EFTA00678662.pdf

From. a- a 0 To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bee: jeevacation@gmail.com Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 08/18/2013 Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 15:05:48 +0000 Attachments: Why_We_All_Need_a_Daily_Dose_of Brain_Magic_Sleight_of Mind_Huff Post_TED_W eekends_August_11,2013.pdf; The_Neuroscientific_Answer to_How_Did_He_Do_That_Latja_Brose_Huff Post_TED_W eekends_August_11,2013.pdf; Keith_Barry_-_magician_-_bio.pdf; U.S. Budget_Deficit_Down_37.6_Percent_Through_July„CBO_Martin_Crutsinger_Huff P ost_August_12„2013.pdf; Why_the_Anger- Robert Reich_Huff Post August_12„2013.pdf; North arolina_Voter Bill_Signed_Into_Law_By_Gov„Pat_McCory„Sparking_Lawsu its_Luke_Johnson_Huff Post_08_12_2013.pdf; Sequestration_Ushers In _A Dark Age For Science In America Sam Stein Huff Post 0 8 _ 14_ 2013.pdf; Dana Rohrabacher,GOP House Science Committee Member„Global_Warming_Is_A_T otal_Fraud_Nick_Wing_08_12_2013.pdf; - _Prison_Population_Rates_per 100,000_of the_national_population„the_US_is_.pdf; Politicians Science_Gaffes Huff Post Aug_14„2013.pdf; Paul_Ryan_Spending_Cuts:Face_Bac sh_From_Moderate_Republicans_Andrew_Taylor Huff Post_08_12_2013.pdf; RNC_Votes2No'_on_NBC„CNN_Debates_Over Clinton_Mo_vies_Shushannah_Walshe_ ABC_News_August_16,_2013.pdf; America's_shifting_suburban_battlegrounds_Alan_Berube_&_Elizabeth_Kneebone_Politico _August_14,_2013.pdf Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(15).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png DEAR FRIEND M many of you know, I am a huge fan on TED and last week at Huffington Post's TED Weekends -- Slight ofMind -- the focus was on the manipulation of mind based on magician and mentalist Keith Barry who demonstrates how to fool brains and bodies by performing dangerous tricks and stunts which have baffled audiences time and again. Barry's masterful 'sleight of mind' raises a larger question: What can magic teach us about the human brain? EFTA00678662 inline image 1 As Arthur C. Clarke told us, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." So think of Keith Barry as a technologist, an elite software engineer of the human brain. Witty and direct, he celebrates human cleverness even while he's hacking it. Barry's repertoire ranges from outrageous stunts -- driving a car at full speed blindfolded -- to mind control, including hypnosis and mind-reading The Irish magician's relaxed style has made him an audience favorite worldwide, both in live shows and on his European television series, Close Encounters with Keith Barry, which aired in 28 countries. He's had specials on MTV and CBS, and tried his hand at acting as a murder suspect on CSI: Miami. There are rumors of a Las Vegas residency later in 2008. Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.cornikeith-barry/ted-talk-hypnosis_b_3728458.html WATCH the above video: To see Keith Barry do some amazing things. And also please also feel free to read the attached articles on Keith Barry, how he manipulates minds and what we can learn from his tricks. ****** If you want to know what else is wrong in Washington, let's start with ignorance and the pandering to ignorance. The latest example is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a longtime member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, recently brushed aside concern that the wildfires currently scorching across his state and causing millions of dollars of damage have anything to do with climate change. In fact, he told constituents at a town hall that "global warming is a total fraud," employed by liberals to "create global government." Website: http://..huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/dana-mbrabacher-global-warming n 1743140.html? utm source=concierge&utm medium=onsite&utm rampaignrsailthru%2Rslitler%28 Rohrabacher laughed off a claim made last week by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that the unusual intensity of this year's wildfire season should give rise to a more serious debate about how climate change is affecting the temperature and length of the dry season. "Just so you'll know, global warming is a total fraud and it's being designed because what you've got is you've got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions," EFTA00678663 Rohrabacher said. "Then, at the state level, they want the federal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives." The friendly town hall audience seemed to agree with Rohrabacher's contention that humans were incapable of changing earth's climate, giving a collective chuckle. The congressman then appeared to make an offhand reference to Agenda 21, a set of UN-created sustainable development recommendations that the tea party and other Republicans have put forth as an example of how the government will use the threat of climate change to seize property and control the lives of its citizens. "It's step by step by step, more and bigger control over our lives by higher levels of government. And global warming is that strategy in spades," Rohrabacher said. "Our freedom to make our choices on transportation and everything else? No, that's gotta be done by a government official who, by the way, probably comes from Nigeria because he's a UN government official, not a US government official." Rohrabacher's climate change denialism and misunderstanding of science is well-documented. He's suggested that prehistoric climate change could have been caused by "dinosaurflatulence," and that clear-cutting rainforests would eliminate greenhouse gas production. Regardless of Rohrabacher's beliefs, California's still-young fire season is expected to be more devastating in 2013 than it has been in years, thanks in part to both climate change and the fact that the state is still awaiting the Santa Ana winds, which typically fuel the blazes. The Associated Press reports: California fire officials have battled 4,300 wildfires, a stark increase from the yearly average of nearly 3,000 they faced from 2008 to 2012, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Until last week, those fires had already burned in square miles or more than 71,00o acres, up from 40,00o acres during the same period last year. The annual average for acreage charred in the last five years was 113,00o acres, he said — roughly in square miles. Meanwhile, the congressional body designed to address climate change and its causes has been stacked with Republicans who refuse to consider that a threat exists. Earlier this year, Rep. Chris Stewart (R- Utah) was assigned chair of the House Science Subcommittee on Environment, which plays a direct hand in many areas related to climate change. Stewart, like 55 percent of congressional Republicans, including a handful in the House Science Committee, doesn't believe that humans are responsible for rising global temperatures. Politicians' Science Gaffes gilnline image 22,Inline image 32Inline image 42Inline image 52Inline image QInline image 7 gilnline image 82,Inline image 92,Inline image log2,Inline image 11 "I have flown twice over Mount St. Helens out on our West Coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know the figures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about." Not quite. Cars emit about 8i,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, while Mount St. Helens emitted only about 2,000 tons. - President Ronald Reagan, 1980 "The internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes." The "series of tubes" phrase subsequently became a pop cultural catchphrase -- it even has its own Wikipedia page and mentioned in the Urban Dictionary. EFTA00678664 - Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), 2006 "And sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good, things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not." The common fruit fly is one of the most commonly used organisms in genetic research. Discoveries such as sex-linked inheritance and techniques such as gene mapping are a result of such research. - former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska), 2008 "Information is moving--you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets." The former president went on to use the word "Internets" two more times in public. - President George W. Bush, 2007 "Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?" Rainforests actually absorb far more carbon dioxide than they emit. - Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), when asked whether the U.S. climate policy should focus on reducing carbon emissions. "Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus." Many researchers point to a decline in Arctic sea ice, an increase in droughts, and changing rain and snow patterns as signs of climate change. - Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia), 2009, at a debate over the Clean Energy and Security Act. "What the science says is that temperatures peaked out globally in 1998. So we've gone for 10 plus years where the temperatures have gone down." The mean global temperature has in fact been increasing since 1998. - Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), 2009 in an interview with conservative radio show host Jay Weber. "Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as Earth].... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." Actually, Mars completes an orbital revolution around the sun about every 1.88 Earth years, according to NASA. - Dan Quayle, former vice president, commenting on President George H.W. Bush's Space Exploration Initiative as quoted in This New Ocean by William E. Burrows. "If it's legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." In fact, women can become pregnant from rape. - Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri), 2012 "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell." - Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) 2012 EFTA00678665 Broun, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is a doctor, and would have been taught many of the generally accepted principles of evolution and embryology in medical school. ****** A lot has been reported about our nation's prison system and its bloated population, but this is what it looks like when you take all of the countries that jail more people than we do and put them into one GIF. No country incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than the United States. At 716 per 100,000 people, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies, the U.S. tops every other nation in the world. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced sweeping plans designed to address the issue through drug-sentencing reform. Holder's blueprint included plans to divert low-level drug offenders to treatment and community service programs and implement an expanded prison program to allow for the release of some elderly, non-violent offenders. Online image 12 "We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate - not merely to convict, warehouse and forget," Holder said in remarks to the American Bar Association in San Francisco. "Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable. ... It imposes a significant economic burden -- totaling $8o billion in 2010 alone -- and it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate." Among OECD countries, the competition isn't even close -- Israel comes in second, at 223 per 100,000. According to advance 2012 counts by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. prison population was 1,571,013 at year end. That's actually a decline for the third consecutive year. Including local and city jail figures, however, that number easily tops two million, around 25 percent of the entire world's prisoners. Online image 13 We have to realize that our incarceration rate is a serious problem and that prisons aren't the solution. We have to seriously ask ourselves why does the USA have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and find other ways to treat this issue as it is obvious that prisons do not deter or rehabilitate inmates and/or criminals. We have to understand that like the War on Terrorism which may be creating as many terrorists as are apprehended and killed, the US prison system has become a factories to both warehouse and harden inmates into criminals. Finally we have to acknowledge and change the culture in America that allows people to fall through the cracks to the point that incarceration is just the price of doing business because they have nothing to lose. By giving our children safe housing, healthcare, education, skills and hope from birth we can change this prison dynamic. ****** This week The Washington Post did a 4 part video titled: THE PATH TO NOW - examining the US immigration policies from President Reagan Reagan to present day, we hear from politicians, policymakers and those whose citizenship hangs in the balance. Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/irnmigration/pathjo_now/?wpisrc=n1politics PART 1: `It didn't work at all' - Twenty-seven years ago the United States implemented a plan that offered amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Hear from one of the architects of the bill and key players as they discuss where it went wrong. EFTA00678666 PART 2: `Do something about the border' -- The 199os saw an influx of illegal immigrants, which created tension among Americans and at the Mexican border. But the Clinton administration's response fell short in many ways, especially when it came to security. PART 3: `How are we going to secure this country?' -- September 11, 2001 defined the presidency of George W. Bush and the country's new immigration policy. From the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to the building of a super-fence, the specter of 9/11 was felt along the border and in the halls of Congress. As border security escalated, President Bush's attempts at immigration reforms collapsed. PART 4: `Why don't you just make yourself legal' -- The future remains uncertain for 11 million people living illegally in the U.S. Though immigration reform seems closer than it has ever been before, can Washington and the Obama administration effectively repair 3o years of broken policies? I strongly urge everyone who has the time to watch this 4-Part series. Just so people don't think that racism is limited to the United States last month in Zurich, Switzerland for Tina Turner's wedding, multi-billionaire Oprah Winfrey endured a shocking racist experience during a trip to posh Zurich store when a shop assistant refuse to show her several expensive purses saying that the bags on display were too expensive for her and that she couldn't afford them -- forcing both the boutique's owner and the Swiss Tourism board to issue public apologies. Oprah said she left the shop without contesting the shop assistant's behavior but contributed her experience to a debate about the continued existence of racism on a US television show. Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight: "I was in Zurich the other day, in a store whose name I will not mention. I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and my little sandals. But obviously The Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich." This incident happened as several Swiss towns are trying to ban asylum seekers from frequenting public places such as school grounds, as well as swimming pools and libraries. Switzerland currently hosts twice the number of asylum seekers as its neighboring countries. On August 7, 2013, the head of Switzerland's Migration Ministry, Mario Gattiker, told Swiss media that an agreement between his ministry and the municipality of Bremgarten allows local officials to issue "rules of the game" limiting or prohibiting asylum seekers' use of such spaces. Gattiker was quoted as saying that the rules are intended to secure an "ordered" and "conflict-free" relationship between asylum seekers and locals and will help avoid "friction and resentment" if "so asylum seekers" simultaneously use a football pitch or a swimming pool. European and other international law requires Switzerland to justify any free movement restrictions as a necessary, proportionate, and non-discriminatory measure to secure national security, public order, or public health. "For Switzerland, the home of the United Nations and its refugee agency, to introduce a blatantly discriminatory policy that effectively segregates asylum seekers from the communities in which they live is shocking,"said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The Swiss authorities should encourage all Swiss communities to treat some of the world's most vulnerable people with respect and dignity, rather than reinforcing prejudice and division." Under the Convention Against the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Switzerland is bound to guarantee everyone's right, "without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic group," to equality before the law in relation to a range of rights including the right to freedom of movement. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which interprets the convention, has underlined that "differential treatment based on ... immigration status EFTA00678667 will constitute discrimination if the criteria for such differentiation ... are not applied pursuant to a legitimate aim and are not proportional to the achievement of this aim." According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as of the end of 2012, there were just over 50,000 recognized refugees, as well as almost 22,000 registered asylum seekers in Switzerland. The Swiss authorities should ensure that all agreements governing asylum centers should guarantee asylum seekers' free movement rights, Human Rights Watch said. "After mishandling the opening of the first new asylum seeker reception center, the authorities still have a chance to redeem themselves,"Simpson said. "Instead of encouraging local communities to treat asylum seekers like unwelcome threats to public safety and hygiene, politicians should do everything they can to protect them and encourage their integration into communities." We will see, as it may have taken the visibility of Oprah Winfrey to expose the growing racism in Switzerland. THIS WEEK's READINGS Last Monday the government reported a $97.6 billion deficit for July but remains on track to post its lowest annual budget gap in five years. July's figure raises the deficit so far for the 2013 budget year to $607.4 billion, the government says. That's 37.6 percent below the $973.8 billion deficit for the first 10 months of the 2012 budget year. The Congressional Budget Office has forecast that the annual deficit will be $670 billion when the budget year ends Sept. 30, far below last year's $1.09 trillion. It would mark the first year that the gap between spending and revenue has been below $1 trillion since 2008. Steady economic growth, higher taxes, lower government spending and increased dividends from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have helped shrink the deficit. Jnline image 14 See the attached Huffington Post article and website: Website: http://www.huffingtonposteom/2013/08/12/us-budget- deficit n 3745096.html Still, looming budget fights in Congress are complicating the picture. When lawmakers return from their recess in September, they will need to increase the government's borrowing limit. They will also have to approve a spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on both measures. Republicans want President Barack Obama to accept deeper cuts in domestic government programs and in expensive benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Obama has argued that Republicans must be willing to accept higher taxes on the highest- earning Americans. Conservative House Republicans have signaled a willingness to force a partial government shutdown as a way of defunding Obama's universal health care law, which they oppose. A possible compromise would be to approve a stopgap budget to keep the government operating after Oct. 1 while both sides seek a permanent solution. Obama has vowed not to negotiate with Congress over raising the borrowing limit as he did in 2011. But some Republicans want to test the president's resolve even if it rattles financial markets. Investors fear a doomsday scenario in which the country would default on its debt, which it has never done. Through July, the government collected $2.29 trillion in revenue, up 13.9 percent from the same 10 months last year. Government spending during this period totaled $2.89 trillion, down 2.9 percent from a year ago. That decline reflects, in part, automatic government spending cuts that began taking effect March 1. Collectively, the government's deficits increase the national debt, now at $16.7 trillion. For deficit hawks this should be good news but for Progressives like me, I am not so sure because one of the reasons why the debt is trending down is because the sequester has forced reductions of programs that hurt those Americans who are most vulnerable, as well as reduced the country's growth which has impaired our economic recovery. The problem is that deficit hawks like Paul Ryan and EFTA00678668 Rand Paul still don't think this is enough and some of my conservative friends are still sending me cartoons and Tea Party articles that suggest that President Obama's economic policies are a disaster. For them I asked one thing, is the country better off now than it was when Barrack Obama took office on January 20, 2009? And if your answer is no, you are either an idiot or so bias that you can't see the forest for the trees.... This week in The Huffington Post Sam Stein wrote -- Sequestration Ushers In A Dark Age For Science In America -- as the title aptly describes both the article and the issue. The article focuses on several scientists whose research is being impacted by the cut of funding resulting from the sequestration. One of the scientist profiled is Dr. Anindya Futta at the University of Virginia School of Medicine whose research focuses on identifying specific strands of microRNA, the molecule that plays a large role in gene expression, that are responsible for promoting the formation and fusion of muscular tissue. The implications for such a discovery are tantalizing. People who suffer from diseases like muscular dystrophy would have easier treatments, and the elderly would fall less often and recover faster when they did. And so, as Dutta has me look into the microscope next to those carbon dioxide tanks, there is a notable hint of excitement in his voice. "If you can find ways to manipulate this muscle differentiation process it would do a huge amount for human health," he says. He explains that I'm seeing how myoblasts can be manipulated into becoming myotubes. The problem is that five years after he received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to undertake this microRNA project, he's nearly out of cash. His proposal was placed in the 2nd percentile of all grants reviewed by NIH in 2007, meaning that it was deemed more promising than 98 percent of the proposed projects. When he asked for the same amount of money in 2012, his proposal was scored in the 18th percentile. In years past that score may have been good enough, but in the age of sequestration, NIH is supporting a much smaller pool of applicants. Late last month he was told that there would be no funding. UVA has stepped in to help, but Dutta estimates that 40 of his colleagues are in the same boat. "I am living off of fumes," he says. A feeling of despair has taken hold within research communities like Dutta's, Top officials at academic and medical institutions have grown convinced that years of stagnant budgets and recent cuts have ushered in the dark ages of science in America. "It is like a slowly growing cancer," Steven Warren, vice chancellor for research at the University of Kansas said of sequestration at a recent gathering of academic officials in Washington, D.C. "It's going to do a lot of destruction over time." If sequestration is a cancerous tumor inside the world of science, how far has it spread? In 2013 alone, NIH, the primary federal spigot for projects impacting human health, will be forced to cut $1.7 billion from its budget. Government agencies across the board are making similar reductions in their research budgets as well. The length of some grants have been shortened, while others have decreased in size and still others have been eliminated altogether. Though they aren't supposed to do so, university officials have begun siphoning money from funded projects to those feeling the pinch, in hopes that if they hang on long enough, help will eventually come. At the University of Virginia, hopes are wearing thin. After Stein's first phone interview in July, Dutta ended the conversation with thanks. "I appreciate you doing this story because we need your help, buddy," he said. "We are in deep shit." When Stein visited the campus in August, much of the five-room lab that he runs would not be there but for the grace of the federal government, from the $15,000 freezers and the $30,000 high-performance liquid chromatography machine to the post- doctoral fellows there on grants. All told, NIH funding for just the School of Medicine totaled $95.1 million between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. With sequestration, all of this investment could be EFTA00678669 undermined. During that same time period, existing awards from NIH were cut by $1.9 million. Dutta, meanwhile, has spent his days looking for grant money elsewhere and sending pleading emails to his congressman, Rep. Robert Hurt (R-Va.). But he has little to show for it. He's recently begun contemplating the possibility of ending his project altogether and was recently informed that he would be losing his post-doctoral fellow spot in December. In January 2002, President George W. Bush unveiled a five-year budget proposal that called for a doubling in NIH funding. It was an unprecedented show of commitment to the scientific community that promised 36,000 new projects and major breakthroughs in medical research. In many ways, it proved to be a high-water mark. By 2007, NIH funding had jumped to $29.2 billion, a massive increase from its $20.4 billion level at the start of Bush's presidency. By the time President Barack Obama took office, it had gone up to $30.8 billion. The 2009 stimulus package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act put a significant amount of money behind scientific research as well. But under sequestration, many of those gains were lost. This year, the agency's budget has gone back down to $29.1 billion. Yes, the NIH's budget remains large at $29 billion. But without more investment, the nation's role as an international leader in scientific research is at risk. Moreover, the money being cut now will have lasting damage, both economic and medical, as cures to diseases are left undiscovered and treatments left unearthed. In the interim, the stagnant budgets and sequestration have caused researchers to go to extreme lengths just to stay afloat. For-profit companies can play a role but they are much more likely to support projects with a clear return on investment, leaving explorative research like that being done by Dr. Dutta and others in the lurch. More often than not, researchers dealing with budget cuts that have been compounded by sequestration find themselves in Dutta's predicament. Having exhausted all forms of cost-cutting and fundraising, they are scaling back their projects, contemplating moving or thinking about ending their work altogether. In a number of subtle ways this is creating a brain drain. It's not just projects receiving NIH grants that have been set back by sequestration. Various other government agencies have seen their research budgets slashed as well. Early estimates from the American Association for the Advancement of Science projected that $9.3 billion would be cut from research and development projects in 2013 alone, including $6.4 billion from the Department of Defense. Tom Antonsen and Phil Sprangle, two professors at the University of Maryland, said they've experienced funding shortages from the Defense Department that could hamper their work "I can start off by saying one word: It's devastating," Sprangle said in a phone interview. "It's a disaster. I guess that's two words." Sprangle, an electromagnetic physicist, recently submitted a proposal to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to improve radioactivity detection methods. He believes that with the right breakthrough, port security screening and weapons monitoring, among other things, could be done at a safe distance of more than 100 meters away. "It's a totally new concept," he said. But it was not good enough to get a grant. "They have no money this year,"he said. "It was put on a list of proposals that were scientifically acceptable and if money came in they would fund it. This is the first time I've experienced that." He's been working in the field for 4o years. The problem, Antonsen said, was not just how the lack of funding would impact graybeards like himself, but also the newcomers to the field. Young scientists who had spent 12 years studying for their PhDs would find the climate inhospitable, and future generations would look elsewhere. "We used to be able to tell people that there was some kind of job security," he said. "That would be a compensation for not being paid as much. Now, if you are taking a big risk in investing 12 years of your life to learn how to do the science, people will think twice." The non-technical term for this is "brain drain." It had been happening for years prior to sequestration, though the recent cuts have accelerated it. Antonsen, a plasma physicist who studies the production and interaction of electromagnetic fields with matter, said he has lost two staffers so EFTA00678670 far: one has left the country and another accepted a job at a Wall Street bank. A third is currently looking for work outside the field. Boston University's Gursky said that her program in Physiology and Biophysics had had no incoming graduate students during the last two academic years, while the overall number of matriculating PhD students at other programs had "dropped sharply." Dutta said a prospective hire in India had recently turned down a job offer in favor of going to Germany. 'That was unheard of not too long ago," he said. One of Dutta's colleagues at the University of Virginia, Patrick Grant, an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, said his lab was down to two researchers from a peak of a dozen. His federal funding ran out last year. On the shelves outside Grant's office were old, empty champagne bottles from happier times. They had markings on them, noting student graduations or work being published in scientific journals. "I wouldn't advise people to go into science," he said. "I think it's a tough career to follow. It's not the career that I thought it was, or that it was for me a couple of years ago." The White House and Democratic leaders say that fixing sequestration's cuts to scientific research actually ranks fairly highly on the list of legislative priorities. Obama routinely touts the need to reinvest in the field and recruit new scientists. In April, he proposed a $100 million plan to map the human brain. Until recently support for NIH, meanwhile, had a rich bipartisan tradition, in large part because it's easy to recognize the important work the agency does. This past week, it was announced that NIH scientists had successfully tested, on a small group of people, a vaccine for malaria -- a disease that kills one million people a year. More recently, public universities have stepped up a lobbying campaign to reverse the cuts, with 165 professors and college presidents recently writing to Obama and Congress, urging them to take immediate action. Perhaps most importantly, NIH has one of the most powerful members of the U.S. Senate squarely in its corner. Just one month after sequestration went into effect, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins at a conference in Los Angeles. The two discussed budget cuts and rode together to Reid's next event. In the car, Collins laid out in detail how dire the funding situation was. Reid asked if he could come visit the NIH campus and if Collins, in return, would come brief the Democratic caucus. Two months later, in mid-June, Reid took the trip to NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Md. He gave a floor speech about the dangers of the cuts three days later. The following month, Collins briefed Senate Democrats during their weekly lunch. A source with knowledge of the remarks said he brought up the prospect that the universal flu vaccine that is potentially five years from discovery could end up being delayed. He reminded attendees that 35,000 people die of the flu every year. But it hasn't been enough. No bill has been introduced in the Senate to replace the cuts to the NIH's budget. Meanwhile, the Democratic budget -- which would replace all of the sequester -- is mired in a standoff with Republicans, who want to replace the defense cuts contained in sequestration while expanding the domestic cuts. Reid, who associates say has been drawn to the issue because of his wife's bout with breast cancer, has continued to beat the drum. During a press briefing in late July, he brought up the topic of NIH funding again. And he's provided assurances to officials there and colleagues on the Hill that he will work on labor and health-related funding bills before military funding appropriations to ensure that scientific research doesn't get the short shrift. But in his statement to The Huffington Post, it was evident that the majority leader continues to see the politics of budget cuts as overwhelming the crisis confronting science. "I am working to find a bipartisan solution to reverse the damaging effects of the sequester, including the harmful cuts to NIH _funding," Reid said. "There's absolutely no reason why Republicans shouldn't be able to support funding for life-saving cures and treatments." In the age of congressional ignorance where we have political leaders like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R- Calif.), a longtime member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who EFTA00678671 recently brushed aside concern that the wildfires currently scorching across his state and causing millions of dollars of damage have anything to do with climate change, telling constituents at a town hall that "global warming is a total fraud," employed by liberals to "create global government." 'WE NEEDED ANOTHER STIMULUS. INSTEAD WE GOT SEQUESTRATION.' This past Monday North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed a bill requiring photo identification at the polls and eliminating a slew of voting measures designed to protect against voter disenfranchisement. Realizing that this was a polarizing act to others beyond his political base, the governor, eschewing a more traditional signing ceremony, announced by way of a YouTube video that he had signed House Bill 589. The bill will require voters to show photo identification -- a driver's license, passport, veteran's ID, tribal card -- beginning in the 2016 elections. Student IDs are not an acceptable form of identification. The bill also reduces early voting by a week, eliminates same-day registration, ends pre-registration for 16-and-17 year-olds and a student civics program, kills an annual state-sponsored voter registration drive and lessens the amount of public reporting required for so- called dark money groups, also known as 501(c)(4)s. McCrory said the bill was necessary even if there are very few reported cases of voter fraud. "Even if the instances of misidentified people casting votes are low, that shouldn't prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place," he said in a Raleigh News and Observer op-ed. "Just because you haven't been robbed doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your doors at night or when you're away from home." Just hours after McCrory's signature, the ACLU of North Carolina and a coalition of other groups filed a lawsuit against the bill, charging that it violates the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The North Carolina NAACP and Advancement Project followed shortly after, filing another lawsuit. The latest bill comes after the Supreme Court struck down the core of the Voting Rights Act, which required Southern states with a history of racial discrimination — including North Carolina -- to have their laws cleared by the Department of Justice. The Justice Department could still try to invalidate the recent North Carolina law on the grounds that it deliberately discriminates against voters, a much higher standard than merely proving it disproportionately affects minority voters. The bill has the potential to reduce turnout for key Democratic constituencies -- minorities, the elderly and students -- with the slew of new requirements, even beyond the new measures for identification. President Barack Obama narrowly won North Carolina in 2008 but lost it in 2012, and in 2016, the state is likely to be a battleground. The legislation, passed by the Republican-controlled legislature over the objections of Democrats before heading to McCrory's desk, is the latest of a string of conservative legislation signed into law in the state. McCrory has also signed measures introducing new restrictions for abortion clinics (attached to a motorcycle safety bill), expanding concealed-carry permits to bars and restaurants, and cutting unemployment benefits. The sick thing is that this law is blatant voter suppression with the objective of denying likely Democratic voters, such as the elderly, many of whom don't have picture IDs, Blacks who overwhelmingly vote early and young voters who benefit from same day registration as they often move residence. Consider this. In North Carolina, 6.9 million ballots were cast. The State Board of Elections said that of that number only 121 alleged cases of voter fraud was referred to prosecutors, which means of nearly 7 million votes casts, voter fraud accounted for only .00174% of the ballots and this includes voters who had not committed any crime. Still Gov. Pat McCory said, "that even if the instances of misidentified people casting voter are low, that shouldn't prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place." EFTA00678672 Again this is blatant voter suppression. As Hillary Clinton said in a speech at the American Bar Association's annual conference on Monday, "these laws are reviving old demons of discrimination, insisting that legislation like the North Carolina laws are deliberate and unnecessa►y barrier to voting." She noted that along with North Carolina both Texas and Florida have also introduced whose recent voter legislation has shifted the burden, slamming the North Carolina bill as one that "reads like the greatest hits of voter suppression." "In the weeks since the ruling, we've seen an unseemly rush by previously covered jurisdictions to enact or enforce laws that will make it harder for millions of our fellow Americans to vote," Clinton said. Clinton also went after several provisions of the North Carolina bill that she believes place a greater burden on citizens facing discrimination, including limited voting hours, stricter ID requirements and restricted early voting. This should offend every American. See Hillary's speech: httm/Avww.huffingtonpost.corn/2013/08/12/hillary-clinton-nc-voter-id_n_3746321.html 7 Ways You Could Be Disenfranchised By Voter ID 2Inline image 17 Pennsylvania You're an average voter in Pennsylvania. The night before Election Day, your wallet goes missing, leaving you without immediate access to any of the identification you'll need to vote at your local precinct the following morning. This would be a problem under Pennsylvania's proposed photo ID law, since blocked by a state judge. While many people in this situation may have backup forms of identification, studies have shown that a significant percentage of would-be voters don't. The state's safeguard against the immediate disenfranchisement of people in this situation would be a provisional ballot cast on the day of the election. But this doesn't mean your vote counts, yet. Anyone who casts a provisional ballot is required to "appear in person at the county board of elections" within six days of the vote to provide proof that their ballot was valid. If you're able to take time away from your job to do this, the process still requires a would-be voter to either show up with valid ID -- a replacement driver's license would cost $36 and considerable time -- or to sign an affirmation that you are indigent and not able to afford the fees associated with acquiring a photo ID. Even if you make a rapid and somewhat expensive turnaround to get a replacement ID -- or alternatively swear under oath that you are too poor to pay for such a document -- there is no guarantee that your vote will end up counting. Many elections are largely decided before provisional voters have a chance to verify their validity, which could serve to discouraging them from following up with election officials or leave them effectively disenfranchised. In 2008, only 61.8 percent of all provisional ballots cast were fully counted. If strict photo ID measures were implemented, however, the number of provisional ballots submitted would likely increase, as would the requirements for voters hoping to make them count. EFTA00678673 Georgia Eleven percent of eligible voters say they lack current government-issued photo IDs, a survey on the potential impact of voter ID laws found. You live in Georgia and you're one of them. Like 66,515 other Georgians, according to a recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice, you also lack vehicle access and live more than io miles from an office that issues state ID. As a registered voter who's skipped the past few elections, you decide you'll vote this year. But you spend your life working multiple jobs to provide for your family, not tuned in to a news cycle that may have told you about a voter ID law that changed the requirements. If you were aware of the measure, you'd know that you have to get yourself to a state office during business hours to procure a photo ID in order to vote. According to the Brennan Center, these facilities are often only open part time, especially in areas with the highest concentration of people of color and in poverty. While the state does offer a free photo ID initiative, the Brennan Center points out that many of the offices provide confusing or inaccurate information about what Georgians need to do to get one. This may be a tough task as you juggle a strenuous work schedule with other commitments -- and that's assuming you're aware of the requirement. But you're not, so you head to your voting precinct on election day with no access to an acceptable form of identification and vote with a provisional ballot. To verify that ballot, you'll have two days to present appropriate photo ID at your county registrar's office, which at this point wouldn't be doable. Tennessee As an elderly Tennessee resident, you've made a decades-long Election Day habit of traveling to your local polling place and exercising your franchise. It's an important day for you, and it gives you the rare opportunity to leave your house, where you live alone. For a number of years, you've had an identification card that allows you to vote. But thanks to the state's strict new voter ID law, that document will no longer be sufficient. Reports found that 230,00o Tennesseans older than 6o possess driver's licenses that don't have photos on them. Such ID will not be accepted at polling places in November. While the state has agreed to issue photo IDs free to anyone who asks, a recent study found that only a tiny percentage of potential targets have applied. Perhaps that's because people like you weren't aware of exactly how the change was going to affect them. Maybe you weren't even aware of the change. Poll workers tell you that you can cast a provisional ballot on Election Day. You'll have until "the close of business on the second business day after the election" to find an applicable piece of identification -- which you don't have -- and present it to a designated elections official. Whether it's your lack of an acceptable form of identification, the difficulty in finding transportation back to the elections official, or the prospect of having to go through the drain of the entire process again, you're discouraged, and give up. Kansas You're a resident of Kansas in your early 6os, fully expecting to vote in November. Your driver's license is your primary form of ID, but you rarely carry it anymore. You don't drive and you haven't traveled abroad in years, leaving your passport expired or lost. In the months before the EFTA00678674 election, you changed addresses, and for some reason never received a notification from the state reminding you that your license had expired. On the day of the election, you head to your polling place, unaware that you're about to be told your license is expired and therefore invalid according to the state's new voter ID law (Kansans over the age of 65 can use expired IDs, but you're not there yet). You're given a provisional ballot and informed that you must now "provide a valid form of identification to the county election officer in person or provide a copy by mail or electronic means before the meeting of the county board of canvassers." While Kansas says it has historically counted around 7t) percent of its provisional ballots, this year provides a different landscape. The next steps can be somewhat difficult, and with the enacting of the state's photo ID law, the use of such ballots will undoubtedly become more commonplace. Faced with disenfranchisement, you must now race against the clock to have your vote included. With no other acceptable forms of ID available, you go about the process of renewing your license. According to the state, this requires you to make your way to a state office, where you'll have to provide a number of identifying documents and pay the fee. By the time you can find someone to chauffeur you through this process -- public transportation is complex and unreliable where you live, even if you're in an urban center -- most of the major election results have been announced on the news. You decide the undertaking isn't worth the time. Indiana You're a first-time voter in Indiana who registered to vote at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles using your Social Security number, a process that also required you to get a state identification card, which you placed in your wallet. As a recent high school graduate who commutes with other workers to your full time job on a farm, you rarely need to present identification, so you didn't even bother to get a new ID card when it went missing from your locker a few weeks before the election. You risk potential firing when you travel to your polling place with other members of your community on voting day, but you're intent on participating in your first election. Without valid photo ID, however, you don't get to pull the lever. Under Indiana's new photo ID law, you're instead required to fill out a provisional ballot. But you're told you'll still need to jump through additional hoops that could prove too demanding. Now tasked with making visits during business hours to both the Indiana BMV to get a replacement ID, and then to the county elections board to verify your ballot, you decide keeping your job is more important than voting. Pennsylvania, Part II Viviette Applewhite was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's new voter ID measure. She's a 93-year-old great-great grandmother who has voted regularly for decades. She claimed she didn't have access to any of the documents she'd need to vote. With no driver's license and no birth certificate, needed to get a photo ID, Applewhite said she'd be disenfranchised by the law. And she wasn't the only one. A number of other plantiffs in the ACLU case against Pennsylvania's photo ID law claimed they had been unsuccessful in attempts to get copies of their birth certificates and other papers due to complexities in the state's record-keeping. Most claimed the measure would take away their vote. The law has since been blocked for this election cycle. Georgia, Part II EFTA00678675 You're a longtime resident of Georgia, but you've just recently returned home from a six-month out-of- town assignment from your job. You get into town on the Monday before Election Day. Most of your possessions are still being shipped from halfway across the country. Old friends invite you to a bar to catch up, but in the process of removing your driver's license from your wallet to present to a bouncer, it cracks in half, leaving it officially invalidated. Without a valid license, you won't be able to cast a ballot the next day. You'd renew it and choke down the $20 or more fee for the replacement, but the documents you need to present are in the moving truck. An election official informs you that you can fill out a provision ballot on Election Day. To verify that ballot, you'll have two days afterward to present appropriate photo ID at your county registrar's office. Either you're telling the moving company to drive twice the speed limit for the next 48 hours straight, or you're accepting your disenfranchisement. This week Robert Reich wrote and op-ed — Why the Anger? — in the Huffington Post, posing the question, why is the nation more bitterly divided today than it's been in 8o years? And why is there more anger, vituperation, and political polarization now than even during Joe McCarthy's anti- communist witch hunts of the 195os, the tempestuous struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, the divisive Vietnam war, or the Watergate scandal? As Reich points out that if anything, you'd think this would be an era of relative calm. First of all, the Soviet Union has disappeared and the Cold War is over. While the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been controversial, the all-volunteer army means young Americans aren't being dragged off to war against their will. And even though there is still a deep racial division, there is a growing Black and Latino middle class and even a black president. Finally even though politicians continue to generate scandals, the transgressions don't threaten the integrity of our government to the level of Watergate. And yet, by almost every measure, Americans are angrier today. They're more contemptuous of almost every major institution -- government, business, the media. They're more convinced the nation is on the wrong track. And they are far more polarized. Political scientists say the gap between the median Republican voter and the median Democrat is wider today on a whole host of issues than it's been since the 1920s. Undoubedly, social media play a part -- allowing people to pop off without bearing much responsibility for what they say. And most of us can cocoon within virtual or real communities whose members confirm all our biases and assumptions. Meanwhile, cable news and yell radio compete for viewers and listeners by being ever more strident. Not long ago I debated a Republican economic advisor on a cable TV program. During the brief station-break, the show's producer told me to "be angrier." I told her I didn't want to be angrier. "You have to," she said. "Viewers are surfing through hundreds of channels and will stop for a gladiator contest." Within this cacophony, we've lost trusted arbiters of truth -- the Edward Murrows and Walter Cronkites who could explain what was happening in ways most Americans found convincing. We've also lost most living memory of an era in which we were all in it together -- the Great Depression and World War II -- when we succeeded or failed together. In those years we were palpably dependent on one another, and understood how much we owed each other as members of the same society. But I think the deeper explanation for what has happened has economic roots. From the end of World War II through the late 1970s, the economy doubled in size -- as did almost everyone's income. Almost all EFTA00678676 Americans grew together. In fact, those in the bottom fifth of the income ladder saw their incomes more than double. Americans experienced upward mobility on a grand scale. Yet for the last three and a half decades, the middle class has been losing ground. The median wage of male workers is now lower than it was in 1980, adjusted for inflation. In addition, all the mechanisms we've used over the last three decades to minimize the effects of this descent -- young mothers streaming into paid work in the late 197os and 1980s, everyone working longer hours in the 1990s, and then borrowing against the rising values of our homes -- are now exhausted. And wages are still dropping -- the median is now 4 percent below what it was at the start of the so-called recovery. Meanwhile, income, wealth, and power have become more concentrated at the top than they've been in ninety years. As a result, many have come to believe that the deck is stacked against them. Importantly, both the Tea Party and the Occupier movements began with the bailouts of Wall Street -- when both groups concluded that big government and big finance had plotted against the rest of us. The former blamed government; the latter blamed Wall Street. Political scientists have also discovered a high correlation between inequality and political divisiveness. Reich's summary: The last time America was this bitterly divided was in the 192os, which was the last time income, wealth, and power were this concentrated. When average people feel the game is rigged, they get angry. And that anger can easily find its way into deep resentments -- of the poor, of blacks, of immigrants, of unions, of the well-educated, of government. This shouldn't be surprising. Demagogues throughout history have used anger to target scapegoats -- thereby dividing and conquering, and distracting people from the real sources of their frustrations. Make no mistake: The savage inequality America is experiencing today is deeply dangerous. Last March the U.S. House narrowly approved a conservative budget plan authored by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, 221-207, on Thursday on a largely party-line vote. Not being a law, it served as the fiscal blueprint outlining the GOP's priorities over a 10-year budget window to reduce the deficit and overhaul the Medicare system. No Democrats voted for the plan. "House Republicans decided to double down on the failed policies that the American people rejected just a few months ago," said Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash. To avert a government shutdown the House also passed a short-term spending bill. The long-term blueprint is similar to the two previous budgets authored by Ryan, who chairs the Budget Committee, since Republicans took control of the House in 2010. Among the most cited and controversial proposals is a fundamental overhaul of Medicare to a premium support system for Americans 55 and younger. Future seniors would be given federal subsidies to buy their own health insurance in contrast to the current guaranteed benefit system. Recently moderate Republican conservatives are beginning to foment a revolt of their own — a backlash to anti-spending tea party shrillness as budget cuts begin to significantly shrink defense and domestic programs. Although Tea Party forces have dominated House GOP's framing of the budget, pragmatists in the party have served notice that they won't stand idly by for indiscriminate spending cuts to politically popular community development grants, education programs and even Amtrak. Voting in the spring for the tea party budget developed by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who was Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate last year, was one thing. But as long as a Democrat occupies the White House, Ryan's budget is little more than a nonbinding wish list — cutting Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps and slashing budgets for domestic agencies funded annually through appropriations bills. Many tenured Republicans, particularly members of the House Appropriations Committee, have viewed Ryan's sweeping cuts as unworkable all along. When more than $4 billion in entirely new cuts came to the House floor in the form of an actual bill for EFTA00678677 funding transportation and housing programs, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, confronted shaky support from less ardently conservative Republicans and decided to pull the $44 billion package on July 31. That sparked a frustrated outburst from the committee chairman, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky. He called for abandoning the Ryan budget and starting bipartisan negotiations that would provide appropriators with "a realistic spending level to fund the government in a responsible - and attainable - way." 'Attainable" is code for something that can pass the Senate and get signed by President Barack Obama. That's rarely a recipe for tea party fun. The House has passed just four of 12 appropriations bills that are all supposed to be on the president's desk by Sept. 3o. The Senate hasn't passed any, though it also tried and failed last week to advance its version of a transportation-housing bill. The four House-passed bills largely embrace Obama's funding levels for homeland security, the Pentagon and veterans' programs. The House has yet to pass one with significant spending cuts in the mold of the Ryan budget. "When it came time for the general (Republican) conference to affirm the Ryan budget in the form of 12 appropriations bills, the conference balked," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. "We need to regroup and say, 'OK, was your vote for the Ryan budget a serious vote or was that just some political fluke that you don't intend to follow up on?' On the night before the transportation bill was pulled, the House restored, with little debate and a voice vote, some money for Community Development Block Grants that had been cut in half to $1.6 billion, the lowest level since the program began in 1975. Mayors love the flexibility of block grants. They can be used for almost anything, from sewer projects and revitalizing slumping downtown business districts to paying for homeless shelters and community health centers. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. stepped in with an amendment to add $350 million back. "This program has provided much-needed help for our senior citizens, for road repairs and our homeless shelters," she said. "Our local governments need this funding." Voices of GOP pragmatists such as Rogers and Capito had been drowned out largely since early in the year when Boehner scheduled a succession of votes on bills advancing Democrats' priorities and raising tea partyers' hackles — a $600 billion-plus tax increase on the wealthy, a Superstorm Sandy relief bill and a liberalized renewal of the Violence Against Women Act. Each of those bills passed the House in contradiction of a practice instituted by former GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert to only bring up bills that are supported by a majority of Republicans. Since then, Boehner has walked lightly and catered to the party's conservative wing when scheduling legislation. The most recent squabble is a prelude of what's to come in the fall. When Congress returns in September, it has only nine working days to figure out at what level to temporarily fund federal agencies beyond Sept. 3o. The alternative is a government shutdown that only the most strident tea partyers want to use as a bargaining chip to "defund" Obama's health care overhaul about to go into top gear. GOP leaders like Boehner oppose that idea but have been unwilling to publicly condemn the effort. In the Senate, the GOP's pragmatic wing includes John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Johnny Isakson of Georgia. They've been meeting frequently with White House staff chief Denis McDonough and other top Obama aides seeking ways to replace deep, non-discretionary automatic cuts known as sequestration with gentler, more targeted cuts. Graham and McCain are chiefly motivated by a desire to restore Pentagon cuts they say will cripple the military. Other Senate Republicans like Susan Collins of Maine are going to bat for domestic programs. Of course, Congress could simply keep the government on autopilot at current funding levels, continuing the automatic spending cuts that kicked in last March. One veteran Congress-watcher says passing it in the 435-member House might again require violating Hastert's practice. "What Boehner has done successfully in the past, is you have to write it to levels that actually get support in the Senate and get some Democrats in the House," said former Rep. Steve LaTourette, R-Ohio. Some EFTA00678678 conservatives among the House's 233 Republicans may "then squeal ...," LaTourette said, "but if they're not going to supply the votes to get to 218 in a way that makes everybody in the (GOP) conference comfortable, then that's the strategy that's left to them. And I think that's probably where we're headed." ****** How Paul Ryan's Budget Would Hurt The Poor 1;2,Inline image 14 1. Paul Ryan's Budget Would Kill Millions Of Jobs His plan would cut the budget by $4.6 trillion over the next 10 years. These budget cuts would raise the unemployment rate, shrink the economy and eliminate 2 million jobs in 2014 alone, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank. 2. Paul Ryan's Budget Would Cut Medicaid His budget would slash Medicaid spending by $756 billion and turn the program into a block-grant program for states. It also would eliminate Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, which would have provided Medicaid coverage for an estimated 12 million more people. 3. Paul Ryan's Budget Would Let States Kick People Off Of Food Stamps His budget would turn the food stamp program into a block-grant program for states. It also would encourage states to limit the amount of time that the unemployed can access food stamps and limit food stamp eligibility mostly to workers. 4. Paul Ryan's Budget Would Cut Medicare His budget would cut Medicare spending and turn the program into a subsidized private-insurance program. This would translate into less health care for seniors, according to the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, as well as more expensive health insurance, according to the left-leaning Center for American Progress. 5. Paul Ryan's Budget Would Repeal Obamacare If it stays in effect, Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured Americans by 27 million by 2023, according the Congressional Budget Office. 6. Paul Ryan's Budget Would Deny Welfare Benefits To People Who Aren't Working His budget would limit eligibility for the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) welfare program mostly to people that are working. 7. Paul Ryan's Budget Would Cut Funding For Programs That Help The Poor His budget would cut funding for a variety of domestic programs -- potentially including child care, education, women's preventive health care and domestic violence prevention, according to the National Women's Law Center. EFTA00678679 The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, says that "Congress shall make no law....abridging (limiting) the freedom of speech, or of the press..." And Conservative Republicans often bathe themselves in the Constitution. So you have to ask why the Republican National Committee passed a resolution today blocking NBC and CNN from partnering with the GOP for any presidential debates during the 2016 primary process because they have not scuffled their pending films on Hillary Clinton. Please feel free to read the ABC News attached article - RNC Votes `No' on NBC, CNN Debates Over Clinton Movies - by Shushannah Walshe. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus wrote Aug. 5 letters to the networks asking them to pull the movies before the vote today or the group would put it to the floor during the RNC's summer meeting here. It passed by a unanimous vote at the meeting today. In the resolution, the RNC calls the programs 'little more than extended commercials promoting former Secretary Clinton" and the "programming decisions are an attempt to show political favoritism and put a thumb on the scales for the next presidential election." The resolution says the programs will "jeopardize the credibility of CNN and NBC as supposedly unbiased news networks and undermine the perceived objectivity of the coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign by these networks" and calls on the networks to "cancel the airing of these political ads masked as unbiased entertainment." "If CNN and NBC continue to move forward with this and other such programming, the Republican National Committee will neither partner with these networks in the 2016 presidential primary debates nor sanction any primary debates they sponsor," the resolution reads, leaving some wiggle room if the networks decide to pull their programs in the future. See weblink: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/16/eric-fehrnstrom-rne n 376O74.html NBC announced its miniseries last month. It is a four-parter starring Diane Lane, with no set air date. CNN also announced last month it was planning a feature-length movie on the former secretary of state's life to premiere in movie theaters and television next year. Both networks have said the programs will have no bearing on the news or reporting sides of the networks, and neither has said how Clinton will be portrayed. "NBC News is completely independent of NBC Entertainment, and has no involvement in this project," network spokeswoman Erika Masonhall told ABC News earlier this month. CNN responded to today's vote with a statement asking the RNC not to rush to judgment, explaining that it is a "non-fiction" look at the former secretary of state. "The project is in the very early stages of development, months from completion with most of the reporting and the interviewing still to be done," the statement said. "Therefore, speculation about the final program is just that. We encouraged all interested parties to wait until the program premieres before judgments are made about it. Unfortunately, the RNC was not willing to do that." As Jonathan Weiler wrote — The Myth of The Republican Moderate - this week in The Huffington Post, "the GOP has become a party of radicals, proudly wearing on its sleeve its contempt for the less well off and its ignorance of basic scientific and mathematical reality. Its primary approach to "governing" at this point is to try to keep government from functioning at all, except when it comes to protecting the interests of the wealthy. It can't pass its own budgets, because they make no sense whatsoever. It's seemingly a badge of honor within the party to utter idiotic statements about women's reproductive systems in defense of retrograde attitudes toward women's health. Its most passionate cause now is to try to undermine passage of a bill that would extend health insurance coverage to millions of Americans." Think about it, the NBC miniseries about Hillary Clinton is just entertainment. It is no different than films about other politicians and people in the public eye and like the 1983 Hollywood movie, The Right Stuff which profiled a young John Glenn as having the right stuff. And although reviewers saw EFTA00678680 Ed Harris' portrayal of Glenn as heroic, it didn't help him win the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1984. So why did the GOP vote to ban NBC and CNN for showing and producing the Hillary Clinton miniseries? But the answer is obvious. They are afraid of Hillary Clinton, and like the manufactured voter fraud issue, using code they are doing whatever they can to disrupt any positivity that could help her, much like they are doing with voter suppression. America is defined by its suburbs. Since the mid-loth century — when highways, the GI Bill and the Federal Housing Administration opened up a new residential frontier for the Baby Boom generation — suburbs have served as the backdrop for the middle-class American dream. And these same suburbs defined politics too. While city dwellers overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and residents of small towns and rural areas vote for Republicans by large margins, suburbs are the quintessential political battlegrounds. In the 113th Congress, nearly half of all House districts,199 of 435, are essentially suburban — a majority of their populations live in the suburbs of one of the nation's 100 largest metro areas. They are represented almost equally by Republicans (ioi districts) and Democrats (98 districts). As the suburbs go, so goes political control of Congress. But now suburbs are helping define another American phenomenon: poverty. Over the past decade, America's major suburbs have become home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country. Between 2000 and 2011, the number of poor residents in suburbia grew by almost two-thirds, or 64 percent — more than double the pace of poverty growth in the large cities that anchor these regions. For the first time, more poor people in America live in suburbs than in big cities. A number of factors converged to drive this shift. The collapse of the housing market in the late 2000S pummeled many metropolitan economies across the country, particularly those in the Sun Belt, like Phoenix, Las Vegas and much of central Florida, where the housing market had boomed the most. At the same time, many Rust Belt metro areas suffered greatly from the decline of manufacturing jobs throughout the 2000S. The Great Recession is only one piece of the story, however. Although the downturn pushed the poor population to record levels and accelerated the shift of poverty toward suburbia, more poor people lived in suburbs than cities even before the market crashed. In fact, poverty began growing faster in suburbs than in cities as early as the 1980s. Suburbia was increasingly home to more low-wage jobs, more new immigrants and more aging housing, all of which led to growth in its poor population, too. The rapid rise in suburban poverty during the 2000s cut across the blue and red political divide. More than 8o percent of districts represented by Democrats and more than 90 percent of those represented by Republicans experienced an increase in their poor populations across the decade. Some of the fastest growth occurred in Republican districts in Sun Belt regions hit hard by the housing market collapse, including Phoenix (AZ-5), Las Vegas (NV-3) and Atlanta (GA-7). At the same time, the biggest increases in suburban poverty rates occurred in Democratic districts in Midwestern manufacturing regions, like Indianapolis (IN-7) and Detroit (MI-13). This demographic shift will have political consequences and challenge states and regions to adopt these broader, cross-jurisdictional models for poverty alleviation won't address the full scale of the poverty problem in America today, but it could help stretch limited resources much further. For Republicans, it would represent an opportunity to move away from outdated formulas and legacy programs toward more outcome-driven strategies that improve efficiency and cut bureaucratic red tape. For Democrats, it's a chance to use scarce federal dollars to get local and state governments, as well as the private sector and philanthropy, to put more of their own resources behind poverty-fighting initiatives. EFTA00678681 As Alan Berube and Elizabeth ICneebone wrote — America's shifting suburban battlegrounds — in Politico this week: Over the past few decades, poverty has become an increasingly structural feature of the American economy. In all likelihood, suburban poverty is here to stay. The battleground character of suburbs could set the stage for more ideological trench warfare and gridlock over federal anti-poverty policy and a suburban replay of the challenges that have beleaguered our inner cities over the last few decades. Or it could spur a bipartisan effort to convert top-down federal programs of old into support for new bottom-up solutions to urban and suburban poverty alike. The future of suburbs — as an American ideal and political keystone — may hang in the balance. And we will see.... FROM AMERICA's GOT TALLENT "Forte" A Puerto Rican, a South Korean and a New Yorker stun the audience and judges of America's Got Talent with their rendition of `Pie Jesu'. Josh Page, Hana Ryu and Fernando Varela met on the intemet just a few weeks earlier and then met face-to-face just a few days before the audition. "Forte" had never performed as a group for an audience before. Weblink: http://www.flixxy.com/forte-americas-got-talent.htm?utm source=nl Simply incredible. These guys voices will bring tears to your eyes especially given they have never sang together in pubic before this broadcast and had rehearsed only a few weeks. PICTURES OF BROOKLYN BACK IN THE DAY It's Brooklyn.... but something's missing: Vintage photos show how the New York City borough looked before hipsters took over ,,,1n line image 15 For years it has been a mecca for hipsters, with their music, art and sustainable living ethos, but Brooklyn has long been attracting creative types willing to travel across the world in search of a better life. A series of photos taken by Life magazine's photographer Ed Clark after the Second World War shows how New York City's most populous borough has supported a thriving community for decades. Many of the scenes reflect life in Kings Country today. Couples embrace on the beach with the bright lights of Coney Island behind them, roof tops provide the perfect place to chat with friends in the summer, and families gather in Bed-Stuy. However, the vintage photos show a more family orientated feel compared to today, where an influx of hipsters with their trendy clothes and remarkable facial hair has led to a rash of organic cafes, vintage boutiques, record shops and micro breweries. EFTA00678682 'Models, writers, actors, and artists have been flocking to New York's Left Bank for its destination restaurants, bustling farmers' markets, Parisian-style parks, and passionate dedication to l'art de vie,' a recent post on vogue.com stated. However, as this collection of photos from Life and other 194os photographers shows, the love affair with Brooklyn is nothing new and the borough still has the same power to sustain free-thinking, creative communities. ; 1;Inline image 16 Website: http://www.dailymailco.uldnews/article-2389095/Its-Brooldyn--somethings-missing-Vintage-photos-New-York- City-borough-looked-hipsters-took-ovechtml ;;Skyline: Manhattan's skyscrapers and buildings can be seen across the water in 1946 I invite you to see the rest of the photos from the past of Brooklyn on the weblink above FUNNY.... FUNNY.... VIDEO.... Canadian Border Candid Camera* Weblink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFGArNnpa6Q&feature=related The 5 Riddles... THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST FIVE RIDDLES I HAVE SEEN... THE ANSWERS ARE AT THE BOTTOM. RIDDLE 5 IS AMAZING. IT SHARPENS THOSE GENES IN YOUR BRAIN AND STALLS ALZHEIMER'S FOR YEARS .... 1. A murderer is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns, and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in 3 years. Which room is safest for him? 2. A woman shoots her husband. Then she holds him under water for over 5 minutes. Finally, she hangs him. But 5 minutes later they both go out together and enjoy a wonderful dinner together. How can this be? - / - 3. What is black when you buy it, red when you use it, and gray when you throw it away ? EFTA00678683 - / - 4. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday? - / - 5. This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious as to just how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so ordinary and plain that you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is highly unusual though. Study it and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out. Try to do so without any coaching! THE ANSWERS TO ALL FIVE THE RIDDLES ARE BELOW: Answers: 1. The third room. Lions that haven't eaten in three years are dead. That one was easy, right? 2. The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it, and hung it up to dry (shot; held under water; and hung). 3. Charcoal, as it is used in barbecuing. 4. Sure you can name three consecutive days, yesterday, today, and tomorrow! 5. The letter "e" which is the most common letter used in the English language, does not appear even once in the paragraph. I'll be getting Alzheimer's any time now. How did you do? THIS WEEK's QUOTE Judy Woodruff asking Mark Shields on PBS' Newshour this Friday about his and David Brook's thoughts on the new voter ID law just passed this week in North Carolina. "So my question -- this is a state that is Republican for the first time completely, the governor, the legislature for — in decades. Critics say this is really meant to cut down African-American turnout. How do you see it?" Judy Woodruff "This is punitive. It's vindictive. It's vengeful. It's just a way -- there is no evidence of any voter fraud, of anybody using somebody else's identification to vote. If there were, you could say it's an overreaction. This is a created fabrication to basically discourage, if not make impossible, voting by groups, people who belong to groups who don't ordinarily vote Republican, who vote Democratic; 56 EFTA00678684 percent of the people in North Carolina voted on Election Day -- early voting, rather. That will -- there will be no early voting in this. It's just an attempt to make it difficult to vote." Mark Shields THIS WEEK's MUSIC In the Northern Hemisphere it is almost the end of summer vacation for most people and I realized that it is time for me to do a summertime sampling of songs that celebrate the fun sun and spirit of the summer holiday season. I hope that you enjoy this week's selection and don't feel self-conscience if you find yourself tapping your feet or even dancing along.... Please enjoy g 2 binline image 172,Inline image .182Inline image igclA 4Inline image 2oginline image 22 ginline image 23 DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince — Summertime -- http://youtu.be/Kr0tTbTbmVA Mariah Carey — Dreamlover http://youtu.be/CqBtS6BIP I E 2Pac — I Get Around -- http://3outi e/qBtS6BIPIE Kanye West & T-Pain — Good Life -- http outu.be/CgBtS6BIP1 E Nelly — Hot in There -- lutp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeZZrp6vB8 The Beach Boys — California Girls -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a49McFOFpO Seals & Crofts - Summer Breeze -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEF470mXqU4 War - Summer -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MyH I TcqAhl Brian Adams — Summer of 69 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgpcwYooLO0 Sly & The Family Stone - Hot Sun in the Summertime -- http://www.youtube.corn/watch? v=3ahhmiuyko0 Lovin Spoonful - Summer in the City -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MNSDDJKb0U Katy Perry & Snoop Dogg — California Gurls - http:/Avww.youtube.corn/watch?v=r6fgJzI qTyA Rob Bass and DJ E-Z Rock — It Takes Two -- http://www.youtube.corn/watch?v=kp3Jvc5cXn8 Martha and the Vandallas — Heatwave - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2fnYpwrng Kool & The Gang — Summer Madness -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTI7o7YM5-A I hope that you enjoyed this week's offerings and wish you a wonderful rest of the summer and a great week.... Sincerely, Greg Brown EFTA00678685 Gregory Brown Chairman & CEO GlotolCast Partners, LW US: +I-415.994-7851 Tel: +1400-4064892 Fax: +1-310461-0927 Skypc: gbcown1970 GregoryM Plob i rpattnemeorn EFTA00678686