telescopically beseeching: May 2012

Thursday, May 31, 2012

UN chief warns Syria; regime again shells Houla

In this image made from amateur video released by the Shaam News Network and accessed Tuesday, May 29, 2012, purports to show 13 blindfolded and handcuffed bodies on the ground in Deir el-Zour, Syria. U.N. observers have discovered 13 bound corpses in eastern Syria, many of them apparently shot execution-style, the monitoring mission said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network via AP video) TV OUT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CANNOT INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE CONTENT, DATE, LOCATION OR AUTHENTICITY OF THIS MATERIAL

BEIRUT (AP) ? U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on Syria on Thursday to stop its attacks, saying the U.N. observers monitoring the cease-fire were not there to watch the killing of innocent people. The warning came as activists reported that Syrian troops again shelled the country's central region of Houla where more than 100 people were massacred last week.

The latest shelling and sniper fire killed at least one person and made scores flee in fear of more government attacks.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees activist groups said government troops unleashed heavy machine guns but also used mortars Thursday in Houla, a collection of poor farming villages in the central Homs province. Both groups said a young man was killed by sniper fire.

Survivors of the Houla massacre have blamed pro-regime gunmen for at least some of carnage that began Friday and left 108 people dead, many of them children and women. The Syrian government denied its troops were behind the killings and blamed "armed terrorists."

Activists from Houla said government forces last Friday first shelled the area after large demonstrations against the regime earlier in the day. That evening, they said, pro-regime fighters known as shabiha stormed the villages, gunning down men in the streets and stabbing women and children in their homes.

The Houla massacre was one of the deadliest incidents since the uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime started in March last year. The U.N. said several weeks ago that more than 9,000 people have been killed in the past 15 months while activists put the number at about 13,000.

The Observatory reported that Houla residents were fleeing Thursday to nearby towns and villages "fearing a new massacre."

Speaking in Istanbul, Ban said that "the massacre of civilians of the sort seen last weekend could plunge Syria into a catastrophic civil war ? a civil war from which the country would never recover." He added that a united international community demands that the Syrian government act on its responsibilities to its people.

"We are there to record violations and to speak out so that the perpetrators of crimes may be held to account," Ban told a summit of the Alliance of Civilizations, a forum promoting understanding between the Western and Islamic worlds.

"The more the international community knows," Ban said, "the more likely it is that we can advance on our most important goal: to help find a political solution, a solution that safeguards the lives and interests of all the Syrian people."

"Let me state plainly, however: The U.N. did not deploy in Syria just to bear witness to the slaughter of innocents," he said. "We are not there to play the role of passive observer to unspeakable atrocities."

Nearly 300 U.N. observers have been deployed around Syria to monitor a cease fire that went into effect on April 12, as part of a peace plan negotiated by international envoy Kofi Annan. Despite the cease fire, violence continued almost daily.

In the wake of last week's massacre, the United States, Western and Asian nations expelled Syrian diplomats in protest.

In Denmark, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that every day of slaughter in Syria is strengthening the case for tougher international action. However, she stressed that military intervention would need international support, including from Syrian ally Russia.

Speaking to Danish university students, Clinton noted that U.N. and international backing made possible last year's international coalition against Moammar Gadhafi in Libya but that Russia and China are standing in the way of similar action in Syria. She also suggested that a military effort against Assad's regime would be far more difficult.

Asked when the U.S. might opt for a military option, Clinton said, "Every day that goes by makes the argument for it stronger," even if Moscow in particular remained unconvinced. She said Washington would continue pressing its case to Russia, which has promised to block any moves at the United Nations to obtain a military mandate for intervention.

Meanwhile, a group of army defectors known as the Free Syrian Army warned the Syrian government on Thursday that if it does not abide by Annan's plan by ceasing fire and pulling out troops from residential areas by Friday noon, the group will defend the people.

"After that, the Free Syrian Army will not abide by the Annan plan ... and will defend the civilians," said Col. Qassim Salaheddine in a statement posted on YouTube. Salaheddine identified himself as the FSA commander in Homs province.

Although the FSA claims that it has so far been abiding by Annan's plan, Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said gunmen have violated the cease-fire more than 3,500 times. There have been clashes over the past weeks between troops and army defectors in different areas around Syria.

Also Thursday, Syria's state-run TV said 500 people who had gotten involved in recent events in Syria were released from detention. It gave no further details.

In Damascus, the Syria International Islamic Bank, or SIIB, criticized the latest sanctions imposed Wednesday by the Obama administration as "irrational and unjustified."

The Treasury Department said Wednesday that SIIB has been acting as a front for other Syrian financial institutions seeking to circumvent sanctions. The new penalties will prohibit the bank from engaging in financial transactions in the U.S. and will freeze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction.

SIIB said it would undertake all necessary measures toward the U.S. decision, saying it has no assets or accounts in the United States. It added that the bank, like other Syrian banks, halted all banking operations with the dollar since U.S. sanctions were first imposed on Syria.

With Washington unwilling at this point to pursue military options in Syria, the U.S. has relied heavily on economic sanctions as a means for pressing Assad to leave power. The United States will host other nations in Washington next week to look at ways to tighten international sanctions further.

World powers share a belief that Syria could descend into civil war and plan to map out possible ways to avoid such a disaster for the region, a deputy for Annan said Wednesday. Jean-Marie Guehenno told reporters after privately briefing the U.N. Security Council, the world body's most powerful unit, that diplomats are deeply troubled by Syria's cycle of violence.

Earlier Wednesday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani warned the West about military intervention in Syria along the lines of NATO's campaign that helped ouster Moammar Gadhafi after the alliance backed the rebel movement in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

"Creating another Benghazi in Syria will impact Palestine and the ashes of this fire will cover the Zionist regime, definitely," he said using the phrase commonly used by Iranian officials to refer to Israel.

___

Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this report from Damascus, Syria.

Associated Press

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Syria on brink of sectarian civil war, West says

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria is nearing full-blown sectarian civil war that would be catastrophic for the entire Middle East, Western nations said on Thursday, urging Russia to end its support for President Bashar al-Assad and put pressure on him to stop the bloodshed.

With anti-Assad rebels urging international envoy Kofi Annan to declare his peace plan dead, freeing them from any commitment to the tattered truce, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the prospect of spiraling violence presented "terrible" danger.

"A civil war in a country that would be driven by sectarian divides ... could then morph into a proxy war in the region because, remember, you have Iran deeply embedded in Syria," Clinton said during a trip to Copenhagen where she urged Moscow to increase pressure on Assad.

Russia, like China, has vetoed two Security Council resolutions calling for tougher action against Damascus, while stressing hopes that Annan's plan can spur a political solution. Washington called a reported shipment of Russian arms to Syria "reprehensible" although not illegal.

"The Russians keep telling us they want to do everything they can to avoid a civil war because they believe that the violence would be catastrophic," Clinton said.

"I think they are in effect propping up the regime at a time when we should be working on a political transition."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Syria was moving towards "all-out civil war or a state of collapse". The European Union was drafting new sanctions against Syria, he added, calling on other nations to pressure Assad.

A bloody crackdown on what began 14 months ago as a peaceful mass uprising has increasingly turned it into an armed conflict between heavily armed forces representing an establishment dominated by Assad's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, and rebel forces drawn largely from the Sunni majority.

Damascus says the rebels are backed by Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab states fearful of the growing influence of Syria's main ally in the region, Shi'ite Iran.

HOULA MASSACRE

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that another massacre like Friday's killing of 108 men, women and children in the western Houla region could pitch Syria into a devastating civil war "from which the country would never recover".

The United Nations has said the army and pro-Assad gunmen were probably responsible for the Houla killings, but Syria said on Thursday that a preliminary investigation had shown that anti-government armed groups carried out the killings with the aim of encouraging foreign military intervention.

Washington's U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, said Syria's version of what had happened in Houla was "another blatant lie". The massacre led a range of Western countries to expel senior Syrian diplomats and to press Russia and China to allow tougher action by the U.N. Security Council.

Syria's main rebel commander, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, urged Annan to declare that his peace plan had failed.

"There is no deadline, but we want Kofi Annan to issue a declaration announcing the failure of this plan so that we would be free to carry out any military operation against the regime," Turkey-based Asaad told Al Jazeera television, contradicting rebels inside Syria who issued a 48-hour ultimatum on Wednesday for Assad to abide by Annan's plan.

Annan's spokesman said it was not for the peace envoy to declare defeat.

"The Annan plan does not belong to Kofi Annan. It belongs to the parties that have accepted it and the international community that has endorsed it," Ahmad Fawzi told Reuters.

"So a failure of the Annan plan would be the failure of the international community to solve this peacefully ... If anyone has a better plan, they should come up with it."

The United Nations says Assad's forces have killed more than 9,000 people since the start of the uprising. Syria blames Islamist militants for the violence and says 2,600 soldiers and police have been killed.

Rebel leader Asaad said his fighters had so far honored Annan's plan. But activists have reported frequent attacks by militants and army defectors on government forces since the April 12 ceasefire agreement.

BODIES FOUND

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based network that collates reports of violence in Syria, said 11 bodies had been found outside the town of al-Qusair - killings that a Syrian television station blamed on "terrorist groups".

At least one person was killed and dozens were wounded in artillery and rocket bombardment in the Houla region on Thursday following rebel attacks on soldiers and pro-Assad 'shabbiha' militiamen, opposition activists said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin flies to Berlin and Paris on Friday for talks that European leaders may hope to use to lean on him to loosen Moscow's strategic links to Assad.

Russia has sought to justify its weapons deliveries to Syria, saying government forces need to defend themselves against rebels receiving arms from abroad. Damascus says Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya are among the countries helping the rebels.

The United States and the EU have suggested a U.N. arms embargo, but that would need the consent of Russia and China, which have so far resisted tougher action at the Security Council.

China said it still had faith in the Annan plan, despite the "pain and sadness over what happened in Houla".

"Annan's efforts are facing difficulties but no one can deny that they are making progress in some respects," Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said.

"We knew from the beginning that his path would not be strewn with flowers."

Annan met Jordan's King Abdullah in Amman to discuss the regional impact of the Syrian crisis, before flying to Lebanon where he met President Michel Suleiman, telling his interlocutors he had urged Assad to "take bold steps now to end the violence" and implement the peace plan, his spokesman said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati visited Turkey for talks with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on the fate of a dozen Shi'ite pilgrims taken hostage last week in northern Syria, shortly after crossing the border from Turkey.

Syrian rebels in Aleppo province said in a statement that the hostages were in good health and suggested that some had participated in fighting the rebellion.

They demanded an apology from Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, an ally of Assad, for remarks on Syria he made in a speech last week.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Seda Sezer in Istanbul, Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv; Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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CareCrunch Answers ? Answers Archive ? Consider Many Of These ...

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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Scrapbooking Ruler | Scrapbooking

This article looks at the general scrapbooking topics of gifting scrapbooks. Scrapbooks make great gifts for those people who have everything. They are very personal and will be treasured for a very long time.

It is not difficult to make a scrapbook. The first step is to decide on a topic. Most of the time this is an obvious decision due to the nature of the gift. For example a birthday can be celebrated by doing a story of the persons life. Other topics may not be so obvious. Your friend may be having a birthday but a story about them can be replaced by commemorating an event of one of their loved ones, like a grandchild attending school for the first time.

The most important elements of a scrapbook are the photos and images included. Getting these images may take a bit of sleuthing. The more friends and family members you can get involved without letting the cat out of the bag the better. Get them to scan and email images to you. You can print them from home or send them to a photo printer for printing. Printing method is personal preference.

Next is to procure the materials to actually start putting the book together. The first thing you will need is a book. There are several options available when choosing a book. Craft supply shops have a large assortment of books made specifically for this purpose. You can also choose a photo album if you wish. If you are an avid recycler you may find that you would like to reuse an old picture book you have. The shape and size and color are all completely up to you. There are no restrictions that you must follow.

The rest of the materials can also all be found at the craft shop. Be sure not to forget about the items you already have at home, however. You may prefer to get card stock and paper from the store but scraps paper, newspaper, wrapping paper, and magazine paper can all do a great job.

It is also not necessary to go out and spend a small fortune on scrapbooking cutters. An exact-o knife with a ruler can do some intricate cutting. Regular scissors will also do. Remember to pay close attention while cutting so as not to harm yourself.

Take the time to plan out your story before you start. Invest in some artist tape so you can temporarily stick things in place. This will make it easy to make changes along the way if you decide elements will look better placed elsewhere. When you have determined where everything should go, firmly stick them in place so they will not slide or move.

This is a hobby that has gained popularity over the years and you might find that after you have completed one, you are hooked and will quickly find yourself doing another. Not only is it relaxing for the hobbyist but they make great gifts that have special meaning. There is nothing that says you care than something made from the heart.
Doc No.:212-JG-ULT5-fb25x

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Cavallini Numbers Decorative Paper Tape, 5 Assorted Rolls
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These cool paper tapes by Cavallini are perfect for packages art projects embellishments collage scrapbooking bookmaking and more. Each set comes with five assorted paper tape rolls packaged in a reusable decorative tin. The tape is self adhesive and each roll measures 16 yards. You get one roll that is 1-3/16 inch wide 2 rolls that are 9/16 inch wide and 2 rolls that are 3/8 inch wide?.

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Marti Michell 6-Inch-by-18-Inch My Favorite Universal Ruler
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MARTI MITCHELL-My Favorite Universal Ruler. These acrylic rulers feature metric measurements and inches on the same ruler. Perfect for a rotary cutter with fabric; paper; vinyl and more. Ruler features inch measurements down to 1/8in and centimeter measurements down to the millimeter on both the long and short sides of the ruler; 45 and 60 degree angle markings in two directions. Ruler measure?

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Video: Obama awards Medal of Freedom to Bob Dylan, John Glenn (cbsnews)

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

HUFFPOST HILL - All That For This: Romney To Win GOP Nomination

Mitt Romney will likely secure the Republican nomination today, which is why he's suddenly moved to the center and is campaigning with moderate Donald Trump. If you change lanes on the Beltway without signaling, be careful: Bob McDonnell wants to blow you up with an unmanned drone. And an electric cigarette company is publicly imploring John Boehner to curb his tobacco consumption, meaning a press release from a low-alcohol Merlot producer can't be far off. This is HUFFPOST HILL for Tuesday, May 29th, 2012:

TEXAS PRIMARY PREVIEW - Although it's mostly being framed as "the one where Mitt Romney secures the nomination," there's still some suspense to today's vote. Lucia Graves: "The Republican Senate primary race to fill the seat left open by retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has been framed as Republican establishment versus Tea Party, but it may simply be a test of how conservative Texas Republicans have become. Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst has endorsements from prominent conservatives like Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee, while his opponent, former Solicitor General Ted Cruz, has received nods from such national Tea Party figures as Sarah Palin and Jim Demint. A third candidate, former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, while clearly the underdog, could garner enough votes to prevent Dewhurst from receiving the 50 percent necessary to win the Texas Republican party nomination outright on Tuesday. Should he fail, Dewhurst will be forced into a run-off election on July 31." [HuffPost]

ROMNEY ATTENDING DONALD TRUMP FUNDRAISER - The best part is imagining all the awkward things Romney might say when confronted with Trump's conspicuous consumption ("This 20-foot high oil portrait of you and that cheetah smells great!" "This appetizer of gold-dipped lobster and caviar reminds me of baseball!" "This platinum toilet... wow!"). Jon Ward: "'He doesn't want to talk about it.' Or so said Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's spokesman, on the question of where President Obama was born. Cohen, in a phone interview, called the renewed controversy over Trump's questioning of whether Obama was born in the U.S. 'a distraction,' and blamed it on 'the liberal media.' But five minutes after The Huffington Post talked to Cohen on the phone, a call to Trump's New York offices resulted in the casino, real-estate and reality-TV mogul being patched through on the line, from here in Las Vegas. Adding to the surreal nature of the day, Trump openly disagreed with his own spokesman's assessment. 'I don't imagine this is distraction at all,' Trump said. 'In fact, we have a fundraiser that's going to take place in a couple of hours, and I'm just walking through the lobby of Trump international and this place is packed.'" [HuffPost]

@hollybdc: And here's Romney exiting next to the Trump plane (Las Vegas NV) instagr.am/p/LOMPqdIDjL/

Oh, and this: "Hours before hosting a fundraiser for Mitt Romney in Las Vegas, Donald Trump said Tuesday he's renewing questions about whether President Barack Obama was born in the U.S. because 'a lot of people agree' with him and it might help Republicans win the White House." [Las Vegas Review-Journal]

Naturally, the Obama campaign is happy about the aforementioned "this": "The campaign's new web video, released on Tuesday and coinciding with a Romney fundraiser featuring Trump at his Las Vegas hotel, highlights Trump's repeated references to President Barack Obama's birthplace and contrasts Romney with previous Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who is shown in clips from 2008 denouncing supporters' claims questioning Obama's citizenship." [HuffPost's Sabrina Siddiqui]

NLRB SCANDAL VALIDATES LABOR MOVEMENT'S PARANOIA - Dave Jamieson: "Members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Tuesday addressed the recent resignation of their former colleague Terence Flynn, who stepped down over the weekend after investigators found he'd improperly shared agency information with a former adviser to presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. In a joint statement, four members of the five-person labor board said the drama surrounding Flynn, a conservative among a liberal majority, would not 'tarnish' the image of the NLRB, the federal agency tasked with enforcing labor law for businesses and their workers...Pressure had been mounting on Flynn to resign for weeks, ever since an NLRB inspector general report documenting Flynn's leaks became public. According to investigators, Flynn had shared "sensitive" agency information -- including board member's deliberations on pending cases -- with former board members while he was serving as agency counsel last year, prior to his recess appointment to the board." [HuffPost]

IS REP. MICHAEL FITZPATRICK IN THE POCKET OF BIG PIGMENT? - Running in tomorrow's Roll Call from Jonathan Strong: "In early May, Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) introduced 12 bills to suspend importation duties on chemicals like Isoviolanthrone Crude Dry Presscake and 4-Sulfo-1,8-naphthalic anhydride potassium salt. The obscure names and dense bill text, which would amend the 'Harmonized Tariff Schedule,' might leave casual observers perplexed. But according to disclosure forms, eight of the 12 proposals had something in common: they would benefit United Colors Manufacturing, a dyes and pigments firm in Fitzpatrick's district. Thomas Nowakowski, the president of the company, said the 'low six figure' monetary value of the duty suspensions to his company is critical for it to stay competitive with rivals in India, China and Mexico. But Nowakowski and his family have
also been generous campaign donors to Fitzpatrick and the Republican party, giving the Pennsylvania Republican over $26,000 since 2002 and over $150,000 to Republican candidates and party organizations during that same time period."

U.S. NEGOTIATORS GET FIRST AMENDMENT'D - Zach Carter: "For most of last week, the Obama administration worked to block a new global fund to develop drugs for use in poor countries. Then, on Friday, U.S. negotiators suddenly softened their opposition and agreed to a compromise. What happened? HuffPost happened. According to global health advocates at Knowledge Ecology International: 'Stories by Zach Carter in the Huffington Post and Agathe Duparc in Le Monde during the negotiations seemed have to have had an impact on the positions of the US and French delegations.' [KEI]

DAILY DELANEY DOWNER - From our ongoing series PASTED: The Emails of the Jobless: "My husband lost his unemployment benefits two weeks ago (14 weeks earlier than expected)," writes an unemployed Marylander. "He has been searching... and has had some interviews, but no success. He has heard that he is 'over qualified.' I also lost a job in January 2010; found work almost immediately but took a very significant pay cut. We have gone from over $150k per year to $45k in less than three years. I am one federal budget cut away from unemployment myself -- I work for a community action agency and my salary comes from a Community Services Block Grant, which is always up for play. We haven't had health insurance for over a year." [Hang in there!]

Don't be bashful: Send tips/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to huffposthill@huffingtonpost.com. Follow us on Twitter - @HuffPostHill

ROMNEY NOT ANTAGONIZING CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICANS - Bloomberg: "[T]he presumed Republican presidential nominee has been able to overcome rifts within his party that might otherwise undermine his chances of winning the White House in November. So far, Romney has harnessed an intense hunger to beat Obama among congressional Republicans willing to paper over their policy differences in pursuit of the presidency...With close message coordination and consultation with lawmakers and their staff on Capitol Hill in twice-daily conference calls and sit-downs with party leaders, Romney and his team are succeeding where past presidential campaigns have sometimes failed to disastrous effect...His political director, Rich Beeson, worked with House Speaker John Boehner's political chief at the Republican National Committee four years ago. Kevin Madden, who is coordinating with the RNC for Romney and was a spokesman for his failed 2008 presidential campaign, is a former aide to Boehner, an Ohio Republican...The links extend to those affiliated with the anti- government Tea Party movement. Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, not only worked at the RNC with Tim Griffin, now a first-term congressman from Arkansas elected with Tea Party support, he was a member of Griffin's wedding." [Bloomberg]

ROMNEY TARGETS SOLYNDRA... BECAUSE PEOPLE STILL CARE ABOUT THAT - Politico: "Mitt Romney and a super PAC supporting him are giving Solyndra a try on the trail, unveiling ads that wield the $535 million energy loan scandal as a double-whammy: an indictment of big government spending and the answer to Romney's private equity problem. The argument: Solyndra is the best example of President Barack Obama's stimulus at its worst, complete with a cozy donor in deep with a company that got taxpayer money only to file for bankruptcy and lay off 1,100 workers. Forget Romney's record at the private equity firm Bain Capital -- look at Obama's public investment failure." [Politico]

Given the choice between the guy who spent his adolescence hotboxing a VW bus and the guy who committed a hate crime for a laugh, a former classmate of both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is betting on the former. The Daily: "Sidney Barthwell just might be the only person on the planet who went to school with both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Friendly with both men long before they entered political life, Barthwell has contributed money to both campaigns and speaks highly of both candidates. But when his two former classmates face off later this year in a series of presidential debates, he doesn't mince words about what he thinks will happen. 'When they debate, Barack will smoke Romney,' Barthwell, a district court magistrate in Michigan who attended boarding school with Romney and Harvard Law School with Obama, told The Daily." [The Daily]

Bob Dylan received a Medal of Freedom today.

THAD MCCOTTER'S CAMPAIGN IS SO ROCK & ROLL HE'S NOT EVEN ON THE BALLOT - It's like, Imma make music, man, but I don't care if you hear it. Rawk. Luke Johnson: "U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter (R-Mich.) announced Tuesday that he will run a write-in campaign for reelection to his seat, agreeing with Michigan's secretary of state's office that the number of valid signatures on his submitted petitions were insufficient to qualify for the ballot... His campaign submitted 2,000 signatures but his state's Board of Elections reviewed them and determined that fewer than 1,000 -- the number required to get on the ballot -- were valid... 'Yes, a write-in campaign is a difficult hill to climb but, as I am responsible for the hill, I will climb it to the utmost of my ability,' McCotter said." [HuffPost]

Womp womp: "Rep. Thaddeus McCotter turned in 2,000 petition signatures to get on August primary ballot, but >all except 244 have been deemed invalid because of rampant duplicated copies, the Michigan Secretary of State found. A review by The Detroit News of the petition signatures found full copies of a sheet of signatures that were photocopied once and in some cases two times and mixed in with the 136-page stack of signatures. In some cases, a different petition circulator's name was signed to the duplicate copy." [Detroit News]

@adamsmithtimes: '14 Fla Gov race poll: Charlie Crist 48%, Rick Scott 34% bit.ly/M3m9sZ

JERSEY PRIMARY A BOON FOR FANS OF PROXY WARS - John Celock: "The New Jersey primary between Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) and Rep. Steve Rothman (D-Englewood) in a newly created district has turned bitter as the one-time allies accuse each other of having flawed records and no ties to the district. It also is taking on shades of the Obama/Clinton 2008 presidential primary. Former President Bill Clinton announced on Friday plans to campaign for Pascrell, while President Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod is backing Rothman... The two have also fought for the progressive mantle. Rothman claims Pascrell supports lowering taxes for the rich and opposes a women's right to choose. Pascrell is challenging an ad from Rothman on the tax claim that features Pascrell saying, 'Republicans had great ideas. I liked some of their ideas,' during a 2010 Chris Matthews interview. The quotes were excerpted from a longer quote on health-care reform." [HuffPost]

BOB MCDONNELL WANTS DRONES FLYING OVER VIRGINIA - As opposed to the drones who file in and out of apartment complexes in Clarendon and Court House and into the District every workday. WTOP: "Police drones flying over Virginia would be 'great' and 'the right thing to do' for the same reasons they are so effective in a battlefield environment, the state's chief executive said Tuesday. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, says he is open to any technology that makes law enforcement more productive. The use of drones, which was recently endorsed by the police chiefs of Fairfax County and D.C., would make better use of valuable police resources. Increased safety and reduced manpower are among the reasons the U.S. military and intelligence community use drones on the battlefield, which is why it should be considered in Virginia, he says." [WTOP]

COMPANY WORRIED ABOUT JOHN BOEHNER'S LUNGS - The Hill: "A Florida-based seller of electronic cigarettes has offered House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) a starter kit for its product, which the company says is aimed at giving Boehner a healthier alternative to regular cigarettes. 'We appreciate all that Boehner does for our country and the economy and we would like for him to enjoy the satisfying feeling of smoking without the harmful side effects of tobacco,' Eversmoke said Tuesday. 'We understand how much pressure is involved in politics, especially being the House Speaker, and it's important to remain healthy in every way possible.' ... But even if he wanted to try the e-cigarette, current House rules on gifts appear to require Boehner to turn down the offer. According to the House Ethics Committee, members can accept almost any gift from any source that is valued at less than $50, and a limit on these gifts of $100 per year per source." [The Hill]

BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - No hamsters were harmed in the making of this video.

SAYING GOODBYE TO CHUCK BROWN - HuffPost DC: "The public can view the body of the "Godfather of Go Go" at the Howard Theatre tonight until midnight." [HuffPost]

SYRIAN SURPRISE: - HuffPost DC: The top Syrian diplomat in D.C. is being forced to leave William Howard Taft's old house around the corner from Donald Rumsfeld's old lair. [HuffPost]

COMFORT FOOD
By @bradjshannon!

- "The rabble are fickle, my lord Barack." [http://bit.ly/N8gOgL]

- Pop it like you mean it. [http://bit.ly/N8bTwg]

- Pachelbel's Canon in Zzzz... [http://chzb.gr/N8bGtg]

- "The rabble are fickle, my lord Barack." [http://bit.ly/N8gOgL]

- Best marriage proposal from a soldier "in Afghanistan" after his girlfriend threw the first pitch at a Cardinals game EVER. [http://bit.ly/MW7JKz]

- Side effects may include: ruined movie moments. [http://bit.ly/N8aUMK]

- A slideshow of presidents and the drugs they did. [http://bit.ly/MW8bbA]

- This is the trailer/pledge campaign video for Moses, a feature documentary about a homeless man from San Francisco. [http://bit.ly/N8bTwg]

TWITTERAMA

@elisefoley: Trump would NEVER seek publicity MT @realDonaldTrump: Losers such as George Will and @Rosie use me to get publicity for themselves. 3rd rate'

@RealClearScott: Who would've thought Trump would say something unhelpful while acting as a Romney surrogate, besides everyone?

@johnjcook: Something grates about guy who wrote Masters of War accepting a medal from a guy who has a kill list.

ON TAP
By @christinawilkie

TONIGHT

6:00pm: Typically uptown Mitt Romney drops a few notches tonight in Las Vegas, passing the hat at Donald Trump's Casino fundraiser. Expect to see lots of trophy wives engaged in serious discussions about where the president was born. Extra Klassy. [Trump International Hotel, Las Vegas]

TOMORROW

5:30pm - 7:00pm: In preparation for this year's highly anticipated Irritable Bowel Disorders Day on the Hill, the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation reception gets the fun started early. [Rayburn B-354]

6:00 - 8:00pm: When retired Rep. Barney Frank came out of the closet 25 years ago, few could have imagined that one day it would be a celebrated occasion on Capitol Hill. Tonight's D-Trip Anniversary Reception proves otherwise. Cheers, y'all. [1819 14th St. NW]

6:00 - 8:00pm: Mitt Romney ventures into hostile territory with a sweep of California. First stop: A fundraiser at the 98-room mansion of San Francisco Giants owner Charles Johnson. Look, Mitt has "some friends who are owners of" MLB teams, too! [Carolands Chateau, Hillsborough Calif.]

Got something to add? Send tips/quotes/stories/photos/events/fundraisers/job movement/juicy miscellanea to Eliot Nelson (eliot@huffingtonpost.com), Ryan Grim (ryan@huffingtonpost.com) or Arthur Delaney (arthur@huffingtonpost.com). Follow us on Twitter @HuffPostHill (twitter.com/HuffPostHill). Sign up here: http://huff.to/an2k2e

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From No Knowledge in Outsourcing to 1000 employees Overseas ...

President and CEO of Office Beacon ? Pranav Dalal

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Right Click to Download the MP3

Pranav?s wife had an idea that start an outsourcing business by hiring workers in India. He is Indian but has no family there and he doesn?t speak the language. But he jumped in, and tells the story of starting and growing to 1,000 employees. He discusses what he had to do to niche and pivot so he wasn?t just dealing with trying to provide the cheapest price.
Great tips, and great inspiration!

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

Check out Officebeacon.com.

Thanks so much for listening! If you like these interviews subscribe via iTunes.

Any questions or comments on the podcast let me know!

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Budget Subcomm says use fed special ed $ for student med therapy ...

Desaulnier Recommending that schools pay for student medical programs with federal special education monies, state Sen. Mark De Saulnier, at left, chair of Senate Budget Committee #3, rejected Gov. Brown's proposed cut to the state's?Children's Services' Medical Therapy Program?(CCS- MTP) last Thursday.?Marisa Lagos reported on the story for the?San Francisco Chronicle.

Under Browns' proposal, families with annual incomes over $40,000 would no longer be eligible for MTP services?unless medical expenses exceed 20% of their income; currently there is no financial eligibility requirement.

From the Subcommittee agenda, May 24, 2012:

If Brown's proposal is approved, an estimated 4,779 children would lose MTP services...it would result in annual savings of $21.9 million ($10.9 million General Fund and?$11 million county funds).

Instead it is recommended to use available federal special education funds to cover the costs?of providing services to the 14,273?children with?Individual Education Programs (IEPs) [under the federal?Individuals with Disabilities Education Act]?who receive medical therapy.

Currently state and county funds cover the medical therapy services included in the IEP.

A conservative estimate of these costs is $24.6 million ($12.2 million General Fund?and $12.4 million county funds).

The subcommittee staff recommendation would require schools to pay for all therapies?included in a child?s IEP, including medical, (as required by federal law) and to provide schools?with this additional special education funding to cover the increased cost. Under this scenario,?the state would continue to require [the clinics] to provide medically necessary therapies, but?placeholder language would specify that medically necessary therapies included in an IEP?would not be the financial responsibility of the CCS, but would be funded by the schools.

The CCS-MTP provides physical, occupational, and medical?therapy to handicapped children with neurological and musculoskeletal disorders, such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida, muscular dystrophy, head and spinal cord injuries;?24,433 children receive services in 125 mobile?outpatient clinics located on school campuses and run by county CCS programs.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

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Monday, May 28, 2012

Garden Style: Artworks inspire in Webster (Rochester Democrat and Chronicle)

Share With Friends:

| Politics - Top Stories News, RSS Feeds and Widgets via Feedzilla.

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Tactile Tablet Sleeves - Formatron Skinny iPad Case is Light in the Hand and Fine for the Fingertips (TrendHunter.com)

There are so many fantastic features to Apple?s iPads, yet one of the rare, complaints still concerns the gadget?s keyboard. The Formatron Skinny iPad Case gives users the opportunity to interact with their tablets and bypass the tricky touchscreen interface, with a separate QWERTY typepad built right into the protective fabric sleeve.

The Hatch & Co. accessory comprises two slip pockets, one for your device and another for the super slim keyboard. A stitched window surrounds the typer and stiff grips hold the tablet in place. When opened, the screen can be perched at a convenient angle so that one might use this setup much like a laptop computer. Even with its aesthetic, practical and technological features, the Formatron Skinny iPad Case is more slender than many on the market.

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Cain Velasquez TKOs Antonio Silva in a bloody UFC 146 battle (PHOTO)

Cain Velasquez wanted to make a statement in his first fight back after losing the UFC heavyweight belt to Junior dos Santos. He did that with a bloody, first-round TKO of Antonio "Big Foot" Silva.

Velasquez caught a Silva kick and took him down right off the bell. From there, Velasquez pounded away at Silva's face, opening a massive cut on Silva's nose. The cut gushed a ton of blood, more than is usually seen during a fight. It covered Silva's face and body, coated Velasquez's arms, and gathered in a pool next to them.The bout was stopped for a doctor to check the cut.

[Kevin Iole: Junior dos Santos rocks Frank Mir at UFC 146]

Silva tried to shake the blood off as the doctor looked at the cut. After the fight was allowed to continue, Velasquez kept throwing bombs at Silva's head until the bout was stopped at 3:36 in the first round.

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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Hormonal acne treatment for women - Health and Fitness ...

This is one of the simplest home remedies for acne to apply to your skin, and has been shown to for work. Really and truly, if you want to turn your life and your skin around, Mike? s hormonal acne treatment for women system is the way to do it. Herbal treatment for acne with scars can be used for curing this condition. The egg white face mask is absolutely treatment accessible and all that you just basically need is to split up the egg white from the egg yolk. Deep within each follicle, sebaceous glands are working to produce sebum, the oil that keeps your skin moist and flexible. Apply this combination on your face and keep it on till it dries off. Acne glycolic acid, an alpha hydroxyl acid, is safe to use since it is a natural product. All this will just end up drying your face out. Always make sure to consult with your physician or health care practitioner before using any body acne treatment or remedy. It will help greatly for preventing breakouts as well. Even a good scrub and exfoliating gel once a week will be very helpful. hormonal acne treatment for women Simply set up blue and red lamps and ? bathe? in the light just as you would in a tanning booth. If you already think acne that you have the right peel for your acne problem and you are still intimidated on using treatment it, you can try test patching it. But, if you are very much use to make up, you can apply water based make up. Would you be willing to see women a epiduo acne treatment dermatologist for information about acne treatments that work? Witch Hazel Astringent This astringent happens from your plant aided by the exact same term. Use gentle hair products and try not to get them on your face. Acne can be healed though there are cases that it takes time for it to disappear. 5. It will help your colon cleansing more effective than usual. acne Home remedies for acne Your kitchen is a huge repository of parts that can facilitate in preparing home remedies for acne. Wait for 15 minutes and then wash it off using water. I was frustrated and confused. How Does Acne Laser Treatment Perform? While this may work fine, treatment has a limited ? and follow- up treatments are needed from time to hormonal time. BPO, the main epiduo ingredient in most acne treatments is one of the most effective treatments for acne. Oils produced by the skin help these dirt particles and microbes to seep into the pores of the skin. Most sufferers avoid eye contact and try to cover their face by growing their hair long. Its synthetic form, however, is only half as effective as its natural form.

Hormones cause the sebaceous glands to grow. Neither race or gender is an indicator of acne as it affects male and female and all The best example of this are the pimples that almost every teenager gets when puberty makes their testosterone levels skyrocket. Nodules are large bumps A well- balanced diet with acne lots of fresh fruit and vegetables will always assist with your skins condition and general health. If worse It is important to ensure that every cleaner, oil, and lotion that you use in your cosmetic or skin care regimen is free of Still looking for quality, unbiased information on back acne causes ? 2] The lesions are caused by changes in the pilosebaceous units, the skin

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Different Options For Back Pain Relief | i.Pain Relief

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Different Options For Back Pain Relief ? Health ? Fitness. Search by Author, Title or ... Ultimately, strong, healthy muscles and overall physical fitness will work to deter injury and back pain. Further exercise for back pain relief ...

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When Looking for Estate Planning Lawyer ... - Personal Finance Info

In the future, it is possible for certain issues to be alleviated through estate planning and what you have here pertains to creating plans for asset disposal when you are no longer with the living. When it comes to this, get the advice of an estate lawyer so that you can maximize the value of an estate after taxes and so on. For a lot of estates, these are often designated to the children of the owners and they normally get help from the best Estate Panning Lawyer Charlottethat they can find.

Charlotte is a large city in North Carolina and in America and there are more than a million individuals living in the city proper and in the metropolitan part as well. In the USA, land in Charlotte is tremendously marketable and this is because of the fact that it is a Global City. With NY having the largest banking center in America, Charlotte is a close second.

In North Carolina, there are other cities that are just like this one and they are Huntersville and Fort Mill. You are dealing with the 19th largest city in the States when it comes to nearby Huntersville. Fort Mill, on the other hand, is a fast-growing suburban town with vast peach orchards and picturesque pastures, lakes and forests with trails that are perfect for hiking, biking and horseback riding.

With the expertise of a highly skilled estate planning lawyer, there is nothing to worry about if you have land in this area. Reducing the value of what you own need not be a problem as well. Something that property owners in North Carolina want to avoid is diminishing value for their assets especially if they are considering passing these on to other family members.

It is not fun planning one?s own death and determining what would happen to one?s property after someone dies. To make sure that no problems arise when it comes to the future transfer of assets, see to it that you consult an attorney. In various cities in North Carolina, it is pretty easy to find competent lawyers when it comes to something like estate planning.

The thing about estate planning is that it involves powers of appointment, property ownership and beneficiary designations not to mention usual legal elements like wills and trusts. Depending on the preference of an individual, assets may go to the next living relative or they can be designated to friends or a charitable institution. Planning may include a living will that gives out other instructions such as manner of burial or the passing on of heirlooms.

There are issues pertaining to laws and taxations that you will deal with through estate planning. Since you will be dealing with these things, it is adamant that you get the help of lawyers or accountants with titles such as Chartered Financial Analyst, Trust and Estate Practitioner, or Chartered Trust and Estate Planner when it comes to something like estate planning. Even after you pass on, you still have to pay taxes and the job of the estate planner is to see to it that such taxes need not be paid so that your intended beneficiaries can get your assets in full.

Aside from guaranteeing the transfer of assets and limiting tax liability, it is also the responsibility of the estate planning lawyer to protect the family. Family is the most important asset that you can have no matter how wealthy you are. For those who transfer properties to their family members, this is a way of securing the family, not just passing on the wealth.

The job of providing property owners with the right kinds of wills, trusts, and powers of appointment is something you can expect from competent estate planners. When it comes to this, templates are not enough. Flexibility is something that is important when it comes to this.

The most reasonable advicecan also be provided by the estate planner. By working with a competent estate planning lawyer Charlotte, you can expect services that are so good that they outlive the clients. An estate planner is more than just a lawyer for he or she provides great advice too.

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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Richard (RJ) Eskow: How to Fix the Fed: Dismiss Dimon, Boot the Bankers, and Can the Corporations

More and more people are calling for Jamie Dimon, CEO of troubled JPMorgan Chase, to resign from the Board of the New York Federal Reserve.

His latest scandal, combined with Dimon's hypocrisy and relentless self-promotion, make him an obvious target. But he isn't alone. Bankers dominate the Fed at the regional and national levels, and most of the other outside seats are held by executives from large corporations. (Remember Herman Cain?)

Should Dimon resign? They all should.

The Board Member With No Name

The scary thing is, Dimon may not be the Fed's most inappropriate board member. That honor may belong to the individual I call the Board Member With No Name.(I don't to want inflame emotions by identifying her, because what she represents is more important than who she is.)

Shouldn't a r?sum? that includes being the top bank lobbyist and working for the firm that laundered a third of a billion dollars for Mexican drug cartels disqualify someone from serving at the Fed?

Before she became the banking industry's chief lobbyist, the Board Member With No Name's was an executive at scandal-plagued Wachovia Bank, an institution whose egregious mismanagement led to its collapse and a government rescue. Its scandals and crimes included: deceptively packaging its toxic subprime mortgage backed securities; rigging municipal bond bids, which led to a $148 million fine ; and, worst of all, laundering $378 billion in drug money for the Mexican cartels that have murdered at least 60,000 people.

The legislators who passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 couldn't have imagined that someday one of its governors would come from a firm that was buste,d when its laundered money was used to buy a drug-smuggling plane in Sinaloa.

Banks are large organizations, and it's highly unlikely that the Board Member even knew about the wrongdoing. She looks like a very nice person - and she probably is. But her background hardly qualifies her for a position of public trust. After all, she's only two or three degrees of Kevin Bacon away from cartel bosses like "El Loco," who leads a group of deserters from the Mexican Army's Special Forces known as "Los Zetas."

Coincidentally, El Loco was arrested this week for beheading 49 people and dumping their bodies in the town square.

The drug cartels have been called "vicious," "evil," and "sociopathic." At Wachovia they were also called "preferred clients."

Conflicted

The New York Fed is the most powerful of all the regions - understandably, since it includes Wall Street. Dimon's one of three bankers on its board. One of the others is from a bank which still owed the government nearly $1 billion in TARP money as of last report. The corporate world is represented by the CEOs of a technology venture capital firm, an HMO, and the company which owns Macy's and Bloomingdale's (who's actually said to be a good guy.)

The Richmond Fed's bank representatives include the leaders of First Citizens Bancshares and CommerceFirst bank, as well as the managing partner of a Charleston law firm who specializes in labor and employment law (judging from his resume he defends corporations). There are also executives from an oil company, a big construction company, and an aerospace manufacturer. The Seattle board includes executives from Wells Fargo Bank (Wachovia's new parent) and Boeing.

And so it goes ...

Other banks and corporations represented at the regional or branch level include Bank of America, Boyd Gaming, Shorenstein Properties, Dow Chemical, Nissan, AutoNation, USAA, IBM, Southwest, JC Penney, USG, Nissan, along with energy and lumber companies and some of the legal and accounting firms that serve the country's megabanks.

Of nearly 250 Board members for the Fed's regions and branches, I was able to identify only three union representatives (from the AFL-CIO), one or two pension fund representatives (pension funds have been robbed blind by the big banks), and one member of a housing coalition. The Fed's boards have become more exclusive than a country club - and a lot more powerful.

Federal Case

Why do we even have a Federal Reserve? There are people - mostly libertarians of the Ron Paul school - who think it should be abolished. They're wrong. We need a central bank. The financial crises which peppered our early history proved the need for a secure dollar backed by the "full faith and credit" of the United States government.

Panics like the one that led to William Jennings Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech were led by speculators who became wealthy at the expense of working people and farmers. Back in the 19th Century many banks issued their own dollars, leaving both buyers and sellers unsure of their value from day to day. Anybody who had been holding "Lehman Brothers dollars" would be out of luck today.

So the question isn't whether we need a central bank: We do. The question is, Why is it dominated by the people who have already ruined the economy once - and who have a clear conflict of interest?

The World's Biggest ATM

Give a bunch of bankers access to the world's biggest ATM and look what happens: As Bloomberg News reported last August, "Wall Street's aristocracy got $1.2 trillion in secret loans" from the Federal Reserve.

What the Federal Reserve hasn't done is carry out its mission, which the Fed's own "Purposes and Functions" document describes as:

conducting the nation's monetary policy by influencing the monetary and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates
supervising and regulating banking institutions to ensure the safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system and to protect the credit rights of consumers
maintaining the stability of the financial system and containing systemic risk that may arise in financial markets

providing financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions ...

When it comes to that last bullet point, the Fed's knocked it out of the park. They serve the banks quite well.The others? Not so much.

Scoring the Fed

Let's rate the Federal Reserve according to the parameters it set out for itself:

"Maximum employment": Thanks to the Fed, banks have had access to free or very-low-cost money, which they've used to make money on Treasuries and other safe investments. But they haven't been lending it to the consumers and small businesses who are the engines of job growth.
"Stable prices": Gas prices keep swinging up and down radically because of speculation.
"Moderate long-term interest rates": Yes - but is that good? Opinions vary.
"Safety and soundness of the nation's banking and financial system": JPMorgan Chase's recent debacle shows how little the Fed has accomplished here. but then, how easy can it be to rein in Jamie Dimon when he's chairing the meeting?
"Protect the credit rights of consumers": Massive mortgage fraud by major banks. One settlement after another for deceiving consumers. How much time do you have?
"Maintaining stability ... containing systemic risk": JPMorgan Chase's latest debacle settles this issue once and for all ...

... By any objective measurement, the Federal Reserve has failed to do meet these key objectives.

The Radical Fed

Is it any wonder that the Fed gave out more than a trillion dollars to Wall Street's biggest banks - and did it in secret? (That alone would appear to violate securities law, since it allowed bankers like Jamie Dimon to materially misrepresent the financial condition of their corporations.)

And that's not all the newly radicalized Fed has done. It broke the rules by allowing Goldman Sachs and GE Capital to call themselves "banks" - just in time to collect their taxpayer-funded bailouts. But it hasn't shown any flexibility when it comes to demanding that banks use some of their low-interest Fed loans to lend to the people and companies that will use it to create jobs.

The Fed has even broken its own rules in order to protect bad bankers. As Prof. Steven Davidoff noted in the New York Times: "In Blocking Activists, the Fed Protects Poorly Performing Banks." It's also protecting poorly performers bankers - like the ones that sit on its boards.

In one case the Fed blocked a shareholder action by invoking a rule which said an outside party couldn't have more than 25 percent control of a bank - but the shareholder would only have acquired 22 percent control. As Davidoff documents, Fed is repeatedly bending or violating its own rules to prevent shareholders from exercising their rights to limit executive compensation or take action against underperforming or ethically-challenged executives.

The Fed has changed the playbook for bankers over and over. But whenever someone suggests imaginative programs to stimulate the economy by helping consumers or small businesses the Fed suddenly decides it's a stickler for the rules.

Resistance Is Futile

In our interview for The Breakdown last week, Paul Krugman reiterated his statement that his former Princeton colleague Ben Bernanke has "joined the Borg." The "Borg" is the collective alien entity from Star Trek that takes over people's identities and leaves them with no other mission but expanding its own power. These Federal Reserve boards represent the Corporate Borg in all its unchecked power - but the power they possess is power that we have given them, through our elected representatives.

It doesn't have to be this way. There are good folks on the Committee, like Janet Yellen, Sarah Bloom Raskin and Daniel Tarullo.

But they're the exceptions, not the rule.

Enter Sanders

That's why Sen. Bernie Sanders' Federal Reserve Independence Act is so important. The bill would eliminate these conflicts of interest and force the Fed boards to stop serving bankers' interests and return to the Fed's original mission. People should insist that their Senators support it.

The bill follows on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which was cosponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ron Paul. That bill demanded a public audit of the Fed, which is how we learned about those massive secret loans. That act showed that the left and the right can work together to change our broken central banking system.

It's time for a replay of that coalition the elimination of these conflicts of interest, and a return to accountability for the Fed.

Dissing Dimon

Which gets us back to Jamie Dimon. When the prominent economist Simon Johnson first demanded Dimon's resignation he noted that, while his role is sometimes described as "advisory," Dimon sits on the Management and Budget Committee which supervises the pay of senior Fed executives.

That committee also approves the self-evaluation of senior Fed executives - which essentially means it gives them their performance reviews. It reviews and approves the Fed's overall budget, too, including the budget for auditing bankers like Jamie Dimon. According the Fed itself, its other main responsibility is to "review and endorse the Bank's strategic plan."

Budget, compensation, strategic planning: That pretty much covers everything.

Johnson's call for Dimon's resignation has been joined by Elizabeth Warren and the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, which calls Dimon's position "a stunning conflict of interest."

They're right, of course. But in saner times people would also be demanding that Dimon resign from his bank, too. His tenure as CEO has been marked by a wave of massive deals to settle criminal and civil charges. That alone would have led to disgrace and resignation in more civilized times.

Even in today's more mercenary atmosphere, Dimon's nothing to write home about: The stock was worth around $40 when he became CEO in 2005 and never rose much above $50 after that. It was $33.78 after this latest fiasco.

Dismissing Dimon

From his perch on the New York Fed board, Dimon has had a front row seat to the dispensing of a trillion dollars in secret cash to Wall Street banks - including his own. His bank reportedly received as much as $48 billion in secret loans at 1.1 interest, when less privileged banks were paying 3.8 percent. The money saved in interest on that loan alone could amount to almost $1.3 billion.

It's like the old saying goes - a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Dimon's always been a paper tiger, a product of his own PR campaign and the low standards of his profession. If he won't resign as JPM's CEO, he should certainly resign as its Board Chairman, a title he assumed in 2006. That's another clear conflict.

An ethically-managed Federal Reserve wouldn't wait for Dimon to resolve this internal conflict by giving up one of these roles. It would have demanded it long ago. And it would have dismissed Dimon from its Board for JPMorgan Chase's past scandals, as well as the one that just came to light.

And now for something completely different ...

It seems like something out of a Monty Python routine. The boards that govern the Federal Reserve, the publicly-created central bank that dispenses money to bankers, are all dominated by ... the bankers who receive that money. Picture it if you can:

Fed Board room, 2008:

ECONOMIST: This is serious! The global economy is collapsing because of your reckless gambling!
LONE CITIZEN BOARD MEMBER: That is serious. What can we do? We could break up our banks and fire their executives, or ...
BANKER: Wait! I've got it! Give us more money!
(Nods all around the table)

Six months later:

ECONOMIST: This is serious! We've given you money but you're not lending it out to get the economy moving!
LONE CITIZEN BOARD MEMBER: That is serious. What can we do? Perhaps there could be rules and conditions about lending that ...
BANKER: Or they could give us more money!
OTHER BANKERS: Good one! Let's go with that!

Three years later:

ECONOMIST: This is serious! Joblessness is still at record highs. Poverty has soard. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever. And you guys are still breaking the law and skirting the rules.
LONE CITIZEN BOARD MEMBER: Hmm. That is serious. The Fed could use its regulatory authority to ...
BANKER: (aside) I hate that guy. (to all) Let me see ... hmmm ... how about giving us more money?

Three and a half years later:

ECONOMIST: This is serious! The country -
BANKERS (in unison): More money!

Clean Up the Boards

The Federal Reserve's governing structure isn't quite that bad - but it's pretty close. As the President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve just noted, bankers have a "special obligation" to maintain the "integrity, dignity and reputation" of the central bank. ""No individual is more important than the institution and the public's trust," she added.

We'll go a step further: The public's trust can no longer be given to a central bank whose governing bodies are dominated by the wealthy and powerful. Bankers and large corporations should be asked to provide information to the Fed, and should be encouraged to offer their advice. But they don't belong on its boards or committees.

It's time to give those seats to people who will work on behalf of the citizenry which created the Federal Reserve in the first place.

Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and the host of The Breakdown, broadcast Saturdays nights from 7-9 pm on WeAct Radio, AM 1480 in Washington DC.

Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow

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Cali Estes, the Addictions Coach, Exposes Xanax Prescription Drug ...

New York, NY, May 25, 2012 ?(PR.com)? Cali Estes exposed the hazards of over prescribing and using Xanax during her interview with Chris Glorioso of NBC Universal. Chris Glorioso interviewed Cali with her client, ?Rob? about his addiction to Xanax and the inability for him to come off the drug safely. Cali discussed the pitfalls and problems associated with over use of Xanax.

Accoding to the Center for Disease Control, Xanax is a benzodiazepine that is currently prescribed by doctors and psychiatrists for anxiety and General Anxiety Disorder. If taken as prescribed, the drug will lessen the systems of a panic attack and make the client feel calm and relaxed. The problem arises when the body adapts to the drug and needs more and more to produce the same relaxing results.

?I was totally addicted,? Rob said. ?I was prescribed Xanax originally for anxiety and I had to keep taking more and more just to feel the original affect. It was crazy, I couldn?t get enough of the drug and I found myself stealing and buying more illegally just to feel normal again. I was using it at one point to lessen the symptoms of heroin withdrawal. I can?t believe how out of control it was. I ended up getting arrested to support my habit.?

According to Cali Estes, owner of The Addictions Coach, Over 60 percent of her clients are addicted to prescription drugs, including Xanax, and are having difficulties stopping the drugs. At The Addictions Coach, Cali specializes in working with clients that have a prescription drug abuse problem in addition to other drug addictions.

?Most of my clients use benzos in addition to other drugs like oxycodone, roxycodone or heroin to reduce the anxieties associated with those drugs,? Cali said. Ten years ago I treated more clients with cocaine and heroin addiction than scripts."

Cali?s multidimensional approach focuses on the underlying cause of the addiction and she approaches each client in a unique manner. Unlike traditional rehabilitation centers that convince the addict that they have a disease that is incurable and they must attend meetings, recite prayers and follow steps, Cali tailors her program to fit the client. By realizing that each client is unique and their pattern of addiction is unique with a root cause, Cali is able to address the addiction at the core and assist the addict in making the necessary changes and positive steps in their life.

?Cali has helped me enormously with my addictions to Xanax, opiates and heroin,? Rob said. ?I had been to six rehabs and prison twice and could not stop. Cali has helped me by getting to the bottom of the reason that I use and she taught me new ways to learn how to cope in a normal lifestyle.?

Cali is more than a "sober coach." She has a background in clinical and personality psychology, addictions and forensics. She can get to the root of the addiction quickly and work with the client in building a safe environment in which to make the changes necessary to live a productive lifestyle. Clients in addiction feel powerless, helpless and hopeless and need answers and ways to change their lives. Sometimes family and friends think that everyone should be able to have "just one drink" at a function, but for some clients that is not what happens. That one drink turns them into an unmanageable individual that their family and friends cannot deal with. Taking a pill to "get through the day" or "take the edge off" eventually leads to a full blown addiction with the addict personality. Cali can address all these issues with both the family and the client and assist them in making the changes necessary to be happy and healthy.

?I am very intense and get to the root cause of the problem quickly,? Cali said. ?A lot of clients started with honest intentions and went to the doctor for valid medical reasons, but ended up without knowing the right information or how addictive these drugs can be. I not only educate someone on the drugs but how to live without them and function without the crutch.?

Cali has consulted in 2 countries and frequently flies between South Florida, New York and Los Angeles to work with her clients. She has clients in the music industry, acting/film, modeling, CEO?s and frequent high stress jobs clients. She is available on an individual basis for clients, more intensive or for speaking engagements. She has accompanied clients to high risk situations like weddings, worked "on set" of movie and film productions, worked directly with pro athletes, sat in on business meetings, been "on tour" with musicians and even will work directly in the home of the client for a more intensive "rehab" setting.

?I am available for individual sessions, long day sessions from 8-12 hours, weekly sessions on as a 30 day stay,? Cali said. ?I handle drug, alcohol, food and assorted other addictions at the root cause and assist the client in realizing that a life free from addiction is possible.?

The Addictions Coach is based out of Miami Florida but services clients in all of South Florida, New York City and Los Angeles.

Cali Estes
786 709 0479

Contact Information:
The Addictions Coach
Cali Estes
786-709-0479
Contact via Email
www.theaddictionscoach.com

Click here to read the full story: Cali Estes, the Addictions Coach, Exposes Xanax Prescription Drug Abuse on NBC Nightly News

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