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Dropping weight may help ward off type 2 diabetes
By Stephanie Desmon
/ Published Aug 2013
People with pre-diabetes who lose roughly 10 percent of their body weight within six months of diagnosis dramatically reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the next three years, according to results of research led by Johns Hopkins scientists.
The findings, investigators say, offer patients and physicians a guide to how short-term behavior change may affect long-term health.
"We have known for some time that the greater the weight loss, the lower your risk of diabetes," says study leader Nisa Maruthur, an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "Now we understand that we can see much of the benefit of losing that weight in those first six months, when people are adjusting to a new way of eating and exercising. Substantial weight loss in the short term clearly should go a long way toward preventing diabetes."
Preventing pre-diabetes from becoming full-blown diabetes is critical, Maruthur says. Uncontrolled diabetes—marked by excess sugar in the blood—can lead to eye, kidney, and nerve damage, as well as cardiovascular disease. The new research suggests that if people with pre-diabetes donít lose enough weight in those first months, physicians may want to consider more-aggressive treatment, such as adding a medication to push blood sugar levels lower.
A report on the research was published online July 16 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Maruthur and her colleagues based their conclusions on analysis of data from the Diabetes Prevention Program, the largest diabetes prevention study in the United States. Overweight, hyperglycemic people were recruited between 1996 and 1999 and followed for an average of 3.2 years. More than 3,000 participants at 27 academic medical centers were assigned at random to receive either an intense lifestyle intervention, doses of the diabetes drug metformin designed to reduce blood glucose (sugar) levels, or a placebo. Maruthur and her colleagues searched the study for information linking short-term weight loss, reduction of blood glucose levels, and impact on the longer-term risk of developing diabetes.
Patients with pre-diabetes have blood sugar levels higher than normal but not yet high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes. Although not all people with pre-diabetes develop full-blown type 2 disease, without intervention the risk of getting it within 10 years is substantially increased, and damage to health may already have begun.
The good news, Maruthur says, is that studies like hers show that the progression from pre-diabetes to type 2 diabetes is not inevitable and that lifestyle changes can bring blood sugar levels back to normal.
Participants in the lifestyle arm of the Diabetes Prevention Program were advised about better eating habits, directed to exercise 150 minutes a week, and given one-on-one counseling for the first six months and group counseling thereafter. Researchers found that those in this cohort who lost 10 percent or more of their body weight had an 85 percent reduction in risk of developing diabetes within three years. Even more moderate weight loss showed positive effects; those who lost 5 to 7 percent of their body weight reduced their risk of developing diabetes by 54 percent three years later.
Those who were given metformin, a drug that prevents the liver from producing too much glucose, did not lose significant amounts of weight on average. But those whose blood sugar levels were significantly lowered in six months of taking the medication saw their future risk of developing diabetes fall as well.
The lowest risk, Maruthur says, occurred in patients who lost weight and also lowered the amount of glucose in their blood, as measured by a blood test taken after fasting.
"I'm usually thrilled if a patient loses 3 to 5 percent of his or her body weight after six months, but based on this new knowledge, if patients arenít losing more weight and if their glucose remains elevated, it might be time to escalate treatment by prescribing metformin," she says.
Maruthur says that few doctors use metformin in patients with pre-diabetes, but given what her new study shows, it might make sense for them to consider prescribing the drug to patients who are unable or unwilling to lose substantial weight in the short term.
When blood tests indicate pre-diabetes, doctors often discuss with their patients the changes they can make to hopefully stave off type 2 diabetes. "Right now, the doctor and patient discuss this and may not discuss it again until the next appointment, which may be six months away or even longer," she says. "This routine isn't getting us anywhere."
She says that doctors don't effectively provide behavior modification programs, in part because insurance rarely covers them. The new research suggests just how valuable—and potentially cost-effective—such interventions could be, she says.
Maruthur's work is supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources.
Other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study are Frederick L. Brancati and Jeanne M. Clark.
More from the August 2013 issue


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Home » World News » Meet Roger Stone: One of Trump's most loyal supporters whose 40-month prison sentence was just commuted
Meet Roger Stone: One of Trump's most loyal supporters whose 40-month prison sentence was just commuted
Editors note: This article was first published in March 2017. It has been updated in light of Roger Stone being found guilty of obstructing the Russia investigation.
President Donald Trump officially commuted the prison sentence of Roger Stone on Friday, July 10.
A federal judge sentenced Stone, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, to 40 months in prison after a jury convicted Stone of making false statements, witness tampering, and obstruction in November.
Federal prosecutors said Stone attempted to undermine the investigation in order to protect Trump. Stone was found guilty of all seven charges brought against him.
In January 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted him with one count of obstruction, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
It took nearly 20 years for Roger Stone to realize his dream.
Since the 1980s, the self-described "dirty trickster" who's been in and around Republican politics for half a century, had made it something of a mission to make Donald Trump president.
Despite parting ways with the Trump campaign in August 2015 — Trump says he fired Stone for hogging the media spotlight; Stone says he quit because Trump attacked Megyn Kelly — Stone has remained one of Trump's most loyal true believers.
Now, Stone's decades of loyalty have fully paid off. On Friday, July 10, Trump officially commuted Stone's federal prison sentence, which was set to begin on July 14.
In January 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted Stone with one count of obstruction, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering. Stone denied the charges, and pleaded not guilty.
On November 15, 2019, a jury convicted Stone in federal court on all counts against him, including obstructing the congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Three months later on February 20, a federal judge sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison and ordered him to pay a $20,000 fine, serve four years of probation after his sentence, and complete 250 hours of community service.
Initially, federal prosecutors recommended a seven to nine-year sentence for Stone in February 2020, which Trump immediately criticized on Twitter as "a horrible and very unfair situation," adding, "the real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!
Then in an unprecedented development, the Department of Justice leadership overruled their prosecutors' sentencing recommendation, releasing a separate memo saying it "could be considered excessive and unwarranted" and that the DOJ will "[defer] to the Court" about how long Stone should be sentenced.
The sudden reversal of the DOJ's recommendation shocked veteran prosecutors, and led to all four Assistant US Attorneys assigned to the prosecution withdrawing from the case en masse, casting serious doubt over the DOJ's independence.
In his statement announcing the commutation of Stone's sentence, the White House claimed that Stone was "a victim of the Russia hoax that the left and its allies in media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump presidency" and said he would put "at serious medical risk in prison."
Stone was put in the crosshairs of the FBI over communications with a Russian hacker and his alleged communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as the FBI look for connections between Trump's campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Mueller's January indictment of Stone repeatedly referred to Stone's contact with "Organization 1," which had "posted documents stolen by others" from the US government and citizens.
The filing said it "released tens of thousands of documents stolen from" people including the Democratic National Committee and the personal email account of Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta.
"Organization 1" is widely believed to be WikiLeaks.
The filing also said Stone deliberately obstructed investigations by the FBI, House Intelligence Committee, and Senate Intelligence Committee into Russian interference in the election.
Stone has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Russia, but messages he has sent to the hacker accused of a cyberattack on the DNC, as well as Stone's own provocative statements, continued to raise questions.
"It's rare that I'm accused of something that I'm not guilty of," Stone told the New Yorker in 2008.
Stone said in July it's "a possibility" that he could be indicted over his communications with Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks, which experts had warned could implicate him in a conspiracy to defraud the United States by interfering in the 2016 election.
Stone and the Russians
On August 12, nearly a year after he left Trump's campaign and a few weeks after WikiLeaks, a radical-transparency group, published the first set of stolen emails from the DNC, Stone reached out through a private message to a Twitter user named "Guccifer 2.0."
Earlier that August, Stone had written on the alt-right website Breitbart, then controlled by Steve Bannon, that it was "a hacker who goes by the name of Guccifer 2.0" — and not the Russians — who hacked the DNC and fed the documents to WikiLeaks.
But experts quickly linked Guccifer 2.0 back to Russia and concluded that the so-called hacker was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign. When the special counsel's office indicted 12 Russian security officers for hacking the DNC and the Clinton campaign in July, they said the hacker was a front for Russian military intelligence.
In his messages with Guccifer 2.0, Stone asked if the hacker could retweet his Breitbart column about the 2016 presidential election possibly being "rigged."
Guccifer 2.0 responded: "i'm pleased to say that u r great man. please tell me if i can help u anyhow. it would be a great pleasure to me."
Stone later told Business Insider that the interaction he had with the hacker was so "brief and banal" that he "had forgotten it."
"Not exactly 007 stuff even if Gruccifer [sic] 2.0 was working for the Russkies," Stone said. "Meaningless."
Stone's tweets in the days after his communications with Guccifer 2.0 have raised questions about whether he knew in advance that Podesta's emails would be imminently published by WikiLeaks.
On August 21, Stone sent a series of famously prescient tweets. "Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary." On October 1 Stone tweeted: "Wednesday @HillaryClinton is done."
On October 3 he tweeted: "I have total confidence that @wikileaks and my hero Julian Assange will educate the American people soon #LockHerUp."
Four days later, WikiLeaks published its first set of emails stolen from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta.
In October, Stone said he had "back-channel communication with Assange," but has denied having any direct contact with WikiLeaks, saying that he had been getting his information from a mutual friend he shares with Assange, later revealed to be radio host Randy Credico, who has since been subpoenaed to testify in the Mueller probe.
But in February, The Atlantic reported that Stone was in direct communication with WikiLeaks via Twitter in the days leading up to the election.
Mike Pompeo, then the director of the CIA, described WikiLeaks as a "hostile, non-state intelligence service" last year.
"Since I was all over national TV, cable and print defending wikileaks and Assange against the claim that you are Russian agents and debunking the false charges of sexual assault as trumped up bs you may want to reexamine the strategy of attacking me- cordially R," Stone wrote to Wikileaks on October 13, 2016, according to The Atlantic.
Wikileaks responded the same day, "We appreciate that. However, the false claims of association are being used by the democrats to undermine the impact of our publications. Don't go there if you don't want us to correct you."
"Ha!" Stone wrote back on October 15. "The more you 'correct' me the more people think you're lying. Your operation leaks like a sieve. You need to figure out who your friends are."
On November 9, the morning after Trump won the presidential election, Wikileaks wrote to Stone, "Happy? We are now more free to communicate."
It is unclear whether Stone and Wikileaks had any other private communications either before October 13 or after November 9, 2016.
Stone told the House Intelligence Committee in a prepared statement last September that his communications with Wikileaks were always conducted through Credico, an associate of Assange who tweeted a selfie outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange lives, two days before WikiLeaks released a trove of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta's emails. The email dump came the same day as a damning Access Hollywood tape surfaced in which Trump discussed groping women without their consent.
"I have never said or written that I had any direct communication with Julian Assange and have always clarified in numerous interviews and speeches that my communication with WikiLeaks was through the aforementioned journalist," Stone told the committee.
Meanwhile, NBC News reported in October 2018 that Jerome Corsi, a right-wing conspiracy theorist and close friend of Stone who was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury, knew in advance that Clinton campaign emails had been stolen and given to WikiLeaks.
Stone told Business Insider in March 2017 that he "had no contacts or communications with the Russian State, Russian Intelligence or anyone fronting for them or acting as intermediaries for them," he said. "None. Nada. Zilch. I am not in touch with any Russians. don't have a Russian girlfriend, don't like Russian dressing and have stopped drinking Russian Vodka."
The New York Times reported in October 2018 that Stone discussed the WikiLeaks document dumps with both Steve Bannon, then the chairman of the Trump campaign, and Matthew Boyle, who at the time was the Washington editor of the far-right website Breitbart, which was previously spearheaded by Bannon.
In an exchange on Oct. 3, 2016, Boyle reportedly asked Stone, "Assange — what's he got? Hope it's good," to which Stone replied, "It is."
Boyle then reportedly pressed Bannon to contact Stone about the impending WikiLeaks dump, telling Bannon, "clearly he knows what Assange has." Just 4 days after that exchange on Oct. 7, WikiLeaks released the trove of John Podesta's emails.
"Mere knowledge alone might not be enough to establish criminal responsibility," Cornell Law School Professor Jens David Ohlin told Business Insider about Stone's potential liability with regard to his contacts with WikiLeaks and Guccifer.
"However, if Stone was not just aware of what WikiLeaks was doing but actually intended for it to happen, then he could be considered a member of the criminal conspiracy and just as guilty as its other members," he added.
Also in October 2018, Mother Jones reported that Stone had pushed the Trump administration to issue a pre-emptive presidential pardon to Assange, who has not been charged with a crime in the United States.
Ohlin told Business Insider at the time that "if someone offered Assange a pardon in exchange for Assange releasing hacked emails to influence the election, this would constitute a criminal conspiracy. If Trump or those close to him were part of these discussions, they would all be part of the same criminal conspiracy."
And then emailed leaked which shows top Trump campaign officials and right-wing media allies said they were convinced Stone was closer to Wikileaks than he let on, and Mueller was reported to have several emails from 2016 between the GOP strategist Roger Stone and Corsi that showed Stone anticipated a WikiLeaks document dump at the height of the 2016 election.
The White House, for its part, has worked to distance itself from Stone. During a press conference on March 20, 2017, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Stone and Trump talk occasionally but that Stone's work for the campaign ended in August 2015.
"I don't know at all when the last time they even spoke was," Spicer said.
In December, Stone invoked his Fifth Amendment right and declined to provide documents requested of him by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
'Admit nothing, deny everything'
Stone was perhaps the first, and most influential, person to believe in Trump's political potential.
In 1988, Stone tried to persuade him to run for president. Trump decided against it, but 12 years later he launched a presidential exploratory committee, which Stone chaired.
Since the 1980s, Stone and Trump have fostered a close professional and political relationship. Stone has been characterized as Trump's longest-serving adviser.
Stone and Trump share remarkably similar worldviews and approaches to politics. Like Trump, Stone has a penchant for making bold, unsubstantiated claims, promoting conspiracy theories, and being unafraid of controversy. He told The New Yorker in 2008 that "The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring."
Stone encouraged Trump's infamous "birther" conspiracy, which claimed that President Obama wasn't born in the US, and promoted unsubstantiated theories that Bill Clinton was a serial rapist and fathered a son.
Trump has apparently adopted many of Stone's ideas and methods. Stone told The New Yorker in 2008 that "Politics is not about uniting people. It's about dividing people. And getting your fifty-one per cent." One of his cardinal rules was "Attack, attack, attack—never defend" and "Admit nothing, deny everything, launch counterattack."
"It takes a certain kind of consultant who could work for a candidate like Donald Trump and it takes a certain kind of candidate to hire a consultant like Roger Stone," says Chris Barron, a Washington-based political consultant who has worked with Stone in the past, told the National Review in 2015.
In the 2017 Netflix documentary "Get Me Roger Stone," Trump says of Stone: "He loves the game, he has fun with it, and he's very good at it."
Both Stone and Trump are preoccupied with the news media, and they rail against it as being biased, but also court publicity. Stone is known for being easily accessible, and he seems to relish providing reporters with provocative sound bites. As Stone told The New York Times in 2015 of his life philosophy, "Never miss the opportunity to have sex or be on television, as Gore Vidal said."
The media has, in turn, portrayed Stone as everything from a "state-of-the-art sleazeball" to a dangerous conspirator. But Stone relishes these descriptions — the more unflattering the better.
"I revel in your hatred, because if I weren't effective you wouldn't hate me," Stone says in "Get Me Roger Stone."
Stone, who has been a Republican operative for almost 50 years, has long treated politics and campaigning as a battle to be won at any cost. As a junior in high school and vice president of the student government, he forced the president out and succeeded him.
''I built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket," Stone told The New York Times in 1999. "Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school to run against me. You think that's mean? No, it's smart.''
Notably, Stone has remained an unapologetic Nixon supporter to this day. After working for Nixon's campaign in the 1970s, he maintained a close relationship with the president and regularly dined with him at his home in the years following the president's resignation. Stone has a tattoo of Nixon's face across his back and a large photograph of the former president over his bed.
Among many, Stone is better known for his eccentricities than his political work.
Throughout his career, Stone has cultivated what he calls his "extraordinary wardrobe," which includes a taste for seersucker suits and top hats, a style that The New Yorker has said makes Stone look "like a Prohibition-era mobster."
"If life is a stage, then you should always be in costume," Stone told The Times.
'He always tries taking credit for things he never did'
Stone and Trump have had a rocky relationship. In 2008, Trump called Stone a "stone-cold loser," telling The New Yorker that "he always tries taking credit for things he never did."
In August 2015, Stone parted ways with Trump's campaign. While Trump announced that he had fired Stone, accusing him of attempting "to use the campaign for his own personal publicity," Stone said that he resigned, making public a letter he said he had sent to Trump arguing that the campaign was being derailed by "controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights."
Stone's departure came as Trump faced scrutiny surrounding his controversial comments about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Some conservatives believed Trump's campaign would suffer without Stone to guide it.
"It's hard to overstate just how close Trump and Stone have been over the years," the National Review wrote after Stone had left the campaign. "Trump without Stone is akin to George W. Bush without Karl Rove or Barack Obama without David Axelrod."
But even after Stone left the campaign, he remained a strong supporter, calling himself "the ultimate Trump loyalist." In January, Stone published a book, "The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution," in which he says Trump was "put on Earth" to be president.
From Nixon to Bush
Stone was raised in Lewisboro, New York, in a white working-class family. He told The New Yorker that while growing up adjacent to New Canaan, a wealthy Connecticut suburb, he saw himself as "living in kind of a bridge between two cultures, the white working class and the white upper class."
Stone remains convinced that both groups of white Americans should be politically united against what he sees as an overreaching government.
After high school Stone moved to DC to attend George Washington University. He never graduated.
Stone made his debut in national politics at 19, when he sent campaign contributions in the name of a socialist organization to Richard Nixon's rival in the 1972 Republican presidential primary. He then sent a letter to The New Hampshire Union-Leader with the donation receipt, in an attempt to undermine Nixon's competitor.
In a 2008 New Yorker article, Stone told reporter Jeffrey Toobin that Nixon started the "exodus of working-class people from the Democratic Party" and realigned the Republican Party's platform to one founded on antielitism.
"We were the party of the workingman! We wanted lower taxes for everyone, across the board," Stone said. "The point that the Democrats missed was that the people who weren't rich wanted to be rich."
As Toobin wrote, "Stone represents the less discussed but still vigorous legacy of Richard Nixon."
In 1976, Stone joined Ronald Reagan's first, unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination as national youth director. Four years later, Stone took on the role of political director of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, helping pave Reagan's path to the White House.
But Stone, ever the campaigner, didn't take a position in the Reagan administration and instead started a political consulting and lobbying firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater, along with Paul Manafort, who, decades later, would become Trump's 2016 presidential campaign chairman.
Stone's corporate clients included Trump businesses and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., on whose behalf Stone lobbied his former campaign colleagues in the administration, and more controversial characters, including dictators in Zaire and the Philippines, and rebels in Angola.
Stone and his firm were on the forefront of a new era of political operatives lobbying their former campaign colleagues, now in powerful positions in the administration, to serve their private-sector ends.
But Stone was drawn back into campaigning when George H.W. Bush ran for president in 1988, serving as a senior consultant to Bush. Stone continued jumping between the campaign trails — for Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter and Kansas Republican Bob Dole — until he was kicked off Dole's presidential campaign after Stone and his wife were caught soliciting "similar couples or exceptional muscular" men for group sex. (Stone denied the accusations at the time but later admitted they were accurate.)
After Stone left Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater in the mid-1990s, he ran various campaigns, including a billionaire's bid for New York governor, and then moved down to Miami. In 2000, he was instrumental in orchestrating the so-called Brooks Brothers riot — a chaotic pro-Bush protest outside the Miami recount center — which helped shut down the Florida recount in the presidential election, securing George W. Bush's victory over Al Gore.
Natasha Bertrand contributed reporting.
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Extras: This Property Has Over 930 Square Feet On Main Floor + Option Of Also Leasing 930 Square Feet Of Finished Basement.


The human body has two kidneys; each is about the size of a fist. Our kidneys help clean the blood and produce urine to rid the body of waste. Our kidneys help do other things too. They control our blood pressure, keep our bones strong, make red blood cells, and control the chemicals and fluid in our bodies.
Kidney disease can affect anyone. Some people are more likely to develop kidney disease due to other medical conditions. Other medical conditions include high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease. Others get kidney disease from an external event such as injury to the kidneys or major blood loss.
When kidneys are not functioning normally, the following terms may be used.
If kidney disease is caught early, there are ways to prevent or slow the development of the disease with exercise, diet, and medication. When the kidneys are no longer functioning, dialysis or a kidney transplant are used for treatment.


In the heart of the city, close to the Independence Avenue and embassies, Le Grand Mellis is classified 3 stars and provides its visitors with a casino, an outdoor pool and a spa and fitness center opened recently.
The restaurant Paris Delhi offer a wide selection of vegetarian Indian dishes and non-vegetarian but also tasty and European dishes To accompany your meal wonderfully, we suggest our best selections of French wine.
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The outdoor swimming pool, located in the inner patio of the hotel is a haven of peace in the center of the city of Antananarivo. A changing room near the pool is available.


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Bob Perry and James Leininger aren't the only poster children for campaign finance reform in Texas, but they and other mega-donors are inspiring more talk about the need for contribution limits. And the talk isn't coming from just the public advocacy groups that have been preaching reform for years. A number of prominent Austin lobbyists, whose business clients also play the money game, are increasingly beginning to feel the same way.
Lobbyists lean toward funds limits
By CLAY ROBISON
AUSTIN — Bob Perry and James Leininger aren't the only poster children for campaign finance reform in Texas, but they and other mega-donors are inspiring more talk about the need for contribution limits.
And the talk isn't coming from just the public advocacy groups that have been preaching reform for years. A number of prominent Austin lobbyists, whose business clients also play the money game, are increasingly beginning to feel the same way.
"The whole money thing ... has gotten totally out of hand. I support any restrictions of any kind, and most of the lobby would, too," said one lobbyist, who didn't want to be named.
Reform still has at least two major obstacles, however, in Gov. Rick Perry and Speaker Tom Craddick. Two of the governor's biggest contributors are Bob Perry (to whom he isn't related) and Leininger.
Some reformers suggest that Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, a multimillionaire who can largely fund his own campaigns if necessary, may be receptive to contribution limits because they could partially disarm opponents in a future governor's race.
But Dewhurst may not want to fight this uphill battle.
Business lobbyists could help renew an old debate, but many don't want to be publicly associated with campaign finance reform, at least not yet, because they and their clients have to work with lawmakers on both sides of the issue.
Jack Gullahorn, an Austin attorney and former lobbyist, said he has slowly come around to the need for contribution limits partly, but not totally, because of the super-rich donors who, of late, have been dumping tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into selected legislative races.
"I think that, over the last few years, I've been hearing from more people that they're feeling disenfranchised," Gullahorn said.
In other words, a growing number of lobbyists and their corporate clients are worried about their own preservation in an arena in which money is considered essential to political influence.
Gullahorn said the Professional Advocacy Association of Texas, an organization of lobbyists that he heads, won't take the lead on campaign finance reform but will support efforts to impose contribution limits.
He said the group also would support the legalization of direct, but limited, corporate contributions to candidates, a practice now banned by state law.
That proposal may spark even more controversy, but Gullahorn said such a law could be easier to administer than the system of political action committees, through which many corporate-related donations are now made.
Bob Perry, a Houston home builder, and Leininger, a San Antonio businessman, are among donors now outgunning most traditional givers, including the vast majority of business executives, doctors and plaintiff lawyers.
Perry, who has headed the Texas donors list for the past three elections, spent $16 million on state and federal races in 2005-06, according to a report by Texans for Public Justice, which tracks money in Texas politics. He gave $6.7 million of the total to state candidates, mostly Republicans, and conservative Texas political committees.
Leininger gave about $5 million in pursuit of a law allowing tax dollars to be spent on vouchers for private school tuition. He helped unseat two Republican legislators who voted against him in 2005 but overall lost more races than he won.
A handful of other contributors, including plaintiff lawyers John O'Quinn, of Houston, and Fred Baron, of Dallas, gave about $1 million or more. O'Quinn was Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Bell's single biggest contributor.
And Texans for Lawsuit Reform, to which Bob Perry has generously contributed, gave more than $3 million in the recent election cycle, far outpacing most political action committees.
One bill already has been prefiled to limit an individual's total contributions in state races to $100,000 per election cycle, and there will be other proposals, including public funding of campaigns.
The above, unnamed lobbyist said he believes donation limits will get more support from legislators, following the large sums of money that Leininger, in particular, spent against House members who had voted the "wrong" way on vouchers.
"If they have a brain at all, they have to be smart enough to understand that the first time they step out of line, they're going to be the target next time," he said.
Perry aide promoted
Kathy Walt, former Houston Chronicle reporter and Gov. Rick Perry's press secretary for the past six years, has a new title, special assistant for communications.
Currently, she is helping prepare for the Jan. 16 inauguration but also will take on several additional duties, including working with state agencies to assure their coordination with the governor's initiatives.
The new press secretary is Robert Black, who recently was Perry's chief re-election campaign spokesman. Ted Royer is his deputy.
Media 'shield law'
Preliminary shots in the 2007 legislative fight over whether Texas should enact a "shield law" to protect reporters from having to disclose confidential sources of information in court will be fired Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee.
The issue is among several the panel is studying before the legislative session convenes on Jan. 9.
Similar legislation, which has been proposed off and on for more than 30 years, died during the 2005 session. Some reporters, editors and TV news directors say they believe the protection is necessary to ensure that confidential — and often vital — sources of information, particularly those involving controversial governmental actions, don't dry up.
The main opposition still comes from prosecutors, who contend a shield law could interfere with their ability to develop evidence in criminal investigations.
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Property sales and leasing transactions wrap Local pays $8m for Hawthorn commercial Leasing success at 140 St Georges Tce Supply good news for tenants Fairlight development site sells after just 48 hours
REITS & Funds
RURAL Property & AGRIBUSINESS
PROPERTY REVIEWER
GENERAL PROPERTYRESIDENTIAL PROPERTY
Apartment owners face potential financial ruin
By Nelson Yap
LESS than a week after the Mascot Towers evacuation, a joint report by Deakin and Griffith universities has revealed defects in 85% of apartment buildings such as cracking, dangerous cladding or other fire safety breaches, threatening lives and potentially putting unaware owners and investors hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket.
The report, authored by Deakin University's senior lecturer Nicole Johnston with Griffith University's associate professor Sacha Reid, analysed 212 building audit reports across New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria and found 3,227 line item defects.
Defects were found in 97% of New South Wales buildings, and 71% in Queensland and 74% in Victoria. An average of 14 line items per building were found, averaging 16 in NSW, 12 in Queensland and 11 in Victoria. Construction systems affected by defects per building was 5.93; NSW buildings had 6.5, Queensland 5.8 and Victoria 4.85.
Building fabric and cladding accounted for 40.19% of defects, followed by fire protection (13.26%), water proofing (11.46%), roof and rainwater disposal (8.58%), and structural (7.25%).
Structural construction system defects impacting the slab (i.e. concrete issues unrelated to ground movement) were most prevalent (48%), followed by framing (14.5%), foundation footing and slab (i.e. issues arising out of ground movement – possible footing failure, such as cracking; 13%), foundation subsidence (6%), foundation retaining walls (5%) and curtain wall (4%).
Structural defects resulted in building damage (35%) and multiple other impacts (35%), followed by water ingress, moisture, and rust.
Failures in fire safety with combustible cladding and faults along with balcony glass panels were the most common causes for concern. Alarmingly, interviewees told the study that owners are usually unaware and fire safety inadequacies or faults are uncovered only after an incident.
One lawyer told the study most do not know until they have a fire safety consultant involved.
"And more often than not, that's because there are other defects in the building and they've gone to a consultant or a lawyer".
Human error plays a significant part in building defects. Misuse of building products, due to lack of knowledge, poor workmanship, time pressures, cutting corners, poor supervision, lack of training, lack of licensing and trade accountability were all common.
Two recurring triggers for defects identified by the report were the motivation to make a profit, which incentivises builders and trades to source cheaper building solutions; and time pressure on completions that resulted in mismanaged construction processes and inferior builds.
A lawyer told the report that the developer does not have a vested interest in making sure a building would be constructed properly because they are ultimately not the long-term owner of the property.
"They just need to get it built and sold and out to make them money. That's what their focus is.
"That's the problem. It's the management of the risk whereas a developer of a commercial property has tremendous incentive to really deal with the risk properly whereas the developer of resi properties are, 'whatever'."
Furthermore, when defects are identified, it is difficult to seek recourse several years after construction because it is common practise for small and large development and building companies to create single purpose companies or "two dollar companies" for each new project.
"So I have to caution my clients by saying that you may not see a dollar for this, and you might be spending good money with lawyers and experts and you won't see a dollar for that either, and you've still got to fix it," the lawyer said.
On top of health impacts, various psychological impacts – particularly stress – were experienced by owners, usually arising from financial pressures related to the devaluation of properties and drawn-out rectification processes.
"You do hear people get into serious trouble because they've got to sell the place but they can't sell it because it's worth nothing," another lawyer said.
One manager told the study that lot owners are often unaware that insurance (in many instances) will not cover the costs associated with rectifying building defects.
"For some lot owners, the additional financial burden forces them to sell (if they can and usually at a significantly reduced price) or borrow additional monies.
"For some investors, either rents had to be reduced or they were unable to obtain a renter. A number of interviewees reported that lot owners have been forced into bankruptcy as a result of additional special levies that they simply could not pay. There were other people who were on the verge of bankruptcy there,"
They said the owners have "mortgaged themselves to the absolute hilt".
"It's their first homes. They don't have the extra money to fix the buildings or to pay for legal fees. Another mortgage isn't an option for them.
"There have been people who have lost their units and that's been awful, it's been awful to have to see. They just can't afford it – they've had to move on. We've had to go through the debt collection stage and you can see they're struggling and it's not a nice thing to go through.
"For lot owners, there are often financial impacts (including raised levies to fund rectification works, loss of rent, and property value depreciation)."
The report released this week comes days after residents were evacuated from Mascot Towers in Sydney on the weekend after structural cracks were discovered, just six months after 3,000 residents were evacuated from Opal Tower on Christmas eve for the similar reasons.
It is also two years after the tragic Grenfell fire in London drew greater attention to risks associated with combustible cladding. A recent RMIT University study estimates Australian owners face a bill that could run into billions of dollars to replace combustible cladding.
Meanwhile residents of Mascot Towers were told at an extraordinary meeting that the emergency building repairs will cost an estimated $5.5 million. One apartment owner told the media his bank has declined to refinance his mortgage because of the building defects.
The Deakin and Griffith report interviewees are supporting calls for reforms, and there was general consensus by interviewees that changes were required to the private certification system.
Lawyers interviewed recommended extending the statutory warranty insurance scheme to cover buildings over three storeys. Many were perplexed about the current regime and believed that building defects would not be as prevalent if the insurance scheme was extended.
"If it's less than a four-storey building, and a job over $20,000, you need to satisfy the home warranty insurer that you've got the capability and solvency for it not being an unacceptable risk," one said.
"So if you're going to build something in that window, it's a lot harder for you to actually be allowed to do it, because you've got to persuade the insurer that you're capable and good for it. So it's not a licence issue but it effectively adds an extra licensing requirement before you can do the work. But you don't even have that. So if an insurer won't give you – doesn't trust you enough to give you insurance to do a $25,000 job – just go and build a high-rise and you're fine."
They highlighted the decenniale (decennial) liability insurance in France, which is a 10-year long stop insurance that ties developers to building defects for an extended period.
"So if you prevent the developer from transferring that risk on to the lot owners and have him buy 10-year insurance which is going to be expensive, the incentive on reducing claims and all the rest of it is going to be there so they make sure things are built properly to start with."
Another lawyer believed that more regulation is not necessarily what will cure the situation.
"You need to change the commercial imperatives of how things are done so that there's a commercial imperative to doing it properly because commercial buildings seem to be built well."
In NSW, many interviewees were concerned about the abrogation of rights in relation to commencing legal action against builders for defects.
"In New South Wales, it should be to learn a lesson from what's happening in other states and territories, particularly Victoria, about the 10-year time period, and reintroduce that. … For Victoria, my message to regulators is don't touch what isn't broken. Don't mess with this. Don't touch it, it's a system that has foibles and has limitations, but 10 years is a good period of time to bring a claim for building defects, and it shouldn't be wound back," a lawyer said.
"…part of the problem with building defects litigation in NSW is the process, how long it takes, how much money it costs, and how that becomes an attrition and survival process for owners, strata plans, as much as single dwelling owners who are on their own," another lawyer said.
Interviewees also suggested changes to Australian Standards, which they said is too technical and bureaucratic, and not practical or realistic with hands-on experience.
Many interviewees were annoyed by the lack of collaboration with industry experts.
"I think the regulators need to engage more with the stakeholders in industry, insurers, practitioners. At the moment there's very much a them and us mentality in the regulators, which I think is really unhelpful, and I think they're just not doing enough to consult with insurers about these sorts of issues and I think they have a lot of very valuable input and expertise around these sorts of issues that they could be drawing on if they just bothered to ask."
The Strata Community Association, representing the sector which oversees $1.2 trillion of strata properties under management, is calling on the federal and state/territory governments to come together for a common solution.
CEO Alisha Fisher said apartment owners faced potential financial ruin to fix building defect problems out of their control.
According to the 2016 ABS Census, the number of occupied apartments in Australia has increased by 78% to 1,214,372. More Australians than ever are taking up apartment living with 10% (2,348,434) of all people in Australia spent Census night in an apartment. There is now around one occupied apartment for every five occupied separate houses in Australia – compared with one to every seven, back in 1991.
"This report will shock people. It has unveiled the horror story the last few years has been for the construction sector in Australia. Thousands of people remain impacted by combustible aluminium cladding and now we have other major defects including problems with water penetration and incomplete fire safety systems still out there." Fisher said.
Meanwhile the Owners Corporation Network's chair Philip Gall has warned in an ABC editorial against buying off the plan apartments, while the Builders Collective of Australia president Phil Dwyer has called for a Royal Commission.
Alisha Fisher building defect combustible and flammable building cladding Deakin University Griffith University Nicole Johnston Owners Corporation Network Philip Gall Sacha Reid Strata Community Association
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Home Entertainment Bollywood 'Chashme Buddoor' Fiasco: Ali Zafar in damage control mode
'Chashme Buddoor' Fiasco: Ali Zafar in damage control mode
Ali Zafar holds special screening of 'Chashme Buddoor' in London soon after being criticised for staying away from his new film's promotions
Ali Zafar recently faced the music when there was buzz in the industry how he was missing in action for the promotional activities of his upcoming film with David Dhawan.
However, we hear that the Pakistani actor-singer organised a special screening of his film in London, where he has been shooting for another project.
A source says, `He has been busy shooting with Yaami Gautam. He has been missing out on all the promotions that's happening back home.
His schedule is tight and he was unable to travel to India to promote the film. He recently called a press conference as well as a small screening of a few sections of the film for the media and his fans in London. May be this was a face-saver on his part.`
Incidentally, there was massive snowfall in UK the day of the screening. `Ali thought it would be very difficult for people to travel to the screening as several roads were blocked. However, many of his fans came and even complimented him for his work.`
Ali says, `It was heartwarming to see the warmth and love of so many people who saw the film.`
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Trump dominates Super Tuesday by winning SEVEN states: Tycoon crushes his rivals as Ted Cruz takes Texas, Alaska and a surprise victory in Oklahoma - knocking Marco Rubio out the race for second place
Donald Trump dominated Super Tuesday, winning seven states against Cruz's two and Rubio's one
Republican front runner won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia
Ted Cruz won in his home state of Texas, scored a surprise victory in Oklahoma and positioned himself as the only candidate who can beat Trump. He also won Alaska
Marco Rubio took his only win of the night in Minnesota - a state which his rivals largely ignored, but he vowed to continue his campaign
Trump congratulated Cruz for Texas but said it had been a 'tough night' for Rubio who he called a 'lightweight'
Ben Carson insists he is not ready to end his campaign despite failing to win a single state on Super Tuesday
Democrat Hillary Clinton earned victories in seven states compared to Bernie Sanders' four but he beat expectations
Trump now has 285 delegates out of the 1,237 needed to win the nomination
Super Tuesday 2016: See more of the latest poll news and primary updates as Trump wins seven states
By David Martosko, Us Political Editor, In Palm Beach, Florida, For Dailymail.com and Hannah Parry For Dailymail.com
Published: 18:36 EDT, 1 March 2016 | Updated: 12:25 EDT, 2 March 2016
Donald Trump romped through the second biggest day in American politics – only November presidential elections are grander – etching his name on seven trophies in the Republican party's Super Tuesday display case.
Three states, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alaska, eluded his grasp and went to Ted Cruz, a senator from the Lone Star State.
And Marco Rubio had a dismal night, claiming only Minnesota's caucuses.
In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton swept seven states over Bernie Sanders - a commanding performance that will settle nerves in her campaign.
But the rest of the night belonged to The Donald.
The billionaire real estate tycoon has been declared the GOP primary winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia.
Cruz held on to claim Texas on the strength of an almost single-minded campaign strategy that ceded other southern territories to Trump.
Partly as a result, the GOP front-runner's early victories set a blowout pace.
The tea party senator later added Oklahoma to his column in an unexpected development: Trump had out-polled him there a week ago by a dozen percentage points. And early in the morning Cruz won Alaska by 2.6 per cent.
SCROLL DOWN FOR STATE BY STATE RESULTS
Victory: The billionaire real estate tycoon, pictured with his son Eric Trump (right) and Gov. Christie, (left), has been declared the GOP primary winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia on Super Tuesday
Ally: The Donald was accompanied at his victory speech by Chris Christie, who looked awkward standing behind his ally as he spoke. Trump lost out in three states - Oklahoma and Texas went to Ted Cruz while Marco Rubio won Minnesota
Surprise victory: Ted Cruz scored an upset win in Oklahoma, where polling had put him far behind Trump. He also won in his home state of Texas. Cruz told supporters that he is the only candidate who has a chance of beating Trump
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Bragging rights will go to the senator in the year's first 'closed' GOP primary, where voters were required to register as Republicans weeks earlier, could go either way.
But the front-runner Trump broke Cruz's serve in return, winning in Arkansas despite trailing there in recent polls.
Eleven states in all hosted Republican presidential primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, and pre-election polling showed Trump with solid leads in eight of the contests.
The results will determine how many delegates who are 'bound' to each candidate will attend this year's Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Associated Press declared Trump the victor in Georgia – the first decision of the night – almost immediately after polls closed at 7:00 p.m.
Republicans have no clear favorite choice for Trump's VP... Why President Trump would be the big short: Wall Street... Voters go to the polls in 11 states including Democratic...
With 77.2 per cent of the votes counted in the Peach State, The Donald had a 40-24 lead over Cruz, his nearest competitor. Rubio was just a hair's breadth further back.
By 8:00 p.m. the former reality TV star had punched his nomination ticket in three more states just minutes after their polling places closed for the day.
Virginia jumped into Trump's win column at around 8:45 p.m. Arkansas came at 10:25.
But Cruz's two victories establish that Trump's brand of populism hasn't yet penetrated fully into cowboy country.
In a Super Tuesday speech, Trump congratulated Cruz on his Texas win but took a swipe at Rubio.
'I know it was a very tough night for Marco Rubio. he had a tough night,' Trump told a packed room of journalists and well-wishers at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
'He is a lightweight as I've said many times before.'
He blasted the first-term senator who is 25 years his junior, saying that the decision to go negative in the past week doomed his chances.
'I always liked Marco until about a week ago when he decided to go hostile,' Trump said as chuckles filled the room.
'He decided to become Don Rickles, okay? But Don Rickles has a lot more talent.'
'At least you could say that Ted Cruz has won something,' he boomed from a gilded posium set up on a small stage in front of a row of American flags.
'He hasn't won anything. And he actually hasn't come very close.'
Rubio would be named the victor in Minnesota an hour later.
After tonight's significant win, Trump told DailyMail.com during a press conference that his string of triumphs will make it difficult for Republican Party insiders to argue that he shouldn't be their standard-bearer.
'I have millions and millions of people,' he said, describing the army of peasants wielding political pitchforks on his behalf.
And as a result, he claimed, 'the Republicans have tremendous energy. The Democrats don't. ... Their numbers are down. Our numbers are through the roof.'
'We could win nine states today,' Trump mused. 'If I'm going to win all of these states with tremendous numbers, and if I'm going to come in, the worst is second, in the two or three that I might not win, I think, you know, we're a democracy.'
'I think it's awfully hard to say that's not the person we want to lead the party.'
He spoke too soon, it turned out, as he placed third in Minnesota – the one state Rubio carried.
Trump also warned that when Super Tuesday is over, 'I'm going to go after one person: Hillary Clinton.'
He pegged much of his support to a nationwide financial crisis that's unfolding at the level of individual households, and said Clinton's own victory speech after her string of Democratic primary victories shows that she 'doesn't have a clue' how to reverse it.
'In her speech she just said, "They're making less money",' Trump observed.
'Well, she's been there with Obama for a long period of time. Why hasn't she done anything about it?'
And her record at the helm of President Obama's state department was 'abysmal,' he charged, in a likely test balloon of general election messaging.
'You look at what's going on with Syria. You look at what's going on with everything. It's a disaster!'
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And in a momentary detour on Clinton's classified-email scandal, he paused and looked into the sea of cameras and reporters.
'I don't know that she's going to be allowed to run. What she did is a criminal act,' he said.
'If she's allowed to run, honestly it would be a sad day for this country. Because what she did was wrong. And other people have done far less than her and they paid a very, very big price.'
Ted Cruz positioned himself as the Republicans' only viable alternative to frontrunner Donald Trump during his speech after the results came in.
'Tonight was another decision point and the voters have spoken,' Cruz said. 'Tomorrow morning we have a choice.'
Cruz then said that as long as the field was still 'divided' – with Marco Rubio, John Kasich and Ben Carson still hanging on – 'Donald Trump's path to the nomination remains more likely and that would be a disaster for Republicans, for conservatives and for the nation.'
'And after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump,' Cruz claimed.
Rubio went on CNN later in the evening and suggested that Cruz's performance was underwhelming and said he wouldn't be dropping out.
'Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night, not a night where he won two states, he was supposed to have that Southern firewall and it didn't happen,' Rubio said.
Some of Tuesday's races hold implications beyond the simple question of how many delegates to the summer GOP convention each candidate will control.
In the key November swing state of Virginia, for instance, pundits were watching vote totals for signs of whether a Republican nominee could challenge Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton there.
Turnout was on pace to set a new record, and Trump needed every advantage. He won by just 30,000 votes among more than 1 million cast.
Trump also scored a gold medal in Vermont.
With 93 per cent of precincts reporting, the front-running businessman won with 32.7 per cent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich came running second with 30.4 per cent.
Rubio stood in third with 19.6 per cent, ahead of Cruz's 9.8 per cent.
And Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon, was in the basement at 4.1 per cent – the same fifth-place position he occupied in most of Tuesday's races.
Kasich's rise to the number two slot in Vermont was a rare bright spot for him.
Everywhere else, Rubio and Cruz seemed to be returning to a role they learned in South Carolina: jostling for second place behind Trump.
And Trump ended the night finishing in first or second place everywhere his name was on the ballot.
Rubio's only hope was to notch a win is in Minnesota, a state his rivals have largely ignored. And he managed to do so. The young Floridian rushed there immediately after the February 20 South Carolina primary to shore up his one beachhead.
Instead of a secret-ballot election, Minnesota holds caucuses – neighborhood meetings where voters try to persuade each other to declare their support for one White House hopeful or another.
A win anywhere for Kasich or Carson would have been a long-shot miracle.
Lashing out: Trump hit out at Marco Rubio in his victory speech after the Floria Senator launched a series of vicious attacks on him in the days leading up to Super Tuesday. Trump said: 'He decided to become Don Rickles, okay? But Don Rickles has a lot more talent.'
Second place: Ted Cruz told supporters 'after tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump'
Cruz is pictured kissing his wife Heidi. He added in his speech: 'We are the only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump once ... twice ... three times'
Only victory: Marco Rubio addresses supporters in Minnesota on Super Tuesday, the only state where he won
Clinging to the race! Ohio Gov. John Kasich's best result was second in Vermont. He says he will withdraw from the race if he fails to win Ohio on March 15
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson insists he won't be bowing out of the race during an election night party in Baltimore, despite not winning a single state
The Republican front runner was sporting a Make American Great Again umbrella, decorated with the stars and stripes, at an earlier rally in Columbus
Kasich has said he will withdraw from the race if he fails to win his own state, Ohio, on March 15.
Carson insists he's in it for the long haul, crediting his social media followers for inspiring his tenacity.
Fox found that 32 per cent of all Super Tuesday voters chose a candidate in just the last few days.
Of that group, Rubio got the lion's share with 38 per cent. Trump was fourth with just 15 per cent of last-minute deciders.
Rubio struck an aggressive tone with reporters on Tuesday afternoon, suggesting his goals are to beat Ted Cruz for second place and to keep as many Republican National Convention delegates out of Trump's hands as possible.
'His whole campaign for months has been built on winning Iowa, winning South Carolina, and winning big on Super Tuesday,' he said of Cruz.
'He won Iowa but he came in third in South Carolina, and he's not going to win big on Super Tuesday. So I think there's a lot of questions.'
'We're going to have a lot of delegates after tonight,' Rubio added, 'and you're going to see very clearly after tonight that Donald Trump has no chance of ever getting the delegates he needs to be the nominee.'
'We feel great about Minnesota. We feel great about Virginia. We feel great about a bunch of them,' he said.
Asked if he had a sense of controlling his own political destiny, Rubio said: 'All these things are in God's hands, God's will is going to be done.'
By the time all the votes are counted Tuesday night, the Republican field will have split up 595 delegates to July's Republican National Convention.
The first four high-profile contests in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada – all told – put just 126 delegates in play. Trump led the field at the beginning of Tuesday with 82 delegates in his corner.
The GOP convention will seat a total of 2,472 delegates from all 50 states and every U.S. territory, making 1,237 the magic number of votes a candidate needs in order clinch the presidential nomination.
All of the Super Tuesday battleground states will award delegates according to the proportions of the vote won by the candidates. In a few places they must reach a threshold – usually 20 per cent – in order to claim any delegates at all.
HIGH STAKES: Five GOP candidates and two Democratic candidates sparred over delegates on March 1, also known as Super Tuesday. Here's how they were distributed – according to population
But most follow arcane formulas that allocate their delegates by district, and put a large pot of them up for grabs according to statewide totals.
Cruz awaited Tuesday's results in the Houston suburb of Stafford, Texas, and celebrated his victories there.
Trump held a press conference, not a party, at his sprawling, opulent Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach.
Dozens of his high-society friends occupied the front two rows. Son Eric Trump appeared on stage with the candidate and a handful of staffers.
But wife Melania and daughter Ivanka remained in New York, as Ivanka is due to give birth any day.
Rubio was in Florida, too, but by default: With no one state appearing to a sure victory, he chose to frame it as a kickoff party for the March 15 primary there – a must-win contest if Rubio has any hope of ever surging to the front of the pack.
House Speaker Paul Ryan and other conservatives had kicked off the day urging their party to side with establishment candidates.
Ryan said Tuesday that anyone who wants to be the Republican presidential nominee must reject racism.
The GOP is the party of President Abraham Lincoln, he told reporters, adding: 'this party does not prey on people's prejudices.'
Ryan was grinding an axe on Trump's Sunday CNN appearance in which he declined to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and other white supremacists.
Trump had disavowed Duke on several other occasions and later blamed a faulty IFB – a television interview earpiece – for his lack of a forceful response Sunday on the air.
While Trump seems on course for a win, the question of who will take home the votes for the Vice Presidency remains uncertain.
Carson got the biggest chunk of support, at 11 percent, in a scattershot poll published by the Morning Consult.
Another 38 percent of respondents indicated they didn't yet know who they would like to see take Joe Biden's place.
Right behind Carson are the remaining candidates in the Republican field.
Rubio and Cruz each get 9 percent support for the vice presidency, while former Ohio Gov. John Kasich received 8 percent support.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who threw his weight behind Trump's bid on Friday and introduced him Tuesday night in Florida, also clears the top of the list at 8 percent.
Bernie Sanders campaign facing stern test on Super Tuesday | US news | The Guardian
DeDe in the Morning | K104 | Hip-Hop and R&BHillary Clinton Calls In - DeDe in the Morning | K104 | Hip-Hop and R&B
Super Tuesday 2016 sees Donald Trump storm to victory with Ted Cruz behind him
There's not getting around it--everyone who votes ...
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Tax Deal Pases Senate 81-19
The Senate just approved the tax deal by an 81 to 19 margin, and now the bill will move to the House of Representatives, where it will have to overcome opposition within the Democratic caucus.
I don't have the official final roll call yet, but among those voting no were generally a coalition of conservatives and liberals: Jeff Bingaman, Tom Coburn, Jim Demint, John Ensign, Russ Feingold, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kay Hagan, Tom Harkin, Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Sessions, George Voinovich, Mark Udall and Tom Udall.
Posted on December 15, 2010 Categories American Spectator
Tone Deaf Democrats
Whatever else you want to say about the omnibus spending bill, from a purely political perspective, it's a pretty amazing example of how out of touch Democrats are with the spirit of the times. A little over a month after they took a "shellacking" at the polls, they decided to introduce a $1.2 trillion spending bill, with thousands of earmarks, including $8 million for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. It's a rich target for Republicans to show themselves as opposed to government spending at a time when the Democratic strategy was supposed to be about portraying them as fiscal frauds.
Coburn Files Amendments Proposing $156 Bln in Spending Cuts to Pay for Tax Bill
Sen. Tom Coburn this morning filed ammendments cutting spending by $156 billion to offset the new spending in the tax deal negotiated beteen President Obama and Republicans. Coburn was one of just five Republicans to vote against the tax deal on Monday. You can read the amendments here.
Among the savings he proposes:
– A congressional pay freeze and a 15 percent reduction in Congress' budget;
– A freeze on how much can be spent on the salaries for federal employees and a reduction in the number of government bureaucrats;
– Limiting the amount that the government can spend on printing, travel, and new vehicles;
– Selling unneeded and excess federal property;
– Stopping unemployment benefit payments to jobless millionaires;
– Collecting unpaid taxes owed by federal employees and members of Congress;
– Consolidating duplicative government programs;
– Preventing fraud within federal health care programs;
– Streamlining Defense spending and reducing foreign aid, including voluntary contributions to the United Nations.
Here's video of Coburn explaining his move:
UPDATE: The amendment failed 47 to 52.
What Carter Learned
Asked about his biggest failure as president, Jimmy Carter offered the following:
"I guess my biggest failure was not getting re-elected. And I learned two things; one is that you ought not to ever let American hostages be held for 444 days in a foreign country without extracting them. I did the best I could, but I failed."
Seriously, it took losing the presidency to learn this? Via Political Wire, which posted video.
Liberals Mull ObamaCare Without The Mandate
It's long been accepted as a given in health care policy circles that if the government is going to force insurers to offer coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, they're also going to have to require that everybody purchase insurance. Without a mandate, you end up with the infamous "death spiral" — healthy people forgo purchasing coverage because they know they can wait until they get sick, leaving insurers with sicker beneficiaries, which drives up premiums and causes more healthy people to exit the market, and so on.
In the wake of yesterday's court decision declaring the mandate unconstitutional, liberals have begun to discuss strategies in the event that this aspect of the law gets overturned by the Supreme Court. Both Ezra Klein and Brian Beutler have weighed in, saying there would be ways to modify the mandate. Each of them pointed toward this proposal by Paul Starr for an "opt out" provision. The idea would be that any uninsured American could choose to opt out of the mandate, but only after agreeing to forgo federal subsidies to purchase insurance on government-run exchanges for five years, during which time they would not be guaranteed coverage were they to get a pre-existing condition.
The problem with this proposal — setting aside any legal or ideological issues — is that I don't see how it would do much to solve the "death spiral" problem. The mandate is mostly aimed at making sure that healthy individuals join the risk pool to offset the cost of covering those with pre-existing conditions. If the "opt out" were simply added to the existing law, this group would now have three choices: A) "opt out" and maintain the status quo B) pay small penalty, which guarantees you the ability to purchase insurance if you get sick or C) shell out thousands of dollars a year on premiums. I think it's fair to assume that most people in this group would choose either A or B, since the first option woud leave them no better or worse off, and the second option would promise them greater protection for a small fee.
Starr himself anticipated this criticism in a NY Times op-ed, to which he responded: "The more sensible approach would be to provide a five-year opt-out without penalties and, after a transitional period, to set stiffer annual fines for those who want to keep open the alternative of buying guaranteed coverage at any time."
The problem is that to change the incentive structure, you'd really have to make the fines approach the actual cost of insurance. And even if you did that, healthy people would still be able to choose the status quo, which most of them are still likely to do — or at least enough of them so as to still cause the "death spiral." This is especially true for those making over $43,320, who would not qualify for any government subsidies anyway. And keep in mind that as the Congressional Budget Office has explained, premiums are going to shoot up for those in the individual market not receiving government subsidies, because the national health care law is imposing all sorts of requirements on what benefits insurers must cover.
The individual mandate is one of the most unpopular elements of the health care law, and Democrats would have jumped at the chance to remove it if there was a viable alternative. But there's a reason why they kept it in, and why President Obama, who strongly opposed the mandate during the campaign season, had to embrace it. The bottom line is that ObamaCare — particularly the guaranteed coverage for those with pre-existing conditions — unravels in the absence of a mandate.
ObamaCare's Legal Setback
Nationwide protests were "Astroturf." Polling was to get better once Congress passed a bill. And the new law was supposed to boost Democrats' electoral chances in November. Throughout their campaign for national health care, liberals tried to convince us that opposition was a joke, only to be proven dramatically wrong each and every time.
This Monday, a federal judge punctured another liberal fantasy — that constitutional challenges to ObamaCare were frivolous exercises that would be laughed out of courtrooms.
In a 42-page decision, U.S District Court Judge Henry Hudson ruled that the health care law's requirement that individuals purchase insurance "exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power," rejecting the Obama administration's argument that the Commerce Clause gave it the authority to compel the purchase of coverage as part of a larger health care regulatory scheme.
"This case isn't about health insurance, it isn't about health care, it's about liberty," Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who was mocked by liberals in March when he launched a lawsuit against the law, told TAS in a phone interview Monday evening.
If courts ultimately uphold the individual mandate, Cuccinelli argued, it will give the federal government unprecedented power over Americans' lives. The mandate is also being challenged in a separate lawsuit filed by 20 states led by Florida.
"If the feds win this case, they can do anything," he said. "They can force people to buy cars, asparagus — the list goes on and is infiniteâ€_. It is no underestimation to say that it (would be) the end of federalism. That nothing the federal government does (would be) limited by enumerated powers."
Given the uncertainty that is hanging over states as a result of the pending constitutional challenges, Cuccinelli is in talks with the U.S. Department of Justice to join together in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to expedite hearing the case. But the Obama administration is likely to appeal the decision to the Fourth Circuit.
While that court was once considered one of the most conservative appeals courts in the nation, three recent Obama appointees have tilted the balance, and Democratically appointed judges now outnumber Republican ones by an 8-to-5 margin. Typically, the court hears cases in three-judge panels, but it also has the option of hearing them as a whole, or en banc.
"My focus is on the end point," Cuccinelli explained, asked about the composition of the Fourth Circuit. "I don't mind losing everything except the last one.â€_ One way or the other, it's going to be tight. I think it's going to be close at the Supreme Court as well."
Unlike other types of lawsuits, this one doesn't involve depositions, discovery and witnesses. "This is a pure legal debate," he said. "And the universe of available legal argument is pretty well known at this point. We may reformulate it for different panels, for the Fourth Circuit. But the contours of the legal argument are pretty well settled at this point. Nobody is going to say, 'Aha, I found the silver bullet case!' That isn't going to happen at this point. It's a matter of how the judges along the way — by that I mean moving up the appellate chain — respond to the same type of arguments you saw in the District Court."
While Hudson (a George W. Bush appointee) held that the individual mandate "exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I," two other district court judges (appointed by Bill Clinton) have upheld the individual mandate as constitutional, arguing that not purchasing health insurance is an "economic decision" and therefore fair game for regulation under the Commerce Clause.
Speaking of one of the decisions, by U.S. District Court Judge George Steeh of the Eastern District of Michigan, Cuccinelli said, "It adopts such a leap of logic and language, to reach the conclusions that judge reaches, that I hope other judges read it and go, 'Whoa, this is what it takes for these guys to win? I don't want to sign on to this.'"
Congressional power under the Commerce Clause has been greatly expanded by courts from its original meaning in the Constitution, but the individual mandate takes things to a whole new level by saying that it gives the federal government the right to compel the purchase of something. That's why Cuccinelli believes that the mandate can be struck down without overturning prior Supreme Court rulings.
"It is quite an incredible leap to go from regulating actual voluntary activity that affects commerce, to say that doing nothing, and the accumulation of people doing nothing, affects commerce in the sense that if they did something, the market would look different," he said.
Cuccinelli argued that those who may favor expanding federal power now because they support the health care law may one day find that it comes back to haunt them.
"How much would the folks who voted for this bill appreciate a mandate that every American buy a gun?" he asked, laughing heartily. "And not whatever you want, we're going to have a government-approved list of guns. And they're going to be ugly, mean-looking guns that normally these people would try to ban."
Assuming that the case travels through the typical appeals process, Cuccinelli estimated that it would be roughly two years before the Supreme Court issues a decision. The individual mandate component of the law is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2014. For now, he says he's "cautiously optimistic."
Randy Barnett Says Court Decision Against ObamaCare is a Game Changer
Georgetown Law Professor Randy Barnett, who has been a leading legal critic of the national health care law, said today's ruling against the individual mandate changes the dynamics of the effort to overturn the legislation.
"This was a huge day," Barnett told me in a phone interview. "The government needed to run the table on all of these cases to survive, and it failed. It basically needed all the judges to say it was constitutional, and as soon as they had one that said it wasn't, then we have a different game."
First, he said, "It changes the posture, because now this will go to the Court of Appeals, and the Court of Appeals is going to have to reverse this judge."
But in the more immediate term, it will impact a similar suit against ObamaCare brought by 20 states led by Florida, he predicted. U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson, of the Northern District of Florida, is scheduled to hear arguments on Thursday.
Barnett explained that had today's decision gone the other way, the Obama administration would have been able to argue that three judges had upheld the law, but now the state of Florida can point to a case in which the law was ruled unconstitutional.
The ruling also gives more cover to Vinson. "Judge Vinson now is not going to be standing alone against Congress if he should decide it's unconstitutional," Barnett said.
Going forward, Barnett said, if one of the appeals' courts decides that the law in unconstitional, it's almost garunteed to go to the Supreme Court. If the law is upheld in appeal, then it would take four Supreme Court justices who want to weigh in on the issue to bring it before the court, which he believes is likely anyway.
But he doesn't expect the Supreme Court to weigh in on an expidited basis, bypassing the appeals' courts. He said as a case moves up the food chain, the quality of the arguments and analysis improves, so the Supreme Court tends to wait until wait for the appeals' court to have its say so that the case is more fully formed by the time it reaches the highest court. "I'd be surprised if they want to jump the gun on this," he said.
Barnett also emphasized that in his preliminary ruling on the Florida case, Vinson rejected the argument that Congress had the constitutional authority to impose a mandate under its taxing power. That argument was also rejected by Judge Henry Hudson in his decision today.
"Basically, every court has rejected the tax power argument," Barnett said. "I never thought that argument was going anywhere, and it hasn't gone anywhere. This is another sign that this thing is going to have to rise or fall on the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause. And the tax power thing is going to be gone."
Tax Deal Moves Ahead in Senate, 83-15
The U.S. Senate on Monday voted to move forward on the tax deal cut by President Obama and Republicans, 83-15. It will now move on to the House of Representatives.
While the outcome of today's vote was never in doubt, the overwhelming margin makes it a lot harder for House Democrats to seriously resist the bill. As Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen said, their caucus had strong reservations about the deal, especially on the estate tax, but, "We're not going to hold this thing up at the end of the dayâ€_"
Van Hollen seemed to be suggesting House Democrats may hold a symbolic vote on estate taxes, but then another vote to approve the package as is and send it to the president.
There are other issues Democrats still have to or would like to tackle — a year-end spending bill, the START treaty and "Don't Ask Don't Tell." The longer they stall on the tax vote, the less chance they have of dealing with those priorities.
Also, now that the Senate has approved the deal, House Democrats have very little leverage. When the Republican majority comes in next month, they would immediately vote to approve the deal, which we now know would coast through the Senate, and then be signed by the president. The problem with that option is that it would create a number of logistical hurdles for the IRS, and it's extremely difficult to write tax legislation retroactively.
There's no official roll call yet, but by my count, Democrats voting no: Sens. Jeff Bingaman, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Mark Udall, , Sherrod Brown, Kay Hagan and Carl Levin, Frank Lautenberg,
Republicans voting no: John Ensign, Tom Coburn, George Voinovich, Jeff Sessions, and Jim DeMint.
Report: Steele to Run Again
Despite his troubled tenure, litany of gaffes, and rumors to the contrary, RNC Chairman Michael Steele will tonight announce his plans to run for re-election, the Frum Forum reports.
Anti-ObamaCare Lawsuit Could Advance to Less Favorable 4th Circuit
While conservatives are celebrating today's ruling against ObamaCare's individual mandate, should the Obama administration appeal today's decision to the Fourth Circuit, as widely assumed, it will face a much more favorable venue thanks to recent appointments by President Obama that have tilted the balance of the once-conservative court.
During the Bush era, the Fourth Circuit developed a reputation as the most conservative in the nation, in large part because it sided with the administration on a number of key national security decisions, particularly involving terorist detainees.
But the balance has shifted dramatically since then, and currently Democratic appointees outnumber Republicans by an 8-to-5 margin, with two vacancies remaining.
At the start of the Obama administration, Republicans had the slight edge over Democrats, 6-to-5. In July of last year, chief judge and Republican appointee Karen Williams had to step down due to early onset of Alzheimer's. Since then, Obama has been able to get three of his nominees to the court confirmed — Judges Andre Davis, Barbara Keenan and James Wynn.
The appeals court is already on track to hear an appeal of another anti-ObamaCare lawsuit, brought by Liberty University, which was dismissed by a Clinton appointee, Judge Norman Moon, earlier this month.
No matter what happens with either case at the appeals court level, however, the issue will likely have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court.


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text:
SRX Physics
Table of Contents Submit
SRX Physics / 2010 / Article
AbstractReferencesCopyright
G. Upender, C. P. Vardhani, V. Kamalaker, V. Chandra Mouli, "Infrared Spectroscopic Characterization of Tellurite Glasses Containing Heavy Metal Oxides", SRX Physics, vol. 2010, Article ID 927056, 6 pages, 2010. https://doi.org/10.3814/2010/927056
Infrared Spectroscopic Characterization of Tellurite Glasses Containing Heavy Metal Oxides
G. Upender,1 C. P. Vardhani,1 V. Kamalaker,1 and V. Chandra Mouli1,2
1Glassy Materials Research Laboratory (GMRL), Department of Physics, Osmania University, Hyderabad 500 007, India
2Pulla Reddy Institute of Technology, Vargal, Madak, A.P., India
Received13 Jul 2009
Published03 Feb 2010
The infrared (IR) spectra of (100-x)TeO2–xWO3 glasses reveal that the glass network consists of [TeO3]/[TeO3+1], [TeO4], [WO4], and [WO6] groups as basic structural units. Addition of WO3 oxide to the binary TeO2–WO3 glasses increases the amount of lower coordination of [TeO3]/[TeO3+1] units and decreases the higher coordination of [TeO4] units and also the formation of Te–O–W linkages at the expense of Te–O–Te linkages. The IR spectra of 60TeO2–(40-x)WO3–xPbO glasses reveal that the glass network consists of [TeO3], [TeO4], [WO4], [WO6], and [PbO4] units. Changes in the coordination state of tellurium and tungsten ions occur when the PbO and WO3 concentrations are varied. The dual role of the lead ions is confirmed in 60TeO2–(40-x)WO3–xPbO glass system. The W ion coordination state changes from 4 to 6 when WO3 concentration increases beyond 30 mol% in both (100-x)TeO2–xWO3 and 60TeO2–(40-x)WO3–xPbO glass systems. The IR spectra of 60B2O3–10TeO2–(30-x)ZnO–xPbO glasses reveal that the glass network consists of [TeO3], [BO3], and [BO4] groups.
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Cliff Bell's is a jazz club in Detroit, Michigan which is located at 2030 Park Ave. It originally opened in 1935, and it is named after John Clifford Bell, an entrepreneur in Detroit in the 1930s. Notable artists such as Marcus Miller have performed at Cliff Bell's. Additionally, The Moth storytelling events are held monthly at Cliff Bell's.

It was used as a location in the movie The Ides of March, in a scene where Detroit musician Bob Mervak was briefly shown singing We'll Meet Again. The entrance was also seen in the film Kill the Irishman, filming up Park Avenue.

References

Music venues in Michigan
Buildings and structures in Detroit
Culture of Detroit
Event venues established in 1935
1935 establishments in Michigan

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Benchmark Resources was awarded multi-year contracts to perform annual mine inspections and review financial assurance cost estimates and financial assurance mechanisms for both Yolo and Imperial Counties. Benchmark Resources' staff has inspected mine reclamation activities for more than 15 years, and staff has completed more than 800 annual inspections for lead agencies throughout California. Benchmark Resources' experience and approach to conducting inspections and reporting will ensure that the inspection process is completed to satisfy the mine reclamation requirements of both the California Surface Mining and Reclamation Act and each county. For more information about this type of service, please contact Dave Brown or Andrew Heinemann at (916) 983-9193.