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Friday, March 1, 2013

PM Note: Washington Split Screen With Rosa Parks, Voting Rights, An Interview With Eric Holder, 'Spare Me' Sequestration

Washington Split Screen - Rosa Parks at the Capitol, Voting Rights Act at the Court - It was a strange day of confluences in Washington and on the two sides of 1st St., N.E.

While conservatives on the Supreme Court expressed deep skepticism about a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, suggesting it was no longer necessary? literally across the street at just about exactly the same time the President and Congressional leaders were unveiling a statue to honor Rosa Parks, an icon of the civil rights movement.

"She defied the odds. she defied injustice," said President Obama of Parks. House Speaker John Boehner shed a tear. http://abcn.ws/YFetkA

With Parks' victory in the bus boycott, said Obama, "?the entire edifice of segregation, like the ancient walls of Jericho, began to slowly come tumbling down."

Across the street, they weren't memorializing a hero, but discussing the future of a 48-year-old law. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was talking about the continued Constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark piece of legislation first passed about a decade after Parks refused to stand up.

Scalia was talking about the unanimous vote to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act in 2006.

"I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It's been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.

"And I am fairly confident it will be re-enacted in perpetuity unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution," he continued. "You have to show, when you are treating different states differently, that there's a good reason for it. "

Scalia said, "That's the concern that those of us who have some questions about this statute have. It's a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress."

If their questioning is any indication, conservatives like Scalia on the court seem poised to overturn a key part of the law, which requires states to pre-clear newly drawn legislative boundaries with the Justice Department - More from Ariane de Vogue - http://abcn.ws/VaY3Av

Read more here about statues in Congress - http://abcn.ws/Va7IHz

More from Thomas's Interview with Holder - Holder Remembers Newtown, His Worst Day on the Job - As the nation's top law-enforcement officer, Eric Holder is briefed daily on terrorist threats. He attends meetings in the White House situation room, and he decides when to ask judges for the death penalty. At night, Holder says, he worries about terrorist threats. http://abcn.ws/15jwx5P

Holder: Home-Grown Terrorist Threat Rivals Overseas - After years of security briefings and thwarting terrorist plots, national security still keeps Eric Holder awake. "I still worry at night," the U.S. attorney general told ABC's Pierre Thomas in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview on Wednesday. http://abcn.ws/15jBrj9

Eric Holder Sounds the Sequester Alarm - The looming budget sequestration will make Americans less safe, Eric Holder says-and anyone who says otherwise isn't telling the truth. http://abcn.ws/YALM6x

Counterpoint - Bloomberg on Sequester: 'Spare Me' - "There's a lot of posturing - 'I'm going to lay off my employees today unless you do something. We're going to close the hospitals down. We going to take all the prisoners from jail and put them on the street. Spare me. I live in that world. I mean come on," Bloomberg said, mocking the warnings coming from the administration. http://abcn.ws/YFJip7

President Obama to Meet Congressional Leaders Friday-.His first working meeting with Boehner since December - http://abcn.ws/VNiUcd

Maybe They'll Figure Something Out by March 27th, the date you should really be worried about - . http://abcn.ws/VNGbe3 (Chris Good)

When Does the Sequester Go Into Effect?-It had been widely assumed that the dreaded across-the-board spending cuts would go into effect at midnight on Thursday - as the calendar turns to March 1. http://abcn.ws/WiqSg6 (Jonathan Karl)

Pre-Sequester Pink Slips? Duncan Stretches Impact on Teachers http://abcn.ws/ZBHk8g (Devin Dwyer, Mary Bruce)

An Alternative to Furlough? - TSA Head Suggests Possible Hiring Freeze - http://abcn.ws/12bFUH1 (Julie Percha)

Feds Deny DHS Official's Departure Tied to Immigrant Releases A federal agency denied on Wednesday that a Homeland Security official's departure was connected a controversial decision to release immigration detainees in the face of mandatory budget cuts. The Associated Press reported that Gary Mead, who is in charge of enforcement and removal operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told colleagues on Tuesday that he would leave the agency, just after the releases were announced. But ICE called the report "inaccurate and misleading," saying that Mead's departure had been planned weeks in advance. http://abcn.ws/VOiQZK (Jordan Fabian)

Biden Invokes Untold Horror at Sandy Hook in Gun-Control Plea - With hearings underway on Capitol Hill over the Obama administration's proposed gun-control measures, Vice President Joe Biden today described what he said was untold horror from Sandy Hook Elementary in an appeal to the nation's attorneys general for help. http://abcn.ws/YYeNHR (Devin Dwyer)

Newtown Parent Sobs at Senate Gun Hearing-A father who lost his son in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School wept openly today as he testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a proposed assault weapons ban. http://abcn.ws/Xbh85R(Arlette Saenz)

Europe Welcomes Blunt Kerry, Who Says Americans Have 'Right to Be Stupid,' Speaks French - Newly minted Secretary of State John Kerry is making friends, as well some waves on his first European tour as America's top diplomat. http://abcn.ws/XiCtsv (Dana Hughes)

Rubio 'Only Member of the Hip-Hop Caucus'-Is there a love of hip hop in the U.S. Senate? Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., says he doesn't find many other senators to discuss the history and trends of hip-hop with. http://abcn.ws/YXKDnX (Arlette Saenz)

Friday, February 22, 2013

Many Expect Budget Cuts to Hit Small Businesses Hard (But Not the ...

The Agenda

How small-business issues are shaping politics and policy.

Economists have been warning for months that if the $85 billion in indiscriminate budget cuts known as the sequester take effect, the consequences for the economy could be dire. But for small businesses, the prospects may be even worse.

?Government spending is at 8 percent of gross domestic product, and at a time like this, when the private sector is still climbing off the mat, the last thing you need is for the public sector to pull out,? said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and formerly the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden. ?So nonpartisan analysts predict that if the sequester takes hold, it will lower the growth rate of G.D.P. by half a percent. And that translates to an unemployment stuck at 8 percent and hundreds of thousands of fewer jobs.?

Small businesses, Mr. Bernstein added, will bear the brunt of it. ?Smaller businesses tend to be more locally dependent,? he said. ?They tend not to be multinationals. If you?re a multinational and the economy is not doing well here, you shop around the globe for economies that are doing a lot better.? Moreover, he said, ?a lot of small businesses don?t have the access to credit markets, so it?s tougher for them to get through periods of a down economy.?

According to Stephen Fuller, a professor at George Mason University?s School of Public Policy, the budget cuts required by sequestration amount to $35 billion in payroll costs and about $50 billion in procurement expenses. All told, Mr. Fuller said, these cuts would result in 1.4 million lost private-sector jobs. Those lost jobs include positions at federal contractors, as well as at businesses that serve those contractors and, even less directly, at the businesses that depend on spending by government and contractor employees.

Small businesses, Mr. Fuller said, would lose just over half of those jobs.

?So many of these small businesses don?t realize how dependent they are to the federal government because they?re not the contractors ? they are suppliers and vendors to the contractors,? said Mr. Fuller, who testified (pdf) at a House Small Business Committee hearing last September on the effect of sequester. ?They?re the ones who water the plants and secure the buildings.? Small businesses will suffer from the reduced federal and private sector payroll because of the important role they play in the consumer economy, as retailers and restaurants. ?However you allocate the consumer budget across the economy, there?s a large number of small businesses,? Mr. Fuller said.

Small businesses that deal directly with the federal government would fare even worse. According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses received $91 billion in prime federal contracts in 2011, or just under 22 percent of the total contracts available to small companies.* However, according to Mr. Fuller?s calculations, small companies would account for about 34 percent of the job losses at prime contractors under the sequester. (Since Mr. Fuller?s testimony, Congress reduced the amount of the sequester as part of the New Year?s fiscal cliff legislation. While the overall job losses would be lower as a result, Mr. Fuller said the share coming from small businesses would likely change only slightly.)

Small businesses ?can?t survive on the loss of 10 or 20 or 30 percent of their revenues,? he said. ?They can?t continue operating at half-speed or two-thirds speed. They don?t have a cushion that a large publicly traded company would have.? Large federal contractors can shift employees across business lines ? most have both civilian and federal divisions ? and geography. Small companies that specialize ?can?t learn new tricks that quickly.?

Officials in the Obama administration, asked to comment on how small businesses could be affected by cuts to federal procurement, declined to be specific. ?Should sequestration occur, small businesses, like other business, will be impacted as agencies are forced to allow certain contracts to lapse and de-scope, or terminate other contracts that would be no longer affordable,? said an Obama administration spokesman who asked that his name not be published. The spokesman would not say whether government agencies would attempt to stretch out payments to vendors in order to make the money last longer. For example, in September 2011, the administration announced its so-called QuickPay program, which attempted to cut the government?s payment time to small companies from 30 days to 15 days. The spokesman did not say whether the administration would continue this initiative.

However, Mr. Fuller said agencies would not likely cancel existing contracts, since the money for these has already been appropriated. Rather, he said, agencies would probably not extend some of those contracts or issue new ones. Because of the way the federal government spends money ? purchasing is typically concentrated in the last three months of the fiscal year, which ends in October ? the impact of the sequester would most likely be felt beginning in July.

The sequester would also scale back programs at the S.B.A. According to the administration, loan guarantees would be reduced by $902 million, from $22 billion to just over $21 billion. And the agency told (pdf) the Senate Appropriations Committee that cuts to its counseling programs would force the agency?s partners to turn away at least 33,000 business owners seeking assistance.

Not everybody was so pessimistic. Holly Wade, a senior policy analyst at the National Federation of Independent Business, said it was impossible to know whether the sequester, should it take effect, would harm the economy. ?If the economy contracts overall, that will affect small businesses,? she allowed. But she downplayed the prospect of specific threats to small businesses. ?Few small businesses have contracts with the federal government, and few small businesses get loans from the S.B.A.,? she said.

The N.F.I.B., she added, has not taken a position on whether the sequester should go into effect.

Source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/21/many-expect-budget-cuts-to-hit-small-businesses-hard-but-not-the-n-f-i-b/

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Vegas shooting 'like something out of a movie'

LAS VEGAS (AP) ? Bullets were flying from a black Range Rover at a gray Maserati as the vehicles raced toward a red light on the Las Vegas Strip.

Beneath the neon lights, police say, the Maserati ran a red light at one of the Strip's busiest intersections and smashed into a taxi that exploded into flames early Thursday, killing the two people inside.

Three more cars and a utility truck also collided at a crossroads home to Bellagio, Caesars Palace and Bally's, leaving at least six more people injured as the Range Rover sped off in the predawn darkness.

The Maserati driver was pronounced dead at the hospital.

The dramatic scene that more one tourist compared to something out of a violent action movie set off a frantic search for the occupants of the Range Rover and marked the latest episode on the Strip since the beginning of the year.

Two people were critically wounded in a shooting at a parking garage on Feb. 6, and a tourist was stabbed last Saturday in an elevator at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay.

Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie told reporters several hours later that the shooting was sparked by an argument in the valet area of the nearby Aria hotel-casino, and that the violence at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo Road did not reflect the values of the residents or visitors to Las Vegas.

"What happened will not be tolerated," Gillespie said. He promised the shooters would be "found and prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

On the Strip, the fiery rampage shocked tourists.

"This doesn't happen where we come from, not on this scale," said Mark Thompson, who was visiting from Manchester, England, with his wife. "We get stabbings, and gang violence, but this is like something out of a movie. Like 'Die Hard' or something."

Police said they were contacting authorities in three neighboring states about the Range Rover Sport with dark tinted windows, distinctive black custom rims and paper dealer ads in place of license plates that fled the scene about 4:20 a.m.

In Southern California, the California Highway Patrol alerted officers in at least three counties to be on the lookout for the SUV.

Las Vegas Police Sgt. John Sheahan said the Range Rover was last seen near the Venetian resort as it headed north from the shooting scene on Las Vegas Boulevard.

Witnesses also told police the SUV and Maserati had come from the nearby CityCenter area, the home of Aria just south of the site of the attack. Police said the argument had started in the valet area of the upscale resort.

"We have numerous witnesses to this," Sheahan said. "But what is the genesis of this? We don't know yet."

Predawn jogger Eric Lackey was on his way back to the New York-New York hotel when he snapped a cellphone photo of the blazing scene moments after the crash. Black smoke billowed from the flaming taxi, amid popping sounds from the fire.

Lackey, of Forest Hill, Md., said a security officer in a yellow shirt performed CPR on a person on the sidewalk while police officers canvassed a small crowd of perhaps 15 onlookers gathering at the scene.

"Police were asking if anyone was still in the vehicles and if they heard gunfire," Lackey told The Associated Press. "That's when I realized it wasn't just a regular accident."

Sheahan said police have video from traffic cameras at the intersection and were checking hotel surveillance systems. The video will not be made public, he said.

Police said the driver and passenger in the taxi were killed. The male driver of the Maserati also died, and his passenger was shot. Police did not release their names citing the ongoing investigation.

The crumpled, gray sports car, which had no license plates, came to rest several feet away from the incinerated taxi.

"The people I feel sorry for are the people in the taxi," said Elvina Joyce, a tourist from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. "Seconds made all the difference in the world for them. Wrong place, wrong time."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-hotel-altercation-sparked-vegas-shooting-182403826.html

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PS3 Sharpshooter bundle - SA Gamer - South African Gaming ...

For Sale PS3 Sharpshooter bundle

Senior Member

Hey guys selling my sharpshooter which has been used for around 5 hours, along with the navigation controller and the ps3 headset. Sharphooter has been up for grabs before but no bites so thought I would add some goodies to sweeten the pot. Im located in jhb until wednesday next week so jhb peeps hit me up before I leave otherwise the bundle will be in Cape Town. Oh yea forgot the price......asking R600 for the bundle....

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Perfect Redecorating Recommendations, Tips, And Pleasures ...

Perfect Redecorating Recommendations, Tips, And Pleasures

Home improvement allows to produce a property genuinely the one you have. Having every one of the proper information and facts can save you cash and prevent trouble for oneself or a loved one. These guidelines will bring you started.

It can be easy to enhance your home?s value without the need of task a tremendous project. If you want to sell your property, take into consideration doing a number of small jobs. An excellent example is actually a thoroughly clean jacket of indoor and outside color. Such as this which is relatively low in cost can improve your home?s worth tremendously.

Before signing about the dotted line, be sure to meticulously peruse any agreement drawn up using a service provider for your house upgrades. As goofy as it can certainly appear to be, you need to make sure anything you are agreeing to is always to your endorsement. Should you neglect to browse the commitment, the contractor might take you for all that you?re well worth. Read every thing, no matter how a lot believe in you may have in the service provider.

A terrific way to reduce the fee for your utility bill is to use a motion detector light-weight rather than standard veranda gentle. Light may still be turned on personally, and you will change the sensitivity on the majority of designs.

Protect the surfaces to get security if you are doing any renovations. When you begin piece of art, irrespective of how hard you keep it neat, there will inevitably be splatters that will terrain on other surfaces around the area that you?re piece of art. Also, when you?re doing any demolition, there will sections traveling close to that will scuff and harm the surrounding surface areas. When you don?t plan to color your surfaces, you should cover them to safeguard them.

Even though an area is lacking in sq footage doesn?t mean it needs to seem to be confined or limited. Search for strategies to create the room appear less heavy plus more airy. Thoroughly clean your house windows right up until they shimmer, and wide open the window shades! Sun light will make any space really feel greater. Also, use light-weight shades around the surfaces and keep the mess to a minimum. Your tiny space won?t appear crowded any longer.

The decision to fix up or expand your present property is actually cost-effective than seeking to commence anew by purchasing a new house. When you redecorate your home, you can make it merely how you will need it, rather than moving into a home created by somebody else. Makeovers may also be far more inexpensive than purchasing a new property totally.

Hiring a contractor right after a catastrophe has to be done very carefully. There are some shady character types who wait around for emergency circumstances to take place after which take advantage of those who are naive and who definitely have a having faith in cardiovascular system. Perform a little research prior to hiring someone to make fixes in your destroyed home.

If you want boost your home?s worth, consider getting a service provider and cooperating on new tips. The installers know what improvments will heighten the most value.

In case you are concentrating on numerous projects in the identical place, carefully prepare the transaction where you full them. It?s wise to replace cabinets very first and therefore the floor, by way of example. That way, design debris or problems comes about simply to the floors that will be replaced. Take the time to rest and pre-plan your projects in writing before commencing. You?ll be grateful you probably did.

Redesigning is extremely rewarding, and also calls for quite a bit of work. When you know very well what you?re doing, you?ll be able to efficiently complete all of your redecorating assignments. While you read through previously mentioned, be sure you do your homework to ensure that you obtain the final results that you are looking for.

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High-tech customer feedback pays off for Florida farmers

By TBO.COM | Staff
Published: February 20, 2013 Updated: February 20, 2013 - 12:00 AM

If you produce anything, especially agricultural goods, nothing is more valuable than information from your customers on the quality of what you're growing. That's why more farmers are using systems to gain that feedback so they can continue to produce the best possible products, which in turns increases their success and grows their business.

The operators of Wish Farms, from Plant City, started this a few years ago and have a patented program of getting feedback from their customers. On the label of their strawberries or blueberries is a code and website where consumers can provide vital information.

The code tells the farmers when the fruit was picked, where it was picked, the taste and other information so they can deal with quality control issues in almost real time. At Wish Farms, for example, they can decide what variety to grow next season and even better estimate how much to grow.

Wish Farms isn't the only operation to do this. Others have done it as well, but few are as well done as Wish Farms. There's little doubt more farms will do the same as they compete to produce the best possible fruit.

Technology is changing everything. Sometimes what seems like a great idea turns out to be expensive without much payoff. Other times it's clear that the benefits of technology make a huge difference. We believe this kind of product tracking will be a success for those who can use it.

Source: http://www2.highlandstoday.com/news/agri-leader/2013/feb/20/lrnewso4-high-tech-customer-feedback-pays-off-for-ar-638515/

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AP, you made a mistake on same-sex marriage. Now correct it. (Americablog)

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