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From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bcc: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.... 03/02/2014 Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2014 09:27:46 +0000 Attachments: Buckminster_Bucky_Fuller_bio.docx; The Stimulus Tragedy Paul ICrugman NYT 02 20 2014.docx; enn_Huff Post_02_20_2014.docx; CLARENCE_THOMAS'S_DISGRACEFUL_SILENCE_Jeffrey_Toobin_The_New_Yorker Feb. 21,_2014.docx; Tom beLay_Claims_God_Wrote_The_Constitution_Shadee_Ashtari_Huff Post_02_22_2 014.docx; Govemors,_Obamacareis_Here_To_Stay_Ken_Thomas_&_Steve_Peoples_Huff Post_02_ 24 2014.docx; Federal Deficit Falls to Smallest_Level_Since_2008_Annie_Lowrey_Feb._27,_2014.docx ; Barbra_Streisand_bio.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image( I ).png; image(2).png; image(3).png; image(4).png; image(5).png DEAR FRIEND R. Bucluninster Fuller was a renowned loth century inventor and visionary born in Milton, Massachusetts on July 12, 1895. Dedicating his life to making the world work for all of humanity, Fuller operated as a practical philosopher who demonstrated his ideas as inventions that he called "artifacts." Fuller did not limit himself to one field but worked as a 'comprehensive anticipatory design scientist' to solve global problems surrounding housing, shelter, transportation, education, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty. Throughout the course of his life Fuller held 28 patents, authored 28 books, received 47 honorary degrees. And while his most well know artifact, the geodesic dome, has been produced over 300,000 times worldwide, Fuller's true impact on the world today can be found in his continued influence upon generations of designers, architects, scientists and artists working to create a more sustainable planet. Fuller died from cancer on July 1, 1983, 11 days before his 88th birthday in Los Angeles. Web Link: WAyoutu.bc/o6yaSLipeWg "Making the world's available resources serve one hundred percent of an exploding population can only be accomplished by a boldly accelerated design revolution." There are few men who can justly claim to have revolutionized their discipline. IL Buckminster Fuller revolutionized many. "Bucky," as he was known to most, was a designer, architect, poet, educator, engineer, philosopher, environmentalist, and, above all, humanitarian. Driven by the belief that EFTA00984863 humanity's major problems were hunger and homelessness he dedicated his life to solving those problems through inexpensive and efficient design. The grandnephew of the American Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, Bucky was born on July 12, 1895 in Milton, Massachusetts. He was twice expelled from Harvard. Later, Bucky married Anne Hewlett in 1917 and went into the construction business with her father. A decade later he witnessed the first of many business failures, when, due to economic difficulties, he was forced out of the company. Despondent over these failures and family problems, he resolved to focus his energies on a search for socially responsible answers to the major design problems of his time. Recognizing the inefficiency of the automobile, Bucky spent the late twenties designing a car that would incorporate the engineering advances of the airplane. In 1933, he presented the first prototype of the Dymaxion car. The Dymaxion car could hold twelve passengers, go 120 miles per hour and used half the gas of the standard car, utilizing aerodynamics construction and only three wheels. While demonstrating the car to investors, it crashed, taldng one life. Though the crash was later determined not to be the fault of the car, he was never able to find adequate funding. As World War II ended and housing crises in America became more acute, he turned his sights to what would remain his life-long dream. Using airplane construction methods and materials, Bucky set out to create a pre-fabricated house that could be easily delivered to any location. It would be fireproof and inexpensive and constructed out of lightweight materials. In 1945 however, with thousands of orders in place for his new Dymaxion House, Fuller once again ran into difficulties with investors and had to end the project. Unsure of his next step and without a job, Bucky accepted a position at a small college in North Carolina, Black Mountain College. There, with the support of an amazing group of professors and students, he began work on the project that was to make him famous and revolutionize the field of engineering. Using lightweight plastics in the simple form of a tetrahedron (a triangular pyramid) he created a small dome. As his work continued it became clear that he had made the first building that could sustain its own weight with no practical limits. The U.S. government recognized the importance of the discovery and employed him to make small domes for the army. Within a few years there were thousands of these domes around the world. Having finally received recognition for his endeavors, Buckminster Fuller spent the final fifteen years of his life traveling around the world lecturing on ways to better use the world's resources. A favorite of the radical youth of the late 6o's and 7o's, Fuller worked to expand social activism to an international scope. Among his most famous books were NO MORE SECONDHAND GOD(1963) OPERATING MANUAL FOR THE SPACESHIP EARTH (1969), and EARTH, INC. (1973) in which he writes "In reality, the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon are nothing else than a mostfantastically well- designed and space-programmed team of vehicles. All of us are, always have been, and so long as we exist, always will be—nothing else but—astronauts." Why the First Issue Is Money in Politics EFTA00984864 Constitutional scholar and activist Lawrence Lessig, whose march through New Hampshire to get money out of politics is featured on our broadcast this week, often says that his crusade is the most urgent in America because it impacts virtually every other issue. From achieving tax reform to fighting climate change to strengthening the social safety net, we will see no progress until the wealthy entities that benefit can no longer buy up politicians to prevent the status quo from changing. "The people who want to stop reform will pay an enormous amount of money to be able to achieve that," Lessig told us when we met during his march. "...What this system has done is made the politics of dysfunction incredibly profitable." Some lobbyists, he noted, even advertise their ability to exploit the system and use legislators to "delay and obstruct" progress in Congress. "We will never get your issue solved until we fix this issue first," Lessig said in a TED talk last year. "So it's not that mine is the most important issue. It's not. Yours is the most important issue, but mine is the first issue, the issue we have to solve before we get to fix the issues you care about." Here are five examples of issues beaten into stasis by a barrage of big money. Environment One example Lessig cites — one that motivates many progressives — is climate change. "If you are a coal company who's against the idea of climate change legislation, this [political system] is a boon for you," he said, "because it's trivial and cheap to be able to leverage your money, to guarantee nothing ever happens to adjust climate change." It's a scenario America has seen play out time and again, most recently in 2009-10, when cap and trade, an idea that originated with the Reagan administration and had Republican support, seemed to have a real chance of working its way through Congress. But in 2009, thousands of lobbyists representing energy and natural resource extraction companies spent more than they ever had before — over $400 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That record was broken the very next year, when spending reached $450 million. Is it coincidental that in 2010, cap and trade was declared dead? In proposing climate change legislation that year, Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) refused to even discuss cap and trade as a realistic policy suggestion. EFTA00984865 It wasn't until last fall, when President Obama used an executive order to circumvent Congress and cap emissions from coal power plants, that the heaviest polluters faced across-the-board emission restrictions. A similar story is unfolding right now with the Keystone XL pipeline, a massive project that, once operational, would pump more than 800,000 barrels of crude from Alberta's tar sands to refineries on the US Gulf Coast — every day. It has become a defining issue for both the oil industry and environmental activists. The pipeline's approval is a decision over which a legacy-conscious Obama has vacillated for five years. Following a year of record spending by the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade association for the oil and natural gas industry, and in the face of growing frustration from red state Democratic senators, earlier this month, the State Department released an environmental impact statement claiming that the project would have little impact on global climate emissions. That statement brought the project one step closer to approval, but the Obama administration cautioned that it was still weighing the pros and cons. A 3o-day comment period has begun, during which environmental advocates will continue to encourage the administration to stand up to the oil industry, an outcry the oil industry can be expected to counter with another wave of money. Taxes Tax reform is one key issue that especially inflames conservative activists. And as Lessig pointed out when we spoke, the problem of legislative paralysis knows no political alignment; it stumps would-be reformers on both the right and the left. "It's incredibly naive to believe that this Congress will ever simplify the tax s tem because the complexities in the tax system are fund-raising opportunities," he told "Every single special benefit is a reason and a target to raise more money. "So the special Research & Development Tax Credit which Ronald Reagan created in 1981, and which was originally a temporary provision but has been temporary ever since, is temporary because each time it's about to expire they have a long list of beneficiaries they can go to and say 'Geez, we need to raise some money to support the idea of extending this temporary tax benefit.' In fact, as NPR reported, Congress annually rings in the New Year by letting dozens of tax breaks expire. There immediately follows a healthy round of campaign contributions, as lobbyists for a slew of industries — from overseas financial operators to rum retailers, from movie producers to racetrack operators — scramble to get those tax breaks reinstated. Food Stamps EFTA00984866 The recent farm bill cut food stamps even further than the already severe cuts implemented in 2013. But it preserves a different sort of safety net: subsidies for big agriculture. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in both 2008 and 2013, the two most recent years that the farm bill has come before Congress (it's renewed every five years), agribusiness spent more than $145 million on lobbying. Recipients of food stamps, of course, don't have the same kind of lobbying muscle to advocate on their own behalf. In a Congress pushing austerity, the programs that help the poor continue to hit the chopping block while recipients of corporate welfare can afford a hearty defense to protect their benefits. In fact, both in 2008 and in 2013, although legislation to roll back agricultural subsidies had bipartisan support, the effort to do so fell apart. And even though subsidies were "reformed" this year, The New York Times reports that in practice, these reforms mean little. "It's a classic bait-and-switch proposal to protect farm subsidies," Vincent H. Smith, an economist at Montana State University, told the Times. "They've eliminated the politically toxic direct payments program and added the money to a program that will provide farmers with even larger subsidies." The 2014 farm bill cuts direct payments to farmers, but puts that money into the farm insurance program. Writing in The New Republic, David Dayen explains why this helps big agriculture even more than previous farm bills: That's because the farm bill will expand subsidies for crop insurance, which looks like a private-sector program but which actually hands over virtually the same amount of taxpayer money to farmers, mostly wealthy ones, as the old direct payment program. What's more, the shift from direct payments to crop insurance ensures that those handouts can be distributed in a hidden, more politically palatable way, malting it more difficult to ever dislodge them. Minimum Wage The fight over raising the minimum wage is a war of information. Conservative opponents of a proposed increase commission academic studies for use by lobbyists and their front groups. A recent New York Times report illustrates how one of the most prominent think tanks opposing the raise, the Employment Policies Institute, "is run by a public relations firm that also represents the restaurant industry, as part of a tightly coordinated effort to defeat the minimum wage increase that the White House and Democrats in Congress have pushed for." EFTA00984867 Their strategy has proven effective, with business groups and the mainstream media continuing to cite research claiming that a raise in the minimum wage will hurt the economy. Recently, the hotel industry, a major employer of low-wage workers, announced it will lead the fight to keep wages low. According to the congressional newspaper The Hill, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, a group that includes such major hotel chains as Best Western, Hilton and Hyatt, has plans to lead the charge to beat back the growing emergence of extreme minimum and living wage initiatives that are proven job-killers and ultimately hurt those who are building successful careers from the entry level." Simultaneously, as money continues to pour into Congress to keep a low minimum wage at the federal level, proponents of increasing it are turning to the states and cities, where they are finding some limited success. Net Neutrality Last month, a federal appeals court struck down Net neutrality, the principle that Internet service providers cannot give favorable treatment to some content over others (e.g., Verizon could not give a faster connection to their own video streaming service than to Netflix). Tom Wheeler, the new head of the FCC, has not settled on a permanent fix to settle Net neutrality, but says he will announce one soon. One very easy way for the FCC to reinstate Net neutrality would be to reclassify the Internet under the Federal Communications Act as a telecommunications service, not an information service, giving the agency broader regulatory powers. But if the FCC does that, lobbyists representing Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon, and their Republican allies, will put up a huge fight. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats' recent attempt to use legislation to preserve Net neutrality until the FCC has time to settle on a permanent fix looks likely to die in the House. It is strongly opposed by industry-backed Republicans. For one, Comcast is the second biggest campaign donor to Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) — and he's chairman of the communications and technology subcommittee. Instead, FCC Chairman Wheeler reportedly is leaning toward not reclassifying the Internet, but promising instead to take rigorous enforcement action against those Internet providers that attempt to use their considerable size and power to monopolize business or abuse consumers. But Wheeler is a former lobbyist for the companies he's now supposed to regulate. Add to that Comcast's considerable lobbying clout and Washington connections, which soon may be magnified by its proposed merger with Time Warner. There's reason for doubt that Wheeler's plan would be effective. EFTA00984868  2,Inline image Last week I did a piece on the new iteration of NBC's The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, as I along with many of my generation and our parents grew up with The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and loyally moved on twenty years ago when Jay Leno took over the show. And to my surprise, I found the new show starring Jimmy Fallon 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. My favorite segment of the first week was his History ofRap Part 5 parody with Justin Timberlake. Having not seen the previous four, I went on YouTube to see them. As someone who has everyone from Hendrix to Sinatra to The Beetles, Prince, James Brown to James Taylor, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Lucio Dalla, Pavarotti, Miles Davis, Quincy Jones and Lou Reid on my iPod. I also have a wide sampling of Hip Hop, 2Pac, Biggie, Too Short, Jay Z, NWA, Heavy D and Slick Rick on the same playlist. So after seeing History of Rap Part 5, definitely was interested in viewing the first four... Below please find the web link of the first four and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I did. History of Rap -- Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake Web Link: Intmayoutu.be/sWsBircutAA ;;Inline image 2 Web Link: Intp://youtu.be/XOZTLoxvBTc and http://youtu.he/VmXsYlthVQ9w I didn't believe when a friend sent this article to me from The Huffington Post written by Shadee Ashtari - Tom DeLay Claims God 'Wrote The Constitution' - so I actually went on the Internet to see if it was really true or just a hoax by a lefty friend trying to make fun of another over- the-top Texas Republican sending out another "dispatchfrom the bubble." DeLay: "I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government," Delay explained. "When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it's based on biblical principles." I know that I don't have to tell you all how wrong he is. But for Tom's sake, maybe I can clear it up, based on Biblical principles. God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Men wrote the US constitution, and did it with the express intention of not allowing this country to be a theocracy. EFTA00984869 Because so Americans think that God wants America to be special — one of the pitfalls of being a species that embraces both religion and nationalism at the same time — we get logic like DeLay's, who truly believes that God wrote the Constitution, which is a special kind of dim-wittedness that can only come from a culture that believes the world is 6,000 years old, that there's roughly four thousand years from the creation of the universe to the writing of the Constitution. This idiotic perspective makes all history into a fairy tale, where the Founding Fathers might as well have been riding Tyrannosaurus Rexes to Philadelphia, and where Moses could practically be Paul Revere's great-great grandfather. The neoconservative disdain for science and history causes real problems, like men who once held great power thinking that their God insists that every American own at least one gun. This sort of argument ends with evangelicals who want to nuke the Middle East to bring about the end times. "And Jesus destroyed Satan so that we could befree and that is manifested in what is called the Constitution of the United States. God created this nation and God created the Constitution; it is written on Biblical principles." Tom DeLay former House Majority Leader (R-Texas). These Christian scholars, like DeLay forget to quote the Constitution which actually says, 'Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.' The United States has been a secular nation from day one, and we should be so glad that this knucklehead isn't in power anymore. These comments was so over the top that I had to actually Fact Check The Huffington Post, only to find Conservative bloggers and media applauding Delay's latest "dispatch from the bubble". Delay does not mention that The Constitution doesn't mention, God, Jesus or the Bible and the only mention of religion is "you shall not establish one." Again, thank God that Delay is no longer in power and again thank God that the United States is a secular democracy. ******* 2,Gov. Jan Brewer to decide if Arizona's anti-LGBTQ measure lives or dies In the same week that former House Majority Leader (R-Texas) Tom Delay claimed that "God wrote the US Constitution"there was another Republican who shared another pearl of wisdom (dispatches) from "the bubble"- when Arizona Governor Jan Brewer said that she was reluctant to sign an anti- gay "religiousfreedom" bill passed by the Arizona state legislature this week, telling reporters„ "I believe that bigotry and hatred should befree of government regulation." She said that while many Arizona business owners currently enjoy employing hateful practices, "I worry that if big government gets involved, that'll ruin everything." "Don't get me wrong—I think the anti-gay bill that the legislature passed was well-meaning,"she said. "All. saying is, let's leave it to the private sector." Offering an example, she added, "Look at how Obamacare has messed up health care. hate to pass a new law that results in government wrecking bigotry." But Governor Brewer got some pushback today from Republican legislator Harland Dorrinson, who told reporters, 1. as opposed to big government as anyone. But promoting hate-based bias is one area where I believe government has an important role to play." For her part, Governor Brewer remains unconvinced by that argument. Noting that the current system of hatred and bigotry in place in Arizona has worked well for decades, she said, "If it ain't broke, don'tfix it" Between Brewer and Delay, I don't know which one's comments are worse, because they are all so ridiculous, that even Robert Mugabe wouldn't use them. But in a country where free speech is one of the tenets of our democracy, I guess that we have to accept ridiculous accretions from the likes of Ted Nugent, Rafael Cruz, Rush Limbaugh and Louis Farrakhan. With this said I would like to commend Governor Brewer EFTA00984870 for vetoing the controversial bill Wednesday that would have allowed businesses in the state to deny service to gays and lesbians if they felt that serving them would violate their religious rights. But remember that it took the very vocal outrage of everyone from Arizona Republican Senator John McCain to the company Apple to JP Morgan Chase Bank to the National Football League's threat of moving the Super Bowl which is scheduled next year, as well as hundreds of thousands if not millions of outraged Americans for her to make this decision. `',,Dick Cheney Former Vice President Dick Cheney (R) took a hit at President Barack Obama on Monday, saying he favors food stamps over a strong military. During an interview on Fox News' "Hannity," Cheney criticized a proposal put forth by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Monday that called for shrinking the Army to its smallest size in 74 years, closing bases and reshaping forces. The former vice president called the cuts `just devastating." "I have not been a strong supporter of Barack Obama. But this really is over the top. It does enormous long-term damage to our military," Cheney said. "They act as though it is like highway spending and you can turn it on and off. Thefact of the matter is he is having a huge impact on the ability offuture presidents to deal with future crises that are bound to arise." "And I think the whole thing is not driven by any change in world circumstances, it is driven by budget considerations," Cheney said later. "(Obama] would much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military or supportfor our troops." The details revealed by Hagel are included in the defense spending plan that will be part of the 2015 budget that Obama will submit to Congress next week. I think that for the first time I hope that Vice President Cheney is right, because since World War 2, the US has spent more money than any other country on the planet and it hasn't made us safer than Brazil, Germany, Switzerland or Australia. And using the argument that someone has to do it because our allies won't or can't should not be shouldered by American taxpayers. Global military expenditure this year stands at over $1.7 trillion in annual expenditure at current prices for 2012. It fell by around half a percent compared to 2011 - the first fall since 1998. Of which $614 billion is US military spending down from more than $7oo billion in 2009. Since the start of the Cold War in the 195os US military spending has been on the rise but the increases (from a bit more than $300 billion to more than $700 billion in 2009) are attributed to the so-called War on Terror and the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. The US budget is larger than the combined military budgets of the next 13 largest countries and the only two (suggested) enemies are Iran and North Korea. And I would have a better chance winning the Super Lottery then either one of them attacking America. So do we really need 2400s new F35 Fighter planes at a projected cost of $857 billion which has more than doubled in costs since being awarded to Lockheed Martin in 2001? Even with the suggested cuts by Defense Secretary Hagel the US military budget really wouldn't be reduce, it just that it wouldn't be rising as much as hawkish supporters would like and several programs and bases that the Department of Defense would like to eliminated would be cut. One of the big uglies in America is food insecurity and that more than 15 million children go to bed hungry. So why would the former Vice President so disparage a program that helps almost 5o million fellow countrymen feed their families and themselves, especially when much of our military expenditures are focus to war strategies that are obsolete? The days of air superiority with fighter pilots facing off in dogfights is almost as out of date as a slide-rule. We have drone technology today that can identify an individual in a moving car or underground bunker, which could easily be designed to shoot down a $200 million state of the art jet EFTA00984871 fighter. Thank God that we have a President who given the only choice who would rather feed needy Americans at the cost of reducing a bloated military budget. teinline image 3 Like many people around the world I am a lover of sports. I grew up playing baseball and football and for a brief moment I flirted with boxing until I spent six minutes in the ring with Victor Valle Jr., whose father was a famous trainer and fixture in the professional boxing world for six decades. Growing up I went to the Penn Relays and I look forward every spring to The Final Four. And like many blacks of my generation inspired by the amazing exploits Tiger Woods, I picked up a golf in the 1ggos, until I tore my rotator cup in my right shoulder skiing. But having lived most of my life in New York and later on in Los Angeles, I grew up with the New York Yankees and Mets and drank out of the Stanley Cup when the Rangers and Devils won their championships. Long before I moved to Los Angeles, I cherished the many Laker games that friends took me to at the old LA Forum, and went to the Forum Club so many times, that many members assumed that I was one too. But in spite of the beating that I took at the hands of Victor Valle Jr, which was judged a draw, but still made me realize that boxing was much more fun to watch than do, I frequent ringside during the during the 19705, 8os and gos having gotten the bug when my father took my first fight to see a young Cassius Clay defeat Doug Jones at the old Madison Square Garden in 1963. This prefix is only to establish my love for sports, which is why one of my favorite sports television shows, is HBO's, Real Sports with Bryant Gumbet I was taken aback with the first segment of the most recent show titled, Kids and Guns, which although about a sport "sport shooting", it challenges both the gun culture in America and the marketing of gun to children. In an effort to gain lifelong customers American gun makers are manufacturing and marketing special hunting guns made just for kids. And in many states it is so easy that kids who can't buy beer, cigarettes or a lottery ticket can by themselves a gun. We have to wonder about this country, it's sad and deadly fascination about guns. Although it's hard to believe in a time when this county's adolescents understandably can't buy alcohol or cigarettes or even adult magazines, they can own guns. Despite growing calls for stricter gun controls, many states these days are actually making it easier to put deadly weapons in the hands of youngsters, whose ability to handle them responsibly is questionable at best. Today the American firearms industry is taking aggressive measures to secure future customers by literally giving young kids a shot. In middle class neighborhoods, kids shooting kids is often described as 'just one of those accidents,"when many of the shooters having a rifle is not an accident at all. These kids size hunting rifles often come with cute names, such as Crockett and marketed in ads no different than the ones that you see for the hottest new toy. Crickett, my first rifle. "I wish that I had one." '!it moment but you neverforget." The ads show kids shooting and the gun comes with a gun-toting stuffed animal/teddy bear. In one ad targeted to young girls, it showed a young girl with a Glock pistol, with the caption, "Make Dad "Jealous." All are part of an aggressive campaign being waged by the gun industry, in the plan to get guns in the hands of a legion of consumers as early as possible, by selling them on something that is fun, exciting and cool, sports. The gun industry is worried that young people are more interested today in virtual shooting on their computer screens than traditional shooting, which gun enthusiast see as a loss of our heritage. With magazines like, Junior Shooter, children are being recruited across the country. Magazines like Junior Shooter endorse all sorts of guns for kids. One its article was titled, "Glocks arefor Girls." Another listed a high capacity magazine, 'for when you're getting the right toys." Ad support EFTA00984872 comes from major gun manufacturers, including Winchester, Remington, Ruger, SigSauer, Glock and Colt, as well as the industry's trade group, National Shooting Sports Foundation, (`IVSSF') the architect of the strategy to reach kids through sports. One of the most heavily featured guns in Junior Shooter, is the Alti5, which the NSSF calls the modern sporting rifle. The Albs is the civilian version of the M16 military assault weapon. And no surprise it is a huge hit with kids. Recently in Junior Shooter there was an article with instructions on how to make one. Web Link: http://www.juniorshooters.net Then there are the kids size rifles, "the training wheels ofguns."Along with Crickett, there are other cute names, like The Chipmunk and Rascal which comes in seven colors. One of the arguments did they make for giving an Alti5 to a child, is that it has less recoil. Calling it sports shooting is the only acceptable way to market guns to children, as a result the NSSF, which is the official trade Association for the firearms industry now have focus groups (testing and marketing) to fine tune the best ways of getting guns in the hands of children. Many of these kids begin shooting as early as the age of 4 and hunting at the age of 6. There is a Hunter's Safety Course for kids to take as early as the age of 6, and if the child can't read they will read the test to them. These kids can take the test and get licensed in a single day. The class last a little less than 7 hours and it doesn't include live shooting and if the child passes the test that day they can begin shooting the same day. Think about being able to get a driver's license without taking a driving test and then being able to drive at the age of 6. Critics say that safety classes don't work because kids will be kids. Kids because of their developmental nature take risks, especially teenagers who are often impulsive. You can talk about safety but what are the developmental capable of? You can teach them, but it's not what they or taught or know, as it is what are they capable of — developmentally. And the science is simple, because we know that the brain develops sequentially and the last area to develop is the free frontal cortex, which is this thinking and reasoning part of the brain and "the break" to one's impulsiveness. And you can't educate a teenager to be less impulsive. Yet the gun industry trade group, NSSF and partners have been lobbying States to lower age limits lighten hunter education requirements and to date 35 states have done just that. Even supporters of the National Rifle Association ('NRA') and Americans suspicious of government regulation conceded that like cars and alcohol, there are certain thresholds in a society that you do things to preserve and protect the society to avoid chaos. It should be common sense that you do not put a loaded firearm in the hands of a kid. In a country that keeps kids away from almost every type of danger there is one odd exception, guns. As an example, Real Sports sent a young thirteen year old actor to several stores to buy beer, cigarettes, a pornographic magazine and a lottery ticket and none of the shops would sell them to him. And at several of the establishments, his request was greeted with amusement and outright laughter. Then the sent him to a gun show and within minutes the same thirteen year old was able to legally purchase a 22 calibre rifle from a private seller. And although not a majority of states allow a thirteen year old to legally buy a rifle, almost all allow them to own them when they are used for 'hunting"or "shooting sport." This is nuts, because when you bring a gun into a home you increase the risk to children, teenagers, their families and the community as a whole. The math is simple. Adolescents with access to guns on more than twice as likely to commit suicide. You can teach an adolescent how to use the gun, load the gun, clean a gun, gun safety and even conservation, but what you can never control a teenager's impulse of resorting to a long term solution EFTA00984873 for a short term problem. In 2013 there were nine school shootings by teens. Gun enthusiasts will tell you that guns are as safe as tools in the hands of kids if they are trained. But that sounds like industry marketing. And the efforts of the NSSF and firearms industry maybe paying off as the number hunters between the ages of 6 and 15 is on the rise. Marketing guns to kids is not only borderline morally but it's insane. There are more than two million kids with access to guns (their own guns) in America. And although it is speculated that thousands of children are injured as a result of firearms, there are no real numbers because in 1996 the NRA successfully lobbied Congress to not allow people to do studies when he came to guns and safety and violence in the name of Public Health that was sponsored or finance by the CDC or with federal funding. This was recently rescinded, but no money has been appropriated to fund these sorts of studies. And for those who don't believe that nothing should be done other than relaxing gun regulations and get guns into more American hands, remember that Adam Lanza killed 23 children after killing his mother who was a gun enthusiast and the person who bought the Altis that he used to kill her, the children and 4 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the village of Sandy Hook in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. WEEK's READINGS As Paul Krugman pointed out an New York Times op-ed last week — The Stimulus Tragedy — that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - the "stimulus"- signed into law by President Obama five years ago — which has been a huge success but for some reason it is a political disaster — because of the perception that somehow the stimulus failed. Let's remember five years ago — the economy was in absolute free-fall; the financial markets had nosedived, the housing prices had crashed, the country was losing 800,000 jobs a month and the country's banking sector was on a verge of collapse. And it is universally accepted that the stimulus helped end the economy's plunge, creating or saving millions of jobs, as well as the banking sector and leaving an important legacy of public and private investment. So how come it is a political disaster. The case for stimulus was that we were suffering from a huge shortfall in overall spending, and that the hit to the economy from the financial crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble was so severe that the Federal Reserve, which normally fights recessions by cuffing short-term interest rates, couldn't overcome this slump on its own. The idea, then, was to provide a temporary boost both by having the government directly spend more and by using tax cuts and public aid to boost family incomes, inducing more private spending. Opponents of stimulus argued vociferously that deficit spending would send interest rates skyrocketing, "crowding out" private spending. Proponents responded, however, that crowding out — a real issue when the economy is near full employment — wouldn't happen in a deeply depressed economy, awash in excess capacity and excess savings. And stimulus supporters were right: far from soaring, interest rates fell to historic lows. People also forget that opponents of the stimulus, vehemently supported austerity, which is what Europe did facing a similar catastrophe, forcing sharp changes in government spending. Some but not all members of the euro area, the group of countries sharing Europe's common currency, were forced into imposing draconian fiscal austerity, that is, negative stimulus. If stimulus opponents had been right about the way the world works, these austerity programs wouldn't have had severe adverse economic effects, because cuts in government spending would have been offset by rising private spending. In fact, austerity led to nasty, in some cases catastrophic, declines in output and employment. And private spending in countries imposing harsh austerity ended up falling instead of rising, amplifying the direct effects of government cutbacks. EFTA00984874 All the evidence, then, points to substantial positive short-run effects from the Obama stimulus. And there were surely long-term benefits, too: big investments in everything from green energy to electronic medical records. So why does everyone — or, to be more accurate, everyone those who have seriously studied the issue — believe that the stimulus was a failure? Because the U.S. economy continued to perform poorly — not disastrously, but poorly — after the stimulus went into effect. There's no mystery about why: America was coping with the legacy of a giant housing bubble. Even now, housing has only partly recovered, while consumers are still held back by the huge debts they ran up during the bubble years. And the stimulus was both too small and too short-lived to overcome that dire legacy. This is not, by the way, a case of making excuses after the fact. In 2009 supporters of President Obama's economic policies (including me) warned everyone who would listen that the Recovery Act was inadequate — and that by falling short, the act would end up discrediting the very idea of stimulus. And so it proved. There's a long-running debate over whether the Obama administration could have gotten more. The administration compounded the damage with excessively optimistic forecasts, based on the false premise that the economy would quickly bounce back once confidence in the financial system was restored. But as Krugman says, "that's all water under the bridge." The important point is that U.S. fiscal policy went completely in the wrong direction after 2010. With the stimulus perceived as a failure, job creation almost disappeared from inside-the-Beltway discourse, replaced with obsessive concern over budget deficits. Government spending, which had been temporarily boosted both by the Recovery Act and by safety-net programs like food stamps and unemployment benefits, began falling, with public investment hit worst. And this anti-stimulus has destroyed millions of jobs. Kurgman again — "In other words, the overall narrative of the stimulus is tragic. A policy initiative that was good but not good enough ended up being seen as a failure, and set the stagefor an immensely destructive wrong turn." As Jim Kuhnhenn wrote an interesting article last week in The Huffington Post — How America's Debt And Deficit Became An Afterthought In Washington - acknowledging what everyone now knows, the fears of the stimulus worsen our economy that was pushed by proponents of austerity five years ago — is a dying ember in Washington's political and policy landscape. The nation's annual deficit, the amount the government spends beyond what it receives in revenue, has been cut by nearly two-thirds from its 2009 high, thanks to a combination of tax increases, an improving economy and mandatory across-the-board cuts in programs from defense to transportation to education. And lawmakers, fatigued by their budget battles, have called a truce and abandoned the brinkmanship that led to unnerving default threats and a partial government shutdown. As a result, the impulse to cut will be decidedly weaker when President Barack Obama's submits his latest budget plan to Congress early next month. The White House drove home the point Thursday when it said Obama's budget would drop his past offer to cut spending on federal benefits with lower cost-of-living increases for beneficiaries. "It's hard to deny that there is less political momentum at this moment, in the year 2014, for the type of extensive budget negotiations we saw in 2011 and 2012," EFTA00984875 said Gene Sperling, the director of the White House's National Economic Council and a close Obama adviser. That doesn't mean the problem has been solved. Far from it. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects deficits will rise again in a couple of years, pushed up by an aging population, rising health care costs and anticipated increases in interest on the nation's debt, the amount accumulated over the years by deficit spending. But the public has shifted its anger. The 2008-2009 bank bailouts and the stimulus spending that Obama set in motion in 2009 sparked the revolt in 2010 as swing voters — those who might vote for either Democratic or Republican candidates — demanded more fiscal accountability. With another midterm election this year, swing voters appear more concerned about their own personal economic circumstances, and Republicans are focused on making the election a referendum on Obama's health care law. A Gallup poll last week showed public preoccupation with debt and deficits falling as concerns over jobs took over as the top worry for Americans. Health care continued to rank among the top problems cited by those surveyed, though it has dropped slightly from its high in November during the botched enrollment rollout of the law. "Deficits and debt remain salient with the Republican base, but the middle has moved on," Republican pollster Wes Anderson said. "They were there in 2010, but now they are pretty strongly focused on Obamacare, with the economy as an issue picking up steam." Indeed, Republicans are now not only attacking the health care law but shifting from calling for cuts to complaining about them. House Republican leaders drew attention to the health care law's reductions in spending for Medicare Advantage, an option available to older Americans who are eligible for Medicare. In a letter to Obama, House Speaker John Boehner and other top House Republicans complained that the cuts, which Republicans themselves have included in past budgets, would result in higher health care costs for those who enroll in the program. "Now is not the time to shortchange seniors' choices," the Republicans wrote in a not-so-veiled appeal for the over-65 vote. That fundamental shift in attention may well be both a blessing and a curse. If the cease-fire over budgets holds, the economy no longer will be convulsed by eleventh-hour negotiations, missed deadlines, threatened shutdowns and fears of jeopardizing the nation's credit. The new 2014 projection from the Congressional Budget Office — $514 billion this year from a $1.4 trillion high 2009 - means this year's deficit would be about 3 percent of the nation's economic output, good news in that it would virtually match the average percentage of the past four decades. But the nation's debt continues to grow, the CBO says, ever rising as a share of the nation's gross domestic product. The CBO estimates that the federal debt will equal 94 percent of GDP at the end of the year, the highest since 1946, and it projects that based on existing laws, it will rise to 79 percent in 2024. The main drivers of the debt are the government's biggest benefit programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The government revenue stream is simply not keeping up with the aging population and with the increases in the cost of care. The CBO also predicted that after 2016, the health care law also will lower total working hours as many employees choose to cut back on work to qualify for federal insurance subsidies. Such a reduction would contribute to lower tax revenues and thus higher deficits, CBO director Doug Elmendorf said. That conclusion has become yet another piece of Republican ammunition against the law. White House officials say the revenue projections in the president's budget won't be as pessimistic as CBO's, in part because they will factor in deficit reduction from their immigration overhaul plan. Under White EFTA00984876 House projections, deficits as a share of the economy will be below 2 percent after the 2023-2024 fiscal year. The CBO says they will rise to about 4 percent. In 2011, Obama and Boehner came tantalizing close to striking a "grand bargain" that would have increased taxes and contained some of Medicare and Social Security costs. But the deal didn't hold. It's difficult to imagine a set of circumstances anytime in the near future that would bring both parties that close to a significant deal again. Instead, the $1.11rillion budget agreement struck by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., eased across- the-board mandatory spending cuts and defused any chance of an election-year shutdown. "They kind of did a grand bargain — they agreed not to do anything," said Robert Bixby of the budget watchdog group The Concord Coalition. "The Ryan-Murray budget was basically an agreement to stop fighting." The past three years of confrontations have focused almost exclusively on those aspects of the budget that require annual approval — the "discretionary" portion of the budget. Untouched have been the huge benefit programs, which are most responsible for the debt. 'The tragic part of it is, all the anguish we're going through isn't dealing with two-thirds of the American budget," said former Sen. Alan Simpson, the Wyoming Republican who co-chaired a presidential debt commission created in 2010. Politically, Social Security and Medicare are much tougher to tackle. While the public does demand fiscal discipline, it often rebels when spending reductions affect them. Consider the GOP letter demanding restoration of Medicare Advantage cuts. Or a recen