hallmarkchannel.com/santariffic – Hallmark Channel Santa-Riffic Sweepstakes. Wonderful Christmas card greeting from the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States. Do you remember those beautiful cards from Hallmarks? These special cards who bring warmth in the heart of your dear friends during times of celebrations. Hallmark Cards are also the owners of Hallmark Channel, the cable television network who knows how to celebrate Christmas.
Their countdown to Christmas is already started with their latest Christmas marketing promotion where you can enter their Hallmark Channel's Santa-Riffic Sweepstakes to win a $17,000 trip for four to the North Pole or daily prizes of MP3 players, Christmas trees and wreaths, cameras, and more. Who want to go to the North Pole? Well I want go, so i can see Santa Claus. lol. Wish you all good luck and a happy merry Christmas. This promotion sweepstakes ends on December 25, 2012 Visit https://hallmarkchannel.com/santariffic and follow the on-screen instructions to enter the Christmas contest. SWEEPS has Ended..


text:
Q: Why do named arguments in python have consistent memory? The following code
def f(x,l=[]):
    for i in range(x):
        l.append(i*i)
    print(l)

f(2)
f(3)

outputs

[0, 1]
[0, 1, 0, 1, 4]

And not the trivial

[0, 1]
[0, 1, 4]

This means that the named argument l is actually a single consistent variable THAT DOESN'T GET RESET on new calls to f.
This is obviously not a bug, and is by design.
My question is why is this the desired behavior? To me it seems more confusing than helpful, and this would make me never want to use default values that are not immutable.

A: Functions are defined once, so when using default args with mutable types, they use a single reference to that default arg (because it's again, defined once). This is why it is bad practice to use lists, dicts, etc as default args over immutable types like None, int, str, etc.
As an example:

def mutable_arg(x=[]):
    x.append(3)
    print(x)

def immutable_arg(x=None):
    x = x or []
    x.append(3)
    print(x)

mutable_arg() # prints [3]
mutable_arg() # prints [3,3]
immutable_arg() # prints [3]
immutable_arg() # prints [3]

In immutable_arg, it's creating a new list for each call, rather than re-using the same default as in mutable_arg

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Atorvastatin is a member of the drug class known as statins, used for lowering cholesterol and thereby reducing cardiovascular disease. Atorvastatin inhibits a rate-determining enzyme located in hepatic tissue used in cholesterol synthesis, which lowers the amount of cholesterol produced. This also has the effect of lowering the total amount of LDL cholesterol; Atorvastatin is a member of the drug class known as statins, used for lowering cholesterol and thereby reducing cardiovascular disease. Atorvastatin inhibits a rate-determining enzyme located in hepatic tissue used in cholesterol synthesis, which lowers the amount of cholesterol produced. This also has the effect of lowering the total amount of LDL cholesterol; As with other statins, atorvastatin is a competitive inhibitor of HMG-CoA reductase. Unlike most others, however, it is a completely synthetic compound. HMG-CoA reductase catalyzes the reduction of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) to mevalonate, which is the rate-limiting step in hepatic cholesterol biosynthesis. Inhibition of the enzyme decreases de novo cholesterol synthesis, increasing expression of low-density lipoprotein receptors (LDL receptors) on hepatocytes. This increases the LDL uptake by the hepatocytes, decreasing the amount of LDL in the blood.
This compound belongs to the class of organic compounds known as diphenylpyrroles. These are aromatic heterocyclic compounds with a structure based on a pyrrole ring linked to exactly two phenyl groups.


text:
bolt-extension-starter
======================

A starter skeleton for a Bolt Extension

To get going run the following command:

`composer create-project --no-install rossriley/bolt-extension-starter <newextname>`

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This webpage is for Sirthelion Telumendil, my character on the MUSH Elendor. Follow these links to learn more about Sir, Lorien, and Elendor, as well as little blurbs about some of Sir's favourite people!
Elendor - best MUSH in the world!


text:
What Is Information Mapping?
IA: A Specialization
Parcel Mapping
An Idea Mapping Certification Course
A Survey of Major Geographic Information Systems Languages
The Mercator Map
Floods can happen anywhere. They may not even be near a body of water, but river and coastal flooding are two of the most common types. Flood damage can be caused by poor drainage, heavy rains, and even nearby construction projects.
Flood maps show likely a flood is. A place with a 1% chance or higher of flooding each year is considered to be a high risk. The areas have a one-in-four chance of flooding during a 30-year mortgage.
FEMA and your community work together to update flood maps. Every community that participates in the National Flood Insurance Program has a floodplain administrator who works with FEMA. Preliminary flood maps will be available for review once the data analysis done.
When dealing with large information systems, experts choose a specialized niche in the field since it is more complex. IA sub-specialties include focusing on search, Metadata, Taxonomy, and other things.
Parcel mapping is a process in which land parcels are created. Parcel mapping service creates maps from base maps with details about the ownership of properties and other information Parcel maps are the base for any such maps.
If you want to teach Idea Mapping as part of your business, you need to take an Idea Mapping Certification course that will give you the necessary skills to do so.
A variety of technologies and concepts are incorporated into the discipline of Geographic Information Systems. To understand the capabilities of the geographic information system, it is important to learn about mapping, spatial and statistical analysis, database management, and programming. Many of the positions in the field of Geographic Information Systems include customizing applications.
Maps can show where shops are located in a mall, how subway lines are located in a city, and the layout of a historic battle. Most people know the map of the globe as Mercator. The creator of it is a Flemish man named Gerardus Mercator.
Source and more reading about what is information mapping:
Fema.gov
Usability.gov
Riunitedformarriage.org
Ideamappingsuccess.com
Gislounge.com
Smartdraw.com
What Is Information Computer?
What Is Information Barrier?
What Is Information Made Of?
What Is Information Extortion?
What Is Information Utility Marketing?
What Is Information Collection?
What Is Information Governance in Healthcare?
What Is Information Policy?
What Is Information Asymmetry in Accounting?
Information Asymmetry in Business, Asymmetric Due Diligence in a Lender's Practice, Market Economy: Asymmetric Information, Asymmetric Information in Business and Financial Arrangements and more about what is information asymmetry in accounting.
What Is Communication Failure?
Using Technical Language to Explain Questions and Answers, A Method for the Control of a Relativistic Aircraft with Communication Failure, Communication Culture and more about what is communication failure.
What Is Digital Jpeg?
JPEG: A File Type of Photojournalics, JPEG: A Lossy Compression Mechanism for Digital Images, PackJPG: A tool for converting JPEG images into vectorial and digital formats and more about what is digital jpeg.
What Is Website Ui?
Mobile User Interface, Designing a User Interface for Your Site, User Interface Design, Designing Websites with Feedback, A Simple and Attractive User Interface Design for a Website and more about what is website ui.
What Is Internet of Things in Education?
Smart Technology in Education, Coding Education in the Internet of Things, Internet of Things for Improved Education, The Internet of Things for Education and more about what is internet of things in education.
What Is Digital Audio Broadcasting?
The Amazon Services LLC ASSOCIATES Program, Investing in the right radio station for your favourite FM broadcaster, DAB - A New Radio System and more about what is digital audio broadcasting.
What Is Communication Between Persons?
Interpersonal Communication, Relational Lysical Behavior, Communication with a Partner, Cell Phone Ringtones, Interpersonal Communication Skills, Emotional Awareness in Communication, Communication in Relationships and more about what is communication between persons.
What Is Internet Data?
Go Binge: A One-Month Rolling Contract for Unlimited Data, Data Unlimited: A New Standard for Broadband Users, The importance of the use and analysis in research on entangled data and more about what is internet data.
What Is Communication Port?
The Communication Port, The Chip for a Robot Positioning System, The Main Interface between Computers and Peripherals, A Computer's First Look at a Security System and more about what is communication port.
What Is Technology Education in Spanish?
The SUNY-St. Johns School of Business and Science, Using Technology to Enhance the Learning Experience of Students, LEAP Global Educational Consultants: A Comprehensive Education System in Spain and more about what is technology education in spanish.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Oct. 16, 2015 8:00 a.m.
Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg reunite in war-torn Europe – this time, Cold War-torn Europe – with Bridge of Spies.
Also, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps debuts as a feature film, starring Jack Black – although it's reportedly much different from the 90's teen novels it's named for. And Deepa Mehta's Beeba Boys, a gangster film about Indo-Canadians wreaking havoc in Vancouver.


This Nation's most results proven program for claiming and achieving your outcome!
Program after program, members successfully achieve their outcome.
The Lisa Christiansen's Discovery Process harnesses the art of setting and achieving YOUR outcome, it all begins with the secret of our proven peak performance strategy.
Take action this very moment!
This method begins one of the most powerful, entertaining and exciting life processes you will ever experience.
Remember when you were a child? … What did you DREAM of ?
What did you WANT to be?... Do you REMEMBER?
What was POSSIBLE?... Did you have limits?
What INSPIRED you?... What were you CURIOUS about?
Who did YOU want to help?... Where did YOU want to go?
"This process helped me challenge many of the beliefs I have made in regards to the level of control I have over my life choices. Lisa has given me many tools with which to build a sound framework and direction for my future."
"As a spouse, this gave my husband and I the opportunity to talk about and plan our future together. This process of learning and visualizing sets the systems in place for success. Personally, professionally, and together we have our visions, our plans and our affirmations and we are on our way."
This program works, and it works for all professions, all cultures, all ages, males and females.
"This program was intense, But if you take action and trust the process, you will be dazzled and grateful."
Everybody knows how few people actually achieve their goals. Lisa Christiansen's Discovery Process program's packages the nation's most effective combination of retreat and online course elements for allowing you to achieve your goals!
Our next program begins with the Opening Retreat, October 30 through November 2, in Scottsdale, Arizona. This is followed by a 6 week user friendly online course and a Certificate of Achievement upon completion.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life, design it!
What must you discover for yourself in order to bring joy and fulfillment to your life?
Do you remember the moments that changed your life forever?... another one is coming!
"This has been a challenging but rewarding journey. My single greatest insight has been to realize that I love what I do; I need to harness the beast so I can continue to enjoy the ride! I can and will work on the environment in which I practice so that it too reflects my love for my patients."
Claim Your Passion begins with a 3 1/2 day retreat held in Scottsdale. Members develope supportive relationships, complete self-discovery assessments and develop inspiring life Visions. You will leave with one of the most exciting documents of your life!
The Opening Retreat is followed by the nation's most powerful 6 week user-friendly online course. This course is specifically designed to facilitate additional self-discovery and reflection, harnessing the principles of change, and the development of your plan for achieving your goals.
Throughout the entire 6 weeks, members participate in secure, member only, online dialogues. Your journey will be guided by a one-on-one personal coaching session with one of your Opening Retreat facilitators.
Your program ends with a Closing Retreat celebration with all 12 members of your program. You have now defined and endorsed your plan for a life of fulfillment! In fact, you have already started to experience and celebrate the life YOU have always wanted.


text:
Луквењак је мало ненасељено острво у хрватском делу Јадранског мора у Шибенском архипелагу. То је једно од 5 малих острвца која се налазе у акваторији општине Рогозница.

Налази се око 2 км југоисточно од острва Јаз око 3,5 км насеља Рогозница. Површина острва износи 0,215 км². Дужина обалске линије је 0,49 км..

Референце

Острва у Хрватској
Севернодалматинска острва

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Experimental GM crops can be grown in open fields in the UK with permission from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). A list of current applications and consents is published online. When researchers apply for a new GM field trial there is a brief public consultation. GM Freeze submits evidence to most of these consultations and can help you understand how to get your concerns across. Applications can be made at any time so sign up to our email list to ensure you hear about them in time to act.
Instead of putting public health and the environment first, DEFRA has handed out a free pass to plant highly experimental genetically engineered crops in open fields without a proper risk assessment.
Last year Rothamsted Research planted an illegal trial of genome edited plants and now they are planning a pick-and-mix trial that jumbles up over a hundred different genetic modifications. They are playing games with the regulations and Michael Gove needs to call time before they cause irrevocable damage to the ecosystem.
Iron-rich wheat may sound positive but, even if it works, this crop is designed to improve iron levels in white flour. Adding a single nutrient to white sliced bread and doughnuts is no substitute for addressing the barriers that prevent people eating a balanced diet rich in wholegrains and other natural sources of iron.
Brassicas are known for their promiscuity so any escape from the proposed trial could spell disaster for local farmers and growers. This is an early research study that should be conducted in a contained environment. If the John Innes Centre hasn't got a suitable facility it should invest in one, not carry out experiments in open fields.
GM Freeze's work opposing field trials is funded by donations from our supporters.
If you can afford to contribute financially, please give what you can to allow us to make more noise about risky GM field trials.


We often celebrate anniversaries, especially when it is the anniversary of something great. This is often done in birthdays or perhaps wedding anniversaries but for the Vicar, it is her 10th anniversary in Dibley. When she reveals that fact to the committee, the discussion that ensues is rather hilarious.
It starts off with a conversation about how she could have done anything, but she managed to waste 10 years of her life with the idiots in the area. Then they talk about some of the things that happened in the past, but Jim has some rather unusual ideas of what took place. In fact, he keeps bringing up dreams that he had, and they are rather inappropriate.
We may not always remember all of the details, but it's nice to look back over the years at what we were able to accomplish. Many of us have been watching this show since the very beginning, so remembering when 10 years took place was quite a milestone.


text:
Oscar Ratings Collapse: What a 16-Percent Drop Means for the Live Telecast
ABC has little to lose while the Oscars organization may be setting itself up for a rough future
Jethro Nededog | February 23, 2015 @ 7:06 PM	Last Updated: February 24, 2015 @ 9:36 AM
Racial controversy, a tight match between "Birdman" and "Boyhood" and a new host in Neil Patrick Harris just weren't enough to give ABC's Oscars telecast a winning ratings boost over last year.
In fact, the audience dropped significantly. Pulling in 36.6 million total viewers on Sunday night — 6.4 million fewer than 2014's 10-year high, according to overnight numbers – the audience represents a six-year low in total viewers for the awards show and a 16 percent drop in viewership.
By comparison, two of the other biggest live televised events this year saw increases in viewership. January's Golden Globes telecast snagged 20.9 million viewers – a 10-year high for the show. The Globes were hosted by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey and gave "Boyhood" and "The Grand Budapest Hotel" the top movie prizes.
See photos: Oscars Winners 2015: The Complete List
Meanwhile, the Super Bowl drew a stunning 114.4 million viewers earlier this month on NBC – making it the most-watched broadcast in TV history.
Those shows prove that live viewing isn't necessarily falling every year and people will show up for the right combination of participants, performers or nominees.
So what happened at the Oscars? There are a few probable reasons the show would see such a drop:
1. Nominees lack box office might.
The biggest culprit appears to be the movies, for the most part an eclectic mix of mainly quirky and thoughtful indie films that did fair-to-middling business at the box office. However artful, they didn't generate much mainstream interest at multiplexes or for Sunday night's show. One can't help but wonder how the show would have done with "Gone Girl," "Interstellar" and "The LEGO Movie" in the mix.
See photos: 23 Best & Worst Oscars Moments of 2015
2. No big watershed moments.
A big moment can bring in new viewers and hold on to them as the show goes on — especially now with the speed that social media can make a moment viral. Sunday's show had nothing close to last year's star-studded selfie with Ellen DeGeneres.
3. The longer the show, the less people are watching.
A long show can be a ratings killer. People begin falling like flies as the show reaches its third hour. So, going over can be deadly to the its numbers. This year's show ran 48 minutes over its allotted time — eight minutes longer than last year's telecast.
See video: Oscar Performance: Neil Patrick Harris' Musical Opening Transports Him Into Iconic Movies (Video)
The decline doesn't worry ABC, however, which has the upper hand in the broadcasting deal, TheWrap has learned. Regardless of incremental ratings falls, the network wouldn't be able to program anything that could come near to the amount of live eyeballs that the Oscars telecast attracts.
Even when the show runs over its three hours of allotted time, it doesn't bother the network — even though it has plenty viewers complaining on social media — for the very same reason as above: It's a huge amount of viewers.
See photos: Oscars 2015 Winners Gallery: 'Birdman,' 'Grand Budapest,' Eddie Remayne, Julianne Moore
And when the show doesn't perform to the same level of ratings as the previous year, still the network doesn't bat an eyelid. As apparently, ABC doesn't guarantee advertisers that the show will match previous numbers.
That's very different to when a series misses its goals and then must provide advertisers with what's called "make-goods," meaning networks give advertisers more time on other programs or on digital platforms to make up for the impressions purchased by advertisers that weren't delivered.
So, why do advertisers put up with it? Again, there are very few TV events that get the amount of live viewership that the Oscars receive.
See photos: Oscars Red Carpet Arrivals
Another reason advertisers don't mind a fall in the Oscars ratings is its attractive demo: an upscale, female audience with money to spend.
So, if both the network and the advertisers are OK with falling ratings, who's getting the short end of the stick?
The Academy may find that it could pay for losing viewers in the long run. Its current contract with ABC runs through 2020. If it continues to lose viewers, that will take away some of its negotiating power when it's time to renew.
See photos: Oscar Week Party Report in Pictures: Oprah, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore
Then, again, the Academy can offer up its viewership to the other networks if ABC attempts to use the ratings falls against the group.
Still, no one really wants to walk away from viewers. But, even if a contingent of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences wanted to make changes — like handing out technical awards off-screen in order to shorten the show's length — the structure of the Academy makes that nearly impossible.
AMPAS decisions are made by a board of governors made up of three representatives from each of the 17 Academy branches, which means the below-the-line branches outnumber the actors, directors and writers by a substantial number. Those branches have always closed ranks to resist any attempt to move categories off the air, no matter how much ABC and viewers might wish for a more streamlined show. Those branches also now occupy most if not all of the officer positions, so they've got the power.
In fact, viewers (and the ratings they do or don't deliver) seem to have very little power over anything that has to do with movie's biggest night.
Steve Pond, Tony Maglio and Todd Cunningham contributed to this report.
21 Exclusive Wrap Awards Contender Portraits (Photos)
Julianne Moore stuns in both a red frock and with her performance in "Still Alice." She claimed the Desert Palm Achievement Award for her turn as a woman suffering early onset Alzheimer's. "Obviously it was a very emotional role, but I brought home the joyful parts, the appreciation of life and of my own family," Said Moore. "This was a story about facing loss, but also about acknowledging those things."
Jeff Vespa
"Birdman," star Michael Keaton and director Alejandro González Iñárritu, strike a distinguished pose. "Thirty minutes ago, my personal Birdman inside was telling me, 'You are a piece of shit!' And I believed him. But five minutes later he said, 'You are the best!'" said Iñárritu
Keaton presented Iñárritu with director of the year saying, "We work in a business that instills narcissism, self-involvement and ego ... so I can't tell you how great it feels not to talk about myself tonight."
Rosamund Pike claimed the Breakthrough Award for her wicked turn in "Gone Girl," though in an acceptance speech admitted, "not a week went by when I didn't come home from the set thinking, 'I can't do this.'"
Rosamund Pike once told her agent that she wanted to work with Fincher, only to be told that Fincher would never cast a Bond girl. Never say never. "I got to play every part of being a woman: the sexy and fun-loving side, the nurturing and kind side, even if it was an act, the angry side, the vulnerable side, the truly diabolical side. It was everything, and it was thrilling," she said.
— Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Best supporting actor nominee for "Whiplash, J.K. Simmons said: "I like being the supporting guy. And that was obviously part of the joy of doing 'Whiplash,' because this is just a bigger supporting part than usual. But I have no illusions about being a movie star. I'm just glad to be able to work."
Golden boy Benedict Cumberbatch is a darling of Hollywood and the Internet, but missed a certain "Imitation Game" costar. "Keira Knightley thought this was taking place in Palm Beach," he said, "so she couldn't be here."
"Alan Turing wasn't just a lone, troubled genius who was awkward and difficult and different," Benedict Cumberbatch (with Morten Tyldum) said about his "The Imitation Game" character. "He perhaps became like that over time, but I think that was very much from losing his first love, being a homosexual man at a time of intolerance, working in a very secret environment. the script showed us that complex, very empathizable and human man."
Benedict Cumberbatch, with director Morten Tyldum, said of the "Imitation Game" cryptologist: "Alan Turing was a war hero, he was a gay icon, and he was the father of modern computer science."
"The Imitation Game's" behind-the-scenes foursome: Editor William Goldenberg, producer Nora Grossman, writer Graham Moore and producer Ido Ostrowsku.
Ido Ostrowsky and Nora Grossman of "The Imitation Game" cracked the code for desert magic, as their cast claimed Best Ensemble.
Math never looked so good: "The Imitaiton Game's" supporting actors Matthew Beard, Alex Lawther and Allen Leech.
Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Robert Duvall accepted the PSFF Icon Award. "When I was growing up, the only thing I knew about drama was cowboys and Indians. I said, 'I want to be an Indian.' I was shocked when I found out that you have to be born an Indian," said "The Judge" actor. "So I said, 'OK, I'll be a cowboy.'"
"Wild" women Laura Dern and Reese Witherspoon, who said of the actress who played her mother: "She can turn any press junket or film festival into the best party you've ever been to."
"We walked, we shared the stories of our lives, and we put the film together for everyone who has ever felt lost in their life," Reese Witherspoon said about working with "Wild" co-star Laura Dern
"Selma" actor David Oyelowo said: "It's an amazing thing when a role in a film comes along that you know is going to be one of the greatest things you will ever do in your life."
A PSFF highlight came when Brad Pitt introduced David Oyelowo and taught the whole crowd how to pronounce his name.
Eddie Redmayne's remarkable turn in "The Theory of Everything" captivated the PSFF jury to the point of awarding him the Desert Palm Achievement Award.
Felicity Jones brought a red lip and a bright smile to support her "Theory of Everything" costar Eddie Redmayne.
"Day one, I'll never forget, we were shooting in Cambridge. It was my first scene playing young Stephen, and Jane came running up and said, 'No, Ed, his hair would be much messier!' What an extraordinary thing to have Jane Hawking doing my hair," Eddie Redmayne (with Felicity Jones and James Marsh) recalled of filming "The Theory of Everything."
"There's something so universal about the human condition of growing up with siblings and parents, with how we maneuver through the world over time -- you can't not relate to it on some level, which means the response to this film has been fun and heartfelt and kind of beautiful," Richard Linklater said of "Boyhood's" 12 year journey.
Before the Oscars are handed out, see where the road to gold began for Eddie Redmayne, Julianne Moore and Alejandro González Iñárritu with photos by Jeff Vespa at the Palm Springs Film Festival
Oscars #AskHerMore Debate: Should Equality Trump Glamour?
By Matt Donnelly and Linda Ge | February 23, 2015 @ 6:06 PM
11 Lessons from the Oscars Flubs, Snubs and Legos
By Steve Pond | February 23, 2015 @ 3:05 PM
Twitter and Facebook Users Agree: Top Oscars Moment Goes to Lady Gaga
By Lia Haberman | February 23, 2015 @ 9:07 AM
TheWrap's complete coverage of the Academy Awards


text:
Montana State Bobcats' offense looking to bounce back against Wagner
BOZEMAN – The Montana State Bobcats had their first defeat of the season last Saturday against South Dakota State, losing to the Jackrabbits 45-14 on the road. The Bobcats struggled offensively, rushing for only 29 total yards. But the big story came on third downs. MSU was 4-for-13 (30.77 percent) on third-down conversions against SDSU.
Montana State had five consecutive three-and-out drives to start the game. It wasn't until midway through the second quarter that the Bobcats picked up their first first down. That put a lot of pressure on the defense, which spent 37 minutes and 42 seconds on the field.
"I feel bad sometimes because we go three-and-out and our defense has gone 10 plays and has to go right back out. I think from an offensive perspective, first down is going to be what's important, what we can do on first down so we don't put ourselves in a hole where we are in a situation where it's like 3rd-and-8-plus," said Kevin Kassis, a senior wide receiver for the Bobcats. "That doesn't help ourselves or the defense, because your percentages of converting that first down go down as you get farther from the first down."
The growing pains on offense can be contributed in part to consistency at the quarterback position. Troy Andersen started the opener against Western Illinois, but an injury to his left hand forced him to play outside of the quarterback position against SDSU, giving Tucker Rovig the start.
It marked the first time that Montana State has started a different quarterback in its first two games of the year since Kasey Harte and Dusty Broderick split duties to begin the 1999 season.
"Sometimes it's tough not knowing who the quarterback will be week in and week out, but it's just one of those things that we have to adapt to quick," Kassis said. "If Tucker is going to be the guy this week, then we have to rally and make plays for him. We will take it week by week and see who is playing quarterback. You never know, I guess."
Rovig finished the game 13-of-25 passing with 164 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions. It wasn't a shining debut, but Kassis gave his quarterback credit for jumping in when his number was called.
"I thought (Rovig) did a really good job. Obviously a couple interceptions and whatnot, but I guess those things happen with growing pains. It's his first time playing college football against the No. 3 team in the nation," said Kassis. "I actually thought he had a lot of poise back there and made a lot of good throws."
Andersen and Rovig are listed as co-starters heading into the Wagner game, but whoever starts, the Bobcats will look to find consistency quickly. Kickoff is scheduled for Saturday at 1 p.m.


text:
bscorp ( bnmc2005) wrote in ontd_political,
bscorp
bnmc2005
You call this Decline? I call it a reshuffling of um, priorities... (an optimistic outlook)
Being the worry wart that I am, I enjoyed reading this article from The Atlantic Online. It is Very Much TL;DR but give it a shot if you have the time, I think it's worth the read. Hell, Even the quote from Ralph Nadar made me hate him less .
How America Can Rise Again
Since coming back to the United States after three years away in China, I have been asking experts around the country whether America is finally going to hell. The question is partly a joke. One look at the comforts and abundance of American life—even during a recession, even with all the people who are suffering or left out—can make it seem silly to ask about anything except the secrets of the country's success. Here is the sort of thing you notice anew after being in India or China, the two rising powers of the day: there is still so much nature, and so much space, available for each person on American soil. Room on the streets and sidewalks, big lawns around the houses, trees to walk under, wildflowers at the edge of town—yes, despite the sprawl and overbuilding. A few days after moving from our apartment in Beijing, I awoke to find a mother deer and two fawns in the front yard of our house in Washington, barely three miles from the White House. I know that deer are a modern pest, but the contrast with blighted urban China, in which even pigeons are scarce, was difficult to ignore.
And the people! The typical American I see in an office building or shopping mall, stout or slim, gives off countless unconscious signs—hair, skin, teeth, height—of having grown up in a society of taken-for-granted sanitation, vaccination, ample protein, and overall public health. I have learned not to bore people with my expressions of amazement at the array of food in ordinary grocery stores, the size and newness of cars on the street, the splendor of the physical plant for universities, museums, sports stadiums. And honestly, by now I've almost stopped noticing. But if this is "decline," it is from a level that most of the world still envies.
The idea of "finally" going to hell is a modest joke too. Through the entirety of my conscious life, America has been on the brink of ruination, or so we have heard, from the launch of Sputnik through whatever is the latest indication of national falling apart or falling behind. Pick a year over the past half century, and I will supply an indicator of what at the time seemed a major turning point for the worse. The first oil shocks and gas-station lines in peacetime history; the first presidential resignation ever; assassinations and riots; failing schools; failing industries; polarized politics; vulgarized culture; polluted air and water; divisive and inconclusive wars. It all seemed so terrible, during a period defined in retrospect as a time of unquestioned American strength. "Through the 1970s, people seemed ready to conclude that the world was coming to an end at the drop of a hat," Rick Perlstein, the author of Nixonland, told me. "Thomas Jefferson was probably sure the country was going to hell when John Adams supported the Alien and Sedition Acts," said Gary Hart, the former Democratic senator and presidential candidate. "And Adams was sure it was going to hell when Thomas Jefferson was elected president."
But the question wasn't simply a joke. Through the final year I spent in China, in which the collapse of the U.S. financial system was blamed for half the bad things happening in that country, I got used to hearing sentences that began "With U.S. power on the wane …" or "In a post-American world …" From Australia I have just received an invitation similar to many others I have heard about. The conveners began, "We would like to develop a session we have tentatively titled 'America: In Decline?'" I also heard from Chinese and other foreigners who look at America with an analytic eye and find it wanting. Just as the material bounty of America is more dramatic on return to the country, so are areas of backwardness or erosion you do not notice unless you've been somewhere else. Cell-phone coverage, for instance. In other developed countries, and for that matter most developing countries I've visited, you simply don't have the dead spots and dropped calls that are endemic in America. There are reasons for the difference: China, in which I never lost a signal when on subways, in elevators, or even in a coal mine, has limited competition among phone companies that coordinate to blanket the country with transmitters. Still, this is one of several modern-tech areas in which the U.S. is now notably, even embarrassingly, behind. I went several times to a private medical clinic in Beijing and once to a public hospital in Shanghai (the Skin Disease and Sexually Transmitted Disease Hospital—it's a long story). In each, the nurses entered my information at a computer, rather than having me fill out the paper forms, on a clipboard, on which I have entered the same redundant information a thousand times in American medical offices. Again, there's a reason for the difference; but we're not keeping up.
When I was a schoolboy in California in the 1950s and '60s, the freeways were new and big and smooth—like the new roads being built all across China. Today's California freeways are cracked and crowded and old. A Chinese student I knew in Shanghai who has recently entered graduate school at UC Berkeley sent me a note saying that the famous San Francisco Bay Area seemed "beautiful, but run down." I remember a similar reaction on arriving at graduate school in England in the 1970s and seeing the sad physical remnants—dimly lit museums, once-stately homes, public buildings overdue for repair—from a time when the society had bigger dreams and more resources than it could muster in the here and now. A Chinese friend who flew for the first time from Beijing to New York phoned soon after landing to complain about the potholed, traffic-jammed taxi ride from JFK to Manhattan. "When I was growing up, these bridges and roads and dams were a source of real national pride and achievement," Stephen Flynn, the president of the Center for National Policy in Washington, who was born in 1960, told me. "My daughter was 6 when the World Trade Center towers went down, 8 when lights went off on the East Coast, 10 when a major U.S. city drowned—I saw things built, and she's seen them fall apart." America is supposed to be the permanent country of the New, but a lot of it just looks old.
Since everyone knows that America's passenger-rail system is a world laggard, there is no surprise value in saying so. But it's still true. Stephen Flynn points out that the physical infrastructure of big East Coast cities was mainly built by the 1880s; of the industrial Midwest by World War I; and of the West Coast by 1960. "It was advertised to last 50 years, and overengineered so it might last 100," he said. "Now it's running down. When a pothole swallows an SUV, it's treated as freak news, but it shows a water system that's literally collapsing beneath us." (Surface cave-ins often reflect a sewer or water line that has leaked or collapsed below.)
At a dinner in Washington this fall, I heard a comment that summed up the combination of satisfaction and concern that ran through many of the interviews I held. The day before the dinner, three U.S. citizens had been named the winners of the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. The day after, three more would be named winners of the Nobel Prize for physics. All the more impressive for America's attractive power, four of the six winners had been born outside the country—in China, Canada, Australia, England—and had taken U.S. citizenship, in some cases jointly with their original country, while they trained and did work at U.S. or other foreign institutions. The dinner discussion topic was the future of America's scientific-research base—and the prize announcement, rather than a cause for celebration, was taken almost as a knell. "This was for work done 10 or 20 years ago, based on research funding that started 30 or 40 years ago," the main speaker, the CEO of a famous Silicon Valley firm, said. "I don't know what we're funding that will pay off 30 years from now."
"After almost a century, the United States no longer has the money," the economists J. Bradford DeLong and Stephen Cohen, both of Berkeley, write in their new book, The End of Influence.
It is gone, and it is not likely to return in the foreseeable future … The American standard of living will decline relative to the rest of the industrialized and industrializing world … The United States will lose power and influence.
This judgment differed from many others I heard mainly in being more crisply put.
So the question is: Are the fears of this moment our era's version of the "missile gap"? Are they anything more than a combination of the two staple ingredients of doom-and-darkness statements through the whole course of our history? One of those ingredients is exaggerated complaint by whichever group is out of political power—those who thought America should be spelled with a "k" under Nixon or Reagan, those who attend "tea bag" rallies against the Obama administration now. The other is what historians call the bracing "jeremiad" tradition of harsh warnings that reveal a faith that America can be better than it is. Football coaches roar and storm in their locker-room speeches at halftime to fire up the team, and American politicians, editorialists, and activists of various sorts have roared and stormed precisely because they have known this is the way the nation is roused to action.
Today's fears combine relative decline—what will happen when China has all the jobs? and all the money?—with domestic concerns about a polarized society of haves and have-nots that has lost its connective core. They include concerns about the institutions that have made America strong: widespread education, a financially viable press, religion that can coexist with secularism, government that expresses the nation's divisions while also addressing its long-term interests and needs. They are topped by the most broadly held alarm about the future of the natural environment since the era of Silent Spring and the original Earth Day movement.
How should we feel? I spoke with historians and politicians, soldiers and ministers, civil engineers and broadcast executives and high-tech researchers. Overall, the news they gave was heartening—and alarming, too. Most of the things that worry Americans aren't really that serious, especially those that involve "falling behind" anyone else. But there is a deeper problem almost too alarming to worry about, since it is so hard to see a solution. Let's start with the good news.
One Reason Not to Worry: We Have Been Here Before
Three years ago, Cullen Murphy published Are We Rome?, a book that asked a version of the question that has run through American political discussion for at least 200 years. Murphy, a former editor of this magazine, gave the only sensible answer, which amounted to "Maybe." When I spoke with him recently, he emphasized how much the current wave of "declinist" worry matches a tradition that has been an inseparable part of American strength.
"If you go back and pick any decade in American history, you are guaranteed to find the exact same worries we have now," he said. "About our commercial capacities, about the education system, about whether immigrants are ruining our stock and not learning English, about what is happening to the 'real' values that built the country. Poke a stick into it, and you will get a gushing fount of commentary on the same subjects as now, in the same angry and despairing tone. It's an amazingly consistent trait.
"Fifty years from now, Americans will be as worried as they are today," Murphy said. "And meanwhile the basic social dynamism of the country will continue to wash us forward in the messy, roiling way it always has."
Ralph Nader, for whom I worked as a researcher in my teens and early 20s, and from whom I became estranged after his 2000 run for the presidency, made a similar upbeat point in a recent reconciliation conversation in Washington. First he elaborated the ways that Congress, the media, the regulators, and both political parties were more in thrall to corporate power than ever before in his memory. But, he said, "you've got to be very careful about thinking things can't rebound. My favorite phrase is 'America is a country that has more problems than it deserves, and more solutions than it applies.' We don't want to be Pollyannas, but we really should believe that we can turn things around."
In The American Jeremiad, his classic 1978 account of that phenomenon, Sacvan Bercovitch, of Harvard, points out that from the very start of European settlement in New England, colonists were warned that God was disappointed in them, so they should improve not just their individual ethics but their collective social behavior. Indeed, only six years after the Arbella brought John Winthrop to Massachusetts, a Congregationalist minister was lamenting the lost golden age of the colony, asking parishioners, "Are all [God's] kindnesses forgotten? all your promises forgotten?"
Bercovitch traces how this theme persisted through the centuries that followed, reaching its literary high point in the portrayal of 19th-century America in The Education of Henry Adams, to which I would add the 20th-century summit, George Kennan's Memoirs. Bercovitch also explains the theme's important political effect. "The jeremiad played a central role in the war of independence, and the war in turn confirmed the jeremiad as a national ritual." It was a national as opposed to a purely religious ritual, because the warnings were intended—and expected—to provoke a cleansing public response. Through the 1800s, "American Jeremiahs considered it their chief duty to make continuing revolution an appeal for national consensus," Bercovitch wrote. Americans had to be told that they were this far from doom before they would address problems.
In his recent book about Jimmy Carter's now-ridiculed "malaise" speech in 1979, What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?, Kevin Mattson, of Ohio University, says that initially the speech was well received, as most jeremiads are. (I worked earlier as Carter's White House speechwriter but had left by that time.) The speech, which did not include the word "malaise," was officially called "A Crisis of Confidence" and warned that Americans had lost their way. Carter began by reciting a list of immediate crises and then said: "It's clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper … The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us." He enumerated these "true problems" in painful detail. For instance, "We remember when the phrase 'sound as a dollar' was an expression of absolute dependability." The speech is shocking to read 30 years later, for how closely its diagnosis of American problems matches today's bleak national self- assessment, from the dispiriting partisan gridlock of politics to the crippling dependence on foreign oil. (One obvious difference is that Carter does not mention China at all, let alone as a more successful rival.) In retrospect, his grim tone might seem the reason Carter was turned out of office the next year. But in its time, this was what voters wanted to hear. "It prompted an overwhelmingly favorable response," Mattson wrote after his book came out. "Carter received a whopping 11 percent rise in his poll numbers." It is remembered as a failure not because Americans of the time rejected a tough-love appeal but because two days later Carter asked his Cabinet members to resign, creating an air of political chaos. In The Audacity to Win, his recent memoir of Barack Obama's drive to the presidency, David Plouffe, his campaign manager, describes how Obama struck a similarly resonant chord (minus the Cabinet turmoil) at an important moment in the campaign. At 11 p.m., as the last candidate speaking at the Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines two months before the Iowa caucuses, Obama held a crowd rapt with a jeremiad calling for national rebirth and reform. "The dream that so many generations fought for feels as if it's slowly slipping away," he said. "And most of all, we've lost faith that our leaders can or will do anything about it." The crowd went wild.
The expectation of jeremiad is so deeply ingrained in Americans' political consciousness that it might seem to be universal. In fact, most historical accounts suggest this is a peculiar trait of our invented political culture. I recall, from living in both Japan and England, mordant remarks about the fecklessness of public officials, but many fewer "we have lost our country" broadsides of the sort that Americans have long taken for granted.
T. Jackson Lears, of Rutgers, has written two influential books that discuss American cycles of despair and renewal in the 19th and 20th centuries: No Place of Grace and Rebirth of a Nation. "Historically, the prospect of imminent decline has been used as a rallying cry, to get Americans committed to whatever is the agenda of the person doing the rallying, often the elites," he told me. He added that while much of today's "free-floating populist anger" reminded him strongly of the mood of the 1890s, in light of the long history of such concerns, "we can rightly raise a skeptical eyebrow at the shrillest predictions of imminent catastrophe."
Nearly 400 years of overstated warnings do not mean that today's Jeremiahs will be proved wrong. And of course any discussion of American problems in any era must include the disclaimer: the Civil War was worse. But these alarmed calls to action are something we do to ourselves—usually with good effect. Especially because of the world financial crisis, "we have seen palpable declines in the middle class's standing and its sense of security for the future," Jackson Lears said. "I think that was a good deal of what was behind Obama's election—that same longing for rebirth that we have seen in other eras. It is rooted in the familiar Protestant longing for salvation, but is adaptable to secular arenas. Obama was basically riding to victory as part of a politics of regeneration." Barack Obama's very high popularity ratings just after the election suggest that even those who now oppose him and his policies recognized the potential for a new start.
It was recognized overseas as well. Shortly before the election, I interviewed a senior Chinese government official in Beijing. He would not speak on the record about U.S. politics, and he noted that since the time of Nixon, Democratic presidents had been more troublesome for China to deal with than Republicans. But he said, "We view this"—meaning the possibility of Obama's election—"as a test of whether America can change course. It is a remarkable strength of your country." This fall in Sydney, the head of an investment bank laid out for me the ways that profligate spending in the United States had brought the world close to financial disaster, and the future problems that would be created by America's looming federal deficits. Then he said, "And we will look on in awe as you avoid catastrophe at the last moment—again."
"Why has the United States been so resilient?" Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University, asked rhetorically, after enumerating previous waves of concern about American "decline." He listed many factors, including the good luck of geography and resources, the First Amendment's success in reducing religious and sectarian friction, and the decentralization of power and culture. "There's no Paris, no Rome—a city where a general strike could bring the whole country to a halt." But like Lears and the writer Garry Wills, Kazin was at pains to challenge today's declinism on its own terms, pointing out the successes of recent American history. "Racial relations, the major problem in our history, are better than they have ever been before," he said. "Religious tolerance is better. Anti-immigrant feelings do not come close to the levels of the 1840s, 1890s, or 1920s. Political decline? The level of participation is higher than it used to be, especially in the last election."
Garry Wills listed his concerns about the militarization of American public life (the subject of his recent book, Bomb Power ) and the vitriol of today's political/cultural divisions. But he added: "When people say how bad things are, I always emphasize that we have never in our history been so good on human rights. The rights of women, gays, the disabled, Native Americans, Hispanics—all of those have soared in the last 40 years." Even the "birther" and "tea bag" movements are indirect evidence of progress, Wills said. "They are reactions to a really great achievement. We did elect a black president. Not many people thought that was possible, even two or three years ago." Of course Wills's list of achievements is, for some, evidence of what has been "taken" from them in recent history. The point for now is that their concern is part of a strong national tradition, as is the fluidity that gave rise to it. If we weren't worried about our future, then we should really start to worry.
Another Reason Not to Worry: The Irrelevance of "Falling Behind"
In one important way, the jeremiads I have heard since childhood are not part of the great American tradition. Starting with Sputnik, when I was in grade school, they have involved comparisons with an external rival or enemy. "Whether you like it or not, history is on our side," Nikita Khrushchev said to Western diplomats in 1956. "We will bury you." After the Soviet Union came the Japanese and the Germans; and now China, or occasionally India, as the standard whose achievements dramatize what America has not done.
This is new. Only with America's emergence as a global power after World War II did the idea of American "decline" routinely involve falling behind someone else. Before that, it meant falling short of expectations—God's, the Founders', posterity's—or of the previous virtues of America in its lost, great days. "The new element in the '50s was the constant comparison with the Soviets," Michael Kazin told me. Since then, external falling-behind comparisons have become not just a staple of American self-assessment but often a crutch. If we are concerned about our schools, it is because children are learning more in Singapore or India; about the development of clean-tech jobs, because it's happening faster in China.
Having often lived outside the United States since the 1970s, I have offered my share of falling-behind analyses, including a book-length comparison of Japanese and American strengths (More Like Us) 20 years ago. But at this point in America's national life cycle, I think the exercise is largely a distraction, and that Americans should concentrate on what are, finally, our own internal issues to resolve or ignore.
Naturally there are lessons to draw from other countries' practices and innovations; the more we know about the outside world the better, as long as we're collecting information calmly rather than glancing nervously at our reflected foreign image. For instance, if you have spent any time in places where tipping is frowned on or rare, like Japan or Australia, you view the American model of day-long small bribes, rather than one built-in full price, as something similar to baksheesh, undignified for all concerned.
Naturally, too, it's easier to draw attention to a domestic problem and build support for a solution if you cast the issue in us-versus-them terms, as a response to an outside threat. In If We Can Put a Man on the Moon …, their new book about making government programs more effective, William Eggers and John O'Leary emphasize the military and Cold War imperatives behind America's space program. "The race to the moon was a contest between two systems of government," they wrote, "and the question would be settled not by debate but by who could best execute on this endeavor." Falling-behind arguments have proved convenient and powerful in other countries, too.
But whatever their popularity or utility in other places at other times, falling-behind concerns seem too common in America now. As I have thought about why overreliance on this device increasingly bothers me, I have realized that it's because my latest stretch out of the country has left me less and less interested in whether China or some other country is "overtaking" America. The question that matters is not whether America is "falling behind" but instead something like John Winthrop's original question of whether it is falling short—or even falling apart. This is not the mainstream American position now, so let me explain.
First is the simple reality that one kind of "decline" is inevitable and therefore not worth worrying about. China has about four times as many people as America does. Someday its economy will be larger than ours. Fine! A generation ago, its people produced, on average, about one-sixteenth as much as Americans did; now they produce about one‑sixth. That change is a huge achievement for China—and a plus rather than a minus for everyone else, because a business-minded China is more benign than a miserable or rebellious one. When the Chinese produce one-quarter as much as Americans per capita, as will happen barring catastrophe, their economy will become the world's largest. This will be good for them but will not mean "falling behind" for us. We know that for more than a century, the consciousness of decline has been a blight on British politics, though it has inspired some memorable, melancholy literature. There is no reason for America to feel depressed about the natural emergence of China, India, and others as world powers. But second, and more important, America may have reasons to feel actively optimistic about its prospects in purely relative terms.
The Crucial American Advantage
Let's start with the more modest claim, that China has ample reason to worry about its own future. Will the long-dreaded day of reckoning for Chinese development finally arrive because of environmental disaster? Or via the demographic legacy of the one-child policy, which will leave so many parents and grandparents dependent on so relatively few young workers? Minxin Pei, who grew up in Shanghai and now works at Claremont McKenna College, in California, has predicted in China's Trapped Transition that within the next few years, tension between an open economy and a closed political system will become unendurable, and an unreformed Communist bureaucracy will finally drag down economic performance.
America will be better off if China does well than if it flounders. A prospering China will mean a bigger world economy with more opportunities and probably less turmoil—and a China likely to be more cooperative on environmental matters. But whatever happens to China, prospects could soon brighten for America. The American culture's particular strengths could conceivably be about to assume new importance and give our economy new pep. International networks will matter more with each passing year. As the one truly universal nation, the United States continually refreshes its connections with the rest of the world—through languages, family, education, business—in a way no other nation does, or will. The countries that are comparably open—Canada, Australia—aren't nearly as large; those whose economies are comparably large—Japan, unified Europe, eventually China or India—aren't nearly as open. The simplest measure of whether a culture is dominant is whether outsiders want to be part of it. At the height of the British Empire, colonial subjects from the Raj to Malaya to the Caribbean modeled themselves in part on Englishmen: Nehru and Lee Kuan Yew went to Cambridge, Gandhi, to University College, London. Ho Chi Minh wrote in French for magazines in Paris. These days the world is full of businesspeople, bureaucrats, and scientists who have trained in the United States.
Today's China attracts outsiders too, but in a particular way. Many go for business opportunities; or because of cultural fascination; or, as my wife and I did, to be on the scene where something truly exciting was under way. The Haidian area of Beijing, seat of its universities, is dotted with the faces of foreigners who have come to master the language and learn the system. But true immigrants? People who want their children and grandchildren to grow up within this system? Although I met many foreigners who hope to stay in China indefinitely, in three years I encountered only two people who aspired to citizenship in the People's Republic. From the physical rigors of a badly polluted and still-developing country, to the constraints on free expression and dissent, to the likely ongoing mediocrity of a university system that emphasizes volume of output over independence or excellence of research, the realities of China heavily limit the appeal of becoming Chinese. Because of its scale and internal diversity, China (like India) is a more racially open society than, say, Japan or Korea. But China has come nowhere near the feats of absorption and opportunity that make up much of America's story, and it is very difficult to imagine that it could do so—well, ever.
Everything we know about future industries and technologies suggests that they will offer ever-greater rewards to flexibility, openness, reinvention, "crowdsourcing," and all other manifestations of individuals and groups keenly attuned to their surroundings. Everything about American society should be hospitable toward those traits—and should foster them better and more richly than other societies can. The American advantage here is broad and atmospheric, but it also depends on two specific policies that, in my view, are the absolute pillars of American strength: continued openness to immigration, and a continued concentration of universities that people around the world want to attend.
Maybe I was biased in how I listened, but in my interviews, I thought I could tell which Americans had spent significant time outside the country or working on international "competitiveness" issues. If they had, they predictably emphasized those same two elements of long-term American advantage. "My favorite statistic is that one-quarter of the members of the National Academy of Sciences were born abroad," I was told by Harold Varmus, the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and himself an academy member (and Nobel Prize winner). "We may not be so good on the pipeline of producing new scientists, but the country is still a very effective magnet."
"We scream about our problems, but as long as we have the immigrants, and the universities, we'll be fine," James McGregor, an American businessman and author who has lived in China for years, told me. "I just wish we could put LoJacks on the foreign students to be sure they stay." While, indeed, the United States benefits most when the best foreign students pursue their careers here, we come out ahead even if they depart, since they take American contacts and styles of thought with them. Shirley Tilghman, a research biologist who is now the president of Princeton, made a similar point more circumspectly. "U.S. higher education has essentially been our innovation engine," she told me. "I still do not see the overall model for higher education anywhere else that is better than the model we have in the United States, even with all its challenges at the moment." Laura Tyson, an economist who has been dean of the business schools at UC Berkeley and the University of London, said, "It can't be a coincidence that so many innovative companies are located where they are"—in California, Boston, and other university centers. "There is not another country's system that does as well—although others are trying aggressively to catch up."
Americans often fret about the troops of engineers and computer scientists marching out of Chinese universities. They should calm down. Each fall, Shanghai's Jiao Tong University produces a ranking of the world's universities based mainly on scientific-research papers. All such rankings are imprecise, but the pattern is clear. Of the top 20 on the latest list, 17 are American, the exceptions being Cambridge (No. 4), Oxford (No. 10), and the University of Tokyo (No. 20). Of the top 100 in the world, zero are Chinese.
"On paper, China has the world's largest higher education system, with a total enrollment of 20 million full-time tertiary students," Peter Yuan Cai, of the Australian National University in Canberra, wrote last fall. "Yet China still lags behind the West in scientific discovery and technological innovation." The obstacles for Chinese scholars and universities range from grand national strategy—open economy, closed political and media environment—to the operational traditions of Chinese academia. Students spend years cramming details for memorized tests; the ones who succeed then spend years in thrall to entrenched professors. Shirley Tilghman said the modern American model of advanced research still shows the influence of Vannevar Bush, who directed governmental science projects during and after World War II. "It was his very conscious decision to get money into young scientists' hands as quickly as possible," she said. This was in contrast to the European "Herr Professor" model, also prevalent in Asia, in which, she said, for young scientists, the "main opportunity for promotion was waiting for their mentor to die." Young Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Dutch know they will have opportunities in American labs and start-ups they could not have at home. This will remain America's advantage, unless we throw it away.
The Main Concerns
If we're worried, perhaps that's a good sign, since through American history worry has always preceded reform. What I've seen as I've looked at the rest of the world has generally made me more confident of America's future, rather than the reverse. What is obvious from outside the country is how exceptional it is in its powers of renewal: America is always in decline, and is always about to bounce back.
Late last year, on the first anniversary of Barack Obama's election, I was at a lunch where an immigrant billionaire discussed his concerns about the new administration's economic policy. By the meeting's ground rules, I am not supposed to identify the speaker—and the wonderful thing about America is that "immigrant billionaire" does not narrow the field down too much. The man thought that deficit spending was out of control, that other world leaders judged the new president as weak and therefore might test him, and that a run on the dollar might begin any day. "But long term, America will be fine," he said, as if the truth was so self-evident, it didn't need to be explained.
So what could be the contrary case? It starts with the aspects of relative decline that could actually prove threatening. The main concerns boil down to jobs, debt, military strength, and overall independence. Jobs: Will the rise of other economies mean the decline of opportunities within America, especially for the middle-class jobs that have been the country's social glue? Debt: Will reliance on borrowed money from abroad further limit the country's future prosperity, and its freedom of action too? The military: As wealth flows, so inevitably will armed strength. Would an ultimately weaker United States therefore risk a military showdown or intimidation from a rearmed China? And independence in the broadest sense: Would the world respect a threadbare America? Will repressive values rise with an ascendant China—and liberal values sink with a foundering United States? How much will American leaders have to kowtow?
The full details are beyond us here, but the crucial point is that in principle, the United States itself has the power to correct what is wrong in each case. Take jobs, as a very important for-instance: the loss of middle-class jobs is America's worst economic problem. But that would be so even if China were still as closed as under Mao. According to prevailing economic theory, a country's job structure and income distribution are determined more by its own domestic policies—education, investment, taxes—plus shifts in technology than by anything its competitors do. That's especially true of a large economy like America's. Those policies are ours to change. With differences in detail, something similar is true of America's public and private debt, its maintenance and careful use of military power, and its management of the "soft power" that enlarges its freedom of action.
The Biggest Problem
We could correct all these problems—and that is the heart of the problem. America still has the means to address nearly any of its structural weaknesses. Yes, the problems are intellectually and politically complicated: energy use, medical costs, the right educational and occupational mix to rebuild a robust middle class. But they are no worse than others the nation has faced in more than 200 years, and today no other country comes close to the United States in having the surplus money, technology, and attention to apply to the tasks. (China? Remember, most people there still live on subsistence farms.) First with Iraq and now with Afghanistan, the U.S. has in the past decade committed $1 trillion to the cause of entirely remaking a society. We know that such an investment could happen here—but we also know that it won't.
That is the American tragedy of the early 21st century: a vital and self-renewing culture that attracts the world's talent, and a governing system that increasingly looks like a joke. One thing I've never heard in my time overseas is "I wish we had a Senate like yours." When Jimmy Carter was running for president in 1976, he said again and again that America needed "a government as good as its people." Knowing Carter's sometimes acid views on human nature, I thought that was actually a sly barb—and that the imperfect American public had generally ended up with the government we deserve. But now I take his plea at face value. American culture is better than our government. And if we can't fix what's broken, we face a replay of what made the months after the 9/11 attacks so painful: realizing that it was possible to change course and address problems long neglected, and then watching that chance slip away.
The most charitable statement of the problem is that the American government is a victim of its own success. It has survived in more or less recognizable form over more than two centuries—long enough to become mismatched to the real circumstances of the nation. If Henry Adams were whooshed from his Washington of a century ago to our Washington of today, he would find it shockingly changed, except for the institutions of government. Same two political parties, same number of members of the House (since 1913, despite more than a threefold increase in population), essentially same rules of debate in the Senate. Thomas Jefferson's famed wish for "a little rebellion now and then" as a "medicine necessary for the sound health of government" is a nice slogan for organizing rallies, but is not how his country has actually operated.
Every system strives toward durability, but as with human aging, longevity has a cost. The late economist Mancur Olson laid out the consequences of institutional aging in his 1982 book, The Rise and Decline of Nations. Year by year, he said, special-interest groups inevitably take bite after tiny bite out of the total national wealth. They do so through tax breaks, special appropriations, what we now call legislative "earmarks," and other favors that are all easier to initiate than to cut off. No single nibble is that dramatic or burdensome, but over the decades they threaten to convert any stable democracy into a big, inefficient, favor-ridden state. In 1994, Jonathan Rauch updated Olson's analysis and called this enfeebling pattern "demosclerosis," in a book of that name. He defined the problem as "government's progressive loss of the ability to adapt," a process "like hardening of the arteries, which builds up stealthily over many years."
We are now 200-plus years past Jefferson's wish for permanent revolution and nearly 30 past Olson's warning, with that much more buildup of systemic plaque—and of structural distortions, too. When the U.S. Senate was created, the most populous state, Virginia, had 10 times as many people as the least populous, Delaware. Giving them the same two votes in the Senate was part of the intricate compromise over regional, economic, and slave-state/free-state interests that went into the Constitution. Now the most populous state, California, has 69 times as many people as the least populous, Wyoming, yet they have the same two votes in the Senate. A similarly inflexible business organization would still have a major Whale Oil Division; a military unit would be mainly fusiliers and cavalry. No one would propose such a system in a constitution written today, but without a revolution, it's unchangeable. Similarly, since it takes 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster on controversial legislation, 41 votes is in effect a blocking minority. States that together hold about 12 percent of the U.S. population can provide that many Senate votes. This converts the Senate from the "saucer" George Washington called it, in which scalding ideas from the more temperamental House might "cool," into a deep freeze and a dead weight.
The Senate's then-famous "Gang of Six," which controlled crucial aspects of last year's proposed health-care legislation, came from states that together held about 3 percent of the total U.S. population; 97 percent of the public lives in states not included in that group. (Just to round this out, more than half of all Americans live in the 10 most populous states—which together account for 20 of the Senate's 100 votes.) "The Senate is full of 'rotten boroughs,'" said James Galbraith, of the University of Texas, referring to the underpopulated constituencies in Parliament before the British reforms of 1832. "We'd be better off with a House of Lords."
The decades-long bipartisan conspiracy to gerrymander both state and federal electoral districts doesn't help. More and more legislative seats are "safe" for one party or the other; fewer and fewer politicians have any reason to appeal to the center or to the other side. In a National Affairs article, "Who Killed California?," Troy Senik pointed out that 153 state or federal positions in California were at stake in the 2004 election. Not a single one changed party. This was an early and extreme illustration of a national trend.
On rereading Mancur Olson's book now, I was struck by its relative innocence. Thinking as an economist, Olson regarded the worst outcome as an America that was poorer than it could otherwise be. But since the time of his book, the gospel of "adapt or die" has spread from West Point to the corporate world (by chance, Olson's Rise and Decline was published within weeks of the hugely influential business book In Search of Excellence ), with the idea that rigid institutions inevitably fail. "I don't think that America's political system is equal to the tasks before us," Dick Lamm, a former three-term governor of Colorado, told me in Denver. "It is interesting that in 1900 there were very few democracies and now there are a lot, but they're nearly all parliamentary democracies. I'm not sure we picked the right form. Ours is great for distributing benefits but has become weak at facing problems. I know the power of American rejuvenation, but if I had to bet, it would be 60–40 that we're in a cycle of decline."
What I have been calling "going to hell" really means a failure to adapt: increasing difficulty in focusing on issues beyond the immediate news cycle, and an increasing gap between the real challenges and opportunities of the time and our attention, resources, and best efforts. Here are symptoms people have mentioned to me:
• In their book on effective government, William Eggers and John O'Leary quote a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, Michael Keeley, on why the city is out of control. "Think of city government as a big bus," he told them. "The bus is divided into different sections with different constituencies: labor, the city council, the mayor, interest groups, and contractors. Every seat is equipped with a brake, so lots of people can stop the bus anytime. The problem is that this makes the bus undrivable."
For that same book, Eggers and O'Leary surveyed members of the National Academy of Public Administration, a counterpart of the National Academy of Sciences for public managers. Sixty-eight percent of those who responded said that the government was "less likely to successfully execute projects than at any time in the past."
• Kevin Starr, author of an acclaimed multivolume history of California politics and culture, told me that through the 1960s, the state's public culture was dedicated to the idea that big things could be done. "The water plan, the freeways, the universities—it was all supposed to be the greatest in the history of the human race," he said. "It was envisioned as a higher-ed utopia. Whether you wanted to be a nuclear physicist or a beautician, the state would help get you there." Now, as he and countless others point out, California's system has been engineered to ensure that nothing can be done. Through ballot measures, California's electorate votes itself increasing benefits; through other ballot measures, the public limits taxes to pay for them. Harold Varmus won his Nobel Prize for work done at UC San Francisco and still owns a house in the Bay Area. He says that thanks to California's famous Proposition 13, which has limited property taxes over the past 30 years, his annual taxes in California are about $600—one-twentieth of what they are for a similar property in New York.
The American Society of Civil Engineers prepares a "report card" on the state of America's infrastructure—roads, bridges, dams, etc. In the latest version, the overall "GPA" for the United States was D, and the cost of bringing all systems up to adequacy was estimated at $2.2 trillion over the next five years, or twice as much as is now budgeted by all levels of government. In 1988, the comparable study gave an overall grade of C, with many items getting B's. Now, the very highest grade was for solid-waste systems, at C+, or "mediocre." Roads, dams, hazardous-waste systems, school buildings, and public drinking water all received a D or D–. The average dam in the United States is 50 years old. "More than 26%, or one in four, of the nation's bridges are either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete," according to the latest report. Improving existing bridges would cost about $17 billion per year, or about twice as much as currently budgeted. Worn-out water systems leak away 20 gallons of fresh water per day for every American; replacing systems that are nearing the end of their useful life would cost $11 billion more annually than all levels of government now plan to spend. "Engineers don't usually put things dramatically, but the alarm about infrastructure is real," Stephen Flynn, of the Center for National Policy, told me. "Our forebears invested billions in these systems when they were relatively much poorer than we are. We won't even pay to maintain them for our own use, let alone have anything to pass to our grandchildren."
• Robert Atkinson, the director of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, in Washington, has written that several times per century, a "transformational wave" of new technologies ripples through the economy and creates new opportunities and wealth. In the past, these have included mass-production systems, modern chemicals, aviation, and so on. Today the economically important technologies include genomic knowledge, information technologies like the Internet, and the geospatial information, from the GPS network, that is built into everything from dashboard navigators to the climate-change-monitoring systems that measure the size of glaciers or extent of forests. Private companies now create the jobs and wealth in each field, but public funds paid for the original scientific breakthroughs and provided early markets.
It couldn't have been otherwise, Atkinson says. The scale of investment was too vast. The uncertainty of payoff was too great. The risk that profits and benefits would go to competitors who hadn't made the initial investment was too high. The difference between promising and dead-end technologies was too hard to predict—especially decades ago, when work in all these fields began. So each started as a public program: the Internet by the Pentagon, the Human Genome Project by the National Institutes of Health, and the GPS network by the Air Force, which still operates it. The government could not have created Google, but Google could not have existed without government efforts to establish the Internet long before the company's founders were born. This pattern—public investment and standard-setting, followed by private industrial growth—has been consistent through the years, Atkinson said, which is what worries him now. "Our companies and entrepreneurs are matchless in their power to adapt," he said. "We lead in many categories the private economy can handle by itself. But where you need any public-private coordination, we've become handicapped. I worry that our companies can adapt, but our system can't."
• Scientists I spoke with said that as more and more research money is assigned by favoritism and earmark, it becomes harder for scientists to pursue the most-promising research opportunities. "The amount of earmarking that has percolated into the scientific establishment is disturbing," Shirley Tilghman, of Princeton, told me, referring to congressional appropriations that single out particular scientists or projects for support rather than letting research organizations distribute the money. "Science is not a democracy. It is a meritocracy. The old cliché that 90 percent of the progress comes from 10 percent of the people is true. You want a system that acknowledges that the first priority is to get resources into the hands of the very best scientists, who are going to do the vast majority of the work that will move us ahead." That was still easier in America than in most other places, she said, but harder than it used to be.
• In 1972, Congress created an Office of Technology Assessment as a source of nonpartisan expertise on scientific and technical questions, ranging from the utility of early anti‑ AIDS treatments to the practicality of alternative fuels for cars. The model was hailed and imitated internationally; here, it helped inspire the creation of the Congressional Budget Office two years later. The CBO remains, but in 1995 Newt Gingrich, in one of his early acts as speaker of the House, led a movement to abolish the OTA, as a symbolic strike against government waste. Its annual budget at the time was $22 million—less than a dime per U.S. citizen, or 20 minutes' worth of financial-bailout spending early last year. "We are willfully making ourselves stupid," Ralph Nader said about the absent OTA. He has urged the current Democratic congressional majority to reinstate it. But, he says, "they are so afraid of attacks for supporting 'big government,' they won't dare."
Nader, who at age 75 is as intense and animated as ever, concludes his modern jeremiads with a "yes we can!" appeal for the power of reform. ("I never like the word 'hope,' though," he says. "It's usually 'I hope you can,' not 'I hope we can.'") But he sounded pretty discouraged when ticking off the problems our system couldn't face. "When was the last time we faced up to a major national problem?" he asked. "Immigration. Corporate crime. The war on drugs, which is a madness beyond boundaries." The list went on, and of course included the rigidity of the two-party system and "the collapse of Congress" in terms of upholding its authority rather than abdicating its power to the White House. "We would do well to focus on the issue of public paralysis."
• From a different political starting point than Nader's, Andrew Bacevich reached a similar conclusion. Bacevich, a West Point graduate and career Army officer who now teaches at Boston University, began by criticizing today's popular military doctrine of counterinsurgency, or COIN. With its emphasis on better ways of fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq, he said, it represented a "triumph of tactics over strategy"—that is, better ways of doing a job that perhaps should not be done. "This is a phenomenon that goes beyond the military sphere to the political and economic sphere," he said. "I think it would be easy for common-sense Americans to draw up a list of big things that would seem to demand concerted effort. Deficits are too big. Health costs are unacceptable. Oil. And yet we have a political system that seems to be constantly consumed with trivial things. We cannot seriously grapple with the big issues. Tactics consume strategy." Rick Perlstein, whose Nixonland and Before the Storm are critical histories of the modern conservative movement, said the most worrisome symptom was the relative shortage of a jeremiad theme under Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and now Obama. This he attributed to Ronald Reagan, "who managed to equate criticism with anti-Americanism, and render unintelligible bad news about America." In the '60s and '70s, Perlstein said, "it was jeremiad city! The best-seller list was full of doom-and-gloom books." In the long rhythms of American jeremiad, he said, that was a sign of political health, despite the excesses of those times. By contrast, the public mood now is "perilously blithe."
What Is To Be Done?....
(Continued at source)
A source who speaks like a comforting Grumpy old man, "Depression? You call this tough? HA! When I was in school...."


The Euro and British Pound started a decent recovery against the Japanese Yen. Both EUR/JPY and GBP/JPY are likely to rise slowly and steadily in the short term.
The Euro grinded higher recently after forming a bottom near the 124.90 level against the Japanese Yen.
There is a crucial bullish trend line in place with support at 127.60 on the 4-hours chart.
GBP/JPY moved above the 141.80 and 142.00 resistances, which is a positive sign.
The pair could correct lower, but it is likely to resume its upside above the 143.00 level.
The Euro formed a decent support base near the 125.00 level against the Japanese Yen. The EUR/JPY pair gained traction above 126.00 and 127.00 resistance levels to move into a positive zone.
The upside move was strong as the pair settled above the 127.00 pivot level and the 50 simple moving average. The pair climbed above the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the 129.45 high to 124.90 low.
It opened the doors for more gains and the pair broke the 128.00 resistance. There was also a break above the 76.4% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the 129.45 high to 124.90 low. It indicates that the pair may perhaps rise towards the 129.45 swing high.
If there is a downside correction, the pair is likely to find the support near the 127.50/70 zone. There is also a crucial bullish trend line in place with support at 127.60 on the 4-hours chart.
Below the trend line support, the 127.00 level is a decent support area since it coincides with the 50 SMA. Overall, the market sentiment is positive and EUR/JPY is likely to accelerate gains above the 128.50 level in the near term.
The British Pound recently declined below the 140.00 level against the Japanese Yen. The GBP/JPY pair traded as low as 139.91 and later it started an upward move.
The pair climbed higher and broke the 141.00 resistance area along with a bearish trend line on the 4-hours chart. Later, the pair gained momentum and broke the 141.50 resistance and the 100 simple moving average.
Moreover, there was a break above the 50% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the 144.43 high to 139.91 low. On the upside, the next resistance for buyers are near the 143.35 level.
Moreover, the 76.4% Fib retracement level of the last decline from the 144.43 high to 139.91 low is also around 143.50 zone to prevent further upsides. Should there be a break above this, the pair is likely to visit the last swing high at 144.43.
On the other hand, if there is a downside correction, the broken support at 142.00 may well act as a support. There is also a key bullish trend line with support at 141.50 is the next major buy zone.
Overall, both EUR/JPY and GBP/JPY are trading in a positive zone and if buyers remain in control, there could be more gains above 129.00 and 143.00 levels respectively in the near term.


text:
What Apple's $100 billion buyback plan says about President Trump's tax cuts
Wednesday, May 2, 2018 5:56 pm 28 Comments
"The Republican tax cuts are paying off bigtime for Apple shareholders," Yuval Rosenberg writes for The Fiscal Times.
"The iPhone maker on Tuesday reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the first three months of the year — but its operating results were overshadowed by the bonanza it announced for shareholders: Apple said it would buy back an additional $100 billion worth of stock from its investors and increase its dividend payout by 16 percent," Rosenberg writes. "The $100 billion program is reportedly the largest ever. It's about the size of Ecuador's GDP, or enough cash to buy companies like Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs or Starbucks."
"Senate Democrats have been tracking buyback announcements since the Republican tax law was passed, and Apple's is far and away the largest, accounting for more than a quarter of the $390 billion total so far. (Cisco's $25 billion increase in its repurchase program, announced in February, is second on the list)," Rosenberg writes. "But for now the tax cut winners are clear: 'Apple Inc lavished cash on its shareholders like no company in history in the first three months of the year and it intends to keep doing so, making the iPhone maker's investors the clearest winners yet from last year's sweeping U.S. corporate tax cuts,' Reuters' [Noel] Randewich wrote."
MacDailyNews Take: Seismic!
Apple plows U.S. tax cuts into record share buybacks – May 2, 2018
Apple beats Street with best Q2 ever – May 1, 2018
Apple investor focus shifts to capital return plans – March 9, 2018
Boris Spider
Wednesday, May 2, 2018 at 6:27 pm
T'would be nice if they spent just a sliver of them bucks to bring some non-compromised, non-delayed product to market.
Des Gusting
Wednesday, May 2, 2018 at 11:21 pm
Fuckin' oath, Boris!
thetheloniousmac
With risk there is often reward. I don't know how long I can take all of the pussy grabbing racism. It's leading to tax cuts, improved economy, corporate investment in America, huge improvements in the black economic sector, vastly improved relations between North Korea and the world, renewed respect for Israel, our greatest ally in the Middle East, Assad finally getting the bitch slapping he deserves, and so on. I mean what might happen if the assholes in Washington and the media would let the administration actually get to work instead of doing NOTHING except obstructing day in and day out.
No longer novel, i know, but a jackass with an opinion. Wow such Fox news, russian brainwashing.
https://fee.org/articles/why-is-the-eu-celebrating-karl-marxs-birthday/
'When legal bloodhounds and baying critics fail to take out Trump, what's next? The Resistance wants Trump's head — on the chopping block.
On the domestic and foreign fronts, the Trump administration has prompted economic growth and restored U.S. deterrence. Polls show increased consumer confidence, and in some, Trump himself has gained ground. Yet good news is bad news to the Resistance and its strange continued efforts to stop an elected president in a way it failed to do in the 2016 election."
More at link.
I pledge my vote to help you get over your drug dependence. Like any good conservative I have no money for your problem of drug addiction.
Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 4:48 am
BOB, you must be Nancy Pelosi in your real life! Your obsession with "anything Russian" is getting more amusing by the day to an ever growing American population laughing at people like you. Get over your Hillary defeat and put it behind you and kiss the ring of the man who owned your political party in late 2016 and will again in 2020 given your current crop of political candidates to be!
TxUser
Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 5:52 pm
Several of the highest figures in the Trump campaign met with someone whom they believed (correctly) to be an agent of the Russian Government for the express purpose of accepting help from that foreign government to influence an American election. A few days later, material hacked from Democratic Party servers by other agents of the Russian Government was released with the obvious intent (and effect) of influencing that same American election exactly as promised in connection with the meeting.
None of that is fake news. All the participants agree to the truth of those facts, although they differ on other details.
If that isn't collusion with a foreign power, what would be?
Aw…bless. Only communism kills people, nothing to do with despotic corruption and evil manipulation of course, just communism. I mean America troops and ideology killed no one, just ask the Vietnamese…yup, they killed everyone in that conflict.
How nice to have such a simpleton view of the world.
I wouldn't venture beyond your safe little US bubble, there's a red under every bed here in commie Europe just waiting to get you.
Thank goodness there is one place in the world, with the historical political sophistication to enable the celebration of one of the world's greatest thinkers, whatever the outcome of subsequent events.
Yep...
'dere's lot uf obstructin goin on out 'dere…amidst some pretty good stuff unnoticed.
You are right on. The reason for obstructions like all of the goofy "sexual scandals" is that the last thing the Dems want to be is politically honest. If they were, they would say things like "We want to reverse the tax cuts. We want open borders." Instead, the game is like what Obama did, which was a bunch of nonsense rhetoric and then get in and try to half Europeanize the country.
DavGreg
Republicans control the whole store:
SCOTUS 5-4
Both Houses of Congress
So what is the excuse?
The only obstruction going on is that of justice by the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
-hh
Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 10:20 pm
Please put yourself down for an iCal to drop me a note after November 2020, when I'm no longer legally bound by the Hatch Act.
macdoctors
Donald J. Trump, A True American Hero! 🇺🇸
KenC
What is "The Fiscal Times"?!? Never heard of them before.
The $100B buyback has NOTHING to do with the tax cuts, but everything to do with tax reform. That money was earned long before the cuts were implemented. Apple has been waiting for tax reform to repatriate those funds.
WriterGuy
Uh — the tax cuts were PART of tax reform. It was one package. And it was sold as creating middle-class jobs.
But — gee — it turns out corporations are using the one-time windfall to reward themselves and their stockholders. What a shock.
Uhm, thanks. I understand, but the article implies that the buyback has everything to do with the tax cuts. Maybe you should write to them and remind them about tax reform, since they seem to have forgotten.
This isn't a one-time windfall, that's why it's REFORM. It's an on-going correction of a tax policy that no other developed country was using. That money is income. Income belongs to the company and its shareholders. That's the profit after expenses. It's what is left over for shareholders or investment, why shouldn't it go to shareholders?
Lot of praise for Fake POTUS
Thursday, May 3, 2018 at 12:09 am
In addition, buybacks are a net neutral activity for shareholders. Apple is simply converting cash on hand into stock value by slightly increasing my share in the corporation. Trump did not do me any favors with the tax law. The only effect was to reduce the amount of tax owned on the overseas earnings. But that was not for me…it was for him and the Republicans. Because that one-time tax revenue was used to offset some of the cost of enacting the lower tax rates included in the tax law. The one-time tax windfall may make year one look a little better. But wait until the rising deficit kicks in again. Reagan — Bush — Trump: tax cuts –> rising deficits and national debt –> economic crash about seven years in (assuming Trump lasts that long)
I love how this is all because of the tax cut. Article completely and purposefully ignores that apple just finished a 100BN buy back before the tax cut. But let's not let facts get in the way of a nice communist false narrative. If this country really wanted to get at the root of collusion, it would investigate how teaching communist dogma and brainwashing the public that it's "bad to return gains to investors" because apparently investors should just give all their money up to the communist motherland, maybe they'd actually find something worth looking at. F Yuval Rosenberg, he can go circle **** Marx Engel and Lenin.
Trump is the greatest president in my fifty years. He's just getting started. He'll clean the swamp
The democrats and deep state and silly media seem to think if trump gets impeached Hillary becomes president. So stupid.
Giuliani will clean the swamp.
The Apple buy back was said by Cook to be due to tax cuts.
Money trickles down. Ever hear of trickle up? Duh.
Fake POTUS, dumb voters
You are a deluded fool. Nothing can change your mind, because it ossified years ago, old man.
Fake POTUS
Lots of things trickle down…urine for instance. Isn't it grand to be part of the trickled-down upon? You make it sound like I should be grateful that yet another Republican economic mess will hit us in a bout six years.
applecynic
Film at 11:00…
chefpastry
Why was Obama so stubborn and didn't do this???
Those tax cuts are a long fuse debt bomb and the Fox News/Breitbart/NewsMax/Daily Caller crowd will be pointing fingers elsewhere when the bill comes due.
Corporate Tax cuts are permanent.
Wealthy Tax cuts are permanent.
Tax cuts for working class and Middle Class are temporary and the debt is already starting to pile up. Do a little research and see how much extra debt Trumpov is causing the Treasury to sell.
Grubner
There won't be as much debt if we have the balls to start slashing big govt—they're the biggest money wasters on the planet. And BTW a strong economy/less taxes LOWERS the deficit—not raises. Only a lib could think paying less taxes is a bad thing..
I am not a liberal and the biggest budget item needing to go on a diet is the Department of Defense, then Homeland Security.
Believe it or not, there are still a few of us fiscal conservatives who believe in paying for what you use instead of passing the buck to the next generation. Yes spending is a concern but fundamentally the USA has to at some point start paying down the accumulated debt. Neither party has tried to do so since Slick Willy was president. Now that one party owns DC, I'd like to know why the budgets keep growing, military adventures never end, highly profitable corporations get gifts—and the deficit is balooning.
Cute factoid: in the first year of the Trump presidency, growth was slower than it was in the first year under Obama.
I'd like to see why this administration has time to tweet incessantly and watch TV and golf every other day but they cannot and will not cut expenses.
Face it, the Retards are as incompetent as the Dumbocrats.
Tags: Apple, Apple Board of Directors, Apple buybacks, Apple dividend, capital return program, President Trump, Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, U.S. corporate taxes, U.S. tax code


To save Felicity, Ollie has surrendered himself to The Church of Blood! Roy has the means to track him but with Diggle helping The Suicide Squad overseas he's a little short on back-up. Thankfully, there is one ARGUS agent who is available to help but calling them an unlikely ally is the understatement of the year.
One would think it impossible for a comic set between the seasons of a TV series to truly surprise its readers - we already know what characters will survive to see Season 3! Yet Arrow: Season 2.5 #14 managed to surprise me not once, but twice! I won't say anything beyond that save this - if you're a fan of the Arrow TV series and you aren't reading this comic already, you should start. Now.