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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187686 GREAT MAGIC TRICK Move your mouse IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII How To Amuse People - FOR HOURS ! ! ! ! ! Web Link: http://img0.1iveintemetsufimages/attach/c/5/3970/3970473 sprite198.swf THIS WEEK's MUSIC PIECES OF A MAN GIL SCOTT-HERON In honor of the last weekend of Black History Month, I would like to again share my favorite musician of "my generation"who provided the soul and spirit of Black culture for young people in the 1970s and until his death on May 27, 2011. Gilbert "Gil" Scott-Heron born on April 1, 1949 was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken word performer in the 197os and '8os. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues, and soul, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. His own term for himself was "bluesologist", which he defined as "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues." His music, most notably on Pieces of a Man and Winter in America in the early 1970s, EFTA01187686
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187676 you're choosing between two investments: the lowest-cost index fund with a o.o8 percent fee, and a typical managed stock fund with, according to Morningstar, a 1.33 percent fee. And finally, let's say that, though you don't know it, they both return 7 percent a year, because, as we saw above, most managed funds don't beat the market. Fees Are Killing Your Retirement $600,000 401k Balance $500,000 $400,000 1 You would hen lost $159,000 to fees $300,000 $200,000 $100,000 This 1.25 percent difference in annual fees adds up to a six-figure difference in lifetime earnings. That's because you don't just lose the money you pay in fees. You lose the returns you could have had on the money you pay in fees, too. As you can see in the chart below, this compounding effect doesn't matter much for the first 20 years or so, but really accelerates after that. If you chose the lowest-cost index fund, you'd have $15,000 more at age 45, $55,000 more at 55, and $159,000 more at 65. That would balloon to $257,000 more if you waited to retire at 70. This is some brutal math. It's 27 percent of your retirement going to Wall Street for nothing. Actually, less than nothing. Remember, about 8o percent of actively managed funds do worse than index funds after you take fees into account. It's a Wall Street handout that you can't afford to make. O'Brien — Skip thefees, and save your retirement. But the reality is that between quantitate easing and 401(k) plans, 40% of the income made in America last year was in the financial sector, which only employed 7.9 million people including bank tellers, secretaries and messengers out of a total of 154.4 million employed workers, and another 20%/25% people working in the gray economy. And I can assure you that in this "masters of the universe" Wall Street group the Top 1%, receive a lot more than 40% of this 40%. Therefore if you use "Deep Throat's" advice of `follow the money", like me and many others you will come to the conclusion that the game is rigged, with the added insult of fees being paid to poor preforming fund managers, who are part of the people who continually fleece America. I only wish that there was a Judge Judy Show to expose their malfeasance. EFTA01187676
May 12, 2026 at 9:50 PM
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187687 influenced and helped engender later African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul. Besides influencing contemporary musicians, Scott-Heron remained active until his death, and in 2010 released his first new album in 16 years, entitled I'm New Here. A memoir he had been working on for years up to the time of his death, The Last Holiday, was also published, posthumously in January 2012. His recording work received much critical acclaim, especially one of his best-known compositions "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". His poetic style has influenced every generation of hip hop. Gil Scott Heron is a connection. He is the connection between the old and the new. The connection between the poetry and the music. The connection between the responsibility that an artist has and the entertainment that his audience desires and espects. For forty years he influenced people. For forty years he entertained people. For forty years he forced people to actually think and make differences in their lives. Gil Scott Heron is one of those few artists that ever lived who is his own genre. He is his own definition of music. He will always be with us because the strength of his body of music/work will endure over time and no better example is that not only was the revolution televised in Detroit, Los Angeles and Chicago in the U.S., it was televised twenty years later in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China and then another twenty two years later in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt and currently today in Aleppo, Syria. With this said, I invite you to connect to the poetry, music, spirit and message of Gil Scott-Heron who will always be relevant as long as there is injustice and oppression anywhere on the planet. Gill Scot Heron interviewed by the BBC 2009 pl http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v=K5eYRwvLYHA RBG-Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 2 of 6 -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LeGukR7b1s Gill Scott Heron - Whitey on the Moon -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY Gil Scott-Heron - We Beg Your Pardon -- http://youtu.be/MDCfEkopryo Gil Scott Heron — The Bottle -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnOVbMFiGVg Gil Scott-Heron — Pieces OfA Man -- httpyoutu.be/nhauYZOfaDQ Gil Scott-Heron - Home Is Where The Hatred Is -- http://www.youtube.comlwatch? v=MuMx4GoGNDw Gil Scott-Heron - Save The Children -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phm7Nhlaxzs Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised -- http://youtu.be/qGaoXAwl9kw Gil Scott- Heron - Rivers ofMy Fathers -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgaucR5EdRc Gil Scott-Heron - The Ghetto Code (Dot Dot Dit Dit Dot Dot Dash) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZuP-7U10Xo Gil Scott-Heron — Winter in America -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EhaPUqG3M Gil Scott-Heron — Johannesburg -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvHFuJX2Ock Gil Scott Heron - Lady Day and .John Coltrane -- http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=3fKBCD0R9FU EFTA01187687
May 12, 2026 at 9:50 PM
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187656 Romare Bearden is considered one of the most important American artists of the loth century. His life and art are marked by exceptional talent, encompassing a broad range of intellectual and scholarly interests, including music, performing arts, history, literature and world art. His early paintings were realistic with religious themes. Later, his works depict aspects of family culture in a semi-abstract collage and Cubist style. He was also a songwriter and designed sets for the Alvin Ailey Company. Bearden was also a celebrated humanist, as demonstrated by his lifelong support of young, emerging artists. Presage, c. 1942 Gouache with inks and graphite on brown paper 48 x 32. Southern Recall. c. 1965 Collage of various papers with ink and graphite on cardboard 7 7/8 x 4 1/2. The Lamp. c. 1984 Lithograph commissioned commemorating the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Courts decision ending official segregation in public education Romare BeardenRomare Bearden began college at Lincoln University, transferred to Boston University and completed his studies at New York University (NYU), graduating with a degree in education. While at NYU, Bearden took extensive courses in art and was a lead cartoonist and then art editor for the monthly journal The Medley. He had also been art director of Beanpot, the student humor magazine of Boston University. Bearden published many journal covers during his university years and the first of numerous texts he would write on social and artistic issues. He also attended the Art Students League in New York and later, the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1935, Bearden became a weekly editorial cartoonist for the Baltimore Afro-American, which he continued doing until 1937. After joining the Harlem Artists Guild, Bearden embarked on his lifelong study of art, gathering inspiration from Western masters ranging from Duccio, Giotto and de Hooch to Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse, as well as from African art (particularly sculpture, masks and textiles), Byzantine mosaics, Japanese prints and Chinese landscape paintings. From the mid-193os through 1960s, Bearden was a social worker with the New York City Department of Social Services, working on his art at night and on weekends. His success as an artist was recognized with his first solo exhibition in Harlem in 1940 and his first solo show in Washington, DC, in 1944. Bearden was a prolific artist whose works were exhibited during his lifetime throughout the United States and Europe. His collages, watercolors, oils, photomontages and prints are imbued with visual metaphors from his past in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, Pittsburgh and Harlem and from a variety of historical, literary and musical sources. EFTA01187656
May 12, 2026 at 9:49 PM
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187666 that wealth is going to be put to the needs of the society or how the society's going to be protected from inevitable threat, if all of those things are not -- if how the society's infrastructure, shared infrastructure, is fashioned and whether or not it's sustainable, if all those things are not metrics and if it's just about generating mass wealth, then you know, what are we saying? What are we saying about the human condition? What are saying about our society's condition? And the only way that you tame greed is legislatively. And the problem is that we don't have a Teddy Roosevelt today. Today you can't look at politics and be sanguine about where we're going. And as a result you have to understand why so many people's anger has turns to resignation. Resignation or contempt for government as an idea. That's a luxury we don't have. It is basically either, on one side it's people who think, "I can do well on my own and screw my neighbor." And it's basically greed wrapping itself in the mantle of a legitimate ideology. Or it's just people who are not doing well, who are saying, you know, "The government's my enemy." If democracy's going to work, the government in some sense is you and your neighbors. And if it's not, that's the fight to have. And this fight can't be had by walking away. Because, if only 20 percent of the people in America end up voting in elections that they don't think matter, you lose and they'll be right, with any sense of democracy dying. Therefore in any democracy, it's a fight worth having even if we're going to lose. Even when you believe that the game is rigged. Sooner or later even the most apathetic will seethe with contempt that their voice isn't being heard. Today the logical outcome can witnessed in the uprising in the Ukraine. And although revolution sometimes seems good in theory — but the destruction, pain and death that accompanies it is not. Therefore opting out is not only a lost opportunity but it often leads to unintended consequences creating the worse of all outcomes. David Simon: In "The Myth of Sisyphus" Camus' idea is that to commit to an unlikely cause or a cause that is, seems, almost certain of defeat may seem absurd, but to not commit is also absurd given the situation. And only one choice of those two offers even the remote chance at dignity. But more than that, the idea that democracy works without there being a constant fight, is equally absurd — as such, it is negligent for us to walk away and say I'm not going to play this game by which I might lose or which the odds are stacked against me, and want the lofty position of walking away and saying, "No more." Because all that will happen is a more rapid decline in our society. As such there is nowhere to go except to fight. Being a Baby Boomer who grew up in the age of television when there were only three networks and that was only in the major markets, one of the shared experiences in America, whether you were rich, poor, black, white, woman, man, gay, young and old, was television. Those shared experiences were often painted in the collective psyche of the American audience. For Baby Boomers and their parents, many of us remember watching Elvis Presley and The Beetles on the Ed Sullivan Show and during that same time we anointed Walter Cronkite "the most trusted man in America." We crowded around our television sets to witness the landing on the moon in 1969, and we were collectively outraged by the over-reaction of local police during the social protests in the 196os. Along with Dragnet, American Bandstand, Bonanza, The Honeymooners and scores of other television shows, one EFTA01187666
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187663 destruction of Penn Station inspired the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Movement that saved a number of historic buildings including the wonderful Grand Central Station in New York. It had taken four years to build Pennsylvania Station. McKim's colossal structure used 27.000 tons of steel, 500,000 cubic feet of granite, 83,000 square feet of skylights and 17 million bricks. When the station was completed in 1910 thousands of spectators wandered through the station, flooding the acres of its floor space reported the New York Tribune, "gazed at the vaulted ceilingsfar above them, and pressed like caged creatures against the grill that looked down upon subterranean tracks, trains and platforms." Pennsylvania Station was a symbol not only to the greatness and power of the railroad, but also to the greatness and power of the city, it was a gift to the city as well as a creation of a corporation with a notion that private enterprise and the public good didn't contradict each other — they in fact reinforced each other. More than a half of century later my first memories of Penn Station is still indelible. You walked into the majestic structure immediately realizing that this is a wonderful space, making it one of the greatest public spaces in the country whether you are rich or poor, urban, suburban or rural. One of the unintended beneficial consequences of Penn Station was the opening up of access for the suburbs to the city. At the time that Penn Station was built, most Americans viewed railroads as symbols of progress, symbols of what the United States could achieve. Most people didn't realize what was lost until Penn Station was torn down. It is hard to get over the fact that such a wonderful place is gone. Often described as the "great martyr of historic preservation", the building that died so that we could/would save others in the future. z Inl‘ \Alainst1 I "I) 10: ...tie ^SP ''• ei. 1Ar. ,„;,.: • -- 0.--,1.1_3011latlin -S a, -rot — -__ __,..", -0 -...c.: . ... sv i,... — ---,, 9. ♦1011/4 ---ii0.‘0-41 'W am lI ia . 10 11:7; i: ,b.., —ila 110 VA-4:. ---- "\h tz tt-TC .,-T, „ 7•-•.-:Fes . -;;;k -6 0 __it i klii.5 :; .,, . % AN. --- ;;-:::..,„ = 1= •. -3,-;,.......>bia,..,1 .._•%* NW. ‘ n t% ..,2_2,v .....e. \ X \ca —• _ --‘ itt iv • — 4. itiornts) \ \ ...en .,.._Illii ,4... . ..1:vit 41•. „....... . ---1,. ist;iti,_% vir . • a• A A -442.0.--Cade. • i: ----- * _ 4-1 c •. els.- t• -.400, iral . ci 1 . On - ig r Va ii• -r . • ....-. 'i I I . ..P.. I s" M wit en r _ ..o.. d.•do•9 1•. ... •;,',,,-.5ii trill V er ' 1,e• ‘ 111 4 ,::: ?„" ..: illinSil.t,Zst: II Illilliki:. 1 --A IEN IIN NODS ;','" l H Ma ill igi idi , a "d wall I ATT 06=1'4;42'4 r - c'-‘i Ar • . ) • wa IMAM ... •', WAS " Alai It wil EFTA01187663
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187669 WHAT'S THE POINT OF THE MINIMUM WAGE? Most people think of the minimum wage as the lowest legal hourly pay. That's true, but it is really much more than that. As defined in the name of the Lord that established it - Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 - the minimum wage is a fundamental labor standard designed to protect workers, just as child labor laws and overtime pay rules do. Labor standards, like environmental standards and investor protections, are essential to a functional economy. Properly set an enforced, these standards check exploitation, pollution and speculation. In the process, they promote broad and rising prosperity, as well as public confidence. The minimum wage is specifically intended to take aim at inherent imbalance in power between employers and low-wage workers that can push wages down to poverty levels. An appropriate way to floor set by Congress affectively substitutes for bargaining power the low-wage workers lack. When low-end wages rise, poverty and inequality are reduced. But that doesn't mean the minimum wage is a government program to provide welfare, as critics sometimes imply in an attempt to link it to unpopular policies. An hourly minimum of $10.10, for example, as Democrats have proposed, would reduce the number of people living in poverty by for 4.6 million, according to widely accepted research, without requiring the government to tax, borrow or spend. IS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE? No. Other programs, including food stamps, Medicaid and earned-income tax credits, also increase the meager resources of low-wage workers, but they do not provide bargaining power to claim a better wage. In fact, they can drive wages down, because employers who pay poorly factor the government assistance into their wage scales. This is especially true of the earned-income tax credit, a taxpayer-provided wage subsidy that helps lift the income of working families above the poverty line. Conservatives often call for increases to the E.I.T.C. instead of a higher minimum wage, saying that a higher minimum wage acts as an unfair and unwise tax on low-wage employers. That's a stretch, especially in light of rising corporate profits even as pay has dwindled. It also ignores how the tax credit increases the supply of low-wage labor by encouraging people to work, holding down the cost of labor for employers. By one estimate, increasing the tax credits to 10 percent reduces the wages of high-school educated workers by 2 percent. There are good reasons to expand the tax credits for childless workers, as President Obama recently proposed. It is a successful antipoverty program and a capstone in the conservative agenda to emphasize work over welfare. But an expanded E.I.T.C. is no reason to stint on raising the minimum wage - just the opposite. A higher minimum wage could help offset the wage-depressing effect of a bolstered E.I.T.C., and would ensure the both taxpayers employers do their part to make work pay. HOW HIGH SHOULD IT BE? There's no perfect way to set the minimum wage, but the most important benchmarks - purchasing power, wage growth and productivity growth - demonstrate that the current $7.25 an hour is far too low. They also show that the proposed increase to $10.10 by 2016 is too modest. The peak year for the minimum wage was in 1968, when its purchasing power was Nelly $9.40 in 2013 dollars, as shown in the accompanying chart. Since then, the erosion caused by inflation has obviously EFTA01187669 Epstein Web iOS app on the App Store.
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187688 Gil Scott Heron — Inner City Blues -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcrQBU7x-IA Gil Scott Heron — Angel Dust -- http://youtu.be/hWitRABYVBk Gil Scott Heron — We Almost Lost Detroit -- http://youtu.be/OLdOJBZRgMs Gil Scott Heron — Blue Collar -- http://youtu.beiNg39RmKt77Q Gil Scott-Heron — Black History Month -- httpyoutu.be/fTIX_-mN6kY I hope that you enjoyed this week's offerings and wish that you and yours a great week Sincerely, Greg Brown Gregory. Brown Chairman & CEO GlobalCast Panne's. LLC EFTA01187688
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187685 WHY CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: "If you think about every single important issue America has to address — if you're on the right and you care about tax reform or addressing the issues of the deficit, or on the left and you care about climate change or real health care reform — whatever the issue is, if you look at the way our system functions right now you have to see that there will be no sensible reform given the way we fund campaigns," Lawrence Lessig SECOND WEEK's QUOTE Ted Kaufman who was Joe Biden's advisor said a great thing about climate change. After 9/11 Dick Cheney invoke the principle that ff there was even a one percent chance of a terrorist attack we must prepare as ifit was a certainty. Therefore, can a rational human being who doesn't believe in climate change can at least agree that there is a remote possibility that 95percent of climate scientist are right. Bill Maher (February 20, 2014) BEST VIDEO OF THE WEEK Time Lapse Cutting of Cruise Ship Cruise Ship Cut in Half & then Stretched 99 Feet http://www.nidokidos.org/threads/210295 EFTA01187685
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187684 wrote on his Facebook page. "We do this by building services that help people share any type of content with any group ofpeople they want." "More than 1 million people sign upfor WhatsApp every day and it is on its way to connecting one billion people," he added. Zuckerberg promised that WhatsApp will operate independently within Facebook, similar to how the photo-sharing app Instagram has been kept separate from Facebook proper after it was acquired for $1 billion in 2012. The social network has its own well-used messaging app, called Facebook Messenger, that Facebook has pushed its members to download over the past year. Zuckerberg said that Messenger and WhatsApp will not be merged. Aside from Messenger, Facebook's efforts to grow in messaging have fallen flat. Poke, a Snapchat done that also lets people send disappearing messages, failed to gain traction when released at the end of 2012. Instagram Direct, a recently introduced and widely touted Instagram feature lets people privately share photos, also doesn't seem to be well used. So far, WhatsApp has forgone ads and instead made money by charging 99 cents to cell owners after 12 months of use. The app is initially free to download and is popular among young people who want to send photos and texts to friends abroad without being hit with high international data fees. The subscription fee is new territory for Facebook, which over its decade-long existence has reiterated again and again on its homepage that it is 'free and always will be." In a blog post, co-founder and CEO Jan Koum, who founded WhatsApp with fellow former Yahoo executive Brian Acton in 2009, insisted that "nothing" will change for customers. That includes ads: "you can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication," he wrote. "There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles." SMS/month/user 40> 20) 0 cua otos 010> WO/ 0.30) Q•3> CtIOB QXS(1)01010S 010) 0)09 QX0 0:0 4uowtowwwnwn 0)1I QM <Sit 010 QM OM 011/ 01 COli QUI 0 Chelan Sharma Consulting And, at least in the short-term, these trends show no sign of letting up. WhatsApp, according to Facebook, signs up over 1 million new people each day. THIS WEEK's QUOTE EFTA01187684 Epstein Web iOS app on the App Store.
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187683 related to declining concerns about the government. In inverse fashion, mentions of unemployment decreased last fall as mentions of government dissatisfaction rose. Now that the shutdown is over and the government has successfully passed a budget and avoided another debt ceiling shutdown, Americans appear to have shifted their focus away from the government and back to the still relatively weak job market. Although that 22% is much lower than the all-time satisfaction poll number of 7% in 2001 right after World Trade Center bombing, but it is considerably higher than the all-time low in October 2008 several months before Barrack Obama took office. Like me you may have noticed that Facebook announced on Wednesday that it was acquiring WhatsApp (a messaging service) for an astonishing/jaw-dropping US$19 billion (YES, NINETEEN BILLION DOLLARS and only 55 employees) - a company that, like me, you may have never used, heard of or you nerdy nephew doesn't use, but a lot of people, especially in India, Latin America and Europe, have. And they use it. A lot. WhatsApp customers send a whopping 19 billion messages each day. Yes, that's billion. Again, with a "b." To put that huge number in perspective -- more WhatsApp messages were sent and received in 2013 than SMS messages were sent and received on all U.S. and Chinese wireless carriers combined, according to data from Chetan Sharma Consulting, a Washington-based firm that advises mobile carriers. Messaging Volume (Last 12 months) ChetanSharrnaConsultIng, 2013 Meese Operators usoperuors whatuno Chetan Shama Consulting Facebook has shown a keen interest in developing or, with its $173 billion valuation, outright buying mobile messaging apps. Last year, Snapchat, a 2-year-old app that allows people to send disappearing photos and videos to one another, rebuffed a $3 billion offer from the social network. But the 5-yearold WhatsApp is far more established, and has fetched its owners a far greater sum. This month, it had 450 million monthly users, having added 100 million of them in the last four months of 2013 alone. WhatsApp is essentially a replacement to traditional text messaging. But unlike costly texts, which eat into cell phone owners' data plans, WhatsApps messages are sent over the Internet if connected to WiFi. "Our mission is to make the world more open and connected," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg EFTA01187683
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187682 Unemployment has retaken its place in Americans' minds as the country's biggest problem, according to a new Gallup poll published Monday. 23 percent now consider unemployment the greatest challenge facing the nation, while only 16 percent said the same in January. More people named joblessness as the nation's top problem than "government and politicians," which had been the most popular answer among survey respondents since the government shutdown last year. Before the shutdown, jobs and the economy had topped the list. The poll was conducted between Feb. 6-9, 2014. On Feb. 6, Senate Democrats mounted another unsuccessful attempt to extend long-term unemployment benefits, which lapsed for more than 1.7 million Americans at the end of December. Only 63 percent of working-age Americans have a job or are actively looking for one -- the lowest share of the population participating in the labor force since 1978. (The population of working-age Americans here includes anyone over the age of 16, including those who have retired and students). And while the jobless rate fell last month, the drop was due in large part to the long-term unemployed giving up on looking for work. "Some of this is due to thefact that Baby Boomers retiring -- but only some," HuffPost's Mark Gongloff wrote last month. "Most of it has to do with thefact that the economy is still too weak to create enough jobs to draw people into the market. This is most clearly evident in thefact that younger people are leaving the laborforce, too -- or never even entering it -because they can'tfind jobs." Recent Trend in Top Five "Most Important" U.S. Problems What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today? (open-ended) ▪ % Government/Politicians % Economy in general ▪ % Unemployment/Jobs % Federal budget deficit/Federal debt Aug 113 Sep '13 Oct '13 Nov '13 % Healthcare Dec 113 Jan 114 Feb '14 GALLUP' Bottom Line - Economic issues again lead Gallup's measure of what Americans see as the most important problem facing the nation. Concerns about the government, at least as measured by responses to this open-ended question, have faded since the government shutdown in October. Fears about employment and the economy may be linked to weaker-than-hoped-for jobs reports and flat job growth in the past few months. The rise in mentions of unemployment specifically may also be EFTA01187682
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187681 I am not against fracking and actually have worked on fracking projects in Canada and China ten years ago. But I think that we need to make sure that drillers and oil companies make it there number one priority to keep air pollution, ground contamination and water reservoirs to an absolute safety. Is this too much to ask? For more information see the video by The Weather Channel - Big Oil and Bad Air - web link: http://stories.weather.com/fracking This Is Why It Was So Insanely Cold Last Month Feb 19, 2014 — Web Link: http://www.youtubc.comAvatchN=Pvtgoe0pN8U That incredibly cold, it-hurts-to-be-outside weather that much of the U.S. experienced last month may come back to bite the country again next week. So what's causing these temperature extremes? The polar vortex is a mass of winds that form over the Arctic each winter, and tend to move in a circular motion around the region, according to NASA. This year, however, a few factors caused the vortex to dip south, like the jet stream moving further south than usual and a low-pressure system forming over Canada, according to the video. As this animation progresses from early December 2013 to early January 2014, you can watch the polar vortex -- represented by the purple colors -- bend southward over time. It features data collected by NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder Mission instrument, and shows temperatures at 3,000 feet above the Earth's surface. As NASA points out on their website, this year's cold wave set many temperature records. And that wasn't all: flights were canceled, Canada experienced frost quakes and a jail escapee returned to prison because it was so cold. Unemployment The Number 1 Problem For Americans, Gallup Poll Says EFTA01187681
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187680 Eagle Ford Shale Complaints t. tMOaiy off chemicals from the wtdis makiN peepk sicking/re atea...• eninetn,an 70I0,4 1.0, 17.:1DI3 • Local readeettIlle4 NA canasta% about gland get drilern the Eagle lad SAW-will the Twos COW11414b anI rmionnunta/ °tarty (TC(Ot • Me KW kayoed lee not•cesa velwonmdeahnolw wo7n90442114 found at a betty. • As ol eh I. 2014.TCLO had issued two finea ItCe. WWERZSLel -Odors Innen palrig en cowlng thecomplonvont hesdathirtgonin9 end Itonwh acInt.' TEXAS Sampan of actual conteamb be lbownun t ad test. <cab ale soiled bee by <0.417 and bye the lwawan ol ewh code doesn't necesaarib 'bath the poose locator, ol each compLont. nen4 tM e agI« Ford shale owe morn. 1 bole I Mascots Bee butt &nation DeWel Farb* Frio Gonzales fi xers Kamen La Salle Lwow Lae Leon Law Oak Madmen Mowed, McIAAen Robeetwn 7 Water Webb Yawn TOTAL 142 COMHAIM TYPES • • A lla OUST 011.0% TOTAL 2 2$ 6 13 0 0 10 0 4 0 16 6 0 3 41 10 9 10 0 14 It 1 2$4 hat nblelloata laner(hlbeendtaralsoxnew Pone web no knnalowetanneseetwwwelwal/aw /27071 YAM PAWS tcolISCL: •-ran q •.- can we MPreethe fresh ale or Mw• airy company en, duo Is the wing' MADIVIN CatWS In U the wad. on el end torten oder —She wake, up w4Is u pti tternoth d hang* San Afton)) heoclochei • A NILSON 'The ampleInont oP4 speuse hove son thrcan end Modoth••.' Oft lb/ AIALCOSA "WS "Th. chidden site toles cot, of hot thek notes hov• been n:y....The odors snort;Me en 4<kf or theta. chew. ca." tme OM t.t.y were lair ring from mat:ratan poblems onto Sr Ant' 6 Cowsce/an MAAS 0eIdd Pr. MOW. .0.Wis ran co....m.0 cn t eveina.04110•Si The health issues faced by people who live in drilling areas — not just in Texas but throughout the United States — simply don't carry enough weight to counterbalance the financial benefits derived from oil and gas development, said Robert Forbis Jr., an assistant professor of political science at Texas Tech University. "Energy wins practically every time," Forbis said. "It seems cynical to say that, but that's how states see it — promote economic development and minimize riskfactors." The energy industry's impact on Americans living near drilling areas has been fiercely debated in the last decade, as the shale boom brought drilling to vast stretches of the United States. Much of the concern has centered on how methane and fracking chemicals can contaminate drinking water. But scientists say air pollution is an equally serious problem that receives less attention, in part because its so difficult to track. Plumes of contaminated air move with the wind. Some of the chemicals break down in sunlight or react with other pollutants to form new compounds. The evidence disappears quickly, while health effects may linger. People who live close to oil and gas development — whether in Texas' Eagle Ford, Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale or Wyoming's Green River Basin — tend to report the same symptoms: nausea, nosebleeds, headaches, body rashes and respiratory problems. Public health experts say these shared experiences point to a pressing need for improved air monitoring. Chemicals released during oil and gas extraction include hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas found in abundance in Flag e Ford wells; volatile organic compounds (VOCs) like benzene, a known carcinogen; sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, which irritate the lungs; and other harmful substances such as carbon monoxide and carbon disulfide. VOCs also mix with nitrogen oxides emitted from field equipment to create ozone, a major respiratory hazard. "If you have pockets of communities with the same symptoms downwind of similar sources, then there is a body of evidence,"said Isobel Simpson, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who studies air pollution around the world. EFTA01187680
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187679 a Republican who favors dismantling the EPA and voices doubt about climate change. TCEQ officials often go on to jobs as lobbyists for the energy industry they once regulated. The Texas Railroad Commission, which issues drilling permits and regulates all other aspects of oil and gas production, is controlled by three elected commissioners who accepted more than $2 million in campaign contributions from the industry during the 2012 election cycle, according to data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. State legislators who enact the laws that regulate the industry are often tied to it. Nearly one in four state legislators, or his or her spouse, has a financial interest in at least one energy company active in the Eagle Ford, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of personal financial disclosure forms shows. "I believe if you're anti-oil and gas, you're anti-Texas," state Rep. Harvey Hilderbran, a Republican from Central Texas, said during a media panel discussion in September. In a prepared statement, it said air pollution isn't a problem in the Flag e Ford. "The air monitoring data evaluated to date indicate that air pollutants in the Eagle Ford Shale area have not been a concern eitherfrom a long-term or short-term perspective," the statement said. "Therefore, we would not expect adverse health effects, adverse vegetative effects, or nuisance odors in this area." But an interoffice memorandum obtained through the Texas Public Information Act indicates the TCEQ knows its statewide air monitoring system is flawed. "The executive director has extensive records of underestimated or previously undetected emissions from oil and gas sites. These are not isolated instances but have occurred statewide and indicate a pattern," Richard A. Hyde, then deputy director of the TCEQ's Office of Permitting and Registration, wrote in the Jan. 7, 2011, memo. Hyde, now the TCEQ's executive director, through an agency spokeswoman declined to comment. Since drilling came to Karnes County, asthma and other repertory symptoms has worsened, causing a number of the locals to resort to using breathing machines. Other symptoms include migraine headaches so intense that they are said to induced temporary blindness and bringing locals to the brink of unconsciousness. As a result of complaints to the TCEQ in 2012, which prompted investigators to check out several Marathon Oil facilities, the emissions were so high, the investigators wrote in their report, that they "evacuated the area quickly to prevent exposure." Marathon, a Houston-based company worth nearly $25 billion at the end of 2013, reported that it fixed the problem and was not fined. Still residents in the area say that the air is often so bad — described a rancid chicken stench — that they no longer can sit down on the porches to enjoy the sundown — "There's nothing we can do," and "Nobody is listening to us." EFTA01187679 Epstein Web iOS app on the App Store.
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187678 the state. These facilities host compressor engines, heater treaters, flares, glycol dehydrators and storage tanks for oil, wastewater and condensate. Combined, these facilities release thousands of tons of volatile organic compounds, a class of toxic chemicals that includes benzene and formaldehyde, into the air each year. These facilities also release thousands of tons of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and hydrogen sulfide per year. Sometimes the emissions soar high into the sky and are carried by the wind until they drop to the ground miles away. But often they blow straight toward neighboring homes. The regulation of oil and gas extraction falls primarily to the states, whose rules vary dramatically. States are also responsible for enforcing the federal Clean Air Act, an arrangement that is problematic in Texas, which has sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 18 times in the last decade. For the past eight months, the Center for Public Integrity, InsideClimate News and The Weather Channel have examined what Texas, the nation's biggest oil producer, has done to protect people in the Rag e Ford from the industry's pollutants. What's happening in the Rag e Ford is important not only for Texas, but also for Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Dakota and other states where horizontal drilling and high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have made it profitable to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale. A recent investigation and records obtained from Texas regulatory agencies reveal a system that does more to protect the industry than the public. Among the findings: • Texas' air monitoring system is so flawed that the state knows almost nothing about the extent of the pollution in the Eagle Ford. Only five permanent air monitors are installed in the 20,000square-mile region, and all are at the fringes of the shale play, far from the heavy drilling areas where emissions are highest. • Thousands of oil and gas facilities, including six of the nine production sites near the Buehrings' house, are allowed to self-audit their emissions without reporting them to the state. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), which regulates most air emissions, doesn't even know some of these facilities exist. An internal agency document acknowledges that the rule allowing this practice "[c]annot be proven to be protective." • Companies that break the law are rarely fined. Of the 284 oil and gas industry-related complaints filed with the TCEQ by Eagle Ford residents between Jan. 1, 2010, and Nov. 19, 2013, only two resulted in fines despite 164 documented violations. The largest was just $14,250. (Pending enforcement actions could lead to six more fines). • The Texas legislature has cut the TCEQ's budget by a third since the Eagle Ford boom began, from $555 million in 2008 to $372 million in 2014. At the same time, the amount allocated for air monitoring equipment dropped from $1.2 million to $579,000. • The Eagle Ford boom is feeding an ominous trend: A 100 percent statewide increase in unplanned, toxic air releases associated with oil and gas production since 2009. Known as emission events, these releases are usually caused by human error or faulty equipment. • Residents of the mostly rural Eagle Ford counties are at a disadvantage even in Texas, because they haven't been given air quality protections, such as more permanent monitors, provided to the wealthier, more suburban Barnett Shale region near Dallas-Fort Worth. Texas officials tasked with overseeing the industry are often its strongest defenders, leaving local effected families to mostly fend for themselves. Oil money is so thoroughly ingrained in the Texas culture and economy that there is little interest in or sympathy for those who have become collateral damage in the drive for riches. The TCEQ is led by three commissioners appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, EFTA01187678
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187677 There is a new evolving story around fracking. It centers around the industrialized expansion of fracking in which is know as the Eagle Ford Shale play, a 400-mile-long, 50-mile-wide bacchanal of oil and gas extraction stretches from Leon County, Texas, in the northeast to the Mexican border in the southwest, which although is sparsely populated, it is the land-mass is the size of the state of Massachusetts. Since 2008, more than 7,000 oil and gas wells have been sunk into the brittle, sedimentary rock. Another 5,500 have been approved by state regulators, making the Eagle Ford one of the most active drilling sites in America. Energy companies, cheered on by state officials, envision thousands more wells scattered across the plains. It is, an industry spokesman says, an "absolute game-changer" for a long-depressed region of about 1.1 million people, some of whom suddenly find themselves with enough money to ensure their grandchildren's future. The Eagle Ford and Barnett Shales The Eagle Ford and Barnett shales are two of the most active plays in Texas.Drilling in the Barnett Shale took off in the late 1990s.Drilling in the Eagle Ford began in 2008, and the pace of development has skyrocketed In recent years.lt is now considered the most active oil and gas drilling area it the United States, and perhaps the world. N.NI. Amarillo Barnett Shale Dallas Fort Worth% sid IA. TEXAS Austin Houston • San Antonio , 4,-- Eagle Ford Shale 1=-Laredo Karnes County Corpus Christi TEXAS COUNTIES AFFECTED Barnett Archer Dallas Basque Denton Clay Eastland Ellis Comanche Erath Cooke Coryell Hamilton Hill Hood Jack Johnson Montague Palo Pinto Parker Shackelford Somervell Stephens Tarrant Wise Eagle Ford Atascosa Bastrop Bee Brazos Burleson DeWitt Dimmit Lee Leon Live Oak Madison Maverick McMullen Milam Robertson Walker Webb Wilson Zavala Fayette Frio Gonzales Grimes Karnes La Salle Lavaca SOURCES:Texas Commission on Environmental Quality; Railroad Commission ofTe PAUL HORN / Insi deChmate News In addition to the wells, there is a rush to build more and more oil and gas production facilities and little is known about most of these facilities, because they don't have to file their emissions data with EFTA01187677
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187675 plans have disproportionately benefited the very rich, while the average 401 (k) participant plan has been stagnant over the past 15 years. One of the reasons for this are fees, pointed out this week in The Atlantic by Matthew O'Brien in his article — The Crushingly Expensive Mistake Killing Your Retirement. When most people think about 401 (k) plans they look at the returns. But the said fact is that returns aren't certain whereas fees are. In the 1990s few people cared about the fees as the financial markets were soaring and the i% of more that people were paying in fees didn't seem egregious. But many managed funds underperform index funds over the short and longer hauls, net of fees. Which is to say, most of them. It's hard enough for funds to beat their benchmarks over just one to three-year periods. But that gets damn near impossible the longer you go. Once one accounts for survivorship bias — that bad funds go bust, and disappear from the sample — almost 8o percent of actively managed funds don't beat simple index funds over 10 to 15-year periods. • Survivorsonly • Sunivers plus %WO' Ards 15-yoar avMwaOn ri 147 "w 9 mot 10, feat evaulltiOn t9 20 0 Steer evaluat, It MO% A ir 40 — / 0 100•4 841 314444 ealo4000 b r i t y•at oval-4'6bn 42: 0 1W 111. a ias 4. 4 t - I In the meantime, you're stuck paying fees. Those fees don't sound too bad—just 1 percent!—but this is where our total lack of intuition for how compounding works really hurts us. L et's try an example: what's 0.99 to the 40th power? It's not exactly a calculation you can do in your head. It's not even one you can estimate. But it's the kind of calculation that you need to do to figure out how much your 401(k) fees are costing you. The answer is a lot more than you think. Example — let's say you contribute $3,000 to your 401(k) every year, which is a little more than the national average, starting when you're 25. Let's also say that EFTA01187675
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187674 and signed into law by President Gerald Ford on September 2, 1974, Labor Day. In the years since 1974, ERISA has been amended repeatedly. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a federal law that established minimum standards for pension plans in private industry and provides for extensive rules on the federal income tax effects of transactions associated with employee benefit plans. ERISA was enacted to protect the interests of employee benefit plan participants and their beneficiaries by: Requiring the disclosure of financial and other information concerning the plan to beneficiaries; establishing standards of conduct for plan fiduciaries; providing for appropriate remedies and access to the federal courts. ERISA is sometimes used to refer to the full body of laws regulating employee benefit plans, which are found mainly in the Internal Revenue Code and ERISA itself. Responsibility for the interpretation and enforcement of ERISA is divided among the Department of Labor, the Department of the Treasury (particularly the Internal Revenue Service), and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Pre-1978 — Deferred compensation arrangements ("cash or deferred arrangements," known as CODAS) which allowed some compensation (and resulting tax liability) to be deferred, predate 4O1(k) plans by several decades and are viewed as their precursors. An ongoing debate between employers and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about the extent of restrictions on such plans culminated in IRS guidance in 1956 on the deferral of profit-sharing contributions. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) barred the issuance of Treasury regulations prior to 1977 that would impact plans in place on June 27, 1974, thereby freezing a regulation proposed by the IRS in December 1972 that would have severely restricted the tax-deferred status of such plans. This action inhibited the creation of some new plans. After Congress extended the moratorium deadline twice, the IRS withdrew the proposed regulation in 1978. ERISA also mandated a study of salary reduction plans that influenced 1978 legislation creating 4O1(k) plans. 1978—The Revenue Act of 1978 included a provision that became Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Sec. 401(k) (for which the plans are named), under which employees are not taxed on the portion of income they elect to receive as deferred compensation rather than as direct cash payments. The Revenue Act of 1978 added permanent provisions to the IRC, sanctioning the use of salary reductions as a source of plan contributions. The law went into effect on Jan. 1, 1980. Regulations were issued in November of 1981. The IRS issued proposed regulations on 401(k) plans that sanctioned the use of employee salary reductions as a source of retirement plan contributions. By January 1982 a number of major countries including Johnson & Johnson, FMC, PepsiCo, JC Penney, Honeywell, Savannah Foods & Industries, Hughes Aircraft Company, and Coates, Herfurth, & England (a San Francisco-based consulting firm) develop 401(k) plan proposals, many of which officially began operation in January 1982. Many employers replaced older, after-tax thrift plans with 4O1(k) and added 4O1(k) options to profit-sharing and stock bonus plans. Within two years, surveys showed that nearly half of all large firms were either already offering a 4O1(k) plan or considering one. By 1990 there were 97,614 plans with a 4O1(k) feature, 19,548,000 active participants 19,548,000 and $384.85 billion in the plans. By 1996 there were 230,808 401 (k) plans, 30,843,000 active participants and $1.6 trillion in total assets. As of year-end 2003 there were 438,000 plans with a 4O1(k) feature, with 42.4 million active participants and $1.9 trillion in assets. And as of April 2013 there were 654,469 401(k) plans, 88,301,000 total participants with $4.2 trillion in assets. One of the results is that at year-end 1981 the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 875 and it closed on Friday at 16,103.30. Which on face value appears as a fantastic return for participants/workers, except that the numbers are misleading as the Top 1% own almost 40% of the country's wealth and the top 10% own 75.4% of the country's wealth as of December 2013. To provide you with another illustration, the five Walmart heirs have more wealth than the bottom 16o million Americans. So the 401(k) EFTA01187674 Epstein Web iOS app on the App Store.
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187673 elections. A more likely outcome than repeal, Frakt believes, will be that Republicans, or the government as a whole, will eventually find a way to give more freedom to the states to change some of the parameters of the ACA, bringing states that have resisted marketing their own exchanges or enrolling patients in Medicaid into the fold. Says Frakt: "It may be a conservative means to a progressive ends." It probably won't happen soon, but at some point there may actually be a need for compromise on both sides. But for Republicans to continue to believe that the ACA is the Achilles Heel for the Democrats, the numbers are telling a different story, so instead of being a 'player hater"why not change course and do whatever possible to make it better and more sustainable. And if not, my preference is Medicarefor all which is definitely an improvement over Obamacare. Critics will doubtlessly continue to try to blame Obamacare for anything bad that happens to anyone's health insurance before the November election. But all of this is just noise without the central narrative of a "failed program." Attack ads against vulnerable Democratic senators, such as Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, are already trying to paint Obamacare as a character defect — the president and his supporters "lied" when they said everyone could keep their insurance. The response from Democrats should be to shift the focus to the actual program and its impact. Imperiled incumbents can point to constituents who are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act in life-changing ways. If you assume that Affordable Care Act enrollment remains on its current trajectory, the February numbers should look even better. Polls consistently show that even if voters have mixed views about the health-care reforms, most do not want to see them repealed. By the fall, the whole Obamacare-is-adisaster line of attack could sound stale and irrelevant. Republicans may even have to take the drastic step of saying what they advocate, rather than harping on what they oppose. Is there a GOP plan to cover those with preexisting conditions? To cover the working poor? Is expanding access to health insurance really such an awful thing? Wall Street loves it when there is someone in the room who is the fool. "Always lookfor thefool in the deal. If you don'tfind one, it's you."— Mark Cuban. And nowhere has this been clearer then with retirement plans. In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy created the President's Committee on Corporate Pension Plans. The movement for pension reform gained some momentum when the Studebaker Corporation, an automobile manufacturer, dosed its plant in 1963. Its pension plan was so poorly funded that Studebaker could not afford to provide all employees with their pensions. The company created a program in which 3,600 workers who had reached the retirement age of 60 received full pension benefits, 4,000 workers aged 40-59 who had ten years with Studebaker received lump sum payments valued at roughly 15% of the actuarial value of their pension benefits, and the remaining 2,900 workers received no pensions. Due much in part to his "dismay" over union leader George Barasch's sole control over union benefit plan funds, Republican Senator Jacob K. Javits proposed legislation in 1967 that would address the funding, vesting, reporting, and disclosure issues identified by the presidential committee. His bill was opposed by business groups and labor unions, which sought to retain the flexibility they enjoyed under pre-ERISA law. On September 12, 1972, NBC broadcast Pensions: The Broken Promise, an hour-long television special that showed millions of Americans the consequences of poorly funded pension plans and onerous vesting requirements. In the following years, Congress held a series of public hearings on pension issues and public support for pension reform grew significantly. ERISA was enacted in 1974 EFTA01187673
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187672 Obamacare is still about 1 million signups behind where the Obama administration expected it to be before the government botched the rollout of Healthcare.gov, but these numbers are still looking significantly better than worst-case scenarios from a month ago, when enrollment of 5 million or even 3 million looked possible. What's more, a closer look at the data seems to indicate that even some state one would expect to be anti-Obamacare are having large numbers of people enroll in insurance through the exchanges — and that's not counting those in Medicaid. 'We've known California and NY have been leading the way on total enrollment,"says Caroline Pearson, a vice president at consultancy Avalere Health. "Florida and North Carolina and Alabama — states that have been relatively antiObamacare — are infact doing quite well on their enrollment relative to what we expected." Pearson took the data released by the government and paired it with a model Avalere developed to predict how many people each state would have to enroll in order to reach the projection of 6 million people enrolled in total, which was used in a recent Congressional Budget Office report. The results are presented in the map below, and in the state-by-state table at the end of this article. When total enrollment is expressed as a percentage of Avalere's projection, Alabama (60%) and Florida (74%) are actually lapping New York (39%) and Pennsylvania (35%). What's more, the map makes clear that most states are at least 40% of the way to their expected totals, and almost all are at least 30%. Keep in mind that a state can enroll more than its projected total (California is already 118% of the way there). Pearson says the worst-performer, Alabama, may deserve an asterisk depending on whether it uses Medicaid money to enroll people in its exchanges. Not that everything is rosy. Not everyone counted in these numbers is certain to actually get health insurance, because these numbers count people who signed up but who have not yet paid their first bill. Three-quarters of those who have signed up so far are getting subsidies to help pay for their coverage. For young consumers, as Avik Roy has written and others have also found, the Affordable Care Act may make insurance less affordable. The Affordable Care Act could be doing even more if Republican governors such as Rick Perry of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida were not doing all they could to sabotage the program. But even in states that refused to set up their own health-insurance exchanges or to expand Medicaid eligibility, growing numbers of the uninsured are obtaining coverage. Politically, this is terrible news for Republicans who hoped that the botched Web site launch and President Obama's misleading "you can keep your insurance" pledge would be the gifts that kept on giving. Bashing Obamacare will always have resonance for the GOP's conservative base. But if you're trying to win the votes of independents, it's more profitable to target a failed program than a successful one. But the Department of Health and Human Services says that more young, healthy people are signing up. Pearson says she models that these customers, valued by insurance companies, are more likely to sign up as we reach the end of the sign-up period at the end of March. Insurance companies said on their earnings calls that the mix of customers signing up for their plans is getting better. "We are seeing enrollees skewing to the younger side," Humana president and chief executive officer Bruce Broussard said a week ago. Cigna's chief, David Cordani said those signing up are a "little older mix relative to population."Aetna Chief Executive Mark Bertolini called the risk from the law "manageable" and also said that the ACA was part of a set of opportunities "unprecedented in the history of managed care." There will be eight more weeks of data to see what happens. The point is that even with all the law's problems, there may be a substantial number of people who come to depend on it before there is any political chance of repealing it — before the midterm EFTA01187672
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187671 wage below a level that would constitute a firm wage floor, though an increase of $1O.1O an hour would help tens of millions of workers. It also would help the economy by supporting consumer spending that in turn supports job growth. It is not a cure-all; it is not bold or innovative. But it is on the legislative agenda, and it deserves to pass. ****** EXCHANGE ENROLLMENT TO DATE AS A PERCENT OF PROJECTED ANNUAL ENROLLMENT FOR 2014 ■ 60% co avow (15) • 40%-60% (15) • 30.40%(15) 20-30%(4) • 10-20% (2) For Republicans who want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, there is a major problem: many people may hate the law, but just as many like it. This is what Matthew Herper said this week in Forbes Magazine in his article — New Signup Numbers Show Why Obamacare May Be Impossible To Repeal. "The thing that bothers me is people constantlyforget that all politics is local, and that there's great variation in the extent to which the law is accepted or is going to work. It's state by state,"says Austin Frakt, an associate professor of public health at the Boston University School of Public Health and co-author of the popular Incidental Economist blog. "It's notfair to say we'll repeal the whole thing because there's half the states that are cool with it." That may be even more true today than it was before, as the Obama administration released new figures saying that, through January, a total of 3.3 million people had signed up to get health insurance either through the federal government's Healthcare.gov website or through the insurance exchanges run on the state level. That includes 1 million who signed up in January alone. The numbers are even more encouraging when you look more closely. The proportion of young people — from 18 and 34 — who chose insurance plans through the exchanges increased slightly to 27 percent, compared with an average of 24 percent in previous months. This is important because premiums would have to rise if not enough young, healthy people enrolled. The administration had hoped the percentage of young enrollees would reach about 4o percent. But the January figure — and the rising trend — should put to rest any notion that the whole program could go down the drain in an actuarial "death spiral." Administration officials are convinced this won't happen. EFTA01187671
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187670 overwhelmed the increases by Congress. Even a boost to $10.10 an hour by 2016 (also adjusted to 2013 dollars) would lift the minimum to just above its real value in 1968. So while it is better than no increase, it is hardly a raise. The situation is worse when the minimum wage is compared with the average wages of typical American workers, the ones with production and nonsupervisory jobs in the private sector. From the mid 1960's to the early 1980s, when one full-time, full-year minimum wage job could keep a family of two above the poverty line, the minimum equaled about half the average wage. Today, it has fallen to one-third; to restore it a half would require nearly $11 an hour, a better goal than $10.1o. The problem is that the average wage, recently $20.39 an hour, has also stagnated over the past several decades, despite higher overall education levels for typical workers and despite big increases in labor productivity. People a working harder and churning out the goods and services, but there's no sign of that in their paychecks. If the average wage had kept pace with those productivity gains, it would be about $36 an hour today, and the minimum wage, at half the average, would be about $18. That is not to suggest that the hourly minimum wage could be catapulted from $7.25 to $18. A minimum wage of $18 would be untenable with the average hovering in the low $20's. But it does confirm that impersonal market forces are not the only, or even the primary, reason for widespread stagnation. Flawed policies and change in corporate norms are also to blame, because they have allowed the benefits of productivity gains to flow increasingly to profits, shareholders returns an executive pay, instead of workers' wages. DOES THIS KILL JOBS? The minimum wage is one of the most thoroughly researched issues in economics. Studies in the last 20 years have been especially informative, as economists been able to compare states that raise the wage above the federal level with those that did not. The weight of the evidence shows that increases in the minimum wage have lifted pay without hurting employment, a point that was driven home in the recent letter to Mr. Obama and congressional leaders, signed by more than 600 economists, among them Nobel laureates and past presidents of the American Economic Association. The economic conclusion dovetails with a recent comprehensive study, which found that minimum wage increases result in "strong earnings effects" - that is, higher pay - "and no employment affects" that is, zero job loss. Evidence, however, does not stop conservatives from making the argument that by raising the cost of labor, a higher minimum wage will hurt businesses, leaving them to cut jobs and harming the lowwage workers it is intended to help. Alternatively, they argue it will hurt consumers by pushing up prices precipitously. Those arguments are simplistic. Research and experience show that employers do not automatically cope with higher minimum wage by laying off workers or not hiring new ones. Instead, they pay up out of savings from reduce labor turnover, by slower wage increases higher up the scale, modest price increases or other adjustments. Which brings the debate over raising the minimum wage full circle. The real argument against it is political, not economics. Republican opposition will likely keep any future increase in the minimum EFTA01187670
May 12, 2026 at 9:49 PM
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187668 Fallon is already putting his stamp on the Grand Daddy of Late Night Shows -- The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. WEEK's READINGS The Case for a Higher Minimum Wage THE EDITORIAL BOARD: February 8, 2014 The political posturing over raising the minimum wage sometimes obscures the huge and growing number of low wage workers it would affect. An estimated 27.8 million people what are more money under the Democratic proposal to lift the hourly minimum wage from $7.25 today to $10.10 by 2016. And most of them do not fit the low-wage stereotype of a teenager with a summer job. Their average age is 35; more than one-fourth are parents; and, on average, they are on half of their families' total income. None of that, however, has softened the hearts of opponents, including congressional Republicans and low-wage employers, notably restaurant owners and executives. This is not a new debate. The minimum wage is a battlefield in a larger political fight between Democrats and Republicans - dating back to the New Deal legislation been instituted the first minimum wage in 1938 - over government's role in the economy, over raw versus regulated capitalism, over corporate power versus public needs. 2016: 2013: 61119p 518.30 $20 $18 At thit growthraft oft $16 U.S. productivity $14 512 $10 U.S. average wages of production, nonsupervisory 1968: $9.40 $10.63 S10.89, • $9.61 (under 57.25 HaddnMllNri 58 56 Real minimum wage $4 52 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008 2012 2016 But the results of the way to bait are clear. Decades of research, facts and evidence shows that increasing the minimum wage is vital to economic security of tens of millions of Americans, when would be good for the weak economy. As Congress begins its own debate, here are answers to some basic questions about the need for an increase. EFTA01187668
May 12, 2026 at 9:49 PM
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EFTA01187655 | EFTA01187667 of the preempted collective American television experiences was the late night television show, and most of all, NBC's The Tonight Show, which is still the longest running talk show having first aired in 1954. The Tonight Show has been hosted by Steve Allen (1954-57), Jack Paar (1957-62), Johnny Carson (1962-92), Jay Leno (1992-2009), Conan O'Brien (2009-10), and Jay Leno again (2010-14). After hosting The Tonight Show for twenty years, Joe Leno did his last show two weeks ago to make room for a younger Jimmy Fallon who moved the show after thirty years in Los Angeles back to its original studio in New York City. The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon premiered on Monday night, February 17, 2014. Having lived longer than most people expected and in fear of being put out to pasture or worse irrelevant, I often find myself nostalgic for the past and as a result glued to the final months of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. What is funny, is that prior to this period, if I watched The Tonight Show more than two or three times a month the show's Neilson rating had a banner week. Like a future ex-wife who wanted to see the new wife, I recorded the new Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, so that I could view it later at my convenience. And to my surprise, I found it to be thoroughly entertaining, especially since I had never seen his previous show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon or remembered him from Saturday Night Live, which I stopped watching since the original cast left in the last 8os and early 9os. Without a doubt, Johnny Carson set the Gold Standard. There are not enough superlatives to describe his brilliance. And Johnny Carson being #1 for thirty years and leaving on top, it has been amazing how easily Jay Leno transitioned into his chair and established his own stamp on the show. Having watched the disaster of Conan O'Brien crashing and burning when he moved from the Late Night to The Tonight Show five years ago, I was also curious to see if the same would happen to Fallon. In my humble opinion, Jimmy Fallon's first week has been stellar. And my favorite segment this week was his History of Rap Part 5 parody with Justin Timberlake. I invite you to use the web link below and hopefully you will enjoy it as much as I did. History of Rap 5 — Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake Web Link: http://youtu.be/ONOOrArJRR4 Jimmy Fallon thanks to a successful five-year run as the host of Late Night, a proven record of creating deliciously viral content which spreads like wildfire across social media, became NBC's hope — "A Tonight Show Host Who Speaks YouTube" to appeal to a younger audience, convincing them to sit down in front of the TV at a specific time (an increasing rarity), while simultaneously engaging them with social media and active digital content. Maybe learning from his Conan O'Brien experience, Jay Leno saw himself out after over twenty years as The Tonight Show's host with humility, class and good well to his successor. His final Tonight Show episode and Fallon's first have a lot in common: a constant flow of superstar guests, high-caliber musical performances and sincere, emotional monologues from the respective hosts. Both are always eager to please, with the niceness of an everyman. But the biggest difference is that the new show seems to be less about the desk and the interviews and more of a sketch-based variety musical hour given to the whims of improv. Hence EFTA01187667
May 12, 2026 at 9:49 PM