U.S. - continue to avoid most fees in favor of offering free Internet, free breakfast and free parking.
Fees collected by the hotel industry this year will hit a record $2.1 billion, according to a projection released by NYU's Hanson on Tuesday, who tracks hotel fee trends annually. That is double what consumers paid a decade ago.
Among luxury properties, 99% charge for a late cancellation, compared with 29%among so-called midscale properties, according to a 2012 study by the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
The biggest problem with fees, Hanson says, is not disclosing those that are mandatory. Last fall the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to 22 hotel booking companies for leaving details out of the price projection when consumers shopped for rtls. It is now common to find a section on fees on hotel booking sites as well as a disclosure when a "resort fee" applies.
"Increasingly, hotels give away free breakfast, free Internet, and now some hotels are trying to claw that back with 'convenience fees,'" says Robert Habeeb, president and chief operating officer of First Hospitality Group in Chicago, which operates 53 hotels, mostly in the Midwest. Fees vary at its properties but can include Internet connection fees ($11.95 a day at one property), a pet fee ($50 per stay at another property), breakfast and parking.
Hotels watch occupancy trends and change prices - and fees - constantly, Habeeb says. "It has become like you're trading a commodity on the floor of an exchange." Ultimately, he says, "consumers decide what they're willing to pay for and what they're not."
Overall, nearly a quarter of hotels charge for in-room Internet access, according to a 2012 survey commissioned by the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Wi-Fi charges are most common in so-called "upper upscale" and luxury hotels - with the fee assessed at more than three-quarters of all properties in those categories.
Business travelers to big cities, in particular, are targeted for the Wi-Fi charge - which can be as high as $15 a day. "If you're headed to downtown-anywhere, there's a good chance you'll see a Wi-Fi fee on your bill," says Jeremy Murphy, chief executive officer of TheSuitest.com, a travel website that analyzes hotel rooms and prices.
NYU's Hanson says it can be tough for consumers to understand what might end up on their bills. "Fees and surcharges are not even uniform across brands," he says. "They can change overnight ... That makes it very difficult for travelers to be aware and anticipate."
If you can, find out in advance what the extra charges are, and pay close attention to your bill when you're checking out. Tom Waithe, director of operations for Kimpton Hotels in the Pacific Northwest, encourages hotel guests to challenge charges they disagree with.
"The desk has, in many cases, the full ability to reverse a charge or reduce it, but be fair - the charges are often posted in advance," Waithe says.Read the registration card carefully. Says Waithe: "If you say you will pay for Wi-Fi and newspapers, don't be complaining at checkout that you didn't notice what you were signing."
Jack Worthen Germond, born during the Roaring ’20s, worked for the Rochester Times-Union and became Washington Bureau chief for Gannett newspapers. In 1974, he moved to the Washington Star, where he started a syndicated political column with Jules Witcover. After the Star folded, they went to the Baltimore Evening Sun.
For many Americans, he was a familiar figure on television, as a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a frequent commentator on Meet the Press. “Jack Germond was one of the great happy warriors of political reporting,” NBC’s Chuck Todd wrote on Twitter. Journalist Jeff Greenfield wrote on Twitter: “Germond’s bull---- detector should be implanted in every political reporter.”
Germond was renowned for his no-nonsense manner and his cultivation of political sources around the country during a pre-Internet era when that was a crucial part of smart reportage. He was also famous for his love of fine food and drink — immortalized by “the Germond rule,” which held that political reporters split the dinner tab evenly, regardless of who had eaten what.
Democrat and Chronicle columnist and former managing editor Jim Memmott interviewed Germond in 1997 when the T-U closed. Germond, who worked at the Times-Union in the mid 1950s, recalled an election to control the fate of the Monroe County Democratic Party.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
But even Hanson got confused during a business trip a few years ago when a hotel bill included $18 in charges for real time Location system. One fee was for a bellman he didn't use and the other was for housekeeping service, even though he had already left a tip.
It took some discussion with the manager to get the fees dropped.
While travelers were complaining about airline fees - additional charges for putting luggage on planes, reserving seats and other services - the hotel business quietly experimented with fee after fee.
The result is that your bill at checkout can be confounding. Hotels are tacking on lots of extra charges in addition to sales tax and the tariffs from cities and states that apply only to the hospitality industry.
Common fees include resort usage, airport pickup, parking and gym visits along with charges for room service.
Some of the more surprising charges include a fee for moving items around in the minibar (not actually consuming any), a bellman (whether you use one or not), the room safe (even if you don't stash valuables in it), checking out early, checking in early and upgraded amenities (such as shampoo). And here's a new fee: parking in an open, unattended lot.
These charges are most common at higher-end hotels, resorts and properties in urban centers. The new parking fee at suburban hotels is still relatively rare. Most hotels in the middle of the price spectrum - the most popular segment in the U.S. - continue to avoid most fees in favor of offering free Internet, free breakfast and free parking.
Fees collected by the hotel industry this year will hit a record $2.1 billion, according to a projection released by NYU's Hanson on Tuesday, who tracks hotel fee trends annually. That is double what consumers paid a decade ago.
Among luxury properties, 99% charge for a late cancellation, compared with 29%among so-called midscale properties, according to a 2012 study by the American Hotel and Lodging Association.
The biggest problem with fees, Hanson says, is not disclosing those that are mandatory. Last fall the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to 22 hotel booking companies for leaving details out of the price projection when consumers shopped for rtls. It is now common to find a section on fees on hotel booking sites as well as a disclosure when a "resort fee" applies.
"Increasingly, hotels give away free breakfast, free Internet, and now some hotels are trying to claw that back with 'convenience fees,'" says Robert Habeeb, president and chief operating officer of First Hospitality Group in Chicago, which operates 53 hotels, mostly in the Midwest. Fees vary at its properties but can include Internet connection fees ($11.95 a day at one property), a pet fee ($50 per stay at another property), breakfast and parking.
Hotels watch occupancy trends and change prices - and fees - constantly, Habeeb says. "It has become like you're trading a commodity on the floor of an exchange." Ultimately, he says, "consumers decide what they're willing to pay for and what they're not."
Overall, nearly a quarter of hotels charge for in-room Internet access, according to a 2012 survey commissioned by the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Wi-Fi charges are most common in so-called "upper upscale" and luxury hotels - with the fee assessed at more than three-quarters of all properties in those categories.
Business travelers to big cities, in particular, are targeted for the Wi-Fi charge - which can be as high as $15 a day. "If you're headed to downtown-anywhere, there's a good chance you'll see a Wi-Fi fee on your bill," says Jeremy Murphy, chief executive officer of TheSuitest.com, a travel website that analyzes hotel rooms and prices.
NYU's Hanson says it can be tough for consumers to understand what might end up on their bills. "Fees and surcharges are not even uniform across brands," he says. "They can change overnight ... That makes it very difficult for travelers to be aware and anticipate."
If you can, find out in advance what the extra charges are, and pay close attention to your bill when you're checking out. Tom Waithe, director of operations for Kimpton Hotels in the Pacific Northwest, encourages hotel guests to challenge charges they disagree with.
"The desk has, in many cases, the full ability to reverse a charge or reduce it, but be fair - the charges are often posted in advance," Waithe says.Read the registration card carefully. Says Waithe: "If you say you will pay for Wi-Fi and newspapers, don't be complaining at checkout that you didn't notice what you were signing."
Jack Worthen Germond, born during the Roaring ’20s, worked for the Rochester Times-Union and became Washington Bureau chief for Gannett newspapers. In 1974, he moved to the Washington Star, where he started a syndicated political column with Jules Witcover. After the Star folded, they went to the Baltimore Evening Sun.
For many Americans, he was a familiar figure on television, as a regular panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a frequent commentator on Meet the Press. “Jack Germond was one of the great happy warriors of political reporting,” NBC’s Chuck Todd wrote on Twitter. Journalist Jeff Greenfield wrote on Twitter: “Germond’s bull---- detector should be implanted in every political reporter.”
Germond was renowned for his no-nonsense manner and his cultivation of political sources around the country during a pre-Internet era when that was a crucial part of smart reportage. He was also famous for his love of fine food and drink — immortalized by “the Germond rule,” which held that political reporters split the dinner tab evenly, regardless of who had eaten what.
Democrat and Chronicle columnist and former managing editor Jim Memmott interviewed Germond in 1997 when the T-U closed. Germond, who worked at the Times-Union in the mid 1950s, recalled an election to control the fate of the Monroe County Democratic Party.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Monday, August 12, 2013
The Pink Slip
America’s pastime has taken a lot of hits over the years—of the wrong kind, we hate to admit, not the type that boosts players’ averages into the Hall of Fame echelon. Ryan Braun, the Milwaukee Brewers slugger and winner of the National League’s Most Valuable Player award in 2011, finally came clean—he had run out of excuses—and in the process dirtied his reputation for good. He made a fool out of his team owner, Mark Attanasio, and Doug Melvin, the team’s general manager, who signed Braun to an eight-year contract that was the richest in Milwaukee’s history, and most tragically for the game, his legion of fans.
Braun violated the league’s anti-doping policy. His name showed up in a sweeping investigation of Biogenesis, an anti-aging clinic in Florida that baseball officials claim distributed illegal performance-enhancing drugs. His lies finally caught up with him, and he’s been suspended for the rest of the rtls. He tried to make his fans think he was as pure as driven snow. Just like another artificially pumped-up player named Alexander Rodriguez, whose time is up. When hypocrites fall hard, it’s never a pretty sight. Braun, yer out!
When was the last time Fox News “journalist” Geraldo Rivera actually made news? We can’t remember either, but tweeting a seminude photo of himself clad only in a bath towel has to be another low in a downward spiraling career that they never teach you in Columbia J-School. On the plus side, he didn’t look too flabby for a guy who just turned 70 on July 4 but the other side of the story is his apparent Anthony Weiner plagiarism. Let the New York City mayoral candidate be judged by the voters—and his private behavior by his wife. Rivera’s grab for attention is just cheesy. Is he trolling for a new bride? He’s on his fifth marriage now—still three more to go to catch up to Larry King, who apparently set the bar high for these cable guys. Rivera, next time you take a shower, keep it to yourself.
Maybe it’s not her fault that bleached blonde Aaryn Gries has an egregious spelling of her first name; she can blame her parents for that. But she has to take full responsibility for her outrageous behavior on the CBS reality show “Big Brother” that puts a new shiny face on white supremacy and racism. Her guilt-free expression of intolerance and her selfish expectation of privilege make her the candidate we’d like to banish forever, let alone eliminate from the program. But we know there are millions out there who feel just like her, they’re just not as willing to parade their prejudices in public before the television audience. The benefit of all this attention, scripted or not, is that it gives the lie to the conservatives’ contention that racism in America is a thing of the past. On the contrary, it’s alive and well—in prime time.
Hempstead school district’s summer reading list this year was so stupid it became a national joke because it was filled with errors. It didn’t echo President George W. Bush’s famous malapropism, “Is our children learning?,” but then he was only running for president. The school district’s assignment was to educate its students over the summer. On the list, “The Great Gatsby” became “The Great Gypsy,” Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones” became “The Lovely Bone,” and George Ornell, rather than George Orwell, was credited as the author of “Animal Farm.”
The lowly employee who put the list together has not been named, just reportedly “disciplined,” but we say the blame should go straight to the top. Superintendent Susan Johnson makes about $265,000 and is eligible for about $40,000 in annual performance bonuses. She was fired from the district in 2005 for wasteful spending; the district has gone through seven superintendents in the last eight years. Has anybody learned anything since then? Clearly Johnson should renew her library card—and spend all her free time reading the books on this list. Her kind of bureaucratic incompetence hurts the kids who count on her academic leadership.
What Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, did to the punk-rock band Pussy Riot was outrageous enough. By their courageous acts, the all-women collective has shown how little regard Putin has for free speech in his country and how screwed up Russia’s Orthodox Church is. To prove their point, the women staged a protest song , appropriately called “Holy Shit,” from the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. They were arrested for desecration and charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or indoor Tracking.” All they destroyed was Putin’s reputation.
The church had been blown up in the 1930s and later turned into a swimming pool, but recently, thanks to a restoration reportedly paid for by organized crime, there’s a huge parking lot underneath it, and its banqueting halls are available for $10,000 a day. After the crackdown, which garnered international attention, three of the women remain behind bars. Amnesty International has called them prisoners of conscience. If Putin ever wants to put his ugly KGB past behind him, he should let them go with an apology and a promise that he’ll respect free expression.
But he seems to be willfully moving in the wrong direction. While attention has been on Edward Snowden, the American in Moscow seeking asylum, Putin has declared war on homosexuals, signing a bill on July 3 that bans adoption of Russian-born children not only to gay couples but also to any couple or single parent living in any country where marriage equality exists, as gay rights activist Harvey Fierstein, an internationally renowned actor and playwright, recently described it in the New York Times. Putin has also signed a law that allows Russia’s cops to arrest tourists and foreigners they suspect of being gay, lesbian or “pro-gay” (which sounds like a “thought crime” out of “1984”) and detain them for up to 14 days. And let’s not forget that Russia is supposed to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. Perhaps an international boycott is in order. We say “nyet” to Putin. And he should keep his shirt on in public. Who does he think he is—Anthony Weiner?
There were many contenders for this ignominious distinction, but Tennessee’s Rep. Stephen Fincher is the smug face of conservative Republican hypocrisy, hands down. The Congressman has gotten millions of dollars in farm subsidies but blithely voted to cut food stamps to the bone last month. Twenty-two percent of the people in his own district reportedly rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka SNAP).
But he joined his colleagues in stripping this essential program from the agriculture bill—a measure that had routinely passed in previous years with bipartisan support, because it paired aid for the big farm owners with assistance for the needy people in cities, suburbs and rural areas around the country. You know, wherever there are Americans who can’t afford to put food on their table. But as Fincher calls them, citing the Bible: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” He, of course, rakes in $3.5 million in farm subsidies for growing nothing. Having any American go hungry in a country as rich as ours is a sin. Fincher, get stuffed.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Braun violated the league’s anti-doping policy. His name showed up in a sweeping investigation of Biogenesis, an anti-aging clinic in Florida that baseball officials claim distributed illegal performance-enhancing drugs. His lies finally caught up with him, and he’s been suspended for the rest of the rtls. He tried to make his fans think he was as pure as driven snow. Just like another artificially pumped-up player named Alexander Rodriguez, whose time is up. When hypocrites fall hard, it’s never a pretty sight. Braun, yer out!
When was the last time Fox News “journalist” Geraldo Rivera actually made news? We can’t remember either, but tweeting a seminude photo of himself clad only in a bath towel has to be another low in a downward spiraling career that they never teach you in Columbia J-School. On the plus side, he didn’t look too flabby for a guy who just turned 70 on July 4 but the other side of the story is his apparent Anthony Weiner plagiarism. Let the New York City mayoral candidate be judged by the voters—and his private behavior by his wife. Rivera’s grab for attention is just cheesy. Is he trolling for a new bride? He’s on his fifth marriage now—still three more to go to catch up to Larry King, who apparently set the bar high for these cable guys. Rivera, next time you take a shower, keep it to yourself.
Maybe it’s not her fault that bleached blonde Aaryn Gries has an egregious spelling of her first name; she can blame her parents for that. But she has to take full responsibility for her outrageous behavior on the CBS reality show “Big Brother” that puts a new shiny face on white supremacy and racism. Her guilt-free expression of intolerance and her selfish expectation of privilege make her the candidate we’d like to banish forever, let alone eliminate from the program. But we know there are millions out there who feel just like her, they’re just not as willing to parade their prejudices in public before the television audience. The benefit of all this attention, scripted or not, is that it gives the lie to the conservatives’ contention that racism in America is a thing of the past. On the contrary, it’s alive and well—in prime time.
Hempstead school district’s summer reading list this year was so stupid it became a national joke because it was filled with errors. It didn’t echo President George W. Bush’s famous malapropism, “Is our children learning?,” but then he was only running for president. The school district’s assignment was to educate its students over the summer. On the list, “The Great Gatsby” became “The Great Gypsy,” Alice Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones” became “The Lovely Bone,” and George Ornell, rather than George Orwell, was credited as the author of “Animal Farm.”
The lowly employee who put the list together has not been named, just reportedly “disciplined,” but we say the blame should go straight to the top. Superintendent Susan Johnson makes about $265,000 and is eligible for about $40,000 in annual performance bonuses. She was fired from the district in 2005 for wasteful spending; the district has gone through seven superintendents in the last eight years. Has anybody learned anything since then? Clearly Johnson should renew her library card—and spend all her free time reading the books on this list. Her kind of bureaucratic incompetence hurts the kids who count on her academic leadership.
What Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, did to the punk-rock band Pussy Riot was outrageous enough. By their courageous acts, the all-women collective has shown how little regard Putin has for free speech in his country and how screwed up Russia’s Orthodox Church is. To prove their point, the women staged a protest song , appropriately called “Holy Shit,” from the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. They were arrested for desecration and charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred or indoor Tracking.” All they destroyed was Putin’s reputation.
The church had been blown up in the 1930s and later turned into a swimming pool, but recently, thanks to a restoration reportedly paid for by organized crime, there’s a huge parking lot underneath it, and its banqueting halls are available for $10,000 a day. After the crackdown, which garnered international attention, three of the women remain behind bars. Amnesty International has called them prisoners of conscience. If Putin ever wants to put his ugly KGB past behind him, he should let them go with an apology and a promise that he’ll respect free expression.
But he seems to be willfully moving in the wrong direction. While attention has been on Edward Snowden, the American in Moscow seeking asylum, Putin has declared war on homosexuals, signing a bill on July 3 that bans adoption of Russian-born children not only to gay couples but also to any couple or single parent living in any country where marriage equality exists, as gay rights activist Harvey Fierstein, an internationally renowned actor and playwright, recently described it in the New York Times. Putin has also signed a law that allows Russia’s cops to arrest tourists and foreigners they suspect of being gay, lesbian or “pro-gay” (which sounds like a “thought crime” out of “1984”) and detain them for up to 14 days. And let’s not forget that Russia is supposed to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. Perhaps an international boycott is in order. We say “nyet” to Putin. And he should keep his shirt on in public. Who does he think he is—Anthony Weiner?
There were many contenders for this ignominious distinction, but Tennessee’s Rep. Stephen Fincher is the smug face of conservative Republican hypocrisy, hands down. The Congressman has gotten millions of dollars in farm subsidies but blithely voted to cut food stamps to the bone last month. Twenty-two percent of the people in his own district reportedly rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (aka SNAP).
But he joined his colleagues in stripping this essential program from the agriculture bill—a measure that had routinely passed in previous years with bipartisan support, because it paired aid for the big farm owners with assistance for the needy people in cities, suburbs and rural areas around the country. You know, wherever there are Americans who can’t afford to put food on their table. But as Fincher calls them, citing the Bible: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” He, of course, rakes in $3.5 million in farm subsidies for growing nothing. Having any American go hungry in a country as rich as ours is a sin. Fincher, get stuffed.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
StarCraft Universe MMO turns to Kickstarter
The mod, which has been in development for two years and will be released through Battle.net, takes place 11 years after the end of StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty. Developer Upheaval Arts is looking for $80,000 to finish the game's first act and get it into public beta. The first act will include two playable races, the Terran and Protoss, with the ability to play as Zerg a possible stretch goal.
Upheaval Arts notes that while Blizzard is not affiliated with the production of StarCraft Universe, the company has given the project its blessing.
"While Blizzard is not directly affiliated with this project's production, we do communicate with them to submit bug reports and indoor Tracking," reads the post. "They have given their blessing/permission for us to launch this Kickstarter, and they are supporting our efforts by featuring SCU as an Arcade Highlight."
According to the Kickstarter page, funding will be used to expand the team, gain the resources to polish the mod and get it into players' hands "faster, better and sexier."
StarCraft Universe follows the "Utter Darkness" scenario and depicts a world in which Kerrigan dies and the remaining survivors struggle in the face of a hybrid onslaught. Players will need a copy of StarCraft 2 and access to Battle.net to play the free-to-play mod. The prologue was released through Battle.net in February.
Let me state, up front and for the record, I am a big fan of both Sen. Mike Lee and Sen. Ted Cruz. But, they and their allies in the Senate pushing the “defund Obamacare or shut down the government” fight are wrong. One hundred and ten percent wrong. This is the exact approach Obama wants and needs Republicans to take and when they do it, they are playing right into the Administration’s hands.
Every time those of us on the right start talking about shutting down the government we lose support for our cause, even when we are trying to stop the wildly unpopular Obamacare. This type of political posturing takes the debate away from the sheer awfulness of the President’s health care law and allows Obama to claim this is just Republican pettiness. We mustn’t look petty in this fight, we have lives to save. We must go out and warn people of how bad Obamacare really is and how poorly we will fare under this law.
To that, my fellow conservatives, your government shutdown approach has got to stop. In theory, should we defund Obamacare? Sure, but stop living in the theoretical! This is the real world and with a divided Congress there is no way legislatively to stop Obamacare unless the results of the 2014 election help Republicans keep the House and win the Indoor Positioning System. Therefore, Senate Lee’s approach, while principled, is bad politics that is giving cover to bad policy. Conservatives, don’t let that happen! There is a way to win against Obamacare and it is happening right here in Pennsylvania, right outside your door. The left has already figured it out. Now you must.
Have you ever heard of the group Enroll America? If not, you soon will. Over the weekend they were out in full force in Pennsylvania knocking on your neighbors’ doors telling them what a great idea it is to enroll in Obamacare and helping them get started. At the same time splashed on the front page of many Pennsylvania newspapers was state Sen. Vince Hughes, a Democrat; and the world’s worst Republican, state Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, both pushing for the continued expansion of Medicaid at the state level.
In order to survive, Obamacare, the law, needs two things: an expanded Medicaid in every state and lots of young, uninsured people enrolling on the exchanges. Denying the law those two components is like denying a plant sunlight and water — pretty soon it will shrivel up and fade away. If you care about the health and wellbeing of your family, your neighbors and your fellow Americans, then stop talking about defunding Obamacare and start talking about how negatively it will impact people’s lives.
Medicaid is a bad deal for the poorest and sickest among us — with higher death rates and poor health outcomes. Politicians like Hughes and DiGiralomo want to pat themselves on the back for their good intentions while obviously caring very little about the results for the people they condemn to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Access to health insurance does not mean access to health care. Here’s the funny thing: while Hughes and DiGiralomo cry fake tears about expanding Medicaid and pointing to polls showing a plurality of voters want it — what they are ignoring is that those same polls show when people realize Medicaid expansion is part of Obamacare — they hate it.
Upheaval Arts notes that while Blizzard is not affiliated with the production of StarCraft Universe, the company has given the project its blessing.
"While Blizzard is not directly affiliated with this project's production, we do communicate with them to submit bug reports and indoor Tracking," reads the post. "They have given their blessing/permission for us to launch this Kickstarter, and they are supporting our efforts by featuring SCU as an Arcade Highlight."
According to the Kickstarter page, funding will be used to expand the team, gain the resources to polish the mod and get it into players' hands "faster, better and sexier."
StarCraft Universe follows the "Utter Darkness" scenario and depicts a world in which Kerrigan dies and the remaining survivors struggle in the face of a hybrid onslaught. Players will need a copy of StarCraft 2 and access to Battle.net to play the free-to-play mod. The prologue was released through Battle.net in February.
Let me state, up front and for the record, I am a big fan of both Sen. Mike Lee and Sen. Ted Cruz. But, they and their allies in the Senate pushing the “defund Obamacare or shut down the government” fight are wrong. One hundred and ten percent wrong. This is the exact approach Obama wants and needs Republicans to take and when they do it, they are playing right into the Administration’s hands.
Every time those of us on the right start talking about shutting down the government we lose support for our cause, even when we are trying to stop the wildly unpopular Obamacare. This type of political posturing takes the debate away from the sheer awfulness of the President’s health care law and allows Obama to claim this is just Republican pettiness. We mustn’t look petty in this fight, we have lives to save. We must go out and warn people of how bad Obamacare really is and how poorly we will fare under this law.
To that, my fellow conservatives, your government shutdown approach has got to stop. In theory, should we defund Obamacare? Sure, but stop living in the theoretical! This is the real world and with a divided Congress there is no way legislatively to stop Obamacare unless the results of the 2014 election help Republicans keep the House and win the Indoor Positioning System. Therefore, Senate Lee’s approach, while principled, is bad politics that is giving cover to bad policy. Conservatives, don’t let that happen! There is a way to win against Obamacare and it is happening right here in Pennsylvania, right outside your door. The left has already figured it out. Now you must.
Have you ever heard of the group Enroll America? If not, you soon will. Over the weekend they were out in full force in Pennsylvania knocking on your neighbors’ doors telling them what a great idea it is to enroll in Obamacare and helping them get started. At the same time splashed on the front page of many Pennsylvania newspapers was state Sen. Vince Hughes, a Democrat; and the world’s worst Republican, state Rep. Gene DiGirolamo, both pushing for the continued expansion of Medicaid at the state level.
In order to survive, Obamacare, the law, needs two things: an expanded Medicaid in every state and lots of young, uninsured people enrolling on the exchanges. Denying the law those two components is like denying a plant sunlight and water — pretty soon it will shrivel up and fade away. If you care about the health and wellbeing of your family, your neighbors and your fellow Americans, then stop talking about defunding Obamacare and start talking about how negatively it will impact people’s lives.
Medicaid is a bad deal for the poorest and sickest among us — with higher death rates and poor health outcomes. Politicians like Hughes and DiGiralomo want to pat themselves on the back for their good intentions while obviously caring very little about the results for the people they condemn to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. Access to health insurance does not mean access to health care. Here’s the funny thing: while Hughes and DiGiralomo cry fake tears about expanding Medicaid and pointing to polls showing a plurality of voters want it — what they are ignoring is that those same polls show when people realize Medicaid expansion is part of Obamacare — they hate it.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
High-tech Headache
We can’t round a corner these days without being slapped in the punim by some seductive new piece of technology.It’s becoming heinously difficult to indulge in special quiet moments to ourselves to just … think. Yeah. I believe it’s called thinking.
Every now and then, in a fit of positive imagination—that often begins with the question, “What if someday soon I have more money to spend on technology than I do to buy two cans of Vienna sausages on sale at Walmart?”—I take a little sightseeing trip to Best Buy … where I walk around trying to look like I can afford more than a battery.
On one of my recent trolls, I stumbled on a line of shiny new refrigerators. I know. Older folks—by older folks, I mean you—used to call them “iceboxes.” It was a fitting name as they were boxes containing ice that kept milk from curdling, eggs from hatching and rtls, well, hard. Shut up.And that’s pretty much what you’re supposed to use a fridge for. Keeping foodstuffs cold so’s they’ll last longer. Awesome, right? Apparently not awesome enough.
The first refrigerator I came across had the usual filtered water and ice cube-dispensing door deal. But it looked fancier than usual.See, apparently a horde of consumers complained the fridge was just too boring. I mean there was nothing—zip, zero, nada—to do while you wait three seconds for the sophisticated machine to piss cold water into your waiting cup.
Heaven forbid you should spend even a few seconds away from technological bombardment. That would mean you'd have three seconds to think for yourself and perhaps even birth an original thought. And now—thanks to some lame idea wizard mainlining Ritalin—you can push a button to continue that conversation about the pros and cons of naval vacuuming you're having on Facebook with 700 of your closest friends. Woo-hoo! LOL! Or you can fill that three-second gap by blasting your face off with, well, whatever is on Pandora. Just push the button. G’head, poke it.
Don’t get me wrong. I dig computers and cool programs, and I’m all about making life easier for the masses. But, ultimately, this kind of thing doesn’t make life easier. This makes life stupid … stupider. More stupid.Then again these extras don’t endanger anything but your brain cells—unlike all the stuff they put in cars these days. Don’t get me started. Too late.
As I noted earlier, helpful, efficiency-boosting technology is fabulous. GPS, for instance, is a godsend when roads are squiggly and your directions came from your great-grandmother … who’s never driven one of those newfangled “magic gas jalopies.” But I gotta say, the ability to read a map is an important skill to have—just as a part of a human's general knowledge base—but it’s a skill most people (yes, I mean you) don’t have anymore.
When I brought up cartographic illiteracy to a tech-savvy friend of mine, he said he likes having somewhere else to store directions so they don’t clutter up his brain. As though his brain was some low-RAM Indoor Positioning System and when the memory got full, he was gonna need to purge information to make room for incoming data.
Hey, Sparky, your brain can’t get full. It’s impossible for your brain to get overfull. Just … FYI.GPS is one thing—a darn useful thing on occasion—but now they’re trying so hard to make things convenient in your car that it’s downright distracting.
Some cars now have iPhone-ready buttons for your hands-free gabbing convenience. But wait! Access to your email, Facebook account and hell, for all I know, your prostate exam, is right there on your steering wheel. I jerk the wheel every time I try to set the cruise control on my 2007 Saturn Ion. And they want me to steer straight when my boyfriend and/or girlfriend posts naughty pics of me on Facebook?
Anyway, it’s all just too much. Can’t a fridge just be a fridge? And when I’m in my car, I just wanna be left alone. I just wanna drive. And listen to music. And dictate my column into a digital recorder. And eat. And change my pants and shoes. And brush my hair and teeth. And eat again.
The kitchen in Rachel Cunningham’s Latrobe, Pa., home started out the year with “an orange-sherbet-colored bulkhead, a dingy beige-colored backsplash and an ugly green wallpaper.” But now, redone in PPG Paint’s light sage and cream-puff shades, it “actually looks presentable.”
We know this because Cunningham is what is casually known as a “mom blogger,” one of the tens of thousands who have merged parenthood and technology to create online publications that talk about their lives, their frustrations and, yes, products like PPG Paint.
She and her “Third Stop on the Right” blog, with 1,500 unique visitors per month, were recruited by public-relations agency Burson-Marsteller’s Pittsburgh office for a PPG Industries’ Pittsburgh Paints project. She agreed to talk about the company’s product in return for brushes, a T-shirt and free paint chosen from a selection of trendy shades.
That’s been the traditional way that mom bloggers have worked with companies. But the business model that connects advertisers and the blogosphere is changing.Public-relations agencies now incorporate blogs into their overall marketing plans for clients; networks of bloggers help identify the most appropriate ones to recruit for those marketing efforts; and then bloggers, aware of the value they bring to the deal, consider how they want to be rewarded.
Five years ago, paying a blogger wasn’t something that came up often, said Caroline Friedman, senior associate at Burson-Marsteller. Now, she said, many more are responding to promotional inquiries with explanations of the rates that they charge for their time and access to their reader base.‘‘It’s a very noticeable shift every few months,” said Friedman, who works on various programs involving bloggers, including an ongoing project with Hormel Foods.
The marketing community has done enough tracking of mom blogs to respect the power in them. H&R Block found almost 4 million mom blogs in North America last year, with 500 having built a large enough audience to have significant influence.
Every now and then, in a fit of positive imagination—that often begins with the question, “What if someday soon I have more money to spend on technology than I do to buy two cans of Vienna sausages on sale at Walmart?”—I take a little sightseeing trip to Best Buy … where I walk around trying to look like I can afford more than a battery.
On one of my recent trolls, I stumbled on a line of shiny new refrigerators. I know. Older folks—by older folks, I mean you—used to call them “iceboxes.” It was a fitting name as they were boxes containing ice that kept milk from curdling, eggs from hatching and rtls, well, hard. Shut up.And that’s pretty much what you’re supposed to use a fridge for. Keeping foodstuffs cold so’s they’ll last longer. Awesome, right? Apparently not awesome enough.
The first refrigerator I came across had the usual filtered water and ice cube-dispensing door deal. But it looked fancier than usual.See, apparently a horde of consumers complained the fridge was just too boring. I mean there was nothing—zip, zero, nada—to do while you wait three seconds for the sophisticated machine to piss cold water into your waiting cup.
Heaven forbid you should spend even a few seconds away from technological bombardment. That would mean you'd have three seconds to think for yourself and perhaps even birth an original thought. And now—thanks to some lame idea wizard mainlining Ritalin—you can push a button to continue that conversation about the pros and cons of naval vacuuming you're having on Facebook with 700 of your closest friends. Woo-hoo! LOL! Or you can fill that three-second gap by blasting your face off with, well, whatever is on Pandora. Just push the button. G’head, poke it.
Don’t get me wrong. I dig computers and cool programs, and I’m all about making life easier for the masses. But, ultimately, this kind of thing doesn’t make life easier. This makes life stupid … stupider. More stupid.Then again these extras don’t endanger anything but your brain cells—unlike all the stuff they put in cars these days. Don’t get me started. Too late.
As I noted earlier, helpful, efficiency-boosting technology is fabulous. GPS, for instance, is a godsend when roads are squiggly and your directions came from your great-grandmother … who’s never driven one of those newfangled “magic gas jalopies.” But I gotta say, the ability to read a map is an important skill to have—just as a part of a human's general knowledge base—but it’s a skill most people (yes, I mean you) don’t have anymore.
When I brought up cartographic illiteracy to a tech-savvy friend of mine, he said he likes having somewhere else to store directions so they don’t clutter up his brain. As though his brain was some low-RAM Indoor Positioning System and when the memory got full, he was gonna need to purge information to make room for incoming data.
Hey, Sparky, your brain can’t get full. It’s impossible for your brain to get overfull. Just … FYI.GPS is one thing—a darn useful thing on occasion—but now they’re trying so hard to make things convenient in your car that it’s downright distracting.
Some cars now have iPhone-ready buttons for your hands-free gabbing convenience. But wait! Access to your email, Facebook account and hell, for all I know, your prostate exam, is right there on your steering wheel. I jerk the wheel every time I try to set the cruise control on my 2007 Saturn Ion. And they want me to steer straight when my boyfriend and/or girlfriend posts naughty pics of me on Facebook?
Anyway, it’s all just too much. Can’t a fridge just be a fridge? And when I’m in my car, I just wanna be left alone. I just wanna drive. And listen to music. And dictate my column into a digital recorder. And eat. And change my pants and shoes. And brush my hair and teeth. And eat again.
The kitchen in Rachel Cunningham’s Latrobe, Pa., home started out the year with “an orange-sherbet-colored bulkhead, a dingy beige-colored backsplash and an ugly green wallpaper.” But now, redone in PPG Paint’s light sage and cream-puff shades, it “actually looks presentable.”
We know this because Cunningham is what is casually known as a “mom blogger,” one of the tens of thousands who have merged parenthood and technology to create online publications that talk about their lives, their frustrations and, yes, products like PPG Paint.
She and her “Third Stop on the Right” blog, with 1,500 unique visitors per month, were recruited by public-relations agency Burson-Marsteller’s Pittsburgh office for a PPG Industries’ Pittsburgh Paints project. She agreed to talk about the company’s product in return for brushes, a T-shirt and free paint chosen from a selection of trendy shades.
That’s been the traditional way that mom bloggers have worked with companies. But the business model that connects advertisers and the blogosphere is changing.Public-relations agencies now incorporate blogs into their overall marketing plans for clients; networks of bloggers help identify the most appropriate ones to recruit for those marketing efforts; and then bloggers, aware of the value they bring to the deal, consider how they want to be rewarded.
Five years ago, paying a blogger wasn’t something that came up often, said Caroline Friedman, senior associate at Burson-Marsteller. Now, she said, many more are responding to promotional inquiries with explanations of the rates that they charge for their time and access to their reader base.‘‘It’s a very noticeable shift every few months,” said Friedman, who works on various programs involving bloggers, including an ongoing project with Hormel Foods.
The marketing community has done enough tracking of mom blogs to respect the power in them. H&R Block found almost 4 million mom blogs in North America last year, with 500 having built a large enough audience to have significant influence.
Condom program at risk in Cape Breton
A condom manufacturer has stopped donating condoms to the AIDS Coalition in Cape Breton, jeopardizing its free condom program.The AIDS Coalition of Cape Breton said it hands out about 10,000 condoms per year.
The company was bought by a large American conglomerate that said giving away its product wasn't good business.The Nova Scotia government has said it does not want its funding used to supply condoms.
Christine Porter, executive director of the real time Location system, said access to condoms means a healthier community."We look at HPV now as being one of the big things that could lead to cervical cancer and now you're not just preventing HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancies, but now you're even preventing cancer," she said.
Cathy Penny, the head of Cape Breton's Centre for Sexual Health, said losing the condom program could mean more unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases."To have a condom program close down has an impact because a lot of times younger men and women won't take the money they have to spend and use it on something like that because they feel they are at a very low risk," she said.The AIDS Coalition needs to raise between $8,000 and $10,000 to hand out the condoms anonymously.
Tech sector startups aren’t the only folks “disrupting” things in the Bay Area as of late. Social justice activists are mounting their own creative, grassroots responses to unjust practices – and while they don’t often have deep pockets, they’ve got the collective momentum of people who give a damn propelling them onward. Below, a few examples of what’s percolating on this front.
Earlier this year, we told you about Jeremy Mykaels, a tenant and disabled senior living with AIDS who has rented his apartment in the Castro for more than four decades, and is now battling eviction. Here’s his story, posted to a website he created where he also lists other properties where seniors have been targeted with evictions.
Eviction Free Summer, a group of tenant activists who made a splash at the San Francisco Pride Parade this past June with a faux-Google bus, has started rallying people together to show up outside the homes and offices of landlords after they issue eviction notices. On Sat/10, they’re planning to caravan to Union City, where they’ll stage a protest outside the homes of the property owners who are Hands free access. More information can be found here.
From Aug. 5 until Sept. 1, a billboard at 10th and Howard streets will proclaim: “Hate Has No Place in Our City: San Francisco Embraces Diversity and Acceptance, Not Hate and Bigotry.”
The effort was crowd-funded through Louder, a platform for crowd promotion, through about $3,000 in donations from 100 individuals from throughout the country. It was spearheaded by San Francisco resident Christie George, who teamed up with New Yorker Ateqah Khaki to get the project off the ground.
“When I read about the ads in other cities, I was horrified by how hateful they were. But when I learned that they were coming to San Francisco, I felt like I couldn’t be silent, and was compelled to do something to celebrate how much this city embraces diversity,” George said.
Next Thursday, Aug. 15, the “No Place For Hate” team will host a meet-up for contributors and supporters, featuring talks from the campaign organizers and some comments by Louder founder Colin Mutchler.
Meanwhile, in Oakland, the effort to hack Oakland’s budget with a ballot measure that would put discretionary spending in the hands of ordinary people is starting to pick up speed.
As Community Democracy Project co-director Sonya Rifkin explained in this interview with Shareable: “We care about a wide range of issues and lot of problems come back to questions of power – access to resources and self-determination and being engaged in decisions that affect our lives. Problems arise in politics from the right people not being invited to the table. The strength of this process is people getting connecting and understanding each others' perspectives and empowering communities, which can have far reaching potential for enabling people to solve their own problems.”
Lastly, the Pacifica Radio Archives has received a $128,000 matching grant from the National Archives – the largest-ever grant for a public radio project, according to spokesperson Stephenie Hendricks -- to restore historic recordings of powerful women. Once completed, the recordings will be made available – for free! – to colleges and universities through the archive’s "Campus Campaign." Pacifica doesn't accept corporate funding, and it's hoping to fundraise a matching amount from its listeners.
The recordings were made between 1963 and 1987, and we even have a sample for you. This is the voice of Bella Abzug, a member of the House of Representatives and leader of the women’s movement, recorded in 1981.
The company was bought by a large American conglomerate that said giving away its product wasn't good business.The Nova Scotia government has said it does not want its funding used to supply condoms.
Christine Porter, executive director of the real time Location system, said access to condoms means a healthier community."We look at HPV now as being one of the big things that could lead to cervical cancer and now you're not just preventing HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancies, but now you're even preventing cancer," she said.
Cathy Penny, the head of Cape Breton's Centre for Sexual Health, said losing the condom program could mean more unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases."To have a condom program close down has an impact because a lot of times younger men and women won't take the money they have to spend and use it on something like that because they feel they are at a very low risk," she said.The AIDS Coalition needs to raise between $8,000 and $10,000 to hand out the condoms anonymously.
Tech sector startups aren’t the only folks “disrupting” things in the Bay Area as of late. Social justice activists are mounting their own creative, grassroots responses to unjust practices – and while they don’t often have deep pockets, they’ve got the collective momentum of people who give a damn propelling them onward. Below, a few examples of what’s percolating on this front.
Earlier this year, we told you about Jeremy Mykaels, a tenant and disabled senior living with AIDS who has rented his apartment in the Castro for more than four decades, and is now battling eviction. Here’s his story, posted to a website he created where he also lists other properties where seniors have been targeted with evictions.
Eviction Free Summer, a group of tenant activists who made a splash at the San Francisco Pride Parade this past June with a faux-Google bus, has started rallying people together to show up outside the homes and offices of landlords after they issue eviction notices. On Sat/10, they’re planning to caravan to Union City, where they’ll stage a protest outside the homes of the property owners who are Hands free access. More information can be found here.
From Aug. 5 until Sept. 1, a billboard at 10th and Howard streets will proclaim: “Hate Has No Place in Our City: San Francisco Embraces Diversity and Acceptance, Not Hate and Bigotry.”
The effort was crowd-funded through Louder, a platform for crowd promotion, through about $3,000 in donations from 100 individuals from throughout the country. It was spearheaded by San Francisco resident Christie George, who teamed up with New Yorker Ateqah Khaki to get the project off the ground.
“When I read about the ads in other cities, I was horrified by how hateful they were. But when I learned that they were coming to San Francisco, I felt like I couldn’t be silent, and was compelled to do something to celebrate how much this city embraces diversity,” George said.
Next Thursday, Aug. 15, the “No Place For Hate” team will host a meet-up for contributors and supporters, featuring talks from the campaign organizers and some comments by Louder founder Colin Mutchler.
Meanwhile, in Oakland, the effort to hack Oakland’s budget with a ballot measure that would put discretionary spending in the hands of ordinary people is starting to pick up speed.
As Community Democracy Project co-director Sonya Rifkin explained in this interview with Shareable: “We care about a wide range of issues and lot of problems come back to questions of power – access to resources and self-determination and being engaged in decisions that affect our lives. Problems arise in politics from the right people not being invited to the table. The strength of this process is people getting connecting and understanding each others' perspectives and empowering communities, which can have far reaching potential for enabling people to solve their own problems.”
Lastly, the Pacifica Radio Archives has received a $128,000 matching grant from the National Archives – the largest-ever grant for a public radio project, according to spokesperson Stephenie Hendricks -- to restore historic recordings of powerful women. Once completed, the recordings will be made available – for free! – to colleges and universities through the archive’s "Campus Campaign." Pacifica doesn't accept corporate funding, and it's hoping to fundraise a matching amount from its listeners.
The recordings were made between 1963 and 1987, and we even have a sample for you. This is the voice of Bella Abzug, a member of the House of Representatives and leader of the women’s movement, recorded in 1981.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Tybee Island Maritime Academy Charter School
Friday, Tybee Island Maritime Academy officials were busy unloading boxes of sports equipment, inventorying laptop computers and fielding phone calls from parents all over the county who are interested in enrolling their children in the remaining seats.
Principal Patrick Rossiter signed for indoor Tracking, fielded phone calls and helped teachers fill salt water tanks with creatures from Tybee Beach. The 34-year educator was as excited as a first-year student.“These lap tops are cool,” Rossiter said as he navigated the chairs and crates of supplies in the gleaming halls of the newly renovated school. “And look at this — these are the signal flags they use on those big container ships. Each one represents a different letter. That’s a unique way for a kindergartener to learn the alphabet.”
When the new maritime-themed charter school opens Aug. 12 it will be the first time that Tybee has had a public school in 22 years. The old Tybee Public School closed in 1988 as part of a desegregation plan and dwindling enrollment forced St. Michael’s parochial school to close its doors in 2010.
But the absence of a school made the grey hair on the heads of Tybee’s large retirement community really stand out. So the community pooled their resources and talent to organize an innovative maritime-themed charter school designed to attract more young families to the island. State law allows community groups to use public school funding to independently operate tuition-free schools that are open to all residents. Tybee’s charter school was organized by concerned citizens who wanted to see more children on the island. Everyone on Tybee seemed to buy in.
“Our community effort is coming together,” said Perb Fortner, a retired Jackson Hewitt Tax Service executive who volunteers as the school’s chief financial officer.
St. Michael’s Church officials made major renovations to the old St. Michael’s School facilities so the charter school could be housed there. Residents donated their time and money to the effort, many sold off goods and services to generate funds. Plans for integrating the Common Core Curriculum into a hands-on, project-based academic program for grades K-5 were developed by local educators, including Tybee Mayor Jason Buelterman, retired Atlanta educators Carolyn Jurick and Cindy Cupp, as well as professors from Savannah State University. Buelterman heads up the successful International Baccalaureate program at Johnson High, Jurick was principal of Georgia’s first charter school and Cupp served as state curriculum director and authored a reading instruction program called Cupp Readers and Journal Writers.
The school will offer maritime-themed lessons that focus on soft skills, reasoning, problem solving and independence. Students will track the origins of products they use in school and research where the raw materials came from, how the final products were manufactured, shipped and distributed for retail sale. Patrick Rossiter, a popular educator who previously served as principal of Garden City Elementary School, will lead the school. There will be a 17 to 1 student-to-teacher ratio; every child will have his own laptop and access to an iPad lab.
Officials expect to enroll about 166 students in grades kindergarten through four next year and 200 in grades kindergarten through five the year after that. Seats are still available and the community is working on the finishing touches before the students return to the Island on Aug. 12. After three years without a school, blinking school zone warning lights have to be re-installed on the roads and staff has to refresh the playground mulch.
The awards celebrate the achievements of firms and individuals working across the spectrum of trading and technology in the European financial markets, from stock exchanges and alternative trading platforms, to brokers, software vendors and in-house electronic trading teams.
Regulatory forces have continued to transform and reshape the financial landscape over the past 12 months, threatening traditional business models but presenting opportunities for visionary and nimble operators. Similarly, technological progress continues to reshape the sector, allowing true innovators to thrive.
The London-headquartered exchange group’s strategy to diversify and become a broad-based market infrastructure company continues to pay off, with the LSE Group’s share price up 40% in the year to date. In May, the company completed its acquisition of a 58% stake in clearer LCH.Clearnet, which positions the exchange to benefit from new derivatives trading reforms.
The Swiss bank has long been regarded as a pioneer of electronic trading, and it continues to rank highly on the buyside’s broker lists. The bank has also bucked the market trend by maintaining traditional execution channels, such as electronic and program trading.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
Principal Patrick Rossiter signed for indoor Tracking, fielded phone calls and helped teachers fill salt water tanks with creatures from Tybee Beach. The 34-year educator was as excited as a first-year student.“These lap tops are cool,” Rossiter said as he navigated the chairs and crates of supplies in the gleaming halls of the newly renovated school. “And look at this — these are the signal flags they use on those big container ships. Each one represents a different letter. That’s a unique way for a kindergartener to learn the alphabet.”
When the new maritime-themed charter school opens Aug. 12 it will be the first time that Tybee has had a public school in 22 years. The old Tybee Public School closed in 1988 as part of a desegregation plan and dwindling enrollment forced St. Michael’s parochial school to close its doors in 2010.
But the absence of a school made the grey hair on the heads of Tybee’s large retirement community really stand out. So the community pooled their resources and talent to organize an innovative maritime-themed charter school designed to attract more young families to the island. State law allows community groups to use public school funding to independently operate tuition-free schools that are open to all residents. Tybee’s charter school was organized by concerned citizens who wanted to see more children on the island. Everyone on Tybee seemed to buy in.
“Our community effort is coming together,” said Perb Fortner, a retired Jackson Hewitt Tax Service executive who volunteers as the school’s chief financial officer.
St. Michael’s Church officials made major renovations to the old St. Michael’s School facilities so the charter school could be housed there. Residents donated their time and money to the effort, many sold off goods and services to generate funds. Plans for integrating the Common Core Curriculum into a hands-on, project-based academic program for grades K-5 were developed by local educators, including Tybee Mayor Jason Buelterman, retired Atlanta educators Carolyn Jurick and Cindy Cupp, as well as professors from Savannah State University. Buelterman heads up the successful International Baccalaureate program at Johnson High, Jurick was principal of Georgia’s first charter school and Cupp served as state curriculum director and authored a reading instruction program called Cupp Readers and Journal Writers.
The school will offer maritime-themed lessons that focus on soft skills, reasoning, problem solving and independence. Students will track the origins of products they use in school and research where the raw materials came from, how the final products were manufactured, shipped and distributed for retail sale. Patrick Rossiter, a popular educator who previously served as principal of Garden City Elementary School, will lead the school. There will be a 17 to 1 student-to-teacher ratio; every child will have his own laptop and access to an iPad lab.
Officials expect to enroll about 166 students in grades kindergarten through four next year and 200 in grades kindergarten through five the year after that. Seats are still available and the community is working on the finishing touches before the students return to the Island on Aug. 12. After three years without a school, blinking school zone warning lights have to be re-installed on the roads and staff has to refresh the playground mulch.
The awards celebrate the achievements of firms and individuals working across the spectrum of trading and technology in the European financial markets, from stock exchanges and alternative trading platforms, to brokers, software vendors and in-house electronic trading teams.
Regulatory forces have continued to transform and reshape the financial landscape over the past 12 months, threatening traditional business models but presenting opportunities for visionary and nimble operators. Similarly, technological progress continues to reshape the sector, allowing true innovators to thrive.
The London-headquartered exchange group’s strategy to diversify and become a broad-based market infrastructure company continues to pay off, with the LSE Group’s share price up 40% in the year to date. In May, the company completed its acquisition of a 58% stake in clearer LCH.Clearnet, which positions the exchange to benefit from new derivatives trading reforms.
The Swiss bank has long been regarded as a pioneer of electronic trading, and it continues to rank highly on the buyside’s broker lists. The bank has also bucked the market trend by maintaining traditional execution channels, such as electronic and program trading.
Read the full products at http://www.ecived.com/en/.
With license plate scanners
After an American Civil Liberties Union report found police increasingly can track law-abiding drivers’ whereabouts with few restrictions, the group’s Massachusetts branch renewed its calls for lawmakers to impose limits and said the state already may collect such information.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or Indoor Positioning System – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
On the heels of the report, the ACLU of Massachusetts repeated its call for state legislation to require police to delete plate data after two days unless it relates to a specific investigation.“The police shouldn’t just be collecting location data of innocent people on a routine basis,” said Kade Crockford, director of the state ACLU’s Technology for Liberty project.The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation held a hearing on such bills in May. It has taken no action yet, according to Crockford.
She also said the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security EOPSS announced plans a number of years ago to create a statewide database of captured plate information, but has yet to release information on what data it tracks or what guidelines govern it.
In a 2010 grant application for law enforcement agencies seeking federal funding to buy plate scanners, the state public safety office said recipients must agree to “electronically submit captured license plate data to the state repository maintained by the Criminal Justice Information Services CJIS Division at the Commonwealth’s Public Safety Data Center.”
You might have missed this, if you didn't happen to hit the right fast-food drive-through on the right day in July, but burger-flippers and assorted labor activists staged one-day strikes in cities across the country. They called for the right to unionize and for a raise in the minimum wage - to $15 an hour.
That's right; they want to double the federal minimum wage. Hey, why not swing for the fences? But before you sputter at the chutzpah of this demand, consider the point made by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a provocative op-ed for Bloomberg: "If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour - three times what it is now."
Hanauer, who also supports a $15 wage floor, is clearly mixed up. We in America are not supposed to look at this issue from the point of view of the worker. We're consumers first and foremost, right?
What's supposed to matter is how much doubling the wage would add to the price of your Big Mac or Whopper. And, yes, prices would rise, but by how much is currently something of an Internet parlor game.
The Huffington Post touted and subsequently disowned an estimate that McDonald's would have to increase prices by 17 percent to maintain current levels of Hands free access. An editor for the Columbia Journalism Review picked this apart and instead surmised the price hikes would have to be more in the range of 25 percent, while an industry think tank pegged them at up to 35 percent.
So maybe you don't care if the Dollar Menu becomes the Dollar-Thirty-Five Menu. Have you paused to consider that by raising the wage you would throw thousands of fry cooks out of work? That McDonald's and its franchisees would close stores or introduce more automation to bolster profits? This could raise the unemployment rate.
Could it? Because if you consult actual research, there's no clear consensus on what raising the minimum wage does to employment. Some economists argue that the effect is usually positive, while others say it has no effect or a slightly negative one. There's good reason to believe that raising the minimum wage during a period of high unemployment, like our own, would stimulate the economy. And that's exactly what we need now.
Moreover, raising the pay of low-wage earners will get them off of the public assistance rolls. Restaurant servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the general population and are at three times the poverty rate of the general population.
America's real job creators are its consumers, and their wealth was decimated when the real estate bubble collapsed. Middle-class jobs are increasingly being replaced by low-wage ones. Putting more cash into average workers' hands allows them to spend more, which puts others back to work.
As the low-wage sector goes, so goes the nation. That's the message every middle-class American should be getting. A major challenge in the coming decades will be ensuring that the vast majority of citizens have access to work that affords a decent standard of living.
Fifteen bucks an hour too pie-in-the-sky for you? OK, try $11. Economists consider that hourly wage the cutoff for poverty level for a family of four. So you get why people are protesting. And you get why the fast-food industry has an incredibly high turnover rate: a 75 percent rate annually. The pay stinks. You can't live a decent life on it. The national median pay for cashiers, cooks and the crew in the industry is $8.94.
The people bagging the burritos and taking those frozen patties from the walk-in are not out of line to insist on higher pay. This is one of the fastest growing sectors of employment. And increasingly, its workers are adults, many with families.
The national report raises concerns about cameras mounted on patrol cars, street signs and overpasses that automatically scan license plates on passing vehicles and check them against databases of stolen cars or people wanted on arrest warrants, among other things.
In the report, the ACLU does not question the use of plate scanners for these purposes, but warned that the devices retain images and details on the time and location of every passing vehicle – including a vast majority of motorists who have done nothing wrong.
Police agencies vary widely in how long they keep such information – anywhere from two days to years or Indoor Positioning System – and in some cases feed it into larger law enforcement databases, according to the report, based on 26,000 pages of documents obtained through public records requests in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
On the heels of the report, the ACLU of Massachusetts repeated its call for state legislation to require police to delete plate data after two days unless it relates to a specific investigation.“The police shouldn’t just be collecting location data of innocent people on a routine basis,” said Kade Crockford, director of the state ACLU’s Technology for Liberty project.The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation held a hearing on such bills in May. It has taken no action yet, according to Crockford.
She also said the state Executive Office of Public Safety and Security EOPSS announced plans a number of years ago to create a statewide database of captured plate information, but has yet to release information on what data it tracks or what guidelines govern it.
In a 2010 grant application for law enforcement agencies seeking federal funding to buy plate scanners, the state public safety office said recipients must agree to “electronically submit captured license plate data to the state repository maintained by the Criminal Justice Information Services CJIS Division at the Commonwealth’s Public Safety Data Center.”
You might have missed this, if you didn't happen to hit the right fast-food drive-through on the right day in July, but burger-flippers and assorted labor activists staged one-day strikes in cities across the country. They called for the right to unionize and for a raise in the minimum wage - to $15 an hour.
That's right; they want to double the federal minimum wage. Hey, why not swing for the fences? But before you sputter at the chutzpah of this demand, consider the point made by venture capitalist Nick Hanauer in a provocative op-ed for Bloomberg: "If the minimum wage had simply tracked U.S. productivity gains since 1968, it would be $21.72 an hour - three times what it is now."
Hanauer, who also supports a $15 wage floor, is clearly mixed up. We in America are not supposed to look at this issue from the point of view of the worker. We're consumers first and foremost, right?
What's supposed to matter is how much doubling the wage would add to the price of your Big Mac or Whopper. And, yes, prices would rise, but by how much is currently something of an Internet parlor game.
The Huffington Post touted and subsequently disowned an estimate that McDonald's would have to increase prices by 17 percent to maintain current levels of Hands free access. An editor for the Columbia Journalism Review picked this apart and instead surmised the price hikes would have to be more in the range of 25 percent, while an industry think tank pegged them at up to 35 percent.
So maybe you don't care if the Dollar Menu becomes the Dollar-Thirty-Five Menu. Have you paused to consider that by raising the wage you would throw thousands of fry cooks out of work? That McDonald's and its franchisees would close stores or introduce more automation to bolster profits? This could raise the unemployment rate.
Could it? Because if you consult actual research, there's no clear consensus on what raising the minimum wage does to employment. Some economists argue that the effect is usually positive, while others say it has no effect or a slightly negative one. There's good reason to believe that raising the minimum wage during a period of high unemployment, like our own, would stimulate the economy. And that's exactly what we need now.
Moreover, raising the pay of low-wage earners will get them off of the public assistance rolls. Restaurant servers rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of the general population and are at three times the poverty rate of the general population.
America's real job creators are its consumers, and their wealth was decimated when the real estate bubble collapsed. Middle-class jobs are increasingly being replaced by low-wage ones. Putting more cash into average workers' hands allows them to spend more, which puts others back to work.
As the low-wage sector goes, so goes the nation. That's the message every middle-class American should be getting. A major challenge in the coming decades will be ensuring that the vast majority of citizens have access to work that affords a decent standard of living.
Fifteen bucks an hour too pie-in-the-sky for you? OK, try $11. Economists consider that hourly wage the cutoff for poverty level for a family of four. So you get why people are protesting. And you get why the fast-food industry has an incredibly high turnover rate: a 75 percent rate annually. The pay stinks. You can't live a decent life on it. The national median pay for cashiers, cooks and the crew in the industry is $8.94.
The people bagging the burritos and taking those frozen patties from the walk-in are not out of line to insist on higher pay. This is one of the fastest growing sectors of employment. And increasingly, its workers are adults, many with families.
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