EFTA00834915.pdf

From: Gregory Brown To: undisclosed-recipients:; Bee: [email protected] Subject: Greg Brown's Weekend Reading and Other Things.. 2/07/2016 Date: Sun, 07 Feb 2016 07:08:25 +0000 Attachments: Too_poor_to_retire_and_too_young_to_die_John_Glionna_01.29.16.docx; Marcus_Miller_bio.docx Inline-Images: image.png; image(I).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(I4).png; image(I5).png; image(16).png; image(17).png; image(I8).png; image(19).png; image(20).png; image(21).png; image(22).png; image(23).png; image(24).png DEAR FRIEND Too Poor to Retire and Too Young to Die Inline image Angelo and Mina Maffucci were living on coffee before calling a food pantry for help. There is an ugly truth in America today that our politicians and general public seem to ignore and it is that in addition to the usual aspects of everyday life ranging from the loss of mental acuity to physical dexterity and sexual activity deterioration, the big ugly in the United States is that more and more Americans are too poor to retire and are living longer with little or no financial security. Nearly one-third of U.S. heads of households ages 55 and older have no pension or retirement savings and a median annual income of about $19,000. A growing proportion of the nation's elderly are too EFTA00834915 poor to retire and too young to die. Many rely on Social Security and minimal pensions, in part because half of all workers have no employer-backed retirement plans. Eight in to Americans say they will work well into their 6os or skip retirement entirely. Inline image 6 Elder poverty rates are twice as high among Blacks and Latinos compared to the U.S. population as a whole: 19.4 percent of Black seniors and 19.0 percent of Latino seniors have incomes below the federal poverty line, compared to 9.4 percent for the senior population overall. Less than a third of employed Latinos and less than half of Black workers are covered by an employer sponsored retirement plan, a critical resource in ensuring adequate retirement income. As a result, they are disproportionately reliant on the limited income provided by Social Security. Inline image 5 EFTA00834916 Among retirees age 6o and older, people of color are disproportionately likely to be low income: for 2007-2009, 31.6 percent of Blacks and 46.5 percent of Latinos were in the bottom 25 percent income group. The "other" race group, which includes Asian/Pacific Islander and Native American populations, is also more likely to be low-income (38 percent). Imagine the face of senior poverty. Who do you see? If you see a woman, you'd be spot on. That's because the same challenges that affect women in their younger years, follow them and magnify as they age — income inequality, low wage jobs, discrimination, societal expectations of women as caregivers, lack of financial education. When you add declining health, longevity as compared to male partners, racial disparities and disability to the mix, the result is a full-blown crisis of illness, hunger, depression and isolation. It should therefore come as no surprise that one in five women over age 65 who lives alone in America is living in poverty. Yet it isn't even on the political or media radar. I'm talking about women who must make daily choices between heat and medicine — who consider suicide on a regular basis. Sandy, Myrtle, Lidia and Dolly Web Link: https://vimeo.com/m9_46751.3 Sandy, Myrtle, Lidia and Dolly agreed to share the struggles they face in their daily lives in the hope that if enough people learned the truth and spoke out about it, politicians would be forced to listen and to act on behalf of low-income seniors by preserving and expanding the programs that help these women survive — Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and the Supplemental Security Income program. The life events that led these women to their current situations could happen to many women we know. They are not unusual, just everyday misfortunes and disappointments — magnified by age and economic vulnerability. Like many poor Native American women of her generation, Dollie received only limited formal education. She came to California from Oklahoma with her family as a child and had to quit school and go to work when her father became ill. Her lack of formal education led to a lifetime of low-wage, physically demanding jobs that made saving impossible. Because many of those jobs were "off-the- books" she didn't build the work history necessary to qualify for Social Security. She now relies on her monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit of $877 to survive. Sandy had a good job as a registered nurse, and a middle class standard of living. She lost her husband and her ability to work her physically demanding job around the same time, leaving her with no income. Because she had a good job, she receives just enough Social Security to be disqualified from means-based assistance like Medicaid and subsidized housing. As a result she spends a large percentage of her monthly income on rent, leaving little money to cover food or her Medicare co-payments and premiums. EFTA00834917 Lidia came to the US from Cuba as a child. For 20 years she ran her own barbershop business, while she raised a family, bought a home, worked hard and thrived. She became too ill to cut hair about the same time as the housing market collapsed. She lost her home and unknowingly signed away her rights to her ex-husband's police pension, depriving herself of around $1,800 per month in benefits. Today she lives in subsidized senior housing, struggles to afford food and tries to avoid relying too much on her children for help. Myrtle had a good job and a big plan for travel when she retired. Then she got injured at the workplace and had to go on disability. Her husband then divorced her. She managed to keep her home, but she struggles daily with medical and other expenses on her limited Social Security Income benefit. These women and growing numbers of others like them have nothing to rely on but the limited and increasingly threatened social safety net programs — like Medicaid and SSI. We all need to fight hard to preserve and expand these programs — especially with a new Congress that appears committed to reducing the assistance these programs provide. The solutions to senior poverty are well within our grasp. As a country we have the ability to ensure that every senior has access to a safe place to live, healthy food to eat, and affordable, accessible medical care — in essence the right to age in dignity. Older women are twice as likely to live in poverty as men due to wage discrimination, low wage jobs, death of a spouse, and divorce. And this is especially true for black women, as 25% of black women over 65 live in poverty and 26% of Native American women over 65 live in poverty. 23% of Hispanic women over 65 live in poverty. These women are living from paycheck to paycheck, often they are living from day to day, facing the decision of either eating versus buying new medicines. It cost an average of $23,317 a year for a senior living alone in California to meet her basic needs. While the average Social Security income for retire women is $12,155. Take medicines for the elderly, whereas they may have the coverage often they don't have the money to make the co-pays. They have four for a lot of seeing is what happens is that the healthcare stops right there. Older women spend on average of $5,036 a year on out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Which is more than older man and any other age group. And women age 85 and over spend an average of $8,574. Let's remember that one in five seniors nearing retirement have no retirement savings at all. Often the elderly end up homeless living in cars when they cannot get into shelters or low-cost housing. And this can be for a year and more. Seniors with that access the housing, food, and healthcare face and possible choices. i.rti Inline image 2 It is not fun getting old and we have to do something for these people who don't have families and the means to take care of themselves especially in the richest country in the world. These people are asking for much: a basic income, a safe place to live, affordable health care, and healthy food. Please see the attached story in the Los Angeles Times by John Glionna - Too Poor to Retire and Too Young EFTA00834918 to Die - story of Dolores Westfall who in her 7os lost her home. Her savings long gone, and having never done much long-term financial planning, Westfall left her home in California to live in an aging RV she calls Big Foot, driving from one temporary job to the next. "I want to live life as much as I can. Before I don't have any." She endures what is for many aging Americans an unforgiving economy. In 2013, 9.6 million Americans over the age of 60 -- or one of every six older men and women -- could not reliably buy or access food at least part of the year, according to an analysis from researchers at the University of Kentucky and the University of Illinois, using the most recent data available. The country was doing a "worse job in trying to end senior hunger in America: said Enid Borden, president of the National Foundation to End Senior Hunger in Alexandria, Va., which commissioned the report. She noted the number of seniors who "face the threat of hunger has gone up every single year since we started doing the research on this. And that's not good." Across the country, the rate of food insecurity -- the academic term for a disruption in the ability to maintain a basic, nutritious diet -- among seniors has more than doubled since 2001, according to the National Council on Aging. And it is projected to climb even further as the Baby Boom generation gets older. Out-of-pocket medical expenses, which increase steadily as people age, often use up large portions of monthly income for seniors, money that otherwise might be used on groceries. The descent into privation for seniors accustomed to middle-class life is usually swift and unforgiving, say the advocates who aid them. It is often also triggered by failing health, the inability to work or the death of a spouse. As a result more and more of our elders are facing the rest of their lives living in poverty, while politicians are arguing about giving more tax breaks to the wealthy as their solution. Who's kidding who I> ****** Sorry Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz Immigration has changed the world and America — for the better Inline image 1 .4 migrant holds his passport am! a train ticket in Frellaming. Germany September 15. 2015. EFTA00834919 In today's hostile anti-Immigrants climate whereby some argue that the immigrants flooding across borders, steal jobs, are a burden on taxpayers and threaten indigenous culture and all of the Republican candidates for the GOP's 2016 Presidential nomination concur, most notable Donald Trump, who wants to deport 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in the United States — the reality is that evidence (World Economic Forum) clearly shows that immigrants provide significant economic benefits. That immigration boosts economic growth, meets skill shortages, and helps create a more dynamic society. However, there are local and short-term economic and social costs. As with debates on trade, where protectionist instincts tend to overwhelm the longer term need for more open societies, the core role that immigrants play in economic development is often overwhelmed by defensive measures to keep immigrants out. A solution needs to be found through policies that allow the benefits to compensate for the losses. Around the world, there are an estimated 23o million migrants, making up about 3% of the global population. This share has not changed much in the past 100 years. But as the world's population has quadrupled, so too has the number of migrants. And since the early 1900s, the number of countries has increased from 5o to over 200. More borders mean more migrants. Inline image 2 Of the global annual flow of around 15 million migrants, most fit into one of four categories: economic (6 million), student (4 million), family (2 million), and refugee/asylum (3 million). There are about 20 million officially recognized refugees worldwide, with 86% of them hosted by neighboring countries, up from 70% 10 years ago. In the US, over a third of documented immigrants are skilled. Similar trends exist in Europe. These percentages reflect the needs of those economies. Governments that are more open to immigration assist their country's businesses, which become more agile, adaptive and profitable in the war for talent. Governments in turn receive more revenue and citizens thrive on the dynamism that highly- skilled migrants bring. Yet it is not only higher-skilled migrants who are vital. In the USA and elsewhere, unskilled immigrants are an essential part of the construction, agriculture and services sector. Again for those who believe that immigrants take jobs and destroy economies. Evidence proves this wrong. In the United States, immigrants have been founders of companies such as Google, Intel, EFTA00834920 PayPal, eBay, and Yahoo! In fact, skilled immigrants account for over half of Silicon Valley start-ups and over half of patents, even though they make up less than 15% of the population. There have been three times as many immigrant Nobel Laureates, National Academy of Science members, and Academy Award film directors than the immigrant share of the population would predict. Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concluded that "immigrants expand the economy's productive capacity by stimulating investment and promoting specialization, which produces efficiency gains and boosts income per worker". Research on the net fiscal impact of immigration shows that immigrants contribute significantly more in taxes than the benefits and services they receive in return. According to the World Bank, increasing immigration by a margin equal to 3% of the workforce in developed countries would generate global economic gains of $356 billion. Some economists predict that if borders were completely open and workers were allowed to go where they pleased, it would produce gains as high as $39 trillion for the world economy over 25 years. Inline image 3 In the future, it will become even more imperative to ensure a strong labor supply augmented by foreign workers. Globally, the population is ageing. There were only 14 million people over the age of 8o living in 1950. There are well over too million today and current projections indicate there will be nearly 400 million people over 8o by 2050. With fertility collapsing to below replacement levels in all regions except Africa, experts are predicting rapidly rising dependency ratios and a decline in the OECD workforce from around 800 million to close to 6o0 million by 2050. The problem is particularly acute in North America, Europe and Japan. EFTA00834921 There are, however, legitimate concerns about large-scale migration. The possibility of social dislocation is real. Just like globalization — a strong force for good in the world — the positive aspects are diffuse and often intangible, while the negative aspects bite hard for a small group of people. Yes, those negative aspects must be managed. But that management must come with the recognition that migration has always been one of the most important drivers of human progress and dynamism. Immigration is good. And in the age of globalization, barriers to migration pose a threat to economic growth and sustainability. Free migration, like totally free trade, remains a utopian prospect, even though within regions (such as Europe) this has proved workable. As John Stuart Mill forcefully argued, we need to ensure that the local and short-term social costs of immigration do not detract from their role "as one of the primary sources ofprogress". And for the Neanderthals who forget that that United States is a country of immigrants and its diversity created the strongest economic powerhouse on the planet — immigration is a plus, not a minus — and most illegal immigrants are doing the jobs that others don't and won't. So True For all those who said that 12 year-old "Tamir Rice shouldn't have been playing with a toy gun in a public recreational area... see the difference...." !dine image 1 Please don't ever again say that justice is colorblind when no one is at fault for the death of a 12 year- old playing with friends in a playground. If You Want to Understand Why Refegees are Fleeing Syria EFTA00834922  See the video on the web link below Inline image 1 Web Link: https://m.facebook.com/eazzuziposts/ 1154042631275348 Horns is a city in western Syria and the capital of the Horns Governorate. It is located 162 kilometers (101 mi) north of Damascus on the Orontes River and was the central link between the interior cities and the Mediterranean coast. Previous to the Syrian war, Horns was a major industrial center, and with a population of at least 652,609 people in 2004, it was the third largest city in Syria after Aleppo to the north and the capital Damascus to the south. Its population use to reflect Syria's general religious diversity, composed mostly of Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims and Alawite and Christian minorities. There was also a number of historic mosques and churches in the city, and it is close to the Krak des Chevaliers castle, a world heritage site. For approximately 2,000 years, Homs has served as a key agricultural market, production site and trade center for the villages of northern Syria. It has also provided security services to the hinterland of Syria, protecting it from invading forces. Excavations at the Citadel of Homs indicate that the earliest settlement at the site dates back to around 2300 BCE. Biblical scholars have identified the city with Zobah mentioned in the Bible. In 1274 BCE, a battle took place between the forces of the Egyptian Empire under Ramesses II and the Hittite Empire under Muwatalli II at the city of ICadesh on the Orontes River near Homs. It was possibly the largest chariot battle ever fought, involving perhaps 5,000-6,000 chariots. Horns did not emerge into the historical record until the ist century BCE at the time of the Seleucids. It later became the capital of a kingdom ruled by the Emesani dynasty who gave the city its name. Originally a center of worship for the sun god El-Gabal, it later gained importance in Christianity under the Byzantines. Horns was conquered by the Muslims in the 7th century and made capital of a district that bore its current name. Throughout the Islamic era, Muslim dynasties contending for control of Syria sought after Horns due to the city's strategic position in the area. Horns began to decline under the Ottomans and only in the 19th century did the city regain its economic importance when its cotton industry boomed. During French Mandate rule, the city became a center of insurrection and, after independence in 1946, a center of Baathist resistance to the first Syrian govemments. EFTA00834923  This is what Horns looked like prior to this current war. Inline image 1 As a result of the ongoing Syrian civil war, when Horns became an opposition stronghold, the Syrian government launched a military assault against the city in May 2011. As you will see in the video, this fighting has left much of the city completely destroyed and thousands dead. In December 2015, the last rebel forces withdrew from Horns as per a UN mediated ceasefire. So if you want to know why so many Syrians are willing to risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean for the safety of Europe, remember this video and understand that all of this started with the Bush/Cheney gunboat diplomacy and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in search of Regime Change without accepting the consequences for today's destruction, death and massive destabilization. ****** You Got To Be Kidding 25 States Will Let You Carry a Concealed Gun Without Making Sure You Know How to Shoot One Inline image 1 A review of statewide licensing requirements shows that in half the country, applicants are not required to demonstrate their shooting ability. EFTA00834924 In an article by Jennifer Mascia - 25 States Will Let You Carry a Concealed Gun Without Making Sure You Know How to Shoot One — she tells a story about how after the recent shooting of 36 civilians in San Bernardino, California by two terrorist, a New York sheriff issued a call to arms. "I want to encourage citizens of Ulster County who are licensed to carry a firearm to PLEASE DO SO," wrote Paul J. Van Clarcum on Facebook. And he was just one in a string of law enforcement officers to implore residents to arm themselves amid the procession of terrorist's attacks and mass shootings that rocked the United States in 2015. But while appeals for more Americans to carry guns intensify, there's no guarantee that civilians will know how to handle their weapons should the need arise: A state-by-state review of training standards shows that in nearly half the country, there is no universal requirement that applicants for concealed carry permits undergo so-called live-fire training. Just 24 states and the District of Columbia include mandatory range time as part of their permitting process, while the remaining 25 have no such requirement in place. (Vermont does not issue concealed carry permits at all.) States that do not mandate live-fire training include places such as Pennsylvania, where applicants must only meet a set of criteria — a clean criminal record and mental health history, for instance — to be handed a permit. On the other end of the spectrum, in order to receive a permit in Kentucky, applicants must demonstrate their shooting ability by placing 11 of 20 rounds on a full-size silhouette target. At least 8 million Americans had an active permit to carry a concealed weapon in 2012, according to a report by the United States Government Accountability Office. A more recent estimate by pro-gun researcher John Lott places that figure closer to 13 million. "I have people who come to my class who basically couldn't hit the broad side of a barn," Rich Strohmeier, a firearms instructor in Fisherville, Kentucky, tells The Trace. "I think Kentucky is doing the right thing and everyone else is doing the wrong thing." "It takes 2,500 repetitions to pick up a pistol correctly," he adds. To compile a national breakdown of live-fire requirements, Mascia examined state statutes covering concealed carry licensing. When the language of a state's law did not specify a training requirement one way or the other — some call for a basic handgun safety course but do not spell out whether that encompasses a live-fire component — she contacted the state's centralized issuing authority. Some states, like California and Hawaii, have no such central authority setting the rules for concealed carry, leaving it to local authorities to issue permits and establish training requirements. It's possible that these local authorities make permit-seekers in their individual jurisdictions go through training that goes beyond state minimums. For instance, though California does not have a statewide standard regarding live-fire training, although sheriffs in half a dozen counties do require it for permit seekers under their purview. Hawaii also does not have a statewide live fire requirement. At the same time, it's been a labelled a "no issue" state by gun-right advocates: Just 21 private citizens applied for concealed carry licenses in 2014, and all were denied. But ultimately such local quirks fall outside the scope of her analysis. Instead she focused solely on state level requirements — and the simple question of whether the licensing authority takes steps to ensure that every permit applicant demonstrates competence at the range before granting a license to carry a gun into public spaces. Accordingly, neither California nor Hawaii appear on our live-fire list. EFTA00834925  Inline image 2 Typically, firearms laws in blue states are stricter than they are in red states. But in some places, the split on live-fire mandates does not follow the usual partisan divide. New York and Massachusetts, for instance, require permits to purchase a handgun, and Washington is one of only eight states to require background checks on all gun sales. Yet these states, named among the worst for gun ownership by Guns & Ammo, do not require live-fire training before issuing a permit to carry a concealed handgun. Even New York City — where concealed carry permit applicants go through a selective, months-long process involving letters of necessity, character references, and multiple interviews with police — does not require applicants to learn how to shoot a gun in order to carry one in public. In Texas — a state which just legalized the open carry of handguns, and guns on college campuses — applicants are required to demonstrate their shooting proficiency by firing a series of shots from varying distances. In practice, the instructors who administer the training can let applicants keep firing until they record a passing score. But by subscribing to a live-fire requirement, Texas is aligning itself with a belief about gun safety: Concealed carriers who aren't familiar with how to use their weapon pose a danger to themselves and the public. "I always use the driving analogy: You get your teenager behind the wheel, it's a complete mess," says Kelly Venden, owner of Criterion Tactical in San Antonio. "It's the same thing with a weapon. You get a person who's unfamiliar and put a live weapon in their hand and expect them to be both competent and safe, you're asking a lot of that person." In transportation policy, the solution is to require the driver's license applicant to show that he or she can parallel park, execute a three-point turn, and merge safely into traffic as a DMV staffer scores their performance. But here's where the car analogy breaks down for Venden. He thinks government mandated live-fire training for concealed carriers goes too far. "I agree with it from the safety perspective but disagree with it constitutionally," he says. Instead, Venden sees the issue as one of individual responsibility for gun owners. "You have to do your due diligence to be both safe and proficient." Six states — Maine, Arizona, Kansas, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont— do not require a permit to carry a concealed handgun inside their borders. But some residents of these "permitless" states opt to obtain a license anyway, often for the ability to carry out of state. (Only in Vermont is this not an option, since Vermont does not issue concealed carry permits at all.) The only permitless states that require live-fire training for a concealed carry permit are Kansas and Alaska. EFTA00834926  [it online image 3 States recognize other states' concealed carry permits through two mechanisms. "Recognition" agreements, in which a state honors another state's permit, are nonreciprocal. The next level up is "reciprocity," which describes a mutual agreement between states to honor each other's permits. Through recognition and reciprocity agreements, 44 states allow people to carry a concealed handgun within their borders without having been required to show that they know how to properly fire one. Only six states require both residents and concealed carriers visiting from out of state to undergo live- fire training. They are Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Minnesota. Residents of states with higher permitting standards have used recognition and reciprocity agreements to get around licensing rules that might disqualify them from concealed carrying (or are just deemed too great a hassle). Last year, some North Carolina residents were found to be skirting their state's basic handgun training class requirement, which includes a mandatory live-fire component, by obtaining concealed carry permits from neighboring Virginia, where the permit process is more relaxed. Permits from Virginia are valid in North Carolina, and only ask applicants to pay a fee, watch a gun safety video, and answer an online questionnaire. Attorney General Mark R. Herring announced in December that Virginia would disband recognition agreements with 25 states, including North Carolina. But last week Governor Terry McAuliffe brokered a deal to reverse the new rule, enraging gun violence prevention advocates. Even if Virginia were still moving toward toughening its permitting rules, North Carolinians unwilling to visit the range would still have had their choice of options. Utah and Arizona not only have no live fire requirements, but also allow people to apply for their permits from anywhere in the country (Utah permit classes are popular asfar away as Maryland,for instance). Through recognition agreements, permits from those two states are valid in three dozen others, making it possible for their holders to crisscross the country toting concealed guns, without anyone having verified that their aim is true. The fact that you can get a concealed permit in half of the states without demonstrating proficiency is beyond ridiculous.... and this is my rant of the week.... WEEK's READINGS EFTA00834927 Ronald Reagan made it all worse: How Republicans — the real party with their hands out — convinced white America that government was out to get them Anti-government diatribes from the prime beneficiaries of government programs? How the GOP lies to white America Inline image 1 Ronald Reagan; Ed Rollins, Lee Atwater, Lyn Nofziger The men occupying Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge represent a bizarre contradiction. They howl about the overreach of the federal government, but they are among the biggest beneficiaries of government programs. For 150 years, their brand of logic has pitted individuals against an activist government, Western cowboys against black Americans, and the West against the East. Behind their protest is a uniquely American story that welds racism to anti- government sentiment. It comes from a peculiar coincidence of timing: that Reconstruction after the Civil War coincided with U.S. expansion into the American West. Real "patriots," the Bundys claim, stand against a behemoth government that has grasped their lands and their rights. America, after all, is made by ambitious individuals working their way up. A government that promotes social welfare or regulates business destroys the American system because it both limits a man's ability to make money and requires tax revenue. Those taxes strike at the very heart of individualism because they redistribute money from hard workers to lazy people. Ammon and Ryan Bundy and their compatriots are quite clear about exactly who those lazy people are. The younger Bundys' father, Given, the Nevada rancher who started an armed standoff with government officials in 2014 over grazing rights, had plenty to say about the "Negro" who lived in EFTA00834928 government housing and "didn't have nothing to do."African-Americans' laziness led them to abort their children and send their young men to jail. Bundy wondered: "are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life... or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no morefreedom. They got lessfreedom." And yet, the Bundys are perfectly comfortably taking money from government programs themselves. Aside from animal kill programs that protect herds, drought relief payments, and the 93 percent discount at which the government assesses grazing fees, Ammon Bundy borrowed more than $500,000 from the federal government through a loan guarantee program for small businesses. Ammon Bundy's father, Cliven, owes the government more than $1 million in grazing fees for running his cattle on public land. No matter how you slice it, taxpayers have subsidized the Bundys. Observers have made much of this obvious contradiction. But it is not a sign only of the Bundys' lack of self-awareness, or even simply of white supremacy. It is the intellectual formula that has driven American politics since 1980. That formula was laid down immediately after the Civil War. In 1865, the South was so devastated by the war that Southerners, white and black, were starving. To provide rations and medical care, and to place homeless Southerners on farming land, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. To emphasize that government aid would be temporary, they placed what became known as the Freedmen's Bureau within the War Department. In summer 1865, military officers distributed 150,000 rations, a third of them to white people. But the agents also took on an unexpected role. Southern states refused to let ex-slaves testify in court, leaving them to the tender mercies of angry white Southerners, who cheated, beat, raped and murdered them. So Freedmen's Bureau officers began to hear the cases that pitted black and white Southerners against each other. While agents often forced black people back to work for abusive employers or demanded subservient behavior, they decided cases in favor of ex-slaves about 68 percent of the time. So Southern Democrats rewrote history. They had not fought the Civil War over slavery after all, they insisted. They had fought it to stop a huge government bureaucracy from forcing its way into their homes and regulating the way they treated "their people." They had fought, they now claimed, not for slavery, but for states' rights. When Congress tried to expand the Freedmen's Bureau the following year to enable it to provide education for poor Americans of all races, President Andrew Johnson added the final ideological piece to the Democrats' attack on an activist government. That piece was taxation. During the war, the Republican Congress had created the nation's first national taxes, including the income tax. Johnson vetoed the bill expanding the Freedmen's Bureau on two grounds. First, although the schools in the bill would have disproportionately helped whites in the Border States, Johnson claimed that it provided benefits for African-Americans that had never been accorded to white people. Second, he explained that the bill would create an army of officials that would harass Southern whites, while the taxes necessary to support them would impoverish hardworking white people. EFTA00834929 This formula—that an activist government sucks white tax dollars to provide for lazy minorities—has been sold to voters ever since. It caught on largely because of the odd happenstance that it coincided with the rise of the American cowboy. During this very moment, the cattle industry was taking off on the Western plains. Cowboys tended to be former Confederates who were dirt poor and good with a horse and a gun. Their dirty, hard, ill-paid and dangerous lives mirrored those of Eastern industrial workers, but Southern Democratic newspaper editors grabbed hold of the idea of the free and independent cowboy as the embodiment of American individualism. Cowboys, they said, were the very opposite of the ex-slaves the government was coddling. Cowboys were hardworking young men who asked nothing of the government. The reality, of course, was that the cattle industry depended almost entirely on the American government. The Army protected herds and cattlemen against Indians, Congress funded the railroads that moved cattle to Eastern markets, and Indian agents bought cattle to fulfill the ration provisions of treaties. Cattlemen, in short, received massive government subsidies. But the image of the Western cowboy as a hardworking man who asked only to be left alone got traction among Southerners and Northern Democrats who hated the idea of black rights, and who loathed the Republicans' activist government that was trying to enforce those rights. By the 1870s, ex-Confederates had taken their support for Western individualism a step further. They insisted the federal government was actively persecuting Western individuals. Their hero was Jesse James, the former Confederate guerilla-turned-criminal. When a Republican state government in Missouri refused to let ex-Confederates sit on juries or practice law, Democrats used the fugitive James to bludgeon their political opponents. James was "an angel of light," as one said, who wanted to turn himself in to authorities, but could not because he would not get a fair trial in a courtroom full of his political opponents. He was a good man, the story went, but the government was forcing him into criminality. And then, the governor of Missouri cut a deal with Robert Ford to kill James. That a government official had colluded to murder a citizen added fuel to the idea that Westerners were in danger from an overweening government. The political construct that lionized Western individuals and demonized an activist government, a government that apparently helped minorities, was a product of a peculiar moment in American history. Neither the moment nor the ideology lasted. The political construct that idealized cowboys fell into disrepute during and immediately after the New Deal. In those years, Americans turned away from Western individualism and toward the idea of an activist government. Westerners and Southerners both, after all, were suffering from the Dust Bowl and the boll weevil. They wanted government programs even more than Easterners did. But in the 195os, the Movement Conservative war on the New Deal resurrected the post-Civil War political cliché. Since the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, Movement Conservatives have tapped into the idea that an activist government redistributed wealth to lazy minorities. But they have also pushed hard on the idea that true Americans are Western individualists. Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater launched this association in 1964 by dismissing Brown v. Board as governmental overreach and fictionalizing his wealthy upbringing as a hardscrabble Western frontier story; Ronald Reagan made it even more explicit by contrasting his image of the Welfare Queen' with his own cowboy hat and EFTA00834930 Western ranch. And yet, the Goldwater and the Reagan stories mirrored those of the historical Western individual: their regions, and their own families, prospered only when government contracts poured money into their communities. To them, there was no contradiction between their championing of individualism and benefiting from government largess. According to Movement Conservatives, Americans who believe in individualism want nothing from the government, and thus, unlike grasping minorities, they are the nation's true patriots. The government should do nothing for "lazy black Americans," who only want an un-American redistribution of wealth through taxes. But, paradoxically, the government can — and should — use tax money to help America's individualists. This is the peculiar contradiction that defines today's politics. Confederates, cowboys, anti- government diatribes from people who are prime beneficiaries of government programs ... thanks to the Bundys we are celebrating the 15oth anniversary of Reconstruction by reliving it. Heather Cox Richardson — The Salon Magazine — January 17, 2016 R.I.P., Bitcoin. It's time to move on. The most recent Bitcoin obituary Inline image 2 The Bitcoin community is engaged in an apparent civil war. Bitcoin is a digital asset and a payment system invented by Satoshi Nakamoto who published the invention in 2008 and released it as open-source software in 2009. The system is peer-to-peer; users EFTA00834931 can transact directly without an intermediary. Transactions are verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called the block chain. The ledger uses bitcoin as its unit of account. The system works without a central repository or single administrator, which has led the U.S. Treasury to categorize bitcoin as a decentralized virtual currency. Bitcoin is often called the first cryptocurrency, although prior systems existed. Bitcoin is more correctly described as the first decentralized digital currency. It is the largest of its kind in terms of total market value. Bitcoins are created as a reward for payment processing work in which users offer their computing power to verify and record payments into a public ledger. This activity is called mining and miners are rewarded with transaction fees and newly created bitcoins. Besides being obtained by mining, bitcoins can be exchanged for other currencies, products, and services. Users can send and receive bitcoins for an optional transaction fee. Bitcoin as a form of payment for products and services has grown, and merchants have had an incentive to accept it because fees were generally lower than the 2-3% typically imposed by credit card processors. Unlike credit cards, any fees are paid by the purchaser, not the vendor. The European Banking Authority and other sources have warned that bitcoin users are not protected by refund rights or chargebacks. Despite a large increase in the number of merchants accepting bitcoin, the cryptocurrency does not have much momentum in retail transactions. The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, law enforcement, and media. Criminal activities are primarily centered around black markets and theft, though officials in countries such as the United States also recognize that bitcoin can provide legitimate financial services. Bitcoin has drawn the support of a few politicians, notably U.S. Presidential candidate Rand Paul, who accepts donations in bitcoin. In August 2015 it was announced that Barclays would become the first UK high street bank to start accepting bitcoin, with the bank revealing that it plans to allow users to make charitable donations using the currency. And in the 21 September 2015 press release, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) declared bitcoin to be a commodity covered by the Commodity Exchange Act. Not long ago, venture capitalists were talking about how Bitcoin was going to transform the global currency system and render governments powerless to police monetary transactions. Now the cryptocurrency is fighting for survival. The reality came to light on Jan. 14, when its influential developer, Mike Hearn, declared Bitcoin a failure and disclosed that he had sold all of his Bitcoins. The price of Bitcoin fell 10 percent in a single day on the news, a sad result for those who are losing money on it. Bitcoin did have great potential, but it is damaged beyond repair. A replacement is badly needed. Most currency and transaction systems today are opaque, inefficient and expensive. Take the North American stock exchange NASDAQ as an example. It is among the most technologically advanced in the world. Yet if I buy or sell a share of Facebook on the NASDAQ, I have to wait several days for the trade to finalize and clear. This is unacceptable; it should take milliseconds. In Venezuela, citizens wishing to buy anything of value on supermarket shelves wait all day in lines to do so, because hyperinflation causes the paper currencies in their pockets to lose significant value every day. When migrant workers there send money back to their families in places such as Mexico, EFTA00834932 India and Africa, they are gouged by money-transfer companies — paying as much as 5 to 12 percent in fees. And even in the United States, payment processors and credit-card companies collect merchant fees of 1 to 2.5 percent of the value of every transaction. This is a burden on the economy. Bitcoin was born with serious flaws. It was unregulated and provided anonymity, so it rapidly became a haven for drug dealers and anarchists. Its price fluctuated wildly, allowing for crazy speculation. And, with the majority of Bitcoin being owned by the small group that started promoting it, it has been compared to a Ponzi scheme. Exchanges built on top of it also had severe security vulnerabilities. And then there were the venture capitalists who got carried away. Several of them purchased considerable coinage and then began to hype it as a powerful disruption that could underpin all manner of financial innovation, from mobile banking to borderless, instant money transfers. They also poured millions of dollars into Bitcoin start-ups hoping to reap even greater fortunes. Inline image 1 Bitcoin is virtual money that cuts out banks and credit card companies, and has gotten more popular recently. Here's what you need to know about the original cryptocurrency. Web Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/postty/business/technology/bitcoin-explained-in-90- seconds/2014/02/27/7b6ae408-9fe9.11e3-878c-65222df220eb video.html But Bitcoin was not ready for prime-time. Hearn's criticism has laid bare the nightmarish reality — a list of negatives that is both long and frightening. Chinese Bitcoin miners control more than 5o percent of the currency-creation capacity and are connected to the rest of the Bitcoin ecosystem through the Great Firewall of China. This slows down the entire system because, as Hearn explained, it is the equivalent of a bad hotel WiFi connection. It also gives the People's Army a strategic vantage point over a global currency. The Bitcoin distributed network can process only a handful of transactions per second. That causes unpredictable transaction-resolution times and other behaviors that one really does not want as part of a monetary system. Bitcoin fees can, at peak times, exceed credit-card fees, for example. As if all this weren't bad enough, the Bitcoin community appears to be engaged in open civil war. Its members have been censoring debates and attacking each other's servers. A tiny EFTA00834933  committee of five core developers that contro