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Sunday, October 24, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Trees Eat Pollution Better Than Expected : Discovery News
Some common and dangerous air pollutants found in cities can be absorbed by plants at far greater rates than ever suspected.
The discovery has big implications for modeling how vegetation affects pollutants, as well as how particles in the atmosphere affect human health and global warming.
The finding comes from a fruitful and unusual collaboration of plant geneticists and atmospheric scientists. The plant scientists found the genes used by plants and the conditions under which they are activated to allow more volatile organic compounds (VOCs) to be absorbed, while the atmospheric scientists lugged equipment around the globe to verify that the plants were indeed sucking up pollutants in the real world.
"It's been hard to measure this in the real world," said Thomas Karl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "That's why we hauled this instrument all around the world."
Karl led the field work which involved gathering and immediately analyzing air samples in remote forests using a 200-pound, washing machine-sized mass spectrometer. He is also the lead author on a paper reporting the discovery in the Oct. 21 issue of Science Express.
"Our goal was to really be in places that were undisturbed to mimic the most natural case," said Karl. That took them to seven locations in more than six years.
Among the specific discoveries is that deciduous plants take up about a third more oxygenated VOCs -- a form of pollutant that has reacted with oxygen -- than previously thought. These oxygenated VOCs come from burning gasoline, forest and other biomass fires and are e even released by some kinds of trees.
"The trees actually clean up more than we thought," said Karl.
That's extremely useful information when trying to figure out what's happening globally. The work will be used by modelers, Karl said, working on Earth systems models which attempt to try to take into account and simulate as many processes as possible.
"This paper is very interesting to me because we want to understand the sources and the sinks" of VOC pollutants, said researcher Qi Zhang of the University of California at Davis.
Of particular interest are particles, called secondary organic aerosols (SOAs), that are created by oxygenated VOCs. These SOAs are extremely important, Zhang said, because they can serve as seeds for cloud droplets, affect the way the atmosphere holds heat and they are major cause of disease and death in urban areas.
"(SOAs) are more deadly than car accidents," Zhang told Discovery News.
Now that the plant genes for grabbing VOCs are understood, there could be a future application for them in helping to clean cities, said Chhandak Basu of the University of Northern Colorado, a co-author on the paper. He envisions a day when plants with these VOC-sucking genes line highways, or other sources of pollution, sucking the harmful compounds out of the air.
As for the unusual cross pollination that produced the discovery, it was not easy, said Brenda Thornton, of the University of Northern Colorado, who identified the plant genes at work.
"It's really difficult to get different fields working together," said Thornton. They often seemed to be speaking separate languages, she said, but they managed to bridge the gaps.
Arbor Day takes on a whole new meaning!
Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day
There are a number things the public "knows [1]" as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.
Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:
1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush's last budget [2] had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first reduced that to $1.29 trillion [3].2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes [4]. 40% of the "stimulus" was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt [5], which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the "stimulus" with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush [6] and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts [7] to be "non-reviewable by any court or any agency.") The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.4) The stimulus didn't work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough [8]. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office [9], the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand [10]. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts [11].6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion [12].7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme [13], is "going broke," people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on "welfare" and "foreign aid" when that is only a small part of the government's budget.This stuff really matters.
If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.
If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn't work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.
If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.
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Friday, October 22, 2010
I Got A Brand New Pair Of Roller Skates- You Got A Brand New Key- HP ePrint Baby
via youtube.com
Baby walkers will never look the same again.
Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz Calls for Jail Time for Corporate Crooks - DailyFinance
via dailyfinance.com
Nobel Prize Winner Joseph Stiglitz Calls for Jail Time for Corporate Crooks
http://t.co/fBGMjmQ via @AOL
Study: Dogs' Separation Anxiety May Be a Sign of Pessimism
The only time my dog's tail stops wagging is when she's asleep. She's a really happy pup, in other words — or at least I thought she was. The lead author of a new study in the journal Current Biology suggests she may have a "negative underlying emotional state."
According to researchers at the University of Bristol and University of Lincoln in the U.K., dogs that exhibit "separation-related behavior" (SRB) may be inherently pessimistic pooches. This behavior includes barking, destructive chewing and peeing and pooping when left alone. (My dog, Lola, exhibits the second one.) (More on Time.com: Why Spamming Your Friends With Cute Kitties Is Good Karma)
For the study, researchers observed 24 shelter dogs to determine which ones exhibited SRB. Next, the researchers taught the dogs that a bowl placed on one side of a room would contain food, while a bowl placed on the other side would not. After the pups had that down, the researchers placed a test bowl elsewhere in the room. Dogs that ran to that bowl expecting food were labeled "optimistic"; dogs that ignored the new bowl figuring it wouldn't contain food were labeled "pessimistic."
The authors of the study found a correlation between dogs that exhibited SRB and those that were pessimists in the bowl test. In a published interview, Mike Mendl, the study's lead author said, "Happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. Now it seems that this may also apply to dogs." The ambiguous situation he referred to was being left alone. Pessimistic dogs, the study says, may view this circumstance as bad and react accordingly, while optimistic dogs may not.
Back to my dog, Lola. When my husband and I first adopted her from a rescue group, we immediately bought a metal crate and began the process of "crate training," allowing her to be outside her crate only under supervision or if it was time to go for a walk to pee and poop outside. Once she got the hang of that, we left her outside her crate while we were at work. She was free to roam around our apartment all day. (More on Time.com: Photos: Animals That Can Think)
I'm not sure how much roaming she did in between all the destructive chewing. First, she destroyed her dog bed, ripping it apart and pulling out all the stuffing. Then, she chewed up a corner of our bed's box spring. Later on, she ate the wooden handles of our antique writing desk. We didn't worry too much — these were our own possessions, after all, and we wanted to give her time to adjust. Then, she chewed the windowsill. This was actually attached to our rented apartment, so it was cause for concern. But we didn't react to Lola's SRB until she took it one step further, literally chewing a hole through the hardwood floor.
After this, we decided we would keep Lola in her crate whenever no one else was home. Many people might think this is cruel, but there are a few mitigating circumstances. One, Lola loves her crate. When we're home, we leave the crate door open and she frequently saunters in there to curl up and nap, having claimed the space as her "den." Secondly, when she's in her crate, Lola is calm and sleeps almost all day. (We know this because we had a brief foray with a pet-cam during the chewing escapades.) Thirdly, we take Lola off leash in a nearby park every morning for at least an hour, so she gets lots of exercise.
But in light of this new study, might my husband and I have missed a clear sign that Lola is just a pessimistic dog? What is pessimism after all? If it's a sign of unhappiness, what accounts for the constant tail wagging? And what about our successful use of positive reinforcement? We trained Lola to shake on command by giving her a dog biscuit every time she performed. After she learned this trick, we started giving her a biscuit for shaking only occasionally. This didn't cause her to stop extending her paw for a greeting. On the contrary, every time we ask, "Can you shake, Lola?" she lifts her little white paw upward, eyes glistening in anticipation. That seems like pretty optimistic behavior to me.
More on Time.com:
Photos: Amazing Moms of the Animal Kingdom
Video: Animal Intelligence: Birds That Use Tools
Seagull Droppings in Drug Development? Why Not!
Health.com: What Does Depression Look Like?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
10 infants dead in California whooping cough outbreak
10 infants dead in California whooping cough outbreak
From Miriam Falco, CNNSTORY HIGHLIGHTS
- California health officials say it's the worst outbreak of whooping cough in 60 years
- Nearly 6,000 confirmed or probable cases have been reported since January 1
- Vaccinations prevent the spread of the highly contagious bacterial disease
- "This is a preventable disease," says a health department spokesman
(CNN) -- Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, has claimed the 10th victim in California, in what health officials are calling the worst outbreak in 60 years.
Since the beginning of the year, 5,978 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of the disease have been reported in California.
All of the deaths occurred in infants under the age of 3 months, says Michael Sicilia, a spokesman for the California Department of Public Health. Nine were younger than 8 weeks old, which means they were too young to have been vaccinated against this highly contagious bacterial disease.
"This is a preventable disease," says Sicilia, because there is a vaccine for whooping cough to protect those coming in contact with infants, and thereby protect the infants.
However, some parents are choosing to not vaccinate their children. In other cases, previously vaccinated children and adults may have lost their immunity because the vaccine has worn off.
The vaccine "does not protect you for life," explains Alison Patti, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sicilia says California Health Department epidemiologists estimate 50 percent of the children who have gotten sick were infected by their parents or caregivers.
According to the recommended vaccine schedule for infants, newborns don't get their first pertussis vaccine until they are 2 months old, leaving them vulnerable to infection until then if the people surrounding them are infected.
"That's why the real important message is -- whether it's a mom, dad, sibling, grandfather or grandmother that comes in contact with these really young babies -- all the close contacts, including the health care professionals, need to vaccinated," says Patti. It's called the "cocooning strategy," where the newborns are protected because the older people around them have been vaccinated and protected from pertussis, and therefore won't pass it on to little babies.
Pertussis, or whooping cough, is a highly contagious disease caused by bacteria that can lead to severe upper respiratory infections. The bacteria is spread in tiny droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
Initial symptoms are very similar to a cold, but a week or two later, a violent cough develops.
"If you've ever seen a child with pertussis, you won't forget it" -- that's how the American Academy of Pediatrics explains what whooping cough is on its website. The academy says a child with the disease coughs so hard and so often "until the air is gone from his/her lungs and he/she is forced to inhale with the loud 'whooping' sound that gives the disease its nickname."
The cough can last for weeks and children can cough so hard and rapidly,that blood vessels can burst and they have difficulty eating, drinking and breathing. According to the CDC, "about 1 in 5 infants with pertussis get pneumonia, and about 1 in 100 will have convulsions. In rare cases (1 in 100), pertussis can be deadly, especially in infants."
Parents and doctors can often miss the initial symptoms of pertussis in the youngest patients because they often do not have the characteristic cough with a "whoop" says Patti.
According to the National Institutes of Health, "the whoop noise is rare in patients under 6 months and in adults."
That's why parents need to be alert to symptoms in themselves as well as their children, says Patti. If there's a prolonged pause in breathing or they have trouble breathing, that's an important sign and parents should seek medical attention immediately, she explains.
"It's important to go to the doctor early on," says Patti because, "antibiotics don't help you later."
Adults usually don't have the "whoop" cough, so they may not think they have pertussis. Patti recommends if someone has a cough that doesn't go away, they should get tested for pertussis.
Sicilia points out that the pertussis vaccine isn't perfect and its protection wanes after about five years.
Health officials are urging everyone who hasn't had a pertussis vaccine in the past five years or -- doesn't remember if they had one -- to get the shot.
Jenny McCarthy should be proud.....
HDDs' Burgeoning Capacities: Aspiring To Cut Off SSDs At The Knees - Brian's Brain | Blog on EDN
Some industry observers, such as yours truly, believe that HDD (hard disk drive) capacities have already overshot the vast majority of computer users’ storage needs. As such, other factors beyond the historically dominant metrics of absolute capacity and cost/bit will gain in prominence as selection criteria. And those other factors, such as random access performance, power consumption, ruggedness, reliability, and operating noise, specifically favor the flash memory-based SSD (solid-state storage) apparent successor.
Mine is not, I admit, a universally held opinion within the analyst ranks. And for those who favor the continued dominance of capacity-related decision factors, the HDD suppliers (many of which, I’ll note, have recently also become SSD vendors) are providing plenty of ammo to bolster their stances. Consider, for example, some cost/bit promotional examples I collected just yesterday:
- A Samsung 3.5″ 1 TByte HDD for $49.99, along with a Western Digital 2 TByte model for $99.99 (both $0.05/GByte), and
- A Toshiba 2.5″ 500 GByte HDD for $49.99 ($0.10/GByte), all in contrast to
- A Corsair 2.5″ 32 GByte SSD for $58.99 ($1.85/GByte)
Now, from an absolute capacity standpoint, consider the industry news of just the past few days. Yesterday, for example, Western Digital unveiled a 3 Tbyte HDD in a 3.5″ ‘bare’ configuration ($239, quantity 1), following up on a USB3-interface external storage variant ($249.99, quantity 1) unveiled earlier this month. At first glance, WD’s announcement might seem to be a copy-cat; after all, I wrote up Seagate’s 3 Tbyte release back in early July (a product which is already down to $199.99 or less). However, as Anand also noticed and noted in his WD coverage, Seagate’s drive was a five-platter monster (I’m reminded of Hitachi’s four-platter 1 Tbyte premier in early 2007). Conversely, WD’s focus was on power consumption, not to mention cost reduction, so it was willing to delay its entré until it could shoehorn the requisite capacity into an industry-leading four-platter configuration.
Then there’s Hitachi, who also chose October 5 to launch a new product, this a 750 GByte 2.5″ HDD. Again, at first glance you might wonder what the big deal is; Western Digital launched a 1 TByte 2.5″ HDD more than a year ago, after all, and Seagate started shipping a 1.5 TByte portable external drive a month ago. But WD’s drive is a three-platter, 12 mm design (translation: thicker than normal, thereby unable to fit in some systems), and Seagate’s drive is an even more bloated four-platter arrangement. Hitachi’s $129.99 drive matches Seagate’s per-platter capacity but, since it’s a two-platter approach, it fits into a conventional 9.5mm chassis. And it comes in both 5,400 and (beginning in the first quarter of next year) 7,200 RPM variants. Effective drive capacity tends to decrease as rotational speeds increase, thereby making Hitachi’s high-speed product plans particularly notable from an areal density standpoint.
Regarding Seagate’s 3 TByte external drive, I wrote back in early July:
This drive has migrated from the traditional 512 byte sector size to the newer 4 Kbyte sector arrangement with resultant stronger ECC, as a means of more effectively mitigating the degrading effects of raw error rates. Unfortunately, the 4 Kbyte sector size is at minimum performance- and capacity-inefficient, and worst-case completely incompatible, with legacy operating systems when the drive is directly accessed by them. By putting an intelligent USB- or FireWire-to-SATA controller in-between the drive and system, however, such incompatibilities can invisibly be worked around by it.
An intermediary approach can eliminate some, but unfortunately not all, O/S cognizance problems. A bit over a year ago, I mentioned in a blog post that I was in search of 120 GByte HDDs because of capacity-limiting 28-bit-maximum logical block addressing support in some of my computers. Well, folks, at 3 TBytes we’re once again bumping up against legacy LBA issues driven by 32-bit-max access limitations. Specifically, the full capacity of the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex drive (beyond ~2.1 Tbytes) can only be harnessed by systems that fully support 48-bit LBA; hardware, BIOS (specifically EFI), drivers, and one of the following operating systems:
- A 64-bit variant of Windows Vista or Windows 7 (including Windows Server variants derived from them)
- Mac OS 10.6 ‘Snow Leopard’, or
- A ‘modified’ Linux distribution
Unfortunately, as WD’s 3 TByte HDD system specifications suggest, I wasn’t underestimating the challenge of utilizing such an advanced drive. The 4 KByte sector size approach that I was speaking of is known as the Advanced Format; both the WD 3.5″ and Hitachi 2.5″ drives mentioned in this writeup employ it. And to get around at least some of the native system support shortcomings, WD is including an AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface)-compliant HBA (Host Bus Adapter) with the drive.
This board bundling is conceptually no different than Maxtor (now owned by Seagate) did when it was advocating ATA/133 drives in the absence of native chipset support for that particular proprietary PATA speed, for example, or what some early SATA drive suppliers did until native chipset support for the serial storage interface reached critical mass. Nonetheless, it’s a cost-burdening extra step that I’m sure WD will be happy to dispense with as soon as possible.
via edn.com
Super size me....
Technology Review: A Cell-Phone Network without a License
A trial cell-phone network in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, gets by without something every other wireless carrier needs: its own chunk of the airwaves. Instead, xG Technology, which made the network, uses base stations and handsets of its own design that steer signals through the unrestricted 900-megahertz band used by cordless phones and other short-range devices.
It's a technique called "cognitive" radio, and it has the potential to make efficient use of an increasingly limited resource: the wireless spectrum. By demonstrating the first cellular network that uses the technique, xG hopes to show that it could help wireless carriers facing growing demand but a relatively fixed supply of spectrum.
Its cognitive radios are built into both the base stations of the trial network, dubbed xMax, and handsets made for it. Every radio scans for clear spectrum 33 times a second. If another signal is detected, the handset and base station retune to avoid the other signal, keeping the connection alive. Each of the six base stations in xG's network can serve devices in a 2.5-mile radius, comparable to an average cell-phone tower.
"In Fort Lauderdale, our network covers an urban area with around 110,000 people, and so we're seeing wireless security cameras, baby monitors, and cordless phones all using that band," says Rick Rotondo, a vice president with xG, which is headquartered in Sarasota, Florida. "Because our radios are so agile, though, we can deliver the experience of a licensed cellular network in that unlicensed band."
While most radios can only use frequencies that are completely clear, xG's radios can unlock more free space by analyzing channels whose use varies over time, Rotondo says. Signals can then be inserted in between bursts of activity from a device using that channel.
"Where a more conventional radio would see a wall of signals, we are able to put our packets in between them and move around between those gaps," he explains. "Using that method, we find that even in an urban area, the 900-megahertz band is really only around 15 percent occupied at any time."
The company recently won a contract to install an xMax network to cover a large chunk of the U.S. Army's Fort Bliss training base in New Mexico. "They're interested in the possibility of one day being able to create cellular networks for use on their bases for everything we use cell networks for: voice, texting, e-mail, and data access," Rotondo says, "or rapidly deploying a version on the battlefield."
Craig Mathias, an analyst with the Farpoint Group, which specializes in the wireless industry, has inspected the Fort Lauderdale network. "It really is just like using a regular cellular system, even though the technology is so different," he says.
The potential for cognitive radio to make better use of spectrum has motivated many companies and academic labs to work on the technology in recent years, says Mathias. "The real advance of xG's system is that it can be deployed in exactly the same way as a conventional cell-phone network," he says. But exactly how xG will bring the technology to market is unclear. "One option may be for a carrier to use this in an area or market where they don't have spectrum, or to serve rural areas without coverage."
Rotondo says that xG wants to offer its approach as a complement to existing networks. "We are interested in having devices able to dynamically access different areas of spectrum--both licensed and unlicensed," he says. Wireless carriers like AT&T are turning to Wi-Fi hot spots to offload some of the load on their licensed spectrum, he points out. Being able to have devices switch to the 900-megahertz band at times of high load could be an attractive option, because it can perform much more like a cell network. The radios developed by xG could be built into commercial phone handsets, says Rotondo.
Alternatively, the system could augment emerging networks that operate in the unlicensed "white spaces" recently freed up by the end of analog TV broadcasts, Rotondo says. A recent study by University of California-Berkeley academics revealed how the density of TV stations in metropolitan areas could reduce the availability of white spaces in such areas.
Copyright Technology Review 2010.
Hello... Who is calling, please?
From Obama, the Tax Cut Nobody Heard Of
HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — What if a president cut Americans’ income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?
It is not a rhetorical question. At Pig Pickin’ and Politickin’, a barbecue-fed rally organized here last week by a Republican women’s club, a half-dozen guests were asked by a reporter what had happened to their taxes since President Obama took office.
“Federal and state have both gone up,” said Bob Paratore, 59, from nearby Charlotte, echoing the comments of others.
After further prodding — including a reminder that a provision of the stimulus bill had cut taxes for 95 percent of working families by changing withholding rates — Mr. Paratore’s memory was jogged.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he said. “I’ll be honest with you: it was so subtle that personally, I didn’t notice it.”
Few people apparently did.
In a troubling sign for Democrats as they head into the midterm elections, their signature tax cut of the past two years, which decreased income taxes by up to $400 a year for individuals and $800 for married couples, has gone largely unnoticed.
In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know. As Thom Tillis, a Republican state representative, put it as the dinner wound down here, “This was the tax cut that fell in the woods — nobody heard it.”
Actually, the tax cut was, by design, hard to notice. Faced with evidence that people were more likely to save than spend the tax rebate checks they received during the Bush administration, the Obama administration decided to take a different tack: it arranged for less tax money to be withheld from people’s paychecks.
They reasoned that people would be more likely to spend a small, recurring extra bit of money that they might not even notice, and that the quicker the money was spent, the faster it would cycle through the economy.
Economists are still measuring how stimulative the tax cut was. But the hard-to-notice part has succeeded wildly. In a recent interview, President Obama said that structuring the tax cuts so that a little more money showed up regularly in people’s paychecks “was the right thing to do economically, but politically it meant that nobody knew that they were getting a tax cut.”
“And in fact what ended up happening was six months into it, or nine months into it,” the president said, “people had thought we had raised their taxes instead of cutting their taxes.”
There are plenty of explanations as to why many taxpayers did not feel richer when the cuts kicked in, giving typical families an extra $65 a month. Some people were making less money to begin with, as businesses cut back. Others saw their take-home pay shrink as the amounts deducted for health insurance rose.
And taxpayers in more than 30 states saw their state taxes rise, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
That is what happened here in North Carolina. The Treasury Department estimated that the federal tax cut would put $1.7 billion back in the hands of North Carolina taxpayers this year. Last year, though, North Carolina, facing a large budget shortfall, raised a variety of state taxes by roughly a billion dollars.
“It was a wash,” said Mr. Tillis, the state representative.
The guests at the Pig Pickin’ rally here could rattle off the names of the House speaker and the Senate majority leader with ease, if with disdain, and were up on many of the political controversies of the day. They studied the campaign fliers at their tables, and pocketed the 1.5-ounce jars of strawberry preserves with special labels urging them to vote for Judge Bill Constangy for Superior Court (“Preserving Justice,” the labels read).
Many volunteered that they thought the Bush tax cuts should be extended for all taxpayers, even for the wealthy ones whom Mr. Obama would like to exclude. But few had heard that there had also been Obama tax cuts — which will also expire next year unless extended, but have generated far less public debate.
Bob Deaton, 73, who wore a “Fair Tax” baseball cap, was surprised to hear that there were tax cuts in the $787 billion stimulus bill, which was wildly unpopular with many at the rally even though roughly a third of it was in the form of tax cuts.
“Tax cuts?” he asked. “Where were the tax cuts?”
Ron Julian, 50, a Huntersville town commissioner, said he thought his taxes had gone up under Mr. Obama. And Mr. Paratore, a former Hearst executive, said he might have noticed the tax cuts if his paycheck had jumped more in the weeks before he retired last year: “I couldn’t even tell you what it was, to be honest with you.”
The Obama administration wants to extend the little-noticed tax cut next year. Jason Furman, the deputy director of the National Economic Council, said the administration still believes that changing the withholdings was a more effective form of stimulus than sending out rebate checks would have been.
“In retrospect, we think that judgment was right,” he said. “It’s harder to predict what’s good for politics. Ultimately, the best thing for politics is going to be helping the economy.”
But at least one prominent economist is questioning whether the method really was more effective. Joel B. Slemrod, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan, analyzed consumer surveys after the last rebate checks were sent out in 2008 by the Bush administration, and after this tax cut, called Making Work Pay, went into effect under the Obama administration.
After the 2008 rebates, he found that about a quarter of the households surveyed said they would use the money primarily to increase their spending. After the Obama tax cut took effect, he said, only 13 percent said they would use the money primarily to increase their spending. The Obama administration believes that people did spend the money, and cites analyses calling the cut one of the more effective forms of stimulus.
Mr. Slemrod said it was not unheard of for voters to miss tax cuts. Just a few years after a 1986 overhaul of the tax system made significant cuts to most people’s taxes, he said, a survey asked people what had happened to their taxes. “Most people didn’t answer that they went down,” he said.
Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington.
via nytimes.com
In case you didn't know....
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Feds probing possible criminal violations in home foreclosure crisis
Feds probing possible criminal violations in home foreclosure crisis
By Terry Frieden, CNN Justice Department ProducerSTORY HIGHLIGHTS
- A federal task force is investigating potential fraud in the foreclosure crisis
- The task force will meet Wednesday, and a White House briefing is likely afterwards
RELATED TOPICSWashington (CNN) -- Federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday the probe of potential fraud by financial firms in the foreclosure crisis includes an investigation into possible criminal violations of federal laws.
Two sources familiar with the federal Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force indicated the multi-agency effort by investigators in the Justice, Treasury and Housing departments would determine whether prosecutors would ultimately pursue criminal or civil penalties -- or both.
The task force has scheduled a meeting for Wednesday at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Upon conclusion, a briefing is likely at the White House, officials said.
"The administration's Federal Housing Administration and Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force have undertaken their own regulatory and enforcement investigation into the foreclosure process," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs confirmed Tuesday. "We remain committed to holding accountable any bank that has violated the law," he said.
Growing concern over flawed paperwork by banks and other lenders in foreclosure proceedings has prompted growing anger and confusion in the housing market. Some banks temporarily froze foreclosures, but are now indicating plans to resume seizing homes after reviewing new paperwork.
Morals Without God?
Very interesting piece on morals in various species, including humans: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
Monday, October 18, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Buzz: It may soon be time to worry about the weak dollar - Oct. 14, 2010
Is the dollar toast?
By Paul R. La Monica, editor at largeOctober 14, 2010: 12:47 PM ETNEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- In Gary Shteyngart's brilliant new novel "Super Sad Love Story," he envisions a not-so distant nightmarish future for the United States where the dollar has essentially no value and China gets tired of backing our worthless debt.
Fortunately, it's just a satire. Or is it?
The dollar has sunk like a stone in recent weeks. With the euro now at $1.41, nobody's seriously talking about parity any more. There are growing concerns about the trade deficit in the United States and the possibility of trade and currency wars -- particularly with China.
And with the Federal Reserve strongly hinting that a new round of bond buying -- the so-called quantitative easing policy -- is likely to be announced at its next meeting in early November, long-term bond yields could continue to sink.
That may put pressure on the dollar and make our nation's biggest creditors, i.e. China and Japan, increasingly wary of holding debt that offers such little in the way of return.
So is it time to worry yet about the anemic dollar? Investors in stocks are strongly saying no. As the chart at the top of this column shows, the market has tended to move higher even as the dollar weakens against a basket of major currencies, which includes the euro and the yen.
The bet is that the weak dollar is good news for big multinational firms like IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500) and McDonald's (MCD, Fortune 500). It should lead to increased demand for U.S.-made goods and services abroad -- particularly in hot emerging markets like China and India.
But how long can that last?
Several experts said the dollar does have some room to fall further before it becomes a problem. But not that much room.
"We're not in a danger zone yet. However, the dollar is rapidly depreciating so the time to worry could come up more quickly than people realize," said Andrew Busch, global currency and public policy strategist with BMO Capital Markets in Chicago.
Busch said something has to give soon though. If bond yields continue to fall and the price of gold keeps hitting new record highs, then that's troubling for the dollar.
Fred Fraenkel, vice chairman with Beacon Trust Company, an investment firm in Summit, N.J., agreed that the time may be coming where the sluggish greenback does more harm than good for the economy and markets.
"Right now, the positive impact the weak dollar has had on exports and multinational earnings has so far overwhelmed the impact of people in the financial world looking for a different place to invest their reserves," he said.
"But when you degrade your currency over a long enough period of time, it's a negative for your standing in the world and reserve currency status. That's the big problem that can eventually come back to haunt you," Fraenkel added.
Degrade is a strong word. It implies that there is a conscious effort to make the dollar weak. And in some respects, that is what's happening.
The Fed is clearly making the decision that it's willing to let the dollar fall a bit more because it thinks a new round of QE could help get the economy back on firmer footing in the short term.
The big concern though is that the Fed may be going too far. If the dollar gets so weak that the likes of China and Japan pull out of the U.S. debt market and other nations find that there's no incentive to invest here, then Shteyngart's fiction could become reality.
"The dollar had been rallying earlier on a flight to perceived safety," said Anthony Welch, co-manager of The Currency Strategies Fund, a mutual fund specializing in foreign exchange investments in Sarasota, Fla. "Now the behavior of the dollar is a function of our economic policies, which people can argue are not really that sound."
The dollar is still about 13% above its all-time low against the euro from two years ago. So it's definitely not panic time yet. But Welch said the Fed can't get too carried away or the dollar could fall to new lows.
"We've been here before. But the dollar needs to stabilize around current levels. If it doesn't, there's cause for worry," he said. "I would imagine the Fed doesn't want the dollar to disintegrate and go too low. I hope that's the case."
- The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney.com, and Abbott Laboratories, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.
via money.cnn.com
Buy Gold....
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Dear 20something: Your future
Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your Future
Dear 22 year old:
Now that you are about to graduate from college some Baby boomer ought to level with you about your fiscal future. Maybe you’ve heard about it already in the news (though few of you ever listen to “the news”). Here it is straight up: your economic future isn’t as rosy as we hoped, but you will survive.
In the next 40 years, unless we do something drastic, our country will spend way more than the whole GDP. This is impossible to sustain, so something has to change. Maybe you will understand the dilemma of our nation though, since you are probably graduating with about $40,000 worth of school debt and your first job will bring you less than that a year—you will personally reach the 100%-of-GDP situation long before the nation gets there. Both the country and you personally have to face the music. But don’t despair, you are up to it—and so are the Boomers, if you lead us. Action hasn’t been desperately required yet, so both parties are dilly-dallying. Once action is demanded I’m confident we Americans will bite the bullet and do the hard thing. Both of our generations will feel that crunch. But it won’t destroy us—we’ll survive.
So, what can you expect in the future? It is hard stuff, but not impossible. Though no politician will tell you this, I’ll be truthful—you can expect both reduced government services and higher taxes. Just one of these actions won’t solve our economic problems, though cutting-before-raising is preferable to many of us. Here’s is my opinions on the economic future you face in the coming decades while Boomers climb into the passenger seats and you take over the steering wheel of this country:
EXPECT REDUCED GOVERNMENT SERVICES
1. You probably won’t collect Social Security until you are 70.
The numbers just won’t crunch. Forget retiring at 67. Count on age 70, or even later. Luckily, you will have more than 20 years to live when you reach 70, so you will be retired longer than any generation before you—even if you wait until 70. Though physical workers in your generation who crawl under houses or dig with shovels will retire at 70 many professional workers (like ministers) will copy Wilbur Williams and work right until they are 80.
2. You won’t to get Social Security unless you stop working
Boomers were generous to the “greatest generation” before them and built all kinds of giveaways into the system. We let them collect their Social Security even if they kept on working. You won’t be able to do that…and you probably ought to take away that benefit away from boomers now. When you get in charge, I suspect you won’t let people collect a penny from Social Security until they actually quit hogging their job—you’ll want them to leave that job opening it up to others, for instance you. The sooner you make this change the better—it is a boondoggle we could afford for the Boomer’s parents—but you can’t afford it for us Boomers.
3. Your Social Security will become “needs-based.”
Right now millionaires can collect Social Security. In 2058 when you are 70, if you retire with a handsome savings account that produces $100,000 a year interest, I bet you won’t be able to collect Social Security on top of that like people do now. Social Security won’t be a retirement plan—it will be a safety net by then. The sooner you make this change the faster the country will balance the books.
4. Government welfare will be greatly reduced.
The generation before us and the Boomers wanted government to do nice things for people—so we made “helicopter government” which you understand because your parents still pay your cell phone bill. The country decided to pay for the education of all the “Greatest Generation” when they came home from the war through the expensive “G I Bill”—not loans, mind you, but outright payments. Then we decided to help all kids go to college by offering grants and then later (by your time) interest-free loans until the graduation payback time occurs. My generation offered help for single mothers to buy food for their children—we thought that was kind. We decided to help people who lose their jobs by offering unemployment checks until they got back on their feet. Your government probably won’t be so generous. (We weren’t really that generous actually, because we borrowed most of the money we gave away and you’ll be paying that off—your inherited generosity?) To be practical, you probably shouldn’t expect government subsidized educational loans for your own kids like your parents had for you. You might have to be your own kids’ bank when they need $40,000 for college like you did (they’ll need more). This means you have to get out of debt yourself as fast as you can, then save like crazy so you have some money by the time your own kids go to college. (Or, home-college them.)
5. Health care rationing is coming.
Right now we think old people are entitled to health care no matter what it costs. In the future it will be technologically possible to keep your mom alive for years so long as we are willing to fork out a million dollars a year. In your world Medicare and Medicaid won’t be able to afford million dollar heart transplants for 85 year olds. This will be hard to swallow for us pro-life Christians, but its coming. You might face it with your own parents. The only folk who will be able to add another six months to their life for a million dollars will be people who have a million dollars of their own money to pay for it.
6. Your nation won’t be the world’s military.
Your nation won’t be able to afford so many periodic middle east wars like those in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Even these “little wars” will just cost too many Billions of dollars for your nation. Instead you’ll be paying back the money we borrowed for the Boomer wars instead. You might even end the V.A. and shelve the notion that once someone serves in the military they are entitled to free health care the rest of their lives.
BUT YOU SHOULD ALSO EXPECT TO PAY HIGHER TAXES
I’m a fiscal conservative so I think we should cut first then raise taxes. But either way we won’t be able to pay down the national debt by cuts alone. Even all the above cuts in government won’t make your nation solvent. Sorry, we just owe too much. You will have to make all these cuts in government services just to get the budget nearer to balancing—to actually balance the budget and pay down the debt you will have to pay higher taxes too… like these:
1. Closing the welfare-by-deduction loopholes.
One of the ways the government gives welfare to people is exempting some of their income from taxes. It isn’t a direct payment but it is a government gift just the same. I suspect one of the ways your generation will “raise taxes” is close some of these deductions and exemptions. To start with you’ll probably shut down the government subsidy for ministers by eliminating the tax-free status of a ministers housing allowance. Ministers don’t pay any income tax on their housing or housing allowance. When I explain that to your generation you always think it is wrong so I suspect you will close up that loophole in the tax system. It will cost us ministers several thousand dollars a year but you say you’re going to make this change “to equalize things with laity.” You also think a minister living in a parsonage for free ought to pay income taxes on the value of that parsonage—so, even though it affects you personally, I suspect you close this loophole…alone with all kinds of other deductions… like tax-free insurance from an employer, deductions for interest on mortgages, and about a hundred thousand other deductions and exemptions for individuals and business. Many of you favor something like a “flat tax” that only exempts the bottom $20,000 of income… (we’ll see if you keep that opinionwhen you earn more than $20,000 ;-)
2. Higher Social Security taxes.
Right now we Boomers (with our employers) pay 12.4% of wages as Social Security taxes—it is “taken out of our paychecks.” To finish fixing Social Security you can expect these taxes to go up to 14.2% of your wages—half paid by you and the other half by your employer. If you are self-employed (like most ministers) expect your bill to rise to 17%
3. Higher Medicare taxes.
While there is more attention paid to the “Social Security crisis” actually Medicare is closer to meltdown than Social Security. We Boomers now pay (on top of our Social Security taxes) an additional 2.9% of wages as Medicare taxes. You can expect to pay as much as 5% of your wages in the future—even after you’ve made all the cuts above.
4. You will probably have to pay income taxes on your inheritance
When the Boomers die they’ll leave Trillions of dollars to your generation. Boomers allowed themselves to receive their own inheritances as tax-free income (up to a million dollars or so). Though Boomers never “earned” this money we allowed ourselves to inherit our first million without paying any taxes on it. (Our rationale was that our parents already paid taxes on it when they earned it and thus we were entitled to it tax-free.) You probably won’t have that advantage. When we boomers die off and leave you whatever money we have left, you’ll probably expect everyone to pay income taxes on their inheritance just like they earned it from work.
5. You’ll have to pay income tax on all your Social Security when you retire.
Right now couples who earn less that $44,000 get a free ride on paying taxes for most of their Social Security income—you will probably close that gate. In fact, you will probably enact this early so Boomers have to pay taxes on their Social Security income too—after all we will be a large cohort in retirement so taxing us will be wise.
6. You can expect a national sales tax.
Even all the cuts and taxes above won’t get your country completely out of the hole—if you really are serious about balancing the budget and paying down the national debt you’ll probably have to also enact a VAT—a Value Added Tax. Your “National Sales Tax” would be added to products at each stage of production so that you won’t be able to buy a shirt for your toddler at Wal-Mart for five bucks any more—it will cost $7 including the VAT. You may say, “So what—that’s only two dollars.” But, since your real wages will not rise like ours did, you won’t be able to buy as many shirts for your toddler—or anything else. You aren’t headed for abject poverty, but you will be able to buy fewer shirts for your toddler and fewer new cars if you enact a VAT. Luckily, your generation already likes to buy things at Goodwill so you might consider keeping that habit in the future—especially if you enact a VAT.
-------------------
Sorry about all this… but some boomer had to tell you the truth. Unless there is some phenomenal change in the world, like figuring out how run our cars on water, heat our homes with air, or we invent a Fusion-in-a-Coke-can machine, your future appears to be one of less government services and higher taxes at the same time. That is, if you really want to “fix the fiscal problem.” Of course, you could be like your parents and cut taxes to yourself, and raise government benefits and borrow the difference—but that won’t work long because eventually nobody will eventually lend to your nation and everything will collapse in one great economic Alt Ctrl Del.
But I think you’re up to it. I have taught your generation for a few decades and I believe you can handle this challenge. You have already rejected the notion of being rich. You don’t think you are entitled to a mansion—in fact giant houses turn your stomach. You aren’t impressed with multi-million dollar mega-churches. You live simply, serve locally, and recycle. While you have been pampered and helicopter parented like no generation before you, at the same time you seem content to live in a modest apartment, drive a used car, and work part time “until something better turns up.” I’ve gotten to know scores of you over the years and most of you expect things in your future to be far worse than what I described above. Many of you think “I’ll never collect a penny from Social Security” and “I’ll never get out of debt until maybe I’m 60 or so.” So, the picture I just painted above might actually be encouraging to your generation, given your own economic bleakness!
All this won’t to happen right away because the cheerful Boomers (after all, we invented the have-a-good-day smiley face) will pretend this crisis will go away if we all just spend more money “to get the economy moving again.” But that won’t work in the long run. Our generations together have to figure out how to do two things that are repugnant to both of us—reduce government services and increase taxes. Just like you 20somethings will have to live on less to pay off your $40,000 college debt, we as a nation have to do the same thing to do penance for our past fiscal profligacy. But you are up to it! And so are we if you lead us. Don’t expect boomers to lead on this issue. Boomer rhetoric says all the same things but in actuality boomers want the opposite—greater government service (to us, at least) and lower taxes. You’ll have to lead the country to do the opposite—reduce service, increase taxes and get out of debt. We boomers will eventually be willing to take some of these cuts ourselves as we admire your own example of modest living and reduced income. We can do this together. And since many of these cuts will affect Boomers in our old age—you may have to count on your mom or dad moving in with you, or leaving your job to take care of your dad when he has Alzheimer’s because your government might not be able to pay their thousand-dollar-a-week nursing home bill though Medicaid.
But we can do this, even though its hard. All this is actually not that much harder than what you’ll be doing personally in the next five years. You might be a youth pastor earning $30,000 a year while paying off a $40,000 school debt. This can be your practice session for what the nation has to do—live on less and pay more. Boomers will follow you if you step up and lead. We can do this together.
I’m not writing about Republicans, Democrats or the Tea Party this week. No matter who we elect we will have to do these things. Everyone will be a fiscal conservative in the future. Parties aren’t the issue, money is. In Grant County, Indiana where I live, all the Tea Party candidates are running as Democrats!). This column is not so much about political parties as about fiscally conservative policies.
What I’m asking this week is this: What are the other “cuts” in government we need to make in the future—especially cuts in the benefits we personally receive (anyone can cut others’ benefits). And what other loopholes need shut that increases revenues for government so we can work our way out of debt—or at least reduce the debt and balance the budget?
So, what do you think?
The discussion of this column is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=161502633
Keith Drury October 12, 2010
CREDITS: I am indebted to several people for the fiscal data on which this column is based. First to Michael Kinsley’s article The Least We Can Do in The Atlantic, October 2010 and second to The Global Budget Race, by Douglas Besharov & Douglas Call in The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn, 2010 (and to Steve Lennox for the gift subscription to the WQ;-)
via drurywriting.com
All my nieces and nephews need to read this!
The discussion of this column is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/notes.php?id=161502633
Keith Drury October 12, 2010
CREDITS: I am indebted to several people for the fiscal data on which this column is based. First to Michael Kinsley’s article The Least We Can Do in The Atlantic, October 2010 and second to The Global Budget Race, by Douglas Besharov & Douglas Call in The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn, 2010 (and to Steve Lennox for the gift subscription to the WQ;-)
Monday, October 11, 2010
Tuesday, July 06, 2010
The manufacturing future
On O'Reilly Radar I ran across this piece by Dale Dougherty and a pointer to a companion piece by Intel's Andy Grove. Read for yourself and then ask yourself, "whom does our financial sector serve?"
Sunday, July 04, 2010
DooDah Bbrownies
Craving brownies, but you'd like to minimize the "hit" from oil, eggs, etc? And, by the way, need some more fiber in your diet? Well, its DooDah brownies to the rescue.
Google produced 182,000 hits on the topic of "brownie bran flakes recipe". Here's a representative recipe.
Never content to leave well enough alone, my Daughter (aka DooDah) and my wife came up with this slight variation.
Ingredients:
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Cover the bran flakes with the water and allow to sit until the water has been absorbed. Stir occasionally.
In a separate bowl blend together the brownie mix and baking powder.
When the bran flakes have absorbed the water and have softened, add the wet bran flakes to the brownie powder. Stir until all the brownie mix has been wetted by the bran mush.
Use either a standard size or mini muffin pan. You could also use a quadrilateral baking pan, but this will lengthen the baking time.
Put a "blast" of cooking spray in the bottom of each muffin cup of your chosen size pan and spoon in the batter.
Bake for 30 minutes or until a knife comes out clean from the center of a couple of muffins.
Allow to cool for five minutes and then turn out onto a rack. The muffins will be very soft at first, but will firm as they cool.
The muffins are moiist and delicious and to me, taste just like a brownie.
Good for meals on the go or as a snack or desert.
Google produced 182,000 hits on the topic of "brownie bran flakes recipe". Here's a representative recipe.
Never content to leave well enough alone, my Daughter (aka DooDah) and my wife came up with this slight variation.
Ingredients:
- 3 Cups Bran Flakes
- 2 Cups water
- 11/2 Teaspoons of Baking Powder
Cover the bran flakes with the water and allow to sit until the water has been absorbed. Stir occasionally.
In a separate bowl blend together the brownie mix and baking powder.
When the bran flakes have absorbed the water and have softened, add the wet bran flakes to the brownie powder. Stir until all the brownie mix has been wetted by the bran mush.
Use either a standard size or mini muffin pan. You could also use a quadrilateral baking pan, but this will lengthen the baking time.
Put a "blast" of cooking spray in the bottom of each muffin cup of your chosen size pan and spoon in the batter.
Bake for 30 minutes or until a knife comes out clean from the center of a couple of muffins.
Allow to cool for five minutes and then turn out onto a rack. The muffins will be very soft at first, but will firm as they cool.
The muffins are moiist and delicious and to me, taste just like a brownie.
Good for meals on the go or as a snack or desert.
Saturday, July 03, 2010
Firecracker Recipe
No... Not those kind of firecrackers!
The carrots still have a bit of crunch and the jalapeños and horseradish lend a pleasant burn to the experience.
Recommended!
Friday, July 02, 2010
Read This...
To remember what July 4th is all about:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
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