Jo Weber Economist & Social Media Expert
SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERT HELPS CPAS, ATTORNEYS AND SMALL BUSINESSES GAIN A 300% ROI
English
English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in early medieval England and is now a global lingua franca.[4][5] It is anofficial language of almost 60 sovereign states, the most commonly spoken language in the United Kingdom, the United States,Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand, and a widely spoken language in countries in the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia.[6]It is the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin and Spanish.[7] It is the most widely learned second language and is an official language of the United Nations, of the European Union, and of many other world and regional international organisations.
English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialectsbrought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the fifth century, are called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England.[8] Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of theprinting press to London and the King James Bible as well as the Great Vowel Shift.[9] Through the worldwide influence of the British Empire, modern English spread around the world from the 17th to mid-20th centuries. Through all types of printed and electronic media, as well as the emergence of the United States as a global superpower, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and in professional contexts such as science, navigation, and law.[10]
Modern English has little inflection compared with many other languages, and relies on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation. Despite noticeable variation among the accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions – in terms of phonetics andphonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, grammar and spelling – English speakers from around the world are able to communicate with one another effectively.
Conventional wisdom goes like this: Americans are sick of dynastic politics. And, that fact means that Jeb BUSH and Hillary CLINTON are going to face a series of challenges because of their last names that wouldn’t be a problem if it was Jeb Jones and Hillary Smith running for office.
The middle class in this country is collapsing. We have 27 million people living in poverty. We have massive wealth and income inequality. Our trade policies have cost us millions of decent jobs. The American people want to know whether we’re going to have a democracy or an oligarchy as a result of Citizens United.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee, [and] what are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping,” said Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the number two Republican in the House, last month.
Jeb Bush cannot rewrite the history of his brother’s disastrous decisions in Iraq, or any other of the numerous disastrous decisions his brother made affecting our country.
The 2007 Iraq surge was intended as a temporary build-up to buy time, not any kind of permanent occupation. George W. Bush signed the security agreement with Iraq that set a date of Dec. 31, 2011, for all U.S. forces to withdraw from the country! Do you remember that, Jeb? Withdraw all U.S. forces by Dec. 31, 2011. Your brother signed it! Not Clinton. Not Obama.
How can Jeb Bush talk about the Iraq war or its horrible aftermath when his brother’s administration lied and fabricated intelligence to get us into that $3 trillion war in which over 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis died?
How can Jeb Bush talk about the economy when his brother’s administration’s economic decisions and policies nearly put our country into a depression that also resulted in the U.S. real estate crash and 800,000 jobs lost every month?
We should be asking this question. What did Jeb Bush do when he worked for the company that caused the financial crisis while his brother was president while Lehman was dumping AAA mortgage securities they knew were actually junk?
A new poll of the 2016 presidential race contains a frightening number for two of the top potential candidates, Republican Jeb Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
About 39% of voters would prefer a president who isn’t from the Bush or Clinton political dynasties.
That’s scary for Bush and Clinton, as it is a problem with no obvious solution.
Bush is the son of former President George H.W. Bush and the brother of former President George W. Bush. Clinton’s husband is former President Bill Clinton.
These numbers clearly suggest that family ties could be an obstacle for both Clinton and Bush as they mull whether to enter the 2016 race.
AP/Jae C. HongJeb Bush at the Republican National Convention.
And the question about their families wasn’t the only part of the poll that looked bad for Bush and Clinton. The pollsters asked voters what they thought about potential Bush and Clinton presidencies. A majority of respondents said both candidates would “represent too much of a return to the policies of the past” if they were elected.
60% of voters believed Bush would be a “return to the policies of the past” compared with just 27% who said he would “provide the new ideas and vision the country will need for the future.”
Clinton’s numbers were slightly better. The poll showed 51% of respondents thought she would be too much of a “return to the policies of the past” and 44% said she would bring “new ideas.”
REUTERSFormer President George Bush, second from left, shakes hands with President Clinton November 6 after Clinton’s speech at the formal opening of the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Applauding, center, is Hillary Rodham Clinton, and President Bush’s son Jeb, is at far left, rear, in November 1997.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) eviscerated the main conservative argument against filling Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat during President Barack Obama’s last year in office.
Warren, an acclaimed legal scholar, explained in a viral Facebook post that since the American people re-elected Obama in 2012, his power to nominate a replacement has already been approved by the voters.
Warren referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) claim that it would be undemocratic to seat an Obama nominee in the president’s last year. McConnell “is right that the American people should have a voice in the selection of the next Supreme Court justice,” Warren wrote. “In fact, they did — when President Obama won the 2012 election by five million votes.”
The clause in the constitution empowering the president to name Supreme Court justices — Article II, Section 2 — does not include an exception for when the president only has one year left in office, Warren noted.
Of course, McConnell himself has acknowledged as much in the past, since he voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988, the last year of Reagan’s presidency.
Warren’s post had been shared more than 75,000 times as of noon on Sunday.
Thomson ReutersU.S. Senate Majority Leader McConnell speaks after their party’s caucus luncheons on Capitol Hill in Washington
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday had barely moved beyond the realm of rumor before Senate Republicans announcedthat they would stonewall any replacement named by Barack Obama.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who controls much of the confirmation process—quickly declared that “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”
Republican presidential contenders agreed at Saturday night’s debate, and the right-wing press jumped into action to pretend that blocking a Supreme Court nominee for 11 months is a time-honored American tradition. (It’s not.)
Obama refused to play along, stating that he planned to fulfill his “constitutional responsibility to nominate a successor in due time.” Many Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, also employed the “constitutional responsibility line” to imply that the Senate would be shirking itsArticle II duties by obstructing the appointment of a new justice.
Whatever the merits of the constitutional argument, the Republicans’ political strategy here is extremely risky. It makes some sense at first blush—better to roll the dice that a President Rubio or Bush will get to appoint Scalia’s successor—but completely falls apart upon further analysis.
There are serious compromise candidates on the current shortlist, extraordinarily qualified moderates like Sri Srinivasan who would likely refuse to overturn treasured conservative precedents like Heller (establishing an individual right to bear arms) and Citizens United(allowing unlimited corporate electioneering).
Wikimedia CommonsTop row (left to right): Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Bottom row (left to right): Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, and Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
If the Senate confirmed a Srinivasan-type now, it might have to swallow a slight liberal SCOTUS tilt—but it could, by and large, avoid dramatically altering the balance of the court.
If the Senate holds out until January 2017, however, it will be taking an astonishing gamble. Should voters send another Democrat to the White House in November, they just may turn the Senate blue again at the same time.
At that point, the president could nominate a true liberal, in the vein of Justice Sonia Sotomayor—and Senate Democrats could revise the nuclear option and push him or her through over staunch GOP opposition. Once a Justice Goodwin Liu takes the bench, no conservative precedent would be safe. Goodbye Heller, goodbye Citizens United, goodbyeMcCutcheon and Hobby Lobby and maybe even the death penalty itself.
There are a few obvious caveats and retorts to this scenario. Most obviously, a Republican could win the presidency, keep the Senate red, appoint whomever he wants, and maintain the court’s previous balance. (My money is on Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, whose charming affability belies his rock-ribbed conservatism.)
Second, a Democrat could take the White House without turning the Senate blue, forcing a Srinivasan-type compromise candidate anyway. Third, even a Democratic Senate in 2017 could refuse to go nuclear and confirm a Supreme Court nominee with 50 votes, once again leading to the nomination of a moderate.
But are Republicans so confident in the likelihood of one of these alternatives that they’re willing to risk the worst possible outcome? Are they so horrified by the modest liberal victories that would come with the confirmation of a moderate as to deploy a strategy that could bring the second coming of the Warren court?
And, just as critically, are they really certain that a presidential election entirely focused on the impact of the court on American life—as this one surely now will—plays to their advantage?
Most Americans, after all, absolutely despise Citizens United and want to keep Roe v. Wade on the books. An election that focuses overwhelmingly on money in politics and first-trimester abortion is a losing election for Republicans.
Brendan Hoffman/Getty ImagesCruz is in favor of delaying the nomination.
Of course, the Republican strategy in the Obama era has been based on massive, unprecedented risks like this one, and the Senate stonewallers might just have the winning hand. But the odds that this particular gamble plays to their favor strike me as chillingly low. Already, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has begun to speak favorably about the possibility of a “consensus” candidate passing the Senate.*
Expect to hear a growing din of chatter along these lines as more Republicans survey the political landscape and realize that the obstructionist path forward may also be the riskiest.
The ability to give our phones a big chunk of battery life in a short amount of time is key, as charging them for long periods of time, like we might overnight, can damage them permanently.
If we want to do it properly, we need to charge them whenever we can throughout the day and keep them charged around 40% to 80% to prevent permanent damage.
With that in mind, it’s not always convenient to charge during the day, so that’s why quick-charging is important. It gives your phone a quick battery boost, which is especially useful if you’re in a hurry.
However, it turns out that the iPhone charges very slowly compared to Android phones with quick-charging features.
YouTube user AGNTV posted a video comparing charge times of the iPhone 6s Plus, OnePlus 2, and Moto X Play from around 3% up to 100% all with airplane mode on, so there’s no background activity from apps. It shows that the latest Android phones charge much more quickly than the latest iPhone.
After 15 minutes of charging, the iPhone only went up to 8% while the OnePlus and Moto X charged up to 20%. There’s no denying that the Android phones would last a lot longer if you only had 15 minutes to charge them.
Neither the iPhone or the OnePlus 2 have quick-charging features, and yet the iPhone charges much slower thean the OnePlus 2. That’s because the OnePlus uses the new USB-C standard, which will eventually be used by future Android phones.
It allows for faster charging than the conventional microUSB standard from previous Android phones and Apple’s Lightning standard.
The Moto X Play has the biggest battery out all three phones and uses microUSB, but it has the quick charging feature from mobile chip-maker, Qualcomm, that uses a special quick-charging adapter that comes with the phone. It only took the Moto X Play two hours to charge from 3% to 100%, which is almost an hour less than the iPhone. That’s pretty impressive.
Antonio Villas-Boas/Tech InsiderA quick-charger from the Galaxy S6.
Most Android flagships, including the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Note 5, and LG G4, also have Qualcomm’s quick-charging features. We also expect most flagship Android phones to adopt USB-C in the near future.
We haven’t seen Qualcomm’s quick-charging feature combined with USB-C yet, but when it does, we could potentially charge our phones extremely quick.
Meanwhile, there’s no mention of Apple adding its own quick-charging features to the iPhone, and it’s unlikely that Apple will adopt Qualcomm chips for the iPhone, as the company prefers to design and build its own chips. There are rumors, however, that the iPhone 7 will come with wireless charging, but that’s also pretty slow.
Check out AGNTV’s comparison video here:
The appearance of former Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli, the hoodie-wearing, hip-hop-loving indicted millennial multimillionaire, will certainly create congressional theatrics. | AP Photo
The drug industry is under attack in Washington.
Drug-price increases, and in particular price gouging, are a hot topic with the House of Representatives holding hearings on the matter.
It doesn’t help that the No. 1 target of the public’s ire chose to smirk and tweet his way through the hearings.
But despite its efforts to distance itself from Martin Shkreli, thedrug industry as a whole is being dragged into the debate.
“These tactics are not limited to a few ‘bad apples,’ but are prominent throughout the industry,” Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland) wrote last week in a memo, referring to the practice of jacking up drug prices.
The lobbying groups that oversee pharmaceutical companies’ interests have their work cut out for them, and they’ve ramped up spending in response. According to the the Center for Responsive Politics companies that make drugs spent $145 million in 2015 on lobbying the government, up from $138 million in 2014.
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of AmericaPhRMA campaign screenshot
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the pharmaceutical industry’s largest trade group, spent $18.4 million on lobbying efforts in 2015 — its first spending increase since 2009 when spending peaked at over $26 million.
One place spending will go is an ad campaign. PhRMA said it plans to spend 10% more than it did in 2015 on ads that intend to show how the industry advances research and development for new medical treatments. The campaign will be aimed at lawmakers and other political influencers, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier.
Here’s one of the new ads. It doesn’t directly address the issue of drug pricing, but rather focuses on the industry’s role in developing new treatments for diseases like cancer and diabetes. This ad was released February 1:
PhRMA said the “We’re Fighting Back” video and accompanying print ad is just the first round of material. More ads are expected to roll out later this year.
While the cost of bringing a new drug from the lab to the pharmacy — often more than $1 billion — is often offered as the justification for high prices in practice it doesn’t seem to be a primary factor.
One survey of 3,000 brand name drugs conducted by DRX, which provides health plans with price comparison software, led to the Bloomberg headline: “Shkreli was Right: Everyone’s Hiking Drug Prices.” It found that prices more than doubled for 60 drugs and at least quadrupled for 20 others since 2014. And the Oversight hearing announcement noted that the wholesale price rose more than eight times as fast as inflation for 30 of the top-selling U.S. drugs between 2010 and 2014 — 76 percent.
To Shkreli, 76 percent is piddling stuff. He’s said his only regret is that he didn’t jack up the price of Turing’s AIDS drug by even more than 5,000 percent.
The political battle to replace US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in his sleep Saturday at a Texas ranch at the age of 79, is set to be perhaps the “most consequential … of the last 20 years.”
That is according to veteran Republican strategist Rick Wilson, who was one of many analysts weighing in on the political ramifications of Scalia’s unexpected death Saturday.
Many seemed to agree that it will be difficult for President Barack Obama, who will now be tasked with choosing a nominee to replace Scalia, to get his appointment through a polarized Senate in an election year.
NBC chief legal analyst Pete Williams said he would be “very surprised” if the vacancy was filled before October, when the Supreme Court begins its 2016-2017 term.
“I would be very surprised, frankly, if a vacancy can be filled in time for the next term to start when it starts in October,” Williams said, according to RealClearPolitics.
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told CNN that Scalia’s “departure leaves a huge political fight in the offing.”
“There will be one of the great battles in United States Senate history,” to replace him, he added. “The question will be whether President Obama’s nominee … will get a vote at all in the remaining months of his presidency,” Toobin said.
Indeed, a battle has already begun between top Republicans and Democrats over whether a nominee should be appointed before or after Obama leaves office in January.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said in a statement that the “American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice.”
“Therefore,” McConnell added, “this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”
McConnell’s statement is important, since as majority leader he has large control over what comes up on the Senate floor. And he was largely backed up by his rank and file Saturday.
Scalia had served 30 years since being appointed in 1986 by Ronald Reagan. He was widely known for his staunchly conservative legal philosophy, and many Republican presidential candidates have said he is the type of juror they would look to appoint to the high court.
AP Photo/Ron EdmondsIn this June 17, 1986 photo, President Ronald Reagan speaks at a news briefing at the White House in Washington, where he announced the nomination of Antonin Scalia, left, to the Supreme Court as a result of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger’s resignation.
Conn Carroll, the communications director for Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), said on Twitter that the chances of Obama successfully appointing a Supreme Court justice to replace Scalia are “less than zero” — a sign of the polarizing fight to come.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a presidential candidate, said on Twitter that “we owe it” to Scalia and the nation “for the Senate to ensure that the next President names his replacement.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), also a presidential candidate, said in a statement that “the next president must nominate a justice who will continue Justice Scalia’s unwavering belief in the founding principles that we hold dear.”
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that “the fact of the matter is that it’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year.”
“Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this President, above all others, has made no bones about his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court justice.”
But in a preview of the battle set to hit Washington, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) released his own statement shortly thereafter slamming the notion that the Senate should wait to fill Scalia’s seat.
“The President can and should send the Senate a nominee right away,” Reid said. “It would be unprecedented in recent history for the Supreme Court to go a year with a vacant seat.
He added: “Failing to fill this vacancy would be a shameful abdication of one of the Senate’s most essential Constitutional responsibilities.”
Getty Images/Spencer PlattJustice Scalia at a Columbus Day parade.
Obama, for his part, said in a statement on Saturday that he plans to fulfill his “constitutional responsibility to nominate a successor in due time.”
“These are responsibilities that I take seriously, as should everyone,” he added.
Under Article II of the Constitution, the president has the power to appoint Supreme Court justices — but only with the “advice and consent of the Senate.” Typically, the candidate appointed by the president has to answer questions in a hearing before a Senate Judiciary Committee before he or she is given a vote from the full chamber.
Since President Gerald Ford’s term in office from 1974 to 1977, it has taken an average of 67 days for a president to nominate a candidate to that candidate receiving a final Senate vote, according to the Congressional Research Service. Because it is an election year, however, the process is bound to be even more politicized and lengthy than usual.
For perspective, the last time a sitting Supreme Court Justice died during a presidential election year was Justice Joseph Lamar in 1916 — and it took his successor, Louis Brandeis, 125 days to be confirmed by the Senate (the longest in history.)
President Obama has 341 days left in office.
By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company
Gather round for the word of the day: metanarrative. Definitions vary but let’s say it’s one big narrative that connects the meaning of events to a belief thought to be an essential truth, the storytelling equivalent of the unified field theory in physics.
Now use it to define what’s being done to America today – our Big Story. Journalist and activist Naomi Klein did just that a couple of weeks agowhen she and I talked at Finger Lakes Community College in upstate New York about the Koch brothers’ resistance to the reality of climate change.
“…The Charles Koch metanarrative – and he’s said it explicitly – is that he is challenging collectivism, he is challenging the idea that when people get together they can do good,” she said. “And he is putting forward the worldview that we’re all very familiar with that if you free the individual to pursue their self-interest that will actually benefit the majority. So you need to attack everything that is collective, whether it’s labor rights or whether it’s public health care or whether it’s regulatory action. All of this falls under the metanarrative of an attack on collectivism.”
In other words, Koch and his brother David and the extraordinary machine they have built in cahoots with fellow billionaires and others, have spent hundreds and hundreds of millions to get their way – “the great wealth grab” in the words of Richard Eskow – all part of one long story told in pursuit of a specific end: to make the needs of the very, very few our nation’s top priority and to thwart or destroy any group effort among the poor and middle class to do or say otherwise.
The Kochs have spun their tale with a singular, laser-like focus, carefully taking their time to make sure they get it right. Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, recently wrote inPolitico Magazine that
“Charles Koch might claim that his entry into politics is new, but from its secrecy to its methods of courting donors and recruiting students, the blueprint for the vast and powerful Koch donor network that we see today was drafted four decades ago.”
Mayer reviewed papers – including one written by Charles Koch himself – presented at a Koch-sponsored Center for Libertarian Studies conference in 1976 and concludes, “…It’s not hard to recognize the Koch political movement we see today-a vast and complex network of donors, think tanks and academic programs largely cloaked in secrecy and presented as philanthropy, leaving almost no money trail that the public can trace. And it’s these techniques Charles first championed decades ago that helped build his political faction-one so powerful that it turned fringe ideas William F. Buckley once dismissed as ‘Anarcho-Totalitarianism’ into a private political machine that grew to rival the Republican Party itself.”
And so we see their creation of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council posing as a non-profit while entertaining state legislators and plying them with templates for laws that favor restrictions on voter eligibility, public sector unions and the minimum wage while supporting freedom for the gun lobby and deregulation. The Kochs shower cash on candidates and elected officials who do the bidding of the right, fund programs at historically black colleges and universities that preach free-market economics and deregulation, bankroll the Libre Initiative that hands out holiday turkeys and Easter baskets to Latino families while, in its own words, “informing the U.S. Hispanic community about the benefits of a constitutionally limited government, property rights, rule of law, sound money supply and free enterprise through a variety of community events, research and policy initiatives that protect our economic freedom.”
As Naomi Klein said during our conversation, “The Koch brothers set out to change the values, to change the core ideas that people believed in. And there is no progressive equivalent of taking ideas seriously.” She then asked, “So what is the progressive metanarrative? Who funds it? Who is working on changing ideas that can say, ‘Actually, when we pool our resources, when we work together, we can do more and better than when we only act as individuals.’ I don’t think we value that.”
In fact, there is a progressive metanarrative, one that needs to be valued and not obscured by arguments over who is or is not sufficiently progressive or who did what to whom and when. The metanarrative’s lead has been buried in divisiveness, by trolling from every side and by despicable, old-fashioned redbaiting. What’s more, goals and purposes have been diffused with a scattershot approach when we should be vectoring in on what really counts.
The progressive metanarrative is the opposite of the fight against collectivism: it’s the struggle against inequality. The Harvard Gazette reports, “Though the wealthiest 20 percent earned nearly half of all wages in 2014, they have more than 80 percent of the wealth. The wealth of the poorest 20 percent, as measured by net worth, is actually negative. If they sell all they own, they’ll still be in debt.”
Labor organizer and Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Marshall Ganz tells theGazette, “I think the galloping inequality in this country results from poor political choices. There was nothing inevitable, nothing global. We made a series of political choices… that set us on this path.” He continues, “Inequality, it’s not just about wealth, it’s about power. It isn’t just that somebody has some yachts, it’s the effect on democracy… I think we’re in a really scary place.”
But it’s not a place from which escape is impossible. To make our metanarrative come true, we must embrace both community and government that effectively can protect and provide for all. In a 2014 article at the Ideas.TED website, philosopher T.M. Scanlon wrote,
“No one has reason to accept a scheme of cooperation that places their lives under the control of others, that deprives them of meaningful political participation, that deprives their children of the opportunity to qualify for better jobs, and that deprives them of a share of the wealth they help to produce… The holdings of the rich are not legitimate if they are acquired through competition from which others are excluded, and made possible by laws that are shaped by the rich for the benefit of the rich. In these ways, economic inequality can undermine the conditions of its own legitimacy.”
And so it can, if progressives work together, mobilize, dare to take risks and keep the faith in the face of cynicism and weary resignation. Such a metanarrative could have a different – and happy – ending.
Antonio Villas-Boas
Jo Weber Economist & Social Media Expert 
