EFTA00636801.pdf

From: To: Bce: Subject: Date: Attachments: Inline-Images: Gregory Brown undisclosed-recipients:; jeevacation@gmail.com Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 08/04/2013 Sun, 04 Aug 2013 10:56:05 +0000 Profiling_Obama_Bill_Keller_NYT_July_28._2013.pdf; The GOP_Divide on Immigration_Michael_Gerson_TWP_July_29,_2013.pdf; Obina's_plan_tojinkicorporate_tax_refonnjobs_spending_is_quickly_rejected_by_GOP Zach_Goldfarb_TWP July_30,2013.pdf; Sirecessful_otherwisefedefining_the_whole_concept_of_success_Adrianna_Huffington_Hu ff Post July_30„2013.pdf; Racial_Profiling_Gone_Wrong,_=?WINDOWS-1252?Q? Bigot_eops_Didn=92t_Recognize_0?=_ff- Duty_Chief_Alison_Gendar_African_Globe_July_31„2013.pdf; Florida_Sheriff's_Deputies_Gun_Down_Unarrned_Black_Ma_n_In_His_Own_Driveway_A frican_Globe July_30„2013.pdf; House_ReputTlicans_pull_spending_measure;_focus_on_bills_to_embarrass_White_House_ Ed_OKeefe_TWP_July_31„2013.pdf; Publicly_ owned_ companies_need_to_invest_Harold_Meyerson_TWP_July_31„2013.pdf; The_Ojays_bio_August_4„2013.pdf image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png DEAR FRIEND America's 50 Best Cities Having lived in a number of cities around the world I often like to see how they compare. Last week Bloomberg BusinessWeek rated the top 50 cities in the United States. Although you may not agree with their Ai choice, San Francisco, Seattle #2 and Portland #3. With 70 museums, 17 colleges, 3,430 restaurants, two major sport franchises and a median household income of $90,640, San Francisco provides its 8o8, 854 residents with the best blend of entertainment, education, safety, clear air, and a prosperous economic base. As the heart of the Bay Area, San Francisco draws on the prosperity of Silicon Valley and possesses its own diverse history well represented at cultural centers such as the Young Museum. Residents care fiercely about their cafés and causes; night life flourishes in the Mission and the Castro, while tech companies code away in SoMa. And built on seven hills this multi-cultural little city offers a wonderful visual motif in almost every neighborhood as well as a great quality of life for almost every resident. I do differ with this list which placed my home, Los Angeles as #50, behind Anchorage #49, Omaha #48, St. Louis #47 and Cleveland #46 None of which I or almost anyone that I know would prefer to the City of Angels.... even with its smog and congested traffic.... If only because it's much better weather More things to do Definitely more opportunities.... And the Dodgers, Angels, Lakers, Clippers, Galaxy, Ducks, Bruins, Trojans, Sparks, 101 museums & cultural organizations, great shopping, Hollywood Bowl, Malibu, Venice, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Universal Walk and Disneyland. EFTA00636801 For those like me who like to see these types of ratings: Website: http://imacies.businessweektom/slideshows/2012-09-26/amencas-50-best-citiestislidel ****** The Stunning Collapse of Beer in America 'Inline image 2 Fairly stunning data from Gallup on Americans' declining taste for beer compared to wine and hard liquor. There are some interesting demographic internals, too. Back in the early nineties 71 percent of the 18- 29 cohort preferred beer. Just 41 percent of today's youth cohort says beer is their favorite, as do only 43 percent of 30 to 49 year olds. In other words, a cohort of beer lovers lost their taste for it as they became middle aged and was replaced by a new youth cohort that doesn't like beer that much either. What will be interesting to see is whether today's young people follow their elders in becoming more beer-averse as they age. BRAIN TEASERS 1. Johnny 's mother had three children. The first child was named April. The second child was named May. ...What was the third child 's name? 2. There is a clerk at the butcher shop, he is five feet ten inches tall and he wears size 13 sneakers ....What does he weigh? 3. Before Mt. Everest was discovered, ...what was the highest mountain in the world? 4. How much dirt is there in a hole ...that measures two feet by three feet by four feet? 5. What word in the English language ...is always spelled incorrectly? 6. Billy was born on December 28th, yet his birthday is always in the summer. ....How is this possible? 7. In California, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. ...Why not? 8. What was the President 's name ...in 1975? EFTA00636802 9. If you were running a race, ...and you passed the person in 2nd place, what place would you be in now? 10. Which is correct to say, ... "The yolk of the egg are white" or "The yolk of the egg is white"? 11. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field, ....how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in another field? Here are the Answers 1. Johnny 's mother had three children. The first child was named April The second child was named May. What was the third child 's name? Answer: Johnny of course 2. There is a clerk at the butcher shop, he is five feet ten inches tall, and he wears size 13 sneakers. What does he weigh? Answer: Meat. 3. Before Mt. Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the world? Answer: Mt. Everest; it just wasn't discovered yet. [You're not very good at this are you?] 4. How much dirt is there in a hole that measures two feet by three feet by four feet? Answer: There is no dirt in a hole. 5. What word in the English language is always spelled incorrectly? Answer: Incorrectly 6. Billy was born on December 28th, yet his birthday is always in the summer. How is this possible? Answer: Billy lives in the Southern Hemisphere 7. In California, you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why not? Answer: You can 't take pictures with a wooden leg. You need a camera to take pictures. 8. What was the President's name in 1975? Answer: Same as is it now - Barack Obama [Oh, come on ... ] EFTA00636803 9. If you were running a race, and you passed the person in 2nd place, what place would you be in now? Answer: You would be in 2nd. Well, you passed the person in second place, not first. 10. Which is correct to say, "The yolk of the egg are white" or "The yolk of the egg is white"? Answer: Neither, the yolk of the egg is yellow [Duh!] 11. If a farmer has 5 haystacks in one field and 4 haystacks in the other field, how many haystacks would he have if he combined them all in another field? Answer: One. If he combines all of his haystacks, they all become one big one. Racial Profiling Gone Wrong: Bigot Cops Didn't Recognize Off-Duty Chief Inline image I While sitting off-duty in a department SW in the Corona neighborhood in Queens, New York, NYPD's highest ranking uniformed Black police officer, three-star chief Douglas Zeigler, 60, head of the Community Affairs Bureau, was approached by two plainclothes white policemen approached on May 2, told him to roll down the heavily tinted windows of the car for no apparent reason other than the color of his skin. Zeigler who was wearing his police ID, was then ordered to get out of the car when one of the officers did not believe the NYPD identification that Zeigler gave him. When one officer spotted Zeigler's service weapon through the rolled-down window, he yelled "Gun!" according to sources who have spoken with the officers. Both cops then raised their weapons and ordering the Zeigler out of the car. Still in the wrong, one officer got into a heated argument with the Chief, even after seeing the ID. That cop was stripped of his gun and badge and placed on modified duty last night, sources said. The status of the second officer was unclear. The incident occurred as the NYPD is under fire for record numbers of pedestrians being stopped and frisked, the majority of them Black or EFTA00636804 Hispanic. Some 145,098 people were stopped by the NYPD in the first quarter of this year. If this is happening in New York City to the highest ranking Black police officer in the NYPD, please understand that for Black males, America is a police state, where wantabee untrained neighborhood watch guys feel free to profile, stop and frisk any unarmed person of color and should a fight ensue, kill them without consequence. MANAGEMENT Gr Created by W. Edwards Deming, 1900-1993, a prolific American educator. He taught management how to improve design, systems and methods often using statistical methods. He is well known for his "Plan-Do-Check" system which was first adopted by the Japanese car manufacturing industry to make into International leaders of product quality. The Deming System For Profound Knowledge contained approximately 14 points which have been adapted to this situation: 1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of products and service with the aim of continuity, competitiveness, and job creation. 2. Adopt a new philosophy of awakening management to the challenge of learning their responsibility and taking on the leadership of change. 3. Cease dependence on inspections as the basis for improving quality of a process. Do it right the first time! 4. Minimize total cost. 5. Constantly improve the system and service to improve the quality and productivity thereby decreasing system cost. 6. Institute training on the job. 7. Institute true leadership to help people and ma-chines do a better job. Management supervision needs to be overhauled as well as the supervision of workers. 8. Break down barriers between departments. 9. Eliminate slogans and targets that create adversarial relationships. to. Replace work standards with leadership. 11. Eliminate management by numbers and numerical goals per se. 12. Remove barriers that rob the worker of the pride of workmanship. 13. The same goes for management and engineers. 14. Put everyone in the organization to work to accomplish the transformation. Transformation is every-one's job EFTA00636805 THIS WEEK's READINGS Like most successful people of color life in American means that you have to navigate between the dominant culture who expects you to be like them and your own cultural roots which at times connects with the dominant culture but at other times at total odds and no one is a better example of this than our President Barrack Hussein Obama. As New York Times Editor Bill Keller wrote this week, "for much of his public life, Barack Obama has been navigating between people who think he is too black and people who think he is not black enough. The former group speaks mostly in dog-whistle innuendo and focuses on proxy issues to emphasize Obama's ostensible otherness: his birth certificate, his supposed adherence to "black liberation theology" (presumably before he converted to Islam), his "Kenyan, anticolonial" worldview. Jonathan Alter's recent book on Obama's presidency sums up these notions as symptoms of "Obama Derangement Syndrome" — a disorder whose subtext is more often than not: he's too black. On the other side are African-Americans and liberals who are disappointed that Obama has not made it his special mission to call out the racism that still festers in American society and rectify the racial imbalance in our economy, in our schools, in our justice system." "It has, at times, been painful to watch this particular president's calibrated, cautious and sometimes callous treatment of his most loyal constituency," the radio and TV host Tavis Smiley told The Times's Jodi Kantor last year. That was one of the gentler rebukes from the not-black-enough camp. Like Nelson Mandela, Obama believes he best serves the country, and ultimately the interests of black Americans, by being the president of America, not the president of black America. Even when he speaks eloquently on the subject, as he did in his 2008 speech in Philadelphia, he presents himself as a bridge between white and black rather than the civil rights leader-in-thief. And even when his administration has undertaken reforms that address racial injustice — reinvigorating the moribund civil rights division of the Justice Department, for example — he does not call a news conference and make a big deal of it. This is certainly calibrated and cautious. But callous? Obama's remarks on the death of Trayvon Martin — "could have been me 35 years ago" — reanimated the old divide. From the he's-too-black sideline the president was predictably accused of indulging in "racial victimology" and "race baiting." On the other side, some of those who had yearned for Obama to be more outspoken seized on his riff as a turning point; the president, a Detroit radio host exulted, "showed his brother card." Charles Ogletree, a Harvard law professor who has known Obama for 25 years, told NPR he felt like "turning cartwheels" when he heard the remarks, and he declared he would now have to rethink a book-in-the-works, in which he had planned to criticize the president's timidity on race. I understand that it is difficult for some of my white friends to understand, that almost every black man has been profiled in an unflattering and often hostile way because of the color of their skin and every mother of a black male teenager understands that there but for the grace of God, George Zimmerman might have followed their son. With the final insult that somehow Trayvon caused his own death because he was wearing a huddy in the rain and tried to defend himself from a older man who had stalked him for several blocks, got out of his car to track him down and confronted him. Like President Obama, I knew that 45 years ago that could have been me too.... I urge everyone to read Bill Keller's article and take the time to revisit President Obama's amazing 2008 speech on race in America. Website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffxOSEj_sOM I understand that President Obama wants to reflect the needs and desires of all Americans, and as a result he tries to avoid doing or saying anything that might be interpreted by White America as favoritism to his back constituency, but sometimes you have to call the cards what they are. The casualness of how the killing of a seventeen year old kid coming home from a local convenience store EFTA00636806 on a snack run with Skiddles and ice tea was treated by the local authorities, should outrage any mother or father whatever their race. And to expect the President to say nothing is ridiculous. Especially when he has been racially profiled from the moment that he became a Presidential contender. I have never heard Donald Trump ask a white presidential contender for their long-form birth certificate. And if that is not racial profiling nothing is... Race is a messy issue and racial inequality is real. And since almost all other political leaders refuse to address it, I am glad that the President did Being on the road in Europe I didn't hear Rep. Steve King's (R-Iowa) recent description of the children of undocumented workers as having "calves the size of cantaloupes" from hauling bales of marijuana across the desert, until I read Michael Gerson's op-ed in The Washington Post this week — The GOP Divide on Immigration. And although it desert brought a cascade of rebuke from his fellow Republicans. "'There's no place in this debate for hateful or ignorant comments from elected officials," said Speaker John Boehner. King seemed confused by the criticism. Were people offended by "my choice of the fruit"? This is the GOP challenge in miniature: how to appeal to an increasingly diverse nation when the behavior of a small but vocal portion of its coalition is both offensive and clueless. Gerson: Boehner's response was not only tough — just the kind of rapid response Sister Souljah-ing Republicans need more of — but politically sophisticated. To express his displeasure with King, the speaker held a meeting with the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, an organization of Latino evangelicals. Support from this demographic group, which now accounts for about one-third of all U.S. Hispanics, was essential to President George W. Bush's reelection victory in 2004 (he won more than 6o percent). Sympathy among these voters is a fair test of future GOP prospects among Hispanics. If Republicans can't appeal to born-again, Bible-believing Christians who happen to be Latino, it means the party is defined by its whiteness. And although this may not be a serious political problem in Iowa's 4th Congressional District, represented by King, which is about 93 percent white and less than 6 percent Hispanic. These types of racist views are a major problem for a national party that must perform in places such as Florida, Nevada and Colorado, particularly in presidential elections. This is the main GOP political divide on immigration reform: between those focused on the electoral dynamics of their own district or state (and sometimes fearful of primary challenges from within the conservative portion of those electorates) and those focused on the national prospects of their party. The political tide flows naturally in the direction of parochialism. A primary challenge is a more tangible and immediate threat than a possible future loss of the White House. And Republican members of the House will be taking careful measure of public opinion on immigration reform during the August congressional recess. Is opposition building or fizzling? What many in the Republican leadership refuse to face (say publicly is that people like King who trade in stereotypes to feed public resentment of outsiders are racist opportunists with little empathy for anyone not within their tribe and should be soundly rebuked not only because the electoral map no longer favors the white majority but because it is morally wrong. The fact that the country may have to face this problem again is no defense for not doing comprehensive immigration today. And for those critics of reform that argue that future immigration will undermine the wages of native workers. There are major academic studies on this issue indicate that the results are both mixed and marginal. The long-term impact of immigration on native wages seems to be slightly positive for those with a high school education or some college, and slightly negative for those who don't graduate from high school and those who graduate from college. But all these effects are overwhelmed by other economic trends, such as technological innovation and globalized labor markets. EFTA00636807 Republicans will either view immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, as threats to the nation or as potential advantages to the nation. Michael Clemens of the Center for Global Development recently put the matter in historical context: "In 1900 this country was a fourth of the size it is today. A little over half of that increase came from immigration, and what happens to unemployment rates? Nothing at all. Actually zero effect. ... All of that immigration led to a massively more prosperous economy." For the GOP, this is not just a matter of economics but of political philosophy. Gerson: Only a party that generally regards human beings as sources of ambition, enterprise and future wealth will be a source of inspiration to the whole country. And if they don't they deserve the fate of the dinosaurs. As Jennifer Rubin wrote, "Rep. Steve King personifies the stereotypical anti-immigration right winger. His tone is intemperate if not downright vile. He flogs the issue incessantly while offering no remotely reasonable solutions." And he is a racist who should not be tolerated in either of the major political parties.... 2,Naftali Bennett Just when I thought that I had read enough bigoted hatred while perusing my daily reading last Tuesday, I came across this headline on The Huffington Post - Naftali Bennett, Minister of Economy of Israel: "I killed many Arabs in my life and there is no problem with that." This was said, while direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, frozen for three years, resumed the day before in Washington, DC. The Israeli Minister of Economy made the above public statement in response to the Israeli government's approval (on Sunday) for the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners in a gesture of goodwill, opening the door to the new negotiations. Naftali Bennett, who also heads the ultra-nationalist right-wing political party Jewish House - said to prefer that the Palestinian prisoners to be killed rather than prosecute. We often hear about how the Palestinians refuse to denounce violence, hear is a sitting Israeli Minister publicly suggesting his solution would be killing Arabs. I am waiting for the Israeli leadership to publicly rebuke this racist and if I had heard the same thing from a Palestinian leader my response would be the same. These views should not be tolerated from anyone. In an effort to break a stalemate with Republicans over budget policy, President Obama offered a plan to cut the highest corporate tax rate in return for a pledge from Republicans to invest in more programs to generate middle-class jobs. Calling it a Grand Bargain for Middle Class jobs that would stimulate the economy, the President outlined a plan to give businesses and their Republican allies the lower tax rates that they have long sought, along with job creation through education, training and public works. The overhaul, administration officials said, would generate new revenue that could be used to pay for President Obama's priorities, including hiring workers to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure. As usual, the Republican response was to immediately to say no. President Obama outlined the terms of this tax plan in early 2012 during the presidential election, when he said the corporate tax rate would be reduced to 28 percent, from 35 percent, with a lower rate of 25 percent for manufacturing firms. While the president presented the proposal as a concession, Republicans dismissed it more acidly than usual. "It's the opposite of a concession," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio. In the Republicans' view, Mr. Obama's offer was less of a "grand bargain" than an effort to extract a new fiscal stimulus program with money from a corporate tax cut that would end up, for accounting reasons, initially generating billions of dollars of revenue for the government. Administration officials said that the proposal, like past tax overhauls, would raise additional revenue on a one-time basis that could offset new spending. That money, the officials said, could be used to EFTA00636808 finance the investment in jobs. The revenue would result from the transition to a revised code — for example, as companies paid a one-time fee on profits they earned overseas but did not bring home because they did not make them subject to American tax rates. For two years, Republicans have rejected most of Mr. Obama's initiatives to create jobs, in part because, to avoid increasing the budget deficit, he has paired those ideas with proposals to repeal or reduce tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations, especially oil companies. By presenting the tax-rate cut as a stand-alone proposal, the White House hoped to make it more appealing to Republicans — or, failing that, to depict them as obstructionists. Both Republicans and the administration have said that an overhaul of the corporate code should be "revenue neutral," meaning it does not add to or subtract from the annual budget deficit. The White House and Republicans also clashed over Mr. Obama's contention that he was making a concession by calling for an overhaul of the corporate tax code separate from one for individual taxes. In truth, analysts said, both the White House and Republicans have been increasingly open to separating the two, although neither likes to advertise it. In February 2012, Timothy F. Geithner, then the Treasury secretary, said the administration's plan was devised so that the corporate tax code could be overhauled separately. Even the White House's rollout of the President's proposal in Chattanooga became an excuse for finger-pointing. White House officials said they briefed Democratic and Republican lawmakers on Monday evening and tried to reach out to Mr. Boehner's aides. But Mr. Buck said the Republican leadership learned of the initiative from the news media. The choice of Amazon was meant to illustrate President Obama's theme of a job revival in America. The company recently announced plans to hire 5,000 more workers at 17 fulfillment centers, where it packs and ships customer orders. But the White House came under fire because many Amazon jobs pay only $n an hour, and the pace of the work in these warehouses has been described as exhausting. Still that is 40% higher than the minimum wage which Republicans and conservatives are fighting tooth and nail to not raise. Republicans have argued the revenue should be put toward further reducing corporate tax rates and that somehow this will stimulate job growth. Obviously this doesn't make sense. And the only reason that the public is confused is due to a crusade of Washington lobbyists and public relations professionals who have prevailed upon corporate clients to form a bewildering array of "grass-roots" tax reform coalitions: the Coalition for Fair Effective Tax Rates, the RATE Coalition, and the Alliance for Competitive Taxation, to name a few, and these special interest groups have sold both our politicians and a large section of the American public, that it is in the best interest that Corporate American receive a larger slice of the pie than it already receives. This week The Huffington Post UK hosted a conference in London - "Succeeding otherwise: redefining success beyond money and power," - to discuss a more sustainable definition of success that includes the well-being, wisdom, and our ability to be amazed and to be charitable. It was a follow up to another Huffington Post in June in New York on the concept of "Succeeding otherwise." What prompted The Huffington Post to organize such events was the following observation: it is becoming increasingly clear that the current model, in which success is equivalent to the work overload, overwork, lack of sleep, never see his family, to be connected by e-mail 24h/24, to exhaustion, does not work. It does not work for women. It does not work for men. It does not work for the companies or any of the companies where the model is dominant or the planet. At the same time this system collapses, there is an awareness-supported by scientific evidence increasingly numerous and overwhelming benefits to-use tools such as respect and meditation to reduce stress and improve our health and well-being. EFTA00636809 As such, the people at The Huffington Post thought that this was the perfect time to start to redefine success to bring it more in line with what really makes us happy. And that is why we keep more events like today, so that people can hear, learn from each other, exchange ideas and actually begin to incorporate more healthy habits and restructure the way we live life everyday. Why give an international dimension to this debate? Because even though the United States has undoubtedly contributed to the definition of full-through-the success, this is clearly a global phenomenon. At a meeting held a few days ago with the editors of our international editions of The Huffington Post, we've heard stories about the specific ways in which this skewed vision of success is evident in each of the countries represented, and on how to fight to restore balance in their lives. In terms of where we are today, Winston Churchill said a famous phrase stating that the United States and the United Kingdom are "two nations divided by a common language." And we could add a common problem of stress and burnout. Contrary to the stereotype that the British would respond to pressure with a scathing cynicism, a patented phlegm or an invitation to tea to forget the stress has the same effect here in the United States. Here are just a few examples: • Some eight million men, women and children in the UK suffer from anxiety, costing nearly 10 billion pounds each year. • Since May 2012, admissions to the hospital for stress increased 7% over the past year, reaching 6370. • Stress and depression have resulted in a loss of 10 million working days a year ago. • Over the same period, the stress was responsible for 40% of all work-related illnesses. • Nearly one in five adults in the UK suffers from anxiety and depression. • The British are those who receive fewer days of paid vacation and holidays in Europe. • From 2009 to 2012, the annual costs of sleeping pills for national health services increased by nearly 5o million pounds. • In 2011, over 45 million antidepressants were prescribed, up 9% over the previous year. • Health Services (NHS) spent over 270 million for antidepressants in 2011, an increase of 23% in one year. In fact, this epidemic of depression is a global phenomenon. According to the WHO, more than 350 million people worldwide currently suffer from depression. In the United States, antidepressant prescriptions rose 400% since 1988. In the UK, this is an increase of 495% since 1991. In Europe, from 1995 to 2009, the antidepressants increased by nearly 20% per year use. Also in Germany, the site of our next international edition, which is scheduled for launch in October, stress and burnout affect. More than 40% of German employees say their work has become more stressful over the past two years. And in 2011, Germany lost 59 million days of work due to psychological illness, an increase of over 8o% in 15 years. The German Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen said that the burn-out cost the country up to 10 billion euros per year. "Nothing is more expensive than sending a good employee to retire at age 45 because of exhaustion, she said. Such cases are not exceptions. This is a trend against which we must something. " EFTA00636810 The French, it is not surprising, have a philosophical approach to the problem. In an article in the Huffington Post , the Belgian philosopher Pascal Chabot said the burn-out that it is "a disease of civilization" and says that it is symptomatic of our modern times. "It is not just an individual disorder that affects some people ill-suited to the system, or too committed, or not knowing (or can not) put limits on their investment professional, he writes, it is also a disorder mirror reflecting some excessive values of our society. " The Italians have their own answers to the problem. I especially like their tradition called the retort , a moment in the afternoon when the shops, restaurants and offices closed. They also have an evening stroll, the passeggiata , a time when we cut the vagaries of the day. Italy has also created one of the strongest movements in the push against our equation for success including speed and burnout . In 1989 the movement Slow Food was launched to push the expansion of fast food, focusing on local production, sustainability, and food as a social act of personal contacts. Since then the movement has expanded and now includes the Slow Travel, Slow Design and Slow Cities. Adrianna: Europe, like the United States, is facing major challenges that our political system does not seem able to resolve yet. The concept of "Successful otherwise" is not a substitute for taking responsibility and large-scale changes that American citizens and European law. But political leaders more in tune with their own wisdom are more likely to make better decisions, which can of course make a world of difference in our individual lives. Our current and possible definition of success is a global problem and will require a global response. I hope you will join the conversation and you tell us how you redefine success in your own life and in your corner of the world. If you are like me, someone who works five to six hours on holidays and never takes a weekend off, I invite you to read Adrianna's article which is attached and follow the conference on The Huffington Post. Early Sunday morning Roy Middleton, 6o, who had gone to find cigarettes in his mother's white Lincoln Town Car, which was parked in the driveway of his home in a quiet neighborhood in the town of Warrington, Florida was shot when two county sheriff deputies open fire, shooting 17 bullets. A neighbor, who apparently didn't recognize Middleton, called 911 to report a possible robbery, and police arrived at the scene at approximately 2:4o a.m. When asked to turn around and put his hands where the officers could see them, he did and with his car keys in his hand, which the deputies mistook for a gun they began shooting. "It was like a firing squad," Middleton told PNJ from his bed at Baptist Hospital. "Bullets were flying everywhere." Middleton's mother, Ceola Walker, T7, was sleeping inside the home at the time of the incident. "He was just coming home like he usually does. I don't understand why they had to use so much force under the situation," Walker said. "I don't understand how they could fire so many shots at him. He wasn't resisting or anything and he was at his own house." Neighbors and relatives describe Middleton as mild-mannered and law abiding, and a teenage girl who witnessed the shooting said she did not see the 6o-year-old provoke the incident. EFTA00636811 Wi, Florida Sheriffs Deputies Gun Down Unarmed Black Man In His Own Driveway 2 photo Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating the shooting, and amid growing criticism, Escambia County Sheriff David Morgan held a press conference Monday. According to Morgan, the two deputies said that Middleton "made a lunging motion" out of the car causing them to "fear for their safety." Middleton, Morgan said, "had a metallic object in his hand." That object was a flashlight attached to Middleton's key chain. The bones in Middleton's leg are shattered and he will require the implantation of a steel rod in order to walk, but is expected to make a full recovery. Like her son, Middleton's mother is still struggling to come to terms with what happened. "He's my only son and for that to happen was just devastating. We know it wasn't anyone but God that saved him," Walker told reporters. And the two deputies have been placed on paid administrative leave. Is this justice? We have to ask ourselves why do we allow our politicians to pursue bad policies in their relentless pursuit to embarrass the other side even when it hurts the country. The most recent example is House Republicans proposing deep spending cuts in 2013, which would reduce federal transportation and housing funding by more than $4 billion, which even conservative economist say would place a drag on economic growth. House leaders said they had merely run out of time before Congress's August recess, scheduled to begin Friday. But the top House appropriator said the measure lacked the votes to pass and fumed in a written statement that the automatic cuts, known as the sequester, are recklessly austere and should be abandoned. "Sequestration — and it's unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts — must be brought to an end," Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) wrote with unusual anger and bluntness. "The House, Senate and White House must come together as soon as possible on a comprehensive compromise that repeals sequestration, takes the nation off this lurching path from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis, reduces our deficits and debt, and ... fund[s] the government in a responsible — and attainable — way." The development suggests that Republican support is eroding rapidly for the sequester, weakening the hand of House Speaker John A. Boehner (Ohio) as Republicans brace for another big fight with President Obama over taxes, spending and the federal debt limit later this year. Across the Capitol, Senate Republicans were on the verge of killing a more generous Democratic version of the transportation measure that proposes to cancel the sequester entirely. Without an agreement on how to fund federal agencies in 2014, the nation faces the risk of a government shutdown at the end of September. EFTA00636812 The collapse of the transportation bill, meanwhile, diverted attention from the primary goal House GOP leaders hoped to accomplish before heading home for five weeks: embarrassing the Obama administration and scoring political points. Eager to call fresh attention to the troubled Internal Revenue Service and lingering doubts about Obama's health-care law, Republican leaders dubbed this "Stop Government Abuse Week" and had scheduled votes on a collection of partisan measures intended to curb the power of government. The theme had been in the works for more than a month, and GOP aides privately admitted that House leaders rushed consideration of a truncated farm bill in early July to make space on the calendar. Several of the measures passed the GOP-controlled House in previous years, but have been ignored by the Democratic-controlled Senate. Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), who sponsored legislation that would limit non-military government travel and require detailed reports on conference spending, said it doesn't matter when the measures make it to Obama's desk. "The whole purpose of these votes, in my opinion, is to show that when we see government abuses, we try to do something about them," he said. "Even if we can't get the Senate to act, and even if the president won't sign them, we have told the American people that the House of Representatives stands for good, responsible, transparent government." Lawmakers drafted many of the proposals after it was revealed that IRS employees improperly scrutinized applications for tax- exempt status based on political ideology. The agency is also under fire for spending $49 million on employee conferences from fiscal 2010 to 2012, including what has been described as a lavish three- day conference for 2,600 managers in California in 2010. Not every Republican was thrilled with the focus on government mismanagement at a time when Congress has been unable to agree on more substantive matters such as immigration reform and farm policy. Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) said he would have preferred to spend the final days of July focusing on a long-delayed farm bill, as current policy is set to expire soon after lawmakers return to work Sept. 9. "This is something that's going to be slamming us in the face in September, and we have to address it," he said. "I would have loved to go home, especially to my district, which is mostly agricultural... and been able to be like, 'It's a done deal. We're good.' " Instead, Rooney found himself voting Wednesday on measures with such flashy titles as "Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act" and "Stop Playing on Citizen's Cash Act." There's also the STOP IRS Act — STOP stands for "Stop Targeting Our Politics" — that would permit the IRS to fire employees "who take official actions for political purposes."And there's a plan to bar the IRS from implementing or enforcing any aspect of the 2010 health-care law — the 40th time in recent years that the House has voted to repeal, defund or otherwise deconstruct the legislation. The transportation bill was one of the few substantive measures left on the House calendar. It would have provided about $44 billion for transportation and housing programs in the fiscal year that begins in October, slicing those budgets by $4.4 billion over 2013. The House approved four other appropriations bills this year, for the Pentagon and other national security programs. But those measures did not include particularly deep cuts, because House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) chose to shift the burden of the sequester onto domestic agencies when he drafted the GOP's budget blueprint for 2014. Although House Republicans supported the Ryan budget, the transportation bill marked the first time they were asked to implement his small-government vision. Mayors howled about the proposed cuts to community block grants, and lawmakers in both parties worried about major reductions for roads and bridges. On Wednesday, more moderate Republican lawmakers rebelled, GOP aides said, leaving House leaders dozens of votes short. They pulled the measure around lunchtime, vowing to reintroduce it in September. The country has serious infrastructural problems and people need jobs. Instead the Republican opposition is concentrating on cutting back trips, IRS profiling and deficit reduction, except when it comes to raising revenues to cut the deficit. And instead of trying to make Obamacare more efficient and cost effective, they would rather kill it than to make it better, just so that they can blacken the President eye... This has to stop and whether you are Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, EFTA00636813 Rich or Poor, none of us should tolerate this type of childish gamesmanship. We live in a global economy and our competition is everywhere around the world and to bicker within only allows our competitors in Asia, Europe and elsewhere to take advantage of the fact that we are so distracted by sniping at each other they.... are easily eating our lunches.... This week Harold Meyerson wrote an interesting op-ed in The Washington Post - Publicly Owned Companies Need To Invest - in response to President Obama trying again on Tuesday to boost the economy, by offering congressional Republicans a cut in the corporate tax rate in return for a $30 billion investment in sagging U.S. infrastructure, which the GOP immediately rejected, without coming up with an alternative. Meyerson points out that Conservatives' stock answer — if we just lift regulations and cut taxes on business, if we only get rid of unions and the minimum wage, then corporate investment will flow like a mighty stream. When the truth is that this policy, as Meyerson says, "is sheer hooey." In late April, John Asker and Alexander Ljungqvist of NYU's Stern School of Business and the National Bureau of Economic Research and Joan Farre-Mensa of Harvard Business School published a study looking at one of the U.S. economy's fundamental disconnects: the gap between profits and investment. Profits now constitute the highest share of the nation's overall output since World War II, while wages constitute the lowest share since then. But profits have also been decoupled from investment. Until the late 1980s, according to the asset manager GMO, profits and net investment in the United States each came to roughly 9 percent of gross domestic product. Today, corporate profits account for 12 percent of GDP, while net investment has shrunk to 4 percent. When Asker, Ljungqvist and Farre-Mensa looked into this anomaly, they unearthed a startling fact: While publicly traded firms devote 3.7 percent of their total assets to investment, comparable privately owned firms devote 6.8 percent. Using a new database that provides more information on more privately held firms than had previously been available, the economists discovered a problem at the heart of this nation's shareholder version of capitalism. Given that privately held and publicly traded companies must operate under the same regulations, wage standards and taxes (with some small variations on the last), it's being public that makes all the difference. When the economists looked at the investment levels of companies that had been private and then went public without raising new capital, they found that once the companies had gone public, their level of investment dropped precipitously. What is it about being listed on stock exchanges that retards U.S. businesses' investment? In a (clunky) word: short-termism. Investments, particularly long-term investments that don't pay off for many years, can reduce companies' quarterly earnings, which in turn tends to reduce the value of a company's stock, to which most CEOs' income is linked. In other words, share value and investment have a relationship that's at least as inverse as it is complementary. In a sense, the NYU-Harvard study provides a numerical expression of an epochal shift within the U.S. economy: the ascent of finance over manufacturing. Profits and investment began to decouple at the end of the 198os — several years after the doctrine took hold that share price was the sole determinant of a corporation's value and that corporate management had to heed only the concerns of shareholders, rather than balancing the interests of shareholders, employees and consumers. The terrible toll this doctrine has taken on U.S. workers is clear. But with this study, it's apparent that the damage came not only in the form of lowered wages and off-shored jobs but also in an overall reduction of investment in productive enterprise. What are the public-policy takeaways of the Harvard-NYU study? First, that the president's emphasis on public investment is a screamingly necessary corrective to a national economy that has a structural bias against investment. So long as CEOs are more concerned with short-term share value than long- term research, development and production, either the public sector will have to pick up the EFTA00636814 investment slack or nobody will. The second takeaway is a more long-term, fundamental project: We have to alter those CEOs' concerns. Their pay and bonuses need to be unlinked from share value, and corporate boards must include employee and community representatives. In the broadest terms, the economy must be reshaped from one subservient to Wall Street's emphasis on short-term valuation to one that promotes productive investment. For all the talk about the alleged "skills gap" of U.S. workers, it's the investment gap of U.S. business that is dragging the economy down. THIS WEEK's QUOTE "Short-term profits are not a reliable indicator of performance of management. Anybody can pay dividends by deferring maintenance, cutting out research, or acquiring another company" W. Edwards Deming, THIS WEEK's MUSIC 2Triline image 4 One of my favorite R&B groups in the world is The O'Jays. Hailing from Canton, Ohio, they formed in 1958 and originally consisted with Eddie Levert (born June 16, 1942), Walter Williams (born August 25, 1943), William Powell (January 20, 1942 — May 26, 19T7), Bobby Massey and Bill Isles. The O'Jays made their first chart appearance with "Lonely Drifter" in 1963, but reached their greatest level of success once Gamble & Huff, a team of producers and songwriters, signed them to their Philadelphia International label in 1972. With Gamble & Huff, the O'Jays (now a trio after the departure of Isles and Massey) emerged at the forefront of Philadelphia soul with "Back Stabbers" (1972), and topped the Billboard Hot too the following year with "Love Train". Numerous other hits followed through the 197os and into the 8os and 9os, "Put Your Hands Together," "For The Love Of Money," "I Love Music" and "Use to Be My Girl." The O'Jays were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2004, and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. In 1980, I had the pleasure of bringing The O'Jays to South Africa where they toured the region performing in front of more than one million people. With this said, please enjoy the music of the fabulous O'Jays The O'Jay s - Backstabers https://www.youtube.corn/watch?v=T6h1BV7FZqs The O'Jays - For The Love of Money -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L13uipTO-4A and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOMOolydb6M The O'Jays - Use to Be My Girl -- https://www.youtube.corn/watch?v=GxT1fZ0k1Ss The O'Jays — Forever Mine -- https://www.youtube.corn/watch?v=6CXXdpj0Tg The O'Jays - I Love Music -- https://www.youtube.corn/watch?v=e_ls2UFc_z8 The O'Jays - Love Train -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1cTun4foMM The O'Jays — Family Reunion -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11erY5OzVjc EFTA00636815 The O'Jays - Brandy -- haps://www.youtube.comiwatch?v=NuMedQ69Y The O'Jays - Put Your Hands Together -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV120Sq7nLY The O'Jays — We Cry Together -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=794aj6_AaPw I hope that you enjoyed this week's offerings and wish you a great week Sincerely, Greg Brown Gregory Brown Chairman & CEO GlobalCast Panne'. 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