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LED Sequins Warm White Adafruit Pack of 5
Sew a little sparkle into your wearable project with an Adafruit LED Sequin. These are the kid-sister to our popular Flora NeoPixel, they only show a single color and they don't have digital control, but that makes them smaller easier to use for many projects.
Simply connect 3 to 6VDC to the + pin and ground to the - pin, and the LED on the board will light up. You can make the LEDs fade and twinkle by using the PWM (a.k.a. analogWrite) functionality of your Gemma or Flora, or just connect directly to a digital I/O pin of a microcontroller to turn on and off. Or even skip the micro altogether, and power directly from a LiPoly or coin battery.
This order comes with 5 Warm White "1206 size" LEDs, matched with a 100 ohm resistor. When powered from 3.3V they draw about 5mA so you can put up to 4 or 5 in parallel on a single microcontroller pin. We also have these sequins in ruby red, emerald green, royal blue, and rose pink.
- 4mm x 9mm / .16" x .35"
- 2mm thick
- Holes are 7mm / .28" apart
- Datasheet for warm white LED
LED Sequins Warm White Adafruit Pack of 5
LED Sequins Warm White Adafruit Pack of 5
Low stock: 2 left
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₱ 335.00
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The Intervertebral Discs
The intervertebral discs are a prevalent source of lower back pain as they are one of the most frequently injured spinal structures. The discs connect adjacent spinal vertebrae together and provide a degree of shock absorption in the torso.
- Disc Structure
- Causes of Injury
- Types of Disc Injury
- Symptoms of Disc Injury
- Treatment of Disc Injuries
Disc Structure
The structure of the spinal disc resembles a jelly filled doughnut. The inner aspect of the disc contains a gel-like substance called the nucleus pulposus. Surrounding the nucleus are tough fibrocartilagenous fibers called the annulus fibrosis. These annular fibers contain the inner nuclear material similar to a basketball skin containing the air within.
Causes of Disc Injury
Disc injury occurs when the annular fibers of the disc are torn. Because the inner regions of the annulus lack "pain" innervation, injuries contained to the inner annulus occur without one's knowledge.
Common causes of annular disc tears include:
- uncorrected spinal misalignments
- prolonged sitting
- poor postural habits
- poor lifting habits
- improper workstation setup and ergonomics
- improper lifting techniques
- extended periods of vibratory forces (truck and auto drivers, jack hammer operators, etc.)
- Other factors have been shown to increase the susceptibility of disc injury:
- inadequate diet and nutrition
- smoking
- obesity
- lack of physical activity
Types of Disc Injury
There are 3 main types of disc injuries. The first disc injury consists of annular fiber tears which do not extend to the outer aspects of the disc. Thus, the inner nuclear material is prevented from completely escaping the disc.
The second type of disc injury, commonly referred to as a disc herniation, consists of annular tears which run from the innermost aspects of the annulus (where the nucleus is) to the outermost aspects of the annulus. In this type of injury, the pressurized nuclear material can squeeze through the tears in the annulus and escape to the outside of the disc. When this occurs, the nuclear material may come in contact with nearby spinal nerves and even the spinal cord.
In the third type of disc injury, referred to as a disc bulge, the inner nucleus loses hydration; common in those with prolonged spinal stress and the elderly. This results in "bulging" of the disc much like a tire "bulges" when it contains inadequate amounts of air. Similar to the previous injury, the nearby spinal nerves and spinal cord may become impinged from the bulging disc.
Symptoms of Disc Injury
The symptoms of disc injury depend upon the location of the disc tears and whether or not the spinal nerves or spinal cord are affected.
When tearing of the annulus occurs within it's inner portion only, generally pain is not experienced. As previously stated, this is because the inner regions of the annulus lack pain receptors. When tearing of the annulus occurs in the outer annular fibers, mild to excruciating pain is felt in a generalized manner. If a lumbar disc is affected, for instance, diffuse low back pain with associated paraspinal muscle spasm is typical.
When numerous partial tears coalesce to form tears which run clear through the thickness of the annulus, the gel-like nucleus is able to escape the disc. If a spinal nerve or the spinal cord is contacted the individual may experience symptoms of pain, numbness, tingling and/or weakness within either or both lower extremities. In rare cases patients may lose the ability to control bowel and bladder functions. If this occurs, immediate medical intervention is required as the condition can become permanent.
Treatment of Disc Injuries
Disc injuries respond favorably to chiropractic care. This is because chiropractic treatments focus on the dysfunctional spinal segments and not just the symptoms of the disc injury. Pain killers, anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxants do nothing to treat the cause of disc injuries and have been shown to induce further injury.
Chiropractic treatments provide fast, effective, safe and long lasting relief from disc injuries. This is because the chiropractor's approach focuses on restoring spinal alignment, spinal function and overall spinal health, which are the primary factors responsible for the development of disc injuries.
Chiropractic doctors are experts in maintaining proper spinal alignment and function, both of which play a critical role in minimizing spinal stresses – the stresses that are responsible for injury and accelerated degenerative processes in spinal discs.

subset: commoncrawl


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Ongoing exhibition, opened April 11, 2008.
Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) collected books across a vast spectrum of topics and languages. Jefferson followed a modified version of an organizational system created by British philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626) to arrange the books in his library, then the largest private book collection in North America.
Divided into categories of Memory, Reason, and Imagination—which Jefferson translated to "History," "Philosophy," and "Fine Arts"—and further divided into forty-four "chapters," the collection placed within Jefferson's fingertips the span of his multifaceted interests. The books from Jefferson's library are part of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress.


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Steve Sarkisian is headed back home.
Washington quarterback Keith Price and Hau'oli Kikaha aren't bitter about it. The pair of team captains met briefly with the media Monday afternoon outside Husky Stadium after they and the rest of the players met Sarkisian and UW athletics director Scott Woodward for a 45-minute meeting to formally hear the news.
"It doesn't matter who's coaching," said Price. "You could have a janitor coaching us. We know we need to get to nine wins, and that's the goal."
Price and the rest of the team found out hours before the meeting via news media that their coach wouldn't be joining them for a fourth consecutive bowl game.
"It was surprising," Price said. "I think I heard it right after I got done lifting this morning. I turned on ESPN and that was like the top story. It was strange. It wasn't supposed to leak out."
The Pac-12 named Kikaha to its second-team defense and All-Academic first team Monday. The defensive end said many players were upset, but he avoided denigrating his former coach.
"It hurts a little," Kikaha said. "It was a difficult decision for him but it was the best one for he and his family. In the end he had to make the best decision for him, and that's what he did."
Sarkisian spent the last five years (2009-13) gradually resuscitating Washington to respectability after coach Tyrone Willingham led the Huskies to an 0-12 mark in 2008. Sarkisian's breakthrough came Friday when the Huskies reached the eight-win mark with a 27-17 triumph against Washington State in the Apple Cup.
It wasn't enough to keep him from splitting.
He accepted USC's offer to become its head football coach Monday, returning the Torrance, CA., native to the program he spent seven years at as an assistant (2001-03 and 2005-08). USC interim coach Ed Orgeron, owner of a 6-2 record since Lane Kiffin was fired in September, resigned Monday after USC athletic director Pat Haden told him the news.
Both schools confirmed the move through press releases.
"We are delighted to welcome Steve Sarkisian back to the Trojan family," said Haden. "We conducted a very exhaustive and thorough search, pinpointing about 20 candidates and interviewing five of them. We kept coming back to Sark. He is the only who was offered the job. I believe in my gut that he's the right coach for USC at this time."
Monday morning Sarkisian appeared on KJR-AM radio and denied undergoing an official interview with USC, though he admitted speaking to Haden during the weekend. Sarkisian was a quarterbacks coach on the Trojans team that won the 2003 national championship. He spent 2007-08 as USC's offensive coordinator before taking the top job at Washington. The buyout clause in Sarkisian's contract with UW demands he pay the school $1.5 million.
The Huskies finished the 2013 regular season 8-4, pushing Sarkisian's career mark as a head coach to 34-29.
"First, I'd like to thank the University of Washington and athletic director Scott Woodward for the opportunity they gave me five years ago," Sarkisian said. "I believe the Husky program is in a better place now than when we arrived, and I am proud and thankful of the players for that.
"That said, I am extremely excited to be coming home to USC and for the opportunity that USC presents to win championships," Sarkisian said. "I can't wait to get started."
UW didn't immediately announce an interim coach or give indication whether Sarkisian's assistants will join him at USC.
Woodward said he has already started his search for a successor. Alabama offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier and UCLA coach Jim Mora are rumored to be on his wish list.
"The search for Steve's successor has already begun," Woodward said. "I will work hard in the coming days to find the absolute best fit for the University of Washington, but I will not comment on or speculate about the process. We have tremendous tradition, fan base and a world-class institution, and I am confident we will find the right man."
University of Washington President Michael K. Young acknowledged the obvious in a release from the school.
"It is a fact of life in modern intercollegiate athletics that the competition for coaching talent is fierce, and this results in perhaps more movement in coaching positions than one might wish," he said. "This shoe dropping means we are now in the market and that will lead to other shoes dropping. It is the nature of the enterprise. We wish Steve well at USC and every success, except for one day a year."


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Loma Nourishing Shampoo.Loma Nourishing Conditioner.Loma Calming Creme.
All domestic orders are fulfilled through shipping carrier Canada Post.
For all international orders, orders are fulfilled through UPS and DHL Express.
Get more information about Returns & Exchanges.
If you are not completely satisfied with an online purchase or gift, you may return your Canadian purchase in stores or by mail. Restrictions apply for returns made outside of Canada.


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NEW YORK — Dark, dingy, cramped and sad. These are some of the ways travelers describe LaGuardia Airport, a bustling hub often ranked in customer satisfaction surveys as the worst in America.
"It does not represent what people think of when they think of New York and Broadway shows and glamour. It's not very pretty," said Layla House, a sales manager for a medical supply company who travels from her home in Bullard, Texas, to New York at least six times a year.
That's about to change.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced the state is taking control of an ambitious $3.6 billion construction project that envisions an entirely new central terminal at LaGuardia, with vast open spaces, restaurants, shopping plazas, new parking garages, free Wi-Fi and other amenities now common in other airports. Cuomo also wants to develop a plan to upgrade cargo operations at nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport.
"We are going to redevelop those airports the way they should have been redeveloped many, many years ago," Cuomo said in his annual State of the State address to the Legislature.
Cuomo, who is running for re-election and has been mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2016, said he had become frustrated that talk of such renovations has been going on since the 1990s with little progress.
He wants to jump-start construction just as he has done with a $3.9 billion project to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge, north of New York City, which also had been stalled for years.
LaGuardia, along the Flushing and Bowery bays in northern Queens, is the closest of the New York area's three major air hubs to midtown Manhattan, just 8 miles, and it handled a record 27 million passengers last year.
Often the first building they see is the sprawling, boomerang-shaped Central Terminal, which opened just in time to receive visitors to the 1964 World's Fair. Many passengers say it is like stepping back in time.
They immediately encounter low ceilings and dimly lit, narrow hallways. Check-in kiosks are arrayed haphazardly in rows just inside the entrances, where bright green neon lights blare "Welcome to LaGuardia Airport." On the west side of the terminal sits a modest food court featuring a hamburger counter, a pizzeria and a Dunkin' Donuts.
"It's probably the worst of all the terminals I go in and out of," said Thomas Smith, a frequent-flying energy company executive from Chicago who has seen buckets on the floor under leaky ceilings and other signs of decay. "There's no real food service other than small snack shops. The gate areas are old."
Most passengers have to drag their carry-on bags down a flight of stairs to get from their gates to baggage claim because only one concourse has an escalator. Others have complained that neither Kennedy nor LaGuardia provides free Wi-Fi, something that has been industry standard for years.
Built to accommodate 8 million passengers a year, the central terminal now handles 12.5 million. Cuomo envisions a new terminal that could handle as many as 17.5 million passengers by 2030. LaGuardia's three other terminals — which include the Art Deco-style Marine Air Terminal, where seaplanes landed in the 1940s — are not slated for renovation.
"When you see the difference between these airports and some of these other countries' (airports), it's shameful," said George Hobica, who runs the website Airfarewatchdog.com. He noted that after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, airports had to install security equipment for luggage and passenger screening.
"The TSA equipment barely fits at LaGuardia," Hobica said. "LaGuardia is just functionally disjointed."
In 2012, Travel and Leisure magazine put LaGuardia at the bottom of its ranking of the nation's worst airports, saying it had the "dubious honor of ranking the worst for the check-in and security process, the worst for baggage handling, the worst when it comes to providing Wi-Fi, the worst at staff communication, and the worst design and cleanliness."
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, concedes the facility is in need of an overhaul and had already begun awarding contracts for preliminary work at LaGuardia. A spokesman said it welcomes the state's involvement to expedite the project.
Four companies have been asked to submit proposals for the Central Terminal Building project by April 15, and construction is expected to begin by the end of the year. The tricky part will come when construction is fully underway while the airport continues to serve millions.
"Everybody acknowledges that this is a complex undertaking but one that is absolutely necessary," said Stephen Sigmund, executive director of the Global Gateway Alliance, which has advocated for improvements at New York's airports.
"It's going to be a nightmare," added Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst. "This is going to be the equivalent of General Motors trying to change one of its models while the assembly line is still running. … But this is the way airports get redeveloped. Every airline understands this."
Darius Douglass, a New York writer waiting for a flight at LaGuardia, said the workers throughout the airport try to be friendly and helpful. "But it's an old airport. It just needs to be refurbished. It was good in its heyday, but nothing has been done."
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text: "In God's Country" was released as a single in Canada and the U.S. in November. It reached number 44 on the Billboard singles chart and number 48 as an import in the UK. The single's video appears on Outside it's America, a documentary tracking the band's first few weeks on tour through the American southwest in 1987.


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Our company aim to offer the best Land Rover lease deals in Markham NP12 0 which can be modified to suit your individual needs. Since Land Rovers are well-known and popular cars, many people choose to look for leasing deals for this type of vehicle. It's difficult to get a whole new car. From buying outright to buying cars on lease, there are many choices.
You will also have to keep in mind running charges. In addition to buying a home, a vehicle is one of the most expensive assets you will ever purchase. Therefore we shall work very hard to make certain you get the best when choosing to finance a car.
For more details on Land Rover lease deals, please complete our contact form and we will respond to you as soon as possible. Our specialists are happy to answer any queries you may have and can give you all the details you need. Or you can look here - https://www.best-car-lease-deals.co.uk/brands/nissan/caerphilly/markham to see the range of cars we have available whch includ Nissans and Audi.
If you're interested in leasing Range Rover Evoque cars, we have a range of colours available to choose from. Our Range Rover Evoque collection is reasonable to lease and also the contracts can be modified to suit your individual budgets.
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One way of financing a car by top rated specialists is making use of Hire Purchase (HP); this calls for instalments over 12-60 months after placing an initial deposit of 10% in most cases. All finance deals will be authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
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After the contract it is possible to give back the vehicle to the nearby dealership closest to you and pay nothing, swap the vehicle in and start once again or pay the resale cost of the car and keep it. PCP leases generally have smaller monthly payments after paying the initial deposit when compared with other finance strategies.
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We cover Markham (Caerphilly)


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1. Write in the comments what you're most excited about for the Rodarte for Target line. It could be a specific piece, or just something about the feel of the collection you like, or anything. I've made comments anonymous-inclusive so anyone can enter. Leave your email address in the comments too so we can get your mailing address if you win.
2. I will pick 40-45 winners (but don't try to make the answer suitable to my tastes or anything. That's no fun!) We will email the winners and the pieces will be sent out.
The giveaway item is this mustard lace cardigan I said I would wear every day if I could in the collaboration video.
It's also here:I haven't taken any pictures of myself in it but it's super soft and nice to stare at when you're bored during gym WHAT WHO SAID THEY ARE BORED DURING GYM NOT ME.
Now get cracking!
EDIT: I will stop taking entries at midnight Central Standard Time on Saturday, December 19th.
EDIT AGAIN: The contest has ended, we will be emailing the winners this week. Any new entries will be ignored. Thank you to everyone who participated!
EDIT AGAIN AGAIN: Please do not email me about winning. I am basing my choices off the comments alone, emails will be ignored.
Because of the new law, I am supposed to let you know that I receieved compensation and pieces from the Rodarte for Target collection for my collaboration with Target.


text: Mark, thank you for the reply, and help. It is exactly what I needed. I was responding to the fact that approximately 57 people viewed my question, but no one took the time to at least say, "I do not know." I honestly thought a forum made up of likely many pastors would welcome and respond to a new comer. I too am a pastor and so I do understand. Mark, (My name as well!), I do not think it should not have to take a post like mine to get a response in such a forum. Please, forgive me if I offended you, and I am PMing you because I do not like airing things in a public thread. It took a bit from me to write in the first place and I incorrectly had too high of expectations. Thank you again. Mark


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"Coop" was the strong, silent type.
And my dad certainly had his quiet moments.
Plus my dad owned The Princess Movie theater in a small town in Iowa during the Depression, so he had plenty of chances to keep an eye on Coop.
My father was 6'2" tall with green eyes, red hair and freckles. Here he is, looking ever the proud groom when he married my mother, a city slicker from the East.
His mother died when he was just 16, so he ran away from home (Iowa).He joined the Royal Canadian air force and flew crates over France.He never got to go to college but he loved to recite Walt Whitman and other poets from memory.
Like me, he had a varied work life. He won ice skating contests, rolled logs, sold ladies shoes until a jilted date walked in the front door and he ran out the back
My parents used to fight over my future - what would I do when I grew up.
My mother wanted me to go to art school, actually fashion design school in fact. My dad nixed that. I could only go if I became an art teacher. I was not consulted...
If they only knew how I've run the gamut
An old generational photo - me, my dog Pumpkin, my father and my two petites nieces, Anabel and Louisa. Recently I found an old letter my dad wrote me a few years before he died.
Dear Carol,
Just a note to say all is well including Pumpkin(my poodle), who is enjoying the cool sea breezes. Your itinerary sounds very exciting (I was in North Africa researching a book on souks) and I am sure that you will have a grand time along with your work.
I am so proud of you to have accomplished all of this on your own. I realize how hard it is to break in, in New York, as competition is so keen. You're well on the way and things will come much easier, now that you know how to do things as well as being a full fledged authoress. (ref:Street Markets book)
As you look back you will appreciate the hard work and seemingly unrewarding efforts, but now everything is beginning to fall in place.
Best of luck, drop a card or a little note when you have time
It does sounds like a letter Gary Cooper would write...


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Finally, the results from a decades-long study that compared surgery for prostate cancer to careful monitoring have been published.
Overall, the researchers found no difference in rates of death from any cause, including prostate cancer, among men who had their prostates surgically removed compared to those who didn't.
Preliminary results were released more than a year ago.
The newly published conclusion:
"Our findings support observation for men with localized prostate cancer, especially those who have a low PSA value and those who have low-risk disease. Up to two thirds of men who have received a diagnosis of prostate cancer have a low PSA value or low-risk disease, but nearly 90% receive early intervention — typically surgery or radiotherapy."
The findings appear in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
IN 2011, Dr. Timothy Wilt, the lead author on the paper, presented findings from the study, called PIVOT for short, at a meeting of urologists in Washington. Thousands of doctors, many of whom routinely perform prostate surgery, sat silent as the evidence suggested that waiting was a reasonable choice for men whose cancer hadn't spread and appeared to be a low risk to their health.
The federally funded PIVOT study looked at the health of 731 men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1994 and 2002. They were randomly assigned to have their prostates surgically removed or to be observed. After follow-up of about 10 years, a little fewer than half of the men in each group had died.
Now that the data have been subjected to peer review and have been published in an influential journal, they may get even more attention.
"Overtreatment of prostate cancer is a well-recognized phenomenon," Dr. Durado Brooks, of the American Cancer Society, said in a statement about the paper. "Observational management has been recommended for some men for over a decade, yet 9 out of 10 U.S. men diagnosed with prostate cancer continue to receive definitive therapy (usually surgery or radiation)."
Prostate surgery has risks and side effects, including incontinence and impotence.
The PIVOT results may help give doctors and patients more confidence that waiting can be OK, he said. "Some 30 to 40 percent of men diagnosed with prostate may be candidates for observation, many men have never heard of observational management and are never informed that this may be a reasonable option for them."
Some doctors have already gotten the message. "For my practice it's not going to change much," urologist Benjamin Davies, a cancer specialist at the University of Pittsburgh med school, told Shots. The PIVOT results "confirm our suspicions that treating low-risk prostate cancer in older men is not helpful."
In his reading of the study, there is a survival benefit for patients with high-risk cancers. For men whose PSA results were greater than 10 and who had surgery, the rate of death from any cause was lower than for men with similar PSAs who didn't have surgery.
An accompanying editorial pointed out some shortcomings in the study, including the fact that about one-fifth of men didn't stay in their assigned group. But it notes that the results from PIVOT and some other trials show "that a national focus on PSA screening and treatment for prostate cancer may have a marginal benefit on the lifespan of men but at a considerable cost."
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.


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The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is the leading, and most collective voice of the veterinary profession.
The AVMA strives to be the most trusted association in protecting, promoting, and advancing the unified veterinary profession. The core values that the AVMA is built upon are to be ethical, inclusive, science-based, animal-focused, member-centric, supportive, fiscally responsible, efficient, and innovative. Through an AVMA membership, a hospital location can expect to have advancements in shared interests, values and goals, crucial veterinary services, educational accreditation and certification programs, opportunities for success and services, protection in the health and welfare of animals, and education to the public of the important type of work that veterinarians do.
An AVMA membership will enhance a veterinarian practice by presenting support and opportunities through every facet of the profession. Members will also save a minimum of $1,000 on AVMA products and services, in addition to member-only tools and resources.
For more information or to join the AVMA, please visit https://www.avma.org/.


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Boban i Marko Markovic: Irresistible Party Music
The various music styles of Eastern Europe's Roma people, formerly known as gypsies, have become favorites with audiences around the world. Milo Miles says no group does a better job of blending tradition with innovation than the ensemble led by Boban Markovic and his son Marko.
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Other segments from the episode on July 31, 2012
July 31, 2012
Guest: David Wessel
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. You know that fiscal cliff that we're heading for? My guest today is going to explain how we got to its edge and what the consequences are if we go over that cliff at the end of the years. David Wessel is the author of the new book "Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget." He's the economics editor of the Wall Street Journal and writes the Capital column, a weekly look at the economy. He shared two Pulitzer Prizes and is the author of the previous book "In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic." Wessel often contributes economic analysis on NPR's MORNING EDITION and the PBS series "Washington Week."
David Wessel, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let's start with what is the fiscal cliff. I just want to start with something really basic that I know some people know the basics of this, but let's make sure everybody understands it before we go any further.
DAVID WESSEL: Last year, Congress and the president faced a crisis of sorts, and in order to get out of the crisis, they loaded a gun and pointed it at the American economy. And the bullets in the gun are that unless Congress and the president come up with some compromise that will reduce the deficit in the future, taxes will go up for almost everybody, and spending will be cut across the board, hitting defense particularly hard. And this happens at the end of December of this year.
The argument now is: What will Congress and the president actually do about this? There seems little chance they'll do anything about it before the election, and after the election, there's really only two months. If they don't do anything, then they'll pull the trigger on the gun, and, mixing metaphors a bit, the economy goes over the fiscal cliff, and everybody from the Congressional Budget Office to Ben Bernanke says that would be really, really bad for the economy.
GROSS: And explain why everybody says it would be bad. You know, on the one hand, if we cut defense and we raise taxes, that's a lot of money that the government saves. So why is it a fiscal cliff?
WESSEL: Because nobody, even the most vociferous deficit folks, think you should do all this all at once. It's a little bit like being overweight, and the doctor tells you OK, as of December 31, no food and water. That's not the kind of fiscal medicine that the economy needs.
What the economy needs is probably a little help to get growth going now and some discipline in the future, like a person agreeing not to eat so much ice cream and to exercise more, so that over the next decade, the economy can adjust to a federal government which is taking more in taxes, cutting more in spending or some combination thereof.
GROSS: So in the fiscal cliff scenario, do the taxes return to the pre-Bush tax-cut era?
WESSEL: Yes, taxes go up to where they were before President George Bush's 2001-2003 tax cuts. Now, it gets a lot of attention that that means higher taxes on the rich, and it does mean higher taxes on the rich, but there is a lot of these tax increases that would hit people throughout the income spectrum: the child credit that helps people at the bottom and the tax rates that people at the middle class pay.
GROSS: So you've been studying this very closely, like no one believes that there will be a deal before the election because that's too politically dangerous, compromise can be seen as very dangerous now in some circles. So say there's a serious effort to have a compromise or some kind of grand bargain between the end of the election and the beginning of the new year. Any idea what that compromise or grand bargain might look like?
WESSEL: Well, the easiest bargain to make would be to call the whole thing off for a year, and a number of politicians on both parties, including Mitt Romney, have basically called for that. So that's one option. The only way I see getting a compromise is something that does some pretty tough restraints on spending on benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which would be hard for the Democrats to swallow, coupled with some increase in taxes that would be hard for the Republicans to swallow.
But it's going to be really hard because the two parties can't really negotiate now, so the pressure to fix it all after November will be so intense that the only thing they may be able to agree on is we don't want this to happen. There are a few people who think we ought to go over the fiscal cliff, and that'll really force the politicians to get their act together. That seems a little risky to me.
GROSS: So would you compare for us what President Obama and where Mitt Romney stand on what to do about avoiding the fiscal cliff?
WESSEL: Well, I don't actually think either one of them has spelled out what precisely what they would do to avoid the fiscal cliff, but they have contrasting recipes for what to do about the big deficit problem, that is how to fix it. Mitt Romney says you don't need to raise taxes. He would lower tax rates for everybody and make up for that by getting rid of a lot of deductions, credits and exclusions, although he isn't specific about them.
And he has endorsed the rather austere budget that Paul Ryan, the Republican from Wisconsin, has proposed. So basically he says I want to fix the deficit, I want to do it while lowering tax rates, getting rid of deductions and credits and cutting spending a lot.
President Obama thinks that's a mistake. He doesn't want to cut spending as much as Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan does. He does want to raise taxes, but he says that he'll only raise taxes on income over a quarter of a million dollars a year.
GROSS: So let's look at these plans for a moment. Let's start with Romney. Romney says he wants to cut tax rates and make rates that were already cut in the Bush era and then make up for it by cutting spending. What kind of spending cuts would we be looking at in that scenario?
WESSEL: Well, what Romney says is he wants a tax code that brings in as much money as today's tax code but does it with lower tax rates but fewer loopholes, deductions, credits and exclusions. He hasn't spelled out how he's going to do it.
If he's going to bring the deficit down, which he says he wants to do, and if he's going to do that while raising defense spending, which is also something he wants to do, then the burden of the spending cuts is going to have to come on the rest of the budget. And most of the rest of the budget is not government employees or national park service booths, most of the rest of the budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a few other benefit programs.
So we'd have to cut there quite a bit, perhaps turning over some of the responsibility for those programs to the states and saying here's some money, less than you got before, see what you can do with this.
GROSS: And that puts the states in what position?
WESSEL: It depends. Some people think that the states could run, say, Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, more efficiently than the federal government lets them run it now. And they're in favor of giving them some money and letting the states figure out how to do it.
Other people say it's going to be very difficult for the states to save enough money to get by on what the federal government is likely to give them under a Ryan budget, Paul Ryan's budget, and that inevitably means the providers will get less money, and the patients will get less care.
GROSS: Now is Romney saying that under my plan we'd have to cut things like Social Security or Medicare, Medicaid?
WESSEL: He's not said he's going to cut Social Security in the harshest sense. He is in favor of raising the retirement age, the age at which you're eligible for these benefits that we give to the elderly. And he says yes, that we have to find a better way to deliver health care that costs less money. That means spending less on it.
If you don't like it, you say it's a cut. If you do like it, you say it's just making common sense, let's make it more efficient, we can't afford to have an increasing share of our budget going on health care. But he has not been yet forced to say look, this is the budget, this is what my budget would look like if I was elected president. The only thing he's done is endorse the Paul Ryan budget, the House Republican, which is a pretty tough and austere approach to this problem.
GROSS: Give us an overview of that budget.
WESSEL: Well, Paul Ryan, who is a very ambitious Republican from Wisconsin, believes that the government would function better, and the economy would function better, if taxes were lower, and if spending - if the government was a lot smaller. So for instance he would cut a lot of spending on things that are politically popular, like retiree healthcare for the military, which is - aren't going to be on the chopping block no matter who's president, and he's very much in favor of this turning over - turning the Medicare and Medicaid systems into health insurance much more like our 401(k)s, where you get a certain amount of money, you might call it a voucher, and you go shopping for these benefits.
And he thinks that with the competition that that would engender, we could get more for less, more service for less money.
GROSS: He used his Lasik surgery as an example of what he means.
WESSEL: He does. Lasik surgery, which is when they fix your eyes with surgery so you don't need glasses, is not covered by most insurance. And he had Lasik surgery, and he points out correctly that in this particular little market, the market actually worked as all the free market economists and politicians believed: There was competition; the competition forced the price down.
He thinks that applies to health care generally. A lot of other people think that's not the case, that we're not going to go around shopping for the best place to get chemo, or if you have a heart attack, you don't have 15 minutes to say OK, if I go to this hospital, higher quality, lower cost, if I go to that hospital, it's the opposite.
Whether this paradigm works is an open question. There's certainly a lot of evidence that: A, competition generally helps when people have choice; and B, health care may not be like buying soda pop or Internet service.
GROSS: So let's look at President Obama's plan for the budget and to reduce the deficit and the debt.
WESSEL: Well, the president - the reason I hesitate is that the president laid out a plan in his budget - that's the disadvantage of being president, you actually have to put some stuff on paper - but it doesn't fully incorporate the things that he has said he is willing to do. For instance, in the conversations he had last year with House Speaker John Boehner, he was willing to go much farther, the president, than he actually went in his budget.
But taking his budget at face value, basically he would have pretty tough restraints on domestic spending, he'd cut the defense budget, and he would make some money-saving changes to Medicare and Medicaid but not the ones as large as the ones that Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney is in favor of. And most significantly, he would get more tax revenue, and most of that extra tax revenue would come from people who make more than a quarter of a million dollars a year.
GROSS: And what's the rationale for that?
WESSEL: Well, there are two rationales. One is he talks about balance. All that means is: I don't think it's wise to cut spending to reduce the deficit, I think we need some extra tax revenues at the same time. If we don't have extra tax revenues, I think we'll have to cut spending so much that we'll regret it in the future. And secondly, the president argues that it's only fair. The people at the top have made more money over the last 20 or 30 years; they should have to pay more taxes.
He talks about that as giving back. He thinks it won't hurt the economy, and it's only fair. Fairness is, of course, an inherently political decision. He says it would be fair to tax the rich more. Mitt Romney says it's a tax on success, and we'd regret it.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Wessel. He's the economics editor and an economics columnist for the Wall Street Journal. He's also author of the new book "Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget." Let's take a short break here, then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Wessel, and he's the economics editor and an economics columnist for the Wall Street Journal. His new book is called "Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Government(ph)."
You have studied a lot about, you know, the history of the federal budget, not just where we are now. Do you think we're at more of an ideological impasse than we've ever been before in terms of, you know, trying to, you know, balance the budget?
WESSEL: I think there are some competing ideologies here, but we have to remember when we look back at history, the battles over this stuff are incredibly intense. There were the battles at the beginning of the 20th century about whether an income tax was a good idea, about whether to cut tariffs. There was the whole argument during the 1930's about what Franklin Roosevelt did and him attacking wealth and people - the big money interests fighting back.
There were big issues over the Vietnam War and whether that was - whether Lyndon Johnson really hurt the U.S. economy by refusing to raise taxes. So there have been pretty sharp differences before, and that even - that skips the Civil War and what happened during the Revolution and the years that followed.
But I think you put your finger on something that's pretty significant and which unfortunately gets lost in this tit-for-tat stuff that goes on in the campaign: We have a pretty clear contrast, when you think of it, between the two parties right now.
One wants less government; one wants more government. Neither one is really willing to come to grips with what that means. Republicans are a little reluctant to say who is going to lose their benefits as a result, and Democrats are a little reluctant to say who's going to have to pay more taxes as a result.
I don't think that the president's talk of over a quarter of a million dollars a year is realistic. I think most of the Democrats who think about the budget know that they're going to have to raise taxes on more people than just the top two percent. But there is this fundamental difference, and you can hear it in President Obama's rhetoric and Governor Romney's rhetoric about how important a role and how big a role should the government play in our economy, and that influences what you think should be done to cure the deficit.
GROSS: Let me just back up a second. You said a lot of people think that President Obama's being unrealistic when he says he could get the income that he wants by raising taxes on only the top two percent, he's going to have to raise taxes on more people. What's the rationale behind that point of view?
WESSEL: It's basically arithmetic. It's very hard to imagine bringing the deficit down to a reasonable, manageable level while cutting spending enough so that you only raise taxes on the top two percent of the population. The high-profile bipartisan deficit commissions, the one led by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the one led by Pete Domenici and Alice Rivlin, they all have much broader tax increases than just the top two percent.
And even some people who work for the president quietly admit that this is more of a talking point than a clear economic strategy. It doesn't mean that taxes have to go up now, but if you look over the next decade, it's very hard to imagine getting the deficit down to a safe level and only raising taxes on the top two percent.
GROSS: In your book "Red Ink," you ask how did we get here, where the debt is so large. And you point out lousy economy, big tax cuts, two wars that weren't paid for, expansion of Medicare to cover prescription drugs without any offsets to pay for it and a bad recession.
So if we look at the tax cuts, the two unpaid-for wars, the prescription drug benefit without any offsets to pay for it, those were all Republican plans. Can you explain how the Republicans, who are, you know, are now complaining that we're being fiscally irresponsible?
WESSEL: Well, I think - so if you're discovering just a little bit of hypocrisy in Washington, well, welcome to the club. But let's remember here, there are a lot of Democrats who have their fingerprints on some of this stuff. The Medicare prescription drug benefit was favored by many Democrats. Nobody was standing up in the floor of Congress and say I'm voting against this because we haven't found a way to pay for it.
And there weren't a lot of Democrats who wanted to raise taxes to fight the wars, even those who were in favor of them, let alone the ones who weren't. But I think there is a bit of a contradiction, and some of the Republicans are up front about it, and they say look, we don't like what happened in the 2000s. We think spending went up too much, and now we're trying to reverse that. I think that's what Paul Ryan would say.
Others of them have a very convenient amnesia, and they want to go back to Ronald Reagan's era, where Ronald Reagan, they think, cut taxes and restrained spending. But in fact, that's not really the right view of history. Ronald Reagan did cut taxes a lot initially, realized he had overdone it and then raised taxes, things that Grover Norquist doesn't actually like to talk about. And in many respects, he raised spendings. He failed to curtail the big expansion of benefits, although he did do a pretty successful fix to Social Security.
So I think there's a selective reading of political history, and there's also a view among some Republicans that what's important, particularly politically, is to be in favor of lower taxes, and don't worry about deficits so much. And so they'd rather harp on lower taxes and not worry about how do you get the deficit down, and there's quite a bit of that going around.
GROSS: You have a lot of interesting statistics and stand-alone facts in the book. I just want to run through some of those. Let's start with this: The defense budget is greater than the combined defense budgets of the next 17 largest spenders.
WESSEL: We have become the world's policemen, and it's very expensive. We don't know exactly how much the Chinese spend on their military, so the data may be a little bit forced, but if you look at what the military budgets are, as reported by people who try and do apples and oranges, the U.S. military budget is bigger than the combined military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Germany, India, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, Australia, Canada, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, Spain and Israel all combined together. That's a lot of money.
And I think one of the interesting things that's happened in Washington in the last few years is that a lot of the conservatives are beginning to wonder about how much money we should spend on defense. It's not a simple liberal-conservative split anymore. And I suspect that despite Mitt Romney's promises about increasing the defense budget, even if he's elected, we'll see some severe pressure on how much do we really need to spend on defense.
GROSS: Is that because some conservatives are non-interventionists?
WESSEL: No, I think it's because they think that we can't take the burden for the whole world given our current resources. Some of them are non-interventionist, but some of this money is not spent in wars in Afghanistan. Some of this money is spent in congressional districts to build Coast Guard cutters. It's a tough thing to cut.
I mean, one of my favorite examples is the aircraft carriers. The United States Navy is required by Congress to have 11 aircraft carriers. Aircraft carriers were really important in the past. There's a big debate in the military about whether they even make sense now. The Navy wants to replace each of the aircraft carriers with a new one every five years for the next umpty-ump(ph) years at a cost of $11 billion a piece.
Every time they decommission one of these ships, it costs $2 billion to take a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and take it out of service because you've got to take it apart and deal with all the nuclear reactors. So the scope of our military budget is really, really almost hard to grasp.
GROSS: David Wessel will be back in the second half of the show. His new book is called "Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with David Wessel, author of the new book "Red Ink: Inside the High Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget." In fiscal year 2011, the federal government spent $3.6 trillion. That's $400 million an hour, more than $30,000 per American household. Wessel's book explains where the money goes and describes the controversies over how it's spent. Wessel is economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, and he writes the weekly column "Capital."
Here's another statistic from your book: Firing every federal government employee would not save enough to even cut the deficit in half.
WESSEL: Right. One of the things that people think when they think about the government is they think about all these federal employees, these much-maligned bureaucrats who are not working hard, and the taxpayers are picking up their tabs. And to be sure, some of them don't work very hard. So I'm not saying that every federal employee deserves to have the job they have, and there's an enormous amount of jobs security in the government that most of us don't have in the private sector.
But the fact is that the federal government employs 4.4 million people. More than half are either uniformed military personnel, or they're civilians working for the Defense Department or Homeland Security. If we fired them all, everybody - the president, the guy who's standing in front of the Congressional Office Building to put you through the metal detector - if we fired all of them, we'd save about $435 billion a year. But the deficit we have is well over a trillion dollars.
So the reason that this is significant is because it's a way to remember that most of the money that the government spends doesn't go to government employees. Most of the money goes to benefits of some sorts - for individuals, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, grants to state and local governments for highways and sewage treatment plants. Most of the money that comes into the federal government goes right out again and does not go through the paychecks of federal employees.
GROSS: But I think it gets to one of the fundamental, hypocritical things about the American people. We as a people tend to want the benefits that we get - the, you know, Medicare, Social Security. I think a lot of the middle-class and wealthy are more indifferent about Medicaid, because that deals exclusively with the poor. But a lot of people don't want to pay taxes, but they want - they want their infrastructure. They want their health care and Social Security.
WESSEL: Right.
GROSS: Any comment on that?
WESSEL: Yeah. Well, in the book I make something of a hero of a guy named Doug Elmendorf, who most people have never heard of, who's the director of the Congressional Budget Office. And he's in the business of trying to speak the truth to the powerful people in Congress and the administration and the rest of us. And he once summed up the deficit in one very smart sentence, I thought. He said the fundamental problem is the American people want more in benefits - particularly for the elderly - than they're willing to pay in taxes. That tension underscores the entire deficit debate. You can't have more benefits and not pay more taxes as the people, in general. Yet that's what people really want.
GROSS: On a related note, another statistic from your book: one of every $4 the federal government spends goes to health care, and that share is rising.
WESSEL: Right. So somebody once said to me that the federal government has become a big military with a social insurance company on the side, and there's actually some merit to that view. And the federal government is spending more on health care because it covers more people, and because the cost of covering them has been rising inexorably. And despite the president's health care law, we haven't really got our grips around what to do about that.
And most of the people who are serious students of the budget on the left and on the right agree that finding some way to control health care costs is the one essential thing on the spending side of the budget. It's even a problem for the Pentagon. Bob Gates - the defense secretary for both President Bush and President Obama - said at one point that health care costs were eating the Defense Department alive. He made that remark in May 2010. In that year, the Pentagon spent more on health care - not for injured soldiers, but for their families and for military retirees - than it spent on fighting the war in Iraq.
GROSS: Let me get to another statistic from your book. The federal government gives up almost as much money from tax loopholes, deductions, credits and other breaks as it collects in individual and corporate income tax. Why is that a significant fact?
WESSEL: Because we have a lot of focus on tax rates. Should tax rates be lower? Would the economy work better if they were lower? And one reason why tax rates are where they are is because we have these tax rates, these sticker-price rates and the tax code, and then we have a tax code that's full of holes, like a piece of Swiss cheese. There's a break for doing this, a break for doing that. Some of them are pretty popular, mortgage interest deductions. Some of them are not really well understood, like a special tax break we give companies who are in manufacturing.
And what a lot of people are saying is it's going to very hard to raise tax rates, but we have to raise more money from the tax code. Well, how can we do that? Well, the way to do it is to have fewer deductions, loopholes, credits - these things that are basically subsidies, or they're almost like spending in disguise that we run through the tax code, because that's become a politically easier way to do it.
So pretty much everybody - Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, Simpson-Bowles, Domenici-Rivlin - is looking for ways to reduce the amount of money that these inefficient loopholes, credits and deductions in the tax code as a way to either lower tax rates or raise money for the federal government with doing less harm to the economy.
GROSS: And one of the reasons why loopholes are popular with lawmakers is that it doesn't count as spending. Like, you're giving your preferred people a break, but it doesn't go on the spending budget.
WESSEL: That's correct, and that's a very good point. So if you spend a dollar, then you're accused of being a spender, and that's evil. If you give somebody a dollar tax break, you're considered a hero because you've cut taxes, even though economically they're the same thing. Over time, that has forced a lot of social spending through the tax code, which has made the tax code pretty complicated, but it has also distorted the way people think about the federal government.
GROSS: My guest is David Wessel, author of the new book "Red Ink: Inside the High Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget." We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Wessel. He's the author of the new book "Red Ink: Inside the High Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget." He's also the economics editor and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
You write in the book the most salient and overlooked fact is that for most Americans, federal taxes have not risen over the past couple of decades. And you write, in fact, the share of income most American families pay in federal taxes has been falling for more than 30 years. So elaborate on that for us.
WESSEL: When you look at the numbers across the income spectrum, the share of income that's paid in federal taxes for the American people as a whole fell in the 1980s, rose in the 1990s, and then fell again in the 2000s. Now, one reason for that is that taxes don't cover federal spending. This year, taxes cover only about two-thirds of all federal spending. We borrow the rest. But if you look at the people say in the middle of the middle-class - the statistical middle 20 percent of the people - the share of their income that they're paying in federal taxes of all kinds has gradually come down over the last 30 years.
GROSS: Why has it come down?
WESSEL: Well, it's come down because that's the way we've written the tax law, and because they've had a smaller share of the income in the economy. As more of the income has gone to people at the top, more of the burden has been lifted from people at the bottom to pay taxes, but they've also enjoyed a smaller slice of all the income.
GROSS: But has the tax burden on the wealthy come down even more than it has on the middle-class?
WESSEL: There's more than one way to measure that. If you look at what share of income the top 1 percent pay in taxes, that has come down - not as much as people at the bottom, but that has come down. If you look at how much of the income the people at the top get versus how much of the tax burden do they bear, their tax burden has actually gone up.
So, for instance, in the 1980s, the top 5 percent of the population - according to the Congressional Budget Office - got about 23 percent of the income and paid 29 percent of the taxes. The top 5 percent in the 2000s averaged about 28 percent of the income and paid 40 percent of the taxes. Now, this doesn't mean they're starving. The people at the top, the top 1 percent, have seen a huge raise over the last decade, and most of that raise has gone into their pockets, not gone to the taxes. Their taxes haven't gone up as much as their incomes have.
GROSS: But say you look at the capital gains tax, which came down a lot to 15 percent. It used to be higher than that. It used to be in the 20s, and one time maybe in the 30s.
WESSEL: Correct.
GROSS: So who has benefited the most from that, and how has that affected the income that we get from taxes as a nation?
WESSEL: Right. That's a good point. If you get your income from dividends or capital gains, you pay taxes at a lower rate than a lot of people who get their income from wages. So that's one reason why Mitt Romney's average tax rate is so much lower, not only than those of middle-class Americans, but also from a lot of working rich Americans, because so much of his income comes in capital gains and dividends.
So it definitely means that there's less tax revenue coming into the federal government. The people who are against it say it's a waste of money. We should tax that like everything else and we'd be - we'd have more revenue and less deficit. After all, Ronald Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986, and at that time, the difference between capital gains taxes and wage taxes was eliminated. They were both taxed at the same rate.
The other side says, oh, but if we give people a tax break for capital gains and dividends, we'll get more investment, more growth and we'll all be better off. And there's a big running debate among academic economists - not only them, but, of course, among politicians - about whether the economy as a whole benefits from lower capital gains and dividend taxes or not. President Obama wants to raise these taxes. Mitt Romney doesn't.
GROSS: So, OK. This gets to something we were talking about earlier, which is tax loopholes. You say the federal government gives up almost as much money from tax loopholes, deductions, credits and all other tax breaks as it collects in individual and corporate income tax. So it all just kind of evens out?
WESSEL: No. It doesn't even out. It's that if you want to increase taxes, you have two choices to do it. You can close some of these loopholes and deductions and raise more money, or you can raise tax rates.
Why do we worry about raising taxes? Well, we worry about raising taxes because A, people don't like it, B, because it's not fair, but C, because it tends to interfere with the functioning of a market economy. I mean, every time you tax something, you get less of it.
So if you tax work or you tax savings, you get less of it. If you tax gasoline, people use less of it. So it can be a good thing or a bad thing. But when you make the tax code so complicated with all these loopholes, you have all sorts of weird things that people are doing that don't necessarily benefit the economy.
There are legions of people in American corporations who spend all their time not trying to figure out how to create new, wonderful medicines or use the Internet or how to make, invest in new plans. They spend their time looking at how - at the complicated tax system and figuring out how, for their company, they can game the system by doing this and that in a way that doesn't affect workers or a society at all, but just saves them money on taxes.
There's one company in the Midwest, Eaton Corporation. It's an old-line American company. They just bought an Irish company, and they're going to turn themselves into an Irish company to avoid paying U.S. taxes. That kind of stuff is - benefits people who have the money to do it, but doesn't benefit the society.
How do we make less of that? We have fewer deductions, credits and exclusions. We get more money for the government. The money can be used to lower rates. It can be used to reduce the deficit, and we have fewer of these distortions in the economy.
GROSS: So we talked a little bit about individual tax rates and how they compare to the past. Let's look at corporate tax rates. You write: The tax on corporate profits, which was created in 1909, is a shrinking part of federal revenue. In the early 1950s, it accounted for more than 30 percent of federal revenues. Last year, only 7.9 percent.
WESSEL: Right. So 7.9 percent was a little distorted by the recession. It's been more like 10 percent. But it's a shrinking share of the federal revenue. Now, why is that? Really, two reasons. One is capital is mobile and labor isn't. So governments have decided to go a little easier on taxing capital. So it's much - the U.S. government in the 1950s didn't have to worry about what the Irish tax rate was on corporations. Now it does.
Secondly, as one of the games that businesses play is if you organize your business so that you don't get hit by the corporate tax and you pay the profits as an individual, it may save you money. So a lot of people have done that, which means that a lot of business in America is done in the form of partnerships or other things that are not subject to the corporate tax.
And then finally what's happened is we've relied more and more on the payroll tax. Thanks to the expansion of Medicare, more of our wages and more of our government's income comes from the tax on payrolls, on workers' wages, and that has been a growing share of federal revenues, while corporate taxes have been a shrinking share.
GROSS: Is that in part because corporations have such effective lobby groups?
WESSEL: Yes, in part - in part because people believe that raising corporate taxes would hurt the economy more than it would bring in money. So, for instance, one of the things I found very interesting is there's a big debate about corporate tax reform and how we could have lower tax rates if we didn't have so many loopholes, deductions, credits and blah, blah, blah.
Neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama wants to raise more money from the corporate income tax. Both of them are talking about different ways so it brings in the same amount of money, but maybe helps the economy more. I think that's one of the side effects of a global economy. The U.S. government has to worry that if it taxes companies too heavily, that companies will move overseas. And they can do that now.
In 1950, it was harder to do that. As I said, capital is mobile and workers aren't - or are less mobile. So we'll have to find - now, it doesn't mean that we can't raise money from the owners of capital. It doesn't mean that we can't raise capital gains taxes or tax the people who are making $50 million a year for running a company or something like that.
So, for instance, when I talked to a number of CEOs - this always fascinates me - and I say to them: Would you be in favor of taxing your company less, but taxing your salary more? And a number of them say yes. And I say, well, if a dozen of you would say that on the record, I'd write a front page story on the Wall Street Journal about that. And then suddenly, they're no so interested in saying it.
WESSEL: No, people will be angry at me, and blah, blah, blah. But there are a number of people in business who will say privately we ought to raise taxes on upper-income people, and we ought to cut corporate taxes, because that would help us have more employment investment in the United States. That's pretty much the spirit of the Bowles-Simpson report, and a number of CEOs have actually signed onto that, but they don't exactly phrase it the way I did.
GROSS: I really like the quote that you end your book with. It's from Leon Panetta, who's now the head of the CIA.
WESSEL: Right.
GROSS: And he says I used to tell the students that we are either governed by leadership or crisis. And I always thought that if leadership wasn't there, then ultimately, you rely on crisis to drive decisions. In the last few years, my biggest concern is that crisis doesn't seem to drive decisions, either.
It's a pretty pessimistic, stalemated kind of quote. Do you think that that's where we are now? Where neither leadership nor crisis leads to any kind of decision?
WESSEL: Yeah. Pretty much. But I think there's two things to remember: One is we're really lucky now. The U.S. government is borrowing unbelievable sums of money at unbelievably low interest rates because the rest of the world is such a mess. Alan Simpson says we're the best-looking horse in the glue factory. I like to say that we're the world's tallest midget.
That won't go on forever. Someday we'll have a crisis. I don't know when, and it might not be for a long time. And the second thing is: Leadership sometimes comes from strange places. I mean, none of us who covered Ross Perot thought that we wanted him to be president. But a lot of us thought, hmm. He actually is forcing the politicians to come to terms with some of the issues of the day.
So we may discover that there's some hidden leadership out there that rises to the fore. So I'm not in despair yet, but it is hard to be optimistic. And Leon Panetta, in my experience, is one of the most optimistic people in Washington usually, and that quote from him at the end of the book is - underscores how severe the political paralysis in Washington is right now.
GROSS: Well, David Wessel, thank you so much for talking with us.
WESSEL: You're welcome.
GROSS: David Wessel is the Wall Street Journal's economics editor. His new book is called "Red Ink: Inside the High Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget." Coming up, Milo Miles reviews a new album from a father and son Roma brass band. This is FRESH AIR.
TERRY GROSS, HOST: The various music styles of Eastern Europe's Roma people - formerly known as gypsies - have become favorites with audiences around the world. The brass bands of the Balkans have been particularly well served by documentaries and movie soundtracks. Music critic Milo Miles says that no group does a better job of blending tradition with innovation than the ensemble led by Boban Markovic and his son Marco.
MILO MILES, BYLINE: A dozen years ago, if someone told me that one of the liveliest, most inventive party albums of the year came from a band originally associated with wedding celebrations and beer festivals, I would have been all, yeah, sure. You bet. If it was further explained that the band's roots were much closer to polka than rock, funk or hip-hop, I would have responded: Don't push it.
But nowadays, I'm familiar with the Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar, and their retrospective "Golden Horns" will lighten the heart and lift the feet as surely as anything you'll hear in 2012. I'm just glad the band finally released an irresistible introduction.
MILES: Expanding on longstanding brass-band traditions of the Roma people in southern Serbia, band founder Boban Markovic was a regional powerhouse well before his group was heard in the West. The Orkestar only plays at the major Balkan brass-band festival as a guest of honor, so that somebody else can win prizes.
But it's hard to deny that the ascendance of Boban's son Marko Markovic is what opened the door to the world for the group. Boban and Marko are equal-but-different trumpet stylists - Boban more languid, Marko more jabbing. But as the de facto current leader of the Orkestar, Marko gives the newer numbers a worldly juice, a quicker pulse suited to the Internet age.
MILES: Yet as immediately appealing as individual Orkestar tunes can be, there's something elusive about the way they work and exactly how to present a series of performances. This not a tight band led by virtuoso soloists, instrumental or vocal.
The punch comes from the ongoing collective interactions of more than a dozen players - plus guests - with a rollicking feel that most suggests early jazz ensembles such as Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers. Before "Golden Horns," the Markovic Orkestar tended to hit snags with slow numbers that felt too old-fashioned, or vocal features that seemed oddly melodramatic.
Although obviously not an issue during free-flowing concerts, finding the right vocals and how to mix them in was a challenge in the studio. The tracks on "Golden Horns" were selected and programmed by DJ Robert Soko, and his sense of how to get Balkan beats going in your living room is key to the album's appeal. Here, Soko picks a vocal tune that's not typical for the Orkestar, but perfect for changing the pace from a dreamy sequence of songs.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN AND WOMAN: (Singing) I met her on the Milky Way. Who she was, I cannot say. I only knew I wanted to stay. Together we spent night and day. We used to fly through summer trees. The air was full of blossom breeze. Deep inhale this tasty smell. How many stories does it tell? Hey, my little honeybee. Honeybee. You're far away. That's hurting me. Hurting me. I miss you, darling, far away, your warm sweet smile this summer day.
MILES: Finally, I'd like to offer a shout-out to the wonderfully robust passages for tuba on display in "Golden Horns," such as in the tune "Clock."
MILES: I played tuba in my high-school marching band. How come we didn't do wild stuff like that? Because sly folks like Boban and Marko Markovic weren't calling the shots. That's why.
GROSS: Milo Miles lives in Boston. He reviewed the new album, "Golden Horns." You can hear two tracks from it on our website freshair.npr.org, where you can also download podcasts of our show. And you can follow us on Twitter @nprfreshair and on Tumblr at nprfreshair.tumblr.com.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.


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Medicare is the health plan provided by taxpayers to everybody aged 65 and older, as well as younger people with disabilities. While the prescription-drug portion of the plan can be complicated, the basic hospital and health service plans are not that difficult to navigate once you know the basics.
This is the plan that covers virtually every US citizen and legal immigrant, and is not to be confused with Medicaid, which is a federal health assistance program for the poor that is administered through the states.
What Does Medicare Cover?
Medicare is divided into 4 parts:
- Part A is hospital insurance—It helps pay for hospital, limited nursing home, home health, and hospice care.
- Part B is medical insurance—It helps pay for doctors, ambulances, tests, outpatient therapy, and other professional services, and some medications, including certain cancer drugs. There are 2 kinds of Part B coverage. One kind pays for medically necessary services (what is needed to diagnose or treat your condition), and the other pays for preventive services.
- Medicare Advantage Plan (like an HMO or PPO)—This consists of plans administered by private health insurance and health maintenance organizations that add extra coverage to the basic government Medicare plans.
- Plan D is the prescription drug plan.—This actually consists of many plans administered by private companies and organizations approved by the federal government.
What Are Medicare's Limitations?
Basic Medicare does not cover acupuncture, dental services, help with dressing and other custodial care, certain eye care, hearing aids, and some other goods and services. It pays for only a limited number of visits to speech and occupational therapists and covers only about half of outpatient mental health services.
You can buy additional health insurance on your own that does pick up these costs.
If a supplier or doctor does not accept Medicare, you may be required to pay most or all of the bill when you receive services, but Medicare may reimburse you for some portion of these services.
What Does It Cost?
Part A
Most people don't have to pay for Part A because they or their spouse have paid for it already through payroll taxes.
Part A does not require payment for people who are 65 and older and who:
- Receive or are entitled to Social Security or railroad retirement benefits, or
- Have worked long enough in a government job to be eligible, or
- Are entitled to Social Security benefits based on a spouse's (or ex-spouse's) work record
It also covers younger people who:
- Have been getting Social Security disability benefits for 2 years, or
- Get Social Security disability benefits and have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ( Lou Gehrig's disease ), or
- Have worked long enough in a government job to meet the requirements of the Social Security disability program
All persons with kidney failure are covered if they:
- Receive maintenance dialysis or have had a kidney transplant, and
- Are insured or are getting benefits under Social Security or the railroad retirement system, or
- Have worked long enough in government to be eligible
Those who do not meet these eligibility criteria may still purchase Plan A.
Part B
Part B requires a monthly payment and can be purchased with deductions from your Social Security, railroad, or Civil Service retirement check. While the costs of Part B continue to rise, the enrollment fees are generally much lower than the cost of private insurance.
Medicare Advantage
Like private insurance, all Medicare plans have deductibles, copayments, and fee restrictions, which can add up quickly. These costs are often called "gaps." For help with costs of these payments, private companies offer "gap" (or medigap) insurance.
Alternatives to gap insurance include Medicare Advantage plans available from managed care companies in many areas. These plans include Parts A and B (at the standard cost) and the approved prescription drug plans. They also provide extra benefits, including paying more of the bill or providing extra days in the hospital. The costs of these plans vary depending on the amount of coverage you select.
To find out more about plans in your area, use the Medicare Plan Finder web tool.
Part D
There are many versions of the new Medicare Prescription Drug plan. Refer to this article devoted entirely to this topic: How to Choose a Medicare Drug Plan.
Who Does the Paperwork?
You are not required to file most paperwork to Medicare. That is the job of the doctors and other providers.
How Do I Enroll?
Social Security generally contacts eligible persons to tell them about their options a few months before their 65th birthday. If you require benefits before you are 65, or want more information about the various plans, contact your local Social Security office.
Health Canada http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca
Healthy Alberta http://www.healthyalberta.com


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The Mancos Lady Bluejays played consecutive nights last Friday and Saturday.
Mancos coach Josh Kitchen felt his basketball team played its best game this season at Monticello (Utah).
Unfortunately, a valiant Lady Bluejays effort came up just short by the narrowest of margins in a 28-27 loss.
Mancos turned around and played at rival Dove Creek Saturday evening. A Lady Bulldogs squad fresh off of Christmas break wore out the Lady Bluejays at home in the second half.
The end result was a 47-24 win for Dove Creek.
"We talked about in our pregame, no mater what the offense does, the defense still has to play tough," said 36th year Lady Bulldogs coach Jim Buffington. "We held them to seven points in that second half. We started clamping down and defense is what wins games."
Jessica Guynes led a balanced Dove Creek (4-3, 1-1 2A/1A San Juan Basin League) scoring attack with 11 points. Twin sister Cori Guynes scored eight and recorded five steals on defense. Shelbie Knuckles totaled 10 points and seven rebounds.
"We had a really good second half. We had good subs come in, and do good and help us stay ahead," Cori Guynes said. "A key was to block out. If we didn't block out right, then we'd get a foul and we'd be 1-and-1, and they'd be shooting (free throws) again."
The Lady Bluejays (1-7, 0-3 2A/1A SJBL) are still growing under their first-year coach. Kitchen feels last week's games were another learning experience for his team.
"It came down to, Dove Creek just out-hustled us," Kitchen said. "Tonight, Dove Creek worked harder than we did and they deserved it. We got a little lazy and they exploited it, to their credit."
Mancos pulled within two at 19-17 in the second quarter after back-to-back buckets by Andie Paschal and Jessica Gutierrez.
Dove Creek countered with four straight points to close out the half and led 23-17 at the break.
The Lady Bulldogs bit hard in the third quarter. A suffocating defense limited Mancos to just two points in the frame. Kayla Goff's basket were the only points scored for the visitors in the third. The Lady Bluejays trailed 31-19 heading into the fourth quarter.
Dove Creek continued to pull away in the final stanza, as it went on to post a 23-point win.
"Our subs came in and did a good job," Buffington said. "What I expect of my subs, is play it even. Don't lose 10 points to the other team. If you can keep it even, then you've done your job. They came in and did a real good job in that respect."
Paschal led Mancos with eight points and fellow post presence Megan Hess grabbed eight boards. Gutierrez and Taylor Goff scored six points apiece.
"We're finally getting healthy and we're starting to learn the system," Kitchen said. "It's hard to learn a new system and the girls are starting to get a grasp for it. We're starting to gel a little bit as a team. The girls are playing better. The biggest thing is we need to cross that threshold and convert that into wins."
The Lady Bluejays travel to Telluride Friday night with tip-off at 5:30 p.m. Mancos hosts 4A Aztec (N.M.) Saturday at 6:30.
Dove Creek goes to Nucla on Friday and plays at 5:30.
[email protected].


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Poetry Book Giveaway for National Poetry Month 2010
After participating in the One World, One HeArt giveaway, I thought for National Poetry Month we could do a poetry book giveaway where bloggers giveaway 2 books-- the first can be your own & the second book must be of another favorite poet of yours.
The goal is two share our favorite poets with others as well as to visit different blogs and see who others are reading. There is also a benefit for those who participate as it will bring people to your blog and share your work and/or the work of a favorite poet with them.
The Poetry Book Giveaway will start as soon as you post your book giveaway and will run through April 30th (all of National Poetry Month).
On May 1st (or 2nd if you can't make it), choose 2 winners for your giveaway.
**** If you are participating in this giveaway, you must be willing to mail 2 separate books of poems to ANYWHERE in the world. You pay the postage, not the winner.
1) Can I enter the drawing if I don't participate in the giveaway?
Yes, the drawings are open to anyone.
2) Can I participate in the drawing if I am a blogger giving away two books?
Yes, again, the drawings are open to anyone.
3) Can the two books I give away both by written by me?
No. One book in your giveaway must by another poet, specifically one of your favorite poets.
4) Can I give away two books that I wrote and one book from someone else?
Yes! You can give away as many of your own books as you like as long as you make sure to give away a book by someone else. You are also welcome to give away a subscription to a favorite literary journal as an extra prize if you like, but again, you cover the cost.
5) Do the books I give away have to be new?
No. But only give away gently-used books. They should look newish.
6) I'm not a poet, but I love poetry can I participate in the giveaway?
Yes! Just give away books by two of your favorite poets.
7) I'm a poet, but only have a chapbook, does that count as a book?
Yes! Chapbooks are books! Feel free to give away your chapbook and then another collection by a favorite poet.
8) I don't want to pay postage if someone wins. Can I still participate?
No. You must be willing to mail the books to the winner at your cost. That's what makes it a giveaway (not a pay-me-for-postage-away.)
9) Do I need to have a blog to sign up for the drawings?
10) Is it too late to post a giveaway on my blog and be included on the list?
Sorry, but yes. All links were to have been given to me by April 15, 2010, but you are still welcome to ENTER as many of the drawings you like! Also, I do plan on doing this for next poetry month, so come on back here in 2011 for the National Poetry Month Poetry Book Giveaway 2011!


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Developing Diversity: Building A Sustainable Talent Pool In Investment Management
Copyright Notice: Copyright 2020 by Financial Investment News (FIN) and GRLM,
LLC. All rights reserved. Photocopy permission is available solely through GRLM, LLC, Financial Investment
News, 15 West 26th Street, 4th Fl. New York, NY 10010. Copying, photocopying or duplicating this publication
in any form other than as permitted by agreement with FIN is prohibited and may constitute copyright
infringement subject to liability up to $100,000 per infringement. For photocopy permission, back issues and
bulk distribution needs, please contact Rob Regan at 212-627-7615 or e-mail [email protected]


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Okhai 'Colour Splash' Pure Core Hand Embroidered Blazer
To add a pop of colour to your life this Holi, we bring to you the never seen before 'Colour Splash' blazer which is an amalgamation of modern silhouettes featuring traditional Indian craft techniques. Handcrafted from the softest pure cotton fabric, this collared blazer comes with two bone pockets and three buttons for closure in the front. The real charmer is the intricate embroidery with running, lazy daisy, back running and rice stitches along with mirror work on the front, back and sleeves. This blazer will breathe fresh new life into your existing outfit, whether you're wearing it with jeans or smart trousers.
Brand Name -Okhai
Country of Origin -India
Generic Name -Women-Clothing
Craft -Hand Embroidery work
Color -White
Material -Cotton
Net Qty -1 Blazer
Dimension / Size -Bust: XS:80-84cms, S:85-89cms, M:90-94cms, L:96-102cms, XL:104-109cms, XXL:110-114cms.
M.R.P.(incl. of all Taxes) -4500
Product SKU -LB23327120
Manufactured & Marketed By -Okhai Center for Empowerment, Hostel Complex, Tata Chemicals Township, Mithapur, Jamnagar, Gujarat 361345, India.
Packed By -Okhai Center for Empowerment, B 319, Sumel-8, Near Ajit Mill Compound, Rakhiyal, Ahmedabad 380023, Gujarat, India
Customer Care -Customer Care Executive, Address: Okhai Center for Empowerment, 4th Floor, Shivalik Point, Near Mithakali Six roads, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad 380009, Gujarat, India. Phone: 079 66131721/ +91 6359 021 222, Email: email@example.com
Model Fit -This model is 5'9" and wearing size XS
Wash Care
Cotton Apparel - Hand wash separately. Silk & Madhubani - Dry clean only. Baskets & Show Pieces - Clean with a wet cloth. For any other product - Please find the wash care in the product description.
DRY CLEAN ONLY EVERY TIME. Natural colours tend to run. Do note that sometimes the colours on screen appear brighter. Please do see the size chart carefully.
Free shipping within India on orders valued above INR 4999. Shipping out of India is as per weight calculation at checkout.
Country of Origin - India
Gift Wrap Available
To gift wrap order, select the gift wrap check box on the cart page during checkout
30 Days Free Return
Okhai Apparels - 30 Days Free Return. On SALE - No Return Refund. Please Note - Custom Made Handicrafts - No Returns No Refund as mentioned in the product description.
Estimated Delivery Time
Okhai Apparel - 4-6 Working Days. Custom Handicrafts - 15 to 30 days as artisans make it after they receive the order.
The colours seen in the image may vary from the actual product due to different computer screen resolutions and displays. Dark colours may look lighter in direct sunlight.
Karamta Read Story


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Check out how the following amazing group of writers get inspired by this picture. Each has 100 words, no more, no less, to come up with their version which they do so well. Please click on their names and show them some love by reading. As always comments are much appreciated.
Participating Authors


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The man wanted for holding up a 2900 block Duke St. Jiffy Lube at gunpoint earlier this month remains at large, city police say.
Authorities describe the suspect as a black man about 5-foot-10 with a slim build. Donning a gray jacket, dark pants, black and silver shoes, and a dark ski mask, the man walked into the automobile repair shop at 7:26 p.m. February 6 carrying a chrome handgun, said Jody Donaldson, department spokesman.
He demanded the manager turn over the shop's bank deposit bag and forced the remaining employees to empty their pockets before fleeing on foot. Police would only say he made off with an undisclosed amount of cash.
Authorities do not believe the suspect repeated the crime at any other businesses in the immediate area.


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When it comes to storing files and processing information, it is difficult to shove the impressive SATA hard drives aside. Although many people tend to regard hard disk drives as old technology, the new highly-performing variants have raised the bar. One of the most impressive variants is hard drives with the SATA interface and transfer speed of up to 6Gbps.
These are among the best drives to buy presently. They come with flash-speed disks that load several times faster than traditional hard drives. Another added advantage is that they come in either 2.5-inch sizes or 3.5-inch sizes. Users can find SATA 6Gbps hard drives that will nicely fit their case or enclosure.
SATA 6Gbps hard drives are designed to offer maximum performance. They connect to servers, PCs, or desktop computers via SATA 6Gbps cables. Despite their compact 2.5" to 3.5" sizes, they feature a dynamic cache of up to 64MB. Having these types of storage devices in hand will improve work efficiency and productivity.
There are SATA 6Gbps hard drives that can give users a blend of HDD and SSD functionality. A device that can give a synergistic effect on both storage units will surely offer a higher level of performance. Users will find drives with traditional storage capacity up to 22TB. Most of these drives also come along with NAND technology for enhanced performance.
The read-write speed is something that will give users optimum satisfaction. With the SATA 6Gbps interface, users can expect a read speed of up to 400MB/s. Not only that, but some drives also run at up to 10000 rpm. Even at that rate, they are generally quiet, and they generate less heat.
Drives that use the SATA 6Gbps interface have been built to learn users' most used applications effectively. This engineering allows them to load those applications faster. It also helps gaming consoles to load the games initially after users have launched the game. There is everything to get excited about when it comes to these drives.
The point of the SATA 6Gbps interface is to enhance the quality of traditional mechanical hard drives. They are available at different capacity choices and RPM choices.
There are possibilities of data accidents such as accidental deletion, formatting, virus attack, unexpected power shutdown, and partition loss. If such losses occur, data recovery software can easily recover the data from SATA 6Gbps hard drives. Data can be easily recovered, undelete, and unformatted from these SATA hard drives


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Organize Your Images With iPhoto
- What's New in Organize Mode
- Organize Tools Overview
- Changing the Display Pane's Layout
- Other Display Preferences
- Contextual Menu Shortcuts
- Moving Around in iPhoto
- Editing Film Rolls
- Creating and Modifying New Film Rolls
- Creating and Working with Folders
- Creating Albums
- Creating and Editing Smart Albums
- Smart Album Ideas
- Duplicating Sources
- Renaming and Rearranging Sources
- Deleting Sources
- Selecting Photos
- Adding Photos to Sources
- Removing Photos from Sources
- Sorting Photos
- Assigning Titles to Photos
- Assigning Comments to Photos
- Editing Photo Dates
- Assigning Ratings
- Managing Keywords
- Assigning and Removing Keywords
- Searching with the Keyword Pane
- Searching with the Search Field
- Searching with the Calendar Pane
- Viewing Photo Information
There are two types of people when it comes to photos. First are the Martha Stewart types who manage to organize every picture into precious handmade albums constructed of used tissues and old grocery bags. Then there are the rest of us, who dump our pictures in a box, and that's if we remember to develop the film in the first place. We in the second group hate those in the first group (though we're sure you're actually very nice people).
For me, the promise of digital photography was a way not just to join that first group, but to beat them at their own game. I'm constitutionally incapable of cutting a print to crop it, and my miserable handwriting makes captions painful. I figured I could do it all on the computer with no trouble and make prints to boot. Unfortunately, it was just too hard—until iPhoto.
iPhoto's editing tools are covered in a future chapter, so here we're going to focus on iPhoto's organizational features. Some require a little effort, but even with no work, your digital photo collection will be far better organized than the box in the closet.
And if you're one of those people who put together handmade photo albums before digital photography, well, you're still going to love what iPhoto can do for you.
What's New in Organize Mode
If you've used previous versions of iPhoto, you'll want to pay attention to the new features iPhoto 6 brings to organize mode.
New features in organize mode:
- The new cards and calendars are, like books, independent entities that are parallel to albums, smart albums, and slideshows in the Source pane.
- When you scroll through your photos in organize mode using the scroller in the scroll bar, iPhoto displays a translucent pop-up containing the date of the visible photos and, if you're in the Library album, the name of the current film roll (Figure 3.1). Unfortunately, it doesn't work if you use a scroll wheel to scroll.
Figure 3.1 As you scroll, iPhoto 6 now displays a translucent pop-up that helps you figure out where you are in the album.
- You can now include EXIF data when defining smart albums, which enables you to create smart albums containing images selected by aperture, camera model, flash, focal length, ISO, or shutter speed.
- When filtering the contents of the display pane by keywords, you can now choose whether selecting multiple keywords presents photos matching any of the selected keywords or only those photos that have all the selected keywords.
- Performance is distinctly better.