EFTA00695928.pdf

From: To: Bcc: Subject: Date: Attachments: Inline-Images: Gregory Brown undisclosed-recipients:; jeevacation@gmail.com Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 05/07/2017 Sun, 07 May 2017 11:07:51 +0000 IMMIGRATION_AND_PUBLIC_SAFETY_The_Sentencing_Project_March_2017.docx; The_Danger_of_Trump? s_Civil_Warignoran_ce_Jamelle_Bouie_SLATE_May_3,2017.docx image.png; image(I).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(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png DEAR FRIEND Don't Blame Jesus Blame game: Trump casts immigrants as dangerous criminals, but the evidence shows otherwise Inline image 1 Starting from his first day as a candidate, President Donald Trump has made demonstrably false claims associating immigrants with criminality. As president, he has sought to justify restrictive immigration policies, such as increasing detentions and deportations and building a southern border wall, as public safety measures. He has also linked immigrants with crime through an Executive EFTA00695928 Order directing the Attorney General to establish a task force to assist in "developing strategies to reduce crime, including, in particular, illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and violent crime," and by directing the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to assist and publicize victims of crimes committed by immigrants. A rigorous body of research by both The Sentencing Project and the Cato Institute supports the following conclusions about the recent impact of immigrants in the United States: 1. Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native born citizens. 2. Higher levels of immigration in recent decades may have contributed to the historic drop in crime rates. 3. Police chiefs believe that intensifying immigration law enforcement undermines public safety. 4. Immigrants are under-represented in U.S. prisons. Inline image 2 Trump Administration officials said the strategy is intended to reframe the political debate over immigration reform from what they view as a misplaced emphasis on the well-being of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to the negative impacts their presence can have on local communities. At the White House, President Trump has on several occasions used the bully pulpit to highlight some of the most sensational crimes by immigrants, and he met in the Oval Office with family members of their victims. "We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored," Trump said during his prime-time address to Congress last month before highlighting each of the families' stories. "These brave men were viciously gunned down by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record and two prior deportations," Trump said to two widows of law enforcement officials killed in the line of duty. "Should have never been in our country." EFTA00695929 In his first week in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to deport most illegal immigrants who come in contact with law enforcement. His order is based on the widespread perception that illegal immigrants are a significant source of crime in the United States. This brief uses American Community Survey data to analyze incarcerated immigrants according to their citizenship and legal status. All immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives relative to their shares of the population. Even illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. BACKGROUND Estimates of the total criminal noncitizen population vary widely, from about 820,000 according to the Migration Policy Institute to 1.9 million according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but rarely is the number of those incarcerated estimated. Empirical studies of immigrant criminality generally find that immigrants do not increase local crime rates and are less likely to cause crime than their native-born peers, and that natives are more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants. There are two broad strands of this literature. The first is an area approach that analyzes how immigrants affect crime in locations where they settle, finding a general decrease in crime rates. The second broad strand of research examines immigrant institutionalization rates and uniformly finds that that native-born Americans are more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants as a percentage of their population. Illegal immigrant incarceration rates are not well studied, although one investigation estimated that 4.6 percent of Texas inmates are illegal immigrants while illegal immigrants comprise 6.3 percent of that state's total population. The best research on illegal immigrant crime exploits a natural experiment to see how the removal of illegal immigrants from an area through the Secure Communities (SCOMM) program affects local crime rates. SCOMM was an interior immigration enforcement program started in 2008 that checked the fingerprints of local and state arrestees against federal immigration databases. If ICE suspected the arrestee of being an illegal immigrant, then ICE would issue a detainer to hold the arrestee until ICE could pick them up. The Obama administration ended SCOMM in 2014, but the Trump administration reactivated it. If illegal immigrants were more crime prone than natives, the crime rates in those local areas that were first enrolled in the program should have seen crime decline relative to areas that were not. As it turned out, SCOMM had no significant effect on local crime rates, which means that illegal immigrants were not more crime prone than natives. But critics, including civil rights advocates and immigration lawyers, said the Trump administration is purposely inflating the dangers and scapegoating a wide swath of immigrants to manipulate public fears and create more political support for its hardline policies. IMMIGRANTS COMMIT CRIMES AT LOWER RATES THAN NATIVE BORN CITIZENS EFTA00695930 "Research dating back more than a century documents a pattern whereby the foreign-born are involved in crime at significantly lower rates than their peers," note Bianca Bersani and Alex Piquero, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and a criminologist at the University of Texas, respectively. These scholars contribute to a vast body of research demonstrating that popular fears about immigration and crime have been unfounded. Inline image 3 Foreign-born individuals ("first-generation immigrants") report lower rates of criminal offending than native-born citizens and they have less contact with the criminal justice system, as measured by arrest records. Indeed, two notable studies, highlighted in a report by the American Immigration Council, find: • Foreign-born individuals are less likely than native-born individuals to have engaged in violent or non-violent antisocial behaviors in their lifetimes, including harassment, assault, and acquiring multiple traffic violations, "despite being more likely to have lower levels of income, less education, and reside in urban areas." The study's authors add that these findings hold for immigrants from major world regions including Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Their analysis drew on survey data from a nationally representative sample of over 40,00o U.S. residents aged 18 years and older. • Foreign-born youth enrolled in U.S. middle and high schools in the mid-199os had among the lowest delinquency rates when compared to their peers. These researchers focused on non- violent delinquent acts such as stealing, damaging property, or selling drugs. In fact, the prevalence of foreign-born individuals among the Latino population helps to explain differences in violent crime rates between whites and Latinos. Harvard University sociologist Robert Sampson and colleagues have found that "the lower rate of violence among Mexican Americans compared with Whites was explained by a combination of married parents, living in a neighborhood with a high concentration of immigrants, and individual immigrant status." Thus all else equal, ethnic/racial groups with a higher proportion of immigrants exhibit lower rates of crime. IMMIGRANTS ARE UNDERREPRESENTEDIN U.S. PRISONS U.S. State and Federal Prison Populations by Citizenship EFTA00695931 Inline image 4 Legal and illegal immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated than natives. After immigration law violations, drug convictions were the next largest category of federal offenses of which non-citizens were sentenced (24%). In contrast, drug offenses accounted for 38% of federal sentences for U.S. citizens. Undocumented immigrants who receive federal criminal sentences are even more likely to be convicted of an immigration law violation as their most serious offense. Nearly three-quarters (93%) of the 25,670 undocumented immigrants sentenced in federal criminal courts in 2015 were convicted of an immigration offense. In addition, in that year: • Twenty percent of undocumented immigrants who received federal sentences were convicted of drug offenses (5,218 sentences). As noted above, drug offenses accounted for 38% of federal sentences for U.S. citizens. • Six undocumented immigrants received federal sentences for murder and manslaughter. This comprised .02% of federal sentences for this group (in contrast to .3% for U.S. citizens). Seen another way, undocumented individuals accounted for 4% of the 143 federal sentences for these offenses. U.S. citizens, in contrast, received 88% of these sentences (126 sentences). AGAIN: Trump has been making that connection from his first campaign speech in June 2015, when he referred to Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals and drug dealers. He appeared at campaign events with "angel moms" whose children had been killed by undocumented immigrants. Beyond illegal immigration, Trump has characterized legal immigrants as potential terrorist threats in his attempts to enact a ban on refugees and travelers from several majority-Muslim nations. Although his two travel-ban orders have been blocked in federal court, the most recent one included a provision mandating that the government begin publicizing information about acts of "gender-based violence against women," including "honor killings," in the United States by foreign nationals. In a visit to DHS in January, during which he signed a pair of executive orders to ramp up deportations in the United States, Trump said, "Pundits talk about how enforcing immigration laws can separate illegal immigrant families, but the families they don't talk about are the families of Americans." Trump's focus on those families, through the new office called Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE), represents a sharp break in rhetoric from his predecessor. President Barack Obama emphasized a balance between upholding the law and showing empathy toward immigrants who had not committed crimes, particularly those known "dreamers" who arrived in the country illegally as children and were often depicted as hard-working strivers. EFTA00695932 HIGHER LEVELS OF IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO THE HISTORIC DROP IN CRIME RATES The influx of immigrants in recent decades has coincided with a significant decline in reported crime rates, which may have been influenced by the growing immigrant population. Research has demonstrated that communities with larger immigrant populations have outpaced the public safety gains of their peers. Inline image 5 In 1990 the reported violent crime rate was 730 offenses per 100,000 residents. That same year the number of foreign-born individuals living in the United States was roughly 19.8 million (3.5 million of whom were undocumented). The violent crime rate began to fall in the mid-199os and by 2014 it was half of its 1990 level, at 362 offenses per 100,000 residents. By that year, the foreign-born population had more than doubled, reaching 42.2 million people (including 11.1 million undocumented people). Research has shown that crime rates have also decreased in "gateway" cities, which are the entry point cities to the United States and often the most densely immigrant-populated places. In addition, southwestern Border States and cities were found to be safer than similarly sized non-border areas in 2010. Even at the neighborhood level, communities with larger immigrant populations have lower crime rates. One study found that people living in Chicago neighborhoods in 2005 with at least 4o% immigrants were 8o% less likely to experience violence than people living in neighborhoods with no immigrants. In addition, immigration was generally found to not affect homicide rates of Latinos and to have mixed effects on the rate among African Americans, according to a study that looked at the relationship between immigration and homicide from 1985 to 1995 in Miami and San Diego, and from 1985 to 1994 in El Paso. Before and after his election, Donald Trump has raised concerns about increasing crime and immigration in the United States. Indeed, he has signed an executive order and made regular statements alleging that curbs to unauthorized immigration and dismantling sanctuary cities would reduce U.S. crime rates. The evidence presented here concludes otherwise. EFTA00695933 A century of research has shown immigrants do not threaten public safety and, in fact, are less likely to commit crime than native-born citizens. False statements about immigrant criminality contribute to unfounded public fears that threaten the safety of immigrants and U.S. citizens. Improving public safety is a complicated question that cannot be addressed by scapegoating foreign-born residents but rather by investing in effective community-based solutions that address the true causes of crime. ****** So True 400o years and we are back to the same language gt Inline image 1 ****** Dinosaurs EFTA00695934 Inline image 2 The shopping mall maybe the next dinosaur as a number of big-name chain have announced hundreds of new store closings and still others moved aggressively to recalibrate their businesses for the online shopping stampede. Payless Shoes filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and outlined plans to immediately close nearly 400 of its 4,400 stores globally. While Ralph Lauren is shuttering its flagship Polo store, a foot-traffic magnet on tony Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the latest step in a massive cost-cutting effort. Big-box office supplies stalwart Staples is reportedly considering putting itself up for sale. The shakeout among retailers has been building for years and is now arriving in full force. The retrenchment comes as shoppers move online and begin to embrace smaller, niche merchants. As a result, many major chains find themselves victims of a problem of their own making, having elbowed their way into so many locations that the United States has more retail square footage per capita than any other nation. To use the industry vernacular, they are simply "overstored." Many have begun cutting back, sending ripples through the economy. The wave of store closures by Macy's and Sears alone will empty 28 million square feet of retail real estate, according to an analysis by research firm CoStar. Often those vacancies are slow to fill, leaving shopping centers less hospitable to the chains that remain, feeding even more departures and job losses. The malaise has spread even as the economy overall grows stronger and the stock market marches higher. Just this week, Urban Outfitters reported that in the current quarter to-date, its comparable sales are "mid single-digit negative." The women's clothing chain Bebe said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it is closing 21 locations. Last week, yoga clothier Lululemon chief executive Laurent Potdevin acknowledged that the chain had seen "a slow start to 2017." Few traditional retailers are immune: The Limited filed for bankruptcy and shuttered all 250 of its stores. Hudson's Bay, the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, announced a $75 million annual cost-cutting effort . Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch each named a new chief executive, leadership changes that were precipitated by ongoing struggles to connect with customers. In a report published in late February, Standard & Poor's said it had already lowered ratings 20 times on various retailers this year. S&P analysts wrote that they expect to see "increased levels of stress for the sector in 2017." EFTA00695935 As big retail closes stores, it has cost many Americans their jobs. So far in 2017, retailers have announced plans to slash more than 38,000 positions, according to data from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. And yet some of those losses have probably been offset by new jobs at start-up retailers and e-commerce operations. Amazon.com, for example, said this year that it expects to create 100,000 full-time roles over 18 months. Retailers are deploying different kinds of firepower to try to regain some momentum. J. Crew announced this week that it is parting ways with its longtime creative director, Jenna Lyons, a change that effectively concedes that it needs to fix its fashion if it wants to boost its sales. Still other companies are exploring branching into different kinds of retailing formats: Ralph Lauren, for example, said it is exploring new opportunities for its Ralph's Coffee concept. Macy's is selling off some of its lucrative real estate portfolio, hoping to strengthen its balance sheet. Another chain, J.C. Penney, looks to be trying to position itself to take advantage of fallout from the turmoil: The retailer has started to carry large appliances again, a potentially shrewd move that could fill a void in the marketplace as Sears and HHGregg close stores. It doesn't help any of these legacy bricks-and-mortar companies that customers are increasingly seeking out under-the-radar labels with a more specialized, boutique feel. The likes of Bonobos, Warby Parker, Shinola and Marine Layer are picking off shoppers that might once have filled their closets with goods from more ubiquitous chains. Meanwhile, as worries mount for bricks-and-mortar players, Amazon's stock hit an all-time high Wednesday. While others pare back, the Seattle company announced a deal to stream NFL games, a milestone that underscores the e-commerce giant's growing muscle. According to research from Slice Intelligence, Amazon captured 38 percent of all dollars spent online during the holiday season. The next-closest retailer, Best Buy, had a mere 3.9 percent. And now the old guard has to worry about Amazon encroaching in new ways: It is branching into physical retailing, including opening several bookstores. In Seattle, it is preparing to open a concept called Amazon Go, a technology-powered grocery store that would not require shoppers to go through a checkout line. All of this change is not just pushing traditional retailers to reduce their overall numbers of stores — it is also forcing them to rethink what their stores should look like. Office Depot, for example, is converting some stores to a smaller footprint of just 15,000 square feet. Target recently announced that it is testing a new store prototype in which there will be a separate entrance and dedicated parking for shoppers looking to retrieve a "buy online, pick up in store" order. As a result, the shopping mall as we know it today, may be on its way to extinction.... much like the dinosaurs. ****** Donald Trump gives a baffling, extremely incorrect history lesson on Andrew Jackson The fact that .Jackson died 16 years before the Civil War apparently didn't stop him from being "really angry" about it. EFTA00695936 R, Inline image 1 A portrait of former President Jackson hangs on the wall behind President Trump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, as he speaks in the Oval Office on March 31. It's not unusual for an American president to try and learn from this nation's history. But the lessons that President Donald Trump has apparently drawn from his studies border on the surreal. The current president shared his thoughts on his predecessor Andrew Jackson in a Sirius XM interview set to broadcast on May 1, 2017. Those thoughts bore only a very casual relationship to anything that Andrew Jackson actually did. "I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War," Trump said. "He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, `There's no reason for this.'" Of course, Jackson couldn't have been that angry over "what was happening with regard to the Civil War." He died in 1845, a full 16 years before the start of the Civil War. It's unclear why Trump believes Jackson would have prevented the Civil War if he had been "a little later." After all, "Old Hickory" famously threatened to send federal troops into South Carolina after the state claimed it had the right to nullify a federal tariff. But maybe Trump believes that Jackson, an unapologetic supporter of slavery, would not have given the South cause to secede in the first place. Ned Resnikoff Dan Rather Is DONE, Posts BRUTAL Takedown Of Donald Trump After His Ridiculous Civil War/Andrew Jackson Claims I TruthExaminer.com EFTA00695937 Inline image 2 I wanted to let this story go. I really did. I don't want to be distracted from all the important things taking place. Where are we on the Russia investigation again? But the sheer craziness of this obsession by Donald Trump with Andrew Jackson and the Civil War is a carnival act unlike anything I have ever seen at the White House. And not to let something drop, there is Mr. Trump on Twitter just recently pouring gasoline on the fires of his ignorance. Never mind that Mr. Trump's knowledge of American history seems below that of most grade schoolers. Never mind that Jackson is not exactly the kind of president, or man, you would want to hold up as an example. And never mind that there is an implicit criticism of arguably our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln. (It reminds me of his slam against John McCain and how war heroes aren't captured. Apparently great presidents don't wage a war to keep the Union together). These are the rantings of someone who really should be focused on the job of governing. Should we not conclude that he approaches policy decisions with the same half-baked conspiracies with which he apparently approaches history? To be President of the United States is to part of the great American story. To not understand that story is to not understand the presidency. Maybe Frederick Douglass can give Mr. Trump some advice. Apparently, he's "an example of somebody who's done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more." Dan Rather EFTA00695938 lit Inline image 2 The above was the end of the my piece until I read the article in this week's SLATE Magazine by Jamelle Bouie - The Danger of Trump's Civil War Ignorance which truly provided a short background behind cause of the Civil War and an clear analysis of why President Trump's "alternative history" claims about Andrew Jackson's character, priorities and that he, instead of 'low energy' Abe Lincoln, (considered by most as one of the greatest Presidents ever, if not the greatest), could have stopped the Civil War and suggesting that would have been good for the Country, without acknowledging that in 1860 there were more than 4,000,000 slaves held in bondage. Above all, Trump's musings are a reminder that his ignorance isn't an act or a performance. Excerpts from Bouie's article —Trump (the dealmaker) isn't wrong to think there was a deal that could have prevented the Civil War. There was. But the price of that deal was the maintenance of slavery; in fact, the strengthening of a monstrous system of violence and exploitation. That this wasn't obvious to President Trump — that, judging from his continued tweets on the issue, it still isn't — is as revealing as it is troubling. It suggests a worldview in which everything can be resolved by deals, where there are no moral stakes or irreconcilable differences, where there aren't battles that have to be fought for the sake of the nation and its soul. Slavery had to be eradicated, and war was the only option. Any deal that was achievable would have been an immoral maintenance of an abominable status quo. Likewise, Trump seems to see presidential leadership as a game of deal making, where the best and most effective presidents are those that make the most "deals." But this just isn't true. Deal making and negotiation are part of the job of the presidency, but they have to happen with a purpose in mind; with an idea of the good within reach. Simply striking a deal for the sake of a deal is a recipe for terrible missteps or outright capture by antagonistic interests. Trump's amoral and opportunistic approach may pay dividends in the world of real estate, but it can bring disaster in government, obscuring real challenges, alienating potential allies, and bringing bad outcomes. Above all, Trump's musings are a reminder that his ignorance isn't an act or a performance. The president of the United States isn't just inexperienced; he is profoundly unknowledgeable about his EFTA00695939 country and its history, as uninterested in the challenges of the past as he is the dilemmas of the present. He knows nothing of the world around him, other than the selected information he receives from his advisers, which then gets restated to us, the public, in often-garbled form. This ignorance isn't just embarrassing; it's also a threat to our collective and institutional well-being. A president who knows nothing of the past will likely blunder in office; a president who knows nothing of history will likely repeat the worst mistakes of his predecessors; a president who all but relishes his ignorance will, at some point, lead us all into disaster. Attached please find, Jamelle Bouie's article in its entirety as it is a insightful synopsis of the events, people and attitudes that led to the Civil War I urge everyone to download and read.... ****** Please Tell Me He Didn't Say That If they get too comfy in assisted housing, he says, they won't ever want to leave. Inline image 1 Every so often you read something and can't believe what you read. Most recently for me it was an article in the Huffington Post by Sam Levine under the heading — Ben Carson Wants To Make Sure Poor People Aren't Too Comfortable — because if they get too comfy in assisted housing, he says, they won't ever want to leave. One of the priorities for Ben Carson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, is that ne is concerned that those who rely on the government for help with their housing aren't too comfortable. I know that when he is touring public housing he sprinkles phrases like "creating a nurturing environment" but when he is with his fellow cronies and the Conservative Establishment the tenor of his conversation is completely the opposite. EFTA00695940 The New York Times recently followed Carson as he toured housing facilities in Ohio, where he seemed very interested in the amenities residents received. During one stop, Carson noted that an apartment complex for veterans was just missing pool tables. He also simply nodded along when he learned that employees stacked bunk beds at one homeless shelter where they deliberately deny residents television. Carson told the Times that his understanding of compassion meant not giving those who need help "a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: just stay here. They will take care of me.'" Carson appeared more interested in talking about the comfort level of residents than federal funding during his tour, according to the Times. When Trisha Farmer, the CEO of a housing facility that provides support for recovering drug addicts asked Carson for federal support, he replied he wanted to incentivize "those who help themselves." He then repeatedly asked how comfortable her facilities were letting people get, according to the Times. About 2.2 million families depend on housing assistance from HUD through the agency's Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher system. The average household income for families getting HUD assistance was $13,726, according to the 2010 census data. Before President Donald Trump nominated him to lead HUD, Carson had no experience in housing policy or government. A close friend of Carson's had previously told The Hill that Carson didn't want to run a federal agency because he had no experience doing so, although he eventually accepted the position. Carson told the Times he wanted to focus on getting developers to hire low-income residents for construction projects. Trump's proposed budget would slash funding for HUD by more than $6 billion. The cuts would include eliminating the Community Development Block Grant Program, which provides assistance to a number of community organizations, including Meals on Wheels. The president has also proposed eliminating a program that helps the poor pay to heat their homes. The $3.3 billion cut to that assistance program would save just 0.2 percent of discretionary spending. In an interview with the Times, Carson suggested that HUD programs wouldn't be eliminated entirely. "I know they have been called out for elimination. My impression is that what [President Trump] is really saying is that there are problems with those programs," Carson said. "And I think it may have been someone on his staff who kind of said, `Well, maybe we just need to get rid of the whole program.' No, we don't need to get rid of the whole program because there are some extremely good things there." During his confirmation hearing, Carson expressed skepticism of the very concept of helping people get housing, saying the best thing the government could do for someone getting public assistance was to get them off it. This is one of the problems with novices. They don't understand the complexity. As the President admitted, he didn't realize how complex healthcare was or that how difficult the job of the Presidency. When Ben Carson believes that his priority is getting people out of public housing he obviously doesn't understand the actually responsibilities of his job. Because unless he is generating jobs (or education to get jobs), for people living is public housing other than making them more comfortable, there is little else that he can do for them. And being insensitive to their comfort as if poverty is a crime and public housing is a sort of purgatory is cruel or stupid. EFTA00695941 The reality is that although there are millions of Americans scamming the system, there are tens of millions more who are not. They include homeless families, children, the elderly, returning veterans with PTSD and millions of Americans with physical and mental challenges as well as tens of millions who have fallen through the cracks as the jobs for their skills have been outsourced to Bangladesh, China and elsewhere or are now performed by robots or evaporated like those jobs in the asbestos industry that were plentiful in the 197os. And for the person heading the department with the responsibility of helping those in need of housing feel uncomfortable is appalling. Why should poor innocent children live in uncomfortable conditions because their parents can't find a job that support market rents? Why should the elderly on fixed incomes, live in poverty in the richest country of the world? Why should those who have physical and mental challenges or returning veterans be denied creature comforts of a middle-class quality of life, when our current government is proposing trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the Top i%? Why don't more people see what Ben Carson and his cohorts are suggesting as immoral and ugly? Especially, when these same people consistently drape themselves in the cloak of Christianity? "I see each individual as human capital that can be developed to become part of the engine that drives our nation — or, if not developed, becomes part of the load," he said. As someone who spent the first twelves of my life in railroad cold water flat, that made public housing look like paradise, I can assure Secretary Carson and others that poor people don't need to be incentivize to want to "move up to the Eastside" as George Jefferson use to say. Poverty is not due to the lack of personal responsibility as many conservatives believe. And just because you, Ben Carson, and I have made it out of poverty to live in a world that no one could have envisioned, doesn't mean that those children and parents who didn't are slackers. We need our political leaders to be more sensitive to the needs of those who have fallen through the cracks and not act like overseers on a plantations trying to keep slackers from slacking. But as long as we have a government that believes that dispensing money from the top to create opportunity for us all, the attitude that those at the bottom are what is dragging the country down.... And this is my rant of the week.... WEEK' s READING S Carlos the Jackal Venezuelan playboy Illich Ramirez Sanchez - who once one of the world's most wanted terrorists. EFTA00695942 Inline image 1 Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez (born 12 October 1949), also known as Carlos the Jackal, is a Venezuelan terrorist currently serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murder of an informant for the French government and two French counter-intelligence agents. While in prison he was further convicted of attacks in France that killed 11 and injured 150 people and sentenced to an additional life term, and to a third life term in March 2017. A committed Marxist-Leninist, Ramirez Sanchez is commonly described as one of the most notorious political terrorists of his era. When he joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in 1970, recruiting officer Bassam Abu Sharif gave him the code name "Carlos" because of his South American roots. After several bungled bombings, Ramirez Sanchez achieved notoriety for the 1975 raid on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) headquarters in Vienna, which killed three people. This was followed by a string of attacks against Western targets. For many years he was among the most wanted international fugitives. Carlos was dubbed "The Jackal" by The Guardian after one of its correspondents reportedly spotted Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal near some of the fugitive's belongings. His upbringing and early life seemed filled with contradictions. His family background was upper- middle class, with his father operating an exclusive, highly lucrative law practice alongside being a deeply committed Marxist, ensuring his son received an education which emphasized communist political theory and revolutionary ideas. Ramirez's mother was a popular socialite, allowing her son to develop a playboy lifestyle which seemed to go against the revolutionary ideas he professed. Poor performance and conflicts with academic authorities saw Ramirez expelled from Patrice Lumumba People's Friendship University in Moscow in 1970. He swiftly joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), commencing his training as a militant revolutionary. During this time he was given the name 'Carlos, possibly in reference to his South American heritage. Carlos' first mission for the PFLP was to assassinate Joseph Sieff, president of the popular British retail chain Marks and Spencer and a prominent Jewish figure. Carlos forced his way into Sieffs home on 3rd December 1973 and seriously wounded him with a gunshot wound to the head. Carlos was forced to flee before he could kill Sieff however, his gun jamming before he could fire the final shot. Over the next few years Carlos was involved in several other terrorist attacks. He played a key part in planning the occupation of the French embassy in the Netherlands by the Japanese Red Army. As the French negotiated the hostages' release, it was Carlos who threw a grenade at a crowded Parisian cafe. EFTA00695943 The attack killed two and wounded many more. Fearing further attacks, the French authorities had agreed to the Japanese Red Army's demands within a few days. In June 1975, one of Carlos' accomplices was apprehended by the French police. He led them to the flat Carlos was staying in, where they were welcomed by the Venezuelan terrorist with drinks and conversation. As the police started to relax, Carlos took out a machine gun and opened fire — killing two French detectives and the informant who had betrayed Carlos. The event was a turning point, Carlos moving from relative obscurity to the subject of an international manhunt. The media soon dubbed him `Carlos the Jackal'. The attack on the OPEC headquarters in 1975 was by far the biggest operation of Carlos the Jackal's career however, malting his name recognized with fear around the world. The target of the attack was a meeting of oil ministers from oil producing countries, in the Austrian capital Vienna. A heavily armed group of Arab and German terrorists, led by Carlos, stormed the site of the meeting with machine guns. Three people were killed, while 63 were taken hostage, including eleven oil ministers. Carlos issued clear, simple demands. A communique explaining the Palestinian cause was to be broadcast on Austrian television and radio networks every two hours, and a bus would be supplied to take the terrorists and their hostages to Vienna airport. Austrian authorities, likely fearing a massacre and aware of Carlos the Jackal's brutal reputation, swiftly met all of the demands of the group dubbed the `Arm of the Arab Revolution'. The terrorists escaped to Algeria, where all of the hostages were released unharmed. Such was the shock caused by the event that OPEC would not hold another summit for 25 years. For almost twenty years Carlos escaped capture, the ominous aurora around the terrorist growing each year he evaded the authorities. In 1994 he was finally caught while recuperating from a medical procedure in Sudan. He was clandestinely extradited to France where he was charged with the 1975 murders. At trial he denied all involvement, and accused Israel of being a terrorist nation, claiming his motives had only ever been to secure Palestinian liberation, "When one wages war for 3o years, there is a lot of blood spilled - mine and others. But we never killed anyone for money, but for a cause — the liberation of Palestine." He was found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison along with two of his accomplices. His life has since been dissected and discussed in movies and books, the shifting interpretations of his actions, from fame obsessed murderer to honest believer in a controversial cause, providing an insight into the shadow he left over the world in the 1970s. For his part, Ramirez Sanchez denied the 1975 killings, saying they were orchestrated by Mossad, the Israeli secret service, and condemned Israel as a terrorist state. During his trial in France in 1997, he said, "When one wages war for .30 years, there is a lot of blood spilled—mine and others. But we never killed anyone for money, but for a cause—the liberation of Palestine." In May 2007, anti-terrorism judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere ordered a new trial for Ramirez Sanchez on charges relating to "killings and destruction of property using explosive substance? in France in 1982 and 1983. The bombings killed eleven and injured more than roo people. Ramirez Sanchez denied any connection to the events in his 2011 trial, staging a nine-day hunger strike to protest his imprisonment conditions. The trial, which had been expected to last six weeks, began on 7 November 2011, in Paris. Three other members of Ramirez Sanchez's organization were tried in absentia at the EFTA00695944 same time: Johannes Weinrich, Christa Margot Frohlich, and Ali ICamal Al-Issawi. Germany has refused to extradite Weinrich and Frohlich, and Al-Issawi, a Palestinian, "is reportedly on the run." Ramirez Sanchez continues to deny any involvement in the attacks. On 15 December 2011, Ramirez Sanchez, Weinrich and Issawi were convicted and sentenced to life in prison; Frohlich was acquitted. Ramirez Sanchez appealed against the verdict and a new trial began in May 2013. He lost his appeal on 26 June 2013 and judges in a special anti-terrorism court upheld his life sentence. In October 2014, he was also charged for a Paris drugstore attack in September 1974 that killed two and wounded 34. After a lengthy appeal of the charges, in May 2016 his trial was ordered to proceed and opened in March 2017. On 28 March 2017, he was sentenced to a further life term for this attack. I remember back in the 197os in France, friends telling me that they had just partied with Carlos the Jackal as he was known to like high-end discos/clubs and champagne but the funny thing is, that like many people today, I thought that he was long dead... ****** HOW TRADER JOE'S WINE BECAME CHEAPER THAN BOTTLED WATER Charles Shaw wine, aka "Two Buck Chuck," is one of the best-selling products ever sold at Trader Joe's, topping 800 million bottles in its first 12 years. Inline image 1 It might sound insane, but there's a decent bottle of wine out there that costs less than some bottles of water. That's been the gimmick of Charles Shaw, aka "Two Buck Chuck," which hit the shelves at Trader Joe's in January 2002. The wine's $1.99 price tag, simple off-white label, and saccharine EFTA00695945 flavor, closer to grape juice than wine, sparked a collective freak out among American bargain hunters. It flew in the face of the wine world's snobbery; it was an every person's bottle of wine. For years, there's been more legend than truth in the story of how it remains so inexpensive. Word on the street was that Shaw had slashed the price to spite his ex-wife, who owned half of his Napa Valley winery. Others claimed branches, dead birds, and insects were fermented as filler along with the grapes to keep costs down. Chuck Shaw himself -- who went broke, sold the brand, and disappeared from the limelight decades ago -- never quite set the record straight. To get to the bottom of it, the author tracked down a half-dozen insiders from the early days of the winery, including the reclusive man behind the label, who now lives alone in a Chicago high-rise and says he's poised for a comeback with a new wine brand. The upshot? None of the lore is exactly true -- but the real story is just as juicy. 2 Inline image 2 The man behind the label Before his name became synonymous with bargain booze, Charles Shaw was an early pioneer of the Napa Valley wine industry and made delicious, award-winning vino. Chuck Shaw, founder of Charles Shaw (after graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1965 and finishing his army commitment, Shaw went onto Stanford Graduate School of Business): I was going to Stanford in 1971, taking a small-business class. My professor told each student to find a company in the area to work with. I heard about a guy who was making wine out of his garage, so I started working with him and fell in love. I knew I wanted a vineyard. But my wife, Lucy, said, "You don't have any money," so I took a job at a bank. The bank later asked me to go to Paris and my office ended up being right behind [famous wine expert] Steven Spurrier's school (where he became enamored of Beaujolais wine). I got hooked. I flew to Napa and bought 20 acres above Lake Hennessey. Bob Dempel, vineyard manager for a decade: He used Lucy's mother's money to start the winery. She had grown up wealthy; it was her inheritance. EFTA00695946 Shaw: I moved my family there to start Charles Shaw winery in 1974. We were part of a pioneering group out there. In 1978, we made our first production of gamay. We were so excited. It was carbonic, it had an amazing garnet color and was really quite striking. I liked to drink it with a Tiffany's all-purpose glass. You could smell it just sitting at the table, and people said it had notes of banana. "CHARLES SHAW WINE USED TO BE GREAT --AND NOBODY DRANK IT. NOW, ITS TERRIBLE AND IT'S SELLING LIKE GANGBUSTERS." Keith Wallace, wine expert and author: The wine he made back then was actually really good. But nobody was buying it because nobody knew much about gamay. The irony is that Charles Shaw wine used to be great -- and nobody drank it. Now, it's terrible and it's selling like gangbusters. Shaw: By 1983, we were charging $13.50 for a bottle. In 1992, the business had grown to 115 acres. It was some of the best wine in the Napa Valley. We won awards internationally. Pretty soon, we were putting out 15,000 cases a year of multiple types of wine with some 6o employees. Dempel: Beaujolais nouveau was his pride and joy. Back then, a bottle was more than I could afford. It used to be very high-end. I would be there weekly inspecting the crop and I got to know Chuck and Lucy well. He was athletic and exceptionally good-looking and so was Lucy. Everyone in the Napa Valley knew them. When they walked into a restaurant, people would stare and say, "There go Charles and Lucy Shaw." They were treated like Jackie and JFK. Like a Camelot couple. Bad breaks and big mistakes After years of success as a legitimate Napa Valley winery, bad business moves, a baffling streak of bad luck, and an explosive divorce lead to the downfall of the multimillion-dollar brand. Dempel: They started bleeding money in the early '9os. Shaw: I made some big mistakes. I released a batch of wine in small wooden barrels, which was a real popular thing to do at the time. This was 1986. The supplier was supposed to use beeswax but instead they used paraffin [a petroleum-based wax] and it tainted the wine. It ruined it -- you could taste it. And it broke my heart. And I had to recall almost all of them. It cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars. I lost 1,40o barrels. I also entered into a bad agreement with national distributors. I aggressively suggested we increase production quite dramatically on our Burgundy-style wines [in 1987]. It was my own darn fault. They agreed and we doubled them. But people in those days wanted merlot and cabernet. Nobody was thinking about Burgundies. This was long before the movie Sideways. We overproduced and I should have been more careful. Then, in the late '80s, we got root louse and had to replace an entire 50-acre EFTA00695947 vineyard. It was completely destroyed. A couple years later, there was a bit of a recession. One thing led to another and I lost everything in 1992. It was a hit of a few million dollars. Dempel: Lucy was devastated they had lost her mother's money. He started staying in the empty au pair's room. And there was another guy fast on the scene. Shaw: It was tough because I lost my wife and my business at the same time. It was a very unhappy time for me. It really hurt. It's still hard knowing it was my fault. It was a mess, in terms of the divorce. I didn't fully recover from losing her and the business until six or eight years ago. I just kept thinking, "I wish I'd done this or that." Now, here I am feeling almost i00% and I'm not a kid anymore. I'm 73. Dempel: There was a little more to the story. Chuck would fly away all the time for fishing trips and leave Lucy and the kids behind. She told me that's what broke them up. On one trip, the whole family came and they got into a big fight. He told her "it's a woman's job" to bring drinks for the kids on the boat. Boy, she didn't like that. Backsliding into bankruptcy It was the early '9os and the business was in a free fall. Amidst the turmoil, a familiar wine mogul known for his shrewd, vulture-like business style snaps up the failing label. Shaw doesn't see a penny from the transaction. Wallace: The winery had to be auctioned off and all of his vines were ripped up. It was sort of poetic. Tom Eddy, court-appointed trustee of Charles Shaw vineyard: It was tragic. In 1992, they went bankrupt and stopped producing the wine. The creditors were after them. A judge overseeing the bankruptcy case hired me to protect the property. He said, "You make sure the place is locked and nobody breaks in. Keep the wine safe. Oh, and by the way, neither Charles nor Lucy can set foot on the property." I said, "That's fine." But I didn't know what I was getting into. Dempel: Chuck filed for bankruptcy [in 1992]. Workers never got paid -- I never got paid. The last time I saw Chuck, he had stashed the last of his cash under the floor of his car. I bought him breakfast. I thought he was going through a major form of depression. Eddy: Lucy was a pistol. She was supposed to leave the vineyard in 90 days. But in her mind, it was her place and she wasn't leaving. I had to change the locks. It was ugly and pretty awkward for me. I told her, "I'd like to help you but I can't. You need to start looking for a place that you and your kids can rent. Otherwise, it's gonna be embarrassing if the sherfff has to come out here." Eventually, she figured it out and left. EFTA00695948 "I TRIED TO PUT IT ALL BEHIND ME BUT I NEVER STOPPED THINKING ABOUT WINE." Dempel: Years ago, I ran into Lucy. She was working as a salesperson at a bookstore. She looked me square in the face and said, "Bob, all of the money is gone. It was all my mother's money, and now it's gone." I was taken aback. I thought, Here's the Camelot lady and she's selling fucking books. Shaw: I tried to put it all behind me. I totally changed what I was doing. I went to Chicago and helped start a company called DataBase Network Systems. But that might have been foolish; I never stopped thinking about wine. Eddy: We were trying to sell the vineyard for $3 million. The judge called and said, "Is there anything else we can sell?" I said, "Well, the trade name." He said, "Let's try to make a deal." I thought that Fred Franzia, who owns Franzia and Bronco wines, would be interested. He would go after anyone who was in trouble, buy up distressed wineries, turn them around, and dump them off to someone else. It was his M.O. Fred Franzia is a controversial and colorful character. That's all I'll say about him. I don't want him to come after me. So Franzia said, "What do you want for it?' I said, "$35,000." And he said, "Hell no," and hung up. A week later he called back and offered $27,000. I was stunned because, really, I wasn't expecting a nickel. It ended up being a brilliant business move on his part. Shaw: I didn't get any of that money. And I haven't seen a penny since. Franzia doesn't care about me and I stay out of his way. Charles not in charge Fred Franzia buys up the trademark and slashes the wine's price. The $1.99 tag stirs up a slew of rumors about the wine's quality, some of which aren't terribly off the mark. The brand is sued for the levels of arsenic in the wine. Eddy: Franzia used the exact same name and the exact same label on the bottle. Even the same original artwork: a picture of a little pagoda that used to sit by [Shaw's] tennis court. He shocked the world by slapping a $1.99 label on it. Everybody in the industry thought it was impossible. He had the testicles that nobody else had, to sell wine at that price. He'd shoot over to Portugal or France and knock on the door of a cork or glass producer and say, "If I write you a check for $2 million, will you fill up this boat with cork? I don't care about quality." Wallace: A few years ago, a report came out, claiming machine harvesting left branches, bugs, and birds in the grapes in the wine. It's true that there is method of machine harvesting, which I believe [Franzia] uses, and you get some bugs and birds in it. It sounds gross but it's not really a big issue. EFTA00695949 The FDA has requirements on how much of that is OK. [Note: Franzia has claimed the company uses methods to filter out branches and animal residue.] Brian ICabateck, lawyer: The company's white zinfandel is one of 83 California wines that tested positive for high levels of inorganic arsenic. Our conclusion is that something is going on inside the winery, not in the field where grapes are grown. More likely than not, they're adding something to the wine. It may be something in the filtering process that they're using -- something akin to cheap diatomaceous earth. Those high arsenic levels have an effect on the reproductive and cardiovascular systems. It has been linked to cancer. Arsenic is basically poison. I t's a significant public health risk. Wallace: It's not actually good. It's so sweet and nasty. It's full of residual sugar, which is bad for consumers. Ifs not hard to make cheap wine. You can make anything cheaply by cutting corners. It is the complete industrialization of wine, making it a commodity like grain. A lot of it is automated with little concern for quality. Eddy: The last time I was at Bronco, they were doing 7 million cases. That was 2010. It's still one of Trader Joe's most popular products. Wallace: Can you imagine how much that would suck? It's your dream. You work hard and make really good wine. Then, all of a sudden, your name is tainted. Inline image 3 The amazing $2 bottle In the early aughts, Charles Shaw wine gets its nickname, rising to cult stardom as the accessible and cheap wine option. But as Two Buck Chuck finds its place in the world, the original man behind the label gets left in the dust. EFTA00695950 Shaw: I've seen some reports that are very wrong about why it's cheap. Some of them are so wrong, they're funny. No, the wine is not $2 because I wanted to get back at [Lucy]. I don't know the particulars about how ifs made. But Franzia deserves the credit. Wallace: People went apeshit. This was around 2002. Articles were saying this wine is amazing and actually drinkable. It was a fad -- the "Macarena" of wine. I would always hear about it from college students. And it was this blue-collar pride thing. People thought, "This bottle is just as good as one that's $20. Screw those snobs." Eddy: I've been in the wine business for 42 years and I've never seen anything like it. You'd watch little old ladies with blue hair line up at the shop and say, "I want one case of that and one case of that." Alison Mochizuki, Trader Joe's rep: Somewhere along the way, these wines were dubbed "Two Buck Chuck." We wish we could take the credit for that, but alas, some scribe came up with that moniker. Eddy: As far as I remember, it was a local wine writer who coined the term. Couldn't tell you his name -- but it stuck. Shaw: I used to worry about having my name on a bargain wine. I went on 2o/2o more than a decade ago, complaining about it. I said, "We started out with premium winery. And now look at it." But now I think that was immature of me. You know? I actually like the name Two Buck Chuck. It ties it to me. It's better than the brand disappearing -- or being forgotten. By NATALIE O'NEILL — Thrills) — 03130120/7 Risk of Sleep Deprivation to Your Brain Inline image 1 EFTA00695951 We universally accept that sleep is one of the important pillars of good health; equally important as healthy foods, pure water and exercise. An increasing number of studies demonstrate how sleep relates to your sleep-wake cycles and plays a central role in multiple processes that are key to your health. But little is known why sleep is so important to your health and why many people experienced waking up after a poor night's sleep, feeling cranky, over-tired and mentally foggy. And this is only a small fraction of the mental and physical health issues you may suffer from sleep deprivation. On the surface, you may have suffered through bad moods and poor energy levels from lack of sleep. Chronic sleep deprivation can also lead to depression, weight gain, increased risk of diabetes and cancer and increased risk of accidents. Sleep is necessary to feel alert, be productive and creative and for optimal body functioning. The good news is that scientist may be discovering the mechanisms behind why sleep is so important to your health. Quality sleep doesn't often happen naturally. Bombarded with artificial light pollution, work stress and insufficient exposure to full-spectrum natural sunlight during daylight hours, you may need to make sleep a goal to enjoy the health benefits. A recent study from the University Medical Center Freiburg in Germany set out to understand more about the function of sleep and the interrelationship with health disorders and treatments. Although it may appear as if sleep is an inactive state, your brain and body are actually quite busy while you're sleeping. Synaptic Plasticity May Hold One Answer to the Importance of Sleep Specifically, the researchers were interested in synaptic plasticity, or how the connectivity between neurons in your brain changes. Past research has demonstrated sleep has an influence on the strength of those neuronal connections. This study looked at the overall strength of the connections between neurons and the selective strengthening that occurs as your brain learns and encodes new information, called associate plasticity. The study engaged the participation of 20 individuals to evaluate synaptic plasticity with and without sleep deprivation. The first stage of the research involved using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the motor cortex of the brain in order to stimulate hand movement. After just one night of sleep deprivation the participants required less stimulation to elicit hand movement. This indicated a greater degree of neuron excitability in the brain. This increased excitability also reduces the selective strengthening of the neurons important to learning. While the participants reacted more quickly to stimuli after deprivation, they learned more slowly. They tested the learned response by electrically stimulating a nerve in the arm immediately before administering TMS. EFTA00695952 The expected response would have been for the relevant synapses for this movement to strengthen as the electrical stimulation mimicked the movement elicited by the TMS. It's an elementary mechanism of memory and learning that was inhibited with sleep deprivation. From this information the researchers established that sleep essentially recalibrates homeostatic and associative plasticity in your brain. In other words, sleep is essential to learning adaptive behavior at the level of your brain's neurons. Regions of Your Brain Act Differently After Sleep Deprivation Interestingly, not all areas of the brain react in the same way to sleep deprivation. Some areas suffer from lack of sleep more than others. Another study using brain scans studied participants after consecutive nights of no sleep and found areas of the brain involved with concentration and problem solving were especially sluggish. The researchers were focused on better understanding how sleep impacts the rhythmic nature of psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders. Study co-author Derk-Jan Dijk, Ph.D., of the University of Surrey, England, was quoted in Science News saying: "We've shown what shift workers already know. Being awake at 6 a.m. after a night of no sleep, it isn't easy. But what wasn't known was the remarkably different response of these brain areas." The study enrolled 33 young adults who went without sleep for 42 hours. Over this period of time they participated in tasks measuring reaction time, memory and learning; had their melatonin levels measured to assess and track their sleep-wake cycles and underwent 12 brain scans. The researchers found specific areas of the brain's activity increased and decreased with the rise and fall of melatonin, such as in the hypothalamus. However, there were other areas of the brain that continued a downward spiral of activity and ability to perform, not in harmony with the circadian rhythm but rather driven by growing sleep debt. As you might expect, the areas of the brain that experienced reduced function controlled learning, memory and the ability to perform simple tasks. Light Pollution Affects Your Sleep Pattern The challenge of getting quality sleep increases each year as new technological devices are produced that keep you entertained. When you are forced to go without electricity, such as camping or if the power goes out, you sleep deeper and arise more rested. Light sources at night interrupt your EFTA00695953 circadian clock and melatonin levels, both responsible for how deeply you sleep and well-rested you feel the next day. An increase in sleep disruption happens more frequently with blue light emitted from digital devices and not just any source of artificial lighting. Many incandescent lights emit a red wavelength, which is not as detrimental as the blue lights from your eBook readers, computers, cell phones and energy efficient LED lights. This blue light is beneficial during the day as it boosts your attention, improves your mood and reduces your reaction times. At night these changes may have yet another effect on your body. According to a study published in Current Biology, increasing the number of hours you're exposed to artificial lighting may also have an effect on the strength of your muscles and density of your bones. Researchers studied rats kept under 24-hour lighting conditions for six months and compared their strength and bone density to a control group exposed to 12 hours of light followed by 12 hours of dark. The experimental group experienced weight gain, reduced strength and had higher blood glucose. The good news was the effects appeared to reverse after two weeks of normal lighting conditions. The High Cost of Sleep Deprivation After reviewing the study, Chris Colwell, Ph.D., neuroscientist, psychiatry professor and sleep specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles was quoted in The New York Times, saying: 'The study is the first of its kind to show markers of negatively-affected muscle fibers, skeletal systems and motor performances due to the disruption of circadian clocks, remarkably in only a few months. They found that not only did motor performance go down on tests, but the muscles themselves just atrophied and mice physically became weaker under just two months under these conditions." Although stress, lifestyle choices and light pollution may affect the quality of your sleep, there is also an underdiagnosed sleep disorder that may affect the quality of sleep you experience. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a sleep-related breathing disorder during which your air exchange may stop momentarily or decrease, despite your ongoing effort to breathe. Unfortunately, you may not recognize the symptoms of OSA as they include changes to your breathing patterns while you're sleeping. While awake you may experience chronic drowsiness and fatigue, and your sleeping partner may complain of loud snoring at night. The economic impact on employers may be as high as $86.9 million in lost productivity each year, and just under $150 billion is the economic burden of undiagnosed OSA, including lost productivity, motor vehicle accidents and workplace accidents. EFTA00695954 The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) estimates 12 percent of the U.S. adult population suffers from OSA. In a companion report to their new analysis, researchers found that once treated, individuals experienced a positive impact on their health and quality of life, including better sleep quality, greater productivity and a 4o percent reduction in absence from work Sleep Deprivation Linked to Dementia A lack of sleep may also increase your risk for dementia. Researchers from University of California Berkeley's Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab discovered that a lack of sleep leaves your brain more vulnerable to proteins believed to trigger dementia. Alzheimer's disease has been diagnosed in almost 4o million U.S. adults and is considered one of the more debilitating forms of dementia. This study discovered beta-amyloid, a protein associated with those who suffer from Alzheimer's disease, aggregates in your brain when you are chronically sleep deprived. These deposits hinder your ability to sleep and thus set up a vicious cycle. Lead author Bryce Mander, Ph.D., neuroscientist from the University of California Berkeley was quoted in California Association UC Berkeley magazine, saying: "What was unknown was whether or not that's just a side relationship that has nothing to do with the clinical symptoms of dementia, or if sleep disruption is part of why these toxic chemicals in the brain are causing memory loss. This is not to say that amyloid and other pathologies can't impact memory independent of sleep. But it does suggest that part of the way it impacts memory is through sleep-dependent memory." Other research demonstrates that amyloid plaques, common in Alzheimer's disease, build up more quickly in sleep deprived lab animals. A second study then discovered how sleep clears toxins from your brain while sleeping, reducing your potential risk for dementia. Risks Associated With Sleep Deprivation Sleep deprivation, or a lack of quality sleep, has a significant impact on your brain health and your overall health and wellness. There are good reasons you may want to develop good sleep habits and strive to achieve quality sleep every night. EFTA00695955 Gti Inline image 2 How You May Improve Your Sleep Quality Increasing the number of hours you sleep to eight each night and improving your quality of sleep may help to significantly reduce your risks associated with sleep deprivation. Below are several suggestions that may help. For a more comprehensive list of strategies, see the article titled, "Want a Good Night's Sleep? Then Never Do These Things Before Bed' by Dr. Mercola Turn your bedroom into an oasis for sleep Your bed is a place to sleep and rest comfortably. Only two other activities will not significantly impede a restful sleep: reading and intimate relations with your significant other. Anything else, such as work, computers, cells phones or watching television will reduce the quality of your sleep. Reduce any noisy interruptions from pets or outdoor activities. You might consider removing your pet from the bedroom or using a white noise machine to reduce interruptions from outdoor noises. Establish a soothing pre-bedtime routine Humans are creatures of habit. When you establish a soothing bedtime routine you go through each evening before bed, you're more likely to fall asleep easily. Activities such as a warm bath, reading a good book or relaxation exercises may help you fall asleep easier. If you have trouble falling to sleep one night, ifs better to leave the bedroom and read quietly than to try even harder to fall asleep. I would strongly recommend using blue-blocking glasses if you do this, to prevent your reading light from further depressing your melatonin production. Keep a consistent schedule EFTA00695956 When you go to bed and wake up at the same times, your body becomes accustomed to the routine. This helps regulate your circadian clock so you fall asleep and stay asleep all night. Keep this routine even on the weekends. Get plenty of bright sunlight exposure in the morning and at noon Exposure to bright light first thing in the morning stops production of the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin and signals to your body that it's time to wake up. Outdoor sunlight is best, so you might even want to take a quick walk outside. Not only will this increase in physical activity help you sleep later, but taking your walk outdoors — either first thing in the morning or around noon when the sun high — gives you more exposure to bright sunlight. Light intensity is measured in lux units, and on any given day, the outdoor lux units will be around 100,000 at noon. Indoors, the typical average is somewhere between too to 2,000 lux units, about two orders of magnitude less. The author of this article says that he takes a one-hour walk every day in the bright sunlight on the beach, so along with boosting his vitamin D, he also anchor his circadian rhythm at the same At sundown, dim your lights (or use amber-colored glasses) In the evening (around 8 p.m.) you'll want to dim your lights and turn off electronic devices. Normally, your brain starts secreting melatonin between 9 p.m. and to p.m., and these devices emit light that may stifle that process. After sundown, shift to a low-wattage bulb with yellow, orange or red light if you need illumination. A salt lamp illuminated by a 5-watt bulb is an ideal solution that will not interfere with your melatonin production. If using a computer or smartphone, install blue light-blocking software like flux, which automatically alters the color temperature of your screen as the day goes on, pulling out the blue wavelengths as it gets late. The easiest solution, however, is to use amber-colored glasses that block blue light. The author found an Uvex model (81933X) on Amazon that costs less than $io and works like a charm to eliminate virtually all blue light. This way you don't have to worry about installing programs on all your devices or buying special light bulbs for evening use. Once you have your glasses on, it doesn't matter what light sources you have on in your house. Check your bedroom for electromagnetic fields (ENIFs) EFTA00695957 These can disrupt your pineal gland and the production of melatonin and serotonin, and may have other negative effects as well. To do this, you need a gauss meter. You can find various models online, starting around $50 to $200. Some experts even recommend pulling your circuit breaker before bed to kill all power in your house. Exercise daily Your body thrives on exercise and movement. It reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders. Exercise will help you get to sleep more easily and sleep more soundly. However, your body also releases cortisol during exercise, which may reduce your melatonin secretion. Exercise at least three hours before bed, and earlier if you can. Keep your room cool The optimal temperature for sleeping is between 6o and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. If your room is cooler or warmer you may have a more restless night's sleep. During sleep your body's core temperature drops to the lowest level during a 24-hour period. The cooler your room is, the more conducive it may be to your body's natural drop in temperature. Evaluate your mattress and pillow You'll experience more restful sleep when your mattress and pillows are comfortable and supportive. You'll want to consider replacing your mattress after nine or 10 years, the average life expectancy of a good quality mattress. Downshift your mental gymnastics before bed Put all your work away at least one, and preferably two, hours before bed. You need a chance to unwind before falling asleep without being anxious about the next day's plans or deadlines. Dr. Mecola — September 2016 Be careful when buying meat! EFTA00695958 Inline image 1 Web Link: https://www.facebook.com/JewishVoiceNV/videos/1396899700330496/ I am sure that this is not the norm but I am also sure that when push comes to shove some of the less than honorable butchers use these tactics pushing the envelope in an endeavor to make more profits or just to survive THIS WEEK's QUOTE EFTA00695959 Inline image 1 THIS IS BRILLIANT Movie Magic The Blackbird can shape-shift into any car you want. Inline image 1 Web Link: https://www.facebook.com/dhammkini/posts/10154436147520737 EFTA00695960 Simply Amazing THINK ABOUT THIS R In.e image. BEST VIDEO OF THE WEEK Father-Daughter Dance EFTA00695961 Shows That The Wedding Day Dance Needn't Be A Bore !aline image 2 Web Link: https://youtu.be/OulFZhMA88g Ashley Richmond's wedding happened all the way back in 2011, but years later her dad-and- daughter dance routine is still a viral hit. With a wide range of tracks in their compilation, covering material from Beyonce to Motown, there's something in here for everyone. The video has garnered over 1.4 million views, and even though Ashley was psyched about her routine on the day of her wedding, she had no way of knowing just how big of a hit the clip would prove to be or that it would land them a slot on "Good Morning America" performing for an audience in Times Square. Enjoy their Magic... THIS WEEK's MUSIC Steven Tyler EFTA00695962 Inline image 1 This week you are invited to enjoy the music of rock icon, Steven Tyler, the former lead singer of the mega-rock band Aerosmith with hits like "Dream On" and "Walk This Way," Steven Tyler has also served as a judge on American Idol for two seasons. Steven Victor Tallarico, was born on March 26, 1948 in Yonkers, New York. As the lead singer of Aerosmith, Tyler is considered to be one of rock's greatest showmen. The son of a music teacher, he started playing drums at a young age, but then focused on singing. After moving to Boston in the late 1960s, Tyler eventually met up the musicians that would form the rock group Aerosmith. He reportedly met up with guitarist Joe Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton while they were playing in different bands in the Sunapee, New Hampshire area. Guitarist Ray Tabano (who was later replaced by Brad Whitford) and drummer Joey Kramer joined up with the others to form Aerosmith. The band played its first gig together in 197o, and shared an apartment in Boston. In 1972, Aerosmith signed a contract with Columbia Records. The following year their self-titled debut album was released. It featured the song "Dream On," which was a minor hit. In the early days of the group many comparisons were drawn with the Rolling Stones because their similar bluesy sound and the physical resemblance between Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler. But with their third album, Toys in the Attic (1975), the band emerged as a leading rock group in its own right. Showcasing their talent for creating hard rock, Aerosmith scored with such hits as "Sweet Emotion" and "Walk This Way." Their follow-up album Rocks (1976) also had strong sales despite the lack of a breakout single as did Draw the Line (99T7). But by the end of the decade, the band was coming apart at the seams. Perry and Whitford eventually left the group while Tyler became heavily involved with drugs. Tyler kept the group going by adding new members, but his personal problems affected his creative abilities and Aerosmith was only a shadow of its former self. By the mid-1980s, Tyler had gotten his act together after going through a rehabilitation program. In 1986, rap group Run-D.M.C. covered Aerosmith's famous "Walk This Way" single on their Raising Hell album. The rendition featured vocals by Tyler and Joe Perry, and helped push Aerosmith back into the limelight. By 1987, the band had made a successful comeback: That year, Aerosmith released Permanent Vacation, which featured the hits "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)" and "Rag Doll." The revitalized rock supergroup had more commercial success with its next effort, Pump (1989), which EFTA00695963 featured such songs as "Love in an Elevator" and "Janie's Got a Gun." With the rise of the cable music channel MTV, the band's videos helped them win over a new generation of fans. Aerosmith's winning streak continued with 1993's Get a Grip, driven in part by such singles as "Livin' on the Edge," "Cryinm and "Crazy." By the end of 1990s, the group was unable to maintain its chart momentum with later albums. Tyler and his bandmates were still a big draw for concerts with droves of their fans turning out to see the group play live. Health problems have also cropped up for the famed performer in recent years. He underwent throat surgery in 2006 that could have ended his singing career. Fortunately the procedure was a success, but Aerosmith had to cancel half of its North American tour for that year. Also in 2006, Tyler announced that he had been treated for Hepatitis C, a liver disease. In 2008, Tyler checked into Las Encinas Hospital rehabilitation clinic in Pasadena, California, to recover from multiple leg surgeries to repair damage to his feet. Then in 2009, during an Aerosmith performance, Tyler fell off a stage in South Dakota, breaking his shoulder. The band was forced to cancel yet another tour. After his fall in 2009, it was reported that Tyler planned not to return to Aerosmith. A month later, Joe Perry confirmed that Tyler quit Aerosmith to pursue a solo career, but shortly after, Tyler assured fans that he was not quitting the band. In 2010, the frontman headed off on the Cocked, Locked, Ready to Rock Tour with Aerosmith, performing in more than 18 countries. Despite numerous challenges in 2009 and 2010, Tyler returned to the studio in 2011 with Aerosmith, to begin working on a new album. The band released a greatest-hits album, Tough Love, in 2011, and is slated to release Music from Another Dimension! in November 2012. His much anticipated autobiography entitled Does The Noise In My Head Bother You? was released in 2011. A best seller, the book provides an inside look to Tyler's many wild exploits with some critics comparing it to Rolling Stone Keith Richard's graphic memoir Life. Not afraid to joke at his own expense, Tyler indicated that he suffers from "Lead Singer Disease." Tyler scored another hit earlier that year, signing on to judge contestants on the popular singer reality show American Idol. He, along with Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson, signed on for another season at the judges' table in 2012. In January 2012, however, Tyler found himself under fire from the public and the media. His less-than-stellar performance of the national anthem at the NFL playoff game produced a wave of criticism; many objected to the "pitchy" way in which he sang "The Star- Spangled Banner." Tyler did not publicly respond to his critics' remarks. In July 2012, Tyler announced that he would not be returning to American Idol for a third season. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he explained his decision: "After some long, hard thoughts, I've decided it's time for me to let go of my mistress, American Idol, before she 'boils my rabbit'," Tyler said, referencing the film Fatal Attraction. "I strayed from my first love, Aerosmith, and I'm back -- but instead of begging on my hands and knees, I got two fists in the air and I'm kicking the door open with my band. The next few years are going to be dedicated to kicking some serious ass -- the ultimate in auditory takeover." EFTA00695964 Promoting his new solo country LP, Steven Tyler phoned into The Howard Stern Show last June, as well as to confirm the rumors that Aerosmith are planning a farewell tour in 2017. "I love this band, I really do, and I want to squash every thought that anybody might have about this ... We're doing a farewell tour, but only because it's time. We've never done that," Tyler said. Wikipedia describes Aerosmith legacy as — Influenced by bands such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, and the New York Dolls, Aerosmith proved to be a major influence themselves on subsequently massively successful bands and musicians; according to Perry, Eddie Van Halen once told him that his band Van Halen "started out on the suburban L.A. club circuit, playing Aerosmith songs". Aerosmith's influence was evident on the next generation of hard rock and heavy metal bands, namely Motley Crile, Ratt, Guns N' Roses, Tesla, L.A. Guns, Cinderella, Faster Pussycat, Skid Row, Extreme, Warrant, the Black Crowes, and the Quireboys, as well as Metallica, Metal Church, and Testament. Especially, Guns N' Roses and Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash has stated that Aerosmith is his favorite band, and Motley Criie's Nikki Sin has expressed massive admiration for the band and its early records in both The Dirt and The Heroin Diaries. Like many of their 1970s contemporaries including Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper, Tyler and the other members of Aerosmith were prone to excess and debauchery. Drug consumption was rampant; the recording sessions for 1976's Rocks and 1977's Draw the Line were especially noted for their substance indulgence, including heroin. In the words of Bebe Buell, "They/Aerosmith were like a gang of kids with their own planes, Porsches, millions of dollars, limitless resources. [...] Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page had control, but these boys did not care. They won the prize, hands down, for the rowdiest American rock 'n' roll band in that era. No question." With this said you are again invited to enjoy the music of one of the original bad boys of American rock who has matured into one of its elder statesman.... the badass himsejf, the one and only, Steven Tyler.... Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith - Dream On -- https://youtu.be/o2SIK4O2UDo - Walk This Way -- https://youtu.be/pL4uESRCnv8 - Janie's Got A Gun -- https://youtu.be/RqQn2ADZEIA - Sweet Emotion -- https://youtu.be/33C1rPlzuVQ - I Don't Want to Miss a Thing -- https://youtu.be/JkK8g6FMEXE - Angel -- https://youtu.be/CBTOGVb cQg - Back In The Saddle -- https://youtu.be/ZFTBIyz6VCs - Mama Kin -- https://youtu.be/pata BEIHDE Aerosmith — Same Old Song and Dance (from You Gotta Move) -- https://youtu.be/ig r j i 6U Aerosmith — Last Child -- https://youtusbe/9mtN78D8kQU Steven Tyler — Come Together -- https://youtu.be/291FSZ7KoVwU Aerosmith — Crazy -- https://youtu.be/NMNgbISmF4I EFTA00695965 Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith Aerosmith - Dude (Looks Like A Lady) -- https://youtu.be/nfooXY4nDxE - Love In An Elevator -- https://youtu.be/h3Yrhv33Zb8 - Amazing -- https://youtu.be/zSmOvYzSeaQ - Livin' On The Edge -- https://youtu.behnqcLomjMjw - Cryin' https://youtusbe/qfNmyxV21Ccw - Toys In The Attic -- https://youtu.be/6uyerzDiiFc - Rats In The Cellar -- https://youtu.befif2qj6jozeU - Draw the Line -- https://youtu.be/ALGwst9ySIM Santana ft. Steven Tyler — Just Feel Better -- https://youtu.be/enbTb8PizTI Pink & Steven Tyler — Misery -- https://youtu.be/2PK8Zi3rW3E Willie Nelson & Steven Tyler — One Time Too Many & Once is Enough -- https://youtu.be/32Taj2wVsSQ Steven Tyler feat. Slash — Dream On (live, 2014) https://youtu.be/syCAX4HcZBU?1 ist=RDsyCAX4HcZBU I hope that you have enjoyed this week's offerings and wish you and yours a great week.... Sincerely, Greg Brown Gregory Brown Chairman & CEO GlohalCao Fanners. Di' US: Tel: Fax: Sk EFTA00695966