The Court stated in the decision, “With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters. Shareholders can determine whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits, and citizens can see whether elected officials are “‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.” The author of the Citizens United decision, Anthony Kennedy, speaking for the Court, underscored the point: “The First Amendment protects political speech and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”

At last, a venue for common ground! After all, even opponents of campaign reform had long emphasized their deep fealty to disclosure. In March of 2000, a Wall Street Journal editorial said, “Our view is that the Constitution allows consenting adults to give as much as they want to whomever they want, subject to disclosure on the Internet.” That same year, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell asked, “Why would a little disclosure be better than a lot of disclosure?” As recently as 2007, John Boehner said on “Meet the Press,” “I think what we ought to do is we ought to have full disclosure, full disclosure of all the money that we raise and how it is spent. And I think sunlight is the best disinfectant.” And the public resoundingly agrees: In an October 2010 CBS/New York Times poll, 92 percent of Americans said it is important for the law to require campaigns and outside spending groups to disclose how much money they have raised, where the money comes from, and how it was used.

Yet, since the Citizens United decision, the once-unifying disclosure issue has degenerated into another divisive set of battles, as long-time conservative proponents of disclosure have changed their positions so dramatically they could be treated for whiplash. Why has this happened—and can anything be done to fix it?

 

The 2010 mid-term elections showed clearly how legal loopholes involving non-profit groups called 501(c)4s, and the failure to adopt clear regulations surrounding campaigns, can result in hundreds of millions of dollars of spending to influence campaigns that masked the identity of huge donors. In response to these realities, the Federal Communications Commission is considering requiring robust disclosure by TV stations of the major donors of political ads; the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering requiring public corporations to disclose to stockholders their spending on politics, and the White House has drafted an executive order to require companies applying for federal contracts to disclose their spending on political campaigns. Given the strong position of the Supreme Court in Citizens United, the longtime consensus among political figures, and the overwhelming preference of voters, one might think that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) would have moved to implement regulations to strengthen disclosure, and that politicians and others would applaud the recent moves by the government to strengthen disclosure through the administrative process. To the contrary, however, things have gone horribly wrong.

Last month, Mitch McConnell now says he views disclosure as “a cynical effort to muzzle critics of this administration and its allies in Congress.” He savaged the White House for considering an executive order to require corporations getting federal contracts to disclose its corporate spending on campaigns, saying, “Now, under the guise of ‘transparency,’ the Obama administration apparently wants to know the political leanings of any company or small business, including those of its officers and directors, before the government decides if they’ll award them federal contracts.” What’s more, last fall, McConnell pulled out all the stops to prevent passage of the DISCLOSE Act, which would have required all corporations and unions to disclose their campaign spending. McConnell managed to pressure every Republican from supporting cloture, leaving the legislation, which had passed the House, stuck at 59 votes in the Senate.

The Wall Street Journal’s full-throated support for transparency has disappeared as well; it blasted the FCC recently for considering requiring TV stations to put donors of campaign spots on the Internet, writing, “The goal here is to use ‘transparency’ to intimidate businesses out of making political donations. Disclosure sounds good, but liberals have begun to wield it as a weapon to vilify business donors.” Critically, the Journal’s editorial reflects a larger point: Opponents of any regulation of campaigns have not only abandoned their longstanding support for transparency, they are also trying to create a new attack line that identifies disclosure as a muzzle, a way to stifle speech.

The opponents of any regulation or restraint of any sort on campaign spending also include the three Republican commissioners of the FEC. Their leader, Donald S. McGahn, recently wrote self-righteously that he is free to ignore acts of Congress because, “As an FEC Commissioner, I am bound by my oath to follow controlling precedent of the Supreme Court.” But McGahn and his Stepford colleagues have consistently ignored the 8-1 precedent of the Court and moved to dilute or block any meaningful disclosure.

What to make of the turn away from support for disclosure? I can draw only one conclusion: The earlier support for disclosure was a façade. McConnell, McGahn, and the Journal, among others,don’t actually want transparency or any regulation. At base, they are for a wholly unregulated, Gilded Age-style campaign system where big and secret money rules.

The motives and potential actions of the FCC, SEC, and White House remain under intense assault. Republican Representative Greg Walden, chairman of the House Telecommunications subcommittee, threatened to “go nuclear” if the FCC even tried to implement disclosure of political ad sponsors by TV stations, and McConnell and his allies are talking lawsuits and retaliation if the White House moves on its executive order. On the flip side, however, there is momentum to keep the push for disclosure alive. Notably, Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen has sued the FEC to require disclosure of donors.

The key now is for theWhite House and the regulatory agencies to ignore the threats from Congress and elsewhere, and move ahead with their efforts. After all, the sentiments of the 92 percent of the public that favors transparency, and the eight justices on the Supreme Court that have endorsed it, should outweigh the objections of the reborn anti-disclosure cabal.

Norman Ornstein is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author, in 2006, of The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track, with Thomas E. Mann. 

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If current policies remain in place, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the U.S. budget deficit for 2011 will be close to $1.5 trillion, or 9.8 percent of GDP. While CBO "benchmark" projections see a short-term, gradual decline in deficits as the economic recovery continues, long-term deficits loom large with ballooning entitlement outlays stemming from an aging population and rising health care costs.

Most economists fear that large budget deficits and growing debt poses a considerable threat to U.S. global economic competiveness. Maya MacGuineas of the New America Foundation suggests the government needs a dramatic shift from a consumption-oriented budget to one centered on investment, including R&D and human capital.

The Peterson Institute's C. Fred Bergsten says an "early correction" is necessary to prevent investment-killing interest rate hikes and an inflationary dollar. CFR's Sebastian Mallaby says ongoing deficits may reduce the willingness of major investors to buy and hold U.S. Treasuries, pushing up interest rates and threatening the dollar's reserve currency status. Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute asserts the best way to control red ink is to cap the rise of federal spending and allow revenue growth from the economic recovery to "catch up." The Economist's Greg Ip advocates a "medium-term plan" that includes a reform of the tax system and, possibly, raising the retirement age.

Maya MacGuineas, President, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

The United States is on an unsustainable fiscal path, and changes will be made, whether on our own terms or because we are forced to by markets. But dealing with our deficits and debt needs to be more than just an exercise in getting the numbers to add up (which will be hard enough).

A balanced, multi-year fiscal consolidation plan needs to be a central part of a strategy to enhance U.S. growth and competitiveness. If we fail to reduce our borrowing needs, at some point there will be upward pressure on interest rates, increasing the cost of capital as well as the interest payments owed by the government, dampening investment, and harming economic growth. This could come on gradually or in the form of a full-blown fiscal crisis.

But dealing with the debt is only the first step. At the same time we need to ensure that we dramatically shift our budget from a consumption-oriented budget to an investment-based budget. This will mean spending more on certain areas of public investment, from research and development to investment in human capital, and less--much less--on many of our major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, for those who do not need them.

Moreover, our tax code needs to be overhauled and updated for the modern economy. Revenues will have to go up to deal with the deficit, but it is thus more important than ever to be careful to do as little damage to the economy as possible. The tax base should be reconsidered, rates should be reduced when possible, and issues such as the mobility of capital must be taken into account. Consumption taxes could help promote savings; a carbon tax could help lead to improved energy policies; and reforming tax expenditures could greatly improve the efficiency, complexity, and fairness of our tax code.

Overwhelming? Somewhat. But if we use the need to deal with our fiscal situation as an excuse to make some long-overdue changes, our economy could benefit tremendously.

C. Fred Bergsten, Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Early and effective correction of the budget deficit is critical to the global competitiveness of the U.S. economy. This is because there are only two possible financial consequences of our continuing to run deficits of more than $1 trillion annually as now projected for the next decade or more. One is sky-high interest rates that would crowd out private investment. The other is huge borrowing from the rest of the world that would push the exchange rate of the dollar so high as to price U.S. products out of international markets. Either outcome would severely undermine U.S. global competitiveness.

The saving rate of the U.S. private sector, despite modest recovery from its rock-bottom lows prior to the recent crisis, is far too meager to finance enough investment to grow U.S. productivity and economic output at an acceptable rate. Government deficits anywhere near current levels tap such a large share of this pool of funds that they starve the capital needs of productive enterprise.

The traditional "escape value" from this dilemma, facilitated by the central international role of the dollar, is for the United States to borrow abroad. We can do so in only two ways, however: by offering interest rates so high that they will also stultify domestic investment or, more likely, by letting the dollar climb to levels that are substantially overvalued in terms of U.S. trade competitiveness. Every rise of a mere 4 percent in the trade-weighted average of the dollar in fact reduces the U.S. current account balance by $20 to $25 billion, after a lag of two years, cutting economic growth and destroying 100,000 to 150,000 jobs in an economy already suffering from high unemployment. Partly as a result of persistent budget deficits, the dollar has been overvalued by at least 10 percent--and frequently by much more--over the past forty years. As a result, U.S. competitiveness and the entire U.S. economy have been severely undermined. In addition, the United States has become by far the world's largest debtor country, and its external balance is on a wholly unsustainable trajectory.

The trade and budget deficits are not "twins" in any mechanistic sense. The latter inherently promotes the former, however, as we have observed over these last four decades. Elimination of the fiscal imbalance, and preferably the maintenance of a modest surplus over the course of the business cycle to produce an adequate level of overall national saving, is imperative to avoid further severe deterioration of the international economic position of the United States.

Sebastian Mallaby, Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies and Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics, Council on Foreign Relations

The United States is running an unsustainable budget deficit. The International Monetary Fund calculates that it will come to 10.8 percent of GDP in 2011, worse than the 8 percent projected for the group of advanced G20 countries and far worse than the 2.5 percent projected for the emerging G20 countries. The future doesn't look much better. The IMF calculates that the gap between the current budget path and a sustainable budget path is larger for the United States between now and 2016 than for any other country bar Japan.

Deficits for a few years don't matter. The United States can borrow easily to cover its budget gap thanks to the dollar's status as the leading reserve currency. But sustained deficits do matter. They add to the stock of national debt, driving up the cost of interest payments and draining the government of resources. When cumulative deficits drive national debt to around 90 percent of GDP, a country's growth rate starts to suffer. On current projections, the United States will hit that level within a decade.

Sustained U.S. deficits may also create doubts about the U.S. commitment to repay creditors. The more the U.S. government owes, the more tempting it is to reduce the value of those obligations via inflation or a depreciating dollar. The fear that U.S. officials will succumb to these temptations, justified or not, may dampen investors' willingness to hold U.S. Treasuries, threatening the dollar's reserve currency status. At some unpredictable point, investor jitters could spark a rush for the exit, driving U.S. interest rates up and causing the dollar to fall sharply.

How pressing is this risk? CFR's Center for Geoeconomic Studies tracks the foreign-exchange reserves held by BRIC central banks (PDF); the data show that faith in the dollar may already be waning. China, for example, held 70 percent of its reserves in dollars in 2005, but the share has since fallen to 63 percent. Another CFR chartbook underscores the importance of foreign governments' confidence in the dollar (PDF). More than a third of U.S. government debt is in the hands of foreign official investors. If they were to sell even a small share of their stake, the United States would be in trouble.

Daniel Mitchell, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute

Competitiveness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. But there's presumably widespread agreement that it is good for a nation to have a prosperous and dynamic economy that generates above-average income and growth.

Government impacts competitiveness in many ways, including monetary policy, trade policy, and regulatory policy. Moreover, the presence of sound institutions, such as property rights and the rule of law, is critical for an economy to have a good foundation.

Fiscal policy also is an important part of the mix. Excessive government spending can slow growth by diverting labor and capital from more productive uses. Punitive tax rates can hinder prosperity by discouraging work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. And large budget deficits can undermine competitiveness by "crowding out" private capital and building negative expectations of future tax increases.

In extreme cases, high budget deficits can destabilize entire economies, either because a government resorts to the printing press to finance deficits or because investors lose faith in a government's ability to service debt, thus leading to a sovereign debt crisis.

The United States hopefully is not close to becoming either Argentina or Greece, but the trend in recent years is not very encouraging. The burden of government spending has exploded, which, combined with temporarily low tax receipts because of a weak economy, has pushed annual red ink above $1 trillion per year.

The good news is that the deficit situation will get a bit better in coming years. Even modest growth rates will cause revenues to climb (that's the kind of tax increase nobody opposes). Indeed, revenues will soon be above their long-run average, as a share of economic output.

The bad news is that we'll still have too much red ink because the federal government's budget is about twice as big as it was when Bill Clinton left office. Even more worrisome, government borrowing actually will begin to increase again by the end of the decade because of demographic changes such as retiring baby boomers.

The best way to control this red ink while also boosting competitiveness is to cap the growth of government spending. If revenues increase by an average of 7 percent each year (as the president's budget projects, even without tax increases), then we can reduce deficits by making sure spending grows by less than 7 percent annually.

Given the enormous size of the budget deficit, this doesn't solve the problem overnight. If spending was allowed to grow 2 percent each year, the budget wouldn't be balanced until 2021. But it would be a big step on the road to fiscal recovery.

To turn a phrase upside down, this makes a necessity out of virtue. Spending restraint is good for growth since it leaves a greater share of resources in the productive sector of the economy. And since this also happens to be the best way of letting revenue catch up to spending, it also solves the deficit issue.

Greg Ip, U.S. Economics Editor, The Economist

Textbook economics tells us that government deficits eat up scarce savings, pushing up interest rates and the dollar. That discourages private investment and exports, a lethal combination for our productivity and competitiveness. The textbook does not apply to our current circumstance: Today's deficit is occurring against a backdrop of deeply depressed private demand, which is evident from the fact that interest rates are so low. This argues against too rapid a cut in the deficit, because the Federal Reserve can't compensate for fiscal austerity through lower interest rates.

At some point, though, the recovery will be more firmly established. If we still haven't put the deficit on a firm downward path by then, interest rates will rise, reflecting not just competition for savings but compensation to investors who fear we'll escape our debts via default or inflation. That interest rate penalty will add to the cost of capital of every business in the United States. A medium-term plan to reduce the deficit will help keep both interest rates and the dollar low, speeding the reorientation of the American economy from borrowing and consumption to saving and exports.

A medium-term plan to reduce the deficit will help keep both interest rates and the dollar low, speeding the reorientation of the American economy from borrowing and consumption to saving and exports.

There are no painless ways to reduce the deficit: Spending will have to drop and taxes will have to rise. But it can be done in ways that make the economy more productive. On spending, for example, gradually raising the retirement age to sixty-seven then indexing it to life expectancy will reduce future liabilities for both Social Security and (somewhat less) for Medicare, while at the same time expanding the supply of labor by encouraging Americans to work longer.

Taxes can be raised via reform that makes the entire system less of a burden to growth. Relative to other countries, America taxes income too much and consumption too little. This can be corrected either through a broad-based consumption tax or, more narrowly, by raising the gasoline tax. This would both not only raise revenue and cut carbon emissions, it would do more to make alternative energy viable than our current preference for subsidies and mandates. Rather than raise marginal tax rates, which discourages work and saving, better to eliminate distortionary exemptions such as for mortgage interest which tilts investment toward housing.

This post originally appeared at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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See Also:

• Americans Are Leaning On Government Support More Than Ever
• Why We Need To Focus On Fixing The National Debt Crisis
• The New GOP Debt Plan Puts More Lipstick On The Pig

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Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels discussed his vision of education reform at the American Enterprise Institute. With a string of education reform victories, Daniels is being touted as a GOP presidential candidate, writes Politics K-12 reporter Michele McNeil. As for what a President Daniels administration would look like, at least on the education side of things, [...]

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels is expected to make an announcement soon on whether he will run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Daniels was in Washington D.C. Wednesday, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute about his record on overhauling education in Indiana. But he gave no indication if he will run for president.

Mitch Daniels, the conservative intelligentsia’s choice for president in 2012, came to Washington on Wednesday to give a speech on education policy to a conservative think tank. But not 10 minutes into his address, he took an unexpected turn.

“Most of what I’ve talked about so far, and much of what I will, is strongly supported by the Obama administration,” the Republican governor of Indiana told the standing-room-only crowd at the American Enterprise Institute. “I salute the president, Secretary [Arne] Duncan. They are right about these things.”

Read full article >>

The Aspen Institute and the Association for Enterprise Opportunity announced today the five organizations selected to be part of the Scale Academy for Microenterprise Development. The Scale Academy is a program that offers grant funding, peer learning events, and technical assistance to a set of high-performing microenterprise organizations that have demonstrated a commitment to scaling up to serve more clients through working to help low-income entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. The Academy is operated jointly by FIELD at the Aspen Institute (Microenterprise Fund for Innovation, Effectiveness, Learning and Dissemination) and the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, the trade association for microenterprise development programs in the US. Microenterprises are very small businesses requiring $50,000 or less in start-up capital and employing five or fewer people. The entrepreneurs targeted by microenterprise organizations tend to be women, minorities, immigrants, low-income and/or individuals with disabilities. The five organizations, selected from among 33 applicants nationwide, are: ACCION Chicago, Chicago, Ill. The organization disbursed 205 microloans in 2010 and served 2,256 aspiring entrepreneurs with business development services. The Academy recognized its plan for achieving growth balanced with operational and financial sustainability. In 2013, ACCION Chicago expects to be serving 4,800 entrepreneurs and disbursing 400 loans across a 13-county area in Illinois and Indiana. Four Bands Community Fund, Eagle Butte, S.D. A Native American Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) focused on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, which encompasses the 4th and 11th poorest counties in the nation, Four Bands was recognized for its work to invest in, grow, and protect Native assets. In 2010, the organization made 106 loans and served 144 entrepreneurs. Its growth plan focuses on a set of market opportunities it has identified for business development on the reservation, and on expanding its service area to include a nearby reservation and neighboring communities. The Intersect Fund, New Brunswick, N.J. Founded by two students at Rutgers University, the Intersect Fund is now a professional organization that is growing quickly, offering entrepreneurial training, microloans, and access to market services in central New Jersey. The Fund, which was incorporated in 2008, expects to have served 175 clients and disbursed 75 loans this fiscal year (which ends July 31, 2011). The Academy recognized the organization for its high learning capacity, and for its strategy to grow its reach through northern and central New Jersey. Mercy Corps Northwest, Portland, Ore. With offices in Portland and Seattle, the organization served 958 clients in 2010 with business training, lending, Individual Development Accounts, and specially targeted services for the formerly incarcerated, refugees, and other high-risk populations. The Academy recognized Mercy Corps as a highly innovative organization and for its strategy to expand its microlending throughout Oregon and Washington using a new online portal for loan applications and a partnership referral program. MicroMentor, Portland, Ore. MicroMentor facilitates mentoring relationships between entrepreneurs and volunteer business mentors using a platform that integrates technology systems and other services to accelerate the growth of microenterprises. In 2010, it matched 900 entrepreneurs with mentors, and the organization aims to grow that, planning to make 2,500 matches in 2012. The Academy recognized MicroMentor for its total focus on scalability and its strategy to develop an affiliate program to help 150 microenterprise development organizations offer higher-quality mentoring services to disadvantaged entrepreneurs. The Academy is funded by the Charles Stewart Mott and Citi foundations. Additional information about the Academy and the participating organizations is available on FIELD's website: www.fieldus.org/Projects/ScaleAcademy.html. FIELD at the Aspen Institute has been a leading producer of research on the domestic microenterprise industry since 1998. The Aspen Institute mission is twofold: to foster values-based leadership, encouraging individuals to reflect on the ideals and ideas that define a good society, and to provide a neutral and balanced venue for discussing and acting on critical issues. The Aspen Institute does this primarily in four ways: seminars, young-leader fellowships around the globe, policy programs, and public conferences and events. The Institute is based in Washington, DC; Aspen, Colorado; and on the Wye River on Maryland's Eastern Shore. It also has an international network of partners.

Via Huffington Post - Last week Jon Entine, a visiting fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, attacked the link between the decline of frogs globally and pesticide use. As Jon...

Former Governor Sarah Palin has a new foreign policy team, but the real story is that she may be shifting her entire foreign policy persona to accommodate a GOP voting pool that is increasingly driven by Tea Party politics.

In a speech at Colorado Christian University on Monday, Palin laid out a foreign policy framework that runs counter to her previous identity as a pro-military, pro-defense budget, pro-intervention hawk. She criticized the war in Libya -- despite the fact she once pressed for the no-fly zone there.

"We should only commit our forces when clear and vital American interests are at stake. Period," Palin said. She called nation building "a nice idea in theory," and criticized the placement of U.S. forces under foreign command, another reference to the NATO-led mission in Libya. "We can't fight every war, we can't undo every injustice in the world," Palin said.

Until now, Palin has been the Tea Party's hawk, the movement's main leader in the fight to wall off foreign policy and national security from budget cuts, and a primary opponent of the effort to pull back America's foreign military presence around the world. Her change in tone and substance could reflect the growing power of the libertarian wing of the Tea Party, which is now well-represented in Congress, in advance of the 2012 primary season.

"She sounds more Michelle Bachman-esque," said Tom Donnelly, director of the Center for Military Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. "The temptation to move to the right-wing version of ‘come home America' is increasing all the time."

If she does run in 2012, Palin could face a field of candidates who are more libertarian than neoconservative. Bachman, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee all have espoused views that warn about the overuse of U.S. military force. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty lean more to the military-focused approach that has guided GOP foreign policy since President Ronald Reagan's administration.

But many in the new generation of GOP politicians don't remember the Cold War and see the Pentagon as just another bloated bureaucracy, Donnelly said.

"The issue set that got them elected was all domestic or social policy and part of the libertarian trope is to be for military power but be very judicious about using it," he said. "This is not just a Palin phenomenon."

Who will win the internal GOP battle over national security policy? "I don't think the outcome is knowable," said Donnelly.

Meanwhile, Politico reported today that Palin has cut ties with Randy Scheunemann and Michael Goldfarb, two partners in the consulting firm Orion Strategies, who had been her primary foreign policy advisors since the McCain presidential campaign in 2008. She has a new foreign policy advisor, Peter Schweizer, a Hoover Institution fellow who blogs for Andrew Breitbart's website Big Peace.

Scheunemann was a top McCain campaign advisor who sided with Palin after the election, during a period of internecine fighting among former McCain team staffers. Goldfarb, another key McCain campaign staffer, previously ran the blog at the Weekly Standard, which is edited by Bill Kristol. They had been crafting what was until recently Palin's mostly neoconservative stance on a range of foreign policy issues, including her opposition to New START, support for robust defense budgets, criticism of Obama's handling of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and backing for the surge in Afghanistan.

"The personnel shift carries an ideological charge," wrote Politico's Ben Smith. [Scheunemann and Goldfarb] crafted for Palin a policy platform and voice reflecting an eagerness to use American force.... Schweizer has articulated a more skeptical view of the use of American force and promotion of democracy abroad."

But Palin didn't drop Orion, it was the other way around. And Orion didn't drop Palin over ideological differences. They told her staff weeks ago that they were simply too swamped with other clients and needed to consolidate their time and resources. Their firm, Orion Strategies, has taken on clients including Google and the Koch brothers recently.

It's also no secret that Palin is a complicated client to work with. She is difficult to manage, hard to schedule for events, and doesn't always stay on the talking points provided to her, according to several articles on how she operates.  Nevertheless, Scheunemann told The Cable that her core beliefs on foreign policy are firm and consistent.

"Sarah Palin has been a powerful advocate for freedom, democracy, and human rights all over the world, and I don't think that's going to change because of who her advisers are -- that's who she is," he said.

GOP foreign policy experts aren't so sure. They believe that Palin is moving to a foreign policy identity more in line with the Tea Party politics of the moment, and perhaps more in line with her ever-emerging personal beliefs.

"This may be her finding her niche. Up until now people have been trying to make her into something," Donnelly said.

Last week Jon Entine, a visiting fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, attacked the link between the decline of frogs globally and pesticide use. ...

We told you previously ablout the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge.  Now we can show you their official wedding photos taken after yesterday's nuptials in the throne room at Buckingham Palace. Also, meet some Black royalty from around the globe. 

 

 

Prince William and Kate Middleton, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, posed after their wedding in the throne room at Buckingham Palace in London. 

William and Kate in the throne room at Buckingham Palace with (clockwise from bottom right) Margarita Armstrong-Jones, Miss Eliza Lopes, Miss Grace van Cutsem, Lady Louise Windsor, Master Tom Pettifer and Master William Lowther-Pinkerton.

In the group photo, the couple posed with, from back row left, Master Tom Pettifer, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Michael Middleton, Carole Middleton, James Middleton, Philippa Middleton, and front row from left, Grace van Cutsem, Eliza Lopes, Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II, Margarita Armstrong-Jones, Lady Louise Windsor and William Lowther-Pinkerton in the throne room at Buckingham Palace.

And later that day....

The Duke and Duchess were spotted on the way to their wedding reception accompanied by Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.  

 

And though they weren't at the wedding, Barack and Michelle Obama, along with The White House, released a statement about the wedding saying,

"We congratulate Prince William and Catherine Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, on their wedding today and wish them a lifetime of happiness together.  

The United States has no closer friend in the world than the United Kingdom. On this occasion, the American people extend heartfelt congratulations to the peoples of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth and share in their hopes for a bright future for the Royal couple."

 
And for those of you wondering about Black royalty around the globe, Black Enterprise put together a feb slideshow highlighting a few regal YBF chicks who wear crowns....

 

Queen Sylvia Nagginda of Buganda (Uganda)

 

Born in the United Kingdom and raised in Uganda, this regal woman married King Kabaka Mutebi II in 1999, after a career working in various U.S. sectors including public relations, international nonprofits and healthcare and human services. A graduate of New York University and New York Institute of Technology, the queen also advocates for public service, having worked as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund, and has worked as a consultant to bring resources to Uganda's entrepreneurs and business community.
 

 

Princess Angela (born Angela Gisela Brown) was a standout graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York and worked as a fashion director for Adrienne Vittadini, before marrying Prince Maximilian of Liechtenstein in January 2000. This Afro-Panamanian beauty also started her own line, A. Brown, which she headed for three years. The couple wed at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York, after reportedly meeting a few years earlier at a reception in the city. The princess wore a white dress which she designed and the same Kinsky royal-jeweled tiara that Princess Tatjana of Liechtenstein wore when she married Philipp von Lattorff in June 1999.

 

Check out the rest of the women here.

 

 

Photos via AP/Clarence House/Reuters

Andrew Wetzler, Director, Land & Wildlife Program, Chicago:   In Tuesday’s Huffington Post Jon Entine, a visiting fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, attacks the link between the decline of frogs globally and pesticide use.  As Jon rightly notes, worldwide the biggest problem facing frogs today is...

Jennifer McPartland, Ph.D., Health Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund:

My colleague Richard Denison at EDF ended a recent blog post asking, "The new study [Environmental Chemicals in Pregnant Women in the US: NHANES 2003-2004] leaves me with one question:

How many more such wake-up calls do we need before our government enacts policies to ensure the safety of chemicals to which we are exposed?"

Maybe this will help shake us awake! The obesity epidemic in the United States is increasing at alarming rates. So too is an associated disease, type 2 diabetes. Researchers have attributed 70% of the risk associated with developing type 2 diabetes with being overweight or obese, a risk that increases by 4.5% for every 2.2 pounds of weight gained over 10 years.

A healthy diet and hitting the gym should keep these diseases at bay, right? Certainly proper nutrition and exercise are good and important habits for controlling our weight and maintaining overall health. But what if, despite all such efforts, there are contributing factors outside of our control, and even outside of our genetic makeup? And what if those potential factors are found in us, on us, and all around us?

New research suggests that chemicals found in our environment and in everyday products may play a significant role in packing on the pounds.

Major media outlets, including Newsweek and the Washington Post, have profiled the growing concerns about linkages between chemical exposures and obesity and diabetes. These linkages were the focus of an intensive three-day workshop – "Role ofEnvironmental Chemicals in the Development of Obesity and Diabetes " – held recently by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

The purpose of the workshop was to bring together the collective brainpower of scientists to develop a research agenda that will fill knowledge gaps and allow conclusive results to be drawn on this topic. Researchers representing fields ranging from molecular biology to epidemiology came together to review the evidence linking these diseases to chemicals in six classes: arsenic and other metals, bisphenol A (BPA), organotins and phthalates, nicotine, pesticides, and persistent organic pollutants. These scientists were charged with thoroughly examining the scientific literature for the role these chemicals play in obesity and diabetes.

The emerging science warrants the attention of researchers. Take for example, tributyltin, an endocrine-disrupting compound that has multiple uses, including in pesticides and in certain paints. Recently published work from the lab of Dr. Bruce Blumberg reveals that tributyltin is an "obesogen" – that is, a chemical that disrupts normal biological activity in such a way that "promotes fat accumulation and obesity."

Quite astonishingly, this effect of tributyltin has been shown to occur in utero before birth in mice. Tributyltin exerts its fat-influencing activity by promoting stem cells (including stem cells derived from humans as well as mice) to preferentially differentiate into adipocytes or fat cells. The Blumberg lab believes that this activity is most likely mediated by tributyltin’s interaction with cellular receptors that activate genes involved in the differentiation of stem cells into fat cells, called adipogenesis. Their studies indicate that tributyltin alters differentiation so that a higher proportion of stem cells become fat cells at the expense of bone cells.

So before we are even born, chemicals like tributyltin may be predisposing us toward obesity by interfering with fetal development.

Given the ubiquity of human exposure to these classes of chemicals and the enormity of the economic and even security impacts that obesity and diabetes have on this country, EDF applauds the efforts of the NIEHS. It is of paramount importance for the U.S. research enterprise to take this issue seriously.

A white paper synthesizing the ideas and recommendations from this workshop will be published in the coming months. In addition, as highlighted during testimony from NIEHS director Dr. Linda Birnbaum before Congress, the agency has already begun funding research on environmental chemical exposures and their potential relationship to metabolic diseases including obesity and diabetes.

As we wait anxiously for the results, a growing segment of the American public is growing increasingly impatient over the failure of the agencies charged with protecting our health to anticipate, develop the data needed to understand, and act to reduce such risks. That failure can in turn be traced to the outmoded and feeble chemical safety policies in this country.

The alarm is sounding and the snooze button should not be an option.

------------------------

Healthy Child urges you to do 2 simple things right now:

• Watch and share our new video, Sound the Alarm. Toxic chemicals don’t belong in our homes and it’s time we all sounded the alarm to protect our children.
• Sign or call. Take a minute and ask your Senators to co-sponsor the Safe Chemicals Act.

 

Read also: The truth about Climategate, and why we don't believe science.

From the "hockey stick" graph to the hottest decade on record, a timeline of how Climategate really went down.

1988	NASA scientist James Hansen tells Congress the agency is "99% certain" record-high global temperatures are due to human activity.
1990	The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its first report (PDF), predicts that without a significant decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, the world will warm 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade in the 21st century.
1997	World leaders adopt the Kyoto Protocol, which the US later refuses to ratify.
1999	Michael Mann introduces the now-infamous "hockey stick" graph. Global warming worries 3 in 10 Americans a "great deal." 1990s confirmed as hottest decade in history.
JULY 28, 2003	Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) calls global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
NOVEMBER 2003	Mining consultant Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick publish a critique of Mann's hockey stick (PDF), the first in a series of climate audits.
2004	Mann and a NASA climate modeler launch RealClimate, a blog "by working climate scientists."
2005	McIntyre debuts Climate Audit, a skeptics' blog, and publishes a second critique of Mann. The Wall Street Journal runs a front-page story, prompting House Republicans to launch an inquiry into Mann's research (PDF).
2006	An Inconvenient Truth features Al Gore and the hockey-stick graph. It becomes the fifth-highest-grossing documentary in the US to date. 70% of Americans believe the Earth is warming, but are divided on whether humans are the cause.
2007	Gore and the IPCC win the Nobel Peace Prize.
2007-'09	McIntyre demands data from climate researchers, including those at the University of East Anglia (UEA). One laments that the endless requests are like a "McCarthy-style investigation."
JUNE 2009	An unknown hacker attempts to break into the email accounts of five State Department employees who were working on climate change.
NOVEMBER 12-17, 2009	A hacker breaks into the CRU's server and steals more than 4,500 emails and documents from Mann and other climate scientists.
NOVEMBER 17, 2009	The hacker tries to post a link to the emails on RealClimate. Similar links appear on several prominent skeptics' blogs.
NOVEMBER 19, 2009	The story jumps from niche blogs to larger conservative echo chamber. Christopher Horner, a fellow at the oil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), calls the scandal a "blue-dress moment" in the National Review.
NOVEMBER 20, 2009	Phil Jones, who heads the CRU, confirms the email theft. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR run stories quoting portions of the emails. The Telegraph's James Delingpole picks up the term "Climategate" from the skeptic blog Watts Up With That? A few weeks later, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) says the emails are evidence of "scientific fascism."
NOVEMBER 21, 2009	CEI director Myron Ebell accuses scientists of "unethical conniving" in the Washington Post.
DECEMBER 19, 2009	The UN climate change conference in Copenhagen ends without any major international agreement on how to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
2010	Numerous independent reviews (PDF) conclude the emails were cherry-picked and misconstrued. But half of Americans now believe global warming is "generally exaggerated." Senate abandons a bill that would set the first-ever mandatory caps on US greenhouse gas emissions. The 2000s replace the 1990s as the hottest decade on record.
2011	McIntyre claims UEA is "stonewalling" requests for information on its investigation of the hack.

Read also: The truth about Climategate, and why we don't believe science.

From the "hockey stick" graph to the hottest decade on record, a timeline of how Climategate really went down.

1988	NASA scientist James Hansen tells Congress the agency is "99% certain" record-high global temperatures are due to human activity.
1990	The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its first report (PDF), predicts that without a significant decrease in greenhouse gas emissions, the world will warm 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit per decade in the 21st century.
1997	World leaders adopt the Kyoto Protocol, which the US later refuses to ratify.
1999	Michael Mann introduces the now-infamous "hockey stick" graph. Global warming worries 3 in 10 Americans a "great deal." 1990s confirmed as hottest decade in history.
JULY 28, 2003	Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) calls global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."
NOVEMBER 2003	Mining consultant Stephen McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick publish a critique of Mann's hockey stick (PDF), the first in a series of climate audits.
2004	Mann and a NASA climate modeler launch RealClimate, a blog "by working climate scientists."
2005	McIntyre debuts Climate Audit, a skeptics' blog, and publishes a second critique of Mann. The Wall Street Journal runs a front-page story, prompting House Republicans to launch an inquiry into Mann's research (PDF).
2006	An Inconvenient Truth features Al Gore and the hockey-stick graph. It becomes the fifth-highest-grossing documentary in the US to date. 70% of Americans believe the Earth is warming, but are divided on whether humans are the cause.
2007	Gore and the IPCC win the Nobel Peace Prize.
2007-'09	McIntyre demands data from climate researchers, including those at the University of East Anglia (UEA). One laments that the endless requests are like a "McCarthy-style investigation."
JUNE 2009	An unknown hacker attempts to break into the email accounts of five State Department employees who were working on climate change.
NOVEMBER 12-17, 2009	A hacker breaks into the CRU's server and steals more than 4,500 emails and documents from Mann and other climate scientists.
NOVEMBER 17, 2009	The hacker tries to post a link to the emails on RealClimate. Similar links appear on several prominent skeptics' blogs.
NOVEMBER 19, 2009	The story jumps from niche blogs to larger conservative echo chamber. Christopher Horner, a fellow at the oil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), calls the scandal a "blue-dress moment" in the National Review.
NOVEMBER 20, 2009	Phil Jones, who heads the CRU, confirms the email theft. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR run stories quoting portions of the emails. The Telegraph's James Delingpole picks up the term "Climategate" from the skeptic blog Watts Up With That? A few weeks later, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) says the emails are evidence of "scientific fascism."
NOVEMBER 21, 2009	CEI director Myron Ebell accuses scientists of "unethical conniving" in the Washington Post.
DECEMBER 19, 2009	The UN climate change conference in Copenhagen ends without any major international agreement on how to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
2010	Numerous independent reviews (PDF) conclude the emails were cherry-picked and misconstrued. But half of Americans now believe global warming is "generally exaggerated." Senate abandons a bill that would set the first-ever mandatory caps on US greenhouse gas emissions. The 2000s replace the 1990s as the hottest decade on record.
2011	McIntyre claims UEA is "stonewalling" requests for information on its investigation of the hack.

China's weak leadership, growing military prowess and propaganda driven xenophobia combine to dictate their foreign policy and international relations.A Dan Blumenthal reports for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: Why has China's foreign policy been more aggressive over the past three years? Why have the Chinese undone a ...

China’s weak leadership, growing military prowess and propaganda driven xenophobia combine to dictate their foreign policy and international relations.  Dan Blumenthal reports for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: Why has China’s foreign policy been more aggressive over the past three years? Why have the Chinese undone a decade’s worth of good neighborly [...]

China's weak leadership, growing military prowess and propaganda driven xenophobia combine to dictate their foreign policy and international relations.A Dan Blumenthal reports for the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: Why has China's foreign policy been more aggressive over the past three years? Why have the Chinese undone a ...

From The American, the online magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, “A Toxic Setback for the Anti-Plastic Campaigners“: Advocacy groupsRead the Rest...

CBS News

Obama's Plan to Limit Medicare Opposed Daily Political Both Democrats and Republicans oppose President Barack Obama's new deficit reduction plan, which would create an independent board that would make cuts in the Medicare spending. The president wants to expand the power of the panel. ... Michigan congressmen ask Obama for specifics on Medicare planDetroit Free Press More 'Obamacare' Deceit Becomes ClearWheeling News Register IPAB suddenly under the spotlightHot Air American Enterprise Institute -National Review Online -FavStocks all 556 news articles »

AP Exclusive: Millions in malaria drugs stolen The Associated Press The internal investigation by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria comes two months into a new anti-corruption program that the fund launched after an AP report detailing fraud in their grants attracted intense scrutiny from donors. ... AP reports millions in malaria drugs stolenOrange County Review Partners in Crime: National Theft of Global Fund MedicinesAmerican Enterprise Institute $100 Million Worth of Missing MedicinesThe American (blog) Tripbase -Newsday (subscription) all 183 news articles »

For Treatment of HCV, Surveyed European Gastroenterologists Will Prescribe Telaprevir and Boceprevir to Nonresponder and Treatment-Naive Patients Following Launch, Leading to Higher Treatment Costs Than Interviewed Payers Expect

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Decision Resources, one of the world’s leading research and advisory firms for pharmaceutical and healthcare issues, finds that, for the treatment of hepatitis C virus (HCV), the highest percentage of surveyed gastroenterologists in the EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) indicate that they will likely use Vertex/Johnson & Johnson/Mitsubishi Tanabe’s telaprevir and Merck’s boceprevir initially after launch to a greater extent in nonresponder HCV genotype 1 patients than in treatment-naive patients. However, a significant proportion of HCV-1 treatment-naive patients will also receive these new HCV-specific antiviral agents within the first year of launch and treatment rate estimates in this subpopulation will be nearly 60 percent by 2014.

“Because the novel direct-acting antivirals have vastly improved efficacy in hard-to-treat patients over the current standard of care, surveyed clinicians expect drug-treated rates to grow as a result of an increase in the volume of patients seeking treatment”

The new European Physician & Payer Forum report entitled Hepatitis C Virus: Physician & Payer Perspective on Future Treatment and Reimbursement of Novel HCV Therapies in the European Union finds that a clash in expectations exists between surveyed gastroenterologists and interviewed payers across the EU5 as payers predict physicians will initially only use telaprevir and boceprevir in nonresponder patients, which could lead to prescribing restrictions if treatment costs become significantly higher than anticipated due to use in treatment-naive patients.

The current armamentarium for treating HCV is relatively modest and consists of pegylated interferon (peg-IFN) products—Roche’s Pegasys (peg-IFN-alpha-2a) and Merck’s PegIntron/ViraferonPeg (peg-IFN-alpha-2b)—as well as equivalent branded ribavirin products: Roche’s Copegus, Merck’s Rebetol and generic ribavirin. The current standard of care for most patients is a dual-therapy with a peg-IFN and ribavirin, which has poor cure rates in hard-to-treat patients and considerable safety and tolerability issues. As a result, significant unmet needs remain in HCV treatment.

The report also finds that surveyed European gastroenterologists expect to treat more patients when emerging HCV-specific drugs become available.

“Because the novel direct-acting antivirals have vastly improved efficacy in hard-to-treat patients over the current standard of care, surveyed clinicians expect drug-treated rates to grow as a result of an increase in the volume of patients seeking treatment,” said Decision Resources Analyst Courtney Stanton, Ph.D. “Surveyed German clinicians expect to have the greatest increase in the amount of patients they will treat once the new HCV-specific drugs are available, a maximum 77 percent increase over the amount of patients they currently treat on average each month. Increases will be much less dramatic in the other surveyed European countries, especially the United Kingdom, where clinicians only expect a maximum six percent increase over current average monthly patient numbers. The remaining countries—France, Italy and Spain—will see increases between 39 and 47 percent over current patient numbers.”

The report also finds that mounting pressure from EU5 governments for increased generic use will likely encourage uptake of generic ribavirin and trigger price-cuts from brand manufacturers. Although government regulation regarding the use of generics varies between surveyed countries, there is a shift towards increased generic use across the EU5 and interviewed payers expect drug makers to implement considerable voluntary price cuts for their branded ribavirin products in order to remain competitive.
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About Decision Resources
Decision Resources is a world leader in market research publications, advisory services and consulting designed to help clients shape strategy, allocate resources and master their chosen markets. Decision Resources is a Decision Resources, Inc. company.
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About Decision Resources, Inc.
Decision Resources, Inc. is a cohesive portfolio of companies that offers best-in-class, high-value information and insights on important sectors of the healthcare industry. Clients rely on this analysis and data to make informed decisions. Please visit Decision Resources, Inc. at http://cts.businesswire.com/
All company, brand, or product names contained in this document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

From HIV and Hepatitis Liz Highleyman, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

Boosted Danoprevir Improves Response in Prior Null Responders
SUMMARY: Nearly 90% of genotype 1b prior non-responder hepatitis C patients treated with ritonavir-boosted danoprevir plus pegylated interferon/ribavirin experienced early virological response at week 12, but breakthrough reached 50% for those with genotype 1a.

Kidney Toxicity Uncommon among People Taking Tenofovir for Hepatitis B
SUMMARY: Impaired kidney function among people with HIV, HBV, and HIV/HBV coinfection taking tenofovir mainly occurred in those with pre-existing risk factors, researchers reported at EASL 2011.

More Evidence Abacavir Does Not Raise Heart Attack Risk
SUMMARY: A large cohort study found no increased risk of myocardial infarction in people taking abacavir.

Universal Testing and Treatment Could Reduce New HIV Infections by 76%
SUMMARY: New HIV infections among gay men could decrease by 59% if all HIV positive adults now in care start antiretroviral therapy, and the number could drop further with universal annual testing, according to recently published mathematical models

Can Lowering Community Viral Load Decrease New HIV Infections?
SUMMARY: Decreased average and maximum community viral load (CVL) was associated with a decline in new HIV infections in San Francisco, and new HIV diagnoses are decreasing along with CVL in New York City, but this correlation has not yet been observed in Washington, DC, researchers reported at CROI 2011.

AHF: Gilead Must Halt FDA Approval Of Truvada As HIV Prevention After PrEP Study In Women Fails
19 April 2011
On the heels of Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announcement earlier today that an ongoing study of the use of Gilead's top selling AIDS treatment, Truvada, as a possible form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV...

From NATAP Executive Director: Jules Levin

New Study- Boceprevir in HIV-HCV Coinfected Patients Who Have Failed to a Previous Therapy With Peg-Interferon/Ribavirin -

Pharmacokinetics, Safety and Tolerability of the HCV NS5A Inhibitor ABT-267 Following Single and Multiple Doses in Healthy Adult Volunteers

Utility of Historical Data Compared to Lead-In Response in Predicting Sustained Virologic Response in Nonresponders and Relapsers to Peginterferon/Ribavirin When Retreated With Boceprevir+Peginterferon Alfa-2b/Ribavirin

High Sustained Virologic Response Among Genotype 1 Previous Non-responders and Relapsers to Peginterferon/Ribavirin when Re-treated With Boceprevir Plus Peginterferon Alfa-2a/Ribavirin -

From GastroHep News

Revised classification system of renal dysfunction in patients with cirrhosis

May's issue of Gut reports on a working party proposal for a revised classification system of renal dysfunction in patients with cirrhosis.

Dr Florence Wong and colleagues from Canada proposed an improvement on the current classification of renal dysfunction in cirrhosis. Clinicians caring for patients with cirrhosis recognize that the development of renal dysfunction is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. While most cases of renal dysfunction in cirrhosis are functional in nature, developed as a result of changes in hemodynamics, cardiac function, and renal auto-regulation, there is an increasing number of patients with cirrhosis and structural changes in their kidney as a cause of renal dysfunction. There is a need for a newer classification to include both functional and structural renal diseases. Acute kidney injury is defined as a rise in serum creatinine of 26.4µmol/L in less than 48hours Gut A working party consisting of specialists from multiple disciplines conducted a literature search and developed summary statements, incorporating the renal dysfunction classification used in nephrology. The research team discussed and revised these to produce this proposal. Literature search using keywords of cirrhosis, renal dysfunction, acute kidney injury, chronic kidney injury, and hepatorenal syndrome. Acute kidney injury will include all causes of acute deterioration of renal function as indicated by an increase in serum creatinine of more than 50% from baseline, or a rise in serum creatinine of 26.4µmol/L or more than in less than 48hours. The team defined chronic renal disease as an estimated glomerular filtration rate of less than 60ml/min calculated using the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease 6 (MDRD6) formula, recognizing that the MDRD6 formula is not perfect for the cirrhotic patients and this may change as improved means of estimating glomerular filtration rate becomes available. The team reported that acute on chronic kidney disease will be defined as acute kidney injury superimposed on existing chronic renal disease using the above definitions for AKI and chronic kidney injury. Dr Wong's team concludes, "Accepting this new classification will allow studies into the epidemiology, incidence, prevalence, natural history and the development of new treatments for these subtypes of renal dysfunction in cirrhosis." Gut 2011: 60: 702-709 19 April 2011

Fatty Liver
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Limiting carbs, not calories, reduces liver fat faster, UT Southwestern researchers find
DALLAS – April 19, 2011 – Curbing carbohydrates is more effective than cutting calories for individuals who want to quickly reduce the amount of fat in their liver, report UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers.

"What this study tells us is that if your doctor says that you need to reduce the amount of fat in your liver, you can do something within a month," said Dr. Jeffrey Browning, assistant professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern and the study's lead author.

The results, available online and in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, could have implications for treating numerous diseases including diabetes, insulin resistance and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, or NAFLD. The disease, characterized by high levels of triglycerides in the liver, affects as many as one-third of American adults. It can lead to liver inflammation, cirrhosis and liver cancer.
For the study, researchers assigned 18 participants with NAFLD to eat either a low-carbohydrate or a low-calorie diet for 14 days.

The participants assigned to the low-carb diet limited their carbohydrate intake to less than 20 grams a day – the equivalent of a small banana or a half-cup of egg noodles – for the first seven days. For the final seven days, they switched to frozen meals prepared by UT Southwestern's Clinical and Translational Research Center (CTRC) kitchen that matched their individual food preferences, carbohydrate intake and energy needs.

Those assigned to the low-calorie diet continued their regular diet and kept a food diary for the four days preceding the study. The CTRC kitchen then used these individual records to prepare all meals during the 14-day study. Researchers limited the total number of calories to roughly 1,200 a day for the female participants and 1,500 a day for the males.

After two weeks, researchers used advanced imaging techniques to analyze the amount of liver fat in each individual. They found that the study participants on the low-carb diet lost more liver fat.
Although the study was not designed to determine which diet was more effective for losing weight, both the low-calorie dieters and the low-carbohydrate dieters lost an average of 10 pounds.
Dr. Browning cautioned that the findings do not explain why participants on the low-carb diet saw a greater reduction in liver fat, and that they should not be extrapolated beyond the two-week period of study.
"This is not a long-term study, and I don't think that low-carb diets are fundamentally better than low-fat ones," he said. "Our approach is likely to be only of short-term benefit because at some point the benefits of weight loss alone trounce any benefits derived from manipulating dietary macronutrients such as calories and carbohydrates.

"Weight loss, regardless of the mechanism, is currently the most effective way to reduce liver fat."


Other UT Southwestern researchers involved in the study were Dr. Shawn Burgess, senior author and assistant professor of pharmacology in the Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC); Dr. Jonathan Baker, assistant professor of pathology; Dr. Thomas Rogers, former professor of pathology; Jeannie Davis, clinical research coordinator in the AIRC; and Dr. Santhosh Satapati, postdoctoral researcher in the AIRC.
The National Institutes of Health supported the study.

Fatty Liver Disease Can Lead to Heart Attack

Released: 4/18/2011 9:00 AM EDT
Source: Methodist Hospital, Houston

Newswise — Because of the prevalence of obesity in our country, many Americans are expected to develop a serious condition called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which can lead to cirrhosis, fibrosis, and in some cases liver failure. It is also one of the best predictors for coronary artery disease.

“Most people who have fatty liver disease are more likely to die from a heart attack than cirrhosis of the liver,” said Dr. Howard Monsour, chief of Hepatology at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. “I ask all my patients, especially those over 50, if they have had a stress test in the last year; if not then I send them to the cardiologist to get one.”

NAFLD is fat inside the liver cells. Alcohol, drugs, obesity, lipid disorders and diabetes can all be causes. However, many with this condition suffer from Metabolic Syndrome, a constellation of factors which include a large waist circumference (men greater than 40 inches, women greater than 35 inches), high blood pressure, high triglyceride levels and insulin resistance that heighten the risk of heart attack, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

“Data has shown that nearly 30 million Americans have NAFLD. Many times it is missed until the person’s liver enzyme levels are high,” said Dr. Kathleen Wyne, director of clinical research for the Diabetes Research Center at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI). “Much like type 2 diabetes, it can be cured with diet and exercise.”

“Vigorous exercise, such as weight lifting, swimming, running or aerobics, between 75 and 150 minutes a week with a heart rate of 120 or above will help you tackle this problem,” Monsour said. “If you lose 12 percent of your current weight, no matter how much you weigh, you can also eliminate fat from your liver.”

Between five and 20 percent of people with fatty liver will develop serious liver disease. Developing cirrhosis, fibrosis or liver cancer depends on whether the person has inflammation in the liver caused by the fat resulting in an inflammatory response called steatohepatitis. This often, but not always, causes liver enzyme elevation on routine blood tests.

“The key is to catch it early. If we do, we can help the patient avoid cirrhosis, fibrosis and type 2 diabetes,” Monsour said. “Letting it go without evaluation can lead to liver disease, liver cancer, stroke, heart disease and a very difficult life.”

Cancer

Cancer Patient invented low radio frequency machine to fight liver cancer




With boost from Southwest Florida, possible cancer treatment advances

By LIZ FREEMAN

• Naples Daily News
• Posted April 18, 2011 at 8:28 p.m.

More importantly, the rabbits experienced no side effects, and healthy tissue was left unharmed.
They tested animals with pancreatic cancer, introducing antibodies into the body through microscopic gold nanoparticles. Those antibodies attach to cancer cells and enter inside the diseased cells, after which the gold nanoparticles are heated up using radio frequency waves to kill the bad cells.
Now researchers are looking toward the next phase in a treatment they believe holds potential for fighting some cancers.
“I’ve been blown away,” said Dr. Steven Curley, a professor of surgical oncology at M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center in Houston. “We really haven’t found any side effects with this treatment.”
..continue reading

Study shows how inflammation can lead to cancer
COLUMBUS, Ohio –
A new study shows how inflammation can help cause cancer. Chronic inflammation due to infection or to conditions such as chronic inflammatory bowel disease is associated with up to 25 percent of all cancers.

This study by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) found that inflammation stimulates a rise in levels of a molecule called microRNA-155 (miR-155).

This, in turn, causes a drop in levels of proteins involved in DNA repair, resulting in a higher rate of spontaneous gene mutations, which can lead to cancer.

“Our study shows that miR-155 is upregulated by inflammatory stimuli and that overexpression of miR-155 increases the spontaneous mutation rate, which can contribute to tumorigenesis,” says first author and post-doctoral researcher Dr. Esmerina Tili. “People have suspected for some time that inflammation plays an important role in cancer, and our study presents a molecular mechanism that explains how it happens.”

“Our findings also suggest that drugs designed to reduce miR-155 levels might improve the treatment of inflammation-related cancers,” Tili says.

The findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

MicroRNAs form a large family of non-coding genes involved in many important cell processes. They carry out this function by suppressing the amount of particular proteins in cells, with each type of microRNA often affecting many different proteins.

MiR-155 is known to influence blood-cell maturation, immune responses and autoimmune disorders, and high levels of this molecule have been directly linked to the development of leukemias, and breast, lung and gastric cancers.

For this study, Tili and her colleagues examined the effects of inflammation-promoting substances such as tumor necrosis factor or lipopolysaccharide (found in the outer walls of bacteria) on miR-155 expression and on the frequency of spontaneous mutations in several breast-cancer cell lines.

When the researchers exposed breast-cancer cells to the two inflammatory factors the levels of miR-155 rose abnormally high, and the mutation rate increased two- to three-fold. To understand why, the investigators focused on the WEE1 gene, which stops the process of cell division to allow damaged DNA to be repaired.

The investigators learned that miR-155 also targets WEE1 and showed that high levels of miR-155 lead to low levels of WEE1. They reasoned that low levels of WEE1 allowed cell division to continue even when DNA damage is present, leading to a growing number of mutations.

“It is believed that cancer is caused by an accumulation of mutations in cells of the body,” says principal investigator Dr. Carlo M. Croce, professor and chair of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics, and director of the Human Cancer Genetics program the OSUCCC – James. “Our study suggests that miR-155, which is associated with inflammation, increases the mutation rate and might be a key player in inflammation-induced cancers generally. This could make it an important therapeutic target.”

Funding from the National Cancer Institute supported this research.

Croce is also the John W. Wolfe Chair in Human Cancer Genetics.

Other researchers involved in this study were Jean-Jacques Michaille, Dorothee Wernicke, Hansjuerg Alder, Stefan Costinean and Stefano Volinia of The Ohio State University.

The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (http://cancer.osu.edu) is one of only 40 Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States designated by the National Cancer Institute. Ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the top cancer hospitals in the nation, The James is the 205-bed adult patient-care component of the cancer program at The Ohio State University. The OSUCCC-James is one of only seven programs in the country funded by the NCI to conduct both Phase I and Phase II clinical trials.
From Medgaget
.
Delcath Receives Notice of European Regulatory Approval for Hepatic CHEMOSAT(TM)





Delcath Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: DCTH) today announced that the Company has been notified of CE Mark approval for its proprietary Hepatic CHEMOSAT(TM) Delivery System. The product has been approved with an indication for the percutaneous intra-arterial administration of a chemotherapeutic agent (melphalan hydrochloride) to the liver.

CE Marking confirms that a medical device complies with the Essential Requirements of the Medical Device Directive, and that the device has been subjected to conformity assessment procedures. Receipt of the CE Mark allows Delcath to market and sell the product in countries in the European Economic Area.


About Delcath Systems

Pharmaceutical
.
America’s Most Popular Drugs

 

A Christian radio station commissioned a listener survey and learned that less than 100 people were tuning in to its programming. Instead of being concerned, management’s response was to say that it didn’t matter because their sole responsibility was to get the station’s message out.

Hearing this story in a Consumer Behavior class at Wheaton College was a defining moment in branding expert Karen Dougherty’s vocational journey. “They didn’t care how the receivers on the other end actually connected with the message,” said Dougherty.

The story illustrates a problem that Laity Leadership Institute Senior Fellow Darrell Guder and his colleagues tackled in their 1998 landmark book, Missional Church: A Vision for Sending of the Church in North America.

In the introduction, Guder identified these crisis in the Western church: “diminishing numbers, clergy burnout, the loss of youth, the end of denominational loyalty, biblical illiteracy, divisions in the ranks, the electronic church and its various corruptions, the irrelevance of traditional forms of worship, the loss of genuine spirituality, and widespread confusion about both the purpose and the message of the church of Jesus Christ.”

I talked with Guder at Princeton Theological Seminary, where he is the Henry Winters Luce Professor of Missional and Ecumenical Theology, about what it means to live out the Christian faith in light of these crises.

“The crisis of the Christian movement in the West, meaning the North Atlantic, is a fundamental crisis, not just a question of strategies gone wrong or a couple of cultural challenges,” Guder said. “We are in serious trouble because we’re not thinking biblically about who we are and what we’re for as the church of Jesus Christ.” He said the church has for centuries compromised and adapted to its cultural context to a degree that has deprived it of its primary faithfulness.

Guder named missiologist Leslie Newbigin, theologian Karl Barth, and former Princeton Theological Seminary President John Mackay as primary influences in his work. Newbigin’s research into how the western church might become a genuinely missionary church was especially important to the Missional Church project, Guder said.

“Missional theology is a term invented since Missional Church was published,” Guder said. “The term had not been commonly used in the research project that generated that book. We decided to call it by that name in order to underline the fact that the mission of the church is not just one of its several programs, but it in fact defines what the church is and what it’s for.”

Although missional theology is a serious enterprise, many derivative books and projects employ the term missional, but are actually “how-to” and “methodology” endeavors that fall into the category of rearranging furniture rather than transforming the way Christians live out their faith, said Guder.

Being missional is not about what the churches do, but what the churches empower people to do in their everyday lives. The Great Commission is not merely about spreading the gospel in words, it is about embodying the gospel message—its hope for transformational renewal—in our work.

Karen Dougherty has been in the business of transforming mindsets and corporate cultures ever since she took that Consumer Behavior Class in college. She has worked with many Christian organizations, including Women of Faith, to help them communicate and fulfill their missions more effectively. Recently she worked with a Christian radio station in Dallas that was very much interested in making a difference in people’s lives. “The idea that we came up with is that the station is there to help fortify people’s faith every day,” she said.

As a missional Christian, Dougherty extends her work out into the world. For example, the Texas Historical Commission’s original tag line defined it as “the agency for historic preservation.” The commission saw its mission as saving historical artifacts, she said, but its mission was really about preserving our memory of important historical events that the artifacts represented. With this in mind, she helped the commission develop a new tag line: “saving the real places to tell the real stories,” and said helping the organization define and label its mission transformed the mindset of the organization.

This is what it means to be missional. We experience the transforming truth of Christ and bring it to everything we do. Sometimes this means we work to share the specific truth of Christ’s grace. This is the traditional approach to missions. But often we share the common truth of grace, helping others to understand how their work contributes to the common good.

“Witness is not just a little activity we do now and again. Witness is who we are,” said Guder. “The world will encounter God’s love in Christ… because Christians are equipped by God’s Spirit using Scripture to demonstrate the truth, the relevance, the healing power of the gospel.”

What kind of transformation do you think is necessary in the North American church and in your vocational life in order to live missionally in a post-Christian context?

 

Image by Arthur John Picton. Used with permission via Flickr. Post by Christine A. Scheller.

Glenn Curtiss

F-14 and F\A-18 aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65)

I like to be above the fray if possible. And, given my substantive views, I am willing to consider responsible proposals from both sides. For example, like many on the right, I'm skeptical about the political process, believe that markets can work well in a lot of areas (albeit less so for healthcare and the financial sector), and do not share the left's intense commitment to existing entitlement programs.

The problem I have is that Republican devolution over the last 15 to 20 years leaves me all too often sounding more shrill than I would like.

For example, I've been forced to agree that the Ryan plan is neither serious, professional, credible, brave, nor responsible, even though (a) I would like to be able to reach a more positive conclusion, (b) someone with his general views could have met those criteria, (c) I appreciate that he's better on tax expenditures than the Norquist Republicans, and (d) I think it is within the realm of debates we should be having to argue for a more market-driven healthcare approach with vouchers (although in recent years I've moved away from agreeing with that view).

I'm therefore happy to be able to link to an excellent post in today's New York Times by Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute.

In particular, I agree with Alan about the following:

"The Obama and Ryan plans have one striking similarity, as neither specifies which tax preferences will be curtailed or eliminated. Each plan will face hard choices when it comes time to spell out the details. Significant base broadening cannot be achieved by eliminating unpopular loopholes.

"Instead, it will be necessary to make major changes to at least some of the most widely used tax preferences, such as the exclusion of employer-provided health insurance and the deductions for state and local taxes, mortgage interest and charitable giving. If the political will is found to make such changes, the income tax can be redesigned to facilitate a more efficient allocation of resources across economic sectors. For example, while such a tax system might still promote homeownership, it would no longer provide lavish subsidies for expensive houses.

"The economic gains from income tax base broadening are limited, though, because this approach does little or nothing to mitigate the saving and investment disincentives arising from the taxation of business profits, interest, dividends and capital gains. Long-run economic growth could be better advanced by replacing the entire income tax system with a progressive consumption tax, but neither President Obama nor Representative Ryan has embraced that far-reaching reform."

I certainly don't agree with everything Francis Fukuyama writes, says, or does, but I have long admired him for his intellectual honesty and creativity. As a philosopher of politics and society, he roams the field and seems to be dedicating to saying what he thinks, without trimming it to fit ideology -- or even friends. Here he comments that, "All of the Kissinger-era realists have gone away, like Robert Zoellick, James Baker, and Brent Scowcroft. Today, the party is just a wasteland. They are total amateurs on foreign policy."

He traces his split with the Republican Party to a specific event:

At an annual dinner of the American Enterprise Institute in February 2004, Fukuyama sat listening first to a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney and then the columnist Charles Krauthammer, who declared a 'unipolar era' had begun, which, of course, the U.S. would lead. 'All of these people around me were cheering wildly,' Fukuyama remembers. But in his view, Iraq was fast becoming a blunder. 'All of my friends had taken leave of reality.'

The next major releases of Microsoft Dynamics enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions will run on the Windows Azure platform. The announcement made at Convergence 2011 in Atlanta.

Announcements included roadmaps for a new Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 release and shared the strong momentum experienced by its portfolio of Microsoft Dynamics ERP and CRM solutions.

The Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions will bring the same benefits in the cloud as they do on-premises.

See Microsoft Unveils Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 and Vision for Cloud ERP.

About Dynamics AX 2012

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 empowers people to anticipate and embrace change, with agility made possible by a unified business process repository, model-driven architecture, and simplicity that comes from a familiar user experience and built-in collaboration tools.

Specifically, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 helps customers simplify decisions by delivering the following:

• A powerful foundation through prebuilt industry capabilities and comprehensive, core ERP functionality for financial, human resources and operations management. Delivered in a single, global solution, it gives customers rapid time to value and enables partners to easily deliver packaged vertical offerings.
• A new level of agility through a set of Unified Natural Models, which serves as a library of business processes that reflect real-world situations, and enables customers to easily modify their organizations and processes to meet their changing business needs.
• Simplicity across the board, through the intuitive RoleTailored experience and access to context-sensitive business intelligence (BI) that is relevant to the work at hand. The familiar Microsoft Office user interface drives adoption, and the enhanced BI capabilities help customers uncover fresh insights that can lead to faster and more informed decision-making.

The beta of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 will be released in April 2011. The final release is expected to be generally available in August 2011.

Dynamics Marketplace

Independent software vendors (ISVs) and partners will also be able to showcase Microsoft Dynamics cloud-enabled vertical solutions, add-ons and services on the Microsoft Dynamics Marketplace.

Dynamics Roadmap

In keeping with the level of commitment to innovation across the entire Microsoft Dynamics portfolio of ERP and CRM solutions, Microsoft also announced the following:

• Microsoft Dynamics SL 2011, which gives businesses a faster time to value through integration with Microsoft Project 2010, is now generally available.
• The on-premises version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, which delivers familiar, intelligent and connected experiences to users across an organization, is now generally available. More than 27,000 customers and 1.7 million users are benefiting from Microsoft Dynamics CRM worldwide, including companies such as American National Standards Institute, Hard Rock International and Sandri Companies.
• Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2, which offers customers built-in integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and enhanced data visualizations capabilities, was delivered ahead of schedule in December 2010.
• Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2, which increases customer agility through significant business intelligence capability enhancements, will be generally available May 1, 2011.

About Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP solutions empower your people to be more productive and your systems to last longer and scale as your business grows, while enabling you to derive the insights necessary to respond quickly in an ever-changing world of business.

Getting Started with Dynamics

• Dynamics AX Development Center on MSDN
• Dynamics CRM Development Center on MSDN

Bruce D. Kyle
ISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation

Make 70 the new 65
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

It’s time for a 21st-century retirement age

If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn’t 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever-so-gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers. Since then, American life expectancy has increased by half a decade and continues to rise – while the “traditional” retirement age (established eight decades ago) has only recently begun phasing up to 67 and the official “early” retirement age (established four decades ago) remains stuck at 62.

There is simply no good reason 21st-century workers should operate under obsolete 1930s-era expectations and 1970s rules. We’re living longer, working longer, and in general, holding down jobs that are far less physically taxing than those of previous generations.

The reasons we should update these relics of our teetering federal entitlement programs are myriad. Demographic, actuarial, and fiscal realities demand it. As powerless blue-ribbon entitlement reform panels have warned for years, the number of younger workers supporting Social Security beneficiaries is dwindling. It’s a global phenomenon. The Economist magazine reports based on declining fertility rates “that by 2050 there will be just 2.6 American workers supporting each pensioner and the figures for France, Germany and Italy will be 1.9, 1.6 and 1.5 respectively.”

This amounts to a budget-busting wealth transfer scheme whose lousy “investments” cannot be sustained unless basic structural reforms are made. Shared sacrifice means that every able-bodied worker – including federal employees and elected officials – must get with the times. Americans can no longer feel entitled to some twenty to thirty years of subsidized retirement, often collected over the course of many more years than retirees actually spent paying into the system.

Raising the traditional and early retirement ages will mean extending workers’ taxable earning years, fueling economic growth, and putting a dent in our unfunded liabilities crisis by delaying payouts. Some senior citizens’ lobbying groups fret that today’s workforce wouldn’t be able to handle longer careers. Tell that to Betty White or Joan Rivers or Helen Mirren. More to the point, as domestic policy analyst Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute observes, “Perhaps the best evidence that future Americans can work longer is that past Americans did: Despite poorer health, shorter lives and more strenuous jobs, in 1950 the typical individual did not claim Social Security until age 68.5. In 1950, more than 20% of Americans worked in physically demanding jobs; today only about 8% do. While today’s technology-driven service economy places demands on older workers, it is hard to imagine that things were easier when Americans typically worked on farms or in factories.”

This week, after rejecting the austerity measures of his own blue-ribbon fiscal responsibility panel last fall and attacking serious GOP attempts to address the impending bankruptcy of both Social Security and Medicare, President Obama will unveil his entitlement reform package . Yep: Barry-come-lately and his teleprompter are ambling down the grim-rose path. The main feature of the president’s “bold” plan? Higher taxes on the nation’s top wealth producers and earners. Translation: Same old, same old class-warfare cowardice.

For their part, both Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democrat House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, wary of incurring the wrath of senior voters, have tip-toed, pirouetted, and backtracked on updating the retirement age. They’ve promised to put “everything on the table” now – as long as everyone agrees later to kick the can down the road. Again.

As many entitlement reformers have noted, the very first American to benefit from Social Security, Ida May Fuller, collected nearly $23,000 in government pension benefits after paying in less than $25. At the rate we’re going now, my kids and the Obamas’ kids will never see a dime of what they are forced to put in. They’ll already be waist-deep in the red as they entire their prime earning years. A truly modern government pension plan would follow the private sector by moving from a defined benefits plan to a defined contributions system – and by injecting free-market competition to improve returns.

Instead, we are dooming a generation of reverse Ida May Fullers who have no choice on where best to “invest” their automatically confiscated payroll taxes. The dawdlers and demagogues in Washington aren’t “winning the future.” They’re robbing it.

(Scott)

I'm going to speak this morning to my daughter's high school class legal history class on the subject of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. A few years back ago I had a personal encounter with the guy who helped create the firestorm over alleged racial profiling in traffic stops. It was an experience I hope to revisit briefly in my daughter's history class this morning with a citation to this post.

Heather Mac Donald has done her best to illuminate the facts underlying the racial profiling controversy. See, for example, her National Review article "Reporting while wrong.". The article's subhead is "The New York Times peddles more 'driving while black' malarkey." As might be deduced from the article's title, Mac Donald explores the New York Times's abuse of the relevant data. This is a beat that Mac Donald has simply owned and that she covered in her book Are Cops Racist?.

Mac Donald's NR article begins with an exposition of the key role played by University of Toledo Law School Professor David Harris in promulgating the myth of racial profiling. Harris served as the intellectual guru of the racial profiling campaign waged by the ACLU. As an ACLU consultant, he wrote wrote the influential pamphlet Driving While Black to which Mac Donald referred at the top of her article; the racial profiling litigation that brought the issue of alleged racial profiling in traffic stops to national attention in 2000 was a project of the ACLU.

Mac Donald also notes that Harris expanded his pamphlet into the 2002 book Profiles in Injustice. I read the book when I was invited to debate Harris in early 2002 on his visit to the Twin Cities to promote the book. I'm not easily shocked, but I was shocked by the misrepresentations and omissions in Harris's book.

Harris argues that crime rates are equal among racial groups and that racial disparities in the criminal justice system are therefore a function of bias. He simply discounts the basic data regarding racial disparities in crime rates, omits any reference to the basic data regarding the racial identification of perpetrators by victims, and dispenses with the related criminological scholarship of the past 30 years or so.

I wrote an article on the subject for the January/February 2003 issue of the American Enterprise that ran with an excerpt from Harris's book. The article article -- "Better Unsafe than (Occasionally) Sorry?" -- remains available via the Claremont Institute even though the magazine has ceased publication. Harris subsequently wrote a letter to the editor of the magazine:

The personal attack on me in Scott Johnson's article contains inaccuracies, distortions, as well as a breathtaking slander: that I am responsible for the success of the September 11 attacks. All of this from a writer who never even bothered to talk to me, which could have at least saved him from making many of the errors in the piece.

Although Harris accused me of not talking to him before writing the article, I have an autographed copy of his book that refutes him. He signed it as we ate lunch together preceding his talk to a huge conference of high school teachers in Bloomington, Minnesota. I responded to Professor Harris's letter to the editor:

The article is not a personal attack on Professor Harris; it is fair comment on his book. I am not aware of any factual errors and he does not cite any. Harris also does not mention the excerpt from his book that accompanies the piece; it allows him to speak in his own words. In any case, the suggestion that I should have talked to him before critiquing his book lacks a basis in any journalistic practice.

Besides, on March 7, 2002, I attended two presentations by Harris in the Twin Cities. After the first of his talks I commented as a panelist. Following the second presentation [at Macalester College], I debated him. I regret Professor Harris has taken offense, but he is a voluntary participant in a serious debate and can expect his controversial claims to be engaged and [challenged]. . . .

The gist of my American Enterprise article was akin to that of Mac Donald's National Review piece -- the alleged phenomenon of racial profiling condemned by advocates like Harris generally does not exist.

Here is a quiz on both current events and history.

The United States has sent forces abroad more than 100 times. How many times has the United States formally declared war?

The Constitution does provide for it. And the lack of such a declaration has been used to criticize many of America's overseas conflicts.

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, helped to craft the nation's legal policies in the Justice Department of the administration of George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.

read more

An Astroturf campaign is a fake grassroots movement: it purports to be a spontaneous uprising of concerned citizens, but in reality it is founded and funded by elite interests. Some Astroturf campaigns have no grassroots component at all. Others catalyse and direct real mobilisations. The Tea Party belongs in the second category. It is mostly composed of passionate, well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, unaware that they have been organised by the very interests they believe they are confronting... In July 2010, David Koch told New York magazine: 'I've never been to a Tea Party event. No one representing the Tea Party has ever even approached me.' But a fascinating new film (Astro)Turf Wars, by Taki Oldham tells a fuller story. Oldham infiltrated some of the movement's key organising events, including the 2009 Defending the American Dream summit, convened by a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP). The film shows David Koch addressing the summit. 'Five years ago,' he explains, 'my brother Charles and I provided the funds to start Americans for Prosperity. It's beyond my wildest dreams how AFP has grown into this enormous organisation.' Americans for Prosperity is one of several groups set up by the Kochs to promote their politics. We know their foundations have given it at least $5m, but few such records are in the public domain and the total could be much higher. It has toured the country organising rallies against healthcare reform and the Democrats' attempts to tackle climate change. It provided the key organising tools that set the Tea Party running. Oldham's film shows how AFP crafted the movement's messages and drafted its talking points AFP is one of several groups established by the Koch brothers... The Kochs have lavished money on more than 30 other advocacy groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the George C Marshall Institute, the Reason Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute. These bodies have been instrumental in turning politicians away from environmental laws, social spending, taxing the rich and distributing wealth. They have shaped the widespread demand for small government. The Kochs ensure that their money works for them. 'If we're going to give a lot of money,' David Koch explained to a libertarian journalist, 'we'll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent. And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don't agree with, we withdraw funding.' Most of these bodies call themselves 'free-market think tanks', but their trick as (Astro)Turf Wars points out is to conflate crony capitalism with free enterprise, and free enterprise with personal liberty. Between them they have constructed the philosophy that informs the Tea Party movement: its members mobilise for freedom, unaware that the freedom they demand is freedom for corporations to trample them into the dirt. The thinktanks that the Kochs have funded devise the game and the rules by which it is played; Americans for Prosperity coaches and motivates the team... Billionaires and corporations are capturing the political process everywhere; anyone with an interest in democracy should be thinking about how to resist them. Nothing is real any more. Nothing is as it seems.

• added by: bundlebear  
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(John)

I am in Dallas today and tomorrow, attending a conference on economic growth at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. The conference is titled The 4 Percent Project: Driving Economic Growth. It proposes a goal of 4 percent consistent annual GDP growth--an objective that has often been reached in the past, but is out of reach under current policies. The conference is small and by invitation. President Bush spoke early this afternoon and got a warm reception:

There was a panel discussion on what public policies contribute to economic growth, moderated by Richard Fisher, the CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The panelists were Allan Meltzer, a professor at the Carnegie Mellon school of business; Jeffrey Miron, an economist at Harvard; Susan Schwab, former United States Trade Representative, and Amity Shlaes, author and syndicated columnist. The discussion was intensely interesting. If I were to take away one lesson, it would be the economically destructive effect of excessive government spending, regardless of whether that spending is financed by taxes or debt (future taxes).

There was a question period at the end of the panel discussion. I was going to raise my hand, but when the first question came from a Nobel Prize-winning economist, I decided I'd better keep my mouth shut.

I then attended a breakout session on The Fed, Taxes and Spending that was moderated by Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal. The panelists were Kevin Hassett, formerly a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and now with the American Enterprise Institute; Robert McTeer, a former CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas who is now with the National Center for Policy Analysis; David Malpass, formerly chief economist at Bear Stearns and now president of Encima Global; and Paul Singer, the founder of Elliott Management, a hedge fund. The discussion was frankly brilliant. It ran the gamut from optimistic--Kevin Hassett pointed out that our government's policies are now palpably bad on so many fronts that we have many opportunities for improved growth--to worrisome--Paul Singer argued that bank finances are as opaque as ever, and Dodd-Frank makes the financial system more brittle and less safe.

The day concluded with a rousing speech by Meg Whitman, who is still somewhat in campaign mode:

The program will continue tomorrow. The cause, identifying ways of achieving sustainable 4 percent growth, is a good one. None of our problems, from debt to defense, is ultimately soluble without more robust economic growth. The good news is that economists know quite a lot about what policies will foster growth, if we can only make politicians cut out the demagoguery and implement them.

In the Financial Times at the end of March, the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote “With notably rare exceptions (2008, for example), the global ‘invisible hand’ has created relatively stable exchange rates, interest rates, prices, and wage rates”.

That statement is mundanely true. But as it came from Greenspan, it was not well received.

Left-leaning blogs have had great fun: “With notably rare exceptions, the levees protecting New Orleans have held fast in the face of major hurricanes”.

The Nobel winning economist-turned-polemicist Paul Krugman wrote he “didn’t know quite how to respond”.

The Global Financial Crisis still looms large.

Our understanding of the crisis will shape debate about the role of government and the fragility or robustness of markets for decades.

So it’s important to get it right - to pinpoint exactly what went wrong in the US housing market and what caused it. The particulars are important.

Those particulars make it hard to shove the crisis into a morality play of deregulation and rampant greed.

We know a lot more about the crisis than we did in 2008 and 2009.

The US government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reported this January. While its majority report largely fails to interrogate the structural origin of the housing bubble, a dissenting report released as an appendix is much more interesting.

Written by Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute, the dissent rigorously documents the deliberate erosion of lending standards by successive American administrations.

As Wallison writes, in the early 1990s lending standards were seen as a barrier to home ownership for low and middle-income families.

The solution was the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992, which intended to give those families better access to mortgage credit through the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Fannie and Freddie had been, until then, conservative and relatively benign, trading mortgages on the secondary market since the Great Depression. But with the 1992 Act they now had a new mandate, a social mission.

Over the next 15 years the Government ratcheted up the affordable housing goals.

The result of these goals was spectacular.

By 2008, “non-traditional” mortgages (loans made to those with blemished credit, or lacking documentation, or with negligible down-payment) made up a massive 58 per cent of the total US mortgage market.

And US government entities - primarily Fannie and Freddie - were either directly holding or guaranteeing 71 per cent of those non-traditional loans.

This was a successful program, under its own terms. It boosted homeownership rates substantially. But the housing bubble it created eventually burst.

The received wisdom on this boom in non-traditional mortgages has focused on fraud by lenders, the naivety of borrowers, and the greed of investment bankers who packaged them into complex and inscrutable investments.

This tale has been reinforced by bookstores full of hastily-written financial crisis porn, rich with anecdotes about fast-living financiers and lazy lenders.

Yet in a market engorged by government affordable-housing goals, these bankers no more epitomise the ‘invisible hand’ than the US Congress does.

So three years after the crisis, the policies which caused the housing bubble are starting to get their due recognition.

As are the mistakes made in 2008, while the bubble was collapsing.

If the erosion of lending standards was the long-term cause of the crisis, then the actions of the US government in 2008 was the short-term one - badly deepening the crash and impeding the recovery.

Since the 1980s, the US government had slowly built an expectation it would bailout big firms if they got into trouble. This expectation was never explicit. You wouldn’t want to bet the company on it. But it was there.

Still, the bailout of the investment bank Bear Sterns in March 2008 came as a surprise. Sure, Bear Sterns was deeply involved in non-traditional mortgages, but it was only a mid-sized firm. If Bear Sterns was “too big to fail”, so were dozens of others.

When the Federal Reserve stepped in to save Bear Sterns, it was massively expanding the government’s implied support net.

In retrospect, many participants have blamed the failure to bailout Lehman Brothers in September for the crash. And it is true that the market only truly sunk after it became clear Lehman would be left to fail, and investors realised government help was not guaranteed.

But Lehman’s actions in the week after the Bear Sterns bailout reveal the real problem in 2008.

Bear Stern’s near collapse in March should have inspired all participants to stop and reassess the quality of the mortgage-backed securities they were holding.

Instead, Lehman doubled-down, packaging all their riskiest assets into a special fund with one purpose - as collateral to borrow money from the Federal Reserve. In other words, instead of limiting their risk, they increased it.

For Lehman and other firms, maximising the chances for a bailout became the main game. Not cleaning balance sheets and taking a financial hit. As a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank, Vince Reinhart, has argued, the question becomes less “how do we get out of this mess?” and more “how much money will the government pony up first?”

Expectations changed again in September with Lehman’s collapse. The US economy froze. The global panic began. Governments initiated an unprecedented series of interventions and stimulus packages.

And the name of the Lehman Brothers fund specifically designed to take advantage of Federal Reserve largesse and the banking sector’s new claim on taxpayer dollars?

The “Freedom” fund.

Memory of the Great Depression shaped economic policy in the second half of the 20th century. The Great Recession will shape the next 50 years.

So let’s not let our understanding of its causes slip into a vague haze of myth and cliché. The crisis was caused not by greed, or deregulation, or neo-liberalism. It was caused by a web of public policy mistakes - if well-intentioned ones - and their unintended consequences.

Chris Berg is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs. Follow him at twitter.com/chrisberg

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Here is a quiz on both current events and history.

The United States has sent forces abroad more than 100 times. How many times has the United States formally declared war?

The Constitution does provide for it. And the lack of such a declaration has been used to criticize many of America's overseas conflicts.

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, helped to craft the nation's legal policies in the Justice Department of the administration of George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003.

read more

Colbert I. King | Commentary

Allow me to join the chorus: The 2012 federal budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is an improvement over the administration's 2012 plan, since the GOP proposal at least makes a stab at tackling two of the three major entitlement programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- that are driving the country toward a financial cliff. As Obama's plan did, Ryan's plan punts on Social Security reform. But the House Republican proposal does acknowledge the looming crisis and offer solutions. That's more than Barack Obama can say.

Thus ends my time with the chorus. Now for my solo.

The GOP deficit-closing plan relies on deep cuts that return nondefense discretionary spending to 2008 levels. Such "discretionary" spending programs, of course, support our country's most vulnerable citizens. They, not baby boomers who are the true beneficiaries of America's bountiful years, are being asked to bear the brunt of the House Republican cuts.

It's no surprise. The Republican view of those in the weakest shape was captured Tuesday in Ryan's speech at the American Enterprise Institute. Making the case for the GOP budget plan, Ryan told the audience, "America is drawing perilously close to a tipping point that has the potential to curtail free enterprise, transform our government and weaken our national identity in ways that may not be reversible."

He offered this vision of the two dangers that represent the tipping point: "first, long-term economic decline as the number of makers diminishes and the number of takers grows ... and second, gradual moral-political decline as dependency and passivity weaken the nation's character."

Let's pause right here -- at diminishing "makers," expanding "takers," a nation pulled downward by "dependency." A nation blessed with strong, contributing members beset by weak, dependent takers: a worldview right out of the Victorian era. It has currency today, though, and informs the "Path to Prosperity," as the Republican budget is titled.

At bottom, the GOP's approach to solving the debt crisis is driven by an elitist notion that holds that unfit people, because of wrongheaded Washington policies, have been receiving unwarranted benefits at the expense of more deserving, and better off, Americans. Implicit in the GOP plan is the idea that it is not only fiscally prudent but also morally correct to use the budget to chart a new path. The 2012 budget, said Ryan, "represents a new federal commitment, assuring this nation's workers, investors and entrepreneurs that the new House majority recognizes the threat that unlimited government poses to the American way of life."

To protect and defend the American way of life, the House Republican majority would take spending back to 2008 levels, which, according to a news release from the Democrats of the House Committee on Education and Workforce in a news release, would remove 218,000 low-income children and families from Head Start; close more than 16,000 Head Start and Early Head Start classrooms; put 55,000 Head Start teachers and related staff out of work; and cause 170,000 families trying to find or keep jobs to lose child care.

Score one for the American way of life.

And to curb the government's reach, the Republican spending plan essentially removes funding from 2,400 schools that serve nearly a million low-income students. It would cut Pell Grants for all 9.4 million students eligible next year. If that's not enough, the GOP plan would kick at least 180,000 students out of the Pell Grant program altogether. To strike another blow for freedom, Ryan would replace Medicare with premium subsidies that seniors would use to pay off private health insurance companies rather than doctors and hospitals. And if the subsidies fail to cover health-care inflation in the future? Tough noogies.

What a federal commitment.

Look at all those kids and old folks just a-marchin' off to prosperity.

Oh, but America's comfortable and well-off need have no fear. Tax cuts for millionaires are preserved in the GOP plan. And that nuisance 35 percent top tax rate on individuals and businesses will be taken down to 25 percent. Defense spending gets a light trim. Agricultural subsidies stay alive.

So, as in the world of Darwin, in the trek to prosperity, this country's strongest and the fittest will make out very well, thank you very much.

It's those freeloading, undesirable, able-bodied poor folks, their children and their grandparents who are going to get their comeuppance, courtesy of the new House Republican majority. Even as a craven White House, with no entitlement reform plan of its own and a 2012 budget plan that envisions repeat annual deficits, clings wordlessly to the sidelines.

Colbert I. King is a former member of The Washington Post's Editorial Page staff.

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with top-echelon and renowned professionals. In this blog, I interview Rick Cooper: Top Ranking Internationally Known Entrepreneur, Innovator, Executive, Investor.

Enjoy!
Stephen Ibaraki

Rick Cooper has proven expertise in general management, business development, sales, marketing, R&D, and manufacturing, in four Cleantech and other hi-tech start-ups. Mr. Cooper's successes are attributable to his innate effectiveness (getting the right things done), an inherent emphasis on customer focus, building sustainable competitive advantages and resourcefulness.

Mr. Cooper began his career in 1983 as a chemist doing research on rechargeable lithium batteries for Ballard Power Systems in Canada. In the early 1990s, he started up two branch offices: first with Ransco which developed multi-million dollar automotive test facilities, and then with L&F Industries which designed and built the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. From 1996 to 2001 Mr. Cooper provided executive leadership at Ballard and Xcellsis. He started up Ballard's US operations and advanced the state of the art in automotive fuel cell technology which supported the creation of Xcellsis, a joint venture with Daimler AG and the Ford Motor Company. He was promoted to CEO of the US division of Xcellsis which he grew into a world-class company with 175 employees. Mr. Cooper raised over $60M for Xcellsis and the enterprise was acquired for over $400M.

From 2002 to 2009 Mr. Cooper served as VP Business Development at PolyFuel which developed fuel cell products to address the battery runtime problem in consumer electronic devices such as cell phones and notebooks. Under Mr. Cooper's direction, PolyFuel achieved design-wins with 45% of the world's leading developers of portable fuel cells. His strong relationships with multinational consumer electronic OEMs and battery companies contributed deal-making validation for investors' due diligence in venture capital financings and PolyFuel's IPO.

At PolyFuel, Ballard and Xcellsis, Mr. Cooper was involved with 13 proposals for government funding. Twelve of those were awarded grants totalling $26M. Mr. Cooper was instrumental in the formation of the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CAFCP), a collaboration between the world's leading automotive OEMs, energy companies, government agencies and fuel cell technology suppliers. Mr. Cooper was a member of the CAFCP steering committee. Technology developed by CAFCP members provided the foundation for President Bush's $1.8B program for a hydrogen and fuel cell economy featured in his 2003 State of the Union address.

Mr. Cooper has two degrees with honours: Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, 1991 (2nd in Class), and a Diploma of Technology, Chemistry, BC Institute of Technology, Vancouver, BC, 1983 (1st in Class). He is a registered professional engineer in California and has completed numerous executive education courses on management, marketing and finance at the Stanford Business School and the Hass Business School at UC Berkeley.

Today Mr. Cooper is an active member of the Tech Coast Angels where he invests in early stage start-ups and advises entrepreneurs. He is a Board Observer at IntraStage, a leading test data software company and his first angel investment. He is passionate about technologies and products that address today's environmental issues and looks forward to adding value in an executive role at a Cleantech start-up.

To listen to the interview, click on this MP3 file link

DISCUSSION:

Interview Time Index (MM:SS) and Topic

:00:44:
Rick, due to your recognized international standing as the leading executive, entrepreneur, investment expert with a deep knowledge of innovation, you were invited to a series of international summits hosted in China. It was a real pleasure to talk with you while you were in China. Congratulations on your remarkable contributions internationally.
"....It's fairly well-known around the world that the pace of change there is quite remarkable and the growth rates in various industries are amazing. It's always fun to be there first hand and experience it...."

:01:49:
What are your top lessons that you can share from being part of this special VIP Delegation to China hosted by the government and coordinated by the Great-Idea Business Resources Co. Ltd.?
"....The organizers did a remarkable job....We met with numerous executives and government officials in several different cities and those stakeholders were all talking about growth rates in this space....Even though China has an enormous population, the executives and government officials all had the same number one challenge that some of these fields are growing so fast they have a hard time finding people....The extent of support the government agencies provide for these start-up companies....Another lesson was just how modern and well-equipped their facilities are....From a more personal interest perspective, travelling around by bus with this delegation gave us a great chance to see how things are developing in the countryside...."

:05:37:
What triggered your initial interest in science and technology and then what forces shaped your interests?
"....As a small boy I remember being very curious about how things worked. Rather than playing with puzzles or games I was busy taking things apart and trying to learn how they worked....I guess I was naturally curious and was fortunate to have grown up in a very supportive and thoughtful environment...."

:06:57:
Rick provides his past career highlights and valuable leadership and career lessons for success which he shares with the audience.
"....The most important lesson is to always follow a customer-focus philosophy....Related to customer-focus is very clear and effective communications...."

:11:54:
What specific attributes contributed to your success?
"....The most important one is what I call 'effectiveness' – that is getting the right things done rather than getting things done right....Customer focus....People often think that selling is about talking and persuasion – in my opinion the other half of communication is listening...."

:13:37:
Can you profile your current roles/projects and then what you want to accomplish and the value you deliver to your stakeholders?
"....I'm happy to be involved with an organization called CONNECT, a San Diego based organization that has been established to help new entrepreneurs as they start up their businesses....I'm also an active member of Tech Coast Angels, a Southern California based angel investment organization that funds early stage ventures...."

:14:42:
Can you talk more about Tech Coast Angels (TCA)?
"....TCA is the largest angel investment group in North America....We have hundreds of members; more than half of them are seasoned entrepreneurs themselves...."

:15:26:
What are the major challenges in being an angel investor and how can they be resolved?
"....These are very early stage companies and they typically don't have validation from customers (so that you can measure their progress through revenues) and as a result they are very risky....Another challenge is a kind of funding gap that has come up in the venture space...."

:17:25:
In terms of being an angel investor what percentage would you advise potential angel investors to put at risk?
"....That's very much an individual choice....Just thinking off the top I would say ten to twenty percent at the most of a person's net worth could be deployed in this high risk space. I'm a little bit conservative so I'd be at the lower end of that scale...."

:18:00:
What mistakes are made by startups and entrepreneurs?
"....In my opinion the biggest mistake new entrepreneurs in particular make is not seeking advice and maybe even worse is not listening once they have solicited the advice....Second is lack of focus....The other common mistake we see is when founders sell shares in their early stage companies to friends and family – they come with a valuation for the business that is sometimes unrealistic or too optimistic...."

:20:53:
Let's say there are people who have been the technology industry for some time and have an innovative idea they've been working on and they got some kind of a product perhaps already in a beta stage and want to do a start-up or become an entrepreneur. Where do they go to get help in terms of investment?
"....Southern California entrepreneurs are very lucky because there is a great infrastructure set up here, the CONNECT organization. They have a very robust program in place that helps early stage investors called Springboard....I imagine that there are those types of help and mentoring organizations in other regions. If that kind of service is available I advise people to jump in with both feet as quickly as possible and look for that type of support in the very early stages...."

:22:28:
What are the biggest opportunities in investment and how can they be actioned?
"....I've spent most of my career in Cleantech so I'm pretty biased. I happen to believe that represents one of the biggest opportunities...."

:24:14:
Can you provide your global perspective on innovation and investment trends?
"....I don't want to sound like a broken record here but it's pretty clear that Cleantech is a global trend. Another area is Healthcare. I see a lot of exciting things coming to TCA in this field that can increase the effectiveness and reduce the cost in the healthcare space...."

:24:45:
Can you provide your global perspective on innovation and investment trends?
"....Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is a MD, surgeon, researcher and a really accomplished entrepreneur. He's working on prevention and payment for health rather than payment for services that are sometimes just wastefully rendered. One of the vehicles that he has is a program called All About Advanced Health Project....Another interesting trend is that China should be able to continue to outpace the growth of the rest of the world....I remain optimistic as well that Cleantech will continue to make an impact on climate change....Another interesting area is the field of mindfulness-based stress reduction...."

:30:12:
How about this new idea of US Venture Financing and American ingenuity – do you have any thoughts on that?
"....I've been fortunate to have done business in various parts of the world, in Europe and Asia in particular. The one thing that I think differentiates the American culture is resilience....Risk is another area that really differentiates the US culture. Many entrepreneurs here fail in their ventures, they dust themselves off, they get up again, apply lessons learned from that experience and in many cases go on to achieve great success. On the flip-side, in many other cultures, failure is a 'one strike and you're out' kind of situation...."

:33:39:
Where do you want to see yourself in five years or ten years or in a hundred years from now – what do you want said about you and your life and what you contributed?
"....Over the last couple of years I have been able to take a step back from the day-to-day hands-on heavy-lifting in the entrepreneurial sector and to focus more on the angel investment and volunteer activities....I've concluded that I'm so much more happy being in involved intimately in the entrepreneurial activity. I still remain very passionate about Cleantech...."

:35:30:
Which are your top recommended resources and why?
"....Book by David Berkus called Berkonomics....Blog: Greentech media...."

:37:05:
Rick shares some interesting stories from his many experiences and work.
"....To have lived the dream here and to have been a pioneer in a field working on some technologies which can help improve society and make a difference, and then have that technology be featured in a President's State of the Union address, I have to say that is one thing that sticks with me....Another one that comes to mind is how I've been personally affected by and transformed when it comes to China...."

:40:08:
China has this phenomenal growth in many areas including economics, education, and so forth. What does this mean to America and the rest of the world?
"....I think the world has to get recalibrated. I came away from the last trip in particular having a chance to see the infrastructure around the country, (and not just the big cities which I had only seen before), with the feeling that you can't really call China a developing country anymore....I think the US will be a force to reckon with for quite some time but there's no doubt that China is on a trajectory to become the economic powerhouse in the world in this century...."

:45:09:
If you could sum up your life experiences with career tips for the ICT professional, what would be your tips and the reasons behind them?
"....Ask the customer what they really want before you start your work. Avoid assumptions wherever possible....It's really important to take your job seriously and of course you have to work really hard to be successful....Always be mindful of that work-life-enjoyment balance...."

:47:04:
What are your thoughts on computing as a recognized profession like medicine and law, with demonstrated professional development, adherence to a code of ethics, and globally recognized credentials and more? [see www.ipthree.org for more details]
"....It could be very easy to have all kinds of disruptions in the world if some of these products were not developed in the most ethical way. I think it's a great idea and I hope it does catch on and it has capabilities on a global basis...."

:49:07:
If you were doing this interview, are there areas that you would have covered that I’ve missed?
"....A couple of things that I'd want people to consider when they want to do business internationally....Be patient. There are cultural differences and obviously there are communication challenges.....Second is this concept of agility or flexibility; it's very important to respect the differences. If they go into it with a really strong 'this is the way we do it therefore this is the way it has to be done in this deal' kind of mentality I wouldn’t say it's not impossible to have success but it is far more difficult than if you are open-minded and flexible...."

This is the next blog in the continuing series of interviews with top-echelon and renowned professionals. In this blog, I interview Rick Cooper: Top Ranking Internationally Known Entrepreneur, Innovator, Executive, Investor.

Enjoy!
Stephen Ibaraki

Rick Cooper has proven expertise in general management, business development, sales, marketing, R&D, and manufacturing, in four Cleantech and other hi-tech start-ups. Mr. Cooper's successes are attributable to his innate effectiveness (getting the right things done), an inherent emphasis on customer focus, building sustainable competitive advantages and resourcefulness.

Mr. Cooper began his career in 1983 as a chemist doing research on rechargeable lithium batteries for Ballard Power Systems in Canada. In the early 1990s, he started up two branch offices: first with Ransco which developed multi-million dollar automotive test facilities, and then with L&F Industries which designed and built the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. From 1996 to 2001 Mr. Cooper provided executive leadership at Ballard and Xcellsis. He started up Ballard's US operations and advanced the state of the art in automotive fuel cell technology which supported the creation of Xcellsis, a joint venture with Daimler AG and the Ford Motor Company. He was promoted to CEO of the US division of Xcellsis which he grew into a world-class company with 175 employees. Mr. Cooper raised over $60M for Xcellsis and the enterprise was acquired for over $400M.

From 2002 to 2009 Mr. Cooper served as VP Business Development at PolyFuel which developed fuel cell products to address the battery runtime problem in consumer electronic devices such as cell phones and notebooks. Under Mr. Cooper's direction, PolyFuel achieved design-wins with 45% of the world's leading developers of portable fuel cells. His strong relationships with multinational consumer electronic OEMs and battery companies contributed deal-making validation for investors' due diligence in venture capital financings and PolyFuel's IPO.

At PolyFuel, Ballard and Xcellsis, Mr. Cooper was involved with 13 proposals for government funding. Twelve of those were awarded grants totalling $26M. Mr. Cooper was instrumental in the formation of the California Fuel Cell Partnership (CAFCP), a collaboration between the world's leading automotive OEMs, energy companies, government agencies and fuel cell technology suppliers. Mr. Cooper was a member of the CAFCP steering committee. Technology developed by CAFCP members provided the foundation for President Bush's $1.8B program for a hydrogen and fuel cell economy featured in his 2003 State of the Union address.

Mr. Cooper has two degrees with honours: Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, 1991 (2nd in Class), and a Diploma of Technology, Chemistry, BC Institute of Technology, Vancouver, BC, 1983 (1st in Class). He is a registered professional engineer in California and has completed numerous executive education courses on management, marketing and finance at the Stanford Business School and the Hass Business School at UC Berkeley.

Today Mr. Cooper is an active member of the Tech Coast Angels where he invests in early stage start-ups and advises entrepreneurs. He is a Board Observer at IntraStage, a leading test data software company and his first angel investment. He is passionate about technologies and products that address today's environmental issues and looks forward to adding value in an executive role at a Cleantech start-up.

To listen to the interview, click on this MP3 file link

DISCUSSION:

Interview Time Index (MM:SS) and Topic

:00:44:
Rick, due to your recognized international standing as the leading executive, entrepreneur, investment expert with a deep knowledge of innovation, you were invited to a series of international summits hosted in China. It was a real pleasure to talk with you while you were in China. Congratulations on your remarkable contributions internationally.
"....It's fairly well-known around the world that the pace of change there is quite remarkable and the growth rates in various industries are amazing. It's always fun to be there first hand and experience it...."

:01:49:
What are your top lessons that you can share from being part of this special VIP Delegation to China hosted by the government and coordinated by the Great-Idea Business Resources Co. Ltd.?
"....The organizers did a remarkable job....We met with numerous executives and government officials in several different cities and those stakeholders were all talking about growth rates in this space....Even though China has an enormous population, the executives and government officials all had the same number one challenge that some of these fields are growing so fast they have a hard time finding people....The extent of support the government agencies provide for these start-up companies....Another lesson was just how modern and well-equipped their facilities are....From a more personal interest perspective, travelling around by bus with this delegation gave us a great chance to see how things are developing in the countryside...."

:05:37:
What triggered your initial interest in science and technology and then what forces shaped your interests?
"....As a small boy I remember being very curious about how things worked. Rather than playing with puzzles or games I was busy taking things apart and trying to learn how they worked....I guess I was naturally curious and was fortunate to have grown up in a very supportive and thoughtful environment...."

:06:57:
Rick provides his past career highlights and valuable leadership and career lessons for success which he shares with the audience.
"....The most important lesson is to always follow a customer-focus philosophy....Related to customer-focus is very clear and effective communications...."

:11:54:
What specific attributes contributed to your success?
"....The most important one is what I call 'effectiveness' – that is getting the right things done rather than getting things done right....Customer focus....People often think that selling is about talking and persuasion – in my opinion the other half of communication is listening...."

:13:37:
Can you profile your current roles/projects and then what you want to accomplish and the value you deliver to your stakeholders?
"....I'm happy to be involved with an organization called CONNECT, a San Diego based organization that has been established to help new entrepreneurs as they start up their businesses....I'm also an active member of Tech Coast Angels, a Southern California based angel investment organization that funds early stage ventures...."

:14:42:
Can you talk more about Tech Coast Angels (TCA)?
"....TCA is the largest angel investment group in North America....We have hundreds of members; more than half of them are seasoned entrepreneurs themselves...."

:15:26:
What are the major challenges in being an angel investor and how can they be resolved?
"....These are very early stage companies and they typically don't have validation from customers (so that you can measure their progress through revenues) and as a result they are very risky....Another challenge is a kind of funding gap that has come up in the venture space...."

:17:25:
In terms of being an angel investor what percentage would you advise potential angel investors to put at risk?
"....That's very much an individual choice....Just thinking off the top I would say ten to twenty percent at the most of a person's net worth could be deployed in this high risk space. I'm a little bit conservative so I'd be at the lower end of that scale...."

:18:00:
What mistakes are made by startups and entrepreneurs?
"....In my opinion the biggest mistake new entrepreneurs in particular make is not seeking advice and maybe even worse is not listening once they have solicited the advice....Second is lack of focus....The other common mistake we see is when founders sell shares in their early stage companies to friends and family – they come with a valuation for the business that is sometimes unrealistic or too optimistic...."

:20:53:
Let's say there are people who have been the technology industry for some time and have an innovative idea they've been working on and they got some kind of a product perhaps already in a beta stage and want to do a start-up or become an entrepreneur. Where do they go to get help in terms of investment?
"....Southern California entrepreneurs are very lucky because there is a great infrastructure set up here, the CONNECT organization. They have a very robust program in place that helps early stage investors called Springboard....I imagine that there are those types of help and mentoring organizations in other regions. If that kind of service is available I advise people to jump in with both feet as quickly as possible and look for that type of support in the very early stages...."

:22:28:
What are the biggest opportunities in investment and how can they be actioned?
"....I've spent most of my career in Cleantech so I'm pretty biased. I happen to believe that represents one of the biggest opportunities...."

:24:14:
Can you provide your global perspective on innovation and investment trends?
"....I don't want to sound like a broken record here but it's pretty clear that Cleantech is a global trend. Another area is Healthcare. I see a lot of exciting things coming to TCA in this field that can increase the effectiveness and reduce the cost in the healthcare space...."

:24:45:
Can you provide your global perspective on innovation and investment trends?
"....Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is a MD, surgeon, researcher and a really accomplished entrepreneur. He's working on prevention and payment for health rather than payment for services that are sometimes just wastefully rendered. One of the vehicles that he has is a program called All About Advanced Health Project....Another interesting trend is that China should be able to continue to outpace the growth of the rest of the world....I remain optimistic as well that Cleantech will continue to make an impact on climate change....Another interesting area is the field of mindfulness-based stress reduction...."

:30:12:
How about this new idea of US Venture Financing and American ingenuity – do you have any thoughts on that?
"....I've been fortunate to have done business in various parts of the world, in Europe and Asia in particular. The one thing that I think differentiates the American culture is resilience....Risk is another area that really differentiates the US culture. Many entrepreneurs here fail in their ventures, they dust themselves off, they get up again, apply lessons learned from that experience and in many cases go on to achieve great success. On the flip-side, in many other cultures, failure is a 'one strike and you're out' kind of situation...."

:33:39:
Where do you want to see yourself in five years or ten years or in a hundred years from now – what do you want said about you and your life and what you contributed?
"....Over the last couple of years I have been able to take a step back from the day-to-day hands-on heavy-lifting in the entrepreneurial sector and to focus more on the angel investment and volunteer activities....I've concluded that I'm so much more happy being in involved intimately in the entrepreneurial activity. I still remain very passionate about Cleantech...."

:35:30:
Which are your top recommended resources and why?
"....Book by David Berkus called Berkonomics....Blog: Greentech media...."

:37:05:
Rick shares some interesting stories from his many experiences and work.
"....To have lived the dream here and to have been a pioneer in a field working on some technologies which can help improve society and make a difference, and then have that technology be featured in a President's State of the Union address, I have to say that is one thing that sticks with me....Another one that comes to mind is how I've been personally affected by and transformed when it comes to China...."

:40:08:
China has this phenomenal growth in many areas including economics, education, and so forth. What does this mean to America and the rest of the world?
"....I think the world has to get recalibrated. I came away from the last trip in particular having a chance to see the infrastructure around the country, (and not just the big cities which I had only seen before), with the feeling that you can't really call China a developing country anymore....I think the US will be a force to reckon with for quite some time but there's no doubt that China is on a trajectory to become the economic powerhouse in the world in this century...."

:45:09:
If you could sum up your life experiences with career tips for the ICT professional, what would be your tips and the reasons behind them?
"....Ask the customer what they really want before you start your work. Avoid assumptions wherever possible....It's really important to take your job seriously and of course you have to work really hard to be successful....Always be mindful of that work-life-enjoyment balance...."

:47:04:
What are your thoughts on computing as a recognized profession like medicine and law, with demonstrated professional development, adherence to a code of ethics, and globally recognized credentials and more? [see www.ipthree.org for more details]
"....It could be very easy to have all kinds of disruptions in the world if some of these products were not developed in the most ethical way. I think it's a great idea and I hope it does catch on and it has capabilities on a global basis...."

:49:07:
If you were doing this interview, are there areas that you would have covered that I’ve missed?
"....A couple of things that I'd want people to consider when they want to do business internationally....Be patient. There are cultural differences and obviously there are communication challenges.....Second is this concept of agility or flexibility; it's very important to respect the differences. If they go into it with a really strong 'this is the way we do it therefore this is the way it has to be done in this deal' kind of mentality I wouldn’t say it's not impossible to have success but it is far more difficult than if you are open-minded and flexible...."

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Director of Public Policy

We’re excited to announce the 2011 class of Google Policy Fellows, and we’re expecting great things from the 16 students selected for the fourth summer of the Google Policy Fellowship. Our host organizations selected the 2011 fellows from over 900 impressive submissions – nearly double the number of applications from 2010. The 2011 class includes undergrads and graduate students from 15 schools, studying computer science, economics, information policy, intellectual property, international affairs, law, library sciences, and public policy.

Congratulations to the 2011 Google Policy Fellows!

• Adam Weinberg, Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies - Technology Policy Institute
• Avonne Bell, The George Washington University Law School - Public Knowledge
• Casey Fiesler, Georgia Institute of Technology - Creative Commons
• Colin Rhinesmith, University of Illinois - New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative
• Corey Carpenter, George Mason University School of Law - TechFreedom
• Corey Walker, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies - Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
• Daniel Kent, Haverford College - Internet Education Foundation
• Elizabeth Allen, University of Michigan Law School and University of Michigan School of Information - Future of Music Coalition
• Elizabeth Ruiz, University of North Carolina School of Law - Media Access Project
• Fabiola Rivas, American University Washington College of Law - National Hispanic Media Coalition
• Jennifer Simpson, University of Western Ontario - Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic
• Jessie Mannisto, University of Michigan School of Information - American Library Association
• Jon Penney, Oxford University - Citizen Lab
• Josephine Wolff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Center for Democracy & Technology
• Luke Pelican, University of Nebraska College of Law - Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Oscar Montezuma, The George Washington University Law School - Electronic Frontier Foundation

The 2011 Fellows will spend 10 weeks this summer at our host organizations in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Toronto, and Ottawa working on Internet and technology policy issues including free expression, privacy, security, and intellectual property.

Thank you to everyone who applied. Each year brings more and more outstanding applicants, and we hope everyone will stay engaged, involved, and consider applying again for future programs. Please sign up here to receive program announcements, and visit google.com/policyfellowship for more information.

Federal and state elections are not the only political races the tea party is impacting. "Though difficult to quantify, the same forces that swept conservative candidates into office on the congressional and state levels appear to be working their way down to some local races," Christina A. Samuels of Education Week reports. In Wake County, N.C., voters elected four conservative-leaning members to its nine-member board in 2009. While the school board election is nonpartisan, the new members "garnered much of their support from voters displeased with a school assignment policy based on socioeconomic diversity, including some conservative community organizations that viewed the policy as social engineering," Samuels writes.

In March 2010 the new members voted to do away with the school assignment policy, drawing "criticism from the district’s accrediting agency for high schools, the U.S. Department of Education’s office for civil rights, and federal Secretary of Education Arne Duncan," Samuels writes. In Gaston County, N.C., newly elected school board member Mark A. Stephens was listed "by the Tea Party of Greater Gaston County as a candidate who aligns with the group’s priorities of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets," Samuels writes. "Because of the political climate, people were a lot more interested in everything," Stevens said.

In Baraboo, Wis., local tea party organizer John Meegan received the most votes in a six-person race for three spots on the local school board. Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies for the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, says the nature of conservatism may be changing on school boards. "Given how much of the conservative criticism has been the need to reassert local governance and preserve community values, it would make sense” to see tea party conservatives focusing on school board races, he told Samuels. (Read more)

Still cleaning out the “blog ideas” attic and found this gem.  In this speech to the American Enterprise Institute, Gen. David Petraeus presented the Iraq surge as an organizational change problem.  He has clearly lived the change process, both in theory and practice: [T]here are four steps to institutional change. First, you have to get [...]

“Earlier this week the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research [AEI] released an article outlining their Principles for reforming the housing market. So many of the solutions we see for “fixing” housing and rather ridiculous, so it was refreshing to see some ideas that make sense. Here’s the short version of their list”

Florida Senator Senator Alan Hays (R-Umatilla) held a press conference in Tallahassee on March 11, 2011 about Citizens Property Insurance Corporation ("Citizens") and his related bill, SB 1714. 

Joining him were representatives from The Heartland Institute, James Madison Institute, Florida Wildlife Federation, Americans for Prosperity, 1000 Friends of Florida, The American Consumer Institute, Campaign for Liberty, the Sea Turtle Conservancy and the Tea Party of Tallahassee.

Senator Hays noted that if a 1-in-100 year storm were to hit Florida, Citizens would have a $13.7 billion deficit.  The probable maximum loss for two 1-in-25 year storms in the same year would trigger a $2 billion deficit.

According to Senator Hays, SB 1714 represents an effort to depopulate Citizens as rapidly as possible. With that in mind, he indicated that he will propose amendments to his bill that would prohibit Citizens from writing any new construction in coastal and environmentally sensitive areas.

The aforementioned SB 1714 proponents who joined Senator Hays noted coastal conservation should be addressed in the legislation, inasmuch as it will help reduce Citizens' risk and exposure.  The proponents also noted that doing so will allow for environmental conservation and thus make economic sense.

Floridians should not subsidize this type of growth, explained the bill advocates, who emphasized that SB 1714 is not intended to limit private enterprise. 

Senator Hays indicated that Florida Governor Rick Scott supports this proposal, and that he does not expect the Governor to propose separate Citizens-related legislation.

State Representative Jim Boyd has sponsored HB 1243, an identical bill.

Earlier this week the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research [AEI] released an article outlining their Principles for reforming the housing market. So many of the solutions we see for “fixing” housing and rather ridiculous, so it was refreshing to see some ideas that make sense.  Here’s the short version of their list: 1. The housing finance market-like other U.S. industries and housing finance systems in most other developed countries-can and should... Read this item at Housing Doom... ...

Earlier this week the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research [AEI] released an article outlining their Principles for reforming the housing market. So many of the solutions we see for “fixing” housing and rather ridiculous, so it was refreshing to see some ideas that make sense.  Here’s the short version of their list: 1. The housing finance market-like other U.S. industries and housing finance systems in most other developed countries-can and should...

Read this item at Housing Doom...

Technorati

Principles for Reforming the Housing Finance Market American Enterprise Institute I. The housing finance market-like other US industries and housing finance systems in most other developed countries-can and should principally function without any direct government financial support. Under this principle, we note that the huge losses ... Republicans Advancing Eight Bills On Fannie, FreddieNASDAQ all 54 news articles »

The Wall Street Journal reports New Jersey Pension Gap Hits $54 Billion.

New Jersey’s pension gap grew to $53.9 billion in the last fiscal year, up from $45.8 billion, thanks to market losses and a lack of state funding, according to figures released Thursday.

Gov. Chris Christie’s administration said the gap, which reflected the state’s investment positions as of June 30, highlighted the need for proposed cuts to current public workers’ pensions. The $53.9 billion figure reflects the difference between the retirement benefits the state has promised to roughly 780,000 state and local workers over the next few decades and the amount on hand to pay those benefits.

In addition, an accounting practice called “smoothing” allows the state to factor market gains and losses over several years — meaning pension funds, on paper, are still feeling the effect of the 2008 market crash.

Christie, a Republican, wants to reverse a 9% pension bump workers received in 2001 under a Republican administration. Unions argue their members have an irrevocable right to benefits they have earned. The governor has challenged the unions to meet him in court.

Actual Deficit Much Higher

There are at least two problems with that $54 billion number.

1. It allows smoothing
2. Plan assumptions expect average annual returns of 8.25%.

I highly doubt pensions return 8.25% total (let alone annual) over the next 5 years.

10-year treasury yields are a mere 3.4%. To get higher returns, requires higher risk. History shows how well that idea has worked out for the last 10 years. There is no reason to assume the next 10 years will be any different.

In fact, given stretched valuations and overly optimist earnings estimates, there is every reason to suspect the next 5 years will be worse.

New Jersey Pension Funding

Here is a look at New Jersey pension funding from Interactive Map of Public Pension Plans; How Badly Underfunded are the Plans in Your State?

New Jersey Subtotals

PERS - $48 Billion
Teachers - $61 Billion
Police and Fire - $36 Billion

Those subtotals net to a combined $145 billion. They are from March 2010 so there has likely been some improvement since then. However, those totals do not include all of the state pension plans nor any deficits in city or county pension plans.

The interactive map and those subtotals are based on data from Calculating the Market Price of Public Sector Pension Liabilities, by Andrew Biggs at the American Enterprise Institute.

The American Enterprise Institute report is quite detailed. However, it only includes 3 of 7 New Jersey defined benefit pension plans.

New Jersey Defined Benefit Plans

• Teacher's Pension Annuity Fund (TPAF)
• Public Employees Retirement Fund (PERS),
• Police and Firemen's Retirement System (PFRS)
• State Police Retirement System (SPRS)
• Judicial Retirement System (JRS)

There are two existing defined benefit plans closed to current workers, the Consolidated Police and Firemen's Pension Fund (CPFPF), and the Prison Officer's Pension Fund (POPF).

Thus, New Jersey's liability is hugely understated, even at $145 billion.

Crisis in Public Sector Pension Plans

Please consider Crisis in Public Sector Pension Plans by George Mason University.

Pension plans operated by state governments on behalf of their employees are underfunded by an estimated $452 billion according to official reports, with total liabilities of $2.8 trillion and total assets of $2.3 trillion in 2008. However, many economists argue that even these daunting liabilities are understated. Current public sector accounting methods allow plans to assume they can earn high investment returns without any risk. Using methods that are required for private sector pensions, which value pension liabilities according to likelihood of payment rather than the return expected on pension assets, total liabilities amount to $5.2 trillion and the unfunded liability rises to $3 trillion. The ability of governments to pay for the retirement benefits promised to public sector workers runs up against the reality of limited resources.

The state reports that its pension systems are underfunded by $44.7 billion, when liabilities are discounted at the 8.25 percent annual return that New Jersey predicts it can achieve on funds' investment portfolios.

However, when plan liabilities are calculated in a manner consistent with private sector accounting requirements, methods that economists almost universally agree are more appropriate, New Jersey's unfunded benefit obligation rises to $173.9 billion. This amount is equivalent to 44 percent of the state's current GDP8 and 328 percent of its current explicit government debt. This calculation applies a discount rate of 3.5 percent (the yield on Treasury bonds with a maturity of 15 years) to reflect the nearly risk-free nature of accrued benefits for workers. It is estimated if state pension assets average a return of 8 percent, New Jersey will run out of funds to meet its pension obligations in 2019. If asset returns are lower than 8 percent, they will run out of funds sooner. State actuaries estimate that under certain assumptions, New Jersey's pension plans will run out of assets to make benefit payments beginning in 2013.

Governor Chris Christie signed legislation on March 22, 2010 to reduce the size of the unfunded liability. These measures include capping payments for unused sick days, banning part-time workers from receiving pensions, and requiring government workers to contribute 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care. Legislation also adjusted the formula used to calculate benefits, returning to the pre-2001 formula where benefits equalled 1.7 percent of final salary times number of years of service, versus 1.8 percent of final salary in the TPAF and PERS plans. Also, members of these plans would have their retirement allowance calculated based on the final five years of service, instead of the final three. However, these changes to benefits would apply only to newly-hired public employees. Current workers, even those who recently entered the job rolls, would be able to continue under the current benefit formula for the rest of their careers.

These measures will help at the margins but do little or nothing to address the size of the liability that has already been accrued. The rate of accrual of benefits will have to be reduced further, and employees will have to contribute more to their plans. The state must recognize that adding more workers to a system that is underfunded by $173 billion by market standards, representing over 40 percent of New Jersey's GDP, is not a tenable option.

The report cites Calculating the Market Price of Public Sector Pension Liabilities, the same study used to create the interactive map.

Report Recommendations

• Reduce benefits for newly-hired public employees
• All newly hired employees should be shifted to a defined contribution pension model based upon the plan already offered to New Jersey's university employees
• Current reforms lowering pension replacement rates should be continued and, if possible, extended to current employees. All vested benefits should be honored, but the rate at which future benefits are earned should be reduced.
• Current employees who are not yet vested in their benefits might be shifted along with newly hired employees to a defined contribution plan. This step could produce savings to existing DB plans while moving more quickly to a sustainable pension model for public employees.

I agree with those except honoring vested benefits. I recommend taxing the hell out of benefits above a certain level.

Here is a look at liabilities state by state.

Unfunded Liabilities by State

California is the worst state in absolute terms. In per capita terms, Illinois appears to be in the worst shape. However that statement does not factor in all of New Jersey's pension plans. Then again, the Biggs report does not include all of Illinois' public pension plans either. The mess everywhere is far bigger than it looks.

Pension Apartheid Doesn't Work

Unions are screaming about an Irrevocable Right to Benefits. Leo Kolivakis at Pension Pulse sums up the situation nicely.

State governments have little choice but to raise the retirement age, cut benefits, and partially or fully remove inflation protection of public sector pensions. They should also revise their rosy investment assumptions for state plans.

This may seem unfair and unreasonable to public sector workers, but to quote a strategist who I spoke with yesterday, "deleveraging sucks". You can't have pensions apartheid between the private and public sector. And there are no "irrevocable rights to benefits". Just look at the mess Greece and Ireland are in right now. When the money runs out, cuts are guaranteed.

Yes indeed. Not only do Greece and Ireland prove it, but so does Prichard, Alabama the first city in the country to default on pensions. Please see Alabama Town Defaults on Pensions, Breaks State Law; Renewed Calls For San Diego Bankruptcy; "Prichard is the Future" for details.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

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It's truly amazing how often President Barack Obama is underrated. True, everybody agrees he's likable and is an outstanding orator. But because Obama says he will listen to all sides, Republicans assume he's a pushover. On the left side of the spectrum, liberals bitch constantly that Obama has no spine because he compromises too much.

The president is underrated by everybody. How wrong they all are!

Read this thumbnail review of the recently ended Congress by a man whose day job is to study Congress:

"This is the most dysfunctional political environment that I have ever seen. But then you have to juxtapose that with [this Congress being] one of, at least, the three most productive Congresses" since 1900, said Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

This Congress is so dynsfunctional because of the rabid antagonism of Republicans to President Obama. With Obama, there was no "honeymoon," such as that given to all previous presidents. Immediately after Obama's inauguration, Rush Limbaugh, the informal head of the Republican Party, pronounced that the main goal of Republicans was to see that Obama failed. Soon thereafter, the formal Minority Senate Leader, Mitch McConnell, said the same thing. From then on, whatever Obama asked for, Republicans did their best to block.

Through it all, President Obama stayed ready to listen to all sides and made significant compromises. So, liberals, who had been waiting for years to get some of their ideas enacted, were outraged by Obama's concessions. As the conventional wisdom says, Obama hurt his "base."

And yet, here is respected Ornstein saying that this Congress is "one of, at least, the three most productive Congresses" since 1900.

Ornstein says he is baffled. But I'm not baffled. This Congress was very productive because of the brilliant leadership of President Barack Obama. THE most important ingredient of his leadership that made this huge success possible is what both Left and Right consider his Achilles heel: his COOPERATIVE STANCE.

Obama always asks for ideas from both Democrats and Republicans. Whenever he does so, Republicans seek to take advantage of Obama and Democrats wail about the compromises Obama makes. But Obama gets things done.

Now, all the pundits are underrating Obama again. They are saying that yes, Obama won a great deal in the so-called lame duck Congress, but next year, he will have a tougher time with a more Republican Congress. The Tea Partiers are especially eager to fight.

There will be plenty of fighting. The House will present Republican versions of bills and the Senate will present Democratic versions of bills. At the conference table, the 2 views will need to be adjusted by compromise. And who will have the last word? President Barack Obama.

I believe that Barack Obama, the most consistently underrated president, will defy his critics and demonstrate in the next 2 years, that his COOPERATIVE STANCE is the best way to solve both domestic and international problems.