(CNS News) In an e-mail to supporters, First Lady Michelle Obama says she grew up in a family that didn?t need help from the government, and that her husband is working to make Americans free from dependence on government once again.
In her message sent yesterday from democratparty@democrats.org, Mrs. Obama says:
?When I was growing up, a family like mine ? living on my hard-working father?s salary at the city water plant ? could build a solid life without much debt and without relying on any form of public assistance. Today, for too many families, that American promise is no longer within reach.
Source: forums.canadiancontent.net --- Saturday, July 27, 2013 Canadians observed the 60th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice at sombre ceremonies across the country Saturday. The events also marked the first official Korean War Veterans Day which will be held each year on July 27. "Establishing July 27 as a national day of recognition serves as a way to honour our veterans and this important moment in Canada's history," said Veterans Affairs minister Julian Fantino. "Today, Canadians will pause to remember the men and women in uniform who came to the aid of South Koreans during the Korean War." More than 26,000 Canadians came to the aid of South Koreans during the Korean War, and 516 lost their lives in the area. On July 27, 1953, the Korean War Armistice was signed, ending three years of fighting. Some 7,000 Canadians continued to serve there between the signing of the Armistice and the end of 1955, with some Canadian troops remaining until 1957. "South Koreans have never forgotten the courage and sacrifices of our men and women in uniform, and we have a duty to ensure Canadians never do either," MP Royal Galipeau said at a ceremony held at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. On Friday, Fantino unveiled a new monument dedicated to Canadians who fought during the Korean War and to those who served after the Armistice. Sun News : Canada marks 60th anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Story of Korean War in Colour (Documentary) - YouTube ...
The Obama administration has once been revealed as an opponent of media freedom.
According to Fairfax NZ News report, U.S. spy agencies collected "metadata" phone records of New Zealand journalist Jon Stephenson.
This information was turned over to the New Zealand Defence Force, which was upset about Stephenson's revelations about the treatment of Afghan prisoners.
"New Zealand SAS troops in Kabul had access to the reports and were using them in active investigations into Stephenson," wrote Fairfax reporter Nicky Hager. "The sources believed the phone monitoring was being done to try to identify Stephenson's journalistic contacts and sources. They drew a picture of a metadata tree the Defence Force had obtained, which included Stephenson and named contacts in the Afghan government and military."
In 2009, Stephenson revealed how New Zealand soldiers were involved in human-rights abuses in Afghanistan. This came when they turned over prisoners to U.S. and Afghan authorites, who allegedly relied on torture.
He elaborated on that in a 2011 television interview, pointing out that he had located former prisoners who spoke openly about being tortured.
Attorney general cracked down on media
Meanwhile, U.S. attorney general Eric Holder has told the Russian government that if National Security Agency whistle blower Edward Snowden is returned to America, he won't receive the death penalty.
Earlier this year, Snowden released details of the U.S. government's massive metadata-phone-surveillance program, which enabled it to track calls like the ones made by Stephenson.?
In a separate attack on press freedom, Holder justified the seizure of phone records from Associated Press on the basis of protecting the U.S.?This came after the wireservice revealed details about a CIA operation in Yemen.
President Barack Obama has since ordered the Department of Justice to review the way it addresses freedom of the media.
Amid all of this, U.S. lawyer and press-freedom advocate James Goodale told a Russian news service that Obama is the greatest threat to the media since Richard Nixon was president.
Goodale, who defended the New York Times after the leak of the Pentagon Papers, pointed out that Obama has pursued six leakers, including WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange. The Obama administration has also gone after a reporter, James Risen.
"If he?s pursuing Julian Assange as a co-conspirator and succeeds he?ll be worse than Nixon because Nixon tried to go after the New York Times and its reporters saying they were co-conspirators, but Nixon failed," Goodale added.
Read the full interview?here.
The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald has declared that Obama is already worse than Nixon. He told CNN that Obama has charged with more leakers under the Espionage Act than all other U.S. presidents combined.
Obama and the First Amendment
The irony is that Obama once taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.?
"I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the constitution," he declared in 2007.
The First Amendment of the U.S. constitution declares that Congress shall not pass any law that abridges freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
Obama has tried to paper over his administration's contempt for the First Amendment by publicly supporting a federal shield law, which will enable journalists to keep sources confidential.
But as the executive director of the First Amendment Center, Gene Policinski, recently noted, this comes just as the Justice Department is prosecuting Private Bradley Manning for disclosing information to WikiLeaks.
A Congressional version of the shield law would only offer this protection to people who gather news "for financial gain or livelihood". WikiLeaks is a nonprofit media organization, so this legislation wouldn't stop the government from throwing Manning or Assange into the slammer.
Both the Senate and Congressional versions would also exclude "agents of a foreign power" from coming under a shield law. This could have the effect of ruling out journalists for CBC, BBC, or news services owned by other governments.
Obama is starting to talk a good game about freedom of the media. But the reality is that any shield law will probably only protect journalists working for media outlets owned by large U.S. corporations.
For the most part, these reporters and editors are the least likely to get upset about the Obama administration's extrajudicial assassinations, attacks on foreign journalists, and eagerness to prosecute Snowden, Assange, and Manning.
After all, they have mortgages to pay, kids to put through college, and medical-insurance premiums that would cause some scribes in other countries to think twice before taking a major career risk.
U.S. journalists working for major media outlets have become part of the bourgeoisie and form a key part of Obama's constituency of supporters on national-security matters.
In the meantime, expect the snooping of the phone calls of foreign journalists like Jon Stephenson to continue unabated.
Piles of of garbage, ashes, cosmetics and even a destroyed smoke alarm can be seen in the photos taken inside Amanda Bynes' hotel room.
Days before Amanda Bynes landed in enforced psychiatric hold in Los Angeles, the "Easy A" actress trashed a room in New York City's Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The 27-year-old former child star, who was last spotted in New York on July 17, left mounds of garbage in her wake, scattering ashes, cosmetic products, empty soda bottles and other detritus around the room.
RELATED: AMANDA BYNES POSES 'A SUBSTANTIAL RISK TO HERSELF AND OTHERS,' SAY PARENTS
According to TMZ, Bynes was kicked out of the hotel for smoking marijuana and ran up a $9,000 bill during a nine-day stay in the swanky digs.
The pictures show a destroyed smoke alarm hanging from the ceiling. The damaged alarm is consistent with claims that Bynes' parents, Rick and Lynn Bynes, made?in a filing seeking temporary conservatorship of their daughter, who they believe has run off the rails and requires immediate help.
PHOTOS: CHILD STAR MELTDOWNS
According to her parents, Bynes had become "extremely paranoid" about being watched. She would cover smoke alarms with towels, tape windows shut, and cover her car's dashboard with cardboard and tape due to fears "cameras were watching her."
Bynes' parents claim that they have no idea how their daughter got from Southern California from New York, as she has no formal identification. According to the filing, Bynes told them she "cabbed it."?
RELATED: AMANDA BYNES' MOM FILES FOR TEMPORARY CONSERVATORSHIP
"We believe she is essentially homeless," the filing states.
The request came after Bynes was forcibly hospitalized to examine her mental state after an incident in which Bynes began a fire in a driveway around the block from her parents' house.
PHOTOS: CELEBRITIES WHO'VE FELT THE WRATH OF AMANDA BYNES
Bynes and her parents had been estranged in recent months, but they filed for conservatorship over concerns that "Amanda poses a substantial risk to herself to others and to property based on recent events in her life."
Bynes has also apparently blown through $1.2 million of her $4 million in savings in a "very short amount of time."
Doctors plan to hold Amanda for two more weeks in a psychiatric ward to further evaluate her. A California judge will rule on her mother's request for conservatorship after speaking with Bynes when she is released from hospitalization.?
The actress is due to appear in court in Manhattan on Sept. 26.?
PHOTOS: AMANDA BYNES' BIZARRE ANTICS: IS SHE HAVING A MELTDOWN?
Bynes? downward spiral began with a DUI arrest in Hollywood in 2012. Since then, her increasingly bizarre behavior has nabbed headlines and sparked rampant speculation about the state of her mental health.
With all the news about the Ubuntu Edge and Canonical's plans for Ubuntu Touch to be the future of convergent computing, you may have forgotten that Canonical is still working on Ubuntu for Android. Ubuntu for Android is essentially the same idea as Ubuntu Touch, where you get a full Ubuntu desktop environment when you dock a mobile device, but with the difference that the handset runs Android, not Ubuntu Touch.
Canonical engineer Victor Palau is showing off Ubuntu for Android running through a Nexus 4, which is hooked up to an external monitor via a Slimport HDMI cable. As you can see in the video, it does give access to full Ubuntu, complete with workspaces, and the Ubuntu Software Centre. But, as you can also see, the Nexus 4 struggles with the system. Windows stutter when moving, and overall performance is slow.
This could very well be partially due to the system not being optimized properly for the hardware in a Nexus 4, but part of it could simply be that the Nexus 4 isn't powerful enough. The Ubuntu Edge is planned to have the "fastest available" processor and "at least 4GB of RAM", while the Nexus 4 has a year old Snapdragon S4 Pro and just 2GB of RAM. Now we can see that "convergence hump" that Mark Shuttleworth talked about yesterday.
SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Four more women, including a retired U.S. Navy admiral and a college dean, came forward on Thursday to publicly accuse San Diego Mayor Bob Filner of making unwanted sexual advances toward them, as local party leaders called on him to resign.
The latest allegations leveled at Filner during a group interview of the four women by public television station KPBS brought to seven the number of women who have come forth since earlier this week to accuse the 70-year-old Democrat and former congressman of sexual harassment.
Meanwhile, the San Diego County Democratic Party Central Committee voted 34-6 to approve a non-binding resolution calling on Filner to step down.
(Reporting by Marty Graham; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Eric Beech)
The SportShell Convertible's interchangeable back pieces let you enjoy versatile features: an iPhone armband for running; an iPhone 5 stand for hands-free viewing; a 360? iPhone holster case; and a thin back shell for sleek, stylish protection. The Marware SportShell Convertible transforms to keep up with the demands of your active lifestyle!
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Communication channels such as Facebook may be leading consumers to discuss more interesting products, according to a new study.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]A 30 million year-old fossil has revealed how remoras -- also called sharksuckers -- evolved the sucker that enables them to stick to other fishes and 'hitch a ride'.
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Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have developed the first user-interactive sensor network on flexible plastic. That differs from the touchscreens on smartphones in that this material is thin and pliant, able to be wrapped around and adhered to a variety of objects.
And the material also differs from skin in that it, well, lights up. The so-called electronic skin, or e-skin, responds to touch with light: more intense pressure yields brighter light.
?We have made the "skin" interactive,? said Ali Javey, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley and the leader of the research team on the e-skin project. ?Where the surface is touched, it lights up with the brightness quantifying the magnitude of pressure.?
To make the e-skin, described in Nature Materials, engineers first hardened a thin layer of polymer on top of a slice of silicon, a semiconductor material. Once the polymer had toughened, the engineers ran it through with the same materials used in current touchscreens ? organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDS), pressure sensors, and transistors. They then peeled the wired-up plastic from the silicon base. That left a plastic film thinner than a standard sheet of paper and embedded with a sensor network.
The project, which receives funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), joins surging investment in developing robotic skin, keeping pace with mounting developments in robotics that have given those metal robots ever more useful, albeit skinless, hands and feet.
Most robotic skin projects have been modeled on human skin. Our sense of touch is received from our somatosensory system, wherein four different kinds of receptors in our skin feed information to our neurons and then to the brain. And so robotic skin would consist of sensors that communicate to the robot how much force to use in handling various objects.
It?s a simple request of a robot ? don?t manhandle innocent things ? but how to get a robot to feel its way through the world, as opposed to just seeing its way, has been a complicated, vexing problem in robotics.
In 2010, Javey and colleagues debuted pressure sensitive electronic material made of nanowires that could clothe a robots hands ? the basis for his new, interactive material. In April, Georgia Tech released a robotic skin covered in thousands of nanowire transistors that respond to pressure, and the next month, ROBOSKIN, an EU-funded collaborative project between European researchers, debuted the prototypes for electronic sensors that could be applied to various robot?s touch points.?
Those projects have mainly focused on bringing humans into safe contact with robots, but other researchers have veered toward developing the ?super skin? that robots would need to roar into disaster zones. In 2011, Stanford researcher Zhenan Bao and colleagues prototyped a skin-like material that can detect not only extremely light pressure but also various chemicals. Her lab has also described a pressure-sensitive, electronic material ? a nickel and polymer blend ? that can self-heal, replicating human skin?s ability to do so.
Javey says that the new e-skin could have applications in addition to robotics. With some imagination, the pliable skin could be applied all over our world to make a huge variety of surfaces interactive, responsive to just a soft tap of the hand.
?Our vision for e-skin is beyond just robotic or prosthetic applications,? said Javey. ?We are developing a new human-machine interfacing concept that consists of large-area sensor networks on thin flexible substrate that can be laminated on walls, tables, and all around us.?
Researchers at the lab are now hoping to develop an e-skin that can respond to light and heat, broadening the possible applications of the interactive interface.
China has banned the construction of government offices for the next five years, ratcheting up an austerity campaign that has already taken a toll on the economy.
The State Council, China?s cabinet, and the Communist party late on Tuesday said the ban, which takes immediate effect, would also apply to the expansion of existing buildings.
They seem to mean it, and in part they wish to improve the moral image of Chinese government.? Here is a bit of background:
Beijing has previously tried to stop local governments from building massive new offices, but only with limited success. Even in poorer parts of China, cities and villages have built monolithic offices, replicas of the US Capitol building and faux-European palaces. In one notorious case, the government of the poor Yingquan district in Anhui province spent a third of its budget on a White House replica.
Under the new ban, renovations of outdated offices will be permitted, but the approval process will be extremely strict and there will be no tolerance for ?luxurious decorations?.
Going through the motions improves dance performancePublic release date: 23-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anna Mikulak amikulak@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Expert ballet dancers seem to glide effortlessly across the stage, but learning the steps is both physically and mentally demanding. New research suggests that dance marking loosely practicing a routine by "going through the motions" may improve the quality of dance performance by reducing the mental strain needed to perfect the movements.
The new findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that marking may alleviate the conflict between the cognitive and physical aspects of dance practice, allowing dancers to memorize and repeat steps more fluidly.
Researcher Edward Warburton, a former professional ballet dancer, and colleagues were interested in exploring the "thinking behind the doing of dance."
"It is widely assumed that the purpose of marking is to conserve energy," explains Warburton, professor of dance at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "But elite-level dance is not only physically demanding, it's cognitively demanding as well:
Learning and rehearsing a dance piece requires concentration on many aspects of the desired performance."
Marking essentially involves a run-through of the dance routine, but with a focus on the routine itself, rather than making the perfect movements.
"When marking, the dancer often does not leave the floor, and may even substitute hand gestures for movements," Warburton explains. "One common example is using a finger rotation to represent a turn while not actually turning the whole body."
To investigate how marking influences performance, the researchers asked a group of talented dance students to learn two routines: they were asked to practice one routine at performance speed and to practice the other one by marking.
The routines were relatively simple, designed to be learned quickly and to minimize mistakes. Yet differences emerged when the judges looked for quality of performance.
Across many of the different techniques and steps, the dancers were judged more highly on the routine that they had practiced with marking their movements on the marked routine appeared to be more seamless, their sequences more fluid.
The researchers surmise that practicing at performance speed didn't allow the dancers to memorize and consolidate the steps as a sequence, thus encumbering their performance.
"By reducing the demands on complex control of the body, marking may reduce the multi-layered cognitive load used when learning choreography," Warburton explains.
While marking is often thought of as a necessary evil allowing dancers a "break" from dancing full out the large effect sizes observed in the study suggest that it could make a noticeable difference in a dancer's performance:
"Marking could be strategically used by teachers and choreographers to enhance memory and integration of multiple aspects of a piece precisely at those times when dancers are working to master the most demanding material," says Warburton.
It's unclear whether these performance improvements would be seen for other types of dance, Warburton cautions, but it is possible that this area of research could extend to other kinds of activities, perhaps even language acquisition.
"Smaller scale movement systems with low energetic costs such as speech, sign language, and gestures may likewise accrue cognitive benefits, as might be the case in learning new multisyllabic vocabulary or working on one's accent in a foreign language."
###
Co-authors on this research include Margaret Wilson, Molly Lynch, and Shannon Cuykendall of the University of California, Irvine.
For more information about this study, please contact: Edward C. Warburton at tedw@ucsc.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "The Cognitive Benefits of Movement Reduction: Evidence From Dance Marking" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Going through the motions improves dance performancePublic release date: 23-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Anna Mikulak amikulak@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Expert ballet dancers seem to glide effortlessly across the stage, but learning the steps is both physically and mentally demanding. New research suggests that dance marking loosely practicing a routine by "going through the motions" may improve the quality of dance performance by reducing the mental strain needed to perfect the movements.
The new findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that marking may alleviate the conflict between the cognitive and physical aspects of dance practice, allowing dancers to memorize and repeat steps more fluidly.
Researcher Edward Warburton, a former professional ballet dancer, and colleagues were interested in exploring the "thinking behind the doing of dance."
"It is widely assumed that the purpose of marking is to conserve energy," explains Warburton, professor of dance at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "But elite-level dance is not only physically demanding, it's cognitively demanding as well:
Learning and rehearsing a dance piece requires concentration on many aspects of the desired performance."
Marking essentially involves a run-through of the dance routine, but with a focus on the routine itself, rather than making the perfect movements.
"When marking, the dancer often does not leave the floor, and may even substitute hand gestures for movements," Warburton explains. "One common example is using a finger rotation to represent a turn while not actually turning the whole body."
To investigate how marking influences performance, the researchers asked a group of talented dance students to learn two routines: they were asked to practice one routine at performance speed and to practice the other one by marking.
The routines were relatively simple, designed to be learned quickly and to minimize mistakes. Yet differences emerged when the judges looked for quality of performance.
Across many of the different techniques and steps, the dancers were judged more highly on the routine that they had practiced with marking their movements on the marked routine appeared to be more seamless, their sequences more fluid.
The researchers surmise that practicing at performance speed didn't allow the dancers to memorize and consolidate the steps as a sequence, thus encumbering their performance.
"By reducing the demands on complex control of the body, marking may reduce the multi-layered cognitive load used when learning choreography," Warburton explains.
While marking is often thought of as a necessary evil allowing dancers a "break" from dancing full out the large effect sizes observed in the study suggest that it could make a noticeable difference in a dancer's performance:
"Marking could be strategically used by teachers and choreographers to enhance memory and integration of multiple aspects of a piece precisely at those times when dancers are working to master the most demanding material," says Warburton.
It's unclear whether these performance improvements would be seen for other types of dance, Warburton cautions, but it is possible that this area of research could extend to other kinds of activities, perhaps even language acquisition.
"Smaller scale movement systems with low energetic costs such as speech, sign language, and gestures may likewise accrue cognitive benefits, as might be the case in learning new multisyllabic vocabulary or working on one's accent in a foreign language."
###
Co-authors on this research include Margaret Wilson, Molly Lynch, and Shannon Cuykendall of the University of California, Irvine.
For more information about this study, please contact: Edward C. Warburton at tedw@ucsc.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "The Cognitive Benefits of Movement Reduction: Evidence From Dance Marking" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Anna Mikulak at 202-293-9300 or amikulak@psychologicalscience.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
JOPLIN, Mo. ? A Jasper County judge granted probation Monday to two defendants convicted of stealing copper wire on the streets of Joplin in the aftermath of the tornado in May 2011.
Co-defendants Nycoa K. Kracht, 32, of Laurel, Ind., and Timothy M. Silveria, 45, of Joplin, pleaded guilty May 20 in Jasper County Circuit Court to a charge of stealing wire from a public utility.
Circuit Judge David Dally assessed Kracht and Silveria seven years in prison at sentencing hearings Monday, but suspended execution of the sentences and placed them both on supervised probation for five years.
Kracht, Silveria and Dennis B. Ray, 34, of Joplin, were arrested May 25, 2011, in the 100 block of East 22nd Street with a load of copper wire in the bed of a truck bearing a sticker and logo of a food distribution company.
The wire had been cut from nearby Empire District Electric Co. utility poles in the portion of the city ravaged by the tornado. A police officer testified in July 2011 that Silveria was outside the truck with a pair of bolt cutters and Ray was loading wire into the truck when the officer pulled up.
A detective who came to the scene to assist the officer told the court that Silveria initially claimed to have obtained permission from another police officer to gather wire from debris that was pushed to the curb along the streets in the tornado zone. Kracht, who was sitting inside the truck, denied that they were stealing wire and told the detective that they intended to donate whatever money they might get for the copper to tornado victims.
During booking procedures at the city jail, Ray?s cellphone was obtained by investigators, and a text message was discovered on it that read: ?I?m going scrappin? tom and getting me a bus ticket to Ten.?
Third defendant
DENNIS RAY, a co-defendant of Timothy Silveria and Nycoa Kracht, also pleaded guilty to stealing wire from a public utility and was sentenced in December to three years in prison, with credit for time served in jail.
North Dakota and Texas get all the press when it comes to America's domestic oil boom, but production is increasing dramatically in several other states in the American West.
According to the Energy Information Administration, since 2010 oil production has increased 64% in Colorado, 51% in Oklahoma, 46% in New Mexico, 45% in Utah and 23% in Wyoming.
Combined, those states rival the heralded Bakken field in North Dakota. The reason behind the boom is the same as it is in the more well-known oil producing regions: technology.
"In the olden days exploring for oil and natural gas was a much bigger challenge than it is now," explains Tim Wigley, President of the Western Energy Alliance, an industry association. "And what really has been a game changer has been directional drilling, so now as opposed to having 15 or 20 wells on your property, you have one that can branch out 10 to 15 different ways."
Wigley is quick to point out that the onshore oil boom is not due to the Obama administration.
"While energy production overall in the country has gone up significantly it is because of private land production, it is in spite of the federal government not because of it."
In a statement to Fox News, the Bureau of Land Management pointed out that, "Domestic production from over 99,000 federal onshore oil and gas wells accounts for almost 13 percent of the nation's natural gas production and 5 percent of its oil. In FY 2012, this amounted to about $2.5 billion in royalties from onshore federal oil and gas production."
While industry critics say those figures are insignificant compared to what they could be, some conservationists believe the administration has gone too far in opening up federal lands in the West to oil and gas production.
"The reality is that acres of land that have been leased for energy production far outstrip land that has been preserved or conserved during the Obama administration," said Pete Maysmith, Director of Conservation Colorado.?
"We need to put that on equal ground. That's not happening right now, we need to be doing more land protection here in Colorado and the West."
Maysmith acknowledges that oil and gas exploration must and will happen on public lands but says it must be done in ways that preserve the western tradition of multiple land use.?
"And the interesting thing is that Westerners actually get that. A bipartisan poll that came out in the region just a couple of months ago shows deep and strong support for preserving our landscapes. They are economic drivers for tourism, outdoor recreation, industry, agricultural uses, clean water, you name it."
The administration has worked to shorten the time it takes to obtain oil and gas leasing permits on federal lands, a process that used to take an average of 300 days. But critics like Wigley say it's still not enough when compared to state and private lands. "For instance a permit in Texas or Oklahoma or North Dakota, you can get in 15 or 45 days. A permit on federal lands is about 230 days."
He also points out that unlike most areas of the country, in most of the Intermountain West, the amount of land owned by the federal government ranges from around 30% to 70% in states like Utah and Nevada.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite talk about tax reform, U.S. senators are largely shrugging off a request that they present specific ideas for rewriting a tax code that has grown to more than 70,000 pages since it was last revamped 27 years ago.
With a deadline for submissions approaching on Friday, members of Congress and their aides say many Senators are declining to accept the challenge from Democratic Senator Max Baucus and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.
Baucus, chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, and Hatch, the top Republican on the panel, want senators to make a case for exceptions they believe should remain if the tax code was theoretically wiped clean.
"Give us your submissions. What do you want added back from a clean slate?" Baucus pleaded on the Senate floor on Tuesday.
The tax code was last thoroughly revamped in 1986, when Republican President Ronald Reagan struck a deal to pass legislation backed by a Democratic House of Representatives and a Republican Senate.
In the years since, tax issues have dominated public and congressional debate and factored prominently in U.S. election campaigns, even as tax breaks expanded.
"Since that date, it's built up barnacles, loopholes, deductions, credits, 15,000 changes," Baucus said.
These additions cost the government $1.3 trillion a year, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Optimists say an overhaul is coming if not this or next year, then within several years.
But lawmakers are reluctant to propose removing specific tax breaks popular with special interests that apply pressure through congressional lobbyists. These range from mortgage interest deductions for homeowners to breaks for business.
The finance committee will draft legislation for debate when Congress returns from its August recess, Baucus said.
"I'm guessing ... September, October, November," Baucus said of when his committee would debate a formal proposal.
Asked by reporters later if he has received many submissions, Baucus said "a good number," but he has not read them all so could not say how detailed they were.
ISSUES AVOIDED
The two senators have purposely avoided the most partisan issue - whether to raise revenue - but that has not prevented their colleagues from resorting to general arguments about tax revenue while avoiding making specific proposals.
"It has to have revenue as part of the agreement," said Democratic Senator Robert Menendez. "On the Democrat side, the overwhelming view is there needs to be revenue."
Republicans especially are not eager to take part without a vow to keep taxes from going up, congressional aides said.
"In theory, a blank slate makes sense, but you have to resolve the political challenge - what to do about revenue," a Republican tax aide to a senator on the finance committee said.
Republican Senator John Hoeven said he was likely to simply express "broad principles."
"The key is that it is pro-growth, that it stimulates job creation and of course, that it doesn't raise taxes," he said.
In the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican Dave Camp also was working on legislation to overhaul the tax code and was touring the country with Baucus to make the case.
LOBBYISTS SCRATCH HEADS
Meanwhile, business and other interest groups are trying to rally support for a tax revamp that cuts their tax rates.
The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group made up of companies such as Boeing Co and Honeywell International Inc, encouraged senators in a letter on Tuesday to take part in the process, but said it should not raise taxes on corporations.
Even lobbyists for popular breaks are having a hard time convincing senators to go on the record to back their preferences.
One of the most popular but pricey tax expenditures is the home mortgage interest deduction, which costs the government $100 billion a year, according to the Congressional Research Service.
A lobbyist for the National Association of Realtors said it was unclear who would back the policy.
"We are trying to be on as many senators' request lists as possible," said Jamie Gregory, a lobbyist with the group.
Lawmakers who have been specific in the past, including liberal Democrat Carl Levin and conservative Republican Pat Toomey, are not revealing as many details as requested.
Levin, who proposes legislation every year to rid the code of tax breaks that help big companies shield profit from taxes on overseas income, is likely to submit a general letter expressing support for tax reform that is fair and raises revenue, an aide said.
Toomey, who in 2011 offered a tax revamp plan during bipartisan talks over the deficit, will not be taking part, according to one of his aides.
(Reporting by Kim Dixon; Editing by Howard Goller, Grant McCool and Andre Grenon)
So much for the new, "tougher" Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
FERC, as the agency is known, is in the process of negotiating a settlement with JPMorgan Chase & Co., the huge New York bank that has been accused of serial frauds against California electricity customers and the state's electric distribution system.
The reported size of the settlement price could be as high as $500 million, which would be a record penalty in a FERC proceeding.
That certainly sounds like a big number. But here's the number that measures the deterrent effect the settlement likely would have on JPMorgan's inclination and ability to stage similar schemes again and again: zero.
That's true for two reasons. First, it's unlikely that the settlement would cost any high-ranked Morgan executive any money, much less his or her job. (The most often-mentioned individual is Blythe Masters, who essentially created Morgan's commodity business.) Second, there's no sign that FERC is inclined to bar Morgan permanently from the electricity trading business. That's a costly sentence that could really make the bank reconsider its past misbehavior.
No matter the size of the fine the regulators impose, these players will always find a way to outsmart the watchdogs. "The more complicated the market, the more opaque it is," Robert McCullough, an energy consultant who follows the trading markets from Portland, Ore., told me. "We're going to learn what yesterday's manipulation is, but we're never going to get ahead of it."
In fact, there's evidence that Morgan actually evaded a stiff penalty FERC imposed for its earlier shenanigans by concocting yet another shady scheme. More on that in a moment.
Morgan's behavior may not be menacing Californians' pocketbooks at the moment; in May it sold to Southern California Edison its rights to control and trade the output of 12 California power generating units, removing a headache its presence in the market had caused for state regulators. But its past trading has already roiled state power sales. And nothing says Morgan couldn't reenter the California market any time it wishes. Morgan wouldn't comment on any aspects of its adventures in the California electric power market.
In any case, the settlement negotiations dodge the most important question about the business model of Morgan and other banks: Why are they allowed in the commodity markets in the first place?
That question was the subject of a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee, which delved into the drawbacks of allowing big commercial banks into the electricity, metals and oil trading businesses. The upshot, observed Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), has been "a host of anticompetitive activities."
The banks contend that they perform a service for clients and the economy as a whole by making the trading markets more liquid, reducing costs for the commodities' buyers and sellers alike.
But Saule T. Omarova, a regulatory expert at the University of North Carolina law school, pointed out that the potential for conflicts of interest, market manipulation and bank profiteering might outweigh those benefits.
"There's no particular benefit to the economy in having JPMorgan play the role that Enron played," Omarova told me.
Indeed, a spokeswoman for the California Independent System Operator, a quasi-state agency that oversees much of California's electrical distribution grid and filed the initial complaints about Morgan's scheme, essentially told me that the ISO regards electricity-trading banks as pests.
"The banks have introduced a new culture in the market, not consistent with the kind of trading we've seen with energy companies," says the spokeswoman, Stephanie McCorkle.
Let's not overlook that the activities Morgan was accused of are crimes: market manipulation, fraud and lying to government officials. If JPMorgan were just an average mook on the street, by now it would have been consigned for life to San Quentin under the state's three-strikes law. But its color is green and its collar is white, and as a result it continues to skate. No criminal charges against the bank, its traders or its executives are on the table, and that's improper.
The $500-million penalty wouldn't rank as a big hit in terms of the bank's wealth. It comes to about 2.35% of Morgan's $21.3-billion profit last year. If the sum were to come directly out of its shareholders' hides, it would cut their annual $1.20 dividend per share less than three cents.
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A Morgan settlement with FERC would come on the heels of several other eye-catching actions by the agency, which has been playing itself up as a serious sheriff over the electricity markets. Earlier this month, the agency slapped a $470-million penalty on Barclays Bank for market manipulation in California. Barclays says it will fight the case in court.
What's worst about enforcement by cashier's check is that it allows FERC to evade the real lesson taught by these endlessly repeated shenanigans in the energy markets ? the markets are too complex, and the potential profits from wrongdoing are too high, for government regulators to supervise properly.
The British Drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline said that some of its executives in China appeared to have broken the law as part of a major bribery scandal. The company also said that proposed changes to its operations would result in lower prices of its medicines in China.
Related Keywords:GSK China, Chinese law, GlaxoSmithKline, SHANGHAI, Pharmacology
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Public release date: 23-Jul-2013
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