Monday, January 2nd, 2017
Matthew Rozsa, Staff Writer - Salon
Stephan: Beginning with the inauguration of Donald Trump I think we could be entering a period of massive social disruption. The Republican ideologues who dominate the Congress I think will move to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), with Trump a willing fellow traveler, followed by another corporate tax cut. As this report lays out that hasn't worked in the past, and it is unlikely to do so in 2017.
Credit: VOA News
Although not widely discussed, President-elect Donald Trump’s economic plan includes an estimated $2.6 trillion repatriation proposal very similar to the one that was passed by President George W. Bush in 2004 — and which didn’t do what it was supposed to do.
On his
campaign website, Trump has promised to “provide a deemed repatriation of corporate profits held offshore at a one-time tax rate of 10 percent.” He has
characterized this as a “tax holiday” that will encourage American companies to create jobs. American corporations are currently required to pay up to 35 percent of their earnings to the government and get credited for taxes they already paid overseas.
While the extra money that businesses earn through Trump’s plan could in theory be invested back in their businesses, thereby creating jobs, there is no guarantee that they’d do this. As Marc-Anthony Hourihan, co-head of mergers and acquisitions in the Americas for the Swiss bank UBS, explained to The New York Times on Monday, merger bankers “are sharpening their pencils with what types of deals those larger companies […]
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Monday, January 2nd, 2017
Bryan Lowry, Reporter - The Wichita Eagle
Stephan: Kansas is one of the states that I follow particularly closely because it, according to its Republican Governor Sam Brownback, is explicitly running an experiment to test the economic theories of the Republican Party. To date it has been a disaster and now, as the state faces yet another crisis, Brownback and his band of trolls have come up with a scheme, as described in this report, to take what amounts of a payday loan to keep the already desperate public school system operating.
One of the reasons I follow Kansas so closely is that Donald Trump apparently holds similar beliefs, and has similar policies in mind for the entire country.
Gov. Sam Brownback wants to tap the state’s long-term investments as part of his budget fix, according to the majority leader of the Kansas Senate.
Brownback has been tight-lipped about how he plans to address the $930 million budget shortfall the state faces over the next 18 months. The governor will roll out a budget proposal during the second week of January when Kansas lawmakers officially begin their 2017 legislative session.
One source of money that the governor is eyeing is a long-term investment fund, according to Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park.
Denning said the governor plans on using the roughly $360 million fund “to get out of the crisis” for the next six months “without having to do deep, deep cuts to K-12.”
It’s one of several budget fixes being discussed.
Among the other possibilities:
▪ Selling off future proceeds from the tobacco settlement, money that is currently used for children’s programs.
▪ Rolling back the state income tax exemption for the owners of pass-through businesses.
▪ Raising the state income tax rate on wealthy residents.
▪ Instituting a flat state income tax of 5 percent – a move that would almost double the tax rate on married couples earning […]
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Monday, January 2nd, 2017
Stephen Battersby, - New Scientist (U.K.)
Stephan: It has been my belief for some years, based on my own experimental work, as well as the work of colleagues, that the key to understanding what we call reality lies in understanding information. It is to me the great mystery question: What is information? This well written article does not answer that question -- no one really knows what information is -- but it does give a good assessment of what information can do, and how physics is beginning to understand it.
The unseen agent
‘No Shadow’ by Makoto Tojiki
We live in the age of information. We are surrounded by it, and more of it year by year. It is the currency of human understanding, our indispensable guide to navigating a complex world. But what, actually, is information?
As we have wrestled with the question over the years, we have slowly begun to realise it is more than an abstraction, the intangible concept embodying anything that can be expressed in strings of 1s and 0s. Information is a real, physical thing that seems to play a part in everything from how machines work to how living creatures function.
Recently came the most startling demonstration yet: a tiny machine powered purely by information, which chilled metal through the power of its knowledge. This seemingly magical device could put us on the road to new, more efficient nanoscale machines, a better understanding of the workings of life, and a more complete picture of perhaps our most fundamental theory of the physical world.
For at its heart, information is a mystery bound up with thermodynamics. This set of iron rules explains how […]
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Sunday, January 1st, 2017
Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor & Author - The 8 Laws of Change - The Schwartzreport
Stephan: If we want a compassionate and life-affirming society whose purpose is the fostering of wellbeing from the individual to the family, the community, the nation, and the planet itself here are the tools that have been proven to work.
The Quotidian Pledge
I pledge that at every decision point throughout my day, from this day forward, I will ask myself before making the decision, Of the options available to me which is the most compassionate and life-affirming one as I understand it in this moment? I pledge that I will choose that one.
The 8 Laws of Change
Law Number 1 — The individuals, individually, and
the group, collectively, must share a common intention.
Law Number 2 — The individuals and the group may have goals, but they may not have cherished outcomes.
Law Number 3 — The individuals in the group must accept that their goal may not be reached in their lifetimes, and be O.K. with this.
Law Number 4 — The individuals in the group must accept that they may not get either credit or acknowledgment for what they have done, and be authentically O.K. about this.
Law Number 5 — Each person in the group regardless of gender, religion, race, or culture, must enjoy fundamental equality even as the various roles in the hierarchy of the effort are respected.
Law Number 6 — The individuals in the group must foreswear violence in word, act… or thought.
Law Number 7 — The individuals in the group, and the group itself, must make their private selves consistent with their public postures.
Law Number 8 — The individuals in the group, and the group collectively, must always act from the “beingness” of life-affirming integrity.
Happy New Year, the choice of what kind of year it will become is up to you.
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Sunday, January 1st, 2017
Mike Hixenbaugh and Charles Ornstein, Reporter - Virginia Pilot/Senior Reporter - Pro Publica - ProPublica/The Virginian Pilot
Stephan: Perhaps because only a few people in the Congress, and no President since Bush senior has served in combat America is very quick to go to war. There are people old enough to vote in the just completed election who have never lived in an America at peace. War is the new normal in this country.
And when most people, including most in public office, think about what the military costs they think about machines and armaments. Few think about the ongoing costs that run across decades, the shattered lives, the young wives and children condemned to the lifelong care of a severely wounded veteran. I was a corpsman in the army, and I still have dreams in which men with limbs missing, guts shot out, half their heads gone appear.
As we start a new year, let's think about this, and what it is doing and has done to our society.
This story was co-published with The Virginian-Pilot.
There are many ways to measure the cost of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War: In bombs (7 million tons), in dollars ($760 billion in today’s dollars) and in bodies (58,220).
Then there’s the price of caring for those who survived: Each year, the Department of Veterans Affairs spends more than $23 billion compensating Vietnam-era veterans for disabilities linked to their military service — a repayment of a debt that’s supported by most Americans.
But what if the casualties don’t end there?
The question has been at the heart of reporting by The Virginian-Pilot and ProPublica over the past 18 months as we’ve sought to reexamine the lingering consequences of Agent Orange, the toxic herbicide sprayed by the millions of gallons over Vietnam.
We’ve written about ailing Navy veterans fighting to prove they were exposed to the chemicals off Vietnam’s coast. About widows left to battle the VA for benefits after their husbands died of brain cancer. About scores of children who struggle with strange, debilitating health […]
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