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I’m very interested in completely losing a sense of time and scale with my images.
Home of the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company
It’s always uncomfortably warm here, regardless of the season. We’re in this same boat, myself and the others (sometimes one, sometimes two, depending upon the wind). One of us always eats my bread. At midday, less than a tenth remains for myself. The others are here to help take me down to the pier, sleep in their eyes, dripping from the low ceiling of the sky, droplets becoming people or droplets still. As soon as they begin to fall, the boat fills and they start to take shape. I take buckets full of them—lungs and hearts and bits of flesh—and send them back into the water where they disperse. Those not bailed out in sufficient time begin to talk and eat. There is nothing I can do but let them stay. Even a bag of saltwater gets a seat at the table now.
Henri’s left shoulder approaches his ear while his right shoulder is near his waist. This is uncomfortable for me. When Henri walks (we have not always been in this boat though it is becoming hard to remember what that time was like) his gait is difficult. I watch as he awkwardly rolls forward: shoulder to ear, shoulder to waist, shoulder to ear, shoulder to waist. People point at Henri when they see him, but he ignores it. He must be in pain. Each time he turns his head, he winces a bit.
When one of us talks the others listen. Henri says he feels older here. I ask if he would feel younger on the salt flats and wonder if I feel older now. I tell Henri that a salt flat is like an old ocean, or what’s left over from when the oceans were young. Our boat isn’t moving anymore (does it ever?) and Henri isn’t responding. At this point, I begin to worry that I am slowing us down, though I seem to be doing all the rowing. I can’t see the pier anymore. It seemed so close from the land.
Henri asks for more to eat. “Haven’t I already fed you?”
“Not right now you haven’t.” I do as he asks for fear that he might wrench my arm from its socket. We find ourselves among cruel taskmasters, demanding attention for an eternity this night.
There are millions of us now, running from point to point. There are the ones going under the arch and those going over, and there is no preventing the arguments between them. We are standing in an old office in a place that could be called home (strange phenomenon), though it is an unfamiliar space completely changed from its previous self so far as to not know its own past (I do not know its past). Those who intend to go over the arch insist on the river’s northerly placement, while the under camp claims the river is to the west.
Henri is hungry again (as am I). We decide to take the map off the wall and return to the water where one of us will fish (which one will be subject of a lengthy debate). The wall holds on to the pin, so I put my all into its removal. Looking down, I see its plastic end jutting out under the skin of my forearm. Sensing no pain, I remove another pin with the same result (repetition is surprising). We are all shocked by this experience (it always is a shock), so we leave the map hanging by one corner on the wall.
It will soon be light and we will be free of many of them (desiccation is an industrialized process here. The day after a heavy rainfall, all of the factories are busy). As we row onwards (down the wrong streams for this location), Henri (who is at this point a dog) decides to draw a new map to guide us. This new map settles all debates regarding the location of the river. Some of us are lost (there is no more bread until tomorrow). Henri insists that we are all here. I look around and realize that we are only three now (myself to row, Henri to navigate, and the other to eat).
“Do we have much farther to go?” I am tired of this night and certain that my arms move too slowly to get us there before the next storm.
I’m crimped. No more food, just water on this plain. I’m so hungry and out of space here. I think he’s seeing things again: things not there and things not here. We’re drenched, drenched and never going to be dry again, no matter where. I just want something to eat.
My left shoulder approaches my ear while my right shoulder is very near to my waist. This is uncomfortable. When I walk, I have the appearance of an accordion. People point at me when I’m on the street. I ignore them and continue on my way, slowly and with discomfort, thanks to a shooting pain in my left side. I believe there is a string secured to my collarbone that runs down to my hip where it is firmly attached at my pelvis and then continues on down my leg to the last toe of my foot. This is where the pain stops. Movement is understandably difficult. I turn my head left, I turn my head right, I remain still, pain. All of this provokes insults from my nerves. Each one yells its own personal epithet after being abused by my movement or non-movement. It is generally noisy inside my head. Because of this, I find it difficult to know where I am. We are here together, and he will make sure we get where we need to be.
I don’t feel my age tonight. This upsets me. I wonder if I would feel younger someplace dry. He tells me I should try going to the salt flats, and I ask what they are. He explains that the water we’re on is old and that the salt flats are what’s left over when old waters go away. If I wait here long enough, then maybe they’ll come to me. I’ve decided that I’d like to try visiting them, after lunch.
“Can I have some more to eat?” and he says I’ve already eaten.
I make myself big like an ox until he feeds me because I know I haven’t eaten anything in a long time. No one’s keeping me from my meal.
Now that we’ve arrived at the fork in our path, where the water has dried up, he’s thinking things about the land and which direction to go. The only way to go is forward and I don’t know how to change his mind. There are rivers everywhere and I just want to get to my bed so I can sleep. I’ll snore until the sound wakes me and then wonder what it was that woke me up. But first, he has to find my bed for me.
We stop to consult a map. He wants to take the map with us but the buzzing in my head says to leave it alone. The map tells us to go in the same direction I’d said to go in the first place. Working my way toward the river I knew was adjacent from the start of the night, I push long needles into my knee, behind the cap. It’s a painful process, but it quiets things down inside my skin.
He continues to argue with me regarding the location of the river. I’m so hungry now that all statements do nothing but offend me. I draw a new map that shows where the river is (just ahead of us) and where my bed is (just by the pier). He sets back to rowing and says he still feels lost. I can’t help him any more than I already have. I point out the way and hope for my bed and a huge dinner.
I ask how much farther away we are. He’s taller than I am so he sees farther than I can. I wonder if we’ll get there before dawn.
Henri is dancing again. I call it a dance but I’ve learned that others don’t see it that way. Sometimes it makes the boat wobble from side to side and other times it makes the sidewalk buckle, depending upon the sway in his step. There he is, back and forth, performing his spasmodic dance. The others do not seem to notice, twinkling eyes in the dark, perhaps not even seeing his hip come at his ear at all the wrong angles, even for his gnarled form. It is at these moments that I begin to understand Henri’s affinity for trees.
There is a ginkgo down a road with which Henri is particularly enamored. We go there, when the others have dissipated into a barely present mist, and Henri stares for hours, as though waiting to be told something, waiting to hear something from the knots on the bark and the maidenhair leaves. There is another tree nearby of the same sort but much younger. I realize that though this tree has a trunk nearly a foot in diameter, it has none of the grace or character of its much older neighbor. I ask Henri if he thinks the tree has anything to tell us and he laughs at me.
What good is telling you anything if you aren’t paying attention?
This seems like a valid point. As I ponder this statement, I notice that Henri is dancing again and that we are far from the trees and I then wonder who led us here to this place, this plain platter of a country that we inhabit. There are stars so numerous I can’t begin to find the only constellations I know. Henri sees my distress (how often has he noticed such things? I can’t seem to recall another instance, but I know that I must have just forgotten them.) and tries to pacify me:
Calm down. You can’t do this. Calm down now. Stop it. Right away. Calm down immediately.
You’re solid, understand?
This does nothing to assuage my fears. I notice Henri is poking about trash cans and I forget all about the stars—Nothing til tomorrow little one, I say. Henri lets out a small cry and we continue down whatever path it is that Henri is following, has been taking us down. I feel hungry because the others took all I had before promptly returning whence they came. I wonder how they do this. Food is so substantial yet they are so insubstantial in their comings and goings. I am angry, but the object of that anger is nowhere to be seen, only felt as a damp presence.
Just when I have reconciled myself with this fact, a gang of them walks up from behind. Never fully gone and never fully present, just an atmosphere or two behind me and Henri. I feel pity for them and notice that Henri is gnawing at one of their legs.
Henri is at my side and we are walking down a street and see colors bursting in the sky under a full moon (I am assured that this moon is special and happens only rarely), but it is less fantastic than the explosions in the sky in front of us. They appear to mark the beginning of the carnival season, in spite of it being autumn. Hemmed in by police barricades, Henri has become very small, ignoring the fireworks. I don’t need fires like that. I think he might just not be able to find them (pride is his greatest sin). There is tripe enough to eat, even if you have to fight the gulls to eat it. Henri, however, hasn’t even noticed the food or the revelers. He is preoccupied with the fireworks. Each time he hears a mortar pop, he looks in the wrong direction to locate its source but is hell-bent on finding the individuals responsible for all these lights in the sky. He informs me frequently that he will find them as soon as he sorts out where they might be. To my right maybe left I think they’re behind in front of me, yes that’s where they are. Look! Look! You have to at least try to pay attention if you’re going to be of any help. Henri is mad that I am not helping. You may as well go home since you won’t do anything to help, not even point out what’s right in the open. I laugh. Henri pouts but finds a new distraction to occupy his time and moves on. He has never been very good at holding a grudge. I have never been very good at being an assistant.
Henri has disappeared again and I am walking down the street. There are beautiful babies and dogs. The dogs sit attentively by their owners with slightly panicked expressions on their snouts. I notice their thin leads on the ground next to them. The babies are silent. A man in a suit is talking to two women with a serious expression on his face. There is fresh tar on the road and broken pieces of car bumpers on the sidewalk. I begin to realize that the man is here to provide some sort of service to these women and I wonder what use he is, and where the police are, and where Henri is, and why the fireworks have stopped, and how the sky was, and how pleasant it would be if I could sit and watch the fireworks, and then I see red and blue lights in the distance. A bee is hovering around my head and I begin to feel inconsequential in my largeness, a beef bouncing from patch of grass to patch of grass.
Henri asks me whence this plain came. I stop to think back to the possibility of an epoch before the current one. In that possibility there are mountains reaching beyond this space, volcanos and oceans stretching out far and farther to the other side of this sphere. A time of variety of ones and others, when things were young, when we were young yet. I recall the capacity of colors to inhabit our world of sounds hidden visually, of something different. I look back to Henri and tell him of the mountains shifting out and away, of eruptions and tremblings, of an eventual calming down into this place now, where we are, where we seem to have always been. Henri wants to know how and why and I have no answer that could satisfy his curiosity. He is sad because of this and goes off, finding a weasel and a hammer, a vase and an eel. I watch with pleasure as he strikes. The flesh does not hold, only the hammer.
They appear to be confused, paralyzed, stuck in their little eddy below. I call it their eddy because their flow formed it. They made it. It could just as easily have been my own, though I have yet to learn how to melt down into a state such as they have, all together, shapeless, nameless, present. If only I knew how, I would join them in their hallucinatory being. Henri has never appeared to be bothered by this. Indeed, he has never seemed to want to join in the first place. How can he desire to remain himself out here when in there is an unheard of unity? All this individualism will be the death of me, I say to Henri, who has climbed a tree. Though not desiring to join them, Henri never seems to tire of observing them.
I admire his tireless watching. Perhaps one day I will gain this ability to appreciate at a distance.
—What do you see down there?
—All of them, all of the other ones, the only other one.
I don’t understand so I just nod. Below, they swirl and flow into one another and I am jealous.
Henri runs around me in circles, pushing me in every direction. I don’t understand this sudden aggression, what have I done to deserve such treatment? Everywhere I turn, there is Henri, his thick mitt knocking me to the ground. I begin to contemplate some form of retaliation. I ponder Henri’s boney legs, their knots and twists constantly return to my field of vision. I think of what might happen next if I wrestle this beast to the ground. What will it mean for Henri? For me? Will Henri throw me down to the others? What would that mean? I catch Henri’s eye, searching for information that might help but find it blank and just as quickly gone. It would seem I am finally alone here.
I have learned little about them. Henri has taught me most of what I know and his
understanding of them is perhaps not reliable. Just now, Henri tells me of one he saw while hiding under a leaf in the park one day. (A day when I was not there? How can such an impossibility have taken place?) He tells me that while keeping himself hidden, he heard one of them, alone:
I don’t need my son if he doesn’t agree with me. If any of you had a third of what I got you’d be shitting all over time. They put Ophelia with my mother Theresa. Don’t try son. We don’t have to talk about that. Were you born today or yesterday? You touch me with that dog I’ll kill that damn thing. Right there on Robbins street. Most prejudiced people I ever knew. Skin. Black white and red. And now we gotta change. Michael? Sister Marion yes. Did you see your mother? One now and one at six. What is this I don’t look glamor in the business section? Just a minute I have to go. Don’t call me.
Henri tells me she was sitting in a wheelchair and had a waiting room around her. A trip to the doctor’s office, a water cooler in the corner, unread and uninteresting magazines on the table, an aquarium to the left stocked with freshwater fish from tropics that never existed. He describes a world that seems impossible, but what else is the world? Henri says she rambled on and on and tells me exactly what she said. This string of language makes no sense, and as Henri is prone to lying, I doubt the veracity of his statements but find the recollection to be, if nothing else, an interesting con.
They are headed south toward the river. They will find the edge of the river to be more real than their perception had anticipated, water being so wavering and confused, they cannot understand its collection into a body. They will realize that they are bodies, formed from a body they cannot know because they have no memory of experience before the experience of the bodies. They are far-reaching and interminably small. They suffer from myopia. They have no contradictions in their politics—they are of one mind. They will find a way to cross the river. Many of them will meet their ends in this body of water. This will provoke no reaction from them. Others will join them later. They are neither aware nor unaware of the loss of one or of the joining of another. These things are felt but not known. They know hunger. They know labor, in their way. They build upon themselves with themselves.
They are approaching what passes for a mountain here, a cathedral of sorts, a promontory in the air. They have stopped perceiving and do not see what is in front of them. They approach from all angles, reaching up to try and consume. Scores of them are stretched too thinly and disappear into the sky, which opens up and pours its contents onto them. Arms, kidneys, nerves, and tendons melting and falling, forming, deforming, splattering on the ground, against buildings: a wet and solidifying mess. They do not notice their dissolution and reformation, only continuing along their way. Those to the north continue their approach and dissipation, those to the south begin their way south away from the river. This is the same action.
Here’s one, he’s dressed himself in black trousers and a short-sleeved black shirt, a yellow card sticking out of his breast pocket (truly a resourceful one). He’s talking to us others—Have a good day—and he stops to marvel at the structures protruding from the ground. We are lucky to have such companions here: folks to notice that things are such as they are. He continues to wander aimlessly around these grounds, then under the arch and is gone. We are alone again and Henri is unhappy. This was intended to be a happy occasion but nothing can satisfy Henri’s appetite. From here, he wants to pace the balcony of a nearby house (I have not yet even noticed its existence when Henri expresses this desire). We go where Henri wants to go. From the house, he wants to walk the plain; from the plain he wants to go to the pier; from the pier he wants to be on the boat; on the boat, he wants me to row. “All the indignities are here.” I wonder what Henri means by that. His face spasms into a million overlaid fragments, his voice a stutter. Is this a moment I know how to endure? Are we even aware of it? We wonder where we will go next, though I point out that we’ve yet to really go anywhere. Looking around, I realize that we are only two: Henri and myself. Where has the world gone?
One of them bubbles up from the deck of the boat. I try to toss him out. Henri barks at me to make it stop. Too late, deformed, this one will stay. Only one arm fully formed, his humerus terminating in a round button of flesh, twitching in the light. This will not do. Already we are spread too thin and my arms will not carry us any longer. Henri is pouting again. “You’ve let us all down,” and there is so little bread and so many thousands of us to feed. I am beginning to lose hope. Our deformities are numerous. The water is not safe to drink. The fish, not safe to eat. Henri, a string pulled taut on his cheeks, grins. Gallows humor, I suppose. We debate what to do with our latest acquisition. Henri, many feet taller, after conducting a lengthy trial with many witnesses but no defense, calls for his execution. It is then that we notice this new one is disembarking, a young girl skipping through a crosswalk, avoiding a puddle and falling deep into the next.
I see one, standing atop a pile of snow, twelve feet tall and broken in half. A man sliced into lateral portions, emitting inarticulate sounds.
While it would appear as though Henri and I are traveling around a single plain, my studies have indicated that we are in fact roaming about a series of plains. The others are plate glass intersecting with what may as well be their world. Henri and I watch them fracture from our vantage point above them on this plain. How swarm-like they are. A sea of roe.
Glass is, of course, liquid or very nearly liquid. Even when it shatters, the sharp breaks are slow spigots. The others only appear liquid when heated by the air. Their solidity seems not to be linked to absolute temperatures but to rates of change not measured in hundreds of degrees. At the appropriate rate of change, they reduce to pools of red and yellow mixing into orange.
David Emanuel was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He then lived in Chicago where he went to school, worked, and wrote before moving to Providence, Rhode Island for more schooling, more working, and more writing. He is an editor for Anomalous Press.
I’m very interested in completely losing a sense of time and scale with my images.


Multiscale simulation of flow and heat transport in fractured geothermal reservoirs, 2013
Tor Harald Sandve
Advisors: Inga Berre
Short description of project:
The main contributions of this thesis are:
1. A consistent and robust discretization of flow in fractured reservoirs. More precisely; an existing numerical method for flow in fractured reservoirs is extended to tackle anisotropic permeability on unstructured grids.
2. An efficient linear solver to tackle the high-resolution models stemming from representing individual fractures explicitly.
3. A flexible upscaling approach for the heat transport equation, where the fine scale description is utilized to obtain models tailored for fractured reservoirs. The flexibility of the upscaling approach allows for the construction of models where the small-scale fractures and the porous media is represented in dual-continuum or multiple interacting continuum (MINC) type models and the large-scale fractures are represented explicitly.
Link to thesis at BORA-UiB: Link


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This is the pile of flowers that I stamped, colored and die cut using the stamp set and coordinating die set, May Flowers. It took me HOURS! Some of the flowers were stamped on Whisper White cardstock and lightly watercolored using the same color that I stamped the flowers/leaves in.
I then built several card bases using the same colors – Old Olive, Perfect Plum, Elegant Eggplant and the new In-Color Sweet Sugarplum. From there I started building my cards, adding in die cuts from the Layering Squares and Circles framelits. In total I made 4 cards and a bookmark. I’ll share the first two cards today!
Sentiments were added using the Teeny Tiny Wishes stamp set. I needed something really small to stamp in there. I tried going with no sentiments but I didn’t like the look.
I’ll share the other cards soon – hopefully in the next few days! Thanks for stopping by today!
Supplies ~ all SU!
Stamps: Falling Flowers, Teeny Tiny Wishes
Ink: Old Olive, Perfect Plum, Elegant Eggplant, Sweet Sugarplum
CS: Old Olive, Perfect Plum, Elegant Eggplant, Sweet Sugarplum, Whisper White
DSP: Neutrals DSP stack, Regals DSP stack
Other: May Flowers framelits, Layering Square framelits, Layering Circle framelits, Basic Rhinestones, Basic Black baker’s twine

domain: design


NEWS- Empty file? State has no record of water plan
A group of citizen activists road-tripped to Richmond last week to explore the status of the Community Water Supply Plan, the one that supposedly demands that Charlottesville area water users meet Year 2055 needs by spending over $100 million for a new pipeline/reservoir system. But what they found on their May 23 visit is that, in the eyes of state regulators with the Department of Water Quality, there's no Plan there.
"They've been asserting that the DEQ has endorsed a plan," says critic Kevin Lynch. "They've been misleading the public."
Lynch, a former Charlottesville vice-mayor-turned-water-activist, says that state law gives area officials three years to file their plan. But by then, Lynch fears, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority's scheme to put the controversial pipeline-dependent reservoir on two sides of Interstate 64 will already have commenced with the felling of 180 acres of a century-old forest.
"We've been told over and over by Rivanna that we have a plan," says Lynch. "But when we asked the state, we found there is no plan from Rivanna."
Area governments have not been reluctant to tout the alleged 50-year water plan. On May 14, all six Albemarle supervisors reiterated their support for the "plan," and a little over a month earlier, the chair of that body teamed up with his counterpart in the City of Charlottesville– as well as the heads of the Rivanna Authority and the Albemarle County Service Authority– to purchase half-page ads (cost: about $4,000) in various local newspapers (including the Hook) "to strongly reaffirm our continuing commitment to the community water supply plan."
How does anyone really know what the Plan is?
For months, Lynch and his fellow Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan, concerned about the official scheme's $143 million estimated price tag– which also covers a pair of upgraded treatment plants– have been vexed by the difficulty of trying to find the Plan.
Anyone clicking on "Community Water Supply Plan" at the Rivanna Authority's website, rivanna.org, confronts 29 different links. The only easy link to any cost is to a five-page estimate of the over-$223 million top price to dredge the Rivanna Reservoir– more than a recent Panama Canal contract.
There's a document entitled "Now What... [PDF]" that alleges– dubiously, in light of some unsolicited dredging estimates– that the DEQ concluded that "all reasonably available information has been considered." Moreover, "Now What..." even claims that the reservoir/pipeline plan is "the least environmentally damaging, practicable means" of meeting the community's water needs.
Least damaging? The links includes a 51-page "mitigation plan [PDF]" showing the countless steps, and another document shows that $7.7 million [JPG] will be necessary create a new forest and other steps to compensate for the environmental damage caused by erecting a 9.5-mile pipeline across 32 streams and by building a new reservoir that requires clear-cutting over 180 acres of mature forest and flooding 2.6 acres of wetlands and over two miles of streams.
Those who still want to know the total cost will have to pull up the technically challenging 93-page "Permit Support Document [PDF]" and make it to page 74 to learn the price– $142.8 million– as well as the rationale: it's cheaper than a $150.9 million pipeline stretching to the James River.
There's even a "personal perspective [PDF]" from Dr. Elizabeth Palmer, who serves on the boards of both the Albemarle County Service Authority and the Ivy Creek Foundation (which oversees the Ragged Mountain Natural Area), that relates her "confidence and pride" in what she calls the "Community Water Supply Plan." Yet in the world of the DEQ– the realm of law and state regulations– the activists are right. There is no such plan.
A document obtained by the Citizens under the state Freedom of Information Act found that Authority director Tom Frederick had been told at least three years ago that there might be a problem with his terminology.
"We can call it what we want locally," he wrote in an April 2005 email to the Authority Board, blaming a predecessor, and acknowledging the "unintended confusion" of using words to refer to something that doesn't exist.
There's little confusion in the details of Title 9 [PDF] of State Water Control Board regulations which is currently being phased in. In no uncertain terms, Virginia officials are expecting to receive several specific things from the Authority:
• decade-by-decade estimates of water needs
• a list of 300,000+ gallon-a-month users
• bona fide population estimates, and
• evidence of a conservation plan
So far, all the state has are documents making the case for one part of a water supply plan– as required under the old law: the new pipeline/reservoir. In February, the DEQ issued the water permit that allows it to be built.
"From a legal standpoint, these two actions are distinctly different," Authority director Frederick tells the Hook in an email, "and neither is currently a prerequisite of the other."
Frederick contends that local governments voted in 2006 to authorize regional planning, but Lynch notes that minutes of the City Council and Albemarle Supervisors meetings show only a vote for an unpriced reservoir/pipeline concept (which he no longer supports).
What the two can agree on is that the community has already beaten the November 2 deadline by which they need to notify the state that they intend to file a plan using the "most appropriate and sustainable alternatives."
The Citizens group contends the most sustainable solution involves dredging, which local officials are now considering only as a "maintenance" strategy. The Citizens hope that one private firm's recent unsolicited offer to do a full-blown, turn-key dredge of two million cubic yards of sediment for $24 million might get a favorable nod from the Rivanna Authority board or from the governments that appoint its members.
On Monday, May 19– the same day the Rivanna Authority raised [PDF] the City's wholesale water price 2.65 percent and sewer price by 10.43 percent– the editor of the Hook asked the Authority board when it might issue a Request for Proposals for dredging and whether it would tell the state about the new information calling into serious question its earlier allegations about the expense of dredging.
"We'll take those under advisement, and I'm sure we will consider those," said Authority director Mike Gaffney, continuing a board policy of not answering unscripted questions.
SIDEBAR- City unveiling: Council looks at higher water rates, giant fees
Charlottesville City Council will hold a public hearing on utility rates next Monday, June 2. Residential customers may learn why water rates are rising 5.2 percent and sewer rates 8.3 percent. The monthly bill for the average residential city customer who uses 763 cubic feet (5,708 gallons) of water per month will rise from $30.86 to $33.43. But the big news is a set of new connection fees.
Last year, the fees for new water and sewer connections totaled just $1,600 for a house. This year, the combined fees total $6,010. A prospective commercial customer hooking up a two-inch water line and accompanying sewer service will see the connection fee jump from $1,600 to $48,080. The idea is to get newbies to pay for the capital costs of expanding and renewing the infrastructure.
While most of the sewer rate increase covers the spike in the wholesale price, according to a document [DOC] recently released by the City, the largest portion of the water increase– about 42 percent– comes from an expected lower volume of water sales to city and university customers. The rest of the water price hike is nearly equally divided between a rise in the wholesale water rates and a jump in operating costs.
The City's water/sewer departments intend to spend $146,635 this year for vehicle replacement, up from zero last year. Additionally, personnel costs are climbing rapidly. For starters, the concept of merit pay was unveiled last year, and now has a budget of over $34,000. Additionally, retirement contributions have climbed from $168,770 in 2007 to $297,296 in the current budget. In fiscal 2007, total personnel costs were $1.3 million, but last year the personnel budget jumped to $1.8 million. And this year's budget calls for spending $2.1 million on personnel.
But it's not just rising operating costs. Construction contracts are shooting from the $3 million authorized in fiscal 2008 to $8.6 million budgeted this year, a 285 percent increase. The construction projects will be funded the same way as last year, by taking on debt– specifically, by issuing bonds.–Spencer


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Polish Hemp Production Is Down – Because Of Government Stays On Incentives
Hemp production fell about 36% this year because many farmers found their state-derived incentives blocked due to supposedly illegal levels of THC
Here is the good news. The Polish government is providing government incentives to the domestic hemp industry.
Now here is the kicker. The domestic Agency for Restructuring and Modernization of Agriculture (ARiMR) which supports such efforts reduced the amount of money allocated for this activity on the basis that the hemp grown had a level of THC that is verboten.
As a result, hemp fields in cultivation for 2021 numbered just 2,300 hectares, down from 3,600 in 2020 as subsidies have been blocked for the FINOLA oilseed variety (the most popular crop).
The Finnish-based FINOLA is fighting back against this decision as well as the European Commission’s Standing Committee on Plants, Animals and Feed after the EU level agency issued a decision in late July allowing Poland to prohibit the marketing of its seeds.
There is an ongoing battle right now at the European level – namely about how and whether to proceed on a previous decision that CBD was not a narcotic or take a giant step back and reverse its earlier decision.
This hemming and hawing on a regional level is absolutely at play in Poland – particularly because the EC has already signed off on allowing a regional increase of THC from 0.2 – 0.3%.
However, the domestic government’s stance on the issue creates yet another snag in the pipeline – namely that a regional body and one country in the region (Finland) have already proceeded with the understanding that a higher level of THC would be allowed – and a local one dug in its heels on standing precedent.
This kind of whipsaw is of course not limited to either Poland or hemp. Much of the battle for legalization reform over the next few years will absolutely be to create regional standards and then get these clearly implemented in individual countries. Both strategies will have to be followed – one is not enough.
Beyond this, of course there are pending lawsuits that also may help change the landscape – but this strategy also has its drawbacks.
Cannabis Reform Is a Hot European Issue
Despite general intransigence and local skirmishes like this one (which have nonetheless proved to be a setback for the thriving Polish hemp industry), there is a new sense on a political level that cannabis reform is coming to Europe and will not be held back. This has been reinforced in the last month with both Switzerland and Luxembourg announcing the next steps to their own recreational markets.
Nonetheless, forward motion is going to be a hard-fought proposition – regionally and locally. This latest contretemps is just one more example.
Be sure to stay tuned to this blog for more trends and analysis of the European cannabis market.

domain: news


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Milo Ventimiglia's Shirtless Cycle
It seems like this is going to be a weekly feature — Milo Ventimiglia shirtless pictures!
The Hereos star, aka Peter Petrelli, always manages to find himself without a shirt on during every episode of Heroes. And are any of you really going to complain about that?
During last night’s episode (“Four Months Ago”), Peter was on the run from Elle (Kristen Bell) and The Haitian (Jimmy Jean-Louis). And why not run around without a shirt on?!
25+ pictures inside of shirtless Milo Ventimiglia…

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1. The low air temperature may cause the battery to freeze 2. Failure of voltage regulator or diode bridge 3. Lack of battery maintenance 4. Dirty terminals of the battery 5. Not using or starting your car for a long time
If you have an automatic car, this method is suitable for you as it takes only a few minutes to solve the issue when your car’s battery dies. A charged jumper box is considered a lifesaver as it is inexpensive and solves your problem in no time. For using a jump-start box, you need to make sure that the car is off. Connect the box with the positive post of the car’s battery.
For your information, the push start method is not suitable for an automatic car when its battery gets dead. This method is only suitable for manual cars when you need two to three people to push your car when it stops. If your car stops suddenly due to a dead battery, you can use a portable battery charger. It is recommended to all automatic car drivers to keep a battery charger with them.
If you do not have any resources that can help you start your car without the need for any other car or any other tool, you should visit a nearby auto repair shop for a quick inspection. If you do not notice there is an auto repair shop near you, you should call a professional towing company that could provide you with efficient roadside assistance services.
It is recommended to all the drivers to keep an extra car battery with them. It is because you may not be aware of your car’s battery life or its current condition because you are too busy. It is advised to keep yourself updated regarding the current condition and battery life of your automatic car but still, to avoid any inconvenience, you should keep an extra battery with you.
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Fiat Chrysler has recalled nearly a million vehicles globally after it discovered some of the vehicles’ air bags could suddenly and inadvertently deploy and others’ antilock brake systems could fail. FCA US LLC announced two separate recalls that encompass 893,700 vehicles total. About half have been identified by the company as potentially dangerous due to inadvertent air bag deployments that have already injured at least seven people and the rest may be vulnerable to moisture buildup that can disable the vehicles’ anti-lock brake and electronic stability control systems. FCA US said it is not aware of any injuries or accidents related to the brake issues. The air bag recall involves an estimated 284,089 older-model SUVs in the U.S. The automaker said it will replace their occupant restraint control modules and front or side-impact sensors, as required. The recall also includes 13,411 vehicles in Canada, 6,277 in Mexico and 48,212 outside North America.
Impacted models include 2003 Jeep Liberty SUVs and 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokees. The anti-lock brake recall involves an estimated 275,614 2012-2015 Dodge Journey cross-utility vehicles in the U.S. The automaker said it will apply a moisture sealant and replace, as required, certain electrical components in the impacted vehicles. The recall also includes 78,148 vehicles in Canada, 36,471 in Mexico and 151,476 are affected in left-hand-drive vehicles sold outside North America as the Fiat Freemont. The electrical issues, if they occur, are most often preceded by an instrument-cluster warning light and foundation brake function is unaffected, the company said.
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- Robert Borosagefounder and president of the Institute for America’s Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future. He recently wrote an article for Reuters called “Tea Party Zealots Hold the Public Debate Hostage.”
- Amanda Terkelsenior political reporter and politics managing editor at The Huffington Post.
The partial shutdown of the federal government has entered its 16th day, and the nation is now on the brink of a default as the government’s borrowing authority ends tomorrow. On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings warned it could cut the the U.S. government’s AAA debt rating if a deal to raise the debt limit is not reached. In a statement, Fitch said, “The prolonged negotiations over raising the debt ceiling … risks undermining confidence in the role of the U.S. dollar as the preeminent global reserve currency, by casting doubt over the full faith and credit of the U.S.” The Senate appears to be moving closer to a deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit, but the Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed twice Tuesday to produce its own plan. As lawmakers continue to debate a possible deal to reopen the government, the impact of the shutdown is being felt across the country. North Carolina has become the first state to halt its welfare program due to the shutdown. “It’s meant a lot of pain for a lot of Americans — infants that have lost support for nutrition, children that have been thrown out of Head Start, safety measures that are not taken because the weather buoys are no longer manned. The list can go on, and the effects accumulate each day,” says Robert Borosage, founder and president of the Institute for America’s Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future. He recently wrote an article for Reuters called “Tea Party Zealots Hold the Public Debate Hostage.” We are also joined by Amanda Terkel, senior political reporter and politics managing editor at The Huffington Post.
AMY GOODMAN: The partial shutdown of the federal government has entered its 16th day, and the nation is now on the brink of a default as the government’s borrowing authority ends tomorrow. On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings warned it could cut the U.S. government’s AAA debt rating if a deal to raise the debt limit isn’t reached. In a statement, Fitch said, quote, “The prolonged negotiations over raising the debt ceiling … risks undermining confidence in the role of the U.S. dollar as the preeminent global reserve currency, by casting doubt over the full faith and credit of the U.S.”
The Senate appears to move closer to a deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit, but the Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed twice Tuesday to produce its own plan. This is House Speaker John Boehner.
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Listen, we’re working with our members on a way forward and to make sure that we provide fairness to the American people.
REPORTER 1: Mr. Speaker, can you guarantee to the American people Congress will not go past the deadline and push us into default?
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Listen, I have made clear for months and months that the idea of default is wrong, and we shouldn’t get anywhere close to it.
UNIDENTIFIED: Last question?
REPORTER 2: Mr. Speaker, will there be a vote today on the plan?
UNIDENTIFIED: Right here.
REPORTER 3: Are you going to vote today on this plan that would make some changes to the Senate bill, reopen the government [inaudible]—
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: We’re—we’re talking with our members on both sides of the aisle to try to find a way to move forward today.
AMY GOODMAN: House Speaker John Boehner has refused to allow the House to vote on the Senate plan. Meanwhile, the Senate appears to be close to reaching a deal to keep the government funded through January 15th and the debt limit extended until February 7th. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized House Republicans for failing to reach its own agreement.
SEN. HARRY REID: I know I speak for many of us, who have been working in good faith, when I say that we felt blindsided by the news from the House. But this isn’t the first time. Extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo the Senate’s bipartisan progress with a bill that can’t pass the Senate—can’t pass the Senate and won’t pass the Senate.
AMY GOODMAN: As lawmakers continue to debate a possible deal to reopen the government, the impact of the shutdown is being felt across the country. North Carolina has become the first state to halt its welfare program due to the shutdown. Meanwhile, nearly a hundred veterans converged at the National World War II Memorial in Washington Tuesday to protest the shutdown, saying it could put more than 5.5 million servicemembers at risk of not receiving their monthly benefits by November 1st.
To talk more about the government shutdown and the possible default, we’re joined by two guests. Robert Borosage is the founder and president of the Institute for America’s Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future. He recently wrote a piece for Reuters called “Tea Party Zealots Hold the Public Debate Hostage.” We’re also joined by Amanda Terkel, senior political reporter and politics managing editor at The Huffington Post.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Bob Borosage, let’s begin with you. What has this shutdown meant?
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, it’s meant a lot of pain for a lot of Americans—infants that have lost support for nutrition, children that have been thrown out of Head Start, safety measures that are not taken because the weather buoys are no longer manned. The list can go on. And the effects accumulate each day. It’s hurt the economy dramatically, and that—those effects accumulate each day. It’s undermined our credibility globally. You know, it’s been a totally contrived and unnecessary crisis which has had real-world and horrible effects that are growing every day.
AMY GOODMAN: Amanda Terkel, you wrote a really interesting piece for The Huffington Post about what gets shut down and what remains open. Can you give us some of the examples?
AMANDA TERKEL: Sure. Well, I think it’s been very frustrating to a lot of people that many Americans are feeling the effects of the shutdown while many members of Congress who caused the shutdown aren’t feeling those same effects. So, Congress, like federal agencies, is supposed to furlough its staff and keep only essential personnel, but there are at least 10 senators and dozens of House members who haven’t furloughed a single member of their staff. And some of these people are like Senator Tom Coburn, who’s always railing about how there’s all this waste in government and all this wasted taxpayer money, yet every single one of his staff is essential.
Congress has kept its gym open, the gym for members. The gym for staff has been closed, but the gym for members is open. And then even there’s a little subway in the bottom of the Capitol so that members don’t have to walk a few hundred feet to get from the Capitol to the House and Senate office buildings, and that little train takes someone to run it. That train is still running.
AMY GOODMAN: So you have people like Steve King of Iowa, one of the die-hards against any kind of—any kind of agreement, kept his entire staff. But you talk about Nobel Prize-winning scientists furloughed.
AMANDA TERKEL: Right, exactly. I think—I believe there are five Nobel Prize-winning scientists who work for the government and who have been furloughed. There’s one man who’s a physicist who said, “You know, I guess that even if you win a Nobel Prize, you’re not considered essential.” There’s the man who kind of—who developed the Mars Curiosity rover; he’s been furloughed. And 96 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency staff has been furloughed. And cleanup at—I think it’s something like over 500 toxic Superfund sites, that has stopped, yet every single member of Steve King’s staff, they’re essential.
AMY GOODMAN: So the gym remains open. Head Start was not funded, except for a private foundation gave $10 million. What about day care for congressmembers—meaning their children, of course.
AMANDA TERKEL: That’s a good question. I’m actually not sure about that, although I know for federal agencies a lot of these day cares were being shut down, which had many people worried. They—if they, for example, weren’t furloughed, they’re still having to go to work, but now they can’t get day care, because that’s not considered an essential service. And many private day cares, too, are suffering, as well, because they are used to having all of these students coming in, and now the parents are home, they’re furloughed, they don’t need the use of this day care.
And so, I think, you know, it’s important that this isn’t just affecting people who work for government or who rely on government services, which is pretty much every American, but it’s also affecting many private businesses. Businesses who rely on tourism and who are around national parks are seeing a drop—restaurants, shops, you know, if you run a canoeing service in a national park. So this is really rippling all across all sectors of society.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: You know, Amy, it’s putting a little focus—
AMY GOODMAN: Bob Borosage.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: —a little focus on the people who work for us—federal employees—because they’ve taken the biggest hit. Eight hundred thousand employees have been furloughed. That means they are sent home without pay. If you’re an essential worker, you are required to work without pay. So you pay the costs of getting to work. You pay the costs of buying your lunch or whatever you do to eat during the day, and you’re not getting pay. We’re headed into our third week of these workers forced to work in, in essence, indentured servitude, without pay. And, you know, people tend to be cynical about bureaucrats in Washington, etc., but these employees are people who work for us, they provide services that go to us, and we are abusing them. And there’s no question that the best of them are going to start looking for different jobs.
AMY GOODMAN: Bloomberg has a piece, “Troops Forage for Food While Golfers Play On in Shutdown.” “Grocery stores on Army bases in the U.S. are closed. The golf course at Andrews Air Force base is open.” Yes, so who is essential, and who isn’t? Now, the way the tea party congressmembers are talking about it is each thing that’s essential, they can vote on, if you want that particular thing to be open. This is certainly a way of, you know, shrinking the government to the size of a bathtub. Your thoughts on that, Bob Borosage, and then what it means moving from the partial shutdown to the deadline tomorrow, October 17th?
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, this is—this is an example of why you shouldn’t let children play with bombs. The tea party congresspeople set out to shut down the government and threaten default on America’s debts, in order to get “Obamacare” either defunded or delayed. And when the president sensibly called their bluff and said, “Look, we’re not going to negotiate with a pistol to our head,” they have gone—proceeded to go into the shutdown and celebrate it, despite the damage it’s doing to people and to the economy. And now we’re headed into what is unimaginable, which has not been done before: a potential default on America’s debts.
It’s important for people to understand, these are debts that every Republican member in the House, including the tea party members, voted for as part of their budget resolution. So we’re talking about lifting the debt ceiling to cover debts that they supported, to pay the debts that they ran up, and they’re refusing to do that. And we really don’t know what happens if America defaults on its debt. The entire global financial system depends on the security of American bonds. And if they become less secure, if interest rates spike, as they are likely to do, if investors can’t count on them as the equivalent of cash, then you’re talking not about a small slowdown, you’re talking about a multitrillion-dollar house of financial cards that is going to be shaken at its root.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re talking to Bob Borosage and to Amanda Terkel—Amanda Terkel of The Huffington Post, Bob Borosage with Institute for America’s Future. Stay with us.
AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who spoke on the Senate floor Tuesday.
SEN. DICK DURBIN: We need to open this government. We should do it tomorrow morning, period, just open it. We need to bring these people back to work to perform the services they need to perform for this great nation. And we need to make certain that we don’t default come Thursday. The default would have a negative impact that would have far-reaching consequences beyond this political battle today.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Senator Dick Durbin. Bob Borosage of the Institute for America’s Future, talk about the significance of this default. I was watching Steve King, the congressmember from Iowa, who did not furlough any of his staff, saying all were essential, as, what, 800,000 or more Americans have been furloughed. And he said the default doesn’t really matter, it’s kind of a fake date. He said it would be up to President Obama whether he decided not to service the debt, and he said he didn’t think Obama would imperil the nation in that way.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, you know, you’re playing with—you’re playing with bombs that can go off at any time. On Thursday, the Treasury will have about $30 billion in its coffers. It will have continued bills coming in. And it will have continued income coming in, although not as much as the bills. And so, the question is: What will get paid, and what won’t get paid? The entire Treasury system is designed to pay bills as they come due, not to distinguish between, say, interest on bonds and Social Security payments. Republicans are essentially saying, “Well, look, you can keep the Treasury bills good by paying the interest on the debt we owe to, say, the Chinese, and just delay payments of Social Security payments.” That is both administratively enormously difficult to do, given the way the system’s set up, and it is humanly repellent.
A big date, I think, you know, you can—this default isn’t going to be something that suddenly the lights turn off tomorrow, and the Treasury can continue to try to scramble a bit. But on November 1st, a big set of payments to veterans and to Social—and Social Security to seniors have to be paid or postponed. And I think if there’s a D-date on this, where the rubber hits the road, where real pain is going to be felt, beyond the financial system, it will be that.
In terms of the financial system, no one knows. Interest rates are—on short-term notes are already spiking. They could spike at any time, when investors decide they’ve just got to bail out of these instruments because they can’t—they can’t afford to risk what the decline in their value will be. If we get our ratings diminished by the rating agencies, there’s a whole set of investments that pension funds make in Treasury bills that they can’t sustain if they’re not rated AAA. And so, the consequences here are literally incalculable. And how they hit, we don’t know. But they will grow with each moment. You know, Boehner started your show by saying, “I always thought a debt default was wrong, and we shouldn’t get near it.” Well, we’re not only near it, we’re beginning it.
AMY GOODMAN: But—
AMANDA TERKEL: And jumping on what Bob said—
AMY GOODMAN: Amanda Terkel.
AMANDA TERKEL: And not only—so you would have the default on the debt ceiling, but you would also have the shutdown continuing, supposedly. And I think that it’s important to look at sort of what hasn’t hit yet with the shutdown, but what will, going forward. So the State Department, for example, remains open, because it had some extra funds that it could use. Those funds are going to run out soon, so the State Department will then have to furlough people, and many of the State Department functions will have to close. The Department of Veterans Affairs will soon, as Bob mentioned, not be able to pay out disability benefits, and many benefits to veterans won’t be coming.
And the District of Columbia will be in a lot of trouble. It has been working off emergency funds. And little things that you wouldn’t even think about—
AMY GOODMAN: Just to explain that, Amanda, on the—on D.C., Congress—people might not realize Congress runs the District of Columbia’s budget.
AMANDA TERKEL: Yes, yes, Congress runs the District of Columbia’s budget, because D.C. here, we are not a state, so we are reliant upon Congress. And with the government shutdown, the District of Columbia is not getting money from the federal government, but it has some emergency funds that it has been using. But little things will stop, things you don’t even realize. For example, there’s basically two groups that do the rape kits. When a person comes into the hospital and they have been the victim of sexual assault, a rape kit is performed to try to get the DNA and help get the victim justice. Those rape kits will stop if the government remains shut down, because right now they have emergency funds from the District of Columbia, but those will stop unless the government opens.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: And it’s important—
AMY GOODMAN: House—
ROBERT BOROSAGE: It’s important to reinforce the fact this is a totally self-inflicted set of damage. This was inflicted by a set of about 40 Republican House tea party members and their outside allies, the money that supports the Club for Growth and Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity and other groups, who decided that they could get rid of “Obamacare,” despite the fact that it had been passed and confirmed by the Supreme Court, by holding the government hostage. And the president and no one else was going to take that, accept those terms. And so now they’re faced with: Are they actually going to blow up the place? And they’re—they’ve already shut down the government into its third week, and now they’re headed to the unimaginable: the default of America’s debts.
AMY GOODMAN: Republican Senator John McCain recently appeared on Fox News with host Martha MacCallum. When MacCallum asked him about the White House’s handling of the suspension of death benefits to military families, McCain noted it was a Republican-induced shutdown that caused the problem in the first place. He was also quick to say Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas does not represent all Republicans.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Let’s have a little straight talk, Martha. They wouldn’t have had the opportunity to handle it that way if we had not shut down the government on a fool’s errand that we were not going to accomplish. The whole premise of shutting down the government was the repeal of “Obamacare.” I fought against “Obamacare” harder than any of the people who wanted to shut down the government. I campaigned all over this country in 2012 saying, “Elect Mitt Romney, and we’ll repeal and replace 'Obamacare.'” We weren’t going to defund “Obamacare,” and so we shut down the government, and then that gave the opportunity for this to be terribly, awfully mismanaged and mishandled by the White House. If we hadn’t shut down the government, this wouldn’t have happened.
MARTHA MacCALLUM: How do you feel about him representing you all there?
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: First of all, Martha, please, he is not representing us there.
AMY GOODMAN: That was John McCain of Arizona. The significance of Ted Cruz, Bob Borosage, and his power right now, and where this is all headed?
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, Cruz, of course, has benefited from this crisis. He’s risen in the polls among the zealots. He reported contributions of $800,000 to his political operations in the last quarter alone. And he’s driven in the Senate this demand that we hold the government hostage and threaten to default on our debts in order shut down “Obamacare.”
And now what you have in both—in both houses now is you have this very small minority holding back any agreement. So, in the Senate, we’re going to have a bipartisan agreement today to reopen the government and to lift the debt ceiling for a period of time. And it can come to a vote immediately if there’s unanimous consent to allow that vote. But if Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, his ally from Utah, decide—alone—to not allow that vote, the Senate can’t even vote on it until after we default tomorrow and until Saturday. In the House, the House yesterday, Republicans met to do a proposal that they would send to the Senate, and the small minority of 40 or so tea party members stopped them from having any agreement on a measure that they could even present on the floor of the House. So you have the minority, you know, very small minorities of the House and the Senate, stopping progress, stopping a settlement that could be made and be supported by the vast majority of both houses.
AMY GOODMAN: House Democrats are criticizing their Republican counterparts for making a little-noticed rule change they say blocked them from reopening the government. The Democrats say House rules should have allowed them to force a vote on a budget bill that had already passed the Senate, but on the eve of the shutdown, the House Rules Committee passed a measure effectively barring anyone except House Majority Leader Eric Cantor from taking such action. Congressmember Chris Van Hollen of Maryland questioned Speaker Pro Temp Jason Chaffetz about the rule change on Saturday.
REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: So, Mr. Speaker, just so I understand the situation, parliamentary inquiry, H.Res. 368 changed the standing rules of the House to take away from any member of the House the privilege of calling up the Senate bill to immediately reopen the government, is that right?
REP. JASON CHAFFETZ: It did change the operation of the standing rule.
AMY GOODMAN: Amanda Terkel, the significance of this?
AMANDA TERKEL: It’s incredibly shocking. And I think the fact—what they did is so brazen that you’re starting to see this clip of Chris Van Hollen calling out the Republicans just going viral on the Internet, because people are amazed that Republicans did this.
I mean, it’s just baffled me that all along Republicans have said, “Look, a clean bill to continue funding the government and to reopen the government, it just couldn’t pass the House.” Well, if it can’t pass the House, bring it up for a vote, let it fail, and Democrats will lose that very valuable talking point. But clearly they are afraid that it will pass the House with enough Democratic votes—probably all Democrats—and enough Republicans, who are just fed up with all of this and would come together and would pass it. And quite frankly, I’m sort of confused what House Speaker John Boehner is afraid of, because this would give him an out, saying, “Look, we tried, but the votes were there.”
And more and more moderates, I think, in the Republican Party are getting frustrated. Last night [Congresswoman] Jaime Herrera Beutler from Washington, a more moderate member, put out a statement telling her party, “It’s time to face reality. I’m not going to vote for any poison pills trying to block 'Obamacare.' You guys need to move on. We need to reopen the government. It’s hurting my constituents. So just, you know, sort of get with it, guys.”
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday, Democratic Congressmember Charles Rangel of New York attempted to explain to CNN host Ashleigh Banfield why he believes it’s impossible to work with House Republicans in good faith.
REP. CHARLES RANGEL: This isn’t a question of the House and Senate differing. This is not even a question of Republicans and Democrats differing. This is all about a handful of people, who got elected as Republicans, that want to bring down our government. You can see it in the streets. You can see where they’re coming from. And the same way they fought as Confederates, they want to bring down the government and reform it.
AMY GOODMAN: Confederates, Bob Borosage?
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, exactly. I think—I think this is an extremist band that has no adult supervision on the Republican side.
It’s worth understanding the position that Boehner is in, the speaker of the House, the Republican speaker of the House. He can pass at any moment a bill, with 200 Democratic votes and a couple dozen Republican votes, to reopen the government and lift the debt ceiling. But if he he did that, he would face the opposition of probably a majority of his caucus voting against that. And that obviously puts his speakership at risk. The next day, somebody would challenge him for the speakership and collect those votes and try to dislodge him. So he has to make a very personal decision: Is he the adult in the room, or is he continuing to try to cater to and placate the crazies? And he’s got to put—if we’re going to reopen this government at the end of the day, Boehner is going to have to put before the House a measure that will come out of the Senate with bipartisan support, that will be passed with Democratic votes in the House and put his speakership at risk. And if he doesn’t step up to do that—actually, it’s not—he must step up to do that, because it is unimaginable that we will actually default on our debt for any length of time.
AMY GOODMAN: While Republicans push to gut programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, new figures show next year’s increase in Social Security will already be historically small. According to the Associated Press, Social Security recipients, as well as disabled veterans and federal retirees, will see their payments rise roughly 1.5 percent in January, among the smallest rises since the automatic increases began in '75. The exact size of the cost-of-living adjustment is unknown, because a key federal inflation report has been delayed by the shutdown. But, Bob Borosage, I want to ask you about Medicare and Social Security. President Obama has said this is negotiable. And isn't this what many of the Democrats, including President Obama, have felt for a long time? And this is what the Republicans are pushing for.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, that’s the second horror of this contrived crisis, which—when we eventually pass the bipartisan Senate deal, which is being done today, which I assume eventually we will, that deal essentially says, “Look, the beatings will end, but they’ll begin again in three months.” That is, it sets up the borrowing authority only for another three months, to the end of—to early February. It reopens the government and funds it only to the middle of January. And it sets up a process of a committee meeting to negotiate about a long-term, 10-year deficit-reduction program. And at the center of those negotiations will be Social Security and Medicare. So, essentially, you’re saying we’re going to go back into a situation in three months with the gun still at the president’s head of shutdown, sequester, default, only on the table now will be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and basic security programs for Americans.
And, basically, the argument is, our long-term—we don’t have a short-term debt problem. In fact, the debts are coming down too fast and hurting the economy. We don’t have a mid-term debt problem. But over the long term, America’s broken healthcare system and its rising costs do raise concerns about how we’re going to balance our books. And so, that puts Medicare, Medicaid, and then the Social Security—because of the rising number of seniors, is kind of thrown into that, even though it’s not a problem long-term in terms of our debt—and the president, in previous negotiations with Boehner and in his own budget at the beginning of the year, has put into his proposals cuts that would actually cut benefits in those programs.
So he has supported what’s called the chained CPI, which basically changes the inflation adjust—the adjustment for inflation for Social Security benefits, to lower that adjustment, so that over time, as inflation rises, Social Security benefits will not keep pace with it, and so people will in fact lose the real value of their benefits over time. And the perverse part of that reform is the older you get and the more vulnerable you are, the more your benefits will be cut or will lose ground to rising inflation.
On Medicare, the president has, in different guises, supported means-testing Medicare, meaning make people who have more retirement income pay more for their Medicare. The problem with that—that sounds OK if we ask millionaires to pay more—they won’t miss it. But to get any resources, in fact, revenue from that, you’ve got to ask people who are making—who have retirement income of $40,000, $50,000 to pay more for their Medicare, and they will feel that. And then, he’s also talked about, but walked away from, lifting the retirement age on Medicare.
So, where we’re headed out of this contrived crisis, where the crazies drove the bus, is, three months from now, to a negotiation in which basic security programs of Americans will be on the table, and the gun will still be at the president’s head.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Amanda Terkel, you also talk about issues of reproductive rights involved with these negotiations, that people might not be taking notice of.
AMANDA TERKEL: Yes. I mean, it’s shocking that birth control will come up during a debate about the government shutdown and raising the debt limit. But there are some Republicans in the House who say that they want to insert the “conscience clause” into the Affordable Care Act. This is something that Republicans like Congressman Paul Ryan have been pushing for quite a while, which would allow employers and insurers to not offer free contraception that is promised under the Affordable Care Act, if they have any sort of moral objection. So it doesn’t matter if women don’t have a moral objection and would like to be able to receive that. If their insurer or their employer has a moral objection, they get to make the decision for them, and women have to go elsewhere and pay for birth control that is promised to them under the—under “Obamacare.” The fact that this is even coming up right now as a—the fact that we could default on our debt possibly, because Republicans want to restrict access to free contraception, is just absurd.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Bob Borosage, but, you know, there are many Democrats who actually agree with—with cutting Social Security and Medicare.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, cutting Social Security is much more controversial among Democrats. I think any sensible look at that program, it does not contribute to our long-term debt. In fact, Social Security benefits are too low, not too high. We ought to be talking about ways to raise them. I think Democrats on the whole will be opposed to any agenda on that.
On Medicare, it’s more difficult, because in fact we have to get rising Medicare costs—and healthcare costs, generally—under control. The Obama healthcare reforms has helped to do that. So, the costs have been rising less quickly, less—you know, less than they had previously before the reforms. But we have more to do there. The question is, do you cut the costs by cutting benefits, or do you cut them by taking on the entrenched interests—the drug companies, the insurance companies, the hospital complexes—that make American healthcare cost twice as much per capita as any other industrialized countries? And, you know, you can start by cutting the cost of Medicare by simply allowing Medicare to negotiate bulk discounts in prescription drugs, which would save hundreds of billions of dollars over 10 years. And that would be a good start. It would take on—
AMY GOODMAN: But under President Bush, of course, they passed Plan B, which stopped that kind of negotiation.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Which is stunning. It actually prohibited Medicare from getting a bulk discount. It was a total and abject giveaway to the drug companies. And, of course, the chairman of that committee then immediately became a million-dollar lobbyist for the drug company after he—after he retired.
AMY GOODMAN: Billy Tauzin?
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: Of Louisiana.
ROBERT BOROSAGE: So, in the end of the day, progressive Democrats would like to find ways—have to find ways to slow the—to reform our healthcare system so it delivers better healthcare at less cost. But that is very different than cutting benefits in Medicare. And that’s the line that’s going to have to be—that we’re going to have to try to enforce from the outside.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to wrap up, but very quickly, of course, all of this—the irony of all this, they shut down the government, and the very thing they’re against, Affordable Care Act, then this obscures the fact that the websites for the marketplaces, state and federal, have had so much trouble. Bob Borosage, is there a number you have, an estimate of the number of people who have signed up all over the country, with many of the websites down most of the time for this massive launch that has shocked so many?
ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, it’s not in—it’s not in the hundreds of thousands. It’s in the handful of thousands. Some of the state sites have worked, and worked decently, even though they have to make their way through federal things. And so, in the states with Democratic governors that wanted the program to work, they fared a bit better. But on the whole, the federal chaos has made it almost impossible even for the navigators to help people to sign up.
AMY GOODMAN: Bob Borosage and Amanda Terkel, I want to thank you for being with us—Bob Borosage of the Institute for America’s Future, Amanda Terkel with The Huffington Post. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.


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By Foday Moriba Conteh
In order to enhance the development of young people in Sierra Leone, the West Africa Youth Network (WAYN) a youth-led organization in partnership with Patriotic Advocacy Network (PAN) on Saturday 16nd November, 2019 joined other countries in celebrating International Student Day at Africell American Corner, Bathurst Street in Freetown.
Speaking to this medium in an interview, Assistant Executive Director, West Africa Youth Network, James Fortune disclosed that the International Day of Students is geared towards raising awareness on issues affecting students globally and find possible ways to eradicate them within society, adding that in order to celebrate the day, the West Africa Youth Network brought together students from different institutions to discuss and raise awareness on these issues affecting them in their various institutions and the society as a whole.
He said it is no secret that students in Sierra Leone face huge challenges ranging from sex for grade, marginalization, injustice, corruption etc. He noted that corruption in the educational system is the order of the day and it has eaten into the fabric of our educational system.
He said students have the ability to change Sierra Leone positively and in that regard he encouraged them to not only look at issues surrounding them but to do something in order to change the narrative, noting that they are partners in development and constitute the majority of the country’s population and in that regard he encouraged them to contribute to nation building.
He called on the government of Sierra Leone to own up to their promises towards the development of young people in the country.
Executive Director Patriotic Advocacy Network Ansumana Keita disclosed that the International Student’s Day started in Germany 1939 during the Nazi era in Germany, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship and Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state where nearly all aspects of life were controlled by the government. During this period students were marginalized, killed, raped etc.
He said that since 1939 the International Day of Student is a day set aside every year to raise awareness on issues affecting students and increased recognition of students as key agents for social change, economic growth and sustainable development.
He said that however, students in Sierra Leone face huge challenges in the areas of education, employment, health, and governance, noting that with students strength, flexibility, unwavering desire to effect the needed change in their society, they are indeed the centrality of the development of Sierra Leone.
He disclosed that celebrating this day in Sierra Leone will help raise awareness on issues affecting students in the country ranging from corruption within the educational system, lack of learning materials, sex for grade, injustice, marginalization within the system which he considers to be the negative things that have destroyed the educational system.
He said that this year’s celebration focuses on three major areas education, empowerment and engagement, adding that the event was also geared towards looking at contributions made by students.


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Report: Eminem Confronts Man Breaking Into His Home
Eminem reportedly came face-to-face with an intruder in his Michigan home earlier this month.
According to TMZ, a man named Matthew David Hughes reportedly broke in around 4 a.m. and used a paving stone to smash a kitchen window and climb inside the property. TMZ also states the alarm went off when the window was broken, and Eminem found himself standing in front of the intruder in his living room.
Hughes was booked on April 6 and has apparently been charged with first-degree home invasion and malicious destruction of a building.
According to TMZ, he is still being held at Macomb County Jail on $50,000 bond.
Stay safe, Em!


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The three women gather around a small table, long dresses trailing the floor, hair pulled back from their faces. One holds a pen, the others lean towards her. Their frozen female forms, molds of historical figures soon to be cast in bronze, don’t know the waves they will cause later this year in New York’s Central Park.
On August 26th, 2020, the centennial anniversary of women’s suffrage, a new statue by sculptor Meredith Bergmann will appear in the park, depicting three iconic New York women’s rights activists working together: Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It will be the first statue of real women, not fictional figures, in Central Park. And it’s all thanks to a small non-profit aptly called Monumental Women.
But Monumental Women isn’t just a group that celebrates pioneering women. The board of directors is a veritable history lesson in activism. From the great-great-granddaughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to the first female firefighter in New York, to the CEO of Girl Scouts of Greater New York, and the first woman elected to the Examining Board of Plumbers Local No. 1, almost every member has done groundbreaking work in their respective field. Their push to get the statue was a long and hard one.
And it all started with an old Polish king and a phone call.
In 2013, Coline Jenkins, a Connecticut legislator, author, and television producer, answered a call from a man who was trying to get in touch with a descendant of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Jenkins happens to be the great-great-granddaughter of the famous suffragist. The man, Gary Ferdman, a retired non-profit executive, and his wife, Dr. Myriam Miedzian, a writer and former philosophy professor, had an idea they wanted to talk to Jenkins about.
After many walks through their beloved Central Park, Miedzian says she found herself wondering what the King Jiaello Monument was doing in the park. The huge statue of a medieval Polish king atop his horse seemed odd to her. “Every time we passed the statue I’d think, ‘What the hell is this guy doing in the park?'” Miedzian says.
So the curious couple did some research on Central Park statues, and stumbled upon a glaring fact: there were no statues of real women. Although there were fictional female figures, not a single one of the 23 statues in the park was of a historical female. They wanted to change that, and Jenkins was game to help.
Jenkins, now vice president of Monumental Women, says she understands the importance of public monuments. The statues that are in the park—fictional women like Shakespeare’s Juliet and Alice in Wonderland—don’t carry the same weight as an actual person like Susan B. Anthony. “If any of those women talked, it would be William Shakespeare’s voice or [Lewis] Carroll’s voice,” she says of the female statues. Miedzian and Ferdman, now vice president and director at Monumental Women respectively, had a solution. The Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony Statue Fund was born.
But Ferdman and Miedzian weren’t the first to notice the distinct lack of female representation. While working for Elizabeth Holtzman, the first female New York City Comptroller as well as District Attorney of Kings County, Pam Elam remembers Holtzman talking about the lack of female statues, as well. So when Jenkins, a longtime friend, called her up, Elam was interested. “We’ve been fighting a lot of fights together for women,” says Elam, who is now the president of Monumental Women. After decades in the legislative world, Elam would prove essential in wrangling their statue into being.
It also helped that Jenkins had experience in this realm. “I know something about moving statues,” Jenkins says. In fact, this won’t be the first statue of her great-great-grandmother she helps install. In 1997, Jenkins helped move a statue called The Portrait Monument, which depicts Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to the rotunda in Washington, D.C.
“That statue took two acts of Congress to move,” Jenkins says. “So I figured this would be easier.” It wasn’t. The group had to meet with various government committees, departments, and community boards—every community district that touched Central Park—to get approval. Only now, after seven years of bureaucratic red tape, is Monumental Women finally getting a statue.
But it took a lot of work. In one of the initial meetings with the Committee on Parks and Recreation, a man told the group that they didn’t really want a statue, Jenkins recalls. What this group really wanted, the man said, was a “women’s garden.” Monumental Women disagreed.
Initially, they considered a petition campaign, but Jenkins didn’t think that was a good idea. “It would take the rest of our lives to get the rest of New York to sign the petition,” she says. So instead, Jenkins took matters into her own hands.
Jenkins decided to attend a talk at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn where Mitchell Silver, Commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation, was discussing his ideas for increasing equity in New York City parks. She waited for Silver to finish, walked down the aisle, and asked him point blank if he knew that there were no statues of real women in Central Park, noting that her group had an idea for one. Silver told Jenkins he would look into it.
A week later, the group received a two page letter giving a description of possible sites for the statue. Now, instead of a bed of daisies, they’re getting a block of bronze.
Jenkins’ question at the lecture had prompted Silver to effectively break a decades long moratorium blocking new statues in the park. “Never forget that people are humans and they’re reasonable,” Jenkins says. And although it would take many more meetings and legislative backbends to get all the permissions they needed, the first step—arguably the hardest—was out of the way.
With 12 directors on their board, the non-profit usually has meetings once a month. But when they’re not meeting, Elam says the board members are in constant contact. “All of us do what we must to make sure this is successful because it’s too important to just not have it happen and not have it happen now,” Elam says. She says she spends time on the non-profit every day.
However, Monumental Women’s success relies on the contributions each volunteer makes. It relies on Girl Scouts selling cookies to donate to the statue fund in Central Park, handing out fliers, and shouting and jumping around. It relies on public officials like Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President, who Elam and Jenkins say supported the effort from the beginning. It relies on Commissioner Silver, on the thousand individual donors who contributed to raise the money, and on donations from big organizations like New York Life Insurance and the Ford Foundation. “The women’s movement is like a mosaic and each of us puts in a little,” Elam says, quoting feminist activist Alice Paul. “Now we have our own mosaic.”
The 167-year-old Central Park is what Jenkins calls a “quintessential public forum,” visited by more than 25 million people each year, according to the NYC parks website. Monumental Women sees its work as something that will help educate New Yorkers and visitors alike, no matter their gender, on American women’s important historical contributions.
While Monumental Women mostly focused on the statue for the past seven years, the group will announce future plans at the unveiling celebration in August. Among these ventures include an app with a feature that makes the statue interactive. An email from Elam says this allows the three women to “speak for themselves.”
They also plan to continue this public education campaign by announcing a “call to action” for municipalities across the country to bring historical women into public spaces. Elam wants others to learn from Monumental Women’s seven-year legislative process. “We want to make it easier for you than it was for us to honor women in your communities.”


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Welcome to AyJay Photography! I am a Landscape and Wildlife photographer based in Northern California. I really enjoy all forms of photography but find myself drawn to the beauty that exists in Nature. I hope you enjoy viewing my photos and thanks for stopping by!
AJ Schibig joined Fine Art America on January 16th, 2013.

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