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Reforming America's public schools occurs with seemingly glacial slowness. In the private sector, businesses (including schools) that provide a lousy product quickly lose customers. They either correct their deficiencies or they eventually close. Similarly, if the problem is poor performance by a private enterprise's workers, then either the employees start doing a better job ormanagement replaces them to save the company.
These market-based, pro-consumer forces are largely absent from taxpayer-supported schools, because public schools have captive "customers." Young residents of apublic-school district are legally required to attend school, and in areaswhere those schools lack meaningful, affordable competitors, the youngsters are trapped by a virtual monopoly. The school can do a poor job year after year,and teaching jobs can becomesinecures for the mediocre, the burned out, and the indifferent, protected by powerful unions that exist to serve teachers and not the pupils with whose education they have been entrusted.
It is in that context that I was glad to hear the news out of Chicago that Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced plans to close 17 of the city's worst-performing schools. This seems like one of those Nixon-in-China momentswhen only a politician from the party normally allied with unions would dare to implement a policy that is so hated by the teachers' union. Indeed, the mayor's courageous decision brought upon him the ire of Jesse Jackson and the ChicagoTeachers Union, but I salute Mayor Emanuel for challenging a status quo that protects failed, dysfunctional schools.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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I can attest from first-hand experience that some schools are so dysfunctional that they simply cannot be reformed. Early in my career, I did some substitute teaching in inner-city Phoenix. While there were several schools that were pathetic, one particular middle school sticks in my memory.
The windows in the classrooms had been smashed so often that the decision was made to brick them up, depriving the rooms of any natural light. A favorite pastime was to turn off the light switch when the teacher wasn't looking. That was a signal for books to be thrown through the air. Everyone, including the teacher, would take cover, because in the total darkness, everyone was at risk o finjury, while it was nearly impossible to know who had thrown the particular book that hit somebody.
At that same school, kids would tear pages out of books to get out of doing assignments. At least a dozen seventh-grade girls were pregnant at any given time. A fulltime teacher there (a former college linebacker) told me that a good day was when nobody got hurt. The priority at that school was safety, note ducation. That school should have been euthanized and something else done in an attempt to salvage a decent education for those children.
Similar to Mayor Emanuel's decision to pull the plug on a few failed schools in Chicago, there are similar moves afoot in California, where a majority of parents could sign a petition that triggers a major reform of an unsatisfactory public school, up to and including shutting it down if it can't be reformed or restructured satisfactorily.
Thatis the good news. The bad news is that union operatives and allies, some from outside the area, used a combination of intimidation and lies against parents who had signed petitions to trigger reforms, causing the petition to be rescinded. It remains for the courts to determine whether the original petitionis valid or not, but in the interim, reform is being blocked. This may be ashort-term victory for the teachers' union, but in the long run, they may find(as in Wisconsin) that their aggressiveness may turn people against them.
In New York City, teacher evaluations were made public at the instigation of The Wall Street Journal and other media organizations. This is problematical, and I'm not sure I agree with it. Yes, without a doubt, teachers should be held accountable for their performance and irremediably ineffective teachers shouldbe canned. But can't this be done without making public spectacles of inferior teachers? Perhaps a small committee of parents could be allowed to see the evaluations on the condition of confidentiality being maintained as long as the school district acts to replace bad teachers. In short, remove them, but don't make them wear a scarlet letter.
There are signs that significant upheavals are beginning to occur in public education. Let's hope they gain traction and momentum. We owe it to our young people. A decent education is an integral part of the American Dream.


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01 May 1999 African-Americans Are Being Left Behind in the Information Age, by Council Nedd
A 1998 Vanderbilt University study found that 73% of white high school and college students have a computer in their home, yet only 33% of their black peers do. 28% of white Americans with household incomes of less than $40,000 annually have home computers, compared with 13% of African-Americans. 13% of white households with income under $40,000 use the Internet, compared to 8% of African-American households. And white lower-income households that do access the Internet do so more frequently: When whites and blacks from households making under $40,000 were asked if they'd visited the World Wide Web in the past month, more than three times as many whites as blacks said yes.
A major U.S. Commerce Department report found similar results. The Commerce Department found that 40% of all white households have computers, compared to 19.3% for African-Americans and 19.4% for Hispanics. At incomes higher than $75,000, the Commerce Department found, 76.3% of white households owned computers, compared to 64.1% of black households.
African-Americans cannot afford to be left behind in the information age.
What can be done?
First, we can support government policies that make the Internet more accessible. For instance, AT&T recently purchased the national TV cable company TCI with the intention of offering Internet service through TV cable. This would be a boon to black families, who currently are more likely to have cable service than Internet access. Unfortunately, some big business interests – like the Internet service America Online – are attempting to block AT&T's action, and the matter was brought before a Senate committee on April 13 for investigation. Policymakers should be told that AT&T should be allowed to offer Internet service through TV cables.
Second, we need to teach our kids about the Internet and monitor their use of it, to make sure the time they spend online is positive and productive. Schools without computers and Internet access can get online more cheaply than they might think, as many businesses routinely throw away or send to storage computers that are just a couple of years old. These businesses could be convinced to donate them to a school in return for a tax deduction.
Third, we can keep Internet taxes low to help lower-income families pay for access. The Internet Tax Freedom Act, approved by Congress after an uphill fight by Representative Chris Cox (R-CA), bans new taxes on the Internet for three years. This could be extended.
Fourth, we need to build and maintain intact families. The Department of Commerce report found that one of the most significant factors influencing children's access to the Internet is family structure. Commerce found that households composed of married couples with children are approximately twice as likely to own computers and have Internet access (57.2% and 29.4% respectively) as are single-headed households headed by a male (30.5% and 14%) or a female (25% and 9.2%).
Tamar Jacoby of the Manhattan Institute reports that, by next year, 60% of all U.S. jobs will require technical skills and that – although African-Americans make up 12% of the U.S. workforce – only 4% of the jobs in the lucrative computer science field are held by blacks. The computer industry has 200,000 unfilled jobs now and a million new computer jobs will need filling by 2006.
Computer jobs are, for the most part, lucrative and prestigious positions. As African-Americans, we should position ourselves to take our share of them, and we should seize the other educational, career and recreational benefits the information age makes possible.
Note: New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21.

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Gold Student Edition
|Item #:
Publisher Description:
Gold, the textbook for eighth grade, offers increasingly complex literature and a curriculum that prepares your student for high school. The lessons emphasize discussion and hone in on perfecting critical reasoning skills. Meaningful themes promote thinking and talking about values, ideals, and behavior. Our expanded poetry unit shows your students the joys of poetry and the satisfaction of understanding its complexity!
Mosdos Press bills its literature courses as intellectually challenging with positive moral values. We used the Gold book for Mark's literature course for one year, and we would agree with their assessment.
So that students will see the full range of literary works, each level in the program is comprised of several types of literature: short stories, poetry, nonfiction essays, plays, songs, drama selections, and even a complete novel. Selections are from top-notch authors. A review of the table of contents in Pearl reveals selections from such well-known authors as Irene Hunt, Langston Hughes, Alex Haley, T. S. Eliot, Jack London, Leo Tolstoy, James Thurber, Robert Frost, James Herriot, Carl Sandburg, and Aesop.
Each level consists of three components: a hardcover student book, a softcover spiral-bound teacher edition, and a softcover workbook. The Student Book is quite visually appealing, with a mixture of color photographs, color drawings, b&w line drawings, and watermark backgrounds and borders. The desire for visual appeal is even more obvious in Pearl (6th grade, copyright 2003) than in Gold (8th grade, copyright 2001), showing that visual quality is quite important to the publisher.
But quality is much more than skin-deep. In addition to the literary work itself, each piece is proceeded by a Blueprint for Reading. This includes a brief bio of the author, an introduction to the story, and an explanation of some facet of literature. A Word Bank lists vocabulary words to know; however, pronunciations and definitions of the more challenging words are given at the bottom of the page where each first appears in the story. Selections end with Quick Review, In-depth Thinking, and Drawing Conclusions questions. A Focusing On section asks the student to examine some literary aspect of the selection. Creating and Writing lists a few possibilities for some type of writing related to the story.
While the Teacher Edition lacks the color of the student book, it contains a wealth of information to aid the instructor. For starters, it contains a reduced-size version of the student text, sans color. It also contains additional background information about the selection and general literary information as well, such as comments about setting and plot. Discussion questions (with answers), which are different from and more detailed than the end-of-selection questions, are given along the way. Answers to the end-of-selection questions and workbook questions are also provided, as are pointers to aid with the Creating and Writing assignments.
The Workbook format differs slightly from grade to grade. The 6th grade workbook contains vocabulary activities, graphic organizers, and space to write answers to the In-depth Comprehension Questions and the Creative Writing exercises, plus 25 additional Creative Writing tasks which incorporate language arts components and facets of each type of literary genre. It also contains 25 prose pieces with comprehension questions to help prepare students for standardized tests. The 8th grade workbook contains vocabulary exercises, graphic organizers, and a research or creative writing activity. Answers to the questions are included in the back of the Teacher's Editions.
A Test Master CD-ROM for each level is available which contains all the test masters for prose selection, unit tests, vocabulary tests and essay questions. Use them as tests or as extra assignments.
As an instructor, I really liked this program. I (Bob) was doing a fair amount of Mark's instruction at this point, and I don't always get a chance to preview the material before discussing it with Mark. The teacher's manual really fills in the gaps in this situation, although it would still be better for me to read the selections prior to discussion. Mark is not a big fan of canned literature programs (although he reads a great deal), but in general he liked the stories included in the program.
One final note. The program is written so that it can be used in a secular setting, so you won't see many references to God or the Bible. However, the selections do maintain a high moral tone that should be pleasing to a broad spectrum of users. All things considered, we believe that this program compares favorably to program like the Bob Jones literature program, which we have also used at various levels.
Components are available individually or in a convenient bundle. Bundles include all the textual resources necessary for the course: Student Book(s), Teacher Edition(s) and the softcover workbook. Not included but available separately is the Test Master CD-Rom.
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EPA Administrator Jackson Outlines New Vision for Clean, Safe Drinking Water
In a speech at the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies (AMWA) annual conference in Washington, D.C., U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced the agency is developing a broad new set of strategies to strengthen public health protection from contaminants in drinking water. The aim is to find solutions that meet the health and economic needs of communities across the country more effectively than the current approach. EPA is also announcing a decision to revise the existing drinking water standards for four contaminants that can cause cancer.
"To confront emerging health threats, strained budgets and increased needs -- today's and tomorrow's drinking water challenges -- we must use the law more effectively and promote new technologies," said EPA Administrator Jackson. "That means fostering innovation that can increase cost-effective protection. It means finding win-win-win solutions for our health our environment and our economy. And it means broad collaboration. To make our drinking water systems work harder, we have to work smarter."
The new vision is meant to streamline decision-making and expand protection under existing law and promote cost-effective new technologies to meet the needs of rural, urban and other water-stressed communities. Specifically, this shift in drinking water strategy is organized around four key principles:
EPA's current approach to drinking water protection is focused on a detailed assessment of each individual contaminant of concern and can take many years. This approach not only results in slow progress in addressing unregulated contaminants but also fails to take advantage of strategies for enhancing health protection cost-effectively, including advanced treatment technologies that address several contaminants at once. The outlined vision seeks to use existing authorities to achieve greater protection more quickly and cost-effectively.
Stricter Standards Appropriate for Four Contaminants
While exploring this shift in strategy, EPA continues to look for opportunities to increase protection using traditional approaches. In the newly finalized review of existing drinking water standards, EPA determined that scientific advances allow for stricter regulations for the carcinogenic compounds tetrachloroethylene, trichloroethylene, acrylamide and epichlorohydrin. Tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene are used in industrial and/or textile processing and can be introduced into drinking water from contaminated ground or surface water sources. Acrylamide and epichlorohydrin are impurities that can be introduced into drinking water during the water treatment process. Within the next year, EPA will initiate rulemaking efforts to revise the tetrachloroethylene and trichloroethylene standards using the strategy's framework. Revision of epichlorohydrin and acrylamide standards will follow later. As EPA looks at its new approach to addressing groups, the agency will consider whether revisions to these standards fit into that approach.
Ongoing Regulatory Actions
There are ongoing efforts on 14 other drinking water standards. For example, EPA is considering further revisions to the lead and copper rule in order to better address risks to children. EPA also has ongoing health risk assessments or information gathering for chromium, fluoride, arsenic, and atrazine. EPA continues to consider whether to regulate perchlorate. When these efforts are complete, should additional action be required, EPA will move ahead to address any risks in an expedited manner.
EPA believes it is critical to enhance drinking water protection to address the growing number of contaminants. By pursuing these sets of goals outlined above, EPA seeks to provide more robust public health protection in an open and transparent manner, identify cost and energy efficient treatment technologies and to collaborate more broadly with states, the drinking water industry, public health professionals, technology developers and manufacturers and the public to address this challenge.
More information on the strategy:
More information on the six-year review: http://www.epa.gov/safewater/review.html
NAHB International Builders' Show
January 9-11, 2018
The Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS)
January 9-11, 2018
AHR Expo 2018
Jan 22-24, 2018
6th Annual Emerging Water Technology Symposium
May 15-16, 2018


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According to Polish folklore, the lipa was considered sacred and under the protection of the Blessed Mother. Small roadside shrines were often built under lipa trees in honor of Mary. It was not uncommon for a ring of lipa trees to be planted around a village church. Additionally, the month of July (lipiec in Polish) derives its name from the lipa, mostly likely because the tree blooms in that month. And traditionally among the nobility, a lipa was planted on the day a child was born.
From Sophie Hodorowicz Knab's book, Polish Customs, Traditions and Folklore, we begin to see something of the significance of lipa.
There are other very significant reasons why the linden rose to such
importance in everyday Polish life. In July, the linden tree, laden with creamy white to light yellow flowers, exudes the sweetest fragrance imaginable that perfumes great distances. Sensing the nectar, bees come from far and wide to gather it, so that there is a constant buzzing humming around the blossoming branches. The linden was therefore an important chain in nature's cycle to provide the country folk with honey for use as a sweetener, and for making mead, as well as for the beeswax necessary for the making of candles.
There is one final gift which the linden so graciously provided. Few things were more precious to the Pole than his physical health. Each peasant knew that unless he was hale and hearty to rise each day with the dawn to till the soil, the future was unthinkable. Since doctors almost never came to the small rural villages, it was up to individuals to treat themselves as best they could with what nature provided. When plagued with a bad cough or feverish cold that was accompanied by much sneezing, the Polish peasant would reach up into the perfumed branches of the ever faithful linden, pinch off a few clusters of blooms and carry them home. placing them in a cup, covering them with boiling water, and perhaps sweetening the mixture with a small amount of honey, he would slowly sip the liquid. This linden tea induced sweating and the breaking of the fever, much to the joy and satisfaction of the individual.
In another of Sophie's books, Polish Herbs, Flowers & Folk Medicine, she explores in greater detail the role the lipa played in the lives of Polish peasants. In this book she refers to the tree as linden rather than lipa.
Linden was a tree of inestimable value. It was used in woodcarvings especially shrines and holy figures and in the making of musical instruments. From its inner bark, rough shoes called chodaki were made as well as baskets and hats. The magnificent altar of St. Mary's in Cracow is made from linden. From its seeds, an oil was extracted for consumptives and for use in oil lamps. It made for wonderful honey.
All the parts of the tree were useful in Polish folk medicine. The bark and leaves were applied to the eyes and to inflamed areas of skin. For headaches, the leaves were applied to the head and a tea made from the flowers. It was also supposed to be helpful for hair loss and was known as a general panacea for nerve troubles. In old apothecaries, a distillation of the flower was supposedly effective for convulsions and epilepsy.
Now that we've established how common, valuable, and cherished the lipa tree was/is in Poland, let's move on to look at how common the surname is.
There is a surname web site at http://www.herby.com.pl/herby/ which includes a database of data from the Dictionary of names used in Poland today by Prof Kazimierz Rymut. The data was actually compiled back in the early 1990s but it is the best data of this sort available on the Internet. Enter the surname LIPA and you'll find that there were 2635 persons living in 38 of the then 49 provinces of Poland. Further, the breakdown of LIPAs in the top 5 provinces was as follows: katowickie=453, lubelski=332, kieleckie=329, tarnowskie=236, legnickie=143. (The breakdown for all 38 provinces is given on the web site.) Here is a map of Poland (generated at the web site http://www.genpol.com/) showing the distribution of the LIPA surname throughout Poland. My LIPA ancestors came from the village of Bobrowa in the Tarnowskie province.
As it turns out, LIPA is a rather uncommon surname, even among the family of related surnames as identified in Polish Surnames: Origins and Meanings by William F. Hoffman. Hoffman's list (with the number of people with that surname in parentheses), based on the same data as the map and web site mentioned above, is as follows: Lip (532), LIPA (2635), Lipczynski (1317), Lipecki (471), Lipek (32), Lipiak (461), Lipiec (5610), Lipinski (23,390), Lipka (6955), Lipke (249), Lipkowski (902), Lipnicki (1570), Lipowicz (816), Lipowski (2863), and Lipski (9353). So we can see that even though the surname LIPA is not all that common, when you take into account all the related surnames it becomes a popular root in surnames in Poland.


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Release Date: June 27, 2006 This content is archived.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In a full car, some poor soul is relegated to the middle of the back seat, the least desirable, most uncomfortable, most "un-cool" spot in the vehicle.
It also happens to be the safest.
University at Buffalo researchers studied all auto crashes involving a fatality in the U.S. between 2000 and 2003 where someone occupied the rear middle-seat.
They found that occupants of the back seat are 59 percent to 86 percent safer than passengers in the front seat and that, in the back seat, the person in the middle is 25 percent safer than other back-seat passengers.
"After controlling for factors such as restraint use, vehicle type, vehicle weight, occupant age, weather and light conditions, air-bag deployment, drug results and fatalities per crash, the rear middle seat is still 16 percent safer than any other seat in the vehicle," said Dietrich Jehle, M.D., UB associate professor of emergency medicine and lead author on the study.
Results of the study were presented at the May meeting of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine in San Francisco, Calif.
Jehle and colleagues at the Center for Transportation Injury Research (CenTIR), conducted a retrospective cohort study of fatal crashes in which there were rear-seat occupants and at least one fatality in the vehicle. CenTIR is headquartered in the Erie County Medical Center and is affiliated with the Calspan UB Research Center (CUBRC).
The data was obtained from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The study involved two different sets of fatal crash data. Researchers first analyzed a special class of car crashes in which there were occupants in the front seat and in the middle of the back seat. Fatal crashes in which there was no occupant in the rear middle seat were excluded. This class of crashes involved 27,098 occupants. Researchers compared survival rates of front-seat versus back-seat positions.
The second data set compared survival rates of back-seat occupants only in crashes in which there was at least one fatality. The middle-seat group contained 5,707 occupants, while the "outboard" or window-seat group had 27,611 occupants, for a total of 33,318 back-seat passengers.
The fatality rate for the rear middle-seat occupant then was compared to that of the window-seat positions.
The analysis produced some revealing statistics, aside from the issue of the safest place to be sitting during a crash. The average age of the 33,318 rear seat passengers was 20 years, while middle back-seat passengers were only 15.4 years on average.
Nearly half of the passengers in the back seat -- 46.9 percent -- were not wearing seat belts, results showed, and of these unrestrained passengers, 34.6 percent were fatally injured, compared to only 14.9 percent of seat-belt wearers.
In general, back-seat passengers who wore seat belts were 2.4 to 3.2 times more likely to survive a crash than their unbelted back-seat companions.
One reason the rear middle seat is the safest, Jehle noted, is because passengers sitting in this position have a much larger "crush zone" than rear side-seat passengers in near-side impact crashes. The crush zone is an area of the car designed to collapse in an effort to absorb some of the impact from a collision.
"In addition, in rollover crashes there is potentially less rotational force exerted on the middle seat passenger than on those in the window seats," he said.
"This study reinforces the importance of using seat belts in the back seat, as well as demonstrating that the rear middle seat is the safest," stated Jehle. "Legislation to require rear-seat belt use by all passengers should be strongly supported."
Also contributing to the research were James Mayrose, Ph.D., UB research associate professor of emergency medicine and mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Aruna Priya, a doctoral student in biostatistics.
The research was supported in part by a grant from the Federal Highway Administration awarded to CenTIR.
The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, the largest and most comprehensive campus in the State University of New York.


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Ten years on, Russia's Putin has gone from 'nobody' to unshakeably powerful
He has used a vigorous image and ruthless political strategy to recentralize state power. Some analysts expect he will soon formally return to the presidency.
| Moscow
Ten years ago this week Vladimir Putin, a diminutive former KGB agent with an enigmatic smile, made his first appearance on Russia's political stage. He was Russia's fifth prime minister in barely a year, a virtual unknown plucked from bureaucratic obscurity. He was appointed to a thankless job by an ailing and increasingly out-of-touch President Boris Yeltsin, whose stumbling, corruption-plagued regime appeared to be swiftly falling apart.
The press at the time was filled with surprise and widespread derision at Mr. Yeltsin's "latest mistake." No one expected the new guy to last more than a couple of months. "Everybody thought Putin was a nobody, with zero chances," says Sergei Strokan, a columnist for the liberal daily Kommersant. "The Yeltsin regime was seen as a sinking ship that had been abandoned by everyone with ability."
What a difference the hindsight of a decade makes. Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on New Year's Eve 1999, making Mr. Putin the acting president. He won a convincing electoral victory a few months later and has never looked back.
Putin, back in the prime minister's job after two successful terms in the Kremlin, is now regarded as Russia's indispensable leader. He has consistently higher public approval ratings – averaging a celestial 74 percent over the past 10 years – than his handpicked successor, President Dmitry Medvedev. Many experts believe it is Putin who actually rules Russia and, thanks to constitutional amendments rushed through parliament last year, he might well be back for a much longer presidential term in 2012.
Beloved KGB tough guy
Retrospectives in the Russian press have pointed to Putin's blend of KGB-style tough-talking; his patriotic commitment to rebuilding Russian state power; and his often engaging, undeniably articulate public personality as the secrets to his success.
When he came to power, Putin brought good health, sobriety, and an active lifestyle – he is a black belt in judo – that proved a political tonic for Russians weary of the doddering and sometimes incoherent Yeltsin. Putin's action-man image still serves him well. Last week Russian newspapers featured full-page photos of a vacationing Putin fishing bare-chested in a rushing Siberian stream, riding horseback up a steep mountain path, and preparing to dive to the bottom of Lake Baikal aboard a Mir-2 submarine.
He also had a clearly articulated vision of where he wanted Russia to go. Early in his Kremlin tenure, Putin posted a statement of goals online, in which he declared himself a "statist" who aimed to modernize Russia by harmonizing its national traditions with European democratic values. A lot has since fallen between the cracks of that promise, say experts.
"Putin's main idea was to create a strong, united Russian state, and to do this through a strict, top-down system of power staffed by people loyal to himself," says Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Technologies in Moscow. "He tried to position himself in the public mind as a 'good czar,' according to Russian tradition, and he's been pretty successful at that. But his objective of making the state an effective instrument to promote national development has not turned out at all as advertised."
Mr. Strokan of the Kommersant daily says Putin was the "proverbial man on horseback." He says Putin "came at a time when democracy seemed to be failing, and he had the image of a soldier with clean hands and a firm heart, and that appealed to people ... but it was all a PR operation, of course. Once he had power, he took control of the major media to ensure that no one could use that method against him."
Within a few years, the Kremlin effectively controlled all national TV outlets and the owners of some of those stations that had dared oppose him – tycoons like Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky – had fled the country.
But as the space for public dissent contracted under Putin, the economy expanded – rapidly. That was in large part due to skyrocketing oil prices. But prosperity trickled down and many Russians appeared content to set aside demands for political freedoms as living standards swiftly rose.
Political opponents? Crushed
Not everyone, of course, has a rosy view of his leadership. Putin's years in power have been punctuated by wars and terrorist strikes, which he used to crush political opponents and ratchet up Kremlin control.
Just weeks after Putin became prime minister, Russia was rocked by a series of still-unexplained apartment bombings that killed 300 people, panicked the country, and led the Kremlin to launch a new war against rebels in the separatist republic of Chechnya. In that atmosphere, voters stampeded to support the pro-Putin party in December 1999 parliamentary elections.
The ongoing war in Chechnya, as well as a harrowing attack that led to the poison-gas deaths of 120 people at a theater in the heart of Moscow and another that killed hundreds of schoolchildren in the southern town of Beslan, led to dramatic political shake-ups from which the Kremlin and security services emerged with more power than ever.
"To every crisis, Putin responded with consolidating his control," says Masha Lipman, editor of the Pro et Contra journal published by the Carnegie Center in Moscow. "Public politics in Russia are now 100 percent controlled from the top. No other figure can emerge, in any political capacity, without the approval of the Kremlin," she contends.
Putin also stacked the Kremlin with KGB veterans and arrested Russia's wealthiest man – oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky – on charges of fraud, tax evasion, and embezzlement to enforce his new order. Critics say that the "new men" Putin brought with him from the security services to clean up the country have actually spawned more corruption than ever.
"Putin brought these security people in, because it was thought they were the only ones who could be trusted," says Andrei Soldatov, editor of Agentura.ru, a website that reports on the security services. "But in fact Putin created a state where there is a convergence between big business and the state. The secret services now work more on behalf of corporations than they do for the interests of the country," he says.
As Russia's oil-fueled prosperity fades amid the global economic crisis, Putin may be trapped in the system he created, says Ms. Lipman.
"He stepped down from the presidency last year, while staying on as prime minister, because he cannot afford to leave," she says. "He is essential to the working of the system. If he disappeared, it would quickly become unstable."
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THE MODERATOR: We're joined by Coach Pelini.
COACH PELINI: It's great to be back here in Chicago. It seems like a long time since last year. A lot of things have happened since then. I know as a program we're excited about the upcoming season. The kids have really worked hard.
We've had a tremendous off‑season, starting way back after the Bowl game in January and going on through spring practice. And our kids are excited. They've worked their butts off this summer and camp's right around the corner.
We like where we are as a football program right now. I'm proud of our football team. I'm proud of the kids in it, how they represent our program and what we've been able to do not only on the field but more importantly in the classroom and in the community, and there's a lot of positive things going on with our program.
And that goes to the character and the type of young men that we have on our football team. And I'm proud of all those guys and what they've done for our football program. And football‑wise we're looking forward to the upcoming season. We know it's going to be a tremendous challenge as it always is.
The interesting schedule for us, the way it sets up, with the extra home game and we're looking forward to that, because we always feel it's an advantage playing at home. And so we're looking forward to all the challenges that are going to come up.
But first and foremost, we've gotta have a great fall camp. We've gotta come out and work hard, and we've gotta improve us. We've gotta work to get better each and every day.
We're going to get what we earn. We understand that. We understand that the challenges are going to be there from the first week, all right on through, and we're looking forward to everything that lies ahead.
Seems like a long time since spring practice. We moved practice up from last year. I think that really worked for us, but, boy, it seems like it was a long time ago that we practiced football. So we're looking forward to getting together and getting a football team out on the field and getting ready to go.
It's about going to work now. It's about getting out there and improving as a football team and, as they say, trying to find our power line, as Amy Ramsey would like to say.
But looking forward to it, and would like to open it up for any questions.
Q. The losses that you guys had last year were kind of shock‑you‑to‑the‑core‑type losses with what you gave up defensively these kinds of things in these games. You're known as a defensive coach. What are the things that you and your staff did this off‑season, the soul searching, the studying, whatever it was, to improve scheme‑wise, whatever it needed to be, to work on those things that happened in those games?
COACH PELINI: It's nothing magical. It's about getting better. It's about tackling better, executing better.
It's not a scheme thing. It's not a‑‑ at the end of the day you have to execute. And when those things happen, they happen for a reason. We've studied it. We've addressed it. Going to continue to work and we need to be better, more consistent than we were last year.
You look at the wins we had and where we rank nationally in total defense in total wins and obviously a couple of the losses that we had, especially ones where we gave up a lot of points and a lot of yards.
And there's not much‑‑ the room for error isn't there anymore. Utah was playing the spread out teams and you play some good football teams and when some things‑‑ you face some adversity early on you can't let it turn the other way on you.
Like I said, fundamentally, technique‑wise and execution‑wise, we need to be better. We need to be better consistently because when you're not, those bad things can happen to you.
Q. Why was Thomas Brown dismissed from the team?
COACH PELINI: Violation of team rules. I don't speak in specifics about it. But I wish him luck at his next school.
Q. Rutgers and Maryland went to the Big Ten next year, you just made that transition. What advice would you have for them as to how to what to do, what to prepare for going through that transition to the Big Ten?
COACH PELINI: Everybody's going to have their different approach on how they're going to go through to transition. I think the support you have here with the Big Ten Conference and the other member institutions and for that matter even the hospitality of the other coaches, that was tremendous for us.
And there's always going to be an adjustment period for teams going through, going into a conference for the first time. And that's going to be there. There's no hiding from that.
And it's going to require some extra work in the off‑season. But it's a transition that you just have to spend a little bit more time familiarizing yourself with teams that you haven't seen for a while, coaches you might not have coached against, and it just adds a little more to your off‑season to try become familiar with it before it's staring you in the face in a game week.
So the more preparation you're able to do in the off‑season makes that transition that much easier. But it's still going to be difficult. There's one thing about seeing things on film and watching it on your laptop, but there's a whole other thing going through it, and over time you'll become more and more familiar and things become a little bit easier for you.
Plus you have your football players who are also going through a transition time, and they're going into stadiums they've never been in. There's a lot to it. But the better preparation they can do in the off‑season, the better.
Q. How have you already talked to your team about targeting rules, how will you talk to them about the new targeting rule, and what, if any, concerns do you have about the application of that rule?
COACH PELINI: Well, we talked to them about it in spring knowing it was coming, right around the corner. And you look for examples that you're going to see, different things that came up during practice and said, hey, that's the time where you're probably going to get thrown out of the game.
But the scary thing to me is just what you said: It's the application part of it. And it's going to be pretty subjective. And I don't think it's an easy thing to call. And in my opinion it's going a little bit overboard right now. And some things I've seen on TV and different examples that they've shown, you know, like even as a coach watching it on TV, I haven't quite agreed with some of the things they've talked about.
But I understand where it's coming from. It's about the safety of the players, and we're all for that. We just have to make sure that we're not messing with the integrity of the game or the sport and how it's supposed to be played.
Q. What are your thoughts on your offense? I would think you have to be pretty excited about what you bring back and the possibilities on that side of the ball.
COACH PELINI: Yeah, I really like our offense. It's coming back, and obviously it starts with the quarterback position, having a four‑year starter at quarterback and some really dynamic weapons around them.
I think we have the opportunity to have probably the best offensive line on paper, potentially, that we've had since I've been here, not only the starters but some of the backups and the depth that we have really across the board.
If we can get a couple young kids, incoming guys, that can come in and provide us with some extra depth at a couple of positions, it's a pretty potent‑‑ potentially a very potent offense. And I feel really good about it.
I feel good about where our guys are scheme‑wise and their knowledge of Coach Beck's offense and what he wants to do. And I'm looking forward to our offense. I think they have‑‑ I wouldn't trade our offense for anybody. I really like what we're doing.
Q. What's it like just opening with Illinois five straight years for Big Ten play?
COACH PELINI: Excuse me?
Q. Just opening with Illinois for five straight years in Big Ten play, just what's that like?
COACH PELINI: Well, actually until you said that, I wasn't even aware of that. But I knew they were our opener this year. And that's all I'm concerned with right now. And we have a lot of respect for the Illinois program.
Obviously coming from the Big Ten and I played Illinois a lot over the years, from my playing days and understanding the type of tradition they have and the type of potential they have. Coach Beckman and his staff are doing a good job and getting things going in the right direction, and we know it will be a challenge for us right off the bat to start Big ten play.
Q. The Big Ten's going to the nine‑game schedule in a few years. The excitement of that is you're in a different division than Ohio State and your alma mater and Michigan State and other schools when this happens, but going to nine games you'll be able to play those schools maybe a little bit more regularly, which I think the fans were looking forward to. Just your thoughts about going to the nine‑game schedule?
COACH PELINI: It's going to be a little bit different in that probably the biggest‑‑ it creates some different scheduling issues as far as games we might have had scheduled or planning on scheduling for the future.
But having the five and four format as far as in your division and out of your division, home games and not home games, it changes some of the dynamics. But I think it will be good.
It was inevitable that's where it was heading with the nine conference games, with the expansion of the conference, and I think it will be a good thing in the end. It will be a little bit of‑‑ obviously you're down to three out‑of‑conference games which changes your dynamics a little bit, but I think in time most of the conferences, especially the ones that are expanding past 10, 11 teams, you know, 12 and up, are going to start going to nine conference games.
That's going to I think be pretty uniform throughout college football in short order.
Q. With so much inexperience in the front seven, as a defensive coach, are there unique challenges, any challenges in particular to get those guys ready to play the level of football you expect?
COACH PELINI: Well, there's challenges in every situation. Everyone's a little bit different each year. And we're going to have some inexperience. But we have some experienced guys kind of mixed through there.
And I think it's going to be a great competition. We might be fairly inexperienced, especially to start off the year, you know.
But I think our depth is going to be there. And there's going to be great competition, which I think is‑‑ and we're athletic. It's going to be an athletic group and a talented group and I'll take that any day of the week.
It's just going to require a lot of hard work on our part as coaches, our players' parts, and I like the potential of the group. I like the way we finished spring. I like the development we've had. And I'm excited about the incoming guys that are going to add to the mix. And we're doing a couple different things to add to what we've been doing defensively.
I think we're going to be a little bit more multiple even than we have been even though we're going to be younger.
And so I'm looking forward to it. And I really like the potential of our group.
Q. The question is in regard to Taylor. And we saw a pretty dramatic change from a mechanics standpoint from 11 to 12. And I know he has a coach in California that he's been working with. My question to you is your level of comfort with having external coaches coaching Taylor or any other player and whether the specialization of some of these coaches is an area that you're going to move to in the future.
COACH PELINI: Taylor is being coached by Coach Beck. He's the one who ‑‑ believe me, Taylor works with‑‑ he has his coach at home that helps him on his breaks, but he's at the university most of the year and Coach Beck does a great job with them.
It's nice to have some reinforcement, some guys that he works with, you know, away from when he's in Lincoln and when he's at home. And Taylor's made great strides. I think he had a tremendous year last year.
And I expect him‑‑ there's still a lot of room for improvement there. He's not even close to what his potential is. And I look forward to what he's going to bring to the table this year.
He had an improved spring. And being a great quarterback comes back to not just the talent thing, it's not just the fundamentals and the technique issues, but it comes down to decision‑making and efficiency at the quarterback position and making the offense work for you, and I think he's understanding that.
I think he grew in that area last year and there's still a lot more room for growth. And like you said, he made some big changes in his throwing motion and really his footwork and shoulder angle.
Once he got that corrected, he has the arm strength. He can make any throw there is. And he has tremendous talent. He just needed to refine some things and he's gotta continue to work on that because it's the little things that allow you to have success.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports


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"You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them" (thanks, Apple, for that eccentric commercial). Cloud computing isn't as new as it seems and is popular among businesses of all types and sizes. Legacy or conventional desktop computing has been trending for longer than it should have been. Thankfully, it is fast changing. Changing to cloud computing. Cloud computing refers to software services and platforms offered through the Internet and is available to organizations on the basis of subscription. The cloud has been around for quite a while now, and is becoming the preferred choice for many businesses. Why are these organizations, that were doing fine with installed software, now turning to the cloud? What in cloud computing has won them over?
Many businesses have lost the traditional office model already. Cloud comes as a boon to relatively smaller organizations; emerging ones, whose employees work from home and collaborate online. Any device that has Internet connectivity is all it takes to have access to the organization's data. More importantly, there are no futile copies of the same data. There is one central location where all the data resides, and every user is served that, from wherever he has access. There are precautionary backups though, but the host handles it all.
Second to costly infrastructure, constant software updates and maintenance are nightmares that haunt businesses. The sad plight of traditional desktop software is that integration and maintenance costs you way more than the actual software itself. On the contrary, cloud computing platforms are updated automatically by the provider, and this ensures that every employee is on the latest platform, without having to spend a fortune on updates alone.
Interestingly, this study on giving back more than what we take, reveals,
Large companies that use cloud computing can achieve annual energy savings of $12.3 billion and annual carbon reductions equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil – enough to power 5.7 million cars for one year.
So, for whatever reason you go to the cloud, be it environmental activism, online-collaboration capability, or freedom from infrastructure, maintenance and software updates, there is this one factor that desktop counterparts can never match. And that is ROI (Return on Investment) or the cost factor. Because, in business, emerging ones in particular, money does matter. And money saved is money earned. The showstopper is that the cloud provides all this, and yet, there is no compromise on productivity. And that is why cloud computing platforms are rapidly gaining the appreciation they rightfully deserve.


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This is a fairly minor, technical question, but I'll toss it out in case someone has a good idea on it.
Suppose $(X,<_X)$ and $(Y,<_Y)$ are well-founded orderings (not necessarily linearly ordered, though I don't think it matters). Consider the ordering ${<}$ on $X\times Y$ given by $(x',y') < (x,y)$ if $x'\leq x$ and $y'\leq y$, and either $x' < x$ or $y' < y$. Note that this is not the lexicographic ordering; indeed, it's symmetric.
Obviously $X\times Y$ is well-founded. Suppose I want to prove this carefully (by which I really mean "in the formal theory $ID_1$"); more precisely, let's take $X$ to be a set with two properties: $$Cl_X:\forall x(\forall x'<_X x. x'\in X)\rightarrow x\in X$$ and $$Ind_X: \forall Z[\forall x(\forall x'<_X x. x'\in Z)\rightarrow x\in Z)\rightarrow X\subseteq Z]$$ and similarly for $Y$. (These just characterize that $X$ is its own well-founded part.) I want to prove that for all $(x,y)\in X\times Y$, $(x,y)$ are in the well-founded part of $X\times Y$ under ${<}$; call the well-founded part of $X\times Y$ $Acc(X\times Y)$.
I know one way to prove this: for each $x\in X$, define $Y_x=\{y\in Y\mid (x,y)\in Acc(X\times Y)\}$. Let $X'$ be the set of $x\in X$ such that $Y\subseteq Y_x$. Then it would be good enough to show that $X'$ satisfies the closure property, so I can apply $Ind_X$. To do this, in turn, I show that, if $Y\subseteq Y_{x'}$ for all $x'<_X x$ then $Y_x$ satisfies the closure property, so I can apply $Ind_Y$.
Of course, that means I know I second way: I could swap $X$ and $Y$ in the above proof. Moreover, when one works through the details, it's clear that I'm really proving that the lexicographic ordering is well-founded, and using the fact that ${<}$ is a subrelation of the lexicographic ordering.
Which brings me to my question: is there a proof that $Acc(X\times Y)=X\times Y$ which is symmetric?


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Cloud computing startup Mesosphere has decided to open-source its platform for managing data center resources, with the backing of more than 60 tech companies, including Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Cisco Systems.
Derived from its Datacenter Operating System, a service that Mesosphere set out to build as an operating system for all servers in a data center as if they were a single pool of resources, the open source DC/OS offers capabilities for container operations at scale and single-click, app-store-like installation of over 20 complex distributed systems, including HDFS, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka and Apache Cassandra, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
DC/OS is built around the Apache Mesos kernel for distributed systems of different kinds like analytics, file systems, and Web servers, which Mesosphere founder Benjamin Hindman and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley developed in 2009.
But the minimalist approach used to develop Mesos proved inadequate when it came to running most applications as other functionality such as service discovery, load balancing, user/service authentication and authorization, and command-line and user interfaces had to come from components that run alongside or on top of Mesos, Hindman said in a blog post.
The strategy was that Mesos and the components would equal the data center operating system. "While this remains a solid approach to keeping Mesos nimble, it also meant that each organization that was adopting Mesos had to build its own implementation of all these components," Hindman wrote.
But this model didn't really go according to the plan the founders of Mesosphere had in 2013, which was to build a complete data center operating system that had Mesos at the core and didn't require Mesos users to "reinvent and reimplement each of the necessary components themselves."
"By open sourcing DC/OS we're enabling organizations of all sizes to harness the same computing infrastructure as the Twitters and Apples of the world," Hindman said. While Mesos will continue to add and improve upon its OS-like primitives such as upcoming support for external storage volumes and a universal containerizer, DC/OS will continue to focus on complementary features like service discovery, load balancing, privacy, and ease of installation, he added.
While some of the technologies in DC/OS such as Mesos were already open source, others such as the GUI and the Minuteman load balancer were proprietary technologies developed by Mesosphere.
Some of the components that Mesosphere built as part of its Data Center Operating System, and are included in DC/OS are Marathon, a container orchestrator platform, Universe that provides an app store like experience for deploying distributed systems and additional management components, tools for operating the DC/OS from the Web or command line, and GUI based installers for on-premise and cloud.
Microsoft said it had made DC/OS a key component of its new Azure Container Service, which entered general availability on Tuesday.
Mesosphere recently closed a $73.5 million in a Series C funding round that was led by HPE, with Microsoft as a strategic investor. The investment took Mesosphere's total funding to nearly $126 million.


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Amethyst Bear 82SX
Amethyst Bear 82SX
You will receive the exact piece
*Do take note of natural lines/ pockets
☾ Intuition ☾ Protection ☾ Purification
Amethyst is the stone of spiritual protection and purification. It can be aid to curbing overindulgence and giving up bad habits. It stimulates the crown chakra and is an aid for meditation, helping one to still one's thoughts and move into higher states of consciousness. It can clear negative influences and attachments, and form a spiritual Light around the body that wards off negativity. Amethyst is one of the first stones to which people are attracted to when they first begin their work with the mineral kingdom. Its beautiful purple Light combined with its gentle and sweet energy makes it a necessary crystal to have in one's crystal collection.
Dimensions : 8.7(w) x 11.1cm(h), 339g


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Ocean Princes
As we begin our 5 day trek across southern England. First stop the White cliffs of Dover. A shot of our cruise boat from the cliffs.
White Cliffs of Dover
Sonya's first use of the big camera. Did a good job.
Dover Castle
From the Cliffs
Dinning Hall
When you see it.........
Scribal room
Kings bed chamber
One of the oldest tower in England. See previous web site.
Protecting the castle from the invasion of the Sheep.
Our first night. The Rutland Arms. This pace reminded us of the Winchester Mystery House.
Rutland Arms
The Gallops. Main reason this was one of the stops. The Gallops is used as a location in the Dick Frances Books (Who?). So Sonya had to make this one of her choice stops. Spent a couple of hours there.
Classy stables
Town Square. The off to Stonehenge.
Representation of the living environment around Stonehenge.
Somerset Arms
Night Two. Located in Maiden Bradley, Somerset Arms in the property of the Duke of Somerset. Great little place and we do recommend this place if anyone else decides to visit this area of England. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Somerset
The young man who ran this place reminded me a lot like Harry Potter. Good food also.
Maiden Bradley
After finishing a great dinner we took a walk around the town. My guess is that the town was probably no more then a couple of hundred people. This is the residence of the Duke of Somerset.
Opposite of the gates to the Duke of Somerset Mansion. It was probably the original path through the gates before some of the property was sold off.


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Last week big headlines were made as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned the U.S. Congress about global warming.
Now its time to ask the IPCC the analog of the question asked every time a scientist or activist argues against global warming:
How many of the scientists involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are on the payroll of governemnt?
After all, if being paid for by Exxon makes a scientist prone to give results that Exxon wants (no global warming, no need to regulate oil & gas industry), does it not follow that all of these scientists receiving big government grants will therefore be prone to give results that big government wants (global warming, massive tax hikes, nationalize oil & gas industry, huge money grabs for NGOs and elite consultants)?
How about we get some "global warming is really happening" from the scientists paid for by industry before we jump up and down over this nonsense.
Update, 2:54pm: I replaced all the "Enron"s in the original post with "Exxon". Silly mistake. Canconv readers will note that the original post is still quoted on the site.
Bonus fake science question: Is it true that the discovery that their claims are false cause environmentalists to push even harder for economic ruin at the hands of climate change? Yes.
Bonus link #1: Canada Free Press asks "what's with these control freaks spearheading global warming initiatives?"
Bonus link #2: Colby Cosh has resumed posting, and linked to his recent National Post article about the Stern Report's failure to properly model economics.
A question about so-called "climate change"
Last week big headlines were made as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned the U.S. Congress about global warming.
by Feynman and Coulter's Love Child at 12:49 pm
Labels: #tcot, International politics, Physics and Science, Stupid Environment


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|I used Orly French White and OPI All Lacquered Up for these images. These nail polish brands seem to work the best for this technique. Drip the nail polish into the filtered water and use a toothpick to create your own pattern.
I also created a monogrammed marbleized image by cutting out the letter A from a sticker (you could user painters tape, I just had this sticker on hand) with an Exacto knife. I used the negative part of the sticker (negative part meaning outline) and stuck it onto the ornament. Painted one coat of clear nail polish then another coat of white nail polish. Then I dipped the ornament into the water with the marbleized nail polish. Removed the sticker and used nail polish remover to clean up the edges.
Check out my latest post on making a heart shaped marble pattern: http://www.thecheesethief.com/2012/11/how-to-water-marble-nails-and-christmas.html
Ornament Video Tutorial
Water Marble Nail Video Tutorial


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(Reuters) - An 18-year-old accused of stealing a rooftop panel from the wrecked Porsche in the crash that killed "Fast and Furious" actor Paul Walker was in custody on Friday, Los Angeles sheriff's officials said.
Jameson Witty was arrested at his home in Los Angeles on Thursday, and a second suspect was arranging to turn himself in, authorities said.
On the day of the November 30 crash, someone using the Instagram service handle "jamesonwitty" posted photos of a portion of the roof of a red Porsche and wrote, "Piece of Paul walkers (sic) car, took it off a tow truck at a stop light."
It was not immediately clear whether the photos were genuine, but sheriff's deputies arrested Witty after searching his home.
Walker was a passenger in a fiery one-car crash in Santa Clarita, California, about 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, that also killed 38-year-old driver Roger Rodas over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
The 40-year-old actor, best known for his roles in the "Fast and Furious" action films, died from multiple injuries, the Los Angeles County coroner said on Wednesday.
The coroner said Walker's death resulted from "traumatic and thermal injuries." While the coroner did not elaborate, thermal injuries are heat-related and are commonly burns.
The crash prompted Universal Pictures this week to suspend production of the seventh installment in its lucrative car racing film franchise.
After the crash, rescue crews loaded the wrecked car onto a flat-bed tow truck. Several vehicles followed the truck as it left the scene for a tow-yard, where detectives planned to examine it for evidence of what happened in the accident, the sheriff's department said.
When the truck stopped at a traffic light, a man got out of a car, ran up to the tow vehicle and grabbed a panel from the wrecked Porsche Carrera GT, a witness told investigators.
Deputies later found the red, T-top roof panel at a home in the Los Angeles suburb of Canyon Country.
The second man believed to be involved in the theft is a 25-year-old who was outside the state on Thursday but was making plans to turn himself in, deputies said.
Witty was booked on suspicion of felony grand theft and evidence tampering, with bail set at $20,000, deputies said.
Investigators are continuing to seek a cause for the one-car crash.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Andrew Hay)


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Google Named Happiest Company in America ... Again
For the second time in three years, Google ranks as the happiest place to work, a new study finds.
The technology giant tops this year's Bliss Leap Award winners from online career community CareerBliss, which ranks companies for making strides to create happier work environments.
The company's climb back to the top, after a year in which its measure of overall employee happiness declined, was attributed to its commitment to providing support and growth opportunities.
"Like any organization, company culture is always changing and adapting with new management, policies, and company growth," said Matt Miller, co-founder and chief technical officer of CareerBliss. "Google tells an interesting story, of how dynamic a workplace can change in just one year."
CareerBliss compiled its rankings by getting employee evaluations on 10 key factors that affect happiness: work/life balance, one's relationship with his or her boss and co-workers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and job control over the work performed on a daily basis. The data were then compared from last year's to determine the companies with the greatest gains in employee happiness.
The other companies in this year's Top 10 are:
- SuperMedia
- Unisys
- GE Capital Bank
- Rockwell Collins
- Ernst & Young
- Dyn Corp
- Applied Materials
- Coco-Cola Co.
- AECOM Technology
All of the companies in the Top 10 experienced an increase in employee happiness by more than 12 percent from 2011, according to the survey.
"The Bliss Leap Award honors companies who have spent the last year truly working towards creating a better company culture and happier employees," said Heidi Golledge, co-founder and CEO of CareerBliss. "A common thread amongst all our Bliss Leap Award winners is the desire to improve and continue to foster a positive and happier work environment."
All 50 Bliss Leap Award winners appear on the CareerBliss website.
Follow Chad Brooks on Twitter @cbrooks76 or BusinessNewsDaily @BNDarticles. We're also on Facebook & Google+.
- Founded When? The Oldest Companies in America
- 10 Companies Back From Bankruptcy
- Want to Start a Business? 10 Signs You've Got What It Takes
Copyright 2012 BusinessNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Youth in the ecumenical movement
This project promotes the active participation of young adults in the life of churches and the ecumenical movement, helping them to network, and enabling them to express their concerns and visions.
Youth are the future of the church, and they are great advocates for Christian unity. The WCC wants to empower young Christians to liven up the ecumenical movement: as interns at the WCC offices in Geneva, as stewards at major ecumenical events, or as commissioners liaising between youth, churches, WCC governing bodies and WCC programmes.


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Young Black Men Killed by U.S. Police at Highest Rate in Year of 1,134 Deaths
Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year.
Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.
Paired with official government mortality data, this new finding indicates that about one in every 65 deaths of a young African American man in the US is a killing by police.
"This epidemic is disproportionately affecting black people," said Brittany Packnett, an activist and member of the White House taskforce on policing. "We are wasting so many promising young lives by continuing to allow this to happen."
Speaking in the same week that a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio, was cleared by a grand jury over the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy who was carrying a toy gun, Packnett said the criminal justice system was presenting "no deterrent" to the excessive use of deadly force by police. "Tamir didn't even live to be 15," she said.
Protests accusing law enforcement officers of being too quick to use lethal force against unarmed African Americans have spread across the country in the 16 months since dramatic unrest gripped Ferguson, Missouri, following the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white officer.
Overall in 2015, black people were killed at twice the rate of white, Hispanic and native Americans. About 25% of the African Americans killed were unarmed, compared with 17% of white people. This disparity has narrowed since the database was first published on 1 June, at which point black people killed were found to be twice as likely to not have a weapon.
The Guardian's investigation, titled The Counted, began in response to widespread concern about the federal government's failure to keep any comprehensive record of people killed by police. Officials at the US Department of Justice have since begun testing a database that attempts to do so, directly drawing on The Counted's data and methodology.
The FBI director, James Comey, said in October it was "embarrassing and ridiculous" that the government did not hold comprehensive statistics, and that it was "unacceptable" the Guardian and the Washington Post, which began publishing a database of fatal police shootings on 1 July, held better records. The Counted will continue into 2016.
Data collected by the Guardian this year highlighted the wide range of situations encountered by police officers across the US. Of the 1,134 people killed, about one in five were unarmed but another one in five fired shots of their own at officers before being killed. At least six innocent bystanders were killed by officers during violent incidents; eight police officers were killed by people who subsequently died and appeared in the database.
More than 21% of deadly incidents began with a complaint to police alleging domestic violence or some other domestic disturbance. About 16% arose from officers attempting to arrest a wanted person, execute a warrant or apprehend a fugitive. Another 14% of killings followed an attempted traffic or street stop, 13% came after someone committed a violent crime and 7% after a non-violent crime.
"It would appear that police officers are often confronting people who are armed, non-compliant and threatening," said David Klinger an associate professor of criminology at the University of Missouri-St Louis.
The extensive demographic detail gathered as part of the study also shed light on the diverse set of people who died during confrontations with law enforcement. The group ranged in age from six-year-old Jeremy Mardis, in Marksville, Louisiana, to 87-year-old Louis Becker in Catskill, New York. Officers killed 43 people who were 18 years old and younger.
Mental health crises contributed directly to dozens of police-involved deaths. In at least 92 cases that led to fatalities this year, police had been alerted over a suicidal person or someone who was harming him- or herself. In 28 other deadly incidents, relatives or associates later said that the person killed had been suicidal before they died.
Of 29 military veterans who were killed by police in 2015, at least eight were said to have been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following their service. In all, mental health issues were reported in relation to 246 people killed by police this year – more than one in every five cases. On at least eight occasions, the death was officially ruled a suicide, prompting claims from relatives that officers were escaping scrutiny.
"We have a tremendous problem," said Dr Daniel Reidenberg, the managing director of the National Council for Suicide Prevention. "In a society where firearms are as prevalent as they are, and where people know law enforcement are trained to respond to a certain situation in a certain way, we have a problem."
Regional disparities also emerged from the year's data. Earlier this month, the Guardian published a series of special reports on Kern County, California, where police killed more people relative to the size of its population than anywhere else in the country. Law enforcement officers there killed more people in 2015 than the NYPD, which has 23 times as many officers policing a population 10 times as big.
Following a spate of killings in recent weeks, New Mexico's 21 deaths in 2015 represented the highest per-capita rate of any state. New Mexico's rate of one killing by police for every 99,300 residents was more than 10 times greater than that of Rhode Island, where only one person among a population of more than a million was killed by law enforcement.
The death of Kenneth Stephens, 56, in Burlington, Vermont, last week meant that all 50 states and the District of Columbia had at least one death caused by police in 2015.
Only one of the 21 people killed by police in New Mexico, however, was unarmed. By contrast nine of the 25 people killed in New York state were unarmed, and seven of these were black men. While five of Georgia's 38 deaths followed a suspect being shocked with a Taser – the highest proportion in the country – no Taser-involved deaths were recorded in more than half a dozen states.
In all, 89% of deaths by police in 2015 were caused by gunshot, 4% were Taser-related, 4% were deaths in custody following physical confrontations and 3% were deaths of people struck by police officers driving vehicles.
The Counted found that in at least 255 deaths in 2015, the actions of police officers involved had been ruled justified. These rulings were typically made by a district attorney who worked alongside the department of the officers involved in prosecuting everyday crimes. About a quarter of the justified cases were decided on by a grand jury of the public.
Law enforcement officers were charged with crimes in relation to 18 of 2015's deadly incidents – 10 shootings, four deadly vehicle crashes and four deaths in custody.
By the end of the year, one officer had been acquitted of charges relating to a fatal shooting in Pennsylvania, and the first attempt at prosecuting one of the officers involved in the deadly arrest of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, had ended in a mistrial. Two deputies in Georgia charged over the in-custody death of Matthew Ajibade were cleared of manslaughter but convicted of cruelty, perjury and falsifying paperwork.
Philip Stinson, an associate professor at Bowling Green University who monitors the subject, said the number of officers being charged had risen sharply this year. "There is more public awareness, and I do think that in the past few years the veracity of police officers is being questioned more, after their statements were shown to not be consistent with video evidence," he said.


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Now that I'm off Keenspot, the official GPF forum has moved to http://www.gpf-comics.com/forum/ so please go there until further notice. This forum shall be locked and moved to the archived section of the Keen Forums, and will hopefully remain there for as long as Keenspot is gracious enough to host it. (Either that, or we hope to find a way to export those threads and import them into the new forum, but that's a low priority at the moment.)
See you at our new digs!


text: British authorities have launched an investigation into the recent cyberattacks that crippled Web sites in the U.S. and South Korea, as the trail to find the perpetrators stretches around the world.On Tuesday, the Vietnamese security vendor Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (Bkis) said it had identified a master command-and-control server used to coordinate the denial-of-service attacks, which took down major U.S. and South Korean government Web sites.A command-and-control server is used to distribute instructions to zombie PCs, which form a botnet that can be used to bombard Web sites with traffic, rendering the sites useless. The server was on an IP (Internet Protocol) address used by Global Digital Broadcast, an IP TV technology company based in Brighton, England, according to Bkis.That master server distributed instructions to eight other command-and-control servers used in the attacks. Bkis, which managed to gain control of two of the eight servers, said that 166,908 hacked computers in 74 countries were used in the attacks and were programmed to get new instructions every three minutes.But the master server isn't in the U.K.; it's in Miami, according to Tim Wray, one of the owners of Digital Global Broadcast, who spoke to IDG News Service on Tuesday evening, London time.The server belongs to Digital Latin America (DLA), which is one of Digital Global Broadcast's partners. DLA encodes Latin American programming for distribution over IP TV-compatible devices, such as set-top boxes.New programs are taken from satellite and encoded into the proper format, then sent over VPN (Virtual Private Network) to the U.K., where Digital Global Broadcast distributes the content, Wray said. The VPN connection made it appear the master server belonged to Digital Global Broadcast when it actually is in DLA's Miami data center.Engineers from Digital Global Broadcast quickly discounted that the attacks originated with the North Korean government, which South Korean authorities have suggested may be responsible.Digital Global Broadcast was notified of a problem by its hosting provider, C4L, Wray said. His company has also been contacted by the U.K.'s Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA). A SOCA official said she could not confirm or deny an investigation.Amaya Ariztoy, general counsel for DLA, said the company examined the server in question today and found "viruses" on it."We are doing an investigation internally," Ariztoy said.Investigators will need to seize that master server for forensic analysis. It's often a race against the hackers, since if the server is still under their control, critical data could be erased that would help an investigation."It's a tedious process and you want to do it as quickly as possible," said Jose Nazario, manager of security research for Arbor Networks.Data such as log files, audit trails and uploaded files will be sought by investigators, Nazario said. "The holy grail you are looking for are pieces of forensics that reveal where the attacker connected from and when," he said.To conduct the attacks, the hackers modified a relatively old piece of malware called MyDoom, which first appeared in January 2004. MyDoom has e-mail worm characteristics and can also download other malware to a PC and be programmed to conduct denial-of-service attacks against Web sites.Analysis of the MyDoom variant used in the attacks isn't that impressive. "I still think the code is pretty sloppy, which I hope means they [the hackers] leave a good evidence trail," Nazario said.


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43 S.Ct. 219
67 L.Ed. 419
HILL et al.
No. 164.
Argued Jan. 3, 1923.
Decided Jan. 15, 1923.
Messrs. Geo. S. Fuller and Edward E. Blodgett, both of Boston, Mass., for petitioners.
Mr. Edward F. McClennen, of Boston, Mass., for respondent.
Mr. Justice HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a suit upon a judgment. The defendant, Warren H. Hill, pleaded a discharge in bankruptcy. Subsequently he died and his executors, the petitioners, took his place. There was a trial before a judge without a jury. The plaintiff introduced proof that the judgment was unsatisfied and rested. The defendants proved the discharge and rested. In rebuttal the plaintiff introduced the schedules of creditors in bankruptcy of Hill in which schedules the plaintiff's name did not appear. The defendants asked for rulings that the burden was upon the plaintiff to show that he was not notified of the defendant's bankruptcy and that he had no knowledge of it. These were refused subject to exceptions and the Court found for the plaintiff. The exceptions were overruled by the Supreme Judicial Court and judgment was entered upon the finding. Smith v. Hill, 232 Mass. 188, 122 N. E. 310, 2 A. L. R. 1667. A writ of certiorari was allowed by this Court.
It is argued for the respondent that there is no jurisdiction in this Court because the attention of the trial judge was not called specifically to the Bankruptcy Act (Comp. St. §§ 9585-9656) as a ground for the rulings asked, and because, even if it had been, it is said, the burden of proof is to be determined by the practice of the State. As we are of opinion that the judgment was right we shall not discuss these objections at length. We deem it enough to say, as to the first, that the appellate court treated the question as open and decided it; and as to the second that here as in Central Vermont Railway Co. v. White, 238 U. S. 507, 35 Sup. Ct. 865, 59 L. Ed. 1433, Ann. Cas. 1916B, 252, though perhaps in a somewhat less intimate and obvious way, the burden of proof is so connected with the substantive rights given to the respective parties by the statute—indeed so flows from the words of the statute—that the ruling upon it may be reviewed here.
The merits were fully and adequately discussed by the Supreme Judicial Court. In order to dispose of them it will not be necessary to repeat the distinction, familiar in Massachusetts since the time of Chief Justice Shaw, Powers v. Russell, 13 Pick. 69, and elaborated in the opinion below, between the burden of proof and the necessity of producing evidence to meet that already produced. The distinction is now very generally accepted, although often blurred by careless speech. Thayer, Preliminary Treatise on Evidence, c. 9. The Bankruptcy Act of July 1, 1898, c. 541, § 17a(3), 30 Stat. 550, amended by Act of February 5, 1903, c. 487, § 5, 32 Stat. 798 (Comp. St. § 9601), provides that a discharge 'shall release a bankrupt from all of his provable debts, except such as * * * (3) have not been duly scheduled in time for proof and allowance, with the name of the creditor if known to the bankrupt, unless such creditor had notice or actual knowledge of the proceedings in bankruptcy.' (The Amendment of March 2, 1917, c. 153, 39 Stat. 999 [Comp. St. § 9601], does not change this language, and was adopted after the discharge.) By the very form of the law the debtor is discharged subject to an exception, and one who would bring himself within the exception must offer evidence to do so. Kreitlein v. Ferger, 238 U. S. 21, 26, 35 Sup. Ct. 685, 59 L. Ed. 1184; McKelvey v. United States, 260 U. S. 353, 43 Sup. Ct. 132, 67 L. Ed. ——, Dec. 4, 1922. But there is an exception to the exception, 'unless the creditor had notice,' etc., and, by the same principle if the debtor would get the benefit of that he must offer evidence to show his right. We agree with the Court below that justice and the purpose of the section justify the technical rule that if the debtor would avoid the effect of his omission of a creditor's name from his schedules he must prove the facts upon which he relies.
The petitioners urge two further objections. They say that it did not appear that the debtor knew the name of his creditor. The trial judge was warranted in inferring that when a judgment had been recovered against him in Boston, where he lived, he knew the name of the man who recovered it and who lived hard by. Again, they say that the debt may have been scheduled under some other name. The judge had t e schedule before him and for all that appears well may have inferred that it was not.
But we cannot treat these questions as open. The Supreme Judicial Court stated that the questions presented related wholly to the burden of proof and it was said at the argument and not denied that in their brief before that Court the petitioners asserted that the sole issue was on the refusal to give the requests stated above. That is all that is before us now, although we have been unwilling to let the petitioners suppose that were it otherwise they would be better off.
Judgment affirmed.


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The Uptown
The Uptown Apartments
The Uptown Overview and Highlights
The Uptown, located at 3636 McKinney Ave in Dallas's Uptown neighborhood, has convenient access to many of the city's top attractions. The building offers studio, convertible, one, two, and three-bedroom units in a variety of floor plans. The average price of a 1-bedroom apartment is $1,920 (based on availability from the last 3 months). The Uptown features impressive amenities, including an outdoor pool for soaking up the summer sun, a state-of-the-art fitness center, a roofdeck for hosting friends, and on-site parking. The Uptown is also dog & cat-friendly.
3636 McKinney Ave, Dallas, TX
Building Type
Year Built
The hip neighborhood of Uptown sits in the heart of the city, just north of downtown Dallas. This lively spot is lauded for its cozy cocktail bars and global bistros, serving everything from French patisserie to Vietnamese to Moroccan fare. But, the "see-and-be-seen" atmosphere keeps people coming back for more. A strong social scene along McKinney Avenue, home to the free M-Line Trolly, anchors the neighborhood.
The highly walkable streets are filled with an array of spirited nightlife, fantastic shopping, and designer apartments and condominiums. Tree-lined townhouses farther north add privacy while still remaining close to all the action. Rentals on nearby Knox Street deserve a look as well.
Frequently Asked Questions
Pricing, availability, and concessions are subject to change at any time and without notice. Photos may be of various model units and apartment availability and lease terms may vary. Information is believed to be accurate, however is subject to errors and omissions. The accuracy of all information, regardless of source, including but not limited to square footages and lot sizes, is deemed reliable but not guaranteed and should be personally verified through personal inspection by and/or with the appropriate professionals.


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New imaging system combines ultra high-frequency ultrasound imaging, quantification and
education in a convenient easy to use all-in-one platform designed for small animal studies
Toronto, Canada, September 17, 2014 (Booth #510) – FUJIFILM VisualSonics Inc., a world leader in real time, in vivo, high-resolution micro-imaging systems designed specifically for pre-clinical research and subsidiary of FUJIFILM Sonosite, Inc., will unveil the world's first one-touch pre-clinical imaging platform, the Vevo® 3100 on September 17 -20 at the World Molecular Imaging Congress Annual Meeting in Seoul, Korea.
"Equipped with new Vevo HD Image Technology, a customizable touchscreen user interface, and onboard learning, the Vevo® 3100 imaging platform allows researchers to experience a new and efficient method of imaging in the pre-clinical research world," said Naohiro Fujitani, President & CEO, FUJIFILM Sonosite, Inc. "As the undisputed leader in real-time in vivo micro-imaging systems, FUJIFILM VisualSonics once again advances the world of pre-clinical research with the launch of the Vevo® 3100 imaging platform."
Touch technology on the Vevo® 3100 imaging platform offers the ultimate preclinical imaging experience in medical research. The unique, gesture-driven user interface can be personalized by multiple users and is easily controlled with the glide of a finger and without keys or buttons. Its intuitive control panel allows customizable workflow for rapid data acquisition, providing extremely high throughput when needed.
The simplicity encourages novice and advanced users alike to attain high quality images provided with the new Vevo HD Image Technology equipped on the system. This real-time image processing algorithm allows researchers to visualize high-resolution data like never before. It reduces speckle noise and artifacts in images while preserving and enhancing critical tissue information. The innovative platform also combines real-time learning with onboard step-by-step imaging tutorials and guides.
With smart engineering and a minimalist design, the Vevo® 3100 has a reduced foot print and weight by 40 percent that encourages portability and navigation of this capital instrument in high traffic and unique research environments to conduct ground breaking science. Lightweight ergonomically designed MX series transducers, are also available and are custom-designed and optimized to operate in harmony with the Vevo® 3100 imaging system. The transducers are available across a range of frequencies to provide flexibility that is needed for small animal studies.
This revolutionary technology provides researchers with an easy to use imaging modality that allows them to obtain in vivo anatomical, functional, physiological and molecular data simultaneously, all in real-time and with a resolution down to 30 μm.
The Vevo Imaging solutions have witnessed over 1000 peer-reviewed published reports of advancing science and medical research. The future of preclinical imaging research will witness unmatched contributions with the Vevo® 3100 in research on high value diseases. As the trusted leader in real time, in vivo micro-imaging systems, Fujifilm VisualSonics redefines deep tissue imaging for research on disease characterization, therapeutic efficacies and pharmacology.
For more information, please visit: http://www.visualsonics.com/.
About Fujifilm
FUJFILM VisualSonics, Inc., is the world leader in real time, in vivo, high-resolution micro imaging systems designed specifically for preclinical research. The company's cutting edge technologies allow researchers at the world's most prestigious pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, hospitals and universities to conduct research in cardiovascular, cancer, neurobiology and developmental biology areas. The micro imaging technologies support research applications that include genetic research, phenotypic studies and drug development. VisualSonics high-frequency ultrasound and photoacoustic platforms combine high-resolution, real time in vivo imaging at reasonable cost with ease-of-use and quantifiable results. VisualSonics is a subsidiary of FUJIFILM Sonosite, Inc.
FUJIFILM Sonosite, Inc., is the innovator and world leader in bedside and point-of-care ultrasound, and an industry leader in ultra high-frequency micro-ultrasound technology. Headquartered near Seattle, the company is represented by 26 subsidiaries and a global distribution network in over 100 countries. Sonosite's portable, compact systems are expanding the use of ultrasound across the clinical spectrum by cost-effectively bringing high-performance ultrasound to the point of patient care. For more information, go to: www.sonosite.com.
FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation, Tokyo, Japan brings continuous innovation and leading-edge products to a broad spectrum of industries, including: healthcare, with medical systems, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics; graphic systems; highly functional materials, such as flat panel display materials; optical devices, such as broadcast and cinema lenses; digital imaging; and document products. These are based on a vast portfolio of chemical, mechanical, optical, electronic, software and production technologies. In the year ended March 31, 2014, the company had global revenues of $23.9 billion, at an exchange rate of 102 yen to the dollar. Fujifilm is committed to environmental stewardship and good corporate citizenship. For more information, please visit: www.fujifilmholdings.com.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.
Lauren Geloso
(914) 789-8303


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Netflix Canada is increasing some of its prices again.
The streaming giant says the basic plan for subscribers remains unchanged at $9.99 a month, but the standard monthly plan is going up by one dollar to $14.99, and the premium by two dollars to $18.99.
Netflix says it's implementing the price increase so it "can invest more in films and shows as well as the quality of members' product experience."
The company says new members who sign up will see the updated prices effective immediately.
The new charges will roll out to existing members according to their billing cycle over the coming weeks.
Existing members will be notified about the change via email and the Netflix app 30 days before the new prices are applied to them.
Netflix has cancelled some of its programming recently due to COVID-19 pandemic-related issues, including "Glow," "The Society" and "I Am Not Okay With This."
The company's last price increase in Canada was announced in November 2018. At that time it bumped up the basic monthly plan by a dollar to $9.99, the standard by $3 to $13.99, and the premium by $3 to $16.99.
The basic plan lets subscribers watch on one screen at a time at a lower-quality resolution. The standard plan allows two screens with high-definition resolution. And the premium offers four-screen usage and ultra HD, 4K video.
"Canadians have never had more choices when it comes to entertainment and we're more committed than ever to delivering an experience that exceeds their expectations," Netflix said in a statement about Thursday's price increase.
"Members tell us how much they value variety and we're updating our prices so that we can continue to invest in more shows and films. As always we will continue to offer a range of plans so that people can pick a price that works for their budget."
Netflix launched in Canada in September 2010, charging $7.99 for unlimited TV shows and movies per month.
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text:
Coming UnScrooged
A new book for executives, and project managers, has recently been published. It's called Coming UnScrooged, written by A. Drayton Boylston, a well-known executive coach. Based on the classic Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Boylston gives us the story of a modern CEO. This executive has lost his bearings in a world of wealth and […]Also tagged Drayton Boylston, executive, life, lives, Scrooge, UnScrooged


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The agreement reached by President Obama and Congress on January 1 was both historic and disappointing—and it leaves much unsettled. The urgency of the fiscal cliff has dissipated, but significant threats remain to federal funding for state and local services as well as refundable tax credits for low-income working families, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
There is much to dislike in this agreement. It makes permanent most of the Bush-era tax cuts, ensuring that income from dividends and capital gains will be taxed at a lower rate than income from work. It makes permanent the estate tax but locks in a tax rate that creates a huge windfall for the top 0.3% of households. Sequestration cuts—the automatic spending cuts that members of both parties hated and the president said would not occur—have been postponed for two months, with three-quarters of FFY 2013 cuts ($85.6 billion) and $109 billion in annual cuts after that still in law through 2022. The president's line in the sand on raising tax rates for the top 2% of earners got pushed way back, with top rates kicking in at $400,000 for an individual and $450,000 for a couple. A low-wage earner might need 20 years to make that much.
The agreement is at the same time extraordinary. Eighty-five Republican members of Congress voted with their Democratic counterparts to raise taxes on wealthy Americans—no small feat in a Congress defined (some might say dominated) by its Tea Party members, Grover Norquist, and fealty to the no-tax pledge. Even toward the end, the House of Representatives stood firm in its defense of tax cuts, failing to muster enough votes for Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B," which included significant spending cuts and limited tax hikes to millionaires and billionaires.
On the plus side, the agreement abandoned the plan for "chained CPI," a new measure of inflation that would have reduced future cost-of-living increases for Social Security, veterans' benefits and other critical benefits. There were no additional spending cuts. The family tax credit programs—including the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit—were protected, and improvements made to those credits were extended for five years. Emergency unemployment insurance benefits were extended for laid-off workers who would have faced a significant immediate threat if we went over the cliff.
So what happened? The framework for the debate has always been the same: a grand bargain that would achieve a deficit reduction target of $4 trillion through a combination of cuts and new revenue.
The president took what could be considered a realistic path—pressing for tax cuts for the middle class and tax hikes for the top 2% who could most afford it (and have done the best over the past decade). He largely succeeded, and while that is a significant victory, it does not raise enough revenue to stabilize the nation's debt. This will end up putting significant pressure on the spending side of the ledger.
Already much of the press on the agreement is calling for significant new cuts, without acknowledging the $1 trillion in cuts already agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011. Plus, the president has lost the leverage of the fiscal cliff deadline.
The next fight will take place over the next two months when Congress will have to act to raise the debt ceiling, probably in February. Sequestration cuts will be announced on March 1 and scheduled to begin on March 27, the date that the continuing resolution governing current year spending expires.
The president acknowledged that the debate is not over in his January 2 press conference and made two strong statements; that the vote on the debt ceiling should not be tangled up in the larger deficit reduction plan, and that new spending cuts have to be matched one for one with new revenue. Still, few are optimistic that Congress will take a reasoned, balanced approach to resolve the remaining issues, as The New York Times notes:
In the weeks to come, Republicans will use not just the debt-ceiling threat, but also the $100 billion across-the-board cuts known as the sequester, delayed for two months in this week's deal, and the potential shutdown of the government when the current spending resolution expires in March. Standing up to brinkmanship will require a level of resolve that the president has yet to fully demonstrate.
It is also unclear where new revenue will come from given the long-term agreement on the Bush tax cuts and the fact that the President has taken corporate tax reform off the table, arguing that loophole closures should be dedicated to corporate tax reduction. The easiest and most politically popular option, higher marginal tax rates on wealthy individuals, is done. The other options (capping the value of tax deductions for home sales or charitable contributions) will be harder to accomplish.
So what's at stake moving forward?
Sequestration cuts. The current plan locks in three-fourths of the cuts ($85.4 billion) plus another $4 billion in discretionary cuts in the current year (FFY2013). While there is some hope current year cuts will be reduced, it is more likely that the debate will center on knocking back the devastating sequestration cuts for 2014 and beyond.
Working family tax credits. One of the surprises of the debate was the targeting of the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit programs, which are refundable for very low-income working families. While the fiscal cliff agreement continues those programs for five years, including the improvements that specifically benefit low-income families, there is grave concern that their refundability may be in jeopardy.
Medicaid. The health care program was excluded from sequestration, but cuts are likely to be on the table. Since states jointly fund this program, reduced federal participation will just shift costs to states. On the plus side, Medicaid is key to the promise of coverage under the Affordable Care Act, so protecting Medicaid is likely to be a high priority for the administration.
Entitlements. Chained CPI might return, as well as cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
Pressing for additional revenue will continue to be the key to avoiding new deep cuts to health care, education and other critical services. While the fiscal cliff no longer looms, the debt ceiling cliff is just over the horizon.