EFTA00678662.pdf

From. a- a0 To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bee: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 08/18/2013 Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 15:05:48 +0000 Attachments: Why_We_All_Need_a_Daily_Dose_of Brain_Magic_Sleight_of Mind_Huff Post_TED_W eekends_August_11,2013.pdf; The_Neuroscientific_Answer to_How_Did_He_Do_That_Latja_Brose_Huff Post_TED_W eekends_August_11,2013.pdf; Keith_Barry_-_magician_-_bio.pdf; U.S. Budget_Deficit_Down_37.6_Percent_Through_July„CBO_Martin_Crutsinger_Huff P ost_August_12„2013.pdf; Why_the_Anger- Robert Reich_Huff Post August_12„2013.pdf; North arolina_Voter Bill_Signed_Into_Law_By_Gov„Pat_McCory„Sparking_Lawsu its_Luke_Johnson_Huff Post_08_12_2013.pdf; Sequestration_Ushers In_A Dark Age For Science In America Sam Stein Huff Post 0 8_14_2013.pdf; Dana Rohrabacher,GOP House Science Committee Member„Global_Warming_Is_A_T otal_Fraud_Nick_Wing_08_12_2013.pdf; - _Prison_Population_Rates_per 100,000_of the_national_population„the_US_is_.pdf; Politicians Science_Gaffes Huff Post Aug_14„2013.pdf; Paul_Ryan_Spending_Cuts:Face_Bac sh_From_Moderate_Republicans_Andrew_Taylor Huff Post_08_12_2013.pdf; RNC_Votes2No'_on_NBC„CNN_Debates_Over Clinton_Mo_vies_Shushannah_Walshe_ ABC_News_August_16,_2013.pdf; America's_shifting_suburban_battlegrounds_Alan_Berube_&_Elizabeth_Kneebone_Politico _August_14,_2013.pdf Inline-Images: image.png; image(1).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png; image(6).png; image(7).png; image(8).png; image(9).png; image(10).png; image(11).png; image(12).png; image(13).png; image(14).png; image(15).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(18).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png DEAR FRIEND M many of you know, I am a huge fan on TED and last week at Huffington Post's TED Weekends -- Slight ofMind -- the focus was on the manipulation of mind based on magician and mentalist Keith Barry who demonstrates how to fool brains and bodies by performing dangerous tricks and stunts which have baffled audiences time and again. Barry's masterful 'sleight of mind' raises a larger question: What can magic teach us about the human brain? EFTA00678662  inline image 1 As Arthur C. Clarke told us, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishablefrom magic." So think of Keith Barry as a technologist, an elite software engineer of the human brain. Witty and direct, he celebrates human cleverness even while he's hacking it. Barry's repertoire ranges from outrageous stunts -- driving a car at full speed blindfolded -- to mind control, including hypnosis and mind-reading The Irish magician's relaxed style has made him an audience favorite worldwide, both in live shows and on his European television series, Close Encounters with Keith Barry, which aired in 28 countries. He's had specials on MTV and CBS, and tried his hand at acting as a murder suspect on CSI: Miami. There are rumors of a Las Vegas residency later in 2008. Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.cornikeith-barry/ted-talk-hypnosis_b_3728458.html WATCH the above video: To see Keith Barry do some amazing things. And also please also feel free to read the attached articles on Keith Barry, how he manipulates minds and what we can learn from his tricks. ****** If you want to know what else is wrong in Washington, let's start with ignorance and the pandering to ignorance. The latest example is Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a longtime member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, recently brushed aside concern that the wildfires currently scorching across his state and causing millions of dollars of damage have anything to do with climate change. In fact, he told constituents at a town hall that "global warming is a totalfraud," employed by liberals to "create global government." Website: http://..huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/12/dana-mbrabacher-global-warming n 1743140.html? utm source=concierge&utm medium=onsite&utm rampaignrsailthru%2Rslitler%28 Rohrabacher laughed off a claim made last week by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that the unusual intensity of this year's wildfire season should give rise to a more serious debate about how climate change is affecting the temperature and length of the dry season. "Just so you'll know, global warming is a totalfraud and it's being designed because what you've got is you've got liberals who get elected at the local level want state government to do the work and let them make the decisions," EFTA00678663  Rohrabacher said. "Then, at the state level, they want thefederal government to do it. And at the federal government, they want to create global government to control all of our lives." The friendly town hall audience seemed to agree with Rohrabacher's contention that humans were incapable of changing earth's climate, giving a collective chuckle. The congressman then appeared to make an offhand reference to Agenda 21, a set of UN-created sustainable development recommendations that the tea party and other Republicans have put forth as an example of how the government will use the threat of climate change to seize property and control the lives of its citizens. "It's step by step by step, more and bigger control over our lives by higher levels of government. And global warming is that strategy in spades," Rohrabacher said. "Ourfreedom to make our choices on transportation and everything else? No, that's gotta be done by a government official who, by the way, probably comesfrom Nigeria because he's a UN government official, not a US government official." Rohrabacher's climate change denialism and misunderstanding of science is well-documented. He's suggested that prehistoric climate change could have been caused by "dinosaurflatulence," and that clear-cutting rainforests would eliminate greenhouse gas production. Regardless of Rohrabacher's beliefs, California's still-young fire season is expected to be more devastating in 2013 than it has been in years, thanks in part to both climate change and the fact that the state is still awaiting the Santa Ana winds, which typically fuel the blazes. The Associated Press reports: California fire officials have battled 4,300 wildfires, a stark increase from the yearly average of nearly 3,000 they faced from 2008 to 2012, said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Until last week, those fires had already burned in square miles or more than 71,00o acres, up from 40,00o acres during the same period last year. The annual average for acreage charred in the last five years was 113,00o acres, he said — roughly in square miles. Meanwhile, the congressional body designed to address climate change and its causes has been stacked with Republicans who refuse to consider that a threat exists. Earlier this year, Rep. Chris Stewart (R- Utah) was assigned chair of the House Science Subcommittee on Environment, which plays a direct hand in many areas related to climate change. Stewart, like 55 percent of congressional Republicans, including a handful in the House Science Committee, doesn't believe that humans are responsible for rising global temperatures. Politicians' Science Gaffes gilnline image 22,Inline image 32Inline image 42Inline image 52Inline image QInline image 7 gilnline image 82,Inline image 92,Inline image log2,Inline image 11 "I haveflown twice over Mount St. Helens out on our West Coast. I'm not a scientist and I don't know thefigures, but I have a suspicion that that one little mountain has probably released more sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere of the world than has been released in the last ten years of automobile driving or things of that kind that people are so concerned about." Not quite. Cars emit about 8i,000 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, while Mount St. Helens emitted only about 2,000 tons. - President Ronald Reagan, 1980 "The internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes." The "series of tubes" phrase subsequently became a pop cultural catchphrase -- it even has its own Wikipedia page and mentioned in the Urban Dictionary. EFTA00678664  - Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), 2006 "And sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good, things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not." The common fruit fly is one of the most commonly used organisms in genetic research. Discoveries such as sex-linked inheritance and techniques such as gene mapping are a result of such research. - former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska), 2008 "Information is moving--you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets." The former president went on to use the word "Internets" two more times in public. - President George W. Bush, 2007 "Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rainforests in orderfor some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?" Rainforests actually absorb far more carbon dioxide than they emit. - Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), when asked whether the U.S. climate policy should focus on reducing carbon emissions. "Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus." Many researchers point to a decline in Arctic sea ice, an increase in droughts, and changing rain and snow patterns as signs of climate change. - Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia), 2009, at a debate over the Clean Energy and Security Act. "What the science says is that temperatures peaked out globally in 1998. So we've gonefor 10plus years where the temperatures have gone down." The mean global temperature has in fact been increasing since 1998. - Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), 2009 in an interview with conservative radio show host Jay Weber. "Mars is essentially in the same orbit [as Earth].... Mars is somewhat the same distancefrom the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe." Actually, Mars completes an orbital revolution around the sun about every 1.88 Earth years, according to NASA. - Dan Quayle, former vice president, commenting on President George H.W. Bush's Space Exploration Initiative as quoted in This New Ocean by William E. Burrows. "If it's legitimate rape, thefemale body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." In fact, women can become pregnant from rape. - Rep. Todd Akin (R-Missouri), 2012 "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straightfrom the pit of Hell." - Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) 2012 EFTA00678665 Broun, a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is a doctor, and would have been taught many of the generally accepted principles of evolution and embryology in medical school. ****** A lot has been reported about our nation's prison system and its bloated population, but this is what it looks like when you take all of the countries that jail more people than we do and put them into one GIF. No country incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than the United States. At 716 per 100,000 people, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies, the U.S. tops every other nation in the world. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced sweeping plans designed to address the issue through drug-sentencing reform. Holder's blueprint included plans to divert low-level drug offenders to treatment and community service programs and implement an expanded prison program to allow for the release of some elderly, non-violent offenders. Online image 12 "We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate - not merely to convict, warehouse andforget," Holder said in remarks to the American Bar Association in San Francisco. "Although incarceration has a role to play in our justice system, widespread incarceration at thefederal, state and local levels is both ineffective and unsustainable. ... It imposes a significant economic burden -- totaling $8o billion in 2010 alone -- and it comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate." Among OECD countries, the competition isn't even close -- Israel comes in second, at 223 per 100,000. According to advance 2012 counts by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. prison population was 1,571,013 at year end. That's actually a decline for the third consecutive year. Including local and city jail figures, however, that number easily tops two million, around 25 percent of the entire world's prisoners. Online image 13 We have to realize that our incarceration rate is a serious problem and that prisons aren't the solution. We have to seriously ask ourselves why does the USA have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and find other ways to treat this issue as it is obvious that prisons do not deter or rehabilitate inmates and/or criminals. We have to understand that like the War on Terrorism which may be creating as many terrorists as are apprehended and killed, the US prison system has become a factories to both warehouse and harden inmates into criminals. Finally we have to acknowledge and change the culture in America that allows people to fall through the cracks to the point that incarceration is just the price of doing business because they have nothing to lose. By giving our children safe housing, healthcare, education, skills and hope from birth we can change this prison dynamic. ****** This week The Washington Post did a 4 part video titled: THE PATH TO NOW - examining the US immigration policies from President Reagan Reagan to present day, we hear from politicians, policymakers and those whose citizenship hangs in the balance. Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/irnmigration/pathjo_now/?wpisrc=n1politics PART 1: `It didn't work at all' - Twenty-seven years ago the United States implemented a plan that offered amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Hear from one of the architects of the bill and key players as they discuss where it went wrong. EFTA00678666 PART 2: `Do something about the border' -- The 199os saw an influx of illegal immigrants, which created tension among Americans and at the Mexican border. But the Clinton administration's response fell short in many ways, especially when it came to security. PART 3: `How are we going to secure this country?' -- September 11, 2001 defined the presidency of George W. Bush and the country's new immigration policy. From the creation of the Department of Homeland Security to the building of a super-fence, the specter of 9/11 was felt along the border and in the halls of Congress. As border security escalated, President Bush's attempts at immigration reforms collapsed. PART 4: `Why don't you just make yourself legal' -- The future remains uncertain for 11 million people living illegally in the U.S. Though immigration reform seems closer than it has ever been before, can Washington and the Obama administration effectively repair 3o years of broken policies? I strongly urge everyone who has the time to watch this 4-Part series. Just so people don't think that racism is limited to the United States last month in Zurich, Switzerland for Tina Turner's wedding, multi-billionaire Oprah Winfrey endured a shocking racist experience during a trip to posh Zurich store when a shop assistant refuse to show her several expensive purses saying that the bags on display were too expensive for her and that she couldn't afford them -- forcing both the boutique's owner and the Swiss Tourism board to issue public apologies. Oprah said she left the shop without contesting the shop assistant's behavior but contributed her experience to a debate about the continued existence of racism on a US television show. Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight: "I was in Zurich the other day, in a store whose name I will not mention. I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was infull Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and my little sandals. But obviously The Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich." This incident happened as several Swiss towns are trying to ban asylum seekers from frequenting public places such as school grounds, as well as swimming pools and libraries. Switzerland currently hosts twice the number of asylum seekers as its neighboring countries. On August 7, 2013, the head of Switzerland's Migration Ministry, Mario Gattiker, told Swiss media that an agreement between his ministry and the municipality of Bremgarten allows local officials to issue "rules of the game" limiting or prohibiting asylum seekers' use of such spaces. Gattiker was quoted as saying that the rules are intended to secure an "ordered"and "conflict-free" relationship between asylum seekers and locals and will help avoid "friction and resentment" if "so asylum seekers"simultaneously use a football pitch or a swimming pool. European and other international law requires Switzerland to justify any free movement restrictions as a necessary, proportionate, and non-discriminatory measure to secure national security, public order, or public health. "For Switzerland, the home of the United Nations and its refugee agency, to introduce a blatantly discriminatory policy that effectively segregates asylum seekersfrom the communities in which they live is shocking,"said Gerry Simpson, senior refugee researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The Swiss authorities should encourage all Swiss communities to treat some of the world's most vulnerable people with respect and dignity, rather than reinforcing prejudice and division." Under the Convention Against the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Switzerland is bound to guarantee everyone's right, "without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic group," to equality before the law in relation to a range of rights including the right to freedom of movement. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which interprets the convention, has underlined that "differential treatment based on ... immigration status EFTA00678667 will constitute discrimination if the criteria for such differentiation ... are not applied pursuant to a legitimate aim and are not proportional to the achievement of this aim." According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as of the end of 2012, there were just over 50,000 recognized refugees, as well as almost 22,000 registered asylum seekers in Switzerland. The Swiss authorities should ensure that all agreements governing asylum centers should guarantee asylum seekers' free movement rights, Human Rights Watch said. "After mishandling the opening of thefirst new asylum seeker reception center, the authorities still have a chance to redeem themselves,"Simpson said. "Instead of encouraging local communities to treat asylum seekers like unwelcome threats to public safety and hygiene, politicians should do everything they can to protect them and encourage their integration into communities." We will see, as it may have taken the visibility of Oprah Winfrey to expose the growing racism in Switzerland. THIS WEEK's READINGS Last Monday the government reported a $97.6 billion deficit for July but remains on track to post its lowest annual budget gap in five years. July's figure raises the deficit so far for the 2013 budget year to $607.4 billion, the government says. That's 37.6 percent below the $973.8 billion deficit for the first 10 months of the 2012 budget year. The Congressional Budget Office has forecast that the annual deficit will be $670 billion when the budget year ends Sept. 30, far below last year's $1.09 trillion. It would mark the first year that the gap between spending and revenue has been below $1 trillion since 2008. Steady economic growth, higher taxes, lower government spending and increased dividends from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have helped shrink the deficit. Jnline image 14 See the attached Huffington Post article and website: Website: http://www.huffingtonposteom/2013/08/12/us-budget- deficit n 3745096.html Still, looming budget fights in Congress are complicating the picture. When lawmakers return from their recess in September, they will need to increase the government's borrowing limit. They will also have to approve a spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on both measures. Republicans want President Barack Obama to accept deeper cuts in domestic government programs and in expensive benefit programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Obama has argued that Republicans must be willing to accept higher taxes on the highest- earning Americans. Conservative House Republicans have signaled a willingness to force a partial government shutdown as a way of defunding Obama's universal health care law, which they oppose. A possible compromise would be to approve a stopgap budget to keep the government operating after Oct. 1 while both sides seek a permanent solution. Obama has vowed not to negotiate with Congress over raising the borrowing limit as he did in 2011. But some Republicans want to test the president's resolve even if it rattles financial markets. Investors fear a doomsday scenario in which the country would default on its debt, which it has never done. Through July, the government collected $2.29 trillion in revenue, up 13.9 percent from the same 10 months last year. Government spending during this period totaled $2.89 trillion, down 2.9 percent from a year ago. That decline reflects, in part, automatic government spending cuts that began taking effect March 1. Collectively, the government's deficits increase the national debt, now at $16.7 trillion. For deficit hawks this should be good news but for Progressives like me, I am not so sure because one of the reasons why the debt is trending down is because the sequester has forced reductions of programs that hurt those Americans who are most vulnerable, as well as reduced the country's growth which has impaired our economic recovery. The problem is that deficit hawks like Paul Ryan and EFTA00678668 Rand Paul still don't think this is enough and some of my conservative friends are still sending me cartoons and Tea Party articles that suggest that President Obama's economic policies are a disaster. For them I asked one thing, is the country better off now than it was when Barrack Obama took office on January 20, 2009? And if your answer is no, you are either an idiot or so bias that you can't see the forest for the trees.... This week in The Huffington Post Sam Stein wrote -- Sequestration Ushers In A Dark Age For Science In America -- as the title aptly describes both the article and the issue. The article focuses on several scientists whose research is being impacted by the cut of funding resulting from the sequestration. One of the scientist profiled is Dr. Anindya Futta at the University of Virginia School of Medicine whose research focuses on identifying specific strands of microRNA, the molecule that plays a large role in gene expression, that are responsible for promoting the formation and fusion of muscular tissue. The implications for such a discovery are tantalizing. People who suffer from diseases like muscular dystrophy would have easier treatments, and the elderly would fall less often and recover faster when they did. And so, as Dutta has me look into the microscope next to those carbon dioxide tanks, there is a notable hint of excitement in his voice. "If you can find ways to manipulate this muscle differentiation process it would do a huge amount for human health," he says. He explains that I'm seeing how myoblasts can be manipulated into becoming myotubes. The problem is that five years after he received a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to undertake this microRNA project, he's nearly out of cash. His proposal was placed in the 2nd percentile of all grants reviewed by NIH in 2007, meaning that it was deemed more promising than 98 percent of the proposed projects. When he asked for the same amount of money in 2012, his proposal was scored in the 18th percentile. In years past that score may have been good enough, but in the age of sequestration, NIH is supporting a much smaller pool of applicants. Late last month he was told that there would be no funding. UVA has stepped in to help, but Dutta estimates that 40 of his colleagues are in the same boat. "I am living off of fumes," he says. A feeling of despair has taken hold within research communities like Dutta's, Top officials at academic and medical institutions have grown convinced that years of stagnant budgets and recent cuts have ushered in the dark ages of science in America. "It is like a slowly growing cancer," Steven Warren, vice chancellor for research at the University of Kansas said of sequestration at a recent gathering of academic officials in Washington, D.C. "It's going to do a lot of destruction over time." If sequestration is a cancerous tumor inside the world of science, how far has it spread? In 2013 alone, NIH, the primary federal spigot for projects impacting human health, will be forced to cut $1.7 billion from its budget. Government agencies across the board are making similar reductions in their research budgets as well. The length of some grants have been shortened, while others have decreased in size and still others have been eliminated altogether. Though they aren't supposed to do so, university officials have begun siphoning money from funded projects to those feeling the pinch, in hopes that if they hang on long enough, help will eventually come. At the University of Virginia, hopes are wearing thin. After Stein's first phone interview in July, Dutta ended the conversation with thanks. "I appreciate you doing this story because we need your help, buddy," he said. "We are in deep shit." When Stein visited the campus in August, much of the five-room lab that he runs would not be there but for the grace of the federal government, from the $15,000 freezers and the $30,000 high-performance liquid chromatography machine to the post- doctoral fellows there on grants. All told, NIH funding for just the School of Medicine totaled $95.1 million between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. With sequestration, all of this investment could be EFTA00678669 undermined. During that same time period, existing awards from NIH were cut by $1.9 million. Dutta, meanwhile, has spent his days looking for grant money elsewhere and sending pleading emails to his congressman, Rep. Robert Hurt (R-Va.). But he has little to show for it. He's recently begun contemplating the possibility of ending his project altogether and was recently informed that he would be losing his post-doctoral fellow spot in December. In January 2002, President George W. Bush unveiled a five-year budget proposal that called for a doubling in NIH funding. It was an unprecedented show of commitment to the scientific community that promised 36,000 new projects and major breakthroughs in medical research. In many ways, it proved to be a high-water mark. By 2007, NIH funding had jumped to $29.2 billion, a massive increase from its $20.4 billion level at the start of Bush's presidency. By the time President Barack Obama took office, it had gone up to $30.8 billion. The 2009 stimulus package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act put a significant amount of money behind scientific research as well. But under sequestration, many of those gains were lost. This year, the agency's budget has gone back down to $29.1 billion. Yes, the NIH's budget remains large at $29 billion. But without more investment, the nation's role as an international leader in scientific research is at risk. Moreover, the money being cut now will have lasting damage, both economic and medical, as cures to diseases are left undiscovered and treatments left unearthed. In the interim, the stagnant budgets and sequestration have caused researchers to go to extreme lengths just to stay afloat. For-profit companies can play a role but they are much more likely to support projects with a clear return on investment, leaving explorative research like that being done by Dr. Dutta and others in the lurch. More often than not, researchers dealing with budget cuts that have been compounded by sequestration find themselves in Dutta's predicament. Having exhausted all forms of cost-cutting and fundraising, they are scaling back their projects, contemplating moving or thinking about ending their work altogether. In a number of subtle ways this is creating a brain drain. It's not just projects receiving NIH grants that have been set back by sequestration. Various other government agencies have seen their research budgets slashed as well. Early estimates from the American Association for the Advancement of Science projected that $9.3 billion would be cut from research and development projects in 2013 alone, including $6.4 billion from the Department of Defense. Tom Antonsen and Phil Sprangle, two professors at the University of Maryland, said they've experienced funding shortages from the Defense Department that could hamper their work "I can start off by saying one word: It's devastating," Sprangle said in a phone interview. "It's a disaster. I guess that's two words." Sprangle, an electromagnetic physicist, recently submitted a proposal to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to improve radioactivity detection methods. He believes that with the right breakthrough, port security screening and weapons monitoring, among other things, could be done at a safe distance of more than 100 meters away. "It's a totally new concept," he said. But it was not good enough to get a grant. "They have no money this year,"he said. "It was put on a list ofproposals that were scientifically acceptable and if money came in they wouldfund it. This is thefirst time I've experienced that." He's been working in the field for 4o years. The problem, Antonsen said, was not just how the lack of funding would impact graybeards like himself, but also the newcomers to the field. Young scientists who had spent 12 years studying for their PhDs would find the climate inhospitable, and future generations would look elsewhere. "We used to be able to tell people that there was some kind ofjob security," he said. "That would be a compensationfor not being paid as much. Now, if you are taking a big risk in investing 12 years of your life to learn how to do the science, people will think twice." The non-technical term for this is "brain drain." It had been happening for years prior to sequestration, though the recent cuts have accelerated it. Antonsen, a plasma physicist who studies the production and interaction of electromagnetic fields with matter, said he has lost two staffers so EFTA00678670 far: one has left the country and another accepted a job at a Wall Street bank. A third is currently looking for work outside the field. Boston University's Gursky said that her program in Physiology and Biophysics had had no incoming graduate students during the last two academic years, while the overall number of matriculating PhD students at other programs had "dropped sharply." Dutta said a prospective hire in India had recently turned down a job offer in favor of going to Germany. 'That was unheard of not too long ago," he said. One of Dutta's colleagues at the University of Virginia, Patrick Grant, an Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, said his lab was down to two researchers from a peak of a dozen. His federal funding ran out last year. On the shelves outside Grant's office were old, empty champagne bottles from happier times. They had markings on them, noting student graduations or work being published in scientific journals. "I wouldn't advise people to go into science," he said. "I think it's a tough career tofollow. It's not the career that I thought it was, or that it wasfor me a couple of years ago." The White House and Democratic leaders say that fixing sequestration's cuts to scientific research actually ranks fairly highly on the list of legislative priorities. Obama routinely touts the need to reinvest in the field and recruit new scientists. In April, he proposed a $100 million plan to map the human brain. Until recently support for NIH, meanwhile, had a rich bipartisan tradition, in large part because it's easy to recognize the important work the agency does. This past week, it was announced that NIH scientists had successfully tested, on a small group of people, a vaccine for malaria -- a disease that kills one million people a year. More recently, public universities have stepped up a lobbying campaign to reverse the cuts, with 165 professors and college presidents recently writing to Obama and Congress, urging them to take immediate action. Perhaps most importantly, NIH has one of the most powerful members of the U.S. Senate squarely in its corner. Just one month after sequestration went into effect, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) met NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins at a conference in Los Angeles. The two discussed budget cuts and rode together to Reid's next event. In the car, Collins laid out in detail how dire the funding situation was. Reid asked if he could come visit the NIH campus and if Collins, in return, would come brief the Democratic caucus. Two months later, in mid-June, Reid took the trip to NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Md. He gave a floor speech about the dangers of the cuts three days later. The following month, Collins briefed Senate Democrats during their weekly lunch. A source with knowledge of the remarks said he brought up the prospect that the universal flu vaccine that is potentially five years from discovery could end up being delayed. He reminded attendees that 35,000 people die of the flu every year. But it hasn't been enough. No bill has been introduced in the Senate to replace the cuts to the NIH's budget. Meanwhile, the Democratic budget -- which would replace all of the sequester -- is mired in a standoff with Republicans, who want to replace the defense cuts contained in sequestration while expanding the domestic cuts. Reid, who associates say has been drawn to the issue because of his wife's bout with breast cancer, has continued to beat the drum. During a press briefing in late July, he brought up the topic of NIH funding again. And he's provided assurances to officials there and colleagues on the Hill that he will work on labor and health-related funding bills before military funding appropriations to ensure that scientific research doesn't get the short shrift. But in his statement to The Huffington Post, it was evident that the majority leader continues to see the politics of budget cuts as overwhelming the crisis confronting science. "I am working tofind a bipartisan solution to reverse the damaging effects of the sequester, including the harmful cuts to NIH_funding," Reid said. "There's absolutely no reason why Republicans shouldn't be able to supportfundingfor life-saving cures and treatments." In the age of congressional ignorance where we have political leaders like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R- Calif.), a longtime member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, who EFTA00678671 recently brushed aside concern that the wildfires currently scorching across his state and causing millions of dollars of damage have anything to do with climate change, telling constituents at a town hall that "global warming is a totalfraud," employed by liberals to "create global government." 'WE NEEDED ANOTHER STIMULUS. INSTEAD WE GOT SEQUESTRATION.' This past Monday North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) signed a bill requiring photo identification at the polls and eliminating a slew of voting measures designed to protect against voter disenfranchisement. Realizing that this was a polarizing act to others beyond his political base, the governor, eschewing a more traditional signing ceremony, announced by way of a YouTube video that he had signed House Bill 589. The bill will require voters to show photo identification -- a driver's license, passport, veteran's ID, tribal card -- beginning in the 2016 elections. Student IDs are not an acceptable form of identification. The bill also reduces early voting by a week, eliminates same-day registration, ends pre-registration for 16-and-17 year-olds and a student civics program, kills an annual state-sponsored voter registration drive and lessens the amount of public reporting required for so- called dark money groups, also known as 501(c)(4)s. McCrory said the bill was necessary even if there are very few reported cases of voter fraud. "Even if the instances of misidentified people casting votes are low, that shouldn't prevent usfrom putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place," he said in a Raleigh News and Observer op-ed. "Just because you haven't been robbed doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your doors at night or when you're awayfrom home." Just hours after McCrory's signature, the ACLU of North Carolina and a coalition of other groups filed a lawsuit against the bill, charging that it violates the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The North Carolina NAACP and Advancement Project followed shortly after, filing another lawsuit. The latest bill comes after the Supreme Court struck down the core of the Voting Rights Act, which required Southern states with a history of racial discrimination — including North Carolina -- to have their laws cleared by the Department of Justice. The Justice Department could still try to invalidate the recent North Carolina law on the grounds that it deliberately discriminates against voters, a much higher standard than merely proving it disproportionately affects minority voters. The bill has the potential to reduce turnout for key Democratic constituencies -- minorities, the elderly and students -- with the slew of new requirements, even beyond the new measures for identification. President Barack Obama narrowly won North Carolina in 2008 but lost it in 2012, and in 2016, the state is likely to be a battleground. The legislation, passed by the Republican-controlled legislature over the objections of Democrats before heading to McCrory's desk, is the latest of a string of conservative legislation signed into law in the state. McCrory has also signed measures introducing new restrictions for abortion clinics (attached to a motorcycle safety bill), expanding concealed-carry permits to bars and restaurants, and cutting unemployment benefits. The sick thing is that this law is blatant voter suppression with the objective of denying likely Democratic voters, such as the elderly, many of whom don't have picture IDs, Blacks who overwhelmingly vote early and young voters who benefit from same day registration as they often move residence. Consider this. In North Carolina, 6.9 million ballots were cast. The State Board of Elections said that of that number only 121 alleged cases of voter fraud was referred to prosecutors, which means of nearly 7 million votes casts, voter fraud accounted for only .00174% of the ballots and this includes voters who had not committed any crime. Still Gov. Pat McCory said, "that even if the instances of misidentified people casting voter are low, that shouldn't prevent us from putting this non-burdensome safeguard in place." EFTA00678672 Again this is blatant voter suppression. As Hillary Clinton said in a speech at the American Bar Association's annual conference on Monday, "these laws are reviving old demons of discrimination, insisting that legislation like the North Carolina laws are deliberate and unnecessa►y barrier to voting." She noted that along with North Carolina both Texas and Florida have also introduced whose recent voter legislation has shifted the burden, slamming the North Carolina bill as one that "reads like the greatest hits of voter suppression." "In the weeks since the ruling, we've seen an unseemly rush by previously covered jurisdictions to enact or enforce laws that will make it harder for millions of our fellow Americans to vote," Clinton said. Clinton also went after several provisions of the North Carolina bill that she believes place a greater burden on citizens facing discrimination, including limited voting hours, stricter ID requirements and restricted early voting. This should offend every American. See Hillary's speech: httm/Avww.huffingtonpost.corn/2013/08/12/hillary-clinton-nc-voter-id_n_3746321.html 7 Ways You Could Be Disenfranchised By Voter ID 2Inline image 17 Pennsylvania You're an average voter in Pennsylvania. The night before Election Day, your wallet goes missing, leaving you without immediate access to any of the identification you'll need to vote at your local precinct the following morning. This would be a problem under Pennsylvania's proposed photo ID law, since blocked by a state judge. While many people in this situation may have backup forms of identification, studies have shown that a significant percentage of would-be voters don't. The state's safeguard against the immediate disenfranchisement of people in this situation would be a provisional ballot cast on the day of the election. But this doesn't mean your vote counts, yet. Anyone who casts a provisional ballot is required to "appear in person at the county board of elections" within six days of the vote to provide proof that their ballot was valid. If you're able to take time away from your job to do this, the process still requires a would-be voter to either show up with valid ID -- a replacement driver's license would cost $36 and considerable time -- or to sign an affirmation that you are indigent and not able to afford the fees associated with acquiring a photo ID. Even if you make a rapid and somewhat expensive turnaround to get a replacement ID -- or alternatively swear under oath that you are too poor to pay for such a document -- there is no guarantee that your vote will end up counting. Many elections are largely decided before provisional voters have a chance to verify their validity, which could serve to discouraging them from following up with election officials or leave them effectively disenfranchised. In 2008, only 61.8 percent of all provisional ballots cast were fully counted. If strict photo ID measures were implemented, however, the number of provisional ballots submitted would likely increase, as would the requirements for voters hoping to make them count. EFTA00678673  Georgia Eleven percent of eligible voters say they lack current government-issued photo IDs, a survey on the potential impact of voter ID laws found. You live in Georgia and you're one of them. Like 66,515 other Georgians, according to a recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice, you also lack vehicle access and live more than io miles from an office that issues state ID. As a registered voter who's skipped the past few elections, you decide you'll vote this year. But you spend your life working multiple jobs to provide for your family, not tuned in to a news cycle that may have told you about a voter ID law that changed the requirements. If you were aware of the measure, you'd know that you have to get yourself to a state office during business hours to procure a photo ID in order to vote. According to the Brennan Center, these facilities are often only open part time, especially in areas with the highest concentration of people of color and in poverty. While the state does offer a free photo ID initiative, the Brennan Center points out that many of the offices provide confusing or inaccurate information about what Georgians need to do to get one. This may be a tough task as you juggle a strenuous work schedule with other commitments -- and that's assuming you're aware of the requirement. But you're not, so you head to your voting precinct on election day with no access to an acceptable form of identification and vote with a provisional ballot. To verify that ballot, you'll have two days to present appropriate photo ID at your county registrar's office, which at this point wouldn't be doable. Tennessee As an elderly Tennessee resident, you've made a decades-long Election Day habit of traveling to your local polling place and exercising your franchise. It's an important day for you, and it gives you the rare opportunity to leave your house, where you live alone. For a number of years, you've had an identification card that allows you to vote. But thanks to the state's strict new voter ID law, that document will no longer be sufficient. Reports found that 230,00o Tennesseans older than 6o possess driver's licenses that don't have photos on them. Such ID will not be accepted at polling places in November. While the state has agreed to issue photo IDs free to anyone who asks, a recent study found that only a tiny percentage of potential targets have applied. Perhaps that's because people like you weren't aware of exactly how the change was going to affect them. Maybe you weren't even aware of the change. Poll workers tell you that you can cast a provisional ballot on Election Day. You'll have until "the close of business on the second business day after the election" to find an applicable piece of identification -- which you don't have -- and present it to a designated elections official. Whether it's your lack of an acceptable form of identification, the difficulty in finding transportation back to the elections official, or the prospect of having to go through the drain of the entire process again, you're discouraged, and give up. Kansas You're a resident of Kansas in your early 6os, fully expecting to vote in November. Your driver's license is your primary form of ID, but you rarely carry it anymore. You don't drive and you haven't traveled abroad in years, leaving your passport expired or lost. In the months before the EFTA00678674 election, you changed addresses, and for some reason never received a notification from the state reminding you that your license had expired. On the day of the election, you head to your polling place, unaware that you're about to be told your license is expired and therefore invalid according to the state's new voter ID law (Kansans over the age of 65 can use expired IDs, but you're not there yet). You're given a provisional ballot and informed that you must now "provide a valid form of identification to the county election officer in person or provide a copy by mail or electronic means before the meeting of the county board of canvassers." While Kansas says it has historically counted around 7t) percent of its provisional ballots, this year provides a different landscape. The next steps can be somewhat difficult, and with the enacting of the state's photo ID law, the use of such ballots will undoubtedly become more commonplace. Faced with disenfranchisement, you must now race against the clock to have your vote included. With no other acceptable forms of ID available, y