Jason Collins’ coming out could land him contract, cash, new career: experts
By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News
He’s gone from being a no-name center to the center of attention, and experts say NBA free agent Jason Collins could parlay his decision to come out of the closet into a contract with a new team, endorsement deals, or even a robust off-the-court career.
Collins is a well-liked journeyman player with 12 seasons under his belt, but before his Monday announcement in Sports Illustrated that he’s gay, the 34-year-old big man was hardly a lock to be picked up for next season.
Jeff Nelson, director of analytics for the sports-marketing firm Navigate Research, said there are likely conversations afoot in front offices across the league about whether Collins’ new profile makes him a more attractive player.
“It would be great for him, great for the cause, great for the NBA if he was signed for another year,” Nelson said. “But by the same token, you don’t want it to appear that’s the reason he’s being signed.”
Having Collins on the roster could also enhance a team’s community credentials.
“His career might be extended because a team — and particularly the NBA — might see it as an opportunity to demonstrate that this announcement is a non-issue for them,” said professor Stephen McDaniel, who specializes in sports and entertainment marketing at the University of Maryland.
“Not that he is in the same strata as an athlete, but maybe you could argue that a team or league could see this symbolic of being inclusive in the same way we view the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson in baseball.”
It could even put more bodies in the seats, but the real benefit will be for Collins, who is now on the radar of sponsors.
His only current endorsement deal is with Nike, which said in a statement that it’s proud of his “courage.” Experts say if he has a jersey to wear next season, Nike could raise his profile and other brands will likely consider him.
“I don’t think you’ll see him on a Wheaties box,” said Robert Tuchman, former president of TSE Sports & Entertainment, who noted that big mainstream brands may be more cautious in embracing an athlete whose name is so closely associated with a hot-button social issue.
“But there are going to be brands that want to get behind him,” he added. “I think you’ll see brands that are more hip and cool and really in touch with 18-25 [year-old demographic].
“If he plays his cards right and he continues to play in the league, there’s definitely a seven-figure opportunity,” Tuchman said.
Nelson said that Collins will have to “walk a fine line” and should focus on message-based ad campaigns to avoid looking crass.
“Certainly there are brands that want to reach the gay community,” Nelson said. “But nobody, especially him, wants to look like they’re capitalizing on this.”
Companies that already reference progressive issues in their advertising or non-profits will be the best bets, he said.
There will be more and better deals if Collins, 35, is playing next season. But even if he’s not, his trail-blazing could turn out to be a good career move.
Thad Williamson, an associate professor at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies author of “More Than a Game: Why North Carolina Basketball Means So Much to So Many,” noted that the Sports Illustrated essay is sure to lead to a round of TV interviews and possible speeches.
“Could he end up being a guy who’s in the studio or is hired by a network to provide commentary? I don’t see why not,” Williamson said. “If he does well with his media attention, it could help him.”
Collins’ major at Stanford was economics, but could he have a future in politics? It’s probably too early to tell, but consider a few of the well-known friends who were among the first to express support for him Monday: former president Bill Clinton and Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy.
Thank you to NBC NEWS for this article.
Could Boston bombing suspect avoid death penalty? Talks have started
By Pete Williams and Tracy Connor, NBC News
Investigators have taken a DNA sample from the wife of slain suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev to compare with the female DNA discovered on the pressure cooker from one of the Boston bombs. The FBI is also examining whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev met with two men in Dagestan who are considered radical Muslims. NBC’s Pete Williams reports.
Prosecutors and lawyers for surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have begun very early discussions about a possible deal, in which he would cooperate in exchange for avoiding the death penalty, legal sources said Monday.
As details of the nascent negotiations emerged, a lawyer who has helped other high-profile suspects cut deals that kept them out of the execution chamber got permission to join Tsarnaev’s defense team.
Attorney Judy Clarke’s past clients have included Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and, more recently, Jared Loughner, who was spared facing the death penalty for the Tucson, Ariz., shooting that nearly killed former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011.
Tsarnaev, 19, is charged with using a weapon of mass destruction for the April 15 bombing that killed three and wounded 176 in Boston and could face the death penalty.
The suspect’s older brother and accused accomplice, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was killed in a firefight with police, and investigators are trying to determine if anyone else was involved.
Law enforcement officials said they took a DNA sample Monday from Tamerlan’s wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, to compare to female DNA found on a piece of pressure cooker used to make one of the bombs.
The wife has said she had no inkling of her husband’s plans, and officials cautioned that the DNA on the cooker could have come from a worker at the store where it was purchased.
The FBI is also looking into whether the older brother met with two men considered radical Muslims during a 2012 trip to the Russian republic of Dagestan. Both men — William Plotnikov and Makmud Nidal — were killed last year in Russian operations.
The spotlight has also been trained on the Tsarnaevs’ mother, Zubeidat, who was caught on a Russian wiretap talking to Tamerlan about jihad, U.S. officials said.
That conversation led the Russians to ask the FBI to look into Tamerlan in 2011. He and his mother were put into a U.S. terrorism database, but no further action was taken.
While some members of Congress have faulted the Russians for not giving the U.S. more explicit details about the mother, officials in Washington said she spoke so generally about jihad that it’s not likely the information would have influenced the outcome of the 2011 probe.
Before he was given a Miranda warning and stopped talking, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told investigators that he and his brother were motivated by religion but acted alone, without help from any overseas terrorist organization.
But law enforcement officials believe someone may have carried items out of his dorm room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth a few days after the bombings and they searched local landfills for them. So far nothing has turned up, but investigators are still looking in garbage containers.
Three federal public defenders were appointed to represent Tsarnaev, and they asked that two death penalty specialists be added to the team. The court approved Clarke but said the request for a second lawyer, David Bruck of the Washington and Lee University School of Law, was premature since Tsarnaev has not been indicted yet.
Wounded by police during his capture,Tsarnaev was transferred last week from a private Boston hospital to a federal medical prison in central Massachusetts.
Thank you to NBC NEWS for this article.
Explaining Socialism To A Republican
By Nurse Pam
I was talking recently with a new friend who I’m just getting to know. She tends to be somewhat conservative, while I lean more toward the progressive side.
When our conversation drifted to politics, somehow the dreaded word “socialism” came up. My friend seemed totally shocked when I said “All socialism isn’t bad”. She became very serious and replied “So you want to take money away from the rich and give to the poor?” I smiled and said “No, not at all. Why do you think socialism means taking money from the rich and giving to the poor?
“Well it is, isn’t it?” was her reply.
I explained to her that I rather liked something called Democratic Socialism, just as Senator Bernie Sanders, talk show host Thom Hartman, and many other people do. Democratic Socialism consists of a democratic form of government with a mix of socialism and capitalism. I proceeded to explain to her the actual meaning terms “democracy” and “socialism”.
Democracy is a form of government in which all citizens take part. It is government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Socialism is where we all put our resources together and work for the common good of us all and not just for our own benefit. In this sense, we are sharing the wealth within society.
Of course when people hear that term, “Share the wealth” they start screaming, “OMG you want to rob from the rich and give it all to the poor!” But that is NOT what Democratic Socialism means.
To a Democratic Socialist, sharing the wealth means pooling tax money together to design social programs that benefit ALL citizens of that country, city, state, etc.
The fire and police departments are both excellent examples of Democratic Socialism in America. Rather than leaving each individual responsible for protecting their own home from fire, everyone pools their money together, through taxes, to maintain a fire and police department. It’s operated under a non-profit status, and yes, your tax dollars pay for putting out other people’s fires. It would almost seem absurd to think of some corporation profiting from putting out fires. But it’s more efficient and far less expensive to have government run fire departments funded by tax dollars.
Similarly, public education is another social program in the USA. It benefits all of us to have a taxpayer supported, publicly run education system. Unfortunately, in America, the public education system ends with high school. Most of Europe now provides low cost or free college education for their citizens. This is because their citizens understand that an educated society is a safer, more productive and more prosperous society. Living in such a society, everyone benefits from public education.
When an American graduates from college, they usually hold burdensome debt in the form of student loans that may take 10 to even 30 years to pay off. Instead of being able to start a business or invest in their career, the college graduate has to send off monthly payments for years on end.
On the other hand, a new college graduate from a European country begins without the burdensome debt that an American is forced to take on. The young man or woman is freer to start up businesses, take an economic risk on a new venture, or invest more money in the economy, instead of spending their money paying off student loans to for-profit financial institutions. Of course this does not benefit wealthy corporations, but it does greatly benefit everyone in that society.
EXAMPLE American style capitalistic program for college: If you pay (average) $20,000 annually for four years of college, that will total $80,000 + interest for student loans. The interest you would owe could easily total or exceed the $80,000 you originally borrowed, which means your degree could cost in excess of $100,000.
EXAMPLE European style social program for college: Your college classes are paid for through government taxes. When you graduate from that college and begin your career, you also start paying an extra tax for fellow citizens to attend college.
Question – You might be thinking how is that fair? If you’re no longer attending college, why would you want to help everyone else pay for their college degree?
Answer – Every working citizen pays a tax that is equivalent to say, $20 monthly. If you work for 40 years and then retire, you will have paid $9,600 into the Social college program. So you could say that your degree ends up costing only $9,600. When everyone pools their money together and the program is non-profit, the price goes down tremendously. This allows you to keep more of your hard earned cash!
Health care is another example: If your employer does not provide health insurance, you must purchase a policy independently. The cost will be thousands of dollars annually, in addition to deductible and co-pays.
In Holland, an individual will pay around $35 monthly, period. Everyone pays into the system and this helps reduce the price for everyone, so they get to keep more of their hard earned cash.
In the United States we are told and frequently reminded that anything run by the government is bad and that everything should be operated by for-profit companies. Of course, with for-profit entities the cost to the consumer is much higher because they have corporate executives who expect compensation packages of tens of millions of dollars and shareholders who expect to be paid dividends, and so on.
This (and more) pushes up the price of everything, with much more money going to the already rich and powerful, which in turn, leaves the middle class with less spending money and creates greater class separation.
This economic framework makes it much more difficult for average Joes to ”lift themselves up by their bootstraps” and raise themselves to a higher economic standing.
So next time you hear the word “socialism” and “spreading the wealth” in the same breath, understand that this is a serious misconception.
Social programs require tax money and your taxes may be higher. But as you can see everyone benefits because other costs go down and, in the long run, you get to keep more of your hard earned cash!
Democratic Socialism does NOT mean taking from the rich and giving to the poor. It works to benefit everyone so the rich can no longer take advantage of the poor and middle class.
Thank you to Addicting Info for this article.
Blogger’s Note:
I know this article is a little old, but it is still very pertinent to the current situation here in the United States. If only people would question people or “News Organizations” when they start into their spiel on how dangerous socialism is. As a matter of fact they should question them on anything they haven’t already done the research on. It is always better to do a little research on a subject before you make up an opinion on said subject. Make up your opinion based on facts not someone else’s speculation as to what something is. Like the current slogan going around social media, ” Better to be correct than to be first!”
Reagan’s Budget Director Says Republican Party Is A Coalition Of Gangs That Stands For Nothing
President Ronald Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman excoriated the Republican Party in an interview he gave to Newsmax TV. While he attacked President Obama for not cutting defense in an era where America is the only superpower in no uncertain terms he laid blame for the predicament of America squarely on the Republican Party.
After Newsmax Anchor David Nelson asserted that many believe the house is divided (the Republican Party that is), he asked David Stockman if he believed Republican leaders like Ryan, Boehner, Rubio, Paul, or anyone else could unite the party. Stockman shot back with a response would expect in a Newsmax interview.
David Stockman’s response:
No. I don’t because I think the Republican Party is not really a party. It doesn’t stand for anything except reelecting itself. It’s a coalition of gangs….
The Neo Cons which I have no use for are only oriented to an aggressive imperialistic foreign policy, a big defense establishment, and suppression of our civil liberties. That’s a bad. I am against that.
The Tax Cons want to just cut taxes anytime any day regardless of the fiscal situation. That has gone to absurd lengths. I oppose that.
The Social Cons, social policy people, the right to life issue, gay marriage and all that, that’s irrelevant to governing a democracy in a free society.
That is basically the heart of the Republican Party. In that mix how can you find anything that is going to stand for conservative economics, fiscal rectitude, free markets, sound money; it’s not there. The Republican Party is basically irrelevant to the economic crisis that faces the country.
David Stockman has been a critic of the Republican Party for some time now. I wrote the article “David Stockman: “get out of the markets and hide out in cash” Corruption Of Capitalism” a few weeks ago where Stockman was quoted saying “This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.”
Mr.. Stockman seems to be progressively sharpening his criticisms in all venues as the ineptitude and intransigence of his party continues. One can only hope that he will trigger what many are hoping for, a rebirth of a viable Republican Party that stands for real American values, a party that stands for middle class values, a party that remembers the time when it actually did good. Real Liberals need a viable conservative party to ensure the purity of liberalism is maintained and do not succumb to a lazy absence of a legitimate pushback.
Thank you to Addicting Info for this article.
It’s Time for America to Get Over Its McCarthy-Era Hissy Fit
Nash Riggins
26/04/2013 22:21
Last night it emerged that Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, will not be allowed to visit Philadelphia next week in order to speak about human rights at an LGBT forum – why? Presumably because the US State Department buckled under pressure from anti-Castro lobbyists. Yet this decision to block Ms Castro from attending said forum is almost as outdated as it is pointless.
First and foremost, it’s worth noting that Ms Castro – who is the director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education – does indeed deserve international commendation for her work promoting sexual tolerance in an area of Latin America where the LGBT community is often heavily discriminated against. She’s instituted awareness campaigns, trained police on relations with the LGBT community and tirelessly lobbied lawmakers to legalise same-sex unions.
That sounds pretty good to me – so, why don’t Americans like a woman who’s working her ass off to improve the lives of Cuban minority groups? According to US Congressional Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami, the answer to this question is quite simple:
“The Castro regime was particularly brutal and harsh in its treatment of members of the Cuban gay community and as part of its revisionist push the dictatorship wants the U.S. to believe its lies because it respects no one’s rights,” she fumed. “The Cuban dictatorship would round up members of the gay and AIDS community and send them to forced-labor camps where their most basic human rights came under withering assaults.”
Ah, I see – so we don’t like it when the Cuban government discriminates against the LGBT community, nor do we like it when a woman campaigns to see that same bigotry erased. Wait…what?
The US government has no reason whatsoever to deny a human rights activist access to an international summit based upon her human rights record – that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. On the other hand, many politicians will no doubt take little issue with denying a Cuban national the right to travel freely in America based upon the US government’s longstanding trade embargo with Cuba. Consequently, that would make sense, had the US State Department not just allowed Jay-Z and Beyoncé to break travel restrictions by going on a holiday to Cuba based upon special ‘cultural grounds’. That’s totally fine, and more power to them; however, if the US State Department thought that sending a rapper to Cuba would serve some greater cultural purpose, how the hell can it rationalise keeping a gay rights activist from speaking at an equality forum? And what’s more, why shouldn’t these special travel privileges work both ways?
It’s clearly time for the US government to get over its McCarthy-era hissy fit and admit that capitalism won the Cold War. Does the Castro regime have a poor human rights record? It sure as hell does – after all, its totalitarian regime loves cracking down on dissent almost as much asAmerica’s Communist allies in China. Yet if Americans continue to justify travel restrictions to and from Cuba based solely upon these lines, why do most Chinese nationals not get turned away at the American border? Well, aside from the Chinese government’s dizzying level of wealth, it probably has something to do with the fact that the US State Department is wise enough to see that it would be a little unfair to blame the average Chinese citizen for every poor decision that his or her government has made. Indeed.
At this point, it’s fair to say that denying Mariela Castro the pleasure of hanging out in Philly for a day is even more hypocritical than it is pointless – so why don’t lawmakers stop acting like a Cuban gay rights activist is posing some menacing threat to the American way of life, and instead take a stab at drafting a productive piece of legislature for a change? After all, while Cuban-American Congressmen are high-fiving each other in celebration of their government’s innate ability to keep Cuban nationals off US soil, the entire world is shaking their heads in disgust at that same government’s refusal to put even the tiniest dent in its nation’s rampant level of gun crime. Perhaps it’s time to reshuffle our list of priorities.
Thank you to Huffington Post for this article.
Exposing Republican Ignorance About the Minimum Wage
April 8, 2013 By Allen Clifton
The minimum wage debate in this country simply baffles me. Maybe it hits closer to home because I grew up dirt poor, but probably because the arguments against it are just flat out ridiculous.
A small insight to my childhood. I was raised by a single mother, who was raising two kids on her own–working 2 jobs. We had a car that barely worked, clothes that were rarely new, very few “perks” (if any) in life and bills that will be represented by ($A) with my mother’s income which was something around ($A-$100). Needless to say, each month was a juggle of which bills to pay, and when, so that none of them would be shut off.
This is the circumstance I’m sure millions face every day and a circumstance that many, unless they’ve experienced it, can never understand. So when someone says something like, “It’s only $40, just pay it,” they don’t understand how it feels to already be pushed to your financial limits, and literally have less money coming in than what is required for monthly expenses.
See, $40 to someone who’s already behind, isn’t really $40. It’s $40+their current deficit+the deficits accruing by way of their monthly expenses.
But moving on…
I hear two main arguments from Republicans against the minimum wage:
- It eliminates jobs
- It’s unconstitutional
Well, right out of the gate I’m going to simply dismiss #2.
As Republicans, this notion that they’re the party of “Constitutional values” is laughable. With each step against abortion (deemed Constitutional in Roe v. Wade), the forced transvaginal probe requirement prior to an abortion or the pre-abortion required sonogram, the push for a ban on same-sex marriage based on religion (which the First Amendment doesn’t allow), the passage of voter ID laws which violate the Voting Rights Act, the push to try and violate the Affordable Care Act law (deemed Constitutional by the Supreme Court), etc…you get the picture.
In each one of these instances, and many more that are similar, Republicans prove that they only love our Constitution when they feel it benefits their ideology. Whenever our Constitution doesn’t side with their system of beliefs, they don’t hide the fact that they’re willing to violate its laws because they don’t agree with them.
As for #1, it eliminates jobs–are you kidding? To paraphrase Chris Rock, when someone pays you minimum wage, what they’re saying is they would pay you less, but they’re not legally allowed to.
How do people use this argument with a straight face? Oh I get it! If we take one really low paying job, split the hourly wage in half, we can then create two even crappier paying jobs. That’s a “brilliant” way to boost job creation!
That was sarcasm by the way.
Oh, and a quick side note to address a spin off some use on this argument, “Well most jobs don’t pay minimum wage anyway, so we don’t need it.” Hey genius, if most jobs pay more than minimum wage anyway–then what’s the point of opposing it? Oh, and where do you think “above the minimum wage” pay scale was based on? Oh that’s right, the minimum wage. It would be lowerwithout it.
But yes, by all means, let’s take the federal minimum hourly wage of $7.25 (I know some states pay more) and reduce it either further. A wage of $7.25, that if worked 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, would only garner an individual $15,080 per year before taxes—and would still place a single mother/father below the poverty line with just one child.
Oh, let’s not forget, Republicans also harp about too many Americans relying on government programs. And it makes perfect sense to lower the minimum wage to help people get off welfare, right? Just another pair of political stances Republicans support that completely contradict one another.
But back to the argument “it eliminates jobs.” One argument is that it hurts employment for teenagers as businesses don’t want to hire 16-20 year old individuals with no prior work experience for such a “high wage.” Some have suggested a tiered system of minimum wage based on age.
So now what, we should use age discrimination to determine pay? Or we can ignore the fact that many businesses would probably then hire younger people over older individuals, because they could pay them less. Then, when budgets are tight, who do you think gets more hours—the person making $5.25 an hour or $7.25 an hour? You don’t think once an individual hits that “age threshold for higher pay” that some businesses might start cutting their hours, or hell, looking for ways to get rid of older employees who cost more?
But let me break down what $7.25 per hour really means–actually, I’ll even take it a step further and use $9.25 an hour:
A single mother or father working 40 hours a week, at 9.25 an hour, would only make $19,240 per year (or $1603 per month) both numbers before taxes.
Let’s assume he/she has 2 kids. This places them (before taxes) a whopping $150 above the poverty line. So, even at $2 above our federal minimum wage, this would place a family of 3 barely above the poverty line.
*At $7.25 40 hours x 52 weeks = $15,080 (before taxes) and would place this family of three $4,010below the poverty line.
And actually both sets of numbers, for a single parents with 2 children, would qualify them for some kind of government assistance. So, when Republicans say people who rely on government assistance are lazy moochers, I guess they’re including those who work full-time jobs at lower pay.
So, are people who work full-time jobs lazy? Are Republicans saying that 40 hours a week isn’t enough, and people should just find a way to work more so that they don’t need to rely on help from the government?
What kind of country is this becoming where millions (millions who use government programs by the way–they just excuse their own reliance while judging others) would rather have someone work 50, 60, or 70 hours per week instead of saying “You know what, businesses need to pay their employees better, so people don’t have to work 60 hours a week just to get by.”
Because if you want to look at a single mother or father, trying to raise their children the best they can, working 40 hours a week and call them lazy, or tell them you believe they should be paid less–you should be ashamed of yourself..
Because I’m damn sure ashamed of you.
Thank you to Forward Progressives for this article.
Mohammed Sohel Rana, Bangladesh Factory Owner, Arrested As Death Toll Climbs
Reuters | Posted: 04/28/2013 6:41 am EDT | Updated: 04/28/2013 12:18 pm EDT
* Owner of collapsed building arrested fleeing to India-police
* More than 900 missing, police say
* Four pulled from rubble alive, four days after disaster
By Ruma Paul and Serajul Quadir
DHAKA, April 28 (Reuters) – The owner of a factory building that collapsed in Bangladesh killing hundreds of garment workers was arrested on Sunday trying to flee to India, police said, as fears grew that the death toll could rise sharply with as many as 900 still missing.
Mohammed Sohel Rana, a leader of the ruling Awami League’s youth front, was arrested by the elite Rapid Action Battalion in the Bangladesh border town of Benapole, Dhaka District Police Chief Habibur Rahman told Reuters.
Speaking near the site of the wreckage of Rana Plaza, which housed several factories making low-cost garments for Western retailers, junior minister for local government Jahangir Kabir Nanak told reporters that Rana would be brought to Dhaka by helicopter.
Authorities put the latest death toll at 372, four days after the country’s worst-ever industrial accident.
Four people were pulled out alive on Sunday and rescuers were working frantically to save several others trapped under the mound of broken concrete and metal, fire services deputy director Mizanur Rahman said.
“The chances of finding people alive are dimming, so we have to step up our rescue operation to save any valuable life we can,” said Major General Chowdhury Hassan Sohrawardi, coordinator of the operation at the site.
About 2,500 people have been rescued from the wrecked building in the commercial suburb of Savar, about 30 km (20 miles) from the capital, Dhaka.
Officials said the eight-storey complex had been built on spongy ground without the correct permits, and more than 3,000 workers – mainly young women – entered the building on Wednesday morning despite warnings that it was structurally unsafe.
Police said one factory owner gave himself up following the detention of two plant bosses and two engineers the day before.
Local news reports said the mother of building owner Rana, who was not being held, died of a heart attack on Saturday evening.
Anger over the disaster has sparked days of protests and clashes, with police using tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets to quell demonstrators who set cars ablaze. On Sunday, however, the roads were quiet.
The main opposition, joining forces with an alliance of leftist parties which is part of the ruling coalition, called for a national strike on May 2 in protest over the incident.
BUILT ON A FILLED-IN POND
Wednesday’s collapse was the third major industrial incident in five months in Bangladesh, the second-largest exporter of garments in the world behind China. In November, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion factory in a suburb of Dhaka killed 112 people.
Such incidents have raised serious questions about worker safety and low wages, and could taint the reputation of the poor South Asian country, which relies on garments for 80 percent of its exports. The industry employs about 3.6 million people, most of them women, some of whom earn as little as $38 a month.
Emdadul Islam, chief engineer of the state-run Capital Development Authority (CDA), said on Friday that the owner of the building had not received the proper construction consent, obtaining a permit for a five-storey building from the local municipality, which did not have the authority to grant it.
Furthermore, another three storeys had been added illegally, he said. “Savar is not an industrial zone, and for that reason no factory can be housed in Rana Plaza,” Islam told Reuters.
Islam said the building had been erected on the site of a pond filled in with sand and earth, weakening the foundations.
Since the disaster, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) has asked factory owners to produce building designs by July in a bid to improve safety.
Thank you to the Huffington Post for this article.
Obama Mocks MSNBC, CNN, Fox, BuzzFeed, His Liberal Critics And Himself In Correspondents Dinner Speech
by Noah Rothman | 11:00 pm, April 27th, 2013
President Barack Obama took the stage on Saturday at the White House Correspondents Dinner night where he fired off a number of quips at his expense and a number of his allies and critics. In the speech, Obama mocked NBC, tore into his own recent shortcomings, and ruthlessly mocked his critics on both sides of the aisle.
“Rush Limbaugh warned you about this – second term, baby!” Obama said after taking the stage to a hip hop song.
Obama said that, even after four years, he still makes “rookie mistakes,” like noting recently that California Attorney General Kamala Harris is “the best looking” of the nation’s Attorney Generals. “As you might imagine, I got in trouble when I got back home,” Obama said. “Who knew Eric Holder was so sensitive?”
Obama mocked his performance in a recent basketball game in which he missed 20 of 22 shots. “2 hits, 20 misses,” Obama noted. “The executives at NBC said, “what’s your secret?’”
The president dismissed New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who said that Obama is not nearly as tough as he should be – like Michael Douglas was in The American President. “Michael, what’s your secret, man?” Obama asked. “Could it be that you were an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy? Might that have something to do with it?”
Obama drew groans from the crowd when he said that it was the Correspondents Association’s first instinct to offer Conan O’Brien the job of hosting before rescinding it and giving the job to Jimmy Fallon instead. “That was a little harsh,” Obama noted.
“I know CNN has taken some knocks lately, but I admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story in case one of them happens to be accurate,” Obama quipped.
Obama noted that his former advisor, David Axelrod, now works for MSNBC. “Which is a nice change of pace, because MSNBC used to work for David Axelrod,” he joked.
Obama tore into the History Channel in which many said used a likeness of him in their special program, The Bible, to depict the devil. He said that Fox News said the History Channel was wrong and the comparison was not fair… to Satan.
“I remember when BuzzFeed was just something I did in college around 2 a.m.,” Obama observed.
Obama said that both he and the press have different jobs. “My job is to be the president, your job is to keep me humble,” Obama noted. “Frankly, I think I’m doing my job better.”
Obama turned to the GOP’s reflection on their losses in 2012. He said that most Republicans know they need to do a better job reaching out to minorities. “I can think of one minority they could start with,” Obama said raising his hand. “Think of me as a trial run.”
Obama closed on a serious note, saying that the last two weeks have been hard on a number of communities in the United States. “We’ve had some difficult days” Obama noted, “but even when the days seem darkest, we have seen humanity shine at it’s brightest.” He praised the conduct of law enforcement officers, first responders, and journalists who performed at their best in recent days.
Thank you to Media Ite for this article.
Army Says No to More Tanks, but Congress Insists
Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army’s hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.
Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.
But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, “No thanks.”
It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.
Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.
“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.
Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.
Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank’s many suppliers are located.
If there’s a home of the Abrams, it’s politically important Ohio. The nation’s only tank plant is in Lima. So it’s no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol’s Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.
“The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country,” said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.
The Abrams dilemma underscores the challenge that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces as he seeks to purge programs that the military considers unnecessary or too expensive in order to ensure there’s enough money for essential operations, training and equipment.
Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, faces a daunting task in persuading members of Congress to eliminate or scale back projects favored by constituents.
Federal budgets are always peppered with money for pet projects. What sets the Abrams example apart is the certainty of the Army’s position.
Sean Kennedy, director of research for the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste, said Congress should listen when one of the military services says no to more equipment.
“When an institution as risk averse as the Defense Department says they have enough tanks, we can probably believe them,” Kennedy said.
Congressional backers of the Abrams upgrades view the vast network of companies, many of them small businesses, that manufacture the tanks’ materials and parts as a critical asset that has to be preserved. The money, they say, is a modest investment that will keep important tooling and manufacturing skills from being lost if the Abrams line were to be shut down.
The Lima plant is a study in how federal dollars affect local communities, which in turn hold tight to the federal dollars. The facility is owned by the federal government but operated by the land systems division of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor that spent close to $11 million last year on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
The plant is Lima’s fifth-largest employer with close to 700 employees, down from about 1,100 just a few years ago, according to Mayor David Berger. But the facility is still crucial to the local economy. “All of those jobs and their spending activity in the community and the company’s spending probably have about a $100 million impact annually,” Berger said.
Jordan, a House conservative leader who has pushed for deep reductions in federal spending, supported the automatic cuts known as the sequester that require $42 billion to be shaved from the Pentagon’s budget by the end of September. The military also has to absorb a $487 billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years, as required by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.
Still, said Jordan, it would be a big mistake to stop producing tanks.
“Look, (the plant) is in the 4th Congressional District and my job is to represent the 4th Congressional District, so I understand that,” he said. “But the fact remains, if it was not in the best interests of the national defense for the United States of America, then you would not see me supporting it like we do.”
The tanks that Congress is requiring the Army to buy aren’t brand new. Earlier models are being outfitted with a sophisticated suite of electronics that gives the vehicles better microprocessors, color flat panel displays, a more capable communications system, and other improvements. The upgraded tanks cost about $7.5 million each, according to the Army.
Out of a fleet of nearly 2,400 tanks, roughly two-thirds are the improved versions, which the Army refers to with a moniker that befits their heft: the M1A2SEPv2, and service officials said they have plenty of them. “The Army is on record saying we do not require any additional M1A2s,” Davis Welch, deputy director of the Army budget office, said this month.
The tank fleet, on average, is less than 3 years old. The Abrams is named after Gen. Creighton Abrams, one of the top tank commanders during World War II and a former Army chief of staff.
The Army’s plan was to stop buying tanks until 2017, when production of a newly designed Abrams would begin. Orders for Abrams tanks from U.S. allies help fill the gap created by the loss of tanks for the Army, according to service officials, but congressional proponents of the program feared there would not be enough international business to keep the Abrams line going.
This pause in tank production for the U.S. would allow the Army to spend its money on research and development work for the new and improved model, said Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Ground Combat Systems office.
The first editions of the Abrams tank were fielded in the early 1980s. Over the decades, the Abrams supply chain has become embedded in communities across the country.
General Dynamics estimated in 2011 that there were more than 560 subcontractors throughout the country involved in the Abrams program and that they employed as many as 18,000 people. More than 40 of the companies are in Pennsylvania, according to Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., also a staunch backer of continued tank production.
A letter signed by 173 Democratic and Republican members of the House last year and sent to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demonstrated the depth of bipartisan support for the Abrams program on Capitol Hill. They chided the Obama administration for neglecting the industrial base and proposing to terminate tank production in the United States for the first time since World War II.
Portman, who served as President George W. Bush’s budget director before being elected to the Senate, said allowing the line to wither and close would create a financial mess.
“People can’t sit around for three years on unemployment insurance and wait for the government to come back,” Portman said. “That supply chain is going to be much more costly and much more inefficient to create if you mothball the plant.”
Pete Keating, a General Dynamics spokesman, said the money from Congress is allowing for a stable base of production for the Army, which receives about four tanks a month. With the line open, Lima also can fill international orders, bringing more work to Lima and preserving American jobs, he said.
Current foreign customers are Saudi Arabia, which is getting about five tanks a month, and Egypt, which is getting four. Each country pays all of their own costs. That’s a “success story during a period of economic pain,” Keating said.
Still, far fewer tanks are coming out of the Lima plant than in years past. The drop-off has affected companies such as Verhoff Machine and Welding in Continental, Ohio, which makes seats and other parts for the Abrams. Ed Verhoff, the company’s president, said his sales have dropped from $20 million to $7 million over the past two years. He’s also had to lay off about 25 skilled employees and he expects to be issuing more pink slips in the future.
“When we start to lose this base of people, what are we going to do? Buy our tanks from China?” Verhoff said.
Steven Grundman, a defense expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the difficulty of reviving defense industrial capabilities tends to be overstated.
“From the fairly insular world in which the defense industry operates, these capabilities seem to be unique and in many cases extraordinarily high art,” said Grundman, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs and installations during the Clinton administration. “But in the greater scope of the economy, they tend not to be.”
Thank you to ABC NEWS for this article.
Russia Caught Bomb Suspect on Wiretap
Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call.
In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.
The conversations are significant because, had they been revealed earlier, they might have been enough evidence for the FBI to initiate a more thorough investigation of the Tsarnaev family.
As it was, Russian authorities told the FBI only that they had concerns that Tamerlan and his mother were religious extremists. With no additional information, the FBI conducted a limited inquiry and closed the case in June 2011.
Two years later, authorities say Tamerlan and his brother, Dzhohkar, detonated two homemade bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three and injuring more than 260. Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout and Dzhohkar is under arrest.
In the past week, Russian authorities turned over to the United States information it had on Tamerlan and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. The Tsarnaevs are ethnic Chechens who emigrated from southern Russia to the Boston area over the past 11 years.
Even had the FBI received the information from the Russian wiretaps earlier, it’s not clear that the government could have prevented the attack.
In early 2011, the Russian FSB internal security service intercepted a conversation between Tamerlan and his mother vaguely discussing jihad, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation with reporters.
The two discussed the possibility of Tamerlan going to Palestine, but he told his mother he didn’t speak the language there, according to the officials, who reviewed the information Russia shared with the U.S.
In a second call, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva spoke with a man in the Caucasus region of Russia who was under FBI investigation. Jacqueline Maguire, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington Field Office, where that investigation was based, declined to comment.
There was no information in the conversation that suggested a plot inside the United States, officials said.
It was not immediately clear why Russian authorities didn’t share more information at the time. It is not unusual for countries, including the U.S., to be cagey with foreign authorities about what intelligence is being collected.
Nobody was available to discuss the matter early Sunday at FSB offices in Moscow.
Jim Treacy, the FBI’s legal attache in Moscow between 2007 and 2009, said the Russians long asked for U.S. assistance regarding Chechen activity in the United States that might be related to terrorism.
“On any given day, you can get some very good cooperation,” Treacy said. “The next you might find yourself totally shut out.”
Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has denied that she or her sons were involved in terrorism. She has said she believed her sons have been framed by U.S. authorities.
But Ruslan Tsarni, an uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers and Zubeidat’s former brother-in-law, said Saturday he believes the mother had a “big-time influence” as her older son increasingly embraced his Muslim faith and decided to quit boxing and school.
After receiving the narrow tip from Russia in March 2011, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation into Tamerlan and his mother. But the scope was extremely limited under the FBI’s internal procedures.
After a few months, they found no evidence Tamerlan or his mother were involved in terrorism.
The FBI asked Russia for more information. After hearing nothing, it closed the case in June 2011.
In the fall of 2011, the FSB contacted the CIA with the same information. Again the FBI asked Russia for more details and never heard back.
At that time, however, the CIA asked that Tamerlan’s and his mother’s name be entered into a massive U.S. terrorism database.
The CIA declined to comment Saturday.
Authorities have said they’ve seen no connection between the brothers and a foreign terrorist group. Dzhohkar told FBI interrogators that he and his brother were angry over wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the deaths of Muslim civilians there.
Family members have said Tamerlan was religiously apathetic until 2008 or 2009, when he met a conservative Muslim convert known only to the family as Misha. Misha, they said, steered Tamerlan toward a stricter version of Islam.
Two U.S. officials say investigators believe they have identified Misha. While it was not clear whether the FBI had spoken to him, the officials said they have not found a connection between Misha and the Boston attack or terrorism in general.
Thank you to ABC NEWS for this article.
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