Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
Little Nemo gawker earthquake today earthquake today Romney ray lewis Bosses Day 2012
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Syracuse Plows West Virginia, 38-14, In Snowy 2012 Pinstripe Bowl (VIDEO/PHOTOS)
NEW YORK ? The weather made passing at the Pinstripe Bowl perilous, so Syracuse sent Prince-Tyson Gulley and Jerome Smith dashing through West Virginia and the snow.
Gulley ran for a career-best 208 yards and had three touchdowns, Smith added 157 yards, and the Orange bid a blustery farewell to the Big East with a 38-14 victory Saturday.
Syracuse (8-5) will enter the Atlantic Coast Conference on a roll after finishing this season with six wins in its last seven games, capped by its second postseason victory at Yankee Stadium in the last three years.
In a bowl played in a baseball stadium, with weather more suited for a playoff game in Green Bay, the team that plays in a dome ended up being better equipped to handle the elements.
"The football Gods brought snow," said Smith, who carried a season-high 30 times. "The football Gods from Syracuse brought us some snow and it changed even West Virginia's game. They had to run a little bit more than they were used to. We ran the ball a little bit more than we're used to and did what we were supposed to do."
Syracuse finished with a season-high 369 yards on the ground and beat its former Big East rival from West Virginia, now playing in the Big 12, for a third straight time.
"They just did a better job than us at the line of scrimmage," Mountaineers coach Dana Holgorsen said. "To be in a game like this when you've got to rely on your run defense to help you win and you're not able to do it, it's frustrating."
Geno Smith connected with Stedman Bailey for two touchdown passes for West Virginia (7-6), but the Mountaineers' quarterback also was sacked in the end zone in the first half and called for intentional grounding in the end zone in the third quarter to give Syracuse a second safety.
Smith, who was an early Heisman Trophy front-runner as the Mountaineers got off to a 5-0 start this season, was 16 for 26 for 197 yards in the final game of his record-breaking career. The NFL awaits.
Same goes for Ryan Nassib, though Syracuse didn't ask much of its talented senior quarterback. He threw two touchdown passes and an interception. His most impressive feat on this day was surviving being driven into the cold turf by Terence Garvin on a sack in the first half. Nassib missed only one play.
"It's my last game, man, nothing's going to take me out," he said.
Especially against a West Virginia team the Orange felt didn't give them much credit after two straight victories over the Mountaineers.
"It was about us going out there and getting respect," tackle Justin Pugh said. "They didn't give us any respect. We kind of said three strikes you're out. Beat them three straight times, so they really can't say anything now."
Snow fell just about all game, giving most of the field a white dusting. Fans were bundled and players not in the game tried to do the same. It took a while for those potent offenses ? both ranked in the top 25 nationally in yards per game ? to heat up, which seemed appropriate considering the conditions.
"Cold. Cold," said Jerome Smith, a junior from Delaware. "I never got a chance to play in the snow, but it was good."
His running mate from Akron, Ohio, had just a bit more experience playing in wintry weather.
"In pee-wees I played in some (snow) like this but not in high school," said Gulley, who carried 25 times. "It was fun."
A goal-line stand by West Virginia in the second quarter kept Syracuse out of the end zone, but set up the Orange for a scoring run.
Left at the 1, the Mountaineers tried to pass out of their end zone, but Geno Smith was smothered by blitzing linebackers Cameron Lynch and Siriki Diabate to make it 5-0 ? a baseball score, of course.
The Orange followed that up with a 33-yard touchdown run by Gulley to make it 12-0 with 6:07 left in the second.
The Mountaineers responded with their first sustained drive. Bailey took a quick pass, darted and broke tackles, and scooted 32 yards to the end zone to make it 12-7.
The Orange extended the lead to 12 to start the second half when they caught a break ? and a touchdown pass. Nassib's throw was tipped around the goal line, but floated safely into the waiting arms of intended receiver Beckett Wales for a 10-yard score.
West Virginia appeared to answer with a touchdown of its own. Andrew Buie broke free for a 28-yard TD run on fourth-and-2. Not so fast. A holding call on the Mountaineers wiped out the play and sent Holgorsen on to the field screaming at the officials.
It didn't help. Instead of a touchdown, a punt.
Holgorsen had nothing to say about the call and was more disappointed with how his team responded.
"We did a poor job of continuing to play. A poor job of overcoming some things," he said.
Moments later another close call, this time on a fumble by Geno Smith which was reviewed to determine if it was an incomplete pass, went Syracuse's way, and again the Orange capitalized.
On the next play, Gulley broke through the line, bounced to the outside and went 67 yards for a touchdown to make it 26-7 with 6:52 left in the third.
West Virginia wouldn't let Syracuse pull away. Smith found Bailey deep down the sideline, beating one-on-one coverage for a 29-yard score 1:11 later.
Back came the Orange, nine plays, 70 yards, with Gulley taking a swing pass from Nassib 10 yards to make it 33-14.
From there the 60th meeting between these teams, but first in a bowl, was a romp in the snow for Syracuse.
___
Follow Ralph D. Russo at www.Twitter.com/ralphdrussoap
"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/29/syracuse-west-virginia-pinstripe-bowl-2012_n_2382371.html
Dana Vollmer phillies phillies Ryan Dempster Phelps NBC Olympics Live Olympic medal count
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Shopping And Product Reviews - cebaln's posterous
As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.
Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.
Source: http://matkopliza9.typepad.com/blog/2012/12/shopping-and-product-reviews-toys-article-category-by-elleeatist.html
the giver march 30 rimm george h w bush pauly d project adrienne rich autism
Source: http://idaopilem.posterous.com/shopping-and-product-reviews-toys-article-cat
paul williams paul babeu kevin costner budweiser shootout animal house invincible jesse jackson
Source: http://fifeir.posterous.com/shopping-and-product-reviews-toys-article-cat
santorum new hampshire debate rupaul meet the press steelers vs broncos chris herren jay z
Source: http://cebaln.posterous.com/shopping-and-product-reviews-toys-article-cat
Eric Idle rory mcilroy Fatboy Slim Rio de Janeiro Shark Week London 2012 closing ceremony Shark Week 2012
Source: http://fseneiuni.posterous.com/shopping-and-product-reviews-cebaln39s-poster
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
CP Group denies Thaksin role in Ping An acquisition - The Nation
Home ? business ? CP Group denies Thaksin role in Ping An acquisition
CP Group VS Ping An
The Nation December 26, 2012 1:00 am
"The Charoen Pokphand Group would like to officially clarify as follows: The acquisition of shares were legal - the source of capital is transparent," the group said in a statement yesterday.On December 5, All Gain Trading, Bloom Fortune Group, Business Fortune Holdings and Easy Boom Developments signed an agreement to transfer shares of Ping An Insurance from the seller HSBC Insurance Holdings and the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The deal raised eyebrows as it was valued at US$9.4 billion or 73.32 billion Hong Kong dollars (Bt288 billion).
"All four companies are subsidiaries of CP which CP fully owns," CP Group insisted. "Furthermore, this acquisition was conducted with legal capital from the Charoen Pokphand Group and its subsidiaries."
It also said that since the People's Republic of China opened up its economy in 1979, CP had cooperated well with its government. CP was the first foreign entity to invest in China and throughout the years, CP had upheld Beijing's three agricultural-development policies as well as the "Three Benefits Principle" (benefit to the country, benefit to the people and benefit to the company).
In addition, CP said, it had continually reformed agricultural management such as expanding farmland, setting strict standards and modernising agriculture.
It said it was confident in the development of Ping An Insurance and aimed to collaborate with the company to develop every sector in the rural area, in line with the policy of modernising China's agricultural sector.
It was reported by Chinese media this week that Thaksin might have taken part in the acquisition of Ping An Insurance.
Caixin Media's Century Weekly magazine reported, quoting sources, that about a third of the HK$15.2-billion (Bt60-billion) first tranche of the purchase was funded by the Shinawatra family, while the rest came from businessman Xiao Jianhua.
Xiao is the founder of several banking and securities firms and has also invested in some. He is reportedly close to former top Chinese government leaders and securities watchdog officials. Century Weekly said his purchase of the Ping An stake was funded by three commercial banks he has links to.
Latest stories in this category
John Orozco Garrett Reid shawn johnson Tony Sly Lauren Perdue tagged Heptathlon
Getting into Shapes: From Hyperbolic Geometry to Cube Complexes
A proof announced in March resolved the last of 23 questions about 3D shapes posed in 1982 by mathematician William Thurston, marking the end of an era in the study of "three-manifolds"
Figure 3. When viewed through the lens of hyperbolic geometry, all the fish are the same size. The curves that run along the fishes? spines are hyperbolic straight lines, or "geodesics." Image: Illustration: Douglas Dunham, University of Minnesota Duluth
From Simons Science News (find original story here).
Thirty years ago, the mathematician William Thurston articulated a grand vision: a taxonomy of all possible finite three-dimensional shapes.
Thurston, a Fields medalist who spent much of his career at Princeton and Cornell, had an uncanny ability to imagine the unimaginable: not just the shapes that live inside our ordinary three-dimensional space, but also the far vaster menagerie of shapes that involve such complicated twists and turns that they can only fit into higher-dimensional spaces. Where other mathematicians saw inchoate masses, Thurston saw structure: symmetries, surfaces, relationships between different shapes.
?Many people have an impression, based on years of schooling, that mathematics is an austere and formal subject concerned with complicated and ultimately confusing rules,? he wrote in 2009. ?Good mathematics is quite opposite to this. Mathematics is an art of human understanding. ? Mathematics sings when we feel it in our whole brain.?
At the core of Thurston?s vision was a marriage between two seemingly disparate ways of studying three-dimensional shapes: geometry, the familiar realm of angles, lengths, areas and volumes, and topology, which studies all the properties of a shape that don?t depend on precise geometric measurements ? the properties that remain unchanged if the shape gets stretched and distorted like Silly Putty.
To a topologist, the surface of a frying pan is equivalent to that of a table, a pencil or a soccer ball; the surface of a coffee mug is equivalent to a doughnut surface, or torus. From a topologist?s point of view, the multiplicity of two-dimensional shapes ? that is, surfaces ? essentially boils down to a simple list of categories: sphere-like surfaces, toroidal surfaces, and surfaces like the torus but with more than one hole. (Most of us think of spheres and tori as three-dimensional, but because mathematicians think of them as hollow surfaces, they consider them two-dimensional objects, measured in terms of surface area, not volume.)
Thurston?s key insight was that it is in the union of geometry and topology that three-dimensional shapes, or ?three-manifolds,? can be understood. Just as the topological category of ?two-manifolds? containing the surfaces of a frying pan and a pencil also contains a perfect sphere, Thurston conjectured that many categories of three-manifolds contain one exemplar, a three-manifold whose geometry is so perfect, so uniform, so beautiful that, as Walter Neumann of Columbia University is fond of saying, it ?rings like a bell.? What?s more, Thurston conjectured, shapes that don?t have such an exemplar can be carved up into chunks that do.
In a 1982 paper, Thurston set forth this ?geometrization conjecture? as part of a group of 23 questions about three-manifolds that offered mathematicians a road map toward a thorough understanding of three-dimensional shapes. (His list had 24 questions, but one of them, still unresolved, is more of an intriguing side alley than a main thoroughfare.)
?Thurston had this enormous talent for asking the right questions,? said Vladimir Markovic, a mathematician at the California Institute of Technology. ?Anyone can ask questions, but it?s rare for a question to lead to insight and beauty, the way Thurston?s questions always seemed to do.?
These questions inspired a new generation of mathematicians, dozens of whom chose to pursue their graduate studies under Thurston?s guidance. Thurston?s mathematical ?children? manifest his style, wrote Richard Brown of Johns Hopkins University. ?They seem to see mathematics the way a child views a carnival: full of wonder and joy, fascinated with each new discovery, and simply happy to be a part of the whole scene.?
In the decades after Thurston?s seminal paper appeared, mathematicians followed his road map, motivated less by possible applications than by a realization that three-manifolds occupy a sweet spot in the study of shapes. Two-dimensional shapes are a bit humdrum, easy to visualize and categorize. Four-, five- and higher-dimensional shapes are essentially untamable: the range of possibilities is so enormous that mathematicians have limited their ambitions to understanding specialized subclasses of them. For three-dimensional shapes, by contrast, the structures are mysterious and mind-boggling, but ultimately knowable.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=5ce9c9493f34b63896b4bacab71f79b8
justin timberlake michael dyer bachmann bachmann iowa caucus results sickle cell trait sugar bowl
Internet Marketing Advice That Can Make You More Successful | Jim ...
Mistakes Are Costing You! Learn To Stop?Making ALL 189 Of Them!
Struggling With WordPress? 100+ Step-By-Step Videos Now Available!
Affiliate marketing is quite a fascinating area. Many businesses, both large and small, have benefited greatly from online forms of advertising. While this is exciting, it can also be stressful for the Website marketing beginner. Use these tips to get started with your website.
Technology moves fast, and if your company wants to keep up, you are going to have to take advantage of all the technology available for marketing success. Neglecting to remain current undermines your clients? confidence in your capabilities. If you want to gain respect and see more sales, you need to show visitors that you are up-to-date in your field.
Make sure you are very knowledgeable about the content on your site. This is vital not solely because it gains you credibility about your field, but it also prevents you from appearing dishonest because you don?t know what you?re talking about.
TIP! Solicit feedback whenever possible. This is very important to your business, as your perception of your prices and your site?s appearance might differ from the customer?s opinion.
Offer freebies that are branded with your company and submit those freebies to the websites that advertise those kinds of deals. If it is a free e-book, submit it to websites that offer free e-books. You can find many websites that are happy to list free offers.
Craft your banner ads so that they stand out from the other million banner ads on the web. The more appealing and original your banner ad appears, the more people you?ll have clicking on it.
TIP! Put some banners on your header, make sure they do not look like a banner. If they appear as clickable links, your customers will be more apt to use them.
People focus on website URLs. Make sure your website is easy to remember so that a customer will be able to quickly and easily access it whenever they desire. When you are setting up your company, you should always try to incorporate your brand name or company name. While customers can Google you, make it simpler by having an address they can easily remember and type into their search bars.
Study the most successful techniques that your competitors are using, then expand on them and use them with your website. If your competitors? websites make you want to buy something, analyze the techniques used to make you feel that way.
You possess the skills needed to be successful in online marketing. You don?t need elaborate software or a wild, far-fetched scheme, you only need yourself. You simply need a good strategy and a great work ethic.
TIP! The internet has turned business into an anonymous affair. Small businesses benefit from this the most as they rely on a more personal and relationship based strategy to help sell, and create a lifelong customer base.
Give your customers a reason to visit your website. You don?t need to create an entire encyclopedia, but having a good amount of information that your customers can easily access is important. Add reviews, articles and other content that will let prospective customers know that you are a business that knows your industry.
You can use online tools to determine the efficiency of your marketing approach; one option is to calculate the percentage of site visitors who ultimately end up making a purchase. Most major companies online offer various add-ons and trackers, which allow you to see the comparison of visitors to sales numbers and repeat customers.
A title often commands respect. If you?re a business owner, become CEO. If you are not the owner, you can still adopt an impressive title. When you write articles ensure you have a good title and sign it along with your name.
TIP! Any online business plan and marketing strategy should include a fully secure ordering process. Guarantee the security of your customer?s information so they are not leery of sharing it with you.
You can?t succeed at Website marketing without a great website. Regularly test your site to make sure there are no broken links, missing images, or other problems. If your website proves to be full of mistakes or links that don?t work, then your potential customers will go elsewhere.
Tailor versions of your website to different audiences worldwide. Offer visitors the option of choosing their own language when viewing your site. With a more global approach, you will get a lot of traffic and a lot more customers. If a person can read your website in their preferred language, they will feel more comfortable, and you raise the chance that they will place an order with you.
Advertising is your best avenue to making your online business successful. Advertising can greatly increase the profits of your business. It helps to make new customers that may not have been able to find you otherwise.
TIP! A little sizzle in your website design can be good, but don?t overwhelm your readers with fancy tricks. You only have a few seconds to engage your potential customer and give them a reason to stay on your site.
Marketing online is like other markets in some ways; however, in other ways, it is very different. For example, what if search engines stopped emphasizing title keywords in their ranking systems? If this happens, you will have to adjust your marketing strategy.
Make a simple video where you demonstrate using the products that you are selling. That way the customer is going to see you use the product. Be sure to demonstrate any and all features and benefits that the product has. Upload this video to sites such as Youtube, and put it on your blog.
Marketing over the Internet is something that is filled with multiple strategies and it can be perceived as a gift or a curse. It is a good thing that there is a lot of room for customization, but that means it can be very difficult to make your choices. The following tips will make your journey into Web marketing a success.
TIP! Design an all-inclusive website with an emphasis on fresh, relevant content. Give knowledge to your customers in a short time, so they are informed prior to purchasing a product.
Are you ready to have success in the home based business industry and build it on autopilot? Click below to register for free today. See how it works here. Also check out our team benefits here
Source: http://leucabiz.com/blog/internet-marketing-advice-that-can-make-you-more-successful/
obama open mic jefferson county colorado extenze tenacious d steve smith zou bisou bisou tim tebow press conference
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Ranchers split over US border security plan
NOGALES, Ariz. (AP) ? When Dan Bell drives through his 35,000-acre cattle ranch, he speaks of the hurdles that the Border Patrol faces in his rolling green hills of oak and mesquite trees ? the hours it takes to drive to some places, the wilderness areas that are generally off-limits to motorized vehicles, the environmental reviews required to extend a dirt road.
John Ladd offers a different take from his 14,000-acre spread: the Border Patrol already has more than enough roads and its beefed-up presence has flooded his land and eroded the soil.
Their differences explain why ranchers are on opposite sides of the fence over a sweeping proposal to waive environmental reviews on federal lands within 100 miles of Mexico and Canada for the sake of border security. The Border Patrol would have a free hand to build roads, camera towers, helicopter pads and living quarters without any of the outside scrutiny that can modify or even derail plans to extend its footprint.
The U.S. House approved the bill authored by Utah Republican Rob Bishop in June. But prospects in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate are extremely slim and chances of President Barack Obama's signature even slimmer. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified in Congress this year that the bill was unnecessary and "bad policy."
Still, an idea that House Republicans kicked around for years has advanced farther in the legislative process than ever before and rekindled discussion over how to balance border security with wildlife protection.
The debate raises some of the same questions that will play out on a larger scale when Congress and the president tackle immigration reform: Is the U.S. border with Mexico secure, considered by some lawmakers to be a litmus test for granting legal residency and citizenship to millions? Has the U.S. reached a point of border security overkill?
Heightened enforcement ? along with a fewer available jobs in the U.S. and an aging population in Mexico ? has brought Border Patrol arrests to 40-year lows.
The U.S. has erected 650 miles of fences and other barriers on the Mexican border, almost all of it after a 2005 law gave the Homeland Security secretary power to waive environmental reviews. The administration of President George W. Bush exercised its waiver authority on hundreds of miles after years of court challenges and environmental reviews delayed construction on a 14-mile stretch in San Diego.
The Border Patrol, which has doubled to more than 21,000 agents since 2004, has also built 12 "forward operating bases" to increase its presence in remote areas. Instead of driving long distances from their stations every shift, agents stay at the camps for several days.
Lots more needs to be done, according to backers of Bishop's bill to rewrite rules on millions of acres of federal land managed by the Interior and Agriculture departments, including more than 800 miles bordering Mexico and 1,000 miles bordering Canada. The bill would waive reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act and 14 other laws in dozens of wilderness areas, national forests and national parks.
"It's a paralyzing process now," Bell, 44, said as his GMC truck barreled down a dirt road on a 10-mile stretch of his ranch that borders Mexico. "They wanted to put this road in for a decade, probably even longer. They broke ground on it last year."
Bell, a burly, third-generation rancher who leases his land from the Agriculture Department, acknowledges there are noticeably fewer border crossers since the government built a fence on the eastern part of his ranch, near Nogales. In the ranch's west end, the Border Patrol opened one of its camps in 2005 ? a collection of shipping containers that agents use as a base while alternating 12-hour shifts.
Yet migrants continue crossing in some rugged reaches that are well outside of cellphone range. Bell says waiving environmental reviews within 100 miles of the border may be unnecessary but that a 25-mile zone would help immensely.
"There are areas where the agents can't get to," he said. "By the time they get out of the station and get to these remote areas, then hike another two or three hours just to get close to the border, they have to come back because their day is pretty much eaten up. It's really difficult when there's no access out there."
Ladd, a fourth-generation rancher whose spread near Douglas is in a flatter, more easily traveled area of mesquite-draped hills, thinks the Border Patrol has gone far enough. The agency installed four 80-foot camera towers on his land about six years ago. In 2007, it completed a fence along the 10.5 miles of his ranch that borders Mexico.
Rainfall that runs downhill from Mexico is stopped by debris caught in the mesh fence and an adjoining raised road, Ladd says. The water is diverted to other areas, causing floods and soil erosion on his property.
Ladd, 57, thinks the bill would allow the Border Patrol to "run roughshod" over ranches and farms.
"Be careful what you wish for, they're going to tear it up," Ladd tells other ranchers. "Once they get in, it pretty well turns into a parking lot. It's really hard to get them out."
Ladd says the 37 miles of roads on his ranch are enough for the Border Patrol's needs. "Why do you need new ones?" he asks.
The Interior Department raised concerns in a survey of Arizona's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge last year that found nearly 8,000 miles of off-road vehicle trails, blaming much of it on smuggling and Border Patrol activity. It urged the Border Patrol to rely on tools like radars and cameras, which are less threatening to wildlife.
Critics of the Border Patrol's growth have long called new fences, roads and other infrastructure a threat to Sonoran pronghorn, Mexican grey wolves, jaguars and other border wildlife.
A Government Accountability Office report in 2010 offered fodder for both sides of the debate. It found Border Patrol supervisors generally felt land laws didn't hinder them on the job but that the agency sometimes encountered roadblocks. An unnamed agency took four months to review a Border Patrol request to move a camera tower in Arizona, by which time traffic had moved to another area.
Rep. Raul Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who has led opposition to the bill that has largely split along party lines, calls the effort a disguised step toward repealing environmental laws.
"The border has become a very convenient excuse to go after laws that have been on the books for four or five decades," he said. "You plant your flag on the 100 miles (of border) and then build from there."
Bishop dismisses that criticism as a scare tactic and a "lousy argument."
"Sovereign countries control their borders. Anything that stops us from that is a violation of why we are a nation," he said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ranchers-split-over-us-border-security-plan-175026635.html
willis mcgahee willis mcgahee ship aground off italy nfl playoff schedule 2012 nfl live saints vs 49ers vanessa marcil
Monday, December 24, 2012
Cats and song tributes dominate viral videos
By Randee Dawn, TODAY contributor
This year, we discovered it was possible to mash up wildly divergent parts of pop culture (Cookie Monster and The Dark Knight), or pretend we were riding horses ("Gangnam Style" tributes) or just watch a cat spin on a turntable. And then we sent those videos around. Everywhere. To everyone.
In case you missed some of the year's great viral videos, we've compiled?a list of our favorites.
(Note: Some of the videos may have adult language, or situations.)
Movies
Darth Vader visits Disneyland, rides teacups
Okay, so it was part of a big ad campaign following Disney?s acquisition of George Lucas? space opera epic -- but that didn?t make the mashup of Lord Vader with the Happiest Place on Earth any less hilarious. Thanks to cheap editing software and a prevailing geek ethic, virals featuring comic book characters/movie franchise heroes (Batman Gets Lost Thanks to Apple Maps) and straight-up Pixar favorites (?Toy Story? toys burn up in family prank on Mom) were among the most popular this year. And let?s not forget the mashups: Prepare for your holiday travel with the Scariest Flights from Films in One Supercut and then calm your nerves by watching 250 Movies in 2 Minutes.
TV
Downton Tabby
Popular TV shows were ripe for parody. PBS?s ?Downton Abbey? offered the most fertile ground for hilarity, from the use of cats (see above) to subbing in a former Will Smith character (The Fresh Prince of ?Downton Abbey?). ?Breaking Bad? also was popular for mixologists, who blended the meth-making characters with a pop tune (Taylor Swift Takes ?Breaking Bad? Turn). Sometimes multiple shows got mashed together, as in Don Draper Eats Brains on ?Walking Dead Mad Men.? And wouldn?t ?Game of Thrones? be even more interesting if, instead of swords, they borrowed from "Star Wars"? (?Game of Thrones? with Lightsabers.)
PBS
Happy Little Trees Grow Again in Bob Ross video
If ?Downton Abbey? held a warm place in many readers? hearts, nostalgia for PBS and Muppet-related programming was white-hot. Gentle painter Bob Ross was able to paint again, while singing, thanks to auto-tune (see video above), a connection was forged between Cookie Monster and Batman (Video Proves Dark Knight is Secretly Cookie Monster), and the Muppets welcomed ?The Voice?s? Cee Lo into their homes (Muppets Join Cee Lo on ?All I Need Is Love? video).?
Music
USA Olympic Swimming Team?s ?Call Me Maybe? Tribute
U.S. Naval Academy Midshipmen Go ?Gangnam Style?
A newcomer to the U.S. must think everyone is out there dancing (or galloping) in the streets 24/7, thanks to the flood of ?Gangnam Style? and ?Call Me Maybe? tribute videos. (The original "Gangnam Style" video itself hit 1 billion views on Dec. 21.) Among the most-watched of these videos here at TODAY.com were the Olympic Swimming Team?s tribute to the Carly Rae Jepsen song?and the Naval Academy?s take on ?Gangnam Style.? Ohio University?s band also got into the ?Gangnam? act, as did Hugh Jackman when singer PSY visited the ?Wolverine? set, and clever editors managed to get both Klingons and Bill Nye in on the Korean pop sensation. Even the president got in on it, unwittingly, thanks to auto-tune and some clever editing, as his ?version? of ?Call Me Maybe? proves.
Kids
Autistic child ballerina dances her way into viewers' hearts with viral video
Songs are funny but kids are gold: One of our most popular stories of the entire year came from the video of an autistic child ballerina going through her steps in perfect precision with a pro. Katy Perry also stepped up to the mic with a little girl who had autism and sang with her onstage. And lest anyone think all kids can do is sing, it turns out they can also kick a little butt, as the ?Dragon Baby? video showed in graphic (hey, stuffing is just pouring out of that toy?s wound!) detail.?
Cats and Dogs
Cat Wanders Into Weather Report
Cats don?t care. They just do their thing. And sometimes, when they do, a camera captures their awesome indifference. Another one of the year?s top clicks went to the kitty who wandered onto Univision?s Miami news set as Eduardo Rodriguez read out the weather; the crew just couldn?t stop laughing, but at no time did Rodriguez break a sweat. A cat also delighted readers with its ride on a record player, and to be fair to canines, the much-clicked sight of actor Kevin Bacon diving into a pool with his pet pit bull Lucy was also hugely popular.
So what was your favorite viral video of the past year? What did we miss? Let us know on Facebook!
More Entertainment news:
Nexus 4 Girl Meets World Jason Babin Nolan Daniels angus t. jones monday night football monday night football
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Researchers induce, relieve depression symptoms in mice with light
Dec. 12, 2012 ? Among those who suffer from depression, the dual inabilities to experience enjoyment in things once pleasurable and to physically motivate oneself -- to meet challenges, or even to get out of bed in the morning -- have been documented for decades, though it has been mysterious why these very different kinds of symptoms show up together, and also disappear together when depression is successfully treated. It has been suspected that the brain chemical dopamine could be a key player in the illness. And yet, in the long history of the study of depression, no one has been able to clearly tie these key concepts together, until now.
Researchers at Stanford University have successfully induced and relieved depression-like deficiencies in both pleasure and motivation in mice by controlling just a single area of the brain known as the ventral tegmental area. It is the first time that well-defined types of neurons within a specific brain region have been directly tied to the control of myriad symptoms of major depressive illness.
In the paper to be published in Nature on Dec. 12, Stanford bioengineer Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, and a team including postdoctoral scholars Kay Tye, PhD, and Melissa Warden, PhD, and research assistant Julie Mirzabekov have used a technique known as optogenetics to pinpoint a specific brain location that produces multiple depression-like symptoms. The region in question is the ventral tegmental area, or VTA, a source of dopamine and a central player in the brain's internal motivation and reward systems.
"We have for the first time directly tied dopamine neurons in the VTA to controlling and relieving these very different and diverse symptoms," said Deisseroth, the study's senior author and a professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. "While depression is a complex disease with still many unknowns, this knowledge may help launch new kinds of investigation into the pathways of depression in the brain, and develop concepts to help people suffering from depression."
Deisseroth's team was able to both induce and relieve multiple depression-like symptoms in laboratory mice by genetically modifying the dopamine neurons in the VTA to be sensitive to light. Using fiber optic cables inserted in rodents' brains, they could then instantaneously produce and inhibit the depression-like symptoms by turning the light on and off. This research technique, developed by Deisseroth at Stanford in 2005, is known as optogenetics.
The team examined mice in a depressed-like, low-motivation state induced by mild stressors whose VTA neurons had been optogenetically modified. "When given light stimulation to the VTA dopamine neurons, these mice showed a robust increase in escape-related behavior. They immediately tried harder to get out of challenging situations -- reversing back to normal levels of effort from the depressed-like state they were in," explained Deisseroth.
Similarly, he said, when offered the choice of sugar water over plain, the mice that had been in a depressed-like state chose the sugar water with much greater frequency when their VTA dopamine neurons were stimulated by illumination. They opted to experience pleasure -- back to normal levels. Finally, and remarkably, Deisseroth noted, optogenetically inhibiting the VTA dopamine neurons instead of stimulating them caused, rather than corrected, both kinds of depression symptoms -- instantaneously and reversibly.
"These results directly implicated a single class of neuron in a single brain region -- ventral tegmental dopamine neurons -- in both producing and relieving very different depression-related symptoms, addressing a mystery in disease pathophysiology," said Deisseroth.
And yet, another key question still remained: What are the VTA dopamine neurons doing to downstream circuits? In other words, how are the depression-related control signals read out? To answer these questions, the researchers next took the work a step further by mapping the effects of dopamine neuron activity in the VTA on the nucleus accumbens, a brain center thought to influence diverse functions of pleasure, and likely the site of action for addictive drugs as well as natural rewards. Seeing a change in the nucleus accumbens would provide information on the mechanism for how VTA dopamine neuron effects are manifested in the brain.
"Indeed, we established that electrophysiological representation of action in the nucleus accumbens is in fact fundamentally altered by VTA dopamine neuron activation. If we activate the VTA dopamine neurons, it influences the nucleus accumbens' encoding of physical, motivated action," emphasized Deisseroth. Together, these results represented a long-sought circuit-level insight into the causes and nature of depression-related behavior.
While the results are significant, Deisseroth, who is also a practicing psychiatrist, cautioned that depression and other mental illnesses are complex, multidimensional and vary from patient to patient. The symptoms of depression are certainly influenced by many neural circuits, he said.
"Nonetheless, the VTA dopamine circuitry we studied is very similar in both rodents and humans. And we have shown that the neurons in this circuit specifically cause, correct and encode diverse symptoms of depression. This is a significant advance in our understanding of the biological underpinnings of depression and related behaviors, with promising implications for future research," said Deisseroth.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University Medical Center, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal References:
- Dipesh Chaudhury, Jessica J. Walsh, Allyson K. Friedman, Barbara Juarez, Stacy M. Ku, Ja Wook Koo, Deveroux Ferguson, Hsing-Chen Tsai, Lisa Pomeranz, Daniel J. Christoffel, Alexander R. Nectow, Mats Ekstrand, Ana Domingos, Michelle S. Mazei-Robison, Ezekiell Mouzon, Mary Kay Lobo, Rachael L. Neve, Jeffrey M. Friedman, Scott J. Russo, Karl Deisseroth, Eric J. Nestler, Ming-Hu Han. Rapid regulation of depression-related behaviours by control of midbrain dopamine neurons. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature11713
- Kay M. Tye, Julie J. Mirzabekov, Melissa R. Warden, Emily A. Ferenczi, Hsing-Chen Tsai, Joel Finkelstein, Sung-Yon Kim, Avishek Adhikari, Kimberly R. Thompson, Aaron S. Andalman, Lisa A. Gunaydin, Ilana B. Witten, Karl Deisseroth. Dopamine neurons modulate neural encoding and expression of depression-related behaviour. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature11740
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/szTahLwI7Jg/121212134056.htm
Chris Brown Tattoo Innocence of Muslims Clara Schumann Jael Strauss Alison Pill Sam Bacile sprint
Ghana opposition to contest poll results
ACCRA, Ghana (AP) ? Ghana's opposition party said Tuesday that they plan to contest the results of the recent presidential election, ignoring the appeals of the international community, which fears that a protracted political fight could destabilize one of the only established democracies in the region.
Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, the chairman of the New Patriotic Party, whose candidate lost last Friday's election, said that the party has widespread evidence of fraud. The results published by the election commission handed victory to incumbent President John Dramani Mahama with 50.7 percent of the vote.
"With the abundant evidence we have gathered, the (party) cannot therefore accept the declared results of the election," said Lamptey. "The party has instructed its legal team to file a petition in the supreme court."
The opposition said the widespread technical glitches that occurred with the biometric machines used to identify voters through their fingerprints created an opportunity for the ruling party to rig the vote. Officials were forced to extend voting into a second day in scores of polling stations due to the malfunctioning equipment, but despite the disorder caused by the delay, international observers say the vote was transparent overall.
Opposition leader Nana Akufo-Addo came in second with 47.7 percent of the vote. He lost the 2008 presidential election by less than 1 percent, making his loss in this month's election ever more painful. Analysts say that this was the last chance for the 68-year-old career politician, the son of a former president of Ghana.
On Monday, the president of the African Union, Yayi Boni, made a point of stopping by Akufo-Addo's house to convince him to concede defeat in the interest of safeguarding Ghana's reputation for peace. Ghana, a nation of 25 million on Africa's western seaboard, remains one of the few established and stable democracies in the region, following the unexpected devolution of the Malian state, which until a coup eight months ago was also considered a model democracy.
The opposition held a rally attended by thousands of people in a roundabout in Accra. Party General-Secretary Kwadwo Owusi-Afriyie said: "We shall continue to protest on this ground until the results are changed."
He added that they had heard that the government plans to arrest party leaders and warned that "we would make the country ungovernable if they dared."
Akufo-Addo told The Associated Press in an interview on Monday that his party has compiled data from polling stations which they are comparing with the published results.
"All of the information we have, the primary data, the results of the polling stations are consistently not tallying with many of the declared results," said Akufo-Addo. "It would seem to be a serious case for saying that something has gone wrong," he said.
International observers from the African Union and the regional body, the Economic Community of West African States, have endorsed the election as free and fair.
"There were hiccups but not such that would grossly undermine the result of the election," said Olusegun Obasanjo, former Nigerian president and head of both observer missions.
Akufo-Addo countered that there were only 2,500 observers in the country for 26,000 polling stations and they could not check all stations for discrepancies.
Observers are concerned that Ghana's status as a model of democracy in West Africa could be compromised if the opposition challenges the results and calls for street protests. Thousands of riot police fanned out across the capital and the country ahead of Tuesday's announcement by the opposition, but despite the heightened security presence, the streets remained calm.
Ghana's former President Jerry John Rawlings said there is a need to look into the opposition's accusations of rigging. "Much as l am happy that President Mahama has won, the complaints that have been made must be taken seriously to make sure that everything is investigated," he said.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ghana-opposition-contest-poll-results-170443529.html
kevin hart living social Earthquake Costa Rica Clinton speech Michael Strahan Griselda Blanco Michelle Obama Speech
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Zynga Takes First Step Towards Gambling In Nevada, Says Process Will Take More Than A Year
Zynga has applied for a "preliminary finding of suitability" from the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which the first step towards offering real-money gambling games in that state. The news broke in the Wall Street Journal, and Zynga has confirmed it, though it notes that the process will take 12 to 18 months, and says that it sees gambling in the "broader U.S. market" as "further out on the horizon based on legislative developments." Here's the full statement from Chief Revenue officer Barry Cottle:Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/2uabQBmORWM/
mta schedule PECO chris christie Hurricane Sandy update weather channel mta ellen degeneres
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Smart Reviews From Stupid Celebrities: ?Zero Dark Thirty? The Hunt Is On
Smart Reviews From Stupid Celebrities: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ The Hunt Is On
O.M.G. What an intense film! My knuckles were white from clinging onto my seat. ?Zero Dark Thirty? took me to a place of darkness. There was a dash of unexpected humor, too, but I?wasn’t?able to muster a smile. I was after all, on a manhunt for the most wanted man in America: Osama Bin Laden. ...
Smart Reviews From Stupid Celebrities: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ The Hunt Is On Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News
john derbyshire kinkade thomas kinkade paintings easter bunny navy jet crash virginia beach isiah thomas passover
Sulentic Becomes CBRE Group CEO | Commercial Property Executive
December 4, 2012 
By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor
Robert Sulentic
CBRE Group Inc.?s new president and CEO, Robert E. Sulentic, is officially on the job. Sulentic moved up the ladder from his previous job as president and stepped into the shoes of former CEO Brett White, who had announced his impending retirement in May 2012. The transition was a seamless one, with White having formally relinquished the role on November 30 and Sulentic having put on the CEO hat on December 1.
Sulentic has been a member of the CBRE family since 2006, when he came aboard as group president with the merging of Trammell Crow Co. and CBRE. He was tasked with overseeing CBRE?s EMEA and Asia Pacific operations and soon after, he became CEO of the Development Services business. His rise at CBRE continued in 2009, when he was named CFO to help guide the company through the real estate market downturn. His most recent title was that of president, a position in which he spearheaded all of CBRE?s business lines and operating segments.
Now Sulentic is the head of the largest commercial real estate services firm, in terms of 2011 revenue. The role of CEO of a major real estate concern is not a new one for Sulentic; he was CEO of Trammell Crow before its acquisition by CBRE.
In addition to becoming CEO, Sulentic has also joined CBRE?s board of directors, where he will continue his interaction with White, who remains a member of what is now an 11-person group.
The changeover at the top marks the biggest step in CBRE?s current succession planning, which, as a CBRE spokesperson told Commercial Property Executive in July, involves all levels of the organization. The summer brought a slew of promotions. Among them, the naming of Calvin Frese as CEO of the company?s Americas business and the tapping of Mike Lafitte to serve as global president of CBRE Services.
?Our Company has many strengths, including our brand, culture, depth of resources and market intelligence, and most of all, our exceptional people,? Sulentic said in a prepared statement.
?
Source: http://www.cpexecutive.com/featuredcontent/sulentic-becomes-cbre-group-ceo/
Hurricane Categories Hurricane Sandy new jersey atlantic city ocean city maryland Nexus 7 KDKA
Conservative Republicans booted from House budget panel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives have been kicked off the House Budget Committee, a rare move that could make it easier for the panel to advance a deal with Democrats to cut fiscal deficits.
Representatives Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan - both favorites of the anti-tax Tea Party movement - are among those Republicans voting most often against House Speaker John Boehner.
Huelskamp and Amash, who both will begin second terms in the House next month, voted against last year's deal to raise the federal debt limit and staunchly oppose any tax increases. Boehner has now included new revenue in his latest offer to avert the "fiscal cliff" of year-end tax hikes and automatic spending cuts. Given their voting records, winning support from Huelskamp and Amash for such a compromise seemed an uphill battle.
Huelskamp released a statement saying the Republican leadership "might think they have silenced conservatives but removing me and others from key committees only confirms our conservative convictions.
"This is clearly a vindictive move and a sure sign that the GOP establishment cannot handle disagreement," he said.
Huelskamp and Amash had said that despite sweeping changes to the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs, committee chairman Paul Ryan's budget did not make deep enough cuts to entitlement programs and military spending.
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel declined to be specific on the reasons for their ouster by the House Republican Steering Committee, which occurred Monday in a closed-door meeting.
"The Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors," Steel said.
Huelskamp said he was given "limited explanation" for his removal from the Budget Committee, a move he called "vindictive." A spokesman for Amash could not be immediately reached for comment.
Huelskamp and Amash cast the only House Budget Committee votes against Ryan's budget plan earlier this year.
While there is often wrangling over committee chairmanships just before a new Congress takes office, it is rare for rank-and-file committee members to be stripped of their assignments.
The 34-member Republican steering committee is headed by Boehner and includes members of House leadership, committee chairs and other lawmakers representing different regions of the country.
The same group last week recommended that Ryan, the conservative former Republican vice presidential candidate, be renewed as Budget Committee chairman.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
shell houston open mega millions winners anthony davis palm sunday toure patti smith lottery winners
Magnitude 5.8 quake rattles Anchorage, Alaska
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck off the coast of Alaska on Monday, close to the city of Anchorage, rattling buildings and knocking bric-a-brac from shelves, but no serious damage or injuries were reported.
The tremor, initially reported as a magnitude 5.7, struck at 4:42 p.m. (8:42 p.m. EST) 25 miles west of Anchorage, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The quake, relatively shallow at a depth of 33.1 miles, was widely felt in Anchorage, according to Guy Urban, a geophysicist for the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska.
"Some people in Anchorage said some things fell off the shelves," he told Reuters, adding that the center was unaware of any severe property damage or anyone being hurt.
Quakes of similar strength are fairly common in Alaska, one of the most seismically active parts of the United States.
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage. Additional reporting by Sandra Maler in Washington; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sandra Maler)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/magnitude-5-8-quake-hits-alaska-close-anchorage-020604134.html
joel osteen emmy rossum jay z and beyonce the big chill tony blankley charles barkley beyonce
Costas wishes he had more time to talk
NEW YORK (AP) ? Bob Costas isn't backing down from his halftime comments on gun violence, but he wishes he had more time.
The NBC sportscaster gave interviews Tuesday to Dan Patrick and Lawrence O'Donnell about his Sunday-night halftime commentary following Kansas City Chiefs player Jovan Belcher's murder of his girlfriend and subsequent suicide. Both interviews were longer than the commentary itself.
Costas said domestic violence, football, the gun culture and possible substance abuse could have been factors in the tragedy. He said the availability of a gun wasn't the only issue, but he didn't have more time for a nuanced discussion Sunday.
Costas received some criticism for injecting politics into a sporting event.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/costas-wishes-had-more-time-talk-132613407--spt.html
Meteor Shower August 2012 jessie j jessie j kobe bryant David Boudia David Rakoff Bourne Legacy
AUA and ASCO to ?archive? clinical guidance of use of 5-ARIs for ...
Posted on December 3, 2012 by Sitemaster
According to a message to its members issued today by the American Urological Association (AUA), the AUA and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) are archiving their collaborative 2008 guideline entitled Use of 5-alpha Reductase Inhibitors for Prostate Cancer Chemoprevention.
This guideline has now been removed from the ?Clinical Guidance? section of the AUA?s website, but is still available in the ?Archived Guidelines? section. According to the message sent to the AUA members, ?This decision is in response to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?s denial of the supplemental New Drug Application for dutasteride for prostate cancer chemoprevention? ? a denial issued by the FDA in late January 2011.
The AUA further recommends to its members that using 5-alpha reductase inhibitors (5-ARIs) like dutasteride and finasteride for prostate cancer prevention ?is not FDA-approved and should be performed with caution.? The message concludes by noting that 5-ARIs ?maintain an FDA-approved indication to treat symptomatic benign prostatic hyperplasia.?
The ?New? Prostate Cancer InfoLink believes that some urologists and urologist oncologists will continue to prescribe 5-ARIs for the prevention of clinically significant prostate cancer in carefully selected individuals who are at potentially high risk for prostate cancer, despite the fact that the FDA denied a formal approval of dutasteride for use in this indication. The ?archiving? of the joint ASCO/AUA guidance document is probably (as much as anything else) a way for the two organizations to protect themselves legally from possible future accusations that they continue to ?recommend? the use of 5-ARIs for chemoprevention of prostate cancer. We do, after all, live in a highly litigious society.
The evidence regarding the actual effect of 5-ARIs in the prevention of prostate cancer and the risk that this use of ARIs may actually increase risk for high-grade prostate cancer is still debatable and controversial, with strong opinions on either side of the issue.
Like this:
Be the first to like this.
Filed under: Diagnosis, Living with Prostate Cancer, Management, Risk
denver news frozen planet creighton new smyrna beach st. joseph puerto rico primary manning
How to Exclude Holiday Music from Your iTunes Genius Playlists
With the holidays coming around, you might have your iTunes playlist packed full of a ton of holiday music, but that doesn't mean you want those holiday tracks sneaking into the rest of your playlists. Macworld shows off how to keep "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" out of the rest of your mixes.
The first thing you need to do is create a holiday playlist by clicking, File > New > Smart Playlist and creating a playlist with the genre tag, "holiday" (if you've already made a mix of all your holiday music you can skip this step). This creates a holiday playlist. Now, simply hold down the Command key, and click the checkbox next to one of the songs. This will uncheck them all, and disable them from appearing in Genius Playlists in the future so your holiday songs won't creep into your other mixes. Head over to Macworld for the full guide.
How to exclude holiday tracks from genius playlists | Macworld
The Happiness Project | Peanut Butter Fingers
It?s time to discuss The Happiness Project!
We?ll be voting on the PBF December Book Club book later today, but for now it?s time to dive into November?s selection.
This review is a long one, so buckle up!
Brief Summary
The Happiness Project follows author Gretchen Rubin as she dedicates an entire year of her life to improving her happiness. Every month she strives to improve happiness related to a different part of her life (marriage, friendship, money, work, etc.) and implements small changes while documenting her findings. The author references theologians, philosophers, researchers and writers and includes detailed research to back up many of her happiness experiments.
My Review
When The Happiness Project was selected for our November Book Club, I wasn?t overjoyed. The concept intrigued me, but I prefer to climb into bed with a page-turning fiction novel rather than a memoir or self-help book.
Within the first 10 pages of The Happiness Project, I found myself dog-earing pages so I could return and reread passages. I was hooked.
Gretchen Rubin is incredibly self-aware and managed to write about happiness in a way that made it seem attainable. As she focused on clearing the clutter out of her life, I wanted to do the same. When Gretchen vowed to ?be in the moment,? I wanted to focus on enjoying moments as they happen as well.
For me, the best way I can think to properly review this book is to share some of my favorite takeaways. When I think about The Happiness Project, certain passages and quotes jump into my mind. The takeaways that left a lasting impression include:
- Enjoy Now: We often imagine a happier future and tell ourselves things like, ?Once I finish this project, then?? which causes us to focus on anticipated future happiness, rather than the joy we can find in our lives right now. If we can enjoy the present, we don?t need to count on and live for the happiness that is (or isn?t) in our future.
- Address Clutter: For some people household disorder and clutter can have a serious negative impact on overall energy levels. I am one of those people, so Gretchen?s section about clutter, while seemingly simplistic, really appealed to me. Implementing the ?one minute rule? and vowing to tackle tasks that take me less than one minute had a shocking impact on my overall happiness. Our house is less cluttered and my office is more organized which helps me feel much more peaceful.
- ?Be Gretchen?: Several times in The Happiness Project, Gretchen recognizes her personal struggle to ?Be Gretchen? and her desire to find certain things that other people love appealing. Like going to a Knicks game. Eating dinner out at a fancy new restaurant. Drinking. Going to a lecture on international markets. She wanted her interests to appear more valuable, interesting, cultured and adventurous. Rather than wish she enjoyed these other activities, Gretchen realized she needed to embrace the activities she truly does enjoy. I identified with this wholeheartedly as I sometimes feel like my interests aren?t in line with my peers. To me, a quiet night at home can be just as fun as a crazy night out. I really value my alone time and get great joy from reading by myself or working on a craft project. It?s okay to love less glamorous activities and embracing them will only bring you more happiness.
- Give Positive Reviews: ?It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light.? The joy exuded from positive people isn?t inexhaustible and requires effort.
- One of the Best Ways to Make Yourself Happy is to Make Other People Happy: And one of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself. ?Do good, feel good; feel good, do good.? Cultivating generosity and kindness breeds happiness. Gretchen included this quote from Tolstoy in her book: "Nothing can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness." It deeply moved me and weighed on my mind for days. Like I?ve said on the blog before, ?I want to see and be the good in the world.?
- Spend Out: Gretchen discusses her tendency to cling to things, saying she would save things like beautiful stationary rather than use it. But how often did something extraordinary surface that warranted the use of the things she saved? Rarely. I noticed that I tend to do the same thing. I save a new top for a special occasion. I won?t write a blog post on a certain topic one day because I want to ?save it.? But for what!? ?Spend out? and enjoy the good things now.
- Don?t Expect Praise or Appreciation: According to Saint Th?r?se of Lisieux, ?When one loves, one does not calculate.? Don?t think about return. Giving without expectation creates a wealth of love and tenderness.
Blogger Link Up
You can find additional reviews of The Happiness Project on the following blogs:
Discussion Questions
- What were some of your key takeaways from The Happiness Project?
- Did you implement anything Gretchen discusses in The Happiness Project in your own life?
Source: http://www.pbfingers.com/2012/12/04/the-happiness-project/
livan hernandez soledad o brien mega ball lottery winner lottery numbers mega millions lottery jackpot
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Best Open Source Shopping carts - Work On the Internet
Zinavo is a website designing company in Bangalore. We have spread our swing even in website development, Domain Registration, Web Hosting and Search Engine Optimizatin and Search Engine Marketing. Zinavo is renowned for its creative, unique and quality works.
We provide the user friendly as well as search engine friendly website. We have a team of professional and highly talented engineers who can embed their innovative thoughts with client needs and deliver an amazing website. Please visit us here:http://www.zinavo.com/
10 Of The Very Best Open Source Shopping carts/eCommerce solutions for websites:
What is eCommerce?
Now a days, Electronic commerce (e-Commerce) has in fact become one of the most popular activities on the web,which is the use of electronic communication to do business. eCommerce on mobile devices, has dissolved every remaining limitation of geography. It facilitates comparison shopping.
Here are ten the best options if you want to invest in open source shopping cart software for your ecommerce business.
1.Magento(Best of Open Source Enterprise Applications)
Magento Community Edition is an open source system, which means that it can be downloaded for free, and modified to suit specific programming and/or design requirements. Magento is architected like an enterprise Java application, but its codebase is written in PHP.
Magento offers four editions based on your business needs:
oMagento Community: Recommended for developers and hobbyists
oMagento Enterprise: Recommended for medium to large businesses
oMagento Enterprise Premium: Recommended for large businesses
oMagento Go: Hosted solution recommended for small merchants and entrepreneurs that ??????don?t want to worry about servers and software
2.WordPress(Ease of use for end users)
Wordpress is an open source Content Management System,powered by PHP and MySQL.One of the main reasons why wordpress themes are attracting the attention of bloggers and businessmen alike is the fact that these themes offer extra functionality plus their appearance are distinctive.
WordPress is today used in serious projects and on large commercial websites besides the millions of hard-working bloggers sharing their valuable knowledge.
3. osCommerce(Free opensource shopping cart)
osCommerce is a free open source online store-management software which is powered by very well established and responsive osCommerce community.It?s Backend Functionality? supports unlimited products and categories. In this,all features are available which one can expect from a shopping cart software.And cross platform functionality that is suitable for all kinds of businesses.
4. Virtumart(Highly ?Customizable Shopping Cart)
VirtueMart is an open source solution and it must be used together with Joomla! Or Mambo Content Management System. This e-commerce software is capable of live credit card processing with safe SSL encryption (128-bit) and supports a large amount of Payment Providers including PayPal and Redunicre.
5. Zeuscart(Offers Web 2.0 Features)
Zeus Cart is an open source shopping cart and incredibly stable & richly interfaced. Zeus Cart includes a number of marketing-tailored features that can help you increase your online sales, promote repeat purchases, and boost customer satisfaction.?It has integrated with many payment gateways like Paypal, Google Checkout, Paymate Express and lot more. It has support of multi currency system.
6. BroadleafCommerce
Broadleaf Commerce is an open source eCommerce which ?enables online retailers to realize their ecommerce vision.In this, Integration with payment providers has been simplified.Broadleaf Commerce is highly scalable and peforms well under load.
7. PrestaShop(Easy Installation)
PrestaShop installation is easy and should not be a problem for anybody.Prestashop Installation requirements are Depends on GD library of PHP.It is powered by PHP and MySQL,supports full-featured WYSIWYG text editor.
8. Zen-cart (Easy to setup)
Zen Cart is a PHP e-commerce shopping cart program. Built on a foundation of OScommerce GPL code, Zen Cart is an easy-to-setup and run online store. Zen Cart is for selling online. Zen Cart is completely customizable ecommerce.
9. Agora Shopping Cart
AgoraCart is a ?free Open Source ecommerce shopping cart software solution Agora Shopping Cart provide your customers dynamically generated web pages that retrieve and information from the databases.
10. AbanteCart
AbanteCart is a shopping cart and eCommerce application that is not only one the best and technologically advanced around, but it is also completely free.
?
Article Tags : website designing bangalore, website design bangalore, bangalore web design company, web design companies bangalore
animal house invincible jesse jackson whitney houston funeral video tyler perry whitney houston r kelly r. kelly
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
How Neoliberal Tax and Financial Policy Impoverishes Russia ...
by Michael Hudson
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://michael-hudson.com
November 23, 2012
Image by KeizerStreetArt via Flickr
* A shorter version of this paper has been published in the Russian Academy of Sciences journal, Mir Peremen (The World of Transformations), 2012 (3):49-64 (in Russian). An earlier version was posted by the Global Policy Forum meeting in Yaroslavl, Russia, September 7-8, 2011, on its website.
Russian poverty is unnecessary. Like all poverty in today?s high-productivity age, it is the result of bad policy. There is no technological need for it, nor is Russia lacking in a full spectrum of natural resources and economic potential. So future historians no doubt will puzzle over how the nation was convinced to de-industrialize its economy and impoverish much of its population in favor of exporting fuels and minerals, and to impose more regressive taxes on labor and industry than existed anywhere in the West ? having been assured that this would streamline growth, not stifle it.
Neoliberal advisors promised that Russia would become more efficient and affluent by following an almost diametrically opposite path from that which Britain, the United States, Germany, Japan and modern China took to raise themselves to industrial power ? the policies that classical 19th-century liberals endorsed to reduce the power of rentiers over the economy and government. Instead, post-Soviet polarization between rich and poor over the past twenty years has seen falling living standards and a dismantling of manufacturing, education and public infrastructure go hand in hand with creation of a new class of instant billionaires at the top of a steeper economic pyramid than exists in Western industrial powers.
This polarization was implicit in the policy advice outlined in 1990, a year before the Soviet Union dissolved, at meetings with the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other inter-governmental organizations in Houston, Texas.[1] It is part of the worldwide dynamic of financialization centralizing planning in the banking sector ? a combination of debt leveraging, privatization and dismantling government?s traditional role.
The shock therapy and ?grabitization? that concentrated wealth while dismantling public regulation and separating resource rents from the financing of social spending was not a natural or inevitable result of Soviet Communism. This sharply anti-labor policy and rejection of a mixed economy finds its origins in Chile after the 1973 military coup, and the Thatcher and Reagan decade of the 1980s that reversed the Progressive Era?s reforms that had broadened the economic base, nurturing a middle class and thriving domestic markets.
Making Russia dependent on Western credit by wiping out Russia?s domestic savings
Today?s economic polarization was planned at the outset, in the logic spelled out at the 1990 Houston Summit. Neoliberals were given a free hand in designing the post-Soviet economies, and they had no intention of creating a Western style mixed economy with progressive taxation and anti-monopoly regulation. The very idea was anathema to them. The ensuing dismantling of industry and asset stripping throughout the former Soviet Union stands as an indictment to the advice they gave.
When a government pursues impoverishing economic policies for a sustained length of time, there always are special interests at work. In Russia?s case the main beneficiaries were Western investors. Their self-serving program is clearest in what the Houston report excluded from consideration: the prospect of businessmen amassing fortunes through banking and insider dealing rather than by real capital formation, realizing their gains by selling their shares abroad ? and keeping the proceeds in the West.
The World Bank, IMF and other institutions adhering to the ?Washington Consensus? presented Russia with a plan that started by wiping out domestic savings (dismissed as ?the overhang?), it was claimed that when markets were freed, spending the savings that Russians had made in hope of buying cars or other basic needs would be inflationary ? so they had to be wiped out. The ostensible excuse was to promote price stability. But the ?shock therapy? of hyperinflation and depreciation of the ruble (Houston Report, p. 13) wiped out the value of domestic savings after 1991. The sudden opening of currency markets led to be a flight out of rubles to exchange for the dollars (and some European purchases) coming in to buy enterprises from the managers who had gained ownership. And after hyperinflation, only Westerners had money to pay. Only politically well-placed insiders were in a position to save large amounts in dollars ? by selling their shares to western investors.
The only way for most Russians to buy into the nation?s natural resources, housing or enterprises was by a voucher plan that was little more than a pretense at giving workers a share of the nation?s assets. In practice the vouchers were simply an opportunity for insiders, investment funds and bankers to obtain ownership. ?There may well be advantages to giving away some shares in some of the larger enterprises,? the Report opined (pp. 26-27). But it advised Russia to block workers from having a voice in management. ?Workers? ownership in enterprises ? would run counter to the desired objectives of enterprise reform? (p. 22). Workers not be given direct voting stock, but preferably shares in money-management companies, which would vote for the enterprise to make money along financialized lines rather than to promote the welfare of employees.
So, the voucher program was organized throughout the former Soviet economies in a way that workers received little benefit. Everyone was given vouchers ostensibly representing a democratic share of national assets, but for most holders these turned out to be worth only the price of a meal (or about $25) to. They quickly ended up in the hands of company managers and insiders, investment funds and bankers ? whose interest was to cash out by selling their shares to Western buyers.
To facilitate privatization, the fortunate recipients were to be given sufficiently firm ownership rights to sell to foreigners without future legal obstruction. ?While the portfolio of government properties that could eventually be privatized is, indeed, very large and much in excess of any measure of the overhang, privatization is likely to proceed slowly, particularly in advance of the clarification of ownership rights? (italics added). This was as highly enriching for the U.S. economy and the West as it was impoverishing for Russia ? while its stock market became the deal of a century for global investors.
Meanwhile, the Houston Report?s neoliberal advice blocked Russia?s government from Keynesian-type spending programs to support the economy and invest in infrastructure. Russia was told to restrict its budget deficit to a drastic low of 2? to 3 percent of GDP. This blocked it from providing the economy with the purchasing power needed to grow. And as an even more restrictive coup de grace, Russia was told to back its domestic money with foreign exchange.
No country needs foreign-currency reserves to pay public employees or cover other domestic payments. Central banks have monetized government spending from the Bank of England in 1694 through the U.S. Federal Reserve in 1913. It therefore was a radical constraint for Russia to back its domestic money 100% by foreign reserves ? in the form of loans to the U.S. Government (that is, Treasury bills). Russia borrowed the money, mainly from Wall Street institutions that made 100% annually in interest by lending to the Russian government to back its issue of rubles. Meanwhile, many employees went six months or more without pay in the mid-1990s as a result of a needless reluctance to create domestic money. Many companies did not even pay wages during the mid-1990s as managers used their cash flow for financial speculation or simply bled companies to use the money themselves ? and usually to send it to the West.
There almost always is a special interest that benefits when bad economic advice is followed. The beneficiary of today?s neoliberalism is the financial sector and its major customers: real estate and monopolies bought on credit. Russian poverty has created fortunes for bankers, political insiders, corporate raiders and hedge funds. For this new class of billionaires, the poverty and debt leveraging that has prompted many economists to wring their hands is actually a success story. Society?s loss has become their gain ? and that of the financial markets.
The moral is that finance has replaced military force as today?s mode of warfare. It is in the financial sphere that the causes of Russian poverty are to be found, and consequent emigration, capital flight and de-industrialization. Inasmuch as U.S. strategists view industrial manufacturing power, and indeed higher education as being potentially military, Russian poverty has served the aims of U.S. global planners. Russia?s economy has focused on exporting fuels and raw materials to the West instead of becoming an industrial and agricultural rival.
Subjecting labor to austerity
In 1990 the impression was that Western advisors would help the Soviet economy become prosperous and competitive by setting it on the path that had enabled North America and Western Europe to get rich. But instead of helping Russia follow successful U.S. experience, they advocated just the opposite policy. In contrast to America?s ?economy of high wages? doctrine recognizing that highly paid, well-educated and well fed and clothed labor ? with subsidized public infrastructure ? is sufficiently more productive to undersell lower-paid labor and privatized monopolies, neoliberal doctrine advocates squeezing down labor?s rate of remuneration and scaling back public social spending.
The resulting unequal concentration of wealth siphoned off income that would have been spent on domestic consumption if it were distributed more widely. The Houston Report?s anti-labor austerity economics thus stifled demand for domestic Russian output. And instead of making the economy more competitive, poverty-level wages caused a brain drain of skilled labor and failed to provide the education needed for high productivity in today?s world. The flat-tax and ?financialized? management policies implemented by the Harvard Boys, Jeffrey Sachs and other neoliberals were the opposite of how the Western economies built up their own productive powers and living standards, and spurred the flight of skilled labor and capital.
Few economists have explained why this neoliberal advice was so bad. There has been little discussion of the alternatives available to the shock therapy and hyperinflation that wiped out savings, the voucher disaster, the 1994-95 loans-for-shares deal, and the central bank policy of borrowing abroad to finance the government?s budget deficit. It is as if the only alternative to Soviet bureaucracy was to follow the advice given by the IMF, World Bank and Harvard Boys to give away public enterprise, to be sold off in due course to foreign buyers.
Progressive Era policies from the United States to Germany and Japan aimed at bringing prices in line with current costs of production in a mixed economy. Governments provided basic infrastructure at cost or at subsidized rates. By not significantly taxing land and property, post-Soviet governments blocked themselves from playing the positive investment and fiscal role that they did in the West. Instead, they gave a free lunch to rentiers, above all to foreign investors.
How neoliberal anti-government ideology dismantled public infrastructure
If Russia had chosen to emulate the classical Western model, it would have promoted public infrastructure investment rather than privatizing it without price regulation. It would have continued subsidizing popular education and industry, and modernized its agriculture. It would not have given away land and mineral rights to insiders to sell off to foreigners to fuel a Western stock market boom. And it would not have closed down manufacturing and research, leading its skilled professionals to emigrate to the West to find work.
Instead of introducing Western-style checks and balances to modernize public spending and tax policy, Russia threw out the baby with the bathwater. Reflecting a loss of faith in government?s ability to function honestly and effectively, public functions were turned over to financial managers. Unfortunately, their scope tends to be short-term and extractive. No agency was charged with steering long-term capital investment and promoting rising living standards.
The former Soviet states did not set out to create a tax policy to make the economy more competitive by minimizing their cost of living and doing business. The greatest international variation in such costs today is for housing and debt service. The Soviet states could have turned over living and office spaces freely to their users in 1991, much as they gave away land and natural resources and public enterprises to managers. This would have provided initially debt-free housing and plant. The rental value of these sites could have served as the tax base, freeing the government from having to tax sales, labor and industry ? just at the moment when Western economies were embarking on their debt-inflated real estate bubble.
But Russia and other post-Soviet countries did what the West economies were doing. They let bankers appropriate the rental value of land sites, turning ?free lunch? rent into interest payments. Taxing employment and sales of consumer goods rather than land and natural resources obliged the post-Soviet economies to make their labor and industry higher-cost than was the case in countries relying more on property taxes and progressive income taxation.
Bankers and foreign investors got a bonanza from mortgage lending. Its basic principle is that ?What the tax collector leaves ?free? is available for banks to turn into interest.? Buyers bid against each other for credit to buy properties, with the winner being whoever agrees to pay the most rental value to bankers. Families, foreign buyers and speculators pay this untaxed rental value as interest, leaving nothing available for the tax collector ? while land prices rise, on credit.
The economic shrinkage resulting from this policy is applauded as a success story even in disaster zones such as neoliberalized Latvia ? as if austerity, dismantling public enterprise, and taxing manufacturing and other employment rather than land and natural resources make economies more competitive. What actually happens is that labor is forced into debt to buy housing, education and other basic needs ? or else, emigrate. Latvia reports a 10 percent drop in its population (from 2.2 million to 1.9 million) since its last census as adults seek work abroad.
Given a free hand in how to make Russia and its post-Soviet neighbors into their ideal, neoliberals promised that vesting a power elite of new billionaires by giving away national assets would make everyone richer. But instead, dismantling Russia?s public infrastructure and economic subsidies has spurred emigration and capital flight. This has not been a natural course of development. It is a distortion akin to the European colonialism achieved by military force prior to World War II, and the austerity programs imposed by the IMF and World Bank on Third World countries since the 1960s, achieved by foreign debt leverage. Without being subject to either of such threats, the post-Soviet economies imposed such programs on themselves voluntarily. The result is that instead of Russia receiving the aid that was expected, it transferred wealth abroad via emigration and capital flight to the West, while destruction of Soviet industry has made more fuel and minerals available for export to the West.
Proceeds went in the first instance to oligarchs, for whom Russian banks served as the pipeline through which an estimated $25 billion in flight capital flowed annually to the West for over a decade after 1991 ? a quarter of a trillion dollars. Privatizers felt that their free lunch was more secure beyond clawback power of the government. And most important, they had more faith in Western growth than in post-Soviet opportunities. So for Western bankers, raw-materials investors and Cold Warriors, a de-industrialized Russia has been a success story ? obtaining natural resources and asset ownership on the cheap while ending the old Soviet Union?s potential military rivalry. Russia?s giveaways made its stock market the world?s best performer, enriching U.S. and other investors from 1993-1997 (and recently once again). So Russia is producing a surplus for foreign investors and for its own large class of billionaires. In this respect Russian poverty finds its counterpart in an enormous transfer of wealth to foreigners and to domestic vested interests since 1990 ? and a destruction of industrial wealth-creating capacity.
Although neoliberal policy advice to turn its economy into what American economists used to call a ?hewer of wood and drawer of water? came from the West, it is not how Western nations organize their own economies. Rather, it is a money manager?s dream of how to extract natural resource rent and install tollbooths on infrastructure mainly to pay Western investors or for Russian investors to extract and send to the West as capital flight.
Russian poverty as a result of economic austerity ideology sponsored by the financial sector
Russia?s economic warping and emigration was unnecessary. The economy was self-sufficient in 1990, with a solvent (although inefficient) public sector. Russia started its conversion to neoliberal policy with one of the world?s most highly educated populations, above all in engineering and technology, computer science and other key skills. Families were secure in their housing (admittedly cramped). And most important, the economy was free of foreign debt, mortgage debt, education debt, credit card debt, corporate debt, urban and other public debt overhead, and. There was no rentier class to support ? no absentee owners living off interest, dividends or property rents.
How then did so much of Russia?s population come to suffer poverty? How was manufacturing dismantled while natural resource wealth was monopolized ? with much of its revenue sent abroad rather than used to upgrade economic infrastructure and capital formation?
The cost of educating people has long been the most productive investment that economies can make. But it is an expensive investment. Dismantling and privatizing public spending has priced higher education out of range for many people in post-Soviet countries. And the curriculum itself has been de-industrialized. Training people to make money by merely financial means rather than by engineering for industry and agricultural technology is as damaging as dismantling factories and equipment. The financialization of schooling and other public policy focus leaves the economy unbalanced and polarized, with many people out of work, able to maintain themselves only by running up debt ? and ultimately by emigrating.
Russia?s problem is not that its economy is too unproductive to create prosperity. The problem now is how to develop a less pro-financial and polarized economy. This was the issue that inspired the classical idea of markets free of ?unearned? financial overhead, land rent and monopoly rent. This Progressive Era approach ? based on progressive taxation, especially of land ? could and should have been Russia?s model in 1990.
Russia?s Achilles heel proved to be a lack of understanding of how financialization already was untracking Western industrial capitalism (having warped economies throughout the Third World). Russia?s leaders had lost faith in the Communist State without realizing that every economy is planned. There is more than one mode of planning ? depending on which sectors control the state. Replacing the old state bureaucracy did not solve the problem of bad planning. It merely changed its character, shifting it to the banking sector and the new oligarchs most favored by their Western sponsors.
Russia?s poverty is unnecessary ? and is the result of regressive financial and fiscal policy
Poverty in modern societies always is a result of the way economies are mis-planned. Throughout the West, planning has shifted out of the hands of governments to those of the banking and financial sector. This is euphemized as ?free markets,? but it is merely markets free of public regulation against fraud and dishonesty, free of government taxation of rentier income ? in short, markets free for rentiers, not free from them.
All economies are planned. The question is, who is to do the planning? When governments are stripped of this role, it passes to financial centers. The shift of planning to Wall Street, the City of London, the Paris Bourse and Frankfurt is more centralized today than government planning was feared to be. And whereas the scope of public planning at least in principle is to promote long-term capital investment and subsidize infrastructure, financial planning is short-term. The result turns out to be even more centralized than government planning ? as well as by financial managers looking to their own short-term interest rather than to promote society?s long-term development and raise living standards for the population as a whole. The financial business plan is to create a loan market in the two largest asset categories of modern economies: real estate (mainly the value of land sites) and privatized infrastructure, as well as monopolies able to charge prices above their basic cost of production.
The resulting land rent and monopoly rent is paid interest out of the higher fees that privatization-on-credit entails. This enriches the financial sector by turning infrastructure charges into a flow of interest and dividends. As these charges rise, their payout raises stock market and real estate prices ? largely by capitalizing the revenue into new debt leveraging. Financial managers leverage their own equity investment by taking on new debt (often to buy other firms or simply to payout as dividends) instead of recycling profits into new capital investment. Tangible capital formation in the means of production gives way to a proliferation of bank loans, bonds and stocks ? financial claims on income and production.
Debt leveraging increases the return on equity ? until the debt overhead shrinks markets, profits fall and companies go bankrupt, leaving empty corporate shells. But by the time this happens, financial managers take their money and run, keeping the enormous salaries and bonuses they have paid themselves ? and looking for new worlds to conquer financially.
The economic agony may be prolonged by persuading governments to bail out the banks, subsidizing the financial house of cards. The pretense is that this will help wage earners keep their jobs. But this is only a populist pretext. The reality is that financialization involves a race to the bottom. It obliges families to pay more of their income as debt service, leaving less consumer demand to warrant new investment and hiring.
Instead of designing a mixed economy with public infrastructure for basic monopolies and taxing the site value of land that public investment in transportation and overall prosperity created, the Houston Summit explained that its aim was to ?promote privatization of state property? (p. 12). But privatization without taxation is ?free lunch? wealth. What followed was a travesty of the truly free market and tax reforms by which North America and Europe got rich during the 1890-1914 Progressive Era.
An identical pattern of de-industrialization, failed voucher schemes, ?grabitization? followed by rising debt, poverty and emigration of skilled labor, has plagued the Baltics and other post-Soviet economies that took Western neoliberal advice. Latvia is the most extreme example ? yet privatization lobbyists celebrate it even today as a success story, not as planning gone radically wrong. Even in Russia, the Right Forces party views Augusto Pinochet?s asset-stripping privatizations as a successful model. The reality is that by the end of the 1970s all the pension funds were looted by the kleptocratic grupos into bankruptcy. Chilean voters rejected this program as most of the population is now without pensions, free public education and other services available before the coup imposed privatization at gunpoint.
Guaranteed to fail: privatization without progressive taxation and regulation
When the Houston Summit acknowledged that ?A process of spontaneous privatization is taking place in large sectors of industry,? there was no criticism of how this might prove damaging ? no suggestion that managers might bleed their enterprises through short-term income maximization, debt leveraging, paying themselves the surplus and sending it abroad or outright looting rather than building up their tangible capital investment.
The new breed of financial managers in the West as well as in the former Soviet economies treat direct investment, research and development almost as donating charity to the future. And financial managers are not known for being charitable. That is the problem with financial management: It is short-term, hit and run, and extractive rather than productive. But rather than discouraging this financialization process and its concentration of wealth in ways that John Stuart Mill?s generation called the ?unearned increment,? the Houston Report endorsed it (p. 26): ?Rapid privatization would not only hasten the benefits of private ownership but can also yield revenue at a time when both the budget deficit and the monetary overhang need to be cut.? What was lacking was a discussion of the various ways available to privatize ? and to shape markets by a tax system that encourages capital formation rather than rentier overhead.
Classical economists from the Physiocrats through Adam Smith, Mill, Marx and the Progressive Era reformers (the real reformers) dealt with how to do this in a free market to minimize the cost of production and cost of living. If privatization?s aim is to encourage new direct investment ? and discourage ?free lunch? speculation ? then governments should tax ?economic rent?: resource rent, land rent and monopoly rent. The revenue of privatized assets attributable to public investment (such as public transportation increasing real estate site rents) should be taxed on the same principle of taxing land and natural resources.
The Houston neoliberals rejected this idea, and urged Russia and other Soviet countries to do the opposite. Their aim was to not to turn them into viable competitors but to treat them as economic prey. Instead of teaching them to become as rich as the West ? without corruption ? the advice given to the individuals picked by Western advisors was just the opposite of how the West developed. It was to let the banks and financial insiders do the planning, not government.
Who has benefited most from privatization, neoliberal style: Russia, or the West?
Instead of helping Russia minimize its cost structure to make it more competitive, European as well as the U.S. advisors viewed it as a potential rival. Their aim was to turn the former Soviet states into customers for their exports, and especially for their bank credit rather than developing their own industrial banking systems. Western bank credit is created simply on computer keyboards that Russia and other financial systems easily could do just as well. But the Baltics, for instance, were treated a field for Scandinavian bank credit, while Hungary and Romania were dependent on Austrian banks. These foreign banks found the largest markets to be real estate, thanks to the fact that neoliberal advisors insisted on leaving land untaxed. The result was that initially low site values were ?free? to be pledged to bankers as interest. The ensuing real estate bubble loaded down the post-Soviet economies with mortgage debt, ultimately leaving many families bankrupt.
The other major credit market consisted of the monopolies being privatized. Here too, neoliberals urged against anti-trust regulation, price regulation or progressive taxation. This left more monopoly rent to be extracted, and ultimately paid to bankers (mainly in the West). The post-Soviet economies were infested with tollbooth systems for predatory pricing rather than enjoying the price regulation that characterized the most successful Western economies.
The post-Soviet economies were to become complementarity to the West in their production and credit patterns, not competitive. The commodities that the West wanted from Russia were oil and gas, as well as minerals. And of course Western investors wanted to profit from ownership of these natural resources, by buying shares in their companies. Russia was not to tax resource rents, which would reduce dividend payouts to investors. So in contrast to the progressive taxation and focusing on land rent and other economic rent as ?free lunch? income, Western advisors told the post-Soviet states to un-tax real estate and subsoil resources (ostensibly to ?raise more money? when the state sold them off).
Neoliberal philosophy was to tax employment in industry and other sectors. The effect was to maximize the cost of living and producing goods and services ? while depriving the government of its natural source of fiscal revenue in resource rents and monopoly rents. A secondary effect was to deprive the middle class of the ability to save. They could maintain basic living standards and obtain housing ownership or education only by running into debt.
This model led to dependency of the former Soviet states on the West, not to their development as equals. To be an ?equal? is to be a rival, from the Western vantage point ? not only an economic rival but also a potential military rival from the NATO perspective. All military power in modern times rests ultimately on industrial capability, and manufacturing was largely dismantled and scrapped throughout the Soviet Union.
The Harvard Boys played a similar role to that of the Chicago Boys in Pinochet?s Chile. Their program of shock therapy, currency depreciation and privatization had the effect of stripping assets and, in due course, making them available to U.S. and other Western investors. Directing governments not to tax the value of land, natural resources and public enterprises made their ?free lunch? rent available to pay bankers and investors. Failure to collect these resource rents and windfall gains left this revenue to be capitalized into securities ? while forcing the government to tax business and employment. The idea was to make the transfer of wealth irreversible ? a transfer of resources to a relatively few individuals enamored with the West, transacted at so far below actual value (often virtually for free) that Russia became the world?s top stock-market performer for three years.
Some excellent economists and property assessors came over from the United States hoping to help Russia. Ted Gwartney proposed to make land-value maps of St. Petersburg, and Moscow so that these cities could collect the rental value as their major source of fiscal revenue. This would have kept housing prices low, by preventing site-value rents from being capitalized into bank loans. The land would have been privately owned, but the rental value that did not reflect new construction costs and other capital improvements would not have pledged to pay interest to banks for loans to load post-Soviet economies down with debt.
A bad tax policy that increases the cost of labor and capital
Neoliberal ?value-free? doctrine holds that making income by real estate and natural resource speculation, lending at interest, financial trading and betting (and asset-price gains) is as helpful to the economy as tangible capital investment in the means of production. On this ground the Houston Summit rejected the classical economic principle that tax rates should differ ?according to the nature of the income? (p. 21). Yet this was the aim of 19th-century free market theory ? to free economies from rentier income in the form of land rent, monopoly rent and interest. Such revenue is an unearned payment to privilege, not technologically necessary.
To counter Mr. Gwartney?s work with Dmitri Lvov of the Russian Academy of Sciences and others, the World Bank and U.S. Agency for International Development (A.I.D.) explained that classical land taxation was not what they had in mind. The idea of rent and monopoly prices as things to be taxed or regulated to keep prices in line with cost-value was expurgated from the program. The aim was for Western investors to receive this economic rent, leaving Russian industry high-cost, highly taxed ? and not subsidized.
The Houston Report claimed that capital investment would develop spontaneously as property was transferred into private hands ? the quicker the better, even without payment being made and before any evaluation and economic reorganization took place. It acknowledged (p. 26): ?Firms might be acquired at far below (or even far above) their actual values, and ownership might become concentrated in the hands of a relatively few individuals with money or connections. Moreover, the state?s productive assets are valued at a sum far in excess of the savings available to the private sector.? However, the report deemed it too ?complicated? to do an assessment of what such a price would be. It recommended that, ?for small enterprises, provision may need to be made for buyers to pay in installments.? But it did not make the obvious corollary proposal for larger companies to issue a small proportion (say, 5 or 10 percent of the shares) to set a market price, or to assess a fair price for the government to tax or receive for its property as operations were rationalized. The report advised Russia simply to give resources away quickly: ?the prospective revenues from privatization should be forgone in the interests of speed and distributive equity.? But what it meant by distributive equity? was carefully avoided. The reality was that only Western investors were in a financial position to pay anywhere near a fair price.
Giving tax subsidy to Russian resources sold to the West on the cheap
The Report insisted that tax rates be slashed for wealthy investors, assuming that they are crooks and can get away with tax fraud, given incompetent governments unwilling to implement the tax code, in contrast to U.S. and Western European 20th-century experience. ?The top marginal rate of 60 percent will deter taxpayer compliance, and the multiplicity of brackets will complicate administration.? Yet high progressive income tax rates went hand in hand with the strongest growth periods of the United States and Europe, especially for the middle class.
Favoring the top of the economic pyramid and the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector, the Report advised that taxes on interest and other rentier income should be added only ?over time? ? implicitly after the economy was restructured along lines favorable to finance, real estate and mining fortunes. Most post-Soviet economies were deterred from taxing windfall gains or what U.S. authorities call ?unexplained enrichment.? Yet the main way to make money in these deregulated economies was indeed to reap a windfall ? selling the property a manager had obtained from the public domain, and indeed, selling part or even all one?s shares to foreigners, once domestic savings had been wiped out. Russia was to avoid a land tax or other taxes on windfall gains and property as ostensibly ?value-free.?
In practice this meant a pro-financial VAT tax to establish ?a broad and neutral revenue base.? But this is not neutral. It increases the cost of consumer goods and hence is anti-labor while not taxing property or lending. We see the result today most notoriously in Latvia, where employment bears a set of flat taxes amounting to 59%, while property taxes are just 1% of assessed value ? with no land-value maps to guide assessors.
So when post-Soviet Russia started with a clean slate in 1991 ? with no debt, and with ownership passing into private hands at perhaps 1 percent of real value ? the benefit of being debt-free and rent-free was not used as the basis of a Russian industrial renaissance. The nation?s vast resources and their potential income were transferred to Western investors at a fraction of their value ? giving a profit to Russian sellers but still leaving enough room to enable the shares to soar in dollarized markets as Russia refrained from taxing the windfall.
Neoliberals applaud this as a success story. It has indeed been a success for the West. But Russia?s economy has received only a small portion of the value of the assets it relinquished. The policy has made many Russian billionaires, as the Forbes list documents each year. But much of the economy remains in poverty.
Summary
Banking today finds its market in lending against economic ?free lunch? rentier income ? debt service paid out of real estate rents and privileged opportunities to engage in monopoly price gouging. Tangible new capital formation is funded out of retained earnings (and to some extent, new stock offerings). Even this corporate cash flow is now being bled to pay interest and dividends, and to spend on stock buy-backs to ?add value? to the stock options that financial managers give themselves.
This dysfunctional financial philosophy has de-industrialized the U.S. and European economies and now is pushing them into depression. So Russia?s problem and that of its fellow BRICS countries is how to protect themselves from having to rely on shrinking financialized markets in what used to be the world?s industrial core nations. They henceforth must depend increasingly on their own domestic market growth ? which means rising living standards at home.
The European Union has followed the bad advice that the IMF imposed on Third World countries from the 1960s through 1980s, for governments to balance their budgets and international payments by imposing austerity. Fiscal austerity takes the form of heavily taxing consumers and selling off public assets and infrastructure to buyers ? who turn around and pay interest and dividends their bankers and stockholders by levying tolls and other access fees. Financial austerity consists of tightening bank credit and raising interest rates to induce borrowing abroad, on the myth that foreign bank loans are inherently more productive.
These austerity policies have not helped economies grow. Latin America, Latvia and now Greece exemplify the waste of economic potential from following neoliberal anti-labor impoverishment as official policy. It slows growth, making economies less competitive and weaker ? and more dependent on foreign creditors as domestic markets stagnate and the most employable individuals emigrate.
So the main task at hand is to develop a policy to spur a thriving domestic market, by elevating low-income families to become an economic resource rather than a burden.
APPENDIX
How much poverty is the result of bad economic policy?
Just as there are many ways to get rich, there are various kinds of poverty. It therefore is necessary to distinguish between how much poverty is ?economically? justified and how much is unnecessary. The good news is that much of today?s poverty does not stem from technological or other ?objective? causes such as low productivity. Rather, it is the result of special interests monopolizing the economic surplus at the expense of the economy at large, carving out privileges to extract income without any technologically necessary cost of production. Their way of getting rich is by what the classical economists called ?rent seeking.? It is an economically unnecessary burden ? and one from which the classical economists sought to free society. The idea of a ?free market? from the Physiocrats and Adam Smith down through John Stuart Mill and the 19th century socialists was to free industrial capitalism from the rentier class that itself was a carry-over from Europe?s feudal epoch.
The main rentiers are the financial class, landowners and natural resource owners at the top of the economic pyramid ownership of ?tollbooths?: land, mineral rights, or basic monopolies and banks with the public privilege to create credit. It is to these rentiers that the bottom 90% are indebted and must pay interest, rent, user fees and other access charges. And neoliberals defending this state of affairs turn the classical idea of free markets upside down. Their idea of ?free? markets is one free from government price regulation, taxes on land rent, monopoly rent, financial interest and other categories of what the classical economists called ?unearned income.?
So we find ourselves with two opposing ideas of what constitutes a free market. The classical idea is to grow by avoiding extractive forms of wealth seeking at society?s expense. The neoliberal alternative to centralized planning is to dismantle the government?s ability to regulate markets to steer growth and shape markets in the national interest. The effect of this dismantling is to centralize planning in the hands of bankers ? primarily those of Wall Street and the City of London, followed by financial interests in satellite economies.
The success of the vested interests ? absentee owners, monopolists and the bankers that finance them ? is the main cause of economic polarization and poverty in today?s world. These rentiers have bought enough control of politics to obtain tax favoritism to subsidize their rent-seeking ?toll booth? economy on credit, with interest being ruled tax deductible in contrast to direct equity investment.
Neoliberal economists endorse as if it were a natural way for economies to grow. But their concept of ?wealth creation? takes the form of financial riches and special privileges, inflated in price by debt leveraging on the premise that an asset is worth whatever banks will lend against it, by capitalizing collateral into an interest-bearing loan. This financial concept of wealth is something quite different from tangible wealth in the form of actual means of production, education and skills, research and technology as most people have long thought of wealth. Yet this mode of wealth seeking has become the major threat to national economic growth today, by dysfunctional taxes favoring special interests at the expense of the economy at large. This fiscal philosophy reflects a failure to draw the classical distinction between productive and unproductive investment and credit.
The wealthy justify their status claiming to invest in building up the stock of capital, employing more labor in the process. Economic textbooks depict them as growing rich by investing in economic growth. Corporate profits are depicted as being re-invested in new plant and equipment, raising productivity. Credit is supposed to finance investment that will generate enough income to pay off loans with interest, leaving a profit over for entrepreneurs and their stockholders.
Business schools and the lobbying tanks endowed by the wealthy depict them as wise managers of companies run by industrial engineers. But in reality it is easier to make money by predatory means. That is how the railroad land barons and Wall Street trust builders and stock market manipulators made the great American fortunes. Their monopolies fought against labor unionization and the drive for safer and better working conditions, raising prices without regard for costs.
This kind of behavior inspired social democratic reforms to shape markets in ways that would raise all levels of society. Immigrants to America arrived poor, but were given schooling, health and social-work assistance to provide the mobility to rise. This enriched the whole economy by what was called the Economy of High Wages. Rising wages were self-justifying by being a precondition for rising labor productivity, thanks to the fact that well-educated, well-fed and well-clothed and housed labor was more productive.
The vested interests broke away from the classical economics that powered this takeoff. The post-classical break occurred mainly over the treatment of all income and wealth as deemed to be ?earned.? There is no recognition of unearned wealth achieved at other peoples? expense, as what technically is merely a transfer function. It is in this spirit that the neoliberal Chicago economist Milton Friedman claimed that: ?There is no such thing as a free lunch.? This ?value-free? logic rejects not only Marx but also Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and other classical economists. Every way of getting rich is deemed to be ?productive? in proportion to the wealth it creates at the top of the economic pyramid.
Why the gap between the rich and poor is growing
The U.S. and European economies are more and more about how to get a free lunch ? on credit. This has led to a post-industrial form of economic polarization. If industrial firms still got rich by squeezing out more profits to invest in capital, this at least would increase employment. But when wealth is concentrated by financial means ? and by buying property rights and privileges on credit ? the gains are paid out as interest and dividends. These financial payments crowd out industrial profits. This explains why the financial sector has increased its share of reported profits in the U.S. national income and product accounts (NIPA) to 40 percent by2010.
Both globally and within nations, economies are buckling under the attempt to pay debts that have grown beyond the reasonable ability to pay. On the global level the wealth and income gap is widening between creditor nations and debtor countries (most recently Ireland and Greece). Domestically, polarization also is increasing mainly between creditors and debtors ? that is, between the financial sector and the rest of the economy. Debt service absorbs most of the surplus: corporate profits, real estate rents, personal income over and above basic needs, and even government revenues over and above necessary public maintenance charges. Financial analysts abbreviate this as ebitda: earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. And banks and other financial institutions recycle most of their revenue to make yet more loans ? to extract yet more interest and fees, until finally the economy buckles in poverty.
The financial sector today thus plays the role that Ricardo, Adam Smith and the Physiocrats assigned to landlords in absorbing the industrial surplus. The financial bubble raised the price of housing, forcing buyers to take on a lifetime of mortgage debt, paying out the rental income as interest. Rising educational fees are financed by student loans. In the United States these debts cannot be wiped out via bankruptcy. Many students took on debt that will take a number of decades to pay off ? without regard for their ability to earn income.
The financial sector also funds corporate takeovers. In fact, most industrial companies are now run by Chief Financial Officers, not industrial engineers or even salesmen. The aim is not to create wealth by new direct investment but by downsizing and outsourcing, by living from short run to short run ? and in the end by asset stripping to pay bankers and bondholders who finance the game.
This is the mentality of the neoliberals who arrived to advise Russia in the 1990s. They did not come to exploit labor by hiring it to squeeze out surplus value. They didn?t want much to do with employment at all. They wanted control of raw materials resources on the cheap. They wanted to help leading scientists and industrial engineers emigrate to America, because its schools are producing mainly financial graduates, not technology-oriented students.
Financial polarization has been catalyzed by fiscal polarization. Since the 1980s the tax burden has been shifted off the higher wealth brackets onto the bottom 80% of the population. Taxes on real estate and financial gains were slashed to a fraction of income tax rates, while Social Security and Medicare were treated as ?user fee? programs, paid for in advance by employees (up to a $102,000 cut-off point), providing the government with enough revenue to cut taxes on wealth. The result is an anti-progressive tax system. And it is most steeply regressive in the former Soviet states (led by Latvia?s race to the bottom).
While average wage levels drifted downward in the United States since the late 1970s, the tax and debt burdens have risen, increasing the cost of obtaining housing, an education and medical care. Debt deflation is now shrinking markets for goods and services, leaving the U.S. economy in a deep L-shaped recession/depression, with Western Europe close in pursuit. Populations are being squeezed and getting poorer. This obviously is not a good model for Russia and other post-Soviet economies to follow. To avoid being dragged down, they must reject the neoliberal financial and tax philosophy they were given in the 1990s.
How to reverse economic polarization and poverty
The most obvious cause of poverty is over-indebtedness. The largest category of personal debt in today?s world is mortgage debt to obtain a family home. The debt burden is aggravated by the tax shift off finance, real estate and monopolies onto employees and consumers. Housing prices rise when taxes are shifted off property onto employment and consumers, because this tax shift leaves more rental value for new buyers to pledge to banks for mortgage loans. The winning bidder is whoever agrees to pay the most of this rental value as interest. So the banks end up with the rent. This is why the financial sector has grown so rich while debtors have little remaining to spend on goods and services. So markets shrink and economies fall into recession.
This financial-fiscal problem can be solved by following what classical economists recommended: taxing away ?free lunch? income ? land rent, monopoly rent and other returns to special privilege ? while keeping natural monopolies in the public domain to provide services at subsidized rates or freely, as in the case of roads, water and sewer systems and the like.
The high point of land taxation in England occurred when William the Conqueror ordered the Domesday Book to be compiled. The idea was for land ownership to be the tax base. But landlords fought to ?free? themselves of this tax, ultimately forcing governments to tax labor and industry by sales and income taxes. Lower property taxes ?freed? the land?s rent to be pledged to the banks for mortgage loans. So higher land taxes actually keep down the price of housing, office building and other debt-financed rent-yielding assets. The tax shift off these assets has had a negative impact on the production-and-consumption economy, by raising the cost of housing, living and doing business. This makes neoliberalized economies less competitive internationally ? and hence, poorer.
Cutting taxes on the higher wealth and income brackets leads to budget deficits, which financial lobbyists urge governments to rectify by imposing austerity programs. This is the fiscal philosophy that the IMF and other Washington Consensus agencies have imposed. It prompts a ?Take the money and run? strategy by the financial interests to bail out, moving their money abroad. This capital flight hurts national economies in the long run.
The manner in which privatization has been handled (without price regulation, and with tax deductibility for interest payments and ?fictitious? offshore charges) is an additional cause of polarization that undercuts competitiveness. American business economists of the late 19th century explained that the nation could become more competitive by treating public infrastructure as what Simon Patten called a ?fourth factor of production? alongside labor, capital and land. Its ?return? does not take the form of income (wages, profits or rent), but rather the degree to which it lowers the national price structure.
By contrast, privatization in a financialized fiscal regime adds pseudo-cost overhead to the economy. These technologically unnecessary costs are headed by interest charges on credit borrowed to buy public assets, high payments to management, and stock options. Privatizers then install ?toll booths? across the economy to extract economic rent.
U.S. economic strategists have long realized this. Back in 1944-46 when the IMF and World Bank were being formed, the Soviet economy was excluded because Western planners feared that its economy was free of the rent and interest charges that ?free market? economies permitted. The opposition to Soviet membership was that its debt-free, interest-free and tax-free structure gave its industry an ?unfair? advantage over market economies being financialized.
The advice given by the West to Russia since 1991 has led to maximizing the financial, real estate and monopoly overhead from which classical economists sought to free society, treating these rentier charges as unnecessary overhead to be reformed. It was by such Progressive Era reforms that Western economies rose to dominance. Russia and other countries can now take this path of reform to shape more efficient, fair and prosperous economies. In sum, now that neoliberal financial lobbyists have turned Progressive Era reforms upside down, it is necessary to ?reform the reformers? in order for Russia to rebuild its economy in the way that made the U.S. and Western Europe so successful during their economic takeoffs.
From the Enlightenment to the flowering of classical political economy into Marxism in Europe and institutional analysis in America, the aim of economics was to free economies from such unnecessary overhead. This is the body of reform that led the Progressive Era to guide public investment and tax policy in the national interest and steer industrial development to raise labor productivity. Keynesian economics subsequently sought to stabilize economies with public spending in the context of ?euthanasia of the rentier.?
By contrast, today?s neoliberal lobbying efforts lead to economic shrinkage and to a redistribution of wealth and income to the rentier classes. This strategy involves disabling government power, while denying the classical distinctions between productive and unproductive (parasitic) investment, credit and modes of wealth seeking.
Ultimately, the wealth of any nation is its population. It is wasteful to reduce families to poverty. The aim should be to make them more productive. The economy is an overall system, which requires a regulatory and tax structure to steer wealth-seeking in ways that add to national output, not merely to benefit the rich (or foreign investors) at the expense of the poor.
Footnotes
Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) and Trade, Development and Foreign Debt: A History of Theories of Polarization v. Convergence in the World Economy. His new book summarizing his economic theories, The Bubble and Beyond, is now available. He can be reached via his website, mh@michael-hudson.com.
see
Michael Hudson: Fiscal Cliff An Artificial?Crisis
Michael Hudson: Lower wages and?Grab-it-a-zation
Please share with others:
Filed under: Dandelion Salad Featured Writers, Dandelion Salad Posts News Politics and-or Videos 2, Economy, Politics, Poverty, Russia, The Economy Sucks and or Collapse 2 Tagged: | Capitalism on Dandelion Salad, Michael Hudson on Dandelion Salad, Neoliberalism
september 11 2001 september 11 2001 dr oz serena williams blake lively RG3 Espn Fantasy Football
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)