January 13, 2017

You have me at a loss, who are you talking about?

January 13, 2017

The Wyden Amendment never actually even came to a vote

https://www.congress.gov/amendment/115th-congress/senate-amendment/188/actions


It wad s ruled out of order. It is very disingenuous for Booker and Casey (and any other of the 13 Dems who voted against the Klobuchar Amendment) to say they voted Yes on the actual Wyden Amendment. They simply voted to allow it to be voted on via an exemption to the budgeting rules. If it had been granted that exception, they would have voted No.

Also, Klobuchar's Amendment language about drug importation was originally introduced in November, NOT 10 minutes before the vote.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/wonkette.com/610392/wtf-democrats-why-did-ted-cruz-vote-better-than-you-on-reducing-prescription-drug-costs/amp?client=ms-android-samsung

January 12, 2017

Theresa May's proposed Brexit crackdown on student immigration 'could cost the UK 2 billion a year'

http://www.businessinsider.com/eu-students-brexit-foreign-immigration-crackdown-could-cost-uk-2-billion-a-year-2017-1?r=US&IR=T&IR=T

LONDON — A post-Brexit drop in the number of EU students coming to the UK to study could cost the economy £2 billion ($2.45 billion) a year, according to a report from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI).

The report suggests that up to 31,000 EU students could be deterred from coming to the UK if the Home Office makes European students pay the same university rates as non-EU nationals after Brexit, which would represent a 57% decline. Currently, nationals within the EU pay similar rates to British students, but that will likely change once the UK exits the European Union.

The estimated £2 billion figure lost from a drop in EU students comprises:

• A £463 million a year loss from tuition fees

• A £604 million a year loss from other student expenditure (such as rent & food);

• A £928 million a year reduction resulting from "the multiplier effect," whereby general expenditure filters out into the local economy and drives up prosperity.

The loss would be in addition to the billions of pounds that would be at risk from any big cut in the number of international visas for students, according to the report. Home Secretary Amber Rudd is currently consulting on plans which could see overall foreign student visas cut by up to half, despite the fact that foreign students currently support 170,000 UK jobs, and are worth over £10.7 billion ($13.1 billion) to the economy annually.

Nick Hillman, director of HEPI, said: "Were the Home Office to conduct yet another crackdown on international students, then the UK could lose out on £2 billion a year just when we need to show we are open for business like never before."


snip

January 11, 2017

this was prescient

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512533924

January 7, 2017

There's A Masive Restaurant Industry Bubble, and It's About To Burst

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/american-restaurant-industry-bubble-burst?pinn_uid=18429180

AS SOON AS HE WALKED THROUGH THE DOOR, Matt Semmelhack knew it was over. He'd been away from his San Francisco restaurant AQ for less than a week, but when he got back, it just felt different. It went beyond the usual concerns of the modern restaurateur. "I wasn't worried the lights were properly dim, or the regulars were in the right booths," he says. Instead, Semmelhack was just looking at his staff -- people he hangs out with on weekends, people whose livelihoods he supplies, some of his closest friends -- and all he could see was the money each one of them was costing him, flashing in front of him like a video-game score. "I knew right then," he says, "we had to shut it all down."

Semmelhack is not the only restaurateur looking to duck and cover. The American restaurant business is a bubble, and that bubble is bursting. I've arrived at this conclusion after spending a year traveling around the country and talking to chefs, restaurant owners, and other industry folk for this series. In part one, I talked about how the Good Food Revival Movement™ created colonies of similar, hip restaurants in cities all over the country. In the series' second story, I discussed how a shortage of cooks -- driven by a combination of the restaurant bubble, shifts in immigration, and a surge of millennials -- is permanently altering the way a restaurant's back of the house has to operate in order to survive.

This, the final story, is simple: I want you to understand why America's Golden Age of Restaurants is coming to an end.

To do that I'm going to tell the story of the rise and fall of Matt Semmelhack and Mark Liberman's AQ restaurant in San Francisco. But this story isn't confined to SF. In Atlanta, D.B.A. Barbecue chef Matt Coggin told Thrillist about out-of-control personnel costs: "Too many restaurants have opened in the last two years," he said. "There are not enough skilled hospitality workers to fill all of these restaurants. This has increased the cost for quality labor." In New Orleans, I spoke with chef James Cullen (previously of Treo and Press Street Station) who talked at length about the glut of copycats: "If one guy opens a cool barbecue place and that's successful, the next year we see five or six new cool barbecue places... We see it all the time here."

Even Portland, the patient zero of the Good Food Revival Movement, isn't safe. This year, chef Johanna Ware shut down universally lauded Smallwares, saying, "the restaurant world is so saturated nowadays and it requires so much extra work to keep yourself relevant." And Pok Pok kingmaker Andy Ricker closed his noodle joint Sen Yai, citing "soaring rents, the rising minimum wage, and stereotypical ideas about 'ethnic food' as 'cheap food'" in an interview with Portland Monthly. Rising labor costs, rent increases, a pandemic of similar restaurants, demanding customers unwilling to come to terms with higher prices -- it's the Perfect Restaurant Industry Storm. And even someone as optimistic as Ricker offers no comforting words about where we're headed.

snip

January 6, 2017

Wikileaks has profoundly jumped the shark, unbelievable!!!!

Wikileaks is taking a stand against leaks!




https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/817322050297745408

January 6, 2017

Obamacare repeal costs: 3 million jobs gone, $1.5 trillion in lost gross state product

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/05/obamacare-repeal-costs-3-million-lost-jobs.html

Spending less by getting rid of Obamacare could end up costing a whole lot more.

Up to 3 million jobs in the health sector and other areas would be lost if certain key provisions of the Affordable Care Act are repealed by Congress, a new report said Thursday. At the same time, ending those provisions could lead to a whopping $1.5 trillion reduction in gross state product from 2019 through 2023, according to the study.

"Repealing key parts of the ACA could trigger massive job losses and a slump in consumer and business spending that would affect all sectors of state economies," said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research and professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. Ku is the lead author of the report, which was issued by the Milken Institute and the Commonwealth Fund.

The report comes as President-elect Donald Trump and the new Congress are moving toward repealing parts of the ACA through the budget reconciliation process. "The immediate and most visible effect of ACA repeal would be the loss of coverage and access to care for millions of people who have gained insurance because of the law," said Sara Collins, vice president for health-care coverage and access at the Commonwealth Fund. "This study points to even larger potential economic effects that would be detrimental to the health and well-being of millions more," Collins said.

The estimate of job and state product losses are based on a scenario in which Congress defunds federal subsidies that most Obamacare customers receive to help lower their monthly insurance premium costs, and also gets rid of funding to cover adults who became newly eligible for Medicaid under the ACA. Repealing both provisions would save the federal government $140 billion in health-care spending, the report found. And as that funding spigot dried up, it would lead to job losses and a drop in gross state product, the report said.

snip


the report

Repealing Federal Health Reform: Economic and Employment Consequences for States

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Publications/Issue-Briefs/2017/Jan/Repealing-Federal-Health-Reform

January 5, 2017

Alt-Right Trolls Use Chicago Kidnapping to Spread Lies About Black Lives Matter

http://www.gizmodo.in/news/alt-right-trolls-use-chicago-kidnapping-to-spread-lies-about-black-lives-matter/articleshow/56361692.cms

Yesterday, four teens were apprehended in Chicago on charges of battery. While in police custody, they were determined to be the same assailants depicted in a Facebook Live video which has since been uploaded (and deleted) countless times on other platforms, wherein the same adolescents filmed themselves torturing a young man with mental disabilities. You might have seen something about it on Twitter associated with the hashtag #blmkidnapping.
The half-hour video is deeply upsetting and was pulled from Facebook on account of its glorification of criminal acts. Over those 30 minutes, the victim is beaten, cut, and forced to drink water from a toilet. "Fuck Trump" and "fuck white people" are heard as the kidnappers-all black-attack their captor, a white man. And there's the rub.

Anyone with a shred of empathy can agree it's a heinous act, and determinations as to whether the kidnapping and subsequent attacks were racially or politically motivated are currently being investigated by police. But how exactly are these teens tied to the Black Lives Matter movement? The short answer is: they're not.



Hello again, Centipedes
Not one legitimate news source linked the attack to BLM for the simple reason that no evidence of such a connection exists. Nor did I hear the movement being invoked at any point during the 30-minute video, which I watched in its entirety. An administrator of Centipede Central-a popular Trump supporter chatroom-was able to find the Facebook page of Brittany Herring, the young woman who filmed the act. Her public posts, which stretch back to September 2015, have no references to BLM either.


snip

December 30, 2016

The Puppet

December 28, 2016

Turkey and Russia 'agree terms of Syria ceasefire'

Source: The Guardian

Countries have agreed proposal that should come into force by midnight, says Turkish foreign minister

Turkey and Russia have agreed on a proposal for a general ceasefire in Syria and will aim to put it into effect by midnight on Wednesday night, Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has said. But he still insisted that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must eventually go, a precondition for talks that Russia has always opposed.

There was also no sign that the mainstream Syrian opposition groups had agreed to the ceasefire, and it appears likely there will be be disagreement about the territory to be covered by any ceasefire. The rebel groups will want it to extend to the Damascus countryside, something that Russia opposes. A senior official in the opposition said they had not received the details of any official deal and denied that they had agreed to a ceasefire agreement.

“The details of the ceasefire have not been presented officially to the opposition factions yet, and there is no agreement at this point,” the official said. Russia, Iran and Turkey said last week they were ready to help broker a peace deal after holding talks in Moscow where they adopted a declaration setting out the principles any agreement should adhere to.

“There are two texts ready on a solution in Syria. One is about a political resolution and the other is about a ceasefire. They can be implemented any time,” Çavuşoğlu told reporters on the sidelines of an awards ceremony at the presidential palace in Ankara. He said Syria’s opposition would never back Assad. “The whole world knows it is not possible for there to be a political transition with Assad, and we also all know that it is impossible for these people to unite around Assad.”

snip

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/28/turkey-russia-agree-terms-syria-ceasefire

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They are trying to bypass both the US and the UN.